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Exactly 70 years ago today, World War II was effectively launched in Europe:

1939 – Nazi Germany invaded Poland at Wieluń and Westerplatte, starting World War II in Europe.



...later that century, other outrageous news:

1983 – Soviet jet interceptors shot down the civilian airliner Korean Air Lines Flight 007 near Sakhalin Island in the North Pacific, killing all 246 passengers and 23 crew on board.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Equinox

An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the Sun being vertically above a point on the Equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, the night and day are approximately equally long. It may be better understood to mean that latitudes +L and -L north and south of the equator experience nights of equal length.

The word is also used for the same event happening on other planets and in setting up a celestial coordinate system; see equinox (celestial coordinates).

At an equinox, the Sun is at one of two opposite points on the celestial sphere where the celestial equator (i.e. declination 0) and ecliptic intersect. These points of intersection are called equinoctial points: the vernal point and the autumnal point. By extension, the term equinox may denote an equinoctial point.

An equinox happens each year at two specific moments in time (rather than two whole days), when there is a location on the Earth's Equator where the centre of the Sun can be observed to be vertically overhead, occurring around March 20/21 and September 22/23 each year.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equinox

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Celebrate, everyone!

2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush signed the USA PATRIOT Act into law, significantly expanding the authority of U.S. law enforcement agencies in fighting terrorism in the United States and elsewhere.

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

October 26

1774 - The First Continental Congress of the U.S. adjourned in Philadelphia.

1825 - The Erie Canal opened in upstate New York. The 363-mile canal connected Lake Erie and the Hudson River at a cost of $7,602,000.

1854 - Charles William Post was born. He was the inventor of "Grape Nuts," "Postum" and "Post Toasties."

1858 - H.E. Smith patented the rotary-motion washing machine.

1881 - The "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place in Tombstone, AZ. The fight was between Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang.

1905 - Norway gained independence from Sweden.

1914 - Jackie Coogan was born. He became the first child to appear in a full-length movie, "The Kid."

1942 - The U.S. ship Hornet was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz during World War II.

1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf ended. The battle was won by American forces and brought the end of the Pacific phase of World War II into sight.

1949 - U.S. President Harry Truman raised the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.

1951 - Winston Churchill became the prime minister of Great Britain.

1955 - New York City's "The Village Voice" was first published.

1957 - The Soviet Union announced that defense minister Marchal Georgi Zhukov had been relieved of his duties.

1958 - Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York City to Paris.

1962 - The Soviet Union made an offer to end the Cuban Missile Crisis by taking their missile bases out of Cuba if the U.S. agreed to not invade Cuba and would remove Jupiter missiles in Turkey.

1967 - The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

1970 - "Doonesbury," the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S.

1972 - U.S. National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam.

1975 - Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to officially visit to the United States.

1977 - The experimental space shuttle Enterprise successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1979 - South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

1980 - Israeli President Yitzhak Navon became the first Israeli head of state to visit Egypt.

1984 - "Baby Fae" was given the heart of baboon after being born with a severe heart defect. She lived for 21 days with the animal heart.

1985 - Approximately 110,000 people marched past the U.S. and Soviet embassies in London to pressure the two countries to end their arms race.

1988 - Roussel Uclaf, a French *SPAM* company, announced it was halting the worldwide distribution of RU-486. The pill is used to induce abortions. The French government made the company reverse itself two days later.

1988 - Two whales were freed by Soviet and American icebreakers. The whales had been trapped for nearly 3 weeks in an Arctic ice pack.

1990 - The U.S. State Department issued a warning that terrorists could be planning an attack on a passenger ship or aircraft.

1990 - William S. Paley died at the age of 89. He was the founder of CBS Inc.

1990 - Wayne Gretzky became the first NHL player to reach 2,000 points.

1991 - Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived at a federal correctional institution in Petersburg, VA, to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession.

1992 - General Motors Corp. Chairman Robert Stempel resigned after the company recorded its highest losses in history.

1992 - In Canada, voters rejected the Charlottetown accord, which was designed to unify the country.

1993 - Deborah Gore Dean was convicted of 12 felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress. Dean was a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal.

1994 - Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty.

1995 - Alec Baldwin got into a fight with a paparazzi in front of his home when he and his wife Kim Bassinger were bringing their first baby home from the hospital.

1995 - Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) scored his 500th National Hockey League (NHL) career goal against the New York Islanders in his 605th game. He became the second-fastest player to attain the plateau. Wayne Gretzky had reached 600 goals by his 575th NHL game.

1996 - Federal prosecutors cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing.

1998 - A French lab found a nerve agent on an Iraqi missile warhead.

2001 - It was announced that Fort Worth's Lockheed Martin won a defense contract for $200 billion over 40 years. The contract, for the "joint strike fighter," was the largest defense contract in history.

2002 - Russian authorities pumped a gas into a theater where separatist rebels held over 800 hostages. The gas killed 116 hostages and all 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.

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BANNED and FAT

Seven years ago today:

Members RayBuckmiller, studabaker_hop (R.I.P.) and Mr_Green_Genes, among others join the recently opened Zappa Forum...

