Scholastic Bowl: All Questions

Hadrons

These particles are any particles made out of quarks (alternatively, any particle affected by the strong nuclear force). Generally, this means the baryons and the mesons. All of these particles are colorless (in the sense of the combined color of their constituent quarks).

J. Robert Oppenheimer

This American physicist oversaw much of the Manhattan project, but was later stripped of his security clearance during the McCarthy-era Red Scare, as a result of his acquaintance with communists and his enmity with Edward Teller.

John Maynard Keynes

This English Economist is most famous for The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which judged most of classical economic analysis to be a special case (hence "General Theory") and argued that the best way to deal with prolonged recessions was deficit spending.

Thor Heyerdahl

This anthropologist and five companions sailed across the Pacific Ocean — going from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands — on a balsa-wood raft named Kon-Tiki, after the Incan sun god Kon-Tiki Viracocha. He later built two boats from papyrus (Ra, which failed in 1969, and Ra II, which succeeded in 1970) to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. These voyages demonstrated the possibility that ancient people could have migrated around the globe using only primitive rafts.

Sei Shonagan

This author was a lady-in-waiting of the Empress. Since Lady Murasaki and this author were contemporaries and known for their wit, they were often rivals*. Her only work is the Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), which is considered the best source of information about life at the Japanese court during the Heian period (784-1185).

Namib Desert

This coastal desert, is known for its bizarre Welwitschia and medicinal Hoodia plants. It is thought to be the oldest desert in the world.

Rub' al-Khali

This desert, whose name means "Empty Quarter" in English, can be considered the most inhospitable place on earth. It is known for the world's largest oil field, the Ghawar, and for once being part of the frankincense trade.

Taklamakan Desert

This extremely cold, sandy desert is known for splitting the Silk Road into branches running north and south of it. It is bounded by the Kunlun, Pamir, and Tian Shan mountain ranges.

John Kerry

This former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee lost the 2004 Presidential Election to George Bush. His major foreign policy involvement has been in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Horus

This god of the sky and light and the son of Isis and Osiris. In earlier myth he was the brother of Set, and son of Ra. His mother impregnated herself with the dead Osiris, and this god was hidden by his mother. When he was grown, he avenged his father's death, driving away Set. In the battle, he lost his eye, but regained it thanks to the god Thoth. Thus this deity came to rule over the earth. He was known to have two faces, that of the falcon, Harsiesis, and that of a child, Harpocrates.

Hydrogen

This is the first element on the periodic table and, by far, the most common element in the Universe. In addition to the main isotope (also called protium), there are two other significant isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium, which has one neutron, and tritium , which has two neutrons. It naturally exists as a diatomic gas, which was discovered by British chemist Henry Cavendish. It is highly flammable when exposed to high temperatures or electric current; a notable example of this was the Hindenburg disaster.

Po River

This longest-Italian river passes through Piedmont and Lombardy before entering the Adriatic 30 miles south of Venice. It flows through Turin and Cremona, and it passes near Milan, Padua, Pavia, and Mantua. This river has a long history of floods, and the manmade levees called argini which protect towns and crops can exacerbate the floods. Pollution, especially from Milan, is becoming a major environmental concern.

Wolfgang Pauli

This man namesake exclusion principle prohibits most types of particles from occupying the same state, and forms the basis for chemical bonds.

Jimmy Doolittle

This man served as a flight instructor for the U.S. Army during World War I, and after the war became a celebrated race pilot, reaching a world-record speed of 296 miles per hour in 1932. Rejoining the military after Pearl Harbor, he personally led the a namesake raid in which 16 B-25 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and bombed the Japanese home islands in April 1942. Following the raid, he commanded the Eighth Air Force that launched massive bombing raids against Germany.

Igor Stravinsky

This man studied under Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Diaghilev, The Firebird and Petrushka. His Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913), however, is what inaugurated music's Modern era. A pagan story featuring polytonal music, The Rite of Spring shocked the audience so much that riots ensued, leading this stunned composer to pursue rational, "neoclassical" music, such as his Symphony of Psalms. In 1940 he moved to Hollywood, where he composed his one full-length opera, The Rake's Progress, with libretto by W.H. Auden. Late in life, he adopted the serialist, twelve-tone style of Webern, producing the abstract ballet Agon (1957).

William Seward

This man wanted to resign prior to Lincoln's inauguration, but the request was denied. Prior to the purchase of Alaska , he helped set the conditions that ended the Atlantic slave trade in the Lyons-Seward treaty between the US and UK. He survived an assassination attempt the night Lincoln was shot. The purchase of Alaska was completed on March 30, 1867 for close to two cents an acre from Russia.

Oe Kenzaburo

This man was a novelist and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first work, Shiiku (The Catch in the Shadow of the Sunrise), describes a friendship between a Japanese boy and a black American POW, and won him the Akutagawa award while he was still a student. His early works are filled with insanity, abuse, perverse sex, and violence, but his later works (including A Personal Matter (Kojinteki-na taiken) and The Silent Cry (Man'en gannen no futtoboru) reflect the experience of being the father of a brain-damaged child. His fiction centers on the alienation following Japan's surrender and his political writings focus on the search for cultural and ideological roots.

Vostok 6

This mission transported the first woman (Valentina Tereshkova) into space. This mission was largely uneventful, though Tereshkova did note minor physical pains and also could not reach the scientific experiments aboard.

Endoplasmic Reticulum

This organelle is a network of tube-like membranes continuous with the nuclear envelope that comes in rough (with ribosomes) and smooth (without ribosomes) varieties. In this organelle, proteins undergo modifications and folding to yield the final, functional protein structures.

Aeneas

This son of Aphrodite and Anchises was knocked unconscious by a large rock thrown by Diomedes, but was evacuated by Aphrodite and Apollo. He succeeds the late Hector as Trojan troop commander and survives the fall of Troy, ultimately settling in Italy. His son Iulus founds Alba Longa, near the site of Rome. That bloodline is the basis of Julius Caesar's claim to have descended from Venus.

Hector

This son of Priam and Hecuba was the noblest character on either side on of the Trojan War. A favorite of Apollo, this captain of the Trojan forces exchanges gifts with Ajax after neither can conquer the other in single combat. He kills Patroclus when that Greek goes into battle wearing the armor of his friend, Achilles. Killed by Achilles to avenge the death of Patroclus, he is greatly mourned by all of Troy. Funeral games take place in his honor.

Henry VIII

This son of Tudor founder Henry VII, who brought England into both the Renaissance and the Reformation, patronized the philosopher Erasmus, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger, and the writer Thomas More. Originally a supporter of the Catholic Church--the Pope had named him "Defender of the Faith"--he named himself head of the Church of England in 1533 so that he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. He also executed top ministers who crossed him, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More. He married six times, but only his third wife, Jane Seymour, bore him a son, the sickly Edward VI.

Gunsmoke

With 635 episodes that aired over 20 seasons, this show was the longest-running prime-time series in American television history until The Simpsons overtook it. Set in Dodge City, Kansas in the late 19th century, it centered on U.S. marshal Matt Dillon. For several seasons in the early 1960s, it featured a young Burt Reynolds as blacksmith Quint Asper.

1896 Summer Olympics

Held in Athens, Greece, his first edition of the modern Olympics was the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France; winners were awarded silver medals. Some of the stranger events included one-handed weightlifting and 100-meter freestyle swimming for members of the Greek navy. Appropriately, Greek shepherd Spiridon Louis became the hero of the Games by winning the marathon.

The Barber of Seville

In this Rossini opera, Count Almaviva loves Rosina, the ward of Dr. Bartolo. Figaro (who brags about his wit in Largo al factotum) promises to help him win the girl. He tries the guise of the poor student Lindoro, a drunken soldier, and then a replacement music teacher, all of which are penetrated by Dr. Bartolo. Eventually they succeed by climbing in with a ladder and bribing the notary who was to marry Rosina to Dr. Bartolo himself. This opera is also based on a work of Pierre de Beaumarchais and is a prequel to The Marriage of Figaro.

The Music Man

In this musical, swindler Harold Hill attempts to con the families of River City, Iowa by starting a boys' band. While there, he falls in love with the librarian Marian Paroo. The scheme is exposed, but the town forgives him. Notable songs include "Trouble" (the origin of the phrase "trouble in River City") "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Shipoopi," "Gary, Indiana," and "Till There was You."

Valois

The first king of France from this royal house was Philip VI, during whose reign the Hundred Years' War began and the Black Death struck France. Notable rulers from this family included Louis XI, who acquired Burgundy, Francis I, who began the French Renaissance, and Henry III, whose assassination in the French Wars of Religion ended this dynasty.

Baryons

These particles are composite (i.e., non-fundamental) and made from three quarks. The most common examples are the proton (two up quarks and one down quark) and the neutron (two down quarks and one up). All of these particles are fermions. One of these particles must have one quark of each color so that the "total color" is colorless. This particle's name comes from the Greek for "heavy."

Giselle

Choreographed by Jean Coralli and Jules Perot, Adolphe Adam wrote this ballet for Perot's lover Carlotta Grisi, who danced the title role at its premiere. The title character, a peasant girl, falls in love with Loys, who is secretly Duke Albrecht of Silesia in disguise. Although Albrecht is engaged to Princess Bathilde, he pursues his romance with that character. After playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with a daisy, that character is shocked when the gamekeeper Hilarion, who also loves her, presents Albrecht's sword, revealing Albrecht's noble status. Unable to handle Albrecht's deception and knowing he can never marry her, she goes mad, tearing the necklace her mother has given her, and dies of a broken heart. After her death, her spirit is enlisted into the Wilis, a group of spirits led by Queen Myrtha. The Wilis corner Hilarion and force him to dance to death; but this ballet's protagonist stops them from doing the same to Albrecht. Sparing Albrecht, the Wilis let the title character's ghost return to rest in her grave.

Pete Sampras

In 1990, this tennis player became the youngest man ever to win the U.S. Open. He would take five U.S. Opens and two Australian Opens, but his greatest accomplishments came on the Wimbledon grass. Starting in 1993 he won the tournament seven times in eight years, losing only to Richard Krajicek in the quarterfinals in 1996. His last Wimbledon win (2000) gave Sampras the all-time men's major record, passing Roy Emerson's 12. Married to actress Bridgette Wilson, he defeated Andre Agassi for the 2002 U.S. Open title before retiring.

Election of 2000

In this closest election in American history, Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote by a final count of 271-266 (one Gore elector abstained). Ralph Nader of the Green Party won an important 2.7% of the vote, while Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party placed fourth. New Mexico and Oregon were initially too close to call but went to Gore, and Florida became the center of attention. Ballot confusion in Palm Beach County, intimidation of vote recounters in Miami-Dade County, and absentee ballots throughout Florida became significant issues, as Americans had to hear about butterfly ballots, hanging chads, and Florida Secretary of State Katharine Harris for the next five weeks.

Maurice Richard

Nicknamed "the Rocket", this athlete was one of the most gifted offensive players in NHL history. He was the first NHL player to score 50 goals in a single season, doing so in 1944-45, and also the first to score 500 in a career. The winner of eight Stanley Cups, his suspension by league president Clarence Campbell in 1955 led to his namesake Riot on March 17, 1955, which was quelled only by an appeal by this athlete for peace. Many sociologists credit that event with starting the Quebec independence movement. The NHL began awarding the his namesake trophy in 1999 for the league's top regular season goal scorer.

John and Harriet Mill

One member of this couple was a utilitarian philosopher authored On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1863). He also wrote one of the most influential philosophical defenses of women's rights in The Subjection of Women (1869). He claimed that his wife, the other member of this couple, co-authored this text with him, a claim which is debated by historians. This husband and wife did write several essays together, including a tract advocating women's suffrage titled The Enfranchisement of Women (1851).

Mount Kosciuszko

This Australian mountain was named for a Polish commander who fought in the American Revolutionary War by Europeans in the 19th Century. When it was discovered that Mount Townsend was actually taller, the names were switched so that this peak would remain the highest peak on the continent. The peak's name in Aboriginal languages, such as Jagungal or Tackingal, translates to "table-top mountain."

Ivan IV

Scholars differ on whether this "terrible" Tsar was literate and on how auspiciously his reign began. Early in his reign, he pushed through a series of well-received reforms and called a zemskii sobor (or "assembly of the land"), This ruler temporarily abdicated in 1564, killed his favorite son, created a state-within-the-state called the oprichnina to wage war on the boyars, and participated in the torture of his enemies, helping to plunge the country into the subsequent period of civil strife known as the "Time of Troubles."

Every Man in His Humour

Set in Jonson's contemporary London, this comedy is a "humours play," in which each character is a stock type governed by a corresponding "humour" (as theorized in Greek medicine). The plot chiefly concerns Knowell, an old gentleman who worries that his son Edward is becoming too involved with Wellbred, a fun-loving gallant Londoner. Knowell secretly follows his son to London; meanwhile, Wellbred's brother-in-law, the merchant Kitely, worries that Wellbred's behavior will give his business a bad reputation, all the while suspecting his own wife of infidelity. Various subplots involve Knowell's mischievous servant Brainworm, the braggart-captain Bobadill, and two friends of Wellbred who try to be fashionably and poetically melancholic. In the end, the kindly Justice Clement settles all of the grievances amassed over the course of the play. A follow-up was written one year later.

