Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian merchant, explorer, and navigator from the Republic of Florence, from whose name the term "America" is derived.
February 22, 1512
March 9, 1451
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (/ˈɡɔɪə/; Spanish: [fɾanˈθisko xoˈse ðe ˈɣoʝa i luˈθjentes]) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.
April 16, 1828
Painting by franciscoFrancisco de goyaGoya
Saturn Devouring His Son is a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya. It is traditionally interpreted as a depiction of the Greek myth of the Titan Cronus (known as Saturn in Roman mythology) eating one of his offspring. Fearing a prophecy foretold by Gaea that predicted he would be overthrown by one of his children, Saturn ate each one upon their birth. The work is one of the 14 so-called Black Paintings that Goya painted directly on the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to canvas after Goya's death and is now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.
Motorcycle
The Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa is a sport bike motorcycle made by Suzuki since 1999. It immediately won acclaim as the world's fastest production motorcycle, with a top speed of 303 to 312 km/h (188 to 194 mph).
In 1999, fears of a European regulatory backlash or import ban led to an informal agreement between the Japanese and European manufacturers to govern the top speed of their motorcycles at an arbitrary limit.The media-reported value for the speed agreement in miles per hour was consistently 186 mph, while in kilometers per hour it varied from 299 to 303 km/h, which is typical given unit conversion rounding errors. This figure may also be affected by a number of external factors, as can the power and torque values.
The conditions under which this limitation was adopted led to the 1999 Hayabusa's title remaining, at least technically, unassailable, since no subsequent model could go faster without being tampered with. After the much anticipated Kawasaki Ninja ZX-12R of 2000 fell 6 km/h (4 mph) short of claiming the title, the Hayabusa secured its place as the fastest standard production bike of the 20th century. This gives the unrestricted 1999 models even more cachet with collectors.
Besides its speed, the Hayabusa has been lauded by many reviewers for its all-round performance, in that it does not drastically compromise other qualities like handling, comfort, reliability, noise, fuel economy or price in pursuit of a single function. Jay Koblenz of Motorcycle Consumer News commented, "If you think the ability of a motorcycle to approach 190 mph or reach the quarter-mile in under 10 seconds is at best frivolous and at worst offensive, this still remains a motorcycle worthy of just consideration. The Hayabusa is Speed in all its glory. But Speed is not all the Hayabusa is."
American astrophysicist and science communicator
Neil deGrasse Tyson (US: /dəˈɡræs/ or UK: /dəˈɡrɑːs/; born October 5, 1958) is an American astrophysicist, planetary scientist, author, and science communicator. Tyson studied at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin, and Columbia University. From 1991 to 1994, he was a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. In 1994, he joined the Hayden Planetarium as a staff scientist and the Princeton faculty as a visiting research scientist and lecturer. In 1996, he became director of the planetarium and oversaw its $210 million reconstruction project, which was completed in 2000. Since 1996, he has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium at the Rose Center for Earth and Space in New York City. The center is part of the American Museum of Natural History, where Tyson founded the Department of Astrophysics in 1997 and has been a research associate in the department since 2003.
From 1995 to 2005, Tyson wrote monthly essays in the "Universe" column for Natural History magazine, some of which were later published in his books Death by Black Hole (2007) and Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (2017). During the same period, he wrote a monthly column in StarDate magazine, answering questions about the universe under the pen name "Merlin". Material from the column appeared in his books Merlin's Tour of the Universe (1998) and Just Visiting This Planet (1998). Tyson served on a 2001 government commission on the future of the U.S. aerospace industry and on the 2004 Moon, Mars and Beyond commission. He was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal in the same year. From 2006 to 2011, he hosted the television show NOVA ScienceNow on PBS. Since 2009, Tyson has hosted the weekly podcast StarTalk. A spin-off, also called StarTalk, began airing on National Geographic in 2015. In 2014, he hosted the television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, a successor to Carl Sagan's 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences awarded Tyson the Public Welfare Medal in 2015 for his "extraordinary role in exciting the public about the wonders of science".
A crankshaft is a shaft driven by a crank mechanism consisting of a series of cranks and crankpins to which the connecting rods of an engine is attached.
The Yamaha MT-09 is a Yamaha naked or standard motorcycle of the MT series with an 847–890 cc (51.7–54.3 cu in) liquid-cooled 4-stroke 12-valve DOHC inline-three engine with crossplane crankshaft, a lightweight cast alloy frame. For 2018, the bike is now designated MT-09 in all markets.
