Exploring the World's Most Spectacular Temples. These Death-Defying Human Towers Build on Catalan Tradition. The Incredible Story of The Gambia’s Graffiti Villages. Emily Blunt and James McAvoy Explain a Typical British Day. German Versus Other Languages (Part 1 and 2) What is the Mannequin Challenge, where did it start and which famous people have got involved? Mannequin Challenge Origin: The true story of the coolest viral video trend of the year. The "mannequin challenge," the new trend in which groups of people hold a statuesque pose, has gone viral.
After a number of publications discovered the latest Twitter sensation last week, the mannequin challenge has since been performed by the likes of Kevin Hart, 2 Chainz and the Dallas Cowboys. How did this viral obsession take off? The mannequin challenge's roots have been traced back to Twitter user @thvtmelanin_, a high school student named Emili from Jacksonville, Florida.
"One day I just went to the front of the class and stood there," Emili told Inverse via Twitter DM. "That's when my friend A'laynah said, 'Hey, you look like a mannequin.' The silly class prank then evolved into a full-blown social media challenge thanks to a little encouragement from a friend, Emili said.
Utilizing the hashtag #MannequinChallenge on Twitter and Instagram, the trend gained popularity in other high schools, eventually spreading across the country. World Video FRONTLINE PBS2. Uniknya Adat Toraja - National Geographic. Why Japanese Kids Can Walk to School Alone. Why Mandarin Won't Be a Lingua Franca. Andrés Martinez is editorial director of Zócalo Public Square, for which he writes the Trade Winds column.
A Russian, a Korean, and a Mexican walk into a bar. How do they communicate? In English, if at all, even though it’s not anyone’s native language. Swap out a bar for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in China this week, and the attending heads of state from those three countries still have to communicate in English: It’s the only official language of the APEC, even when the APEC gathers in Beijing.
Mark Zuckerberg recently scored points during his own visit to Beijing when he made some remarks in Mandarin. Thanks to the British empire, native English speakers are strategically sprinkled across the globe. It’s little wonder that an estimated 2 billion people will speak functional English by 2020, the vast majority of them having learned it as their second language. English is also more politically neutral than we think. A fascinating color-coded map of Africa's diversity. If you haven't already seen this Harvard University map of ethnicity in Africa, based on data from a 2001 book edited by anthropologist Marc Leo Felix, it is really worth taking in: Harvard University / "People's Atlas of Africa," ed.
Marc Leo Felix Each color roughly corresponds to an ethnic group that constitutes the majority in that region, based on how people self-identify. Ethnicity is notoriously difficult to measure and demarcate — everyone sees their own ethnic identity a little differently — but the results here roughly track with a 1959 ethnography by anthropologist George Murdock and with a 2002 Harvard Institute study on ethnic diversity. That latter study found that sub-Saharan African contained many of the most ethnically diverse countries on Earth, including the two most diverse: Uganda and Liberia.
God Grew Tired of Us: The Story of Lost Boys of Sudan 2006. Hungry Planet: What The World Eats. Language "Behind The Mic" version (from "Frozen")