Lake Malawi

Also called lake Nyasa, this southernmost of the Great Rift Valley lakes is wedged between the nations of Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Fed by the Ruhuhu River, its lone outlet is the Shire River, a tributary of the Zambezi. It contains hundreds of species of endemic fish, especially cichlids.

Flagella

Although it is not the Cilia, this is an important organelle of motility, which allow the cell to move. These organelles are are short hair-like projections, which contain a 9 + 2 arrangement of microtubules in cross section and are powered by molecular motors of kinesin and dynein molecules.

Cilia

Although it is not the flagella, this is an important organelle of motility, which allow the cell to move. These organelles are long, whip-like structures, which contain a 9 + 2 arrangement of microtubules in cross section and are powered by molecular motors of kinesin and dynein molecules.

Election of 1800

During this election, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson narrowly beat incumbent Federalist John Adams 73-65, marking the ascent of that party's power. One electoral vote each is cast for president and vice president, so Democratic-Republican VP candidate Aaron Burr also has 73 votes, but Burr refused to step aside. In the House of Representatives, neither man won the necessary 9 state delegations outright until the 36th ballot, when James Bayard of Delaware changed his vote to Jefferson. The debacle leads to passage of the 12th amendment in 1804. The Federalists never recovered; Alexander Hamilton's opposition to Adams led to a permanent split between the two, and Hamilton's opposition to Burr was one cause of their 1804 duel, in which Burr (then vice president) killed Hamilton. Also notable is the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another.

William Tell

The title character of this Rossini Opera is a 14th-century Swiss patriot who wishes to end Austria's domination of his country. In the first act he helps Leuthold, a fugitive, escape the Austrian governor, Gessler. In the third act, Gessler has placed his hat on a pole and ordered the men to bow to it. When the title character refuses, Gessler takes his son, Jemmy, and forces him to shoot an apple off his son's head. That character succeeds, but is arrested anyway. In the fourth act, he escapes from the Austrians and his son sets their house on fire as a signal for the Swiss to rise in revolt. The opera was based on a play by Friedrich von Schiller.

Scales

The two most common types of these things are major and minor, both of which are referred to as diatonic, meaning that they have seven notes between octaves and follow a repeating pattern of whole steps and half steps. While there is only one major one of these, there are three common variants of the minor one: natural, harmonic, and melodic. The individual notes within one of these things are given numeric indications known as scale degrees, starting with "1" and moving up the scale note by note; the most prominent of these are the first degree, or tonic (the "home" pitch), and the fifth degree, or dominant. There is also the chromatic one of these, which includes every note between two endpoints, including sharps and flats.

Dicots

These plants tend to have pollen with three furrows (tricolpate); flower parts in multiples of four or greater; taproot systems; stems with rings of vascular tissue; and branching leaf veins. Many of them exhibit secondary growth that produces wood.

Michelangelo

This Florentine "Renaissance man" also known for architecture (the dome of St. Peter's Basilica), painting (The Last Judgment and the Sistine Chapel ceiling), poetry, and military engineering. His sculpted masterpieces include David, a Pietà, Bacchus, and a number of pieces for the tomb of Pope Julius II (including Dying Slave and Moses). He preferred to work in Carraran marble.

Eine kleine Nachtmusik

This Mozart piece, originally scored for string quartet and double bass, is often translated as "a little night music" (but more accurately as "a little serenade"); it includes a lovely "Romanze" second movement as well as the more famous first movement.

Eero Saarinen

This architect was born in Finland but spent most of his life in the U.S. and died in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He designed many buildings on the campuses of MIT and Yale, as well as Dulles International Airport and the TWA terminal at Kennedy Airport. He may be best known for designing the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, though he died before it was completed. Many of his works are characterized by elegant, sweeping forms, such as the Kresge Auditorium at MIT.

Mycenaeans

This civilization succeeded the Minoans as the preeminent Greek civilization. Much of their territory was on the Greek mainland, including the city of Mycenae . Their writing system is called Linear B. This civilization disappeared in the late Bronze Age. Agamemnon is said to have been the King of this city.

Elasticity

This concept is a measure of how much one economic variable changes in response to a change in a different variable, expressed in the form of "Every 1% change in the independent (second) variable leads to an x% change in the value of the first (dependent) variable." A common example demand type of this, which measures the degree to which the quantity demanded changes when the price is altered.

Thorstein Veblen

This economist is primarily remembered for his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) that introduced phrases like "conspicuous consumption." He is remembered for likening the ostentation of the rich to the Darwinian proofs-of-virility found in the animal kingdom.

Francois Quesnay

This economist led the Physiocrats, the first systematic school of economic thought. Among its tenets were the economic and moral righteousness of laissez-faire policies and the notion that land was the ultimate source of all wealth.

Krishna

This eighth avatar of Vishnu is born when Vishnu plucks two of his own hairs - one light, one dark - and used the dark hair to impregnate Devaki. Her husband Vasudeva saves this avatar from evil King Kansa by carrying him across the river Yamuna to safety in Gokula. This mythological figure can be depicted as a child, adolescent, or adult. As an infant, he plays pranks such as stealing butter. As a youthful lover, he plays the flute and dances with the gopis (cow-maidens) in the Vrindavana forest. As an adult, he is a dark-skinned warrior with a light, angelic face, charioteer to Arjuna (in the Mahabharata). In the Bhagavad-Gita it is he who reveals the importance of dharma and bhakti. His consort is the cowherd girl Radha.

Gold

This element was known to the ancients as a relatively inert metal. Its atomic symbol Au comes from its Latin name, aurum. It is resistant to attack by most acids, but it (along with platinum) will dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. Among all metals, it has the highest electronegativity and electron affinity; it occasionally is found in a -1 oxidation state as Au-. Widely used in jewelry, it also has a number of scientific uses. Ernest Rutherford's experiment with this metal demonstrated the existence of a positively charged nucleus. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) often requires that specimens be "sputtered," or thinly coated, with this element's atoms to allow imaging. Suspensions of this element's compounds have been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

Ganesha

This elephant-headed god of wisdom and learning is often shown riding a rat. Parvati "gives birth" to to this god by creating him from the saffron paste she scrubbed off of herself after bathing. When Parvati instructs him not to let anyone in as she took another bath, he prevents Shiva from entering, prompting Shiva to cut off this god;s head. To calm Parvati, Shiva tells servants to take the head of the first baby found whose mother had her back turned; the servants bring back the head of a baby elephant. This deity has two wives (Riddhi and Siddhi), two sons, and a daughter. People pray to this remover of obstacles and bringer of good fortune before they commence business.

Hershey-Chase experiment

This experiment demonstrated that the material responsible for inheritance of traits was DNA rather than protein. The experiment was carried out by creating radiolabeled T2 bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). In one population, the phages' DNA contained phosphorus-32 in its backbone; in the other population, the phages' proteins contained sulfur-35. The phages were then allowed to infect E. coli. After using a centrifuge to remove the viral coats from the bacteria, its creators found that the viruses labeled with sulfur did not transfer their radioactivity to the cells, while the viruses labeled with phosphorus did. This result, combined with other experiments, demonstrated that the genetic material was DNA, not protein.

Lucretia Mott

This feminist was a Quaker who agitated for both abolitionism and women's rights. When she attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, the male delegates excluded her and the other female delegates from the convention and made them sit in a segregated area. This activist then turned her attention to women's rights. She was older than many of the other prominent delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she mentored. She briefly served as the first president of the American Equal Rights Association. She was also one of the Quakers who founded Swarthmore College.

Susan B. Anthony

This feminist was one of the most outspoken and most famous proponents of women's suffrage in the United States. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she co-founded the first women's temperance society in the 1850s after they were excluded from an all-male temperance society. Together, in 1868, the two women founded a journal called The Revolution, which was dedicated to promoting women's rights. The following year, Stanton and this woman formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872, she gained fame when she was arrested for voting in the presidential election. She defended herself by quoting the Fourteenth Amendment, but she was convicted.

Achaemenid Empire

This first Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, who defeated and incorporated the Babylonian Empire, Lydian Empire and Median Empire. Based in modern Iran, the empire had its capital at Persepolis. Under kings Darius and Xerxes, they unsuccessfully invaded Greece, and came to an end when Darius III was defeated by Alexander the Great.

Call of Duty

This first-person shooter (FPS) series is published by Activision. The first three games centered on World War II, while more recent editions—starting with 2007's Modern Warfare—have largely taken place in contemporary and near-future settings, and have courted controversy for such things as a level in which the player kills civilians while participating in a terrorist attack. The series is celebrated for its multiplayer modes, including cooperative Zombie modes.

Hathor

This goddess was the patron of women. She was the daughter of Ra, and wife of Horus. She fulfilled many functions as goddess of the sky, goddess of fertility, protector of marriage, and goddess of love and beauty. In that final role she became equated with Aphrodite and Venus. Pictures of this deity show her with the head of a cow.

Iron

This is the most common metal in the Earth, and one of the major components of the core as well. Well known to the ancients, its atomic symbol Fe comes from the Latin name ferrum. It is the namesake of ferromagnetism; one of its ores is magnetite, which contains this element in both of its most common oxidation states, 2+ and 3+. This element can react with oxygen in the air to form ferric oxide in a relatively slow but exothermic process; this process is used in "all-day" heat patches. Rust forms when this metal is exposed to both oxygen and water. Its isotope 56 is "doubly magic" in that its nucleus has 28 protons and 28 neutrons; 28 is a magic number that carries special stability. That same isotope is one of the most stable of all nuclei, and it is the heaviest nucleus that is normally produced during stellar nucleosynthesis. The largest use of this metal is in steel.

Colorado River

This is the most significant river of the southwestern United States. Beginning in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, this river runs southwest for 1,450 miles to the Gulf of California in northwestern Mexico. This river formed numerous canyons along much of its length, most notably the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It also has significant dams such as Hoover Dam near Las Vegas (forming Lake Mead) and Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona (forming Lake Powell).

Charles V

This king had an inauspicious start (before his reign even began) with having to ransom his father, John II, from England for three million crowns and most of southwestern France. Later, with military advisor Bertrand du Guesclin, he recaptured almost all of that territory. He also concluded alliances with Portugal, Spain, and Flanders, reorganized the army, and restructured the collection of taxes while leading France's recovery from the devastation of the early period of the Hundred Years' War.

Francis I

This king is best known for his early military victories (like the Battle of Marignano), lavish court, and support of luminaries like Leonardo da Vinci, as well as his rivalry with Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire He was captured in battle in 1525 and held for a humiliating ransom. Wars continued after his release, but bankruptcy and religious strife laid France low.

Richard III

This king was made Duke of Gloucester in 1461 when his brother Edward IV deposed the Lancastrian king Henry VI, as part of the Wars of the Roses. Upon Edward's death in 1483, this ruler served as regent to his nephew Edward V, but likely had the boy murdered in the Tower of London that year. Two years later, this man died at the hands of Henry Tudor's Lancastrian forces at Bosworth Field, ending the Wars of the Roses and beginning the reign of Henry VII.

Jomo Kenyatta

This leader of the Kikuyu people, fought against British control of Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. He studied anthropology at the London School of Economics with Bronislaw Malinowski; his book, Facing Mount Kenya is an account of traditional Kikuyu society under pressure from colonialism. When Britain allowed elections to take place, his KANU (Kenya African National Union) party was successful; in 1964 he became the country's first president. He used the slogan "harambee," which is Swahili for "all pull together," to encourage national unity and economic growth. His son became Kenya's fourth president in 2013.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

This leading architect of the International Style of skyscraper design, worked in the office of Peter Behrens. He directed the Bauhaus from 1930-33, shutting it down before the Nazis could do so. His works include the Barcelona Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition; the Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago; the New National Gallery in Berlin; and the Seagram Building in New York, which he co-designed with Philip Johnson. The phrase "less is more" is associated with this architect, whose glass-covered steel structures influenced the design of office buildings in nearly every major city in the U.S.

Final Fantasy

This long-running Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) series' 15th main installment was released in November 2016. Its seventh installment, released in 1997, was a massive success and (at the time) a technical marvel that helped popularize the Sony PlayStation. Some notable protagonists from the series include Cecil Harvey (IV), Cloud Strife (VII), and Tidus (X). The series is closely associated with composer Nobuo Uematsu, who created the soundtracks for the first nine games as well as part of the tenth.

Victoria

This longest-reigning monarch in British history relinquished much of the remaining royal power, both to her husband Albert and to her favored prime ministers, Lord Melbourne, Robert Peel, and Benjamin Disraeli. After Albert's death in 1861, this queen largely went into seclusion, though she influenced the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, which doubled the number of Britons who could vote.

Stephen Sondheim

This man is one of the most celebrated lyricists and composers in musical theater. His career has included 8 Tony Awards. He was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II (of Rodgers and Hammerstein), and was the lyricist for West Side Story, working alongside composer Leonard Bernstein. Musicals for which he was both lyricist and composer include Company (1970), a series of scenes about an unmarried bachelor and his married friends; Sweeney Todd (1979), about a barber's murderous quest for revenge; Into the Woods (1987), a dark mash-up of several fairy tales; and Sunday in the Park with George (1984), which portrays a fictionalized version of painter Georges Seurat and won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Daniel Webster

This man negotiated the Webster-Ashburton treaty that defined the border between Maine and New Brunswick (the Eastern border) and left his post in 1843 under pressure from Whigs, who had resigned in protest from Tyler's cabinet over the issue of the national bank. In his second term, he upheld the Compromise of 1850; that compromise cost him popularity with his fellow New Englanders.