50 years ago today:


French hero Asterix is published for the first time...

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

What Hath God Wrought...

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

Can you translate, please? Is it related to the Heavens falling in Asterix?

40 years ago today:

Celebrating 40 years of the net

It has often been said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. For the internet, that first step was more of a stumble.

At 2100, on 29 October 1969, engineers 400 miles apart at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI) prepared to send data between the first nodes of what was then known as Arpanet.

It got the name because it was commissioned by the US Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa).

The fledgling network was to be tested by Charley Kline attempting to remotely log in to a Scientific Data Systems computer that resided at SRI.

Kline typed an "L" and then asked his colleague Bill Duvall at SRI via a telephone headset if the letter had arrived.

It had.

Kline typed an "O". Duvall said that arrived too.

Kline typed a "G". Duvall could only report that the system had crashed.

They got it working again by 22:30 and everything went fine. After that first misstep, the network almost never put a foot wrong. The rest has made history. (...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8331253.stm

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Closer to The Forum going to Hell in a Trendbasket.
(OK, and a few others, too. )

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Stay with me flagrantly and we'll have ecstasy for all eternity.

20 years ago, the wall came down...

Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a concrete barrier erected by the German Democratic Republic (GDR) (East Germany) that completely encircled the city of West Berlin, separating it from East Germany, including East Berlin. The Wall included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses.

The separate and much longer inner German Border (the IGB) demarcated the border between East and West Germany. Both borders came to symbolize the Iron Curtain between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Prior to the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans had avoided Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and escaped into West Germany, many over the border between East and West Berlin. During its existence from 1961 to 1989, the Wall stopped almost all such emigration and separated the GDR from West Berlin for more than a quarter of a century.[1] After its erection, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between around 100 and 200.

During a revolutionary wave sweeping across the Eastern Bloc, the East German government announced on November 9, 1989, after several weeks of civil unrest, that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans climbed onto and crossed the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, parts of the wall were chipped away by a euphoric public and by souvenir hunters; industrial equipment was later used to remove almost all of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on October 3, 1990.


Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, 09 November, 1989

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

5 years ago, thanks God, Firefox arrived:

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

85 years ago today, Motoo Kimura was born...

15 years ago today, Motoo Kimura passed away...



Motoo Kimura (木村資生), (November 13, 1924 - November 13, 1994) was a Japanese biologist best known for introducing the neutral theory of molecular evolution in 1968. He became one of the most influential theoretical population geneticists. He is remembered in genetics for his innovative use of diffusion equations to calculate the probability of fixation in time to fixation of beneficial, deleterious, or neutral alleles. Combining theoretical population genetics with molecular evolution data, he also developed the neutral theory of molecular evolution in which genetic drift is the main force changing allele frequencies. James F. Crow, himself a renowned population geneticist, considers Kimura to be one of the two greatest evolutionary geneticists, along with Gustave Malécot, after the great trio of the modern synthesis (Haldane, Wright, Fisher).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoo_Kimura

[Every Green Gene's hero...]

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

November 13th:
1002 – English king Ethelred orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.
1160 – Louis VII of France marries Adele of Champagne.
1947 – Russia completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles
1979 – Ronald Reagan declares his candidacy for president of the United States.

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What's the ugliest part of your body ?

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1969 – Playing for Santos against Vasco da Gama at Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian football player Pelé scored his 1000th goal on a penalty kick.
Who was Pelé?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgJnOyWY9sY
Pelé Vs Maradonna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09r52YXpNF8

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) was Assassinated on November 22 1963 in Dallas,Texas.

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I'm not Antisocial,Society is Anti me !

150 years ago today:



On the Origin of Species, published by Charles Darwin on 24 November 1859, is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Darwin's book presented evidence that the diversity of life arose through a branching pattern of evolution with common descent caused by the mechanism of natural selection. Prior to its publication various evolutionary ideas had been proposed to explain new findings in biology, but the English scientific establishment, closely tied to the Church of England, believed that species were unchanging parts of a designed hierarchy and had rejected ideas of transmutation of species and of humans being related to animals. The book attracted widespread interest, and generated scientific, philosophical, and religious discussion. This debate contributed to establishing secular science based on scientific naturalism. Within two decades there was widespread scientific agreement that evolution had occurred, but until the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 20th century there was much less agreement on the significance of natural selection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Bobby Darin died of a heart attack. It's also my B-day.Born on the cusp of Frank Zappa.Ya!

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

Congrats, Captain, Oh my Captain...

Today is World Zappa Day!

December Solstice (17:47 UTC, 2009)


Only three more years untill the end of the world

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Yes...pleaaaaazzzzeeee more light!

...Starting TOMORROW!

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Lesser-evilism IS war.

In a littlle manger,somewhere in Baltimore,MD..A savior of modern music was born. As he slid down the chimney and landed on his feet,an announcer was heard to say "Ladies and Gentelmen,Frank Zappa"!
Joseff Stalin was born 130yr's ago today and Moscow has asked that people not make fun of him today.

