A really, really, really big day !!

The world's tallest man married a woman about two-thirds his height and half his age, holding a traditional Mongolian ceremony with great fanfare at the tomb of Kublai Khan in Inner Mongolia.

Bao Xishun, a 7-foot-9 herdsman, met his bride this year after searching high and low, sending advertisements around the world. It turns out he didn't have to look far. Xia Shujian, a 5-foot-6 saleswoman, hails from his hometown of Chifeng.

Bao, 56, wore a specially designed light-blue gown topped with a gold vest, and he rode to his 28-year-old bride's camp in a cart pulled by two camels.

The "Rolling stop" just got more costly

At five spots in the Santa Monica Mountains, new traffic-sign cameras are rolling when drivers roll through intersections. Authorities plan to start issuing $100 tickets to motorists who don't come to a complete stop at five stop signs equipped with cameras. The cameras are owned by a firm that will collect $20 from each $100 citation.

In the "Pink's"

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner will carry 210 - 250 passengers on routes of 7,650 to 8,200 nautical miles (14,200 to 15,200 kilometers), while the 787-9 Dreamliner will carry 250 - 290 passengers on routes of 8,000 to 8,500 nautical miles (14,800 to 15,750 kilometers). A third 787 family member, the 787-3 Dreamliner, will accommodate 290 - 330 passengers and be optimized for routes of 2,500 to 3,050 nautical miles (4,600 to 5,650 kilometers).

In addition to bringing big-jet ranges to mid-size airplanes, the 787 will provide airlines with unmatched fuel efficiency, resulting in exceptional environmental performance. The airplane will use 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than today's similarly sized airplane. It will also travel at speeds similar to today's fastest wide bodies, Mach 0.85. Airlines will enjoy more cargo revenue capacity. Passengers will also see improvements with the new airplane, from an interior environment with higher humidity to increased comfort and convenience.

Lady Day Sang the Blues

1936 - Billie Holiday recorded Billie’s Blues for Okeh Records in New York. Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw and Cozy Cole supported Holiday, instrumentally, on the track.

"His Master's Voice"

1900 - One of the most famous trademarks in the world, ‘His Master’s Voice’, was registered with the U.S. Patent Office. The logo of the Victor Talking Machine Company, and later, RCA Victor, shows the dog, Nipper, looking into the horn of a gramophone machine.

WYOMING

1890 - Wyoming, the state with the smallest population entered the Union this day. The 44th state was named after an Algonquin Indian word meaning ‘large prairie place’. Appropriately, the Indian paintbrush that covers much of the large prairie is the state flower and the meadowlark, frequently seen circling the prairie land, is the state bird. Another Indian term, Cheyenne, is also the name of the state capital. Wyoming is called the Equality State because it is the first state to have granted women the right to vote (1869). And, it's also known for the Grand Tetons, shown above.

Jelly Roll Morton

Legendary jazz pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton died in Los Angeles on July 10, 1941. His musical innovations accelerated the development of jazz.

Heroes Fighting an Unrelenting Battle

Firefighters across the country continue to be plagued by an assualt of wildfires in what promises to be a long summer.

Providence . . . looking good!

Providence, R.I. ranks as one of the best for big and small businesses with a low salary to cost of living ratio.

This little vacation home in Aspen, Colorado can be had for $135 million

Owned by Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, former Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S., this 95-acre estate boasts a 56,000-square-foot, 15-bedroom, 16-bathroom mansion. Several smaller buildings, including stables, a tennis court and an indoor swimming pool, complete the property.

For more information, contact Joshua Saslove at Joshua & Co., or Gregory Antonsen of Christie's Great Estates.

Breathtaking Temples and Monuments

A Roman road in a narrow gorge of Siq wadi entering Petra in Jordan.

Petra, where the Nabataean Arabs, ancient masters of the desert, carved breathtaking temples and monuments, 800 in all, out of the multi-colored sandstone.

Inspiration from Fjordland

Milford Sound in Fjordland National Park, New Zealand provides this haunting and beautiful image.

