Talk Elections

Your mixing up of decimal points and commas in numbers is infuriating.

<3

Isn’t that how it is in most of Europe lol?

It still defies all sense.

Nope.

I think Tender mistyped the title. He probably intended to write "Kalwejt - The Badaᛋᛋ Mod".

Cath versus the whole of Europe.

My money is on Cath.

A doughnut (British English) or donut (American English) is a type of fried dough confection or dessert food. The doughnut is popular in many countries and prepared in various forms as a sweet snack that can be homemade or purchased in bakeries, supermarkets, food stalls, and franchised specialty vendors.

Doughnuts are usually deep fried from a flour dough, and typically either ring-shaped or a number of shapes without a hole, and often filled, but can also be ball-shaped ("doughnut holes"). Other types of batters can also be used, and various toppings and flavorings are used for different types, such as sugar, chocolate, or maple glazing. Doughnuts may also include water, leavening, eggs, milk, sugar, oil, shortening, and natural or artificial flavors.

The two most common types are the ring doughnut and the filled doughnut, which is injected with fruit preserves, cream, custard, or other sweet fillings. Alternatively, small pieces of dough are sometimes cooked as doughnut holes. Once fried, doughnuts may be glazed with a sugar icing, spread with icing or chocolate on top, or topped with powdered sugar or sprinkles or fruit. Other shapes include rings, balls, flattened spheres, twists, and other forms. Doughnut varieties are also divided into cake (including the old-fashioned) and yeast-risen type doughnuts. Doughnuts are often accompanied by coffee purchased at doughnut shops or fast food restaurants, but can also be paired with milk.

I have no objection of turning this thread into a depository for recipes and culinary info.

You are woke. I am proud

In French speaking Europe you use a space instead of a period.

For example I'd write 6.000 for you or 6,000 for an American as 6 000 (or here as it's below 10 000, 6000 works as well).

But I think France and Austria are the same in that 6,000 (with a comma) means 6 for us lol

Nah, it's one normal place

Nah, it makes perfect sense

I think the space is what international associations use?

Because Tender showed me proper deference, I'll take him off my list for now, which of course means someobody else is one step closer to the chopping bloc.

the real answer here is that when posting numbers between 1000 and 9999 you do not need a comma or dot.

A space is the officially encouraged notation for scientific use.

In any case, this should be subject to constant debate in all of tender’s threads.

A brick is building material used to make walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Traditionally, the term brick referred to a unit composed of clay, but it is now used to denote any rectangular units laid in mortar. A brick can be composed of clay-bearing soil, sand, and lime, or concrete materials. Bricks are produced in numerous classes, types, materials, and sizes which vary with region and time period, and are produced in bulk quantities. Two basic categories of bricks are fired and non-fired bricks.

Block is a similar term referring to a rectangular building unit composed of similar materials, but is usually larger than a brick. Lightweight bricks (also called lightweight blocks) are made from expanded clay aggregate.

Fired bricks are one of the longest-lasting and strongest building materials, sometimes referred to as artificial stone, and have been used since circa 4000 BC. Air-dried bricks, also known as mudbricks, have a history older than fired bricks, and have an additional ingredient of a mechanical binder such as straw.

Bricks are laid in courses and numerous patterns known as bonds, collectively known as brickwork, and may be laid in various kinds of mortar to hold the bricks together to make a durable structure.

A mountain is a large landform that rises above the surrounding land in a limited area, usually in the form of a peak.[1] A mountain is generally steeper than a hill. Mountains are formed through tectonic forces or volcanism. These forces can locally raise the surface of the earth. Mountains erode slowly through the action of rivers, weather conditions, and glaciers. A few mountains are isolated summits, but most occur in huge mountain ranges.

High elevations on mountains produce colder climates than at sea level. These colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems of mountains: different elevations have different plants and animals. Because of the less hospitable terrain and climate, mountains tend to be used less for agriculture and more for resource extraction and recreation, such as mountain climbing.

The highest mountain on Earth is Mount Everest in the Himalayas of Asia, whose summit is 8,850 m (29,035 ft) above mean sea level. The highest known mountain on any planet in the Solar System is Olympus Mons on Mars at 21,171 m (69,459 ft).

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) is the technology of indoor and vehicular environmental comfort. Its goal is to provide thermal comfort and acceptable indoor air quality. HVAC system design is a subdiscipline of mechanical engineering, based on the principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and heat transfer. "Refrigeration" is sometimes added to the field's abbreviation, as HVAC&R or HVACR or "ventilation" is dropped, as in HACR (as in the designation of HACR-rated circuit breakers).

HVAC is an important part of residential structures such as single family homes, apartment buildings, hotels and senior living facilities, medium to large industrial and office buildings such as skyscrapers and hospitals, vehicles such as cars, trains, airplanes, ships and submarines, and in marine environments, where safe and healthy building conditions are regulated with respect to temperature and humidity, using fresh air from outdoors.

Ventilating or ventilation (the V in HVAC) is the process of exchanging or replacing air in any space to provide high indoor air quality which involves temperature control, oxygen replenishment, and removal of moisture, odors, smoke, heat, dust, airborne bacteria, carbon dioxide, and other gases. Ventilation removes unpleasant smells and excessive moisture, introduces outside air, keeps interior building air circulating, and prevents stagnation of the interior air.

Ventilation includes both the exchange of air to the outside as well as circulation of air within the building. It is one of the most important factors for maintaining acceptable indoor air quality in buildings. Methods for ventilating a building may be divided into mechanical/forced and natural types.

Random-access memory (RAM /ræm/) is a form of computer data storage that stores data and machine code currently being used. A random-access memory device allows dataitems to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the physical location of data inside the memory. In contrast, with other direct-access data storage media such as hard disks, CD-RWs, DVD-RWs and the older magnetic tapes and drum memory, the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement.

RAM contains multiplexing and demultiplexing circuitry, to connect the data lines to the addressed storage for reading or writing the entry. Usually more than one bit of storage is accessed by the same address, and RAM devices often have multiple data lines and are said to be "8-bit" or "16-bit", etc. devices.

In today's technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuits. RAM is normally associated with volatiletypes of memory (such as DRAM modules), where stored information is lost if power is removed, although non-volatile RAM has also been developed.[1] Other types of non-volatile memories exist that allow random access for read operations, but either do not allow write operations or have other kinds of limitations on them. These include most types of ROMand a type of flash memory called NOR-Flash.

