Greco-Buddhism is the term used to describe the cultural syncretism
between the culture of Classical Greece and Buddhism, which developed
over a period of close to 800 years in Central Asia in the area
corresponding to modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan, between the 4th
century BCE and the 5th century CE. Greco-Buddhism influenced the
artistic (and, possibly, conceptual) development of Budhism, and in
particular Mahayana Buddhism, before it was adopted by Central and
Northeastern Asia from the 1st century CE, ultimately spreading to
China, Korea and Japan. Numerous Greco-Buddhist works of art display
the intermixing of Greek and Buddhist influences, around such
creation centers as Gandhara. The subject matter of Gandharan art was
definitely Buddhist, while most motifs were of Western Asiatic or
Hellenistic origin. The interraction between Hellenistic Greece and
Buddhism started when Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and
Central Asia in 334 BCE, going as far as the Indus, thus establishing
direct contact with India, the birthplace of Buddhism.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco%2dBuddhism
Today's selected anniversaries:
312 Constantine the Great adopted Christianity and defeated
Maxentius in the Battle of Milvian Bridge.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Milvian_Bridge)
1886 In New York Harbor, U.S. President Grover Cleveland
dedicated the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France to
commemorate the centennial of the United States Declaration
of Independence.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Liberty)
1918 Czechoslovakia gained its independence from Austria-Hungary.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Republic_of_Czechoslovakia)
1922 Fascist armed squads marched on Rome to take over the
Italian government.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_on_Rome)
Wikiquote of the day:
"The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear
so much, appears to me to be purely factitious - fabricated, on the
one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain
branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by
equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science
takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear
intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of
that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope,
and with ignorance." ~ T. H. Huxley
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Henry_Huxley)
The term race is used in a wide variety of contexts, with related but
often distinct meanings. Its use is often controversial, largely
because of the political and sociological implications of different
definitions, but also because of disagreements over such issues as
whether humans can be meaningfully divided into multiple races. In
biology, some use race to mean a division within a species,
synonomous with subspecies or variety. Race serves to group members
of a species that have, for a period of time, become geographically
or genetically isolated from other members of that species, and as a
result have diverged genetically and developed certain shared
characteristics that differentiate them from the others. Many
biologists feel that in this usage we may justifiably speak of
dividing Homo sapiens into races. Others, however, assert that in
humans there is in fact insufficient categorical variation to justify
the classification of humans into multiple races in a strictly
biological sense. Many social scientists therefore view race as a
social construct, and have sought to understand it as such.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
Today's selected anniversaries:
1863 The Football Association, the oldest governing body in
football, was formed in London, England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Football_Association)
1881 The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place in Tombstone,
Arizona.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral)
1955 Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem declared himself President of
South Vietnam, replacing Nguyen Emperor Bao Dai as the head
of state.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Dinh_Diem)
1979 President Park Chunghee of South Korea was assassinated by
the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and
a long-time friend, Kim Jaekyu.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chunghee)
2000 Laurent Gbagbo took over as president of C�te d'Ivoire
following a popular uprising against military ruler
Robert Gu��.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Gbagbo)
2001 U.S. President George W. Bush signed the "Uniting and
Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools
Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001",
more commonly known as the USA PATRIOT Act, into law.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways
you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to
all the people you can, as long as ever you can." ~ John Wesley
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Wesley)
Crime fiction is a generic term used in literature for a genre of
fiction that deals with crimes, their detection, criminals and their
motives. As such, it is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction
and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction. It
should be noted, however, that boundaries can be, and indeed are,
blurred. It has several sub-genres, including detective fiction,
mystery fiction, legal thriller, courtroom drama, and hard-boiled
fiction. Crime fiction began to be considered as a serious genre only
as late as 1900. The earliest inspiration for books and novels from
this genre came from earlier dark works of Edgar Allan Poe. The
evolution of locked room mysteries was one of the landmarks in the
history of crime fiction, as it helped involve the reader to a major
extent. Sherlock Holmes mysteries are said to have been singularly
responsible for the huge popularity in this genre. Later a set of
stereotypic formulae began to appear to cater to various tastes.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_fiction
Today's selected anniversaries:
4004 BC The universe was created, according to the Ussher-Lightfoot
Calendar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher%2dLightfoot_Calendar)
1911 First use of aircraft in war: an Italian pilot flew from
Libya to survey Turkish lines during the Italo-Turkish War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo%2dTurkish_War)
1958 Belgian cartoonist Peyo introduced a new set of comic strip
characters, The Smurfs.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smurfs)
1983 Suicide bombers destroyed two barracks of the international
peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 U.S.
