The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus dates to the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt. It was copied by the scribe Ahmes (i.e., Ahmose; Ahmes is an older transcription favoured by historians of mathematics), from a now-lost text from the reign of king Amenemhat III (12th dynasty). Written in the hieratic script, this Egyptian manuscript is 33 cm (13 in) tall and consists of multiple parts which in total make it over 5 m (16 ft) long. The papyrus began to be transliterated and mathematically translated in the late 19th century. The mathematical translation aspect remains incomplete in several respects. The document is dated to Year 33 of the Hyksos king Apophis and also contains a separate later historical note on its verso likely dating from the period ("Year 11") of his successor, Khamudi.
In the opening paragraphs of the papyrus, Ahmes presents the papyrus as giving "Accurate reckoning for inquiring into things, and the knowledge of all things, mysteries ... all secrets". He continues with:
This book was copied in regnal year 33, month 4 of Akhet, under the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Awserre, given life, from an ancient copy made in the time of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Nimaatre. The scribe Ahmose writes this copy.
Several books and articles about the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus have been published, and a handful of these stand out. The Rhind Papyrus was published in 1923 by Peet and contains a discussion of the text that followed Griffith's Book I, II and III outline. Chace published a compendium in 1927–29 which included photographs of the text. A more recent overview of the Rhind Papyrus was published in 1987 by Robins and Shute.
The Mecca Defence Alliance, formerly the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, also known as the Mecca Pact or Makkah Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance in the Muslim world that was signed into force by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey on 7 August 2026. It builds upon the earlier Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement signed between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on 17 September 2025 to include Turkey. The pact's ratification was officially announced amidst the 2026 Iran war. The text has not been released.
The Mecca Defence Alliance enshrines a collective security arrangement modelled on Article 5 of NATO, with its official announcement stating that "any armed attack against any one of the three states shall be regarded as an attack against them all." The trilateral pact has been described by Steven A. Cook as a "major change" in Middle East geopolitics and the first institutional arrangement of its kind in the region.
Walter Marvin Koenig (; September 14, 1936 – October 25, 2026) was an American actor and screenwriter. He began acting professionally in the mid-1960s and quickly rose to prominence for his supporting role as Ensign Pavel Chekov in Star Trek (1967–1969). He went on to reprise this role in all six original-cast Star Trek films and in Star Trek: Generations (1994). He also acted in several other series and films including Goodbye, Raggedy Ann (1971), The Questor Tapes (1974), and Babylon 5 (1993). As a screenwriter, Koenig worked on Land of the Lost (1974), Family (1976), What Really Happened to the Class of '65? (1977) and The Powers of Matthew Star (1982), and wrote several books.
The tapestry (dated to about 834AD) is 16 to 23 centimeters in width, but the full length is unknown. The tapestry is filled with a large assortment of human and animal figures with varying interpretations. It is made from wool, silk, and flax.
The fragments were found in 1904 in Norway inside of a well-preserved Viking ship, along with numerous other grave goods and two female bodies.
English spelling began to become standardized in the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Great Vowel Shift is the major reason English spellings now often considerably deviate from how they represent pronunciations. The Great Vowel Shift was first studied by Otto Jespersen (1860–1943), a Danish linguist and Anglicist, who coined the term.
Ui-te-Rangiora or Hui Te Rangiora is a legendary Polynesian navigator who sailed to the Southern Ocean and is sometimes claimed to have discovered Antarctica in the early seventh century on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea. The legend originates from the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands archipelago, but this island was not populated until the tenth century.
According to a 19th-century interpretation of Rarotongan legend by Stephenson Percy Smith, Ui-te-Rangiora and his crew on the vessel Te Ivi o Atea sailed south and encountered an area he called Tai-uka-a-pia (interpreted by Smith as a frozen sea), "a foggy, misty, and dark place not seen by the sun" where rocks grow out of the sea. Smith interpreted this as referring to the ice floes and icebergs in the Southern Ocean, due to the ice floes being similar to arrowroot powder (referring to Tacca leontopetaloides, Polynesian arrowroot). This has led others to conclude that Ui-te-Rangiora was the first person to discover Antarctica.
The interpretation of Ui-te-Rangiora reaching Antarctic waters has been questioned. Anderson et al. note that there is no mention of an Antarctic voyage in the original legend, and that it is first mentioned in the story of his descendant Te Aru Tanga Nuku, who wished to "behold all the wonderful things on the ocean" seen by his ancestor. Anthropologist Te Rangi Hīroa assessed the legend as having "so much post-European information" that it cannot be accepted as accurate and ancient. As the Cook Islands Māori language had no pre-European word for 'ice' or 'frozen', interpreting Tai-uka-a-pia as a frozen sea may be a mistranslation, and an alternate interpretation is "sea covered with foam like arrowroot". New Zealand iwi Ngāi Tahu considers the legend to be a mythic origin story rather than a historical voyaging narrative.
