featured Wiki of the Day Abulsme Productions

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Saturday, 11 May 2024 is Leucippus.

Leucippus (; Λεύκιππος, Leúkippos; fl. 5th century BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. He is traditionally credited as the founder of atomism, which he developed with his student Democritus. Leucippus divided the world into two entities: atoms, indivisible particles that make up all things, and the void, the nothingness that exists between the atoms. He developed his philosophy as a response to the Eleatics, who believed that all things are one and the void does not exist. Leucippus's ideas were influential in ancient and Renaissance philosophy. His philosophy was a precursor to modern atomic theory, but the two only superficially resemble one another.

Leucippus's atoms come in infinitely many forms and exist in constant motion, creating a deterministic world in which everything is caused by the collisions of atoms. Leucippus described the beginning of the cosmos as a vortex of atoms that formed the Earth, the Sun, the stars, and other celestial bodies. As Leucippus considered atoms and the void to be infinite, he presumed that other worlds must exist as cosmoses are formed elsewhere. Leucippus and Democritus described the soul as an arrangement of spherical atoms, which are cycled through the body through respiration and create thought and sensory input.

The only records of Leucippus come from Aristotle and Theophrastus, ancient philosophers who lived after him, and little is known of his life. Most scholars agree that Leucippus existed, but some have questioned this, instead attributing his ideas purely to Democritus. Contemporary philosophers rarely distinguish their respective ideas. Two works are attributed to Leucippus (The Great World System and On Mind), but all of his writing has been lost with the exception of one sentence.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:01 UTC on Saturday, 11 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Leucippus on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

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Until next time, I'm Nicole Standard.

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Friday, 10 May 2024 is Felix M. Warburg House.

The Felix M. Warburg House is a mansion at 1109 Fifth Avenue, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. The house was built from 1907 to 1908 for the German-American Jewish financier Felix M. Warburg and his family. After Warburg's death in 1937, his widow sold the mansion to a real estate developer. When plans to replace the mansion with luxury apartments fell through, ownership of the house reverted to the Warburgs, who then donated it in 1944 to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In 1947, the Seminary opened the Jewish Museum of New York in the mansion. The house was named a New York City designated landmark in 1981 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

The mansion was designed in the Châteauesque style by C. P. H. Gilbert and retains its original facade, characterized by French Gothic details around the windows and on the roofline. In 1993, Kevin Roche constructed an annex to the house in Gilbert's style built with stone from the same quarry that supplied the original mansion, replacing an extension built in 1963. The interior of the Warburg House, wholly occupied by the Jewish Museum, has a total floor space of 82,000 square feet (7,600 m2). Critical reviews of the original house's architecture have generally been positive while the extensions, from 1963 and 1993, have mixed receptions.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:04 UTC on Friday, 10 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Felix M. Warburg House on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.

Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

Until next time, I'm Raveena Standard.

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Thursday, 9 May 2024 is Horned sungem.

The horned sungem (Heliactin bilophus) is a species of hummingbird native to much of central Brazil and parts of Bolivia and Suriname. It prefers open habitats such as savanna and grassland and readily occupies human-created habitats such as gardens. It recently expanded its range into southern Amazonas and Espírito Santo, probably as a result of deforestation; few other hummingbird species have recently expanded their range. The horned sungem is a small hummingbird with a long tail and a comparatively short, black bill. The sexes differ markedly in appearance, with males sporting two feather tufts ("horns") above the eyes that are shiny red, golden, and green. Males also have a shiny blue head crest and a black throat with a pointed "beard". The female is plainer and has a brown or yellow-buff throat. It is the only species within its genus, Heliactin.

The horned sungem is a nomadic species, moving between areas in response to the seasonal flowering of the plants on which it feeds. It relies on a broad variety of flowering plants for nectar. If the shape of the flower is incompatible with the bird's comparatively short bill, it may rob the nectar through a little hole at the base of the flower. The sungem does also consume small insects. Only the female builds the nest, incubates the eggs, and rears the chicks. She lays two white eggs in a small cup nest which are incubated for about 13 days. The chicks are naked and black after hatching, and can fly when 20 to 22 days old. The horned sungem has been reported to readily defend territories both against members of its own species and against subordinate hummingbird species. The species is currently classified as least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and its population is thought to be increasing.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:07 UTC on Thursday, 9 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Horned sungem on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.

Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

Until next time, I'm Justin Neural.

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Wednesday, 8 May 2024 is Anna Blackburne.

Anna Blackburne (baptised Anne Blackburne; 1726 – 30 December 1793) was an English botanist and collector who assembled an extensive collection of natural history specimens and corresponded with several notable naturalists of her era. Blackburne was born at Orford Hall, Orford, Warrington, Lancashire, into a family of landowners and merchants. After her mother's death, she lived at Orford with her father John Blackburne, who was known for his interest in botany and his hothouses for exotic plants. John Blackburne also had an extensive library where Anne probably studied botany; she later taught herself Latin so she could read the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus. She developed a natural history museum where she collected insects, shells, minerals and birds. She regularly met with the naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster while he was teaching at Warrington Academy. Forster instructed her in entomology and helped with her insect collection.

Blackburne corresponded with other naturalists including Linnaeus, to whom she sent a box of birds and insects. Her brother Ashton, who lived in New York, sent her specimens of North American birds. The Welsh naturalist Thomas Pennant studied these bird specimens and included them in his book Arctic Zoology. After her father's death, Blackburne and her museum moved to nearby Fairfield Hall. When she died in 1793, her nephew John Blackburne inherited the collection. Several species are named after Blackburne, including the beetle Geotrupes blackburnii, the Blackburnian warbler and the flowering plant Blackburnia pinnata, now called Zanthoxylum pinnatum.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:48 UTC on Wednesday, 8 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Anna Blackburne on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.

Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

Until next time, I'm Ruth Neural.

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Tuesday, 7 May 2024 is The Structure of Literature.

The Structure of Literature is a 1954 book of literary criticism by Paul Goodman, the published version of his doctoral dissertation in the humanities. The book proposes a mode of formal literary analysis that Goodman calls "inductive formal analysis": Goodman defines a formal structure within an isolated literary work, finds how parts of the work interact with each other to form a whole, and uses those definitions to study other works. Goodman analyzes multiple literary works as examples with close reading and genre discussion.

The main points of Goodman's dissertation were made in a 1934 article on aesthetics by the author, who studied with the philosopher Richard McKeon and other neo-Aristotelians at the University of Chicago. Goodman finished his dissertation in 1940, but it was only published in 1954 by the University of Chicago Press at McKeon's behest. Reviews aggregated in Book Review Digest were mixed. Critics described the book as falling short of its aims, with engaging psychological insight and incisive asides mired in glaring style issues and jargon that made passages impenetrable or obscured his argument. Though Goodman contributed to the development of what became known as the University of Chicago's Chicago School of Aristotelian formal literary criticism, he neither received wide academic recognition for his dissertation nor was his method accepted by his field.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:30 UTC on Tuesday, 7 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see The Structure of Literature on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.

Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

Until next time, I'm Geraint Standard.

Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.

The featured article for Monday, 6 May 2024 is Take Ichi convoy.

The Take-Ichi sendan (竹一船団, "Bamboo No. One" convoy) was a Japanese convoy of World War II. The convoy left Shanghai on 17 April 1944, carrying two infantry divisions to reinforce Japan's defensive positions in the Philippines and western New Guinea. United States Navy (USN) submarines attacked the convoy on 26 April and 6 May, sinking four transports and killing more than 4,000 soldiers. These losses caused the convoy to be diverted to Halmahera, where the surviving soldiers and their equipment were unloaded.

The Take Ichi convoy's losses had important strategic results. The failure to bring the two divisions to their destination without loss contributed to the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters' decision to move Japan's defensive perimeter back by 1,000 km (600 mi). The divisions' combat power was also blunted by their losses, and while they both saw action against United States Army forces, they contributed little to Japan's attempt to defend its empire.

This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:31 UTC on Monday, 6 May 2024.

For the full current version of the article, see Take Ichi convoy on Wikipedia.

This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.

Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.

Follow us on Mastodon at @wikioftheday@masto.ai.

Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.

Until next time, I'm Salli Standard.