Baptist churches in England and New England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Confession became influential throughout the English-speaking world, but especially in American Protestant theology. (Full article...
The Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar was an American fifty-cent piece struck at the San Francisco Mint in 1923, bearing portraits of former presidents James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Sculptor Chester Beach is credited with the design, although the reverse closely resembles an earlier work by Raphael Beck. The commemorative coin was issued to raise funds for an exposition in Los Angeles honoring the 100th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine; the event was organized in part to generate good press for Hollywood during a time of highly publicized scandals, including manslaughter charges against film star Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle. The exposition was a financial failure. The coins did not sell well, and the bulk of the mintage of over 270,000 was released into circulation. Many of the pieces that had been sold at a premium and saved were spent during the Depression; most surviving coins show evidence of wear. (Full article...)
Vultee Vengeance dive bombers operated in Australian service between 1942 and 1950, and saw combat during World War II. A total of 400 of the type were ordered for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in 1942. Large-scale deliveries commenced in 1943, and 342 arrived before the order was cancelled. RAAF Vengeance-equipped units entered combat in mid-1943. The main frontline deployment of the type began in January 1944, but ended after only six weeks as the Vengeance was considered inferior to other available aircraft. All combat units equipped with Vengeances were converted to operate heavy bombers. The type remained in RAAF service for training and support purposes until 1946, and some were used by the Royal Australian Navy until 1950. While there is consensus among historians that the Vengeance was obsolete at the time it entered Australian service, some argue that it proved successful. Others, including the RAAF's Air Power Development Centre, have judged that the type was unsuitable. (Full article...)
King Stephen, and probably received both offices through the influence of Henry. As a papal clerk in Rome, he got to know the future Pope Adrian IV and the writer John of Salisbury. After Hilary's unsuccessful nomination to become Archbishop of York, Pope Eugene III promoted him to the bishopric of Chichester in 1147. Hilary spent many years in a struggle with Battle Abbey, attempting to assert his right to oversee it as bishop. He supported King Henry II's position in a conflict with Thomas Becket, who was then the king's chancellor and later the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry appointed Hilary a sheriff, and employed him as a judge in the royal courts; he was also a papal judge-delegate, hearing cases referred back to England. (Full article...
Rae Thomas. Passions became the first soap opera to show two women (Simone and Rae) having sex, and the first to feature an African-American lesbian. The show won GLAAD's 2006 Outstanding Daily Drama award for its portrayal of Simone. The representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender topics, and Doe's performance as Simone, received mixed responses from critics. (Full article...
Percy Grainger (8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist who played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early 20th century. Grainger left Australia in 1895 to study at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt. Between 1901 and 1914 he was based in London, where he established himself first as a society pianist and later as a concert performer, composer and collector of original folk melodies. He met many of the significant figures in European music, forming friendships with Frederick Delius and Edvard Grieg, and became a champion of Nordic music and culture. In 1914, Grainger moved to the United States, where he took citizenship in 1918. He experimented with music machines that he hoped would supersede human interpretation. Although much of his work was experimental and unusual, the piece with which he is most generally associated is his piano arrangement of the folk-dance tune "Country Gardens". (Full article...)
Harry Bates. Combined with Gernsback's earnest editorials on the educational power of science fiction, the stories gave the magazine an anachronistic feel. Sales were initially good, but soon fell. Moskowitz was able to obtain fiction from some of the better-known writers of the day, including Clifford D. Simak, Murray Leinster, Robert Bloch, and Philip José Farmer, and some of their stories were well-received, including "Spacebred Generations", by Simak, "Strange Compulsion", by Farmer, and "Nightmare Planet", by Leinster. Science fiction historians consider the magazine a failed attempt to reproduce the early days of the science fiction pulps. (Full article...
