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The Encyclopædia Britannica is a general encyclopaedia published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., a privately held company. The articles in the Britannica are aimed at educated adult readers, and written by a staff of 19 full-time editors and over 4,000 expert contributors. The Britannica, widely considered to be the most scholarly of encyclopaedias, is the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still in print. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh and quickly grew in popularity and size, with its third edition in 1801 reaching 20 volumes. Its rising stature helped in recruiting eminent contributors, and the 9th and 11th editions are regarded as landmark encyclopaedias for scholarship and literary style. Beginning with the 11th edition, the Britannica gradually shortened and simplified its articles. In 1933, the Britannica became the first encyclopaedia to adopt a "continuous revision" policy, in which the encyclopaedia is continually reprinted and every article is updated on a regular schedule. The current edition (the 15th) has a unique three-part structure: a 12-volume Micropædia of short articles, a 17-volume Macropædia of long articles and a hierarchical outline of all human knowledge in a single Propædia volume. The size of the Britannica has remained roughly constant over the past 70 years, with about 40 million words on half a million topics. Certain earlier editions of the Britannica have been criticised for inaccuracy, bias and unauthoritative contributors; the accuracy of the present edition has likewise been questioned, although such criticisms have been challenged by the Britannica's management. (more...)

Recently featured: William Tecumseh Sherman – European Parliament – Mauna Loa

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Did you know...

From Wikipedia's newest articles:

...that the United Nations has a collection of artworks (gift from former USSR pictured) which were donated by its member states?
...that in his rookie year, Major league baseball pitcher Matt Kilroy set a record of 513 strikeouts, which still stands 131 years later?
...that Japanese writer Makoto Oda wrote his 1961 book Nandemo Mite yaro (I'll go and see everything) on his travels through Europe and Asia on a budget of a dollar a day?
...that Michelle Morgan, a child abuse victim murdered by her stepmother at age four, was featured on an episode of Cold Case Files?
...that Vitalian of Capua's biography says he refused to return to his post as bishop after being thrown into the Garigliano River in a leather bag?
...that at 34 months, Georgia Brown became youngest ever female member of Mensa?
...that the Polish Home Army planned an uprising in Krakow in 1944 to complement the Warsaw Uprising, but it fell through because of several obstacles?

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In the news

Barry Bonds hits his 756th career home run, passing Hank Aaron for the career home run record in Major League Baseball.
NASA launches the Phoenix spacecraft on a Delta II rocket (pictured), beginning a mission to Mars.
An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom prompts the banning of exports from Great Britain (but not Northern Ireland) of livestock and other animal products.
Patriarch Teoctist I of the Romanian Orthodox Church dies of surgical complications after an operation for prostate adenoma and is buried in Bucharest.
Russian MIR bathyscaphes perform the first crewed descent to the seabed at the North Pole in a bid to strengthen the claim for an extension of Russia's continental shelf.
A series of floods on the Indian subcontinent leaves millions homeless, with the Gangetic plain in India and its delta in Bangladesh being the worst affected areas.

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On this day...

August 8: Father's Day in Taiwan.

1786 – Michel-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat became the first people to climb Mont Blanc in the Alps, one of the highest mountains in Europe.
1870 – Liberal radicals in Ploieşti, Romania revolted against Romanian Domnitor Carol I, only to be arrested the next day.
1876 – Thomas Edison received a patent for his mimeograph machine, a printing machine that was one of the forerunners to the photocopier.
1938 – The Holocaust: Construction of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, one of the largest labour camp complexes in German-occupied Europe, began.
1967 – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand founded the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
1991 – The Warsaw radio mast (pictured), the tallest structure ever built at 646.38 m (2,121 ft), collapsed due to an error in exchanging the guys on the highest stock of the mast.

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Recent days: August 7 – August 6 – August 5

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Today's featured picture

A section of the GISP2 ice core (view the entire image) from 1837 meters (6027 feet) deep in which annual layers of ice are clearly visible (38 years are represented in the entire image). The appearance of layers results from differences in the size of snow crystals deposited in winter versus summer and resulting variations in the abundance and size of air bubbles trapped in the ice.

Photo credit: National Ice Core Laboratory

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