The Mourners of Dijon are tomb sculptures made in Burgundy during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. They are part of a new iconographical tradition led by Claus Sluter that continued until the end of the fifteenth century. In this tradition, free-standing sculptures depict mourners who stand next to a bier or platform that holds a body in state. The figures are cloaked in robes which mostly hide their faces.
The Blancpain Erotic Minute Repeater is a watch with concealed erotic automation.
The Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is the most famous and possibly the best surviving example of manuscript illumination in the late phase of the International Gothic style. It is a book of hours: a collection of prayers to be said at the canonical hours. It was created between c. 1412 and 1416 for the extravagant royal bibliophile and patron John, Duke of Berry, by the Limbourg brothers.
The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is an annual automotive event held on the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. It is widely considered the most prestigious car show in the world and it is the pinnacle Concours d'Elegance competition worldwide. The event open to both prewar and postwar collector cars in which they are judged for authenticity, function, history, and style.
The boojum tree is an unusual flowering tree endemic to the deserts of Baja California and a small area of Sonora, Mexico. It is covered with spiny twigs that bear yellowish flowers in hanging clusters. As with its relative the ocotillo, the small leaves appear after rainfall and are drought-deciduous, meaning they fall off during the dry season to limit water loss.
The lluvia de peces is a phenomenon that has been occurring yearly for more than a century in Yoro, Honduras, in which fish are said to fall from the sky. It occurs up to four times in a year. The explanation generally offered for the rain of fish is meteorological, often speculated to be strong winds or waterspouts, as is commonly proposed when attempting to explain similar occurrences of raining animals.
Ida Lewis was once known as “the bravest woman in America.” Lewis served as an official lighthouse keeper for the U.S. Lighthouse Service (later absorbed into the Coast Guard) from 1879 until her death, at age 69, in 1911. As the keeper of Lime Rock Light Station off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island, Lewis performed work that was critical to national security: lighthouses, administered by the federal government, aided navigation and helped protect the nation’s coastlines. Lewis also performed personal acts of heroism by rescuing people from drowning in the turbulent, cold waters off Newport. According to Coast Guard records, Lewis saved the lives of 18 people, including several soldiers from nearby Fort Adams; unofficial accounts hold that she saved as many as 36. Until 2020, she was the only woman to receive the Coast Guard’s Gold Lifesaving Medal, the nation’s highest lifesaving decoration.
USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000) is a guided missile destroyer of the United States Navy. She is the lead ship of the Zumwalt class. Zumwalt has stealth capabilities, having a radar cross-section similar to a fishing boat despite her large size.
Eugene Schieffelin was an American amateur ornithologist who belonged to the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society and the New York Zoological Society. In 1877, he became chairman of the American Acclimatization Society and joined their efforts to introduce non-native species to North America for economic and cultural reasons. In 1890, Schieffelin released 60 imported starlings from England into New York City's Central Park. He did the same with another 40 birds in 1891. According to an oft-repeated story, Schieffelin supposedly introduced starlings as part of a project to bring to the United States all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. Some historians have cast doubt on this story, as no record of it exists until the 1940s. He may have also been trying to control the same pests that had been annoying him thirty years earlier, when he sponsored the introduction of the house sparrow to North America. Schieffelin's efforts were part of multiple releases of starlings in the United States, ranging from the mid-1870s through the mid-1890s. The successful spread of starlings has come at the expense of many native birds that compete with the starling for nest holes in trees.[18] The starlings have also had negative impact on the US economy and ecosystem. European starlings are now considered an invasive species in the United States.
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque was a French polymath of the early 19th century, born near Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire and self-educated in France. He made significant contributions to the fields of botany, zoology, and the study of prehistoric earthworks in North America. Rafinesque's interests extended to ancient Mesoamerican linguistics, adding to his prior work in Europe. Considered an eccentric and unpredictable genius, Rafinesque was largely self-taught and excelled in multiple areas of knowledge, including zoology, botany, writing, and languages. However, despite his prolific output, he received little recognition in his lifetime. In fact, he faced rejection from leading scientific journals and was marginalized within the American scientific community. Notable among his theories was his proposition that ancestors of Native Americans migrated from Asia to North America via the Bering Sea, as well as his belief that black indigenous peoples inhabited the Americas at the time of European contact.