Thursday, December 6, 2007


A Darwin Award is a tongue-in-cheek honor named after evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin. "Awards" have been given for people who "remove themselves from the Gene pool" i.e. lose the ability to reproduce as early as 1863. It is for people who kill, or in rare cases, sterilize themselves accidentally by attempting to do stupid feats. As described in the Darwin Award books: The Awards honour people who ensure the long-term survival of the human race by removing themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion. While an attempt is made to disallow urban legends from the awards, some older winners have been 'grandfathered' to keep their awards.

Requirements
Examples of Darwin award winners include
Northcutt's Darwin Awards site gives "Honorable Mentions" to people who manage to survive their misadventures with their reproductive capacity intact. One notable example is Lawnchair Larry, who attached helium filled weather balloons to a lawn chair and floated far above Long Beach, California, in July 1982.

juggling active hand grenades (Croatia, 2001), Darwin Awards Examples
Each year, one award is selected as being much more "honourable" than the rest, and it is crowned as the "Darwin Award of the Year" or "[year] Darwin Award Winner".

Special Winners

2000: Darwin Awards: Evolution in Action, ISBN 0-525-94572-5 & ISBN 0-452-28344-2
2001: Darwin Awards II: Unnatural Selection, ISBN 0-525-94623-3 & ISBN 0-452-28401-5
2003: Darwin Awards III: Survival of the Fittest, ISBN 0-525-94773-6 & ISBN 0-452-28572-0
2006: Darwin Awards IV: Intelligent Design, ISBN 0-525-94960-7 Movie

List of inventors killed by their own inventions
Ig Nobel Prize
McCandless Phenomenon
Everett Ruess

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Artes mechanicae
The Artes Mechanicae (mechanical arts) are a medieval concept juxtaposed to the seven Artes liberales. Already Johannes Scotus Eriugena (9th century) divides them somewhat arbitrarily into seven parts,
vestiaria (tailoring, weaving), agricultura (agriculture), architectura (architecture, masonry), militia and venatoria (warfare and hunting, "martial arts"), mercatura (trade, commerce), coquinaria (cooking), metallaria (blacksmithing, metallurgy)
Hugh of St Victor includes navigation, medicine and theatrical arts instead of commerce, agriculture and cooking.
The classification of the Artes Mechanicae as applied geometry was introduced to Western Europe by Dominicus Gundissalinus under the influence of his readings in Arabic scholarship.

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Ketley
Ketley is a suburb of the new town of Telford in the borough of Telford and Wrekin and ceremonial county of Shropshire, England. East Ketley is currently being re-developed as part of the Telford Millennium Community, part of the Millennium Communities Programme. It will consist of around 750 new homes and some live/work units, a new primary school, some small offices and retail and leisure services.
The site is currently home to a terrace of Victorian houses amid old mineshafts, colliery spoil, a golf course (which was later used as a driving range) and playing fields. Most of the site has been left fallow for many years and some areas have become locally important habitats for wildlife. Ketley was formally the home of Ketley Iron works. William Reynolds (the ironmaster of said works in the late 18th century) undertook to construct three tub boat canals. The Wombridge Canal, the Ketley Canal and the Shropshire Canal.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Details
On 5 and 9 July 1941 he ordered the machine gunning of survivors of attacks by HMS Torbay.

Anthony Miers Further information
His Victoria Cross is displayed at the Imperial War Museum (London, England).

Sunday, December 2, 2007


Homewood is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 19,543 at the 2000 census.

