The Tamil people are an ethnic group from South Asia with a recorded history going back almost two millennia. The oldest Tamil communities are those of southern India and north-eastern Sri Lanka. Unlike many ethnic groups, the Tamils have at no time been governed by a single political entity; Tamil̲akam, the traditional name for the Tamil lands, has always been under the rule of more than one kingdom or state. Despite this, the Tamil cultural identity has always been strong. Historically, this identity has been primarily linguistic, with Tamils being those whose first language was Tamil. In recent times, however, the definition has been broadened to also include emigrants of Tamil descent who maintain Tamil traditions, even when they no longer speak the language. Tamils are ethnically, linguistically and culturally related to the other Dravidian peoples of South Asia. There are an estimated 74 million Tamils around the world.

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This 1873 painting, Les dernières cartouches ("The last bullets") depicts a small detachment from the "Blue Division" of the French Army's Troupes de marine in the Battle of Bazeilles on 1 September 1870. As the French Army retreated from its loss at the Battle of Sedan, this group remained in the last house on the road to Sedan, fighting to the last bullet to cover the retreat.

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• ... that according to Russian sociologist Daria Khaltourina, Protestantism positively influenced the capitalist development of social systems through the promotion of literacy and Bible reading?
• ... that Rhodesian soccer captain Bobby Chalmers, a white man, was assisted in his leadership of the mostly black national team by his proficiency in both Ndebele and Shona?
• ... that following the 2011 Libyan civil war, many Tuareg fighters (pictured) for the defeated government became members of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, seeking an independent Azawad?

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• 14 September 1955 - Foundation of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots
• 20 September 1848 - American Association for the Advancement of Science (pictured) created in Pennsylvania
• 21 September 1995 - Nepal Physical Society signed the agreement to be a reciprocal society with the American Physical Society (APS)
• 30 September 1845 - Phi Alpha Literary Society founded in a college dorm room

“ The only living socities are those which are animated by inequality and injustice. ” — Paul Claudel, Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher

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Carl Linnaeus (Swedish original name Carl Nilsson Linnæus, 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology. Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus (after 1761 Carolus a Linné). Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland, in southern Sweden. Linnaeus received most of his higher education at Uppsala University, and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published a first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden, where he became professor of botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 60s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, and published several volumes. At the time of his death, he was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe. In botany, the author abbreviation used to indicate Linnaeus as the authority for species' names is L. In 1959, Carl Linnaeus was designated as the lectotype for Homo sapiens, which means that following the nomenclatural rules, Homo sapiens was validly defined as the animal species to which Linnaeus belonged. (Full article...)

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