The Express Tribune hi five - November 11

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THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Hi light

Have you ever played tug-of-war with your friends and wished that the losers would fall in a pit of lava? Did you ever want to play volleyball with people’s heads instead of a ball? No? Well in the past people actually did do stuff like this. If you think modern sports has too many pads and helmets and, you know, rules, then take a look at these awesome but terrifying ancient sports.

This game should have just been called “slaves vs. wild animals.” Similar to gladiator combat, Venatio was a sport that pitted armed men against wild and often exotic animals.

The matches were hardly even. In a single day, thousands of animals could be slaughtered by only a handful of hunters. In fact, although lions, tigers, bears, and elephants were included in the event, non-aggressive creatures, such as rabbits and deer, were also included in the games. Animals were often also used to inflict punishment. A common execution of criminals often involved mauling by a large beast like a lion or bear.

The Romans played this game so frequently that they actually drove the North African elephant to extinction!

Tug-of-War is one of the oldest sports in the world. You may have tugged a rope with your friends at your last sports day but have you ever considered playing it over a pit of fire? The Vikings did.

Vikings were known to be bloody and vicious. So learning that they used animal skins to play tug-of-war over a fire pit shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The losing team got burned alive. The winning team got all the losing team’s stuff. Fun huh?

Remember that game Battleship?

Well, the Romans played it too... but they used real ships! Naumachia was basically a re-enactment of war battles.

Doesn’t seem too crazy, right? But the Roman definition of re-enactment was to literally redo ancient battles with real ships, real guns, and real deaths.

And where did they do it? Oh, they would just take an arena, flood it with water, then toss some boats in there to conduct a small-scale naval battle for everyone to watch. Unlike battlefields, there is nothing to absorb blood on the deck of a ship. It just builds up until it spills overboard. As if watching the team you bet on literally sink right in front of you would not have been bad enough, it was not out of the ordinary to see many of these men slipping around on their own blood in the process. Finding several thousand willing men to fill these ships wasn’t easy, so many of them were likely slaves dying for people’s entertainment.

If you think the Romans were crazy, you would be wrong. The ancient Egyptians created a simple yet brutal game that involved teams of fishermen whose goal was to knock the other fishermen of their boat by any means necessary. Now you must be thinking, that doesn’t sound dangerous.

Well, despite living right next to the river Nile, many Egyptians could not swim. This added a whole new level of excitement to the game as most people who fell into the water ended up drowning. Since there was lots of blood, it attracted the crocodiles. Since these were sacred animals in Ancient Egypt, the fishermen could not hurt them and just let the crocodiles eat them. The game was played in front of the Pharaoh, presumably for little more than his entertainment.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

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Hi light Hi light

Pankration was a lot like the fighting video games you play, except there were no rules, no rounds, no rests and killing your opponent actually resulted in an instant loss! This Greek game’s purpose was to bring your opponent as close to death as possible, without actually killing him. Because it was a bloodsport, the matches involved elements of wrestling, elbows, hand-to-hand combat, and kicking.

While the goal was to beat your opponent to either submission or unconsciousness, going too far and killing your opponent automatically disqualified you. Why? Because any fighter killed in the course of Pankration was seen as the ultimate fighter and thus the winner of the match. So if you died, at least you won.

Imagine this: you are in Central America some 3,000 years ago, in a long and narrow piece of land with sloped walls surrounding you. There’s a ball and possibly a hoop about 20 feet in the air attached to one of the sloping walls. What is it you’re doing? You, my friend, are about to play what is called Pitz. It’s a lot like volleyball, except the ball involved was nine pounds of solid rubber. And there were beheadings.

The rules of the game aren’t fully understood, but what we do know is the game involved two teams of 2 to 4 people. Players had to keep the ball in play by bouncing it off their forearms, hip and elbows. Points were scored by striking the ball against the opponents’ wall, while points were lost if the ball hit the ground more than twice. Pitz wasn’t just played for fun, archaeologists say that the game was used to settle disputes within the society and even as a method to decide the winner of a conflict between two other civilisations instead of going to war. Oh and the Mayans beheaded the losers. And if you thought that you could save yourself by not playing, the Mayans actually sacrificed people from the crowds before the games. Some historians have even suggested that dismembered heads were used as balls in some ritualistic games.

Talk about taking a sport seriously.

The Zulus’ sport might not have been the most deadly, but it sure does sound annoying and painful. The tribe would essentially just whack each other with soft sapling branches hundreds of times. They had shields, which diminishes the event a little bit, but the contestants would wear their myriad scars like badges of honour.

You know, the honour of getting whacked by branches.

This was considered a child’s game, by the way.

What would you like to see in Hi Five?

Send an email to hifive@tribune.com.pk and let us know!

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

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Make a Coaster, Save a Tree!!

Coasters are the accessories you place your glass or soda on, so it won’t leave its stain on the table. These are usually plastic or cloth, but we got to thinking: we have so many magazines just sitting around! Why not recycle some of those, and create coasters for our homes? And that’s precisely what we started doing!

Supplies needed: •Matt or glossy paper (Newspaper doesn’t work very well) •Scotch tape •Glue Stick

Instructions: • First, tear out the center-fold from your magazine.