Marines and 58 French Paratroopers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_barracks_bombing)
2002 Moscow theater siege: Terrorists seized a crowded theater
in Moscow, took approximately 700 theatergoers and
performers hostage and demanded the immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisis)
Wikiquote of the day:
"There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs
to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and
that only a fool would continue. The truth is, I've always been a
fool." ~ Albert Finney as "Ed Bloom" in Big Fish
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Big_Fish)
Breastfeeding is the practice of a human mother feeding a baby (and
sometimes a toddler or a young child) with milk produced from her
mammary glands, usually directly from the nipples. Babies have a
sucking instinct allowing them to extract the milk. While many
mothers choose to breastfeed their child there are some who do not,
either for personal or medical reasons. Breast milk has been shown to
be very beneficial for a child, though, as with other bodily fluid
transfers, some conditions can be passed from the mother to the
infant. As an alternative the baby may be fed infant formula until
the time that the child may move on to baby food.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding
Today's selected anniversaries:
1383 The 1383-1385 Crisis in Portugal: A period of civil war and
anarchy began when King Fernando died without a male heir
to the Portuguese throne.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1383-1385_Crisis)
1844 Millerites and members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church
were greatly disappointed that Jesus Christ did not return
as predicted by preacher William Miller.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerites)
1943 World War II: Kassel, Germany was severely bombed and
burned for seven days in a firestorm, killing at least
10,000, rendering 150,000 homeless.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Kassel_in_World_War_II)
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: U.S. President John F. Kennedy
announced on television that Soviet nuclear weapons have
been discovered in Cuba, and that he had ordered a naval
"quarantine" of the island nation.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis)
Wikiquote of the day:
"It doesn't matter if we were down 3-0. You've just got to keep the
faith. The game is not over until the last out." ~ David Ortiz
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ortiz)
Jazz is a musical art form, commonly characterized by blue notes,
syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms and improvisation.
It has been called the first original art form to develop in the
United States of America. Jazz is rooted in West African cultural and
musical expression and in African American music traditions, in folk
blues and ragtime. Originating in African American communities near
the beginning of the 20th century, by the 1920s it had gained
international popularity. Since then, jazz has had a profoundly
pervasive influence on other musical styles worldwide. The word jazz
itself is rooted in American slang, but is of unknown origin, despite
many theories about its source. Rather than being a single, narrowly
definable style, in the early 21st century jazz is an ever-growing
family of musical styles, many of which continue to develop.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz
Today's selected anniversaries:
1600 Tokugawa Ieyasu established military supermacy over rival
Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marked
the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, the final
shogunate to rule in Japan.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sekigahara)
1805 Napoleonic Wars: Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson led the
British fleet to defeat a combined French and Spanish navy
in the Battle of Trafalgar.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson%2c_1st_Viscount_Nelson)
1824 Joseph Aspdin, an English bricklayer, received the patent
for Portland cement.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_cement)
1854 Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses were sent to
the Crimean War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale)
1944 The first kamikaze attack: HMAS Australia was hit by a
Japanese plane carrying a 200 kg (441 pound) bomb off Leyte
Island in the Philippines.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/kamikaze)
1945 Argentine military officer and politician Juan Domingo Perón
married popular actress Evita.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Perón)
Wikiquote of the day:
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the
greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most
obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the
falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to
colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which
they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."