Geography
As of the census of 2000, there were 19,543 people, 7,552 households, and 5,256 families residing in the village. The population density was 1,451.1/km² (3,755.5/mi²). There were 7,827 housing units at an average density of 581.2/km² (1,504.1/mi²). The racial makeup of the village was 78.14% White, 17.51% African American, 0.10% Native American, 1.57% Asian, 0.07% Pacific Islander, 1.06% from other races, and 100% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.05% of the population.
There were 7,552 households out of which 35.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 55.7% were married couples living together, 11.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 30.4% were non-families. 27.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 13.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.55 and the average family size was 3.14.
In the village the population was spread out with 27.1% under the age of 18, 5.4% from 18 to 24, 26.8% from 25 to 44, 24.3% from 45 to 64, and 16.4% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40 years. For every 100 females there were 85.5 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.3 males.
The median income for a household in the village was $57,213, and the median income for a family was $70,941. Males had a median income of $50,689 versus $35,978 for females. The per capita income for the village was $26,074. About 3.2% of families and 4.3% of the population were below the poverty line, including 4.1% of those under age 18 and 6.5% of those age 65 or over.

Demographics
Homewood is in Illinois' 2nd congressional district.

Government
The village of Homewood is located in the south suburbs of Chicago. Although some of the southern suburbs have fallen victim to urban poverty and blight, due to gentrification in Chicago, Homewood and its neighboring community of Flossmoor have withstood these pressures and remain communities for the middle class and moderately wealthy, due to the strength and excellence of their educational systems.
Homewood sits on the edge of Lake Chicago, which was formed by a retreating glacier long before Lake Michigan. Of one the main east-west roads through the town, Ridge Road, got its name because it runs along what used to be the ridge of the lake. The area is rich in limestone deposits, and neighbors Thornton Quarry. In its beginning, the area featured excellent topsoil making it an appealing place for farmers to settle.
James and Sally Hart were the first confirmed settlers in the area in 1834. They were New Englanders, as were the families that immediately followed them; the Butterfields, the Campbells, the Clarks, and the Hoods. In 1839, German and Dutch families began to move into the area as well. The town began to use the name of Hartford.
The first store in Homewood was Hasting's General Store; Dr. William Doepp was its first doctor. Attracted by the country life after his Chicago practice was burned down, he moved to the area in 1851. His practice extended from Crown Point, Indiana to New Lenox, Illinois, and he was required to keep two teams of horses in order to make all his calls.
In 1853, the Illinois Central Railroad (IC) established a station in Hartford, calling it Thornton Station, as most of the passengers came from nearby Thornton. This began a serious period of confusion, as mail for the two separate towns was regularly mixed up. In 1869, settlers petitioned the post office to be renamed as Homewood, after the woods that the residents lived among.
The 1870s brought a new era to Homewood, ushered in by trains and by the crowded conditions of the city. Country clubs such as the Homewood Country Club (later changed to Flossmoor Country Club), Dixmoor, Ravisloe, Idlewild and Calumet brought in trains just for golfers. The IC established the Calumet station specifically for their convenience. Wealthy families impressed by the area, and ease of getting to the city, established residences in the area, as permanent or summer homes.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was determined that the small two-room schoolhouse that had been built in the 1880s was inadequate. The Standard school was built in 1904 on Dixie Highway and Hickory for a cost of fourteen thousand dollars. It had four classrooms, two cloakrooms, a tiny office, attic and basement storage. It provided the community with a variety of entertainments in the form of spelling bees, box socials, school entertainment, and a play festival. As many of the children were expected to become farmers, garden and corn clubs were established. Nearby land was turned into gardening plots, but a dry season kept the project from being successful. However, one student, Elizabeth Szanyi made a total of fifty-nine dollars from her produce patch.
Enrollment for the schools continued to grow, and in 1914 the school was forced to convert the cloakrooms into classrooms. In 1918, a nearby residence, the Zimmer house, was rented to house primary grades. In 1923, construction on Central school began. The new school had three more classrooms, an assembly hall, a teacher's room, and a room for health services. By 1928, there were enough students in the district to make a kindergarten class feasible, and extensive additions were made to the school. These renovations included eight new classrooms and a gymnasium-auditorium.
In the 1920s, Homewood became an important railroad depot, and many IC workers and their families moved to the area. Automobiles became a common sight on the streets of downtown. As traffic in the area continued to increase, village officials decided to install the town's first manually operated traffic signal at the corner of Ridge Road and Dixie Highway. This period marks the change from Homewood as a farming community to Homewood as a suburb, as families began to use stores and businesses to supply their needs. The population of town increased from seven hundred and thirteen (730) to fifteen hundred and ninety-three (1593). Thirteen housing developments were recorded in Homewood from 1905 to 1930.
With the crash of the stock market in 1929, life in Homewood changed dramatically. People who worked in factories in Harvey and Chicago Heights lost their jobs, and many almost lost their homes. The Homewood State Bank was closed in the spring of 1932. Optimistic residents who had invested money in the bank until the day before it closed lost everything they had. The flood of trains to and from the city trickled down to three or four trains daily. Those people trying to make an income by bootlegging were raided, and shut down. Transients were common, and the police officers gave them a place to stay at night, a cup of coffee and a donut before they left in the morning. In 1932 alone, the jail housed twelve hundred and twenty-four people (1224). The schools, which had already been operating in the red, scraped through by cutting programs and by the determined efforts of the PTA, which opened a thrift shop as a fundraiser. The village was reduced to issuing scrip notes to its employees that could not be honored by local business; however, a rental of a large parcel of land by the Illinois Jockey Association ended this problem.
As the factories slowly began to reopen, the city began to tear down old buildings and replace them with new businesses. The most important of these was the Homewood Theater. At its "typical Hollywood opening" it was said, "bright lights will flood the sky, bands will blare, and the theatre will be officially presented to Mayor Fred Borgwordt of the town of Homewood." The opening picture was "Double or Nothing" with Bing Crosby and Martha Raye. The theater seemed to symbolize the return of hope to the city, and remained an important landmark for many years. In 1983, Richard Haas painted a mural on the backs of several buildings in the business district, matching their fronts to their backs. Most famous among these was on the back of the Homewood Theater, depicting it with three young women waiting to view It's a Wonderful Life. It was demolished in 1992, despite the comparison made by a local student of "throwing away the Mona Lisa just because the frame is broken."