Second World War. Between 1996 and 2010 the ruins were investigated by archaeologists and community archaeology volunteers as part of the Tameside Archaeology Survey. The site has been designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument since 1924. (Full article...
muroid rodents of the region. E. emmonsae is a relatively large rice rat, weighing 46 to 78 g (1.6 to 2.8 oz), with long, tawny brown fur and a distinctly long tail. The skull is slender and the incisive foramina (openings in the bone of the palate) are broad. The animal has 80 chromosomes, and its karyotype is typical of its genus. Its conservation status is listed as data deficient, meaning more information is needed, but deforestation may pose a threat to the species. Its name honors Louise H. Emmons, who, among other contributions to Neotropical mammalogy, collected three of the known examples of the species in 1986. (Full article...
Nigel Williams (15 July 1944 – 21 April 1992) was a British conservator. From 1961 until his death he worked at the British Museum, where he became the Chief Conservator of Ceramics and Glass in 1983. He was one of the first people to study conservation, before it was recognised as a profession. In the 1960s he assisted with the re-excavation of the Sutton Hooship-burial, and in his twenties he conserved many of the objects found therein, including a shield, drinking horns, and maplewood bottles. Restoration of the Sutton Hoo helmet alone occupied a year of his time. After nearly 31,000 fragments of shattered Greek vases were found in 1974 amidst the wreck of HMS Colossus, Williams set to work piecing them together, and the process was televised for a BBC programme. His crowning achievement, the reassembly of the Portland Vase(pictured) in 1988 and 1989, took nearly a year to complete, and was also televised. The Ceramics & Glass group of the Institute of Conservation awards a biennial prize in his honour. (Full article...)
annular hurricane with a large and symmetric eye surrounded by a thick ring of intense convection, it gradually weakened as it entered an area of cooler water temperatures and increased wind shear. After crossing into the Central Pacific Ocean, it degenerated into a remnant low pressure area on July 26, and dissipated southeast of Hawaii within two days. The storm brought light to moderate precipitation to the Island of Hawaii and Maui, causing minor flooding, with no fatalities or major damage reported. (Full article...
Bolshevik secret police. The location of her burial was unknown during the decades of Communist rule, and rumors that she had escaped circulated after her death. A mass grave near Yekaterinburg which held the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was revealed in 1991, and the bodies of the remaining daughter and the Tsarevitch Alexei were discovered in 2007. Forensic analysis and DNA testing have confirmed that the remains are those of the imperial family, showing that Anastasia and the other grand duchesses were killed in 1918. Several women have claimed to be Anastasia, including Anna Anderson, who died in 1984, but DNA testing in 1994 showed that she was not related to the Romanov family. (Full article...
Umkhonto we Sizwe, which led a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. He was arrested in 1962, convicted of conspiring to overthrow the state, and imprisoned for 27 years. Released in 1990 amid growing ethnic strife and violence, he became leader of the ANC and helped negotiate an end to apartheid with President F. W. de Klerk. In the country's first multi-racial election, in 1994, he was elected President of South Africa. His administration stressed racial reconciliation and measures to alleviate poverty. He retired in 1999 to focus on philanthropic causes. Controversial throughout much of his life, in South Africa he is widely regarded as the "Father of the Nation". (Full article...
The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada on 25 July, the costliest single day for a Canadian battalion since the 1942 Dieppe Raid. (Full article...
high priest of Amun, Ramessesnakht, was turning Thebes in Upper Egypt into the religious capital and a second center of power on par with Pi-Ramesses in Lower Egypt, where the pharaoh resided. He was fond of cult statues of himself; more are known to portray him than any other Twentieth-Dynasty king after his father, Ramesses III. He usurped KV9, a tomb in the Valley of the Kings planned by and for Ramesses V, and had it enlarged and redecorated for himself. His mummy lay untouched for fewer than 20 years before pillagers damaged it. The Egyptologist Amin Amer characterises him as "a king who wished to pose as a great pharaoh in an age of unrest and decline". (Full article...
San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. Before the Interstate was built, US Route 6 was the busiest highway in Iowa. In the early 1950s, a turnpike along the US 6 corridor was slated to be the first modern four-lane highway in the state, but those plans were shelved when the Interstate Highway System was created in 1956. The first section of I-80 opened in 1958 in the western suburbs of Des Moines, and new sections of the Interstate opened up regularly over the next twelve years. The final segment in Iowa, the Missouri River bridge to Omaha, Nebraska, opened in 1972. About one-third of Iowa's population lives along the I-80 corridor, most of which runs through farmland. (Full article...
