On May 31, 1811, Albrecht Ludwig Berblinger, also known as the Tailor of Ulm, failed to give the proof that his machine was able to fly and fell into the Danube river during the demonstration. He is famous for having constructed a working flying machine, presumably a hang glider.
What are microformats?
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.
On June 3, 1539, Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernan de Soto, with all the dignitaries and necessary paraphernalia, took formal possession of La Florida, where he landed nine ships with more than 620 men and 220 horses. De Soto's expedition was the first European expedition leading deep into the territory of the modern-day United States, searching for gold, silver and also a passage to China. Moreover, he also was the first European documented to have crossed the Mississippi River.
If you think RDFa and the semantic web is only for geeks, it's time to take a second look. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is advancing the standards for tomorrow's Internet and web content management vendors are getting on-board. The result is going to be a smarter, more findable Web.. Topic: Web CMS
On June 7, 1848, French painter Paul Gauguin was born. He is considered a leading French Post-Impressionist artist who was not well appreciated until after his death. Then he was finally recognized for his experimental use of colors and synthetist style that were distinguishably different from Impressionism.
On June 16, 1723 (June 5 according to the old Julian calendar), Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economy Adam Smith was born. He is one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment and is best known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)
On August 9, 1896, Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher Jean Piaget was born. He is best known for his epistemological studies with children. In 1934, he declared that "only education is capable of
On August 27, 1858, Italian mathematician and philosopher Giuseppe Peano was born. He is he author of over 200 books and papers, and is considered the founder of mathematical logic and set theory. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in his honor. These axioms have been used nearly unchanged in a number of metamathematical investigations, including research into fundamental questions of consistency and completeness of number theory.
On August 31, 1870, Italian physician and educator Maria Tecla Artemesia Montessori was born. She is probably best known for the philosophy of education that bears her name, and her writing on scientific pedagogy. Her educational method is in use today in public and private schools throughout the world.
On October 9 or 10, 1813, famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi was born. He is primarily known for his romantic operas, and together with Richard Wagner, Verdi is considered the most influential composer of operas of the nineteenth century.
On October 16, 1906, German shoemaker Wilhelm Voight, just released from prison for forgery, purchased parts of used captain's uniforms. In this masquerade of a Prussian military officer he arrested the mayor and the treasurer of Köpenick for suspicion of crooked bookkeeping and confiscated the municipal funds
On June 28, 1577, German-born Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens was born. He is best known for his extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality.
On June 29, 1855, American physician, scientist, inventor, and humanitarian John Gorrie passed away. He is considered the father of refrigeration and air conditioning. Today, refrigeration as well as air condition has become a commodity. But, the importance of refrigeration to modern civilization as a means for conservation of food cannot be overestimated.
On July 29, 1805, French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville was born. He is best known for his Democracy in America, where he analyzed the rising living standards and social conditions of individuals and their relationship to the market and state in Western societies.
On July 27, 1740, French natural scientist Jeanne Baret was born. She was probably the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, but with certainty she was the first woman who achieved this disguised as a man.
On August 17, 1586, German theologian, author, and mathematician Johann Valentin Andreae was born. He claimed to be the author of the Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459 (1616, Strasbourg, the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz), one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, a philosophical secret society said to have been founded in late medieval Germany by Christian Rosenkreutz. Rosicrucianism holds a doctrine or theology "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm."
On June 18, 1815, a battle was fought near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, which should be Napoleon's last. An Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. The defeat at Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French, and made way for a shift in the European balance of power.
On June 12, 1659 (other sources report June 11, 1659 - according to the Julian calendar July 13), Japanese Samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo was born. He is best known for the publication of his compiled commentaries and aphorisms about the life of the Samurai under the title of Hagakure, a word that can be translated as either In the shadow the Leaves or The Hidden Leaves.
On June 14, 1966, the Roman Catholic Church abolished their famous list of banned books, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum or shorter simply, the Index, that had been installed more than 500 years ago.
On July 14, 1858, British political activist and leader of the British suffragette movement Emmeline Pankhurst was born, who helped women win the right to vote. Emmeline Pankhurst was named one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century by the Time magazine.
On October 2, 1608, German-Dutch lensmaker Hans Lippershey applied to the States-General of the Netherlands for a patent for his instrument "for seeing things far away as if they were nearby".
On September 20, 450 AD, the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains also referred to as the Battle of Chalons took place. A coalition led by the Roman general Flavius Aëtius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I against the Huns and their allies commanded by their leader Attila faced each other in a decisive battle that should decide the fate of Europe and the whole Western civilization...
Auf den Webseiten amerikanischer Hochschulen können Blogger weitgehend ungefiltert das Campus-Leben beschreiben. Manche Unis bezahlen Studenten sogar dafür. Deutsche Unis sind noch längst nicht so weit - sie starten gerade erste Gehversuche im Web 2.0.
Screen scraping is the art of programatically extracting data from websites. If you think it's useful: it is. If you think it's difficult: it isn't. And if you think it's easy to really piss off administrators with ill-considered scripts, you're damn right.
What do you send people who you want to introduce to the semantic web to persuade them to take it seriously? Lets say you want to persuade a senior business leader to approve a project/budget that includes semantic web technology?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
The two brothers and business partners, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier changed history today 229 years ago when they presented their hot air balloon for the first time to the public of Annonay, France.
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.
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.
On August 28, 1853, Russian engineer-polymath, scientist and architect Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov was born. He is renowned for his pioneering works on new methods of analysis for structural engineering that led to breakthroughs in industrial design. He was one of the most outstanding designers and constructors of the 19th and 20th century. Moreover, he is considered as one of Russia's most important engineers.
On October 7, 1885, Danish physicist and Nobel Laureate Niels Bohr was born. Bohr made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
(Probably) on September 29, 1547, famous Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright Miguel de Cervantes was born. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, is considered to be the first modern European novel, a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written.
On September 22, 1593, Swiss-born German master engraver and publisher Matthäus Merian der Ältere was born. He is best known for his 21-volume set of the Topographia Germaniae, which includes numerous town plans and views, as well as maps of most countries and a World Map.
On May 13, 1882, French painter and sculptor Georges Braque was born, who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism, an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.
On May 17, 1749, English physician and scientist Edward Anthony Jenner was born, who was the pioneer of smallpox vaccine. He is often referred to as "the father of immunology".