Offshore powerboat racing is racing by large, specially designed ocean-going powerboats, typically point-to-point racing. Probably one of the largest, most dangerous, and most powerful racing machines of all, the extreme expense of the boats and the fuel required to participate make it an expensive and elite sport.
The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving example of a complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone, near Aidin, Turkey (not far from Ephesus).
The Syrena was a Polish automobile model first exhibited at the Pozna Trade Fair in 1955.
Kumis is a fermented dairy product traditionally made from mare's milk. The drink remains important to the peoples of the Central Asian steppes.
Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal the oldest student-edited architectural journal in the United States, is internationally respected for its contributions to contemporary architectural discourse with original presentations of new projects as well as historical and theoretical essays.
Leo the Lion is the mascot for the Hollywood film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Fonthill Abbey was the stuff of legend in its day and much admired by the great romantic painters Constable and Turner. Walled and girdled round and closed to visitors, it intrigued the regency public; so much so that when it was first put up for sale through Christie's in 1822, between 600 and 700 people a day traipsed through its soaring mock-medieval halls, gawping up to the plaster vaulting at the top of its wobbly tower. In all, at least 7,200 people paid a guinea each for a catalogue that gave admission to the abbey. It was the Disneyland of its day.
Charles Howard Hinton was a British mathematician and writer of science fiction works titled Scientific Romances. He was interested in higher dimensions, particularly the fourth dimension. He is known for his work on methods of visualizing the geometry of higher dimensions. He was also one of the many abstruse thinkers who circulated in Jorge Luis Borges's pantheon of writers.
The immortal jellyfish is found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the waters of Japan. It is one of the few known cases of animals capable of reverting completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after having reached sexual maturity as a solitary individual. Once the adults have reproduced, they don’t die but transform themselves back into their juvenile polyp state. Their tentacles retract, their bodies shrink, and they sink to the ocean floor and start the cycle all over again.
George W. S. Trow was an American writer. He worked for The New Yorker for almost 30 years, and wrote numerous essays and several books. He is best known for his long essay on television and its effect on American culture, "Within the Context of No Context. Some critics have found these works impenetrable and elitist; some argue that Trow's nostalgia for the pre-television era was misplaced, because the subsequent civil rights movements had made American culture more democratic.