Norway knighted a penguin.

Norway knighted a penguin.

Nils Olav, a king penguin, was adopted in 1972 to be the mascot of the Norwegian Guard. He is named after Majols Nils Egelien and former King of Norway King Olav. 

Since then, he has only moved up in ranks. In 1982, he became a Corporal. In 1987, he reached the rank of Sergeant. In 1993, he became a Regimental Sergeant Major, and in 2001, he became an Honourable Regimental Sergeant Major. 

Nils is often visited by Norway's armed forces and has received much regard and respect because of his outstanding service and good conduct. In 2005, Edinburgh Zoo was presented with a bronze statue of the penguin due to the esteem Nils has generated. 

2008, however, was the pinnacle of Olav’s career. That year, King Harald V knighted Nils Olav. The ceremony was lavish, and a crowd of several hundred joined 130 guardsmen as Nils received his knighthood. He reportedly was on his best behavior and stood proudly as he was knighted. 

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The Aymara people of the Andes have a reverse concept of time, unique the world over.

The Aymara people of the Andes have a reverse concept of time, unique the world over.

In 2006, a study revealed that South America’s indigenous Aymara people have a reverse concept of time. What does that mean? Well they don’t believe they get younger over time, it has to do with how they think of the flow of time. 

Obviously, we see the past behind us and the future ahead of us. The Aymara people think of it the other way around: the past is ahead and the future behind. This way of mapping time spatially is unique amongst most of the world's cultures.

For clues on how they see time, researchers looked a lot at language. The Aymara language uses “nayra” (eye, front, or sight) to mean “past” and uses “qhipa” (back or behind) to mean “future.” 

So the expression “nayra mara,” which would translate to “last year,” actually means “front year.” To put it in context, it’s something we occasionally do in English. At 1:30, you could say you’re half an hour ahead of 2:00. Being ahead, meaning “in front,” suggests we also sometimes put the past in front. 

Another clue for how their time mapping is different came with their body language. Whenever a native Aymara speaker would refer to events that had already happened, they would gesture forwards, in front of their body. Whenever they were referring to future events, they would gesture behind their body.

It’s a complex concept, for sure. If you want to read more on it, you can check out the study here

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Mortal Kombat for the NES had no blood in it.

Mortal Kombat for the NES had no blood in it.

If you watch enough G4TV, this should be no surprise to you. During the purple reign of the SNES, Nintendo of America maintained a strict censorship policy that limited the amount of violence in the games on its systems. 

Then, like now, Nintendo was aiming to market a family console. When the notoriously gory Mortal Kombat began sweeping the gaming world, Nintendo refused to allow the level of violence that the game had on their system. 

The blood and finishing moves were toned down, so that when players were hit, cut, or stabbed, they would just sweat profusely. Check out a comparison image between versions here.

Gamers really hated the censorship. The Sega Genesis version, wasn't censored and gamers flocked to it. That version outsold the SNES one by a ratio of 3 to 1! This made Nintendo reverse course and allow the developers to put in anything they wanted for the sequel.

If you know much of Mortal Kombat, you might be wondering why after the first game, Nintendo started allowing the violence. Well until that point, video games weren’t rated in the same way. 

Mortal Kombat’s success was the trigger for the creation of the modern video game rating system in the US, and so Nintendo felt its censorship in that department was no longer needed. 

As a result, Mortal Kombat II on the SNES outsold the ports on other systems. If there’s nothing else to take away from this, it’s that thanks to gratuitous violence, we now have a safe and reliable way of knowing which games are appropriate for different age groups. 

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The President of Indonesia has released 3 pop albums while in office.

The President of Indonesia has released 3 pop albums while in office.

Susilo Banbang Yudhoyono has been president of Indonesia since 2004. Widely known in Indonesia by his initials SBY, he is now completing his second term in office. Before he was ever President, or even involved in politics, SBY was a musician and was heavily involved in the music scene. 

He was once part of a band called Gaya Teruna, even. In the late Aughties (2000-2009), he started rekindling his interest in music, despite already being in office. Three years after he was sworn in, he released his first ever music album. 

In English, it is called My Longing For You, and is a collection of ten love ballads and religious songs. Many of the country’s popular singers performed on the album. In 2009, he joined musician Yockie Suryoprayogo and formed the duo “Yockie and Susilo.” 

The two released an album called Evolusi. In 2010, he released his third album, "I’m Certain I’ll Make It." Is it awesome or unprofessional? Well, that’s for you to decide. 

It’s worth noting that there have been presidents who have done much worse with their free time than compose music. But really, could a guy who rocks a Peci fez that hard be blamed for making music? 

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The cat in The Godfather was just a stray that lived on set.

The cat in The Godfather was just a stray that lived on set.

In the movie The Godfather, Don Vito Corleone, played by Marlon Brando, is the founder and mob boss of the Corleone Family. In the film’s opening scene, Don Vito Corleone is seen holding a cat on his lap while he sits in his office during his daughter’s wedding ceremony. 

Francis Ford Coppola, the film’s writer and director, found the stray cat while walking through the lot at Paramount studios. Originally, the cat was not in the script at all, but right before the scene was filmed, Coppola gave the cat to Brando to see how it would play out. 

Evidently, the scene was left with the cat, which ended up creating one of the more memorable images from the Godfather films. The cat did create a problem, though, because its purring muffled some of Brando’s lines, which meant they had to be looped over. 

The placement of the cat is often seen as representing the hidden claws beneath The Don’s warm facade. 

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You will never count to one trillion.

You will never count to one trillion.

This one might be a no brainer if you've thought about it before. How many numbers can you count to in five seconds?

For fast counters, out loud is about twenty seven seconds. In your head, it might be closer to thirty five.

Of course because higher numbers take longer to say, a fast counter can typically hit around 200 in sixty seconds. If you bring that up to an hour, it's somewhere around 1,200.

Doing the math without factoring in the amount of time it takes to say the higher numbers, it would take over 9,000 years to get to one trillion. If you're counting in your head, the results won't be much better.

If you count in your head for 24 hours straight, you will reach somewhere around 600,000. One whole year nonstop would give you 220 million, and if you counted for your entire life, you would only reach the billions.

Well, if you ever find yourself immortal and floating through space after the Earth is destroyed, now you know what you can do for fun.

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Nazi death camps installed brothels to increase prisoner productivity and provide “therapy” for homosexuals.

Nazi death camps installed brothels to increase prisoner productivity and provide “therapy” for homosexuals.

You may remember from school that Hitler also had it out for homosexuals and prostitutes. In the concentration camps, the SS apparently tried to use one to remedy the other, as they saw it. 

It’s certainly a disturbing thing to reveal, and might seem strange that the Nazis would spend so much energy and resources on it. But then again, these are the people who tried teaching dogs to read, write, and talk, so it’s not exactly the craziest thing they did. 

The idea at first was that having brothels in the camps would give prisoners the incentive to work together, but ultimately there was no proof that it did so. This was mostly because the prisoners were too emaciated and too weary and tired of the various SS schemes. 

The ones who actually took advantage of the brothels the most were the Kapos, prisoners who were assigned to supervise forced labor. In addition, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, tried using the brothels as a means of “therapy” to teach the pink triangle (homosexual) prisoners “the joys of the opposite sex.” 

It’s been reported that all pink triangle prisoners were forced to visit the brothels once per week. 

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