George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25
October 1760 until 1 January 1801, and thereafter King of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death. During George
III's reign, Great Britain lost many of its colonies in North
America; the rebellious colonies later formed the United States. Also
during his reign, the realms of Great Britain and Ireland united to
form the United Kingdom. George III suffered from a mental disease,
now thought to be porphyria. After a final relapse in 1811, George's
eldest son, The Prince George, Prince of Wales reigned as Prince
Regent. Upon George III's death, the Prince of Wales succeeded his
father to become George IV.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_III_of_the_United_Kingdom
Today's selected anniversaries:
456 Magister militum Ricimer defeated the Emperor Avitus at
Piacenza and became master of the western Roman Empire. He
spent the rest of his life as the Patrician, ruling through
a number of puppet emperors.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricimer)
1813 The Sixth Coalition attacked Napoleon Bonaparte in the
Battle of Leipzig, the largest conflict in the Napoleonic
Wars .
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig)
1940 Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos in Nazi
Germany-occupied Poland, was established by the German
Generalgouverneur Hans Frank.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto)
1978 Cardinal Karol Józef Wojtyła became Pope John Paul II,
the first non-Italian pope in 455 years and the first ever
from a Slavic country.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II)
2002 Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, a
commemoration of the Library of Alexandria that was lost in
antiquity, was officially inaugurated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world." ~ Margaret Mead
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead)
The Humpback Whale is a mammal which belongs to the baleen whale
suborder. It is a large whale: an adult usually ranges between 12-16m
long and weighs approximately 36 metric tons. It is well known for
its breaching (leaping out of the water) and its complex whale song.
Humpback Whales live in oceans and seas around the world, and are
regularly sought out by whale-watchers. Humpback Whales are easy to
identify. It has a stocky body with an obvious hump and black
upperparts. The head and lower jaw are covered with knobs called
tubercles, and are actually hair follicles that are characteristic of
the species. The tail flukes, which are lifted high in the dive
sequence, have wavy rear edges.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_Whale
Today's selected anniversaries:
1582 Pope Gregory XIII implemented the Gregorian Calendar. In
Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, October 4 of this year
was followed immediately by October 15, skipping over 10
calendar days. Other countries followed at various later
dates.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_Calendar)
1815 Napoleon I of France began his exile on St. Helena, a
remote island in the Atlantic Ocean.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France)
1894 The Dreyfus affair: Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish artillery
officer in the French military, was wrongly arrested for
treason in a political scandal later exposed by �mile
Zola.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dreyfus)
1917 Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari, also a courtesan who might
have had affairs with many military officers and
politicians in France, was executed by a firing squad for
spying for Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mata_Hari)
2003 China launched Shenzhou 5, their first manned space
mission, with Lt. Col. Yang Liwei aboard as the republic's
first astronaut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_5)
Wikiquote of the day:
"It is better to debate a question without deciding it than to
decide it without debate." ~ Joseph Joubert
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Joubert)
Rondane National Park was the first national park in Norway,
established on December 21, 1962. The park contains a number of
peaks, with the highest being Rondslottet. It is an important habitat
for herds of wild reindeer. The park was extended in 2003, in Oppland
and Hedmark. Rondane lies just to the east of Gudbrandsdal and two
other mountain areas, Dovre and Jotunheimen are nearby. As well as
being known for its beauty, Rondane is the setting for Henrik Ibsen's
play Peer Gynt.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rondane_National_Park
Today's selected anniversaries:
1066 Battle of Hastings: The Norman invasion forces of William
the Conqueror defeated the English army and killed King
Harold II of England.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings)
1926 The children's book "Winnie-the-Pooh", by A. A. Milne, was
published for the first time.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie_the_Pooh)
1947 Chuck Yeager flew a Bell X-1 faster than the speed of
sound, the first person to do so in level flight.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager)
1953 Qibya massacre: Israeli military commander Ariel Sharon and
his Unit 101 special forces were ordered to "inflict heavy
damage on the inhabitants" in a village on the West Bank.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qibya_massacre)
1981 Hosni Mubarak was elected President of Egypt, one week
after Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is
finished: If you're alive, it isn't." ~ Richard Bach
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Bach)
In the history of cryptography, the Enigma machine was a portable
cipher machine used to encrypt and decrypt secret messages. More
precisely, Enigma was a family of related electro-mechanical rotor
machines — there are a variety of different models. The Enigma was
used commercially from the early 1920s on, and was also adopted by
military and governmental services of a number of nations — most
famously, by Nazi Germany before and during World War II. The German
military model, the Wehrmacht Enigma, is the version most commonly
discussed. Allied codebreakers were, in many cases, able to decrypt
messages protected by the machine (see cryptanalysis of the Enigma).
