LZ 129 Hindenburg was a large German commercial passenger-carrying rigid airship, the lead ship of the Hindenburg class, the longest class of flying machine and the largest airship by envelope volume. It was designed and built by the Zeppelin Company on the shores of Lake Constance in Friedrichshafen and was operated by the German Zeppelin Airline Company; the airship flew from March 1936 until it was destroyed by fire 14 months on May 6, 1937 while attempting to land at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in Manchester Township, New Jersey, at the end of the first North American transatlantic journey of its second season of service with the loss of 36 lives. This was the last of the great airship disasters. Hindenburg was named after the late Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany from 1925 until his death in 1934; the Zeppelin Company had proposed LZ 128 in 1929, after the world flight of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin. This ship was to be 776 ft long and carry 5,000,000 cu ft of hydrogen.

Ten Maybach engines were to power five tandem engine cars. The disaster of the British airship R 101 prompted the Zeppelin Company to reconsider the use of hydrogen, therefore scrapping the LZ 128 in favour of a new airship designed for helium, the LZ 129. Initial plans projected the LZ 129 to have a length of 813.67 feet, but 10 feet was dropped from its tail in order to allow the ship to fit in Lakehurst Hangar No. 1. Manufacturing of components began in 1931, but construction of the Hindenburg did not commence until March 1932; the delay was due to Daimler-Benz designing and refining the LOF-6 diesel engines to reduce weight while fulfilling the output requirements set by the Zeppelin Company. Hindenburg had a duralumin structure, incorporating 15 Ferris wheel-like main ring bulkheads along its length, with 16 cotton gas bags fitted between them; the bulkheads were braced to each other by longitudinal girders placed around their circumferences. The airship's outer skin was of cotton doped with a mixture of reflective materials intended to protect the gas bags within from radiation, both ultraviolet and infrared.

The gas cells were made by a new method pioneered by Goodyear using multiple layers of gelatinized latex rather than the previous goldbeater's skins. In 1931 the Zeppelin Company purchased 5,000 kg of duralumin salvaged from the wreckage of the October 1930 crash of the British airship R101. Hindenburg's interior furnishings were designed by Fritz August Breuhaus, whose design experience included Pullman coaches, ocean liners, warships of the German Navy; the upper "A" Deck contained small passenger quarters in the middle flanked by large public rooms: a dining room to port and a lounge and writing room to starboard. Paintings on the dining room walls portrayed the Graf Zeppelin's trips to South America. A stylized world map covered the wall of the lounge. Long slanted; the passengers were expected to spend most of their time in the public areas, rather than their cramped cabins. The lower "B" Deck contained washrooms, a mess hall for the crew, a smoking lounge. Harold G. Dick, an American representative from the Goodyear Zeppelin Company, recalled "The only entrance to the smoking room, pressurized to prevent the admission of any leaking hydrogen, was via the bar, which had a swiveling air lock door, all departing passengers were scrutinized by the bar steward to make sure they were not carrying out a lit cigarette or pipe."

Helium was selected for the lifting gas because it was the safest to use in airships, as it is not flammable. One proposed measure to save helium was to make double-gas cells for 14 of the 16 gas cells. At the time, helium was relatively rare and expensive as the gas was available in industrial quantities only from distillation plants at certain oil fields in the United States. Hydrogen, by comparison, could be cheaply produced by any industrialized nation and being lighter than helium provided more lift; because of its expense and rarity, American rigid airships using helium were forced to conserve the gas at all costs and this hampered their operation. Despite a U. S. ban on the export of helium under the Helium Control Act of 1927, the Germans designed the airship to use the far safer gas in the belief that they could convince the US government to license its export. When the designers learned that the National Munitions Control Board would refuse to lift the export ban, they were forced to re-engineer Hindenburg to use hydrogen for lift.

Flammable hydrogen was the only alternative lighter-than-air gas. One beneficial side effect of employing hydrogen was; the Germans' long history of flying hydrogen-filled passenger airships without a single injury or fatality engendered a held belief they had mastered the safe use of hydrogen. Hindenburg's first season performance appeared to demonstrate this. Five years after construction began in 1931, Hindenburg made its maiden test flight from the Zeppelin dockyards at Friedrichshafen on March 4, 1936, with 87 passengers and crew aboard. Thes

Mukul S. Anand was an Indian film director and producer, he was the nephew of veteran film scriptwriter Inder Raj Anand and cousin of actor and director Tinnu Anand. Mukul S. Anand made his debut as a director with the suspense thriller Kanoon Kya Karega, inspired by the Hollywood film Cape Fear, his second film Aitbaar was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's classic Dial M for Murder. The film that first gained him recognition was the epic film Sultanat, which brought together real-life father and son Dharmendra and Sunny Deol for the first time and introduced actress Juhi Chawla; that same year Anand directed the thriller Main Balwan, known for the hit songs "Rock n Roll" and "Halla Gulla". His first box-office success was Insaaf, the film responsible for "re-introducing" Vinod Khanna to films after a hiatus. Anand's next film, Maha-Sangram, reunited him with Vinod Khanna and was acclaimed for Aditya Pancholi's angry portrayal of a Thakur. At this point, Mukul was considered a skilful director, who held much promise but somehow never managed to deliver solid successes.

