Today is Monday, April 24, the 114th day of 2017 in the Gregorian calendar, with 251 days remaining.
There are:
4 days until Arbor
Day;
11 days until Cinco
de Mayo;
20 days until Mother's
Day;
32 days until the
start of Ramadan;
35 days until Memorial
Day;
41 days until Pentecost;
51
days until Flag
Day;
58 days until the
Summer Solstice;
62 days until the
end of Ramadan;
62 days until Father's
Day;
71 days until Independence
Day (July 4);
133 days until Labor
Day;
561 days until the
2018 mid-term elections; and
1,367 days until the end of Donald
Trump's term as President, assuming he doesn't resign or is otherwise
removed from office.
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New York Times photo
On this day in 1800, President John Adams signed an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington. Part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 to establish the Library of Congress "for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress ..., and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them...." Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and three maps, was housed in the new Capitol.
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Also on this day in 1792, the French national anthem, "La Marseillaise," was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
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Among other things, today is also World Day for Laboratory Animals.
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The New York Times' On This Day for today.
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Florida man arrested after stealing neighbor's underwear.
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Some persons born on April 24 who said interesting things:
- William Castle (1914-1977), American film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor;
- Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist;
- Clement Freud (1924-2009), British broadcaster, writer, politician and chef;
- Elizabeth Goudge, (1900-1984), English author ;
- Sue Grafton (1940), American author;
- Richard Holbrooke (1941-2010), American diplomat, magazine editor, author, professor, Peace Corps official, and investment banker;
- Damon Lindelof (1973), American television writer, producer, and film screenwriter;
- Shirley MacLaine (1934), American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author;
- Barbra Streisand (1942), songwriter, actress, and filmmaker;
- Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), English novelist;
- Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989), American poet, novelist, and literary critic; and
- Benjamin Lee Whorf (1907-1941), American linguist and fire prevention engineer
(The KGB Quotations Database currently contains 52,042 entries.)
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Quote of the day:
"All you really need in life is some fresh water, a good hat, and a
really good pair of shoes."
-Shirley MacLaine
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Wikipedia beats fake news every day, so why can't Facebook?
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Or, for that matter, Google... Why you can't always trust Google's top featured answers. Google determines those snippets using technology similar to its Knowledge Graph database, but also doesn't limit itself to verified sources the way Knowledge Graph does. That means Google's featured answers can be pulled in from almost any top search result, even if it's a third-party website. So how do they get to be at the top? Part of it is popularity, but that's not all. Google places priority on links that directly answer common questions, links that answer those questions in fewer words than others, and it likes links that offer the information in a list format. It doesn't matter if the information is accurate or not. For example, if you asked Google "why fire trucks were red" in the past, you'd get a quote from Monty Python. Other past examples include Google listing Barack Obama as "King of America," or a snippet saying dinosaurs never existed.
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Trump's industry, real estate, poses hurdle to tax overhaul. "Trump said he knows where the loopholes are, but so far he hasn't proposed closing any of them. Maybe he will. But so far he hasn't made any of the hard decisions that would show he's willing to close the loopholes that benefit him in order to make the tax code more fair and efficient."
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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2: A fun space opera that you've seen before.
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The smartphone is eventually going to die- this is Mark Zuckerberg's crazy vision for what comes next. Instead of smartphones, tablets, TVs, or anything else with a screen, all our computing is projected straight into our eyes as we type with our brains.
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New atmospheric phenomenon named Steve discovered by aurora watchers. "It turns out that Steve is actually remarkably common, but we hadn't noticed it before."
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