Integrated-circuit RAM chips came into the market in the early 1970s, with the first commercially available DRAM chip, the Intel 1103, introduced in October 1970.[2]

Dennis Mark Prager (/ˈpreɪɡər/) (born August 2, 1948)[1] is an American nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host and writer. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family, his initial political work concerned Soviet Jews who were unable to emigrate. He gradually began offering more and broader commentary on politics. His views generally align with Social conservatism. He founded PragerU, an American non-profit organization that creates videos on various political, economic, and philosophical topics from a conservative perspective.

Dennis Prager was born in New York City to Hilda Prager (née Friedfeld; 1919–2009) and her husband, Max Prager (1918–2014). Prager and his siblings were raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home. He attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn, New York, where he befriended Joseph Telushkin. He went to Brooklyn College and graduated with a major in history and Middle Eastern Studies. Over the next few years he took courses at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and at the University of Leeds; he then left academia without finishing a graduate degree. After he left graduate school, Prager left Modern Orthodoxy but maintained many traditional Jewish practices; he remained religious.[1]


Prager speaking at the California Capitol Building in 2008.
In 1969, while he was studying in England, he was recruited by a Jewish group to travel to the Soviet Union to interview Jews about their life there. When he returned the next year, he was in demand as a speaker on repression of Soviet Jews; he earned enough from lectures to travel, and visited around sixty countries.[2] He became the national spokesman for the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry.[3]

The start of Prager's career overlapped with a growing tendency among American Jews, who had been staunchly liberal, to move toward the center and some to the right, driven in part by the influx of Jews from the Soviet Union.[4] In 1975, Prager and Telushkin published an introduction to Judaism intended for nonobservant Jews: The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, which became a best-seller. Among the questions addressed in the text were: how does Judaism differ from Christianity, and can one doubt the existence of God and still be a good Jew, and how do you account for unethical but religious Jews?[1][5]

Prager supported Jimmy Carter in the 1976 US presidential election.[6] Prager ran the Brandeis-Bardin Institute from 1976 to 1983; Telushkin worked with him there.[1] It was Prager's first salaried job.[2] He soon earned a reputation as a moral critic focused on attacking secularism and narcissicism, each of which he said was destroying society; some people called him a Jewish Billy Graham.[2]

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I mean, I have to agree with Cath here.  "," for numbers above 999 and "." for decimals is just a lot cleaner.

According to the original draft of "Futurama", Bender (full name Bender Mieczysław Brzęczyszczykiewicz, named after great the Polish statesman Ryszard Bender) was a military robot, manufactured by the Bumar-Łabędy Companies in Gliwice to be exported to Malaysia (just like PT-92 main battle tanks). Despite ultimately rejecting the premise, Matt Groening liked the name "Bender" so much he quickly came up with idea of bending units.

This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

First stamps
The first stamps specifically for South Georgia were issued in 1944 and consisted of overprints on stamps of the Falkland Islands for use in South Georgia when it was part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies.[1]

1946 to 1963
From 1946 to 1963, South Georgia used stamps of the Falkland Islands Dependencies.

1963 to 1979
In 1963, British Antarctic Territory was formed, leaving only the island groups of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the Falkland Islands Dependencies. From 1963 to 1979,[2] South Georgia had its own stamps simply marked South Georgia.

1980 to 1985
From 1980 to 1985, South Georgia again used stamps of the Falkland Islands Dependencies.

Present
From 1986 stamps of the territory are inscribed South Georgia & South Sandwich Is.

Survivor is a satirical novel by Chuck Palahniuk, first published in February 1999. The book tells the story of Tender Branson, a member of the Creedish Church, a death cult. The chapters and pages are numbered backwards in the book, beginning with Chapter 47 on page 289 and ending with page 1 of Chapter 1.

Tender Branson sits in the cockpit of a Boeing 747-400, telling his life story to the black box. He is alone in the plane, having hijacked it; he has released all of the plane's passengers and crew prior to this point. He explains the events leading up to the hijacking.

Tender is a member of the fanatical Creedish cult, which engaged in a mass suicide ten years previously. He is one of the Creedish members who was sent out into the world to work as a servant, and send his income back to the Creedish community. Creedish members have been steadily killing themselves since the mass suicide, in keeping with their belief that the deliverance is at hand. At the start of his story, Tender works as the housekeeper. At his dingy apartment, he gets phone calls from people who want to kill themselves—the result of a newspaper misprint which printed his phone number as the number for a suicide prevention hotline.

One of the calls comes from a Trevor Hollis, a man who wants to kill himself because of the nightmares he has been having about disasters, like plane crashes or fires. Tender tells Trevor to kill himself, and soon after, reads his obituary in the paper. One day, Tender goes to the mausoleum to steal fake flowers for his employer's garden, and decides to visit Trevor's tomb while he is there. At the tomb, he meets Trevor's sister, Fertility, and they talk. Later that night, Tender has his weekly meeting with his caseworker from the Federal Survivor Retention Program, a government agency that keeps tabs on the survivors of suicide cults.

Tender describes how, ten years previously, someone leaked the Church's doings (i.e. cult brainwashing, tax evasion, unregistered births) to the police of Bolster County, Nebraska, and the FBI are put on the case. The FBI move in to arrest the cult leaders only to find the entire community dead in an act of mass suicide upon hearing the news. The remaining survivors are expected to be prepared for such an event (called the "Deliverance" by the Church), and kill themselves as soon as they hear the news.

After their meeting, Fertility calls Tender thinking she has called the crisis hotline. Tender soon realizes it's Fertility, so he begins to talk to her in a fake voice. Because it is revealed later that Fertility is psychic and knows "everything", it is understood that she knows at this point that she is speaking to Tender. Eventually, she asks the man at the "crisis hotline" (i.e. Tender) to have phone sex with her, but he hangs up after turning her down. He then stops answering his phone in fear that Fertility will be on the other line, wanting to have phone sex or growing more attracted to him as a mysterious voice than as a person.

At home, Tender receives a suspicious call from a man he recognizes as a member of the Creedish Church, and he soon realizes that the murderer of Creedish survivors is actually Creedish himself.

On a date, Tender and Fertility ride the bus downtown, where a stranger rudely begins telling them facile jokes pointed at the Creedish mass suicide. Tender recognizes the man's pants as Creedish dress, and suddenly recognizes the man as Adam, his twin brother. Tender speaks Adam's name aloud, but when Adam asks if they are brothers, he desperately denies it.

