TheLobotomist

The Bonsai in the picture is a 3.5 mt (10 feet) Ficus retusa linn that's over 1000 years old. It is also known as the Crespi Ficus, because it is exhibited at the entrance of the Crespi Bonsai Museum in Milan, Italy. The owner of this museum, Luigi Crespi, fought for decades for this unique Bonsai tree, and finally got ownership in 1986.

This tree was carefully crafted by the Chinese masters, and once it got to Italy it was properly taken care of by a man called Shotaro Kawahara, a Bonsai master from Japan who carefully pruned the tree to maintain its shape.

Though there were negotiations between China and Italy about the ownership of this Ficus Bonsai tree, Italy managed to keep its prized Bonsai beauty!

Photographer: Alberto Ghizzi Panizza

Polydactyly or polydactylism (from Greek πολύς (polys) 'many', and δάκτυλος (daktylos) 'finger'), also known as hyperdactyly, is an anomaly in humans and animals resulting in supernumerary fingers and/or toes.

The armor now resides at a museum called the Menil Collection in Houston, Texas. The museum consists of collected artifacts and the private art of the Menil family.

What a typhoon looks like from space (Typhoon Trami, 2018).

Credit: ISS, ESA/NASA-A.Gerst

Bibendum commonly referred to in English as the Michelin Man is the official mascot of the Michelin tire company. A humanoid figure consisting of stacked white tires, it was introduced at the Lyon Exhibition of 1894 where the Michelin brothers had a stand. He is one of the world's oldest trademarks still in active use. The slogan Nunc est bibendum ("Now is the time to drink") is taken from Horace's Odes. He is also referred to as Bib or Bibelobis.

While attending the Universal and Colonial Exposition in Lyon in 1894, Édouard and André Michelin noticed a stack of tires that suggested to Édouard the figure of a man without arms. Four years later, André met French cartoonist Marius Rossillon, popularly known as O'Galop, who showed him a rejected image he had created for a Munich brewery a large, regal figure holding a huge glass of beer and quoting Horace's phrase Nunc est bibendum. André immediately suggested replacing the man with a figure made from tires, and O'Galop adapted the earlier image into Michelin's symbol.

The 1898 poster showed him offering the toast Nunc est bibendum to his scrawny Brand X competitors with a glass full of road hazards, with the title and tag C'est à dire : À votre santé. Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle. The character's glass is filled with nails and broken glass, implying that Michelin tires will easily take on road hazards.

Bibendum's shape has changed over the years. O'Galop's logo was based on bicycle tires, wore pince-nez glasses with lanyard, and smoked a cigar. By the 1960s, Bibendum was shown running, often rolling a tyre as well, and no longer smoked. In 1998, his 100th anniversary, a slimmed-down version of him (sans glasses) was adopted. reflecting the lower-profile, smaller tires of modern cars. A computer-animated version of Bibendum has appeared in American television ads, with a pet puppy similar in appearance to him.

In September 2021 A Russian photographer (Dmitry Kokh) captured a fascinating series of photos showing polar bears that took over the abandoned buildings of a meteorological station on an island between Russia and Alaska. The island is located in the Chukchi Sea, a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean.