Ælfheah of Canterbury (954–1012) was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of
Winchester, later Archbishop of Canterbury. He became an anchorite
before being elected abbot of Bath Abbey. His piety and sanctity led to
his promotion to the episcopate, and eventually to his becoming
archbishop. Ælfheah furthered the cult of St Dunstan and also
encouraged learning. He was captured by Viking raiders in 1011 and
killed by them the following year, after refusing to allow himself to
be ransomed. Ælfheah was canonized as a saint in 1078. Thomas Becket, a
later Archbishop of Canterbury (and himself canonized), prayed to him
just before his own slaying in Canterbury Cathedral. Ælfheah became a
monk early in life. He first entered the monastery of Deerhurst, but
then moved to Bath, where he became an anchorite. He was noted for his
piety and austerity, and rose to become abbot of Bath Abbey.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfheah_of_Canterbury>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1671:
Croatian Ban Petar Zrinski was executed for treason for his role in the
attempted Croatian-Hungarian rebellion of 1664–1670.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petar_Zrinski>
1789:
George Washington took the oath as the first President of the United
States at Federal Hall in New York City.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington>
1945:
World War II: As Allied forces were closing in on Berlin, Adolf Hitler
and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker after being married
for one day.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adolf_Hitler>
1948:
Twenty-one countries signed a charter in Bogotá, Colombia, establishing
the Organization of American States.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization_of_American_States>
1975:
North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon, ending the Vietnam War with
the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Saigon>
2004:
The New Yorker magazine posted an article and supporting pictures
online, postdated May 10, detailing accounts of torture and abuse by
American personnel of prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Baghdad, Iraq.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
scion (n):
1. A descendant; a son or daughter.
2. A detached shoot or twig containing buds from a woody plant, used
in grafting.
3. The heir to a throne
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scion>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The Gods do not protect fools. Fools are protected by more capable
fools.
--Larry Niven
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Larry_Niven>
Acid2 is a test page published and promoted by the Web Standards
Project to expose web page rendering flaws in web browsers and other
applications that render HTML. It was developed in the spirit of Acid1,
a relatively narrow test of compliance with the Cascading Style Sheets
1.0 (CSS1) standard, and was released on April 13, 2005. Like Acid1, an
application passes the test if the way it displays the test page
matches a reference image. Acid2 tests aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1
styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The Acid2 test page will be
displayed correctly in any application that follows the World Wide Web
Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for these
technologies. These specifications are known as web standards because
they describe how technologies used on the web are expected to
function. While at the time of Acid2's release no web browser passed
the test, Acid2 was designed with Microsoft Internet Explorer
particularly in mind. The creators of Acid2 were dismayed that Internet
Explorer did not follow web standards and because of this Internet
Explorer was prone to display web pages differently from other
browsers. Acid2 represented a challenge to Microsoft to bring Internet
Explorer in line with web standards, making it easier to design web
pages that work as intended in any web browser.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1770:
British explorer James Cook and the crew of HM Endeavour made their
first landfall on Australia on the coast of Botany Bay near present-day
Sydney.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Endeavour>
1882:
German inventor Ernst Werner von Siemens began operating his
Elektromote, the world's first trolleybus, in a Berlin suburb.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/trolleybus>
1916:
World War I: Khalil Pasha of the Ottoman Army accepted the surrender of
Major-General Charles Townshend and the British Mesopotamian
Expeditionary Force, ending the Siege of Kut.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Kut>
1968:
The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture
and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on
Broadway, with its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War
movement.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_%28musical%29>
1992:
The acquittal of policemen who had beaten motorist Rodney King sparked
civil unrest in Los Angeles that lasted for six days and killed over 50
people.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
crotchety (adj):
Cranky, disagreeable, or stubborn, especially if prone to odd whims or
fancies
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crotchety>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city,
where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but
to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly
and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an
expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past.
--Henri Poincaré
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9>
A kit is the standard equipment and attire worn by players in
association football. The sport's Laws of the Game specify the minimum
kit which a player must use, and also prohibit the use of anything that
is dangerous to the player or another participant. Individual
competitions may stipulate further restrictions, such as regulating the
size of logos displayed on shirts and stating that in the event of a
match between teams with identical or similar colours the away team
must change to a different kit. Footballers generally wear identifying
numbers on the backs of their shirts. Originally a team of players wore
numbers from 1 to 11, corresponding roughly to their playing positions,
but at the professional level this has generally been superseded by
squad numbering, whereby each player in a squad is allocated a fixed
number for the duration of a season. Professional clubs also usually
display players' surnames and/or nicknames on their shirts, above (or,
infrequently, below) their squad numbers. Football kit has evolved
significantly since the early days of the sport, when players typically
wore thick cotton shirts, knickerbockers and heavy rigid leather boots.