Tender soon learns that he has become one of the last two survivors of the Creedish Church. The caseworker has him go over photos of dead Creedish to see if he can identify the other survivor, but he already knows it to be his brother Adam. He begins receiving phone calls from journalists and agents wanting his story. The caseworker manages to suffocate on a chemical solution of ammonia and chlorine that she was using to clean the fireplace, which had been secretly mixed together by Adam, and whose intended target was Tender. Adam steals the caseworker's files on the Creedish suicides immediately after the murder. The police suspect Tender, but he claims innocence and slips away. Tender, meanwhile, calls an agent and takes a flight to New York that very night. Thus begins his road to stardom.

The agent's company has been planning for years to turn the last survivor of the Creedish cult into a religious celebrity. They create a fake history for Tender and completely overhaul his body. He is given steroid injections, health food, teeth caps, and is made to exercise and diet incessantly until he is the model of attractiveness. It is made clear by the agent that no one will worship an ugly religious leader. Tender is entirely agreeable to all of it, as he has no will to live and desires fame only in order to have an enormous audience for when he commits suicide.

As his agent's plans are realized, Tender's fame grows. Tender is constantly waiting for the opportune moment to kill himself, and continually puts it off as circumstances fail to meet his criteria. Then, as his popularity starts to wane, the agent tells him that he needs to perform a miracle in order to stay famous. It is then that Fertility finds Tender and gives him a prediction to make on TV that will seem like a miracle when it comes true. Naturally, it does, and Tender's fame swells to even greater proportions.

This pattern goes on for some time, until the Super Bowl comes up and Tender's agent plans him an elaborate wedding to take place at half-time, following which, Tender will issue another miraculous prediction. The day of the Super Bowl, the agent dies, Tender is married, and as the police come to arrest him, Tender predicts that the Colts will beat the Cardinals 27-24. The stadium erupts in a chaos as angry football fans pour out of their seats to chase Tender and it is all the police can do to stop the crowd from mobbing him to death. Tender escapes with Adam and Fertility to a Ronald McDonald House. The three then begin their journey across the country by hitching rides in semi-trucks transporting incomplete sections of houses from one location to another.

Adam and Tender, then, steal a car that Fertility foretold would be unlocked in a particular parking lot. Attached to the dashboard is a little commercial figurine of Tender. The brothers, heading north to Canada, come to the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill on the way. As they drive through it, Adam begins recounting the way the Church leaders terrorized the children into fearing sex by forcing them to watch every time a woman went into labor. Tender denies this, but it is unclear whether he simply doesn't want to remember, or whether he actually can't remember because the trauma is buried so deep in his memory. Adam believes the only way to cure Tender is for Tender to have sex—to reject the Church doctrine at its core. Tender resists, and as Adam recounts the details of the "mental castration" (as he calls it), Tender loses control and crashes the car into a giant concrete pylon in the middle of the landfill.

The crash causes the airbags to deploy, and the one on the passenger's side sends the Tender figurine into Adam's left eye. Adam pulls out the figurine and asks Tender to find a rock and hit him with it. Tender refuses, but Adam asks him to find any rock that he can just to disfigure him with, pleading that if he goes to jail for his murders, he doesn't want the other inmates to even think about sexually abusing him. Tender reluctantly agrees to do this, as long as Adam will tell him when to stop, but Adam keeps telling him to swing again until it is too late and Adam dies. Immediately afterwards, Fertility shows up in a taxicab and takes Tender away from the landfill. They go back to Oregon, and Fertility plans to go on a quick job assignment to make some money. Fertility's job is being a surrogate mother for couples who can't conceive (Fertility is actually a pseudonym—her real name is Gwen); however, Fertility actually happens to be barren, so her job is, in essence, prostitution. The job she takes coincidentally happens to be for Tender's former employers. In the middle of the night, Tender sneaks into the house, and Fertility has sex with him in the guest bedroom (for a short while, for according to Tender, he only got in her a half an inch and it was over).

The next morning, Tender wakes up, and Fertility tells him that she's pregnant. She then leaves for the airport to board a plane to Sydney, Australia. In her planner that she leaves behind, Tender reads that someone is going to hijack the plane and crash it into the Australian outback. Following Fertility to the airport, Tender finds her, takes Adam's gun (which she has stashed in an urn purportedly containing her brother's cremated remains), and uses it to board the plane. He then begins searching for the "real" hijacker until the joke dawns on him and he realizes that he is the hijacker. The plot thus returns to the beginning, with Tender telling his life story. He mentions that Fertility told him there was a way for him to escape the plane before it crashes, but on the record, he can't seem to figure it out. The book ends mid-sentence, but without any definitive answer as to whether Tender lives or dies. However, it has been stated by the author that Tender survives, and an explanation is available on Chuck Palahniuk's official website.

Hugo Schenk (born February 11, 1849, in Čechy pod Kosířem;[1] died April 22, 1884 in Vienna) was an Austrian serial killer and imposter who murdered four maids with the help of his accomplice, Karl Schlossarek (1858 - 1884).

Hugo Schenk was born into a well-off family as a son of a judge working in Cieszyn. His brother worked as a community doctor in Maria Taferl. In 1869 and 1870 he began his criminal life as an escapee from the henchmen of the Tsar from Warsaw, Prince Boleslav von Wilopolsky, and was tried as a marriage swindler to get the dowry of the alleged brides. Sentenced on December 5, 1870, to a five-year stay at the Mírov detention center for a number of serious frauds, but was pardoned and released after two years.

At the age of 32, he was once again convicted of marital fraud for two years in a heavy dungeon at the Stein Prison. In prison he met Karl Schlossarek, who was imprisoned for theft. After his release in January 1883 Schenk met the 34-year old Josefine Timal, who worked as a maid in Vienna, where he worked as a railway engineer and promised her marriage. Timal gave into his confidence, quit her job, packed all her valuables and drove with him to the alleged honeymoon to Kraków. However, he raped her near the Hranice Abyss. With the help of Schlossarek, he gagged and tied Timal, robbed her of valuables and sank her with a heavy stone into the abyss.

Because Schenk was of the opinion that her aunt Katharina, who worked as a maid in Budweis, could notice her niece's disappearance, he also planned to kill her. He wrote to her that he had married Josefine and invited her to his estate. On June 21, 1883, he picked her up from the station and drove her to Krummnußbaum, where he overpowered and killed her along the banks of the Danube, along with Schlossarek. After taking all her valuables, they sank Katharina into the Danube. Only six weeks later Schenk murdered the maid Theresia Ketterl in a gorge in Lilienfeld to get her valuables. On December 28, 1883, the duo murdered and buried maid Rosa Ferenszi in the Danube at Kittsee to rob her.

