Queen celebrates 60 years on throne   A small crowd greets Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as the monarch marks 60 years on the throne. The anniversary is normally recognised privately as the anniversary of her accession also marks the day her father George VI died. The Queen travelled on the day from her Sandringham estate to King’s Lynn in the eastern county of Norfolk, to meet local dignitaries and visit a school. Elizabeth II has been on the throne for longer than any other British monarch except Queen Victoria who reigned for almost 64 years. During her reign – which began aged 25 – there have been 12 British prime…

http://techland.time.com/2011/06/15/claim-sunspots-to-disappear-global-cooling-may-ensue/ Claim: Sunspots to Disappear, Global Cooling May Ensue By Matt Peckham | @mattpeckham | June 15, 2011 You know what they say about a leopard not changing its spots, but when it comes to our sun, change is all but guaranteed. In fact new research suggests the sun may be on the verge of changing its sunspots in a way that could significantly alter weather patterns for the long haul, both on Earth and in space. Three studies presented by scientists at a conference in Las Cruces, New Mexico yesterday predict that sunspots are set to temporarily and unexpectedly vanish in coming years as part of a solar “hibernation”…

From Out of a Featureless Crowd By KAREN WILKIN New York Victoria and Albert Museum, on long-term loan to The National Gallery, London ‘Fra Teodoro of Urbino as St. Dominic’ (1515), by Giovanni Bellini. Portraits, from gritty Lucian Freuds to the fatuous kitsch perpetrated by street artists, are such a constant presence in our visual landscape that it’s hard to remember that the genre’s history is far from continuous. For centuries, throughout the ancient world—in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece—human beings were depicted according to strict, near-abstract conventions, except for a short-lived period of relative naturalism during the reign of the renegade monotheist pharaoh, Akhenaten. The Romans, of course, excelled at memorial…

Roman Bonzon http://aesthetics-online.org/ Iris Murdoch, British novelist and philosopher, died on February 8, 1999, in Oxford, England, at the age of seventy-nine. She had suffered from Alzheimers disease since the mid-1990s, and died at a nursing home with her husband by her side. “She is not sailing into the dark”, he wrote in the moving account of her illness and their life together published in the United States early this year as Elegy for Iris. “The voyage is over and, under the dark escort of Alzheimers, she has arrived somewhere.” The last of her novels, Jacksons Dilemma, appeared in 1995, and a collection of her essays on philosophy and literature,…

First Groundhog Day. (2012). The History Channel website. Retrieved 9:18, February 1, 2012, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-groundhog-day. On this day in 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring. Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas Day, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept…

Oklahoma City bombing. (2012). The History Channel website. Retrieved 5:13, January 30, 2012, from http://www.history.com/topics/oklahoma-city-bombing. Timothy McVeigh, an anti-government militant, set off a truck bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The blast collapsed one side of the nine-story building and cost 168 people their lives. Until September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack to take place on U.S. soil. McVeigh received the death penalty for his crimes. The Oklahoma City Bombing was a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995, in which a massive homemade bomb concealed in a rental truck exploded, heavily…

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Plants trapped under Iceland’s icecaps store a record of ancient temperatures   The Little Ice Age was caused by the cooling effect of massive volcanic eruptions, and sustained by changes in Arctic ice cover, scientists conclude. An international research team studied ancient plants from Iceland and Canada, and sediments carried by glaciers. They say a series of eruptions just before 1300 lowered Arctic temperatures enough for ice sheets to expand. Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say this would have kept the Earth cool for centuries. The exact definition of the Little Ice Age is disputed. While many studies suggest temperatures fell globally…

A 1929 Cartoon Explains How ‘Talkies’ Work By Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/01/finding-his-voice-1929/251929/ Jan 24 2012, 4:13 PM ET  Once upon a time, synchronized sound in movies was still new and exciting. Finding His Voice, a cartoon starring two rolls of film named Talkie and Mutie, illustrates that process. In the course of Mutie’s quest to get a voice, Dr. Western, a “film surgeon,” leads the pair through the whole process, from sound stage to screen. Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive, the film was created by Western Electric to promote their sound-on-film recording system. Max Fleischer, the co-director of the film, went on to create Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman.    Kasia…

The following article is in  response to a request by a reader for facts and issues regarding Pearl Harbor. How America Changed After Pearl Harbor The December of 1941 radically altered America and its global role By MICHAEL MORELLA January 6, 2012 On Dec. 7, 1941, radios buzzed with the news that several hundred Japanese planes attacked a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,400 Americans as well as damaging or destroying eight Navy battleships and more than 100 planes. Though it would be some time before people learned the full scope of the damage, within days a once-distant war in Europe and the Pacific became…

January 24, 2012 8:03 AM JFK tapes reveal days before his death By Bill Plante It’s a rare peek into Camelot.   The last batch of John F. Kennedy’s private White House tapes are being released by his presidential library.   The 45 hours of audio chronicle the end of his presidency — the last of them was recorded just two days before his assassination.   A particularly ominous note is sounded just three days before Dallas, when the president asks staffers to schedule a meeting with an Indonesian general. At one point during the discussion, he makes a haunting reference to the day on which his funeral would be…