Extreme Ironing

Extreme Ironing is an extreme sport in which people take an ironing board to a remote location and iron items of clothing. According to Extreme Ironing Bureau, extreme ironing is "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."

Some locations where such performances have taken place include a mountainside of a difficult climb; a forest; in a canoe; while skiing or snowboarding; on top of large bronze statues; in the middle of a street; underwater; in the middle of the M1 Motorway; whilst parachuting and under the ice cover of a lake. The performances have been conducted solo or by groups.

Extreme Ironing started in the city of Leicester in the UK, in the summer of 1997. When mild mannered Steam, returned home after a long day in the knitwear factory, the last thing he wanted to do was start on a pile of ironing. The sun was shining and Phil preferred the idea of an evening out pursuing his hobby of rock climbing. Then it occurred to him to combine these activities into an extreme sport and the result was the sport of extreme ironing. In the beginning extreme ironists used very long extension cords, but now they use battery powered irons.

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Nike : The Winged Goddess of Victory

Nike is the winged goddess of victory according to Greek mythology. She sat at the side of Zeus, the ruler of the Olympic pantheon, in Olympus. A mystical presence, symbolizing victorious encounters, Nike presided over history's earliest battlefields. A Greek would say, "When we go to battle and win, we say it is Nike” The Nike 'Swoosh' embodies the spirit of the winged goddess who inspired the most courageous and chivalrous warriors at the dawn of civilization.

More information is available on Nike’s website.

Worth of an Olympic gold medal

How much gold is there in those Olympic medals?

What are they worth?

According to the Olympic Charter, the gold and silver medals must each be made of at least 92.5 percent pure silver and the gold medal must be gilded with at least six grams of gold. The first-place medal is actually 550 grams of silver covered with a thin layer of gold (6 grams)! A silver medal is far more authentic - 509 grams of silver and 41 grams of copper. The bronze medal is composed of mostly copper, with some zinc and tin mixed in. One can ask with the gold prices changing on daily basis approximately how much are all these precious metals worth.

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The Rubik's Cube

The Rubik's Cube is a 3-D mechanical puzzle invented in 1974 by Hungarian sculptor and professor of architecture Ernő Rubik. Originally called the "Magic Cube",the puzzle was licensed by Rubik to be sold by Ideal Toys in 1980 and won the German Game of the Year special award for Best Puzzle that year. As of January 2009, 350 million cubes have sold worldwide making it the world's top-selling puzzle game.

In a classic Rubik's Cube, each of the six faces is covered by nine stickers, among six solid colours (traditionally white, red, blue, orange, green, and yellow). A pivot mechanism enables each face to turn independently, thus mixing up the colours. For the puzzle to be solved, each face must be a solid colour. Similar puzzles have now been produced with various numbers of stickers, not all of them by Rubik. The original 3×3×3 version celebrates its thirtieth anniversary in 2010.

But ever wondered in how many moves the Rubik's Cube can be completed.

Every position of Rubik's Cube can be solved in twenty moves or less. With about 35 CPU-years of idle computer time donated by Google, a team of researchers has essentially solved every position of the Rubik's Cube, and shown that no position requires more than twenty moves.

One may suppose God would use a much more efficient algorithm, one that always uses the shortest sequence of moves; this is known as God's Algorithm. The number of moves this algorithm would take in the worst case is called God's Number. At long last, God's Number has been shown to be 20.

You can read more on the Rubik's Cube and its moves.

World’s Largest Functional Yoyo

The world’s largest functional yoyo is 11 feet, 6 inches in diameter. The massive toy was designed by the Computer Aided Design or CAD team at Bay College in Escanaba, Michigan. It took the seven members four months to perfect the behemoth, because it had to function like a normal yoyo in order to qualify for the world record. The test run went off without a hitch with the yoyo being dropped from a height of 90 feet.

Over a hundred spectators gathered to watch the yo-yo drop. All were quite impressed with what the team had accomplished. Yo-Yo Factory, which manufactures yo-yo's out of Arizona, helped fund the project. They too felt this was quite an accomplishment. The CAD Team currently has the yo-yo up for sale. They've seen interest from yo-yo museums from as far as San Francisco. They hope to sell the yo-yo for at least $6,000 and the majority of those funds will go toward local charities.

Underwater hockey or Octopush

Underwater hockey or Octopush is a global non-contact sport in which two teams compete to manoeuvre a puck across the bottom of a swimming pool into goals.

Players wear a diving mask, swimfins and a snorkel for play. Safety gear includes ear protection usually in the form of a water polo cap, a mouthguard, and a glove for the playing hand. The stick is relatively short not more than 350mm in length, including the handle and is coloured white or black to indicate the player's team.

The puck is approximately the size of an ice hockey puck but is made of lead or similar material and is surrounded by a plastic covering, which is usually matched to the pool bottom to facilitate good grip on the stick face while preventing excessive friction on the pool bottom. The puck's weight brings it to rest on the pool bottom, though can be lifted during passes. The goals are three metres in width and are sited at opposite ends of the playing area on the pool bottom.

Two teams of up to ten players compete, with six players on each team in play at once. The remaining four players are continually substituted into play from a substitution area, which may be on deck or in the water outside the playing area, depending on tournament rules. Games consist of two halves, typically ten to fifteen minutes in length and a short half time interval. At half time the two teams switch ends.

Before the start of play the puck is placed in the middle of the pool, and the players wait in the water, touching the wall above the goals they are defending. At the start-of-play signal (usually a buzzer or a gong), in-play members of both teams are free to swim anywhere in the play area and try to score by manoeuvring the puck into the opponents' goal. Play continues until either a goal is scored, or players return to their wall to start a new point, or a break in play is signalled by a referee.

There are a number of penalties described in the official underwater hockey rules, ranging from the use of the stick against something (or someone) other than the puck, playing or stopping the puck with something other than the stick, and "blocking" (interposing one's self between a team-mate who possesses the puck and an opponent; one is allowed to play the puck, but not merely block opponents with one's body). If the penalty is minor, referees award an advantage puck - the team that committed the foul is pushed back 3 metres from the puck, while the other team gets free possession. For major penalties, such as a dangerous pass (.e.g., at or near an opponent's head) or intentional or repeated fouls, the referees may eject players for a specified period of time or the remainder of the game. A defender committing a serious foul sufficiently close to his own goal may be penalized by the award of a penalty shot, or a penalty goal to the fouled player's team.

The sport was invented in 1954 by Alan Blake of the newly formed Southsea Sub-Aqua Club and first played at the club by him and other divers including John Ventham, Jack Willis, and Frank Lilleker in Eastney Swimming Pool, Portsmouth, England. Originally called "Octopush" the original rules called for teams of eight players (hence "octo-"), a bat reminiscent of a tiny shuffleboard stick, called a "pusher" (hence the "-push"), an uncoated lead puck called a "squid", and a goal known at first as a "cuttle" but soon thereafter a "gully". The first rules were tested in a 1954 two-on-two game, and an announcement was made in the November 1954 issue of Neptune, the official new sheet of the British Sub-Aqua Club. The object of the game was to keep members of Southsea Sub-Aqua Club #9 from abandoning the new club during the winter months in which it was too cold to dive in the sea. The first octopush competition between clubs was a three-way tournament between teams from Southsea, Bournemouth and Brighton in early 1955. Southsea won then, and they are still highly ranked at a national level today.

Underwater Hockey is not very spectator friendly. Since the action is all below the surface, one must enter the water to get the full effect of the game. Spectators may either try on fins, a snorkel, and mask and enter the pool for a view of the playing area, or take advantage of the work of underwater videographers who have recorded major tournaments.