My Offbeat World

First Moon Landing Tapes Erased – But all is not Lost

//  Leave a Comment

The First Men on the Moon

Its a little unfortunate that the orignial tapes of the first manned landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, have been erased.

 Apart from the historical significance of keeping these tapes, this is just the sort of thing that conspiracy theorists thrive on.

Now there is no absolute documented proof of the momentous occasion.

However, all is not lost, some rather blurred copies have been found and they are going to be restored – not doctored- by the Burbank, hollywood based company Lowry Digital.

Lowry Digital are best known for restoring old Hollywood films and they have been busily digitizing the copies and adding other bits and pieces to make a new digitally enhanced of the original landing which will be released in September.

For those who want to read all about the Apollo 11 mission you will find the book The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11  by David M Harland, has lots of interesting facts and figures about the mission.

Apart from the detailed information , the book contains color plates and black and white photographs of the mission.

This book is a must for anyone interested finding out all about the first moon landing.

Where Have all the Frogs Gone?

//  Leave a Comment

Face to Face with Frogs by Mark MoffettSounds like the name of a song but it’s quite a serious business in the Northern parts of Australia.

We all reminisce about the many different species of cute frogs that once were found in abundance in this great land of ours, but now many of them have disappeared because of the introduction of the cane toad.

In 1935, in their infinite wisdom, the government of the day introduced 102 the cane toad to combat the grey backed cane beetle and the Frenchie beetle.

The cane toad proved to be ineffective for this task as the cane toads cannot jump very high so were unable to reach the upper stalks of the sugar cane and couldn’t reach the beetles higher up.

There was an insecticide produced 5 years later and the cane toads were left to do what cane toads do best and that was reproduce, within 6 months there were tens of thousands of these pests. They have spread across Queensland and into the Northern Territory and have now been found in Northern New South Wales.

A female cane toad can lay between 8000 and 30000 eggs at a time (anytime). Most native Australian frogs lay between 1000 and 2000 eggs per year. So our native frogs didn’t stand a chance against these ghastly predators.

The cane toad has no known predators and pets are at risk because of the toxins within the skin of the toads.

This is just another example of Governments not undertaking enough research into the kinds of pests they introduce simply to appease one or other vocal lobby groups, in this case the Sugar Industry.