The Shrine of Remembrance, located in St Kilda Road, Melbourne, is
one of the largest war memorials in Australia. It was built as a
memorial to the the 114,000 men and women of Victoria who served in
World War I, but soon came to be seen as Australia's major memorial
to all the 60,000 Australians who died in that war. It now serves as
a memorial for all Australians who served in war, and is the site of
annual observances of ANZAC Day (25 April) and Remembrance Day (11
November). Around the Sanctuary walls is a frieze of 12 carved panels
depicting the armed services at work and in action during World War
I. The Sanctuary is surrounded by a narrow walkway called the
Ambulatory. Along the Ambulatory are 42 bronze caskets containing
hand-written, illuminated Books of Remembrance with the names of
every Victorian who enlisted for active service with the Australian
Imperial Force (AIF) or Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary
Force in World War I or died in camp prior to embarkation.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrine_of_Remembrance
Today's selected anniversaries:
1799 The 18 Brumaire coup led by Emmanuel Joseph Siey�s and
Napol�on Bonaparte deposed the government of France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18_Brumaire)
1872 The Great Boston Fire of 1872 began, eventually destroying
over 700 buildings in Boston, Massachusetts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Boston_Fire_of_1872)
1965 In the Northeast Blackout of 1965 several U.S. states and
parts of Canada are hit by a series of blackouts lasting up
to 13 1/2 hours.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_1965)
1989 The Berlin Wall fell, marking the beginning of the collapse
of the Soviet Union and communism in Europe
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall)
Wikiquote of the day:
"It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking
ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand?" ~
Spider Robinson
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Spider_Robinson)
The Lord Chancellor is one of the most senior and important
functionaries in the government of the United Kingdom. He is a Great
Officer of State, and is appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of
the Prime Minister and is, by convention, always a peer, although
there is no legal impediment to the appointment of a commoner. The
Lord Chancellor's responsibilities are wide-ranging; they include
presiding over the House of Lords, participating in the Cabinet,
acting as the custodian of the Great Seal and heading the judiciary.
Concerns over these wide-ranging powers have led to a proposal to
abolish the office from Tony Blair's ministry. A bill to achieve the
desired effect has been proposed, but has not been passed into law.
Since 2003, Lord Falconer of Thoroton has served as Lord Chancellor.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chancellor
Today's selected anniversaries:
1688 Glorious Revolution: Protestant Prince William of Orange
landed at Brixham in Devon, on his way to depose his
father-in-law King James II, the last Catholic monarch in
England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution)
1838 The United States of Central America began to disintegrate
when Honduras separated from the federation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_of_Central_America)
1872 Suffragette Susan B. Anthony voted in the U.S. presidential
election for the first time. She was later fined $100 for
this.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_B._Anthony)
1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow was elected the Patriarch of Moscow
and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikhon_of_Moscow)
1935 Parker Brothers released the board game Monopoly.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_%28game%29)
Wikiquote of the day:
"ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US." ~ CATS of Zero Wing
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing)
Baroque was a cultural movement and style in European art,
originating around 1600 in Rome. The Council of Trent (1545-63), in
which the Roman Catholic Church answered many questions of internal
reform, addressed the representational arts by demanding that
paintings and sculptures in church contexts should speak to the
illiterate rather than to the well-informed. This turn toward a
populist conception of the function of ecclesiastical art is seen by
many art historians as driving the innovations of Caravaggio and the
Carracci brothers, all of whom were working (and competing for
commissions) in Rome around 1600. The appeal of Baroque style turned
consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th century
Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed
an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, and theatrical.
Baroque art drew on certain broad and heroic tendencies in Annibale
Caracci and his circle, and found inspiration in other artists like
Correggio and Caravaggio and Federico Barocci, nowadays sometimes
termed 'proto-Baroque'. Germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be
found in the work of Michelangelo.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque
Today's selected anniversaries:
1852 Count Cavour became the prime minister of
Piedmont-Sardinia, which soon expanded to become Italy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_Camillo_Benso_di_Cavour)
1869 Nature, one of the oldest and most reputable general
purpose scientific journals, was first published.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_%28journal%29)
1956 Soviet troops invaded Hungary to crush the Hungarian
Uprising, killing thousands. Nearly a quarter million fled
the country as refugees.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Hungarian_Revolution)
1979 Iranian radicals seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held
the occupants hostage for 444 days.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis)
1995 Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was mortally wounded
at a peace rally in Tel Aviv by Yigal Amir.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin)
Wikiquote of the day:
"I remain just one thing, and one thing only - and that is a clown.
It places me on a far higher plane than any politician." ~ Charlie
Chaplin
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin)
William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public
figure. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary
Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. His early work
tended towards a romantic lushness and dreamlike quality best
described by the title of his 1893 collection The Celtic Twilight,
but in his 40s, inspired by his relationships with modernist poets
such as Ezra Pound and his active involvement in Irish nationalist
politics, he moved towards a harder, more modern style. As well as
his role as member of the board of the Abbey, Yeats served as an
Irish Senator. He took his role as a public figure seriously and was
a reasonably hard-working member of the Seanad. He was awarded the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee
described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic
form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Butler_Yeats
Today's selected anniversaries:
1793 French playwright, journalist and outspoken feminist Olympe
de Gouges was guillotined for her revolutionary ideas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympe_de_Gouges)
1838 The Times of India, the world's largest circulated English
language daily broadsheet newspaper was founded.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_of_India)
1848 A new constitution of the Netherlands drafted by Johan
Rudolf Thorbecke, severely limiting the powers of the
monarchy, was proclaimed.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Rudolf_Thorbecke)
1957 The Sputnik 2 spacecraft was launched, carrying Laika the
Russian space dog, the first living being to orbit the
Earth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_2)
1971 The UNIX Programmer's Manual was first published.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX)
Wikiquote of the day:
"We'd all like t'vote fer th'best man, but he's never a candidate."
~ Kin Hubbard
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Kin_Hubbard)
Air Force One is the airline call sign of any U.S. Air Force aircraft
carrying the President of the United States. Since 1990, the
presidential fleet has consisted of two specifically-configured,
highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft—tail numbers 28000
and 29000—with Air Force designation VC-25A. These planes are
maintained by the U.S. Air Force solely for presidential air
transport. From its inception, Air Force One has become a symbol of
Presidential power and prestige, carrying the president on several
diplomatic missions. Before these planes entered service, two Boeing
707-320B-type aircraft—tail numbers 26000 and 27000—had operated as
Air Force One, starting in 1962. The Secret Service refers to Air
Force One by the codename "Angel."
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_One
Today's selected anniversaries:
1817 The Bank of Montreal, Canada's oldest chartered bank,
opened in Montreal, Quebec.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Montreal)
1917 The Balfour Declaration proclaimed British support for
Jewish settlements in Palestine.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_1917)
1947 Howard Hughes flew Spruce Goose, the largest flying boat
ever built, on its maiden flight in Long Beach, California.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Goose)
1959 After being struck in the face with a hockey puck, Jacques
Plante played the rest of the game wearing a goalie mask,
now an everyday equipment for goalkeepers in ice hockey.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Plante)
2000 The first crew arrived at the International Space Station.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station)
Wikiquote of the day:
"The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes,
which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the
philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all
events profitable, all days holy, all men divine." ~ Ralph Waldo
Emerson
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson)
The World Wide Web is a distributed hypertext system that operates
over the Internet. Hypertext is browsed using a program called a web
browser which retrieves pieces of information (called "documents" or
"web pages") from web servers (or "web sites") and displays them on
your screen. You can then follow hyperlinks on each page to other
documents or even send information back to the server to interact
with it. The act of following hyperlinks is often called "surfing"
the web. The Web can be traced back to a project at CERN in 1989 when
Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau built ENQUIRE.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
Today's selected anniversaries:
1512 The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican was
re-painted in fresco by Michelangelo Buonarroti.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel)
1755 Lisbon was destroyed by a massive earthquake and tsunami,
killing between sixty and ninety thousand people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1755_Lisbon_earthquake)
1800 John Adams became the first President of the United States
to take residence in the Executive Mansion, later re-named
the White House.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House)
1954 The "Front de Lib�ration Nationale" began the Algerian War of
Independence against French rule, with guerrilla attacks in
various parts of Algeria.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_War_of_Independence)
1963 The Arecibo Observatory, with the world's largest radio
telescope, officially opened in Arecibo, Puerto Rico.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Merry meet, and merry part, and Blessed Be." ~ A pagan expression
of blessing.
The "infinite monkey theorem" is a popular misnomer for an idea from Émile
Borel's book on probability, published in 1909. The book introduced the
concept of "dactylographic monkeys" seated in front of typewriter keyboards
and hitting keys at random. Borel exemplified a proposition in the theory of
probability called Kolmogorov's zero-one law by saying that the probability
is one that such a monkey will eventually type every book in France's
Bibliothèque nationale de France (National Library). There need not be
infinitely many monkeys; a single monkey who executes infinitely many
keystrokes suffices. Subsequent restatements by other people have replaced
the National Library not only with the British Museum but also with the
Library of Congress; a popular retelling says that the monkeys would
eventually type out the collected works of William Shakespeare.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem
Today's selected anniversaries:
1517 - Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses onto the door of a church in
Wittenberg, Germany, marking the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/95_Theses
1863 - The Maori Wars resumed as British forces in New Zealand led by
General Duncan Cameron began their Invasion of the Waikato along the Waikato
River.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_the_Waikato
1922 - Benito Mussolini became the youngest Premier in the history of
Italy at age 39.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
1941 - Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers completed the colossal busts of
U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and
Abraham Lincoln at Mount Rushmore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore_National_Memorial
1984 - Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India was assassinated by two of
her own bodyguards. Riots soon broke out in New Delhi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi
Wikiquote of the day:
("It's always worthwhile to make others aware of their worth.") ~Malcolm
Forbes
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Malcolm_Forbes)
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres
per second (approximately 186,282 miles per second). This exact speed
is a definition, not a measurement, as the metre is defined in terms
of the speed of light and not vice versa. According to standard
modern physical theory, all electromagnetic radiation, including
visible light, propagates (or moves) at a constant speed in vacuo,
known as the speed of light, which is a physical constant denoted as
c. According to the theory of special relativity, all observers will
measure the speed of light as being the same, regardless of the
reference frame of the observer or the velocity of the object
emitting the light.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
Today's selected anniversaries:
1787 Mozart's opera Don Giovanni received its first performance
in Prague.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Giovanni)
1886 New York City office workers spontaneously "invented" the
ticker tape parade.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ticker_tape_parade)
1923 Mustafa Kemal Atat�rk became the first President of the
Republic of Turkey, a new nation founded from remnants of
the Ottoman Empire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemal_Atat�rk)
1945 The first ballpoint pens went on sale at a department store
in New York City for US$12.50 each.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballpoint_pen)
1956 The Suez Crisis began: Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula
and pushed Egyptian forces back toward the Suez Canal.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis)
1998 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its
report on Apartheid in South Africa.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and_Reconciliation_Commission)
Wikiquote of the day:
"We're just being ourselves and having fun playing baseball. The
biggest thing is when people look at our team, they can see that
we're having a lot of fun." ~ Johnny Damon
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Johnny_Damon)