Popular Articles (Page 21)
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๐ Perpetual Stew
A perpetual stew, also known as hunter's pot or hunter's stew, is a pot into which whatever one can find is placed and cooked. The pot is never or rarely emptied all the way, and ingredients and liquid are replenished as necessary. The concept is often a common element in descriptions of medieval inns. Foods prepared in a perpetual stew have been described as being flavorful due to the manner in which the foodstuffs blend together, in which the flavor may improve with age.
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- "Perpetual Stew" | 2025-02-06 | 53 Upvotes 63 Comments
- "Perpetual Stew" | 2024-03-27 | 14 Upvotes 5 Comments
- "Perpetual Stew" | 2022-03-13 | 18 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "Perpetual Stew" | 2019-08-16 | 13 Upvotes 7 Comments
๐ Fan death
Fan death is a widely held belief in Korean culture, where it is thought that running an electric fan in a closed room with unopened or no windows will prove fatal. Despite no concrete evidence to support the concept, belief in fan death persists to this day in Korea, and also to a lesser extent in Japan and Russia.
Discussed on
- "Fan Death" | 2021-01-12 | 30 Upvotes 11 Comments
- "Fan death" | 2018-11-12 | 52 Upvotes 48 Comments
- "Fan death" | 2018-06-11 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Fan death" | 2017-09-28 | 20 Upvotes 1 Comments
๐ Preferred number
In industrial design, preferred numbers (also called preferred values or preferred series) are standard guidelines for choosing exact product dimensions within a given set of constraints. Product developers must choose numerous lengths, distances, diameters, volumes, and other characteristic quantities. While all of these choices are constrained by considerations of functionality, usability, compatibility, safety or cost, there usually remains considerable leeway in the exact choice for many dimensions.
Preferred numbers serve two purposes:
- Using them increases the probability of compatibility between objects designed at different times by different people. In other words, it is one tactic among many in standardization, whether within a company or within an industry, and it is usually desirable in industrial contexts (unless the goal is vendor lock-in or planned obsolescence)
- They are chosen such that when a product is manufactured in many different sizes, these will end up roughly equally spaced on a logarithmic scale. They therefore help to minimize the number of different sizes that need to be manufactured or kept in stock.
Preferred numbers represent preferences of simple numbers (such as 1, 2, and 5) multiplied by the powers of a convenient basis, usually 10.
Discussed on
- "Preferred number" | 2015-07-30 | 272 Upvotes 40 Comments
- "Preferred number" | 2013-11-08 | 140 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ The Dyatlov Pass Incident
The Dyatlov Pass incident (Russian: ะะธะฑะตะปั ัััะณััะฟะฟั ะััะปะพะฒะฐ) was an event where nine Russian hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains between 1 and 2 February 1959, in uncertain circumstances. The experienced trekking group, who were all from the Ural Polytechnical Institute, had established a camp on the slopes of Kholat Syakhl, in an area now named in honor of the group's leader, Igor Dyatlov. During the night, something caused them to tear their way out of their tents and flee the campsite, all while inadequately dressed for the heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures.
After the group's bodies were discovered, an investigation by Soviet authorities determined that six had died from hypothermia while the other three showed signs of physical trauma. One victim had a fractured skull; two others had major chest fractures and the body of one of the group was missing both its eyes. One of the victims was missing a tongue. The investigation concluded that a "compelling natural force" had caused the deaths. Numerous theories have been put forward to account for the unexplained deaths, including animal attacks, hypothermia, avalanche, katabatic winds, infrasound-induced panic, military involvement, or some combination of these.
Discussed on
- "The Dyatlov Pass Incident" | 2019-12-25 | 52 Upvotes 16 Comments
- "Dyatlov Pass Incident" | 2016-06-03 | 259 Upvotes 137 Comments
๐ Ant mill
An ant mill is an observed phenomenon in which a group of army ants are separated from the main foraging party, lose the pheromone track and begin to follow one another, forming a continuously rotating circle, commonly known as a "death spiral" because the ants might eventually die of exhaustion. It has been reproduced in laboratories and has been produced in ant colony simulations. The phenomenon is a side effect of the self-organizing structure of ant colonies. Each ant follows the ant in front of it, which works until a slight deviation begins to occur, typically by an environmental trigger, and an ant mill forms. An ant mill was first described in 1921 by William Beebe, who observed a mill 1200ย ft (~370 m) in circumference. It took each ant 2.5 hours to make one revolution. Similar phenomena have been noted in processionary caterpillars and fish.
Discussed on
- "Ant Mill" | 2026-03-22 | 42 Upvotes 6 Comments
- "Ant mill" | 2022-01-22 | 251 Upvotes 154 Comments
๐ Chicken Hypnotism
A chicken can be hypnotized, or put into a trance, by holding its head down against the ground, and drawing a line along the ground with a stick or a finger, starting at the beak and extending straight outward in front of the chicken. If the chicken is hypnotized in this manner, it will continue to stare at the line, remaining immobile for as long as 30 minutes. Other methods of inducing this state are also known. Ethologists refer to this state as 'tonic immobility' i.e. a natural state of semi-paralysis that some animals enter when presented with a threat, which is probably a defensive mechanism intended to feign death, albeit rather poorly.
The first known written reference for this method came in 1646, in Mirabele Experimentum de Imaginatione Gallinae by Athanasius Kircher in Rome.
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- "Chicken Hypnotism" | 2023-11-30 | 54 Upvotes 35 Comments
- "Chicken Hypnotism" | 2020-12-21 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Chicken Hypnotism" | 2019-08-25 | 153 Upvotes 47 Comments
๐ Plankalkรผl
Plankalkรผl (German pronunciation: [หplaหnkalkyหl]) is a programming language designed for engineering purposes by Konrad Zuse between 1942 and 1945. It was the first high-level programming language to be designed for a computer.
Kalkรผl is the German term for a formal systemโas in Hilbert-Kalkรผl, the original name for the Hilbert-style deduction systemโso Plankalkรผl refers to a formal system for planning.
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- "Plankalkรผl" | 2023-03-07 | 226 Upvotes 47 Comments
- "Plankalkรผl" | 2016-01-15 | 56 Upvotes 14 Comments
๐ WikiProject AI Cleanup
Welcome to WikiProject AI Cleanupโa collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly written AI-generated content on Wikipedia. If you would like to help, add yourself as a participant in the project, inquire on the talk page, and see the to-do list.
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- "Wikipedia: WikiProject AI Cleanup" | 2026-01-19 | 235 Upvotes 93 Comments
- "WikiProject AI Cleanup" | 2024-10-09 | 10 Upvotes 2 Comments
๐ Hacker News
Hacker News is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by Paul Graham's investment fund and startup incubator, Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
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- "Mobile Wikipedia looks more beautiful than desktop" | 2014-07-24 | 20 Upvotes 17 Comments
- "Wikipedia blackout notice now on all English Wiki articles." | 2012-01-17 | 61 Upvotes 33 Comments
- "Hacker News" | 2009-04-28 | 49 Upvotes 46 Comments
๐ Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident
The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17 Flying Fortress (named "Ye Olde Pub") was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber but did not do so. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 50 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008.
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- "Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident (1943)" | 2025-03-27 | 66 Upvotes 7 Comments
- "Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler Incident" | 2016-06-05 | 103 Upvotes 25 Comments
- "Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident" | 2011-11-26 | 19 Upvotes 4 Comments