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[JackEmpire]

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[Creeperopolis]

The Albany Charter half dollar, also known as the Albany-Dongan half dollar or Albany half dollar, is a commemorative half dollar struck by the United States Bureau of the Mint in 1936. It was designed by sculptor Gertrude K. Lathrop, who lived in Albany, New York's state capital.

In 1936, Congress approved many commemorative coins for issuance, including some of mostly local significance. These included the Albany piece, wanted by city officials to mark the 250th anniversary of the 1686 grant of its municipal charter by Thomas Dongan, governor of colonial New York. The authorizing bill passed through Congress without opposition, though amendments added protections for coin collectors against abuses seen in earlier commemorative issues. Lathrop's designs have generally been praised: she placed a beaver on one side of the coin, modeled from life (one appears on Albany's city seal) and depicted the persons involved in the grant of the charter on the other. After approval of the designs by the Commission of Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Mint coined 25,013 Albany half dollars in October 1936, including 13 pieces for testing by the Assay Commission.

By the time of issuance, the demand for commemorative coins was falling, and the issue price of $2 was considered high. More than 7,000 were returned to the Mint in 1943, and a hoard of over 2,000 was sold by a local bank in 1954 at the original issue price. The Albany half dollar prices in the low hundreds of dollars, but the original packaging, if undamaged, may sell for more.

[Creeperopolis]

Project Waler was an unsuccessful Australian defence procurement exercise which sought to replace the Australian Army's M113 armoured personnel carriers with more capable armoured fighting vehicles (AFVs). It was initiated in 1980 and cancelled in 1985 without any vehicles being procured.

The goal of the project was to replace the Army's M113s during the mid-1990s with between 500 and 1,000 AFVs optimised for Australian conditions. These vehicles were to be built in Australia to support the local manufacturing industry. After initial scoping work, proposals were sought from companies during 1981. These proposals were submitted in 1982, and further studies were undertaken during 1983. While the scoping studies demonstrated that it would be feasible to build the vehicles in Australia, a planned tender to acquire them was not issued. Instead, Project Waler was cancelled by the Australian Government in July 1985 due to concerns over the cost and capabilities of the proposed vehicles. The M113s used by the Army's armoured reconnaissance units were replaced by ASLAV wheeled armoured fighting vehicles that were similar to the designs considered under Project Waler. Most of the remaining fleet of M113s were upgraded.

Project Waler is sometimes cited as an example of a mismanaged Australian defence procurement process, with commentators noting that it had been over-ambitious and not enough emphasis was placed on keeping costs down. The M113 upgrade project was also unsuccessful, with the resultant vehicles being unfit for combat, and the Australian Government launched a new project in 2018 to replace them.

[Spode]

Imagine not being able to upgrade a M113 :p
rip Australia

[Creeperopolis]

Brazza's martin (Phedinopsis brazzae) is a passerine bird in the swallow family, Hirundinidae. It is 12 cm (4.25 in) long with grey-brown upperparts, heavily black-streaked white underparts, and a brownish tint to the breast plumage. The sexes are similar, but juvenile birds have more diffuse breast streaking and reddish-brown edges to the feathers of the back and wings. The song consists of a series of short notes of increasing frequency, followed by a complex buzz that is sometimes completed by a number of clicks.

The range of this species falls within the African countries of Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nesting in burrows in river banks, it lays a clutch of three white eggs. This bird feeds on flying insects, including termites, and may hunt over rivers or open savanna. It forms mixed flocks with other swallows, but is readily identified by its combination of brown upperparts, streaked underparts and a square tail.

Although this little-known bird had been classified as Data Deficient by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it actually appears to be common and widespread, and it has been listed as a species of Least Concern since 2008. There may be some hunting of this martin for food, but the species does not appear to be facing any serious short-term threats.

[Svedonia]

In mathematics, 0.999... (also written as 0.9, in repeating decimal notation) denotes the repeating decimal consisting of an unending sequence of 9s after the decimal point. This repeating decimal represents the smallest number no less than every decimal number in the sequence (0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ...); that is, the supremum of this sequence. This number is equal to 1. In other words, "0.999..." is not "almost exactly" or "very, very nearly but not quite" 1  –  rather, "0.999..." and "1" represent exactly the same number.

There are many ways of showing this equality, from intuitive arguments to mathematically rigorous proofs. The technique used depends on the target audience, background assumptions, historical context, and preferred development of the real numbers, the system within which 0.999... is commonly defined. In other systems, 0.999... can have the same meaning, a different definition, or be undefined.

More generally, every nonzero terminating decimal has two equal representations (for example, 8.32 and 8.31999...), which is a property of all positional numeral system representations regardless of base. The utilitarian preference for the terminating decimal representation contributes to the misconception that it is the only representation. For this and other reasons—such as rigorous proofs relying on non-elementary techniques, properties, or disciplines—some people can find the equality sufficiently counterintuitive that they question or reject it. This has been the subject of several studies in mathematics education.

There is an elementary proof of the equation 0.999... = 1, which uses just the mathematical tools of comparison and addition of (finite) decimal numbers, without any reference to more advanced topics such as series, limits, formal construction of real numbers, etc. The proof, an exercise given by Stillwell (1994, p. 42), is a direct formalization of the intuitive fact that, if one draws 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc. on the number line there is no room left for placing a number between them and 1. The meaning of the notation 0.999... is the least point on the number line lying to the right of all of the numbers 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc. Because there is ultimately no room between 1 and these numbers, the point 1 must be this least point, and so 0.999... = 1.