Nelson Mandela

This man was a leader of the African National Congress the first democratically-elected president of South Africa. In the 1960s this man was a young radical; along with Oliver Tambo and others, he founded a militant group called Umkhonto we Sizwe (the "spear of the nation") to carry out acts of sabotage against the apartheid government. In 1964, he was charged with criminal activity in the Rivonia Trial; he was imprisoned for 27 years, most of them on Robben Island, a prison colony located off the coast of Cape Town. He was the leading figure in South Africa's transition away from apartheid; he and his predecessor, F. W. de Klerk, shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.

Pedro II

This man was the Emperor of Brazil from 1831 to 1889. Pedro II became emperor at age 5 when his father abdicated. During this ruler's reign, Brazil was victorious in several conflicts with its neighbors, including the Platine War and War of the Triple Alliance.

Augusto Pinochet

This man was the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973 by this man. His economic policies were informed by the Chicago Boys, Chilean economists who had studied under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago, and mostly relied on privatizing the economy. His brutal regime was investigated in the Rettig and Valech reports, and he died awaiting trial in 2006.

Guggenheim

This museum is located in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Founded as "The Museum of Non-Objective Painting," in 1959 it moved into its current home, a Frank Lloyd Wright building that features a spiral ramp connecting the exhibition areas. Focusing on modern art, its holdings include the world's largest collection of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky.

Murasaki Shikibu

This novelist, diarist, and courtesan, was the author of the Tale of Genji, the first known novel; the diary, Murasaki Shikibu nikki; and a collection of tanka poems. The daughter of the court official Fujiwara Tametoki, she sat in on the classical Chinese literature lessons that her brother received, in spite of the Heian traditions against higher education for women.

Fabian Society

This organization, which was founded in 1884 to promote the gradual adoption of socialism, was named for the Roman general Fabius Maximus, who avoided fighting pitched battles against Hannibal and instead won a gradual war of attrition. This society pressed for progressive economic measures that went far beyond the platform of the Liberal Party, including a minimum wage and universal health care. Prominent members of this group included George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Ramsay MacDonald, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb. In 1900, many supporters of this reform movement founded the Labour Party, a socialist rival to the two major parties, which eventually came to power in 1924 under Ramsay MacDonald. Today, this group continues to exist as a left-wing think tank.

American Independent Party

This party was a successor to the Dixiecrats from two decades before. In an effort to combat the desegregation being pushed by a pro-civil rights federal government, George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, ran for president on the ticket of this party, led by Bill and Eileen Shearer. Running on a platform of segregation once again proved appealing to the South, as Wallace won 46 electoral votes from 5 states, and 13% of the vote with nearly 10 million votes. Many Wallace supporters, including the organizers of this party, later joined the U.S. Taxpayers Party, which was renamed the Constitution Party, and still exists as a small party to the right of the Republicans.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

This play's title author has little to do with the story, except that Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. Edward Albee got this play's title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president's daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha's problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.

The Duchess of Malfi

This play, a product of the Jacobean period, follows a widowed Duchess, who loves Antonio Bologna, a good-hearted nobleman below her station. Her twin brother Ferdinand denounces her affection for Antonio out of incestuous envy. Her other brother, a Cardinal, hires the former galley-slave Bosola to spy on her. Bosola discovers the Duchess and Antonio have married (and had children), so the Cardinal sends them into exile. Ferdinand subsequently imprisons the Duchess, terrorizes her with asylum patients, and arranges for her to see statues resembling the dead bodies of her husband and children. Executioners sent by Ferdinand then kill the Duchess and her maid Cariola. Paranoia overtakes both brothers; the Cardinal kills his mistress Julia with a poisoned bible, and Ferdinand imagines he has become a werewolf. Bosola, disgusted by his own actions, tries to murder the Cardinal but mistakenly kills Antonio instead. In a climactic confrontation, Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand all kill each other, leaving the son of the Duchess and Antonio to inherit what remains.

B. F. Skinner

This psychologist was one of the leading proponents of behaviorism in works like Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He argued that all human actions could be understood in terms of physical stimuli and learned responses and that there was no need to study--or even believe in--internal mental states or motivations; in fact, doing so could be harmful. Guided by his ideas, he trained animals to perform complicated tasks including teaching pigeons to play table tennis.

Potomac River

This river is one of America's most historic waterways. Rising at Fairfax Stone in West Virginia, it runs 405 miles, forming the border between Virginia and Maryland. Washington, D.C. was sited on this at its confluence with the Anacostia. George Washington's plantation Mount Vernon was on this river, while Robert E. Lee's two invasions north of this river were major events of the Civil War.

Mackenzie River

This river is the longest of Canada. Flowing 1,080 miles out of the Great Slave Lake, this river flows past Fort Providence and Fort Simpson in Canada's Northwest Territories, emptying into a vast delta on the Beaufort Sea. It is the largest river flowing into the Arctic Ocean from North America. This river was named for a Scottish explorer who crossed Canada to the Pacific ten years before Lewis and Clark.

Rationalism

This school of thought asserts that we gain knowledge through intuition or our rational nature rather than through experience. A version of this doctrine was espoused by the Greek philosopher Plato in his Theory of Forms, which states that abstract ideas are more real than the material world of the senses. Later rationalists include René Descartes, who wrote Meditations on First Philosophy, and Baruch Spinoza, who wrote Ethics.

Lake Victoria

This second-largest freshwater lake lies along the Equator and is shared between Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. Located on a plateau between two rift valleys, its lone outlet is the Victoria Nile, a precursor of the White Nile. Named by British explorer John Hanning Speke for Queen Victoria, the introduction of the predatory Nile perch in the 1950s has caused environmental degradation, sending many native cichlid species into extinction.

USS Missouri

This ship was the last battleship completed by the United States; she was laid down January 6, 1941 by New York Naval Shipyard. She was launched January 29, 1944 and received her sponsorship from Miss Margaret Truman, daughter of then Missouri Senator, Harry S Truman. Commissioned on June 11, 1944, the "Mighty Mo," as this ship became known, sailed for the Pacific and quickly became the flagship of Admiral Halsey, which is why she was chosen as the site of the formal surrender of the Empire of Japan on the morning of September 1, 1945.

Henry II

This son of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda, married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, and invaded England the following year, forcing Stephen of Blois to acknowledge Henry as his heir. While king he developed the common law and due process, but fought with Thomas Becket over submission to the Pope; he had Becket executed in 1170 but performed penance at Canterbury. Eleanor and his four sons conspired with French king Philip II against this English king on several occasions.

Mary Wollstonecraft

This woman was a British author and philosopher who is best known for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In that text, she argued that women are inherently equal to men, but appear inferior because they do not have the same access to education. Two years before, she had responded to Edmund Burke's conservative Reflections on the Revolution in France with her own A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, is famous as the author of Frankenstein.

Thor

A son of Odin and the giantess Jord, this deity is the god of thunder, weather, and crops. One of the most popular of the Norse gods, he travels in a chariot pulled by two goats, and wields the hammer Mjolnir. He is married to Sif, and his special nemesis is the Midgard Serpent.

I. M. Pei

Born in China, this architect emigrated to the U.S. in 1935. Though he has also designed moderate-income housing, this man is best known for large-scale projects. His works include the Mile High Center in Denver, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the John Hancock Building in Boston, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing, and the recent Miho Museum of Art in Shiga, Japan. He may be best known for two fairly recent works: the glass pyramid erected outside the Louvre in 1989, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, completed in 1995.

Battle of Iwo Jima

During this battle, The Allies sought to capture a small island midway between the Mariana Islands and the Japanese home islands to provide an airbase for the eventual invasion of Japan. Under the leadership of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the island's defenders built a complex network of underground tunnels and well camouflaged artillery pieces that enabled them to hold out for a month against vastly superior forces. This battle is best known for Joe Rosenthal's photograph showing six American servicemen raising a flag atop Mount Suribachi.

Anti-Corn Law League

From 1838 to 1846, this organization agitated for repeal of the Corn Laws, a series of laws that imposed tariffs on imported grain, which kept grain prices high to benefit English landowners. The founders of this league, Richard Cobden and John Bright, argued that importing grain would lower food prices for workers and thus stimulate the British economy. The Corn Laws were eventually repealed in 1846 under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel, a decision hastened by the start of the Irish Potato Famine the previous year. The repeal of the Corn Laws ushered in an era of support for free trade that continues to this day. Another legacy of opposition to the Corn Laws was the founding of the weekly publication The Economist in 1843 to promote repeal of trade restrictions.

Robert Walpole

Generally recognized as the first British Prime Minister, this man established personal control over a Whig-dominated Parliament on behalf of the German-speaking George I. He rose to power after many rivals were tarnished by the collapse of the South Sea Company. His long tenure continued under George II, but his attempts to avoid British military commitments worldwide led to his downfall during the War of the Austrian Succession.

Michael I

In 1613, near the end of the Time of Troubles, this 16-year old Romanov was elected Tsar by the zemskii sobor. This ruler was a grandnephew of Ivan the Terrible's "good" wife Anastasia and the son of a powerful churchman named Filaret (who soon became patriarch); as tsar, he has usually been seen as a nonentity dominated by Filaret and other relatives. Nevertheless, his election marked the return of relative stability and the succession of the Romanov dynasty.

Reggie Jackson

Known as "Mr. October" because of his World Series slugging, in the sixth game of the 1977 World Series this baseball player hit three homeruns off three different pitchers on three consecutive swings of his bat. Besides Babe Ruth, who did it twice, he is the only player to homer three times in one World Series game. His .755 slugging average is the highest in World Series history. Soon after joining the Yankees in 1977 he created a sensation by proclaiming himself "the straw that stirs the drink." The wild atmosphere surrounding this athlete and the Yankees was captured by a teammate in a book called The Bronx Zoo. He won four homer titles ('73, '75, '80, '83), hit 563 homeruns, and set a major league record for strikeouts (2,597).

Elizabeth I

Known as the "Virgin Queen" because she never married, this daughter of Henry VIII was considered illegitimate by the Catholic Church. After the death of her Catholic sister Mary I, this Tudor queen tried to restore religious order by declaring England a Protestant state but naming herself only "Governor" of the Church. She foiled attempts at her throne by Spanish king Philip II and Mary, Queen of Scots, who this queen reluctantly executed in 1587. Her reign saw great expansion of the English navy and the emergence of William Shakespeare, but when she died, the Crown went to Scottish king James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Thomas Jefferson

Known more for his Presidency and completing the Louisiana Purchase, this man began his feud with Alexander Hamilton while serving as Secretary of State even though his office had no bearing on Hamilton's Treasury. He founded the Democratic-Republicans. He resigned his post after failing to secure from the British compensation for released slaves, withdrawal from garrisons in the Northwest Territory, and admission of violating the terms of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolution.

Sam Snead

No golfer has won more PGA Tournaments than this man's 81, and he amassed 135 victories worldwide. Nicknamed "Slammin' Sammy," he won seven major professional championships between 1942 and 1954, but he is known more for the one he never won: the U.S. Open. In 1939 he led the Open for 71 holes but lost on the last hole when he took an eight. In the 1960s and '70s he won a record six Senior PGA Championships.

Rhone River

One of Europe's few major rivers to flow directly into the Mediterranean, this river originates in the Swiss Alps and flows into Lake Geneva. It emerges at Geneva and flows south, passes through Lyon, Avignon, and Arles, and enters the sea just west of Marseille. At Arles, this river splits into "grand" and "petit" branches which encircle the island of Camargue. This river's valley is famous for its red wine, and because it is navigable for 300 miles, this river is the key access route of southern France.

Mozart's Piano Sonatas

One of Mozart's best-known pieces is the "Rondo Alla Turca" from this group of compositions. That work begins with a theme and variations that inspired Max Reger to write his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart. No. 14 in C minor, K. 457, is often performed with the highly chromatic Fantasy, K. 475. Other notable Mozart compositions from this group include the dramatic No. 8 in A minor, K. 310; "for beginners" No. 16 in C major, K. 545; and the "Hunt" or "Trumpet" No. 18 in D, K. 576, his last. Mozart also finished four of these for piano duet (also known as "piano four hands") and one in D major for two pianos.

Alexander III

This Tsar, who launched a program of "counter-reforms", enacted a series of Temporary Regulations (giving it the power to crack down on terrorism), increased censorship, tightened controls on Russia's universities, created a position of "land captain" to exert state control in the countryside, and either encouraged or ignored the first anti-Jewish pogroms.

Don Mattingly

This athlete was the best first baseman in baseball for most of the 1980's. He holds the major league record for most grand slams in a season (6 in 1987). He twice led the league in hits ('84 and '85), won the league batting crown by edging out teammate Dave Winfield on the final day of the 1984 season, and drove in the most runs in 1985 to win the MVP award. "Donnie Baseball" also won nine gold gloves--his career fielding percentage (.99599) is the best--but World Series glory eluded "the Hitman." His Yankees never played in the Fall Classic.

Gabriela Mistral

This first Latin American to win the Nobel Literature Prize, was actually named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga. At first a prominent educator, she wrote "Sonnets of Death" (1914) after the suicide of her fiancé. Those sonnets later appeared in her most famous collection, Desolation (1922). A native Chilean, she served as a diplomat both in the United States and Europe. Langston Hughes translated a portion of this woman's poetry into English just after she died.

