Currently standing at 1,680 feet, the still-uncompleted Burj Dubai tower in Dubai is now the world’s tallest building. The previous record holder is Taiwan's Taipei 101 at 1,667 feet. Developers won’t say what the finished height will be, only that it will be over 2,275 feet. The $1 billion skyscraper is expected to be finished by the end of 2008. http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/22/dubai.building.ap/index.html -via Fark

On Saturday, July 6, 1957, a dance was held at St. Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton. One of the two bands playing that night was The Quarry Men, led by a 16-year-old named John Lennon. After the performance, he was introduced to another budding musician, 15-year-old Paul McCartney.

In 1994, Bob Molyneux, a retired policeman, rediscovered a single reel-to-reel tape he had made of that evening performance, caught while experimenting with a bulky "portable" Grunding tape recorder. Preserved on the tape were poor quality recordings of Quarry Men performances of Lonnie Donegan's "Puttin' On The Style" and Elvis Presley's "Baby, Let's Play House."

That tape is the earliest existing recording of John Lennon singing. Those recordings were used for a BBC radio special, and you can hear them at The Beatles Source. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

Claire Wolfe has tips for living small. And she has the experience.

For the last three years I’ve shared a one-room cabin with a pack of dogs and one outnumbered but boldly unflappable cat. The cabin has an exterior footprint of 409 square feet—nine feet above the minimum my county requires for a residence. Its interior space is about 360 square feet, including closets and cabinet space.

Link -via the Presurfer

Just drag and drop various articles of clothing on the naked squirrel. Minutes of fun! Link -via Larry Hnetka Goes HMmmm

Panda breeding has come a long way in the past few years. This gallery is a compilation of various baby pandas showing their development over their first year. Pandas are several months old before they achieve their black-and-white coloring. Link

Cartoonist Jamar Nicholas collects depictions of Wonder Woman as queen-sized. He started by sharing his private collection, but now artists submit pieces specially created for the blog BBWW: The Fat Wonder Woman Blog.

I'm no toothpick myself, and admire and enjoy the female form in all its sizes, especially ladies with some meat on them. Thus, my idea for collecting art of a bigger-sized WW happened. I have always felt like for someone who's supposed to be an amazon, she's pretty thin. I don't know a lot of amazons, but I'm assuming they wouldn't be wafer-thin. So yeah, there you go.

Link -via Metafilter

1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.

Push play or go to YouTube. -via Ectoplasmosis

Advances in bionics, transportation, and other technologies have put comic book superheroes a little closer to reality. This collection of videos looks at a few ways we can achieve “super powers”. Link -via Reddit

Herman and Candelaria Zapp drove from Argentina to Alaska in their 1928 Graham Paige Model 610 touring car. The car’s top speed is about 35 mph. The trip took almost three years, covered 43,717 miles, and produced a son. Link -via Grow-A-Brain

Mark Malkoff visited all 171 Starbucks locations in Manhattan in ONE DAY. Of course, he made a movie about the entire project. http://www.171starbucks.com/ -via Metafilter

Each year, farmers in the town of Inakadate in Aomori prefecture create works of crop art by growing a little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru-roman variety.

Pink Tentacle has more pictures. Link -via Bifurcated Rivets

Wheeler "Johnny" Lipes, had neither the formal training, the equipment, nor the urge to become a surgeon.

But when one of his ship mates came down with acute appendicitis 120-feet below the South China Sea, with enemy warships circling above - he had no choice. He had to do what needed to be done or his shipmate would die.

It was the first major surgery ever preformed aboard a submarine. And it was performed by a man who stepped up to the job.

Lipes is pictured with the spoons he used as surgical retractors. Link -via Cynical-C

Can you name all 43 US Presidents? You have ten minutes. I got 33 of 43, without looking any up. The first seven were easy, and I aced the 20th century, but some in between gave me a brain cramp. Link

Carey Huffman designed and chrocheted this cute set of Pacman and Ghosts, and posted the instructions so you can make them yourself!
Link -via Dump Trumpet

This painting went to auction with an estimated value of £300-£500. Two bidders really wanted it, and the final price was £205,000! Art dealers now think it’s an original Titian, dated between 1510 and 1520. If so, the painting could be worth around £5 million. Auctioneer Mark Gilding said:

"Our opinion was it was 18th century, after an early Italian artist. Obviously a couple of people thought differently: two people on the day turned up and battled it out.

"The people bidding on it handle these things day in, day out. On this occasion, as a provincial auctioneer, we bow to their superior knowledge."

Link to auction site. Link to story. -via Arbroath