Welcome to Dailypedia

DEFINITION: (noun) A straight sword with a narrow blade and two edges. SYNONYMS: tuck. USAGE: Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective.

We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.

For years, doctors have debated the purpose of the appendix, a narrow pouch extending from the cecum of the large intestine. Many believe that it is a vestigial remnant of some previous organ or structure and that it no longer has a purpose in human anatomy. Recently, investigators at Duke University Medical School published a study suggesting that the appendix actually protects the human body from the effects of diseases like cholera and dysentery. According to their research, the pouch shelters important intestinal bacteria that can repopulate the digestive system even after it is completely wiped out by disease.

In 1770, Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton. Dressed in a cloak and turban and seated behind a chessboard, the mannequin played chess and executed complex mathematical puzzles. The Turk performed before numerous world leaders before it was revealed to be a hoax; the cabinet beneath the chessboard, which housed the internal mechanism, actually hid a chess master who secretly operated the machine. Which French Emperor was defeated by von Kempelen's Turk?