Have a deep view into what people are curious about.

🔗 France

La Bougie du Sapeur (French: [la bu.ʒi dy sa.pœʁ]) is a French satirical newspaper launched in 1980 that is published only on Leap Day, making it the world's least frequently published newspaper. The editor-in-chief is Jean d'Indy, who works for France Galop and has been involved in producing the paper since 1992.

🔗 Mammals

Tuffi (born 1946, India – died 1989, Paris, France) was a female Asian elephant that became famous in West Germany during 1950 when she accidentally fell from the Wuppertal Schwebebahn into the River Wupper underneath.

On 21 July 1950, the circus director Franz Althoff (de) had Tuffi, then four years old, traveled on the suspended monorail in Wuppertal, as a publicity stunt. The elephant trumpeted wildly and ran through the carriage, broke through a window and fell 12 metres (39 ft) down into the River Wupper, suffering only minor injuries. A panic had broken out in the carriage and some passengers were injured. Althoff helped the elephant out of the water. Both the circus director and the official who had allowed the ride were fined. Tuffi was sold to Cirque Alexis Gruss (fr) in 1968; she died there in 1989.

No photograph of the incident is known; a widely circulated postcard picture is a montage. A building near the location of the incident, between the stations Alter Markt and Adlerbrücke, features a painting of Tuffi. A local milk-factory has chosen the name as a brand.

The Wuppertal tourist information keeps an assortment of Tuffi-related souvenirs, local websites show original pictures.

In 1970 Marguerita Eckel and Ernst-Andreas Ziegler published a children's picture book about the incident titled Tuffi und die Schwebebahn (“Tuffi and the suspension railway”).

🔗 Television 🔗 Korea 🔗 Fashion 🔗 Korea/North Korea

Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle (alternatively translated as Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle) is a television program that was part of a North Korean government propaganda campaign promulgating grooming and dress standards in 2004–2005.

It was broadcast on state-run Korean Central Television in the capital of Pyongyang and clips from the program were later rebroadcast on the British channel BBC One. The program claimed that hair length can affect human intelligence, in part because of the deprivation to the rest of the body of nutrients required for hair to grow. However, although some researchers have proposed that brain and hair are in competition from an evolutionary standpoint, cutting hair has no influence on its rate of growth. It was part of a longstanding North Korean government restriction campaign against haircuts and fashions deemed at odds with "Socialist values".

🔗 Aviation

A cyclorotor, cycloidal rotor, cycloidal propeller or cyclogiro, is a fluid propulsion device that converts shaft power into the acceleration of a fluid using a rotating axis perpendicular to the direction of fluid motion. It uses several blades with a spanwise axis parallel to the axis of rotation and perpendicular to the direction of fluid motion. These blades are cyclically pitched twice per revolution to produce force (thrust or lift) in any direction normal to the axis of rotation. Cyclorotors are used for propulsion, lift, and control on air and water vehicles. An aircraft using cyclorotors as the primary source of lift, propulsion, and control is known as a cyclogyro or cyclocopter. A unique aspect is that it can change the magnitude and direction of thrust without the need of tilting any aircraft structures. The patented application, used on ships with particular actuation mechanisms both mechanical or hydraulic, is named after German company Voith Turbo.

🔗 Writing systems 🔗 Typography

The long s (ſ) is an archaic form of the lower case letter s. It replaced the single s, or the first s in a double s (e.g. "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "ſucceſs" for "success"). The long s is the basis of the first half of the grapheme or the German alphabet ligature letter ß, which is known as the Eszett. The modern letterform is known as the short, terminal, or round s.

🔗 Psychology 🔗 Museums

Museum fatigue is a state of physical or mental fatigue caused by the experience of exhibits in museums and similar cultural institutions. The collection of phenomena that characterize museum fatigue was first described in 1916, and has since received widespread attention in popular and scientific contexts.

