Random Articles
Have a deep view into what people are curious about.
π Hwasong Concentration Camp
Hwasong concentration camp (ChosΕn'gΕl: νμ± μ 16νΈ κ΄λ¦¬μ, also spelled HwasΕng or Hwaseong) is a labor camp in North Korea for political prisoners. The official name is Kwan-li-so (Penal-labor colony) No. 16.
π Mississippi River Basin Model
The Mississippi River Basin Model Waterways Experiment Station, located near Clinton, Mississippi, was a large-scale hydraulic model of the entire Mississippi River basin, covering an area of 200 acres. The model was built from 1943 to 1966 and in operation from 1949 until 1973. By comparison, the better known San Francisco Bay Model covers 1.5 acres and the Chesapeake Bay Model covers 8 acres. The model is now derelict, but open to the public within Buddy Butts Park, Jackson.
Discussed on
- "Mississippi River Basin Model" | 2018-05-25 | 57 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Romanesco broccoli has a form naturally approximating a fractal
Romanesco broccoli (also known as Roman cauliflower, Broccolo Romanesco, Romanesque cauliflower, or simply Romanesco) is an edible flower bud of the species Brassica oleracea. First documented in Italy in the 16th century, it is chartreuse in color, and has a form naturally approximating a fractal. When compared to a traditional cauliflower, it has a firmer texture and delicate, nutty flavor.
Discussed on
- "Romanesco broccoli has a form naturally approximating a fractal" | 2020-12-28 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π BerkShares
BerkShares is a local currency that circulates in The Berkshires region of Massachusetts. It was launched on September 29, 2006 by BerkShares Inc., with research and development assistance from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics. The BerkShares website lists around 400 businesses in Berkshire County that accept the currency. Since launch, over 10 million BerkShares have been issued from participating branch offices of local banks (as of February 2020, 9 branches of 3 different banks). The bills were designed by John Isaacs and were printed by Excelsior Printing on special paper with incorporated security features from Crane & Co.. BerkShares are pegged with an exchange rate to the US dollar, but the Schumacher Center has discussed the possibility of pegging its value to a basket of local goods in order to insulate the local economy against volatility in the US economy.
Discussed on
- "BerkShares" | 2017-09-08 | 214 Upvotes 88 Comments
π Wojtek
Wojtek (1942 β 2 December 1963; Polish pronunciation:Β [ΛvΙjtΙk]; in English, sometimes spelled Voytek and pronounced as such) was a Syrian brown bear (Ursus arctos syriacus) bought, as a young cub, at a railway station in Hamadan, Iran, by Polish II Corps soldiers who had been evacuated from the Soviet Union. In order to provide for his rations and transportation, he was eventually enlisted officially as a soldier with the rank of private, and was subsequently promoted to corporal.
He accompanied the bulk of the II Corps to Italy, serving with the 22nd Artillery Supply Company. During the Battle of Monte Cassino, in Italy in 1944, Wojtek helped move crates of ammunition and became a celebrity with visiting Allied generals and statesmen. After the war, mustered out of the Polish Army, he was billeted and lived out the rest of his life at the Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland.
Discussed on
- "Wojtek" | 2022-03-27 | 22 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Mary Mallon
Mary Mallon (September 23, 1869 β November 11, 1938), also known as Typhoid Mary, was an Irish-born cook believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever, three of whom died, and the first person in the United States identified as an asymptomatic carrier of the disease, Salmonella typhi. Because she persisted in working as a cook, by which she exposed others to the disease, she was twice forcibly quarantined by authorities, eventually for the final two decades of her life. Mallon died after a total of nearly 30 years in isolation.
Discussed on
- "Mary Mallon" | 2021-06-14 | 48 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Muphry's Law
Muphry's law is an adage that states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." The name is a deliberate misspelling of "Murphy's law".