• Next, begin folding it, in to half-an-inch thick folds. Make sure these folds are tight.

• Use the glue stick across the page while you are making the folds.

This helps the folds to be stronger and tighter.

• You need to repeat this with at least 8-9 center-folds. Make sure to be generous with how much glue you spread on the page, so the folds remain tight.

• Once you have 8-9 of these folded strips, take each strip one-by-one, and keep rolling them into a tight circle.

• When you come to the end of the first strip, and make sure the circle is very tight, take some scotch tape, and stick the end of circle, to itself.

• Use a little tape on the end of the next folded strip, and add the second strip, to the circle.

• You’ll have to repeat this for all 8-9 strips and each time, the size (or diameter) of the circle will continue to get larger.

• Remember, the tighter you squeeze the circle, the more firm and stable your coaster will be.

• When you have reached the last coaster, use some scotch tape, and tape the end.

You are all set with your coaster! Set it down on a table and place your glass on top of it!

Sure it takes a lot of time, but making coasters for yourself is a great way to recycle magazines that are only going to be sitting on your shelf forever!

If you’d like to watch a video of this activity, log onto http://bit.ly/ttv-coasters Want to watch other fun activities like this? Log onto toffeetv.com!

Did you know?

• Globally, we consume about 300 million tons of paper every year.

• Even though the United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, it consumes 30% of all paper

Remember kids, always get permission from your parents before you start. It’s always a good idea to have a helper nearby.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

World wide weird Get your weekly dose of the unusual and funny from across the globe!

Enthralling elephant talk Koshik, the 22-year-old male, housed in a South Korean zoo, helps further forward the claim that elephants are intelligent beings as he has started speaking five words in a human-like voice. But he has yet to master the phrases ‘Please may I have another bun?’ and ‘Eek, a mouse!’

Last week, Californian researchers spoke about a white whale that liked to tell divers to get out of his pool. NoC, as he was called, was also fond of holding burbling ‘conversations’ with himself. However, he ‘spoke’ for only a few years. Koshik, in contrast, has been chatting away in Korean since August 2004, when he was 14. Researcher Angela Stoeger, an expert in elephant communication, said: “Human speech has two important aspects, pitch and timbre. Intriguingly, Koshik is capable of matching both. This is remarkable considering the anatomical differences between an elephant and a human.”

It is thought that Koshik learned to mimic human speech to bond with his trainers when he was kept alone for five years as a young animal. His five words spelt phonetically are annyong, anja, aniya, nuo and choah. They mean: hello, sit down, no, lie down and good.

Despite Koshik’s apparent ingenuity, scientists don’t think that he actually means what he says. They add that he might not be the only pachyderm which has proved to be a good mimic.

African elephants have been known to imitate the sound of truck engines, while a male in a zoo in Kazakhstan was said to talk in both Russian and Kazakh. However, his abilities were never scientifically investigated.

SOURCE: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK

Forgotten fortune She finally hit jackpot! For the last five months, a Los Angeles woman has been driving around with $23 million in her car — and she didn’t even know it.

The millions were in the form of a winning California Lottery ticket, purchased May 30 at Michael’s Market & Liquor in Palmdale. The woman then forgot the ticket in her car. And so, for five long months, say lottery officials, no one stepped up to claim the prize.

That changed when a newspaper published a surveillance camera photo of the mystery victor. The winner’s daughter took a picture of the photo on her cell phone and shared it with her mother.

“When her daughter sent her mother a picture of the newspaper this morning, she just went back out to the car and the ticket was sitting right where she left it,” said California Lottery spokesperson Alex Traverso.

No word yet on how the woman will claim her prize. If she opts to take it all in one lump sum, officials say she’ll walk away with about $16.9 million (Rs16.2 billion) in cash. The store that sold the ticket will also rake in a bonus of 0.5 percent of the jackpot’s worth. If half a percent sounds puny, it isn’t: That’s $115,000 (Rs11,034,250). SOURCE: HUFFINGTONPOST.COM

A wee bit of trouble A US mum was fined $2,500 (Rs239,800) after her three-year-old son urinated outside — in his own front yard.

A police officer saw Dillan Warden pull down his pants and issued the ticket.

Ashley Warden, the little boy’s mother, said he was being potty trained but answered the call of nature outside as he wasn’t near a toilet.Mrs Warden said: “Dillan pulled down his pants to pee outside... and the cop pulled up and asked for my license and told me he was going to give me a ticket for public urination.”

Grandmother Jennifer Warden added: “I said: ‘Really? He is three years old’, and he said: ‘It doesn’t matter. It is public urination.’ I said: ‘We are on our property’, and he said: ‘It’s in public view’.” The family, which lives on two-and-a-half acres of land, has complained that the officer who issued the ticket parks at the end of their street daily. They hope a judge will throw out the case when it comes before a court next month. SOURCE: WEB.ORANGE.CO.UK

Interviews for pilots are the pits

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Do some of the kids at your school stink? Well, Chinese company Hainan Airlines has demanded to smell under the arms of students interviewing as trainee aircrew. It’s a good thing your school does not have this requirement.

