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Steve Wilhite's slide at the 2013 Webby Awards

The pronunciation of GIF has been disputed since the 1990s. GIF, an acronym for the Graphics Interchange Format, is popularly pronounced in English as a one-syllable word. The most common pronunciations in English are /dʒɪf/ (listen) (with a soft g as in gin) and /ɡɪf/ (listen) (with a hard g as in gift), differing in the phoneme represented by the letter G. Many public figures and institutions have taken sides in the debate; Steve Wilhite, the file format's creator, gave a speech at the 2013 Webby Awards (slide pictured) arguing that only the soft g pronunciation is correct. Polls show that the hard g pronunciation is more common, although the frequency of each pronunciation varies by region; in addition, some speakers enunciate each letter in GIF, making it /dʒiː aɪ ɛf/ (listen). English dictionaries generally accept both main alternatives as valid, and linguistic analyses show no clear advantage for either main pronunciation based on the pronunciation frequencies of similar English words. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

Moshassuck Valley Railroad

... that the two-mile-long (3.2 km) Moshassuck Valley Railroad (pictured) operated independently for 105 years?
... that Job Abbott designed the first through cantilever bridge in North America?
... that ska-crazed dancers at a Stretch Armstrong concert once became so intense that three people left on stretchers and one in a hospital helicopter?
... that One Night with Regine was a concert in support of the child-welfare program Bantay Bata, staged on the steps of the entrance façade of the National Museum of Anthropology in Manila?
... that Hanning Schröder, who in the 1930s played historical instruments in the Harlan Trio together with his wife, was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations?
... that Thihapate of Mohnyin, who was laying siege to Mogaung, refused the court's offer to be king of Ava, saying he was neither a son nor a younger brother of the king, and returned to the siege?
... that the Ja Ja Ding Dong Guy announced the points from Iceland in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021?
... that when A Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell screened at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, Lloyd Kaufman said that "no one else was dumb enough to do a dinosaur movie"?

In the news

Jeanine Áñez

Former Bolivian president Jeanine Áñez (pictured) is sentenced to ten years in prison on charges related to her succession to office during the 2019 political crisis.
Voters in Kazakhstan pass 56 constitutional amendments in a referendum, following the January 2022 unrest.
In Nigeria, at least 40 people are killed in an attack at a Catholic church in Owo, Ondo State.
A fire and explosions at a storage depot in Sitakunda, Bangladesh, kill at least 47 people and injure around 450 others.

On this day

June 15

Queen Noor of Jordan

763 BC – The Bur-Sagale eclipse was observed in Assyria, the earliest solar eclipse mentioned in historical sources that has been successfully identified.
1896 – An earthquake registering 7.2 M_s and subsequent tsunami struck Japan, destroying about 9,000 homes and causing at least 22,000 deaths.
1920 – Three African-American circus workers were lynched by a mob in Duluth, Minnesota, a crime that shocked the country for having taken place in the Northern United States.
1978 – King Hussein of Jordan married American Lisa Halaby, who became known as Queen Noor of Jordan (pictured).
2012 – American acrobat Nik Wallenda became the first person to walk a tightrope stretched directly over Niagara Falls.

Eadburh of Winchester (d. 960)
Antoine-François de Fourcroy (b. 1755)
Choi Hong-hi (d. 2002)

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Today's featured picture

Guano is the accumulated excrement of seabirds and bats. As a manure, guano is a highly effective fertilizer due to its exceptionally high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium: key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a lesser extent, sought for the production of gunpowder and other explosive materials. The demand for guano in the 19th century spurred the human colonization of remote bird islands in many parts of the world, resulting in some of the first examples of United States colonialism and the expansion of the British Empire. However, the guano-mining process resulted in ecological degradation through the loss of millions of seabirds. This photograph, taken near Île-de-Bréhat in northwestern France, depicts a herring gull (Larus argentatus) excreting waste, which accumulates to form guano.

Photograph credit: Nicolas Sanchez

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