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December 17

1271 Avenue of the Americas is a 48-story skyscraper on Sixth Avenue, between 50th Street and 51st Street, in Midtown Manhattan, a neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Wallace Harrison of Harrison, Abramovitz, and Harris, the building was developed between 1956 and 1960 as part of Rockefeller Center. The building's eight-story base partially wraps around its 48-story main shaft. The facade comprises glass panels between limestone columns. The lobby has walls of white marble and stainless steel walls, and red-burgundy glass ceilings, with artwork by Josef Albers, Fritz Glarner, and Francis Brennan. The ground floor also includes storefronts. Each of the upper floors covers 28,000 sq ft (2,600 m²), with the offices arranged around the core. Construction started in May 1957, the building was topped out during November 1958, and the occupants took possession in late 1959. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the lobby as a city landmark in 2002. (Full article...)

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April 17

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (217 km/h), making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The hurricane caused great loss of life. The death toll has been estimated to be between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals. The number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780, and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. (more...)

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March 17

The geography of Ireland reflects its situation as an island in northwest Europe in the north Atlantic Ocean. The ocean is responsible for the rugged western coastline, along which are many islands, peninsulas and headlands. The main geographical feature of Ireland is low central plains surrounded by a ring of coastal mountains. There are a number of sizable lakes along Ireland's rivers, with Lough Neagh the largest in either Britain or Ireland. The island is bisected by the River Shannon, at 259 km (161 mi) with a 113 km (70 mi) estuary the longest river in either Britain or Ireland, which flows south from northwest County Cavan to meet the Atlantic just south of Limerick. The island of Ireland consists of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Located west of the island of Britain, it is approximately 53° north of the equator and 8° west of the Greenwich meridian. It has a total area of 84,116 km² (32,477 mi²). Ireland is separated from Britain by the Irish Sea and from mainland Europe by the Celtic Sea. (more...)

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February 17

A Khene player wearing sarong and pakama at the Ubon Candle Festival

Mor lam is an ancient Lao song form of Laos and Isan (Northeastern Thailand). Mor lam means expert song or expert singer, referring to the music or artist respectively. Traditionally mor lam was extemporaneous singing accompanied by the khene, a free reed mouth organ, but the modern form is most often composed and uses electrified instruments. Musically it is characterised by quick tempi and rapid delivery. As well as the usual theme of unrequited love, mor lam reflects the difficulties of life in rural Isan and Laos, leavened with wry humour. In its heartland performances are an essential part of festivals and ceremonies, while the music has gained a profile outside its native regions thanks to the spread of migrant workers, for whom it remains an important cultural link with home. (more...)

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January 17

In sociology, the term gender role denotes a set of behavioral norms. Gender role is a special case of the sociological concept of role. Society tries to impose these norms upon an individual through a process called socialization. During this process a person usually accepts these norms, acts according to them, and develops a matching sense of gender identity. To what degree an individual incorporates these norms into his or her behaviors and personality differs widely from one individual to another. In sexology, on the other hand, the term "gender role" describes an individual or socially prescribed set of behaviors and responsibilities. In essence, gender role comprises all the things that people do to express their individual gender identities. Gender roles are not norms that were established by some authority, but reflections of the changing habits and customs of concrete individuals in actual societies. (more...)

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December 17

A soda can stove is a homemade, ultra-light backpacking stove. The simple design is made entirely from soda pop cans and burns denatured alcohol. Countless variations exist. Pepsi cans are often used because they have a bottom shape that lends itself to securing the stove's inner wall. The stove weighs 0.4 oz (10 g) and will boil two cups of water in five minutes with two tablespoons of fuel. Total weight, including a windscreen/stand can be less than one ounce (30 g). Due to the low weight compared to commercial stoves and their fuel canisters, backpackers can save about one pound (450 g) of pack weight with this stove. This advantage may be lost on very long hiking trips, however, because the stove is less efficient and requires more fuel, especially when cooking for more than one person. (more...)

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November 17

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a naval battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought in the seas around the island of Leyte in the Philippines from October 23 to October 26, 1944. The Japanese intended to repel or destroy the Allied invasion of Leyte. Instead, the Allied navies inflicted a major defeat on the outnumbered Imperial Japanese Navy which finished it as a strategic force in the Pacific War. The battle is often considered to be the largest naval battle in history. Leyte Gulf was also the scene of the first use of kamikaze aircraft by the Japanese. The Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia was hit on 21 October, and organized suicide attacks by the "Special Attack Force" began on 25 October. (more...)

