| 1190 | Frederick Barbarossa drowns in a river while leading an army of the Third Crusade. | |
| 1692 | Bridget Bishop is hanged in Salem, Mass., for witchcraft. | |
| 1776 | The Continental Congress appoints a committee to write a Declaration of Independence. | |
| 1801 | Tripoli declares war on the U.S. for refusing to pay tribute. | |
| 1854 | The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, holds its first graduation. | |
| 1861 | Dorothea Dix is appointed superintendent of female nurses for the Union army. | |
| 1864 | At the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads in Mississippi, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest defeats the numerically superior Union troops. | |
| 1898 | U.S. Marines land in Cuba. | |
| 1905 | Japan and Russia agree to peace talks brokered by President Theodore Roosevelt. | |
| 1909 | An SOS signal is transmitted for the first time in an emergency when the Cunard liner SS Slavonia is wrecked off the Azores. | |
| 1916 | Mecca, under control of the Turks, falls to the Arabs during the Great Arab Revolt. | |
| 1920 | The Republican convention in Chicago endorses women’s suffrage. | |
| 1924 | The Italian socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti is kidnapped and assassinated by Fascists in Rome. | |
| 1925 | Tennessee adopts a new biology text book denying the theory of evolution. | |
| 1940 | The Norwegian army capitulates to the Germans. | |
| 1942 | Germany razes the town of Lidice, Czechoslovakia and kills more than 1,300 citizens in retribution of the murder of Reinhard Heydrich. | |
| 1943 | The Allies begin bombing Germany around the clock. | |
| 1944 | The U.S. VII and V corps, advancing from Normandy’s beaches, link up and begin moving inland. | |
| 1948 | The news that the sound barrier has been broken is finally released to the public by the U.S. Air Force. Chuck Yeager, piloting the rocket airplane X-1, exceeded the speed of sound on October 14, 1947. | |
| 1963 | Buddhist monk Ngo Quang Duc dies by self immolation in Saigon to protest persecution by the Diem government. | |
| 1970 | A 15-man group of special forces troops begin training for Operation Kingpin, a POW rescue mission in North Vietnam. | |
| 1985 | The Israeli army pulls out of Lebanon after 1,099 days of occupation. | |
| 1999 | Serb forces begin their withdrawal from Kosovo after signing an agreement with the NATO powers. |
When the special aired at 11:30 p.m. on October 3, 1975, 22 minutes had been clipped from the original material. Gone was a cat used as a doorbell; a mention of “colonic irrigation” had also disappeared. ABC’s censors had snipped several “Good Lords,” “damns,” and other near-profanities. Any mentions of pooping were also trimmed. For Python fans, it was something akin to comedy castration.And that's where the story really begins. Read about the ensuring legal battle and its results at Mental Floss.
The group didn’t learn the full extent of ABC’s meddling until late November, when they were shown a tape of the edited broadcast. Outraged, they demanded that ABC not re-air it.
The network had planned something worse: A second special was due in December, with the remaining three episodes due to be spliced in a similar manner.
With just days before that second program was scheduled to air, the Pythons filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction against ABC. They wanted their work removed from American broadcast television.
The mesmerizing ceiling, vaults and decor of the Peacock Room in this abandoned Italian palazzo near Florence speak for themselves. Peacocks, and other exotica, were the source of the inspired decoration to be found throughout the seemingly endless empty rooms of this daydream building. The Moorish-style makeover of what was a much older palace was the life work of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragona. Although the aristocratic Italian architect, engineer, botanist, philosopher and politician never visited the Levant or the Orient, he imagined a world of exquisite and highly exotic forms and colors that he brought to life in Leccio between 1843 and 1889. A hotel in the 20th Century, the palazzo and its polychromatic Peacock Room are in limbo today.See nine more gorgeous ceilings in a list from the BBC
In fact, the complexity of the trenches was designed to counter another favored stereotype of the First World War -- that soldiers were seen as easily replaceable machine-gun fodder. The trenches were cut as zig-zags so that, should an enemy force breach the lines, all the troops weren't just standing in a straight headshot-able line from the North Sea to the Alps. Also, the walls were paneled with wood and the parapets reinforced with a ceaseless line of sandbags, and there were large medical stations installed throughout, because even these generals took care not to just let entire regiments die from gangrene and patience.That's just the beginning of the complexity of World War I trenches. They were sometimes even connected underground to larger staging areas. Read about them and four other parts of war that aren't exactly as Hollywood portrays them at Cracked.
Bell and his colleagues examined skin from T. rex and four relatives from fairly late in tyrannosaur history: Albertosaurus, Daspletosaurus, Gorgosaurus and Tarbosaurus. Tyrannosaur skin is rare, Bell said, in part because paleontologists historically favored smashing through skin to get to bones.That's good news for the producers of Jurassic Park. Read more about the study at The Washington Post.
From these skin patches, representing the tyrannosaur abdomen, chest, pelvis, neck and tail, the researchers found nothing but scales. If feathers existed, they did so only along the animals' back or spines.
“This doesn't rule out feathers on even the biggest tyrannosaurs,” said University of London paleontologist David Hone, who was not involved in the research, “but does suggest they lacked a full coat of feathers.”
Our “tough guy” Moyo doesn’t have his horns yet, but that doesn’t stop him practicing his charge! The 2-week-old black rhinoceros calf is very active and zookeepers provide him with a variety of toys and enrichment throughout the day. Play is important for baby animals – it’s how they learn the skills they will need as adults.
