- Undoubtedly the most familiar star pattern in the entire sky is the seven stars that make up the shape popularly termed the Plough or Big Dipper, part of the third-largest constellation, Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The seven stars form the rump and tail of the bear, while the rest of the animal is comprised of fainter stars. Its Greek name in the Almagest was Ἄρκτος Μεγάλη (Arktos Megale); Ursa Major is the Latin equivalent.
- How did Dennis Ritchie Produce his PhD Thesis? A Typographical Mystery (fermatslibrary.com)
Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and, with Ken Thompson, the co-creator of the Unix operating system, completed his Harvard PhD thesis on recursive function theory in early 1968. But for unknown reasons, he never officially received his degree, and the thesis itself disappeared for nearly 50 years. This strange set of circumstances raises at least three broad questions…