Henry Clay

This man helped negotiate the "corrupt bargain" that led to John Quincy Adams winning the House vote that decided the presidency in 1824 and led to his appointment as Secretary of State. While serving in that post his slave, Charlotte Dupuy, sued for her freedom in a move that foreshadowed the Dred Scott case. He lost presidential elections as a Whig candidate three times prior to his involvement in the Compromise of 1850.

Leonhard Euler

This man is known for his prolific output and the fact that he continued to produce seminal results even after going blind. He invented graph theory with the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem and introduced the modern notation for e, the square root of -1 (i), and trigonometric functions. Richard Feynman called his proof that eiπ = -1 "the most beautiful equation in mathematics" because it linked four of math's most important constants.

Salvador Allende

This man was the President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. Allende was the first Marxist head of state to be democratically elected in Latin America. His policies of collectivization and nationalization angered conservatives, and Allende was overthrown and killed in a 1973 coup supported by the CIA. He had survived a coup called El Tanquetazo earlier in 1973.

Paris

This son of Priam and Hecuba fulfills his destiny by accepting a bribe when asked to judge which of three goddesses is the fairest. When he awards Aphrodite the golden apple, Aphrodite repays him by granting him the most beautiful woman in the world; unfortunately, Helen is already married to Menelaus. Known less for hand-to-hand fighting than for mastery of his bow, he kills Achilles with an arrow but dies by the poisoned arrows of Philoctetes.

Talmud

This text is a codification of Jewish oral and written law, based on the Torah. It consists of the Mishnah (the laws themselves), and the Gemara (scholarly commentary on the Mishnah). The Gemara developed in two Judaic centers: Palestine and Babylonia, so there are two of this text (Jerusalem and Babylonian), the latter considered more authoritative by Orthodox Jews. Rabbis and lay scholars finished the Babylonian Talmud around 600.

Johann Cruyff

A stringent believer that "the game should be played beautifully," this footballer helped usher in the system of "total football" into the world game, in which all positions should be equally willing and adept to play all portions of the game. Despite being both gawky and a chain-smoker, he helped Ajax Amsterdam to three European Cups (now known as the UEFA Champions' League) as well as being named European Footballer of the Year in 1971 and 1973. His greatest international success came in 1974 when he helped the "Orange" to their first appearance in the World Cup Final, where they lost to West Germany in Munich. "The Orange" would also make the 1978 World Cup Finals, this time without this man, who retired from international play after the qualification stage. This was followed by a brief stint in the NASL, where he earned 1979 NASL MVP honors. In 1984, at the age of 37, he helped Ajax's arch-rival Feyenoord to its first Dutch league title in a decade before moving into coaching at former club FC Barcelona, where he led the team to four Spanish League titles and a European Cup in a nine-year stint.

Isaac Asimov

Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, this author was one of genre science fiction's "Big Three" writers. During the 1930s and 1940s "Golden Age" of science fiction pulp magazines, he worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as "Nightfall," which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and "Robbie," the first of his many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word "robot" was introduced by the Czech author Karel Capek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Before this author, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God's power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. This man challenged this trope by creating the "Three Laws of Robotics," which robots in his stories are obligated to follow. Asimov helped to promote a conception of robots as useful machines rather than inhuman monsters. He is also known for his Foundation series, which was inspired by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Foundation series begins when the "psychohistorian" Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire will soon fall, and creates the title organization to limit the length of the ensuing Dark Age. This man eventually linked together his Robot and Foundation series into a far-reaching "history of the future," which also includes this man's novels The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust.

The Spanish Tragedy

Also called Hieronimo is Mad Again, this play pioneered and popularized the gory genre known as the revenge tragedy. The play is set in the wake of a war between Portugal and Spain, during which the Spanish soldier Don Andrea was killed by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. After Andrea's death, Balthazar was captured by two Spanish soldiers: Lorenzo, the nephew of the King of Spain; and Horatio, the capable son of the marshal Hieronimo. As the play begins, Andrea's ghost has returned to Earth along with the spirit of Revenge, to watch the events that will lead to Balthazar's death. Those events are put in motion by Andrea's former lover Bel-imperia, who falls in love with Horatio, and rejects the smitten Balthazar. Lorenzo and Balthazar then conspire to kill Horatio, whose death devastates Hieronimo. Bel-imperia is imprisoned by Lorenzo to cover up the crime, but sends a letter written in her own blood to Hieronimo exposing Lorenzo's schemes. During a climactic play-within-a-play, Hieronimo and Bel-imperia take vengeance by stabbing Lorenzo and Balthazar, and subsequently kill themselves. This play is noted for its influence on the works of Shakespeare, especially the incriminating play-within-a-play in Hamlet.

Charles Cornwallis

An aristocrat and ensign in 1756, this man fought in the battle of Minden, and by the end of the Seven Years' War, he was a captain. Made aide-de-camp to George III, he made colonel, and was promoted to major general before being sent to America. After a failed assault on Charleston, he served under Sir Henry Clinton in the battle of Long Island, but made his mark in fighting at Manhattan and pursued Washington across the Hudson, being outmaneuvered by Washington at Princeton (January 3, 1777). Following this defeat he directed the main attack on Brandywine Creek, and reinforcing Germantown, as part of the plan to capture Philadelphia. Promoted to second in command under Clinton after the Philadelphia campaign, he led the Battle of Monmouth before returning home to attend his sick wife. Sent south in 1780 to capture Charleston, he bested Horatio Gates at Camden (N.C.) and Nathaniel Greene at Guilford Courthouse, the latter a pyrrhic victory which likely led to his defeat in attempts to contain Lafayette in Virginia. Following this, he occupied Yorktown in August 1781, where he was surrounded by American and French forces, and forced to surrender. Following the war, he was appointed governor-general of India, and proved to be a capable administrator.

Mary Shelley

As the daughter of the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women), and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, this woman was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to this author while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani's experiments in "animal electricity," this woman wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a "monster." This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein's brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation, and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. This woman presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney's efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, quasi una Fantasia (Moonlight)

As with "Emperor," Beethoven did not give this sonata its nickname; it was coined several years after the composer's death by Ludwig Rellstab, who commented on the first movement's resemblance to moonlight on Lake Lucerne. Beethoven's score calls for the sustain pedal to be held down through the entirety of the first movement. Often overshadowed by the ubiquitous first movement is the violent third movement, a Presto agitato sonata-allegro form with an extended coda, which on a larger scale serves as a recapitulation for the entire sonata. Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Giulietta Guicciardi, his pupil.

Fredericksburg

At this site, about 50 miles south of Washington, Union commander Ambrose Burnside (who had replaced McClellan) tried to take the initiative and cross the Rappahannock River in a march toward Richmond. He met Lee's forces, which were well entrenched in the hills behind this town. With a superior position, Lee routed the Union army; 13,000 Northern troops fell there, while only 5000 Confederates were killed. After the battle, Burnside's troops were forced to make "The Mud March" up the Rappahannock, made foul by weather and dead and wounded bodies.

USS Constitution

Better known as "Old Ironsides," this was one of the first six ships commissioned by the U.S. Navy after the American Revolution. Launched from Boston in 1797, the Constitution first saw action as the squadron flagship in the Quasi-War with France from 1799-1801 and also fought in the Barbary War and the War of 1812. She later served many years as the nation's flagship in the Mediterranean. Retired from active duty in 1846, the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "Old Ironsides" saved her from the scrap yard—she became the training ship of the U.S. Naval Academy until the mid-1880s. She became the symbolic flagship of the U.S. Navy in 1940 and is now a floating museum in Boston.

Martina Navratilova

Born in Prague, this tennis player defected to the United States in 1975 because the Czech Tennis Federation had taken most of her earnings. Early in her career, she won the first two of her nine Wimbledons in 1978-79 but subsequent losses led her to pursue a grueling fitness regimen. This paid off: She won 18 singles Grand Slams (58 overall), 167 total singles titles, and even more doubles crowns, many with partner Pam Shriver. A Wimbledon finalist at 37, she retired from singles in 1994, but returned to play doubles in 2000. In 2003 tied Billie Jean King with 20 overall Wimbledons, taking the mixed doubles.

Tiger Woods

Born to an African-American father and a Thai mother, this man appeared on "The Mike Douglas Show" with a golf club at age two. He won three straight U.S. Junior Amateurs, and then became the only golfer to win three straight U.S. Amateurs (1994-1996). In 1997 he became the youngest ever to win the Masters--by a whopping 12 strokes. At the 2000 U.S. Open, when he won by 15 strokes, this man began a remarkable run of four straight major championships: British Open (by eight strokes, making him the youngest ever to complete the career Grand Slam), PGA Championship, and the 2001 Masters. He added a third Masters in 2002, giving him seven major pro titles.

Fort Sumter

Built on an island in 1829, this fort was one of three that the United States maintained in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In order to claim true independence from the Union, Jefferson Davis decided that this fort needed to be taken; a Confederate force under P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the small Union garrison, controlled by Major Robert Anderson, to surrender. Anderson refused, shots were fired, and the Union commander surrendered two days later, with only one soldier killed. The Union made two unsuccessful attempts to recapture this fort with ironclad ships in 1863, but Confederate forces finally abandoned Sumter when they left Charleston in February 1865.

Rosh Hashanah

Celebrated on the first and second days of Tishrei, this holiday marks the beginning of the Jewish year. It is believed that on this day, people's souls are judged, and God "temporarily" decides their fate. Between this holiday and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, are the Ten Days of Repentment, when people are given a chance to reflect and repent. On this holiday, it is customary to wear white clothes and eat apples, honey, and pomegranates. Other customs include the blowing of the shofar (an instrument made from a ram's horn) and the ceremony of Tashlich, in which Jews throw bread crumbs into running water to symbolize the cleansing of their sins, is also performed.

Sleeping Beauty

Choreographed by Marius Petipa, this Tchaikovsky ballet is based on the fairy tale of the same name, though other fairy tale figures, including Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, appear. Split into four sections ("The Christening," "The Spell," "The Vision," and "The Wedding"), This ballet relates the story of Princess Aurora, the daughter of King Florestan XXIV. He invites a group of fairies to Aurora's christening, but the evil spirit Carabosse, furious at not being invited, appears and curses Aurora to die on her 16th birthday by pricking her finger with a spindle. However, the powerful Lilac Fairy weakens the curse, so that Aurora will sleep for a hundred years instead. On her 16th birthday, the townspeople perform the "Garland Waltz" and four suitors and Aurora perform the challenging "Rose Adagio." A mysterious figure (Carabosse in disguise) appears and gives Aurora a spindle, on which Aurora pricks herself and falls asleep; the Lilac Fairy then expands the spell over the entire kingdom. A century later, Prince Desire is hunting in the forest when the Lilac Fairy approaches him and leads him to the castle. He wakes Aurora with a kiss and wins her hand in marriage.

The Firebird

Choreographed by Michel Fokine, this ballet was the first of several collaborations between Stravinsky and Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev. Prince Ivan, the ballet's protagonist, captures the title mythical creature, who pledges a feather to Ivan in exchange for her freedom. Ivan later stumbles upon 13 princesses performing the "Dance of the Golden Apples." Ivan follows them back to the castle of Kashchei the Immortal, who has enchanted and imprisoned them. Kashchei, whose magic is represented by a recurring descending chromatic motif, sends bewitched monsters to attack Ivan. Ivan uses the feather to summon the title bird, who uses her magic to make the monsters perform an "Infernal Dance" before lulling them to sleep with a "Berceuse." While the monsters sleep, Ivan discovers the egg that preserves Kashchei's power inside a tree trunk and destroys it, breaking Kashchei's spell. Ivan frees the princesses, marrying one of them in the ballet's 7/4 finale. Stravinsky created three versions of the ballet suite for a smaller orchestra, which were published in 1911, 1919, and 1945.

Set

Created in opposition to the forces of Ma'at, this god fought the demon Apopis each day, emerging victorious, symbolic of the struggle of forces that brought harmony. In later times, this struggle led this god to be associated with the serpent itself, and he became the personification of violence and disorder, and the cause of all disasters. Having killed his brother Osiris, this being did battle with Osiris' son Horus, being emasculated in the fight. His cult was diminished over time, due to reaction against violence. His effigies were destroyed by some, while others were changed into representations of Amon, by replacing the ears with horns.

I Love Lucy

During its six-season run, this show was one of America's most watched programs. It centered on Lucy Ricardo, played by comedian Lucille Ball, and her husband Ricky Ricardo, who was played by Ball's real-life husband Desi Arnaz. The show's other major characters were the Ricardos' neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz. In one of the show's most famous episodes, Lucy was hired to do a TV commercial for a health tonic called "Vitameatavegamin"; after drinking too much of it, Lucy becomes inebriated and is unable to pronounce the word correctly.

Levellers

During the English Civil War, these politicians and soldiers wanted to extend suffrage and establish equality before the law. Their name originates from a pejorative term referring to the fact that they wanted all people to live on a common level. Leaders from this group were invited to debate the main leaders of the New Model Army during the 1647 Putney Debates about the formation of a new English constitution. They were eventually suppressed by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

Diggers

During the English Civil War, these radicals, inspired by the Book of Acts, went even further in attempting to establish egalitarianism in the English countryside by trying to farm on common land. Because they dug up this land, they became known as Diggers. They were eventually suppressed by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

1980 Winter Olympics

During these Olympic Games, Speed Skater Eric Heiden would win five gold medals. In what would become known as "The Miracle on Ice," the U.S. Olympic hockey team, led by head coach Herb Brooks and captain Mike Eruzione, defeated the powerful Soviet team 4-3 on February 22, 1980. Two days later, they defeated Finland to claim America's second Olympic hockey gold medal, the first being in 1960 at Squaw Valley.

