"Why would you want to climb Mount Everest?" George Mallory was asked this question in 1924 and gave the most obvious answer: "Because it's there". The famous mountaineer was born 126 years ago, and best known for his expeditions to the highest mountain on earth.
207 years ago, the German poet, philosopher, and historian Friedrich Schiller passed away. As a representative of the Weimar Classicism and the 'Sturm und Drang' (Storm and Drive) movement, Schiller published some of the most influential works of the time.
On October 8-9, 2012 we were glad to attend the tele-TASK Symposium at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute in Potsdam. It was the 6th event of the series, where practitioners and researchers came together to discuss innovative technologies and methodologies for online learning.
Today for us it's pretty normal that electricity can be transmitted on a wire, because it's part of our daily life. But, in the early 18th century, when the English nature-scientist Stephen Gray was able to show that electricity really can be transmitted on a string of copper, it was an unheard-of revelation.
On the 7th of June in the year of our Lord 1742, Prussian mathematician Christian Goldbach wrote a letter to his famous colleague Leonard Euler, which should make history. Well, at least in the mathematical world. In this letter Christian Goldbach refined an already previously stated conjecture from number theory concerning primes to his friend Euler, which by today is known as the famous Goldbach conjecture.
394 years ago, famous astronomer Johannes Kepler discovered the 3rd and also last of his planetary laws, and concluded the general revolution of our celestial world that started with Nikolaus Kopernikus about 100 years earlier. And that made him rather popular as he still is today. Did you know that there is a Kepler crater on the Moon, a Kepler crater on Mars, a Kepler asteroid, a Kepler supernova, of course there has to be a space mission named after him, even an opera
If you are going to Barcelona, Spain, it is rather unlikely that you will leave without having visited one of the fascinating architectural creations of famous architect and designer Antoni Gaudí, the frontfigure of the so-called Catalan Modernism (Modernista), who was born 160 years ago today. Architecture, nature, religion, and the love to his home country Catalonia were the driving forces of Gaudí's work. His work transcended mainstream Modernisme, culminating in an organic style inspired by nature.
The BBC’s website for the 2010 World Cup was notable for the raw amount of rich information that it contained. Every player on every team in every group had their own web page, and the ease with which you could navigate from one piece of content to the next was remarkable. Within the Semantic Web community, the website was notable for one more reason: it was made possible by the BBC’s embrace of Semantic Web technologies.. Topic: Information Management
61 years ago today, on June 14th 1951 the very first electronic computer produced in series (and in the United States), the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was delivered to the US States Census Bureau at the price of $1.6 Mio. It was designed principally by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly, the inventors of the first general-purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC.
As you might know for sure, Benjamin Franklin wasn't only an enthusiastic scientist, inventor, and author, but also one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. His roots lay back in Boston, where he was born in 1706 as the son of a chandler. Therefore the family could not afford the adequate education for their 17 children....
Rezension zu Liv Winterbergs Roman über das Leben der Jeanne Baré, die als Mann verkleidet an Entdeckungsfahrten in die Südsee teilnahm und als Wissenschaftlerin wertvolle Beiträge zur Botanik leistete....via Biblionomicon
Today, 32 years ago, the world's most famous puzzle started to spread all over the world, infecting the population with addiction and curiosity about its solving.
Bram Stoker in 1897 published his seminal book 'Dracula' in London and established one of the most influential genres in fantastic literature by introducing the Transylvanian blood sucker. Nowadays most people don't know that identifying Dracula with the historical Vlad Tepes -- called the impaler -- was completely made up by Stoker himself.
On May 24th 1844 the very first Morse telegram went over the line. Samuel Morse and his colleague Alfred Vail knew that the very first phrase to be sent with the new telecommunication medium was to be remembered. So what should they transmit? Morse came up with a quote from the bible, certainly well chosen for an historic occasion like this:
"What God had wrought"
sent by Morse in Washington to Alfred Vail at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad "outer depot" in Baltimore.
I guess almost nobody except a few mathematicians and computer scientists have ever heard of the Australian computer scientist Charles Leonard Hamblin, who passed away 27 years ago today. And also most of my fellow computer scientists might not have heard of him. But, one of his major contributions to computer science was the introduction of the so-called Reverse Polish Notation. Does that ring a bell?