In the twentieth century boots became lighter and softer, shorts were
worn at a shorter length, and advancements in clothing manufacture and
printing allowed for shirts to be made in lighter synthetic fibres with
increasingly colourful and complex designs.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_%28association_football%29>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1192:
Third Crusade: Conrad of Montferrat, the elected King of Jerusalem, was
fatally stabbed by members of the Hashshashin.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_of_Montferrat>
1611:
The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing
universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic
universities in terms of enrollment, was founded.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Santo_Tomas>
1789:
Fletcher Christian led a mutiny aboard the Royal Navy ship HMAV Bounty
against its commander William Bligh .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty>
1923:
London's Wembley Stadium, then known as Empire Stadium, was opened to
the public for the first time and held the 1923 FA Cup Final between
Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wembley_Stadium_%281923%29>
1952:
The Treaty of San Francisco entered into force, ending the occupation
of Japan by the former Allied Powers of World War II.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_San_Francisco>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
hornswoggle (v):
To deceive or trick
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hornswoggle>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The pen is mightier than the sword ... if the sword is very short, and
the pen is very sharp.
--Terry Pratchett
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett>
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a 1791 book of feminist
philosophy by Mary Wollstonecraft. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to
the educational and political theorists of the eighteenth century who
wanted to deny women an education. She argues that women ought to have
an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that
women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and
because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere
wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to
be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human
beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men. Wollstonecraft
was prompted to write the Rights of Woman by Charles Maurice de
Talleyrand-Périgord's 1791 report to the French National Assembly which
stated that women should only receive a domestic education; she used
her commentary on this specific event to launch a broad attack against
sexual double standards and to indict men for encouraging women to
indulge in excessive emotion. Wollstonecraft wrote the Rights of Woman
hurriedly in order to respond directly to ongoing events; she intended
to write a more thoughtful second volume, but she died before
completing it.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Vindication_of_the_Rights_of_Woman>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1521:
Filipino natives led by chieftain Lapu-Lapu killed Portuguese explorer
Ferdinand Magellan and over forty Spanish soldiers at the Battle of
Mactan.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mactan>
1565:
Conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi and 500 armed soldiers arrived at
Cebu and established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_L%C3%B3pez_de_Legazpi>
1805:
First Barbary War: U.S. Marines engaged forces of the Barbary Coast at
the Battle of Derne in Tripoli, marking the first recorded land battle
by the United States on foreign soil.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Derne>
1909:
After the government was restored following the 31 March Incident and
the Adana massacre, Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman
Empire to rule with absolute power, was overthrown by Mehmed V.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adana_massacre>
1967:
The Expo 67 World's Fair opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with over
50 million visitors and 62 nations participating.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_67>
1992:
Betty Boothroyd became the first female Speaker of the British House of
Commons.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Boothroyd>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
miscreant (n):
1. One who has behaved badly, or illegally
2. One not restrained by moral principles; an unscrupulous villain
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/miscreant>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to
fill the world with fools.
--Herbert Spencer
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Herbert_Spencer>
Operation Passage to Freedom was the term used by the United States
Navy to describe its transportation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians,
soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from the
communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam. The French military
transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the
Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of
French Indochina after eight years of war between French Union forces
and the Viet Minh, which sought Vietnamese independence. The accords
resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi
Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the
French-backed State of Vietnam in the south. The agreements allowed a
300-day period of grace, ending on May 18, 1955, in which people could
move freely between the two Vietnams before the border was sealed.
Between 600,000 and one million northerners fled communist rule, while
between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh
fighters moved in the opposite direction. The mass emigration of
northerners was facilitated primarily by the French Air Force and Navy.
American naval vessels supplemented the French in evacuating
northerners to Saigon, the southern capital. The operation was
accompanied by a large humanitarian relief effort, primarily bankrolled
by the United States.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Passage_to_Freedom>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1865:
American Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the
assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in rural northern Virginia,
ending a twelve-day manhunt.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth>
1937:
Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the
German Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm that caused
widespread destruction and civilian deaths in the Basque town.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica>
1964:
Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanzania>
1986:
The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR,
suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire and a nuclear meltdown,
resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people
around Europe.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant>
2007:
Controversy surrounding the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn
in Tallinn, Estonia, a Soviet World War II memorial that was erected
during the occupation of the Baltic states, erupted into mass protests
and riots.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Night>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
ruction (n):
A noisy quarrel or fight
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ruction>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
I had the good fortune and opportunity to come home and to tell the
truth; many soldiers, like Pat Tillman ... did not have that
opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always
more heroic than the hype.
