Some 400 miles off the coast of Chili, South America, stands a 150 foot artifact that is believed to be of Mayan civilization creation. This tower is also believed to be the focal point of the catastrophic changes in the earth in the year 2012.  The islands are thought to be a part of the Juan Fernandez islands, The Mayan predicted that as the world ends in 2012, the Gods will go on that Island to observe the end of the world as we know it today! The islands are volcanic in origin, and were created by the Juan Fernández hotspot that penetrates the Earth’s mantle breaking through the Nazca Plate to form the islands. The islands have then been carried eastward off the hot spot forming the Juan Fernández Ridge as the Nazca Plate subducts under the South American continent. Radiometric dating indicates that Santa Clara is the oldest of the islands. See more at www.2012 factor.com

The Lombardi Trophy

Super Bowl XLIV will be the 44th annual edition of the Super Bowl in American Professional Football, and the 40th annual championship game of the modern-era National Football League (NFL), after its 1970 merger with the American Football League (AFL, 1960-1969). The game will be played at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. This marks the tenth time a Super Bowl will have played in the South Florida area: five times the game has been held at Dolphin Stadium; the other five were played at the Orange Bowl. The game will be played on February 7, 2010, the latest date of any Super Bowl played during the calendar year ^[1]. The game will be televised in the United States on CBS, which will celebrate coverage of its 50th NFL season (1956–93; 1998–present). It also broadcast the most recent Super Bowl held in South Florida (XLI).

The history of the Super Bowl starts with two things: the merging of the American Football League with the National Football League, and a  rubber ball.

The NFL - AFL World Championship Game was created as a piece of the merger agreement between the NFL and the AFL in 1966.

During the negotiations between the NFL and the AFL, Kansas City Chief owner, Lamar Hunt, thought of the name “Super Bowl” for the Championship game, after observing his daughter playing with her toy Super Ball. Hunt only meant the name to be a stop-gap until the powers that be could think of something better. Not having thought of one, the game was named “The NFL-AFL World Championship Game”.

The first Championship took place in 1967. With the official title being quite a mouth full, the fans as well as the media took to the short, unofficial name, Super Bowl. In 1969, the name, “Super Bowl” became official.

The Green Bay Packers won the first two Super Bowls convincingly, causing many people to question if the AFL teams could compete. The very next year, the New York Jets upset the Baltimore Colts for the AFL’s first Super Bowl Title. The Chiefs won the 4th Super Bowl, evening the record at 2-2.

In 1970, the NFL and AFL merged into one combined league with two conferences, which resembles today’s National Football League. Three NFL Teams joined the 10 AFL teams forming the AFC (American Football Conference). The remaining 13 teams from the old NFL formed the NFC (National Football Conference).

Since the construction of the combined league, former AFL teams have won 10 Super Bowls while original NFL teams have taken 23. Two Super Bowls have been won by teams created after the merger.

The Winner of each Super Bowl receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy, named after Vince Lombardi, the great coach for the Green Bay Packers who led his team to victory in each of the first two Super Bowls. Following his death, the trophy was named prior to Super Bowl V in his honor.

Photo By AP

Look, over there. Under that blue tarp in a suburban driveway. That thing that’s the size of a Smart car?

It’s Joel Waul’s rubber band ball.

Waul has spent the last six years carefully wrapping and linking and stretching rubber bands of various sizes into the ball shape. The Guinness Book of World Records declared it the world’s largest rubber band ball in 2008.

On Thursday, Waul will say goodbye to his creation. A team from Ripley’s Believe it or Not will come to his driveway with a crane and haul the 6-foot, 7-inch tall, 9,032-pound behemoth away. The ball will eventually be displayed in a far-off museum yet to be determined, so folks can marvel at Waul’s obsession.

Waul got the idea six years ago, when he saw a Ripley’s television special that showed the then-largest rubber band ball being dropped into the desert from an airplane.

“I just thought it was the coolest thing I’d ever seen,” said Waul, a 28-year-old who works nights restocking a Gap clothing store.

The idea of setting a world record always appealed to Waul; he recalls that as a 7-year-old in Jamaica he pored over his father’s Guinness Book of World Records.

AP - Thursday, December 24, 2009

A living nativity scene in near the Colorado ski resort of Vail almost had to go without two crucial actors when two donkeys escaped.

The nativity scene is an annual tradition for Eagle River Presbyterian Church in the Vail Valley. Pastor Rob Wilson says two borrowed donkeys were being held in a fenced-in pen for the event Wednesday night, but the animals pushed their way through it.

A church member who stopped by the church Wednesday morning noticed the donkeys were gone. He and a sheriff’s deputy followed footprints in the snow and eventually caught up with them.

The donkeys had wandered near some railroad tracks but were OK.  www.animalcorner.us

As the world holds it,s breath in anticipation of the Mayan Calendar date of 2012, let us dive into the realm of the revelation of this most historic premonition. As the world turns, let us also turn to reality and the conditions that point to the end of times as we know it.

The author of 2012

We will begin with the creator of the 2012 prophecy, The Maya Indians.

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Preclassic period (c. 2000 BC to 250 AD), many Maya cities reached their highest state development during the Classic period (c. 250 AD to 900 AD), and continued throughout the Post classic period until the arrival of the Spanish. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world.

more at www.2012factor.com

Photo By AP

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Only one animal got credit for a record Thursday, the same day Norway registered the world’s largest gingerbread man; the most people hugging in one minute were in the U.K.; Italy set the mark for the fastest consumption of a bowl of pasta; Finland had the most nationalities in a single sauna; and a team from Mexico assembled the world’s longest paper clip chain.

In the midst of it all, Guinness World Records officially named Titan, an ailing 4-year-old white Great Dane from San Diego, as the world’s tallest dog.

Titan is blind, deaf, epileptic and undergoes acupuncture and chiropractic adjustments every three weeks, owner Diana Taylor said.

Great Danes are built like giraffes one way and submarines the other, Taylor said, so they have spine issues. Titan is doing well on his treatments and medication. He hasn’t had a seizure in a year.

He is a gentle soul who befriends everyone during his daily walks on the beach and is often mistaken by young children for a horse or cow, Taylor said.

Titan’s official height, as measured by a veterinarian, is 42.25 inches from floor to shoulder. You could add eight inches if official measurements included the head, Guinness spokesman Stuart Claxton said.

Titan weighs 190 pounds and doesn’t stand on his hind legs because it isn’t good for him. If he did, Taylor figures he would stand 80 or 82 inches tall.

www.animalcorner.us

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/trsorbonnespeech.html

Photo By AP

It’s not unusual to see a deer or a cow crossing Oklahoma’s rural highways. But an elephant? A couple driving home from church nearly slammed into a giant pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday.

“Didn’t have time to hit the brakes. The elephant blended in with the road,” driver Bill Carpenter said Thursday. “At the very last second I said ‘elephant!’”

Carpenter, 68, said he swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping the 29-year-old female elephant on U.S. 81 in Enid, about 80 miles north of Oklahoma City.

“So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us,” he said. “We’d have been history.”

The couple, who own a wheat farm, weren’t injured. But the 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant was being examined Thursday for a broken tusk and a leg wound. A local veterinarian said it appeared to have escaped major injury.

animalcorner.us

AP - Thursday, November 12, 2009

Photo By AP

A British man broke the world record for pulling a double-decker bus with his hair. Manjit Singh broke the Guinness World Record on Thursday by pulling the bus weighing 8.5 British tons for 21.2 meters (69.55 feet) across Battersea Park in London with ribbons attached to his hair. The 59-year-old Singh previously had failed to break the record to pull a double decker bus with his ears.