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Everything2

Everything2

Everything2, or E2 for short, is a large collaborative Internet community, currently at [http://www.everything2.com/ www.everything2.com]. It describes itself as having "grown from being a very simple user-written encyclopedia to an online community with a focus to write, publish and edit a quality database of information, insight and humor."

Nodes and writeups

E2 users called noders create pages called nodes and add information in multiple writeups. Only logged-in users can create writeups, and only the author of a writeup or an editor appointed by the site administrators can edit a writeup. E2 categorizes writeups into four types: person, place, idea, and thing. Writeups are written in a simplified HTML dialect and do not contain images. As of 25 July, 2005, 1,025,556 nodes and 444,183 writeups exist. There are other types of nodes that do not contain writeups; for instance, the administrators can create "superdoc" nodes (similar to Wikipedia's special pages) such as Everything New Nodes and Page of Cool that allow interaction, and each user has a "homenode" where they can add a short autobiography or other text (or a picture, if they are level six or above -- see Rewards, below).

Links

Hard links in E2 are simply words or phrases surrounded by [square brackets]. Any words inside square brackets in a writeup will become a link to the E2 node of that title. If a node with that title does not yet exist, following the link will bring up the option to create it. Recently, partial support for external URLs has been implemented. A hardlinked URL will provide, in addition to the option to create a new node, a link to the URL. Heavy use of external URLs is discouraged, however, as E2 is supposed to stand on its own and contain a largely self-supportive infrastructure. Pipe links are a variant form of hard links. While a hard link to the node Wikipedia would look like [Wikipedia], the pipe link allows the author a greater degree of freedom without restricting what nodes can be linked to. For example, one could write "[Wikipedia|Online encyclopedias] have started to become common sources in my students' research papers." The sentence looks like this to the reader, "Online encyclopedias have started to become common sources in my students' research papers." Noders can link to a specific writeup within a node by appending (person), (place), (idea) or (thing) to a pipe link. For example, the pipe link [Wiki (thing)|Wiki] links directly to the writeup of the type thing within the Wiki node. If the node contains more than one writeup of the specified type, the pipe link returns a "Duplicates Found" page linking to every writeup of the specified type within the node. Pipe links are comparable in function but not usage to Wikipedia's piped links. Unlike piped links, pipe links on E2 often add "easter egg" content, such as commentary, humor and hidden information.[http://www.everything2.org/index.pl?node_id=1340039]. At the bottom of every node, the system displays up to 64 soft links, though each node can store an unlimited number thereof. ("Guest User" -- any viewer not logged in -- can see 24, a logged-in user can see up to 48, and the senior administrators ("gods") can see up to 64). These are two-way links intended to approximate "thought processes". Whenever a logged-in user moves from one node to another, be it through a hard link, another soft link, or through the title search box, the system creates (or strengthens) the bidirectional soft link between the two; however, some nodes -- namely the special pages and the user profiles -- will not display the soft links so created. By repeatedly moving from one node to another, users can and do deliberately create such soft links; some users will use these soft links to make anonymous comments on others' writing. The site's administrators have the ability to remove soft links at their discretion. Firm links are special, editor-created links that serve to redirect between nodes. Firm links are typically used to link multiple forms of a single name or title to aid searching and ensure that readers find the content that they are seeking. A typical use of firm links would be to permanently link the empty node titled 'U.S.A' to a node titled 'United States of America' that contained writeups about the topic.

Copyright policy

The copyright for a writeup rests with the author, and no agreement to any kind of license is entered into by writing on E2 (except for giving the site permission to publish). Authors retain the right to place their work in the public domain, release it under a copyleft license such as GNU or Creative Commons or to request the removal of their work from the site at some later date. For a long time, the posting of copyrighted song lyrics and poetry to the site without approval from the copyright holders, while certainly frowned upon, was not actually prohibited. E2 chose to only passively enforce copyright law, in a manner similar to an ISP. This policy changed in August 2003 to a more active one where writeups containing copyrighted material had to either conform to fair use guidelines (length limits, proportion of quoted material to new text) or be posted with permission. The policy change provoked some users to leave the community.

Rewards

The administrators loosely based E2's reward system on role-playing games. Every time a user creates a writeup, they earn one experience point (XP). Users with at least 20 contributed writeups and 50 experience points can vote (up or down) on a writeup, which has a 1/3 chance of giving or taking an experience point from the author depending on the direction of the vote and a 1/5 chance of giving a point to the voter. After voting on a writeup, a noder can see the writeup's "reputation," or number of positive and negative votes (administrators do not need to vote to see a writeup's reputation). The site's editors delete writeups that do not meet editorial standards or those whose removal has been author-requested. The only effect writeup deletion has on the author's XPs is that the 1 XP the author got for creating the writeup is removed. New levels are attained by reaching a predefined, but arbitrary total of XPs and writeups, which are given in the [http://www.everything2.com/?node_id=444459 FAQ]. An 'honor roll' further rewards users whose writeups have a 'reputation' that has achieved a high interquartile mean by lowering the writeups required to achieve any given level by up to a half. The system grants special powers at other levels of writeups and experience, such as "cool" (reward author with three XPs and send the writeup to the front page), the ability to create basic chat rooms on the site, space for uploading a picture to a user's "homenode", and the ability to hide one's self in the list of logged-in users.

Messaging

Everything2 provides two communication tools: the Chatterbox and the message system. The Chatterbox is similar to a chat room. It appears as a panel on the right side of the page that logged-in users can use to read conversations and participate in them. The site's administrators used to have the ability to "borg" -- prevent from using the Chatterbox or message system -- those users whose behavior violated the unwritten standards of politeness and decorum. This was done through a bot called EDB (short for "Everything Death Borg"), which announced when it has "swallowed" a user. These silencings lasted for five minutes, though persistent trolls were silenced for a longer period -- sometimes permanently. As of 2003, the EDB was no longer much used, only making mostly token appearances for humorous effect. The message system lets users send private messages to other users. The messages are stored in the user's mailbox to be read when they next log in. The main use for the message system is giving constructive criticism to the author of a writeup; however, it can be and is used like any medium of private communication.

