Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence
and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait
commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during
the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Married as
a teenager to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local
official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to
have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived
her husband, who was about 20 years her senior. Centuries after Lisa's
death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a
life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and
hobbyists made the work of art a globally-recognized icon and an
object of commercialization. During the early 21st century, a
discovery made at a university library was powerful enough evidence to
end speculation about the sitter's identity and definitively
identified Lisa del Giocondo as the subject of the Mona Lisa.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_del_Giocondo
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1598:
King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom
of religion to the Huguenots.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_of_Nantes)
1873:
In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in
Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen
and the African American state militia trying to control the parish
courthouse, killing over 100 of them.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_massacre)
1919:
British Indian Army troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering in
Amritsar, Punjab in India, killing hundreds of unarmed of men, women
and children.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre)
1943:
World War II: Germany announced the discovery of a mass grave of
Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest
Massacre.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre)
1984:
Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen
Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with
Pakistan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Glacier)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
impel: To urge a person; to press on; to incite to action or motion in
any way.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impel)
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Wikiquote of the day:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson)
The Kansas Turnpike is a tolled freeway that lies entirely within the
U.S. state of Kansas. The road runs in a general southwest-northeast
direction from the Oklahoma border south of Wichita via Wichita,
Topeka, and Lawrence to Kansas City, Kansas. The Kansas Turnpike Act
defined the turnpike to be built from Oklahoma to Kansas City, Kansas.
The turnpike is owned and maintained by the Kansas Turnpike Authority
(KTA), headquartered in Wichita. The Kansas Turnpike was built from
1954 to 1956, predating the Interstate Highway System. The turnpike
presently has 27 interchanges and two barrier toll plazas. Exit
numbers are assigned by mileage from south to east. After passing the
Bonner Springs interchange, exit numbers change to match the mileage
of Interstate 70 east from the Colorado border. In the median at mile
97 is the Matfield Green Service Area, which contains a memorial to
football coach Knute Rockne, who died in a plane crash near Bazaar,
Kansas.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Turnpike
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1204:
Alexios V fled Constantinople as forces under Boniface the Marquess
of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo the Doge of Venice entered and sacked
the Byzantine capital, effectively ending the Fourth Crusade.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Crusade)
1606:
A royal decree established the Union Flag to symbolise the Union of
the Crowns, merging the designs of the Flag of England and the Flag of
Scotland.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Flag)
1861:
Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of
Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter)
1927:
Chinese Civil War: A large-scale purge of communists from the
nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_12_Incident)
1961:
Aboard Vostok 3KA-2, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first
man to enter outer space, completing one orbit in a time of 108
minutes.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Gagarin)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
concomitant: Following as a consequence, especially secondarily or
incidentally.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concomitant)
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Wikiquote of the day:
The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in
all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public
odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and
encroachments.
-- Henry Clay
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Clay)
Suleiman the Magnificent was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of
the Ottoman Empire, ruling from 1520 to 1566. Suleiman became the
pre-eminent monarch of 16th century Europe, presiding over the apogee
of the Ottoman Empire's military, political and economic power.
Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies to conquer the Christian
strongholds of Belgrade, Rhodes, and most of Hungary before his
conquests were checked at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed most
of the Middle East in his conflict with the Persians and large swathes
of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman
fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
At the helm of an expanding empire, Suleiman personally instituted
legislative changes relating to society, education, taxation and
criminal law. His canonical law fixed the form of the empire for
centuries after his death. Not only was Suleiman a distinguished poet
and goldsmith in his own right; he also became a great patron of
culture, overseeing the golden age of the Ottoman Empire's artistic,
literary and architectural development. In a break with Ottoman
tradition, Suleiman married a harem girl who became Hurrem Sultan,
whose intrigues in the court and power over the Sultan have become as
famous as Suleiman himself. Their son, Selim II, succeeded Suleiman
following his death in 1566 after 46 years of rule.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent
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Today's selected anniversaries:
217:
Roman Emperor Caracalla (bust pictured) was assassinated at a
roadside near Harran.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracalla)
1093:
Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire, one of the largest
cathedrals in England, was dedicated by Bishop Walkelin.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Cathedral)
1341:
Italian scholar and poet Petrarch took the title poet laureate at a
ceremony in Rome.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch)
1886:
British Prime Minister William Gladstone introduced the first Irish
Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Government_Bill_1886)
1904:
France and the United Kingdom signed the entente cordiale, agreeing
to a peaceful coexistence after centuries of intermittent conflict.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/entente_cordiale)
1904:
British occultist, writer Aleister Crowley began transcribing The
Book of the Law, a Holy Book in Thelema.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Law)
1929:
Indian independence movement: Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh with
the help of Batukeshwar Dutt bombed the Central Assembly in Delhi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagat_Singh)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
prorogue: To suspend a parliamentary session or to discontinue the
meetings of a parliament without formally ending the session.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prorogue)
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Wikiquote of the day:
Look, look, look to the rainbow Follow it over the hill
and stream Look, look, look to the rainbow Follow the fellow who
follows a dream.
-- Yip Harburg
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yip_Harburg)
Ima Hogg was an enterprising circus emcee who brought culture and
class to Houston, Texas. A storied ostrich jockey, she once rode to
Hawaii to visit the Queen. Raised in government housing, young Ima
frolicked among a backyard menagerie of raccoons, possums and a bear.
Her father, "Big Jim" Hogg, in an onslaught against fun itself,
booby-trapped the banisters she loved to slide down, shut down her
money-making schemes, and forced her to pry chewing gum from
furniture. He was later thrown from his seat on a moving train and
perished; the Hogg clan then struck black gold on land Big Jim had
forbidden them from selling. Ima had apocryphal sisters named "Ura"
and "Hoosa" and real-life brothers sporting conventional names and
vast art collections; upon their deaths, she gave away their artwork
for nothing and the family home to boot. Tragically, Ms. Hogg (a
future doctor) nursed three dying family members. She once
sweet-talked a burglar into returning purloined jewelry and told him
to get a job. Well into her nineties, she remained feisty and even
exchanged geriatric insults with an octogenarian pianist. Hogg claimed
to have received thirty proposals of marriage in her lifetime, and to
have rejected them all. Hogg was revered as the "First Lady of Texas",
and her name and legacy still thrive today—just ask Ima Pigg, Ima Nut,
and Ima Pain, who have all appeared in the U.S. Census.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima_Hogg
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1865:
Ordered to hold five forks, Confederate General George Pickett
instead lost almost 3,000.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Five_Forks)
1969:
The British-born model Hawker Siddeley Harrier was introduced at a
Royal Air Force event, becoming the only one in the 1960s to
successfully perform on a short runway.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_Siddeley_Harrier)
1970:
The first of over 670,000 gremlins was released into North America.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin)
1976:
Two college dropouts co-founded what is now Apple Inc. to sell their
handicrafts, eventually offering them at a market-price of US$666.66
because they liked repeating digits.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc.)
1999:
Under the terms of two laws passed by the Canadian Parliament in
1993, the Northwest Territories carved all of their inhabitants into
two pieces.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunavut)
2004:
Google launched a free Web-based service, providing users an
unprecedented 1000 megabytes of storage for spam.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmail)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
snipe hunt: A prank in which a gullible victim is sent off on a
fruitless search for a nonexistent item.
(http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/snipe_hunt)
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Wikiquote of the day:
What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is
unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes
everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The
individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what
cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered,
conquered.
-- Milan Kundera
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Milan_Kundera)