On January 10, 1884, Hugo Schenk was arrested, and just a day later - Karl Schlossarek. Both were sentenced to death by hanging and executed on April 22, 1884, in Court No. 1 of the Vienna Regional Court.

The skull of Hugo Schenk, which was autopsied and neurologically examined after the execution by Viennese neurologist Moritz Benedikt, is in the Vienna Criminal Museum. The writer Egon Kisch (1885 - 1948) has dealt with the story of a woman who survived Schenk's attack.

A balloon fetish is a sexual fetish that involves balloons.[1][2][3][4] A balloon fetishist is also referred to as a "looner".[5][6][7] Some balloon fetishists "revel in the popping of balloons and [others] may become anxious and tearful at the very thought of popping balloons".[8] Others enjoy blowing up balloons or sitting and lying on them.[9]

Polandball, also known as countryballs, refers to user-generated visual art, typically manifesting as online comics, where countries are personified as (typically) spherical personas decorated with their country's flag, interacting in often broken English named Engrish (with the exception of countryballs that speak English natively). The characters poke fun at national stereotypes and international relations, as well as historical conflicts. Countryballs have also been used in videos and comics involving alternate and speculative history. It is an Internet meme which originated on the /int/ board of German imageboard Krautchan.net in the latter half of 2009.

The comics style may be referred to both as Polandball (by convention, even in cases where there is no Poland among the cartoon characters) and countryball (or, collectively, countryballs).

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I used to be a big fan but I haven't followed the Polandball stuff much in a couple of years now

Janet, sometimes called Janet Airlines, is the unofficial name given to a highly classified fleet of passenger aircraft operated for the United States Department of the Air Force[1] as an employee shuttle to transport military and contractor employees. The purpose is to pick up the employees at their home airport, and take them to their place of work. Then, in the afternoon, they take the employees back to their home airports. The airline mainly serves the Nevada National Security Site (most notably Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range), from a private terminal at Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport.[2]

The fleet's "Janet" call sign, from which its de facto name comes, is said to stand for "Just Another Non-Existent Terminal".[3][4] It is also sometimes known as "Joint Air Network for Employee Transportation". [5]

Due to the airline's secretive nature, little is known about its organization. It is operated for the USAF by infrastructure and defense contractor AECOM through AECOM's acquisition in 2014 of URS Corporation, which acquired EG&G Technical Services in 2002, as derived from URS's history of providing this service to the Air Force and job openings published by URS.[6][7] For example, in 2010, URS announced it would be hiring Boeing 737 flight attendants to be based in Las Vegas, requiring applicants to undergo a Single Scope Background Investigation in order to be able to obtain a Top Secret security clearance.[7] More recently, AECOM has posted similar openings.[8]

Due to its secrecy, Janet airlines boards at a special part of McCarran International Airport. They board planes at the west side of the airport, next to the Janet Airlines passenger parking lot. There is even a small terminal building for passengers.[9]

Janet flights operate with a three-digit flight number and a WWW-prefix.[10] In the official publication of ICAO airline codes, this specific three-letter designator is listed as being blocked.[11] The official airline callsign is simply Janet. However, the airlines also uses different callsigns, called Groom Callsigns once transferred over to Groom Lake from Nellis control. The callsign name would change, and the callsign number will be the last 2 digits of the flight number +15. For example, if the callsign was Janet 412, and was transferred to Groom Lake control, the callsign would be something like ¨Bunny 27¨.

Are we just posting full Wikipedia articles now?

Wikipedia (/ˌwɪkɪˈpiːdiə/ (About this soundlisten), /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ (About this soundlisten) WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə) is a multilingual, web-based, free encyclopedia based on a model of openly editable and viewable content, a wiki. It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the World Wide Web,[3][4][5] and is one of the most popular websites by Alexa rank as of Oct 2018.[6] It is owned and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates on money it receives from donors.[7][8][9]

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.[10] Sanger coined its name,[11][12] as a portmanteau of wiki (the Hawai'ian word for "quick"[13]) and "encyclopedia". Initially an English-language encyclopedia, versions in other languages were quickly developed. With 5,828,182 articles,[notes 3] the English Wikipedia is the largest of the more than 290 Wikipedia encyclopedias. Overall, Wikipedia comprises more than 40 million articles in 301 different languages[14] and by February 2014 it had reached 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors per month.[15]

In 2005, Nature published a peer review comparing 42 hard science articles from Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia and found that Wikipedia's level of accuracy approached that of Britannica,[16] although critics suggested that it might not have fared so well in a similar study of a random sampling of all articles or one focused on social science or contentious social issues.[17][18] Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world, and was a testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales.[19]

Wikipedia has been criticized for exhibiting systemic bias, for presenting a mixture of "truths, half truths, and some falsehoods",[20] and for being subject to manipulation and spin in controversial topics.[21] In 2017, Facebook announced that it would help readers detect fake news by suitable links to Wikipedia articles. YouTube announced a similar plan in 2018.[22]

Not with the character limit per post.

Interstate 85 (I-85) is a major Interstate Highway in the Southeastern United States. Its current southern terminus is at an interchange with I-65 in Montgomery, Alabama; its northern terminus interchanges with I-95 in Petersburg, Virginia, near Richmond. It is nominally north–south, but physically mostly northeast–southwest. While most interstates that end in a "5" are cross-country routes, I-85 is mainly a regional route, serving five southeastern states. Major metropolitan areas served by I-85 include the Greater Richmond Region in Virginia, the Research Triangle, Piedmont Triad, and Metrolina regions of North Carolina, Upstate South Carolina, the Atlanta metropolitan area in Georgia, and the Montgomery metropolitan area in Alabama.

I-85 is a route that serves several major locations in the Southeastern United States, stretching from Alabama to Virginia and major metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Charlotte.
I-85 begins as a fork off I-65 in Montgomery. From there, I-85 parallels U.S. Route 80 (US 80) until the highway nears Tuskegee. At Tuskegee, I-85 leaves US 80 and starts to parallel US 29, which the highway parallels for much of its length.

I-85 also passes near Auburn, Opelika, Valley and Lanett before crossing the Chattahoochee River into Georgia.

I-85 will soon be rerouted southward just east of Montgomery, where it will intersect with I-65 just south of downtown Montgomery. Future I-685 will be the new designation for the route of current I-85, which leads directly to I-65 in downtown Montgomery.

