AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
The company which had the contract for building the bridge went bankrupt while Bouch was redesigning the bridge. The new company did poor work. Almost every part of the bridge was substandard, including the iron and the ties and fixings. Lack of precision in the bolts and braces led to on-site fixes, described by one witness at the later inquiry as "about as slovenly a piece of work as ever I saw in my life".
On the night of 28 December 1879 at 7.15pm, the bridge collapsed after its central spans gave way during high winter gales. A train with six carriages carrying 75 passengers and crew, crossing at the time of the collapse, fell into the icy waters of the Tay. All 75 were killed. The disaster stunned the whole country and sent shock waves through the Victorian engineering community.
At the time a gale of about force ten or eleven (Tropical Storm force winds: 55–72 mph/80–117 km/hr) had been blowing down the Tay estuary at right angles to the bridge. The engine itself was salvaged from the river and repaired for service on the railways.
The collapse of the bridge, opened only 19 months earlier and passed as safe by the Board of Trade, is still the most famous bridge disaster in the British Isles. The stumps of the original bridge piers can still be seen above the surface of the Tay even at high tide.
The inquiry said that ""the fall of the bridge was occasioned by the insufficiency of the cross-bracings and fastenings to sustain the force of the gale on the night of December 28th 1879 and that the bridge had been previously strained by other gales"."
However, this is not a finding that the bridge "as designed" would have failed. The engineer who carried out a detailed report on the bridge design said:
The section in the middle of the bridge, where the rail ran inside high girders, was likely to be top-heavy and very vulnerable to high winds. Neither Bouch nor the builders appeared to have regularly visited the on-site foundry where iron from the earlier half-built bridge was recycled. The cylindrical cast iron columns supporting the 13 longest spans of the bridge, each 245 ft (75 m) long, were of poor quality. Many had been cast horizontally, with the result that the walls were not of even thickness. There was some evidence that poor quality work was hidden from the (very inadequate) quality control inspections.
In particular, some of the lugs used as attachment points for the wrought iron bracing bars had been "burnt on" rather than cast with the columns. Even the normal lugs were very weak. They were tested for the Inquiry, and proved to break at only about rather than the expected load of . These lugs failed and weakened the entire middle of the bridge during the storm.
Put into simple words, the bridge failed because of defects in its manufacture. This meant it did not reach the standards of wind resistance planned by the designer.
Clacton-on-sea railway station
Clacton-on-Sea railway station is a railway station in England. It serves the town of Clacton-on-Sea in Essex. The station is near the town centre. It is in walking distance from the pier and sea. The station is on the Sunshine Coast Line. Services run to/from Colchester and Liverpool Street.
Yonne (river)
The Yonne is a river in the northern half of France. It flows mainly through the western part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region, giving its name to the Yonne department and to several "communes". It is the main left tributary of the Seine river.
The river was named during the Roman Empire as "Icauna", a Latin word that likely came from the Celtic name for the river.
The Yonne river has a length of and a drainage basin with an area of .
Its average yearly discharge (volume of water which passes through a section of the river per unit of time) is 91.70 cubic metres per second at Courlon-sur-Yonne.
The source of the Yonne is on the "Prénely" mountain on the southern end of the "Morvan" hills in the Glux-en-Glenne "commune", Nièvre department, at an altitude of about .
The Yonne flows, in general, from the southeast to the northwest and passes through the 115 "communes", most of them in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region; the main "communes" are:
Finally, it flows, as a left tributary, into the Seine river in the town of Montereau-Fault-Yonne, at of altitude.
The main tributaries of the Yonne are:
Barbara Cloutman (later Barbara Kent; December 16, 1907 – October 13, 2011) was a Canadian-born and American-based actress of the 1920s and 1930s. She played Lotus in "Chinatown after Dark". She played Amelia in the movie "Vanity Fair" (1932).
Kent was born in Alberta, Canada. She died at 103 in Palm Desert, California.
Chiltern Hills
The Chiltern Hills are chalk hills in southern England. They go 70 mi (115 km) southwest to northeast through parts of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, and Bedfordshire. This makes a well-marked escarpment to the northwest and a gentle southeast slope to the River Thames.
Considerable areas are now under the National Trust and are popular tourist attractions. The greatest elevation is Coombe Hill (852 ft [260 m]) near Wendover. The dense beechwoods still cover the western portions. They were once the basis of the traditional furniture industry of High Wycombe. Several passes through the Chiltern Hills are used by roads and railways to London.
Horacio Cartes
Horacio Manuel Cartes Jara (born 5 July 1956) is an Paraguayan politician. He served as President of Paraguay from 2013 through 2018.
Cartes won the 2013 presidential election in Paraguay on 21 April 2013 and took office as President on 15 August 2013.
Horacio Cartes is the owner of ""Grupo Cartes"", a conglomerate of approximately two dozen of companies. He has also been president of the football club Club Libertad since 2001
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is a keyboard instrument that looks like a piano. The most common Hammond organs create sound using metal wheels and electricity. It is an electric version of a pipe organ that was invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert. It was first built in 1935. Sliding "drawbars" adjust the type of sound that the organ makes. The Hammond organ is one of the most successful organs made because almost two million Hammond organs were sold.
The most common Hammond organ has two keyboards that are called manuals by organ players. They are smaller versions of piano keyboards that are stacked on top of each other. This allows the organist to play both at the same time. The keys on the manuals of a Hammond organ are lighter and easier to press than the keys on a piano. This makes it easier for organists to play notes faster.
The pedalboard on a Hammond organ looks like a very large piano keyboard. It's played with your feet and makes very low sounding notes, known as bass notes.
Both manuals and the pedalboard can be played at the same time, making it easy to make complex sounds with the organ.
The sounds that the manuals and pedalboard make are controlled by switches called drawbars. You can pull them out to make the sound louder, or push them in to make the sound softer. Each manual has nine drawbars that control different parts of the sound. The drawbars on the left side control lower sounds while the drawbars on the right side control higher sounds. The pedalboard has two drawbars, and they both control low sounds.
Hammond organs have a feature called "percussion" which allows you to add melodic clicks to the music you're playing. It's controlled by switches on the upper left side of the organ. Percussion adds harmonics to the melodies you're playing.
To further change the sound of the organ, a knob exists that adds vibrato or chorus to the music depending on how it's turned. Vibrato is a very small change in pitch that makes the notes sound like they're "wobbly". Chorus adds additional notes to the notes you're playing to make the sound more "full".
The Hammond organ was based off of an early instrument called the Telharmonium which made sounds the same way the Hammond organ did, with turning metal discs. Laurens Hammond, the inventor, had a clock making business where he created a clock motor that is useful for other things too. With his motor he made the Hammond Organ.
The most common Hammond organs are tonewheel organs, which means that they create sound based off of turning metal disks with bumps on the edges. An electric signal is sent over the bumps and the resulting signal is made louder by using an amplifier. Hammond's A, B, C, D, and RT series organs use tonewheels, and according to experts, they are preferred over any other model of Hammond.
Hammond manufactured tonewheel organs from 1935 to 1975.
After Hammond made tonewheel organs, he moved onto transistor organs, which didn't use tonewheels, but instead used computer circuitry to generate sound. Most Hammond organ players did not like the sound of the transistor organs, and they lost popularity quickly.
Hammond manufactured transistor organs from 1975 to 1985 when the Hammond Organ Company went out of business.
The tone generator in a Hammond organ is made up of many tonewheels spinning at the same speed. Electric signals and amplifiers make the sounds louder.
The most common speaker used with the Hammond organ is called a Leslie speaker. Made by Don Leslie, it copies the sound of a pipe organ by rotating the speakers inside the speaker cabinet. Leslie speakers were not made by Hammond, but most people liked them so much that they would buy them anyway.
An alternative to the Leslie Speaker is the Hammond Tone Cabinet, but that wasn't as popular.
Mario Abramovich
Mario Abramovich (31 October 1926 – 1 December 2014) was an Argentine violinist and composer of Jewish descent. He was a member of the group Sexteto Mayor since its founding in 1973, until his death in 2014. He was known for performing in the Argentine album "Bête Noire".
Abramovich died in Buenos Aires, Argentina, aged 88.
Robert Henry "Bobby" Keys (December 18, 1943 – December 2, 2014) was an American saxophone player. He performed with other musicians as a member of several horn sections of the 1970s. He appears on albums by The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Who, Harry Nilsson, Delaney Bramlett, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Joe Cocker, amongst other notable musicians. Keys was a touring musician from 1956 until his death in 2014. Keys was born in Slaton, Texas.
Keys had cancer and liver failure. He died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee on December 2, 2014, aged 70.
Twist Bread
Twist bread is a type of bread rolled into a long sausage shape and twisted over a stick. It is then baked over an open fire.
The dough is made like ordinary bread dough with yeast as a leavening agent.
CamelCase (camel case, camel caps or medial capitals) is the practice of writing compound words or phrases so that each next word or abbreviation begins with a capital letter. CamelCase usually starts with a capital. When used in a programming language, it usually starts with a lowercase letter. Common examples are PowerPoint or iPhone.
There are many variations of CamelCase. A few important ones are:
The first use of medial capitals was the notation for chemical formulae invented by the Swedish chemist Berzelius in 1813. He did this to replace the large amount of naming and symbol systems used by chemists at that time. He suggested to show each chemical element by a symbol of one or two letters, the first one being capitalized. The capitalization allowed formulae like 'NaCl' to be written without spaces and still be read without confusion. This system is still in use today.
Since the early 20th century, medial capitals have occasionally been used for corporate names and product trademarks, such as
Despite its unclear origins inside the computing world, the practice spread in the 1980s and 1990s, when the personal computer became popular and exposed hacker culture to the world. CamelCase then became popular for business names. By 1990, it was very common to see CamelCase used in this way:
During the late 1990s when the internet became far more popular and easily available, the lowercase prefixes "e" (for "electronic") and "i" (for "Internet", "information", "interactive", "intelligent", etc.) became quite common, and we began to see names like Apple's iMac and the eBox computer program.
The original name of the practice, used in media studies, grammars and the "Oxford English Dictionary", was "medial capitals". The fancier names such as "InterCaps", "CamelCase" and other variations are pretty recent and seem more common in computer-related communities.
