Honda Civic Hybrid ad

In September, as executives at RPA, the agency for the American Honda Motor Company, were completing a commercial for the Civic Hybrid, they got to know that Subway was using the same music theme from “The Odd Couple,”. RPA suggested Honda to move up the introductory date for the spot to late September from early October. It beat the Subway commercial onto television by about a week.

panvati bull

In December of 1989, Di Modica created a 7,000 bull in front the of New York Stock Exchange as a response to the rebound of the 1987 stock market crash.
The Indian version of Charging Bull was installed in early jan, and dubbed as “panvati bull” (panauti is the Hindi equivalent which means disaster).

But BSE was invaded by bears...BSE ended in Red in next 8 sessions and Protesters are complaining it had not been installed keeping in view the “vaastu” rules of a building and responsible for the recent fall.BSE guys, seems to called a Vastu Expert to suggest on the Bull position...after a close analysis the vastu expert suggested to change the direction to North West!!!

Amul Advertisment

I came across this Amul hoarding today morning.Utterly butterlly hilarious and bang on!!
Amul ads are classic, topically and differ from bland outdoor/print advertisements. Its amazing to see such a consistent quality work for years(starting in 1966) from da Cunha.Click here to see more Amul ads

trivia

Brain branding is an interdisciplinary approach to improve understanding of how the mind perceives and processes brands.

Coke statistical department publishes fun facts about soft drink industry like how many times the world would be circled if coke bottles were lined up end to end.(why not how many ppl using coke as pesticide? point taken)

Billboards were first called a 24 sheet poster due to the fact that they were made of 24 sheets of normal poster size paper

e-Mimi-kun

Which company unveiled a new device that will allow people "speak" through their ear so they can use their mobile telephones in noisy places. The device -- named "e-Mimi-kun" (good ear boy) -- doubles as an earphone and a microphone by detecting air vibrations inside the ear

Answer here

Worlds fattest nation

forbes: Nauru tops the list of Worlds Fattest countries with an estimated 94.5% of overweight population.

The WHO's definitions of "overweight" and "obese" are based on an individual's body mass index (BMI), which measures weight relative to height. Overweight is marked by a BMI greater than or equal to 25 and obese is defined as having a BMI greater than or equal to 30

Xerox New logo

Xerox unveiled a new logo to scuttle its old image as a photocopier manufacturer and highlight its software, color printers and other technologically updated products. 2/3rds of Xerox's revenues in 2007 came from products introduced in the last two years.The new logo looks good but i guess it wont replace the photocopier/document company image of Xerox

source

Rajkumar Hirani in fevicol ad

Rajkumar Hirani in one of the classic ad

salt

The word "salary" was derived from the Latin term "salarium" which was the name for a soldier's pay in the army of ancient Rome. The pay included a large ration of salt, which was a spice of high value and also a medium for exchange; thus the origin of such expressions as "salt of the earth" and "worth your salt


Mandatory iodization of salt, was first introduced by Switzerland in 1922

10% of salt produced worldwide is used in a unusual tak.Which task?

Answer in comments

Braille

Louis Braille became blind at age 3 in a accident at his dad’s workshop. He meet , Charles Barbier, a former soldier in Napoleon Army at National School of blind, Paris. Barbier shared his invention called "night writing," a code of 12 raised dots invented for Napoleon; who wanted a secret code that could be used at night. It proved to be too complex for soldiers to learn and was rejected by the army

Louis trimmed Barbier's 12 dots into 6 and thus came in Braille language

BTW, Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are from India.

What’s worse is 75% of Indian cases are curable, India needs 40,000 optometrists, it has only 8,000, India needs 2.5 lakh donated eyes every year, but could not find enough donors, 30% of donated eyes could not be used, thx to pathetic infrastructure

153 million Indians don’t have access to reading glasses. Only 5% of 2 million blind children in India receive any kind of education.

What’s more pity is our attitude towards physically challenged

Shopdropping

Shopdropping, also known as droplifting, is the incredible act of reverse shoplifting: going into stores and putting things onto the shelves.

read out how they do it and what they put on shelves here and here

Trivia

few interesting and unexpected facts listed by BBC:

Saddam Hussein's codename while in US custody in 2004/5 was "Victor"

British prime ministerial Jaguar is called Pegasus.

Left-handed people are called sinistral

The Italian Mafia have commandments

Chickens can be diagnosed with depression

Times Square New Year Party

The famous "Ball Lowering" in Times Square was started by Alfred Ochs,owner of The New York Times.

Alfred arranged a large illuminated seven-hundred-pound iron and wood ball lowered from the tower flagpole precisely at midnight to signal the end of 1907 and the beginning of 1908 in New York Times Square

It was inspired by a Ukrainian metal worker who reenacted a centuries-old seafaring tradition to lower gold-plated balls to tell time.

2008 year marks the 100th birthday of the New Year’s Eve Ball. This year, the motif is “Let There Be Light'' and features 10,000 computer-controlled lights, producing 6 million color combinations

The first "time-ball" was installed atop England's Royal Observatory at Greenwich in 1833. his ball would drop at one o'clock every afternoon, allowing the captains of nearby ships to precisely set their chronometers

credits: timessquare, pics

Wishing you all a Very Happy New Year