Names for variations on the principle have also been coined, usually in the context of online communication, including:
- Umhoefer's or UmhΓΆfer's rule: "Articles on writing are themselves badly written." Named after editor Joseph A. Umhoefer.
- Skitt's law: "Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself." Named after Skitt, a contributor to alt.usage.english on Usenet.
- Hartman's law of prescriptivist retaliation: "Any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror [sic]." Named after editor and writer Jed Hartman.
- The iron law of nitpicking: "You are never more likely to make a grammatical error than when correcting someone else's grammar." Coined by blogger Zeno.
- McKean's law: "Any correction of the speech or writing of others will contain at least one grammatical, spelling, or typographical error."
- Bell's first law of Usenet: "Flames of spelling and/or grammar will have spelling and/or grammatical errors." Named after Andrew Bell, a contributor to alt.sex on Usenet.
Further variations state that flaws in a printed ("Clark's document law") or published work ("Barker's proof") will only be discovered after it is printed and not during proofreading, and flaws such as spelling errors in a sent email will be discovered by the sender only during rereading from the "Sent" box.
Discussed on
- "Muphry's Law" | 2021-05-26 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Arthropod Head Problem
The (pan)arthropod head problem is a long-standing zoological dispute concerning the segmental composition of the heads of the various arthropod groups, and how they are evolutionarily related to each other. While the dispute has historically centered on the exact make-up of the insect head, it has been widened to include other living arthropods such as chelicerates, myriapods, crustaceans; and fossil forms, such as the many arthropods known from exceptionally preserved Cambrian faunas. While the topic has classically been based on insect embryology, in recent years a great deal of developmental molecular data has become available. Dozens of more or less distinct solutions to the problem, dating back to at least 1897, have been published, including several in the 2000s.
The arthropod head problem is popularly known as the endless dispute, the title of a famous paper on the subject by Jacob G. Rempel in 1975, referring to its seemingly intractable nature. Although some progress has been made since that time, the precise nature of especially the labrum and the pre-oral region of arthropods remain highly controversial.
Discussed on
- "Arthropod Head Problem" | 2023-05-13 | 60 Upvotes 22 Comments
π The Vulture and the Little Girl
The Vulture and the Little Girl, also known as The Struggling Girl, is a photograph by Kevin Carter which first appeared in The New York Times on 26 March 1993. It is a photograph of a frail famine-stricken boy, initially believed to be a girl, who had collapsed in the foreground with a hooded vulture eyeing him from nearby. The child was reported to be attempting to reach a United Nations feeding centre about a half mile away in Ayod, Sudan (now South Sudan), in March 1993, and to have survived the incident. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography award in 1994. Carter took his own life four months after winning the prize.
Discussed on
- "The Vulture and the Little Girl" | 2024-06-18 | 46 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Cippi of Melqart
The Cippi of Melqart are a pair of Phoenician marble cippi that were unearthed in Malta under undocumented circumstances and dated to the 2nd century BC. These are votive offerings to the god Melqart, and are inscribed in two languages, Ancient Greek and Phoenician, and in the two corresponding scripts, the Greek and the Phoenician alphabet. They were discovered in the late 17th century, and the identification of their inscription in a letter dated 1694 made them the first Phoenician writing to be identified and published in modern times. Because they present essentially the same text (with some minor differences), the cippi provided the key to the modern understanding of the Phoenician language. In 1758, the French scholar Jean-Jacques BarthΓ©lΓ©my relied on their inscription, which used 17 of the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet, to decipher the unknown language.
The tradition that the cippi were found in Marsaxlokk was only inferred by their dedication to Heracles, whose temple in Malta had long been identified with the remains at Tas-SilΔ‘. The Grand Master of the Order of the Knights Hospitaller, Fra Emmanuel de Rohan-Polduc, presented one of the cippi to the AcadΓ©mie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in 1782. This cippus is currently in the Louvre Museum in Paris, while the other rests in the National Museum of Archaeology in Valletta, Malta. The inscription is known as KAI 47.