Battle of Kursk

Fought in western Russia, this battle was the largest tank battle in history, with about 6,000 tanks engaged. Thanks to a complex spy network, the Soviet leadership was well-informed about German plans to launch Operation Citadel against this salient, and constructed massive defensive fortifications. After the German advance was stopped, a successful Soviet counterattack was launched. The German Army never again was able to mount a major attack on the Eastern Front.

Chloroplasts

Found only in plants and certain protists, these organelles contains the green pigment chlorophyll and is the site of photosynthesis. Although it is not mitochondria, this is a double-membrane-bound organelle, and it has its own DNA and ribosomes in the stroma. They contain grana, which are stacks of single membrane structures called thylakoids on which the reactions of photosynthesis occur.

Museo del Prado

In 1785, Spanish King Charles III commissioned this building to house a natural history museum, but his grandson Ferdinand VII completed it as an art museum in 1819. Deriving its name from the Spanish for "meadow," its holdings include not only what is universally regarded as the best collection of Spanish paintings, but also a number of works from Flemish masters, such as Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, Francisco Goya's The Third of May, 1808, and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Wiley Post

In 1931, this man and navigator Harold Gatty completed a circumnavigation of the globe aboard the Winnie Mae, an experience that the two wrote about in Around the World in Eight Days. Two years later, He became the first solo pilot to complete an around-the-world trip. He then began investigating the possibility of high-altitude flight and, using a pressurized suit of his own design, reached a height of 50,000 feet and may have been the first to encounter and use the jet stream. Today, he is mainly remembered for the circumstances of his death; while flying through Alaska with humorist Will Rogers as his passenger, Post crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, and both men died.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

In the 1930s,this anthropologist did fieldwork with the Nambikwara people of Brazil, which formed the basis for his thesis on "The Elementary Structures of Kinship." He held the chair in social anthropology at the Collèege de France from 1959 to 1982, during which time he published such books as The Savage Mind and a tetralogy about world mythology whose volumes include The Raw and the Cooked. He pioneered in applying the structuralist methods of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology, which led him to study cultures as sets of binary oppositions.

Oil-drop experiment

In the first step of this experiment, the terminal velocity of an oil drop was measured, which means that the drag force (which can be calculated using Stokes' law) equals the force of gravity. From this, the mass can be calculated. Then, by turning on an electric field, the particle starts to move upward with a terminal velocity when the electric force balances out the forces of gravity and drag. Using this, and the mass of the drop, the total charge on the drop can be calculated. Robert Millikan and Harvey Fletcher found that the total charge on the drops were always

Election of 1948

In the most recent election with four significant candidates, Democrat Harry Truman beat Republican Thomas Dewey, contrary to the famous headline of the Chicago Tribune, printed before results from the West came in. Dewey dominated the Northeast, but Truman nearly swept the West to pull out the victory. Former vice president Henry Wallace earned over a million votes as the Progressive candidate, and Strom Thurmond--yes, that Strom Thurmond--took over a million votes and 39 electoral votes as the States' Rights (or "Dixiecrat") candidate.

Roe v. Wade

In this Supreme Court case began when Norma McCorvey , a rape victim, sued a Dallas County attorney for the right to an abortion. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the plaintiff depended on the growing recognition of a "right to privacy" which began with the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut. The court struck down state anti-abortion laws as "unconstitutionally vague," held that the word "person" in the Constitution "does not include the unborn," and legalized abortion in the first trimester. McCorvey later joined the pro-life movement and claimed that she was not actually raped and that she was pressured into filing the case by her ambitious attorney Sarah Weddington.

Salome

In this opera, Jokanaan is imprisoned in the dungeons of King Herod. Herod's 15-year-old step-daughter becomes obsessed with the prisoner's religious passion and is incensed when he ignores her advances. Later in the evening Herod orders that title character to dance for him, but she refuses until he promises her "anything she wants." She asks for the head of Jokanaan and eventually receives it, after which a horrified Herod orders her to be killed; his soldiers crush her with their shields.

Madama Butterfly

In this opera, the American naval lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is stationed in Nagasaki where, with the help of the broker Goro, he weds the young girl Cio-Cio-San with a marriage contract with a cancellation clause. He later returns to America leaving Cio-Cio-San to raise their son "Trouble", whom she will rename "Joy" upon his return. When Pinkerton and his new American wife Kate do return, Cio-Cio-San gives them her son and stabs herself with her father's dagger. The opera is based on a play by David Belasco.

1996 Summer Olympics

In what have been called "The Coke Games," due to their exceptional commercialization in the city of Coke's business headquarters, sweltering Georgia heat and organizational problems plagued these Olympic Games. But a still-unsolved bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed one person and injured one hundred remains the Games' most memorable event. Irish swimmer Michelle Smith won three gold medals in the pool, only to be plagued by rumors of steroid use. Carl Lewis got his ninth gold by winning the long jump for the fourth consecutive Games, while American sprinter Michael Johnson became the first man to win the 200-meter and 400-meter races, the former in a world-record 19.32 seconds.

Election of 1960

John F. Kennedy defeated vice president Richard Nixon 303-219 in this tight election, winning the popular vote by just two-tenths of a percent. The first Kennedy-Nixon debate is known for the candidate's use of visuals; those who saw the calm, handsome Kennedy and the tired, uncomfortable-looking Nixon on television were more likely to select Kennedy as the winner than were those who listened on radio. Voting irregularities in Texas and Illinois led to allegations of fraud, but a recount would not have been feasible, and Nixon did not press the issue. Nixon would go on to lose the 1962 California gubernatorial race.

Sir Stanley Matthews

Known as "Wizard of the Dribble," the footballer debuted for England as a 19 year-old, and closed his international career in 1956 at the age of 41, when he was named the first-ever European Footballer of the Year. Though he played for unfashionable northern first division clubs like Blackpool and Stoke City, he was the most popular player of his era. In the 1953 F.A. Cup final against Bolton at Wembley, he lead a rousing comeback from a 3-1 deficit with 30 minutes remaining, setting up three goals. He is also one of the most gentlemanly players in history, having never been sent off with a red card during his entire career. In 1961, he became the first English footballer to be knighted. In 1963, at the age of 48, he helped Stoke City back into the FA First Division by scoring the goal that clinched promotion. He retired, quite reluctantly, from the game in 1965 at the age of 50.

The Andy Griffith Show

One of the most popular TV series of its decade, this show starred its title actor as Andy Taylor, who was sheriff in the sleepy small town of Mayberry, North Carolina. The show is almost as well known for its distinctive supporting characters, including a gas station attendant named Gomer Pyle and Andy's awkward deputy sheriff, Barney Fife. Ron Howard rose to fame as a child actor on the show, playing Andy's son Opie, before going on to an adult career as a prolific actor and director.

Deimos

One seventh the mass of Phobos and further away from the Martian surface, this moon was found by Asaph Hall at the US Naval Observatory six days before he discovered Phobos. Its largest and only named craters are Swift and Voltaire; this satellite's surface doesn't appear as rough as Phobos's because regolith has filled in some of the craters. A still-controversial and unproven hypothesis holds that this object (and possibly Phobos as well) were asteroids perturbed out of their orbit by Jupiter and then captured by the gravity of Mars.

Jorge Luis Borges

One-quarter English, this man learned that language before he learned Spanish. Educated in Europe during World War I, he met a circle of avant-garde poets in Spain, which inspired him to found the ultraismo movement and publish the collection Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923) when he returned to Argentina. While working in a library, Borges developed his greatest short stories, collected in A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), and The Aleph (1949). By his fifties, a disorder inherited from his father had taken Borges's eyesight, but in 1962 he completed the influential story collection Labyrinths.

Oresteia

Originally a four-play cycle, only three works of this series of plays survive. Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon's adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon's children, Electra and the title character, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue that character for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, he appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, that title character is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or "The Kindly Ones." The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.

Bhagavad-Gita

Sanskrit for "The Song of God," this poem is found in Book Six of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Likely formalized in the 1st or 2nd century, this religious text begins on the eve of a battle, when the prince Arjuna asks his charioteer Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) about responsibility in dealing with the suffering that impending battle will cause. Krishna tells Arjuna that humans possess a divine self within a material form, and that Arjuna's duty is to love God and do what is right without thinking of personal gain--some of the main tenets of Hinduism.

George Washington

Selected by the Continental Congress to serve as general-in-chief, this general's first action was to blockade Boston. Key to the success in Boston was the capture of Dorchester Heights, allowing cannon fire against the British and forcing the withdrawal of Howe. After failing to defend New York, this general retreated toward Pennsylvania, extending British supply lines and allowing a successful counterattack on Hessian mercenaries at Trenton. Following victory at Princeton, he retired to winter quarters at Morristown. Sending his best forces north to deal with Burgoyne's attack in spring 1777, he kept Howe engaged in the mid-Atlantic. Autumn setbacks at Brandywine and Germantown led to a demoralized winter camp at Valley Forge, countered by the work of Lafayette, Steuben, and others. After a costly draw with Sir Henry Clinton's forces at Monmouth, this leader sent Greene south to replace Gates, and worked with the French general Jean Baptiste Rochambeau to plan the Yorktown campaign. The success of this campaign led to Cornwallis' surrender on October 19, 1781.

The Magic Flute

The libretto of this Mozart piece, by Emanuel Schikaneder, who took the role of Papageno at the premier, incorporates many Masonic elements (both Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons). In this piece, Tamino is saved from a serpent by three maidens of the Queen of the Night, but Papageno, a bird-catcher, claims credit. Both are shown their counterparts—Pamina and Papagena—but must face several trials at the hands of the sorcerer Sarastro, who heads a cult of Isis and Osiris and is assisted by Monostatos, a treacherous Moor. The Queen of the Night, who has two very difficult arias ("O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn" and "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen"), attempts to stop Tamino and Pamina from joining Sarastro, but is magically exiled with Monostatos.

Battle of Constantinople

The site of this 1453 battle fell to the Ottomans on May 29, 1453 after a seven-week siege. The Byzantine defenders were led by Emperor Constantine XI and a Genoese captain named Giovanni Giustiniani, and the Ottomans were led by Sultan Mehmed II and Zaganos Pasha. Preparations for the siege included the building of Rumeli Hisar across from Anadolu Hisar on the Bosphorus. The defenders stretched a chain across the Golden Horn, but the Ottomans rolled their ships over Galata Hill on greased logs to encircle the city.

Lysosomes

These are membrane-bound organelles that contain digestive enzymes that break down proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and nucleic acids. They are important in processing the contents of vesicles taken in from outside the cell. It is crucial to maintain the integrity of these organelle's membranes because the enzymes they contain can digest cellular components as well.

Fermions

These are particles with half-integral spin. Spin is a form of "intrinsic angular momentum" which is possessed by particles as if they were spinning around their axis (but, in fact, they aren't). The values cited for spin are not (usually) the real magnitude of that angular momentum, but the component of the angular momentum along one axis. Quantum mechanics restricts that component to being n/2 times Planck's constant divided by 2 pi for some integer n. If n is even, this results in "integral" spin, if it is odd, it results in "half-integral" spin. Note that the exact value of the spin itself is a real number; it's the multiplier of h/2pi that determines whether it is "integral" or not. These particles are subject to the Pauli Exclusion Principle: No two of these things can have the same quantum numbers (i.e., same state).

Seljuk Dynasty

These people were a family of Ghuzz Turks who invaded the Middle East in the eleventh century and came to control the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. Following their defeat of the Byzantines at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, they settled in Anatolia as well, where they founded the Sultanate of Rum. Following the Central Asian model of "collective sovereignty," they divided territory among the ruling family, which prevented strong political unity. Their rule saw the beginning of the Sunni revival and the spread of religious schools called madrasas in the Islamic world, giving uniformity to elite beliefs and practices. By 1200 their power was all but extinct.

Venus and Serena Williams

These siblings were born in Compton, California and coached from an early age by father Richard. The older one of these siblings reached the final of the U.S. Open in 1997. The younger one won a Grand Slam before her older sister did (1999 U.S. Open), but that sibling hit #1 by sweeping Wimbledon and the U.S. Opens in both 2000 and 2001. For a long time the younger of these siblings could not beat her older sister, but that changed in 2002, when she took four straight major finals against her. With her 2003 win at Wimbledon, she now has six majors to her older sister's four.

Gutzon Borglum

This American sculptor known for crafting Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He is also known for The Mares of Diomedes and an unfinished (and later replaced) tribute to Confederate heroes on Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Helen Wills Moody

This California native was nicknamed "Little Miss Poker Face" because her expression rarely changed on the court. Her play contrasted with that of the other great woman of the era, the emotional Suzanne Lenglen of France, though they met only once (as Lenglen turned pro). Nonetheless, this athlete dominated her competition; between 1927 and 1932 she did not drop a set. She won 19 major singles crowns—out of 22 entered—including eight Wimbledons, six U.S., and four French championships, in 1928 becoming the first player to win three Grand Slams in one season. She also swept the singles and doubles gold medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Lorenzo Ghiberti

This Florentine sculptor and goldsmith taught both Donatello and Filippo Brunelleschi. He is best known for two pairs of bronze doors on the Florence Baptistery (associated with the Duomo, or Florentine Cathedral). He produced a single, low-relief panel to win a 1401 competition (defeating Brunelleschi) for the commission to design the 28 panels for the north doors. After that, he was given another commission to design ten panels for the east doors. This latter work, by far his most famous, was dubbed the "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo.