Homewood, Illinois Early history (pre-1945)
World War II brought a time of great change to the area, although life in the village during the war was about the same as life anywhere. The number of Homewood men who entered the service is unknown, but the village maintains a complete list of the men who died and the circumstances of their death. After the war, the veterans returned home to a rapidly growing Homewood. The desire of young couples to own a home of their own provided for a phenomenal growth and development of suburbs everywhere. To reflect these changes, the school board expanded the schools once again. In 1948, ground was broken for the new Ridge school, which was located immediately west of the Central school. It was immediately followed by the construction of Willow school, in 1953. In 1958, a junior high school was built and named after the area's first settler James Hart.
At the same time as the grade school expansion, a group of residents in Homewood and the neighboring community of Flossmoor worked to bring about a long time dream of having a local high school, instead of sending students to Thornton, Bloom, Rich or Bremen Township High Schools. Homewood-Flossmoor High School opened its doors in 1959. Almost immediately afterward, in 1962 and 1966, large additions were made to the school. The student body grew so large that students were taught on half-day schedules until a second building to house them could be built in 1974.
The businesses of the area boomed, with the building of Westgate shopping center, Ridge-Mar shopping center, Northgate shopping center, Cherry Creek, Washington Square Plaza, Southgate Shopping Center and the West Homewood Commons. Washington Square Plaza was torn down in the nineties. A recent boom in business along Halsted Street (Illinois Route 1) has provided Homewood-area residents with a large number of chain stores. The downtown area has also been on the rise, with new stores moving in, and the recent announcement of the Chestnut Square development along Harwood Avenue at Chestnut Road, behind the village hall.
In 1981, the first Homewood Fine Art Fair was held in the center of the Village, on Ridge Road. Founder Barbara D. Smith (Homewood's first female Chamber of Commerce President) spent two years learning the recruiting, organizational and judging processes from a variety of experts, and ushered it through its first five years. The official portrait artist of Princess Grace of Monaco -- Mohamed Drisi -- observed the fair's progress for the first two years, after which he volunteered to bolster the status of the institution. The HFAF continues to be held each June in Marie Irwin Park, and is considered a backbone of the south suburban art scene. Not without controversy, Ms. Smith has expressed her concern at deviating from the original vision of "fine art only", and has been critical of what she terms downgrading to arts and crafts from juried fine art. Still, a testament to this new tradition is underscored by the fact that some of the original juried artists she procured continue to exhibit.
In 1993, Homewood celebrated its centennial. Summer saw scores of festivals, parades, and a play celebrating the history of Homewood.