The first known description of museum fatigue was made by Benjamin Ives Gilman in the January 1916 edition of The Scientific Monthly. Gilman mainly focused on the efforts of museum fatigue on how the viewing displays are placed. Gilman went on to say that the way the displays were presented caused museum fatigue. In other later studies, Edward Robinson in 1928 spoke more about museum fatigue, specifically of four museums that showed a lot of characteristics of museum fatigue because of how the displays were placed. Arthur Melton provided more proof for Robinson by observing visitors' interest in the displays decreased as the number of displays increased.

In a more recent study of the phenomenon, Falk, Koran, Direking, and Dreblow studied museum fatigue at the Florida Museum of Natural History in 1985. While observing visitors they noticed a pattern of high interest in anything in the museum for about 30 minutes and then a decrease in interest. In 1997–1998, Beverly Serrell in her research determined that in less than 20 minutes people became apathetic towards the museum. Museum fatigue has also been applied in zoos to see if they had the same effect. In one study in 1986, Bitgood, Patterson, and Benefeld observed the reptile house of the Birmingham Zoo. While observing they noticed that the pattern was different from museum fatigue.

🔗 Biography 🔗 Climate change 🔗 Environment 🔗 Biography/science and academia 🔗 Energy

James Ephraim Lovelock (26 July 1919 – 26 July 2022) was a British independent scientist, environmentalist and futurist. He was best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system.

With a PhD in medicine, Lovelock began his career performing cryopreservation experiments on rodents, including successfully thawing frozen specimens. His methods were influential in the theories of cryonics (the cryopreservation of humans). He invented the electron capture detector, and using it, became the first to detect the widespread presence of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. While designing scientific instruments for NASA, he developed the Gaia hypothesis.

In the 2000s, he proposed a method of climate engineering to restore carbon dioxide–consuming algae. He was an outspoken member of Environmentalists for Nuclear, asserting that fossil fuel interests have been behind opposition to nuclear energy, citing the effects of carbon dioxide as being harmful to the environment, and warning of global warming due to the greenhouse effect. He authored several environmental science books based upon the Gaia hypothesis from the late 1970s.

🔗 Food and drink

Gastronorm (GN), sometimes spelled Gastro-Norm, is a European standard for kitchenware tray and container sizes that is commonly seen worldwide in the catering and professional food industry, as well as in certain parts of the high-end consumer market. Gastronorm is generally used worldwide except in most of the United States and Canada, which have their own domestic systems. The Gastronorm standard was first introduced in Switzerland in 1964 and became an official European standard in 1993 with the EN 631 standard.

The basic format is called "GN 1/1" and measures 530×325 mm, with other Gastronorm sizes being multiples and fractions of this basic module size. Gastronorm containers allow for flexible, place efficient, and compatible storage, transport, processing, and serving and can be adapted for shelving, transport on trolleys and conveyor belts, secure temporary placement in compatible sinks, working tables, refrigerators, freezers, ovens, hot water baths, and compatible dishwashers, or display. Other products that have adopted the Gastronorm format include cutting boards and non-stick mats. Many professional food products are even packaged for optimal compatibility with Gastronorm containers, such as pizza base sizes, pre-baked breads, or frozen vegetables.

The most commonly used materials for the containers are stainless steel and (transparent or non-transparent) plastic. Stackable baking trays and stainless steel containers are commonly used for cooking in an oven, while polycarbonate and polypropylene variants are suited for storage of cold foods. Porcelain or melamine containers are used for display.

🔗 Death 🔗 Ancient Egypt 🔗 Ancient Egypt/Egyptian religion

The Coffin Texts are a collection of ancient Egyptian funerary spells written on coffins beginning in the First Intermediate Period. They are partially derived from the earlier Pyramid Texts, reserved for royal use only, but contain substantial new material related to everyday desires, indicating a new target audience of common people. Ordinary Egyptians who could afford a coffin had access to these funerary spells and the pharaoh no longer had exclusive rights to an afterlife.

As the modern name of this collection of some 1,185 spells implies, they were mostly inscribed on Middle Kingdom coffins. They were also sometimes written on tomb walls, stelae, canopic chests, papyri and mummy masks. Due to the limited writing surfaces of some of these objects, the spells were often abbreviated, giving rise to long and short versions, some of which were later copied in the Book of the Dead.