He hit the big league with the Scarface-inspired crime thriller Agneepath with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role, which won Amitabh a National Award for Best Actor. He was reunited with Bachchan for the family drama Hum, a box-office success and featured the popular song "Jumma Chumma", he worked with Bachchan for the final time in the epic film Khuda Gawah which won him the Filmfare Best Director Award. His last completed film, which had a multi-star cast including Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor and Shahrukh Khan, failed to do well at the box office; the film he was working on at the time of his death in 1997 was Dus, which remained incomplete and unreleased, although the film's music did end up being released posthumously. Inder Raj Anand, a film scriptwriter from the late 1940s through to the late 1980s was Mukul Anand's uncle. Mukul's cousin is director Tinnu Anand. Mukul had two children named Alishka and Mikhail. Daughter Aliksha Anand is married to producer, actor Romesh Sharma's son actor Karan Sharma who acted in the 2005 Bollywood film Dil Jo Bhi Kahey....

Mukul died of a heart attack at the age of 45 on 7 September 1997. He was on location for action film Dus in Utah; the film began production in May 1997 and 40% of the shooting had been completed by August. It never was released. Promo videos and clips of what Mukul had shot for the film were seen on Mukul's official website. In 2005, Nitin Manmohan, the co-producer of Dus produced another unrelated film with the same title, directed by Anubhav Sinha. Sanjay Dutt and Shilpa Shetty starred in that film. Mukul S. Anand on IMDb Mukul S. Anand Official Site Mukul S. Anand @ SPICE

Catharanthus roseus known as bright eyes, Cape periwinkle, graveyard plant, Madagascar periwinkle, old maid, pink periwinkle, rose periwinkle, is a species of flowering plant in the family Apocynaceae. It is native and endemic to Madagascar, but grown elsewhere as an ornamental and medicinal plant, a source of the drugs vincristine and vinblastine, used to treat cancer, it was included in the genus Vinca as Vinca rosea. Two varieties are recognized Catharanthus roseus var. roseusSynonymy for this variety Catharanthus roseus var. angustus Steenis ex Bakhuizen f. Catharanthus roseus var. albus G. Don Catharanthus roseus var. occellatus G. Don Catharanthus roseus var. nanus Markgr. Lochnera rosea f. alba Woodson Lochnera rosea var. ocellata WoodsonCatharanthus roseus var. angustus Bakh. f. Synonymy for this variety Catharanthus roseus var. nanus Markgr. Lochnera rosea var. angusta Steenis Catharnthus roseus is an evergreen subshrub or herbaceous plant growing 1 m tall. The leaves are oval to oblong, 2.5–9 cm long and 1–3.5 cm broad, glossy green, with a pale midrib and a short petiole 1–1.8 cm long.

The flowers are white to dark pink with a darker red centre, with a basal tube 2.5–3 cm long and a corolla 2–5 cm diameter with five petal-like lobes. The fruit is a pair of follicles 2–4 cm long and 3 mm broad. Cape periwinkles are of two types - annual periwinkle. In the wild, C. roseus is an endangered plant. It is however cultivated and is naturalised in subtropical and tropical areas of the world like Australia, India and Bangladesh, it is so well adapted to growth in Australia, that it is listed as a noxious weed in Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory, in parts of eastern Queensland. As an ornamental plant, it is appreciated for its hardiness in dry and nutritionally deficient conditions, popular in subtropical gardens where temperatures never fall below 5–7 °C, as a warm-season bedding plant in temperate gardens, it is noted for its long flowering period, throughout the year in tropical conditions, from spring to late autumn, in warm temperate climates. Full sun and well-drained soil are preferred.

Numerous cultivars have been selected, for variation in flower colour, for tolerance of cooler growing conditions in temperate regions. Notable cultivars include'Albus','Grape Cooler', the Ocellatus Group, and'Peppermint Cooler'; the species has long been cultivated as an ornamental plant. In the UK it has gained the Royal Horticultural Society’s Award of Garden Merit. In Ayurveda the extracts of its roots and shoots, though poisonous, are used against several diseases. In traditional Chinese medicine, extracts from it have been used against numerous diseases, including diabetes and Hodgkin's lymphoma. Many of the vinca alkaloids were first isolated from Catharanthus roseus, including vinblastine and vincristine used in the treatment of leukemia and Hodgkin's lymphoma; this conflict between historical indigenous use, recent patents on C.roseus-derived drugs by western pharmaceutical companies, without compensation, has led to accusations of biopiracy. C. Roseus can be toxic if consumed orally by humans, is cited in the Louisiana State Act 159.

C. roseus is used in plant pathology as an experimental host for phytoplasmas. This is because it is easy to infect with a large majority of phytoplasmas, often has distinctive symptoms such as phyllody and reduced leaf size. Vinblastine and vincristine, chemotherapy medications used to treat several types of cancers, are found in the plant and are biosynthesised from the coupling of the alkaloids catharanthine and vindoline; the newer semi-synthetic chemotherapeutic agent vinorelbine, used in the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancer, can be prepared either from vindoline and catharanthine or from the vinca alkaloid leurosine, in both cases via anhydrovinblastine. Rosinidin is the pink anthocyanidin pigment found in the flowers of C. roseus. Media related to Catharanthus roseus at Wikimedia Commons