Late Pliocene. Once thought to be closely related to the great white shark (C. carcharias), it may be a member of the extinct familyOtodontidae. It may have looked like a stocky great white, measuring at most 18 meters (59 ft), and averaging 10.5 metres (34 ft). Its large jaws exerted an estimated bite force of 108,500 to 182,200 newtons (24,400 to 41,000 lbf), coupled with thick teeth to grab large, struggling prey, crushing the heart and lungs of the marine mammals – mainly baleen whales – that it fed on in oceans around the world. It is thought that its decline was due to competition from other large predators (such as Livyatan), the ice ages, and the shift in whale populations. The shark has made appearances in media such as the Discovery Channel's docufictionMegalodon: The Monster Shark Lives. (Full article...
eastern white pine. The fruit body grows on the ground, appearing from early summer to autumn. It is found in eastern Asia, northeastern North America, and Mexico throughout the range of the host tree. The mushroom is edible, although opinions about its quality vary. It bears a resemblance to several other Suillus species, including the closely related S. decipiens, although the species can be differentiated by variations in color and size. (Full article...
pattern-welded sword and hanging bowl. One of only six known Anglo-Saxon helmets, alongside those from Benty Grange, Sutton Hoo, Coppergate, Wollaston, and Staffordshire, it is the sole example to derive from the continental Frankish style rather than the contemporaneous Northern crested style used in England and Scandinavia. Exhibiting hardly any decoration other than a speculative exterior leather covering, this was a utilitarian fighting helmet. It was simply and sturdily designed out of eight pieces of riveted iron, and its only decorative elements were paired with functional uses. The helmet's plainness belies its significance; helmets were rare in Anglo-Saxon England, and appear to have been limited to the higher classes. (Full article...
wolves, elephants, ravens, and keas appear to understand the requirements of the task, and other animals sometimes manage to retrieve the food. The superior scale and range of human cooperation comes mainly from the ability to use language to exchange social information. (Full article...
6× platinum in 2012 for shipping six million copies in the United States. Many rock publications have ranked Ride the Lightning on their best album lists. (Full article...
The Nine Stones is a stone circle near the village of Winterbourne Abbas in the south-western English county of Dorset. The circle was probably erected during the Bronze Age; stone circles were built throughout much of Britain, Ireland, and Brittany between 3,300 and 900 BCE, during the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The stone circle tradition was accompanied by the construction of timber circles and earthen henges, reflecting a growing emphasis on circular monuments. At least nine of these stone circles are known in modern Dorset. They are smaller than those found elsewhere in Britain and are typically built from sarsen stone. Located in the bottom of a narrow valley, the Nine Stones circle consists of nine irregularly spaced sarsen megaliths, with a small opening on the circle's northern side. Two of the stones on the north-western side are considerably larger than the other seven. The site, adjacent to the A35 road, is owned by English Heritage. (Full article...)
Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in June 1918. He was again decorated for courage for the capture of the commune of Merris on 29 July. After the war, he worked as a district officer in the Territory of New Guinea, where he died at the age of 40, probably of complications from his war wounds. (Full article...
venomous, but only the blue-ringed octopus is known to be deadly to humans. Octopus is sold as food around the world, especially in the Mediterranean and along the coasts of Asia. (Full article...
opening batsman, he played 22 Tests between 1934 and 1948, captaining his country in one of them. His partnership with Jack Fingleton in the 1930s is regarded as one of the finest in Australian Test history. In the 1938 tour of England, Brown had 1,854 runs, including an unbeaten 206 that saved Australia from defeat in the second Test, and was honoured as one of the five Wisden Cricketers of the Year. The outbreak of the Second World War cost Brown his peak years as a player, time that he spent in the Royal Australian Air Force. After the war, he was a member of Don Bradman's Invincibles, who toured England in 1948 without defeat. He performed reasonably well in the tour matches, but struggled while batting out of position in the middle order during the first two Tests, and was dropped from the Test team. (Full article...
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