Auguste Rodin

This French sculptor was known for stormy relationships with "the establishment" of the École des Beaux-Arts and his mistress, fellow artist Camille Claudel. His works include The Age of Bronze, Honoré de Balzac, The Burghers of Calais, and the Gates of Hell, a massive pair of doors for the Museum of Decorative Arts inspired by Dante's Inferno. That latter work included his most famous piece, The Thinker.

Clement Attlee

This Prime Minister won a huge Labour landslide victory in 1945 between the end of the war in Europe and victory in Japan. He founded the modern welfare state based on the Beveridge Report, including the National Health Service under his minister Nye Bevan. his Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin took the UK out of Palestine and sent troops to the Korean War.

Miranda v. Arizona

This Supreme Court Decision initiated after Phoenix police arrested the plaintiff on suspicion of kidnapping and rape; he subsequently confessed to those crimes. During his initial interrogation by police, Miranda was never informed of his Fifth or Sixth Amendment rights. Writing for a thin majority, Chief Justice Warren stated that "[p]rior to any questioning, [a] person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed," laying the groundwork for the iconic "Miranda warnings."

Lawrence v. Texas

This Supreme Court case began when a false police report led Houston police to the apartment of this case's namesake; upon entering, deputies claimed they found Lawrence having sex with another man, Tyron Gardner. Both men were charged with homosexual conduct, still a misdemeanor in Texas. Justice Kennedy's majority opinion held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause protected a person's "liberty" to engage in consensual homosexual activity, and declared the Texas law unconstitutional. The decision in this case overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986)—in which the court upheld a similar Georgia law—and has been cited as a key predecessor of both U.S. v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges.

Schenck v. United States

This Supreme Court case challenged the Espionage Act of 1917 which prohibited—among other things—any attempt to inhibit recruitment by the U.S. Armed Forces. This case's plaintiff was a Socialist who opposed conscription and distributed literature urging readers to resist the draft. Follwing his arrest and conviction, he appealed, claiming that his advocacy was protected speech covered by the First Amendment. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Holmes claimed the First Amendment does not protect speech that creates a "clear and present danger," and that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting 'fire' in a theatre."

Plessy v. Ferguson

This Supreme Court case originated when its plaintiff bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway. He sat in the whites-only car in violation of an 1890 Louisiana law mandating separate accommodations. He was convicted, but appealed to the Supreme Court against a Louisiana judge. The court upheld the law provided that "separate but equal" facilities were provided. John Marshall Harlan issued a famous dissent claiming "Our constitution is color-blind." This decision was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Boris Godunov

This Tsar began his career as a boyar in Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina, and eventually became tsar himself. He first cemented his influence by marrying a daughter of one of Ivan's court favorites and arranging his sister Irina's marriage to Ivan's son Fyodor; then he became regent under Fyodor, and was elected tsar when Fyodor died in 1598. However, he was rumored to have arranged the murder of Fyodor's brother Dmitrii, and the first of several "False Dmitriis" launched a revolt against him. This leader died in the midst of growing unrest and is now best known as the subject of a Pushkin play and a Mussorgsky opera.

Challenger Disaster

This accident was attributed by the Rogers Commission (the investigative body set up after the accident) to poor performance of the solid rocket booster (SRB) O-rings. The O-rings lost integrity and became brittle at low temperatures, such as those present on the morning of the launch. The failure of the O-rings caused "blow-by," where hot gasses escaped the booster joint, ultimately resulting in the destruction of this disaster's namesake. The Rogers Commission also cited both NASA and SRB contractor Morton Thiokol for a failure to redesign the SRB joint, known to be dangerous—manifestations of "go fever."

Burt Rutan

This aircraft designer gained worldwide attention in 1986 when his Voyager plane, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed a non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling. More recently, he designed the Global Flyer, aboard which Steve Fossett made a solo, non-stop circumnavigation without refueling in 2005, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by making the first privately funded space flights.

Andrea Palladio

This architect designed villas in or near Venice, including the Villa Rotonda and Villa Barbaro. He integrated Greco-Roman ideas of hierarchy, proportion, and order with contemporary Renaissance styles. His Four Books on Architecture from 1570 relates his theoretical principles. Among architects heavily influenced by Palladio were Inigo Jones and Thomas Jefferson.

Miguel Asturias

This author left his native Guatemala in 1923 to study in Paris. There he discovered Mayan mythology, and translated the Popol Vuh into Spanish; the theme would pervade his work, such as 1963's Mulata de tal. He most famous novel, El señor presidente (1946), was a satire against the oppressive Guatalemalan dictatorship. Healso completed a trilogy that blasted exploitation by the American-led United Fruit Company, and the short-story collection Weekend in Guatemala (1956), based on the CIA-led overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz's liberal government.

Petrushka

This ballet has a framing story with opening and closing scenes at a Shrovetide fair. The main story is about three puppets: the title character, the Ballerina, and the Moor, who are brought to life by the Magician (in some translations, the Charlatan). The former falls in love with the Ballerina, who is smitten with the Moor. The love triangle ends with the Moor killing the protagonist with an axe after the "Dance of the Wet-Nurses" and the "Dance of the Peasant and Bear." The Magician claims that no harm was done, since that character is only a puppet, but at the ballet's end his ghost appears and haunts the Magician. Musically, it is most famous for its "Petrushka chord," a dissonant combination of C major and F sharp major triads played by the clarinets.

Battle of Ticonderoga

This battle was a small but symbolic victory for the American forces led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. The Green Mountain Boys captured this battle's namesake fort on Lake Champlain from the British and transported its cannons to Boston.

Battle of Chancellorsville

This battle was a victory for the South, but with great cost, as Stonewall Jackson lost his life. Lincoln called on "Fighting Joe" Hooker to command the Union army; Hooker took a force of 134,000 and provoked Lee and Jackson's 60,000 men into battle. Jackson moved around Hooker and counterattacked the Union flank on May 2. That night, while Jackson was on reconnaissance, his own men mistook him for a Northerner and shot him; he died of pneumonia eight days later. The following morning, a cannonball blast hit the Chancellor House, knocking Hooker unconscious; Union troops led by John Sedgwick then retreated. Casualties for the North outnumbered those of the South, 17,000 to 13,000.

Chattanooga Campaign

This campaign began when Union General William Rosecrans forced Confederate commander Braxton Bragg out of the city on September 9. Ten days later, at Chickamauga (in Georgia), Bragg and Longstreet turned the tables by whipping Rosecrans, forcing him into a siege position at this campaign's namesake city. Only George Thomas (the "Rock of Chickamauga") saved Rosecrans from annihilation. Well-developed railroad networks, however, allowed Grant, Hooker, and Sherman to bring reinforcements. On November 24, Hooker took Lookout Mountain in the southwest, in the "Battle Above the Clouds." The next day, Thomas ran right over the Southern force at Missionary Ridge, securing Tennessee for the North.

Mario

This character first appeared in the arcade game Donkey Kong, in which he was originally named "Jumpman." Created by Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, He has since appeared in over 200 games, including an iconic eponymous game, which launched with the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985. This character, along with his brother Luigi, his nemesis Bowser, and his allies Yoshi, Princess Peach, and Toad, has also appeared in numerous spinoff series like his namesake Kart, Tennis, and paper Paper, along with Super Smash Bros.

Samuel Barber

This classicist composer isbest known for his "Adagio for Strings" (1936), which he adapted from his String Quartet, and which was premiered under the baton of legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other major orchestral works include his Piano Concerto (1962), his ballet score Cave of the Heart (1947) based on the Greek tale of Medea, and his single-movement "First Symphony" (1936, revised 1943). His vocal works include "Dover Beach" (1931) and "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" (1947). For much of his life, he maintained a romantic relationship with opera composer Gian-Carlo Menotti. His first opera, Vanessa (1958), won the Pulitzer Prize; his second major opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1966), was a flop.

Comparative advantage

This concept is the idea that every pair of potential trading partners (two firms, two neighbors, two countries, etc.) can benefit by trade if they are producing at least two goods. The counterintuitive aspect is that this result is true for every pair, no matter how unproductive one of the parties might be (in absolute terms). Broadly speaking, each party should specialize in what it does best (relative to the other party) and then trade for everything else. David Ricardo formulated this theory with a famous example involving Britain's cloth industry and Portugal's wine industry.

Shang Dynasty

This family is the first Chinese dynasty attested from written records. Archaeological excavations at the "ruins of Yin," near the modern city of Anyang, uncovered the remains of a Chinese civilization from the Bronze Age. Writings from this dynasty are found on "oracle bones," pieces of ox bone or turtle shell that were heated to produce a pattern of cracks that supposedly foretold the future.

The Ninth of Av

This holiday is a day of mourning for the destructions of both the First and Second Temples. It is traditional to fast and to keep oneself in a solemn mood. The Book of Lamentations and the Book of Job are read, traditionally while sitting on the floor and with candles as the only lights, as Jews are supposed to refrain from physical comfort.

Ganges River

This is the holiest river of Hinduism. It rises in the Himalayas and flows a comparatively short 1,560 miles to the world's largest delta on the Bay of Bengal. Among that delta's distributaries are the Hooghly (on whose banks Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) may be found) and the Padma (which enters Bangladesh). Approximately one in every twelve human beings lives in this river's Basin, a population density that is rapidly polluting the river; a significant source of that pollution is cremated remains.

Winston Churchill

This leader is best remembered as the UK's wartime prime minister from the country's isolation in 1940 to victory in 1945. The son of a major Conservative politician, this leader was a Liberal who served in Herbert Asquith's cabinet, becoming First Lord of the Admiralty before resigning over the failure of Gallipoli. As Stanley Baldwin's Chancellor of the Exchequer he put the UK on the Gold Standard. Winning a second term as Prime Minister during the Korean War, in later life he also won the Nobel Prize for Literature and wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Herbert Asquith

This liberal Prime Minister made sweeping reforms, including limiting the power of the unelected House of Lords with the Parliament Act in order to introduce the "People's Budget" of 1911 which established state pensions. Not a successful wartime leader, this man lost control of a coalition government during World War I and was forced to resign in favor of David Lloyd George.

The Ed Sullivan Show

This long-running CBS variety show occupied the same time slot—Sunday night at 8 pm—for over two decades. For most of that time, it broadcast live from the theater on Broadway which is currently the home of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Among the characters it bequeathed to American popular culture were a Spanish ventriloquist known as "Señor Wences" and an Italian mouse puppet named Topo Gigio. In 1964, the Beatles appeared on this show for three straight weeks, appearances which are credited with launching the "British Invasion" in popular music.

Henry Kissinger

This man held the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks that resulted in SALT I with the Soviet Union and pursued the "détente" policy to de-escalate the Cold War. He was instrumental in opening relations between the United States and China in 1972. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for the negotiation of Paris Peace Accords and ceasefires that ended the Vietnam War. This man used "shuttle diplomacy" to settle the Yom Kippur War among Egypt, Syria, and Israel.

Enrico Fermi

This man is best known to the public as a main contributor to the Manhattan Project, his work with statistical physics laid the groundwork for modern electronics and solid-state technologies. He applied the Pauli exclusion principle to subatomic particles to create his namesake statistics, which accurately predicted the low-temperature behavior of electrons. Particles which obey these statistics are named in this man's honor. He also suggested the existence of the neutrino in order to balance nuclear beta-decay chains.

Dean Acheson

This man is known primarily for developing the policy of containment — designed to prevent the spread of Communism — and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. His autobiography "Present at the Creation" is a major source for Cold War historians.

Benito Juárez

This man was a Liberal lawyer who became the first indigenous president of Mexico, and who led the opposition to the French-backed empire of Maximilian von Habsburg. Born to a Zapotec family in the state of Oaxaca, this man became a key figure in the Liberal movement that deposed Santa Anna, and which initiated legal and social changes known as La Reforma. An 1855 law named after this man sought to eliminate special privileges given to members of the church and military, and was incorporated into a new constitution ratified in 1857. Conservative backlash soon led to the War of the Reform, which lasted from 1857 to 1861, and left the victorious Liberals with little money in the national treasury. France's emperor Napoleon III then used Mexico's foreign debts to as a pretense for an invasion known as the "French Intervention," which briefly imposed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as Mexico's second emperor. As the elected president of Mexico, this ruler evaded capture by French and imperial troops while rallying Republican forces. After the departure of the French, Liberal troops captured and executed Maximilian on the Hill of the Bells in the city of Querétaro. This leader returned to Mexico City, and remained president until his death.

Sergei Prokofiev

This man wrote seven symphonies, of which the First is the most notable. While in Chicago, he premiered the opera The Love for Three Oranges, based on Italian commedia dell'arte. This man moved to Paris in 1922, where he composed works for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, including The Prodigal Son. In 1936 he returned to the USSR, where he completed the popular children's work Peter and the Wolf and the score for the film Alexander Nevsky. When Stalin denounced this man as "decadent," he was forced to write obsequious tributes to the premier. He survived Stalin, but only by a few hours (both died on March 5).