On this day in 1908, the 'Phyletic Museum' was giftet to the University of Jena due to its 350th anniversary by Ernst Haeckel. The famous zoologist was best known for his approaches in evolution theory.
Sir Fred Hoyle, born in 1915 was a famous astronomer, mathematician, and author. The scientist was the first to coin the term "Big Bang" for the now prevailing theory of the early development of the universe in 1949, even though he happened to be a strong opponent of this theory.
The search giant generated $10.9 billion in ad revenue in the first six months of 2012, while newspapers and magazines in the U.S. made $10.5 billion, according to Statista.
On July 8 1822 the great English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was drowned near the Italian coast. He was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron. And actually he was married with novelist Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of the famous 'Frankenstein'.
For sure you have seen the classic movie 'The Time Machine', where the Victorian epoch time traveller went to a future far, far away into the world of the future where the old struggle of good against evil will. Then, you also might have heard about the story, where aliens from Mars started war against earth, but finally are going to die because of earth's microbes. Or maybe also the story, when famous actor and director Orson Wells in 1938 produced a radio show from this story, which was mistaken by a lot of American people to be a true radio report about an alien invasion of the USA, causing a real life panic?
32 years ago, one of the most famous characters in the history of gaming was born. Pac-Man was developed by the Japanese company Namco and amazed many people around the globe.
Die "Artikel 29"-Gruppe der europäischen Datenschutzbeauftragten hat Empfehlungen veröffentlicht, wie Techniken zur Gesichtserkennung rechtsgemäß in Online-Diensten und im Mobilfunk genutzt werden können.
Der Bundesdatenschutzbeauftragte Peter Schaar hat die geplante EU-Datenschutzverordnung prinzipiell begrüßt und die Kritik von Bundesinnenminister Hans-Peter Friedrich zurückgewiesen.
For sure you do remember that poster from your classroom with all the chemical elements ordered in the so-called periodic table. But, certainly only a few of you will have heard about Henry Moseley and his concept of the atomic numbers.
Most people know American author Herman Melville only by his most famous novel, the story of Captain Ahab and his paranoid and nightmarish hunt for the gigantic white whale Moby Dick. Of course, it is Melville's singular and also very best story. But, if you are trying to get to know the author Herman Melville better, you should also consider a few of his other short stories or novels.
Taxonomy as a science has been founded by the 18th century Swedish botanist Carl Linné (later enobled Carl von Linné or more fashionable in Latin Carolus Linnaeus). He was born 305 years ago in 1707 and after some difficulties right at the start - he was a rather sluggish student and his dissapointed father saw no other option than to apprentice him to a cobbler...
Scientists and explorers we are...to boldly go where no man has gone before. If there is one scientist, who might serve as the prototype of an bold explorer, then we have to consider Auguste Piccard, a Swiss professor of physics, who tried to explore the deepest depths of the sea as well as the extreme stratosphere of the earth. And he did this not only in theory, but by experiment (always including his own person).
The term “Semantic Search” is certainly not new. However, it has taken on a new dimension and implications in both search and social engines today. In addition, it has had a strong impact on targeted semantic advertising.
The Swiss Bernoulli family is well known for their many offsprings who gained prominent merits in mathematics and physics in the 18th century. Jakob Bernoulli, born in 1654, is best known for his work Ars Conjectandi (The Art of Conjecture). In this work, published 8 years after his death in 1713 by his nephew Nicholas, Jakob Bernoulli described the known results in probability theory and in enumeration, including the application of probability theory to games of chance.
It all started on August 12, 1981. IBM presented the IBM 5150, the very first IBM personal computer, commonly known as the IBM PC, is the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform.
"It is not certain that everything is uncertain." is one of the many profound insights that philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) published in his seminal work entiteled "Pensées" (Thoughts, published in 1669). He literally had versatile scientific interests, as he provided influential contributions in the field of mathematics, physics, engineering, as well as in religious philosophy.
In 1985 Commodore revolutionized the home computer market by introducing the high end Commodore Amiga with a graphic power that was unheard of by that time in this market segment. Based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor series the Amiga was most successful as a home computer, with a wide range of games and creative software, although early Commodore advertisements attempted to cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine.
You know, the fact that you can read your email on a cell phone as well as on your desktop computer or almost any other computer connected to the internet, in principle is possible thanks to mathematician Alonzo Church, who gave the proof (together with Alan Turing) that everything that is computable on the simple model of a Turing Machine, also is computable with any other 'computer model'.
It is the best selling book series ever in history. A fantastic story stretching over seven books of a boy, growing up in between the two worlds of ordinary people - the muggles - and the wizards and witches. It's about the old story of fighting of good against evil. And as the books sold over 400 million copies world wide, almost nobody could escape the news and the story behind the books, too. The story of J. K. Rowling, a single mother living on social security and becoming a multi-millionaire simply because of a children's book within a time frame of only 5 years.
Today 242 years ago, sailor and explorer James Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef while running aground and risking his ship, the HMS Endeavour, to sink.
Today 162 years ago, inventor and engineer Karl Ferdinand Braun was born. The Nobel laureate (1909) is known for his significant improvement of radio and television technology in the Wilhelmine Period.
British Philosopher John Stuart Mill died, maybe the most influential english-speaking philosopher of the 19th century. His views still are significance today and are generally recognized to be among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of a liberal political view of society and culture.
On this day in 1877 Thomas A. Edison conceived the first idea for his phonograph, the very first mechanical tool for recording and reproducing (replaying) sound. The phonograph also was the invention that first gained him public notice.
Our main goal is to provide you with data because you know what you want to do with it. Still, we give some information regarding typical MIR tasks below. We hope to provide snippets of code and benchmarks results to help you getting started. If you want to provide additional information / link to your code / new results / new tasks, please send us an email! We also try to maintain an informal list of publications that use the dataset.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the finest composers the world has ever known, had two great loves in his life: the first was music; and the second one was Constanze Weber, whom he married in Vienna on August 4, 1782. She was 20, he was 26.
Today 219 years ago, the 'martyr of the revolution', Jean Paul Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a 24 year old girl. The physician, natural scientists, and political activist was a member of 'the Mountain', a group active during the French Revolution, and author of the radical newspaper 'L'Ami du peuple'.
200 years ago today, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle was born. Also in Germany hardly anybody might know Galle today. Well, maybe except most astronomers, who will certainly know him, because he has discovered the planet Neptune. No, he didn't do it all by himself...
195 years ago, philosopher and author Henry David Thoreau was born. He is probably best known today for his book 'Walden', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, as well as for his essay 'Civil Disobedience', an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.
Author, journalist, satirist, and critic Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was born 70 years ago today. He had a great influence in the literature of the 20th century through his works, most of them dealing with the American Civil War.
The last transit of Venus took place recently on 5 and 6 June 2012, and it was the last Venus transit of the 21st century. Venus transits are very rare events. The next one will be December 10–11, 2117. So it is much likely that this on was the very last Venus transit I had a chance to see in my lifetime.
On this day in 1804 geographer, naturalist, and explorer Alexander von Humboldt returned home from his great South America scientific discovery journey.
It was 58 years ago today that the first volume of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy story 'The Lord of the Rings' was published. Ever since it has cast a spell over generations of readers. The Lord of the Rings has become one of the most popular books of the last century. But, who was this Oxford professor for Anglo-Saxon and why in the world did he come up with this terrific and rather unusual piece of writing?
180 years ago, famous mathematician Évariste Galois was killed in a duell. He was only 20 years old. And why? Just because of a girl. Her name was Stéphanie-Félicie Poterine du Motel, the daughter of a physician.
When in 1952 the world's first thermonuclear fusion bomb was ignited, mathematicians and physicists thought it would be rather unlikely that testing the device might result in burning all the nitrogen in the earth's atmosphere. But, the possibility could not be excluded completely. Nevertheless, they have tested the bomb and fortunately for us not the like did happen. One of the key persons behind the development of the hydrogenic bomb was Stanislaw Ulam, who together with physicist Edward Teller came up with the first successful design.
543 years ago today, Florentine civil servant, diplomat, historian, philosopher and author Niccolò Machiavelli was born. Besides his seminal work 'Il Principe' (The Prince) he also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and even poetry.
Without difficulty, you can notice that a pioneer in musical engineering is to be remembered today. Today's Google Doodle shows the Moog synthesizer, invented by Robert Arthur Moog, who was born today 78 years ago.
From the invention of a new power source or engine up to a vehicle that applies this power source to move forward sometimes is only a small step. But, to become a commercial success, this step might take even decades. Just think of the oldest type of engine powered by steam.
On this day in 1750 one of the most important and productive composers of the Baroque period, Johann Sebastian Bach died. Bach's abilities as an organist were highly respected throughout Europe during his lifetime, although he was not widely recognised as a great composer until a revival of interest and performances of his music in the first half of the 19th century.
The first Science Slam in Potsdam took place yesterday at the Hans-Otto-Theater and we were there to see five young scientists presenting their latest studies on five different topics.
The rules of the Science Slam are easy. The participants have 10 minutes to present their own research results in an entertaining way. The audience then picks the winner by the volume of their applause
On this day in 1994, the last parts of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the largest planet within our solar system, Jupiter. This was the first time, that an extraterrestrial collision of two objects could be directly observed.
Lately, several earthquakes have caused fear and chaos in Italy. Just yesterday, 10 people have lost their lives after the 5.8 quake in Modena and many more are presumably buried underneath the ruins. Earthquakes happen every day around the globe, only this year 7156 quakes have been registered by seismometers, but most of them stay unnoticed for us humans.
Yesterday 94 years ago, famous physicist and nobel laureate Richard Feynman was born. Ever since my first days at university, Feynman has been one of my absolute heroes of science. Of course I already knew his name back at school, when we first learned about Feynman diagrams named after him and I have had heard about his famous physics lectures. But when I happend to read his autobiographical book "Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman - Adventures of a Curious Character" I became a fan. I guess, reading about Feynman and finally watching his lectures on video also was one of the (many) reasons why I became a scientist.
On July 20, 1969 (for Western Europeans it was one day later, i.e. July 21, 3:56 MEZ) United States' space mission Apollo 11 reached the moon with the lunar module Eagle and the two astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin about 76 hours after they left earth from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
236 years ago today, Adam Weishaupt, the first lay professor of canon law, founded the secret order of Illuminati at the University of Ingolstadt on May 1st 1776. It was made up of freethinkers as an offshoot of the Enlightenment and seems to have been modeled on the Freemasons.
While he was looking for a city called Vilcamba, Hiram Bingham discovered one of the most mysterious towns of all times today 101 years ago. The lost city of Machu Picchu was built in the 15th century by the Inca near Cusco and was declared as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983.
On this day in 1996 the British Royal Air Force engineer officer Sir Frank Whittle passed away. He was best known for inventing the turbojet engine for which he received the knighthood in 1948.
Today 199 years ago, the first (modern) optical telegraph line following the mechanical telegraphy system of the French inventor Claude Chappe was established between Metz and Mainz was established. No, this wasn't the first of its kind, but it was the first to connect the former already in France established telegraphy system with a (now) German city.
On May 27th 1937 The Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco spanning over the opening of the San Francisco Bay and connecting the City with Marin County was opened for public traffic. When the planning for the bridge started back in 1916 many experts said that a bridge couldn’t be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait.
112 years ago, famous american writer Stephen Crane died at age 28. Despite of his youth, he already had become one of the icons of american literature. Most famous is his american civil war novel 'The Red Badge of Courage', which has been read by almost every american high school kid.
What is the driving force behind our motivations and ambitions? Is it pure reasoning? Hardly, as famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung would argue. Moreover its the unconscious buried deep below the surface of our daily self that is responsible. Carl Gustav Jung took into account the unconscious for his new school of analytical psychology, which differs from Freud's original school of psychoanalysis. C. G. Jung was one of the creators of modern depth psychology, which seeks to facilitate a conversation with the unconscious energies which move through each of us.
Today 38 years ago, the Universal Product Code barcode was introduced to the public. A supermarket in Troy, Ohio scanned the first product, which was a pack of Wrigley's gum.
18 years ago today, the very first World Wide Web Conference started with a Welcome Receiption at the restaurant of CERN at Geneva, the European laboratory for particle physics, where the Web also started a few years earlier. The Web (or W3 as they also called it those days) was still some kind of project, but everyone of the 380 participants at the conference knew that they now were taking part in something that could change the internet as we knew it before.
Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos form the culture jamming duo The Yes Men. Through their actions, they try to raise awareness about problematic social issues, in their sense. In order to do this, The Yes Men impersonate people of high economical or political influence to expose lies and injustices.
