Science

The Python Programming Language

The Python Programming Language

12/05/2017

Updated on 10/13/2018

There are many dozens of programming languages that exist in the tech universe today. In no particular order, Assembly, BASIC, C, C++, C#, Fortran, Java, Perl, Python, Javascript, PHP, SQL, Delphi, Visual Basic, Lua, Lisp, Go, Objective-C, Swift, ColdFusion, R, Actionscript, COBOL, Erlang, ABC, Haskell, ASP, A, B, D, E, F, F#, F*, G, Pascal, Tcl, YAML, SALSA are some of…read more

Laika the Space Dog

Laika the Space Dog

10/24/2017

Updated on 09/10/2022

Sputnik 1 was successfully launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, becoming the first artificial object to reach Earth orbit. Having been launched during the Cold War era, this tiny, beeping, ball-shaped satellite caused great concern among many paranoid red-scared Americans for whom the event was not so much a great moment of scientific achievement, but rather a disconcerting development…read more

Second-degree Burns

Second-degree Burns

10/19/2017

Updated on 10/08/2018

Editor’s note: Please don’t be a moron. Under no circumstances should anything written in this post be considered medical advice or be used for diagnostic purposes. Doctors do that stuff. I’m not a doctor and I don’t pretend to be. SilverMedals.net is not a refereed journal by any stretch. At some point in all our lives we experience a first-degree burn….read more

Elcano, Drake, or Urdaneta?

Elcano, Drake, or Urdaneta?

10/11/2017

Updated on 09/24/2022

You’d think that if finding out the first person to do something was relatively easy, then finding the second person to do something would be just as easy, right? SilverMedals finds that this is not the case in many cases, and annoyingly so. For instance who was the second person to circumnavigate the globe? Most of us American kids learned…read more

Lasedi La Rona Diamond

Lasedi La Rona Diamond

10/05/2017

Updated on 10/08/2018

A little over a week ago, the Lesedi La Rona diamond, the second-biggest gem-quality* diamond ever found, sold for a whopping $53 million. Well, whopping is a relative term here, just a few years prior the diamond had failed to sell at auction when nobody was willing to meet the opening bid price, which Sotheby’s had set at $70 million. At 1,109-carats (about…read more

Finding the World’s Second-Biggest Lake Island

Finding the World’s Second-Biggest Lake Island

09/11/2017

Updated on 10/08/2018

You’d think it would be easy to establish which is the world’s second-biggest lake island — a lake island being an island on a lake. For the most part, you can look at a map, figure out which bodies of water are the lakes, then look for the islands in them. Simple right? For the biggest lake island, it’s super…read more

Nagasaki — Second City to Suffer a Nuclear Attack

Nagasaki — Second City to Suffer a Nuclear Attack

08/20/2017

Updated on 09/24/2022

Nagasaki was not the primary target for the nuclear attack the United States launched against Japan on the morning of August 9, 1945. It had barely even made the list of potential targets for atomic bombings. Kokura was the primary target, and Nagasaki was the secondary target should weather conditions have prevented the attack on Kokura. Conditions for the atomic…read more

Survivors

Survivors

06/14/2017

Updated on 10/08/2018

It looks like we can add “survivor of mass extinction” to the list of awesomeness associated with pronghorns. According to this piece on the BBC website, while mastodons, giant sloths, and camels were dying off like a bunch of evolutionary wimps 11,000 years ago, the pronghorn kept bounding along the American plains and deserts like a happy-go-lucky little smart-ass. That part…read more

Polish Climbers Heading to K2

Polish Climbers Heading to K2

05/14/2017

Updated on 10/08/2018

One thing we never mentioned in the K2 article here at SilverMedals.net is that even though the mountain has been climbed many times, it has never been summited in the winter. That may not seem like much of a necessary fact for most readers, but for mountain climbers that is significant. For the most part, mountains are harder to climb…read more