Cardón cactus, or Mexican giant cardón cactus, are native to the Baja peninsula. They have grown to over 60 feet tall and with trunks over 3 feet in diameter. They are a slow-growing plant with a lifespan measured in hundreds of years. Most adult cardón have several side branches that may be as massive as the trunk. The resulting tree may attain a weight of 25 tons.
The Fleurieu Peninsula is a peninsula located south of Adelaide in South Australia.
It was named for Charles Pierre Claret de Fleurieu, the French explorer and hydrographer, by the French explorer Nicolas Baudin as he explored the south coast of Australia in 1802.
The continent of Europe is sometimes considered to be a large peninsula extending off Eurasia. Otherwise, the Arabian peninsula is one of the largest peninsulas in the world.
The federal electorate of Durack in Western Australia is the largest in Australia, with an area of 1,587,758 km² (62 percent of the total landmass of Western Australia).
The current member for Durack is Melissa Price.
“Price” is a Welsh name, formed by contracting the patronym “ap Rhys” meaning “son of Rhys.”
The traditional counting system used in the Welsh language is vigesimal i.e. it is based on twenties, similar to the method used in French for the numbers 60 to 99.
In the Americas, people who used a vigesimal system included the Maya, Aztec, Tlingit, and Inuit.
While vigesimal systems are fairly common among the world’s languages, the Oksapmin language spoken in New Guinea’s Tekin Valley has 27 numeral words: 13 associated with right-side body points (5 fingers, 5 positions on arm, neck, ear, eye), the nose is ‘14’, then the same 13 body parts on the left-side. Thus ‘elbow’ and ‘8’ are the same word; ‘other elbow’ is ‘20.’ Other interesting features of the Oksapmin language include complexly inflected verbs, with an evidentiality marker obligatory in the past tense.
“Tommy John Surgery” or TJS is an elbow reconstruction surgery, most commonly performed on baseball pitchers, where the elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament is replaced by another ligament. TJS is named after the first pitcher to have the procedure done, left-hander Tommy John in 1974.
At the time of John’s surgery his surgeon estimated a 1% chance of success. John’s surgery was so successful that, having won 124 games before his TJS, John won another 164 games after his TJS. John’s 288 career victories place him at 7th all-time among left handed pitchers.
Nowadays doctors estimate an 85-90% success rate for TJS.
Augustus John was a Welsh painter, famous in the 1920s for his portraits, many of which were considered “cruel” for the truth of the depiction. Lord Leverhulme was so upset with his portrait that he cut out the head (since only that part of the image could easily be hidden in his vault) but when the remainder of the picture was returned by error to John there was an international outcry over the desecration.
John painted many distinguished contemporaries, including Thomas Hardy, W. B. Yeats, Aleister Crowley, Lady Gregory, Tallulah Bankhead and George Bernard Shaw. One of his best known portraits is that of T. E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’).
Augustus Montague Toplady was an Anglican cleric and hymn writer, and a major Calvinist opponent of John Wesley. He is best remembered as the author of the hymn “Rock of Ages”.
Augustus’ father, Richard Toplady became a commissioned officer in the Royal Marines in 1739; by the time of his death, he had reached the rank of major. In May 1741, shortly after Augustus’ birth, Richard participated in the Battle of Cartagena de Indias (1741), the most significant battle of the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–42), during the course of which he died, most likely of yellow fever.
The Battle of Gettysburg spanned three days in July 1863, and was the bloodiest of any battle in the American Civil War. The Battle of Antietam in Sept. 1862 had the highest single-day tally of casualties.
Gettysburg was only the fifth bloodiest battle history, behind Cannae, the Somme, Leipzig, and Stalingrad.
In the Battle of Okinawa of WWII there were approximately 150,000 casualties, making this one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific island-hopping strategy against the Japanese.
Benjamin Sisko (played by Avery Brooks) served aboard the USS *Okinawa *early in his Starfleet career. He later rose to command of the outpost Deep Space Nine.
Deep Space 1 (DS1) is a spacecraft of the NASA New Millennium Program dedicated to testing a payload of advanced, high risk technologies. Launched on 24 October 1998, the Deep Space mission carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, which was selected as the mission’s science target. Its mission was extended twice to include an encounter with Comet Borrelly and further engineering testing. Deep Space 1 was the first NASA spacecraft to use ion powered rocketry. The Deep Space series was continued by the Deep Space 2 probes, which were launched in January 1999 on Mars Polar Lander and were intended to strike the surface of Mars.
The next opposition of Mars will occur on 22 May 2016, at which point it will be at a distance of 76 million km from Earth.
The Moon is in opposition to the Sun at full moon. When it is exact in opposition, a lunar eclipse occurs.
The Australian federal budget is a document that sets out the Commonwealth government’s proposed revenues and expenditures and conduct of its operations in the following financial year, as well as its fiscal policy for the forward years. It is presented by the Treasurer to the Parliament on budget night, which is usually the second Tuesday in May. The Treasurer’s speech is broadcast live.
The Leader of the Opposition is given a right of reply, which is delivered in Parliament two nights after the Treasurer’s budget speech, and which is also broadcast live.