Recent history (1945- )
Children in grades K-8 attend schools under the jurisdiction of Homewood public school district 153. School District 153 has four schools: Winston Churchill Elementary, Willow Elementary, Millenium School, and James Hart Junior High School. Children in grades K-2 attend Willow, then move on to Churchill for grades 3 and 4, then move on to Millenium for grades 5 and 6, and finish up grades 7 and 8 at James Hart.
The majority of students in the area then go on to attend the local public high school, Homewood-Flossmoor High School. Homewood-Flossmoor High School is its own school district, school district 233. H-F is a twenty-time winner of the U.S. Department of Education's Blue Ribbon Award for excellence.
The most common destination for students after high school is the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. About 10 percent of H-F's graduating class goes there every year.

Saturday, December 1, 2007



Attrition · Guerilla · Maneuver Siege · Total war · Trench
Economic · Grand · Operational
Formations · Ranks · Units
Equipment · Materiel · Supply line
Military history is composed of the events in the history of humanity that fall within the category of conflict. This may range from a melee between two tribes to conflicts between proper militaries to a world war affecting the majority of the human population. Military historians record (in writing or otherwise) the events of military history.
Military activity has been a constant process over thousands of years. However, there is little agreement about when it began (Otterbein 2004). Some believe it has always been with us; others stress the lack of clear evidence for it in our prehistoric past, and the fact that many peaceful, non-military societies have and still do exist (See Otterbein, Fry and Kelly in bibliography below).
The essential tactics, strategy, and goals of military operations have been unchanging throughout the past 5,000 years of our 90,000-year human history. As an example one notable maneuver is the double envelopment, considered to be the consummate military maneuver, executed by Hannibal at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, over 2,200 years ago. This maneuver was also later effectively used by Khalid ibn al-Walid at the Battle of Walaja in 633 AD, and was earlier described by the Chinese military theorist Sun Tzu, who wrote at roughly the same time as the founding of Rome. By the study of history, the military seeks to not repeat past mistakes, and improve upon its current performance by instilling an ability in commanders to perceive historical parallels during battle, so as to capitalize on the lessons learned. The main areas military history includes are the history of wars, battles, and combats, history of the military art, and history of each specific military service.
There are a number of ways to categorize warfare. One categorization is conventional versus unconventional, where conventional warfare involves well-identified, armed forces fighting one another in a relatively open and straightforward way without weapons of mass destruction. "Unconventional" refers to other types of war which can involve raiding, guerrilla, insurgency, and terrorist tactics or alternatively can include nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare.
All of these categories usually fall into one of two broader categories: High intensity and low intensity warfare. High intensity warfare is between two superpowers or large countries fighting for political reasons. Low intensity warfare involves counterinsurgency, guerilla warfare and specialized types of troops fighting revolutionaries.