The earliest known occurrence of the term "InterCaps" on Usenet is in an April 1990 post to the group alt.folklore.computers by Avi Rappoport, with "BiCapitalization" appearing slightly later in a 1991 post by Eric S. Raymond to the same group. The earliest use of the name "CamelCase" occurs in 1995, in a post by Newton Love. ""With the advent of programming languages having these sorts of constructs, the humpiness of the style made me call it HumpyCase at first, before I settled on CamelCase. I had been calling it CamelCase for years,"" said Love, ""The citation above was just the first time I had used the name on USENET.""
The use of medial caps for identifiers is recommended by many organizations and software projects. For some languages (such as Mesa, Pascal, Modula, Java and Microsoft's .NET) CamelCase is recommended by the language developers or by important manuals and has therefore become part of the language's "culture".
Style guidelines often distinguish between upper and lower CamelCase. They usually specify which one should be used for certain kinds of things: variables, record fields, methods, procedures, types, etc. This is sometimes supported by static analysis tools that check source code to make sure it is following these guidelines.
CamelCase is used in some wiki markup languages for terms that should be automatically linked to other wiki pages. This convention was originally used in Ward Cunningham's original wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, and can be activated in most other wikis. Some wiki engines such as TiddlyWiki, Trac and PMWiki use it in the default settings. They also usually provide an option or plugin to disable it. Wikipedia used to use CamelCase linking. However, they have switched to explicit link markup using square brackets and many other wiki sites have done the same. Some wikis that do not use CamelCase linking may still use the CamelCase as a naming convention, such as AboutUs.
The NIEM registry requires that XML data elements use upper CamelCase and XML attributes use lower CamelCase.
Most popular command-line interfaces and scripting languages usually can't handle file names that contain embedded spaces. Because of this, users of those systems often use to CamelCase (or underscores, hyphens and other "safe" characters) for compound file names like MyJobResume.pdf.
Microblogging and social networking sites that limit the number of characters in a message (most famously Twitter, where the 140-character limit can be quite restrictive in languages that rely on alphabets, including English) are usually outlets for medial capitals. Using CamelCase between words reduces the number of spaces, and thus the number of characters in a given message. This allows more content to fit into the limited space.
CamelCase has been used in languages other than English for several purposes. Some examples are:
CamelCase is sometimes used in the writing or translation of certain scripts as a way to tell the difference between ceratin letters or markings. An example is the rendering of Tibetan proper names like "rLobsang": the "r" here stands for a prefix glyph in the original script that functions as tone marker rather than a normal letter. Another example is "tsIurku", a Latin transcription of the Chechen term for the capping stone of the characteristic Medieval defensive towers of Chechenia and Ingushetia; the capital letter "I" here showing a phoneme different from the one transcribed as "i".
CamelCase may also be used when writing proper names in languages that add prefixes to words. In some of those languages, the custom is to leave the prefix in lower case and capitalize the root.
This convention is used in Irish orthography e.g., ("in Galway"), from ("Galway"); ("to Ireland"), from ("Ireland).
Similarly, when translating the Hebrew language, "haIvri" means "the Hebrew person" and "biYerushalayim" means "in Jerusalem".
This convention is also used by several Bantu languages (e.g., "kiSwahili" = "Swahili language", "isiZulu" = "Zulu language") and several indigenous languages of Mexico (e.g. Nahuatl, Totonacan, Mixe–Zoque and some Oto-Manguean languages).
Abbreviations of some academic qualifications are sometimes presented in CamelCase without punctuation, e.g. PhD or BSc.
In French, CamelCase acronyms such as OuLiPo (1960) were favored for a time as alternatives to initialisms (or representing compound words only by the first letter of each word).
CamelCase is often used to transliterate initialisms into alphabets where two letters may be required to represent a single character of the original alphabet, e.g., DShK from Cyrillic ДШК and PPSh from Cyrillic ППШ.
In Chinese pinyin, CamelCase is sometimes used for place names so that it is easier for readers to pick out the different parts of the word. For example, places like Beijing (北京) and Qinhuangdao (秦皇岛) and Daxing'anling (大兴安岭) can be written as "BeiJing," "QinHuangDao," and "DaXingAnLing," with the number of capital letters being the same as the number of Chinese characters for each word. Writing word compounds only by the initial letter of each character is also acceptable in some cases, so Beijing can be written as "BJ," Qinghuangdao as "QHD," and Daxing'anling as "DXAL".
In several languages, including English, pronouns and possessives may be capitalized to show respect. For example: when referring to the reader of a formal letter or to God. In some of those languages, the capitalization is retained even when those words occur within compound words or suffixed to a verb. For example, in Italian one would write ("offering to You respectful salutations") or ("adore Him").
In German nouns carry a grammatical gender—which, for roles or job titles, is felt usually as masculine. Since the feminist movement of the 1980s, some writers and publishers have been using the feminine title suffixes "-in" (singular) and "-innen" (plural) to help boost the inclusion of women; but written with a capital 'I', to indicate that males are not excluded. Example: ("co-workers, <nowiki>male or</nowiki> female") instead of ("co-workers", masculine grammatical gender) or ("female co-workers"). This use is analogous to the use of parentheses in English, for example in the phrase "congress(wo)man."
In German, the names to statutes are shortened using embedded capitals. An example would be: StGB (Strafgesetzbuch) for criminal code, PatG (Patentgesetz) for Patent Act or the very common GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung) for Company with Limited Liability.
Ibrahim Lodi
Ibrahim Lodi (d. 21 April 1526) was the last sultan of Delhi. He was an ethnic Pashtun. He became sultan in 1517 after Sikandar Lodi died. Sikandar was his father and Ibrahim was soon challenged by his younger brother, Jalal Kahn. Ibrahim had military skills. But unlike his father he lacked tact.
He faced a number of rebellions. The Mewar ruler Rana Sangram Singh extended his empire right up to western Uttar Pradesh and threatened to attack Agra. There was rebellion in the East also. Ibrahim Lodi also displeased the nobility when he replaced old and senior commanders by younger ones who were loyal to him. He further alienated them by throwing some of the older noblemen in prison. His Afghan nobility eventually invited Babur to invade India. In 1526, the Mughal forces of Babur, the king of Kabulistan, defeated Ibrahim's much larger army in the 1st Battle of Panipat. Ibrahim was killed during the battle. It is estimated that Babur's forces numbered around 12,000 men. His army had between 20 to 24 pieces of field artillery. Ibrahim Lodi had around 30,000-40,000 men along with at least 100 war elephants. After Ibrahim Lodi was overthrown, the mughals invaded India.
St Nicholas Day
Saint Nicholas Day is the feast day of Saint Nicholas. It is on December 6 (December 19 in most Orthodox countries). It is a festival for children in many countries around Europe related to surviving legends of Saint Nicholas. The American Santa Claus, as well as the British Father Christmas, are based on these legends. "Santa Claus" is based in part from the Dutch "Sinterklaas".
Saint Nicholas in different countries travels with different people. He may travel with Angels, Krampus, and others.
Julio Velasco
Julio Velasco (born February 9, 1952 in La Plata, Argentina) is a professional volleyball coach from Argentina. He guided the Italian national men's team to several successes in the 1990s. After the 1996 Summer Olympics, where the Italians won silver, he switched to the Italian women's team (1996–1997). In 2011, Velasco was signed as the head coach of the Iran men's national team. He became coach of the Argentina men's national team before his contract expired with the Iranian national team on 1 March 2014. The President of Argentina asked him to take this job. The change was approved by the Iranian volleyball confederation.
Marina Oswald Porter
Marina Nikolayevna Oswald Porter (July 17, 1941) is the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald. According to the Warren Commission he was the sole assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
She was born in Severodvinsk (formerly named Molotovsk), Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia on 17 July 1941. She met Lee Harvey Oswald at a dance in March 1961 in Russia. They were married on April 30 1961. Their daughter, June Lee, was born on February 15, 1962. Later that year the Oswalds moved from Russia to the United States. In Dallas, Marina gave birth to a second daughter, Audrey Marina Rachel Oswald. After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, Oswald was arrested. Two days later Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while still in police custody. Porter was under Secret Service protection until she finished giving testimony before the Warren Commission. She told the commission she believed husband was guilty of shooting President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. In 1965, she married Kenneth Jess Porter. They had two sons. In 1989, Porter became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Porter has said that she now believes that Lee Harvey Oswald was completely innocent regarding the assassination of Kennedy. In 1980 she was convinced by conspiracy buffs that the man in Harvey's grave was a Russian spy and not her husband. She still lives with her second husband but in private and is afraid to go out in public. She believes her phones are tapped by the Secret Service. Porter also believes the Secret Service want to kill her.
Alisohbat Sumbatzade
Alisohbat Sumbat oglu Sumbatzade (8 January 1907, Amirjan, Baku – 1992, Baku) was an Azerbaijani historian and orientalist (and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijani SSR from 1958).
Sumbatzade graduated from the Department of Oriental Studies of Azerbaijan State University in 1929. In 1963 he became director of the Institute of the Peoples of the Near and Middle East of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR. Sumbatzade's main works are on the socioeconomic history of Azerbaijan in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Aydin Balayev
Aydin Balayev Huseynaga oglu (; born November 19, 1956) is an Azerbaijani historian, ethnologist and professor.
Balayev was born on November 19, 1956 in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. In 1980, he graduated from the Department of History of the Azerbaijan State University and in 1982 he started working at the Archeology and Ethnography Institute of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences. In 1983-1985, Balayev was a researcher at the Ethnography Department of Moscow State University. From 1985 he continued his doctoral studies at the Ethnography Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Moscow, graduating with a PhD in History in 1988.
Balayev has additionally published many articles on the history of Azerbaijani independence movement in the 1980s-1990s, Karabakh conflict, in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada, Denmark and Russia. In total, Balayev has written72 books, 16 of which were published abroad, and 6 monographs.
Don Laws
Don Laws (May 30, 1929 – December 2, 2014) was an American figure skater and coach. Laws competed in single skating and ice dancing. With his ice dancing partner, Mary Firth, he won the U.S. junior title in 1948. Laws was born in Washington, D. C..
In men's singles, he won the 1950 U.S. junior title and placed seventh at the 1951 World Championships in Milan, Italy. He was coached by Osborne Colson.
Laws died of heart failure in Sandy Springs, Maryland, aged 85.
