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Chinese people call the panda "Da xiong mao,"

"giant bear cat"

Eventhough parachutes seem to have been used in China since the 1100s and that Leonardo da Vinci of Italy had invented devices similar to parachutes nowadays, worldwide skydivers state that the French inventor André-Jacques Garnerin is the one to make the first parachute. In 1797 he jumped from a balloon over Paris using a parachute and kept on making other jumps in France and also in England.

In World War I , that is between 1914 and 1918, the military began using parachutes in their missions

Chinese Democracy topping 1.5 million in CD sales and downloads

the American Music Industry has never been healthier.

“People don’t realize it,” said Stamphammer in a recent interview, “but we started planning for this back during the teen-pop era. In fact, remember when that N’Sync album sold 1.1 million copies in its first week? 50,000 of those were digital files.”

Bats often make people think of vampires, creatures of the night, and Halloween. Beyond the myth and folklore, bats are one of the most important groups of animals.

Bats are mammals that belong to the order Chiroptera (ky-rop-tera), which means, "winged hand". The wings or hands of a bat have very long finger bones covered by a strong skin. Bats are the only mammals that can fly. Like all mammals, they are "warm-blooded", have bodies covered with fur, and nurse their young (pups) with milk.

Nearly all bats are helpful animals. In fact, tropical rainforests could not survive without bats. Bats are responsible for controlling pest insect populations, pollinating flowers, and dispersing seeds.

One unique feature of bats is their modified forelimbs, which support a wing membrane (patagium). The basic elements of the mammalian limb are present in bats, although the relative sizes of most bones and muscles differ from those of nonflying mammals. The most elongated parts of the limb are those of the hand (metacarpal bones) and fingers (phalanges). The primary functions of these bones in bats is to provide support for the patagium and control its movements.

Numerous blood vessels and nerves are present throughout the wing membrane. Bats also have five unique muscles present in the patagium, and use additional muscles in the chest and back to move the wings up and down.

The most obvious difference between bird wings and those of bats is that bird wings are made of feathers, not a skin membrane. Birds have an elongated arm, but do not have elongated fingers like bats. Additionally, the muscles used in both the upstroke and downstroke are found in the chest of birds, while the upstroke muscles are on the back in bats (Fenton, 1983).

t is a basic notion that during the 1600's, accurately in the year 1621, the English settlers and the Wampanoag Indians got together and shared a fantastic fall harvest feast to celebrate the bounty from the rich earth. Today this celebratory feast is acknowledged to be one of the first Thanksgiving festivities in the early days of the colonies. While that long ago feast is supposed by a lot of people to be the first Thanksgiving celebration, it was, in fact, part of a long existing custom of celebrating the seasonal harvest and giving thanks for a good bounty of crops that would last through the long hard winter. Many Native American tribes of what would be named America, including the Pueblo, Cherokee, Shawnee, Huron, Creek, Blackfoot and so many others would hold huge harvest festivals, consisting in ceremonial dances, races, games and other cheerful celebrations of gratefulness hundreds of years before the European peoples arrived. If you are like me, you are surely wondering the kind of meals served at the harvest feast. Historians, as usual, are not one hundred percent sure regarding it; however they are sure that pilgrims weren't eating pumpkin pies nor building castle towers with mashed potatoes. However, it is easy to think that the list of meat available during this period of time should surely include venison as well as several types wild poultry such as duck, goose as well as wild turkey. While there are hundreds of manuscripts describing such feast, the most detailed description of this celebration of late harvest date of 1621 and was written by a man called Edward Winslow. It is from his manuscript called "A Journal of the Pilgrims at Plymouth" that historians have gleaned the greatest part of information about this first Thanksgiving celebration:

Although the first Thanksgiving dinners were not concentrated on the turkey; today's usual meal primarily focuses around this animal. During the 17th century, vegetables were not as important as of today, so the meal of this period of time included a lot of different meats. The many types of vegetables we take for granted today were not available to the colonists. Freezing methods did not exist; which means that the vegetable consumption was based on seasonal harvests. Because the colonists and Wampanoag tribe had no refrigeration in the 1600s, they dried a lot of their foods to preserve them. They would dry corn, wild boar hams, fish, venison, and many wild herbs.

The history of Thanksgiving goes much further back than Plymouth and 1621. In fact, people across the world from every culture have been celebrating and giving thanks for thousands of years. In this country, long before English colonists arrived, Native People celebrated many different days of thanksgiving. “Strawberry Thanksgiving” and “Green Corn Thanksgiving” are just two of kinds of celebrations for the Wampanoag and other Native People. In 1621, the English colonists at Plymouth (some people call them “Pilgrims” today) had a three-day feast to celebrate their first harvest. More than 90 native Wampanoag People joined the 50 English colonists in the festivities. Historians don­t know for sure why the Wampanoag joined the gathering or what activities went on for those three days. Form the one short paragraph that was written about the celebration at the time, we know that they ate, drank, and played games. Back in England, English people celebrated the harvest by feasting and playing games in much the same way. The English did not call the 1621 event a “thanksgiving.” A day of “thanksgiving” was very different for the colonists. It was a day of prayer to thank God when something really good happened. The English actually had their first thanksgiving in the summer of 1623. On this day they gave thanks for the rain that ended a long drought.

Persistent reports of anabolic steroid abuse by professional athletes, many of whom are regarded as role models by young people, highlight the fact that we are now facing a very damaging message in our society—that bigger is better, and being the best is more important than how you get there.

There are more than 1,000 species of bats in the world! They live on every continent of the world, except Antarctica. Bats do not live in areas where it is very hot or very cold, and there are some remote islands that are not home to bats.

Bats are mammals. They account for more than 25 percent of all the mammals on the earth! Bats are the only mammals that can fly.

Mother bats have one baby in their litter. The baby bats are called “pups.” When a pup is born, it usually has no hair and its eyes are closed. It clings to the mother bat and drinks milk from her. When the pup is about four months old, it learns to fly.

Gymnastics has the highest injury rate of all girls' sports, according to a report from Ohio State University.

27,000 gymnasts were hospitalized annually.

We don't typically think of gymnastics as a dangerous sport. In fact, many parents consider it an activity, but it has the same clinical incidence of catastrophic injuries as ice hockey,"