| 1170 | Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury, is murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four knights of Henry II. | ||
| 1607 | Indian chief Powhatan spares John Smith's life after the pleas of his daughter Pocahontas. | ||
| 1778 | British troops, attempting a new strategy to defeat the colonials in America, capture Savannah. | ||
| 1845 | Texas (comprised of the present state of Texas and part of New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) is admitted as the 28th state of the Union, with the provision that the area (389,166 square miles) should be divided into no more than five states "of convenient size." | ||
| 1849 | Gas lighting is installed in the White House. | ||
| 1862 | Union General William T. Sherman's troops try to gain the north side of Vicksburg in the Battle of Chickasaw Bluffs. | ||
| 1890 | The last major conflict of the Indian wars takes place at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota after Colonel James W. Forsyth of the 7th Cavalry tries to disarm Chief Big Foot and his followers. | ||
| 1914 | The production of Belgian newspapers is halted to protest German censorship. | ||
| 1921 | Sears Roebuck president Julius Rosenwald pledges $20 million of his personal fortune to help Sears through hard times. | ||
| 1926 | Germany and Italy sign an arbitration treaty. | ||
| 1934 | Japan formally denounces Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. | ||
| 1940 | In a radio interview, President Roosevelt proclaims the United States to be the "arsenal of democracy." | ||
| 1940 | London suffers its most devastating air raid when Germans firebomb the city on the evening of December 29. | ||
| 1948 | Tito declares Yugoslavia will follow its own path to Communism. | ||
| 1956 | President Dwight Eisenhower asks Congress for the authority to oppose Soviet aggression in the Middle East. | ||
| 1965 | A Christmas truce is observed in Vietnam, while President Johnson tries to get the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table. | ||
| 1981 | President Ronald Reagan curtails Soviet trade in reprisal for its hash policies on Poland. |
Obesity rates among small
children may finally be on the decline after more than tripling in the
United States the past 30 years. Read more
Cartography and data analysis nut Brandon M-Anderson put together this impressive zoomable map of the United States
with one dot for each of the 308,450,225 people recorded by the 2010
census: oddities revealed include people living in "abandoned" areas or
parks. A Redditor stitched the tiles into a huge image.
For in-person communication, most cultures look a person in the eye to gauge if he or she is lying. Big mistake. Forty-five years of research prove that “humans cannot rely at all on eyes for deception,” Hancock said. “The average deception detection rate is 54 percent.” Reliance on facts, now easier to check via the Internet than ever before, he said, is the best way to determine truth.And while in-person communication is unreliable, telephone communication is even less so. With no visual or in-text mechanism to verify what is being said, phones provide us our most convenient way to sidestep the truth.
Got
helicopter parents? A 21-year-old theater student named Aubrey Ireland
does, and she had to go to court to obtain a civil stalking restraining
order against them after telling the judge that they attempted to control
all aspects of her daily life:The dean's list student's complaints against her parents began when she realized they'd installed monitoring software on her computer and her phone. They paid unannounced visits, traveling 600 miles from their home in Kansas, to meet with Aubrey's department head.ABC Good Morning America has more: here.
They also accused their daughter of promiscuity, doing drugs, and having mental issues to the point where they were considering going to court to order that she get treatment.
"My mom has always been very overly involved," Ireland said. "I would have to get on Skype all the time to show them that I was in my dorm room, or there were nights I had to leave my Skype on all night and my mom would watch me basically sleep."
Peggielene
Bartels has lived in the US for thirty years, and works as a secretary
at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, DC. But she is also the King of
Otuam, a village in Ghana.Nearly five years ago, Bartels was startled out of bed by a 4 a.m. phone call. When the person on the other end informed her that she’d just been named King of Otuam, a village of 7,000 on Ghana’s coast, it felt like a dream.Bartels takes both her responsibilities seriously- her job at the embassy and her subjects in Ghana. Even from a distance, she has caused real change in Otuam. Read how she does it at mental_floss.
The call wasn’t as random as it sounds. “King Peggy” hails from a royal line that has ruled the Otuam village for more than 200 years. Her uncle held the post last, and before he passed, he named Bartels his preferred successor. His niece, after all, was well-educated, younger than 60, and blessed with good character—all integral to the post.
This cavern of writhing demon statues is Le Cafe de L’Enfer (The Cafe from Hell) in Paris’ red light district (aka Pigalle, the neighborhood of the Moulin Rouge). It opened in the late 19th century and operated until the middle of the 20th century. It is the world’s first theme restaurant. The cafe featured waiters dressed as devils and a doorman who screamed damnation at customers as they came in to be seated.Too bad Le Cafe de L'Enfer is no longer open. I would have loved to go there, both to see what types of food they'd serve and who I would meet. To see more images of the cafe, check out the pictures over at Retronaut.
