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British Artist Sets Guinness Record for Largest Canvas

Artist Sacha Jafri standing on his gigantic painting
Artist Sacha Jafri standing on his gigantic painting
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British Artist Sets Guinness Record for Largest Canvas

Artist Sacha Jafri standing on his gigantic painting
Artist Sacha Jafri standing on his gigantic painting

British painter Sacha Jafri has officially set a Guinness World Record for "The Largest Art Canvas" in the world. Measuring over 17,000 square feet, the record-breaking painting is titled "The Journey of Humanity."

According to information shared on February 15, the painting is one of the world's largest social, artistic, and philanthropic initiatives. It is part of the charitable initiative "Humanity Inspired" launched by Sacha Jafri in partnership with Dubai Cares, part of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, and supported by the UAE Ministries of Tolerance and Coexistence, and Education.

"Humanity Inspired" aimed at raising $30 million to support underprivileged children and youth worst-hit by the virus outbreak in the poorest regions around the globe. The British artist created his massive canvas inside the ballroom of Atlantis, The Palm, Dubai, within seven months from March to September 2020, while the world was in total lockdown to curb the Covid-19 outbreak. Spending almost 20 hours a day, Sacha used 1,065 paintbrushes and 6,300 liters of paint to complete the extraordinary painting.

Jafri reached over 2.5 billion people around the world through his canvas described as the modern-day Sistine Chapel ceiling, the historic work signed by Michelangelo.

"It was an honor to receive the Guinness World Record title for my project. This is just the beginning for the "Humanity Inspired". The painting and the initiative are much more than just creative work; it is my initiative for true societal change through the hearts, minds, and souls of the children around the world — a springboard for a better future for all Humanity," Jafri said.

"If one person can spend 20 hours a day with only four hours of sleep for seven months to create a painting of over 17,000 square feet, imagine what 7.5 billion people could do together if we stopped discrimination, judgment, and agenda. Our goal is One World, One Soul, One Planet," the artist added.

"Creating the Largest Art Canvas is an impressive achievement by Jafri. We are confident that the humanitarian cause behind it will inspire many around the world. We congratulate him and those involved in this extraordinary work," said Shaddy Gaad, senior marketing manager (MENA) at Guinness World Records.

The monumental painting was later broken down into numbered, signed, cataloged, and framed canvases. A total of 70 individually framed pieces of the artwork will be sold in four auctions in 2021. The raised funds will be donated for charitable initiatives in education, digital connectivity, healthcare, and other fields.

Artist Sasha Jafri inspired his initiative "Humanity Inspired" from his vision to strengthen ties between people in order to achieve a more aware and compassionate post-Covid19 world, and from his commitment to support the future of education, and to provide financial resources and support for health care issues and infrastructure projects in the poorest regions around the world.

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Varieties

Trove of Everyday Items Dating Back to 1800s Found at Buckingham Palace

11 September 2026, United Kingdom, London: Members of the Massed Bands of the Guards Division perform on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London during a commemorative Changing of the Guard ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. (dpa)
11 September 2026, United Kingdom, London: Members of the Massed Bands of the Guards Division perform on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London during a commemorative Changing of the Guard ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. (dpa)
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Trove of Everyday Items Dating Back to 1800s Found at Buckingham Palace

11 September 2026, United Kingdom, London: Members of the Massed Bands of the Guards Division perform on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London during a commemorative Changing of the Guard ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. (dpa)
11 September 2026, United Kingdom, London: Members of the Massed Bands of the Guards Division perform on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace in London during a commemorative Changing of the Guard ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. (dpa)

A pair of battered, hobnailed boots and a decades-old newspaper cutting are among a trove of everyday objects unearthed during restoration work at Buckingham Palace, reported the BBC.

The misplaced items are thought to belong to staff who worked at the palace decades ago and were found by workers carrying out the £369 million refurbishment.

A ticket for a “whist drive” - a card game event hosted by the Palace on April 14, 1949 - was found embedded in a lump of brick.

Several betting slips, a bottle of spring water, an empty Silk Cut cigarette carton and a newspaper article about the gang jailed for the 1963 Great Train Robbery were also found under floorboards.

Blank Littlewoods Football Pool betting slips from 1957 and a scrap of West End theatre listings from The Standard newspaper in 1889 were also found, alongside fragments of Minton decorative ceramic tiles from a fireplace hearth, with the design dated to around the mid-1800s, according to BBC.

Among the discoveries was a typed schedule detailing Queen Elizabeth II's plans to host a diplomatic reception in her Silver Jubilee year of 1977.

It revealed the monarch would work the room in a “clockwise direction,” and that aides were asked to encourage the 350 British guests to mingle with the diplomats at the annual gathering.

Also discovered were pages from the Daily Express newspaper in 1966 detailing the “maximum security” prison where the Great Train Robbers were incarcerated.

The article had pictures of Durham Prison, revealing that “the men who were found guilty of stealing a fortune in mailbags spend their week stitching them for nine shillings.”

BBC wrote that King Charles and Queen Camilla are currently residing in Clarence House, which stands beside St James's Palace and was once the Queen Mother's home.