--Jessica Lynch
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jessica_Lynch>
Hurricane Ismael was a weak Pacific hurricane that killed over one
hundred people in northern Mexico in September of the 1995 Pacific
hurricane season. It developed from a persistent area of deep
convection on September 12, and steadily strengthened as it moved to
the north-northwest. Ismael attained hurricane status on September 14
while located 210 miles (340 km) off the coast of Mexico. It continued
to the north, and after passing a short distance east of Baja
California it made landfall on Topolobampo in the state of Sinaloa with
winds of 80 mph (130 km/h). Ismael rapidly weakened over land, and
dissipated on September 16 over northwestern Mexico. The remnants
entered the United States and extended eastward into the Mid-Atlantic
States. Offshore, Ismael produced waves of up to 30 feet (9 m) in
height. Hundreds of fishermen were unprepared by the hurricane, which
was expected to move more slowly, and as a result 52 ships were
wrecked, killing 57 fishermen. The hurricane destroyed thousands of
houses, leaving 30,000 people homeless. On land, Ismael caused 59
casualties in mainland Mexico and resulted in $26 million in damage
(1995 USD, $34.4 million 2006 USD). Moisture from the storm extended
into the United States, causing heavy rainfall and localized moderate
damage in southeastern New Mexico.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ismael>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1719:
Robinson Crusoe, a novel by English author Daniel Defoe about a
castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near
Venezuela, was first published.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe>
1898:
Spanish–American War: The United States retroactively declared war on
Spain, stating that a state of war between the two countries had
already existed for the past couple of days.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War>
1915:
World War I: Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Anzac Cove
while British and French troops landed at Cape Helles to begin the
Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallipoli_Campaign>
1953:
Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose
Nucleic Acid by molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick was
first published in the scientific journal Nature, describing the
discovery of the double helix structure of DNA .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_Structure_of_Nucleic_Acids%3A_A_Stru…>
1974:
The song Grândola Vila Morena by Zeca Afonso was broadcast on radio,
signalling the start of the Carnation Revolution, a bloodless coup
against the Estado Novo regime in Portugal.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
wonky (adj):
1. (mostly British and Australian) Lopsided, misaligned or off-centre.
2. (computing) Suffering from intermittent bugs; broken.
3. Generally
incorrect
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wonky>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem
in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator
will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say
it.
--Edward R. Murrow
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow>
Learned Hand (1872–1961) was an influential United States judge and
judicial philosopher. He served on the Southern District Court of New
York and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Hand has reportedly been quoted more often than any other lower-court
judge by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States.
Born and raised in Albany, New York, Hand majored in philosophy at
Harvard College and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School.
After a short career as a lawyer in Albany and New York City, he was
appointed as a Federal District Judge in Manhattan in 1909 at the age
of 37. The profession suited his detached and open-minded temperament,
and his decisions soon won him a reputation for craftsmanship and
authority. He ran unsuccessfully as the Progressive Party's candidate
for Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals in 1913, but withdrew
from active politics shortly afterwards. In 1924, President Calvin
Coolidge promoted Hand to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
which he went on to lead as the Senior Circuit Judge (later retitled
Chief Judge) from 1939 until his semi-retirement in 1951. Friends and
admirers often lobbied for Hand's promotion to the Supreme Court, but
circumstances and his political past conspired against his appointment.
Hand possessed a gift for language, and his writings are admired as
legal literature.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_Hand>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1800:
The Library of Congress , today the de facto national library of the
United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing
for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to
Washington, D.C.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress>
1877:
Unable to resolve a series of disputes over the Balkans in the
aftermath of the 1876 Bulgarian April Uprising, Russia declared war on
the Ottoman Empire, starting the Russo-Turkish War.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_%281877%E2%80%931878%29>
1915:
The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and
deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide>
1916:
Irish republicans led by teacher and political activist Patrick Pearse
began the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule in Ireland,
and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_of_the_Irish_Republic>
1990:
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery
in mission STS-31.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
bromide (n):
1. (chemistry) A binary compound of bromine and some other element or
radical.
2. A dull person with conventional thoughts.
3. A platitude
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bromide>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life
meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see — it is,
rather, a light by which we may see — and what we see is life.
