April 11, 1954 was the most uneventful and boring day of the 20th century.
Every day something of significance occurs, but nothing remarkable had happened on the said day in 1954, according to experts who inserted over 300 million important events of the century into a computer search programme to calculate.
According to the results of the search machine, called True Knowledge, on that day a general election was held in Belgium, a Turkish academic was born and an Oldham Athletic footballer called Jack Shufflebotham died. Apart from that nothing much happened.
Developed by Cambridge University technologist William Tunstall-Pedoe, the Internet search engine reached its lofty decision after analysing some 300 million facts about "people, places, business and events" that made the news.
Using complex algorithms, such as how much one piece of information was linked to others, True Knowledge determined that particular Sunday of 1954 to be outstanding in its obscurity.
"Nobody significant died that day, no major events apparently occurred and, although a typical day in the 20th century has many notable people being born, for some reason that day had only one who might make that claim - Abdullah Atalar, a Turkish academic," Tunstall-Pedoe was quoted as saying by the Telegraph.
He said: "The irony is, though, that having done the calculation the day is interesting for being exceptionally boring. Unless, that is, you are Abdullah Atalar."
Plans for the coup d'etat in Yanaon, then a small French colony in India, are also believed to have been hatched that on the evening of April 11, 1954 but nothing actually happened that night.
Tunstall-Pedoe emphasised that True Knowlegde was not designed solely to search for boring days. "It's just a sideline," he said.
Its true calling was to provide a more intelligent way of searching the internet.
Professor Abdullah Atalar now researches atomic force microscopy and digital integrated circuit design at Bilkent University.
Earlier, April 30, 1930 had been dubbed as the dullest day of the 20th century after a BBC Radio announcer at the 6.30pm bulletin declared: "There is no news".
True Knowledge was launched online in February this year. Unlike other sites such as Google, it provides a direct answer to a question instead of providing a list of links.
The system can store hundreds of millions of facts about people, places, events and businesses.
No comments:
Post a Comment