Apollo 1

This mission was intended to be a test of the Command/Service Module in low-Earth orbit (LEO). However, a fire on the launchpad during a test killed the three astronauts aboard (Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White). The fire was exacerbated by the pure-oxygen, positive-pressure environment inside the capsule, and the fact that the capsule door opened inward. Both of these design elements were scrapped in subsequent missions, and the second was replaced with an outward-opening hatch nominally to facilitate spacewalks. Lessons learned from this mission were also taken into account during the design of the Space Shuttle.

Reform League

This organization developed in 1865 to promote universal suffrage in the United Kingdom, which had been unsuccessfully advocated for by the Chartists. This group staged mass meetings to influence parliamentary proceedings, including a rally in Hyde Park in 1866 that forced the resignation of Spencer Walpole as Home Secretary. Their platform was eventually in 1867, during Benjamin Disraeli's prime ministry. An act named after them enfranchised urban working-class males in England and Wales (further bills enfranchised Scotland and Ireland the following year).

Populist Party

This party had its roots in the same farmer-labor partnership that created the Greenback Party (established 1874). Opposed to the elites of the banking and railroad industries, the Populist movement promised agrarian and labor reform. Its first presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, captured 22 electoral votes from 6 western states with 8.5% of the vote in 1892 as Democrat Grover Cleveland won his rematch against Republican Benjamin Harrison. Also in the West, multiple governors, Senators, and Representatives from this party held power throughout the decade. This party nominated the same presidential candidate as the Democrats in 1896, William Jennings Bryan, because of his stance on a silver bi-metal currency, though the vice-presidential candidate, party leader Thomas E. Watson, differed from the Democratic candidate. Bryan's failure to defeat Republican William McKinley led to the decline of this party.

Antarctica

This place is classified as a desert because of its lack of precipitation. Its notable features include its the mountain Vinson Massif (in the Ellsworth Mountains), the active volcano Mount Erebus, the surrounding Ross and Weddell Seas, and the Ross Ice Shelf. Norwegian Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole, which is located here, while Englishman Robert Scott died trying to reach it. Ernest Shackleton had to abandon his ship, the Endurance, during an attempt to cross this place on foot.

Gayane

This play tells the story of the title heroine, who lives on a cooperative farm in Khachaturian's native Armenia with her husband Giko and her father Ovanes, who heads the collective. Giko, a lazy alcoholic, repeatedly beats and abuses the hardworking title character. However, he escapes the marriage when she reveals Giko to be an anti-Soviet spy, leading to his arrest; he then marries the soldier Kazakov. The most famous excerpt from this ballet is the frenetic "Sabre Dance," originally part of a group of dances in the final act meant to represent the various Soviet republics. Other notable music from the ballet includes an adagio movement, meant to represent carpet weavers, that was used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Way of the World

This play's complex plot concerns Mirabell and Millimant, two lovers who wish to marry. However, Millimant will lose "half her fortune" unless her choice of husband is approved by her aunt Lady Wishfort, who wants her to marry Sir Wilfull Witwoud. Mirabell enlists the married servants Waitwell and Foible to trick Lady Wishfort into falling in love with Sir Rowland, who is actually Waitwell in disguise, so that the compromised Lady Wishfort will be forced to agree to Mirabell and Millamant's marriage. The scheme is supported by Lady Wishfort's daughter, Mrs. Fainall, but exposed by a woman named Mrs. Marwood, who loves Mirabell. A resolution is reached when the rakish Mr. Fainall tries to blackmail his mother-in-law Lady Wishfort, who asks for Mirabell's help. Mirabell then produces an old contract that invalidates the blackmail attempt, securing Lady Wishfort's blessing for his marriage to Millamant.

Thales

This pre-Socratic thinker from the Greek colony of Miletus is considered by many to be the "first philosopher." Rejecting mythical explanations of the universe's nature, he believed that the first principle of all existence, the natural element from which all things emerged, was water. He was also a civil engineer and mathematician, and is credited with discovering that any triangle whose hypotenuse is the diameter of a circle must be a right triangle. He is sometimes thought of as the founder of a "Milesian school" of philosophy, whose other members include Anaximander and Anaximenes.

Tagus River

This principal river of the Iberian Peninsula flows west from East-Central Spain for roughly 645 miles to the Atlantic, passing through Lisbon, Portugal on the way. The cities of Toledo and Santarém are on this river, and hydroelectric dams on the river produce huge artificial lakes including the Sea of Castile.

Abraham Maslow

This psychologist is principally known for two works, Motivation and Personality and Toward a Psychology of Being, that introduced his theory of the "hierarchy of needs" (food, shelter, love, esteem, etc.) and its pinnacle, the need for "self-actualization." Self-actualized people are those who understand their individual needs and abilities and who have families, friends, and colleagues that support them and allow them to accomplish things on which they place value. The lowest unmet need on the hierarchy tends to dominate conscious thought.

John B. Watson

This psychologist was the first prominent exponent of behaviorism; he codified its tenets in Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, arguing that psychology could be completely grounded in objective measurements of events and physical human reactions. His most famous experiment involved conditioning an eleven-month-old boy to be apprehensive of all furry objects by striking a loud bell whenever a furry object was placed in his lap.

Lao Tzu

This quasi-mythical thinker of Taoist tradition is said to have authored the Tao Te Ching. Concepts associated with him include that of the Tao, or "the way," and wu wei, or a life of non-action in accordance with the Tao. In later centuries, he was accorded godlike status as one of the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and is frequently depicted as an old man with a donkey. To him is attributed the quote "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Yangtze River

This river is the longest in China and Asia and the third longest in the world. It rises in the Kunlun Mountains, flows across the Tibetan Plateau, passes the cities of Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai, and empties into the South China Sea. Its basin is China's granary and is home to nearly one in every three Chinese citizens. The river has been in the news for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, which will reduce flooding but displace 1.5 million people and bury more than 1,300 known archaeological sites.

Yellow River

This river is, at 3,400 miles, China's second-longest; it is also the most important to the northern half of the country. It rises in Qinghai province and flows into the Bohai Gulf of the Yellow Sea. The river's name comes from the extraordinary amount of loess silt that it carries, an average of 57 pounds for every cubic yard of water. Among its notable features is the Grand Canal, built during the Ming Dynasty, that links it to the Yangtze.

Utilitarianism

This school of ethics advocates the maximization of "utility," which is often identified with pleasure or happiness. Its most influential early thinker was Jeremy Bentham, who asserted that it is the "greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." The foremost thinker of this ethical school was Bentham's disciple, John Stuart Mill, who expounded his views in such books as On Liberty.

StarCraft

This science fiction-themed video game series features three playable races: Terrans (humans), Zerg (a single-minded collective of insect-like aliens), and Protoss (strong, humanoid aliens with psionic powers). This series' latest entry was split into three parts whose stories each focused on one of the three races. Major characters in the series include Jim Raynor, a Terran leader, and Sarah Kerrigan, a former Terran psychic corrupted by the Zerg.

Paul Dirac

This scientist was one of the first to attempt a generalization of quantum theory to relativistic speeds, the result of which was his namesake equation equation.

Seine River

This second-longest French river flows through Paris. Starting on the Plateau de Langres near Dijon, it weaves northwest for 485 miles to enter the English Channel near Le Havre. Along the way, it passes through Troyes, Fontainebleau, and Rouen. This river is France's chief transport waterway, along with its tributaries the Marne and Oise.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

This sitcom centered on Mary Richards, a young woman who moves to Minneapolis, where she goes to work in the newsroom at WJM-TV. No fewer than three supporting characters eventually got their own spinoffs: Phyllis, which starred Cloris Leachman; Rhoda, which starred Valerie Harper; and Lou Grant, which—unlike both the other two spinoffs and this show itself—was a drama rather than a sitcom. The show is considered groundbreaking for its portrayal of Mary as an independent single woman.

Odysseus

This son of Laertes is known for his cleverness and glib tongue. His accomplishments include a successful night raid against King Rhesus, winning the armor of Achilles, and engineering the famous Trojan Horse. His ten-year trip home to Ithaca (where his wife, Penelope, awaits) is the subject of the Odyssey.

Heimdall

This son of nine sisters is the god of light and guardians. He guards Bifrost, the rainbow bridge into Asgard. His senses are so sharp, he can see 100 miles by night or day and hear grass growing. He will call the Aesir into battle at Ragnarok with his horn Gjall (or Gjallerhorn).

Ganymede

This the largest moon in the solar system and the only one known to have its own magnetosphere. The third of the Galilean satellites, this moon was also first photographed close-up by Pioneer 10 in 1973. Galileo made six flybys of this celestial body between 1996 and 2000. Based on a suggestion from Simon Marius, this moon (along with many of the Jovian satellites) is named for one of Jupiter's lovers in Roman mythology; it is the only such moon named for a male figure. Many of this place's features, including the Enki Catena, are given names from Egyptian and Babylonian mythology, although its largest dark plain is Galileo Regio. This moon is scheduled to be orbited by the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), currently slated for a 2022 launch.

Titan

This the largest moon of Saturn and the second largest in the solar system. Until Voyager 1 visited in 1980, it was thought to be larger than Ganymede. It is the only known satellite with a dense atmosphere—so dense that it makes observation of surface features nearly impossible except from close up—and also the only known satellite for which there is evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid. Discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, it was visited by the Cassini-Huygens mission in 2004. This moon's albedo features, such as the highly reflective area Xanadu, are named for sacred or enchanted places from world literature and mythology. Because of its nitrogen-rich atmosphere and the presence of surface liquid, this place is often thought to be the most likely place in the solar system for microbial life to exist outside of Earth.

Battle of Issus

This was the second major battle between Alexander the Great and the Persian Empire, and the first to feature Darius III. The battle was fought along the Pinarus River near present day Iskenderun in Turkey's Hatay province. Before the battle, Darius was able to surprise Alexander and cut him off from the main force of Macedonians. However, the battle ended with Darius fleeing the field and the capture of his tent and family. The battle was the subject of a 1528 painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, the leader of the Danube School.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor (Choral)

This work marks the first significant use of voices as part of a symphony, though they are only used in the final movement. The opening motif from the first movement reappears in altered form in a second movement scherzo, which itself is followed by a slow third movement that alternates between quadruple and triple time. The massive final movement, whose internal form closely resembles that of the entire symphony, utilizes both Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" and original texts by Beethoven himself. A typical performance takes approximately 75 minutes; the fourth movement alone takes 25.

Cicero

Though he is better remembered today for his role in the political life of the Roman Republic, this thinker was also a significant philosopher. He described the ideal state in such dialogues as On the Republic and On the Laws, while he discussed Epicurean and Stoic views on religion in On the Nature of the Gods. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he was considered one of the most important of ancient philosophers. Indeed, Saint Augustine asserted that he turned to philosophy as a result of reading a now-lost work by this man known as the Hortensius.

Titania and Oberon

Uranus's largest moons, these two places, are named for characters from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. They were discovered on the same day in 1787 by William Herschel, who also discovered Uranus itself in 1781. In 1986 Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to date to visit the Uranian moons.

Patroclus

This Trojan War figure was Achilles' foster brother and closest friend. Although he is a formidable hero, he is more valued valued for his kind and gentle nature. This warrior is killed by Hector while wearing the armor of Achilles.

Alexander II

This Tsar embarked on a program of Great Reforms soon after taking the throne near the end of the Crimean War. The most famous part of his program was the serf emancipation of 1861. But he also introduced a system of local governing bodies called zemstvos, tried to increase the rule of law in the court system, eased censorship, and reorganized the army. He became more reactionary after an attempted 1866 assassination and was assassinated in 1881.

Battle of Saratoga

This campaign was the major turning point of the American Revolution because the American victory led France to join the war. British General John Burgoyne led an invasion into New York from Canada with hopes of meeting another British army and splitting the American colonies. The final surrender was preceded by battles at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights. Horatio Gates led the American forces.

Kalahari Desert

This desert is known for its red sand, large game reserves (meerkats, gemsbok, springbok, steenbok), and mineral deposits (notably uranium). Most famous are its San Bushmen and their click language.

David Ricardo

This economist is best known for Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which introduced more-or-less modern notions of comparative advantage and its theoretical justification for unfettered international trade. He also put forth the so-called iron law of wages.

Plantagenet

This family rose to power when Geoffrey V of Anjou married Matilda, and their rule ended when Richard II was deposed in 1399. Some of their notable rulers included Richard I, John, and Edward I. The signing of the Magna Carta, the English conquest of Wales, and the beginning of the Hundred Years War all occurred during their reign. The houses of Lancaster and York were cadet branches of this house.

Frigga

This goddess is the wife of Odin, and mother by him of Balder, Hoder, Hermod, and Tyr. She is the goddess of the sky, marriage, and motherhood, and often works at her loom spinning clouds.

National Union of Mineworkers

This group led a strikes in 1984 under the leadership of Arthur Scargill. That strike was began after the Thatcher government announced a plan to close 20 coal mining pits as a way of reducing government subsidies to the mines, which precipitated a strike. By March 1985, the Thatcher government had outlasted this group's members, effectively breaking the power of this group, one of Britain's most powerful unions.

Priam

This king of Troy and son of Laomedon, he has 50 sons and 12 daughters with his wife Hecuba (presumably she does not bear them all), plus at least 42 more children with various concubines. Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, kills him in front of his wife and daughters during the siege of Troy.