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October 17

An object which comes within the Roche limits is pulled apart

The Roche limit is the distance within which an object (typically a satellite in orbit) near a celestial body (typically a moon, planet or star) and held together only by its own gravity will start to disintegrate due to tidal forces exceeding the satellite's gravitational self-attraction. Within the Roche limit the net forces experienced by opposite ends of the satellite, gravity acting more strongly on the side closest to the body orbited and less strongly on the far side, are stronger than the force holding the satellite together, the satellite's own gravitational attraction. The term is named after Édouard Roche, the French astronomer who first discovered this theoretical limit in 1848. (more...)

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September 17

A Glass ball from the Vérrerie of Brehat in Brittany

In its pure form, glass is a transparent, relatively strong, hard-wearing, essentially inert, and biologically inactive material which can be formed with very smooth and impervious surfaces. These desirable properties lead to its very many uses. Glass is, however, brittle and will break into sharp shards. These properties can be modified, or even changed entirely, with the addition of other compounds. Glasses are uniform amorphous solid materials, usually produced when a suitably viscous molten material cools very rapidly, thereby not giving enough time for a regular crystal lattice to form. Glasses can be made from many materials, although only a few varieties are in common use. Common glass is mostly amorphous silicon dioxide, which is the same chemical compound as quartz, or, in its polycrystalline form, sand. (more...)

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September 6

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 17

Louis Mountbatten, First Governor-General of independent India

The Governor-General of India was the head of the British administration in India. The office was created in 1773, and gained complete authority over all of British India in 1833. In 1858, India came under the direct control of the British Crown, and the Governor-General acted as the Sovereign's representative. To reflect this role, the term "Viceroy" was informally applied; the title was abandoned when India became independent in 1947. The office of Governor-General continued to exist until India adopted a constitution in 1950. (more...)

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July 17

Statue of Charlemagne in Frankfurt

The Franks formed one of several west Germanic tribes who entered the late Roman Empire from Frisia as foederati and established a lasting realm in an area that covers part of today's France and Germany (Franconia), forming the historic kernel of both these modern countries. The Frankish realm underwent many partitions and repartitions; since the Franks divided their property among surviving sons, and lacked a broad sense of a res publica, they conceived of the realm as a large amount of private property. This practice explains in part the difficulty of describing precisely the dates and physical boundaries of any of the Frankish kingdoms and who ruled the various sections. (more...)

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June 17

Leet (or 31337, or 1337) is a cipher, or simply a novelty form of English spelling. It is characterized by the use of non-alphabet characters to stand for letters bearing a superficial resemblance, and by a number of quasi-standard spelling changes such as the substitution of "z" for final "s" and "x" for "(c)ks". Leet is traditionally used on the Internet and other online communities, such as bulletin board systems, to complement Internet slang or "chatspeak." Real hackers, as opposed to computer criminals, do not normally use leet due to its association with Internet users they dislike, pejoratively dubbed lamers or script kiddies. However, leet is a cultural phenomenon well-known amongst hackers, and is known and used (usually in the jocular) by many computer professionals because of this. (more...)

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May 17

Bob Dylan is regarded by some to be America's greatest popular songwriter. Much of his best known work is from the 1960s when his musical shadow was so large that he became a documentarian and reluctant figurehead of American unrest. More broadly, Dylan is credited with expanding the possible vocabulary of popular music, moving it beyond the traditional territory of boy-and-girl into the heady realms of politics, philosophy, and a kind of stream-of-consciousness absurdist humor that defies easy description. (more...)

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April 17

Asperger syndrome is a condition related to autism and commonly referred to as a form of "high-functioning" autism. The term was coined by Lorna Wing in a 1981 medical paper; she named it after Hans Asperger, an Austrian psychiatrist and pediatrician whose work was not internationally recognized until the 1990s. Non-autistics possess a comparatively sophisticated sense of other people's mental states. Autists do not have this ability, and the individual with Asperger's can be every bit as "mind-blind" as the person with profound classical autism. (more...)

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March 17

The end times are, in one version of Christian eschatology, a time of tribulation that will precede the Second Coming of Jesus, as is related in Bible prophecy such as the Book of Daniel, Book of Ezekiel, and Book of Revelation. Specifically, what is usually referred to as the 'end times' revolves around a cluster of beliefs in Christian millennialism. These beliefs typically include the ideas that the Biblical apocalypse is imminent and that various signs in current events are omens of Armageddon. (more...)

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