1910 Thomas Edison demonstrated the first talking motion picture.
1913 The crossword puzzle was invented by Arthur Wynne.
1918 Charles Jung invented fortune cookies.
See other inventions at: http://inventors.about.com/od/timelines/a/twentieth_2.htm

The first U.S. coin to bear the words "United States of America," was a penny piece made in 1727. It was also inscribed with the plain-spoken motto: "Mind Your Own Business." 97% of all paper money in the US contains traces of cocaine. Since 1874 the mints of the United States have been making coins for foreign governments, whose combined orders have at times exceeded the volume of domestic requirements.
See more at: http://www.matchdoctor.com/blog_94982/SOME_TRIVIA_ON_MONEY.html

One hundred years ago Sunday August 21, an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the world's most famous painting from the world's most famous museum. Fifty years to the day after the "Mona Lisa" heist, a brazen thief stole Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" from London's National Gallery. Read details about art crime at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-0820-charney-art-theft-20110819,0,117238.story?track=rss

In tens of millions of reviews on Web sites like Amazon.com, Citysearch, TripAdvisor and Yelp, new books are better than Tolstoy, restaurants are undiscovered gems and hotels surpass the Ritz. Or so the reviewers say . As online retailers increasingly depend on reviews as a sales tool, an industry of fibbers and promoters has sprung up to buy and sell raves for a pittance. “For $5, I will submit two great reviews for your business,” offered one entrepreneur on the help-for-hire site Fiverr, one of a multitude of similar pitches. On another forum, Digital Point, a poster wrote, “I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.” The boundless demand for positive reviews has made the review system an arms race of sorts. As more five-star reviews are handed out, even more five-star reviews are needed. Few want to risk being left behind. Sandra Parker, a freelance writer who was hired by a review factory this spring to pump out Amazon reviews for $10 each, said her instructions were simple. “We were not asked to provide a five-star review, but would be asked to turn down an assignment if we could not give one,” said Ms. Parker, whose brief notices for a dozen memoirs are stuffed with superlatives like “a must-read” and “a lifetime’s worth of wisdom.”
Determining the number of fake reviews on the Web is difficult. But it is enough of a problem to attract a team of Cornell researchers, who recently published a paper about creating a computer algorithm for detecting fake reviewers. They were instantly approached by a dozen companies, including Amazon, Hilton, TripAdvisor and several specialist travel sites, all of which have a strong interest in limiting the spread of bogus reviews. “We evolved over 60,000 years by talking to each other face to face,” said Jeffrey T. Hancock, a Cornell professor of communication and information science who worked on the project. “Now we’re communicating in these virtual ways. It feels like it is much harder to pick up clues about deception.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html

Cornell's paper on deceptive opinion spam (fictitious opinions that have been deliberately written to sound authentic) is here:
http://aclweb.org/anthology/P/P11/P11-1032.pdf

The new Lenfast plaza next to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia, designed by recent Rome Prize recipient David A. Rubin of the renowned landscape architecture firm OLIN, will be completed by the end of August and serve as a public performance, exhibition, and civic space. The centerpiece of the plaza will be the Claes Oldenburg sculpture, Paint Torch, a 51 ft. high paintbrush capped with illuminated bristles. A sculpture by 2008 PAFA alumnus Jordan Griska will also be installed and remain on view for approximately a year. Griska’s Grumman Greenhouse will be crafted from a decommissioned US warfare aircraft, turning sections of the plane into working greenhouses. Grumman Greenhouse will be the first work by an emerging artist on display at Lenfest Plaza. The plaza project includes new sidewalks, curbs, lighting, benches, platforms for rotating artwork by PAFA students, alumni and faculty, and provisions for the Paint Torch sculpture. The opening ceremony of the Lenfest Plaza and the lighting of Claes Oldenburg’s Paint Torch sculpture will be held on Saturday, October 1, 2011.
See a drawing of Paint Torch at: http://www.pafa.org/About/Lenfest-Plaza/743/
See pictures of Grumman Greenhouse and artist Jordan Griska at: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/art-entertainment-sports/item/19663-sculture-to-make-philadelphia-crash-landing

German data watchdogs on August 19 ordered federal agencies to shut down their Facebook pages and remove "like" buttons from their Web sites, suggesting that anyone who uses Facebook will have their online activity tracked.
"All institutions in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany [must] shut down their fan pages on Facebook and remove social plug-ins such as the 'like'-button from their Web sites," the German Data Protection Commissioner’s Office said in a statement. "Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years." After "thorough and legal analysis," the commission said it concluded that Facebook and its "like" button violates Germany's Telemedia Act and its Federal Data Protection Act because data is transferred to the U.S. and Web analytics are sent to Web site owners. Facebook's privacy statement "does not nearly meet the legal requirements relevant for compliance of legal notice, privacy consent and general terms of use," the agency said. German agencies have until the end of September to stop using Facebook for official business. This is not the first time German officials have tangled with Facebook or other tech giants. Earlier this month, German data protection officials requested that Facebook disable its facial recognition software and delete any previously stored data. Last year, Johannes Caspar, head of data protection in Hamburg also launched an investigation into how Facebook handles the personal information of people who are not a part of the social networking site. In May, Google also voluntarily opted out of enlarging its Street View program within Germany. Last year, Google announced plans to extend Street View to 20 German cities by year's end, including Munich, Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremburg, and Düsseldorf. For those who did not want photos of their homes included in Street View, Google gave people until Sept. 15 to notify the company via google.de/streetview. In all, 240,000 people opted out of having their homes on Street View. But continuing in the country apparently wasn't worth the effort.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2391440,00.asp