Mortadella - The Biggest Sausage in the World

Mortadella pronounced /morta'dɛl:a/ is a large Italian sausage or cold cut (salume /sa'lume/) made of finely hashed/ground heat-cured pork sausage which incorporates at least 15% small cubes of pork fat (principally the hard fat from the neck of the pig). It is delicately flavored with spices, including whole or ground black pepper, myrtle berries, nutmeg, coriander and pistachios and/or olives.

Traditionally the pork filling was ground to a paste using a large mortar (mortaio /mor'tajo/) and pestle. Two Roman funerary stele in the archaeological museum of Bologna show such mortars. Alternatively, according to Cortelazzo and Zolli Dizionario Etimologico della Lingua Italiana 1979-88, Mortadella gets its name from a Roman sausage flavored with myrtle in place of pepper.

In Bologna and the surrounding area, the boiled sausage known as Mortadella can be as heavy as 200 kilograms. Even weirder is the fact that it’s cut into the thinnest slices, so its taste and aroma can be fully appreciated.

Homemade Submarine was Made by Tao Xiangli

A brilliant Chinese inventor by the name of Tao Xiangli has come up with an amazing idea of building a submarine using minimum resources and costing a stunning low amount of cash. All it took the 34 year old was a couple of years’ hard work and a little over four grand to get the whole underwater mission complete. His submarine is made up of propellers, electric motors, a periscope and a depth control tank.

Tao Xiangli, a Chinese inventor, is reported to have built a functional submarine. Amateur inventor Tao, 34, made a fully functional submarine, which has a periscope, depth control tanks, electric motors, manometer, and two propellers, from old oil barrels and tools which he bought at a second-hand market. He took 2 years to invent and test the submarine which costs 30,000 yuan (US$4,385).

Nice idea, if you would ask me. We have a share of ideas that have poured in from China that were supposed to be crude inventions but turned out rather cool. The best part is that like this one costs just about $4,385 to build, a little funding can help college-students back home get down to fixing one themselves!