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Interesting collection of important pictures and short stories behind them. These Historical photos all have incredible backgrounds. Take a look, you might learn something.

Gotta love Google for their innovations, yesterday Google announced that panoramic Street View imagery is now available for four of the world’s great mountains: Everest, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and Mount Elbrus. The mountains are four of the Seven Summits—the highest mountains in each of the seven continents. Google employees captured the imagery on a series of mountaineering expeditions using a lightweight tripod and camera setup that is normally used in the company’s Business Photos program. As part of the expeditions they also captured beautiful panoramic imagery of the surrounding areas. Go explore!

Cats. The Internet loves them, so it makes sense that pet food maker Purina would sponsor a cat-themed game jam called the Friskies "Games for Cats Hackathon." The event challenges game designers to create games or apps that cats can play with. The grand prize-winning design team will receive $15,000, while runners-up will be awarded $3,000 and $2,000 to take home.

Hanna Maria Heidrich has created a beautiful, short story about humanity’s ever growing disconnect from the natural world. She’s a film student at Filmakademie Baden- Württemberg in Germany – one to watch for the future surely.

If you’re not familiar with the prolific Frank Zappa featured above, here’s a brief history lesson. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works, directed feature-length films, music videos and even designed album covers. Equally impressive, is that he produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band The Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. But what I truly love about Frank Zappa, is that on September 19, 1985 he testified before the United States Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center – a music organization co-founded by Tipper Gore, wife of then-senator Al Gore. The PMRC was founded to address the issue of song lyrics with!252?id=216340sexual or satanic content. Naughty naughty. Zappa (quite rightly) saw their activities as on a path towards censorship, and called their proposal for voluntary labeling of records with explicit content “extortion” of the music industry. Soon after he became the voice of anti-censorship & freedom of creative expression – which lead to his iconic appearance on “CNN’s Crossfire” show where he debated that music videos, songs and recordings about remain uncensored. I’ll let the man and his views speak for themselves in the footage from that show – but simply put, I agree 110% with him.

Admit it, you would have LOVED to have been there! On July 31st, 2011 a world record was attempted for the most hot air balloons taking off at once. The location? France’s Chambley-Bussieres Aerodrome and although the world record was not confirmed, the Lorraine Mondail Air Balloons international festival did smash it’s own record of 393 balloons taking off simultaneously back in 2009, with 343 balloons lifting off into the clouds this year!. According to the festival, “1032 drivers from forty-eight nations, 2672 crew members, 174 businesses and communities, 195 volunteers and nearly 400 journalists” were all involved in the event – that’s some serious numbers, but what a spectacle they’ve created. The wonderfully talented Gaston Batistini was there in the thick!25?id=2243820of it all capturing every breathtaking moment.

Forget what you’ve seen on the heavily censored news networks – this is what the REAL war in Afghanistan looks like. Acclaimed photographic journalist Balazs Gardi has been in Afghanistan capturing every moment of the war through the lense of his iPhone. In fact, Recently many of his photos were released as a photo essay in Foreign Policy Magazine. His images are shocking, real, important & powerful.

This is frankly awesome on behalf of the Australian Government – and how often do we say that? Using census data from 2006, they’re able to create an personalized infographic all about you. It’s part of an awareness campaign to make sure you take part in the upcoming Australian Census on August 9.

Apparently American Eagle Outfitters claims that it's shoppers demand skinnier jeans, and what can be skinnier than spray-on jeans? These two cans of "spray on jeans" appear on the official American Eagle Outfitters website. Question is, would people really wear these? And how are they supposed to cover their junk? Perhaps this happens to be an early April Fools joke on behalf of AEO. Let us know what you think in the comments.

It's not a secret that Kim Kardashian is totally self-conscious about her pregnancy weight-gain, and the fashionista is puzzled about what to wear. It took her more than a few tries to get it right. Rumor has it she even took advice from Snooki, that's how desperate the situation became. Check out Kim's pregnant style, rated from worst to best. 

Lululemon stated in a release: "The ingredients, weight and longevity qualities of the pants remain the same but the coverage does not, resulting in a level of sheerness in some of our women's black Luon bottoms that falls short of our very high standards." The company shares have tumbled Monday afternoon due to these news. 

As Lululemon climbed up the ranks of sportswear and appears a favorite among all the yoga-doing, gym-going, track-running ladies out there, it has similarly been a favorite among many men who claim to only attend yoga classes to ogle at the ladies in their sexy Lululemon attire. Hence, does the general public really mind the 'sheerness' of their products or is Lululemon just trying to uphold a more conservative reputation? 

In the southeastern corner of Europe, the small country of Albania is covered by more than 700,000 bunkers—that’s 1 bunker for every 4 Albanians. The bunkers were built at enormous cost between 1967 and 1985 as part of the paranoid national defense strategy of the country’s longtime communist dictator, Enver Hoxha. Though the bunkers saturate the country from its beaches to its city streets, they were of little military value and were never used during Hoxha’s 40 year rule. Due to the cost and difficulty of removing the bunkers they still remain. They now serve as tourist attractions, homes, make-out spots, but mostly, they’re eyesores.

Oh Lindsay, Lindsay...Los Angeles (CNN) reported yesterday that Lindsay Lohan agreed to spend 90 days in a "locked in" drug rehab facility as part of a plea deal to settle criminal charges against her Monday.The actress entered pleas of no contest on two misdemeanor charges relating to a traffic accident last summer, and she did not challenge the finding that she violated her shoplifting probation with those convictions.Her six years of legal troubles trace back to two drunken driving arrests in 2007 and include other incidents in which she was behind the wheel. Someday you'll learn that being celebrity doesn't mean you can do whatever you want Lindsay baby, stay out of trouble!