~ Leo Tolstoy
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy)
Attila the Hun was the last and most powerful king of the European
Huns. He reigned from 434 until his death over what was then Europe's
largest empire, which stretched from Central Europe to the Black Sea
and from the Danube River to the Baltic. During his rule he was among
the direst enemies of the Eastern and Western Roman Empires: he
invaded the Balkans twice, encircling Constantinople in the second
invasion; he marched through France as far as Orleans before being
turned back at Chalons; and he drove the western emperor Valentinian
III from his capital at Ravenna in 452. Though his empire died with
him and he left no remarkable legacy, he has become a legendary
figure in the history of Europe: he is remembered as the epitome of
cruelty and rapacity in much of Western Europe; while he is lionized
as a great king in the national history of Hungary.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attila_the_Hun
Today's selected anniversaries:
1740 Maria Theresa, an "enlightened monarch", assumed the throne
of Austria, succeeding her father, Charles VI.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_of_Austria)
1827 An allied British, French, and Russian naval force
destroyed a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the
Battle of Navarino, a decisive moment in the Greek War of
Independence.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Navarino)
1935 The Chinese People's Liberation Army completed the Long
March from Jiangxi province in southern China to in Shaanxi
province, an organized maneuver covering a distance of 6000
km (3700 mi.)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_March)
1968 Former U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek
shipping business magnate Aristotle Onassis
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Kennedy_Onassis)
1973 The Sydney Opera House was formally opened by Queen
Elizabeth II. The opening was televised and included
fireworks and a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Opera_House)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that
is granted, all else follows." ~ George Orwell in Nineteen
Eighty-Four
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty%2dFour)
The margin of error is an expression of the extent to which a poll's
reported percentages would vary if the same poll were taken multiple
times. The larger the margin of error, the less confidence one has
that the poll's reported percentages are close to the "true"
percentages, i.e. the percentages in the whole population. The margin
of error can be calculated directly from the sample size (the number
of poll respondents) and may be reported at different levels of
confidence - the 99 percent level is more conservative, while the 95
percent level is more common.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error
Today's selected anniversaries:
202 BC At the Battle of Zama, Carthaginian general Hannibal was
defeated by Roman proconsul Scipio Africanus, ending the
Second Punic War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama)
1781 After losing the Battle of Yorktown, British forces led by
Lord Charles Cornwallis officially surrendered, ending the
American Revolutionary War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War)
1943 Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis,
was first isolated by researchers at Rutgers University.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptomycin)
1985 The first Blockbuster Video store opened in Dallas, Texas.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbuster_Video)
1987 Black Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by 22%,
the largest one-day decline in history. Stock markets
around the world soon followed with similar collapses.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday)
Wikiquote of the day:
"These children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your consultations. They're quite aware of what
they're going through..." ~ David Bowie
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Bowie)
Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated Darwin,
Australia, on 24-25 December, 1974. It was recorded by The Age as
being a "disaster of the first magnitude... and without parallel in
Australia's history." It killed 65 people and destroyed over 70
percent of Darwin's buildings, leaving over 20,000 people homeless.
Most of Darwin's population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice
Springs and Sydney and many never returned to Darwin. The town was
subsequently rebuilt with newer materials and techniques. Cyclone
Tracy, due to its severity, has entered into Australian popular
culture in a way that no other meteorological event had before, or
has since.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Tracy
Today's selected anniversaries:
1009 The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church now
within the walled Old City of Jerusalem, was destroyed by
the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre)
1851 "Moby-Dick", a novel by Herman Melville, was first
published as "The Whale".
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby-Dick)
1922 The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a
consortium to establish a network of radio transmitters to
provide a national broadcasting service in the United
Kingdom.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC)
1954 Texas Instruments introduced the first transistor radio.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_radio)
1977 German Autumn: a national crisis revolving around the
kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer in Cologne and the
hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane to Somalia by the Red
Army Faction (RAF) came to an end when various RAF members
committed suicide in prison and Schleyer was executed in
France. The German government later stated that it would
never again negotiate with terrorists.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army_Faction)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try." ~ "Yoda" in Star Wars
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Star_Wars)