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November 3
Music recording certifications are typically awarded by the global music industry based on the total units sold or shipped to the retailers. These awards and their requirements are defined by the various certifying bodies representing the music industry in various countries and territories worldwide. The standard certification awards given consist of Gold (example pictured), Platinum, and sometimes Diamond awards, in ascending order; the UK also has a Silver certification, ranking below Gold. In most cases, a "Multi-Platinum" or "Multi-Diamond" award is given for multiples of the Platinum or Diamond requirements. Though all certifying bodies give awards for album sales or shipments, many also certify singles, paid digital downloads, music videos, music DVDs, and master ringtones. Additionally, some certifying bodies have separate threshold scales for works of domestic or international origins, varying genres, lengths, and formats. (Full list...)
November 7
The Sakharov Prize, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, was established in December 1988 by the European Parliament as a means to honor individuals and groups of people who have dedicated their lives to the defense of human rights and freedom of thought. A shortlist of nominees is drawn up by the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Committee on Development, with the winner announced in October. The prize is accompanied by a monetary award of €50,000. The first prize was awarded jointly to South African Nelson Mandela and Russian Anatoly Marchenko. The 1990 award was given to Aung San Suu Kyi, but she could not collect it until 2013 (pictured) as a result of her political imprisonment in Burma. The prize has also been awarded to organisations, the first being the Argentine Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in 1992. Some Sakharov laureates still face harsh political oppression. 2011 laureate Razan Zaitouneh is still living in hiding in Syria. Nasrin Sotoudeh was released from prison in September 2013, and, along with fellow 2012 laureate Jafar Panahi, is still banned from leaving Iran. (Full list...)
November 10
While predictions of the future can never be absolutely certain, a projected course for the farthest future events may be sketched out based on present scientific understanding in various fields, if only in the broadest strokes. All predictions of the future of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe must account for the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or a loss of the energy available to do work, must increase over time. Stars must eventually exhaust their supply of hydrogen fuel and burn out. Eventually, matter itself will come under the influence of radioactive decay, as even the most stable materials break apart into subatomic particles. The infinite future potentially allows for the occurrence of a number of massively improbable events, such as the formation of a Boltzmann brain. Many questions about the far future are still unresolved, such as whether humans will become extinct, whether protons decay or whether the Earth will be destroyed by the Sun's expansion into a red giant (illustration pictured). (Full list...)
November 14
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The NFPB adds to the NFR up to 25 films each year, showcasing the range and diversity of American film heritage to increase awareness for its preservation. A film is not required to be feature-length, nor is it required to have been theatrically released. The NFR contains newsreels, silent films, experimental films, short films, films out of copyright protection, film serials, home films, documentaries, independent films, television films, and music videos. Currently, the earliest listed film is Newark Athlete (1891), and the most recent is Decasia (2002). The time between a film's debut and its selection varies greatly. The shortest span is the minimum 10 years; this distinction is shared by Raging Bull, Do the Right Thing, Goodfellas, Toy Story, and Fargo. (Full list...)
November 17
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Individual portraits of 53 people central to the history of the United States are depicted on the country's banknotes. There have been no changes in the people depicted on currency intended for the general public since 1928; when Woodrow Wilson was depicted on the 1934 $100,000 gold certificate (portrait pictured), the note was only for internal Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank use. Five people have been depicted on U.S. currency during their lifetime. Abraham Lincoln was portrayed on the 1861 $10 Demand Note; Salmon Chase, Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, approved his own portrait for the 1862 $1 Legal Tender Note; Winfield Scott was depicted on Interest Bearing Notes during the early 1860s; and Francis Spinner and Spencer Clark both approved the use of their own image on fractional currency. In 1873, driven in large part by the actions of Spinner and Clark, Congress prohibited the use of portraits of living people on any U.S. banknote. (Full list...)
November 21
The bibliography of Fyodor Dostoyevsky comprises novels, novellas, short stories, essays and other literary works. Dostoyevsky started his writing career after finishing university. He started translating literature from French—which he learnt at a noble school—into Russian, and then wrote short stories. With the success of his first novel Poor Folk, he became known throughout Saint Petersburg and Russia. This success did not continue with his second novel The Double, and other short stories published mainly in left-wing magazines. Because of his participation in the Petrashevsky Circle, Dostoyevsky was imprisoned in Siberia for four years, during which time he wrote several works, including the autobiographical The House of the Dead. Following his release, Dostoyevsky wrote his most important works, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Gambler and The Brothers Karamazov. Several drafts and plans, especially those begun during his honeymoon, remain unfinished. (Full list...)
November 24
There are eighteen official symbols of the U.S. state of Minnesota, as designated by the Minnesota Legislature. The state's motto and seal were both appointed in 1861. Minnesota did not designate another official symbol until 1945, when "Hail! Minnesota", then the official song of the University of Minnesota, was designated as state song. Minnesota schoolchildren have been the force behind the successful promotion of four official symbols: the blueberry muffin, the monarch butterfly, the Honeycrisp apple, and ice hockey. The 1918 black-and-white photograph Grace, taken by Eric Enstrom in Bovey and later reproduced as a color painting (pictured) by his daughter, was named state photograph in 2002. Through the years, the state legislature has also voted on unsuccessful bills to designate the Tilt-A-Whirl as official amusement ride, the works Little House on the Prairie and On the Banks of Plum Creek as state book, and "Minnesota Blue" as official poem. (Full list...)
November 28
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner (pictured) that have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, and has continued under the directorship of his family since his death. The operas in the Bayreuth canon are the last ten of the thirteen that Wagner completed. He rejected the first three — Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi — as apprentice works. Although these have been staged elsewhere, and Rienzi was very popular into the early 20th century, the works in the canon exceed them, both in the number of performances given and in the number of available recordings. The term Bayreuth canon is therefore sometimes glossed as meaning the composer's mature operas. Georg Solti was the first conductor to complete studio recordings of all the works in the canon, starting in 1958 with Das Rheingold and finishing in 1986 with Lohengrin. (Full list...)