Welcome to Dailypedia

DEFINITION: (noun) The property of being close together. SYNONYMS: proximity. USAGE: She loved Emma Jane, but it was a friendship born of propinquity and circumstance, not of true affinity.

Considered by many to be the greatest basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan in 2003 ended a career of 15 full seasons with a regular-season scoring average of 30.12 points per game, the highest in NBA history. He won six championships, notched 10 scoring titles, and was league MVP five times. Jordan's mid-air acrobatics are legendary and have earned him the nickname "Air Jordan." How many times has Jordan announced retirement during his basketball career?

Kasparov is an Armenian chess grandmaster and one of the strongest chess players in history. His International Chess Federation (FIDE) rating of 2851 is the highest ever achieved. In 1996, Kasparov played two matches against a super-computer called "Deep Blue," capable of evaluating 100 million positions per second. He lost the first game, but rebounded in the next 5 games to soundly beat the machine. His first title match against Anatoly Karpov, the longest in chess history, lasted how long?

A large study has found that children of women who ate little fish during pregnancy had lower IQs and more behavioral and social problems than youngsters whose mothers ate plenty of seafood, a finding that challenges the US government's standard advice to limit seafood while pregnant. The advice to limit seafood consumption is based on concerns that children might absorb too much methyl mercury, which builds up in fish and can cause neurological problems.

"GULAG" is a Russian acronym for "Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps," a department of the Soviet secret police in the past. It was established c. 1920 as a reformed extension of the Siberian labor camps of Imperial Russia. The system reached its peak under Joseph Stalin, who used it to maintain the Soviet state by keeping its populace in a state of terror. Under Stalin, Gulag deaths are estimated to have been in the millions. What used to be the colloquial name for a Gulag inmate?