History and society

The predecessor of E2 was a similar database called Everything (later labeled "Everything1" or "E1") which was started around March 1998 by Nate Oostendorp and was initially closely aligned with and promoted by Slashdot. The E2 software offered vastly more features, and the Everything1 data was twice incorporated into E2: once on November 13, 1999 and again in January of 2000. The Everything2 server used to be physically located with the Slashdot servers. However, some time after OSDN acquired Slashdot, and moved the Slashdot servers, this hosting was terminated on short notice. This resulted in Everything2 being offline from roughly November 6 to December 9, 2003. Everything2 has since been hosted by the University of Michigan. E2 is privately owned by the Blockstackers Intergalactic company, but does not make a profit and is viewed by its long-term users as a collaborative work-in-progress. Some of its administrators are affiliated with Blockstackers, some are not. Administrators are often criticized for making policy decisions without consulting Everything2's user base, and the site is not a democracy, but the degree to which users influence decisions depends on the nature of the decisions and the administrators making them. Writeups in E1 were limited to 512 bytes in size. This, plus the predominantly "geek" membership back then and the lack of chat facilities, meant the early work was often of poor quality and was overburdened with self referential humor. As E2 has expanded, higher quality standards have developed, much of the old material has been removed, and the membership has become broader. Many noders prefer to write encyclopedic articles similar to those on Wikipedia. Some write fiction or poetry, some discuss issues, and some write daily journals, called "daylogs". The userbase tends to lean left politically and culturally. There are conservative voices as well, however, and while debate nodes (of any kind, political or not) are rarely tolerated, well-formed points of view from any part of the political or cultural spectrum are welcome. Like other online communities, E2 has a social hierarchy and code of behavior, to which it is sometimes difficult for a newcomer to adjust. Moreover, some people complain that new users are held to a different standard from established contributors, and that their writeups are singled out for deletion regardless of content. Another complaint is that all too often, site administrators remove articles that they do not agree with or which they do not see explicit value in, thus biasing the content of the database. Others dismiss such complaints as unjustified; they observe that few communities treat newcomers exactly like long-time members, and they claim that those who learn and obey the rules are usually—though not always—treated fairly. There is no consistent, written site policy on acceptable behavior. Bannings have occurred for antisocial behaviour, albeit very rarely and only after a more personal approach to change the individual's behavior. Though these decisions are broadly accepted, some current and ex-members of the site believe that this amounts to mismanagement, and point to accumulation of disgruntled ex-users as evidence of a problem. Everything2 solicits donations and states that the accumulated funds are earmarked for bandwidth and colocation costs, but does not disclose the specific details of how these donations are spent. This policy has met criticism due to concerns that the donations may be mishandled. The management regard Everything2 as a publication, to which authors submit content. Although Everything2 does not seek to become an encyclopedia (even though the contents of Webster's 1913 dictionary have been assimilated into the database), a substantial amount of factual content has been submitted to Everything2. Unlike Wikipedia, Everything2 does not have an enforced neutral point of view. Nodes can contain a mixture of factual writeups, opinion pieces and editorial, all of which are voted on and judged by the site's users. Writeups which achieve a substantial negative rating, or which are otherwise judged by the content editors to be unacceptable, may be removed. Policy states that "Everything2 is not a bulletin board". Writeups which exist as replies to other writeups, or which add a minor point to them or which otherwise do not stand well alone are discouraged, not least because the deletion of the original writeup orphans any replies. This policy helps to moderate flame wars on controversial topics. Everything2 is not a wiki, and there is no direct way for non-content editors to make corrections or amendments to another author's article. Avenues for correction involve discussing the writeup with its author; petitioning a content editor; adding a note in a special "broken nodes" section; or superseding the original writeup with an original, stand-alone follow-up.

Software

E2 is run by the open source Everything Engine, a Perl-based system; its data is stored in a MySQL database.

See also


- Eksi Sozluk
- H2G2 - online writing community based on The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Wikipedia

External links


- [http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=124 Everything2.com home page]
- [http://everything2.com/?node_id=444459 Voting/Experience System@Everything2.com]
- [http://everything2.com/?node_id=497885 Who owns our writeups?@Everything2.com]
- [http://everything2.com/?node=Wikipedia Wikipedia@Everything2.com] Category:Online encyclopedias simple:Everything2

Internet

:For the more general networking concept, see internetworking. The Internet, or simply the Net, is the worldwide system of interconnected computer networks which makes information stored on it accessible. This information is transmitted by packet switching using a standardized Internet Protocol (IP) and many other protocols. It is made up of thousands of smaller commercial, academic, domestic and government networks. It carries various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, and the interlinked web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Creation of the Internet

During the 1950s, several communications researchers realized that there was a need to allow general communication between users of various computers and communications networks. This led to research into decentralized networks, queuing theory, and packet switching. The subsequent creation of ARPANET in the United States in turn catalyzed a wave of technical developments that made it the basis for the development of the Internet. Contrary to popular myth, the DoD did not create the ARPANET so that they could communicate to the US Government after a nuclear war. The first TCP/IP wide area network was operational in 1984 when the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) constructed a university network backbone that would later become the NSFNet. It was then followed by the opening of the network to commercial interests in 1995. Important separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged into the Internet include Usenet, Bitnet and the various commercial and educational X.25 networks such as Compuserve and JANET. The ability of TCP/IP to work over these pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth. Use of Internet as a phrase to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated around this time. The collective network gained a public face in the 1990s. In August 1991 CERN in Switzerland publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN in Switzerland. In 1993 the Mosaic web browser version 1.0 was released, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet" was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide Web. Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks such as FidoNet have remained separate). This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.

