1620
Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1764
Mary Campbell, a captive of the Lenape during the French and Indian War, is turned over to forces commanded by Colonel Henry Bouquet.
1799
Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).
1851
Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
1867
Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
1888
Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.
"In the immortal words of Oliver Cromwell, “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”--Andrew Sullivan, urging Trump to resign because, "You are simply incapable of governing in the system of government our Founders set up. You cannot follow the rule of law; you cannot compromise; you cannot negotiate; you actually cannot make a deal. Every day that passes reinforces your unfitness. . . . And no one believes or should ever believe a word of what you say. . . .
You’ve destroyed your party, molested the Constitution, turbo-charged the debt, laid waste to our allies, and empowered our enemies. Your legitimacy is over. Your cult is in the Kool-Aid phase. You can spend the next two years in an ever-deepening cycle of political reckoning and disgrace, or you can spare yourself — and us! — the ordeal."
***
J.K. Rowling announced that Harry Potter fans can pick up two new Harry Potter books on February 23, 2027.
***
Researchers in the field of swarm robotics are training machines to behave like ants, bees and even slime molds—simple creatures that achieve remarkable feats through collective intelligence.
This is fascinating stuff. A great fictional take is in Crichton's 'Prey', where nanobots undergo epigenetic change.
***
A male emperor angelfish lives together with up to five female mates. If the emperor angelfish dies, one of the females turns into a male fish and becomes the leader of the group.
***
Jack Ham, Steelers Hall of Famer and current Penn State sports analyst, has been hospitalized, according to Penn State Athletics.
***
You Can't Go Home Again
Charles Darwin's horrible wasps are a gruesome success story. Rather than simply hunting other animals, these parasitic wasps lay their eggs on or inside living hosts, including caterpillars, beetles, and spiders. Their larvae then feed on their hosts, gradually consuming them and eventually killing them. Think "Alien."
In an 1860 letter to American botanist Asa Gray, Darwin questioned how a benevolent God could have deliberately created creatures that feed "within the living bodies of caterpillars." This famous observation later inspired the name "Darwin wasps" for the insect family Ichneumonidae, which includes more than 25,000 described species.
Some wasps permanently paralyze their hosts before laying their eggs, effectively turning them into immobile food supplies for their offspring. Others adopt a more intricate approach: they allow their hosts to remain alive, feeding and growing even as the developing wasp larvae consume them.
These contrasting strategies raise a fundamental question in evolutionary biology: how predictable is evolution? Similar adaptations can arise independently in different organisms, suggesting that evolution sometimes arrives at the same solutions again and again. But a related question asks: when evolution takes a particular direction, how easily can it turn back?
Researchers reconstructed the evolutionary history of these strategies. They discovered a striking pattern: the transition from paralyzing hosts to allowing them to continue developing occurred independently at least 23 times, but they found no evidence of reversals. Similarly, the evolution of larvae developing inside rather than outside their hosts occurred repeatedly but was only rarely reversed.
"Evolution doesn't necessarily keep all its options open," explains Bernardo F. Santos, lead author of the study and researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. "Once a wasp lineage evolves a close relationship with a living, developing host, returning to its ancestral strategy seems extremely difficult. It's something like an evolutionary ratchet: you can move forward, but going backward becomes nearly impossible."
The study, published in the journal Current Biology, provides compelling evidence that evolution can be both remarkably repeatable and strongly directional. Different lineages independently arrived at similar solutions, yet rarely returned to their previous ways of life.
The findings highlight that evolution is shaped not only by chance and natural selection but also by the constraints imposed by an organism's evolutionary history. Rather than an unlimited exploration of possibilities, evolution may follow paths that become increasingly difficult to abandon once taken.
So evolution both opens and closes doors. And it's very difficult to return to the path not taken.--much from Steiner
Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup d'état of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).
1851
Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.
1867
Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
1888
Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.
1913
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.
1923
In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
1938
Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht.
1970
Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1989
Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany.
***
The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, destroys 19 ships and kills more than 250 people.
1923
In Munich, Germany, police and government troops crush the Beer Hall Putsch in Bavaria. The failed coup is the work of the Nazis.
