His predictions led to death threats as German fans called for Paul to be cooked and eaten. In response, Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero offered to send Paul official state protection, and the Industry Minister Miguel Sebastian called for Paul to be given safe haven in Spain
Khadijah is known as “Harvard girl,” the “smart girl” and the girl with the contagious smile.
What students don’t know is that she’s also homeless.
As long as she can remember, Khadijah has floated from shelters to motels to armories along the West Coast with her mother. She has attended 12 schools in 12 years; lived out of garbage bags among pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers. Every morning, she upheld her dignity, making sure she didn’t smell or look disheveled.
On the streets, she learned how to hunt for their next meal, plot the next bus route and help choose a secure place to sleep – survival skills she applied with passion to her education.
Only a few mentors and Harvard officials know her background. She never wanted other students to know her secret – not until her plane left for the East Coast hours after her Friday evening graduation.
“I was so proud of being smart I never wanted people to say, ‘You got the easy way out because you’re homeless,’ ” she said. “I never saw it as an excuse.” [x]
When a fresh batch of snow falls to the ground, the world tends to quiet down.
That could partially be attributed to human factors: it’s likely winter, people aren’t out as much and traffic comes to a halt. However, there are more scientific reasons for the quietude. When a fresh blanket of snow settles down, it’s doing a lot more than turning the world into a winter wonderland.
“When snow falls, it does absorb some of the soundwaves,” says Bernadette Woods Placky, a meteorologist and director of Climate Central’s Climate Matters program. [x]
As snowflakes stack up, there is more space left between them, compared to the surface of liquids like water. With all that space, sound is unable to bounce off snow as easily as it would off water. As a result, the sound gets absorbed.
Amongst Mr Burns’ many peculiarities, one of his most well-known quirks is his weird greeting whenever he answers the phone. Instead of the usual ‘hello’ or ‘who the hell is this?’, Mr Burns always uses ‘ahoy hoy’ as an opening greeting. This odd little greeting actually carries some interesting history behind it.
Alexander Graham Bell recommended that ‘ahoy hoy’ should be the greeting in which people should use when answering a call. Thomas Edison later proposed ‘hello’ as a better alternative. You can guess which one stuck and which one didn’t.