In the Know #14

January 18, 2008


Dictionary.com's Word of the Day

stoic \STOH-ik\, noun:
1. (Capitalized). A member of a school of philosophy founded by Zeno holding that one should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and should submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity.
2. Hence, one who is apparently or professedly indifferent to or unaffected by pleasure or pain, joy or grief.

adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to the Stoics; resembling the Stoics or their doctrines.
2. Not affected by passion; being or appearing indifferent to pleasure or pain, joy or grief.


In the news:

- A British Airways flight from Beijing to London lands short of the runway (pictured) injuring 13. The cause of the crash is reported to have been a "total loss of power and avionics."

- The United Nations has appealed for $42 million to assist victims of Kenya violence.


Today in History, according to Wikipedia:

1778 - James Cook (pictured) is the first known European to discover the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands."

1896 - The x-ray machine is exhibited for the first time.

1903 - Theodore Roosevelt sends a radio message to King Edward VII of England, the first transatlantic radio transmission originating in the United States.

1967 - Albert DeSalvo, "The Boston Strangler", is convicted of numerous crimes and sentenced to life in prison.

1990 - Washington D.C. mayor, Marion Barry is arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.


Today's Famous Births:

1689 - Charles Montesquieu, French writer

1779 - Peter Roget, British lexicographer

1782 - Daniel Webster, American statesman

1882 - A.A. Milne, English author, creator of Winnie the Pooh (pictured)

1904 - Cary Grant, American actor, North by Northwest

1950 - Gilles Villeneuve, Canadian race car driver

1955 - Kevin Costner, American actor

1961 - Mark Messier, Canadian hockey player, fifteen All-Star games

1971 - Jonathan Davis, American singer, KoRn

1980 - Julius Peppers, American football player, 3 Pro Bowls


Trivia
Today's Category - Clemson University

~ Thomas Green Clemson, the founder of Clemson University, came to the Foothills of South Carolina in 1838.

~ When Clemson died in 1886, he left most of his estate in his will to be used to establish a college to teach scientific agriculture and the mechanical arts.

~ In November 1889, Governor John Richardson signed a bill establishing Clemson Agricultural College.

~ Clemson was also originally a military institute.

~ There are 17,585 students enrolled at the university.

~ Cooper Library has over 1.5 million items.

~ Tillman Hall has 47 bells.

~ There are 194 wi-fi hot spots on campus.

~ Clemson (tiger paw pictured) covers a total of 17,000 acres.


I always wondered...
...how a fax machine works...

A fax machine is basically a scanner, a printer, a modem and a phone put together. When a document is placed into a fax machine, the scanner looks at the page one line at a time. It translates that line into 1728 separate bits of information. The bits of information either represent a black dot or a white dot. There are 1145 lines on a page in the standard setting of a fax machine (there are higher settings for finer resolutions). Therefore there are approximately 2,000,000 bits of information on a page. If there are large areas of black or white, the data can be compressed to relay that info, thus saving lots of time in faxing. The information is then sent via phone line to the receiving fax machine. That device then decodes, decompresses and reassembles the bits to duplicate the original document.

["How a fax machine works" reference: HowStuffWorks.com]
[All references from Wikipedia.org unless otherwise noted]