In Georgia, I-85 (unsigned State Route 403) bypasses West Point before coming into the LaGrange area. East of LaGrange, I-85 intersects I-185 which connects to Columbus and Fort Benning. In the Atlanta area, I-85 intersects I-20 and merges with I-75 through the downtown area. North of Atlanta, I-985 provides a link to Gainesville before heading through northeastern Georgia and then crossing into South Carolina. Due to a bridge collapse on March 30, 2017, parts of I-85 in Atlanta were closed.

I-85 provides the major transportation route for the Upstate of South Carolina, linking together the major centers of Greenville and Spartanburg with regional centers of importance. In Spartanburg, BMW has a major manufacturing plant that can be seen from the highway. In South Carolina, I-85 bypasses Clemson and Anderson on the way to Greenville. Beginning at Anderson, I-85 widens from four to six lanes. Near Powdersville, US 29 joins I-85 and they run concurrently until they cross the Saluda River. I-85 bypasses just south of Greenville, but provides two links into the city via spur routes I-185 and I-385. I-85 also has direct exits to Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport, which serves the Greenville–Spartanburg metropolitan area. I-85 then bypasses the city of Spartanburg to the north. Its original route is now signed as Business Loop 85 and was approved by AASHTO on April 22, 1995.[2] Near mile marker 70, I-85 intersects with I-26. The exits are signed as exits 70A for eastbound traffic and 70B for westbound traffic. North of Spartanburg, I-85 narrows from six lanes back to four lanes and bypasses Gaffney. Much of the terrain between Spartanburg and the North Carolina border is rural in nature but congested to the state line due to its location near Charlotte.

In North Carolina, I-85 enters a relatively rural area near Kings Mountain before entering the Gastonia and Charlotte areas. In Charlotte, I-85 bypasses Charlotte Douglas International Airport and turns northeastward just before reaching uptown Charlotte; thus I-85 just bypasses uptown to the north where it junctions with I-77. North of Charlotte, the highway passes near Concord, Salisbury, Lexington and High Point before reaching Greensboro. At Greensboro, I-85 shifts away from downtown I-85 Business Loop (old I-85 through town). I-85 then joins I-40 east of downtown, and the two highways are cosigned as they pass through Burlington, Graham and Mebane then separate near Hillsborough where I-40 turns toward Chapel Hill, Cary and Raleigh. After the split with I-40, I-85 continues to Durham, before turning northeastward through Oxford then Henderson toward Virginia.

Starting from the Virginia border, drivers will pass South Hill and McKenney before heading into a large forest. After the forest, I-85 reaches Petersburg and ends at I-95. The highway is briefly cosigned with US 460 from a few miles west of Petersburg in Dinwiddie County to I-95. I-85 follows the same general path as US 1 (Boydton Plank Road and Jefferson Davis Highway), as the two cross several times between the North Carolina border and the northern terminus outside Petersburg.

n the northern half of I-85, the route roughly parallels an ancient Indian trading path documented since colonial times from Petersburg, Virginia, to the Catawba Indian territory.

I-85 near Petersburg once formed the southern end of the Richmond–Petersburg Turnpike, which was completed in 1958. The tolls were removed in 1992 after I-295 was completed.[3]

Before a 2010 decision to raise the speed limit in the state to 70 miles per hour (110 km/h), Virginia's portion of I-85 was also the only Interstate Highway in the state with a posted speed limit greater than 65 miles per hour (105 km/h). It was raised from 65 to 70 mph (105 to 113 km/h) on July 1, 2006, by the state legislature.

In 2004, I-85 was rerouted around Greensboro; and it split with I-40 eight miles (13 km) east of the original departure point. I-40 ran with I-85 along the bypass to the southern/western end and I-40 continued on a new freeway alignment at exit 121 until September 2008, when it was rerouted back to its old alignment through the city. Despite its reroute around Greensboro, the overall length for I-85 in North Carolina remains the same as before.

An extension of I-85 has been proposed west from Montgomery to interchange with I-20/I-59 just east of the Mississippi–Alabama state line,[4] where it will connect with I-20/I-59 near Cuba, Alabama. This extension will roughly follow the route of US 80, going through or bypassing Selma and Demopolis.[5] The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approved the alignment on February 17, 2011, after the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) approved at its Fall 2010 meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi. Also approved was the proposal to re-designate part of existing I-85 south and east of Montgomery to be bypassed as part of the extension of I-85 as I-685. Alabama has permission to co-sign this part of I-85 as I-685 until the new alignment is built.[6] This section is also envisioned by some as part of a proposed I-14. If this extension were to be completed, I-85 and I-20 would meet each other twice.

I-85 is scheduled to have several new auxiliary routes in the future. I-785 is currently planned by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to run from Greensboro to Danville, Virginia. The proposed route would follow the current US 29 corridor. I-885 is also planned by NCDOT to run from I-40 to I-85 in the Durham area, following NC 147, the under-construction East End Connector, and US 70.

There are plans for I-85 from Anderson County to Spartanburg County, South Carolina, to become four to five lanes in each direction including HOV lanes.

Adolf Hitler's sexuality has long been a matter of historical and scholarly debate, as well as speculation and rumour. There is evidence that he had relationships with a number of women during his lifetime, as well as evidence of his antipathy to homosexuality, and no evidence of homosexual encounters. His name has been linked to a number of possible female lovers, two of whom committed suicide. A third died of complications eight years after a suicide attempt, and a fourth also attempted suicide.

Hitler created a public image of a celibate man without a domestic life, dedicated entirely to his political mission and the nation of Nazi Germany. His relationship with Eva Braun, which lasted nearly 14 years, was hidden from the public and all but his inner circle. Braun biographer Heike Görtemaker notes that the couple enjoyed a normal sex life. Hitler and Braun married in late April 1945, less than 40 hours before committing suicide together.

