01/27 Open Thread - The Official End of the Viet Nam War
Her name is Kim Phuc Phan. She survived, and after over a year in the hospital lived in continual pain and with limited mobility. The photo won a Pulitzer. It, and other photos and reporting helped to...
View Article02/03 Open Thread - The Day the Music Died
On February 3, 1959, a Beechcraft "Bonanza" airplane, tail number N3794N, carrying the pilot (Roger Peterson), Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. Richardson (The Big Bopper), crashed, killing...
View Article02/10 Open Thread - Plimsoll Day
The Plimsoll Line is a line painted on a ship's hull. It indicated the waterline corresponding to the maximum depth to which the ship should sink under maximum load, or the maximum safe draft of the...
View Article02/10 Open Thread - Plimsoll Day
The Plimsoll Line is a line painted on a ship's hull. It indicated the waterline corresponding to the maximum depth to which the ship should sink under maximum load, or the maximum safe draft of the...
View Article2/17 Open Thread - Giordano Bruno Day (Unofficial)
On this day in 1600 Giordana Bruno was burned at the stake for the unforgivable sin of thinking for himself. On his way to be burned at the stake for heresy at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, the philosopher...
View Article02/24 - The Gregorian Calendar
Today may or may not be Shrove Monday which has no fixed date because Easter has no fixed date, presumably because it didn't happen on a specific date, or happened on a roving magic date, or something...
View Article03/03 Open Thread - Second Opium War
When I was growing up one of the many cultural stereotypes floating around was that of the Chinese of a certain era wearing long pigtails and funny shoes laying around in opium dens stoned out of their...
View Article03/10 Open Thread - Harriet Tubman Day (United States of America)
Harriet Tubman's parents were enslaved people and she was, accordingly, born into slavery in 1822. She was able to escape and then made around thirteen return trips to Dixie to rescue about seventy...
View Article3/17 Open Thread - A St. Paddy's Day Primer
Ye Basics: He wasn't Irish, he was "Romano-British" He wasn't Catholic, they weren't around yet He's not officially canonized, either, but that doesn't really matter anyway Nobody knows precisely where...
View Article03/24 Open Thread - World Tuberculosis Day
Tuberculosis, aka TB, has been with us for ages, at lest 6,000 years in humans and 17,000 years in some animals. It primarily attacks the lungs, is contagious, and often fatal if untreated. Once known...
View Article03/31 Open Thread - International Taco Day
OK, I'm just gonna go straight to the wiki on this. A taco (US: /ˈtɑːkoʊ/, UK: /ˈtækoʊ/, Spanish: [ˈtako]) is a traditional Mexican dish consisting of a small hand-sized corn- or wheat-based tortilla...
View ArticleApril 7 Open Thread - Metric System Day
Oh whoopee, mensuration. This is so sad. When I looked for the title photo I at one point searched Flickr for "Meter" and up came a lot of pictures of electric meters, water meters, voltage meters,...
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