First Test-Tube Baby - Louise Brown

On July 25, 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first successful "test-tube" baby was born in Great Britain. Though the technology that made her conception possible was heralded as a triumph in medicine and science, it also caused many to consider the possibilities of future ill-use.

Lesley and John Brown were a young couple from Bristol who had been unable to conceive for nine years. Lesley Brown had blocked Fallopian tubes. Having gone from doctor to doctor for help to no avail, she was referred to Dr. Patrick Steptoe in 1976. On November 10, 1977, Lesley Brown underwent the very experimental in vitro ("in glass") fertilization procedure.

Throughout Lesley's pregnancy, she was closely monitored, including the use of ultrasounds and amniocentesis. Nine days before her due date, Lesley developed toxemia (high blood pressure). Dr. Steptoe decided to deliver the baby early via Cesarean section. 

At 11:47 p.m. on July 25, 1978, a five-pound 12-ounce baby girl was born. The baby girl, named Louise Joy Brown, had blue eyes and blond hair and seemed healthy. Still, the medical community and the world were preparing to watch Louise Brown to see if there were any abnormalities that couldn't be seen at birth. 

The process had been a success! Though some wondered if the success had been more luck than science, continued success with the process proved that Dr. Steptoe and Dr. Edwards had accomplished the first of many "test-tube" babies. 

Today, the process of "in vitro" fertilization is considered commonplace and utilized by infertile couples around the world.

A History of the Olympics

According to legend, the ancient Olympic Games were founded by Heracles (the Roman Hercules), a son of Zeus. Yet the first Olympic Games for which we still have written records were held in 776 BC. At this Olympic Games, a naked runner, Coroebus , won the sole event at the Olympics, the stade - a run of approximately 192 meters (210 yards). This made Coroebus the very first Olympic champion in history.

The ancient Olympic Games grew and continued to be played every four years for nearly 1200 years. In 393 CE, the Roman emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games because of their pagan influences.

Approximately 1500 years later, a young Frenchmen named Pierre de Coubertin began their revival. Coubertin is now known as le Rénovateur. Coubertin was a French aristocrat born on January 1, 1863. He was only seven years old when France was overrun by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Coubertin's attempt to get France interested in sports was not met with enthusiasm. Still, Coubertin persisted. In 1890, he organized and founded a sports organization, Union des Sociétés Francaises de Sports Athlétiques (USFSA). Two years later, Coubertin first pitched his idea to revive the Olympic Games. At a meeting of the Union des Sports Athlétiques in Paris on November 25, 1892, Coubertin stated,
"Let us export our oarsmen, our runners, our fencers into other lands".

His speech did not inspire action. Though Coubertin was not the first to propose the revival of the Olympic Games, he was certainly the most well-connected and persistent of those to do so. Two years later, Coubertin organized a meeting with 79 delegates who represented nine countries. He gathered these delegates in an auditorium that was decorated by neoclassical murals and similar additional points of ambiance. At this meeting, Coubertin movingly spoke of the revival of the Olympic Games. This time, Coubertin aroused interest.

The delegates at the conference voted unanimously for the Olympic Games. The delegates also decided to have Coubertin construct an international committee to organize the Games. This committee became the International Olympic Committee (IOC; Comité Internationale Olympique) and Demetrious Vikelas from Greece was selected to be its first president. Athens was chosen for the revival of the Olympic Games and the planning was begun.

Chennai Marathon-31st Aug 2008

Running long distances is not easy , that too with the life style we have , i am damn sure it is very difficult .

GiveLife Chennai Marathon, has organized a marathon on August 31st, 2008 for the benefit of underprivileged children. The marathon will be flagged off from War Memorial, Island Grounds.

A big team and good number of sponsors , good prize money and lot of participants supporting this for good cause .. If u want to register and participate in it , visit the site and register at www.givelife-chennaimarathon.com

After seeing the site , somethings in it really irritated me .. I dont understand why there is a special prize for Tamil people ..What are they trying to say out of it .. Also see the following lines from the site

"The celebrated Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon has so far helped raise Rs. 26 crores in the last 5 years for various social and charitable causes. It is now time for Chennaites to tell the world that Chennai truly cares?!"

I dont think that the last line is really needed ..Its just targeting local feeling of chennai ..Damn shit ..

Allover , the event should become a success bcoz it is for a good cause .. Give Life is really doing a good job ..

Chennai our beloved, modest and mystical! On August 31 we come to run for you.

1. To thank you for giving us a place and life here.
2. To make a pledge and commitment that we care for your less fortunate underprivileged children.
3. To resolve that we will find and nurture athletes who in future will bring glory and honor to the nation.Runners will come from all over Tamil Nadu and India to make the day a truly a historic occasion.
   

