Ōkami is an action-adventure video game developed by Clover Studio and
distributed by Capcom. It was released for the Sony PlayStation 2 video
game console in 2006 in Japan and North America, and 2007 in Europe and
Australia. Despite the closure of Clover Studio a few months after the
game's initial release in 2006, a version for Nintendo's Wii console
was developed and produced by Ready at Dawn and Capcom, which was
released in North America on April 15, 2008, and was released in Europe
in June 2008. Set in an unspecified period of classical Japanese
history, Ōkami combines several Japanese myths, legends and folklore to
tell the story of how the land was saved from darkness by the Shinto
sun goddess, named Amaterasu, who has taken the form of a white wolf.
It features a distinct sumi-e-inspired cel-shaded visual style and the
Celestial Brush, a gesture-system to perform miracles. Ōkami was one of
the last few PlayStation 2 games selected for release prior to the
release of the PlayStation 3. Although it suffered from poor sales,
Ōkami earned high acclaim from reviewers and earned, among other
awards, the title of IGN's 2006 Game of the Year. The Wii version has
earned similar praise though the motion control scheme has received
mixed reviews from both critics and gamers.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ckami>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1190:
The Third Crusade: Frederick I Barbarossa drowned in the Saleph River
in Anatolia.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor>
1719:
Jacobite risings: British forces defeated an alliance of Jacobites and
Spaniards at the Battle of Glen Shiel in the Scottish Highlands.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Glen_Shiel>
1829:
In rowing, Oxford defeated Cambridge in the first Boat Race held on the
Thames in London.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boat_Race>
1838:
More than twenty-five Australian Aborigines were massacred near
Inverell, New South Wales.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myall_Creek_massacre>
1964:
The Battle of Dong Xoai, one of the largest battles in the Vietnam War
to date, began, with the Viet Cong eventually defeating the Army of the
Republic of Vietnam.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dong_Xoai>
2008:
War in Afghanistan: An airstrike by the United States resulted in the
deaths of 11 paramilitary troops of the Pakistan Army Frontier Corps
and 8 Taliban fighters in Pakistan's tribal areas.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gora_Prai_airstrike>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
horseshoe (n):
1. The U-shaped metallic shoe of a horse.
2. A U-shaped piece of metal used to play the game horseshoes.
3. The
U shape of a horseshoe.
4. (bodybuilding, slang) A well-developed set of triceps brachii
muscles
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/horseshoe>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world
henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the
right information at the right time, think critically about it, and
make important choices wisely.
--E. O. Wilson
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson>
New York State Route 311 is a state highway located entirely within
Putnam County, New York, United States. The highway begins at New York
State Route 52 in Lake Carmel, and intersects Interstate 84 shortly
thereafter. It crosses NY 164 and NY 292 as it heads into the
northwestern part of the county, finally curving east to reach its
northern terminus at NY 22 just south of the Dutchess County line. The
route passes several historical sites. Part of modern-day Route 311 was
originally the Philipstown Turnpike, a road built in 1815 to overcome a
lack of transportation when the Hudson River froze during the winter
months. The turnpike was a large business center for the county, though
it was abandoned due to insufficient tolls to maintain it. Another
section was constructed in the early 1900s, from the Patterson Baptist
Church near the modern-day intersection of Route 311 and Route 164 to
the Village of Patterson, by a group of Italian immigrants. In the 1930
renumbering, the segment of NY 39 east of West Patterson was renumbered
to New York State Route 311. In the late 1930s, NY 52 was realigned to
its current alignment between Stormville and Lake Carmel. The former
routing of NY 52 from West Patterson to Lake Carmel later became part
of an extended NY 311.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_State_Route_311>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
68:
Roman Emperor Nero committed suicide after he was deposed by the
Senate.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero>
1310:
Italian artist Duccio's Maestà with Twenty Angels and Nineteen Saints,
a seminal artwork of the early Italian Renaissance, was unveiled and
installed in Siena Cathedral in Siena, Italy.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maest%C3%A0_%28Duccio%29>
1772:
In an act of defiance against the Navigation Acts, American patriots
led by Abraham Whipple attacked and burned the British schooner HMS
Gaspée.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasp%C3%A9e_Affair>
1856:
Mormon pioneers began leaving Iowa City, Iowa, and headed west for Salt
Lake City, Utah, carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled
handcarts.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_handcart_pioneers>
1885:
A peace treaty was signed to end the Sino-French War, with China
eventually giving up Tonkin and Annam, most of present day Vietnam, to
France.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War>
1950:
Prince Bhumibol Adulyadej became King Rama IX of Thailand, currently
the world's longest-serving head of state.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhumibol_Adulyadej>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
volumize (v):
To add volume (to something)
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/volumize>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Be a clown, be a clown,
All the world loves a clown.
