The United States Academic Decathlon is an annual high school academic competition organized by the non-profit United States Academic Decathlon Association. Created by Robert Peterson in Orange County, California for local schools in 1968 and expanded to a nationwide setting in 1981, the competition consists of seven thematically linked multiple choice tests in art, economics, language and literature, math, music, science and social science, as well as three subjective events graded by judges: essay, interview and speech. Teams generally consist of nine members, who are divided into three divisions based on grade point average. Each team member competes in all ten events against other students in his or her division, and team scores are calculated using the top two overall individual scores from each team in all three divisions. To earn a spot at the national competition in April, teams must advance through local, regional, and state competitions. Online competitions, separated into "small", "medium", and "large" categories, are also offered.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1865:

American Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in rural northern Virginia, ending a twelve-day manhunt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth

1937:

Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm that caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths in the Basque town. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Guernica

1958:

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue, one of the first major railway electrification systems in the United States, made its final Washington, D.C., to New York City run. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Blue_%28train%29

1986:

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR, suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire, a nuclear meltdown, and the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people around Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects

2007:

Controversy surrounding the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn in Tallinn, Estonia, a Soviet Red Army World War II memorial, erupted into mass protests and riots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_Night

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

didactic (adj): 1. Instructive or intended to teach or demonstrate, especially with regard to morality. 2. Excessively moralizing http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/didactic

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.

Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits. --Ludwig Wittgenstein http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein