More Best of Wikipedia

2011-09-18T05:24:00.003-04:00

Lonsdaleite is an obscure crystalline form of carbon, neither diamond nor graphite, but harder than diamond.

2011-08-31T12:44:00.001-04:00

List of common misconceptions

2011-08-02T08:33:00.001-04:00

Firefighting

2011-07-20T16:08:00.002-04:00

Chartism was a democratic movement in 1800s Britain.

2011-07-07T06:53:00.003-04:00

Chimerism is the term for rare individuals possessing two sets of DNA. It occurs in humans.
from Laura Lovejoy

2011-06-26T09:47:00.001-04:00

You have probably heard of the "Golden Ratio." The Silver ratio was new to me.

2011-06-05T10:07:00.002-04:00

Why haven't the spiral arms of the galaxy wound up tight? The density wave theory helps explain.

2011-05-19T14:26:00.001-04:00

The Phantom Time Hypothesis posits that the years AD 614–911 did not exist.

2011-05-19T14:18:00.002-04:00

Nuclear aircraft are necessarily hot and heavy. Research was done and test engines run. Follow the links for the details.

2011-05-14T10:51:00.001-04:00

Metacognition is knowing about knowing.

2011-05-04T22:44:00.001-04:00

The Texas sharpshooter fallacy, whereby information is manipulated into apparently having meaning.

2011-04-09T22:57:00.001-04:00

The article on April Fools Day is not so foolish. Today.

2011-04-04T05:32:00.000-04:00

The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature

2011-03-31T11:01:00.002-04:00

What do you know of the humble history of the plow?

2011-03-31T10:51:00.001-04:00

The early history of the automobile goes way back; even to the 1700s.

2011-03-27T08:48:00.001-04:00

The prehistory of Australia

2011-03-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

Pathetic fallacy. Moscow doesn't believe in it.

2011-02-11T13:47:00.002-05:00

The Missoula Floods (a.k.a. the Spokane Floods or the Bretz Floods) refer to the cataclysmic floods that swept periodically across eastern Washington and down the Columbia River gorge at the end of the last ice age.

2011-01-30T17:07:00.001-05:00

A demonym is a word used to name a resident of a particular place, or a particular people. This is a very interesting article with good links.

2011-01-28T10:36:00.002-05:00

Smart glass will become opaque, and/or block heat, when a one-time electrical charge is applied. There are several other kinds.

2011-01-25T10:48:00.002-05:00

A ship mill is an anchored floating factory, powered by water passing under it. Once numerous, now mostly gone.

2011-01-25T10:31:00.001-05:00

High voltage direct current transmission may increase in the future.

2011-01-22T06:00:00.002-05:00

A funicular is an inclined railway. Using cables, a descending car helps pull up an ascending one.

2011-01-21T17:06:00.002-05:00

The Ictineo II was a pioneering submarine launched in 1864 by Spanish inventor Narcis Monturiol i Estarriol, and was the first combustion engine-driven submarine.

2011-01-16T15:37:00.001-05:00

A Sidecar is a cocktail. We are reminded that Wikipedia is a good source for the details of mixology.

2011-01-10T11:13:00.001-05:00

William Patrick "Willy" Stuart-Houston a.k.a. Billy Hitler.

2011-01-06T13:55:00.000-05:00

Puputan a mass suicide in Bali.

2010-12-26T11:16:00.002-05:00

Boxing Day U.S. residents may be unsure.

2010-12-25T11:09:00.001-05:00

The Halifax Explosion remains the largest ever accidental man-made explosion.

2010-12-20T12:01:00.002-05:00

Bookbinding The article is big and fascinating to book lovers such as myself. Many valuable links.

2010-12-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Diplomatic immunity. The basics and the history.

2010-12-16T10:40:00.002-05:00

The Naga Jolokia is sometimes called "ghost chili." It may be the hottest pepper in the world.

2010-12-15T09:17:00.002-05:00

States with limited recognition are nations not viewed as legitimate by various other countries.

2010-12-13T14:52:00.000-05:00

Wikignomes are shy creatures who do much good in the world.

2010-12-12T18:39:00.000-05:00

Rosalind Franklin discovered the structure of DNA first.

2010-12-09T21:15:00.000-05:00

Jactitation is the oddest crime I have heard of lately.

2010-11-23T17:22:00.001-05:00

The tuatara is stranger than it looks. The reptile has no known living relatives and is quite distinct. It has a third eye of sorts.

2010-11-23T08:17:00.001-05:00

The sweet potato suggests early contact between South America and Polynesia.

2010-11-20T15:49:00.001-05:00

Pirate Radio

2010-11-11T10:49:00.001-05:00

Piercing the corporate veil is when a court goes beyond the fiction that the corporation is a legal "person," and holds those behind the veil accountable for wrongdoing.

2010-11-11T08:49:00.001-05:00

Breadfruit. One tree can produce up to 200 fruits a year.

2010-11-10T07:11:00.002-05:00

The Great Depression.

2010-11-04T16:18:00.004-04:00

Privacy

2010-10-27T13:44:00.000-04:00

Time. A brief history of what keeps everything from happening at once.

2010-10-27T13:38:00.001-04:00

Grappa is not exactly brandy.

2010-10-15T10:05:00.002-04:00

Sexually induced sneezing. Sometimes the mere thought of... Ah-ah-choo!

2010-10-15T09:55:00.001-04:00

Olber's Paradox. With so many stars, why is the night sky not brighter?

2010-10-15T09:13:00.000-04:00

Viz.
What does it mean?

2010-10-11T18:34:00.001-04:00

The Knights of Columbus. I didn't know much about this organization until today, Columbus Day.

2010-09-27T15:08:00.000-04:00

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan preceded current events. A good article.

2010-09-25T12:38:00.001-04:00

The United States penny

2010-09-21T15:02:00.001-04:00

Wikileaks is a separate entity from Wikipedia. Here is the Wikipedia article on Wikileaks.

2010-09-20T21:44:00.002-04:00

Negentropy is a process of life exporting entropy in order to minimize it internally.

2010-09-19T10:48:00.002-04:00

Single wire earth return describes a type of rural electrical distribution which uses the earth as a conductor, forming a complete circuit.

2010-09-17T20:56:00.003-04:00

Hypnagogia is the borderline between being awake and falling asleep.

2010-09-15T11:40:00.002-04:00

Natural fission reactor. Only one is known, in which geological concentration of uranium resulted in fission.

2010-08-20T17:37:00.006-04:00

Pareidolia normal random stimuli perceived as patterns.

2010-08-19T14:19:00.001-04:00

Neutrality of money is a disputed notion that aside of adjusted costs (everything merely inflates), money supply has no real effect on the economy.

2010-08-19T13:47:00.000-04:00

National "Do Not Call" Registry

2010-08-15T14:40:00.003-04:00

Grammatical aspect conveys to the audience other temporal information (such as duration/ completeness/ frequency of the action) as it relates to the time of action (while "tense" relates the time of the action to the time of speaking).

2010-08-11T19:25:00.003-04:00

Rwandan genocide

2010-08-10T23:54:00.002-04:00

In the U.S. it is wise to understand one's
credit score.

2010-08-10T23:06:00.001-04:00

Hurdy gurdy

2010-08-05T11:06:00.002-04:00

William Chester Minor was an American army surgeon who made many scholarly contributions to the Oxford English Dictionary while confined in an English lunatic asylum.

2010-08-03T10:31:00.003-04:00

Rainbow Eucalyptus trees have wildly multicolored bark.

2010-08-03T10:17:00.002-04:00

Milankovitch cycles are the various regular eccentricities of Earth's orbit, affecting climate.

2010-07-30T16:17:00.002-04:00

A bog, also known as a quagmire or mire, is a wetland of a certain type.

2010-07-30T14:18:00.002-04:00

The Mannerheim Line was a Finnish defensive line built prior to WWII, meant to fend off Soviet forces. Western historians often can learn much from such an out-of-the-way but well-linked article.

2010-07-28T17:49:00.001-04:00

A view camera has a bellows, and looks antique, but is capable of quite a few photographic tricks other cameras are not.

2010-07-27T12:17:00.002-04:00

The Michelson-Morley experiment. "The most famous failed experiment." Goodbye, luminiferous aether.

2010-07-25T12:02:00.001-04:00

The Belleville spring really is a nifty invention.

2010-07-24T11:52:00.002-04:00

The International Phonetic Alphabet has changed since I was taught its symbols. You see it in pronunciation guides. This article brings one up to date.

2010-07-22T13:39:00.002-04:00

Geomancy, "earth divination," is a method of interpreting markings on the ground or the patterns formed by tossed handfuls of soil, rocks, or sand; and more.

2010-07-17T11:47:00.001-04:00

Falsifiability has a specific meaning in the philosophy of science.

2010-07-12T09:45:00.002-04:00

Monolatrism recognizes other gods - it just doesn't like them.

2010-07-11T22:11:00.001-04:00

Pollen

2010-07-10T09:53:00.008-04:00

Cordwainer Smith was the pen name of Paul Linebarger, an East Asia scholar at Duke University and expert on psychological warfare. He was a noted and gifted science-fiction author and happened to be god-son of Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.

2010-07-10T09:17:00.000-04:00

Lychee fruit. Never had any.

2010-07-02T22:02:00.002-04:00

Telluric currents are electrical currents, the naturally occurring kind accompanied by low frequency electromagnetic waves in the earth. Follow the link to magnetotellurics, too.

2010-07-02T11:45:00.001-04:00

Simpson's paradox is an apparent paradox in which a trend present in different groups is reversed when the groups are combined.

2010-07-01T09:00:00.002-04:00

Jevon's paradox states that rather than saving resources, efficiencies lead to an increase of consumption of those resources.

2010-06-27T12:41:00.002-04:00

What's up with New York City's steam system, where steam is seen to waft up from underground?

2010-06-25T00:41:00.003-04:00

Ikaros is the first successful spacecraft employing a solar sail as its motive power.

2010-06-21T18:50:00.001-04:00

Introspection illusion is over-rating one's own apprehension of one's own mental states.

2010-06-20T11:01:00.002-04:00

The Sea Shadow is an oceangoing craft employing stealth technology.

2010-06-20T09:31:00.000-04:00

How big is the barrel of a 12 gauge shotgun? What exactly are we measuring?

2010-06-20T09:18:00.001-04:00

Action has a specific meaning in physics

2010-06-11T11:54:00.002-04:00

Flags of the U.S. states

2010-06-11T10:51:00.003-04:00

Surra de Bunda is a dance wherein men are beaten with the buttocks of female dancers.

(thanks to milowent)

2010-06-11T10:50:00.001-04:00

List of animals with fraudulent diplomas

(Thanks to milowent)

2010-06-09T11:26:00.001-04:00

The Harmonic Table note-layout, or tonal array, is a key layout for musical instruments that offers interesting advantages over the traditional keyboard layout.

2010-06-01T18:33:00.002-04:00

The Harlem Hellfighters were U.S. troops who served under French command in the first World War.

2010-05-24T16:43:00.002-04:00

Vikings.
There still seems to be some hesitation in Western cultures about their historical significance, which was large. There are several other good articles linked to this main article.

2010-05-24T15:08:00.002-04:00

A bucket shop is a type of stock-market trading similar to an unregulated off-track horse-race betting establishment.

2010-05-17T10:26:00.001-04:00

When we speak of a species, exactly what are we trying to say?

2010-05-12T14:24:00.001-04:00

Don't steal my copyrighted map. It has a few trap streets.

2010-05-11T11:59:00.009-04:00

An anole is technically of the polychritidae family, frequently and incorrectly called chameleons or geckos in the southeast U.S., likely due to their ability to alter their skin color and run up walls.

2010-05-10T15:36:00.002-04:00

The decoy effect is an odd clever marketing trick.

2010-05-06T10:15:00.001-04:00

Why are young counter-culturalists referred to as "Bohemians?"

2010-05-05T22:08:00.002-04:00

Alexander Selkirk was the real sailor who inspired the book Robinson Crusoe.