Stuart Presnell

1995: Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated

Timothy McVeigh kills 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing

Serbian forces led by Ratko Mladić kill 8,300 people in Srebrenica

O.J. Simpson is found not guilty of murder

Bill Watterson publishes the last Calvin and Hobbes comic

#YearPerDay

Seiriol, who was then and no doubt is now a uniquely gruff man, summoned me to his office with an email entitled something like TRIVIA ENTERS MY CONSCIOUSNESS, ENGENDERS FURY. So I turned up at the appointed hour, quaking, and ignoring as best I could his theatrical stack of empty whisky bottles. 2/

Two shelves in a softly-lit room. The top shelf has a green plant in a white pot, the bottom shelf has a couple of ring-bound notebooks and a framed photograph of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate, Guelph, Ontario

It's that time of year again when Canadian parents make sure their children are on best behaviour for Santa by putting up the Guelph on the Shuelph

YouTube video by Bob Newhart - Topic Defusing a Bomb

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k3x...

1994: Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa

In the Rwandan genocide, Hutus kill over 500,000 Tutsi

Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor prove Fermat's Last Theorem

The Channel Tunnel opens

Jeff Bezos founds Amazon

Sony releases the PlayStation

Netscape releases Navigator

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Two shelves in a softly-lit room. The top shelf has a green plant in a white pot, the bottom shelf has a couple of ring-bound notebooks and a framed photograph of the Basilica of Our Lady Immaculate, Guelph, Ontario

It's that time of year again when Canadian parents make sure their children are on best behaviour for Santa by putting up the Guelph on the Shuelph

Damn it it's only December 1st and I've already lost Whamageddonageddon

1993: Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin sign a peace accord in Oslo

NASA astronauts repair a flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope

In the Canadian election the governing Progressive Conservative Party wins only two seats

Steven Spielberg releases Jurassic Park

id Software releases Doom

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"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

I don’t know a lot.

But I know a lot about dinosaurs.

Now we all know dinosaurs lived for millions of years right?

But does you mind actually wrap around how long they dominated for?

Lets get a little perspective.

Did you know Allosaurus never saw flowers but T.rex did?

Q: What do you call the good life that only costs 20 cents?

A: two-dime-onia

I hope these quotes are all going on the same shirt, so eventually it looks like the last day of school

1992: The Maastricht Treaty is signed, founding the European Union

South Africans vote to end apartheid

Slovakia declares independence from Czechoslovakia

The acquittal of four policemen over the beating of Rodney King provokes riots in Los Angeles

The first exoplanets are detected

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I guess I should do a promo with a bit more information: if you want to hear me talk about alien contact, prime numbers, a Doritos commercial from 2008, and what any of that has to do with the Vienna Circle, this is your opportunity to do that!

Sure, but journals have some criterion they use to decide when a published article falls so far beneath basic expected standards that it should be retracted. So likewise they should consider setting some standards that referees are expected to meet, such that failing leads to losing anonymity

I have two apps side by side on my homescreen, one for remembering films I want to see and one for logging films when I've seen them, and I never ever ever remember that the app to click on when I've just watched a film is not the app called JustWatch

Well, what's the policy for when we retract a paper? Any time people get upset?

1991: Operation Desert Storm forces Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait

Guido van Rossum releases Python; Linus Torvalds releases Linux

Mount Pinatubo erupts

Freddie Mercury dies

Croatia declares independence; the Yugoslav Army bombards Vukovar and Dubrovnik

The Soviet Union is dissolved

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De-anonymise them? They could let the world know just who looked at this and gave it the thumbs up

When people complain about inflation it's a kind of indirection — they don't care that the rate of change of prices is ticking up or down, they really just want lower prices

The exact same thing is going on when the far right complain about immigration

Are you thinking more like Silence of the Lambs, A Clockwork Orange, or Superman 2?

1990: East and West Germany reunify

Nelson Mandela is released from prison after 27 years

Margaret Thatcher resigns after 11 years

Iraq invades Kuwait

Voyager 1 sends the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth

NASA launches the Hubble Space Telescope

The first web page is written

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It's almost a new tax year. Here's my visualisation of how income tax works (or did in 2023-24).
Explainer vid: youtu.be/zXJCyffu8Og
Interactive version: www.geogebra.org/m/p97htgc3

1989: Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie over his novel The Satanic Verses

The Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska

Protests at Tiananmen Square are violently suppressed

The Berlin Wall falls

In Romania, Nicolae Ceaușescu is deposed and executed

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TimeGuessr #908 46,397/50,000
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The meme image of a man taking a stand in a town hall meeting Top text: There isn’t a distinction between "they/them" and "you." The pronoun that matters is "we." Bottom text: We the people. And that's who I am for.

1988: After more than 8 years of fighting, the Soviet Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan

Estonia declares that its own laws are supreme over those of the Soviet Union

Benazir Bhutto is elected Prime Minister of Pakistan

Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland

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Here's a crossword

1987: Supernova SN 1987A is visible

Global stock markets drop sharply on "Black Monday"

Iraq uses chemical weapons against civilians in Sardasht, Iran

A fire at King's Cross Underground station kills 31 people

Hurricane-force winds hit southern Britain and northwestern France

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