Famous First Words

Today is the fifth anniversary of the first Twitter Tweet. Not the most momentous of anniversaries perhaps but it is still impressive to see how much progress Twitter has made in such a short space of time. If you were wondering what the first tweet was, it was "just setting up my twttr", whilst the first words mentioned on YouTube were, "Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants." (At the time the founder of YouTube was standing in front of an elephant at San Diego zoo.)

There are more of these in this BBC article, including "Come here Mr Watson, I want to see you" (First telephone message, 1876 - Mr Watson was Alexander Bell's assistant), and "Merry Christmas" (First text message, 1992). Can you remember your first text / email / phone call?

Elephant Rescue

An amazing story has emerged today of how a British tea planter rescued hundreds of refugees fleeing the Japanese in Burma in World War 2 using a team of elephants. Gyles Mackrell learned in summer 1942 that British soldiers and civilians were trapped the other side of a swollen river, surviving on rations dropped by the RAF. He believed his team of elephants could be used to rescue them so he trekked 100 miles through the jungle in a week. The river crossing was incredibly dangerous and the elephants and their handlers "took terrible risks being washed away and broken to pieces". Over 200 people were saved and he was given the George medal for his courage. You can read more about the story here and watch archive footage here.