First Ever" Human-Powered Ornithopter Flight,

A Canadian university student has done what Leonardo da Vinci had only dreamt of: Piloted a human-powered "wing-flapping" plane! Called an ornithopter, and the inspiration for modern day helicopters, the machine was first sketched by da Vinci way back in 1485 and never actually built.

Todd Reichert, an engineering student at the University of Toronto, made history by sustaining flight in his ornithopter -- named Snowbird -- for 19.3 seconds and covering 475.72 feet. Snowbird is made from carbon fiber, balsa wood, and foam. The 92.59 pound vehicle maintained an average speed of 15.91 miles per hour.

Todd and his plane made the accomplishment on August 2, 2010, at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ontario. The crew kept the achievement quiet for nearly two months to get the data finalized. Todd and some 30 other students had been working on the plane for 4 years.

The team went through 65 practice flights, and sadly, the aircraft will probably never be flown again.

[ Vote on Weird Human-Powered Transport Options over at Planet Green! ]

Todd endured a year-long exercise program in which he lost 18 lbs. to prep for the flight. Because the plane has a wingspan of 104 feet -- which is comparable to that of a Boeing 737 -- the pilot had to pedal with his legs all while pulling on the wings to flap at the same time. And he had to do it fast enough to fly!

"Our original goal was to complete this sort of original aeronautical dream to fly like a bird," said 28-year-old Reichert yesterday. "The idea was to fly under your own power by flapping your wings."

The flight, witnessed by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, is the first officially confirmed flight in an ornithopter.

"Thousands of people have tried to do this for hundreds of years," said Reichert. "To be honest, I don't think it's really set in yet that I'm the one who has been successful. I was pushing with everything I had. When I finally let go and landed, I was hit with a breadth of excitement. It was pretty wild."

I bet it was, Todd!

By Jerry James Stone, TreeHugger yahoo green

Bill targeting government waste to be signed into law in the United States of America

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama will sign into law Thursday the Improper Payment Elimination Act -- an effort designed to slim down wasteful government programs and curb fraud in federal spending.

"The fact is, Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money, bartered and traded, divvied up among lobbyists and special interests," Obama said in March when he announced the initiative. "And it has been a place where waste -- even billions of dollars in waste -- is accepted as the price of doing business."

The act will use something known as payments recapture audits, which will pay auditors financial incentives to find improper payments. The White House said it could save $2 billion in taxpayer money over the next three years.

The new law also will toughen up rules for federal agencies, which will be required to report improper payments on a regular basis and elaborate on their efforts to avoid similar waste in the future.

"Well, I don't accept business as usual," the president said in March. "And the American people don't accept it either, especially when one of the most pressing challenges we face is reining in long-term deficits which threaten to leave our children a mountain of debt."

The Senate passed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act by unanimous consent June 23. The House passed it July 14.

'World's strongest ale' comes in eye-catching dead animal bottles

It's super-strength, costs £500 a pop and goes by the fetching title of The End of History - oh, and it's sold inside dead stuffed animals such as the humble stoat.

BrewDog, of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, is the firm behind the new ale that's apparently stronger than whisky and vodka at 55 per cent volume.

Indeed, the brewer recommends that the tasty beverage is served in a shot glass 'to be enjoyed like a fine whisky'.

Twelve bottles of The End Of History have already slid off the production line and been placed inside seven dead stoats, four squirrels and one hare.

Fret not, though, the animals weren't killed specifically for the purposes of housing the bottles but died of natural causes.

The critters also sport a range of eye-catching outfits including a kilt and a top hat.

BrewDog co-founder James Watt describes The End Of History as 'a perfect conceptual marriage between taxidermy, art and craft brewing'.

'This is the beer to end all beers. It's an audacious blend of eccentricity, artistry and rebellion; changing the general perception of beer, one stuffed animal at a time,' he continues.

'The bottles are at once beautiful and disturbing - they disrupt conventions and break taboos, just like the beer they hold within them.'

