The marginated tortoise is the largest European tortoise, reaching a
weight of up to 5 kg (11 pounds) and a length of 35 cm (14 inches).
Its shell is oblong and has a notable thickness around the middle of
the body. The posterior end of the shell has a saw-like formation,
flanged outward like a bell. The carapace of adult specimens is
almost completely black, with yellow highlights. The ventral shell is
lighter coloured and has pairs of triangular markings with the points
facing the rear of the animal. The front sides of the limbs are
covered with large scales. In old female specimens, the rear flaps of
the underside of the plastron are somewhat moveable. The tail is
notable for a lengthwise marking and for an undivided carapace over
the tail. Males have a longer tail, which is thicker at the base than
the females. Their underside is more strongly indented. Males are
also often larger than the females. The females lay their
hard-shelled spherical eggs in the soil in May and June.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginated_tortoise
Today's selected anniversaries:
1674 Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission on the shores of Lake
Michigan to minister to the Illinois Indians (the mission later
grew into Chicago, Illinois).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Marquette)
1829 In the face of fierce opposition, British Lord William Bentinck
carried a regulation declaring that all who abetted suttee in
India were guilty of culpable homicide.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suttee)
1952 Great Smog of 1952: A "killer fog" descended on London ("Smog"
for "smoke" and "fog" became a word).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952)
1991 Pan Am Airways ended operations.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_World_Airways)
Wikiquote of the day:
"The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is
the greatest and only safety in a sane society." ~ Emma Goldman
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman)
India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a
population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth
largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity and is the
world's second-fastest growing economy. India is also the second most
populous country in the world, and the world's largest democracy.
India has grown significantly, in terms of both population and
strategic importance, in the last 20 years. It has also emerged as an
important regional power, with one of the world's largest militaries
and a declared nuclear weapons capability. Strategically located in
Asia, constituting most of the Indian subcontinent, India straddles
many busy trade routes. It shares its borders with Pakistan, the
People's Republic of China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and
Afghanistan. Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia are the nearby
island nations in the Indian Ocean. Home to some of the most ancient
civilizations in the world, India was formally ruled by the British
for almost 90 years before gaining independence in 1947.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India
Today's selected anniversaries:
1901 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech to the House
of Representatives asking Congress to curb the power of trusts
"within reasonable limits".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt)
1904 - The Jovian moon Himalia was discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine
at Lick Observatory.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalia_%28moon%29)
1967 - A team headed by Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in
Cape Town, South Africa, performed the first heart transplant on
a human, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplant)
1984 - The Bhopal gas tragedy resulted in more than 2000 killed and
between 150,000 and 600,000 injured in the Indian city of Bhopal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_Disaster)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the
overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence
of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a
willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may
prevail." ~ Helen Keller
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Keller)
Richard Feynman was one of the most influential American physicists
of the 20th century, expanding greatly the theory of quantum
electrodynamics. As well as being an inspiring lecturer and amateur
musician, he helped in the development of the atomic bomb and was
later a member of the panel which investigated the Space Shuttle
Challenger disaster. For his work on quantum electrodynamics, Feynman
was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics for 1965,
along with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
Today's selected anniversaries:
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned as Emperor of the French at
Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Bonaparte)
1915 Albert Einstein published the general theory of relativity.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein)
1942 Led by Enrico Fermi, a Manhattan Project team at the University
of Chicago initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain
reaction
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project)
1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared that he is a Marxist-Leninist
and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fidel_Castro)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Ooh, with a little luck-- December will be magic again." ~ Kate Bush
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kate_Bush)
The Battle of the Bulge was the last major German offensive on the
Western Front in World War II. It was intended that the German army
would split the Allied line in half, capture Antwerp, sweep north and
encircle and destroy four Allied armies, thus forcing them to
negotiate for peace. Although unsuccessful, it nevertheless tied down
huge amounts of Allied resources, and a slow response to the
resulting gap in their lines erased months from their timetable. An
alternative analysis is that the offensive allowed the Allies to
severely deplete the cream of German army outside the defenses of the
West Wall and in poor supply state, greatly easing the assault on
Germany afterward. In numerical terms, it is the largest battle the
United States Army has ever fought.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
Today's selected anniversaries:
1640 John IV was declared King of Portugal, resulting in a war with
Spain.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_IV_of_Portugal)
1822 Pedro I was crowned the first Emperor of Brazil.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_I_of_Brazil)
1955 Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and was
arrested for violating Montgomery, Alabama's racial segregation
laws.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks)
1990 Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met
40 meters beneath the English Channel seabed, establishing the
first ground connection between the island of Great Britain and
the mainland of Europe since the last ice age.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_Tunnel)
Wikiquote of the day:
"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." ~
William James
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_James)
The Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9 was a high-performance version of the
S-Class luxury sedan. Built on its own assembly line by Daimler-Benz
AG (now DaimlerChrysler) in Stuttgart and based on the long-wheelbase
version of the "W116" chassis introduced in 1973, the 6.9, as it was
generally referred to in the company's own literature to separate it
from the regular 450SEL, was first shown to the motoring press at the
Geneva Auto Show in 1974 and produced between 1975 and 1981 in
extremely limited numbers. It was billed as the flagship of the
Mercedes-Benz car line and the successor to Mercedes-Benz's original
high-performance sedan, the 300SEL 6.3. The 6.9 also has the
distinction of being among the first vehicles ever with optional
anti-lock brakes, first introduced by Mercedes-Benz and Bosch in 1978.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes%2dBenz_450SEL_6.9
Today's selected anniversaries:
1939 Soviet forces invaded Finland, starting the Winter War, but were
stalled at the Mannerheim Line.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_War)
1954 In Sylacauga, Alabama, a meteorite hit Elizabeth Hodges, bruising
her thigh, in the only unequivocally known case of a human being
hit by a space rock.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite)
1979 Rock band Pink Floyd released the mega-selling rock opera The Wall.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wall)
1999 Tens of thousands converged to protest the World Trade Organization
at their meeting in Seattle.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Organization)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Find the good -- and praise it." ~ Alex Haley
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alex_Haley)
The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution amended the
provisions of Article II relating to presidential elections.