Elegance and Flip Flops

LAS VEGAS — On a day when thousands were convinced the calendar made this gambling town the luckiest place to wed on the luckiest day of the century, this may have been the quintessential 7/7/7 wedding: The groom wore green flip-flops with a beer bottle opener built into the sole. The tattooed bride with blue toenails and smeared mascara arrived at 2 a.m., hyperventilating and crying, the rings forgotten somewhere.

At the end of a brisk ceremony at the Graceland Chapel, an Elvis impersonator crooned "Viva Las Vegas" while the couple smooched. And if all that wasn't spectacle enough, a relative in a tuxedo T-shirt snapped pictures — even when the newlyweds toppled from a bench to the ground, a mess of legs and tangled tulle and satin.

"It was either this or the Caribbean," said groom Jon Andreano, 29, of Denver. "But there's nothing cooler than getting married by Elvis. This is Vegas. It's the way it should be."

Whether it was romance or superstition or luck — or that extra gimmick needed to drag their partner down the aisle — many places around the world reported a record number of couples tying the knot Saturday. It was a once-in-acentury calendar convergence that gave couples an anniversary date impossible to forget: 07/07/07.

And nowhere were more couples lining up than in Las Vegas, where it was 104 at 1 a.m. and the day topped out at 112. The "I dos" began at the stroke of midnight and continued nonstop at virtually every casino, hotel and chapel in town. Every limo was booked, every Elvis on the job. Ministers stumbled over words and read from cue cards as if they were third-string pinch hitters. Mandalay Bay held a mass wedding for 33 couples on its beach in the scorching heat.

'Poler' bear stops desert traffic

A bear climbed 100 feet up a Lancaster power pole in the sweltering high desert Friday and brought traffic to a halt as motorists stopped to gawk and take pictures. "Not a whole lot we could do except keep the people out of the area and let him decide he needs to come down and continue his way on to the mountains, and with the assistance of the Highway Patrol that's what we did," Game Warden Martin Wall told a local TV news station.
After a couple of hours of taking in the view from a crossbar supporting electrical wires, the black bear came back to earth, walked across California 138 and ran off into the desert scrub.

(From the Associated Press)

And the winner is . . . or is that loser ??

The Philadelphia Phillies are on the verge of becoming the first professional sports franchise to lose 10,000 games — and the final countdown to the ignominious mark is being, well, celebrated, in Philadelphia.

"Magical Misery Tour," the Philadelphia Daily News called its retrospective of a 124-year history that includes only one World Series championship, in 1980.

"Phabulous Phutility," the Inquirer called it.

The Phillies played their first game in 1883. And lost, naturally.

They lost 23 in a row in 1961, a major league record.

Fourteen times, they have lost at least 100 games in a season, finishing an astonishing 62 1/2 games out of first place in 1942.

And perhaps worst of all, in 1964, they had a 6 1/2 -game lead in the National League standings with 12 games to play, then lost the pennant by losing 10 in a row. But don't ever say they don't love their sports in Philly.

Folks are selling T-shirts to commemorate the historic milestone.

Everything Changes -- "You can get back to the place but not the time"

The Magic Castle and Yamashiro restaurant in Hollywood are being sold by the family that has owned them since the 1940s. The two are expected to keep operating. Vacant land on the site will probably be developed by the new owners.
(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
An early photo of Yamashiro, a replica of a palace in the Yamashiro Mountains near Kyoto, Japan. It was completed in 1914 by the Bernheimer brothers, who wanted a mansion to house their Asian art collection and brought hundreds of craftsmen from Asia to build it.

Realize Your Dreams

The Spaceship-like Chemosphere House

On its way to the Getty Center are the complete works of the late John Lautner, who engineered the spaceship-like Chemosphere house to sit on a single column above a canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Lautner's 9,000 working drawings and other files were being managed by the John Lautner Foundation since his death in 1994. "It's complicated to handle requests," says the architect's daughter, Karol Lautner Peterson, who approached the Getty and worked with De Wit to make the donation. "My father's wish was to have his archive available to architectural writers, students and homeowners."

Hidden Images: See if you can find 10 tigers here ??