Today is World Turtle Day, created to help people celebrate and protect turtles and tortoises and their disappearing habitats.
Stephen Hawking tells the story in A Brief History of Time of a scientist who was giving a public lecture on the orbit of the earth when a "little old lady" told him he was talking rubbish - that the world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise: The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!" This has become a popular reference for the infinite regression problem of the ultimate origins of existence.
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