Coca Cola Rumors & Facts

Are you wondering about something you have seen or heard about this company or their beverages?
Around the world an increasing volume of information is circulating on the Internet. Unfortunately not all of it is correct. Click in this link (provided be Javier P.) if you want to get the facts the company shows.

Coca Cola Rumors & Facts

Interesting Anecdotes (part 2)

Airports at higher  altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air  density.
    
 The University of Alaska  spans four time zones.
  
 The tooth is the only  part of the human body that cannot heal itself.
  
 In ancient Greece ,  tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage.  Catching it meant she accepted.
  
 Warner Communications  paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy  Birthday.
  
 Intelligent people have  more zinc and copper in their hair.
  
 A comet's tail always  points away from the sun.
  
 The Swine Flu vaccine in  1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to  prevent.
  
 Caffeine increases the  power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some  medicines.
  
 The military salute is a  motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised  their visors to reveal their identity.
  
 If you get into the  bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even  in the middle of the day.
  
 When a person dies,  hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is  sight.
   
 In ancient times  strangers shook hands to show that they were  unarmed.
  
 Strawberries are the  only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.
  
 Avocados have the  highest calories of any fruit at 167 calories per hundred  grams.

 The moon moves about two  inches away from the Earth each year.
  
 The Earth gets 100 tons  heavier every day due to falling space dust.
  
 Due to earth's gravity  it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000  meters.
     
 Mickey Mouse is known as  "Topolino" in Italy.
  
 Soldiers do not march in  step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration  which could be sufficient to knock the bridge  down.
     
 Everything weighs one  percent less at the equator.
  
 For every extra kilogram  carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at  lift-off.
  
 The letter  J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.  
  
 And last but  not least:
 In 2011,  July has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays. This apparently happens  once every 823 years!  This is called 'money bags'.

'Great legend' Elizabeth Taylor remembered

Javier P. has sent me this piece of information about the famous actress who has just passed away.

Dame Elizabeth won two Academy Awards over the course of her career
Madonna, Barbra Streisand and many other stars have paid tribute to Dame Elizabeth Taylor following her death in Los Angeles at the age of 79.
"I am so sorry to hear that this great legend has passed," said Madonna.
"I admired and respected her not only as an actress but for her amazing and inspiring work as an Aids activist."
"It's the end of an era," said Streisand in her tribute. "It wasn't just her beauty or her stardom. It was her humanitarianism."
"She put a face on HIV/Aids. She was funny. She was generous. She made her life count."
Double Oscar-winner Taylor had a history of ill health and was being treated for symptoms of congestive heart failure at the time of her death.
Her four children were with her when she died in her sleep at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Wednesday.
Dame Elizabeth's passing prompted a plethora of tributes from her Hollywood contemporaries, among them Shirley MacLaine, Mickey Rooney and Liza Minnelli.
"I don't know what was more impressive - her magnitude as a star or her magnitude as a friend," said MacLaine.
"Her talent for friendship was unmatched. I will miss her for the rest of my life and beyond."
Rooney, who starred opposite Taylor in 1944's National Velvet, remembered her as "a lady who gave of herself to everyone".
Elizabeth's legacy will live on in many people around the world”
End Quote Bill and Hillary Clinton
Minnelli, meanwhile, remembered her as "a true star" and friend who "was always, always there for me."
"Liz was a dear friend," said Dame Julie Andrews, who received her damehood on the same day as London-born Taylor in May 2000.
"She was a great legendary lady of Hollywood and she will be mourned worldwide."
Additional tributes were paid by Debbie Reynolds, Barry Manilow and La Toya Jackson, who said she had been an "incredible friend" of her late brother Michael.
Beyond the movie and music industries, Taylor's passing has also been marked by leading figures in the world of politics.
"Elizabeth's legacy will live on in many people around the world whose lives will be longer and better because of her work and the ongoing efforts of those she inspired," said former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, now US Secretary of State.
Taylor's star on the Walk of Fame has been adorned with mementos from fans
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said she had "forever marked the history of the Seventh Art" and had been "devoted from the youngest age to a limitless passion for film".
"I shall remember her as a woman whose heart and soul were as beautiful as her classic face and majestic eyes," said John Warner, the former US senator who became Taylor's sixth husband in 1976.
Former first lady Nancy Reagan, meanwhile, remembered her as a woman who was "passionate - and compassionate - about everything in her life, including her family, her friends and especially the victims of Aids.
"She was truly a legend and we will miss her."
In Los Angeles, Taylor's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has been deluged by flowers, photos and notes from fans.
A private family funeral will be held later this week.

Very interesting anecdotes (part 1)

For your information!

If you are right handed,  you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you  are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of  your mouth.

To make half a kilo of  honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual  flowers.

Heroin is the brand name  of morphine once marketed by 'Bayer'.
 
 Tourists visiting   Iceland should know that tipping at a restaurant is considered an  insult!
  
 People in nudist  colonies play volleyball more than any other  sport.
  
 Albert Einstein was  offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he  declined.
  
 Astronauts can't belch -  there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their  stomachs.
  
 Ancient Roman, Chinese  and German societies often used urine as  mouthwash.
  