1938
Nazi German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht.
1970
Vietnam War: The Supreme Court of the United States votes 6 to 3 against hearing a case to allow Massachusetts to enforce its law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
1989
Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany.
***
"In the immortal words of Oliver Cromwell, “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”--Andrew Sullivan, urging Trump to resign because, "You are simply incapable of governing in the system of government our Founders set up. You cannot follow the rule of law; you cannot compromise; you cannot negotiate; you actually cannot make a deal. Every day that passes reinforces your unfitness. . . . And no one believes or should ever believe a word of what you say. . . .
You’ve destroyed your party, molested the Constitution, turbo-charged the debt, laid waste to our allies, and empowered our enemies. Your legitimacy is over. Your cult is in the Kool-Aid phase. You can spend the next two years in an ever-deepening cycle of political reckoning and disgrace, or you can spare yourself — and us! — the ordeal."
***
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation after reports that CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort.
Shares fell in premarket trading as investors assessed leadership risk around Huang.
Nvidia’s board opened an independent investigation after reports that CEO Jensen Huang had been targeted by a foreign intelligence effort.
Shares fell in premarket trading as investors assessed leadership risk around Huang.
***
J.K. Rowling announced that Harry Potter fans can pick up two new Harry Potter books on February 23, 2027.
***
Researchers in the field of swarm robotics are training machines to behave like ants, bees and even slime molds—simple creatures that achieve remarkable feats through collective intelligence.
This is fascinating stuff. A great fictional take is in Crichton's 'Prey', where nanobots undergo epigenetic change.
***
A male emperor angelfish lives together with up to five female mates. If the emperor angelfish dies, one of the females turns into a male fish and becomes the leader of the group.
***
Jack Ham, Steelers Hall of Famer and current Penn State sports analyst, has been hospitalized, according to Penn State Athletics.
***
You Can't Go Home Again
Charles Darwin's horrible wasps are a gruesome success story. Rather than simply hunting other animals, these parasitic wasps lay their eggs on or inside living hosts, including caterpillars, beetles, and spiders. Their larvae then feed on their hosts, gradually consuming them and eventually killing them. Think "Alien."
In an 1860 letter to American botanist Asa Gray, Darwin questioned how a benevolent God could have deliberately created creatures that feed "within the living bodies of caterpillars." This famous observation later inspired the name "Darwin wasps" for the insect family Ichneumonidae, which includes more than 25,000 described species.
Some wasps permanently paralyze their hosts before laying their eggs, effectively turning them into immobile food supplies for their offspring. Others adopt a more intricate approach: they allow their hosts to remain alive, feeding and growing even as the developing wasp larvae consume them.
These contrasting strategies raise a fundamental question in evolutionary biology: how predictable is evolution? Similar adaptations can arise independently in different organisms, suggesting that evolution sometimes arrives at the same solutions again and again. But a related question asks: when evolution takes a particular direction, how easily can it turn back?
Researchers reconstructed the evolutionary history of these strategies. They discovered a striking pattern: the transition from paralyzing hosts to allowing them to continue developing occurred independently at least 23 times, but they found no evidence of reversals. Similarly, the evolution of larvae developing inside rather than outside their hosts occurred repeatedly but was only rarely reversed.
"Evolution doesn't necessarily keep all its options open," explains Bernardo F. Santos, lead author of the study and researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. "Once a wasp lineage evolves a close relationship with a living, developing host, returning to its ancestral strategy seems extremely difficult. It's something like an evolutionary ratchet: you can move forward, but going backward becomes nearly impossible."
The study, published in the journal Current Biology, provides compelling evidence that evolution can be both remarkably repeatable and strongly directional. Different lineages independently arrived at similar solutions, yet rarely returned to their previous ways of life.
The findings highlight that evolution is shaped not only by chance and natural selection but also by the constraints imposed by an organism's evolutionary history. Rather than an unlimited exploration of possibilities, evolution may follow paths that become increasingly difficult to abandon once taken.
So evolution both opens and closes doors. And it's very difficult to return to the path not taken.--much from Steiner
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