On this very day in the year 47 BC the Roman dictator Gaius Iulius Caesar won the battle of Zela against Pharnaces II. king of Pontus. As the Roman victory was won rather quickly, Caesar wanted to emphasize that very fact by the brevity and conciseness of his report sent to the senate and people of Rome. He only wrote three little words:
"Veni, Vidi, Vici."
209 years ago today one of the most important English poets of the Victorian era was born, Alfred Lord Tennyson.
The works of Alfred Lord Tennyson are best known for their close affinity with the English mythology and English history, they influenced the movement of the 19th century's Victorian Art as well as the Arts and Crafts Movement, which was to join art and handcraft using simple forms applied to mostly romantic or medieval styles.
Ivan Sutherland, The American computer scientist and Internet pioneer has received the Turing Award from the Association for Computing Machinery in 1988 for his invention of Sketchpad, an early predecessor to the sort of graphical user interface that has become ubiquitous in personal computers today.
On this day in 1921, the psychotherapist, psychoanalytic, sociologist, philosopher, and author Paul Watzlawick was born. He was best known for his approaches in the field of schizophrenia and his five axiomes in the theory of communication.
301 years ago, the great Philosopher David Hume was born. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy as well as the Scottish Enlightenment. In his 'Treatise of Human Nature' (1739), he was about to create a total naturalistic "science of man" examining the psychological basis of human nature.
On July 2, 1839, Sengbe Pieh (later known as Joseph Cinqué) led 53 fellow Africans being transported as captives aboard the Spanish schooner 'La Amistad' from Havana in a revolt against their captors. The captives had been taken in Africa by a Portuguese slaving ship and then smuggled into Havana under cover of nightfall, because this was a violation of an already existing treaty between Britain and Spain, which forbade trading in slaves.
40 years ago today Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded a company named Atari Inc. that should become a pioneer in arcade computer games, video game consoles, and home computers. The year before in 1971, they had designed and built the world's very first arcade video game - Computer Space for Nutting Associates.
On June 10th 1829 the very first of now legendary annual boat races of Oxford and Cambridge on the river Thames took place. The race came about because two friends from Harrow School, Charles Wordsworth (nephew of the poet William Wordsworth), of Christ Church College, Oxford, and Charles Merrivale of St. John’s, Cambridge, met during the vacation in Cambridge, where Wordsworth’s father was master of Trinity. Wordsworth went rowing on the river Cam, and the two school fellows decided to set up a challenge.
958 years ago today, Chinese astronomers observed a new star in the constellation of Taurus, which later turned out to be a supernova.
China was able to contribute to the developments in the science of astronomy critically. In their philosophy, the harmony between earth, the sky and humankind were essential, and therefore any disturbance to that balance had to be predicted. This believe caused the astronomers of the historical China a great status, they were able to predict comets like no other culture. Also, the precise predictions were caused by the critical consequences the responsible astronomer had to face in case of a false prognosis.
H. Yang, B. Quehl, and H. Sack. Proc. of 13th Int. Workshop on Image Analysis and Multimedia Interactive Services (WIAMIS 2012), May 23-25, 2012, Dublin (Ireland), (2012)
T. Heath, R. Singer, N. Shabir, C. Clarke, and J. Leavesley. Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Learning and Education with the Web of Data (LiLe-2012 at WWW-2012) Lyon, France, April 17, 2012., (2012)
M. Knuth, J. Hercher, and H. Sack. Proc. of. 2nd Int. Workshop on Usage Analysis and the Web of Data (USEWOD 2012), co-located with the 21st International World Wide Web Conference 2012 (WWW 2012), April 17, 2012, Lyon (France), (2012)
J. Hercher, M. Ruhl, and H. Sack. Proc. of 2nd DGI Conference, 64th Annual DGI Meeting -- Social Media and Web Science -- Das Web als Lebensraum, page 251--262. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Informationswissenschaft und Informationspraxis e.V., Frankfurt a. M., (2012)
H. Yang, B. Quehl, and H. Sack. Proc. of the 19th International Conference on Systems, Signals and Image Processing (IWSSIP 2012), April 11-13, 2012, Vienna (Austria), page 9--12. (2012)
J. Osterhoff, J. Waitelonis, and H. Sack. Proc. of 2. Workshop Interaktion und Visualisierung im Daten-Web (IVDW 2012), im Rahmen der INFORMATIK 2012, Braunschweig, (2012)