Today's Internet

FidoNets, FTP client, and Telnet client]] Apart from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is held together by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (for example peering agreements) and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies. In an often-cited, if perhaps gratuitously mathematical definition, Seth Breidbart once described the Internet as "the largest equivalence class in the reflexive, transitive, symmetric closure of the relationship 'can be reached by an IP packet from'". Unlike older communications systems, the Internet protocol suite was deliberately designed to be independent of the underlying physical medium. Any communications network, wired or wireless, that can carry two-way digital data can carry Internet traffic. Thus, Internet packets flow through wired networks like copper wire, coaxial cable, and fiber optic; and through wireless networks like Wi-Fi. Together, all these networks, sharing the same high-level protocols, form the Internet. The Internet protocols originate from discussions within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and its working groups, which are open to public participation and review. These committees produce documents that are known as Request for Comments documents (RFCs). Some RFCs are raised to the status of Internet Standard by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). Some of the most used protocols in the Internet protocol suite are IP, TCP, UDP, DNS, PPP, SLIP, ICMP, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, Telnet, FTP, LDAP, SSL, and TLS. Some of the popular services on the Internet that make use of these protocols are e-mail, Usenet newsgroups, file sharing, Instant Messenger, the World Wide Web, Gopher, session access, WAIS, finger, IRC, MUDs, and MUSHs. Of these, e-mail and the World Wide Web are clearly the most used, and many other services are built upon them, such as mailing lists and blogs. The Internet makes it possible to provide real-time services such as Internet radio and webcasts that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Some other popular services of the Internet were not created this way, but were originally based on proprietary systems. These include IRC, ICQ, AIM, and Gnutella. There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks. Similar to how the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:
- GEANT
- Internet2
- GLORIAD These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations In network schematic diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

Internet culture

The Internet is also having a profound impact on work, leisure, knowledge and worldviews. worldviews]]

ICANN

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is one and only one holder of each name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have a privileged role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, Internet protocol addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers.

The World Wide Web

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Google, millions worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data. Some companies and individuals have adopted the use of 'weblogs' or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, via whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. For more information on the distinction between the World Wide Web and the Internet itself — as in everyday use the two are sometimes confused — see Dark internet where this is discussed in more detail.

Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker away from his or her desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into his or her normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives him or her complete access to all their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while they are away.

Collaboration

This low-cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge and skills has revolutionized some, and given rise to whole new, areas of human activity. One example of this is the collaborative development and distribution of Free/Libre/Open-Source Software (FLOSS) such as Linux, Mozilla and OpenOffice.org. See Collaborative software.

File-sharing

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networking. In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed - hopefully fully encrypted - across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale and distribution of many types of product, wherever they can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of office documents, publications, software products, music, photography, video, animations, graphics and the other arts. This in turn is causing seismic shifts in each of the existing industry associations, such as the RIAA and MPAA, that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media and VoIP

Many existing radio and television broadcasters have provided Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licences. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a TV or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialised technical web-casts. The simplest equipment can allow anybody, with little censorship or licencing control, to broadcast on a worldwide basis. Time-shift viewing or listening is not a problem as the BBC have shown with their Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. Web-cams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. In this case the picture may update only slowly - perhaps once every few seconds or slower, but Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal or the traffic at a local roundabout live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams have become popular. Some people install webcams in their bedrooms that can be accessed by other voyeurs, often with two-way sound. VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the turn of the millennium. In recent years many people and organizations have made VoIP systems as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the actual voice traffic is carried by the Internet, VoIP is free or costs much less than an actual telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on ADSL or DSL Internet connections anyway. The disadvantages are that it is still difficult to initiate a call with someone, unless they also have a VoIP phone or are at their computer and that there are still several competing standards that are mitigating against universal acceptance. In all of these cases, existing large organisations, that have grown accustomed to regular incomes for their services, are finding increased competition in their service areas, coming directly from the Internet. While newcomers strive to make these inroads, the traditional industries are having to adapt, adopt, complain or suffer. Meanwhile the consumer in each case most probably benefits from the increased range of services and possible price reductions. Some worry about censorship and control while others see a continuing globalisation of culture and norms.

Language

Main article: English on the Internet The most prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be due to the Internet's origins or to the growing role of English as an international language. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers to handle characters other than those in the basic Latin alphabet (see Unicode). After English (32 % of web visitors) the most-requested languages on the world wide web are Chinese 13 %, Japanese 8 %, Spanish 6 %, German 6 % and French 4 %. (From [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm Internet World Stats]) By continent, 33 % of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 29 % in Europe and 23 % in North America.[http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm] The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake still remain.

Cultural awareness

From a cultural awareness perspective, the Internet has been both an advantage and a liability. For people who are interested in other cultures it provides a significant amount of information and an interactivity that would be unavailable otherwise. However, for people who are not interested in other cultures there is some evidence indicating that the Internet enables them to avoid contact to a greater degree than ever before.

Censorship

Some countries, such as Iran and the People's Republic of China, restrict what people in their countries can see on the Internet, especially unwanted political and religious content. In the Western world, it is Germany that has the highest rate of censorship. Internet Service Providers are required by law to block some sites that contain child pornography or Nazi or Islamist propaganda. Censorship is sometimes done through government sponsored censoring filters, or by means of law or culture, making the propagation of targeted materials extremely hard. At the moment most Internet content is available regardless of where one is in the world, so long as one has the means of connecting to it.

Internet access

Germany Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and cell phones. Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places like airport halls, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee based. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular or mobile phone networks, and fixed wireless services. These services have not enjoyed widespread success due to their high cost of deployment, which is passed on to users in high usage fees. New wireless technologies such as WiMAX have the potential to alleviate these concerns and enable simple and cost effective deployment of metropolitan area networks covering large, urban areas. There is a growing trend towards wireless mesh networks, which offer a decentralized and redundant infrastructure and are often considered the future of the Internet. Broadband access over power lines was approved in 2004 in the United States in the face of stiff resistance from the amateur radio community. The problem with modulating a carrier signal onto power lines is that an above-ground power line can act as a giant antenna and jam long-distance radio frequencies used by amateurs, seafarers and others. Countries where Internet access is available to a majority of the population include Germany, India, China, Chile, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Italy, Australia, Denmark, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea and Norway. The use of the Internet around the world has been growing rapidly over the last decade, although the growth rate seems to have slowed somewhat after 2000. The phase of rapid growth is ending in industrialized countries, as usage becomes ubiquitous there, but the spread continues in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Middle East. However, there are still problems for many. ADSL and other broadband access are rare or nonexistent in most developing countries. Even in developed countries, high prices, mediocre performance and access restrictions often limit its uptake. Within individual countries, wide differences may exist between larger cities (often having multiple providers of broadband access) and some rural areas, where no broadband access may be available at all. The expansion of the availability of Internet access is a way to bridge the so-called digital divide.

