Silly Season
In the United Kingdom, silly season is a period in the summer months known for frivolous news stories in the mass media. The term was first attested in 1861, and listed in the second (1894) edition of ''Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable''. The 15th edition of ''Brewer's'' defined the silly season as "the part of the year when Parliament and the Law Courts are not sitting (about August and September)". In North America, the period is often referred to as the slow news season. In Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, the silly season has come to refer to the Christmas/New Year festive period (which occurs during the summer season in the Southern Hemisphere). Origin The first attestation in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is an article titled "The Silly Season" in the '' Saturday Review'' edition of 13 July 1861.''Oxford English Dictionary'', s.v. "silly season" The article is specifically about an alleged reduction in the quality of the editorial content of ''The Times' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of List of islands of the United Kingdom, the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering . Northern Ireland shares Republic of Ireland–United Kingdom border, a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. It maintains sovereignty over the British Overseas Territories, which are located across various oceans and seas globally. The UK had an estimated population of over 68.2 million people in 2023. The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London. The cities o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Prime Minister's Questions
Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs, officially known as Questions to the Prime Minister, while colloquially known as Prime Minister's Question Time) is a constitutional convention (political custom), constitutional convention in the United Kingdom, currently held as a single session every Wednesday at noon when the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons is sitting, during which the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister answers questions from members of Parliament (MPs). The Institute for Government has described PMQs as "the most distinctive and internationally famous feature of British politics." In the legislatures of the Devolution in the United Kingdom, devolved nations of the UK, the equivalent procedure is known as First Minister's Questions. History Although prime ministers have answered questions in parliament for centuries, until the 1880s, questions to the prime minister were treated the same as questions to other ministers of the Crown: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pickled Cucumber
A pickled cucumber – commonly known as a pickle in the United States, Canada and Australia and a gherkin ( ) in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand – is a usually small or miniature cucumber that has been Pickling, pickled in a Brine (food), brine, vinegar, or other solution and left to ferment. The fermentation process is executed either by immersing the cucumbers in an acidic solution or through souring by lacto-fermentation. Pickled cucumbers are often part of mixed pickles. Historical origins It is often claimed that pickled cucumbers were first developed for workers building the Great Wall of China, though another hypothesis is that they were first made as early as 2030 BC in the Tigris Valley of Mesopotamia, using cucumbers brought originally from India. According to the New York Food Museum, archaeologists believe ancient Mesopotamians pickled food as far back as 2400 B.C. while, centuries later, cucumbers native to India were being pickled in the Tig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cucumber
The cucumber (''Cucumis sativus'') is a widely-cultivated creeping vine plant in the family Cucurbitaceae that bears cylindrical to spherical fruits, which are used as culinary vegetables.Cucumber " ''''. 9982019. Considered an annual plant, there are three main types of cucumber—slicing, pickling, and seedless—within which several [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Swedish Language
Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the Germanic_languages#Statistics, fourth most spoken Germanic language, and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other North Germanic languages, Nordic languages, is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian language, Norwegian and Danish language, Danish, although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish, spoken by most Swedes, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional Variety ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Conker Tree
''Aesculus hippocastanum'', the horse chestnut, is a species of flowering plant in the maple, Sapindus, soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It is a large, deciduous, synoecious (hermaphroditic-flowered) tree. It is also called horse-chestnut, European horsechestnut, buckeye, and conker tree. It is not to be confused with the sweet chestnut or Spanish chestnut, ''Castanea sativa'', which is a tree in another family, Fagaceae. Description ''Aesculus hippocastanum'' is a large tree, growing to about tall with a domed crown of stout branches. On old trees, the outer branches are often pendulous with curled-up tips. The leaf, leaves are opposite and palmately compound, with 5–7 leaflets long, making the whole leaf up to across, with a petiole. The leaf scars left on twigs after the leaves have fallen have a distinctive horseshoe shape, complete with seven "nails". The flowers are usually white with a yellow to pink blotch at the base of the petals; they are produced in spri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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French Language
French ( or ) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues d'oïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, which French (Francien language, Francien) largely supplanted. It was also substratum (linguistics), influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul and by the Germanic languages, Germanic Frankish language of the post-Roman Franks, Frankish invaders. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 16th century onward, it was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, and numerous French-based creole languages, most notably Haitian Creole, were established. A French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Fra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Territorial Entities Where German Is An Official Language
The following is a list of the countries and territories where German is an official language (also known as the Germanosphere). It includes countries that have German as (one of) their nationwide official language(s), as well as dependent territories with German as a co-official language. All countries and territories where German has some officiality are located in Europe. German as an official language German is the official language of six countries, all of which lie in central and western Europe. These countries (with the addition of South Tyrol of Italy) also form the Council for German Orthography and are referred to as the ''German Sprachraum'' (German language area). Since 2004, Meetings of German-speaking countries have been held annually with six participants: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Switzerland: Subdivisions of countries While not official at the national level, German is a co-official language in subdivisions of the countr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cucumis Sativus1
__NOTOC__ ''Cucumis'' is a genus of twining, tendril-bearing plants in the family Cucurbitaceae which includes the cucumber (''Cucumis sativus''), true melons (''Cucumis melo'', including cantaloupe and honeydew), the horned melon (''Cucumis metuliferus''), and the West Indian gherkin ('' Cucumis anguria''). 30 species occur in Africa, and 25 occur in India, Southeast Asia, and Australia. However, ''Cucumis myriocarpus'' was introduced to Australia from Sub-Saharan Africa, and is regarded as an invasive species. Species , Plants of the World Online accepted 61 species: *''Cucumis aculeatus'' Cogn. *''Cucumis aetheocarpus'' (C.Jeffrey) Ghebret. & Thulin *'' Cucumis africanus'' L.f. *'' Cucumis althaeoides'' (Ser.) P.Sebastian & I.Telford *'' Cucumis anguria'' L. *'' Cucumis argenteus'' (Domin) P.Sebastian & I.Telford *'' Cucumis asper'' Cogn. *'' Cucumis baladensis'' Thulin *'' Cucumis bryoniifolius'' (Merxm.) Ghebret. & Thulin *'' Cucumis canoxyi'' Thulin & Al-Gifri *''Cucum ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Siege Of Sarajevo
The siege of Sarajevo () was a prolonged military blockade of Sarajevo, the capital of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the ethnically charged Bosnian War. After it was initially besieged by Serbian forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, the city was then besieged by the Army of Republika Srpska. Lasting from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 (1,425 days), it was three times longer than the Battle of Stalingrad, more than a year longer than the siege of Leningrad, and was therefore the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare. When Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia after the 1992 Bosnian independence referendum, the Bosnian Serbs—whose strategic goal was to create a new Bosnian Serb state of Republika Srpska (RS) that would include Bosniak-majority areas—encircled Sarajevo with a siege force of 13,000 stationed in the surrounding hills. From there they blockaded the city, and assaulted it with artillery, tanks, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Operation Irma
Operation Irma was the name applied to a series of airlifts of injured civilians from Bosnia and Herzegovina during the siege of Sarajevo. The airlifts were initiated after the wounding of five-year-old Irma Hadžimuratović attracted international media attention. The programme was reported to have evacuated hundreds of Sarajevans during the second half of 1993, but attracted significant controversy concerning its scale, evacuee selection criteria, and the motivations of the western European governments and press that inspired it. Wounding of Irma Hadžimuratović Siege of Sarajevo The Bosnian War erupted in March 1992, following Bosnia and Hercegovina's declaration of independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces, representing the Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army, took up positions in the areas surrounding the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and initiated a siege that was to last for four years. The siege was ch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |