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π George Stinney: youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed
George Junius Stinney, Jr. (October 21, 1929 β June 16, 1944), was an African American child who was convicted, in a proceeding later vacated as an unfair trial, of murdering two white girls, ages 7 and 11, in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was executed by electric chair in June 1944. Stinney is the youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed.
A re-examination of the Stinney case began in 2004, and several individuals and Northeastern University School of Law sought a judicial review. His conviction was overturned in 2014, 70 years after he was executed when a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial.
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- "George Stinney: youngest American to be sentenced to death and executed" | 2020-07-05 | 46 Upvotes 2 Comments
π CleanFlicks
CleanFlicks was a company founded in Utah in 2000 that rented and sold commercially-released DVDs and VHS tapes from which they had edited content which the company considered inappropriate for children or that viewers might otherwise find offensive. CleanFlicks removed sexual content, profanity, some references to deity, and some violence from movies, either by muting audio or clipping entire portions of the track.
A group of major film productions studios sued CleanFlicks in 2002, arguing that their service constituted copyright infringement. A 2006 court ruling closed the company. On March 13, 2007, CleanFlicks reopened its website with "Movies You Can Trust." While legally enjoined from offering edited movies, an email sent by the company on that date indicated that they had reviewed "tens of thousands" of movies and compiled over 1000 that meet their "family-friendly criteria" for sale and rent. In January 2013, the CleanFlicks.com website was no longer online.
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- "CleanFlicks" | 2019-10-31 | 51 Upvotes 60 Comments
π Eagle Cash
Eagle Cash (stylized as EagleCash), and sister program EZpay, are cash management applications that use stored-value card technology to process financial transactions in "closed-loop" operating environments. The United States Department of the Treasury sponsors the programs for the U.S. Armed Forces. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston administers the programs for the Treasury, and they are in use at approved U.S. military facilities inside and outside the continental United States. The systems use a plastic payment card, similar to a credit or debit card, which has an embedded microchip that tracks the card's balance and interfaces with encrypted card readers. This method allows soldiers to purchase goods and services at U.S. military posts and canteens, without carrying cash, or manage their personal bank accounts while on deployment or in training. The program reduces the amount of American currency required overseas, reduces theft, saves thousands of man-hours in labor, helps reduce the risk of transporting cash in combat environments, and increases security and convenience for service members. It helped reduce or eliminate the need for cash and money orders.
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- "Eagle Cash" | 2021-01-01 | 137 Upvotes 103 Comments
π Azolla Event
The Azolla event is a scenario hypothesized to have occurred in the middle Eocene epoch, around 49Β million years ago, when blooms of the freshwater fern Azolla are thought to have happened in the Arctic Ocean. As they sank to the stagnant sea floor, they were incorporated into the sediment; the resulting draw-down of carbon dioxide has been speculated to have helped transform the planet from a "greenhouse Earth" state, hot enough for turtles and palm trees to prosper at the poles, to the current icehouse Earth known as the Late Cenozoic Ice Age.
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- "Azolla Event" | 2019-07-22 | 104 Upvotes 80 Comments
π Chicago Tunnel and Reservoir Plan
The Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (abbreviated TARP and more commonly known as the Deep Tunnel Project or the Chicago Deep Tunnel) is a large civil engineering project that aims to reduce flooding in the metropolitan Chicago area, and to reduce the harmful effects of flushing raw sewage into Lake Michigan by diverting storm water and sewage into temporary holding reservoirs. The megaproject is one of the largest civil engineering projects ever undertaken in terms of scope, cost and timeframe. Commissioned in the mid-1970s, the project is managed by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. Completion of the system is not anticipated until 2029, but substantial portions of the system have already opened and are currently operational. Across 30 years of construction, over $3 billion has been spent on the project.
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- "Chicago Tunnel and Reservoir Plan" | 2015-12-04 | 14 Upvotes 5 Comments
π MΓ©nage Problem
In combinatorial mathematics, the mΓ©nage problem or problΓ¨me des mΓ©nages asks for the number of different ways in which it is possible to seat a set of male-female couples at a round dining table so that men and women alternate and nobody sits next to his or her partner. This problem was formulated in 1891 by Γdouard Lucas and independently, a few years earlier, by Peter Guthrie Tait in connection with knot theory. For a number of couples equal to 3, 4, 5, ... the number of seating arrangements is
- 12, 96, 3120, 115200, 5836320, 382072320, 31488549120, ... (sequence A059375 in the OEIS).
Mathematicians have developed formulas and recurrence equations for computing these numbers and related sequences of numbers. Along with their applications to etiquette and knot theory, these numbers also have a graph theoretic interpretation: they count the numbers of matchings and Hamiltonian cycles in certain families of graphs.
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- "MΓ©nage Problem" | 2022-12-26 | 98 Upvotes 65 Comments
π The Last Question
"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). While he also considered it one of his best works, βThe Last Questionβ was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which were first formulated in 1940, outline the criteria for robotic existence in relation to humans. Humanity's relationship to Multivac is questioned on the subject of entropy. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy. Β
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- "The Last Question" | 2022-06-08 | 314 Upvotes 164 Comments
π Jesus Nut
Jesus nut is a slang term for the main rotor retaining nut or mast nut, which holds the main rotor to the mast of some helicopters. The related slang term Jesus pin refers to the lock pin used to secure the retaining nut. More generally, Jesus nut (or Jesus pin) has been used to refer to any component that is a single point of failure which results in catastrophic consequences.
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- "Jesus Nut" | 2023-10-13 | 209 Upvotes 93 Comments
- "Jesus Nut" | 2022-03-02 | 29 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Cherenkov radiation β Faster then light in water
Cherenkov radiation (; Russian: ΠΡΡΠ΅ΠΊΡ ΠΠ°Π²ΠΈΠ»ΠΎΠ²Π° β Π§Π΅ΡΠ΅Π½ΠΊΠΎΠ²Π°, Vavilov-Cherenkov effect) is electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity (speed of propagation of a wavefront in a medium) of light in that medium. A classic example of Cherenkov radiation is the characteristic blue glow of an underwater nuclear reactor. Its cause is similar to the cause of a sonic boom, the sharp sound heard when faster-than-sound movement occurs. The phenomenon is named after Soviet physicist Pavel Cherenkov.
π Biangbiang Noodles
Biangbiang noodles (simplified Chinese: π°»π°»ι’; traditional Chinese: π°»π°»ιΊ΅; pinyin: BiΓ‘ngbiΓ‘ngmiΓ n), alternatively known as youpo chemian (simplified Chinese: ζ²Ήζ³Όζ―ι’; traditional Chinese: ζ²Ήζ½ζ―ιΊ΅) in Chinese, are a type of Chinese noodle originating from Shaanxi cuisine. The noodles, touted as one of the "eight curiosities" of Shaanxi (ιθ₯Ώε «ε€§ζͺ), are described as being like a belt, owing to their thickness and length.
Biangbiang noodles are renowned for being written using a unique character. The character is unusually complex, with the standard variant of its traditional form containing 58 strokes.
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- "Biangbiang Noodles" | 2024-06-25 | 11 Upvotes 6 Comments