From I've heard today, is that this is the hottest day in southern Ontario's history. Possibly in Canada's history too, but don't hold me to that. I took that picture in my truck at 11:20am this morning. It's now 1:40pm and the temperature has just passed 47 degrees celsius. My grass looks like shit, but I love this hot weather!. Here's some fun facts on Environment Canada's website.

• The Deadliest Heat Wave in History - July 5-17, 1936. Temperatures exceeding 44°C in Manitoba and Ontario claimed 1,180 Canadians (mostly the elderly and infants) during the longest, deadliest heat wave on record. Four hundred of these deaths were caused by people who drowned seeking refuge from the heat. In fact, the heat was so intense that steel rail lines and bridge girders twisted, sidewalks buckled, crops wilted and fruit baked on trees.

   

• Hottest Day on Record - July 5, 1937. The highest temperature ever recorded in Canada was reached at Midale and Yellowgrass, Saskatchewan when the mercury soared to 45°C.

Did I read that right?. People actually drowned because they we're seeking to stay cool?. Ah well, survival of the fitness huh.

This week, NASA announced that Dawn is now circling the giant asteroid Vesta. Which is actually history in the making because this is the first time a probe has successfully made its way to an asteroid and started circulating it. With NASA facing declining budgets for building and operating planetary probes over the next five years, one of the agency’s senior science-community advisers warned that there will be no funding to begin development of a flagship-class mission such as a long-sought detailed survey of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon Europa. Which sucks large because since 2008, NASA has been working on not one, but two probes that would study four of Jupiters moons quite extensively.

Jupiter's ice-covered moon Europa is one of the safest bets in the Universe of finding life, or, otherwise put, it's one of the few places other than the Earth that astronomers believe it's able to sustain life to some extent. The experts are not talking about mammals, or other higher creatures, but about simple organisms, such as bacteria, microbes, fungi, and even some primitive forms of vegetation. Despite the fact that the tiny rock looks frozen and inhospitable, astronomers believe that a huge ocean of liquid water could exist under the crusty surface.