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November 18

Donkey Kong Country is a 1994 platform game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It follows the gorilla Donkey Kong and his nephew Diddy Kong as they set out to recover their stolen banana hoard from the crocodile King K. Rool and his army, the Kremlings. Nintendo commissioned Rare to revive the dormant Donkey Kong franchise as it sought a game to compete with Sega's Aladdin (1993). Donkey Kong Country was one of the first home-console games to feature pre-rendered graphics, achieved through a compression technique that converted 3D models into sprites with little loss of detail. It was released on 18 November 1994 to acclaim. Critics hailed its visuals as groundbreaking and praised its gameplay and music; it is frequently listed as one of the greatest games of all time. Donkey Kong Country re-established Donkey Kong as a popular Nintendo franchise and was followed by sequels and ports for subsequent Nintendo consoles. (Full article...)

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April 18

Aramaic is a Semitic language with a 3,000-year history. It has been the language of administration of empires and the language of divine worship. It is the original language of a large section of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra. It was probably the language of Jesus, it is the main language of the Talmud, and it is still spoken today as a first language by numerous small communities. Aramaic belongs to the Afro-Asiatic language family. Within this diverse family, Aramaic belongs to the Semitic subfamily. Aramaic is a part of the Northwest Semitic group of languages, which also includes the Canaanite languages (including Hebrew). (more...)

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March 18

Evolution is a change in the genetic makeup of a population within a species. Since the emergence of modern genetics in the 1940s, evolution has been defined more specifically as a change in the frequency of alleles from one generation to the next. The word "evolution" is often used as a shorthand for the modern theory of evolution of species based upon Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, which states that all modern species are the products of an extensive process that began over three billion years ago with simple single-celled organisms, and Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics. As the theory of evolution by natural selection and genetics has become universally accepted in the scientific community, it has replaced other explanations including creationism and Lamarckism. Skeptics, often creationists, sometimes deride evolution as "just a theory" in an attempt to characterize it as an arbitrary choice and degrade its claims to truth. Such criticism overlooks the scientifically-accepted use of the word "theory" to mean a falsifiable and well-supported hypothesis. (more...)

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February 18

A graffiti artist working with spray paint at a Graffiti competition in London

Graffiti is a type of deliberate human markings on property. Graffiti can take the form of art, drawings, or words, and is illegal vandalism when done without the property owner's consent. Its origin can be traced back to ancient civilizations such as the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece. Graffiti originally was the term used for inscriptions, figure drawings, etc., found on the walls of ancient sepulchers or ruins, as in the Catacombs, or at Pompeii. It has evolved to include any decorations inscribed on any surface that are considered to be vandalism or pictures or writing placed on surfaces, usually outside walls and sidewalks, without the permission of the owner. Thus, inscriptions made by the authors of a monument are not considered graffiti. (more...)

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January 18

The First Crusade was a crusade launched in 1095 by Pope Urban II to regain control of the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Christian Holy Land from Muslims. What started as a minor call for aid quickly turned into a wholesale migration and conquest of territory outside of Europe. Both knights and peasants from many different nations of western Europe, with little central leadership, travelled overland and by sea towards Jerusalem and captured the city in July 1099, establishing the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the other Crusader states. Although these gains lasted for fewer than 200 years, the Crusade was a major turning point in the expansion of Western power, and was the only crusade out of the many that followed to achieve its stated goal. (more...)

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December 18

The Cathedral of Magdeburg was the first gothic cathedral in Germany, and is the tallest cathedral in what is now eastern Germany with a height of 104 m. The cathedral is in Magdeburg, the capital city of the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, and is also home to the grave of Otto I the Great. The first church built in 937 at the location of the current cathedral was an abbey called St. Maurice, dedicated to Saint Maurice. The current cathedral was constructed over the period of 300 years starting from 1209, and the completion of the steeples took place only in 1520. Despite being repeatedly looted, the Cathedral of Magdeburg is rich in art, ranging from antiques to modern art. (more...)

