Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 Wiltshire

The Salisbury cathedral clock is a large iron-framed tower clock without a dial, in Salisbury Cathedral, England. Supposedly dating from about 1386, it is a well-preserved example of the earliest type of mechanical clock, called verge and foliot clocks, and is said to be the oldest working clock in the world, although similar claims are made for other clocks. Previously in a bell-tower which was demolished in 1790, the clock was restored to working condition in 1956 and is on display in the North nave aisle of the cathedral, close to the West front.

🔗 Apple Inc. 🔗 Computing

The term bozo bit has been used in two contexts. Initially a weak copy protection system in the 1980s Apple classic Mac OS, the term "flipping the bozo bit" was later reused to describe a decision to ignore a person's input. It is a whimsical term, possibly derived from the classic children's comedy character, Bozo the Clown.

🔗 Meteorology 🔗 Meteorology/weather data, products and instrumentation

The tempest prognosticator, also known as the leech barometer, is a 19th-century invention by George Merryweather in which leeches are used in a barometer. The twelve leeches are kept in small bottles inside the device; when they become agitated by an approaching storm they attempt to climb out of the bottles and trigger a small hammer which strikes a bell. The likelihood of a storm is indicated by the number of times the bell is struck.

🔗 Soviet Union 🔗 Spaceflight 🔗 Solar System

The Vega program (Cyrillic: ВеГа) was a series of Venus missions that also took advantage of the appearance of comet 1P/Halley in 1986. Vega 1 and Vega 2 were uncrewed spacecraft launched in a cooperative effort among the Soviet Union (who also provided the spacecraft and launch vehicle) and Austria, Bulgaria, France, Hungary, the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Federal Republic of Germany in December 1984. They had a two-part mission to investigate Venus and also flyby Halley's Comet.

The flyby of Halley's Comet had been a late mission change in the Venera program following on from the cancellation of the American Halley mission in 1981. A later Venera mission was canceled and the Venus part of the Vega 1 mission was reduced. Because of this, the craft was designated VeGa, a contraction of Venera and Gallei (Венера and Галлея respectively, the Russian words for "Venus" and "Halley"). The spacecraft design was based on the previous Venera 9 and Venera 10 missions.

The two spacecraft were launched on 15 and 21 December 1984, respectively. With their redesignated dual missions, the Vega probes became part of the Halley Armada, a group of space probes that studied Halley's Comet during its 1985/1986 perihelion.

🔗 Aviation 🔗 Canada 🔗 Aviation/aircraft 🔗 Amateur radio 🔗 Canada/Alberta

Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio (BEAR) is a series of Canadian-based amateur radio high-altitude balloon experiments by a group of amateur radio operators and experimenters from Sherwood Park and Edmonton, Alberta. The experiments started in the year 2000 and continued with BEAR-9 in 2012 reaching 36,010 metres (118,140 ft).

The balloons are made of latex filled with either helium or hydrogen. All of the BEAR payloads carry a tracking system comprising a GPS receiver, an APRS encoder, and a radio transmitter module. Other experimental payload modules include an Amateur Radio crossband repeater, and a digital camera all of which is contained within an insulated foam box suspended below the balloon. A parachute recovery system is automatically deployed when the balloon bursts at altitude.

🔗 United States

🔗 Marine life 🔗 Animals

The Venus' flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum) is a glass sponge in the phylum Porifera. It is a marine sponge found in the deep waters of the Pacific ocean. As other glass sponges, they build their skeletons out of silica, which is of great interest in materials science as they do not require heat to form their glass latices, which in some ways makes their properties superior to manufactured fiber optics. As other sponges, they feed by filtering sea water to capture plankton.

The sponges are often found to house glass sponge shrimp, usually a breeding pair, whom are typically unable to exit the sponge's lattice due to their size. Consequently, they live in and around these sponges, where the shrimp perform a mutuallistic relationship with the sponge until they die. This may have influenced the adoption of the sponge as a symbol of undying love in Japan, where the skeletons of these sponges are presented as nuptial gifts.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Military history 🔗 Military history/Maritime warfare 🔗 Military history/World War II 🔗 Military history/German military history 🔗 Military history/European military history

German submarine U-1206 was a Type VIIC U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II. She was laid down on 12 June 1943 at F. Schichau GmbH in Danzig and went into service on 16 March 1944 before sinking a year later, in April 1945. The boat's emblem was a white stork on a black shield with green beak and legs.

🔗 Computing

The Alternate Instruction Set (AIS) is a second 32-bit instruction set architecture found in some x86 CPUs made by VIA Technologies. On these VIA C3 processors, the second hidden processor mode is accessed by executing the x86 instruction ALTINST (0F 3F). If AIS mode has been enabled, the processor will perform a JMP EAX and begin executing AIS instructions at the address of the EAX register. Using AIS allows native access to the Centaur Technology-designed RISC core inside the processor.

🔗 Computing

A lace card is a punched card with all holes punched (also called a whoopee card, ventilator card, flyswatter card, or IBM doily). They were mainly used as practical jokes to cause disruption in card readers. Card readers tended to jam when a lace card was inserted, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying to produce cards with all holes punched, owing to power-supply problems. When a lace card was fed through the reader, a card knife or card saw (a flat tool used with punched card readers and card punches) was needed to clear the jam.