Capitalization conventions

In formal usage, Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations all use this convention in their publications. In English grammar, proper nouns are capitalized. Most newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals also capitalize the term. Examples include the New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times and Communications of the ACM. In other cases, the first letter is often written small (internet), and many people are not aware of any convention of using a capital letter. Some argue that internet is the correct form. Since 2000, a significant number of publications have switched to using internet. Among them are The Economist, the Financial Times, the London Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, most publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America although one American news source, Wired News, has adopted the lowercase spelling.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related USENET groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to neta; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity. One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet. Online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games. With the release of Diablo by Blizzard Entertainment, gamers were treated to a built in online game service that was free of charge. With Blizzard's next game, StarCraft, the gaming world saw an explosion in the numbers of players using the Internet to play multi-player games. StarCraft may have been the first non-MMO game in which most players utilized the online gameplay as opposed to the single-player gameplay. Online gaming has progressed so much in the last 10 years that gamers earn a living from being a professional at the subject by winning tournaments and prizes as well as signing sponsor deals. Because there is a large support for certain online games, a new community has been born for people modding games, where users edit games to add a whole new element to it. This is how games such as Counter-Strike were born from the Half-Life Gaming Engine. Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services[http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=914&id=1001802003].

A complex system

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system" (Willinger, et al). The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity.

Marketing

The Internet has also become a big market, and the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast community of people all at once. The Internet has revolutionized shopping –– a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases.

Criticism

Many hyperlinks are outdated as time takes its toll on the existence of URL weblinks. These weblinks are often times defunct and are retained as hyperlinks for extended timeframes as a result of laziness or being busy enough to be sidetracked away from updating webpages. This is a common hoax for people who are fans in the field of what those links provide them with/to.

See also


- List of Internet topics
- An internet of things
- Art on the Internet
- Bogon filtering
- Catenet
- Central ad server
- Cybersex
- Cyberzine
- Dark internet
- Democracy on the Internet
- Dynamics of the Internet
- Extranet
- File Sharing
- Flaming
- Friendship on the Internet
- Hacktivism or Hacker culture
- History of the Internet
- International Freedom of Expression eXchange - monitors Internet censorship around the world
- Humor on the Internet
- ICANN
- Internet 2
- Internet Archive
- Intranet
- Internet forum
- Internets (colloquialism)
- Internet traffic engineering
- NANOG
- Netiquette
- Network Mapping
- Online banking
- Open Directory Project
- Security breaches
- Slang on the Internet
- Trolls and trolling
- Videotex - an early communications technology
- Web browser
- Web hosting
- WebQuest

External links

General


- [http://www.channel101.com/ Internet TV Stations]
- [http://www.isoc.org/ The Internet Society (ISOC)]
- [http://www.techterms.org/internet.php Internet Dictionary] - Definitions of Internet-related terms
- [http://www.experienced-people.co.uk/1099-webmaster-glossary/ The Alternate Internet Glossary] (Humor)
- A [http://www.illusivecreations.com Calgary Web Design] company that has put together over 300 articles about the internet and web development. You can view them by going [http://www.illusivecreations.com/articles/ here].
- [http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151 Internet access stats]
- [http://www.sharpened.net/glossary/ Glossary of Computer and Internet Terms]
- [http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx?Login=Y&Username=public&Password=public Internet Health Report] from Keynote
- [http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm Internet World Stats]

Articles


- [http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/29/business/net.php "EU and U.S. clash over control of the Net" - International Herald Tribune article by Tom Wright]
- [http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.08/intro.html "10 Years that changed the world" - WiReD looks back at the evolution of the Internet over last 10 years]
- [http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ John Walker: The Digital Imprimatur]
- [http://www.addressingtheworld.info addressingtheworld.info] - website accompanying a book (ISBN 0742528103) on the history of DNS
- [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrastructure.htm How Stuff Works explanation of the Infrastructure of the Internet]
- [http://www.searchandgo.com/articles/internet/net-explained-1.php Internet Explained] Seven part article explaining the origins to the present and a future look at the Internet.
- [http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64596,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7 "It's Just the 'internet' Now" - Wired.com article by Tony Long]

History


- [http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml The Internet Society History Page]
- [http://www.internetvalley.com/archives/mirrors/cerf-how-inet.txt How the Internet Came to Be]
- [http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/ Hobbes' Internet Timeline v7.0]
- [http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/e-scholarship2000.html Futures and Non-futures for Scholarly Internet. ]
- [http://www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/internet_history.html History of the Internet links]
- [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc801.txt RFC 801, planning the TCP/IP switchover]
- [http://www.archive.org/ Internet Archive] - A searchable database of old cached versions of websites dating back to 1996
- A list of lectures, some of which relate to the Internet, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is available [http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Comparative-Media-Studies/CMS-930Media--Education--and-the-MarketplaceFall2001/VideoLectures/index.htm here]. Of particular interest is lecture #3 The Next Big Thing: Video Internet which is delivered in Real Player format. The lecture gives a brief history of networking; discusses convergence between the internet/telephone/television networks; the expansion of broadband access; makes predictions about the future of delivery of video over the internet.