It is GiveLife Chennai Marathon, wanting to be India’s biggest and South India’s richest run. But more importantly the run itself will be a message. A message reflecting true essence of human spirit and existence : Freedom, grit, compassion, reason and being a beautiful community – ideals which remained the raisandetre for human kind to claim pre-eminence in this planet. So friends come on, join the run and sing gently - WE ARE THE HUMAN RACE!

The Secret Behind the Ashes Victory

Former England opener Marcus Trescothick’s in his new autobiography "Coming Back to me" revelation that he illegally used breath mints(Murray Mints) to help his bowlers gain extra swing during the 2005 Ashes series has received a mixed reaction in Australia.He admitted in his new autobiography that his chief job in the field was to shine the ball using “a bit of spit and a lot of polish” with the aid of the breath sweets.This has claimed mixed reactions from players in the field of cricket for going public with the story.

England stunned the cricket world with a 2-1 win in the 2005 Ashes, their first series win against the Australians in 18 years.The reverse swing achieved by England’s bowlers, led by Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones, was a major factor in the upset victory.

He also revealed that he happened to drop the mints from his pant pockets while taking a catch but neither the umpires nor the batsman happened to notice it.

Some cricketing giants say that it was a tactic to increase the sales of his book.At least now we know why England lost the (next) Ashes: they lost their minty guy.

Anyway they got away with it, good luck to them. You can`t change the result of the Test series, so it`s no good worrying about it

Famous Quotes abt Sachin - 'The Little Master'

"Sachin Tendulkar is the hardest batsman I've ever had to bowl to because he judges the length a lot quicker than anyone else"- Shane Warne

"Sachin Tendulkar is, in my time, the best player without doubt - daylight second, Brian Lara third"- Shane Warne

"I'll be going to bed having nightmares of Sachin just running down the wicket and belting me back over the head for six. He was unstoppable. I don't think anyone, apart from Don Bradman, is in the same class as Sachin Tendulkar. He is just an amazing player." - Warne

"Don't bowl him bad balls, he hits the good ones for fours"-Michael Kasprowicz

"Nothing bad can happen to us if we're on a plane in India with Sachin Tendulkar on it"- Hashim Amla

"If I've to bowl to Sachin, I'll bowl with my helmet on. He hits the ball so hard" - Great Dennis lillee

"You take Don Bradman away and he is next up I reckon"- Steve Waugh

"In an over I can bowl six different balls. But then Sachin looks at me with a sort of gentle arrogance down the pitch as if to say 'Can you bowl me another one?" - Adam Hollioke

"The most exciting batsman of his time because he finds the right balance between reason and passion, technique and power, nerves and placement and judgement that applies to all tastes." - Australian Media

I believe people will love to read this article
http://www.india-today.com/itoday/04051998/sport.html

"I'd like to see him go out and bat one day with a stump. I tell you he'd do okay." - Greg Chappell.

"He is a perfectly balanced batsman and knows perfectly well when to attack and when to play defensive cricket. He has developed the ability to treat bowlers all over the world with contempt and can destroy any attack with utmost ease. "- Greg Chappell

"He is cool, has magnificent temperament, and is so mature you tend to forget his age. I can't think of any other example of a player who has so dominated the world before the age of 25." - Tony Greig

"Sachin should appologize for the way he has played"- Wasim Akram
on sachin's 98 in wc 2003

"I saw him playing on television and was struck by his technique, so I asked my wife to come look at him. Now I never saw myself play, but I feel that this player is playing much the same as I used to play, and she looked at him on Television and said yes, there is a similarity between the two...his compactness, technique, stroke production... it all seemed to gel !" - Sir Bradman

"For me, the best batsman in the world is Sachin Tendulkar. I admire Jacques Kallis' consistency and Ricky Ponting, with the purple patch he's going though. Everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. But if there's one person I've admired over a 15-year period, it's definitely Sachin."- Brian Charles Lara

"Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there is something we don't know, something beyond scientific measure. Something that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When he goes out to bat, people switch on their television sets and switch off their lives." - BBC Sports

Sahin - The Super Star ; Sir Don Bradman - The Legend

When Sachin Tendulkar matched the Don…
That’s the tagline most Indian fans would like to read. (But they do not care that much really; they still love their heroes –with all his flaws and failings. Always the mark of a man whose ability outweighs his fallacy.) When Michael Phelps broke Mark Spitz’s record, no one was even thinking of Bradman or of his extraordinary skills in the game. This was not to belittle Bradman. Rather he speaks volumes that few even think he can be surpassed. The fact of the matter remains that Sachin Tendulkar is one of the best players of the modern game and naturally gifted. But not even the best come close to surpassing the legendary late Sir Don Bradman.


It was a moment recorded in time – the day Sachin Tendulkar met Bradman on the latter’s ninety-first birthday. And it was also a record when Tendulkar equaled the legendary Australian hero’s most Test centuries tally of 29 in the West Indies in 2002. But the comparisons must be drawn there and left there. Both men belong to different times. One has become a legend of past folklore; the other, very close to being a living legend.
The only reason that Tendulkar can be called close to being a living legend is because he still has many miles to go. His talent demands it; though his body is increasingly beginning to suggest otherwise. If Bradman played till he was forty, Tendulkar needs to ensure his body holds up before he leaves his number unreachable as did Bradman.
Bradman scored his first Test century in his second Test; Tendulkar had to wait nine. But thereafter Tendulkar picked up the tempo though perhaps not in the same league as Bradman, a tough to emulate for even the best in the business.
The factor that has most gone against Tendulkar has been the fact that India have not won enough with him in the side. It is an argument that echoes incessantly, even in a team game where ten other players had a role to play in how history was made. But this is just one of the many burdens Tendulkar carries on his shoulders. Some reckon he cannot be taken in the same breath because Tendulkar has not managed to score a triple century in international cricket and Virender Sehwag has already done it twice. But by the same standards, Sehwag cannot be compared to a Bradman on the lone feat. That tells something of the lasting legacy that the great man from Australia left behind.
Bradman, on the other hand, has even Tendulkar in awe. The latter is known to have said that comparisons with Sir Don was not possible given the Australian’s awesome ability to score a century every third innings. Tendulkar has not done badly himself but that was what meeting a man whose heroics are told rather than seen, shared rather than experienced.
Tendulkar is the cynosure of all eyes and hence, perhaps the advent of television and live action through the world attract the global attention and subsequently, criticism. Brian Lara is considered a more swashbuckling batsmen, Tendulkar innovative. Yet in the context of the Bradman discussion, it would have been the icing on the cake even for a man making his own path like Sachin to be told that Bradman thought his technique was almost akin to his own.
The somewhat unfair criticisms are something that do not even spare Bradman. Cricket writers are sometimes too critical of scenarios that were simply not possible in Bradman’s day. There are views expressed on how Bradman would have coped with Twenty20 or of how his Test record would have languished had there been another opponent of worth other than England or that he would not have lasted to reach this average if he played the one day game as well.
It seems rather unfair to take a knife to the man who made cricket what it is at a time when all it gave was hope for a nation. His phenomenal statistics supersede any irrelevant conjectures about something that is simply not possible. He did face some of the faster bowlers of his time. His team went through the ups and downs and did face one of the most negatively devised tactics of Bodyline. Bradman was very much a mortal in that it was his deficiency in playing the shorter, rising delivery that was exploited by the then England captain, Douglas Jardine. Even then Bradman managed to average of fifty. The World War deprived him of eight years. His family life was not always a bliss but through it all, he still held grace and delivered. There were no extravagant endorsement cheques in his days and yet it did not matter to him. The purity of the game is also what makes it pristine. It is hard to imagine that any other player would take the field for the first time for his country purely on Bradman’s principles alone. They are perhaps thinking more on the lines of Tendulkar, not through the man’s faults, but with the dangling carrot of a world of financial opportunities that a cricket career brings in its wake these days.
Would the world want another Bradman? Perhaps not. After all his records, his legend has stood over sixty years since he hung up his boots. Sachin Tendulkar has been a phenomenon in his own right. Others have stretched him, like Ricky Ponting. Sachin Tendulkar will continue to be revered because he is a legend in his own right. As is Brian Lara. As perhaps will be Ponting when he hangs up his boots. It will be hard to find another Sachin Tendulkar. But teams will hope for one like him. But most people definitely know there will be none like Bradman. It has perhaps little to do with logic, though the statistics make for a good case. But like mention before, what is not seen but heard and enumerated seems to hold more magnetism than a hero whose game can be dissected even by those who can never play that way.
Sir Don Bradman is in a class of his own. To be subjected to comparisons takes away from him the immemorial, enduring image of the man who epitomized the game and its spirit. He continues to remain unsurpassed.

Glimpse at Sachin's Profile

Tendulkar (born 24 April, 1973 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India) is a record-breaking Indian cricketer who is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. In 2002, Wisden rated him as the second greatest Test batsman after Sir Donald Bradman, and the second greatest One-day international batsman behind Sir Vivian Richards. In 2003, this list was revised where Tendulkar was ranked No. 1 and Richards at No. 2.

He holds several highly regarded batting records and is the leading scorer of centuries in both Test cricket and one-day internationals. He is one of the three batsmen to surpass 11,000 runs in Test cricket, and the first Indian to do so. He is the most prolific run scorer in ODIs by a margin of over 4000 runs and has scored the most runs in international cricket as a whole. He crossed 16,000 runs in ODIs on February 5, 2008 while playing against Sri Lanka in Brisbane, Australia. Affectionately called 'The Little Master' or 'The Master Blaster', Tendulkar made his first-class debut for the Mumbai cricket team aged 14 and scored a century on debut. He made his international test debut in 1989 against Pakistan in Karachi at age 16.

He is the only cricketer to receive the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, India's highest sporting honour and the only cricketer and one of the first sportsmen (along with Vishwanathan Anand ) to receive Padma Vibhushan (2008), the second highest civilian honor of India. He is the most sponsored player in world cricket and has a huge fan following even amongst foreign audiences. Tendulkar has made numerous commercial ventures including opening a chain of restaurants in India.

Name Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar

Born 24 April 1973, Mumbai
Major Teams Mumbai, Yorkshire, India, ACC Asian XI
Batting Style Right Hand Bat
Bowling Style Right Arm Off Break, Leg Break, Right Arm Medium
Test Debut 15-20 Nov,1989 (Ind vs Pak at Karachi)
ODI Debut 18 Dec 1989 (Ind vs Pak at Gujranwala)

Sachin Tendulkar-The Greatest Batsman Alive

The name itself strikes terror in the hearts of bowlers all around the world. Hailed as the master-blaster following the legacy of the great West Indian Vivian Richards, this man has all the shots in the book, and a few more. There is nothing this man cannot do - he opens the batting for India in the one-dayers, comes at no. 4 in test matches, bowls rightarm offbreaks, legbreaks and even googlies (the wrong-un). He also swings the ball both ways when he bowls his medium pacers. It seems he had tried his hands at wicket-keeping too (in his school days), but gave it up in pursuit of what he does best - Batting.

A child prodigy, he made his international debut in ODIs and Tests at the age of 16 ( yes 16 ) against Pakistan and the fiery pace of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis . He then went to England as a part of the national side, and has not looked back ever since. In batting, he has reached a stage that others can only dream of. He has destroyed practically every bowling opposition in the world - from Shane Warne (Aus.) to Saqlain Mushtaq (Pak.) , and Waqar Younis (Pak.) to Allan Donald (RSA) , and in style . Tendulkar 'specialites' include the straight drive (seemingly nobody plays the shot better than him ), the cover drive, the square cut, the pullshot over midwicket/square leg, the delicate leg glance, the late cut, the lofted shots over mid-on and mid-off and not to mention the improvisations he keeps coming up with time and again. He plays each of his shots amazingly well and has even employed the reverse sweep to good effect. A short but powerful man, some of his shots are hit with so much power that the ball simply rockets to the fence as if he was trying to dismiss the ball from his presence. On the other hand, some of his shots are simply timed and placed well. His timing can be quite exquisite and it is this blend of timing and raw power that puts him in the top league with Brian Lara (W.I.) ,Waugh Twins(Mark and Steve, Aus.) and Ricky Ponting (Aus.).

Always involved in the game, he never hesitates to give his inputs to the captain or to the bowlers. His selfless approach and devotion to cricket coupled with the lack of any ego problems makes him one of the most approachable and likeable personalities on the cricket field. No wonder he commands a huge fan following all over the world. He is a great thinker of the game and a good strategist too.It was his great cricketing mind that saw him being appointed as the captain of the Indian side in 1996-97 making him the second youngest captain in the history of Indian cricket (the youngest being M.A.K. Pataudi who was appointed captain at the age of 21). He initially justified the faith put in him by leading India to series victories against Australia (Border - Gavaskar Trophy), South Africa (at home) and also lifted the TITAN cup (Triangular tournament featuring India, Australia & South Africa). But after that, the performances dropped. He was not given the squad that he wanted and India started losing under an unhappy captain. As usual, the skipper was made the scape-goat and citing his lack of form (!!! he had scored more than a thousand runs in both ODIs and Tests in 1997 - a record) was removed from captaincy. Since then, he has flourished with both the bat and the ball, and is thus back to his true self and the job he loves the most - winning matches for India.

Now, this man is set out to be the highest run getter in the history of world cricket. He has already won rich praises from people and fellow/former cricketers who see in him a living legend and a master batsman who is leagues above his fellow cricketers.
Truly, a living legend and a great champion.