Act the fool, play the calf,
And
you'll always have the last laugh.
--Cole Porter
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cole_Porter>
Cholangiocarcinoma is a cancer of the bile ducts, which drain bile from
the liver into the small intestine. Cholangiocarcinoma is a relatively
rare adenocarcinoma, with an annual incidence of 1–2 cases per 100,000
in the Western world, but rates of cholangiocarcinoma have been rising
worldwide over the past several decades. Prominent symptoms of
cholangiocarcinoma include abnormal liver function tests, abdominal
pain, jaundice, weight loss, and sometimes generalized itching, fever,
or changes in stool or urine color. The disease is diagnosed through a
combination of blood tests, imaging, endoscopy, and sometimes surgical
exploration, though it commonly presents at Stage III or IV: too late
to be resected surgically. Though most patients present without any
risk factors evident, known risk factors for cholangiocarcinoma include
primary sclerosing cholangitis, congenital liver malformations,
infection with the parasitic liver flukes Opisthorchis viverrini or
Clonorchis sinensis, and exposure to Thorotrast (thorium dioxide).
Cholangiocarcinoma is considered to be an incurable and rapidly lethal
disease unless all of its tumors can be fully resected. There is no
potentially curative treatment except surgery, but unfortunately most
patients have advanced and inoperable disease at the time of diagnosis.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholangiocarcinoma>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1776:
American Revolutionary War: British forces defeated the Continental
Army at the Battle of Trois-Rivières, the last major battle fought on
Quebec soil that was part of the American colonists' invasion of
Quebec.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trois-Rivi%C3%A8res>
1783:
Iceland's Laki craters began an eight-month eruption, triggering major
famine and massive fluorine poisoning.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki>
1949:
Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian political novel by English writer
George Orwell about life in the fictional totalitarian government of
Oceania, was first published.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four>
1950:
Thomas Blamey became Australia's first and currently only Field
Marshal.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Blamey>
1995:
Danish-Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf released the first public
version of the scripting language PHP for producing dynamic web pages.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
cupidity (n):
Extreme greed, especially for wealth
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cupidity>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, "Can't
you remember anything I told you?" and lets fly with a club.
--John W. Campbell
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell>
West Bengal is a state in eastern India. With Bangladesh, which lies on
its eastern border, the state forms the ethno-linguistic region of
Bengal. To its northeast lie the states of Assam and Sikkim and the
country Bhutan, and to its southwest, the state of Orissa. To the west
it borders the state of Jharkhand and Bihar, and to the northwest,
Nepal. The region that is now West Bengal was part of a number of
empires and kingdoms during the past two millennia. The British East
India Company cemented their hold on the region following the Battle of
Plassey in 1757, and the city of Kolkata, then Calcutta, served for
many years as the capital of British India. A hotbed of the Indian
independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was
divided in 1947 into two separate entities, West Bengal—a state of
India, and East Pakistan belonging to the new nation of Pakistan.
Following India's independence in 1947, West Bengal's economic and
political systems were dominated for many decades by Marxism, Naxalite
movements and trade unionism. An agriculture-dependent state, West
Bengal occupies only 2.7% of the India's land area, though it supports
over 7.8% of Indian population, and is the most densely populated state
in India. West Bengal has been ruled by the CPI(M)-led Left Front for
three decades, making it the world's longest-running democratically
elected communist government. Since the late 1990s, the state has seen
a resurgence in its economy after decades of stagnation.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bengal>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1494:
Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, dividing the newly
discovered lands of the Americas and Africa between the two countries.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas>
1628:
The Petition of Right, a major English constitutional document that set
out specific liberties of the subject, was granted the Royal Assent by
Charles I.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petition_of_Right>
1776:
Virginia statesman Richard Henry Lee presented a resolution to the
Second Continental Congress, which called for the Thirteen Colonies to
declare independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Resolution>
1880:
War of the Pacific: Chilean forces captured Morro de Arica from Peru.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arica>
1981:
The Israeli Air Force attacked and disabled the Osirak nuclear reactor,
assuming it was producing plutonium to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Opera>
1982:
Graceland, Elvis Presley's mansion in Memphis, Tennessee, opened to the
public.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graceland>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
indefatigable (adj):
Extremely persistent; untiring
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/indefatigable>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
A young man who is unable to commit a folly is already an old man.