The intelligence gained through this source — codenamed ULTRA — was a
significant aid to the Allied war effort. Some historians have
suggested that the end of the European war was hastened by up to a
year or more because of the decryption of German ciphers.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine
Today's selected anniversaries:
54 Claudius I was fatally poisoned by his wife Agrippina the
younger, making her 17-year old son Nero the next Roman
Emperor.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero)
1307 Grand Master Jacques de Molay and thousands of members of
the Knights Templar, a monastic military order, were
simultaneously arrested by agents of Phillip the Fair and
subsequently tortured into "admitting" heresy. From that
Friday on, Friday the 13th was considered by followers of
the Templars as an evil and unlucky day.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar)
1843 The Independent Order of B'nai B'rith, the oldest
continually-operating Jewish service organization in the
world, was founded in New York City.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27nai_B%27rith)
1845 Voters in the Republic of Texas approved a proposed
constitution, that if accepted by the United States
Congress, would make Texas a U.S. state.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Texas)
1943 World War II: With a new government led by General Pietro
Badoglio, parts of Italy switched sides to the Allies and
declared war on Germany and Japan as well as Northern Italy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Badoglio)
Wikiquote of the day:
"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem
improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become
inevitable." ~ Christopher Reeve
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Christopher_Reeve)
"Vulgar Latin" is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of
the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the
Roman Empire, starting from the second and third century CE, until
its direct merging with the early Romance languages in the ninth
century. This spoken Latin differed from the literary language of
classical Latin in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some
features of Vulgar Latin did not appear until the late Empire. Other
features are likely to have been in place in spoken Latin, in at
least its basilectal forms, much earlier. Our knowledge of Vulgar
Latin comes from three chief sources. First, the comparative method
can reconstruct the underlying forms from the attested Romance
languages, and note where they differ from classical Latin. Second,
various prescriptive grammar texts from the late Latin period condemn
linguistic errors that Latin users were likely to commit, providing
insight into how Latin speakers used their language. Finally, the
solecisms and non-Classical usages that occasionally are found in
late Latin texts also shed light on the spoken language of the writer.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulgar_Latin
Today's selected anniversaries:
1810 The first Oktoberfest was held in Munich.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oktoberfest)
1960 Nikita Khrushchev became enraged at a United Nations
conference and told the Filipino delegate that he was "a
jerk, a stooge and a lackey of imperialism."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev)
1999 A military coup in Pakistan led by General
Pervez Musharraf ousted the government of Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pervez_Musharraf)
2002 A terrorist bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali killed
202 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_terrorist_bombing)
Wikiquote of the day:
"I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something
inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to
do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in
me. All of us have a God in us, and that God is the spirit that
unites all life, everything that is on this planet." ~ Wangari
Maathai
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai)
The Hebrew calendar is the annual calendar used in Judaism. It is a
lunisolar calendar, based upon both lunar months and a solar cycle
(which defines its years). This is in contrast to the Gregorian
calendar, which is based solely upon a solar cycle, or the Islamic
calendar, which is purely lunar. Jews use this calendar to determine
when the new Hebrew months start; this calendar determines the Jewish
holidays, which Torah portions to read, and which set of Psalms
should be read each day. Jews have been using a lunisolar calendar
since Biblical times, but originally referred to the months by number
rather than name. The epoch of the modern Hebrew calendar is Monday,
October 7, 3761 BCE, corresponding to 1 Tishri AM 1 (AM meaning Anno
Mundi, "in the year of the world"). This date is about one year
before the traditional Jewish date of Creation on 25 Elul AM 1.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_calendar
Today's selected anniversaries:
1899 A second Boer War erupted between the United Kingdom and
the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State in South
Africa.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boer_War)
1962 Second Vatican Council: Pope John XXIII convened the first
ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church in 92 years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council)
1954 Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh took control of North
Vietnam, which then became a communist state.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Minh)
1968 NASA launched Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_7)
1975 Saturday Night Live was broadcasted for the first time
(George Carlin was guest host).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Live)
Wikiquote of the day:
"You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost
anything without losing your temper or self-confidence." ~ Robert
Frost
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Frost)
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of
the Bill of Rights. It was conceived to prevent Congress and the
federal government from infringing on five rights. These guarantees
were that the government would not endorse any religion or establish
a state religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, infringe
upon freedom of speech, infringe the freedom of the press, limit the
right to assemble peaceably, or limit the right to petition the
government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment, along
with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was proposed by Congress in
1789, to be ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791. It
was passed in order to answer protestations that the newly created
Constitution did not include sufficient guarantees of civil
liberties. The First Amendment only explicitly disallows any of the
rights from being abridged by Congress. Over time, however, the
courts held that this extends to the executive and judicial branches.
