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Charles Darwin
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Spotlight: John Scopes was found guilty of teaching
Darwinism,
Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, in a Tennessee high school on this date in 1925. Though Scopes was fined $100, the Tennessee Supreme Court overturned the verdict on a technicality. The trial, which became known as the
Scopes Monkey Trial, was tried by two very famous lawyers,
Clarence Darrow for the defense and prosecutor
William Jennings Bryan. The
ACLU financed the defense. It was only in 1968 that the US Supreme Court overturned a similar law in Arkansas; today, schools in several American states teach the theory of
intelligent design along with evolutionism.
Quote: "Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt." — Clarence Darrow
Question of the Day: What types of evidence did Darwin present to back up the theory of evolution?Charles Darwin specifically used his findings on the
finch population of the different islands of the
Galapagos Islands to display his theory of evolution. As the islands grew farther apart (or so Darwin states), the different species of finch that were stuck on each island developed beaks with different shapes for hunting different types of prey, leaving us with today's Galapagos finches with thick, stout beaks for catching bugs, thin, needle-like beaks for digging in bark, etc.
Word of the day: TANSTAAFL
[acronym, from
Robert Heinlein's classic SF novel
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.] "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," often invoked when someone is balking at the prospect of using an unpleasantly heavyweight technique, or at the poor quality of some piece of software...
(© The Jargon File)
"
Robot," which first appeared in the 1923 English translation of the Czech play
R.U.R. by
Karel Čapek, is perhaps the most famous example of a word that originated in science fiction literature and passed into common parlance. This week we'll take a look at other terms coined by sci-fi writers.
Today's History:
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Aswan Dam
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- Bull Run: Confederate forces won the first major battle of the Civil War; Confederate general Thomas Jackson acquired his nickname "Stonewall" (1861)
- 17th parallel: following defeat at Dien Bien Phu, France agreed to withdraw troops from communist North Vietnam (1954)
- Aswan Dam: was completed, preventing Nile floods and providing electricity and water for Egypt and Sudan (1970)
- WorldCom: filed for bankruptcy about a month after revealing deceptive accounting had inflated profits by nearly $4 billion; it was the largest bankruptcy in US history (2002)
Today's Birthdays:
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Edward Herrmann
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