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🔗 Finland 🔗 Roots music

Säkkijärven polkka ("the Säkkijärvi polka"), also called the "Karelian-Finnish Polka," is a well-known folk tune from Finland, very popular with Finnish accordionists. It was especially popularized by Viljo "Vili" Vesterinen (1907–1961). The tune was first recorded in Säkkijärvi (now Kondratyevo in the Leningrad Oblast, Russia), and the lyrics sometimes sung with the tune state that while Säkkijärvi itself might have been lost (ceded to the Soviet Union in 1940), the Finns at least still had the polka.

🔗 Germany 🔗 Anthroponymy

Kevinism and Chantalism jokingly describe the tendency of parents in German-speaking areas to name their children with what appears to them to be unusual, exotic-sounding first names.

🔗 Indigenous peoples of North America

Several Native American tribes within the United States register motor vehicles and issue license plates to those vehicles.

The legal status of these plates varies by tribe, with some being recognized by the federal government and others not. Some nations issue plates for both tribal and personal vehicles, while others issue plates only for official tribal vehicles.

Some nations' plates indicate the U.S. state with which they are most closely associated, while others do not. This variation may even exist among the nations associated with one particular state.

Federally recognized tribes may also lease vehicles through the U.S. General Services Administration under certain circumstances. Such vehicles carry U.S. government license plates.

🔗 Writing systems

Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Greek stenos (narrow) and graphein (to write). It has also been called brachygraphy, from Greek brachys (short), and tachygraphy, from Greek tachys (swift, speedy), depending on whether compression or speed of writing is the goal.

Many forms of shorthand exist. A typical shorthand system provides symbols or abbreviations for words and common phrases, which can allow someone well-trained in the system to write as quickly as people speak. Abbreviation methods are alphabet-based and use different abbreviating approaches. Many journalists use shorthand writing to quickly take notes at press conferences or other similar scenarios. In the computerized world, several autocomplete programs, standalone or integrated in text editors, based on word lists, also include a shorthand function for frequently used phrases.

Shorthand was used more widely in the past, before the invention of recording and dictation machines. Shorthand was considered an essential part of secretarial training and police work and was useful for journalists. Although the primary use of shorthand has been to record oral dictation or discourse, some systems are used for compact expression. For example, healthcare professionals may use shorthand notes in medical charts and correspondence. Shorthand notes are typically temporary, intended either for immediate use or for later typing, data entry, or (mainly historically) transcription to longhand. Longer term uses do exist, such as encipherment: diaries (like that of Samuel Pepys) are a common example.

🔗 Death 🔗 Italy 🔗 Hungary 🔗 Austria 🔗 Netherlands 🔗 Jewish history

A Stolperstein (pronounced [ˈʃtɔlpɐˌʃtaɪn] (listen); plural Stolpersteine; literally "stumbling stone", metaphorically a "stumbling block") is a sett-size, ten-centimetre (3.9 in) concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.

The Stolpersteine project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992, aims to commemorate individuals at exactly the last place of residency—or, sometimes, work—which was freely chosen by the person before he or she fell victim to Nazi terror, euthanasia, eugenics, deportation to a concentration or extermination camp, or escaped persecution by emigration or suicide. As of December 2019, 75,000 Stolpersteine have been laid, making the Stolpersteine project the world's largest decentralized memorial.

The majority of Stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Others have been placed for Sinti and Romani people (then also called "gypsies"), homosexuals, the physically or mentally disabled, Jehovah's Witnesses, black people, members of the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the anti-Nazi Resistance, the Christian opposition (both Protestants and Catholics), and Freemasons, along with International Brigade soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, military deserters, conscientious objectors, escape helpers, capitulators, "habitual criminals", looters, and others charged with treason, military disobedience, or undermining the Nazi military, as well as Allied soldiers.

🔗 Fashion

The Great Male Renunciation (French: Grande Renonciation masculine) is the historical phenomenon at the end of the 18th century in which Western men stopped using bright colours, elaborate shapes and variety in their dress, which were left to women's clothing. Instead men concentrated on minute differences of cut, and the quality of the plain cloth.

Coined by the Anglo-German psychologist John Flügel in 1930, it is considered a major turning point in the history of clothing in which the men relinquished their claim to adornment and beauty. Flugel asserted that men "abandoned their claim to be considered beautiful" and "henceforth aimed at being only useful". The Great Renunciation encouraged the establishment of the suit's monopoly on male dress codes at the beginning of the 19th century.

🔗 Physics 🔗 Physics/History 🔗 Physics/Fluid Dynamics

The pitch drop experiment is a long-term experiment which measures the flow of a piece of pitch over many years. 'Pitch' is the name for any of a number of highly viscous liquids which appear solid; most commonly bitumen. At room temperature, tar pitch flows at a very low rate, taking several years to form a single drop.

🔗 Geography 🔗 Maps

The Peirce quincuncial projection is a conformal map projection developed by Charles Sanders Peirce in 1879. The projection has the distinctive property that it can be tiled ad infinitum on the plane, with edge-crossings being completely smooth except for four singular points per tile. The projection has seen use in digital photography for portraying 360° views. The description quincuncial refers to the arrangement of four quadrants of the globe around the center hemisphere in an overall square pattern. Typically the projection is oriented such that the north pole lies at the center.

🔗 Novels 🔗 Novels/Science fiction

Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a "future history" science fiction novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of unprecedented scale in the genre, it describes the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years and eighteen distinct human species, of which our own is the first. The book employs a narrative conceit that, under subtle inspiration, the novelist has unknowingly been dictated a channelled text from the last human species.

Stapledon's conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilisations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but it is also one of progress, as the later civilisations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically linked individuals.

In 1932, Stapledon followed Last and First Men with the far less acclaimed Last Men in London. Another Stapledon novel, Star Maker (1937), could also be considered a sequel to Last and First Men (mentioning briefly man's evolution on Neptune), but is even more ambitious in scope, being a history of the entire universe.

It is the 11th title in the SF Masterworks series.

🔗 Environment 🔗 Disaster management 🔗 London 🔗 Ecology 🔗 River Thames

The Great Stink was an event in central London in July and August 1858 during which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.

The smell, and fears of its possible effects, prompted action from the local and national administrators who had been considering possible solutions for the problem. The authorities accepted a proposal from the civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette to move the effluent eastwards along a series of interconnecting sewers that sloped towards outfalls beyond the metropolitan area. Work on high-, mid- and low-level systems for the new Northern and Southern Outfall Sewers started at the beginning of 1859 and lasted until 1875. To aid the drainage, pumping stations were placed to lift the sewage from lower levels into higher pipes. Two of the more ornate stations, Abbey Mills in Stratford and Crossness on the Erith Marshes, are listed for protection by English Heritage. Bazalgette's plan introduced the three embankments to London in which the sewers ran—the Victoria, Chelsea and Albert Embankments.

Bazalgette's work ensured that sewage was no longer dumped onto the shores of the Thames and brought an end to the cholera outbreaks; his actions are thought to have saved more lives than the efforts of any other Victorian official. His sewer system operates into the 21st century, servicing a city that has grown to a population of over eight million. The historian Peter Ackroyd argues that Bazalgette should be considered a hero of London.