Ramsar (Persian: رامسر‎, also Romanized as Rāmsar and Rānsar; formerly, Sakht Sar) is the capital of Ramsar County, Mazandaran Province, Iran. In 2012 its population was 33,018, in 9,421 families. Ramsar lies on the coast of the Caspian Sea. It was also known as Sakhtsar in the past. The native people in Ramsar are Gilaks although there are also Mazandarani people living there. They speak the Gilaki language (eastern dialect) although the style they speak has been influenced by the Mazandarani language, making it slightly different from the Gilaki (eastern dialect) spoken in Gilan. The natives...

The Dreadnought hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, to a fake delegation of Abyssinian royals. The hoax drew attention in Britain to the emergence of the Bloomsbury Group, among whom some of Cole's collaborators numbered. The hoax was a repeat of a similar impersonation which Cole and Adrian Stephen had organised while they were students at Cambridge in 1905. == Background == === Hoaxers === Horace de Vere Cole was born in Ireland in 1881 to a well-to-do family. He was...

Boston keratoprosthesis (Boston KPro) is a collar button design keratoprosthesis or artificial cornea. It is composed of a front plate with a stem, which houses the optical portion of the device, a back plate and a titanium locking c-ring. It is available in type I and type II formats. The type I design is used much more frequently than the type II which is reserved for severe end stage dry eye conditions and is similar to the type I except it has a 2 mm anterior nub designed to penetrate through a tarsorrhaphy. The type I format will be discussed here as it is more commonly used. The type I Kpro...

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" is a post-apocalyptic science fiction short story by American writer Harlan Ellison. It was first published in the March 1967 issue of IF: Worlds of Science Fiction. It won a Hugo Award in 1968. The name was also used for a short story collection of Ellison's work, featuring this story. It was reprinted by the Library of America, collected in volume two (Terror and the Uncanny, from the 1940s to Now) of American Fantastic Tales (2009). == Background == Ellison showed the first six pages of "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" to Frederik Pohl, who paid him...

Melisma (Greek: μέλισμα, melisma, song, air, melody; from μέλος, melos, song, melody, plural: melismata) is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in this style is referred to as melismatic, as opposed to syllabic, in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note. An informal term for melisma is a vocal run. == History == === General === Music of ancient cultures used melismatic techniques to induce a hypnotic trance in the listener, useful for early mystical initiation rites (such as Eleusinian Mysteries...