--Paul Gauguin
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Paul_Gauguin>
The Astrophysics Data System is an online NASA database of over
7,000,000 astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and
non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for
almost all articles, and full scanned articles are available in GIF and
PDF format for older articles. New articles have links to electronic
versions hosted at the journal's webpage, but these are typically
available only by subscription (which most astronomy research
facilities have). It is managed by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for
Astrophysics. ADS is an extremely powerful research tool, and has had a
significant impact on the efficiency of astronomical research since it
was launched in 1992. Literature searches which previously would have
taken days or weeks can now be carried out in seconds via the
sophisticated ADS search engine, which is custom-built for astronomical
needs. Studies have found that the benefit to astronomy of the ADS is
equivalent to several hundred million US dollars annually, and the
system is estimated to have tripled the readership of astronomical
journals. Use of ADS is almost universal among astronomers worldwide,
and therefore ADS usage statistics can be used to analyze global trends
in astronomical research.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysics_Data_System>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1513:
War of the League of Cambrai: Swiss mercenaries defeated the French in
Novara, present-day Italy, forcing them to withdraw from Milan.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Novara_%281513%29>
1523:
Gustav Vasa became King of Sweden, marking the end of the Kalmar
Union.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_I_of_Sweden>
1844:
The YMCA, today a world-wide movement of more than 45 million members
from 124 national federations, was founded in London.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YMCA>
1933:
The first ever drive-in theater opened in Pennsauken, New Jersey, USA.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/drive-in_theater>
1982:
A war in Lebanon began when Israeli forces invaded southern Lebanon to
root out members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Lebanon_War>
2005:
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered its landmark legal decision in
Gonzales v. Raich, allowing the U.S. Congress to ban medical marijuana
even in states that approve its use.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
let the cat out of the bag (v):
To disclose a secret; to let a secret be known, often inadvertently
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/let_the_cat_out_of_the_bag>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
I can be forced to live without happiness, but I will never consent to
live without honor.
--Pierre Corneille
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_Corneille>
The Rhinemaidens are the three water-nymphs who appear in Richard
Wagner's opera cycle Der Ring Des Nibelungen. Their individual names
are Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, although they are generally
considered as a single entity and act together accordingly. Of the
34 characters in the Ring cycle, they are the only ones who do not
originate in the Scandinavian Eddas. Other legends and myths on which
Wagner drew, notably the Nibelungenlied, include stories that involve
water-sprites (nixies) or mermaids, and it is likely that he created
his Rhinemaidens from these sources. The key concepts associated with
them in the Ring operas—their flawed guardianship of the Rhine gold,
and the condition (renunciation of love) through which the gold could
be stolen from them and transformed into a means of world power—are
wholly Wagner's own invention, and are the elements that initiate and
propel the entire drama. The Rhinemaidens are the first and the last
characters to be seen in the operas, appearing both in the opening
scene of Das Rheingold, and in the final climactic spectacle of
Götterdämmerung when they rise from the Rhine waters to reclaim the
ring from Brünnhilde's ashes. They have no relationship to any of the
other characters, and no indication is given as to how they came into
being, beyond occasional references to an unspecified "father".
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinemaidens>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1257:
Kraków in Poland received city rights.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w>
1305:
Raymond Bertrand de Got became Pope Clement V, succeeding Pope Benedict
XI who died one year earlier.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Clement_V>
1832:
The June Rebellion, a anti-monarchist uprising of students, broke out
in Paris.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Rebellion>
1967:
The Six-Day War began with an Israeli Air Force preemptive strike that
destroyed about 450 total aircraft of the Egyptian, Jordanian and
Syrian Air Forces on the ground.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Focus>
1968:
Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan mortally shot U.S. Senator Robert
F. Kennedy inside the kitchen pantry of The Ambassador Hotel in Los
Angeles, an event that has spawned a variety of conspiracy theories.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy_assassination>
1995:
A new phase of matter, the Bose–Einstein condensate, was produced for
the first time by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at the University of
Colorado at Boulder NIST-JILA lab.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
shufti (n):
A brief glance; a quick look
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shufti>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on
the unthinking.
