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๐ An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms โ 723 CE
Wang ocheonchukguk jeon (Korean pronunciation:ย [waหลotษสฐสntษสฐukkอuktษอสn]; pinyin: wวng wว tiฤnzhรบ guรณ zhuร n; "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms") is a travelogue by Buddhist monk Hyecho, who traveled from Korea to India, in the years 723 - 727/728 CE.
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- "An account of travel to the five Indian kingdoms โ 723 CE" | 2022-09-17 | 113 Upvotes 17 Comments
๐ Roar (1981 Film)
Roar is a 1981 American adventure comedy film written, produced, and directed by Noel Marshall. Roar's story follows Hank, a naturalist who lives on a nature preserve in Africa with lions, tigers, and other big cats. When his family visits him, they are instead confronted by the group of animals. The film stars Marshall as Hank and Tippi Hedren as his wife Madeleine, with Melanie Griffith, and Marshall's sons John and Jerry Marshall in supporting roles.
In 1969, while Hedren was filming Satan's Harvest in Mozambique, she and Marshall had occasion to observe a pride of lions move into a recently vacated house, driven by increased poaching. They decided to make a film centered around that theme, bringing rescued big cats into their homes in California and living with them. Filming began in 1976; it was finished after five years. The film was fully completed after 11 years in production.
Roar was not initially released in North America; in 1981, Noel and John Marshall privately released it internationally. It was also acquired by Filmways Pictures and Alpha Films. Despite performing well in Germany and Japan, Roar was a box office failure, grossing $2 million worldwide against a $17 million budget. In 2015, 34 years after the film's original release, it was released in theaters in the United States by Drafthouse Films. Roar's message of protection for African wildlife as well as its animal interactions were praised by critics, but its plot, story, inconsistent tone, dialogue, and editing were criticized.
The cast and crew members of Roar faced dangerous situations during filming; seventy people, including the film's stars, were injured as a result of multiple animal attacks. Flooding from a dam destroyed much of the set and equipment during its production, and the film's budget increased drastically. In 1983, Hedren founded the Roar Foundation and established the Shambala Preserve sanctuary, to house the animals appearing in the film. She also wrote a book, The Cats of Shambala (1985), about many of the film's events. The film has been described as "the most dangerous film ever made" and "the most expensive home movie ever made", and has gained a cult following.
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- "Roar (1981 Film)" | 2019-11-14 | 85 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ Breitspurbahn
The Breitspurbahn (German pronunciation: [หbสaษชtสpuหษฬฏbaหn], transl.โbroad-gauge railway) was a railway system planned and partly surveyed by Nazi Germany. Its track gauge โ the distance between the two running rails โ was to be 3000ย mm (9ย ftย 10+1โ8ย in), more than twice that of the 1435ย mm (4ย ftย 8+1โ2ย in) standard gauge used in western Europe. The railway was intended initially to run between major cities of the Greater Germanic Reich (the regime's expanded Germany) and neighbouring states.
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- "Breitspurbahn" | 2025-04-25 | 10 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Honeywell 316
The Honeywell 316 was a popular 16-bit minicomputer built by Honeywell starting in 1969. It is part of the Series 16, which includes the Models 116 (1965, discrete:โ4โ), 316 (1969), 416 (1966), 516 (1966) and DDP-716 (1969). They were commonly used for data acquisition and control, remote message concentration, clinical laboratory systems, Remote Job Entry and time-sharing. The Series-16 computers are all based on the DDP-116 designed by Gardner Hendrie at Computer Control Company, Inc. (3C) in 1964.
The 516 and later the 316 were used as Interface Message Processors (IMP) for the American ARPANET and the British NPL Network.
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- "Honeywell 316" | 2024-08-15 | 15 Upvotes 3 Comments
๐ Immortal Game
The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time. Anderssen gave up both rooks and a bishop, then his queen, checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces. In 1996, Bill Hartston called the game an achievement "perhaps unparalleled in chess literature".
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- "Immortal Game" | 2019-12-31 | 227 Upvotes 52 Comments
๐ CorsiโRosenthal Box
The CorsiโRosenthal Box, also called a CorsiโRosenthal Cube or a Comparetto Cube, is a design for a do-it-yourself air purifier that can be built comparatively inexpensively. It was designed during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of reducing the levels of airborne viral particles in indoor settings.
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- "CorsiโRosenthal Box" | 2022-05-19 | 81 Upvotes 21 Comments
๐ Fred Fish (Fish Disks)
Fred Fish (November 4, 1952 โ April 20, 2007) was a computer programmer notable for work on the GNU Debugger and his series of freeware disks for the Amiga.
The Amiga Library Disks โ colloquially referred to as Fish Disks (a term coined by Perry Kivolowitz at a Jersey Amiga User Group meeting) โ became the first national rallying point, a sort of early postal system. Fish would distribute his disks around the world in time for regional and local user group meetings, which in turn duplicated them for local distribution. Typically, only the cost of materials changed hands. The Fish Disk series ran from 1986 to 1994. In it, one can chart the growing sophistication of Amiga software and see the emergence of many software trends.
The Fish Disks were distributed at computer stores and Amiga enthusiast clubs. Contributors submitted applications and source code and the best of these each month were assembled and released as a diskette. Since the Internet was not yet in popular usage outside military and university circles, this was a primary way for enthusiasts to share work and ideas. He also initiated the "GeekGadgets" project, a GNU standard environment for AmigaOS and BeOS.
Fish worked for Cygnus Solutions in the 1990s before he left for Be Inc. in 1998.
In 1978, he self-published User Survival Guide for TI-58/59 Master Library, which was advertised in enthusiast newsletters covering the TI-59 programmable calculator.
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- "Fred Fish (Fish Disks)" | 2023-08-16 | 169 Upvotes 44 Comments
๐ Banana equivalent dose
Banana equivalent dose (BED) is an informal measurement of ionizing radiation exposure, intended as a general educational example to compare a dose of radioactivity to the dose one is exposed to by eating one average-sized banana. Bananas contain naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, particularly potassium-40 (40K), one of several naturally-occurring isotopes of potassium. One BED is often correlated to 10โ7 sievert (0.1 ฮผSv); however, in practice, this dose is not cumulative, as the principal radioactive component is excreted to maintain metabolic equilibrium. The BED is only meant to inform the public about the existence of very low levels of natural radioactivity within a natural food and is not a formally adopted dose measurement.
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- "Banana Equivalent Dose" | 2023-05-02 | 84 Upvotes 62 Comments
- "Banana equivalent dose" | 2010-06-14 | 470 Upvotes 84 Comments
๐ National Eagle Repository
The National Eagle Repository is operated and managed under the Office of Law Enforcement of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service located at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside of Denver, Colorado. It serves as a central location for the receipt, storage, and distribution of bald and golden eagles that have been found dead. Eagles and eagle parts are available only to Native Americans enrolled in federally recognized tribes for use in religious and cultural ceremonies.
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- "National Eagle Repository" | 2019-07-03 | 38 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus (RMP; also designated as papyrus British Museum 10057 and pBM 10058) is one of the best known examples of ancient Egyptian mathematics. It is named after Alexander Henry Rhind, a Scottish antiquarian, who purchased the papyrus in 1858 in Luxor, Egypt; it was apparently found during illegal excavations in or near the Ramesseum. It dates to around 1550 BC. The British Museum, where the majority of the papyrus is now kept, acquired it in 1865 along with the Egyptian Mathematical Leather Roll, also owned by Henry Rhind. There are a few small fragments held by the Brooklyn Museum in New York City and an 18ย cm (7.1ย in) central section is missing. It is one of the two well-known Mathematical Papyri along with the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus. The Rhind Papyrus is larger than the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus, while the latter is older.
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus dates to the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt. It was copied by the scribe Ahmes (i.e., Ahmose; Ahmes is an older transcription favoured by historians of mathematics), from a now-lost text from the reign of king Amenemhat III (12th dynasty). Written in the hieratic script, this Egyptian manuscript is 33ย cm (13ย in) tall and consists of multiple parts which in total make it over 5ย m (16ย ft) long. The papyrus began to be transliterated and mathematically translated in the late 19th century. The mathematical translation aspect remains incomplete in several respects. The document is dated to Year 33 of the Hyksos king Apophis and also contains a separate later historical note on its verso likely dating from the period ("Year 11") of his successor, Khamudi.
In the opening paragraphs of the papyrus, Ahmes presents the papyrus as giving "Accurate reckoning for inquiring into things, and the knowledge of all things, mysteriesย ... all secrets". He continues with:
This book was copied in regnal year 33, month 4 of Akhet, under the majesty of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Awserre, given life, from an ancient copy made in the time of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Nimaatre. The scribe Ahmose writes this copy.
Several books and articles about the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus have been published, and a handful of these stand out. The Rhind Papyrus was published in 1923 by Peet and contains a discussion of the text that followed Griffith's Book I, II and III outline. Chace published a compendium in 1927โ29 which included photographs of the text. A more recent overview of the Rhind Papyrus was published in 1987 by Robins and Shute.
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- "Rhind Mathematical Papyrus" | 2023-04-02 | 42 Upvotes 30 Comments