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A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but it would be decades before reliable synchronization was achieved in a commercially practical way. The first commercial screening of movies with fully synchronized sound took place in the United States in April 1923. In the early years after the introduction of sound, films incorporating synchronized dialogue were known as "talkies." The first feature-length movie originally presented as a talkie was The Jazz Singer, released in October 1927. By the early 1930s, the talkies were a global phenomenon. In the United States, they helped secure Hollywood's position as one of the world's most powerful cultural/commercial systems. (more...)

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On February 24, ..

1582 - Pope Gregory XIII announced the Gregorian calendar.
1803 - Marbury v. Madison established judicial review in the U.S.
1917 - The Zimmermann Telegram was delivered, complicating World War I.
1999 - Arizona executed German national Karl LaGrand.

Recent days: February 23 - February 22

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...that the Certosa di Pavia (pictured) was commissioned by Gian Galeazzo Visconti to be built halfway between his two courts in Milan and Pavia?
...that Jason Bedrick, a New Hampshire state representative, is that state's first Orthodox Jewish elected official?
...that as a teenager, Chiri Yukie prepared the first Japanese translations of several of the yukar sagas of the Ainu people?
...that the Vedic Mathematics genre was revived after Hindu Shankaracharya Jagadguru Swami Sri Bharati Krishna Tirthaji Maharaja rediscovered it in the form of sixteen sutras?
...that the Department of State Lands is one of Oregon's oldest government agencies?
...that on October 5, 1914, a French Voisin III pilot scored the first air-to-air kill of World War I?

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In the news

Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan, abdicates in favour of his son Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck a year earlier than expected.
The Chinese River Dolphin (illustrated) is declared functionally extinct, the first extinction of a large mammal in recent decades.
Suffolk police launch an investigation on five dead bodies discovered near Ipswich in Suffolk, England.
Astronauts on mission STS-116 attempt to retract a solar array on the International Space Station's Integrated Truss Structure.
Former President of Ethiopia Mengistu Haile Mariam is convicted in absentia of genocide by an Ethiopian court for his part in the so-called "Red Terror".

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Obituaries

Italian cyclist Marco Pantani died suddenly at a hotel in Rimini, Italy on February 14.
Former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev was killed in an apparent car bomb explosion on February 13.
Former leader of the Canadian liberal party, Claude Ryan, died from stomach cancer on February 9 at age 79.

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