Jean Béliveau
Joseph Jean Arthur Béliveau, (August 31, 1931 – December 2, 2014) was a Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played parts of 20 seasons with the National Hockey League's (NHL) Montreal Canadiens from 1950 to 1971. He was nicknamed "Le Gros Bill".
Béliveau ranks among the ten greatest NHL players. Béliveau first played professionally in the Quebec Major Hockey League (QMHL). He made his NHL debut with the Canadiens in 1950, but chose to remain in the QMHL full-time until 1953.
Béliveau was born in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada.
By his second season in the NHL, Béliveau was among the top three scorers. He was the fourth player to score 500 goals and the second to score 1,000 points. Béliveau won two Hart Memorial Trophies (1956, 1964) and one Art Ross Memorial Trophy (1956), as well as the inaugural Conn Smythe Trophy (1965).
As a player, he won the Stanley Cup 10 times, and as an executive he was part of another seven championship teams, the most Stanley Cup victories by an individual to date. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972.
Béliveau died on December 2, 2014 at the age of 83, in Longueuil, Quebec, Canada, a suburb of Montreal from unknown causes.
Luc Oursel
Luc Oursel, (7 September 1959 – 3 December 2014), was a French businessman. He was the former chairman of the board of the nuclear company Areva and member of its Executive Committee.
He resigned on October 20, 2014 for health reasons. Until June 2013, he was the President of the French Nuclear Energy Corporation.
Lynne Kosky
Lynne Janice Kosky (2 September 1958 – 4 December 2014) was a former Australian politician and senior minister in the Parliament of Victoria. She represented the electoral district of Altona in the Victorian Legislative Assembly for the Australian Labor Party from 1996 to 2010
Kosky died from breast cancer in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, aged 56.
Jacques Barrot
Jacques Barrot (February 3, 1937 – December 3, 2014) was a French politician. He served as European Commissioner for Justice between 2008 and 2010, after having spent four years serving as Commissioner for Transport (2004–2008) and Commissioner for Regional Policy for eight months (2004).
He was also a minister, and mayor of Yssingeaux.
Ian McLagan
Ian Patrick 'Mac' McLagan ; (12 May 1945 – 3 December 2014) was an English keyboard instrumentalist. He was best known as a member of the English Rock bands Small Faces and Faces. He also worked with The Rolling Stones and led his own band from the late 1970s.
McLagan died on 3 December 2014, reportedly due to a massive stroke, in Austin, Texas aged 69.
Herman Badillo
Herman Badillo (August 21, 1929 – December 3, 2014) was an American politician. He was a borough president, United States Representative and candidate for Mayor of New York City. He was the first Puerto Rican to have been elected to these posts and been a mayoral candidate in the continental United States.
Badillo died on December 3, 2014 of congestive heart failure in Manhattan, New York, aged 85.
Walter Reyno
Walter Reyno (13 February 1935 – 3 December 2014) was a Uruguayan actor and theater director. He was known for his roles in "25 Watts", "El ojo en la nuca", and in "El aura". Reyno was born in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Reyno died from respiratory failure in Montevideo, Uruguay, aged 79.
Ed Wynn
Ed Wynn (November 9, 1886 – June 19, 1966) was a popular American comedian and actor. He was known for his role as the Mad Hatter in the 1951 animated movie "Alice in Wonderland". His son, Keenan Wynn, was also an actor.
Wynn died of throat cancer in Beverly Hills, California, aged 79.
Red Skelton
Richard Bernard Eheart professionally known as "Red Skelton" (July 18, 1913 – September 17, 1997) was an American entertainer. He was best known for his national radio and television acts between 1937 and 1971 and as host of the television program "The Red Skelton Show".
Skelton died in Rancho Mirage, California from pneumonia, aged 84.
The Mechanic (1972 movie)
Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn (July 27, 1916 – October 14, 1986) was an American character actor. He was born in New York City, New York. He was known for his role in the 1972 thriller movie "The Mechanic".
Wynn died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, California, aged 70.
Frank de Kova
Frank de Kova (March 17, 1910 – October 15, 1981) was an Italian-American character actor. de Kova was born in New York City. He was known for his role as "The Man" in the 1972 thriller movie "The Mechanic".
de Kova died of heart failure at his home in Sepulveda, California, aged 71.
Realpolitik is a system of politics or principles based on practical, rather than moral or ideological considerations. Realpolitik is the idea that the world is ruthless and you have to act realistically, even if it causes other things to happen that are bad, or decisions have to be made that upset your people.
Ludwig von Rochau was a 19th century writer and politician. He describes it as follows:
A good example of a realpolitik politician is Henry Kissinger, who helped U.S. Presidents in the 1960s and 1970s to expand the power of the United States and its allies.
Linda Christian
Linda Christian (November 13, 1923 – July 22, 2011) was a Mexican actress. She appeared in Mexican and Hollywood movies. She worked mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. She was the first Bond girl, appearing in the 1954 movie "Casino Royale".
Christian was born Blanca Rose Welter in Tampico, Mexico. She died in Palm Desert, California at age eighty-seven.
Regression toward the mean
Regression toward the mean simply means that, following an extreme random event, the next random event is likely to be less extreme. Regression toward the mean was first described by Francis Galton. He found that offspring of tall parents tended to be shorter. Also, offspring of shorter parents tended to be taller. Galton stated that processes that did not follow regression towards the mean would quickly go out of control.