Two wartime reports by the Allies attempted to analyse Hitler psychologically. Walter C. Langer's 1943 report for the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) describes Hitler as having repressed homosexual tendencies and opined that he was an impotent coprophile. Psychologist Henry Murray wrote a separate psychoanalytical report for the OSS in 1943 that drew similar conclusions. Otto Strasser, one of Hitler's opponents in the Nazi Party, also told his post-war interrogators a similar story. British historian Sir Ian Kershaw describes Strasser's statement as "anti-Hitler propaganda".[1]

In research following Hitler's death, a variety of claims have been made about Hitler's sexual orientation: that he was gay, bisexual, or asexual. Conclusive evidence is lacking, but most historians believe he was heterosexual. There is at least one claim that Hitler had an illegitimate child (named Jean-Marie Loret) with one of his lovers. Mainstream historians, such as Kershaw, dismiss this as unlikely or impossible.[2]

Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections is a web site that provides tables, graphs, and maps for presidential (1789–present), senatorial (1990 and onwards), and gubernatorial (1990 and onwards) elections. Data include candidates, parties, popular and electoral vote totals, and voter turnout. County-level data is available for many years, and all data are compiled from official sources. Leip's Atlas has been cited as a "preferred source for election results" by statistician and political pundit Nate Silver.[1]

The web site was created by electrical engineer David Leip from Massachusetts. Leip began the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections as a hobby after the 1992 presidential election, while he was attending graduate school at MIT. The site was significantly amended in 1997, beginning with data from the 1996 presidential election, acquiring information from the United States Secretary of State offices who published election data on-line from 1996 onwards. The site was originally hosted by MIT, but moved to its own URL, uselectionatlas.org in 1998. A part of the website is the Atlas Forum, a debate chamber on U.S. and international elections and politics as well as electoral mapmaking.

Despite the general media playing Democrats as blue and Republicans as red, the Atlas website uses blue for Republicans and red for Democrats.

PolitiFact.com has referred the web site as "indispensable",[2] while The Washington Post describes it as "great-if-not-super-modern" and notes that "perhaps more interestingly, it lets us figure out which voters actually mattered -- that is, the votes cast before and after a candidate clinched the nomination."[3]

The site has been used a reference for U.S. election and political data by major media outlets including U.S. News & World Report,[4] The Atlantic,[5] The Wall Street Journal,[6] Roll Call,[7] CBS News,[8][9] Politico,[10] and Men's Health.[11]

This is a list of unusual deaths. This list includes only unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources. Oxford Dictionaries defines the word unusual as "not habitually or commonly occurring or done" and "remarkable or interesting because different from or better than others".[2]

Some other articles also cover deaths that might be considered unusual or ironic, including list of entertainers who died during a performance, list of inventors killed by their own inventions, list of association footballers who died while playing, list of cyclists with a cycling-related death and the list of political self-immolations.

2000s
2001: Bernd Brandes, a German engineer from Berlin, was willingly slaughtered so that he could be butchered and eaten by aspiring cannibal Armin Meiwes. Brandes had responded to an internet advertisement which Meiwes had placed for this purpose. In prison, Meiwes became a vegetarian.[154][155][156]
2003: Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man from Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed by an explosive collar around his neck, as part of a bank-robbery scheme.[157]
2004: Phillip Quinn, 24, from Kent, Washington, was killed when a lava lamp he was heating on a stove exploded, with a shard piercing his heart.[158]

2007: Humberto Hernandez, a 24-year-old Oakland, California resident, was killed after being struck in the face by an airborne fire hydrant while walking. A passing car had struck the fire hydrant and the water pressure shot the hydrant at Hernandez with enough force to kill him.[160][161][162]
2008: Judy Kay Zagorski was killed when a 75-pound (34 kg) spotted eagle ray leapt out of the water and knocked her over. The ray also died.[163][164][165]
2008: David Phyall, 50, the last resident in a block of flats due to be demolished in Bishopstoke, near Southampton, Hampshire, England, decapitated himself with a chainsaw to highlight the injustice of being forced to move out.[166][167]

