Hägar the Horrible is the title of a comic strip and the name of the main character. The comic strip is about a Viking and his life of plundering and his family life. It was started in 1973 by Dik Browne. Since Dik's retirement (he stopped working) in 1988, his son Chris has continued the comic.
Baghdad
Baghdad (, transliterated "Baghdād") is the capital city and largest city in Iraq. It is the second-largest city in Southwest Asia after Tehran. It is the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It has 5,772,000 people (2003). Baghdad is on the Tigris River at 33°20′N 44°26′E. The city was once the center of Dar al-Islam, Muslim civilization.
Baghdad used to be one of the largest learning centers in the world, during the post classical era.
Mediterranean Sea
The Mediterranean Sea is the body of water that separates Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The Mediterranean Sea is connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a narrow passage called the Strait of Gibraltar. The sea is almost completely surrounded by land, on the north by Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Middle East. It covers around . Its name was invented in the early middle ages from Latin words for "in the middle of land".
To the east it connects to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, by the Dardanelles and the Bosporus. The Sea of Marmara, which is an inner sea like the Black Sea, is rarely considered as a part of the Mediterranean Sea. The much bigger Black Sea is generally not considered a part of the Mediterranean Sea. The Ancient Greeks called the Mediterranean simply ἡ θάλασσα (hē thálassa; "the Sea") or sometimes ἡ μεγάλη θάλασσα (hē megálē thálassa; "the Great Sea"), ἡ ἡμετέρα θάλασσα (hē hēmetérā thálassa; "Our Sea"), or ἡ θάλασσα ἡ καθ'ἡμᾶς (hē thálassa hē kath’hēmâs; "the sea around us").
The 163 km (101 mi) long man-made Suez Canal in the southeast connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. The canal is between Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, and was built by the French "Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez" from 1859 to 1869.
Some of the most ancient human civilizations were made around the Mediterranean Sea, so it has had a large influence on the history and ways of life of these cultures. It provided a way of trade, colonization and war, and was the basis of life (like fishing and catching other seafood) for many communities throughout the ages. The combination of similarly shared climate, geology and access to a common sea has led to lots of historical and cultural connections between the ancient and modern societies around the Mediterranean.
Above all, it was the superhighway of transport in ancient times. It allowed for trade and cultural exchange between peoples of the region – Phoenicians, Egyptians, Greeks, Hebrews, Minoans and Hittites on the eastern side of the mediterranean and the Carthaginians, Romans, Etruscans, Celtiberians, Gauls and Berbers on the western side.
The history of the Mediterranean is important in understanding the origin and development of Western civilization.
The ancient Punic Wars and the Battle of the Mediterranean during World War II gave the winners control over it so they could destroy the losers. Today the Mediterranean Sea still connects the economies of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as it did in ancient times. The European migrant crisis resulted in many refugees drowning in the Mediterranean Sea.
Almost 6 million years ago, continental drift closed the Strait of Gibraltar. With no water coming in from the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean partly dried up. The remaining part became extremely salty. After half a million years the straits opened again, making the Mediterranean as it is now.
Being nearly landlocked affects the Mediterranean Sea's properties. Tides are limited by the narrow connection with the Atlantic Ocean. The water is saltier, partly because of evaporation. The Mediterranean has a deep blue color.
Evaporation greatly exceeds precipitation and surface runoff in the Mediterranean, a fact that is central to the water circulation within the basin. Evaporation is especially high in its eastern half, causing the water level to decrease and salinity to increase eastward. This pressure gradient pushes relatively cool, low-salinity water from the Atlantic across the basin; it warms and becomes saltier as it travels east, then sinks in the region of the Levant and circulates westward, to spill over the Strait of Gibraltar. Thus, seawater flow is eastward at the Strait's surface, and westward near the bottom. In the Atlantic, this chemically distinct deep "Mediterranean Intermediate Water" can persist thousands of kilometers away from its source.
Shirley Bassey
Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey, DBE (born 8 January 1937) is a Welsh singer, born in Cardiff to an English mother and Nigerian father. She is best known for singing the theme songs for the James Bond films, "Goldfinger", "Diamonds are Forever", and "Moonraker". She was "one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century".
Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet (born Don Glen Vliet January 15, 1941– December 17, 2010) was an American singer. He is better known by his stage name Captain Beefheart. He was best known for his collaborations and (sometimes) rivalry, with long time friend, Frank Zappa. He is an inspiration to many "alternative" singers. He retired from music due to illness and spent his time painting. He was born in Glendale, California. His stage name came from a movie project Zappa was writing, but soon abandoned, ""Captain Beefheart battles the Grunt People"". His best known album was recorded in 1969. It was titled "Trout Mask Replica".
He and his group "Magic Band" also made albums in the early 1980s that received positive critical attention.
Van Vliet was also a well known painter of abstract primitive art. His work has been shown in gallery presentations in New York City and Europe.
He died on December 17, 2010 at the age of 69 from complications from multiple sclerosis, twenty-nine days before his 70th birthday.
December 30
C (programming language)
The C programming language is a computer programming language that was developed to do system programming for the operating system UNIX and is an imperative programming language. C was developed in the early 1970s by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at Bell Labs. It is a procedural language, which means that people can write their programs as a series of step-by-step instructions. C is a compiled language.
Because the ideas behind C are kept close to the design of the computer, the compiler (program builder) can generate machine code/native code for the computer. Programs built in machine code are very fast. This makes C a good language for writing operating systems. Many operating systems, including Linux and UNIX, are programmed using this language. The language itself has very few keywords, and most things are done using libraries, which are collections of code for them to be reused.
There are three successive standards for the C programming language "ANSI C, ISO C" and "Standard C" which are published by the American National Standards Institute(ANSI) and the International Organization for Standardization(ISO).
C is available for many different types of computers. This is why C is called a "portable" language. A program that is written in C and that respects certain limitations can be compiled for many different platforms.
The syntax of C has also influenced many other programming languages, such as C++, C#, and Java, and many more programming languages we use nowadays.
Here is an example of a program written in C. When built and run it will show "Hello world!", followed by a new line on the computer screen.
int main() {
Drake &amp; Josh