--John Maynard Keynes
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes>
The Checkers speech was an address made by United States Senator and
Republican vice presidential candidate Richard Nixon on television and
radio on September 23, 1952. Senator Nixon had been accused of
improprieties relating to a fund established by his backers to
reimburse him for his political expenses. With his place on the
Republican ticket in doubt, the senator flew to Los Angeles and
delivered a half hour television address in which he defended himself,
attacked his opponents, and urged the audience to contact the
Republican National Committee to tell it whether or not he should
remain on the ticket. During the speech, he stated that regardless of
what anyone said, he intended to keep one gift—a black-and-white dog
which was named Checkers by the Nixon children, thus giving the address
its popular name. Nixon got the idea for the Checkers reference from
Franklin Roosevelt's Fala speech. Nixon's speech led to an outpouring
of public support for him. He was retained on the ticket, which swept
to victory in November 1952, keeping Nixon on the path which would lead
to his own election as President sixteen years later. The Checkers
speech was an early example of a politician using television to appeal
directly to the electorate, but has since sometimes been mocked or
denigrated.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkers_speech>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1039:
Henry III became Holy Roman Emperor following the death of his father,
Conrad II.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_III%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor>
1792:
Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver claimed Puget Sound in the Pacific
Northwest for Great Britain.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puget_Sound>
1939:
The German ocean liner SS St. Louis, carrying 963 Jewish refugees
seeking asylum from Nazi persecution, was denied permission to land in
the United States, after already having been turned away from Cuba.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_St._Louis>
1942:
The Battle of Midway , a major battle in the Pacific Theatre of World
War II, began with a massive Imperial Japanese strike on Midway Atoll.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway>
1989:
The People's Liberation Army violently cracked down on the Tiananmen
Square protests in Beijing, leaving at least 241 dead and 7,000
wounded, and causing widespread international condemnation of the
Chinese government.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiananmen_Square_protests_of_1989>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
holystone (n):
(nautical) A block of soft sandstone used for scrubbing the wooden
decks of a ship
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/holystone>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
To insist on one's place in the scheme of things and to live up to that
place.
To empower others in their reaching for some place in the scheme of
things.
To do these things is to make fairy tales come true.
--Robert Fulghum
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Fulghum>
The history of biology traces the study of the living world from
ancient to modern times. Although the concept of biology as a single
coherent field arose in the 19th century, the biological sciences
emerged from traditions of medicine and natural history reaching back
to ancient Egyptian medicine and the works of Aristotle and Galen in
the ancient Greco-Roman world, which were then further developed in the
Middle Ages by Muslim physicians and scholars such as Avicenna. During
the European Renaissance and early modern period, biological thought
was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and
the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were
Vesalius and Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation
in physiology, and naturalists such as Linnaeus and Buffon who began to
classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as the
development and behavior of organisms. Over the 18th and 19th
centuries, biological sciences such as botany and zoology became
increasingly professional scientific disciplines. Naturalists began to
reject essentialism and reconsider the importance of extinction and the
mutability of species. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the
fundamental basis of life. These developments, as well as the results
were synthesized in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural
selection.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_biology>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
350:
Roman usurper Nepotianus of the Constantinian dynasty proclaimed
himself Roman Emperor, entering Rome with a group of gladiators.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotianus>
1621:
The Dutch West India Company received a charter for a trade monopoly in
the West Indies by the Dutch Republic.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company>
1888:
American writer Ernest Thayer's baseball poem "Casey at the Bat" was
first published in the San Francisco Examiner.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_at_the_Bat>
1937:
Months after he abdicated the British throne, Edward, Duke of Windsor
married American socialite Wallis Simpson in a private ceremony near
Tours, France.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VIII_of_the_United_Kingdom>
1963:
The Buddhist crisis: Soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam
attacked protesting Buddhists in Huế, South Vietnam, with liquid
chemicals from tear gas grenades, causing 67 people to be hospitalised
for blistering of the skin and respiratory ailments.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hue_chemical_attacks>
1992:
The High Court of Australia delivered its decision in the landmark case
Mabo v Queensland, recognising the land rights of the Aborigines.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabo_v_Queensland>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
recidivous (adj):
Prone to relapse into immoral or antisocial behavior
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/recidivous>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its
place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their
place.
