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November 8

Mario Party DS is a 2007 party video game developed by Hudson Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DS. It is the second handheld game in the Mario Party series, as well as the last game in the series to be developed by Hudson Soft, as all subsequent games have been developed by NDcube. Like most installments in the Mario Party series, Mario Party DS features characters of the Mario franchise competing in a board game with a variety of minigames, many of which utilize the console's unique features, including its built-in microphone, dual screen and touch screen mechanics, and motion sensitivity. Up to four human players can compete at a time, though characters can also be computer-controlled. Although Mario Party DS received mixed reviews, with general praise for its minigame variety and criticism for its absence of an online multiplayer mode, the game has sold more than nine million units worldwide, making it the 11th-best-selling game for the Nintendo DS. (Full article...)

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April 8

Blackadder is a British sitcom made by the BBC. The title does not refer to a specific series, but rather denotes the programmes — four series and several one-off episodes — taken as a whole. The first series was written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson; subsequent series were written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton. The show was produced by John Lloyd, and starred Rowan Atkinson as the eponymous protagonist, Edmund Blackadder, and Tony Robinson as his sidekick Baldrick. Four series of six half-hour episodes were made, each series set in a different period of British history. The first series was called The Black Adder and was made in 1983; this was followed by Blackadder II in 1985, Blackadder the Third in 1987, and finally Blackadder Goes Forth in 1989. Blackadder came second in a 2004 BBC poll to find 'Britain's Best Sitcom'. (more...)

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March 8

Chemical warfare is warfare using the toxic properties of chemical substances to kill, injure or incapacitate the enemy. Chemical warfare is distinct from the use of conventional weapons or nuclear weapons because the destructive effects of chemical weapons are not primarily due to any explosive force. The offensive use of living organisms or their toxic products (such as anthrax or botulin toxin) is not considered chemical warfare: their use is instead labelled biological warfare. Chemical weapons are classified as weapons of mass destruction by the United Nations, and their production and stockpiling was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. (more...)

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February 8

The Battle of Inchon was a decisive 15-day invasion and battle during the Korean War. The battle began on September 15, 1950, and ended around September 28. During the amphibious operation, U.S. Marines under the command of General Douglas MacArthur secured Inchon and broke North Korean control of the Pusan region through a series of landings in enemy territory. The Battle of Inchon ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA) and began a counterattack by United Nations forces that led to the recapture of Seoul. The northern advance ended when China's People's Liberation Army entered the conflict in support of North Korea, and defeated UN forces at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. (more...)

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January 8

Chuck Palahniuk is a satirical novelist and freelance journalist living in Portland, Oregon. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher. He has one of the largest centralized followings of any author on the Internet, based around his official web site. His writings, similar in style to those of such peers as Bret Easton Ellis, Irvine Welsh, and Douglas Coupland, have made him one of the most popular novelists of Generation X. (more...)

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December 8

A bishōjo game or girl game is a type of Japanese video game centered on interactions with attractive anime girls. Although nearly all bishōjo games involve romantic or sex appeal of some kind, they may or may not be pornographic. Bishōjo games are a uniquely Japanese phenomenon: they have virtually no parallel in the American or European video game industries. They form a sizeable fraction of the Japanese market: the most popular have sold over a million copies, and they make up the majority of offline PC games in Japan. Nevertheless, because of real or perceived cultural differences, few have been translated and no major mass-market release has yet been attempted outside of East Asia. Thus bishōjo games remain by far the least known of the major video game genres outside of Japan. Notable subgenres of bishōjo games are ren'ai games (often called "dating sims") and H games (often called "hentai games"). (more...)

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November 8

The House of Commons is the lower, directly elected house of the Canadian Parliament

The Parliament of Canada is Canada's legislative branch, seated at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario. According to section 17 of the Constitution Act, 1867, Parliament consists of three components: the Sovereign, the Senate, and the House of Commons. The Sovereign is normally represented by the Governor General, who appoints the 105 members of the Senate on the advice of the Prime Minister. The 308 members of the House of Commons are directly elected by the people, with each member representing a single electoral district (or riding). The democratically elected "Lower House", the House of Commons, is the dominant branch of the Canadian Parliament. The "Upper House", the Senate, rarely opposes the will of the other Chamber, and the duties of the Sovereign and Governor General are purely ceremonial. The Prime Minister and Cabinet must retain the support of a majority of Members of the Lower House in order to remain in office; they need not have the confidence of the Upper House. (more...)