The Fourteenth Amendment went further, making abridging First
Amendment rights unconstitutional for state, county, and local
governments.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitut…
Today's selected anniversaries:
680 Battle of Karbala: Imam Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of the
Prophet Muhammad, was decapitated by forces under Caliph
Yazid I. This is commemorated by Shi'a Muslims as
'Aashurah'.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Karbala)
732 Battle of Tours: Charles Martel and the Franks defeated a
large army of Moors near Poitiers, France, stopping the
northward spread of Islam from Spain to the rest of Western
Europe.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tours)
1911 The Xinhai Revolution began with the Wuchang Uprising,
marking the beginning of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty
in China.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuchang_Uprising)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." ~
Groucho Marx
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Groucho_Marx)
Io is the innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter. It is
named after the Greek mythological figure Io. Although the name "Io"
was suggested by Simon Marius soon after its discovery, this name and
the names of the other Galilean satellites fell into disfavor for a
considerable time, and were not revived in common use until the
mid-20th century. In much of the earlier astronomical literature, Io
is simply referred to by its Roman numeral designation as "Jupiter
I," or simply as "the first satellite of Jupiter."
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_%28moon%29
Today's selected anniversaries:
1446 King Sejong the Great of Joseon and various Korean
linguists published the Hunmin Jeongeum to introduce their
invention — the Hangul alphabet.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul)
1701 The Collegiate School of Connecticut (later renamed Yale
University) was chartered in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yale_University)
1888 The Washington Monument, then the world's tallest building,
officially opened to the general public.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Monument)
1919 Black Sox scandal: The Cincinnati Reds "defeated" the
Chicago White Sox to "win" the World Series major league
baseball championship by 5 games to 3.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sox_scandal)
1963 A landslide displaced large amounts of water from the
Vajont Dam in Italy, causing waves and floods that quickly
swept away several villages, killing almost 2,000 people.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam)
Wikiquote of the day:
"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for
anyone else." ~ Charles Dickens in Our Mutual Friend
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charles_Dickens)
James Joyce was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, and is widely
considered one of the most significant writers of the 20th century.
He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for
his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and
Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson,
he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness
technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal
world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances
as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His
fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family
life and the events and friends (and enemies) from his school and
college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan
and one of the most local of all the great English language
modernists.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
Today's selected anniversaries:
451 Council of Chalcedon: Bishops gathered at Chalcedon, a city
of Bithynia in Asia Minor, to open the fourth ecumenical
council in Christianity.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon)
1600 San Marino, the world's oldest republic still in existence,
adopted its written constitution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Marino)
1871 Dry conditions caused two catastrophic historic fires in
the U.S. Midwest: the Great Chicago Fire and Wisconsin's
Peshtigo Fire.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire)
1895 Queen Min of Joseon, the last empress of Korea, was
assassinated.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Min_of_Joseon)
1967 Argentine-born physician, Marxist revolutionary and Cuban
guerrilla leader Che Guevara was captured in Bolivia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara)
Wikiquote of the day:
"Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station,
deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect
ourselves." ~ U Thant
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/U_Thant)
Coronation Street is Britain's longest-running television soap opera.
It was created by Tony Warren and first broadcast on December 9,
1960. The working title of the show was Florizel Street, but Agnes, a
tea lady at Granada Television (where Coronation Street was produced)
remarked that "Florizel" sounded too much like a disinfectant.
Coronation Street is set in a fictional street in the fictional
industrial town of Weatherfield which is based on Salford, now part
of Greater Manchester. It is the central television programme on the
ITV network. Its principal rival soap opera is the BBC's EastEnders.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronation_Street
Today's selected anniversaries:
1571 Battle of Lepanto: The Ottoman Empire was decisively
defeated by the Christian West for the first time, as a
multinational fleet led by Don John of Austria crushed the
Turkish navy near the Gulf of Corinth.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto_%281571%29)
1985 The Mediterranean ocean liner Achille Lauro was hijacked by
Palestinian terrorists.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro)
2001 The Invasion of Afghanistan began at 16:30 UTC with an
aerial bombing campaign targeting Taliban and Al-Qaida
forces.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._invasion_of_Afghanistan)
2003 California recall: Californians voted to recall Governor
Gray Davis from office, electing Arnold Schwarzenegger as
the new governor from a long list of 135 candidates.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_California_recall)
Wikiquote of the day:
"I don't get no respect!" ~ Rodney Dangerfield
(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rodney_Dangerfield)