Exactly 16 years have passed since September 15, 2008, when the American LehmanBrothersthe world’s fourth largest bank, said bankruptcygiving way to the largest banking failure in history (or, as some economists put it at the time, simply “a huge catastrophe”). The causes of the financial collapse of this major bank – explained in a superb way by Adam McKay’s Oscar-winning ...
The expression “go full speed ahead” is used to indicate an action performed at great speed. Its origin, however, is less obvious than it seems. Despite what one might think, “go full speed ahead” it would have nothing to do with beer as a drink or with its consumption. In fact, its history leads us towards a curious linguistic evolution ...
If you are firmly convinced that the acronym Wi-Fiis the abbreviation of Wireless Fidelityyou have to think again because in reality Wi-Fi has nothing to do with “wireless fidelity” (a term that by the way makes no sense). Much more simply this acronym, which refers to a set of technologies for exchanging data between wireless devices, It was chosen for ...
Photo credits aircraft carrier Cavour: Gaetano56 The armed forces Italian (indicated with the abbreviation of FF.AA.) are all the means, people and structures that serve to militarily defend the territory of the Italian State. Hierarchically they depend on the Ministry of Defensewith the role of commander in chief being covered by the President of the Republic. They include: Italian Army, ...
Credit: Photo2023, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Made between the 1962 and the 1975, the so-called “Sails of Scampia“, in Naples, are a complex of buildings for residential construction and public utility services, with an architectural and structural conformation that geometrically recalls that of a sail, from which they take their name. The design idea, which aimed at maximizing ...
Credit: Alef The flying carsalways an icon of vehicles of the future in science fiction films, are slowly becoming reality. With technological advances in recent years, prototype vehicles capable of vertical take-off and landing are attracting the attention of governments and companies around the world. These vehicles (and the companies that are developing them) promise to revolutionize urban transportation by ...
Banknote image credits: Nicholas Gemini The CFA franc originated as currency of the French colonial territories in Africabut it is actually currently made up of two distinct coinseven if absolutely interchangeablerespectively called “West African CFA franc” (in French: franc Communauté Financière Africaine) and “Central African CFA franc” (in French: franc Coopération Financière en Central Afrique), used as official currencies by ...
Creeperconsidering the first example of malwarewas developed in 1971 not with malicious intent, but as experiment to test the potential of self-replicating programsIt was developed by Bob Thomasengineer of the BBN Technologiesone of the companies he created and developed ARPANETthe computer network from which the Internet originated in 1983. To cancel out the effects of Creeper, in 1972 a Reaperconsidered ...
Can a plant survive if it has not been watered for more than 50 years? Evidently yes, as evidenced by the garden in a bottle made in 1960 by the 80-year-old British David Latimerthat the last time the US president saw the watering can was Richard Nixon, way back in 1972. This garden in a bottle – which is an ...
Lately on the web many users claim that the pizza both thefood of happinesswith the aggravating circumstance of “science says so”. The connection between pizza and happiness, as you can read in those articles, is the serotoninwhich is found in abundance in the dough and in the mozzarella, in the form of its precursor, the tryptophan. It is also said ...