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November 18

In mathematics, a regular polytope is a geometric figure with a high degree of symmetry. Examples in two dimensions include the square, the regular pentagon and hexagon, and so on. In three dimensions the regular polytopes include the cube, the dodecahedron, and all Platonic solids. There exist examples in higher dimensions also. Circles and spheres, although highly symmetric, are not considered regular polytopes because they do not have flat faces. The strong symmetry of the regular polytopes gives them an aesthetic quality that interests of non-mathematicians and mathematicians alike. (more...)

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October 18

Cyclone Tracy was a tropical cyclone that devastated Darwin, Australia, on 24 December–25 December 1974. It was recorded by The Age as being a "disaster of the first magnitude... and without parallel in Australia's history". It killed 65 people and destroyed over 70 per cent of Darwin's buildings, leaving over 20,000 people homeless. Most of Darwin's population was evacuated to Adelaide, Whyalla, Alice Springs and Sydney and many never returned to Darwin. The town was subsequently rebuilt with newer materials and techniques. Cyclone Tracy, due to its severity, has entered into Australian popular culture in a way that no other meteorological event had before, or has since. (more...)

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September 18

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 began with a set of national protests in the China, which occurred between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989, centered at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The protests were part of a conflict between students and antigovernment demonstrators and the Chinese Communist Party. After several weeks, a decision was made to forcibly remove the protesters, and an estimated 2,600 people died in the ensuing conflict. (more...)

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September 6

The Warsaw Uprising was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944 as a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2. An estimated 85% of the city was destroyed during the urban guerrilla war and after the end of hostilities. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army was approaching Warsaw. Although the Soviet army was within a few hundred metres of the city from September 16 onward, the link between the uprising and the advancing army was never made. This failure and the reasons behind it have been a matter of controversy ever since. (more...)

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August 18

Barack Obama is an American politician from Chicago, Illinois. A Democrat and current state senator, Obama was the third African-American to deliver a keynote address at a Democratic National Convention. A former law professor, Obama is currently running for an open seat in the U.S. Senate. If successful, Obama would be only the third black U.S. senator since Reconstruction (the two previous being Edward Brooke and Carol Moseley-Braun). (more...)

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July 18

The ichthys, an ancient symbol of Christianity

Christianity is a monotheistic religion, encompassing many religious traditions that trace their origins to Jesus Christ. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and the Lord and sole Savior of all humanity as the Jewish Messiah. Over the past two millennia, Christianity has diverged into three main branches: Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Collectively, it is the world's largest single religion, with nearly a third of the world's population as its adherents. (more...)

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June 18

The Beatles are among the most influential popular music artists of modern times, initially affecting the culture of Britain and the U.S., the postwar baby boom generation, and then of the rest of the world, especially during the 1960s and early 1970s. Certainly they are the most successful, with global sales exceeding 1.3 billion albums. Their influences on popular culture extended far beyond their roles as recording artists, as they branched out into film and even semi-willingly became spokesmen for their generation. The members of the group were John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (Richard Starkey), all from Liverpool in England. The effect of the Beatles on Western culture (and by extension on the rest of the world) has been immeasurable. (more...)

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May 18

A comet is a relatively small object similar to an asteroid but composed largely of ice. In the Solar System the orbits of comets extend past that of Pluto; of the comets which enter the inner Solar System, most have relatively highly elliptical orbits. Often described as "dirty snowballs", comets are composed largely of frozen carbon dioxide, methane and water with dust and various mineral aggregates mixed in. Comets are thought of as debris leftover from the condensation of a solar nebula. (more...)

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April 18

The Ford Mustang is a popular compact car originally based on the Ford Falcon. It was later introduced to the North American public as a "1964 1/2" model both at the New York World's Fair and later via all three American television networks. It was the most successful product launch in automotive history, setting off near-pandemonium at Ford dealers across the continent. (more...)

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March 18

A geyser is a special type of hot spring that erupts periodically, ejecting a column of hot water and steam into the air. The name geyser comes from Geysir, the name of the best-known geyser in Iceland; that name, in turn, comes from the word gjósa, "to gush." Geysers are quite rare, requiring a combination of geology and climate that exists in only a few places on Earth. There are only six geyser fields of any size in the world: two in the United States, and one each in Russia, Chile, New Zealand and Iceland. (more...)

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