References


- Walter Willinger, Ramesh Govindan, Sugih Jamin, Vern Paxson, and Scott Shenker. (2002). Scaling phenomena in the Internet. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99, suppl. 1, 2573 – 2580. Category:Communication Category:Digital media Category:Internet Category:Digital Revolution Category:Technology Category:Computer networks Category:Networks ko:인터넷 ms:Internet ja:インターネット simple:Internet th:อินเทอร์เน็ต fiu-vro:Internet

Online community

A virtual community is a group of people communicating or interacting with each other by means of information technologies, typically the Internet, rather than face to face. Virtual communities are also known as online communities or mediated communities. The term virtual community is attributed to the book of the same title by Howard Rheingold in 1993. The book discussed a range of computer-mediated communication and social groups. The technologies included Usenet, MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) and their derivatives MUSHes and MOOs, IRC (Internet Relay Chat), chat rooms and electronic mailing lists; the World Wide Web was not yet used by many people. He pointed out the potential benefits for personal psychological well-being, as well as for society at large, of belonging to such a group. Today, virtual community can be used loosely for a variety of social groups interacting via the Internet. It does not necessarily mean that there is a strong bond among the members. An email distribution list may have hundreds of members and the communication which takes place may be merely informational (questions and answers are posted), but members may remain relative strangers and uninterested in each other and the membership turnover rate could be high. This is in line with the liberal use of the term community. The idea that media could generate a community is quite old. Progressive thinkers such as Charles Cooley, early in the 20th century in the United States, envisioned a nation whose members are united strongly because of the increased use of mass media. Also well-known is the term community without propinquity, coined by sociologist Melvin Webber in 1963. The explosive diffusion of the Internet into some countries such as the United States was also accompanied by the proliferation of virtual communities. The nature of those communities and communications is rather diverse, and the benefits that Rheingold envisioned are not necessarily realized, or pursued, by many. At the same time, it is rather commonplace to see anecdotes of someone in need of special help or in search of a community benefitting from the use of the Internet.

Benchmark Virtual Communities


- BBS: The WELL
- Blog: Blogger, Xanga
- Habitat: LucasFilm's Habitat, VZones
- IM: ICQ
- IRC/EFNet
- MMORPG: Everquest, Ultima Online
- MOO: LambdaMOO
- MUD/MUSH: Colossal Cave Adventure, TinyMUD
- P2P: Kazaa, Morpheus, Napster
- USENET
- Wiki: Wikipedia, WikiWikiWeb
- WWW: eBay, GeoCities, Slashdot

Additional Virtual Community Listings

Discussion boards


- Electric Minds
- GameFAQs
- LiveJournal
- GrinnellPlans
- M11 Music

Social networks

:See article: List of social networking sites

Art communities


- DeviantART
- Sheezyart

MUD, MUSH, MOO


- :Category:MU
- servers
- :Category:MU
- games

Other types


- GameTZ.com (an online game, music, movie, and book trading community)
- Meetup (an online service designed to facilitate real-world meetings of people involved in various virtual communities)
- Hospitality Club (free accommodation world wide through hospitality exchange)
- Thothica

Virtual Community Pioneers and Experts


- Jonathan Bishop
- Howard Rheingold
- Sherry Turkle

See Also


- Bulletin board system
- Computer-mediated communication
- Internet forum
- Internet social network
- Massively distributed collaboration
- Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games
- Network of practice
- Online wedding
- Social network
- The Virtual Community
- Virtual Community of Practice
- Vitual Reality
- Web of trust
- :Category:Virtual reality communities

References and External Links


- Farmer, F. R. (1993). “Social Dimensions of Habitat's Citizenry.” Virtual Realities: An Anthology of Industry and Culture, C. Loeffler, ed., Gijutsu Hyoron Sha, Tokyo, Japan
- Hagel, J. (1997). Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities. Boston: Harvard Business School Press (ISBN 0875847595)
- Kim, A.J. (2000). Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities. London: Addison Wesley (ISBN 0201874849)
- [http://www.fudco.com/chip/lessons.html Morningstar, C. and F. R. Farmer (1990) "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat", The First International Conference on Cyberspace, Austin, TX, USA]
- Preece, J. (2000). Online Communities: Supporting Sociability, Designing Usability. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. (ISBN 0471805998)
- Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. London: MIT Press. (ISBN 0262681218)
  - The author has made available an [http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html online copy]
- [http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=50#objectives The International Journal of Web-Based Communities]
- [http://www.jan.vandercrabben.name/ba_dissertation.php News Consumption in Online Communities]
- [http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/intro.html The Virtual Community] - By Howard Rheingold (electronic version)
- [http://www.ocreport.com/ Online Community Report] - news and trends in online collaboration. Category:Internet culture Category:Social networking Category:Virtual communities ja:仮想共同体 simple:Virtual community

HTML

In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language designed for the creation of web pages and other information viewable in a browser. HTML is used to structure information — denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists and so on — and can be used to describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document. Originally defined by Tim Berners-Lee and further developed by the IETF with a simplified SGML syntax, HTML is now an international standard (ISO/IEC 15445:2000). Later HTML specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Early versions of HTML were defined with looser syntactic rules which helped its adoption by those unfamiliar with web publishing. Web browsers commonly made assumptions about intent and proceeded with rendering of the page. Over time, the trend in the official standards has been to create an increasingly strict language syntax; however, browsers still continue to render pages that are far from valid HTML. XHTML, which applies the stricter rules of XML to HTML to make it easier to process and maintain, is the W3C's successor to HTML. As such, many consider XHTML to be the "current version" of HTML, but it is a separate, parallel standard; the W3C continues to recommend the use of either XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, or HTML 4.01 for web publishing.

