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π Krista and Tatiana Hogan
Krista and Tatiana Hogan (born October 25, 2006) are Canadians who are conjoined craniopagus twins. They are joined at the head and share a skull and a brain. They were born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and are the only unseparated conjoined twins of that type currently alive in Canada. They live with their mother, Felicia Simms, in Vernon, British Columbia, have two sisters and a brother and often travel to Vancouver for care at BC Children's Hospital and Sunny Hill Health Centre for Children.
π Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat
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- "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the Earth is not flat" | 2022-08-25 | 21 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth is not flat" | 2017-11-20 | 212 Upvotes 121 Comments
π The Angle of repose
The angle of repose, or critical angle of repose, of a granular material is the steepest angle of descent or dip relative to the horizontal plane to which a material can be piled without slumping. At this angle, the material on the slope face is on the verge of sliding. The angle of repose can range from 0Β° to 90Β°. The morphology of the material affects the angle of repose; smooth, rounded sand grains cannot be piled as steeply as can rough, interlocking sands. The angle of repose can also be affected by additions of solvents. If a small amount of water is able to bridge the gaps between particles, electrostatic attraction of the water to mineral surfaces will increase the angle of repose, and related quantities such as the soil strength.
When bulk granular materials are poured onto a horizontal surface, a conical pile will form. The internal angle between the surface of the pile and the horizontal surface is known as the angle of repose and is related to the density, surface area and shapes of the particles, and the coefficient of friction of the material. Material with a low angle of repose forms flatter piles than material with a high angle of repose.
The term has a related usage in mechanics, where it refers to the maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane without sliding down. This angle is equal to the arctangent of the coefficient of static friction ΞΌs between the surfaces.
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- "The Angle of repose" | 2008-09-29 | 16 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Ocoee massacre
The Ocoee massacre was a white mob attack on African-American residents in northern Ocoee, Florida, which occurred on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election. The town is in Orange County near Orlando. Most estimates total 30β35 Blacks killed, although as many as 50 African Americans may have been killed during the massacre. Most African-American-owned buildings and residences in northern Ocoee were burned to the ground. Other African Americans living in southern Ocoee were later killed or driven out on threat of more violence. Ocoee essentially became an all-white town. The massacre has been described as the "single bloodiest day in modern American political history".
The attack started after efforts to suppress black voting. In Ocoee and across the state, various black organizations had been conducting voter registration drives for a year. Blacks had essentially been disfranchised in Florida since the beginning of the 20th century. Mose Norman, a prosperous African-American farmer, tried to vote but was turned away twice on Election Day. Norman was among those working on the voter drive. A white mob surrounded the home of Julius "July" Perry, where Norman was thought to have taken refuge. After Perry drove away the white mob with gunshots, killing two men and wounding one who tried to break into his house, the mob called for reinforcements from Orlando and Orange County. The whites laid waste to the African-American community in northern Ocoee and eventually killed Perry. They took his body to Orlando and hanged it from a lightpost to intimidate other blacks. Norman escaped, never to be found. Hundreds of other African Americans fled the town, leaving behind their homes and possessions.
Discussed on
- "Ocoee massacre" | 2020-09-07 | 16 Upvotes 7 Comments
π Skeuomorph
A skeuomorph () is a derivative object that retains nonfunctional ornamental design cues (attributes) from structures that were inherent to the original. Examples include pottery embellished with imitation rivets reminiscent of similar pots made of metal and a software calendar that imitates the appearance of binding on a paper desk calendar.
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- "Skeuomorph" | 2010-06-25 | 66 Upvotes 47 Comments
π X Window System: Principles
The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.
X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard. X does not mandate the user interfaceΒ β this is handled by individual programs. As such, the visual styling of X-based environments varies greatly; different programs may present radically different interfaces.
X originated at the Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at version 11 (hence "X11") since September 1987. The X.Org Foundation leads the X project, with the current reference implementation, X.Org Server, available as free and open source software under the MIT License and similar permissive licenses.
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- "X Window System: Principles" | 2020-05-05 | 32 Upvotes 11 Comments
π Smeed's law
Smeed's Law, named after R. J. Smeed, who first proposed the relationship in 1949, is a purported empirical rule relating traffic fatalities to traffic congestion as measured by the proxy of motor vehicle registrations and country population. The law proposes that increasing traffic volume (an increase in motor vehicle registrations) leads to an increase in fatalities per capita, but a decrease in fatalities per vehicle.
Smeed also predicted that the average speed of traffic in central London would always be nine miles per hour, because that is the minimum speed that people tolerate. He predicted that any intervention intended to speed traffic would only lead to more people driving at this "tolerable" speed unless there were any other disincentives against doing so.
His hypothesis in relation to road traffic safety has been refuted by several authors, who point out that fatalities per person have decreased in many countries, when the "Law" requires that they should increase as long as the number of vehicles per person continues to rise.
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- "Smeed's law" | 2009-05-08 | 33 Upvotes 5 Comments
π Michael Faraday invented the rubber balloon
A toy balloon or party balloon, is a small balloon mostly used for decoration, advertising and children's toys. Toy balloons are usually made of rubber or aluminized plastic, and inflated with air or helium. They come in a great variety of sizes and shapes, but are most commonly 10 to 30 centimetres in diameter. Toy balloons are not considered to include "sky lanterns" (hot-air paper balloons), although these too are or were used as child toys in some parts of the world.
According to The Journal of the American Medical Association, out of 373 children who died in the US between 1972 and 1992 after choking on children's products, nearly a third choked on latex balloons. The Consumer Products Safety Commission found that children had inhaled latex balloons whole (often while trying to inflate them) or choked on fragments of broken balloons. Parents, a monthly magazine about raising children, advised parents to buy Mylar balloons instead of latex balloons.
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- "Michael Faraday invented the rubber balloon" | 2022-09-29 | 77 Upvotes 9 Comments
π Mosuo Women
The Mosuo (Chinese: ζ©ζ’; pinyin: MΓ³suΕ) are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet. Dubbed the 'Kingdom of Women' by the Chinese, the Mosuo population of about 50,000 live near Lugu Lake in the Tibetan Himalayas 27Β°42β²35.30β³N 100Β°47β²4.04β³E.
Scholars use diverse terms and spellings to designate the Mosuo culture. Most prefer 'Mosuo' some spell it 'Moso', while a minority use neither term, but refer to them as the Na people.
The Mosuo people are known as the 'Kingdom of Women' because the Na are a matrilineal society: heterosexual activity occurs only by mutual consent and mostly through the custom of the secret nocturnal 'visit'; men and women are free to have multiple partners, and to initiate or break off relationships when they please.
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- "Mosuo Women" | 2019-06-07 | 105 Upvotes 62 Comments
π Midget submarine
A midget submarine (also called a mini submarine) is any submarine under 150 tons, typically operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to 6 or 9, with little or no on-board living accommodation. They normally work with mother ships, from which they are launched and recovered and which provide living accommodation for the crew and support staff.
Both military and civilian midget submarines have been built. Military types work with surface ships and other submarines as mother ships. Civilian and non-combatant military types are generally called submersibles and normally work with surface ships.
Most early submarines would now be considered midget submarines, such as the United States Navy's USSΒ HollandΒ (SS-1) and the British Royal Navy's HMSΒ Holland 1.
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- "Midget submarine" | 2019-08-08 | 22 Upvotes 9 Comments