The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of
the Bill of Rights. It was conceived to prevent Congress and the
federal government from infringing on five rights. These guarantees
were that the government would not endorse any religion or establish
a state religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, infringe
upon freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the
right to assemble peaceably, or limit the right to petition the
government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment, along
with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was proposed by Congress in
1789, to be ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791. It
was passed in order to answer protestations that the newly created
Constitution did not include sufficient guarantees of civil
liberties. The First Amendment only explicitly disallows any of the
rights from being abridged by Congress. Over time, however, the
courts held that this extends to the executive and judicial branches.
The Fourteenth Amendment went further, making abridging First
Amendment rights unconstitutional for state, county, and local
governments.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitut…
Today's selected anniversaries:
680 Battle of Karbala: Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the
Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph
Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as
'Aashurah'.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karbala)
732 Battle of Tours: Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a
large army of Moors near Poitiers, France, stopping the
northward spread of Islam from Spain to the rest of Western
Europe.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours)
1911 The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising,
marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty
in China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuchang_Uprising)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ~
Groucho Marx
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)
Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. It is
named after the Greek mythological figure Io. Although the name "Io"
was suggested by Simon Marius soon after its discovery, this name and
the names of the other Galilean satellites fell into disfavor for a
considerable time, and were not revived in common use until the
mid-20th century. In much of the earlier astronomical literature, Io
is simply referred to by its Roman numeral designation as "Jupiter
I," or simply as "the first satellite of Jupiter."
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_%28moon%29
Today's selected anniversaries:
1446 King Sejong the Great of Joseon and various Korean
linguists published the Hunmin Jeongeum to introduce their
invention — the Hangul alphabet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul)
1701 The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale
University) was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University)
1888 The Washington Monument, then the world's tallest building,
officially opened to the general public.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument)
1919 Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "defeated" the
Chicago White Sox to "win" the World Series major league
baseball championship by 5 games to 3.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_scandal)
1963 A landslide displaced large amounts of water from the
Vajont Dam in Italy, causing waves and floods that quickly
swept away several villages, killing almost 2,000 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam)
Wikiquote of the day:
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for
anyone else." ~ Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens)
James Joyce was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, and is widely
considered one of the most significant writers of the 20th century.
He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for
his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson,
he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness
technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal
world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances
as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His
fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family
life and the events and friends (and enemies) from his school and
college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan
and one of the most local of all the great English language
modernists.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
Today's selected anniversaries:
451 Council of Chalcedon: Bishops gathered at Chalcedon, a city
of Bithynia in Asia Minor, to open the fourth ecumenical
council in Christianity.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon)
1600 San Marino, the world's oldest republic still in existence,
adopted its written constitution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino)
1871 Dry conditions caused two catastrophic historic fires in
the U.S. Midwest: the Great Chicago Fire and Wisconsin's
Peshtigo Fire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire)
1895 Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, was
assassinated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Min_of_Joseon)
1967 Argentine-born physician, Marxist revolutionary and Cuban
guerrilla leader Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station,
deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect
ourselves." ~ U Thant
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/U_Thant)
Coronation Street is Britain's longest-running television soap opera.
It was created by Tony Warren and first broadcast on December 9,
1960. The working title of the show was Florizel Street, but Agnes, a
tea lady at Granada Television (where Coronation Street was produced)
remarked that "Florizel" sounded too much like a disinfectant.