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October 8

James Joyce was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, and is widely considered one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners, and for his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Together with Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Richardson, he is credited with the development of the stream of consciousness technique in which the same weight is given to both the internal world of the mind and the external world of events and circumstances as factors shaping the actions and views of fictional characters. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family life and the events and friends (and enemies) from his school and college days. In this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great English language modernists. (more...)

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September 8

In prosody, alliterative verse is any of a number of closely related verse forms that are the common inheritance of the older Germanic languages. This was the verse form in which the Old English epic Beowulf was written, as well as most of the other Old English poetry; so were the Bavarian Muspillo and the Old Saxon Heliand. A modified form of alliterative verse is found in the Elder Edda. Alliterative verse exists from the earliest attested monuments of the Germanic languages; extended passages of alliterative verse are attested in Old English, Old Norse, Old High German, and Old Saxon. (more...)

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September 6

The Warsaw Uprising was an armed struggle during the Second World War by the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) to liberate Warsaw from German occupation and Nazi rule. It started on August 1, 1944 as a part of a nationwide uprising, Operation Tempest. The Polish troops resisted the German-led forces until October 2. An estimated 85% of the city was destroyed during the urban guerrilla war and after the end of hostilities. The Uprising started at a crucial point in the war as the Soviet army was approaching Warsaw. Although the Soviet army was within a few hundred metres of the city from September 16 onward, the link between the uprising and the advancing army was never made. This failure and the reasons behind it have been a matter of controversy ever since. (more...)

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August 8

War elephants were important, although not widespread, weapons in ancient military history. Their main use was in charges, to trample the enemy and/or break their ranks. War elephants were exclusively male animals, as they are faster and more aggressive. An elephant charge could reach about 30 km/h and was difficult to stop by an infantry line. Its power was based on pure force and the fear that a charging 10-ton animal could inspire in the enemy lines. With the advent of gunpowder warfare in the late 15th century, war elephants became obsolete as a charging element because they could be easily knocked down by a cannon shot. (more...)

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July 8

Mark Antony was a Roman politician and general. He was an important supporter of Julius Caesar as a military commander and administrator. When Caesar became dictator, Antonius was made master of the horse — the second most important political office — and in this condition he remained in Italy in 47 BC, while Caesar was fighting the last Pompeians, hidden in the African provinces. After Caesar's assassination, Antonius allied with Octavian and Lepidus. The second triumvirate ended in 33 BC, and he later committed suicide a few days before Cleopatra did. (more...)

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June 8

World War I lasted from 1914 to 1918. It set the violent 20th century in motion. Chemical weapons were used for the first time, the first mass bombardment of civilians from the sky was executed, and the century's first genocide took place during the war. No previous conflict had mobilised so many soldiers, or involved so many in the field of battle. Never before had casualties been so high. World War I was also a war of change, a last blow to the old order in Europe to pave way for the new. Dynasties such as the Habsburgs, Romanovs, and Hohenzollerns all fell after the 4-year war. (more...)

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May 8

Thailand is divided into 76 provinces which are grouped into 5 groups. The name of each province is the same as that of its capital city, which is sometimes preceded with a Mueang to avoid confusion with the province. With the exception of Songkhla the capital is also the biggest city in the province. Bangkok has both the greatest population and the highest population density. Each province is administrated by a governor, who is appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. (more...)

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April 8

The Frankfurt School is a school of neo-Marxist social theory, social research, and philosophy. The grouping emerged at the Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) of the University of Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1930. Responding to the rise of Nazism, they applied the theories of Marx to social conditions that Marx himself had never seen, drawing heavily on the work of Max Weber and Sigmund Freud to fill in Marx's perceived omissions. The Frankfurt School's Herbert Marcuse (photo) was sometimes described as the intellectual progenitor of the New Left. (more...)

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March 8

Sperm Whale

The Sperm Whale is the largest of the toothed whales and is the largest toothed animal in the world. The whale was named after the milky-white substance spermaceti found in its head and originally mistaken for sperm. The Sperm Whale's enormous head and distinctive shape, as well as its central role in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, have led many to describe it as the archetypal whale. (more...)

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