--Lawrence Lessig
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig>
Rudolf Wolters (1903–1983) was a German architect and government
official, known for his longtime association with fellow architect and
Third Reich official Albert Speer. The two formed a friendship while
students in the 1920s. In 1937, Speer hired him as a department head,
and Wolters soon took major responsibility for Hitler's scheme to
reconstruct Berlin on a massive scale. When Speer became Minister of
Armaments and War Production in 1942, Wolters moved to his department,
remaining his close associate. After Speer's indictment and
imprisonment for war crimes, Wolters stood by him loyally. In addition
to receiving and organizing Speer's clandestine notes from Spandau
Prison, which later served as the basis of his best-selling books of
memoirs, Wolters quietly raised money for Speer. These funds were used
to support Speer's family and for other purposes, according to
directions which Wolters received from his former superior. Following
Speer's release in 1966, their friendship gradually deteriorated, until
the two men became so embittered that Wolters allowed papers
demonstrating Speer's knowledge of the persecution of the Jews to
become public.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Wolters>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
455:
Following the death of Western Roman Emperor Valentinian III, the
Vandals led by King Gaiseric sacked Rome, looting treasure from the
city and taking Empress Licinia Eudoxia and her daughters hostage.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals>
1848:
As part of the Pan-Slavism movement, the Prague Slavic Congress began
in Prague, one of the few times that voices from all Slav populations
of Europe were heard in one place.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Slavic_Congress%2C_1848>
1924:
U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into
law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the
territorial limits of the United States.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Citizenship_Act_of_1924>
1995:
United States Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady was shot down by a
Bosnian Serb Army SA-6 surface-to-air missile while patrolling the NATO
no-fly zone over Bosnia in an F-16, but he was able to eject safely and
was then rescued six days later.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrkonji%C4%87_Grad_incident>
2003:
The Mars Express space probe, the first planetary mission of the
European Space Agency, was launched.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Express>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
over the top (adj):
Excessive; exaggerated; outrageous
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/over_the_top>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The capacity to produce social chaos is the last resort of desperate
people.
--Cornel West
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cornel_West>
A tropical cyclone is a storm system characterized by a large low
pressure center and numerous thunderstorms that produce strong winds
and flooding rain. The term "tropical" refers to both the geographic
origin of these systems, which form almost exclusively in tropical
regions of the globe, and their formation in Maritime Tropical air
masses. The term "cyclone" refers to such storms' cyclonic nature, with
counterclockwise rotation in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise
rotation in the Southern Hemisphere. While tropical cyclones can
produce extremely powerful winds and torrential rain, they are also
able to produce high waves and damaging storm surge as well as spawning
tornadoes. They develop over large bodies of warm water, and lose their
strength if they move over land. This is the reason coastal regions can
receive significant damage from a tropical cyclone, while inland
regions are relatively safe from receiving strong winds. Heavy rains,
however, can produce significant flooding inland, and storm surges can
produce extensive coastal flooding up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) from the
coastline. Although their effects on human populations can be
devastating, tropical cyclones can also relieve drought conditions.
They also carry heat and energy away from the tropics and transport it
toward temperate latitudes, which makes them an important part of the
global atmospheric circulation mechanism. As a result, tropical
cyclones help to maintain equilibrium in the Earth's troposphere, and
to maintain a relatively stable and warm temperature worldwide. It is
not possible to artificially induce the dissipation of these systems
with current technology.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1794:
The Glorious First of June, the first and largest fleet action of the
naval conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the First
French Republic during the French Revolutionary Wars, was fought.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_First_of_June>
1813:
War of 1812: Mortally wounded during a battle against the Royal Navy
frigate HMS Shannon, American naval commander James Lawrence of the USS
Chesapeake ordered his crew to "Don't give up the ship!", today a
popular battle cry.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_USS_Chesapeake>
1831:
British naval officer and explorer James Clark Ross successfully led
the first expedition to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clark_Ross>
1943:
Eight German Junkers Ju 88s shot down British Overseas Airways
Corporation Flight 777 over the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Spain
and France, killing actor Leslie Howard and several other notable
passengers.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_777>
2001:
Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal killed King Birendra and several members
of the Shah royal family in a shooting spree at the Narayanhity Royal
Palace in Kathmandu.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_royal_massacre>
2005:
In their first national referendum in over two hundred years, Dutch
voters rejected the ratification of the proposed Constitution of the
European Union.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_referendum%2C_2005>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
gallivant (v):
1. To roam about for pleasure without any definite plan.
2. (obsolete) To flirt, to romance
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gallivant>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
There are times when the utmost daring is the height of wisdom.
--Carl von Clausewitz
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz>