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November 7
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Starship Troopers is a science-fiction action film released on November 7, 1997. Directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier, it is based on the 1959 novel Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (pictured). The story follows teenager Johnny Rico and his comrades as they serve in a 23rd-century interstellar war against aliens called the Arachnids. The film stars Casper Van Dien, Dina Meyer, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris, Patrick Muldoon, and Michael Ironside. Starship Troopers faced critical backlash, with reviewers seeing it as endorsing fascism, and disparaging its violent content. Despite initial box-office success, negative reviews and unfavorable word of mouth made it only the 34th-highest-grossing film of 1997. It has since been critically re-evaluated, and is now considered a cult classic and a satire of fascism and authoritarianism that has grown in relevancy. The film launched a multimedia franchise, video games, comics, and a variety of merchandise. (Full article...)
April 7
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Sikkim is a landlocked Indian state nestled in the Himalayas. It is the least populous state in India, and the second smallest. Sikkim was an independent state ruled by the Chogyal monarchy until 1975, when a referendum to make it India's twenty-second state succeeded. The thumb-shaped state borders Nepal in the west, Tibet to the north and east, and Bhutan in the south-east. The Indian state of West Bengal borders Sikkim to its south. The official language is Nepali, and the predominant religions are Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. Gangtok is the capital and largest town. Despite its small size, Sikkim is geographically diverse, owing to its location at the Himalayan foothills. Terrain ranges from tropical in the south to tundra in the north. Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest peak, is located in Sikkim, straddling its northern border with Nepal. Sikkim has become one of India's most visited states owing to its reputation for untouched scenic beauty and political stability. (more...)
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March 7
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Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who wrote a diary while in hiding with her family and four friends in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. After two years in hiding, the group was betrayed and they were transported to concentration camps, where all but Anne's father Otto died. He returned to Amsterdam to find that Anne's diary had been saved. Convinced that the diary was a unique record, he took action to have it published. The diary was given to Anne for her thirteenth birthday and chronicles the events of her life from June 12, 1942 until its final entry of August 4, 1944. It was eventually translated from its original Dutch into many languages and became one of the world's most widely read books. Described as the work of a mature and insightful mind, it provides an intimate examination of daily life under Nazi occupation; through her writing, Anne Frank has become one of the most renowned and discussed of the Holocaust victims. (more...)
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February 7
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Bodyline was a cricketing tactic devised by the English cricket team for their 1932–33 tour of Australia, specifically to combat the extraordinary batting skill of Australia's Don Bradman. It involved bowlers deliberately aiming the cricket ball at the bodies of batsmen. This caused several injuries to Australian players and led to ill-feeling between the countries that rose to diplomatic levels. Following the 1932–33 series, several authors, including many of the players involved in it, released books expressing various points of view about Bodyline. Many argued that it was a scourge on cricket and must be stamped out, while some claimed not to understand what all the fuss was about. (more...)
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January 7
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A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit of a computer to reduce the average time to access memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the most frequently used main memory locations. So long as most accesses are to the cached copies, the average latency to memory will be closer to the cache latency than to the latency of main memory. When the processor wishes to read or write a location in main memory, it first checks the main memory address against the tags in the cache. If one of the tag entries matches (a cache hit), the processor reads or writes the corresponding data in that entry rather than doing the same to main memory. If none of the tag entries match, the reference is a miss. Misses are slow because they require the data from main memory, and the slowness of that memory is, of course, the reason for the cache in the first place. The proportion of accesses that result in a cache hit is known as the hit rate. (more...)
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December 7
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Palladian architecture is a European style of architecture originally designed by the Italian architect Andrea Palladio. Today, any building which adheres to the rules of architecture to which Palladio subscribed is described as Palladian. This architectural style can be traced as it spread from the early 16th century in the Veneto, across Europe to buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson in North America in the late 18th century. The built and published works of Palladio follow the rules of the Roman architect Vitruvius and his later disciples, such as Leone Battista Alberti who all adhered to the classical Roman principles of architecture, as opposed to the rich ornamentation of the Renaissance. Buildings which are truly Palladian are rare, and all in Italy. They include Villa Capra and Villa Foscari and many churches in the Veneto. To explain fully the term Palladian as used outside of Italy one must first understand true Palladian as designed by the master architect (more...)
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November 7
[edit]There have been two real-life documented incidents of exploding whales. The better known explosion occurred in Florence, Oregon in 1970 when a dead Gray Whale was blown up by the Oregon Highway Division in an attempt to dispose of its rotting carcass and became famous when American humorist Dave Barry wrote about it in his newspaper column. Footage of the incident later appeared on the Internet and it became an instant hit due to the improbability and absurdity of the event. The other reported case of an exploding whale was in Taiwan in 2004 when a build up of gas inside a decomposing Sperm Whale caused it to explode while it was being transported to have a post-mortem performed. The explosion was reported to have splattered whale entrails over surrounding shop-fronts, bystanders and cars. In popular culture, exploding whales are a theme written about by several authors, mainly because their unusual, absurd and highly improbable nature makes them an interesting topic. (more...)
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October 7
[edit]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. (more...)
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September 7
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Elizabeth I was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding her half-sister, Mary I. She reigned over a period of deep religious division in English history. Elizabeth's reign is referred to as the Elizabethan era and was marked by several changes in English culture. Elizabeth was a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler. Like her father Henry VIII, she was a writer and poet. She granted Royal Charters to several famous organisations, including Trinity College, Dublin (1592) and the British East India Company (1600). (more...)
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September 6
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The Warsaw Uprising was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944 as a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2. An estimated 85% of the city was destroyed during the urban guerrilla war and after the end of hostilities. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army was approaching Warsaw. Although the Soviet army was within a few hundred metres of the city from September 16 onward, the link between the uprising and the advancing army was never made. This failure and the reasons behind it have been a matter of controversy ever since. (more...)
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August 7
[edit]Calvin and Hobbes is a comic strip, written and illustrated by Bill Watterson, which follows the humorous antics of Calvin, an imaginative six-year-old boy, and Hobbes, his energetic and sardonic tiger. Syndicated from November 18, 1985 until December 31, 1995, at its height Calvin and Hobbes was carried by over 2,400 newspapers worldwide. To date, almost 23 million copies of 17 Calvin and Hobbes books have been printed. (more...)
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July 7
[edit]Analogue disc record is a term for what is commonly called a gramophone record in British English or a phonograph record in American English. Analogue disc recording was the main technology used for storing recorded sound in the 20th century. An analogue disc record is a flat disc with inscribed spiral grooves, in which the playback process begins with the direct mechanical motion of a stylus riding within the groove as the disc rotates. The record spins at a certain fixed speed, while the needle is held on a mobile arm, which gradually moves toward the centre of the record as it follows the spiral. Since the late 1910s, both sides of the record have usually been used for playing surfaces. By the early 1990s digital media such as the compact disc surpassed the analogue disc in popularity, but analogue discs continue to be made (in limited quantities) into the 21st century. (more...)
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June 7
[edit]Wikipedia down for most of the day. Article not cycled.
May 7
[edit]Batman is a fictional character, a comic book superhero created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1939. He first appeared in the title Detective Comics, and is currently the lead character of a number of comic books published by DC Comics. Batman and Superman are DC Comics' two most popular and recognizable characters. In most versions of the Batman mythos, Batman is the alter-ego of Bruce Wayne, a millionaire industrialist who was driven to fight crime after his parents were murdered by a mugger when he was a child. (more...)
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April 7
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Chariot racing was one of the most popular ancient Greek and Roman sports. It is unknown exactly when chariot racing began, but it may have been as old as chariots themselves. It is known from artistic evidence on pottery that the sport existed in the Mycenaean world, but the first literary reference to a chariot race is the one described by Homer in Book 23 of the Iliad. In Rome the main centre of chariot racing was the Circus Maximus in the valley between Palatine Hill and Aventine Hill. (more...)
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March 7
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Since its founding in 1949, the People's Republic of China has been led by the Communist Party of China. With over 1.2 billion people, it is the most populous country in the world. It is also the fourth-largest in size and has the second-highest gross domestic product (after the U.S.). The official language is Mandarin Chinese, making it the native language of more people than any other language on Earth. (more...)
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