Introduction

HTML is a form of markup that is oriented toward the construction of single-page text documents with specialized rendering software called HTML user agents, the most common example of which is a web browser. HTML provides a means by which the document's content can be annotated with various kinds of metadata and rendering hints. The rendering cues may range from minor text decorations, such as specifying that a certain word be underlined or that an image be inserted, to sophisticated imagemaps and form definitions. The metadata may include information about the document's title and author, structural information such as headings, paragraphs, lists, and information that allows the document to be linked to other documents to form a hypertext web. HTML is a text based format that is designed to be both readable and editable by humans using a text editor. However, writing and updating a large number of pages by hand in this way is time consuming, requires a good knowledge of HTML and can make consistency difficult to maintain. Visual HTML editors such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive or Microsoft FrontPage allow the creation of web pages to be treated much like word processor documents. The code generated by these programs can be of poor quality. However, the open-source visual HTML editor Nvu generates code of high quality. HTML can be generated on the fly using a server-side scripting system such as Perl, PHP, JSP, or ASP. Many web applications like content management systems, wikis and web forums generate HTML pages.

Version history of the standard


- [http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/draft-ietf-iiir-html-01.txt Hypertext Markup Language (First Version)], published June 1993 as an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) working draft (not standard).
- [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1866.txt HTML 2.0], published November 1995 as IETF RFC 1866, and declared obsolete/historic by RFC 2854 in June 2000.
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html32 HTML 3.2], published January 14, 1997 as a W3C Recommendation.
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40-971218/ HTML 4.0], published December 18, 1997 as a W3C Recommendation.
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401 HTML 4.01], published December 24, 1999 as a W3C Recommendation.
- [http://www.purl.org/NET/ISO+IEC.15445/15445.html ISO/IEC 15445:2000] ("ISO HTML", based on HTML 4.01 Strict), published May 15, 2000 as an ISO/IEC international standard.
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ XHTML 1.0], published January 26, 2000 as a W3C Recommendation, later revised and republished August 1, 2002. There is no official standard HTML 1.0 specification because there were multiple informal HTML standards at the time. However, some people consider the initial edition provided by Tim Berners-Lee to be the definitive HTML 1.0. That version did not include an IMG element type. Work on a successor for HTML, then called "HTML+", began in late 1993, designed originally to be "A superset of HTML…which will allow a gradual rollover from the previous format of HTML". The first formal specification was therefore given the version number 2.0 in order to distinguish it from these unofficial "standards". Work on HTML+ continued, but it never became a standard. The HTML 3.0 standard was proposed by the newly formed W3C in March 1995, and provided many new capabilities such as support for tables, text flow around figures, and the display of complex math elements. Even though it was designed to be compatible with HTML 2.0, it was too complex at the time to be implemented, and when the draft expired in September 1995 work in this direction was discontinued due to lack of browser support. HTML 3.1 was never officially proposed, and the next standard proposal was HTML 3.2 (code-named "Wilbur"), which dropped the majority of the new features in HTML 3.0 and instead adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes which had been created for the Netscape and Mosaic web browsers. Math support as proposed by HTML 3.0 finally came about years later with a different standard, MathML. HTML 4.0 likewise adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes, but at the same time began to try to "clean up" the standard by marking some of them as deprecated, and suggesting they not be used. Minor editorial revisions to the HTML 4.0 specification were published as HTML 4.01. The most common extension for files containing HTML is .html, however, older operating systems, such as DOS, limit file extensions to three letters, so a .htm extension is also used. Although perhaps less common now, the shorter form is still widely supported by current software.

Markup element types

Below are the kinds of markup element types in HTML.
- Structural markup. Describes the purpose of text. For example, ::

Golf

 :directs the browser to render "Golf" as a second-level heading, similar to "Markup element types" at the start of this section. Structural markup does not denote any specific rendering, but most web browsers have standardised on how elements should be formatted. For example, by default, headings like these will appear in large, bold text. Further styling should be done with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
- Presentational markup. Describes the appearance of the text, regardless of its function. For example, ::boldface :will render "boldface" in bold text. In the majority of cases, using presentational markup is inappropriate, and presentation should be controlled by using CSS. In the case of both bold and italic there are elements which usually have an equivalent visual rendering but are more semantic in nature, namely strong emphasis and emphasis respectively. It is easier to see how an aural user agent should interpret the latter two elements.
- Hypertext markup. Links parts of the document to other documents. For example, ::Wikipedia :will render the word [http://wikipedia.org Wikipedia] as a hyperlink to the specified URL.

The Document Type Definition

In order to specify which version of the HTML standard they conform to, all HTML documents should start with a Document Type Declaration (informally, a "DOCTYPE"), which makes reference to a Document Type Definition (DTD). For example: This declaration asserts that the document conforms to the Strict DTD of HTML 4.01, which is purely structural, leaving formatting to Cascading Style Sheets. In some cases, the presence or absence of an appropriate DTD may influence how a web browser will display the page. In addition to the Strict DTD, HTML 4.01 provides Transitional and Frameset DTDs. The Transitional DTD was intended to gradually phase in the changes made in the Strict DTD, while the Frameset DTD was intended for those documents which contained frames.

Separation of style and content

Efforts of the web development community have led to a new thinking in the way a web document should be written; XHTML epitomizes this effort. Standards stress using markup which suggests the structure of the document, like headings, paragraphs, block quoted text, and tables, instead of using markup which is written for visual purposes only, like <font>, <b> (bold), and <i> (italics). Some of these elements are not permitted in certain varieties of HTML, like HTML 4.01 Strict. CSS provides a way to separate the HTML structure from the content's presentation, by keeping all code dealing with presentation defined in a CSS file. See separation of style and content.

Serving HTML

The World Wide Web primarily uses HTTP to serve HTML documents to users. In order to do this correctly, it is necessary for the document to be described correctly: the necessary metadata includes the MIME Type (typically "text/html", although other choices include "application/xhtml+xml") and the character encoding (see Character encodings in HTML).

HTML Email

HTML is also used in email messages. Many email clients include a GUI HTML editor for composing emails and a rendering engine for displaying them once received. Use of HTML in email is quite controversial due to a variety of issues. The main benefit is the ability to decorate an email with presentational attributes (bold headings etc). However, there are a number of disadvantages, which include:
- the recipient may not have an email client that can display HTML
- the email has larger size because lots of formatting will be much larger than the plain text equivalent. This issue is made slightly worse by the fact that, for compatibility, most clients send a plaintext version as well.
- overuse of formatting (there was at one stage a craze for making letterheads using HTML and sending them as part of every e-mail)
- potential security issues of deluding the recipient to accept an email as being from an authoriative source (such as a bank) when this is not the case; this is related to phishing scams.
- potential security issues of simply rendering a complex format like HTML. For these reasons many mailing lists deliberately block HTML email either stripping out the HTML part to just leave the plain text part or rejecting the entire message.

