Record-breakers in the news today
Sales of PCs have seen the sharpest decline in nearly 20 years due to the increasing dominance of tablets and smartphones, according to a leading technology tracking firm.
Sales of personal computers plummeted 14% to 76.3 million worldwide in the first three months of the year, according to International Data Corp (IDC), marking the biggest drop since records on sales began in 1994.
The first PC with a hard drive as standard was the IBM PC/XT. Released in 1983, it came with a 10-MB hard drive as standard issue, along with 128 KB of RAM and a 360-KB floppy drive. It retailed at $5,000 (£3,300).
Rock band Metallica have unveiled their own pinball machine.
Designed by Stern Pinball Inc, the game will feature a number of the bands classic tracks including ‘Enter Sandman’ and’ Master of Puppets’.
The band join a long list of bands to have pinball machines made in their honour including KISS, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, The Who and Guns N Roses.
Early pinball machines paid out cash prizes for high scores, which led to pinball being classified as gambling in the USA. In 1942, pinball machines were banned in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia, even went so far as to smash pinball machines during a press conference.
Most bans were lifted by the early 1970s, but New York stood firm until 1976, which, at 34 years, makes it the longest ban in gaming history.
Norman Foster's architecture firm has been hired to refresh the design of Apple's retail stores.
Apple traditionally works with architecture firm 8 Inc to create its shops, but have now turned to Foster + Partners who previously helped build the likes of tMcLaren Technology Centre, home of motorsport team McLaren, and the Reichstag building redevelopment in Berlin.
The giant steel arch supporting the roof of the north stand of the new Wembley Stadium in London, UK, designed by Sir Norman Foster, has a span of 315 m (1,033 ft), making it the world's longest unsupported roof structure.
It weighs 1,750 tonnes (3.85 million lb) and is seven metres (23 ft) in diameter. The Eiffel Tower (324 m or 1,063 ft) is just a shade taller than the arch's span.
The oldest known collection of fossilized dinosaur embryos have been discovered in China.
A team of palaeontologists have uncovered the sauropodomorph fossils in what appears to be a nesting site in Lufeng County that dates to the Early Jurassic period, 197 million to 190 million years ago.
The oldest-dated dinosaur species is Nyasasaurus parringtoni, which was formally described in December 2012.
Known from a partial skeleton discovered in a deposit of fossils present within the Manda Beds near southern Tanzania's Lake Nyasa that date back to the Anisian Stage of the Middle Triassic Period, it is approximately 240 million years old – 10–15 million years older than the previous record holders, from Argentina – and was roughly the size of a labrador dog.
