Record-breakers in the news today
Barack Obama has shown his lighter side by pretending to be method actor Daniel Day-Lewis portraying the president.
The US president displayed his comedic flair during a skit for the White House Correspondents' Association dinner at the weekend, with the President joking about the difficulty in impersonating his voice, as well as the time it takes to create the fake Obama ears.
At this year’s Oscars ceremony, Daniel Day Lewis became the first actor in history to win three awards in the Best Leading Actor category, picking up a statue for his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln in 2012’s Lincoln, to add to his previous wins for There Will Be Blood (2008) and My Left Foot (1990).
According to the report, almost 19 billion messages were sent per day on chat apps in 2012, compared with 17.6 billion SMS texts.
The fastest time to type a text message (SMS) on a QWERTY smartphone record is held by
Grace Pak (USA) typed a prescribed 264-character text on a QWERTY mobile phone in 56.57 sec at Abington Junior High School in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, USA, on 8 June 2011.
The vehicle was dropped from a carrier aircraft high above California's Mojave Desert and successfully ignited its rocket engine for 16 seconds, then glided to a safe landing.
Virgin Galactic’s headquarters and operations are housed at Spaceport America (formerly the Southwest Regional Spaceport) in New Mexico, the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport, which was constructed at a cost of $200million.
Finally, in somewhat sadder space news, Europe's flagship space telescope has stopped working.
The billion-euro Herschel observatory has run out of the liquid helium needed to keep its instruments and detectors at their ultra-low functioning temperature.
The telescope featured the world’s largest space mirror, which measured 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in) across.
It was constructed from a single piece of silicon carbide ceramic, making it much lighter than glass. The mirror allowed Herschel to study objects in the Solar System as well as deep space in the infrared spectrum.