They will not live in Buckingham Palace after the refurbishment is completed.

Varieties

Europe Puts into Orbit Two Earth Observation Satellites

A Vega-C rocket carrying European satellites FLEX and Sentinel-3C lifts off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, on September 15, 2026. (AFP)
A Vega-C rocket carrying European satellites FLEX and Sentinel-3C lifts off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, on September 15, 2026. (AFP)
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Europe Puts into Orbit Two Earth Observation Satellites

A Vega-C rocket carrying European satellites FLEX and Sentinel-3C lifts off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, on September 15, 2026. (AFP)
A Vega-C rocket carrying European satellites FLEX and Sentinel-3C lifts off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, on September 15, 2026. (AFP)

The European Space Agency has successfully put into orbit two satellites designed to better detect extreme weather events linked to climate change, officials said.

The European Vega-C rocket successfully launched the Sentinel-3C and Flex satellites after lifting off from the Kourou space center in French Guiana at 10:21 pm Monday (0121 GMT Tuesday), according to an AFP journalist on the scene.

The two satellites were placed into a sun-synchronous orbit nearly two hours after liftoff.

The first satellite, Flex (Fluorescence Explorer), will provide data on the impact of heatwaves on plant matter.

It will monitor fluorescence, the red light emitted by plants when they carry out photosynthesis, aiming to establish the link between "plant stress and fluorescence" and to "quantify it", head of the Flex program Thierry Huiban told AFP at Thales Alenia Space in April.

The second satellite, the Sentinel-3C from the European Union's Copernicus Earth observation program, will measure the marine environment -- including temperature, wave height and ocean currents -- as well as land use and land cover, aiming to optimize yields to prevent food crises.

Such missions are "essential" in helping with the "climate change we are experiencing", said Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Observation Programmes at the European Space Agency (ESA), speaking from Kourou.

Varieties

Astrophysics Study Suggests Venus May Have Swallowed Its Moon

Data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter is used in an undated composite image of the planet Venus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)
Data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter is used in an undated composite image of the planet Venus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)
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Astrophysics Study Suggests Venus May Have Swallowed Its Moon

Data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter is used in an undated composite image of the planet Venus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)
Data from NASA's Magellan spacecraft and Pioneer Venus Orbiter is used in an undated composite image of the planet Venus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Handout via Reuters)

A California-based astrophysicist presented a new theory on Monday to explain why Venus, the planet most like Earth in size, mass and structure, lacks its own moon. Call it a case of celestial cannibalism.

The extremely slow speed at which Venus rotates on its axis would have doomed any natural satellite that may once have orbited that planet to gradually spiral closer to its parent and ultimately be consumed in a cataclysmic smash-up.

So goes the theory offered by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, and published on Monday in The Astrophysical Journal, marking a departure from past explanations for why Venus, the second planet from the sun, is without a lunar companion.

"If it had a moon, and it ‌likely did at ‌some point, it could not have kept it," astrophysicist Stephen Krane, lead ‌author ⁠of the study, told ⁠Reuters on Monday. "That moon would have crashed down on the planet in a relatively short time scale."

Krane said data from computer models based on planetary physics and simulating the gravitational mechanics of hypothetical Venusian moons of various sizes showed them all meeting the same fate - sooner or later collapsing into their mother planet.

Such a presumed moon-gobbling event likely occurred within the first billion years in the history of Venus, Krane said.

Scientists previously theorized that Venus, ⁠known as Earth's "twin," either never acquired its own moon to begin ‌with, or possibly had a moon that was obliterated in ‌the massive impact from another celestial object.

EARTH SPINS MORE SWIFTLY THAN VENUS

The UC Riverside study, focusing on Earth-moon ‌dynamics, found that planetary rotational speed was the key factor.

In contrast to Venus, which takes 243 ‌Earth days to complete a single rotation - slightly longer than its orbit around the sun - Earth spins on its axis every 24 hours, more than 200 times more rapidly than Venus, Krane said.

The transfer of energy from Earth's faster rotation is gradually pushing our moon farther away, causing it to recede from Earth at the rate of ‌4 centimeters (1.6 inches) a year - precisely measured by mirrors left on the lunar surface in 1969 by Apollo 11's astronauts.

Venus, the third brightest object ⁠in the night sky ⁠after the sun and moon, looms large as point of study for scientists seeking to learn more about Earth's history, and its future.

Similar in its rocky structure but slightly smaller than Earth, Venus is enveloped in a thick, toxic atmosphere that has created a runaway greenhouse effect, scorching its surface at temperatures as high as 880 degrees Fahrenheit (471 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead.

While there is no proof a Venusian moon ever existed, it is unlikely that Venus, in its infancy, somehow avoided the kind of world-shattering collision with another proto-planet that is widely believed to have formed Earth's moon, according to Krane.

The dawn of the inner solar system was crowded with large rocky objects hurtling through space and smashing into one another, with Venus probably taking more celestial hits than Earth because Venus was closer to the sun.

Scientists hope to unlock more secrets of Venus with two forthcoming NASA missions set for launch in the late 2020s or early 2030 dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS to study the planet's atmosphere and geologic features.