If one places 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc. on the number line, one sees immediately that all these points are to the left of 1, and that they get closer and closer to 1.

More precisely, the distance from 0.9 to 1 is 0.1 = 1/10, the distance from 0.99 to 1 is 0.01 = 1/102, and so on. The distance to 1 from the nth point (the one with n 9s after the decimal point) is 1/10n.

Therefore, if 1 were not the smallest number greater than 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc., then there would be a point on the number line that lies between 1 and all these points. This point would be at a positive distance from 1 that is less than 1/10n for every integer n. In the standard number systems (the rational numbers and the real numbers), there is no positive number that is less than 1/10n for all n. This is (one version of) the Archimedean property, which can be proven to hold in the system of rational numbers. Therefore, 1 is the smallest number that is greater than all 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc., and so 1 = 0.999....

Part of what this argument shows is that there is a least upper bound of the sequence 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, etc.: a smallest number that is greater than all of the terms of the sequence. One of the axioms of the real number system is the completeness axiom, which states that every bounded sequence has a least upper bound. This least upper bound is one way to define infinite decimal expansions: the real number represented by an infinite decimal is the least upper bound of its finite truncations. The argument here does not need to assume completeness to be valid, because it shows that this particular sequence of rational numbers in fact has a least upper bound, and that this least upper bound is equal to one.

[im_a_waffle1]

The recorded history of Maryland dates back to the beginning of European exploration, starting with the Venetian John Cabot, who explored the coast of North America for the Kingdom of England in 1498. After European settlements had been made to the south and north, the colonial Province of Maryland was granted by King Charles I to Sir George Calvert (1579–1632), his former Secretary of State in 1632, for settlement beginning in March 1634. It was notable for having been established with religious freedom for Roman Catholics, since Calvert had publicly converted to that faith.[1][2][3] Like other colonies and settlements of the Chesapeake Bay region, its economy was soon based on tobacco as a commodity crop, highly prized among the English, cultivated primarily by African slave labor, although many young people came from Britain sent as indentured servants or criminal prisoners in the early years.

In 1781, during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), Maryland became the seventh state of the United States to ratify the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. They were drawn up by a committee of the Second Continental Congress (1775–1781), which began shortly after the adoption of a Declaration of Independence in July 1776, to 1778. Later that year, these articles were recommended to the newly independent sovereign states via their legislatures for the required unanimous ratification. This long process was held up for three years by objections from smaller states led by Maryland until certain issues and principles over the western lands beyond the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River. These objections were resolved with the larger states agreeing to cede their various western claims to the authority of the new Congress of the Confederation, representing all the states, to be held in common for the laying out and erection of new states out of the jointly held federal territories. Maryland then finally agreed to join the new American confederation by being one of the last of the former colonies ratifying the long proposed Articles in 1781, when they took effect. Later that same decade, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the stronger government structure proposed in the new U.S. Constitution in 1788.

After the Revolutionary War, numerous Maryland planters freed their slaves as the economy changed. Baltimore grew to become one of the largest cities on the eastern seaboard, and a major economic force in the country. Although Maryland was still a slave state in 1860, by that time nearly half of the African American population was free, due mostly to manumissions after the American Revolution.[4] Baltimore had the highest number of free people of color of any city in the United States. Maryland was among the four divided border states during the American Civil War (1861–1865), with most Marylanders fighting for the Union Army, along with a large number for the Confederacy. As a border state, it officially remained in the Union throughout the war.

[Zekeswearengin]

What did you just say to me? I am ranked 188th in the world for NationStates challenges. I will wipe you out with my 59 different badges and challenge lvls with a force that you've never seen. I can (and have) beat another nations with 1,647 different ways with my bare hands and keyboard. Your win rate is in for a world of pain. 

My specialty is Industry: Information Technology : )

You've still not wiped him... its been almost 4 months lmao

[Creeperopolis]

The London and North Western Railway War Memorial is a First World War memorial located outside Euston station in London, England. The memorial was designed by Reginald Wynn Owen, architect to the London and North Western Railway (LNWR), and commemorates employees of the LNWR who were killed in the First World War. Some 37,000 LNWR employees left to fight in the war—around a third of the company's workforce—of whom over 3,000 were killed. As well as personnel, much of the company's infrastructure was turned over to the war effort. Of the £12,500 cost of the memorial, £4,000 was contributed by the employees and the company paid the remainder.

The memorial consists of a single 13-metre (43-foot) tall obelisk on a pedestal. At the top, on each side, is a cross in relief and a bronze wreath. At the four corners of the base are four over-life-size statues of military figures—an artilleryman, an infantryman, a sailor, and an airman. The memorial was unusual among those from the First World War in featuring an airman so prominently.

The memorial was unveiled on 21 October 1921. Over 8,000 people attended the ceremony, mostly LNWR employees and their families, including three who earned the Victoria Cross in the war. Tensions remained following a strike two years earlier and the speeches focused on patriotism and duty, encouraging the workers to follow the example of their dead comrades. The memorial and two entrance lodges are all that remain of the former Euston station complex, the station having been rebuilt in the 1960s. An office building was erected between the memorial and the station in the 1970s, obscuring the view of it from the station entrance. The memorial is a grade II* listed building.

[Zekeswearengin]

nah