--Robert Penn Warren
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Penn_Warren>
The SkyTrain is a two-line urban mass transit system in Metro
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It uses Bombardier's Advanced
Rapid Transit technology, with fully automated trains running
principally on elevated tracks. There have been no derailments or
collisions in its history. It uses the same linear induction
motor-driven trains as the Scarborough RT line in Toronto, the Kelana
Jaya Line in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Detroit's People Mover, and the
AirTrain JFK in New York City. SkyTrain is operated by British Columbia
Rapid Transit Company under contract from TransLink, a regional
government transportation agency. It operates on a proof-of-payment
fare system and is policed by the South Coast British Columbia
Transportation Authority Police Service. SkyTrain Attendants are
present to provide first aid, directions, customer service and inspect
fares, and they monitor train faults and drive the trains when
necessary. SkyTrain's 49.5 km (30.8 mi) of track make it the longest
automated light rapid transit system in the world. It also uses the
longest mass transit-only bridge, the SkyBridge, to cross the Fraser
River. There are 33 stations in the system, which carries more than
160,000 to 180,000 people every day on the two lines.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_%28Vancouver%29>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1661:
Charles II was crowned King of England, Ireland, and Scotland at
Westminster Abbey.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England>
1827:
Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton presented his
Theory of Systems of Rays.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rowan_Hamilton>
1923:
Gdynia was inaugurated as a Polish seaport on the coast of Gdańsk Bay,
a southwestern bay of the Baltic Sea.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gdynia>
1954:
Batting against Vic Raschi of the St. Louis Cardinals, Hank Aaron of
the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his then-record 755 home runs in
Major League Baseball.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Aaron>
1961:
Dressed in his 1940s-vintage general's uniform, President Charles de
Gaulle delivered a televised speech calling on the military personnel
and civilians of France to oppose the Algiers putsch, a coup d'état
attempt against him.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
grotto (n):
1. A small cave.
2. An artificial cavern-like retreat
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grotto>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again:
And by that destiny, to perform an act
Whereof what's past is
prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.
--William Shakespeare
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare>
William IV (1765–1837) was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland and of Hanover from 26 June 1830 until his death. William,
the third son of George III and younger brother and successor to George
IV, was the last king and penultimate monarch of the House of Hanover.
He served in the Royal Navy in his youth and was, both during his reign
and afterwards, nicknamed the Sailor King. He served in North America
and the Caribbean, but saw little actual fighting. Since his two older
brothers died without leaving surviving legitimate issue, he inherited
the throne when he was sixty-four years old. His reign saw several
reforms: the poor law was updated, child labour restricted, slavery
abolished throughout the British Empire, and the Reform Act 1832
refashioned the British electoral system. Though William did not engage
in politics as much as his brother or his father, he was the last
monarch to appoint a Prime Minister contrary to the will of Parliament.
At his death William had no surviving legitimate children, though he
was survived by eight of the ten illegitimate children he had by the
popular actress, Dorothea Bland. He was succeeded in the United Kingdom
by his niece, Victoria, and in Hanover by his brother, Ernest Augustus.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_IV>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1864:
The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the minting of a
two-cent coin , the first U.S. coin to bear the phase "In God We
Trust".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust>
1889:
Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million
acres (8,000 km²) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state
of Oklahoma. Within hours, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had
established cities of around 10,000 people.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Run_of_1889>
1915:
The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second
Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by
asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in
World War I.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_gas_in_World_War_I>
1945:
About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the
Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 managed to escape
while the other 520 were killed by the Croatian Ustaše regime.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasenovac_concentration_camp>
1993:
The first version of Mosaic, created by computer programmers Marc
Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing
Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was
released, becoming the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher
client.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosaic_%28web_browser%29>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
lyonnaise (adj):
Cooked with onions, especially caramelized onions
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lyonnaise>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.
--Marshall McLuhan
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan>
Alleyway is a video game developed by Nintendo and Intelligent Systems
and published by Nintendo as a global launch title for the Game Boy. It
is a Breakout clone and one of the first four games developed and
released for the system. The game was released first in Japan in 1989,
in North America later that year, and in Europe in 1990. Alleyway was
released with limited advertising, receiving moderate to low scores
from reviewers who compared it to games like Arkanoid. The name
Alleyway references the in-game gateway that the player's spaceship
(represented as a paddle) must pass through. While Alleyway is a
portable clone of Breakout, it adds several new features, including
alternating stages, bonus rounds, and hazards for the player at later
levels.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleyway>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1509:
Henry VIII became King of England, following the death of his father
Henry VII, eventually becoming a significant figure in the history of
the English monarchy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VIII_of_England>
1836:
Texan forces led by Sam Houston defeated General Antonio López de Santa
Anna and his Mexican troops in the Battle of San Jacinto near La Porte,
the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Jacinto>
1894:
Norway formally adopted the Krag-Jørgensen, a repeating bolt action
rifle designed by the Norwegians Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik
Jørgensen, as the main firearm of its armed forces.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krag-J%C3%B8rgensen>
1960:
Brasília, a planned city primarily designed by architect and urban
planner Lúcio Costa, was officially inaugurated, replacing Rio de
Janeiro as the capital of Brazil.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia>
1970:
In response to a long-running dispute over wheat quotas, the
Principality of Hutt River proclaimed their secession from Western
Australia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
quarantine (v):
To put into obligatory isolation or separation, especially as a
sanitary measure to prevent the spread of contagious disease
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quarantine>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious
starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the
mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make —
leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone —
we all dwell in a house of one room — the world with the firmament for
its roof — and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any
track.
--John Muir
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Muir>