Originally, the U.S. Electoral College would elect both the President
and the Vice President in a single election; the person with a
majority would become President and the runner-up would become Vice
President. The election of 1800, however, demonstrated some problems
with the system. The Twelfth Amendment, proposed by Congress on
December 9, 1803 and ratified by the requisite number of state
legislatures on June 15, 1804, required electors to cast two distinct
votes: one for President and another for Vice President.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constit…
Today's selected anniversaries:
1095 At the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II called for the
First Crusade.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Clermont)
1978 San Francisco mayor George Moscone and openly gay
supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated by supervisor Dan
White.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moscone)
1990 The British Conservative Party selected John Major as Prime
Minister of the United Kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Major)
2001 A hydrogen atmosphere was discovered on the extrasolar
planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_%28planet%29)
Wikiquote of the day:
"When a person doesn't have gratitude, something is missing in his
or her humanity. A person can almost be defined by his or her
attitude toward gratitude." ~ Elie Wiesel
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel)
Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit scholar who published around
40 works in the 17th century, most in the fields of oriental studies,
geology and medicine. He made an early study of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
He was ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by
an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to
prevent the spread of the disease. A scientific star in his day,
towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of
Ren� Descartes and others. In the late 20th century, however, the
aesthetic qualities of his work have again begun to be appreciated.
He has been described by one scholar, Edward Schmidt, as "the last
Renaissance man."
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athanasius_Kircher
Today's selected anniversaries:
1778 In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook became the
first European to discover Maui.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maui)
1917 The National Hockey League was formed with its first six
teams.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hockey_League)
1922 Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon became the first people to
enter the tomb of Egyptian King Tutankhamun in over 3000
years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun)
1950 Battle of Chosin Reservoir: Chinese volunteers moved into
North Korea and launched a massive counterattack against
South Korean and United States armed forces, ending any
thought of a quick end to the Korean War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chosin_Reservoir)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in
the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If
you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in
yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones
to fools and robs the spirit of its vision." ~ Tecumseh
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tecumseh)
The history of English poetry stretches from the middle of the 7th
century to the present day. Over this period, English poets have
written some of the most enduring poems in European culture, and the
language and its poetry have spread around the globe. Consequently,
the term English poetry is unavoidably ambiguous. It can mean poetry
written in England (and, by extension, the United Kingdom), or poetry
written in English. With the growth of British trade and the British
Empire, the English language has been widely used outside England. In
the twenty-first century, only a small percentage of the world's
native English speakers live in England, and there is also a vast
population of non-native speakers of English who are capable of
writing poetry in the language. A number of major national poetries,
including the American, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian poetry
have emerged and developed. Since 1922, Irish poetry has also been
increasingly viewed as a separate area of study.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_poetry
Today's selected anniversaries:
1034 Malcolm II of Scotland died. Duncan, the son of his second
daughter, instead of Macbeth, the son of his eldest
daughter, inherited the throne.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_II_of_Scotland)
1960 The Mirabal sisters, who opposed the dictatorship of
military strongman Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the
Dominican Republic, were beaten and strangled to death.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabal_sisters)
1984 Band Aid: 36 of Britain and Ireland's top pop musicians
gathered in a Notting Hill studio to record the song "Do
They Know It's Christmas" in order to raise money for
famine relief in Ethiopia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_Aid_%28band%29)
1993 Velvet Divorce: Legislators in Czechoslovakia voted to
split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia,
effective January 1, 1993.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Divorce)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Great minds have purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are
tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them."
~ Washington Irving
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Washington_Irving)