Pizza is a pretty universal treat, but where did it start? Here are three things you probably didn't know about pizza.

    1: Pizza's Origins Are Half-Baked.

    The Neapolitans（那不勒斯人）in Italy are proud of saying they invented pizza, but it's probably more accurate to say, they perfected it. The idea of putting toppings on a flatbread and baking it started in the 6th century B. C. But the people of Naples were the first to put tomato on a flatbread in the 16th century. From its start, pizza was a food of the poor, as it was cheap, filling and easy to eat on the run. In Italian, the word “pizza” refers to anything that is made and then pressed flat.

    2: Pizza Margherita Is Not Exactly a Symbol of Italy.

It was said some day in 1889, a local baker named Raffaele Esposito created three pizzas for Queen Margherita when she was on a tour of Italy. The queen loved the version that had tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese— and just happened to match the colors of the Italian flag. So Esposito named the pizza after her.

    But Pizza historian Scott Wiener points out that Italy was unified in name only in 1889 so it was unlikely any Neapolitan baker would want to celebrate “the Northern conquerors.” Further, the letter of gratitude for the pizza from the royal household that Pizzeria Brandi displays appears to be a fake（赝品）and may just have been a marketing plan.

    3: Hawaliian Pizza Invented by a Canadian.

    Sam Panopoulos, from Greece originally moved to Canada at the age of 20. In 1962, he decided to put some ham and pineapple on a pizza at one of his restaurants in Ontario.

    “We just put it on for fun to see how it was going to taste,” he told the BBC in 2017. Panopoulos named it the Hawaiian pizza after the brand of canned pineapple he used. The mix of sweet and savory toppings caught on with a certain part of the pizza-loving public. The inventor died in 2017.

    Kentucky Fried Chicken has filed a lawsuit（提起诉讼） against three companies in China, because their social media accounts spread false information about its food, including that its chickens have eight legs. The case comes as the Beijing government holds an activity to clean up rumours （谣言）on social media（媒体）. Internet marketers have been accused （指控） of trying to control online opinions of their customers by posting false information about their competitors.

    In an announcement posted on its Chinese website, KFC said one of the best-known false rumours was that chickens used by the company have six wings and eight legs. It is requesting 1.5 million yuan and an official apology from each of three companies. It is also asking for an immediate stop to their activities to hurt it by spreading rumours.

    The fried chicken chain is China's biggest restaurant operator and is a kind of fast food for young people in China. It has more than 4, 600 restaurants in the country, and on average, opens a new branch every day. KFC'S China chief executive officer（行政长官）, Qu Cuirong, said that it is difficult for companies to protect their brands（品牌） against rumours because it is hard for them to collect evidence. She added, "The efforts by the government in recent years to purify（净化） the online environment have offered us much more confidence."

    The companies are Shanxi Weilukuang Technology Company, Taiyuan Zero Point Technology Company and Yingchenanzhi Success and Culture Communication in Shenzhen, south-east China. Calls to numbers listed for the companies either rang unanswered or were not available. In fact, authorities（官方） began an activity two years ago to clean up what they called online rumours. Comments in state media have argued that a clean-up is needed.

    WeChat, the Chinese social media smartphone app, saw an increase in user numbers of 41 percent year on year to 500 million at the end of last year, in a sign that parent company Tencent is extending its reach for the mobile Internet. As one of the largest Internet integrated service providers in Chinaand one of the most Internet users in China, Tencent's profit grew 24 percent to RMB 20.98 billion per year, slightly higher than forecasts, driven mainly by online gaming profits. It is unclear how much WeChat contributed to Tencent's profits but the app's growth is a strong indicator of the company's long-term health as it tries to adjust its business to be more suitable for mobile devices.

    "We extended our leadership in games and online media, and made breakthroughs in emerging platforms such as online security and mobile payments." Ma Huateng, Tencent chairman, said in a statement. WeChat is the second highest ranked social app in China, behind QQ, Tencent's another chatting app, which claimed to have 815 million registered monthly users at the end of 2014.

    Tencent has been unwilling to earn money through WeChat by flooding it with advertising, which could influence the users' experience. But this is expected to change. Some analysts anticipated(预期) that advertising would be introduced on a large scale later this year. Early attempts to test ads on the service have not always gone smoothly. After a BMW ad was introduced on some users' feedbacks in January, many users who were not targeted by the brand's marketing complained of "discrimination" by Tencent's data mining algorithm(数据挖掘算法). They claimed it unfairly treated them as not wealthy or successful enough to view the BMW ad.

    Japanese technology giant Toshiba has built a huge "clean" factory farm where it is growing various types of lettuce (莴苣) leaves without sunlight or soil for sale in its new healthcare business.

    Located in a disused 21,000­square­foot electronics factory in Yokosuka, Toshiba announces to have created a perfect "bacteria­free" environment where it will grow three million bags of lettuce a year.

