In February of 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to execute author Salman Rushdie over the publication of The Satanic Verses. The book was considered blasphemous towards Islam. A six million dollar bounty was placed on Rushdie’s head, which still exists today.
The last non-Muslim dynasty in Iran (then Persia) was the Sasanian Dynasty. The last king was Yazdgerd III who died in AD 651.
The religions of the Sasanian Empire are, according to wiki, Zoroastrianism (official), Christianity, Judaism, Manichaeism, Mazdakism, and Buddhism.
I want to thank everyone here. After work tonight we had a trivia competition at work and our team won. Thanks to you fine folks, in teams of four I was able to contribute to my team’s success.
Have a good weekend, all!
Standup comedian Judy Tenuta’s act revolves around her over-the-top persona of “The Love Goddess,” and her encouraging of her audience to convert to a religion of her own making, “Judyism,” which she says will “help you forget about your problems and think about mine for a change.”
Julia “Judy” Bonds (1952-2011) was an anti-mountaintop removal activist from the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. In 2010 she organized a “thousand hillbilly march” on Washington DC to protest against the issuance of valley fill and other types of permits that allow companies to completely remove a mountain top in the search for coal.
In 2020, coal supplied about a quarter of the world’s primary energy and over a third of its electricity. The largest consumer and importer of coal is China, which mines almost half the world’s coal. Australia accounts for about a third of world coal exports, followed by Indonesia and Russia.
For Yearly Coal Consumption, the top five countries are:
Yearly Coal Consumption (MMcf)
1 China 4,319,921,826,000
2 India 966,288,692,600
3 United States 731,071,000,000
4 Germany 257,488,592,900
5 Russia 230,392,143,100
ETA — according to worldometers.info
Each person in the U.S uses 3.4 tons of coal annually.
“Coke” is a high-carbon fuel, with a low level of impurities, made by heating coal (or petroleum) in the absence of air. Coke which has been derived from coal is commonly used in blast furnaces, and was, in the past, commonly used for home heating, as the low level of impurities means that it gives off far less smoke than coal.
Interesting, I would have expected Russia to be higher on that coal consumption list. So I looked it up, and…
While Russia is the world’s #5 consumer of coal, it is the world’s #2 consumer of natural gas; the U.S. is the world’s #1 consumer. Russia has the world’s largest reserves of natural gas.
Other top consumers of natural gas are China, Iran, Japan and Canada.
Other countries with large reserves of natural gas are Iran, Qatar, the US, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.
Liquefied petroleum gas, or LP gas, is a fuel gas created during the refinement process of crude oil. The most common of these types of gases is propane. Because the boiling point of LP gas is less than room temperature, it is delivered in pressurized steel containers. Among other usages, LP gas can be used as a fuel for cooking, heating, and powering internal-combustion engines.
Perhaps the most famous LP records in the universe are the two copies of the Golden Record placed aboard the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts. They feature musical selections from different cultures and eras, spoken in fifty-five languages, and other messages. Each record is encased in a protective aluminum jacket, together with a cartridge and a needle. Instructions, in symbolic language, explain the origin of the spacecraft and how the record is to be played. Today, Voyager is nearly 12 billion miles away from Earth. https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov › whats-…
What’s on the Golden Record
The national 55 MPH speed limit was signed into law by President Nixon in January 1974, and became effective in April 1974. In April 1987, Congress permitted states to raise this limit.
The first speed limit law in the US was enacted on May 21, 1901, when the state of Connecticut limited the speed of motor vehicles to 12 MPH in cities, and 15 MPH on country roads. The new law also required drivers to slow down upon approaching or passing horse-drawn vehicles, and come to a complete stop if necessary to avoid scaring the animals.
The song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” was written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver; the song became a hit for Denver (with Danoff and Nivert providing backing vocals) in 1971, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Five years later, Danoff and Nivert scored an even bigger hit as members of the Starland Vocal Band, when their song, “Afternoon Delight” (also written by Danoff) reached #1 on the Billboard chart
The Starland Vocal Band won the 1977 Grammy award for Best New Artist. They beat the band, Boston, to win that award.
The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences stripped the 1989 Best New Artist Grammy from Milli Vanilli because Rob Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan didn’t actually sing on their debut album, “Girl You Know It’s True.” It was the first time a Grammy has ever been revoked.
Two people have won the Grammy Categories: Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best New Artist all in the same year - Christopher Cross and Billie Eilish.
Worth a read, if you’d like to learn more from the man himself about the controversy: Joseph Anton: A Memoir - Wikipedia