 The Mona Lisa has no  eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them  off!
  
 Because of the speed at  which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse  to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.
  
 The night of January 20  is "Saint Agnes's Eve", which is regarded as a time when a young woman  dreams of her future husband.
      
 Google is actually the  common name for a number with a million zeros.
  
 It takes glass one  million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be  recycled an infinite amount of times!
  
 Gold is the only metal  that doesn't rust, even if it's buried in the ground for thousands of  years.
  
 Your tongue is the only  muscle in your body that is attached at only one  end.
  
 If you stop getting  thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated,  its thirst
 mechanism shuts  off.
  
 Each year 2,000,000  smokers either quit smoking or die of tobacco-related  diseases.
      
 Zero is the only number  that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
  
 Kites were used in the  American Civil War to deliver letters and  newspapers.
  
 The song, Auld Lang  Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking  country in the world to bring in the new year.
     
 Drinking water after  eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61  percent.
  
 Peanut oil is used for  cooking in submarines because it doesn't smoke unless it's heated above  450°F.
      
 The roar that we hear  when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather  the sound of blood surging through the veins in the  ear.
  
 Nine out of every 10  living things live in the ocean.
  
 The banana cannot  reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of  man.
  
 

Women and Islam. Dr Wafa Sultan

This is a very interesting video with the speech of an American-Sirian psychyatric who strongly fights in favour of Muslim women rights.
It has subtitles in Spanish, soyou will be able to understand very well while she's talking, despite her strong accent.
Dr Wafa Sultan's speech

World Digital Library

Mar G. has sent me this interesting article about this new Library created by UNESCO. It is written in Spanish, but I hope you find it interesting.

                                                    

Mission

The World Digital Library (WDL) makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.
The principal objectives of the WDL are to:

• Promote international and intercultural understanding;
• Expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the Internet;
• Provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences;
• Build capacity in partner institutions to narrow the digital divide within and between countries.

This Site

The WDL makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.
Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.
Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.
The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations.

Worldwide Digital Library

Powerful quake triggers tsunami in Japan

Hundreds of people are feared dead after an 8.9 magnitude earthquake off the northeast coast of Japan sent a 10m tsunami ploughing into its coast. The quake was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and sparked a tsunami alert across the Pacific basin.

• Strong tremors shake buildings in Tokyo
• Major fire at Chiba refinery

If you click here, you can see some impressive images of how the tremendous tsunami sweeps fields and villages and even the airport and a refinery.

 

The guardian

 

THE SUGAR GLIDER by Rod Nielsen

This is the next book you have to read. It's level 5, that is, upper-intermediate. Make sure you buy it with the corresponding CDs. This is the ISBN for the book WITH CDs: 978-0-521-68651-8.
I hope you get it soon to start reading next week.

KEY FOR THE REVIEW

You have access to two documents. One of them is the answer key for Review B, the cloze and the Reading Comprehension (The day that changed my life). The other one is an exercise (USED TO) I just gave to the group at 6 p.m. You can see the exercise and the key.

I hope you find it useful.

Review + other exe. KEY

Used to - ex. + KEY

Shot because he was against the blasmefy laws

The radicals in Pakistan kill a Christian minister because he was against the new blasfemy laws, which punish everyone who is not a Muslim.

Pakistan minister shot dead on way to cabinet meeting in Islamabad

Shahbaz Bhatti – a Christian and critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws – killed by assassins who left behind Taliban-linked leaflets, say reports

 

Shahbaz Bhatti, pictured in 2005, was Pakistan's minorities minister. Photograph: Faisal Mahmood/Reuters

Pakistan's minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, has been assassinated by unidentified gunmen in the capital, Islamabad.

Bhatti, a Christian, was an outspoken advocate of reforms to Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws, and his death comes two months after the Punjab governor, Salmaan Taseer, was gunned down just a few miles away.
Television stations said up to four gunmen opened fire on Bhatti at close range as he left his Islamabad home on Wednesday with his niece on his way to cabinet meeting.
The gunmen pulled Bhatti's niece and guard out of his vehicle, then shot him several times inside the car. The minister was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead. The killers escaped. TV stations reported they left behind pamphlets for a Taliban-affiliated group.
One report said the pamphlet has been signed by a group named "Fidayeen e Muhammad" and "al-Qaida in Punjab", strongly suggesting a link between the killing and the blasphemy controversy.
Television pictures showed Bhatti's bullet-ridden car and police officers entering the house amid heavy rain.
Bhatti had joined Salmaan Taseer in championing the case of Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death last November for allegedly committing blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad.
Human rights campaigners reacted with anger and dismay to the death of Bhatti, calling it a further sign of crumbling tolerance that highlighted the chronic failure of President Asif Ali Zardari's government to safeguard liberal voices.
"Shahbaz Bhatti was one of the few people in the government who took a brave and principled position on the blasphemy law. It appears like Salmaan Taseer before him that he has been killed for espousing this position," said Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch.

If you want to read more, click here
The Guardian

PASSIVE VOICE

I attach the table with the transformations of the verbs from active into passive and the first exercises we did.
Check if your table is correct.

Passive voice table