See also


- Alt attribute
- Character encodings in HTML
- Dynamic HTML
- HTML editor
- HTML element
- HTML reference
- HTML scripting
- Parse
- Tim Berners-Lee
- Unicode and HTML
- Web colors
- List of document markup languages
- Comparison of document markup languages
- Comparison of layout engines (HTML)
- XHTML
- Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/HTML

External links

W3C Specifications


- [http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/ HTML 4.01 Specification]
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ XHTML 1.0 Specification]
- [http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/ XHTML Media Types]

Validators


- [http://validator.w3.org/ W3C's Markup Validator]
- [http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/ WDG HTML Validator]
- [http://uitest.com/en/analysis/ Validators and checkers] ([http://uitest.com/en/check/ Site Check])

Selected Tutorials/Guides


- [http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/ HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials]
- [http://htmldog.com/ HTML Dog] Category:Markup languages Category:Technical communication Category:W3C standards Category:ISO standards ko:HTML ja:Hypertext Markup Language simple:HTML th:HTML

25 July

July 25 is the 206th day (207th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 159 days remaining.

Events


- 306 - Constantine I proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops.
- 1261 - The city of Constantinople is recaptured by Nicaean forces under the command of Michael VIII Palaeologus, thus re-establishing the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines also succeed in capturing Thessalonica and the rest of the Latin Empire.
- 1547 - Henry II (France) crowned
- 1567 - Don Diego de Losada founds the city of Santiago de Leon de Caracas, modern-day Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela.
- 1593 - Henry IV of France publicly converts from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism.
- 1722 - Three Years War begins along Maine and Massachusetts border.
- 1758 - French and Indian War: The island battery at Fortress Louisbourg in Nova Scotia is silenced and all French warships are destroyed or taken.
- 1759 - French and Indian War: In Canada, British forces capture Fort Niagara from French, who subsequently abandon Fort Rouillé.
- 1797 - Horatio Nelson loses more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife Island (Spain).
- 1799 - At Aboukir in Egypt, Napoleon I of France defeats 10,000 Ottomans under Mustafa Pasha.
- 1814 - War of 1812: Battle of Lundy's Lane - Reinforcements arrive near Niagara for General Riall's British and Canadian force, and bloody, all-night battle with Jacob Brown's Americans commences at 18.00; Americans retreat to Fort Erie.
- 1853 - Joaquin Murietta, famous Californio bandit known as "Robin Hood of El Dorado", is killed.
- 1861 - American Civil War: The Crittenden-Johnson Resolution is passed by the U.S. Congress stating that the war is being fought to preserve the Union and not to end slavery.
- 1866 - The U.S. Congress passes legislation authorizing the rank of General of the Army (now called "5-star general") Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant becomes the first to have this rank.
- 1868 - Wyoming becomes a United States territory.
- 1869 - The Japanese daimyō begin returning their land holdings to the emperor as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese Date: June 17, 1869)
- 1894 - The First Sino-Japanese War begins when the Japanese fire upon a Chinese warship.
- 1897 - Writer Jack London sails to join the Klondike Gold Rush where he will write his first successful stories.
- 1898 - The United States invasion of Puerto Rico begins with U.S. troops landing at Guánica Bay.
- 1907 - Korea becomes a protectorate of Japan.
- 1908 - Ajinomoto is born. Kikunae Ikeda of the Tokyo Imperial University discovers that a key ingredient in Konbu soup stock is monosodium glutamate (MSG) and patents a process for manufacturing it.
- 1909 - Louis Bleriot makes the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine (Calais to Dover in 37 minutes).
- 1917 - Sir Thomas Whyte introduces the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).
- 1920 - Telecommunications: first transatlantic two-way radio broadcast.
- 1934 - Nazis assassinate Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss in a failed coup attempt.
- 1943 - World War II: Benito Mussolini is forced out of office by his own Italian Grand Council and is replaced by Pietro Badoglio.
- 1944 - World War II: Operation Spring - One of the bloodiest days for Canadians during the war: 18,444 casualties, including 5,021 killed.
- 1946 - Nuclear testing: In the first underwater test of the atomic bomb, the surplus USS Saratoga is sunk near Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean when the United States detonates the "Baker Day" device.
- 1946 - At Club 500 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis stage their first show as a comedy team.
- 1952 - Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth of the United States.
- 1956 - 45 miles south of Nantucket Island, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria sinks after colliding with the SS Stockholm in heavy fog, killing 51.
- 1958 - The African Regroupment Party (PRA) holds its first congress in Cotonou.
- 1965 - Newport Folk Festival: Bob Dylan goes electric.
- 1969 - Vietnam War: US President Richard Nixon declares the Nixon Doctrine stating that the United States now expects its Asian allies to take care of their own military defense. This was the start of the "Vietnamization" of the war.
- 1973 - Soviet Mars 5 space probe launched.
- 1976 - The first performance of the Philip Glass opera Einstein on the Beach
- 1977 - A supposed thunderbird is reported attacking a boy named Marlon Lowe.
- 1978 - The first so-called test-tube baby, Louise Brown, is born.
- 1984 - Salyut 7 Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
- 1989 - Rock/Hip-hop trio The Beastie Boys release the classic Paul's Boutique.
- 1990 - Comedian Roseanne Barr grabs her crotch and spits on the ground when performing the U.S. national anthem at a San Diego Padres game.
- 1994 - Israel and Jordan sign the Washington Declaration which formally ends the state of war that has existed between the nations since 1948.
- 1997 - K.R. Narayanan is sworn-in as India's 10th president and the first member of the Dalits caste to hold this office.
- 1998 - The United States Navy commissions the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and puts her into service.
- 1999 - Lance Armstrong wins first Tour de France.
- 2000 - An Air France Concorde supersonic passenger jet crashes just after takeoff from Paris killing all 109 aboard and 5 on the ground.
- 2004 - Lance Armstrong makes history, winning his 6th consecutive Tour de France.