Obviously, there were other requirements as well, including 20/20 vision, a maximum height of 1.87 metres and a very good knowledge of the English language, but meeting them and failing the bad odour test meant instant elimination for candidates. “I passed everything, but I was doomed by my armpits, which are always a bit whiffy”, said one of the applicants.

Asked about the purpose of this unusual requirement, one of the Hainan Airlines testers said, “Our staff works very closely with the public, and no passenger wants to smell a pilot’s armpits. And if they can keep their cool in this test, they aren’t going to sweat in the cockpit.” Everyone knows airlines choose their flight attendants mainly based on looks, and as unfair and misogynistic as that sounds, it does make some sense. But judging candidates by their armpit odour seems just dumb.

But look at it this way, if one of the passed candidates ever crashes a plane, at least they’ll smell nice doing it. SOURCE: ODDITYCENTRAL.COM

Baby wipes Babies can now polish the floor as they crawl! Wondering how? A clever website has created a romper suit with a built-in mop. The lighthearted device means you can have your floor scrubbed while your baby learns to explore.

The baby suit has mop heads attached to the arms and legs so your tot ends up cleaning the floor as it moves around on it.

The £25 (Rs3,832) Baby Mop suit is being sold on US website BetterThanPants.com and was inspired by a spoof Japanese version.

The company’s Mike Parker said: “We have sold about 100 in just one month since adding it to our site. So far all the feedback has been very positive, however we get some negative emails surrounding the idea of the actual product.”

He added: “It’s made from microfibre mop material attached directly to the baby clothes.

The idea formed to make the actual product from a Japanese commercial on the web. This is the real deal, it’s a legit product and is proving very, very popular.”

SOURCE: THESUN.CO.UK

Drive away wrinkles Honda has finally cracked what women want in a car. It’s not the fuel efficiency or anti-lock brakes that women look forward to, they need an anti-wrinkle car.

The £10,877 (Rs1,667,542) Fit ‘She’s’ is rolling into showrooms in Japan and helps prevent wrinkles. Its windscreen blocks 99 per cent of wrinkle-causing UV rays and the air-conditioning pumps out ionically charged particles, thought to make skin softer.

There’s a heart instead of an apostrophe in ‘She’s’, and baby-pink details throughout.

The standard model has a shiny pink paint-job, though it comes in brown and white, too — colours, say the company, that complement eye shadows.

SOURCE: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Did you know?

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s n i g i r O d r o W White Elephant A “white elephant” is something you own that you want to get rid of but cannot. But why do we call that an elephant?

It’s one of those confusing terms that make very little sense. There are two different theories about where the term comes from. First, according to Oxford Dictionaries, the term comes from the story that the kings of Siam (now Thailand) were accustomed to make a wondering how could present of one of these animals to people they didn’t like. Now you mustt be wondering, an elephant be a bad gift, that too a white one! Since white elephants were sacred in Siam, they couldn’t be regifted or put to work. But, they were still pretty expensive to maintain, meaning that the owners usually ran out of money.

If you were wondering, white elephants do exist in nature, as it is possible for an albino elephant to be white, as well as pink!

There is another theory: that the term comes from a specific elephant that belonged to P.T. Barnum, the famous businessman and circus owner. In the late 1800s, Barnum sent an agent to India to buy one of those legendary white elephants for his circus, for $100,000. When the first elephant died on its way to America, Barnum paid for another one but when he finally got it, he realised it was more like “grayish with white spots.” Barnum’s audience was as disappointed as he was. To make matters worse, his main competitor at that time simply took a regular elephant, painted it white and had a big hit.

How to say 'Happy Birthday' in different languages?

Afrikaans Arabic Bengali Chinese Corsican Dutch Esperanto French German Ido Indonesian Interlingua Italian Japanese Korean Latin Nepali Polish Romanian Zulu

: : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : :

Gelukkige Verjaarsdag Kul ‘am wa antum bekheir Shubho jonmodin Shengri kuaile Felice anniversariu Gelukkige verjaardag Felican datrevenon Bon anniversaire Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Bona Selamat ulang tahun Felice anniversario Buon compleanno Otanjobi omedeto gozaimasu Saengil chukha hamnida Felix dies natalis Janmadinko shubhakamana Sto lat!

La multi ani Halala ngosuku lokuzalwa

Cool facts The most dogs ever owned by one person were 5,000 Mastiffs owned by Kublai Khan.

On average, cows poop 16 times per day!

The most poisonous fish in the world is the Stone fish.

The placement of the eyes of a donkey enables them to see all four of their legs at all times.

At birth, a panda is smaller than a mouse and weighs about four ounces.

Fireflies are the only creatures that give off light without generating heat.

Hummingbirds beat their wings 60 to 80 times per second.

Only half of a dolphin’s brain sleeps at a time. The other awake half makes the dolphin come up for air when needed to prevent drowning.

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

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Fun & games

Want to be hi five’s artist of the week?

Send your drawing with your name and age to: hifive@tribune. com.pk

THE EXPRESS TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 11, 2012

Find your way through the maze

SOURCE: BP.BLOGSPOT.COM

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