2009: Taylor Mitchell, a 19-year-old Canadian folk singer, was killed by a pair of coyotes while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, in the only known fatal coyote attack on an adult.[169][170][171]
2010s
2010: Mike Edwards, 62, cellist and a founding member of the band Electric Light Orchestra, died when a large round bale of hay rolled down a hill and collided with the van he was driving.[172][173][174]
2010: Jimi Heselden, 62, owner of Segway Inc., died after apparently riding a Segway Personal Transport System, his own product, off a cliff.[175]
2011: Jose Luis Ochoa, 35, died after being stabbed in the leg at an illegal cockfight in Tulare County, California, by a bird with a knife-like spur strapped to its leg.[176][177]
2012: Edward Archbold, 32, of West Palm Beach, Florida, choked on "arthropod body parts" during a cockroach-eating contest.[178][179]
2012: Erica Marshall, a 28-year-old British veterinarian in Ocala, Florida, died when the horse she was treating in a hyperbaric chamber kicked the wall, released a spark from its horseshoes and triggered an explosion.[180][181][182]
2013: Elisa Lam, from Vancouver, British Columbia, was missing for several weeks before being found dead in a large water tank on the roof of the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles, after guests complained about the taste of the water.[183]
2013: Takuya Nagaya, 23, from Japan, started to slither on the floor and claimed he had become a snake. Takuya died after his father spent the next two days head-butting and biting him "to drive [out] the snake that had possessed him."[184]
2013: Roger Mirro was crushed by a trash compactor while looking through a dumpster for his phone.[185]
2013: An unnamed Belarusian fisherman, 60, bled to death after being bitten by a beaver which he had tried to grab in order to have his picture taken with it.[186][187]
2013: João Maria de Souza, 45, was crushed in his bed by a cow falling through the roof of his home in Caratinga, Brazil. The cow had climbed on top of the house from a steep hillside behind it. Both the cow and de Souza's wife (who had been in bed next to him) were unharmed.[188]
2013: Denver Lee St. Clair was asphyxiated by a wedgie administered by his stepson during a fight. After St. Clair had been knocked unconscious, the elastic band from his torn underwear was pulled over his head and stretched around his neck, strangling him.[189][190]
2013: Kendrick Johnson, 17, was discovered trapped upside down in a rolled-up gym mat in his high school gymnasium. Police originally concluded he had climbed in to retrieve a shoe and became trapped, but the case was later reopened as a possible homicide.[191][192][193][194][195]
2013: Miguel Martinez, 14, from Lubbock, Texas, was impaled through the chest by the horn of a bull statue while playing hide-and-seek at night in front of the National Ranching Heritage Center.[196]
2013: Two young boys were killed by an African rock python during a sleepover in New Brunswick, Canada. The large snake had escaped a pet store and slithered up through ducts into the apartment where they slept. Though it suffocated the children it did not attempt to eat them.[197][198]
2013: Hayato Tsuruta, 28, from Japan, with intellectual disabilities, ran away from his residential facility and went to a supermarket. There he bolted down so many doughnuts displayed that he choked to death.[199][200]
2014: Heval Yıldırım, 13, of Turkey was killed when a sacrificial goat bought for Eid al-Adha jumped off the roof over a protective fence and fell onto him. Yıldırım's father placed the goat on the roof of the building where he lived because he could not find another suitable place to keep it.[201]
2014: Christophe de Margerie, an oil executive, was killed when his corporate jet collided with a snowplow reportedly driven by a drunk driver.[202][203]
2014: Peng Fan, a chef in Foshan, China, was bitten by a cobra's severed head, which he had cut off 20 minutes earlier while preparing a soup.[204][205]
2014: Peter Biaksangzuala, an Indian association football player, died after sustaining spinal cord injuries while awkwardly landing a somersault celebrating a goal.[206]
2015: Chelsea Ake-Salvacion, 24, an employee of a Henderson, Nevada salon, was suffocated while using a cryotherapy machine set to the wrong level, which eliminated the oxygen in the chamber.[207][208]
2015: Ravi Subramanian, an Air India technician, was sucked into an aircraft's jet engines.[209][210]
2016: V. Kamaraj, a 40-year-old Indian bus driver, was claimed by local Indian newspapers to have been killed by a meteorite which left a two-foot (61 cm) crater, although officials from NASA oppose that view saying that the most likely explanation was a land-based explosion.[211][212][213][214]
2016: Lottie Michelle Belk, 55, was fatally stabbed in the chest by a beach umbrella blown by a strong wind.[215] Wind speeds at the time reached 20–25 miles per hour (32–40 km/h).[216][217]
2016: Caleb Schwab, 10, was decapitated when he was ejected from his raft on Verrückt, a 168-foot-tall (51 m) water slide.[218][219]
2016: Irma Bule, 29, an Indonesian dangdut singer who performed with live snakes, died during a concert after being bitten by a king cobra and refusing treatment.[220][221]
2016: Anton Yelchin, 27, an American actor known for portraying Pavel Chekov in the Star Trek reboot movie series, was found pinned between his car and a brick wall. His driveway is on an incline and his car was found running and in neutral.[222][223]
2016: A seven-year-old girl died after being struck by a stone thrown by an elephant from its enclosure at the zoo at Rabat, Morocco.[224][225]
2017: Charlie Holt, 5, was killed at the Sun Dial Restaurant, a rotating restaurant at the top of Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia; his head was caught in a small space between the rotating and non-rotating sections.[226]
2017: Akbar Salubiro, a 25-year old man, was killed and swallowed by a reticulated python in Indonesia, in the first fully confirmed case of a snake swallowing an adult human.[227]. A second case in Indonesia happened the following year, when another reticulated snake killed and swallowed an adult woman in her garden.[228]
2017: Robert Dreyer, 89, drowned on his birthday after crashing his car into a fire hydrant.[229]
2017: Debra Bedard, 58, died after falling from a golf cart onto shards of wine glasses that had broken in her hands in Calaveras County, California.[230]
2017: Rebecca Burger, 33, a fitness blogger and model, died after a pressurized canister of whipped cream exploded and struck her in the chest.[231]
2017: Hidr Korkmaz, 42, a Turkish-Dutch drug dealer and informant, died while fishing when he threw his fish hook into an electric wire. Though he was a witness in the case against infamous Dutch criminal Willem Holleeder, he was not important to the case and authorities treated it as an accident.[232]
2018: Rajesh Maru, 32, died at Nair Hospital in Mumbai after carrying a metal oxygen tank into a room housing an MRI scanner; the machine's magnetic field pulled Maru in, pinning his hand and breaching the tank, releasing liquid oxygen.[233] A hospital employee had asked Maru to transport the tank, as Maru's hospitalized relative would need it during her scan.[233][234] An autopsy showed that Maru died instantly from pneumothorax brought on by exposure to very high levels of leaked oxygen.[233] Conflicting reports state two or three hospital employees were arrested for negligence.[235][233] The Maharashtra state government compensated Maru's family 500,000 rupees.[235]
2018: Elaine Herzberg, a 49-year-old woman in Tempe, Arizona, died after being hit by a self-driving car operated by Uber, as she crossed the road, in what was reported to be the first death of a pedestrian struck by a self-driving car on public roads. In response to the fatal accident, Uber suspended self-driving car tests in all U.S. cities.[236][237]
2018: Ateef Rafiq, 24, died from cardiac arrest in Birmingham, England whilst looking for his dropped mobile phone. His head became wedged under the electronic footrest of a cinema seat.[238]
2018: Puneet Kaur, 28, died in the Indian state of Haryana at an amusement park after her hair became tangled in the wheels of a go-kart. As the go-kart continued moving forward, her scalp was ripped from her head. She was taken to hospital but pronounced dead on arrival.[239]
2018: Jennifer Riordan, 43, a passenger aboard Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, died after debris from an engine failure struck and destroyed the window she was sitting next to. She was partially sucked out through the window, but was pulled back into the aircraft and was given CPR until an emergency landing was made. She died upon arrival at hospital with her cause of death determined to be blunt trauma to the head, neck and torso.[240][241]
2018: Hildegard Whiting, 77, died of suffocation from the carbon dioxide vapors produced by four dry ice coolers in a Dippin' Dots delivery car.[242][243] The car was borrowed by the deliveryman's wife to take Whiting home.[242][243]
2018: John A. Korody, 61, died after falling into a vat of cooking oil and grease while standing on a grate in Orange County, Florida, near Orlando. Co-workers were unable to rescue him due to the strong fumes.[244]
2018: Sam Ballard, 29, died from angiostrongyliasis after eating a garden slug as a dare eight years earlier.[245]
2018: Linda Goldbloom, 79, died after being hit by a foul ball at Dodger Stadium. Goldbloom’s death was the first in nearly 50 years directly attributed to a foul ball.[246]
2019: Salvator Disi, 62, was decapitated while using a power cart to jump start a helicopter in Hernando County, Florida. The unexpected up and down motion of the helicopter caused the rotor blades to strike Disi.[247]
2019: Justin Carter, 35 was killed after accidentaly shooting himself in his eye with a prop gun in his pocket when recording music video.[248]

"Down in the Valley", also known as "Birmingham Jail", is a traditional country-blues American folk song.^[1] It has been recorded by many artists, and is included in the Songs of Expanding America recordings in the Burl Ives six-album set Historical America in Song.

The verses mentioning "Birmingham Jail" refer to the Birmingham City Jail which was known in the mid-1920s. According to one biographer of Lead Belly he performed it for Texas Governor Pat Neff at the Sugarland Penitentiary in 1924. Guitarist Jimmie Tarlton claimed to have written the lyrics in 1925 while he was jailed in Birmingham for moonshining. It was first recorded by Tarlton and his partner Tom Darby on November 10, 1927 in Atlanta, Georgia for Columbia Records.