Births


- 1109 - King Afonso I of Portugal (d. 1185)
- 1336 - Albert, Count of Holland (d. 1404)
- 1404 - Philip I, Duke of Brabant (d. 1430)
- 1421 - Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, English politician (d. 1461)
- 1562 - Kato Kiyomasa, Japanese warlord and samurai (d. 1611)
- 1653 - Agostino Steffani, Italian diplomat and composer (d. 1728)
- 1658 - Archibald Campbell, 1st Duke of Argyll, Scottish privy councillor (d. 1703)
- 1799 - David Douglas, Scottish botanist, plant collector, explorer (d. 1834)
- 1839 - Francis Garnier, French explorer (d. 1873)
- 1844 - Thomas Eakins, American artist (d. 1916)
- 1848 - Arthur Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1930)
- 1867 - Max Dauthendey, German writer (d. 1918)
- 1870 - Maxfield Parrish, American illustrator (d. 1966)
- 1883 - Alfredo Casella, Italian composer (d. 1947)
- 1884 - Davidson Black, Canadian anthropologist (d. 1934)
- 1886 - Bror von Blixen-Finecke, Danish big-game hunter (d. 1946)
- 1894 - Walter Brennan, American actor (d. 1974)
- 1901 - Lila Lee, American actress (d. 1973)
- 1902 - Eric Hoffer, American philosopher (d. 1983)
- 1905 - Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1994)
- 1906 - Johnny Hodges, American saxophonist (d. 1970)
- 1907 - Varlam Shalamov, Russian writer (d. 1982)
- 1908 - Bill Bowes, English cricketer (d. 1987)
- 1920 - Rosalind Franklin, English scientist (d. 1958)
- 1923 - Estelle Getty, American actress
- 1928 - Keter Betts, American jazz bassist (d. 2005)
- 1929 - Somnath Chatterjee, Indian politician
- 1930 - Maureen Forrester, Canadian contralto
- 1935 - Barbara Harris, American actress
- 1937 - Colin Renfrew, English archeologist
- 1946 - Rita Marley, Jamaican-Cuban singer
- 1954 - Walter Payton, American football player (d. 1999)
- 1955 - Iman Abdulmajid, Somali model
- 1960 - Alain Robidoux, Canadian snooker player
- 1965 - Illeana Douglas, American actress
- 1967 - Matt LeBlanc, American actor
- 1967 - Chuck Paugh, American record company owner
- 1973 - Dani Filth, English singer (Cradle of Filth)
- 1973 - Kevin Phillips, English footballer
- 1977 - Kenny Thomas, American basketball player
- 1978 - Louise Brown, first test tube baby
- 1978 - Gerard Warren, American football player
- 1979 - Amy Adams, American singer
- 1982 - Brad Renfro, American actor
- 1987 - Michael Welch, American actor
- 1990 - Andy Evenchick, Amateur swimmer

Deaths


- 306 - Constantius Chlorus, Roman Emperor (b. 250)
- 1409 - King Martin I of Sicily
- 1492 - Pope Innocent VIII (b. 1432)
- 1616 - Andreas Libavius, German physician and chemist (b. 1550)
- 1643 - Robert Pierrepont, 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, English statesman (b. 1584)
- 1676 - François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer (b. 1604)
- 1681 - Urian Oakes, English-born President of Harvard University (b. 1631)
- 1790 - Johann Bernhard Basedow, German education reformer (b. 1723)
- 1790 - William Livingston, Governor of New Jersey (b. 1723)
- 1791 - Isaac Low, American Continental Congressman (b. 1735)
- 1794 - André Chénier, French writer (b. 1762)
- 1826 - Kondraty Fyodorovich Ryleyev, Russian poet and revolutionary (b. 1795)
- 1834 - Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet (b. 1772)
- 1842 - Dominique Jean Larrey, French surgeon (b. 1766)
- 1843 - Charles Macintosh, Scottish chemist and inventor (b. 1766)
- 1853 - Joaquin Murieta, California outlaw
- 1861 - Jonas Furrer, Swiss Federal Councilor (b. 1805)
- 1887 - John Taylor, American religious leader (b. 1808)
- 1934 - François Coty, French perfume manufacturer (b. 1874)
- 1934 - Engelbert Dollfuss, Chancellor of Austria (assassinated) (b. 1892)
- 1934 - Nestor Makhno, Ukrainian anarchist (b. 1889)
- 1963 - Ugo Cerletti, Italian neurologist (b. 1877
- 1971 - Leroy Robertson, American composer (b. 1896)
- 1973 - Louis Stephen St. Laurent, twelfth Prime Minister of Canada (b. 1882)
- 1980 - Vladimir Vysotsky, Russian poet, singer, and actor (b. 1938)
- 1988 - Judith Barsi, American actress (b. 1978)
- 1997 - Ben Hogan, American golfer (b. 1912)
- 2003 - Ludwig Bölkow, German aeronautical engineer (b. 1912)
- 2003 - John Schlesinger, British film director (b. 1926)
- 2005 - Albert Mangelsdorff, German jazz trombonist (b. 1928)

Holidays and observances


- Roman festivals - Furinalia
- Galiza - National Day (Dia da Patria Galega).
- Saint James the Great - patron saint of Spain.
- Costa Rica - Anniversary of the Annexation of Guanacaste Province
- Cuba - Eve of Revolution Day
- Puerto Rico - Constitution Day (1952)
- Tunisia - Republic Day (1957)
- Virgin Islands - Hurricane Supplication Day
- Inca - festival in honor of Ilyap'a
- Ebernoe Horn Fair, Sussex, England

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/25 BBC: On This Day] ---- July 24 -