The Inimitable Pink Panther’s Vehicle Back In Action Of Auction?

The very original Pink Panther’s ride called “Panther mobile” is all ready to fetch £100,000 in the coming month. This incredible vehicle was featured on the famous T.V show Pink Panther from 1969-1976. This car was an invention of creative a Hollywood automobile designer Jay Ohrberg, who also made KITT from Knight Rider and DeLorean from Back to the Future and has designed many Bat mobiles.

The “Panther mobile” was usually seen in the opening and closing of “The Pink Panther Show”, encouraged by the films starring Peter Sellers as useless inspector “Clouseau”.

Mr. Jay Ohrberg owned the car himself till he sold it out for £88,000 in 2007 at an auction. Jonathan Kay then owned this car and he gave a review that “The motor vehicle was in perfectly original condition, and would benefit from some sympathetic restoration as the car is now 42 years old”. The engine is supposedly not working currently but was believed to be running well when the vehicle was auctioned in 2007.

The ‘Panthermobile is set to be sold in an online sale run by Manchester based firm ‘Robson Kay’. This super invention is believed to fetch around £50,000 to £100,000.

What a stinker! World's smelliest flower opens for the first time in 75 YEARS

By Daily Mail Reporter

from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

For botanists, it doesn't get more exciting than this - after 75 years, the Titan Arum plant has unfurled its leaves and is in full bloom.

For curious crowds who gathered, they perhaps realised that a once-in-a-lifetime look is more than enough - thanks to its pungent odour of rotting flesh.

The flower, nicknamed 'Corpse flower', bloomed late on Good Friday at the University of Basel, Switzerland and is expected to remain open until Easter Sunday.

Miracle-Gro: The flower opened for the first time in 75 years on Good Friday

The eight foot plant, which is indigenous to Sumatra's rainforests in Indonesia, has the largest unbranched shoot in the world. On average, they bloom once in a decade.

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Titan Arum is coveted by collectors and plant enthusiasts around the world because of its strange blooming patterns.

It produces umbrella-sized petals which open to a diameter of three to four feet.

Its distinctive smell can be detected from half a mile away. The odour, which is usually strongest at night, is meant to attract pollinators such as carrion beetles and flesh flies.

Twelve of them are housed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the Princess of Wales Conservatory among hundreds of other tropical plants.

Once in a lifetime: Crowds capture Titan Arum in bloom at the University of Basel, Switzerland

Rare sighting: Botanists love the plant because it blooms so infrequently - despite the smell of rotting flesh

When the plants are ready to pollinate, the stem heats up to release a pungent smell, which lasts for about three days.

The largest Arum at Kew gardens weighs 200lb and grows at a staggering rate of a quarter of an inch an hour.

It guzzles liquid fertiliser and potassium each week to keep up its strength while bedded in roomy surroundings.

Sir David Attenborough, who invented the name Titan Arum, was the first to capture it flowering on film for his BBC TV series The Private Life of Plants.

He dropped the plant’s original name – Amorphophallus – perhaps because of the reference to male genitalia.

Beauty: The plant originates from Sumatra in Indonesia

Captivating: Crowds gather as the plant prepares to open its leaves

Photos of the Very Rare Pink Katydid

by Jerry James Stone, San Francisco, CA

from: http://www.treehugger.com/

Photo via Flickr

What you are looking at is the very rare and very pink katydid. First discovered back in 1887, the pink katydid is so rare that they occur once out of every 500 individuals. You have a better chance of spotting a unicorn in the wild.

Of course, the color pink alone isn't very common to the animal kingdom, flamingos aside. It's the result of a condition called erythrism, similar to the recessive gene that afflicts albino animals.

Katydids are large, leaf-shaped and usually green. They are named after a song they sing: katy did katy did katy did. Their green skin makes them somewhat hard to find for insect-chowing predators. But the pink ones are not afforded the same luxury.

While people have tried to produce pink katydids in captivity, there had been little success until last year. The New Orleans Audubon Insectarium had acquired both a pink male and a pink female katydid which resulted in a litter of new pink babies.

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Photo via Photobucket

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

68 Rare Pictures Taken Inisde North Korea

Published by djmick
From http://www.djmick.co.uk/

Photographs from North Korea are restricted and hard to come by – the few pictures that do come out of the last Stalinist state in the world, lead by Kim Jong Il, are either state-produced or state-approved.

Still, one can get some idea of everyday life in North Korea from the 68 pictures featured in the gallery below which are a mixture of photos taken from the borders of neighboring South Korea and China, whilst others were provided by North Korea itself, and several by freelance photographers.