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🔗 Science

The Ortega hypothesis holds that average or mediocre scientists contribute substantially to the advancement of science. According to this hypothesis, scientific progress occurs mainly by the accumulation of a mass of modest, narrowly specialized intellectual contributions. On this view, major breakthroughs draw heavily upon a large body of minor and little-known work, without which the major advances could not happen.

🔗 Computer science

Algorithm X is an algorithm for solving the exact cover problem. It is a straightforward recursive, nondeterministic, depth-first, backtracking algorithm used by Donald Knuth to demonstrate an efficient implementation called DLX, which uses the dancing links technique.

🔗 Biography 🔗 England 🔗 Disability 🔗 Biography/arts and entertainment

Jeffrey Hudson (1619 – c. 1682) was a court dwarf of the English queen Henrietta Maria of France. He was famous as the "Queen's dwarf" and "Lord Minimus" and was considered one of the "wonders of the age" because of his extreme but well-proportioned smallness. He fought with the Royalists in the English Civil War and fled with the Queen to France but was expelled from her court when he killed a man in a duel. He was captured by Barbary pirates and spent 25 years enslaved in North Africa before being ransomed back to England.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Energy 🔗 Microsoft

The data furnace is a method of heating residential homes or offices by running computers in them, which release considerable amounts of waste heat. Data furnaces can theoretically be cheaper than storing computers in huge data centers because the higher cost of electricity in residential areas (when compared to industrial zones) can be offset by charging the home owner for the heat that the data center gives off. Some large companies that store and process thousands of gigabytes of data believe that data furnaces could be cheaper because there would be little to no overhead costs. The cost of a traditional data storage center is up to around $400 per server, whereas the overhead cost per server of a home data furnace is around $10. Individuals had already begun using computers as a heat source by 2011.

🔗 Marine life 🔗 Animals

Iridogorgia chewbacca is a species of deep-sea bamboo coral in the family Chrysogorgiidae. Named after the Star Wars character Chewbacca due to its long, flexible, "hairy" branches that evoke the Wookiee's fur, the species was formally described in 2025. It inhabits rocky seafloors in the tropical western Pacific Ocean at depths exceeding 400 meters, where it forms solitary colonies up to 1.2 meters tall.

🔗 Finance & Investment

A credit card imprinter, colloquially known as a ZipZap machine, click-clack machine or Knuckle Buster, is a manual device that was used by merchants to record payment card transactions before the advent of payment terminals.

The device works by placing the customer’s credit card into a bed in the machine, then layering carbon paper forms over the card. A bar is slid back and forth over the paper to create an impression of the embossed card data and the merchant information on the imprinter. The customer signs these paper forms, with one copy as the customer receipt and the other kept by the merchant.

🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 History 🔗 United Kingdom

The modern capabilities and legal framework for mass surveillance in the United Kingdom developed under successive governments of the United Kingdom since the late 20th century.

🔗 Russia 🔗 Architecture 🔗 Russia/politics and law of Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Russia/visual arts in Russia

The Amber Room (Russian: Янтарная комната, romanized: Yantarnaya Komnata, German: Bernsteinzimmer) was a chamber decorated in amber panels backed with gold leaf and mirrors, located in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg.

Constructed in the 18th century in Prussia, the room was dismantled and eventually disappeared during World War II. Before its loss, it was considered an "Eighth Wonder of the World". A reconstruction was made, starting in 1979 and completed and installed in the Catherine Palace in 2003.

The Amber Room was intended in 1701 for the Charlottenburg Palace, in Berlin, Prussia, but was eventually installed at the Berlin City Palace. It was designed by German baroque sculptor Andreas Schlüter and Danish amber craftsman Gottfried Wolfram. Schlüter and Wolfram worked on the room until 1707, when work was continued by amber masters Gottfried Turau and Ernst Schacht from Danzig (Gdańsk).

It remained in Berlin until 1716, when it was given by the Prussian King Frederick William I to his ally Tsar Peter the Great of the Russian Empire. In Russia, the room was installed in the Catherine Palace. After expansion and several renovations, it covered more than 55 square metres (590 ft²) and contained over 6 tonnes (13,000 lb) of amber.

The Amber Room was looted during World War II by the Army Group North of Nazi Germany, and taken to Königsberg for reconstruction and display. Some time in early 1944, with Allied forces closing in on Germany, the room was disassembled and crated for storage in the Castle basement. Königsberg was destroyed by Allied bombers in August 1944 and documentation of the room location ends there. Its eventual fate and current whereabouts, if it survives, remain a mystery. In 1979, the decision was taken to create a reconstructed Amber Room at the Catherine Palace in Pushkin. After decades of work by Russian craftsmen and donations from Germany, it was completed and inaugurated in 2003.

🔗 History of Science 🔗 Sweden

Ytterby (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈʏ̂tːɛrˌbyː]) is a village on the Swedish island of Resarö, in Vaxholm Municipality in the Stockholm archipelago. Today the residential area is dominated by suburban homes.

