In the Know #25

January 29, 2008


Dictionary.com's Word of the Day

sylvan \SIL-vuhn\, adjective:
1. Of or pertaining to woods or forest regions.
2. Living or located in a wood or forest.
3. Abounding in forests or trees; wooded.

noun:
1. A fabled deity or spirit of the woods.
2. One that lives in or frequents the woods or forest; a rustic.


In the news:

- At least 250 schoolchildren 12 to 18 years old and several teachers were taken hostage and finally released by at least seven militants inside a high school in Domail, Pakistan.

- The United States Secret Service has evacuated the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C. after finding a suspicious package.


Today in History, according to Wikipedia:

1845 - "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (pictured) is published in the New York Evening Mirror.

1861 - Kansas admitted as the 34th U.S. state.

1886 - Karl Benz is granted a patent for the first successful gasoline-driven automobile.

2002 - In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush describes "regimes that sponsor terror" as an Axis of Evil.


Today's Famous Births:

1737 - Thomas Paine, American patriot, Common Sense and Rights of Man and The Age of Reason.

1843 - William McKinley, 25th President of the United States

1860 - Anton Chekhov (pictured), Russian writer, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard.

1874 - John D. Rockefeller, Jr., American entrepreneur and philanthropist

1880 - W.C. Fields, American actor

1945 - Tom Selleck, American actor, "Magnum P.I."

1954 - Oprah Winfrey, American actress and talk show host, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and The Color Purple.

1960 - Greg Louganis, American diver, 4 Olympic gold medals

1970 - Heather Graham, American actress


Trivia
Today's Category - Saturn...the planet, not the car company or the game console

~ Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun, located beyond the asteroid belt and is one of four Jovian planets, the gas giants.

~ Saturn has a complex ring system, composed mostly of ice and dust.

~ Saturn's circumference is 9.45 times bigger than Earth's and is 763.6 times more voluminous, but is only 95.2 times as massive.

~ A year on Saturn lasts 29.46 Earth years.

~ A day on Saturn lasts 10-11 Earth hours.

~ Mean temperature is between 84K (-308F) and 134K (-218F), depending on altitude.

~ The atmosphere of Saturn is composed of mostly hydrogen.

~ The apparent magnitude of Saturn is between 1.2 and -0.2, making it easily visible to the naked eye.


I always wondered...
...how braille works...

In 1821, the Frenchman Louis Braille developed the braille system of writing for use by blind people. The system utilized cells comprised of 6 dot positions with the arrangement of raised dots in the positions deciding letters and characters. The cells are arranged with two columns of three dots each. The arrangement of dots creates 64 permutations (2^6).

Dot heights are approximately 0.02 inches. Dot spacing is approximately 0.1 inches. Cell spacing is approximately 0.15 inches horizontally and 0.2 inches vertically. A standard braille page is 11 by 11.5 inches and consists of a maximum of 40-43 cells per line and 25 lines.

["Braille" Photo: Christophe Moustier - 2005]
[All references from Wikipedia.org unless otherwise noted]