Coronation Street is set in a fictional street in the fictional
industrial town of Weatherfield which is based on Salford, now part
of Greater Manchester. It is the central television programme on the
ITV network. Its principal rival soap opera is the BBC's EastEnders.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street
Today's selected anniversaries:
1571 Battle of Lepanto: The Ottoman Empire was decisively
defeated by the Christian West for the first time, as a
multinational fleet led by Don John of Austria crushed the
Turkish navy near the Gulf of Corinth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto_%281571%29)
1985 The Mediterranean ocean liner Achille Lauro was hijacked by
Palestinian terrorists.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro)
2001 The Invasion of Afghanistan began at 16:30 UTC with an
aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban and Al-Qaida
forces.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan)
2003 California recall: Californians voted to recall Governor
Gray Davis from office, electing Arnold Schwarzenegger as
the new governor from a long list of 135 candidates.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_California_recall)
Wikiquote of the day:
"I don't get no respect!" ~ Rodney Dangerfield
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rodney_Dangerfield)
The Golden Age of Arcade Games was a peak era of arcade game
popularity and innovation. Some opinions place this period's
beginning in late 1979 or 1980 when the first color arcade games
appeared and arcades began to become prevalent, and its ending in the
mid-1980s. More generous definitions place its start at the 1978
release of Space Invaders and its end in the mid-1990s with the
release of home gaming systems which were more powerful than typical
arcade hardware. Despite claims to the contrary, the video game crash
of 1983 had little impact on the arcade game industry. In fact, it
may have boosted it since people played more games in arcades since
little was available for the home market.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age_of_arcade_games
Today's selected anniversaries:
1927 The first talking movie "The Jazz Singer", starring Al
Jolson, was released and became a box-office success.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Singer)
1967 The Yom Kippur War began as a simultaneous coordinated
attack by Egypt and Syria in the Sinai Peninsula and the
Golan Heights, respectively, to regain the territories lost
to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War)
1976 Premier Hua Guofeng ordered the arrest of the Gang of Four
and their associates, putting an end to the Cultural
Revolution in China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_of_Four_%28China%29)
1981 Egyptian President Mohamed Anwar el-Sadat was assassinated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al%2dSadat)
1998 Gay-bashing: University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard
was fatally attacked for being gay.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard)
Wikiquote of the day:
"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the
individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own
improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility
for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we
think we can be most useful." ~ Marie Curie
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marie_Curie)
Genes are material entities that parents pass to offspring during
reproduction. These entities encode information essential for the
construction and regulation of polypeptides, proteins and other
molecules that determines the growth and functioning of the organism.
The word "gene" is shared by many disciplines, including classical
genetics, molecular genetics, evolutionary biology and population
genetics. Because each discipline models the biology of life
differently, the material entity that supports the gene in one
discipline is not the same as in the other. Following the discovery
that DNA is the genetic material, and with the growth of
biotechnology and the project to sequence the human genome, the
common usage of the word "gene" has increasingly reflected its
meaning in molecular biology. In the molecular-biological sense,
genes are the segments of DNA which cells transcribe into RNAs and
translate, at least in part, into proteins.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene
Today's selected anniversaries:
1864 Calcutta, India was almost completely destroyed by a
cyclone which had killed 60,000 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcutta)
1877 After battling U.S. armed forces for more than three
months, retreating over 1,000 miles across Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, and Montana, Chief Joseph and his Nez
Perce band finally surrendered following a five-day siege.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_Joseph)
1908 Prince Ferdinand became Tsar when the autonomous
principality of Bulgaria proclaimed independence from the
Ottoman Empire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_of_Bulgaria)
1969 The first episode of 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' was
broadcast on BBC1.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus)
1970 Terrorists of the 'Front de Lib�ration du Qu�bec'
kidnapped a British diplomat, sparking the October Crisis
in Montr�al, Canada.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_de_Lib%E9ration_du_Qu%E9bec)
Wikiquote of the day:
"As for myself, I always willingly acknowledge my own self as the
principal cause of every good and of every evil which may befall
me; therefore I have always found myself capable of being my own
pupil, and ready to love my teacher." ~ Giacomo Casanova
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Giacomo_Casanova)
Emacs is a text editor with a comprehensive set of features that is
particularly popular with programmers and other technical computer
users. The original Emacs was written in 1976 by Richard Stallman, as
a set of Editor MACroS for the TECO editor. It has evolved from its
dumb terminal origins into something resembling a full blown word
processor sporting a complete graphical user interface. A large
number of extensions are available which can turn Emacs into anything
from a web browser to a tool for writing and compiling computer
programs.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
Today's selected anniversaries:
1830 Belgian Revolution: A provisional government in Brussels
declared the creation of the independent and neutral state
of Belgium, in revolt against the United Kingdom of the
Netherlands.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Revolution)
1910 Manuel II, the last King of Portugal, fled to Great Britain
when a revolution erupted in Lisbon and his palace was
shelled. A republic was proclaimed the next day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_II_of_Portugal)
1957 Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite
to orbit the Earth, was launched at 19:12 UTC by a R-7
rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1)
1993 Russian Constitutional Crisis: Tanks bombarded the White
House in Moscow, a government building that housed the
Russian parliament, where demonstrators against President
Boris Yeltsin rallied outside.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_constitutional_crisis_of_1993)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Given the choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier." ~ "Blore's Razor" (Author unknown)
The History of Greenland, the world's largest island, is the history
of life under extreme Arctic conditions; an ice-cap covers about 84
percent of the island, largely restricting human activity to the coasts.
Greenland was unknown to Europeans until the 10th century, when it
was discovered by Icelandic Vikings. Before this discovery, it had been
inhabited for a long time by Arctic peoples, although the direct ancestors
of the modern Inuit did not arrive until around 1200 CE. The Inuit were the
only people to inhabit the island for several hundred years, but in
remembrance of the Viking settlement, Denmark nonetheless claimed the
territory, and colonized it in the 18th century. During World War II,
Greenland
became effectively detached from Denmark, and more connected to the United
States and Canada. Eventually the colonial status was lifted, and although
Greenland is still a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, it has enjoyed home
rule
since 1979.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland
Today's selected anniversaries:
2333 BC - Dangun, a mythical figure, established the Kingdom of Go-Joseon
(presentday Korea).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangun)
1283 - David ap Gruffydd the Prince of Wales, the last native ruler of Wales
to resist English domination, was captured by English forces and
subsequently
executed by drawing and quartering.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_ap_Gruffydd)
1935 - Italy invaded Ethiopia, igniting the Second Italo-Abyssinian War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Abyssinian_War)
1990 - German reunification: The five re-established German states
(Bundesländer)
of East Germany formally joined West Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification)
1993 - Battle of Mogadishu: Soldiers from Malaysian, Pakistani and U.S.
armed forces attempted to capture Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid,
as chronicled in a book and then a film entitled "Black Hawk Down".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried
before." ~ Mae West
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mae_West)
The Shakers are an offshoot of the Religious Society of Friends
(or Quakers) that originated in Manchester, England the early 18th
century. Strict believers in celibacy, they maintained their numbers
through conversion and adoption. Once boasting thousands of a
dherents, today the only remaining Shakers are a handful of people
living in Maine. One of the major attributes of the shakers was to build.
Shakers were known for an exquisite style of furniture that was plain,
durable, and functional. By the middle of the 20th century, as the Shaker
communities themselves were disappearing, some American collectors
whose visual tastes were formed by the stark aspects of the modernist
movement, found themselves drawn to the spare artifacts of Shaker culture.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakers
Today's selected anniversaries:
1187 - Third Crusade: Saladin and the Seljuk Turks captured Jerusalem.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Crusade)
1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed along the St. Lawrence River
and reached an Iroquois fort on an island now known as Montréal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Montreal)
1835 - Mexican dragoons dispatched to disarm settlers at Gonzales, Texas
encountered stiff resistance from a Texian militia in the Battle of
Gonzales, thus
beginning the Texas Revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gonzales)
1950 - Peanuts, a syndicated comic strip by Charles M. Schulz featuring
Charlie
Brown and his pet beagle Snoopy, was first published in major newspapers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts)
1968 - The Tlatelolco massacre: A peaceful student demonstration in
Tlatelolco,
Mexico City ended at sunset, when army and police forces began firing into
the
crowd.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tlatelolco_massacre)
Wikiquote of the day:
"When you get to a fork in the road, take it."
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra)
The Battle of Normandy in 1944, codenamed Operation Overlord, was the
invasion of Nazi-occupied Western Europe by the Allies. The Normandy
invasion began with overnight paratrooper and glider landings,
massive air and naval bombardments, and an early-morning amphibious
assault. It continued over more than two months, with campaigns to
establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads.
It concluded with the surrender of Paris and the fall of the Chambois
pocket. Normandy is, to this day, one of the best-known battles of
World War II. In common language, the expression "D-Day" is still
used to refer to June 6, the starting date of the invasion and the
opening day of the battle
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Normandy
Today's selected anniversaries:
331 BC Battle of Arbela: Despite being greatly outnumbered,
Alexander the Great and his Macedonian forces defeated
Darius III of Persia. Alexander was then crowned "King of
Asia" in a magnificent ceremony in Arbela (modern-day
Arbil, Iraq).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela)
1891 In Stanford, California, Leland Stanford Junior University
officially opened. There were 559 students, and tuition was
free.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_University)
1936 Generalissimo Francisco Franco became the head of the
Spanish State, ruling as a dictator till his death in 1975.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco)
1958 The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
began operations, replacing the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics (NACA).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA)
1977 Brazilian football (soccer) star Edson Arantes do
Nascimento, better known as the "Black Pearl" or
Pel�, played his last game as a professional.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%E9)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be
believed." ~ William Blake
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Blake)