Jason Molina, A Folksinger Who Embodied The Best Of The Blues, Has Died. Jason Molina, who died Saturday at 39, of what his label, Secretly Canadian, calls natural causes, wasn't a blues singer, exactly. In a prolific underground career spanning more than 15 years, his songs mostly took on the form of confessional folk music — a man and a guitar, or a man and a band, singing bruised and barren songs of longing and lost salvation like so many others before and since. RIP Jason.

Casting the devil is a tricky thing; if you're not going with a caricature of a cloven-hooved man all in red with horns then you're going to have to watch what kind of face you put on the face of evil. History Channel's 10-part miniseries hit "The Bible," however, cast an actor (Mohamen Mehdi Ouazani) to play Satan that -- to some -- seems uncomfortably familiar... Do you see the resemblance?

 Don't you just love it when people sell something you'd never expect to be sold. These days it's not a surprise for anyone to see something like instructions for the first landing on the moon go out to the auction, everyone needs cash right?  Buzz Aldrin, the Apollo 11 astronaut is to sell the instruction sheets used during the first moon landing. The notes were part of Aldrin's own manual used while Armstrong piloted the Lunar Module Eagle towards the Moon in 1969. Also included in the sale is a second-by-second account by Aldrin of the fraught final minutes as the Module approached the surface of the moon.

In recent years Mercedes-Benz was working really hard to become more appealing to younger customers (noted for luxury their usual market is 40+). The result is all new  2014 CLA sedan, which is a strong step in that direction offering style and performance with a taste of Benz luxury and engineering at a base price of US$29,000. Take a look at this baby, maybe this could be your next ride.

 In 2007, Jeremy Marie of Caen, France graduated from university, packed his bag and began a journey with the goal of hitchhiking around the world. On March 12, he finally arrived home after 5 years, 5 months and 5 days. In all of the 1,752 vehicles that gave him rides, he never once paid a single cent. Jeremy traveled 180,700 kilometers (112,282 miles) in over 100 countries and used many forms of transportation including boats, tractors, historic cars and camels. Cheers to amazing world explorers!

A 45 year old woman jumped out of an 8th floor window of a New York apartment building while holding her 10 month old baby. She died but the child miraculously survived. By standers were shocked at the sight, as the baby bounced off the womans chest face down into the pavement. It has been confirmed that she was a married lawyer, and a suicide note was found mentioning postpartum depression, and worries of her childs development.

Well NASA's Curiosity has done it again. The rover just discovered what appears to be an anscient river bed, making scientists extatic at the possibility of finally finding life! Besides that, Mars contains 6 elements which indicate that the planet had a habitable environment with water at some point. These are the key elements for life on Earth that have been found in a rock on Mars: hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus.

Anthony Johnson, a 13 year old boy from Missouri died two days after being pulled out from the bottom of the pool at the Disney's Pop Century Resort. There were no lifeguards on duty during the time he was playing in the pool with his brother and friends. Anthony had somehow drowned and was pulled out of the pool minutes after and administered CPR by family members and civilians, but didn't survive.

After continuous drilling, Russia penetrated the frozen crust of Lake Vostok that has been untouched for at least 14 million years, and found new bacteria under 12,139 feet of ice. "After excluding all known contaminants, bacterial DNA was found that does not match any known species in world databases," Sergei Bulat of the St Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute told RIA. Scientists are excited and believe that this discovery may provide a glimpse of the planet before the Ice Age and clues to life on other planets. "If it (the bacteria) had been found on Mars, then without a doubt we would have said there is life on Mars - but this is DNA from Earth," he said. "We are calling this life form unidentified or unclassified". Further studies are being conducted to determine all the details of the newly found speciment.

Everyone knows the common negative effects of sleep deprivation, such as diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and heart desease, however it doesn't make the majority of people smarter about their sleep. Our bodies need a good 8 hours of sleep but according to a Centers for Disease Control report released in 2012 almost 1/3 of working adults in America get only 6, and it gets even worse in Daylight Saving. A recent study of two hospitals in Michigan found that they treated almost twice as many heart attack victims on the first day of Daylight Saving, and that there are usually more car accidents following the time change. But the main poin here is a new discovery made in a study just published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences". It's proven that getting too little sleep just a few nights in a row disrupts hundreds of genes responsible for stress and fighting diseases. Different genes turn on and off, and the ones that became active with lack of sleep, were involved in inflammation, immunity and protein damage. So people Sleep On!

In just one century Earth's climate has gone from the coldest since the last ice age to one of its hottest. Studies have shown that the decade from 1900 to 1909 was colder than 95% of the last 11,300 years, where as it has spiked to being hotter than 75% during 2000 to 2009. "If emissions continue as currently predicted until then, global temperatures will rise well above anything we've ever seen in the last 11,000 years. By 2100, the Earth will be warmer than ever before" said climatologist Shaun Marcott.

Today, March 8th is International Women's Day. International Women’s Day traces its origins back to a protest by women garment workers in New York against poor working conditions. In 1908, the Socialist Party of American established a day to support the garment workers and a year later, behind the slogan “Bread and Roses,” the commemoration spread to Europe. The deaths of 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York, showed the prescience of those original protests and the International Women’s Day movement gained steam in demonstrating against the slaughter of the trenches in World War I and was instrumental in the downfall of the Russian Czar.