100 novels everyone should read, Telegraph selection of the essential fiction library
100 The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkein
WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.
93 Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré
Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.
3 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow”.
2 Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale which ate his leg.
1 Middlemarch by George Eliot
“One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.
See entire list at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4248401/100-novels-everyone-should-read.html

Top 100 Desert Island Books (in no particular order)
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "Always a joyous and thought-provoking read." (Recommended by Sharon Cognetti)
Toni Morrison, Beloved: "One of the few books that actually caused me to drop my jaw while reading -- haunting, magical, and beautifully poetic; tragic and uplifting at the same time." (Recommended by Jennifer Grabowski and Sharon Cognetti)
Laura Esquival, Like Water For Chocolate: "Although I teach it, this book is one of my favorites! On a desert island, the passion for food and love would be perfect." (Recommended by Heather Hickman)
Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends: "A fantastic collection of entertaining poems that got me through childhood and the difficult times in adulthood." (Recommended by Greg Krikava)
Read entire list at: http://ecs.edisonchargers.com/dsp.subpage.print.cfm?id=838

Top 100 Fantasy Books
100. Tiganaby by Guy Gavriel Kay (1990)
After losing his son in a battle against Tigana, a king places a curse on the land. All those born within it will be unable to remember its name.
1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling (2007)
Read entire list at: http://www.fantasybooksandmovies.com/best-fantasy-books.html
Ten 100-year predictions that came true In 1900, American civil engineer John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. Read the ones that came true and those that didn't at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16444966

Inspired by the predictions of Watkins, readers of BBC News Magazines sent in twenty top predictions for life 100 years from now. Read what futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker think of the ideas at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16536598

Antique cut glass Do not serve hot food in cut glass. Do not put the glass in the refrigerator or dishwasher. Wash two or three times a year in warm water and pure soap with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of ammonia. Never let liquids stand in old glass bottles or decanters.
Top ten rules of glass care: http://www.antique-central.com/antique-glass-care-cleaning.shtml

Australia is the world's smallest continent, comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands including Tasmania, New Guinea, the Aru Islands and Raja Ampat Islands. Australia and these nearby islands, all part of the same geological landmass, are separated by seas overlying the continental shelf — the Arafura Sea and Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, and Bass Strait between mainland Australia and Tasmania. When sea levels were lower during the Pleistocene ice age, including the last glacial maximum about 18,000 BC, the lands formed a single, continuous landmass. During the past ten thousand years, rising sea levels overflowed the lowlands and separated the continent into today's low-lying arid to semi-arid mainland and the two mountainous islands of New Guinea and Tasmania. Geologically, the continent extends to the edge of the continental shelf, so the now-separate lands can still be considered a continent. Due to the spread of flora and fauna across the single Pleistocene landmass the separate lands have a related biota. New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia. Australia is sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul, Australinea and Meganesia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_(continent)

On June 15 and 16, 2012, 32 ACM A.M. Turing Award Winners http://turing100.acm.org/index.cfm?p=awardees come together for the first time at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco to honor the 100th Anniversary of Alan Turing and reflect on his contributions, as well as on the past and future of computing. Celebrate with us! Registration is free but limited to 700 attendees. http://www.regonline.com/Register/Checkin.aspx?EventID=1043823 and includes the Friday reception. http://www.acm.org/news/featured

The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the computer field". The Turing Award is recognized as the "highest distinction in Computer science" and "Nobel Prize of computing". The award is named after Alan Turing, mathematician and Reader in Mathematics at The University of Manchester. Turing is "frequently credited for being the Father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence". As of 2007, the award is accompanied by a prize of $250,000, with financial support provided by Intel and Google. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

A "treasure trove" of fossils - including some collected by Charles Darwin - has been re-discovered in an old cabinet. The fossils, lost for some 165 years, were found by chance in the vaults of the British Geological Survey HQ near Keyworth, UK. They have now been photographed and are available to the public through a new online museum exhibit released Jan. 17. The find was made by the palaeontologist Dr Howard Falcon-Lang. Dr Falcon-Lang, who is based in the department of earth sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London, spotted some drawers in a cabinet marked "unregistered fossil plants".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16578330
The collection was assembled by botanist Joseph Hooker (Darwin’s best friend) while he was briefly employed by the Survey in 1846. The material includes some of the first thin sections ever made by William Nicol, the pioneer of petrography, in the late 1820s, as well as specimens picked up by Darwin and Hooker on their round the world voyages in the 1830s and 1840s.
Link to the online exhibit at: http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/25377-charles-darwin-fossils-foun