Knut is a captive-born polar bear who was born at the Zoologischer Garten Berlin on 5 December 2006. Rejected by his mother at birth, he was subsequently raised by zoo keepers. He was the first polar bear cub to survive past infancy at the Berlin Zoo in over thirty years. At one time the subject of international controversy, he became a popular tourist attraction and commercial success. After the German tabloid magazine Bild ran a quote from an animal rights activist that seemingly called for the death of the young cub, a worldwide public outrage was caused as fans rallied in support of his being hand-raised by humans. Children protested outside the zoo, and many emails and letters expressing sympathy for the cub's life were sent from around the world. Knut became the center of a mass media phenomenon dubbed "Knutmania" that spanned the globe and quickly spawned numerous toys, media specials, DVDs, and books. Because of this, the cub was largely responsible for a significant increase in revenue at the Berlin Zoo in 2007. Zoo attendance figures for the year increased by an estimated 30 percent, making the zoo the most profitable it has been in its 163 year history.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_%28polar_bear%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1703: Forty-six of the Forty-Seven Ronin committed seppuku (ritual suicide) in Edo, present-day Tokyo, as recompense for avenging the death of their master, Daimyo of Akō Asano Naganori. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty-Seven_Ronin)

1859: German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf rediscovered the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4th century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, in Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in Egypt. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus)

1899: An American soldier shot a Filipino soldier in Manila after a misunderstanding occurred between the two, igniting the Philippine-American War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine-American_War)

1945: World War II: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin met at the Yalta Conference in Yalta on the Crimean Peninsula. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference)

1957: USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, logged her 60,000th nautical mile, matching the endurance of the fictional Nautilus described in Jules Verne's novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nautilus_%28SSN-571%29)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

frog in one's throat: (idiomatic) Hoarseness or the need to cough. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/frog_in_one%27s_throat)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player. -- Alice Cooper (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alice_Cooper)