In 1886, Galton published a paper called "Regression towards mediocrity in hereditary stature". In the paper, he observed that extreme characteristics (e.g., height) in parents are not passed on completely to their offspring. Rather, the characteristics in the offspring "regress" towards a "mediocre" point. Today, this point is called the mean. By measuring the heights of hundreds of people, he was able to quantify regression to the mean, and estimate the size of the effect. Galton wrote that, “the average regression of the offspring is a constant fraction of their respective mid-parental deviations”. This means that the difference between a child and its parents for some characteristic is proportional to its parents' deviation from typical people in the population. If its parents are each two inches taller than the averages for men and women, on average, the child will be shorter than its parents by some factor times two inches. Today, this factor has been calculated to be one minus the regression coefficient. For height, Galton estimated this coefficient to be about two thirds: the height of an individual will measure around a midpoint that is two thirds of the parents’ deviation from the population average.
Galton used the term regression to describe an observable fact in the inheritance of multi-factorial quantitative genetic traits: namely that the offspring of parents who lie at the tails of the distribution will tend to lie closer to the centre, the mean, of the distribution. He quantified this trend, and in doing so invented linear regression analysis. This is the starting point for much of modern statistical modelling. Since then, the term "regression" has taken on different meanings, and it may be used by modern statisticians to describe phenomena of sampling bias which have little to do with Galton's original observations in the field of genetics.
Galton's explanation for the regression phenomenon he observed is now known to be incorrect. He stated: “A child inherits partly from his parents, partly from his ancestors. Speaking generally, the further his genealogy goes back, the more numerous and varied will his ancestry become, until they cease to differ from any equally numerous sample taken at haphazard from the race at large.” This is incorrect, since a child receives its genetic makeup exclusively from its parents. There is no generation-skipping in genetic material: any genetic material from earlier ancestors than the parents must have passed through the parents. The phenomenon is better understood if we assume that the inherited trait (e.g., height) is controlled by a large number of recessive genes. Exceptionally tall individuals must be homozygous for increased height mutations on a large proportion of these loci. But the loci which carry these mutations are not necessarily shared between two tall individuals, and if these individuals mate, their offspring will be on average homozygous for "tall" mutations on fewer loci than either of their parents. In addition, height is not entirely genetically determined, but also subject to environmental influences during development, which make offspring of exceptional parents even more likely to be closer to the average than their parents.
In sharp contrast to this population genetic phenomenon of regression to the mean, which is best thought of as a combination of a binomially distributed process of inheritance (plus normally distributed environmental influences), the term "regression to the mean" is now often used to describe completely different phenomena in which an initial sampling bias may disappear as new, repeated, or larger samples display sample means that are closer to the true underlying population mean.
Promised Land (movie)
Comrade
Comrade is the name given to someone who belongs to the same social group, party or company. It literally means "friend", "colleague", but an also mean "ally". The term can refer to someone who has the same beliefs or values. That way, in Communism, people who belong to the Communist Party address each other as "comrade".
Terms like this avoid using titles, rank or any other sign that one person is better than, or different from, another.
Giulio Questi
Giulio Questi (18 March 1924 – 3 December 2014) was an Italian movie director and screenwriter. He was known for his roles in "La morte ha fatto l'uovo" and "Django Kill! (If You Live Shoot!)". Questi was born in Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy.
Questi died in Rome, Italy, aged 90.
Sjefke Janssen
Sjefke Janssen (October 28, 1919 – December 3, 2014) was a Dutch professional road bicycle racer. He was known for his bronze medal in the Elite race of the 1947 UCI Road World Championships.
Janssen was a professional cyclist from 1946 through 1954. After retiring, he became a cycling team-manager and owned a bicycle shop in Elsloo.
He was born and died in Elsloo. At the time of his death, Janssen was the oldest living Dutch Tour de France racer.
He was the father of Dutch Olympic team dressage coach Sjef Janssen.
V. R. Krishna Iyer
Vaidyanathapura Rama Krishna Iyer (15 November 1914 – 4 December 2014), popularly known as V. R. Krishna Iyer, was an Indian judge in the Supreme Court of India. He was born at Vaidyanathapuram near Palakkad, in Malabar region of Kerala. He served in the Supreme Court from 1973 until his death in 2014.
Iyer died in Kochi, Kerala, India from renal and heart failure, aged 100.
Claudia Emerson
Claudia Emerson (January 13, 1957 – December 4, 2014) was an American poet. She won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection "Late Wife". She was named the Poet Laureate of Virginia by Governor Tim Kaine in 2008. Emerson was born in Chatham, Virginia.
Emerson died in Richmond, Virginia from colon cancer, aged 57.
Gershon Kingsley (born Götz Gustav Ksinski; October 28, 1922 – December 10, 2019) was a German-American composer. His music genre included electronic music and the Moog synthesizer. He was the founder of the First Moog Quartet, as a partner in the electronic music duo Perrey and Kingsley, and writer of rock-inspired compositions for Jewish religious ceremonies.
Because of his Jewish background (his father was Jewish), he moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1938. After the war he moved to the United States.
Kingsley died on December 10, 2019 at the age of 97.
Death Wish (1974 movie)
Death Wish 3
Death Wish 4: The Crackdown is a 1987 Americans crime-action movie directed by J. Lee Thompson. It stars Charles Bronson. It is the first "Death Wish" movie that wasn't directed by Michael Winner. It received mixed reviews on November 6, 1987.
Death Wish V: The Face of Death
Death Wish V: The Face of Death is a 1994 American crime-action movie directed by Allan A. Goldstein. It stars Charles Bronson. It was the last movie in the "Death Wish movie series". It was released to mixed reviews on January 14, 1994.
Minnie (1923 – October 31, 1976) and Clara Bagelman (October 17, 1920 – November 22, 2014), also known as by the stage names Merna and Claire Barry, or The Barry Sisters, were popular American jazz entertainers. They worked from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Minnie and Clara were born in Bronx, New York. Merna Barry died from a brain tumor, age 54. Clara died at age 94.
Pleurisy
Rita Reys
Rita Reys (21 December 1924 – 28 July 2013) was a jazz singer from the Netherlands. In 1960, she was given the title "Europe's first lady of jazz". She sang jazz and bossa nova.
Reys was born in Rotterdam. She died in Breukelen at age eighty-eight.
Infinity (album)
Infinity is the fourth studio album by Journey. The album was released in 1978.
Evolution (album)
Evolution is the fifth studio album by Journey. The album was released on April 5, 1979.
Regina Resnik
Regina Resnik (August 30, 1922 – August 8, 2013) was an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She sang on many stages in the United States. She was known for performing in "Il trovatore", "La Gioconda", and in "Aida".
She was born in The Bronx, New York. She died at age ninety.
Stiff Upper Lip (album)
Their Satanic Majesties Request is the eighth American studio album and first Worldwide studio album by The Rolling Stones. The album was released on December 8, 1967.
David Steel
David Martin Scott Steel, Baron Steel of Aikwood (born 31 March 1938) is a British retired Liberal politician.
Steel served as the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats. He served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1965 to 1997 and as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2003.
Mathieu Kérékou
Mathieu Kérékou, (2 September 1933 – 14 October 2015) was a Beninese politician. He was President of Benin from 1972 to 1991 and again from 1996 to 2006.
After seizing power in a military coup, he ruled the country for 17 years. He was defeated in the 1991 presidential election, but was returned to the presidency in the 1996 election and controversially re-elected in 2001.
Hull Fair
Hull Fair is one of Europe's largest traveling fairs. In 1993 the fair celebrated its 700th anniversary.
It comes to Hull, England for one week. The fair opens on the Friday closest to 11 October each year. During this time the fair is open every day except Sunday. Unlike small local fairs, Hull Fair attracts rides, attractions and travellers from a wide variety of different regions from around the country. the fair is opened by the Lord Mayor of Hull on the opening evening, normally at 5 pm. It first opened from 9 to 23 March 1278.
In 1752 when the calendar changed in Great Britain, 11 days were lost. Wednesday, 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday, 14 September 1752. The people of Hull believed this took away their fair. Angry mobs shouted “Give us back our eleven days”. The outraged citizens were given their wish. Even since then, October 11th, or the Friday closest to it, became the fair's starting date.
Escape (album)
Khalifa bin Hamad Al Thani
Emir Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad bin Abdullah bin Jassim bin Muhammed Al Thani (17 September 1932 – 23 October 2016; Arabic خليفة بن حمد آل ثاني) was the Emir of Qatar from 27 February 1972 until he was deposed by his son Hamad bin Khalifa on 27 June 1995.
Khalifa died at the age of 84 on 23 October 2016 in Doha, Qatar after being hospitalized for a week.
Jackie Healy-Rae
Jackie Healy-Rae (9 March 1931 – 5 December 2014) was an Irish politician. He served as an Independent Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry South constituency from 1997 to 2011.
Healy-Rae was born in County Kerry, Irish Free State. He died on 5 December 2014 at Kerry General Hospital in Tralee, County Kerry after a long illness, aged 83.
Manuel De Sica
Manuel De Sica (24 February 1949 – 5 December 2014) was an Italian composer. He was born in Rome, Italy. In 1993, De Sica won the Nastro d'Argento for Best Score for Carlo Verdone's "Al lupo, al lupo". In 1996 he won the David di Donatello for Best Score for Carlo Lizzani's "Celluloide". In 2005 he was honored with the title of Commendatore of the Italian Republic.
Sica died of a heart attack in Rome on 5 December 2014, aged 65.
Queen Fabiola of Belgium
Queen Fabiola of Belgium (born "Doña" Fabiola de Mora y Aragón; 11 June 1928 – 5 December 2014) was the widow of King Baudouin. She was queen consort for 33 years, between her wedding in 1960 and her husband's death in 1993. The couple did not have children. When he died, the crown passed to her his younger brother, King Albert II.
On 5 December 2014, the Belgian Royal Palace announced Queen Fabiola had died that evening at Stuyvenbergh Castle in Laeken, Belgium, aged 86.
Molossia, also known as the self-proclaimed Republic of Molossia, is a micronation, founded by Kevin Baugh and headquartered in his home near Dayton, Nevada. Baugh has also been the president since 3 September 1999.
Before holding this office Baugh was prime minister of Vuldstein, Edelstein, and Zaria from 1977 to 1999. He changed Molossia from a monarchy to a republic.
Molossia is made up of Baugh's house (known as the Government House), about in size, as well as of surrounding property, enclaved by Nevada. It formerly claimed a property in Pennsylvania as well. According to author John Ryan, Molossia is "a hobby that has been pushed to the nth degree." Originally established as a childhood project in 1977, Molossia subsequently evolved into a territorial entity in the late 1990s.
The name "Molossia" is derived from the Spanish word "morro" which means "small rocky hill". Baugh has stated that the ancient Greek tribe of Molossians is unrelated.
Kevin Baugh
Kevin Baugh, (born 1962) is a Molossian politician and popular micronationalist. Baugh has been serving as President of the Republic of Molossia since 3 September 1999. His Presidential term started on the 3 September 1999, which is the official date of foundation of Molossia. However, his involvement in micronationalism goes way back to the end of the 1970s, when he formed, with James Spielman, the Grand Republic of Vuldstein.
Kevin Baugh married Adrianne Baugh on 18 October 2009 and has three children, Alexis Baugh, Carson Baugh, and Mark Baugh.
Baugh's full title, according to the Baustralian Gazette, is:
President Baugh is almost certainly the single most decorated figure in micronational culture. Below is a partial list of honors and awards from micronations.
Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands
The Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands was a micronation created as a symbolic political protest by a group of gay rights activists based in southeast Queensland, Australia. Declared in 2004 in response to the Australian government's refusal to recognise same-sex marriages. It is near the islets on the Great Barrier Reef. It is an expression of queer nationalism.
As of 17 November 2017, the Kingdom was dissolved, per the decision made by the Australian people to legalize gay marriage.
Dick Wilson
Dick Wilson, born Riccardo Di Guglielmo (30 July 1916 – 19 November 2007), was a British-Canadian character actor. He was known for playing grocery store manager Mr. (George) Whipple in over 500 Charmin toilet paper television commercials (1965–1989, 1999-2000).
Wilson was raised in Hamilton, Ontario. He died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, aged 91.
Pedro Lascuráin
Pedro José Domingo de la Calzada Manuel María Lascuráin Paredes (8 May 1856 – 21 July 1952) was a Mexican politician.
He served as the 38th President of Mexico. He served as president for less than one hour on February 19, 1913. It is the shortest presidency in the history of the world. He had earlier served as Mexico's foreign minister for two terms and was the director of a small law school in Mexico City for sixteen years.
Lascuráin was born in Mexico City, Mexico.
Before becoming president, Lascuráin was mayor of Mexico City. On 19 February 1913, General Victoriano Huerta overthrew President Madero. Lascuráin was one of the people who convinced Madero to resign the presidency while he was being held prisoner in the National Palace. He claimed that his life was in danger if he refused.
Under the Constitution of Mexico, the vice-president, the attorney general, the foreign minister and then the interior minister stood next in line to the presidency. As well as Madero, Huerta had overthrown Vice-President José María Pino Suárez and Attorney General Adolfo Valles Baca.
Lascuráin, as foreign minister, assumed the presidency. Lascuráin was president for less than an hour; sources quote figures ranging from 15 to 56 minutes. To date, Lascuráin's presidency is the shortest in history, even briefer than that of Venezuelan politician Diosdado Cabello in 2002.
Lascuráin died in Mexico City from natural causes, aged 96 years old.
Alma Cogan (19 May 1932 – 26 October 1966) was an English singer of traditional pop in the 1950s and early 1960s. She was called "the girl with the giggle in her voice". One of her hit songs was "Sugartime". It was released in 1958 alongside The McGuire Sisters' version.
Cogan was born in the East End of London, England. She died after ovarian cancer at age thirty-four.
Typhoon Hagupit (2014)
Typhoon Hagupit (called Typhoon Ruby in the Philippines) was a strong tropical cyclone in the western Pacific Ocean. The storm headed towards the Philippines.
Storm warnings and notices were up for the Philippines because of this typhoon.
Hagupit became a tropical storm on December 1, 2014. It became a typhoon the next day.
.NET Framework (pronounced dot net) is a product of Microsoft. It is a programming framework used by Software applications in order to run. It has two major parts: the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and the .Net Framework Class Library. The CLR is an execution engine used to handle running programs. The class library provides a library of reusable code that applications can use. These are designed to greatly simplify the development of larger applications. .Net Framework supports Object-oriented programming (OOP). Everything in .Net is contained in an object. It also greatly simplifies Windows programming.
Often, a program will ask for a particular version of .Net Framework to be installed (see below). It is usually recommended to install the latest version your operating system (OS) will support. This is because of backward compatibility; the newer version will also support older versions.
Visual Studio is the major development tool for .net Framework. Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition is the first full-featured edition for personal development. It also has compilers for computer programming languages such as C++ and others.
In computing, Physical Address Extension (PAE) is a processor feature to enable 32-bit IA-32 central processing units (CPUs) to access physical address space larger than 4 gigabytes by extending the paging schema . It allows up to 64 gigabytes of system memory to be addressed by a 32-bit processor.