WcP.Story.Teller's blog

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The Taipei Tower 101, Taiwan, completed in 2003 (1,670 ft - 509.2 m)

The Taipei Tower 101, completed in 2003 took just 4 years to build. It is called the 101 because it has 101 floors (stories) above ground, and 5 below. From ground to tip of spire the Sears Tower is still taller than the Taipei 101, however from ground to top of roof the Taipei does win. The Taipei 101 is the first and currently only habitable building in the world to break the half-kilometer mark in height. However, a tower currently under construction known as "Burj Dubai" is going to do away with any controversy so completely that there will be no doubt as to which is the world's tallest building.

Burj Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to be completed in 2009 (2,684 ft - 818 m)  read more »

Eviction
An woman holds her naked child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs.

Winner in General News Singles category, 2008 World Press Photo of the Year.

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Photos courtesy of Reuters/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL)

Original Source: Reuters

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It was the first Friday in December, 23 degrees at dawn and nearly windless. Everyone was looking up. Operation Migration’s four ultralight planes floated into view over some oak and maple trees, then passed over the small, white chapel. An ultralight is powered by a massive rear propeller. In the sky, it looks like a scaled-down Formula 1 car dangling under the wing of a hang glider. Because the little planes taxi on three wheels, pilots call them trikes.

At 200 feet, the first pilot, Chris Gullikson, was perfectly visible in his trike’s open cockpit. He was wearing his whooping-crane costume, a white hooded helmet and white gown that looked like a cross between a beekeeping suit and a Ku Klux Klan get-up. Gullikson and the other trike pilots were going to pick up the 14 juvenile whooping cranes that they were, little by little, leading south for the winter. Traditionally, and for many millenniums, cranes learned to migrate by following other cranes. But traditions have changed. Outside the church, a plucky, silver-haired woman named Liz Condie was explaining to the spectators why, exactly, her team has had to dress up and step in.

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World's first guesthouse on a plane opens in Stockholm, Sweden

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Up close, a Boeing 747-200 is an impressive sight. Visitors to Stockholm’s Arlanda airport can now get a real, close-up view of a mighty bird - in the form of a decommissioned jumbo jet that has been converted into a hostel, opened in mid-January.

The decommissioned jumbo jet was built in 1976 and has been operated by carriers including Singapore Airlines and Pan American World Airways, better known as PanAm. It was taken out of service in 2002, and has featured at Arlanda for some time.

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Nepal became the world's newest republic in 2006, and in May 2008 ended the country's 240-year monarchy. However, the centuries-old Hindu-Buddhist tradition of worshipping a young virgin as the living embodiment of a powerful goddess has survived, and the Nepalese president now receives blessings from the girl - “living goddess”.

The three-year-old daughter of a Nepalese watch repairer became a "living goddess" after being approved by the country's new atheist government. Despite Nepal being a Maoist republic after the monarchy was unseated in May, the centuries-old tradition of worshipping a young virgin as the living embodiment of a powerful Hindu goddess has survived.  read more »

Sometimes things, purely odd, happen. However the disaster on September 6, 1952, prompted the introduction of stringent safety measures to protect spectators at air shows and no member of the public has been killed at a British air show since.

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At the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire on 6 September 1952, thousands of spectators watched as a De Havilland 110 aircraft broke the sound barrier and then disintegrated in the sky above them and fell to earth. The De Havilland 110 fighter had just broken the sound barrier when it broke up over the spectators, showering them with debris. Among the dead are the pilot, John Derry, and the flight test observer Anthony Richards. The two airmen had completed one fly-past in which they amazed 130, 000 spectators by breaking the sound barrier to produce a sonic boom.

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Monday, Oct. 23, 1989, Time Magazine Cover Story: The Can't Do Government

After almost nine years of the Reagan Revolution, Americans may wonder whether the Government -- from Congress to the White House, from the State Department to the Office of Management and Budget -- can govern at all anymore. Abroad and at home, challenges are going unmet. Under the shadow of a massive federal deficit that neither political party is willing to confront, a kind of neurosis of accepted limits has taken hold from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other.

On this day, February 4 in 1789, 69 members of Congress cast their ballots to elect George Washington the first president of the United States. As the former leader of the Continental Army and chairman of the Continental Congress, Washington possessed the necessary credentials for the presidency, if not the enthusiasm. After months of appearing to sidestep, and even outright rejecting the idea of assuming the presidency, Washington reluctantly accepted Congress’ decision. Runner-up John Adams became Washington’s vice president.

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