US Personnel in a Jeep with the 48th Armored Medical Battalion, 2nd Armored Division stop to look at a sign thanking them in Le Molay-Littry Normandy France - July 4, 1944
LIFE Magazine Archives - Scherschel Photographer
200-year old wooden bridge in Dagestan, Russia, built without using a single nail : The bridge is located near the village of Gulli (another pronunciation is Juli) of the Tabasaran region of Dagestan (Russia). It is known that the bridge was built by local residents - Tabasaran people, who had only wood and stone at their disposal.
The bridge is 10 m high and can nicely withstand a passenger car.
1991, "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" was released.
Talk of a potential sequel to "The Terminator" (1984) arose soon after its release, but several outstanding issues precluded such a production. There were technical limitations regarding computer-generated imagery, an aspect of the film essential to the creation of the T-1000 Terminator. The production of James Cameron's 1989 film "The Abyss" provided the proof of concept needed to satisfactorily resolve the technical concerns.
Perhaps more serious were the intellectual property disputes between Hemdale Film Corporation, which owned 50% of the rights to the franchise and stymied efforts to produce a sequel, and Carolco Pictures. Given that Hemdale was then experiencing financial problems, Schwarzenegger urged Mario Kassar, head of Carolco, to bid for the rights: "I reminded Mario that this is something that we've been looking for four years, and that it should be him that should go all-out, no matter what it takes to make this deal." Carolco eventually paid Hemdale $5 million for the franchise in 1990, resolving the legal gridlock.
"Terminator 2" made extensive use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to vivify the main two Terminators. The use of such technology was the most ambitious since the 1982 and 1984 science fiction films "Tron" and "The Last Starfighter,", respectively, and would be integral to the critical success of the film. CGI was required particularly for the T-1000, a "mimetic poly-alloy" (liquid metal) structure, since the shapeshifting character can transform into almost anything it touches. Most of the key Terminator effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), and Pacific Data Images (PDI) for computer graphics and Stan Winston for practical effects. Creation of the visual effects cost $5 million and took 35 people, including animators, computer scientists, technicians and artists, ten months to produce, for a total of 25 man-years. Despite the large amount of time spent, the CGI sequences only total five minutes of running time. (Wikipedia)
