Portal:Society

Disco Demolition Night was a Major League Baseball (MLB) promotion on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, that ended in a riot. At the climax of the event, a crate filled with disco records was blown up on the field between games of the twi-night doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Many of those in attendance had come to see the explosion rather than the games and rushed onto the field after the detonation. The playing field was so damaged by the explosion and by the fans that the White Sox were required to forfeit the second game to the Tigers.

White Sox officials had hoped for a crowd of 20,000, about 5,000 more than usual. Instead, at least 50,000—including tens of thousands of Dahl's adherents—packed the stadium, and thousands more continued to sneak in after gates were closed. Many of the records were not collected by staff and were thrown like flying discs from the stands. After Dahl blew up the collected records, thousands of fans stormed the field and remained there until dispersed by riot police.

An 1880s poster for Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a novella by Robert Louis Stevenson known for its vivid portrayal of a split personality, wherein within the same person there is both an apparently good and an evil personality, quite distinct from each other. It was a huge success, with over 40,000 copies sold in the first six months after publication.

• ... that despite the presence of a minor basilica (pictured), Plaza Miranda in Manila is a center for fortune-telling and the sale of lucky charms and amulets?
• ... that the exploits of the Polish partisan People's Army were significantly exaggerated by the propaganda of the People's Republic of Poland?
• ... that the writer of The X-Files episode "Per Manum" has described it as being about "the way you perceive connections between people"?

• 5 February 1784 - The Asiatic Society (logo pictured) founder Sir William Jones was elected its president, serving until his death in 1794
• 6 February 1899 - Formation of the American Ceramic Society in Columbus, Ohio by nine members of the National Brick Manufacturer’s Association
• 11 February 1915 - Wlodimir Ledóchowski elected 26th Superior General of the Society of Jesus
• 28 February 2002 - Gulbarg Society massacre took place during the 2002 Gujarat riots, when a mob attacked the Gulbarg Society, a Muslim neighbourhood in Chamanpura, Ahmedabad

Carl Linnaeus (Swedish original name Carl Nilsson Linnæus, 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné). Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. Linnaeus received most of his higher education at Uppsala University, and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 60s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, and published several volumes. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. In botany, the author abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species' names is L. In 1959, Carl Linnaeus was designated as the lectotype for Homo sapiens, which means that following the nomenclatural rules, Homo sapiens was validly defined as the animal species to which Linnaeus belonged. (Full article...)