HylicManoeuvre

The domestic pigeon (Columba livia domestica) is a pigeon subspecies that's derived from the rock dove or rock pigeon. The rock pigeon is the world's oldest domesticated bird. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets mention the domestication of pigeons more than 5,000 years ago, as do Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Wild rock doves are uniformly pale grey with two black bars on each wing, with few differences being seen between males and females; i.e. they are not strongly sexually dimorphic. The domestic pigeon (Columba livia domestica, which includes about 1,000 different breeds) descended from this species. Escaped domestic pigeons are the origin of feral pigeons around the world. Both forms can vary widely in the colour and pattern of their plumage unlike their wild ancestor, being red, brown, checkered, uniformly colored, or piebald.

The genus name Columba is the Latin word meaning "pigeon, dove", whose older etymology comes from the Ancient Greek κόλυμβος (kólumbos), "a diver", hence κολυμβάω (kolumbáō), "dive, plunge headlong, swim". Aristophanes and others use the word κολυμβίς (kolumbís), "diver", for the name of the bird, because of its swimming motion in the air. The specific epithet livia is a Medieval Latin variant of livida, "livid, bluish-grey"; this was Theodorus Gaza's translation of Greek péleia, "dove", itself thought to be derived from pellós, "dark-coloured".

Before the Columbian Exchange, rock doves were restricted to a natural resident range in western and southern Europe, North Africa, and extending into South Asia. They were carried into the New World aboard European ships between 1603 and 1607.

Fun fact, there is no clear distinction between pigeons and doves. Generally, bigger species get labeled "pigeons" while more delicate ones are named "doves".

Swardspeak (also known as salitang bakla (lit. 'gay speak') or "gay lingo") is an argot or cant slang derived from Taglish (Tagalog-English code-switching) and used by a number of LGBT people in the Philippines.

The first two are:

1.When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2.The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke, the famed sci-fi author who penned these laws, is probably best known for co-authoring the screenplay to 2001: A Space Odyssee

This appears counterintuitive; people typically predict intense states to last longer. The hypothesized for this disconnect is that, intense states trigger psychological defense processes that reduce the distress, while less intense states do not trigger the same psychological defense processes and, therefore, less effective attenuation of the stress occurs.

Silbo gomero is a whistled register of Spanish that is used to communicate across the deep ravines and narrow valleys that radiate through the island and is generally used for public communication such as event invitations or PSAs. A speaker of Silbo Gomero is sometimes called a silbador ("whistler").

Silbo Gomero is a transposition of Spanish from speech to whistling. The oral phoneme-whistled phoneme substitution emulates Spanish phonology through a reduced set of whistled phonemes. In 2009, UNESCO declared it a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

In plantigrades (e.g. humans, bears, most rodents), the entire sole of the foot touches the ground, in digitigrades (most carnivores, most birds), the heel is off the ground and unguligrades (ungulates) walk on hooves.

Literally, it means to take a course opposite the apparent motion of the sun viewed from the Northern Hemisphere. Widdershins is cognate with the German widersinnig, i.e., "against" + "sense". The opposite of widdershins is deosil, or sunwise, meaning "clockwise".

There are just over 2,000 DRIs in the entire US, 46 of which are women. Alabama is leading the list with >300 inmates per 10M inhabitants.

This hypothesized ninth planet (not you, sorry Pluto) might explain the unusual commonalities of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) 100s of AU from the sun. These ETNOs (such as dwarf planets and sednoids) have remarkably aligned orbits, suggest the existence of an undiscovered celestial body, dubbed Planet Nine, influencing them gravitationally.

The plant's exact identity is unknown to this day, since it went extinct in Roman times. It was a major cash crop of Cyrene, Libya, and even depicted on coins. It was used as seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, contraceptive and abortifacient. The last specimen was supposedly given to Emperor Nero.

TIL that "G.I." originally referred to objects made from galvanized iron from WWI on, before it was reinterpretated as "government issue ", and by WWII, applied to American soldiers.