The MT-09 competes against the Triumph Street Triple, the Kawasaki Z900 and the MV Agusta Brutale 800. It is intended to restore Yamaha's fortunes, as the factory has in recent years lost its reputation for innovation.[opinion] The MT-09's product manager, Shun Miyazawa, said Yamaha had considered parallel-twins, inline-threes, inline-fours and V-twins, but that the inline-three gave the "best solution" of power, torque and low weight. Comparing the MT-09 to the Street Triple, he said the Triumph was a streetfighter, but the Yamaha was a "roadster motard".
Both the frame and the double-sided swingarm are made of lightweight alloy which are cast in two pieces. The frame castings are bolted together at the headstock and at the rear, but the swingarm parts are welded together. The MT-09 is the first Yamaha motorcycle since the XS750 and XS850 to be powered by an inline-three engine. Both are shaft-driven motorcycles produced from 1976 to 1981.
In 2017, the MT-09 was updated with fully adjustable suspension, traction control, ABS, slipper clutch, LED headlights and updated styling.
In October 2020, the MT-09 received the second update with a larger 890 cc (54 cu in) engine.
A sequential manual transmission, also known as a sequential gearbox, or a sequential transmission, is a type of non-synchronous manual transmission used mostly for motorcycles and racing cars.
A sequential manual transmission is unsynchronized, and allows the driver to select either the next gear (e.g. shifting from first gear to second gear) or the previous gear (e.g., shifting from third gear to second gear), operated either via electronic paddle-shifters mounted behind the steering wheel or with a sequential shifter. This restriction avoids accidentally selecting the wrong gear; however, it also prevents the driver from deliberately "skipping" gears. The use of dog clutches (rather than synchromesh) results in faster shift speeds than a conventional manual transmission.
On a sequential manual transmission, the shift lever operates a ratchet mechanism that converts the fore-and-aft motion of the shift lever into rotation of a selector drum (sometimes called a barrel) which has three or four tracks machined around its circumference. Selector forks are guided by the tracks, either directly or via selector rods. The tracks deviate around the circumference and as the drum rotates, the selector forks are moved to select the required gear.
A sequential manual transmission is not to be confused with a "sequential" shifting function sometimes fitted to hydraulic automatic transmission, marketed with terms such as "Tiptronic" or "SportShift". This function allows the driver to select the previous or next gear through the use of buttons or a lever (usually near the gear shifter or steering wheel); however, the mechanicals of the transmission are unrelated to a true sequential manual transmission.
Most motorcycles use a sequential manual transmission. The rider controls the gear shifter with their foot, allowing their hands to remain on the handlebars, and gear selection uses a layout of 1 - N - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 (for a typical 6-speed gearbox, said as "one down, five up"). However, most modern motor scooters do not use a sequential manual transmission; instead using either a hydraulic automatic transmission, or a belt-driven or chain-driven continuously variable transmission. Underbones, however, often use a semi-automatic transmission with an automatic centrifugal clutch, but will still retain the conventional foot-operated gearshift lever, such as the Honda Super Cub.
The first proper sequential manual gearbox used in a racecar was with the Porsche Type 360 Cisitalia in 1946, followed by the infamously unreliable Queerbox design, pioneered by Richard Ansdale and Harry Mundy, which was used in various Lotus Grand Prix racecars during the late-1950s and early-1960s, beginning with the 1958 Lotus 12, and is technically the first proper "sequential" gearbox used in a racecar. Most racing cars also use a sequential transmission now (via a sequential shift lever, with a mechanical linkage, or electronic paddle-shifters), rather than the old H-pattern stick shift, beginning with the paddle-shifted Williams FW14 Formula One car in 1991, which used a sequential drum-rotation mechanism.
The first modern sequential manual gearbox with a manual shift lever was used in the 1990 Peugeot 905 Group C sports car, followed by the Ferrari 333 SP LMP racecar and CART Champ Cars/Indycars in 1994 and 1996, and then the McLaren F1 GTR, Mercedes-Benz CLK GTR, Porsche 911 GT1, and Panoz Esperante GTR-1 GT1 racecars in 1996 and 1997. This was closely followed by WRC Rally cars in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and also the Porsche LMP1-98, Nissan R390 GT1, Toyota GT-One, and the BMW V12 LM' and LMR Le Mans Prototype racecars in 1998 and 1999.
Touring cars have also used sequential manual gearboxes; starting with the European DTM series in 2000, which used it for 12 seasons, until a switch to a paddle-shift system in 2012. The Australian V8 Supercars series started using sequential manual gearboxes in 2008, after switching from an H-pattern manual gearbox.
NASCAR is due to introduce a 5-speed sequential manual transmission with their Gen-7 car in 2022, after using a conventional 4-speed H-pattern manual transmission for many years.
Due to the high rate of wear and abrupt shifting action, sequential manual transmissions are rarely used in passenger cars, albeit with some exceptions.