Infused with nettles and juniper berries, the blond Belgian ale is created by freezing the liquid to separate water from the solution, fact fans will be delighted to know.

Chinese police beat official's wife by mistake

(Reuters) - Plainclothes police severely beat the wife of a provincial official, mistaking her for one of many Chinese who petition government offices in the hope of redressing wrongs, the China Daily reported on Wednesday.

The case of mistaken identity has become a hot topic among Chinese Internet users, highlighting the abuse that China's armies of petitioners routinely suffer at the hands of police and hired thugs who wish to silence them.

Six public security officers set on Chen Yulian, the wife of a provincial law enforcement officer, last month when she tried to enter her husband's office building, which houses the Hubei provincial party headquarters, the China Daily said.

"This incident is a total misunderstanding," the Communist Party chief of the district bureau explained, according the newspaper. "Our police officers never realized that they beat the wife of a senior leader."

China's leaders are obsessed with maintaining social stability and "building a harmonious society" has been their chief concern in the recent years.

Thousands of petitioners take their grievances to Beijing every day. Many of their complaints stem from land seizures, while others seek redress for lay-offs dating from massive bankruptcies in China's state sector in the 1990s.

The men who beat Chen were later identified as public security officers from Wuhan, the provincial capital, who had been assigned to guard the office building and "subdue" petitioners.

"A strong wave of fists rained down on her for more than 16 minutes," the report said.

Chen was knocked to the ground despite her attempt to explain that her husband worked in the office building. She was then transported to a police station and yelled at when she requested medical attention, according to the paper's account.

The attack left her with a concussion, and damaged brain and nerve tissues. Chen was released and sent to hospital after she reached her husband by phone, and ranking police officers apologized profusely.

"Does this mean the police are not supposed to beat leaders' wives, but the ordinary people can be battered?" the China Daily quoted an anonymous visitor to Chen's ward as saying.

(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Lucy Hornby and Ken Wills)

Church rules confessional can't be turned into sauna

Vienna's archdiocese stepped in after a confessional was listed on auction site eBay, with a description that suggested it could be turned into a sauna.

Catholics may sweat in the confessional when they admit things they shouldn’t have done. But Vienna’s archdiocese has ruled that the small booth cannot be turned into a sauna.

Bidding on eBay on a confessional at a church undergoing renovation – described on the site as ideal for conversion into a one-person sauna or a small bar or a children's playhouse – was stopped when the archdiocese stepped in.

Spokesman Erich Leitenberger said that auctioning 'objects that were used for dispensing the sacraments is not acceptable.'

Confessionals 'should not be converted into saunas or bars,' he was quoted Tuesday as saying.

www.metro.co

Romantic comedies might provide 90 minutes of light-hearted fun but the happy-ever-after movies are also impacting people's real love lives, according

(Reuters)

poll of 1,000 Australians found almost half said rom-coms with their inevitable happy endings have ruined their view of an ideal relationship.

One in four Australians said they were now expected to know what their partner was thinking while one in five respondents said it made their partners expect gifts and flowers 'just because'.

"It seems our love of rom-coms is turning us into a nation of "happy-ever-after addicts." Yet the warm and fuzzy feeling they provide can adversely influence our view of real relationships," said Australian relationship counselor, Gabrielle Morrissey.

"Real relationships take work and true love requires more than fireworks."

The survey was released by Warner Home Video to mark the movie "Valentine's Day" going to DVD.

(Reporting by Pauline Askin)

Weird Fact of the Day: The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

Weird Fact of the Day: The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.

Useless facts of the day:

You can pull a cow upstairs,but the cow will not know how to come down by itself.

In a study of 200,000 ostriches over a period of 80 years, no one reported a single case where an ostrich buried its head in the sand

315 entries in Webster's 1996 dictionary were misspelled.

Heating up a rock in the microwave oven will cause the rock to explode.

The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because when it was built, engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.