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

25 years ago today, the first Rock in Rio festival opened...

Rock in Rio

Rock in Rio is a series of rock festivals held in Brazil and later in Portugal and Spain. Future festivals are planned in Poznań (Poland)

Three incarnations of the festival were in Rio de Janeiro, in 1985, 1991 and 2001, three in Lisbon, in 2004, 2006 and 2008, and one in Madrid in 2008. The shows were organized by entrepreneur Roberto Medina. In 2011, 2013, 2015 Rock in Rio will take place in Poznań on a reconstructed racing track.

Rock in Rio has been the largest rock festival in the world (1.5 million people in the first edition, 700 thousand in the second, about 1.2 million in the third, and about 350 thousand people in each of the 3 Lisbon editions.

The first edition of the festival was held from January 11-20, 1985. Queen, George Benson, Rod Stewart, AC/DC and Yes were the headliners, each occupying top spot for two nights (Benson, however, ceded it to James Taylor for their second night in the same bill, due to the huge delay Taylor's extended performance had caused to his concert two days before). About 1.4 million people attended the 10-day-long festival.

1st Rock in Rio in numbers:

* The "city of rock", the place were the event was held (which was built for the festival) covered an area of 250,000 m² (around 2.7 million feet²)
* 1,600,000 liters of beverages were served, using 4 million plastic cups.
* 900,000 hamburgers.
* 500,000 pizza slices.
* McDonalds sold 58,000 hamburgers in a single day, which was a Guinness World Record

International Artists

AC/DC
Al Jarreau
The B-52's
George Benson
The Go-Go's
Iron Maiden
James Taylor
Nina Hagen
Ozzy Osbourne
Queen
Rod Stewart
Scorpions
Whitesnake
Yes

Brazilian Artists

Alceu Valença
Baby Consuelo & Pepeu Gomes
Barão Vermelho
Blitz
Eduardo Dusek
Elba Ramalho
Erasmo Carlos
Gilberto Gil
Ivan Lins
Kid Abelha
Lulu Santos
Moraes Moreira
Ney Matogrosso
Paralamas do Sucesso
Rita Lee

* Both Queen shows were filmed (on January 11 and January 18) and broadcast throughout Brazil by Globo. Each show was watched by nearly 200 million people in over 60 countries. It was later broadcast in the United States on MTV as "Queen: Rock in Rio."

* Iron Maiden's own performance began at exactly two minutes to midnight.[citation needed] This was in celebration and promotion of their latest release, Powerslave, which featured the song 2 Minutes to Midnight. A widely known event occurred during the song "Revelations", when lead singer Bruce Dickinson, playing the guitar, threw his instrument up in the air, which proceeded to hit him on the forehead, opening a deep cut and soaking his face with blood.[citation needed] Dickinson went on as if nothing had happened. The British group was the only non-Brazilian act to play just one concert at the festival (at its opening night, headlined by Queen), since they were already booked for the days ahead and couldn't stay in Rio for longer. All the other international acts performed twice.

* The Go-Go's broke up after their two Rock in Rio performances, though they would later reunite in the 1990s. The two Rock in Rio shows were the debut and swansong for short-tenured Go-Go's member Paula Jean Brown, who had replaced Jane Wiedlin. (Wiedlin would return to the reunited 1990s lineup.)

* Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, at the time Talking Heads drummer and bass player, respectively, took part at the B-52's concert. They joined the band from the third song on and played along with them for the remainder of the performance.

* The January 20 appearance of the B-52's would turn out to be their last with guitarist Ricky Wilson, who died from AIDS in October of that year as the band was finishing their next album.

* Nina Hagen was paid nothing for her two performances, since she had approached Roberto Medina, the festival's mentor herself, requesting a place in its bill. Queen were the highest-paid act, commanding US$ 600,000 for its two headlining performances, on January 11 and 18.

* Initially, Def Leppard were to play the festival. However, they dropped out about two months before the event, due to delays on the recording process of the album that came to be Hysteria. They were replaced by Whitesnake. The situation's turnaround would prove sadly fortunate for the festival's organizers, as Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen suffered the famous accident that cost him his left arm on New Year's Eve, a mere 11 days before the beginning of the festival.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_in_Rio

_________________
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

I could have swore KISS was at one of these, but just checked and they were only live in Rio.

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You gotta give the people something good to read, on a Sunday

MLK Jr. day! Hope you had a great one!

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I'm getting larger as I walk away.

14 days ago yesterday:

The Varginha's ET incident
(aka the Brazilian Roswell or the cosmic Watergate):



The Varginha UFO incident was a mass-media information incident, mainly by TV, in Varginha, Brazil, in 1996 involving popular reports of unidentified flying objects and strange creatures (allegedly extraterrestrials) which were supposedly captured by Brazilian officials. However, no Brazilian officials affirm the unusual history.

http://www.ufo.se/ufofiles/english/issue_3/varginha.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varginha_UFO_incident

http://www.ufoevidence.org/Cases/CaseSubarticle.asp?ID=503

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein