Fact of the day

Thanks for clearing that up, I wouldn't know otherwise.

mankind slaughters 300,000,000 animals a day for their own consumption

If we didn't eat them, we'd be overrun by now.

kathmandu moved 10 feet to the south south during the recent earthquake

a manhole cover has been recorded as the fastest manmade object ever

allegedly 150,000 mph
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-fastest-speed-of-any-object-on-the-earth/answer/Talon-Torres?srid=hAm9&share=66667ee7

there is now only one verified person who was born in the 19th century

India's Mars mission cost less that the film Gravity.

Source: Radio 2, so its a fact.

I took bacon in a Tupperware to work this morning.

i won't believe it till i hear it on radio 2

If all the sand used by humans in a single year was turned into a wall it would be 20 metres high, 20 metres wide and stretch all the way around the equator.

When the first Star Wars came out, France was still executing people by guillotine

The Elephant's foot is a blob of formerly molten nuclear waste and concrete that burned its way through the reactor and ended up in the basement at Chernobyl.

It's the most radioactive waste in the world, and being in the same room as it will kill you pretty quickly.

All the photos of it are super grainy because the radiation cooks the film. The workers had to build a shielded cart to wheel the camera in front of them in order to photograph it.

Best description of it I've read is "It's the closest thing we have to Medusa"

It has been scientifically proved that dogs are better than cats.

That poor bugger in the top left has been turned into an electric ghost.

Apparently, it has since broken up:

http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/the-elephant-foot-of-the-chernobyl-disaster-1986/

Over time, the Elephant’s Foot decomposed. It puffed dust and its surface cracked. But for years it remained too dangerous to approach.

I'm not so sure. There's a documentary on Iplayer about the new sarcophagus, it includes some new footage from inside the melted reactor and there looks to still be some good sized 'corium' shapes.

According to Quora:

The "Elephant's Foot" is still lethally radioactive and isn't really going anywhere since it is solidified material. Though it's following a radioactive decay curve, it's still going to be awhile before it's anything remotely resembling safe. It's cool enough to be cycling in temperature with ambient conditions and it is crumbling here and there, but by and large just sitting.

.

After the larger explosion a number of employees at the power station went outside to get a clearer view of the extent of the damage, one such survivor, Alexander Yuvchenko recounts that once he stopped outside and looked up towards the reactor hall he saw a "very beautiful" LASER-like beam of light bluish light, caused by the ionization of air, that appeared to "flood up into infinity".

Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. Long after bleeding from the core, this unique piece of waste continues to be a testament to the potential dangers of nuclear power.

Thanks for bringing the Elephant's Foot to my attention, it's fascinating. (And terrifying)

The whole incident is nuts. Plenty of stories of workers knowingly sacrificing themselves to open valves under water or even just moving stuff that eventually killed them to prevent it from getting worse and trying to contain it.

Here's a very long photo history of the city and the incident, from memory a number of those individual stories are told in it:

https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q