It is a ballad played in the 3/4 time signature. Lyrics vary, as with most folk songs. For example, sometimes the line "Hang your head over, hear the wind blow" is replaced by "Late in the evening, hear the train blow".^[2] In 1927, Darby and Tarlton sang "down in the levee" in place of "down in the valley"; the version sung by Lead Belly in 1934 substitutes "Shreveport jail" for "Birmingham jail".^[3]

Selected recordings

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• Darby and Tarlton (1927, Columbia 15212D) – sold over 200,000 copies, one of Columbia's best-sellers at the time^[4]
• The Andrews Sisters recorded it in 1944 and their version briefly reached the Billboard charts.^[5] They had featured the song in the film Moonlight and Cactus (1944).
• Patti Page - a single release in 1951.^[6]
• Cisco Houston included his version of the songs in two of his albums.
• Bing Crosby included the song in a medley on his album 101 Gang Songs (1961)
• Connie Francis - included in her album Sing Along with Connie Francis (1961).^[7]
• Jo Stafford - for her album Do I Hear a Waltz? (1966)
• Slim Whitman - in his album Cool Water (1968).^[8]
• Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, on the 1996 album Shady Grove

In other media

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This song is the basis of the 1945 Kurt Weill and Arnold Sundgaard opera Down in the Valley.

It was performed by Anne Baxter in the Wagon Train episode, The Kitty Angel Story (1959).

It was performed on The Alvin Show and The Andy Griffith Show in 1962.

The author/songwriter David M. Pierce used selected lyrics from the song as titles for a series of detective novels written between 1989 and 1996: Down in the Valley, Hear the Wind Blow, Dear, Roses Love Sunshine, Angels in Heaven, Write Me a Letter and As She Rides By. The first four verses are featured in Catherine Marshall's novel, Christy, before the prologue.

It is sung in the movie Stir Crazy by the character Grossberger portrayed by Erland Van Lidth.

Jim and Anna sing the song in Tillie Olsen's novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties as they arrive in the Dakotas. The 3/4 time and melancholy of the song contrast with the hope they are feeling as they arrive there.

The song is performed by Ronny Cox (Ozark Bule) and David Carradine (Woody Guthrie) in the Academy Award winning film (Best Cinematography/Best Music-Score) Bound for Glory (biography of Woody Guthrie) in the scene that takes place in a migrant fruit pickers camp. http://www.halashby.co.uk/page18.html

It is also used in the movie Along the Great Divide starring Kirk Douglas, Walter Brennan, Virginia Mayo, and John Agar although it was written long after the time period set of the movie.

HOW THE PORTUGUESE MADE A BEAUTIFUL AUTO-DA-FÉ, TO PREVENT ANY FURTHER EARTHQUAKES; AND HOW CANDIDE WAS PUBLICLY WHIPPED.

After the earthquake had destroyed three-fourths of Lisbon, the sages of that country could think of no means more effectual to prevent utter ruin than to give the people a beautiful auto-da-fé; for it had been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible secret to hinder the earth from quaking.

In consequence hereof, they had seized on a Biscayner, convicted of having married his godmother, and on two Portuguese, for rejecting the bacon which larded a chicken they were eating; after dinner, they came and secured Dr. Pangloss, and his disciple Candide, the one for speaking his mind, the other for having listened with an air of approbation. They were conducted to separate apartments, extremely cold, as they were never incommoded by the sun. Eight days after they were dressed in san-benitos and their heads ornamented with paper mitres. The mitre and san-benito belonging to Candide were painted with reversed flames and with devils that had neither tails nor claws; but Pangloss's devils had claws and tails and the flames were upright. They marched in procession thus habited and heard a very pathetic sermon, followed by fine church music. Candide was whipped in cadence while they were singing; the Biscayner, and the two men who had refused to eat bacon, were burnt; and Pangloss was hanged, though that was not the custom. The same day the earth sustained a most violent concussion.

Candide, terrified, amazed, desperate, all bloody, all palpitating, said to himself:

"If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? Well, if I had been only whipped I could put up with it, for I experienced that among the Bulgarians; but oh, my dear Pangloss! thou greatest of philosophers, that I should have seen you hanged, without knowing for what! Oh, my dear Anabaptist, thou best of men, that thou should'st have been drowned in the very harbour! Oh, Miss Cunegonde, thou pearl of girls! that thou should'st have had thy belly ripped open!"

Thus he was musing, scarce able to stand, preached at, whipped, absolved, and blessed, when an old woman accosted him saying:

"My son, take courage and follow me."

Enver Hoxha built Albania's first railway line (see the picture below)

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Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant /r/ by speakers of English. It is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. The historical English /r/ sound is preserved in all pronunciation contexts in the "rhotic varieties" of English,[a] which primarily include the English dialects of Scotland, Ireland, and most of the United States and Canada. However, the historical /r/ is not pronounced except before vowels in "non-rhotic varieties", which include most of the dialects of modern England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and some parts of the southern and eastern—particularly coastal northeastern[4]—United States.[1]

In non-rhotic varieties, speakers no longer pronounce /r/ in postvocalic environments—that is, when it is immediately after a vowel and not followed by another vowel.[5][1] For example, a rhotic English speaker pronounces the words hard and butter as /ˈhɑːrd/ and /ˈbʌtər/, whereas a non-rhotic speaker "drops" or "deletes" the /r/ sound, pronouncing them as /ˈhɑːd/ and /ˈbʌtə/. A non-rhotic speaker usually still pronounces the /r/ in the phrase "butter and jam" (the linking R), since the /r/ is followed by a vowel in this case.

Evidence from written documents suggests that loss of postvocalic /r/ began sporadically during the mid-15th century, although these /r/-less spellings were uncommon and were restricted to private documents, especially ones written by women.[1] In the mid-18th century, postvocalic /r/ was still pronounced in most environments, but by the 1740s to 1770s it was often deleted entirely, especially after low vowels. By the early 19th century, the southern British standard was fully transformed into a non-rhotic variety, though some variation persisted as late as the 1870s.[6] This loss of postvocalic /r/ in British English influenced southern and eastern American port cities with close connections to Britain, causing their upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic while the rest of the United States remained rhotic.[7] Non-rhotic pronunciation continued to influence American prestige speech until the 1860s, when the American Civil War began to shift America's centers of wealth and political power to rhotic areas with fewer cultural connections to the old colonial and British elites.[8] The advent of radio and television in the 20th century established a national standard of American pronunciation that preserves historical /r/, with rhotic speech in particular becoming prestigious in the United States rapidly after the Second World War.[9]

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