    Completely cut off from conditions outside the temperature controlled tank, lettuce inspectors wear full body suits while making notes on the quality and growth of the leaves on their iPads in order to prevent the air around the plants becoming contaminated.

    Each plant is given man­made lighting to trick it into believing it is exposed to sunlight, while vitamin and nutrients are put directly into its roots, meaning the lettuce does not need soil.

    Toshiba's new high­tech farm may produce the world's highest quality lettuce. The final product will be free of any form of bacteria or insect life before being placed into sealed (密封的) bags, which should ensure the product has a longer shelf life than other lettuces.

    The gardening technique aims to have a bacteria amount of no more than 1/1000th­much lower than that found in normal gardening soil.

    Toshiba aims to harvest three million bags of leaf lettuce, baby leaf greens, cabbages and other kinds of vegetables every year­with each bag likely to cost people £1.

    The most important thing in organic vegetables, the lettuce requires no pesticides (杀虫剂) but is expected to have a similar shelf to plants that have been heavily treated with chemicals.

    The lettuce factory is no marketing trick by Toshiba, however. Instead it represents the company's latest attempt to expand its technology­led business.

    There are already plans for the technology giant to build similar factories around the world over the coming years and it will also be selling the high tech equipment that allows factories to produce similar products of exceptionally high quality.

    A new study suggests some language learning can take place during sleep. Researchers from Switzerland's University of Bern say they discovered people were able to learn new language words during deep levels of sleep.

    Much of the earlier research found that memories made when awake were strengthened during sleep. This supported the idea that information learned while awake is replayed and deeply embedded in the sleeping brain.

    The researchers theorized that, if replay during sleep improves the storage of learned information while awake, the processing and storage of new information should also be possible during sleep.

    They carried out experiments on a group of young German­speaking men and women, which centered on periods of deep sleep called "up­states". They identified these slow­wave peaks as the best moments for sleep­learning.

    The researchers observed individuals in a controlled environment during brief periods of sleep. Brain activity was recorded as pairs of words were played for the study subjects. One word in the pair was a real German word. The other was a made­up foreign word. For later identification purposes, the German words chosen were things clearly larger or smaller than a shoebox.

    Each word pair was played four times, with the order of the words changed each time. The word pairs were played at a rhythm that is similar to actual brain activity during deep sleep. The goal was to create a lasting memory link between the false word and the German word that individuals could identify while awake.

    When the subjects woke, they were presented with the false language words­both by sight and sound. They were then asked to guess whether the false word played during sleep represented an object smaller or larger than a shoebox. Results of the study found that a majority of subjects gave more correct answers about the sleep­learned words than would be expected if they had only guessed at random.

    The researchers said they measured increased signals affecting a part of the brain known as the hippocampus. This brain structure is very important for building relational memory during non­sleep periods. The researchers also said memory was best for word pairs presented during slow­wave peaks during sleep.

    The study suggests that memory formation in sleep appears to be caused by the same brain structures that support vocabulary learning while awake. The researchers say more studies are needed to support their findings. However, the experiments do provide new evidence that memories can be formed and vocabulary learning can take place in both conscious and unconscious states.

In early February 2019, 51-year-old Rainer Schimpf and his team set out to film South Africa's famous Sardine Run off the coast of Port Elizabeth. The migration of billions of South African sardines, is a big draw for hunters, especially seabirds and dolphins. The two species work together to herd the large group of fish into smaller shoals (浅滩), which are then eaten by not just the birds and the dolphins, but also sharks and Bryde's whales.

In an attempt to find the best scene of the amazing natural phenomenon, which has been the subject of many films, Rainer got into the middle of a swirling ball of fish. Suddenly the sea churned (翻腾), and the experienced diver and his photographer Heinz Toperczer, who was filming from the boat, instantly realized something strange was going on.

Toperczer later said, "As Rainer moved towards the shoals, suddenly the water churned widely up, dolphins shot out of the water and then a whale appeared and caught him!"

Rainer, who was swallowed in darkness inside the whale's mouth, was trying to survive. "I held my breath because I thought he was going to dive down and release me much deeper in the ocean," the diver said.

Fortunately for Rainer, the whale quickly realized he was no sardine! "I felt huge pressure around my waist (腰部) which is when I guess the whale realized his mistake," he said. "As the whale turned sideways, he opened his mouth slightly to release me, and I was washed out, together with tons of water, of his mouth." Though the entire event lasted just 1. 8 seconds, it felt like a century to Rainer.

Still holding his underwater camera, the diver swam to his boat, where he was quickly rescued by the members of the team. The terrifying adventure did not worry Rainer for too long. After checking to ensure he had no injuries, the diver returned to the water. Fortunately, the rest of the adventure went peacefully.