Today I learned...

Today I learned that America is mentioned in one of Shakespeare's plays, The Comedy Of Errors. :)

Antipholus of Syracuse asks, "Where America, the Indies?" (Act III, Scene II)
:)
 
Today I learned that birds of prey have a ratchet-like mechanism in their talons which allows them to grip hold of things without needing to keep their muscles contracted. The outside of the tendons and the inside of the tendon sheaths are both covered in ridges, and when the bird grips with its talons the ridges move over each other and lock in place. It can then relax the muscles without losing grip. The strength of their grip can be huge!
 
Today I learned that every resident of Alaska gets an annual "oil royalty cheque", a payment representing their share of revenue from Alaskan oil. They are expected to get over $2,000 for the 2015 payment. The highest previous payment was in 2008 when it was $2,069 at a time when the oil price was much higher. :D
 
Today I learned: The Shannon limit

Given a channel with particular bandwidth and noise characteristics, Shannon showed how to calculate the maximum rate at which data can be sent over it with zero error. He called that rate the channel capacity, but today, it’s just as often called the Shannon limit.

(... ... ...)

But Shannon knew that better error-correcting codes were possible. In fact, he was able to prove that for any communications channel, there must be an error-correcting code that enables transmissions to approach the Shannon limit.
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How did I learn this? By stumbling onto this one, that's how: Nokia Bell Labs, Deutsche Telekom T-Labs and Technical University of Munich achieve speeds of 1 Tb per second in groundbreaking optical technology trial (LINK)

The demonstration shows that the flexibility and performance of optical networks can be maximized when adjustable transmission rates are dynamically adapted to channel conditions and traffic demands. As part of the Safe and Secure European Routing (SASER) project, the experiment over a deployed optical fiber network of Deutsche Telekom achieved a net 1 Terabit transmission rate. This is close to the theoretical maximum information transfer rate of that channel and thus approaching the Shannon Limit of the fiber link.
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Oh, and today I also learned THIS

I want to ask about the microfilm—microfilm?—but it's hard to get a word in. He's already gone three rounds on the whiteboard, scribbling, erasing, illustrating some of the finer points of gun tracing, of which there are many, in large part due to the limitations imposed upon this place. For example, no computer. The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.

“That's the big no-no,” says Charlie.

That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name.
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Today I learned: World’s first beer pipeline opens in Belgium

The 2-mile pipeline, visible in one spot through a transparent manhole cover cut into the cobblestone, carries beer from one of the country’s oldest still-operating breweries in the center of Bruges to a bottling plant on its outskirts.

The project cost about 4 million euros, or $4.5 million. But the brewery discovered an innovative way to raise the funds: promise donors free beer for life.
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Today I learned that on this day in 1963 President Kennedy suggested that the USA and Soviet Union launch a joint mission to the moon. Furthermore, although this offer was initially rejected by Khrushchev, according to Khrushchev's son he regretted the decision soon afterwards and planned to go ahead with the joint venture...

If these newest revelations are correct, the prospects of a visit to the Soviet Union by President Kennedy during the 1964 Presidential campaign, suggested by several former Kennedy administration staffers or a visit to Russia early in a Kennedy second term might well have cemented the joint lunar plan. And such a Kennedy/Khrushchev initiative might have staved off the planning of a coup that eventually removed Khrushchev from office in October, 1964.

"I think," Sergei Khrushchev said, "if Kennedy had lived, we would be living in a completely different world." But a week after the reversal decision was allegedly made, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas and the decision was dropped.
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Amazing! I had no idea :eek:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kennedy-proposes-joint-mission-to-the-moon
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/russia-97h.html
 
Today I learned that there are over 500,000 alcohol-related deaths in Russia each year. :eek:

No wonder the population is falling.
 
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