It has been suggested that the folklore of the islanders reflected an actual event, namely a sea area covered with a dense layer of floating pieces of pumice resulting from some undersea volcanic eruption. Such a 25 000 km2 sea surface was sighted in 2012 in the area of Kermadec Islands, with a 60 cm thick bright white layer resembling a shelf glacier.
The book was rejected by the Fabian Society and then by 11 publishers before being accepted by Thames and Hudson.
Meritocracy is the political philosophy in which political influence and power is concentrated in those with "merit", according to the intellectual talent and achievement of the individual. The word is formed by combining the Latin root "mereō" and Ancient Greek suffix "cracy". In his essay, Michael Young describes and ridicules such a society, the selective education system that was the tripartite system, and the philosophy in general. Michael Young is widely credited with coining the term "meritocracy" in the essay, but it was first used (pejoratively) by sociologist Alan Fox in 1956.
The word was adopted into the English language without the negative connotations that Young intended it to have and was embraced by supporters of the philosophy. In a 2001 article in The Guardian, Down with Meritocracy, Young expressed his disappointment in the embrace of this word and philosophy by the Labour Party under Tony Blair, stating:
It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.
Journalist and writer Paul Barker points out that "irony is a dangerous freight to carry" and suggests that in the 1960s and 1970s it was read "as a simple attack on the rampant meritocrats", whereas he suggests it should be read "as sociological analysis in the form of satire".
In 2006, The Rise and Rise of Meritocracy, a collection of essays marking 50 years since the coining of the term, commented that The Rise of the Meritocracy "was intended to help turn Labour away from meritocracy, by reminding it of the importance of communitarian values. Curiously, though, half a century later we have a Labour government declaring the promotion of meritocracy as one its primary objectives."
In 2018, to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the publication of The Rise of the Meritocracy, The Young Foundation, named after Michael Young, launched Beyond Meritocracy, a competition to answer the questions "What lies beyond Meritocracy?" and "What might be the equation for the 21st century?" The Rise of the Meritocracy did not say what came after the challenge to meritocracy by the Populists that it predicted in 2034. Following the rise of "populists" in 2016 such as Donald Trump in the USA and Nigel Farage in the UK, some of the essays suggested that the predictions in the book were proving prescient, and coming earlier than predicted.
Several systems of hatchings were developed during the Renaissance as an alternative to tricking, the earlier method of indicating heraldic tinctures by use of written abbreviations. The present day hatching system was developed during the 1630s by Silvester Petra Sancta and Marcus Vulson de la Colombière. Some earlier hatching methods were also developed, but did not come into wide use.
Tricking is an alternative method which has the same purpose as hatching.
A shit flow diagram (also called excreta flow diagram or SFD) is a high level technical drawing used to display how excreta moves through a location, and functions as a tool to identify where improvements are needed. The diagram has a particular focus on treatment of the waste, and its final disposal or use. SFDs are most often used in developing countries.
Most stick charts were made from the midribs of coconut fronds that were tied together to form an open framework. Island locations were represented by shells tied to the framework, or by the lashed junction of two or more sticks. The threads represented prevailing ocean surface wave-crests and directions they took as they approached islands and met other similar wave-crests formed by the ebb and flow of breakers. Individual charts varied so much in form and interpretation that the individual navigator who made the chart was the only person who could fully interpret and use it. The use of stick charts ended after World War II driven in part by new electronic technologies, which made navigation more accessible, the reduction in canoe travel between islands, and the repeated nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll and other islands, which led to widespread destruction by the US government of Marshall Island culture and stability.
North Korea has several restaurants serving pizza. Most people in the country cannot afford pizza, and it is mostly available for the elite. Pyongyang has five restaurants that serve pizza, including Pizza Restaurant on Kwangbok Street and Italy Pizza on Mirae Scientists Street. Kim Jong Il hired Italian chefs to train North Koreans in pizza making and introduced it to the country.
Takeshi's Castle (Japanese: 風雲!たけし城, Hepburn: Fūun! Takeshi-jō) is a Japanese game show that aired between 1986 and 1990 on the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS). It features the Japanese comedian Takeshi Kitano (also known as Beat Takeshi) as a count who sets up difficult physical challenges that players (or a volunteer army) must overcome in order to reach him in his castle.
The show became a cult television hit around the world. It was highly influential in global popular culture, inspiring a genre of game shows involving physical challenges and painful entertainment, as well as other media. On 2 April 2005, a special live "revival" was broadcast for TBS's 50th anniversary celebrations. A reboot of the show was released on Amazon Prime Video on 21 April 2023. German-Japanese actor Subaru Kimura joined the returning Tani as co-leader of the contestants.
To date, five manufacturers have pleaded guilty to their involvement in an international price-fixing conspiracy between July 1, 1998, and June 15, 2002, including Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, Samsung, and Elpida.