On April 2007

A trainer is killed and more than 20 spectators are injured after an elephant goes on a rampage at a ceremonial festival in the south Indian state of Kerala.

Doctor on Call

O.K., hindsight is 20/20, and when this ad was created in 1946, the link to lung cancer wasn't totally set in stone. But the curator of the exhibition, Dr. Robert Jackler, not incidentally the chair of the department of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine, still thinks it egregious. "The ads were intended to reassure a worried public about a product even known back then as 'coughin' nails,' " he says. What's more reassuring than the small-town doctor? "The response of the organized medical community was to do nothing, because the ads showed doctors looking wise," adds Jackler. (Note the unintended irony in "Camels: Costlier Tobaccos.") 

Coochy-Coo

Siberian tigers perform for visitors at a zoo in Fuzhou, China, on the second day of the Lunar New Year — the year of the Tiger.

Impressive

Elephants and their drivers take part in a mock fight as part of regular training exercises at an elephant conservation park in Ayutthaya province, Thailand.

Pacemaker

That pacemaker sewn into a loved one's chest actually came about because American engineer Wilson Greatbatch reached into a box and pulled out the wrong thing.It's true. Greatbatch was working on making a circuit to help record fast heart sounds. He reached into a box for a resistor in order to finish the circuit and pulled out a 1-megaohm resistor instead of a 10,000-ohm one.The circuit pulsed for 1.8 milliseconds and then stopped for one second. Then it repeated. The sound was as old as man: a perfect heartbeat.

 

Climate Change Sets Rural Livelihoods Off Course in Zimbabwe

 

At a public borehole in Zviyambe, a village in the backyard of Zimbabwe, approximately 250 kilometres away from Harare, the capital city, butterflies, goats, cattle and human beings mix and mingle in edenic fashion all in search of the precious liquid: water. Under a blazing sun, Sekai Mabika (not her real name) and her sister take turns to fill up buckets with water all the while shooing the goats away while the butterflies flutter hither and thither sipping at the water spilled to the ground and the cattle standby for their turn to drink water. 

Hands Off

 

A customs official in Karachi defends a burning pile of seized contraband including heroin, alcohol, pirated DVDs and beetle nut from looters intent on stealing and reselling it.