Periods

For more details on this topic, see Prehistoric warfare. Prehistoric warfare

For more details on this topic, see Ancient warfare. Ancient warfare

For more details on this topic, see Medieval warfare. Gunpowder warfare

For more details on this topic, see Industrial warfare.Military history Industrial warfare

For more details on this topic, see Modern warfare. Modern warfare
New weapons development can dramatically alter the face of war.
In prehistoric times, fighting occurred by usage of clubs and spears, as early as 35,000 BC.
World War II gave rise to even more technology. The worth of the aircraft carrier was proved in the battles between the United States and Japan like the Battle of Midway. Radar was independently invented by the Allies and Axis powers. It used radio waves to detect nearby objects. Molotov cocktails were invented by the Finns in 1939, during the Winter War. The atomic bomb was developed by the Manhattan Project and launched at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, ultimately ending World War II.
During the Cold War, even though fighting did not actually occur, the superpowers- the United States and Russia- engaged in a race to develop and increase the level of technology available for military purposes. In the space race, both nations attempted to launch human beings into space to the moon. Other technological advances centered around intelligence (like the spy satellite) and missiles (ballistic missiles, cruise missiles). Nuclear submarine, invented in 1955. This meant submarines no longer had to surface as often, and could run more quietly. They evolved into becoming underwater missile platforms. Cruise missiles were invented in Nazi Germany during World War II in the form of the V-1.

Slinger
Hoplite
Auxiliaries
Hastati
Principes
Triarii
Velites
Artillery
Cataphract
Condottieri
Fyrd
Janissary
Knight (see also: Chivalry)
Crossbow
Pikeman
Samurai
Sipahi
Flag of England Drebbel's submarine (1620)
Turtle (1775)
Brandtaucher (1850)
Plongeur (1863)
Ictineu II (1864)
Submarino Peral (1888)
Gymnote (1888)
USS Holland (1897)
Type XXI Elektroboote (1943)
USS Albacore (AGSS-569) (1953)
USS Nautilus (SSN-571) (1954)
Zulu-class SSB (1955)
USS Narwhal (1967)
Alfa-class SSN (1977)
Type 212 submarine (1998) Technological evolution
Gaining an accurate assessment of past military encounters may prove difficult because of bias, even in ancient times, and systematic propaganda in more modern times. Descriptions of battles by leaders may be unreliable due to the inclination to minimize mention of failures and exaggerate when boasting of successes. Further, military secrets may prevent some salient facts from being reported at all; scholars still do not know the nature of Greek fire, for instance. Despite these limitations, wars are some of the most studied and detailed periods of human history.
Homer, in the Iliad, described the Trojan War. However, the historicity of the Iliad is doubtful, as many historians believe that the Iliad is essentially legendary. Others believe that it is partly historical.
Herodotus (484 BC - 425 BC) wrote the The Histories. He is, along with Thucydides, often known as the "father of history".
Xenophon (430 BC - 355 BC) is most known for Anabasis, in which he records the expedition of Cyrus the Younger into Turkey. It was one of the first books centered around the analysis of a leader.
Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC) authored several military books, such as Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Commentarii de Bello Civili, in which he comments upon his campaigns.
Some other more recent prominent military historians include:

Hans Delbrück (1848-1929)
Charles Oman (1860-1946)
Basil Liddell Hart (1895-1970)
Martin van Creveld (1946)
John Keegan (1934)
William Ledyard Rodgers (d. 1944)
Lynn Montross (d. 1961)
Cornelius Ryan
R. Ernest & Trevor N. Dupuy (a.k.a. Dupuy & Dupuy)
John Terraine (1921-2003)
George F.G. Stanley (1907-2002)
Victor Davis Hanson Historiography

Colonialism
Historical reenactment
Manuel de Landa's War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (1991)
Military science
Imperialism
Prisoner of war
Prisoner-of-war camp
Battledress
Militaria
War
Wargaming
Weapon Military history See also
 Only recognised by Turkey.

By region

Fry, Douglas P., 2005, The Human Potential for Peace: An Anthropological Challenge to Assumptions about War and Violence, Oxford University Press.
Kelly, Raymond C., 2000, Warless Societies and the Origin of War, University of Michigan Press.
Otterbein, Keith, 2004, How War Began. Texas A&M University Press. Other