The Swedish name of the village translates literally into "outer village". Ytterby is the single richest source of elemental discoveries in the world; the chemical elements yttrium (Y), terbium (Tb), erbium (Er), and ytterbium (Yb) are all named after Ytterby, and the elements holmium (Ho), scandium (Sc), thulium (Tm), tantalum (Ta), and gadolinium (Gd) were also first discovered there.

Local roads connect Ytterby to county road 274 and hence the mainland. Except for the winter months, passenger ships of the Waxholmsbolaget call at a pier in Ytterby, providing a connection to Vaxholm town and Stockholm. Ytterby is as well served by several local bus lines of the north east SL district, connecting the area directly to Stockholms Östra station.

🔗 Human rights 🔗 Russia 🔗 Death 🔗 Iran 🔗 Discrimination 🔗 Turkey 🔗 Ethnic groups 🔗 Russia/politics and law of Russia 🔗 Russia/history of Russia 🔗 Caucasia 🔗 Crime and Criminal Biography 🔗 Abkhazia

The Circassian genocide, or Tsitsekun, was the systematic mass killing, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement of between 95% and 97% of the Circassian people during the final stages of the Russian invasion of Circassia in the 19th century. It resulted in the deaths of between 1,000,000 and 1.5 million and the destruction of Circassia, which was then annexed by the Russian Empire. Those planned for extermination were mainly the Circassians, who are predominantly Muslims, but other ethnic groups in the Caucasus were also affected, as part of the Caucasian War. The Imperial Russian Army also impaled their victims and tore open the bellies of pregnant women to intimidate the Circassians and devastate their morale. Many Russian generals, such as Grigory Zass, described the Circassians as a "lowly race" to justify and glorify their wholesale slaughter and their use as human test subjects in unethical scientific experiments. Russian soldiers were also permitted to rape Circassian women.

The native Circassian population was largely decimated or expelled to the Ottoman Empire. Only those who accepted Russification and made agreements with Russian troops, were spared. Starvation was used as a tool of war against Circassian villages, many of which were subsequently burned down. Russian writer Leo Tolstoy reported that Russian soldiers attacked village houses at night. British diplomat Gifford Palgrave, stated that "their only crime was not being Russian." Seeking military intervention against Russia, Circassian officials sent "A Petition from Circassian leaders to Her Majesty Queen Victoria" in 1864, but were unsuccessful in their attempt to solicit aid from the British Empire. That same year, the Imperial Russian Army launched a campaign of mass deportation of Circassia's surviving population. By 1867, a large portion of the Circassians were expelled. Many died from epidemics or starvation. Some were reportedly eaten by dogs after their death, while others died when their ships sank during storms of black sea.

Most sources state that as little as 3% of Circassia's population remained after the genocide and that as many as 1.5 million people were forced to flee in total, though only around half of them survived the journey. Ottoman archives show the intake of more than a million immigrants from the Caucasus by 1879, with nearly half of them having been found dying on the shores of the Black Sea as a result of disease. Presuming that these statistics are accurate, Russia's military campaign in Circassia constitutes the single largest genocide of the 19th century. Russian records, in confirmation of the Ottoman archives, documented the presence of only 106,798 Circassians in the Caucasus on the approach to the 20th century. Other estimates by Russian historiographers are even lower, ranging from 40,400 to 65,900. The Russian Empire census, conducted in 1897, reported the presence of 150,000 Circassians in the conquered region.

Classified Russian Imperial archives in Georgia were opened to historians by the Georgian government, which revealed previously unknown information regarding Russian actions. Following this, on May 20, 2011, Georgia formally recognized the Circassian genocide. Ukraine recognized the Circassian genocide on 9 January 2025, following Circassian appeals in June 2024. The city of Wayne, New Jersey in the United States and the East Turkistan Exile Government have also officially recognized the Circassian genocide. On February 7, 1992, the Kabardino-Balkarian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic decided to condemn the Circassian Genocide. On May 12, 1994, the Republic of Kabardino-Balkaria and on April 29, 1996, the Republic of Adygea submitted applications to the State Duma of the Russian Federation for the recognition of the Circassian Genocide. In October 2006, 20+ Circassian associations appealed to the European Parliament to recognize the Circassian Genocide. In November 2006, Circassian associations in the Republics of Adygea, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia appealed to Russian president Vladimir Putin to recognize the Circassian Genocide. The Russian Federation classifies the events in Circassia as a mass migration (Russian: Черкесское мухаджирство, lit. 'Circassian migrationism') and denies that a genocide took place. 21 May is observed annually as the Circassian Day of Mourning, which consists of ceremonies and marches in memory of the victims and, sometimes, protests against the Russian government. Today, the Circassian diaspora is primarily concentrated in Turkey and Jordan, with some 750,000 living in Russia's North Caucasus Economic Region.