MV Joyita

In 1955, the merchant vessel Joyita disappeared en route from Samoa to the Tokelau Islands, about 270 miles away.

A search and rescue mission found nothing, but five weeks later she was sighted more than 600 miles from her scheduled route. The ship was partially submerged and there was no trace of her 16 crewmembers or 9 passengers, including two children.

An inquiry found that the disappearance of the passengers and crew was “inexplicable on the evidence submitted.” But the Fiji Times and Herald quoted an “impeccable source” saying that the Joyita had passed through a fleet of Japanese fishing boats and “had observed something the Japanese did not want them to see.”

What was it? No one knows.

| Crime · Oddities

High PageRanks

Web sites with a Google PageRank of 10:

And, of course, Google itself.

| Technology

Yellowstone Caldera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Grand_prismatic_spring_edit.jpg

Most people know that Yellowstone National Park is geologically active, but few realize that it sits atop a gigantic volcano. No one knows when it will blow next, but past eruptions have been huge, up to 2,500 times the size of Mount St. Helens in 1980. Today that would kill millions and change the worldwide climate catastrophically.

For now, we just have to wait — the problem is far too big for today’s engineers to tackle.

| Science & Math

Death Tolls

  • 300 million – smallpox, worldwide, 20th century
  • 200 million – bubonic plague, worldwide, 1300s
  • 62 million – World War II
  • 60 million – Mongol conquests, 13th century
  • 19 million – AIDS, worldwide to date
  • 1 million – Irish potato famine, 1846-1849
  • 830,000 – Shaanxi earthquake, China, 1556
  • 650,000 – Deaths in the Roman Colosseum for public entertainment, 80-404
  • 36,000 – Krakatoa eruption, Indonesia, 1883
  • 15,000 – Holy Inquisition, 1184-1800
  • 1,517 – RMS Titanic, 1912
  • 300 – Great Chicago Fire, 1871
  • 270 – Pan Am Flight 103, Lockerbie, Scotland, 1988
  • 36 – Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, N.J., 1937
  • 7 – Space shuttle Challenger, Florida, 1986
  • 4 – Kent State shootings
| Death · History · Trivia

Stature

Tallest U.S. presidents:

  • Abraham Lincoln 6’3.75″
  • Lyndon B. Johnson 6’3.5″
  • Thomas Jefferson 6’2.5″
  • Chester A. Arthur 6’2″
  • George H.W. Bush 6’2″
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt 6’2″

And shortest:

  • John Adams 5’7″
  • John Quincy Adams 5’7″
  • William McKinley 5’7″
  • Benjamin Harrison 5’6″
  • Martin Van Buren 5’6″
  • James Madison 5’4″
| History · Trivia

Top Languages

The world’s most popular languages, by number of native speakers:

  1. Chinese, 937 million
  2. English, 335 million
  3. Spanish, 332 million
  4. Hindi/Urdu, 291 million
  5. Arabic, 193 million
  6. Bengali, 189 million
  7. Malay/Indonesian, 176 million
  8. Portuguese, 170 million
  9. Russian, 165 million
  10. Japanese, 125 million

“The great thing about human language,” wrote Lewis Thomas, “is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.”

| Language