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🔗 United States 🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Former countries 🔗 Haiti

The United States occupation of Haiti began on July 28, 1915, when 330 US Marines landed at Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank) convinced US President Woodrow Wilson to take control of the country's political and financial interests. The occupation took place following years of socioeconomic instability within Haiti that culminated with the lynching of Haitian President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam by a mob angered by his executions of political prisoners.

During the occupation, Haiti had three new presidents while the United States ruled as a military regime through martial law, led by Marines and the US-created Gendarmerie of Haiti. A corvée system of forced labor was used by the US for infrastructure projects, resulting in hundreds to thousands of deaths. The occupation ended the constitutional ban on foreign ownership of land, which had existed since the foundation of Haiti.

The occupation ended on August 1, 1934, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt reaffirmed an August 1933 disengagement agreement. The last contingent of Marines departed on August 15, 1934, after a formal transfer of authority to the Gendarmerie of Haiti.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/North American military history 🔗 Military history/United States military history 🔗 Books 🔗 Business

War Is a Racket is a speech and a 1935 short book by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler discusses how business interests commercially benefit from warfare. He had been appointed commanding officer of the Gendarmerie during the 1915–1934 United States occupation of Haiti.

After Butler retired from the US Marine Corps in October 1931, he made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War Is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a short book published in 1935. His work was condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement, which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, who wrote Butler’s oral autobiography, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".

🔗 United States 🔗 Lepidoptera

Greta oto is a species of brush-footed butterfly and member of the subfamily Danainae, tribe Ithomiini, and subtribe Godyridina. It is known by the common name glasswing butterfly for its transparent wings, which allow it to camouflage without extensive coloration. In Spanish-speaking regions, it may also be referred to as espejitos, meaning "little mirrors" because of its transparent wings. The butterfly is mainly found in Central America and northern regions of South America, with sightings as far north as Texas and as far south as Chile. While its wings appear delicate, the butterfly is able to carry up to 40 times its own weight. In addition to its wing physiology, the butterfly is known for behaviors such as long migrations and lekking. Greta oto closely resembles Greta andromica.

🔗 Mexico 🔗 Marine life 🔗 Panama 🔗 Nicaragua 🔗 Cephalopods 🔗 Guatemala

The larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO), or Harlequin octopus, is a species of octopus known for its intelligence and gregarious nature. The species was first documented in the 1970s and, being fairly new to scientific observation, has yet to be scientifically described. Because of this, LPSO has no official scientific name. Unlike other octopus species which are normally solitary, the LPSO has been reported as forming groups of up to 40 individuals. While most octopuses are cannibalistic and have to exercise extreme caution while mating, these octopuses mate with their ventral sides touching, pressing their beaks and suckers together in an intimate embrace. The LPSO has presented many behaviors that differ from most species of octopus, including intimate mating behaviors, formation of social communities, unusual hunting behavior, and the ability to reproduce multiple times throughout their life. The LPSO has been found to favor the tropical waters of the Eastern Pacific.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Astronomy 🔗 Geology 🔗 Bavaria

The Nördlinger Ries (German pronunciation: [ˈnœʁtlɪŋɐ ˈʁiːs]) is an impact crater and large circular depression in western Bavaria and eastern Baden-Württemberg. It is located north of the Danube in the district of Donau-Ries. The city of Nördlingen is located within the depression, about 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) south-west of its centre.

🔗 Mass surveillance 🔗 Computing 🔗 Film 🔗 Film/American cinema 🔗 Comedy 🔗 Computer Security 🔗 Computer Security/Computing

Sneakers is a 1992 American caper comedy film directed by Phil Alden Robinson from a screenplay co-written with Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker. It stars Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, Ben Kingsley, Mary McDonnell, River Phoenix, Sidney Poitier and David Strathairn. In the film, Martin (Redford) and his group of security specialists are hired to steal a black box but soon realize the job has nefarious and far-reaching consequences.

Lasker and Parkes first conceived Sneakers in 1981 during pre-production on WarGames (1983). Redford was the first actor attached to the project, and he helped recruit the remaining cast members, as well as Robinson. Several of the characters were inspired by members of the hacking and national defense communities, and the actors improvised several scenes during filming. Principal photography took place on location across California, with filming taking place in San Francisco, Oakland, Simi Valley, and the Courthouse Square backlot at Universal Studios Hollywood.

Sneakers was theatrically released in the United States on September 11, 1992, by Universal Pictures. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with praise for its humor, tone, and plot. It grossed $105.2 million worldwide, becoming the 20th-highest-grossing film of 1992.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Telecommunications 🔗 Computing/Networking

The Hayes command set (also known as the AT command set) is a specific command language originally developed by Dale Heatherington and Dennis Hayes for the Hayes Smartmodem in 1981.

The command set consists of a series of short text strings that can be combined to produce commands for operations such as dialing, hanging up, and changing the parameters of the connection. The vast majority of dial-up modems use the Hayes command set in numerous variations.

The command set covered only those operations supported by the earliest 300 bit/s modems. When new commands were required to control additional functionality in higher-speed modems, a variety of one-off standards emerged from each of the major vendors. These continued to share the basic command structure and syntax, but added any number of new commands using some sort of prefix character – & for Hayes and USRobotics, and \ for Microcom, for instance. Many of these were re-standardized on the Hayes extensions after the introduction of the SupraFAXModem 14400 and the market consolidation that followed.

The term Hayes compatible was and as of 2018 still is important within the industry.

🔗 Politics

A kakistocracy [kækɪ'stɑkrəsi] is a system of government that is run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens. The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century, but gained significant use in the first decades of the 20th century to criticize populist governments emerging in different democracies around the world.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Collections Care

M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc. and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Military aviation 🔗 Aviation/Aviation accident 🔗 Wiltshire 🔗 Military history/European military history 🔗 Military history/British military history

On 22 July 1966 Walter "Taffy" Holden, an engineer in command of No. 33 Maintenance Unit RAF with limited experience flying small single-engine trainer aircraft, inadvertently engaged the afterburner of a Mach 2.0-capable English Electric Lightning during ground testing. Unable to disengage the afterburner, Holden ran down the runway, narrowly missing a crossing fuel bowser and a de Havilland Comet taking off, before taking off himself. Flying without a helmet or canopy, the ejection seat disabled, and the landing gear locked down, Holden aborted his first two landing attempts. He landed on his third approach, striking the runway with the aircraft's tail as he adopted in his flare the attitude of a taildragger aircraft. The aircraft returned to service, and was subsequently acquired by the Imperial War Museum Duxford.