A one-armed player scored the winning goal in the first football World Cup

Héctor Castro played on the Uruguay soccer team during the first ever World Cup in 1930. In the final between Uruguay versus Argentina, Castro scored the winning goal in the last minute of the game. The final score was 4-2, making Uruguay the first country to win the World Cup title.

When he was 13, he accidentally amputated his right forearm while using an electric saw, which gave origin to his nickname, El manco (meaning “the one-armed”, or “the maimed”). Later, Castro was nicknamed ‘El Divino Manco’ which roughly translates as ‘the one-handed god’. Fans of his club side, Nacional, worshipped him because of his physical strength and never-say-die attitude on the pitch.

El Divino Manco played 25 times for his country scoring twenty goals. He began his career in 1923/24 with Nacional and was the first player to score in a World Cup game for Uruguay. He retired in 1936.

There are more than one South Poles is in Antarctica

Well, this is right. There are four different South Poles on the continent: The Geographic South Pole (where the earth’s axis intersects Earth’s crust), the Inaccessible South Pole (where Antarctica is farthest from the shoreline), the Geomagnetic South Pole (where the geomagnetic field intersects the Earth’s surface), and the Magnetic South Pole (where Earth’s magnetic fields intersect the crust). To further confuse you, because of magnetic drift, the magnetic south pole is constantly moving.

Why most Disney characters wear gloves

Walt Disney might have been the first to put gloves on his characters, as seen in 1929’s The Opry House starring Mickey Mouse.

In addition to being easier to animate, since drawing characters’ paws in every shot was very time- and labour-consuming, there’s another reason Disney opted for gloves: “We didn’t want him to have mouse hands because he was supposed to be more human,” Disney told his biographer in 1957.

White was chosen as the colour for the gloves because of the fuzzy black-and-white film, which made it hard to see the black hands of the character against a black body. Thus, white gloves helped to emphasize the paws of the characters and their gestures.

The MGM lion roar is trademarked

At the start of any movie made by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, there’s the iconic lion that roars at the audience. While MGM has gone through several iterations of lion mascots, the sound of the roar is always the same. The company trademarked the “sound mark” with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in the 1980s.

World’s biggest Rubik’s cube

The Guinness World Record holder for the world’s largest Rubik’s Cube debuted at Hong Kong’s Nina Mall. Each side is 67 square feet — or more than eight feet tall and wide — and the rows of blocks are capable of being spun independently, just like on the real toy.

But turning one row of the biggest Rubik’s cube on Earth is a serious feat, and solving the whole puzzle requires equal parts brains and brawn.

In a video from Guinness World Records, you can watch people try to solve the interactive sculpture together.

Even with multiple sets of arms to turn them, rearranging the blocks still seems like a workout. The super-sized installation is only temporary, and it will be taken off display after a month at the mall.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 13th, 2021