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π $100 Billion USD oops
The 2018 Samsung fat-finger error was a fat-finger error on April 8th 2018 in which an employee of Samsung Securities mistakenly distributed shares worth US$100,000,000,000 to employees. The company is the stock trading arm of the Samsung conglomerate and is engaged in financial services including securities and investment banking sectors primarily in Korea, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Hong Kong.
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- "$100 Billion USD oops" | 2018-12-14 | 18 Upvotes 18 Comments
π High Arctic relocation
The High Arctic relocation (French: La dΓ©localisation du Haut-Arctique, Inuktitut syllabics: αα¦αααα₯α α¦α α αα ααα¦ Inuktitut: Quttiktumut nuutauningit) took place during the Cold War in the 1950s, when 92 Inuit were moved by the Government of Canada to the High Arctic.
The relocation has been a source of controversy: on one hand being described as a humanitarian gesture to save the lives of starving indigenous people and enable them to continue a subsistence lifestyle; and on the other hand, said to be a forced migration instigated by the federal government to assert its sovereignty in the Far North by the use of "human flagpoles", in light of both the Cold War and the disputed territorial claims to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Both sides acknowledge that the relocated Inuit were not given sufficient support to prevent extreme privation during their first years after the move. The story was the subject of a book called The Long Exile, published by Melanie McGrath in 2006.
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- "High Arctic relocation" | 2017-11-11 | 68 Upvotes 7 Comments
π The Power Elite
The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen in modern times is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those three entities.
π Corpus Clock (Grasshopper Clock)
The Corpus Clock, also known as the Grasshopper clock, is a large sculptural clock at street level on the outside of the Taylor Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, in the United Kingdom, at the junction of Bene't Street and Trumpington Street, looking out over King's Parade. It was conceived and funded by John C. Taylor, an old member of the college.
It was officially unveiled to the public on 19 September 2008 by Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking. The clock was named one of Time's Best Inventions of 2008.
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- "Corpus Clock (Grasshopper Clock)" | 2021-06-02 | 112 Upvotes 32 Comments
π CMS Pipelines
CMS Pipelines implements the pipeline concept under the VM/CMS operating system. The programs in a pipeline operate on a sequential stream of records. A program writes records that are read by the next program in the pipeline. Any program can be combined with any other because reading and writing is done through a device independent interface.
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- "CMS Pipelines" | 2016-04-27 | 43 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Andreev Bay nuclear accident of 1982
The Andreev Bay nuclear accident took place at Soviet naval base 569 in February 1982. Andreev Bay is a radioactive waste repository, located 55Β km (34 mi) northwest of Murmansk and 60Β km (37 mi) from the Norwegian border on the western shore of the Zapadnaya Litsa (Kola Peninsula). The repository entered service in 1961. In February 1982, a nuclear accident occurred in which radioactive water was released from a pool in building #5. Cleanup of the accident took place from 1983 to 1989. About 700,000 tonnes (770,000 tons) of highly radioactive water leaked into the Barents Sea during that time period. About 1,000 people took part in the cleanup effort. Vladimir Konstantinovich Bulygin, who was in charge of the naval fleet's radiation accidents, received the Hero of the Soviet Union distinction for his work.
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- "Andreev Bay nuclear accident of 1982" | 2017-10-08 | 58 Upvotes 16 Comments
π 100 years ago today, the battle of Blair Mountain
The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest labor uprising in United States history and the largest armed uprising since the American Civil War. The conflict occurred in Logan County, West Virginia, as part of the Coal Wars, a series of early-20th-century labor disputes in Appalachia. Up to 100 people were killed, and many more arrested. The United Mine Workers saw major declines in membership, but the long-term publicity led to some improvements in working conditions.
For five days from late August to early September 1921, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers (called the Logan Defenders) who were backed by coal mine operators during the miners' attempt to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields when tensions rose between workers and mine management. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired and the United States Army, represented by the West Virginia Army National Guard led by McDowell County native William Eubanks, intervened by presidential order.
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- "100 years ago today, the battle of Blair Mountain" | 2021-08-25 | 11 Upvotes 1 Comments
π British Expedition to Abyssinia
The British Expedition to Abyssinia was a rescue mission and punitive expedition carried out in 1868 by the armed forces of the British Empire against the Ethiopian Empire. Emperor Tewodros II of Ethiopia, then often referred to by the anglicized name Theodore, imprisoned several missionaries and two representatives of the British government in an attempt to get the attention of the British government, which had decided against his requests for military assistance. The punitive expedition launched by the British in response required the transportation of a sizable military force hundreds of miles across mountainous terrain lacking any road system. The formidable obstacles to the action were overcome by the commander of the expedition, General Sir Robert Napier, who was victorious in every battle with the troops of Tewodros, captured the Ethiopian capital and rescued all the hostages. The expedition was widely hailed on its return for achieving all its objectives.
Harold G. Marcus described the action as "one of the most expensive affairs of honour in history."
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- "British Expedition to Abyssinia" | 2019-08-06 | 60 Upvotes 24 Comments
π List of probability distributions
Many probability distributions that are important in theory or applications have been given specific names.
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- "List of probability distributions" | 2013-05-25 | 47 Upvotes 36 Comments
π Bogdanov affair
The Bogdanov affair was an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics papers written by French twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov (alternately spelt Bogdanoff). These papers were published in reputable scientific journals, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for describing what occurred at and before the Big Bang.
The controversy began in 2002, with an allegation that the twins, celebrities in France for hosting science-themed TV shows, had obtained PhDs with nonsensical work. Rumours spread on Usenet newsgroups that their work was a deliberate hoax intended to target weaknesses in the peer review system that physics journals use to select papers for publication. While the Bogdanov brothers continued to defend the veracity of their work, the debate over whether or not it represented a contribution to physics spread from Usenet to many other Internet forums, eventually receiving coverage in the mainstream media. A Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) internal report later concluded that their theses had no scientific value.
The incident prompted criticism of the Bogdanovs' approach to science popularization, led to multiple lawsuits, and provoked reflection among physicists as to how and why the peer review system can fail.
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- "Bogdanov affair" | 2016-09-24 | 131 Upvotes 63 Comments