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🔗 Environment 🔗 Automobiles 🔗 Environment/Green vehicle

The Flocken Elektrowagen is a four-wheeled electric car designed by Andreas Flocken (1845–1913), manufactured in 1888 by Maschinenfabrik A. Flocken in Coburg. It is regarded as the first real electric car.

🔗 Computing 🔗 Computing/Computer hardware 🔗 Computing/Early computers

In computer jargon, blinkenlights are diagnostic lights on front panels of old mainframe computers. More recently the term applies to status lights of modern network hardware (modems, network hubs, etc.). Blinkenlights disappeared from more recent computers for a number of reasons, the most important being the fact that with faster CPUs a human can no longer interpret the processes in the computer on the fly. Though more sophisticated UI mechanisms have since been developed, blinkenlights may still be present as additional status indicators and familiar skeuomorphs.

🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Fortifications 🔗 Military history/Cold War 🔗 Military history/Balkan military history 🔗 Albania 🔗 Military history/European military history

Concrete military bunkers are a ubiquitous sight in Albania, with an average of 5.7 bunkers for every square kilometer (14.7 per square mile). The bunkers (Albanian: bunkerët) were built during the Hoxhaist government led by the Leader Enver Hoxha from the 1960s to the 1980s, as the government fortified Albania by building more than 750,000 bunkers.

Hoxha's program of "bunkerization" (bunkerizimi) resulted in the construction of bunkers in every corner of the then-People's Socialist Republic of Albania, ranging from mountain passes to city streets. They were never used for their intended purpose during the years that Hoxha governed. The cost of constructing them was a drain on Albania's resources, diverting them away from dealing with the country's housing shortage and poor roads.

The bunkers were abandoned following the dissolution of the communist government in 1992. A few were used in the Insurrection of 1997 and the Kosovo War of 1999. Most are now derelict, though some have been reused for a variety of purposes, including residential accommodation, cafés, storehouses, and shelters for animals or the homeless.

🔗 France 🔗 Celts 🔗 Mythology

Ys (pronounced EESS), also spelled Is or Kêr-Is in Breton, and Ville d'Ys in French, is a mythical city on the coast of Brittany that was swallowed up by the ocean. Most versions of the legend place the city in the Baie de Douarnenez.

🔗 Spirits 🔗 Chicago

Jeppson's Malört is an American brand of bäsk liqueur, a type of brännvin flavored with anise or wormwood. Malört was introduced in Chicago in the 1930s and was long produced by the Carl Jeppson Company. In 2018, as its last employee was retiring, the brand and company name were sold to CH Distillery of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. Jeppson's Malört is named after Carl Jeppson, a Swedish immigrant who first distilled and popularized the liquor in Chicago. Malört (literally moth herb) is the Swedish word for wormwood, which is the key ingredient in bäsk. Malört is extremely low in thujone, a chemical once prevalent in absinthe and similar drinks.

Known for its extremely bitter taste, Malört has been described as "infamous" and "the worst booze ever". It can be found in some Chicago-area bars and liquor stores, and is growing in popularity, with sales of Malört shots increasing from 0.4 million in 2007 to 7.9 million in 2022. However, it is rare to find elsewhere in the United States.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Russia 🔗 Biography/sports and games 🔗 Russia/sports and games in Russia 🔗 Armenia 🔗 Underwater diving 🔗 Swimming

Shavarsh Vladimiri (Vladimirovich) Karapetyan (Armenian: Շավարշ Կարապետյան; born May 19, 1953) is a retired former Soviet finswimmer, best known for saving the lives of 20 people in a 1976 incident in Yerevan.

🔗 Medicine 🔗 Psychology

The Flynn effect is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century, named after researcher James Flynn (1934–2020). When intelligence quotient (IQ) tests are initially standardized using a sample of test-takers, by convention the average of the test results is set to 100 and their standard deviation is set to 15 or 16 IQ points. When IQ tests are revised, they are again standardized using a new sample of test-takers, usually born more recently than the first; the average result is set to 100. When the new test subjects take the older tests, in almost every case their average scores are significantly above 100.

Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For example, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008. Similar gains have been observed in many other countries in which IQ testing has long been widely used, including other Western European countries, as well as Japan and South Korea. Improvements have also been reported for semantic and episodic memory.

There are numerous proposed explanations of the Flynn effect, such as the rise in efficiency of education, along with skepticism concerning its implications. Some researchers have suggested the possibility of a mild reversal in the Flynn effect (i.e., a decline in IQ scores) in developed countries, beginning in the 1990s. In certain cases, this apparent reversal may be due to cultural changes rendering parts of intelligence tests obsolete. Meta-analyses indicate that, overall, the Flynn effect continues, either at the same rate, or at a slower rate in developed countries.

🔗 United States 🔗 Germany 🔗 Ethnic groups 🔗 United States/Texas

The Texas Wends or Wends of Texas are a group of people descended from a congregation of 558 Sorbian/Wendish people under the leadership and pastoral care of John Kilian (Sorbian languages: Jan Kilian, German: Johann Killian) who emigrated from Lusatia (part of modern-day Germany) to Texas in 1854. The term also refers to the other emigrations (and all descendants) occurring before and after this group. However, none came close to the size or importance of the Wendish culture in Texas.

🔗 Korea 🔗 Food and drink 🔗 Korea/one or more inactive working groups

A kimchi refrigerator is a refrigerator designed specifically to meet the storage requirements of kimchi and facilitate different fermentation processes. The kimchi refrigerator aims to be colder, with more consistent temperature, more humidity, and less moving air than a conventional refrigerator, providing the ideal environment for fermentation of kimchi. Some models may include features such as a UV Sterilizer.

In a consumer survey aimed at South Korean homemakers conducted by a top-ranking Korean media agency in 2004, the kimchi refrigerator was ranked first for most wanted household appliance.