Webwatch - including Website of the Day

The British Library have got a great new gizmo on their site. With it you can get access to rare books including Jane Austen's early handwritten works and the original illustrated and handwritten Alice in Wonderland. There are over 10 already with more to follow. Using the Shockwave software, which is a free download, you can browse these books with your mouse - turning the pages almost like a real book. There are plans to increase the selection and also the Libary is going to let other museums use the software. http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

Video Jug is a site just packed full of useful videos It's got everything from how to fold a T-Shirt in 2 seconds ... to how to drive green. From how to make orange cake ... to how to make pepper jump. You can also start a discussion of your own and ask or answer a question. You can browse for subjects or just use the search box. Whatever you are interested in there will probably be something on Video Jug about it. There is a vast array of stuff and it's all great quality. Tip: If you type 'Stephen Fry' then you will find a series of interesting interviews with him.
http://www.videojug.com

I see there is a new advert on TV at the moment implying (yet again) that people in the middle ages thought the Earth was flat. Not true! This old chestnut has been well and truly debunked for many years now but it looks like it won't go away. The myth seems to have gotten into general circulation after being aired in the 1820s in a story by Washington Irving about Christopher Columbus. It seems that, contrary to what Washington Irving wrote, the big debate at the time of Columbus was not whether the Earth was flat but rather what the size of it was. And further, there is no evidence to suggest that anyone thought it was anything other than round! Read more here http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm

Watching a repeat of QI the other night we were astonished to discover that, according to Stephen Fry, the Earth has not one but 2 moons! The second moon, a 5km wide lump of rock, was identified as Cruithne (Celtic: another name for the Picts and pronounced something like krooee-nyuh). Looking further into this we discovered that Cruithne is not a second moon but a near Earth asteroid (named asteroid 3753 in 1986 when it was first discovered). Is it a second moon? Well, Cruithne does not orbit the earth in the same way as our moon, but rather is co-orbital to it which means it shares the Earth's orbit but does not actually orbit the earth itself. So no, it isn't actually a second moon and what's more there are more of these co-orbital near Earth asteroids out there!
To learn more visit www.astro.uwo.ca/~wiegert/3753/3753.html, which is written by Paul Wieger one of the scientists who worked out the mechanics of Cruithne's orbit in 1997. For some great animations (the text is a bit dense) scroll down to the bottom of the page and look under "MPEG movies".

Let's face it, all schoolwork is dull but Geography seemed to me to be the capital of dullsville. But if you want to make up for an embarassing lack of knowlege of where the latest war is on the news, or just want to shine in quizzes check out Trivia Plaza. It's full of fun quizzes and is guaranteed to improve your knowlege of capitals, rivers, mountains, countries and why not be a respected flag expert amoung your friends? And there are plenty more on our Geography Online Games page on our main Directory site. http://www.easytorecall.com/geography_online_games.htm