The exterior copper covering of the Statue of Liberty is 3/32 of an inch thick (less than the thickness of two pennies) and the light green color (called a patina) is the result of natural weathering of the copper.

During the restoration completed in 1986, the new torch was carefully covered with thin sheets of 24k gold.

Official dedication ceremonies held on Thursday, October 28, 1886

Total overall height from the base of the pedestal foundation to the tip of the torch is 305 feet, 6 inches

Height of the Statue from her heel to the top of her head is 111 feet, 6 inches

The face on the Statue of Liberty measures more than 8 feet tall

There are 154 steps from the pedestal to the head of the Statue of Liberty

A tablet held in her left hand measures 23′ 7″ tall and 13′ 7″ wide inscribed with the date JULY IV MDCCLXXVI (July 4, 1776)

The Statue has a 35-foot waistline

There are seven rays on her crown, one for each of the seven continents, each measuring up to 9 feet in length and weighing as much as 150 pounds

Total weight of the Statue of Liberty is 225 tons (or 450,000 pounds)

At the feet of the Statue lie broken shackles of oppression and tyranny

The Statue of Liberty National Monument officially celebrated her 100th birthday on October 28, 1986. Cool Statue of Liberty Light Show.

The Declaration of Independence

Picasso’s Musketeer - painted in 1969, when Pablo was just 89. This painting brought 11.5 million dollars this week at a Sotheby’s auction in London.
Another painting by Picasso, “Mousquetaire à la pipe“, sold in May for more than 14.5 million. The two paintings were inspired by Pablo’s reading of Alexandre Dumas’ “The Three Musketeers”.

Samsung’s new anti-counterfeit passport concept…

Samsung has produced a new idea for ID cards using a flexible QVGA AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen embedded into the card. The screen requires so little energy that it can be powered up by the wireless signals from the RFID reader–no need for batteries. The OLED screen itself can display 260k colors and has a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. It will offer a rotating 360° view of your head when held up to an RFID reader. For airports that might not have an RFID scanner, an old-timey static picture is still included. Driver’s license too?

“As I walked down the street while talking on the phone, sophisticated New Yorkers gaped at the sight of someone actually moving around while making a phone call. Remember that in 1973, there weren’t cordless telephones, let alone cellular phones. I made numerous calls, including one where I crossed the street while talking to a New York radio reporter - probably one of the more dangerous things I have ever done in my life.” Martin Cooper - April 3, 1973 - then mgr of Motorola Communications

In 1983, the Motorola “DynaTac” cell phone made its debut. It weighed one pound and cost 3500.00. By 1990, there were 1 million cell phone subscribers in the U.S. Most entities are not without a cell phone today.

Check out this history of the top 10 computer viruses dating back to 1971. Some were said to have been ground breaking and innovative. Most were seen as pesky and damaging.

Jay’s personal review of the ZR1. Now how did he get serial # 0001?

From a percussion standpoint, I thought this was hittin!

LANSA Flight 508 was a Lockheed Electra L-188A turboprop, registered OB-R-941, operated as a scheduled domestic passenger flight by Lineas Aéreas Nacionales Sociedad Anonima (LANSA), that crashed in a thunderstorm en route from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru, on December 24, 1971, killing 91 people – all of its 6 crew and 85 of its 86 passengers. The sole survivor was a 17 year old girl, who fell 2 miles (3 km) down into the Amazon rainforest strapped to her seat and remarkably survived the fall, and was then able to walk through the jungle for 10 days until she was rescued by local lumbermen. Juliane Kopcke survived and went on to earn a PhD. Read the account of her 2 mile fall and how she survived.

Le Bassin aux Nymphéas by Claude Monet
“Le Bassin aux Nymphéas,” from 1919, a large horizontal work measuring more than 3 feet by 6 feet, is from a series of four that Monet signed and dated and that experts consider to be among the most important paintings from his late period. Monet’s biography and website.
The summer auction season began at Christie’s on Tuesday night, June 24, 2008, when a standing-room-only crowd of dealers, collectors and art lovers came from all over the world to watch and bid on one of the largest London sales the auction house has held. Early in the evening a record price for a Monet, $80.4 million, was set for one of the rarest of his waterlilies. full story

Well, I guess it was a good run. GM is expected to file for bankruptcy on Monday June 1, 2009.

Over its history General Motors has made its share of bad products. Some were poorly built, some were badly executed, others suffered from lousy timing. Here is a  list of examples. Its quite a memorable timeline.

25 Billion?

According to a filing by General Motors late last month, the company estimated the equity value of its common stock would be about $25 billion once it completed a reorganization.

The last time GM was worth as much as $25 billion was late 2007. Friday’s closing stock price of just 75 cents a share left GM showing a current market value of about 450 million. I still really like their new Camaro and Corvette!

The 10 largest U.S. bankruptcies