La Péri

This last major work by Paul Dukas tells the story of Iksender, who is searching Iran for the Flower of Immortality. He finally finds it at the Ends of the Earth, where it is in the hands of a sleeping Péri (a mythical fairy-like creature from Persian folklore). When Iksender tries to steal the flower, he awakens the Péri, who needs the flower to commune with Ormuzd (the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda). The Péri seduces Iksender, who realizes that he doesn't deserve the flower. He surrenders it to the spirit, who ascends to Paradise, leaving him to die alone on Earth. The opening fanfare is often performed independently of the rest of the suite.

Endo Shusaku

This man converted to Catholicism at the age of 11, and majored in French literature. His first works, White Man and Yellow Man, explored the differences between Japanese and Western values and national experiences. Silence tells of the martyrdom of the Catholic converts of Portuguese priests. The Samurai recounts the tale of a samurai sent to establish trade relations between his shogun and Mexico, Spain, and Rome. The latter two novels are generally considered to be this man's greatest achievements.

John Hay

This man negotiated the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War and established the "open door policy" with China. He also served as Lincoln's personal secretary while working as a clerk in the Interior Department. He negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaty that established the Panama Canal Zone in 1903.

Simón Bolívar

This man was a Venezuelan who is known as "El Libertador" for freeing South America from Spanish rule. He authored the Cartagena Manifesto and Decree of War to the Death in his quest to liberate Colombia and Venezuela, during which he won the Battle of Carabobo. After gaining independence from Spain, he led the short-lived republic of Gran Colombia, which from 1819 to 1830 included modern Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama.

Pedro I

This man was the Emperor of Brazil from 1822 to 1831. The son of King John VI of Portugal, he became the first ruler of the Empire of Brazil when he declared independence from Portugal in 1822 with the Cry of Ipiranga. In 1831, he abdicated in favor of his son in order to launch an ill-fated invasion of Portugal.

Alfredo Stroessner

This man was the dictator of Paraguay from 1954 to 1989. He ruled Paraguay with an iron fist, and was backed by the CIA for his anti-communist purges. He came to power by overthrowing Federico Chávez in 1954 and assuming leadership of his Colorado Party.

David Lloyd George

This native Welsh speaker served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Herbert Asquith. Taking control during World War I, he represnted the UK at the Paris Peace Conference, leading to the Treaty of Versailles. After the war he split the Liberal Party by aiming to continue the coalition government together with the Conservative Bonar Law: the coalition collapsed after embarrassment over the independence of Ireland and a scandal over the sale of honors.

Gross Domestic Product

This quantity is a commonly used measure of the size of a country's or state's economy. It is computed by summing consumption, investment, government expenditures, and exports, and then subtracting imports.

Andromache

This wife of Hector and mother of Astyanax futilely warns Hector about the Trojan War, then sees both her husband and son killed by the Greeks. After the Trojan War she is made concubine to Neoptolemus and later marries the Trojan prophet Helenus.

Dao de Jing

This work was the philosophical text behind Daoism, a religion-philosophy founded by the semi-legendary Laozi in the sixth century BC, though scholars now believe it was written about 200 years later, during the Warring States period of the late Zhou Dynasty. This text instructs adherents in restraint and passiveness, allowing the natural order of the universe to take precedent.

Frank Gehry

Winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize, this man is best-known today for large-scale compositions like the Experience Music Project in Seattle, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the recent, controversial Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. He often uses uncommon materials such as plywood and limestone; his designs range from Kobe's Fishdance Restaurant, shaped like a giant fish, to the soft-sculpture look of the so-called "Fred and Ginger" buildings in Prague. He also designs furniture: The Easy Edges line is made of laminated cardboard; his namesake Collection consists of chairs named for hockey terms. As of 2002, active projects included a new wing for the Corcoran Gallery and the SoHo Branch of the Guggenheim.

Zinedine Zidane

this 1998 World and European Footballer of the Year as an all-around player is France's midfield. He was a critical player in the World Cup '98 (he scored a pair of header goals in the final against Brazil) and Euro 2000 (a game-winning overtime penalty kick in the semi-finals against Portugal), both triumphs for the French national side. Like fellow French legend Platini, this man plays for Italian side Juventus, where he has helped the Turin side win two Serie A titles.

Battle of Trenton

This Revolutionary War battle occurred early in the morning after George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night. The Hessians, under the command of Johann Rall, were surprised and about two-thirds of them were captured.

Adam Smith

Although this Scottish philosopher and economist wrote on nearly every subject of moral and social philosophy, he is basically remembered as the author of An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and as the creator of the metaphor of the "invisible hand." He founded the Classical school of economics.

Mario Lemieux

This hockey player scored his first NHL goal on the first shift of his first game, against Boston in 1984. He led the Pittsburgh Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cups in 1991-92. After a bout with Hodgkin's disease, he returned to lead the NHL in scoring in 1995-96 and 1996-97. He then later helped bail the Penguins out of bankruptcy by becoming the lead owner of the team in 1999.

Cordell Hull

This man was a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1945 for his work in founding that organization. He sent a namesake note to Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor making a futile attempt to force the Japanese out of French Indochina, China, and Manchukuo, in accordance with his predecessor's Stimson Doctrine.

Elizabeth II

Representative of the modern ceremonial monarchy, this monarch and her husband "Prince" Philip Mountbatten have traveled the globe representing British interests. Marital failures by her sons Charles (the Prince of Wales) and Andrew have plagued her reign.

Babylonia

.This was a region of lower Mesopotamia centered on the city of Babylon. The different incarnations of this empire included the Amorite, Kassite, and Chaldean dynasties. The most notable Amorite ruler was Hammurabi, famed for his legal code, though Babylon was at its most powerful under the Chaldeans. The Chaldean ruler Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and destroyed Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.

John Paul Jones

A Scotsman who had fled Britain after two deaths at his hands, he added the last name Jones to his given name. At the outbreak of conflict, he was commissioned to outfit the Alfred, which he then used to help capture New Providence in the Bahamas. The next month, April 1776, saw him lead the Alfred against the HMS Glasgow, leading him to promotion and command of the Providence. Ordered to raid until his provisions were expended, he sank and captured ships in operations along the Atlantic coast. Commissioned captain of the Ranger, he sailed to France to acquire new ships, and captured the HMS Drake. Leaving Europe in August 1779, he met the British ship Serapis in battle September 23, 1779.

Petersburg Campaign

After Cold Harbor, Grant moved south to lay siege to this railroad hub, 25 miles from Richmond. On July 30, Pennsylvania coal miners detonated four tons of powder in a tunnel underneath the Confederate line; this "Battle of the Crater" killed many defenders. Although the South maintained the city, its supplies ran thin in the winter of 1865. Grant finally destroyed the Confederate right flank at Five Forks (April 1-2), 14 miles southwest of Petersburg. This resounding defeat led to Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House one week later, effectively ending the Civil War.

John Cage

An American student of Arnold Schoenberg, this composer took avant-garde to a new level, and may be considered a Dada composer because he believed in aleatory, or "chance" music. His Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) used twelve radios tuned to different stations; the composition depended on what was on the radio at that time. The following year's 4'33" required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and then close it; audience noise and silence created the "music." This man also invented the "prepared piano," where he attached screws, wood, rubber bands, and other items to piano strings in order to create a percussion sound.

Nighthawks

As is often the case with his works, this Edward Hopper painting uses a realistic approach (including such details as the fluorescent light of the diner, the coffee pots, and the Phillies cigar sign atop the diner) to convey a sense of a loneliness and isolation, even going so far as to depict the corner store without a door connecting to the larger world. Hopper's wife Jo served as the model for the woman at the bar. This painting is housed at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Gene Sarazen

Born Eugene Saraceni, this golfer came to prominence in the early 1920s, winning the PGA Championship in 1922 and 1923, as well as the U.S. Open in 1922. Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen then dominated golf until the early 1930s, when this player returned to form, winning four more majors. At the 1935 Masters, he carded an albatross (three under par) from the fairway of the Par-5 15th hole to force a playoff; when he won, he became the first golfer to complete the modern career Grand Slam.

Shavu'ot

Celebrated on the sixth day of Sivan, the 50th day of the Omer, after Passover; this holiday's name means "weeks," hence the name Pentecost. He commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, as well as the beginning of the harvest in ancient Israel. Sukkot, Passover, and this holiday are the three pilgrimages, when Jews would all gather at the Temple each year; on this holiday, Jews would dedicate their first harvest fruits to the Temple. The Book of Ruth is read in synagogue on this day, and it is traditional to study all night on this festival.

First Battle of Bull Run

Fought at a creek near Manassas, Virginia (30 miles west of Washington D.C.), this was the first major showdown of the war. Beauregard led an army against Union commander Irwin McDowell and received reinforcements from Joseph Johnston's troops (whom Union General Robert Patterson failed to detain). The Confederacy routed the Union when Thomas Jackson's brigade held the left line at Henry House Hill; this effort earned him the nickname "Stonewall." Congressmen and reporters, who had expected to watch a Union victory, fled in panic back to D.C.

Vacuoles

Found mainly in plants and protists, these organelles are liquid-filled cavities enclosed by a single membrane. They serve as storage bins for food and waste products. Contractile types of these are important for freshwater protists to rid their cells of excess water that accumulates because of salt imbalance with the environment.

South Pacific

In this musical, set during the Pacific Theater of World War II, Nellie Forbush, a U.S. Navy nurse, falls in love with Emile, a French plantation owner. Emile helps Lt. Cable carry out an espionage mission against the Japanese. The mission is successful, and Emile and Nellie reunite. Featuring the songs "Some Enchanted Evening," "There is Nothing Like a Dame," and "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair," it is adapted from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.

Oklahoma!

In this musical, set on the eve of the title locations statehood, cowboy Curly McLain and sinister farmhand Judd compete for the love of Aunt Eller's niece, Laurey. Judd falls on his own knife after attacking Curly, and Curly and Laurey get married. A subplot concerns Ado Annie, who chooses cowboy Will Parker over the Persian peddler Ali Hakim. Featuring the songs"Oh What a Beautiful Mornin, it is often considered the first modern book musical.

Mount Kilimanjaro

Kibo, Mawenzi, and Shira are the three summits of this mountain, which is the tallest peak in Africa. It is notable for also being the tallest mountain that is not part of a mountain range, having been formed by a now-extinct volcano. A corpse of a leopard is found on the top of this mountain in a short story by Ernest Hemingway that uses the mountain as the backdrop for the memories, and ultimately the death, of a writer suffering from gangrene.

Dynamics

Markings denoting this quality indicate the volume at which music is to be played. The two most basic of these markings are forte, meaning "loud," and abbreviated f; and piano, meaning "soft," and abbreviated p. These indications are often modified by the word mezzo (abbreviated m); thus, mf indicates "mezzo forte," meaning "medium loud." They may also be modified by the suffix -issimo, meaning "very," and symbolized by two of the same letter; thus, pp would indicate pianissimo, meaning "very soft." Gradual changes in volume are indicated by a crescendo, meaning gradually getting louder, or a diminuendo (also called decrescendo), meaning gradually getting softer.

Lee Trevino

Nicknamed "Supermex" for his Mexican-American heritage, this golfer came from a poor Dallas family and served in the Marines, but came from nowhere to win the 1968 U.S. Open. He won six majors: the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship twice each, his second PGA in 1984 at age 44. That last win was most impressive because it came after the 1975 Western Open, where he was struck by lightning on the golf course.

William Gladstone

Noted Liberal Prime Minister who passed a Third Reform Act and modernized the military, but failed to achieve Irish Home Rule. Queen Victoria loathed this man, who's campaign sensationalized the "Bulgarian horrors," suggesting that Britain needed to resolve the "Eastern Question" about the fate of the Ottoman Empire.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

On what President Franklin Roosevelt declared would be "a date which will live in infamy," Japanese carrier-based aircraft launched, without a formal declaration of war, a surprise attack on the American naval base on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The attack, planned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, sank four battleships, most notably the USS Arizona, but all of the U.S. Navy's carriers were at sea and were unattacked. Shortly after the attack, Japan began invasions of Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, and the British colony of Singapore. On December 8, with only Montana Representative Jeannette Rankin dissenting, the U.S. Congress declared war on Japan.

Thoth

Serving the gods as the supreme scribe, this ibis-headed deity was known as the "tongue of Ptah" for his knowledge of hieroglyphics, and as the "Heart of Re" for his creative powers. His knowledge of science and calculation made him the creator of the calendar, and his symbol of the moon was due to his knowledge of how to calculate its path. His knowledge of magic led to his association with the Greek Hermes. This god was consulted by Isis when attempting to resurrect Osiris, and was again consulted when the young Horus was stung by a scorpion.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor

The iconic opening motif of this symphony—a descending major third followed by a descending minor third, in a short-short-short-long rhythmic pattern—has become ubiquitous in popular culture, though the claim that it represents "fate knocking at the door" is an apocryphal invention. This work's third movement, a scherzo and trio in C minor, ends on a G major chord that proceeds directly into a C major final movement; that finale features one of the first orchestral uses (though not the first orchestral use) of trombones. This work was premiered as part of a concert that also included the premiere of the Sixth Symphony.

Aida

The title character in this opera is an Ethiopian princess who is held captive in Egypt. She falls in love with the Egyptian general Radames and convinces him to run away with her; unfortunately, he is caught by the high priest Ramphis and a jealous Egyptian princess Amneris. Radames is buried alive, but finds that the title character has snuck into the tomb to join him. The opera was commissioned by the khedive of Egypt and intended to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal, but it was finished late and instead premiered at the opening of the Cairo Opera House.

1972 Summer Olympics

These Olympic Games saw the kidnapping and killing of 11 Israeli athletes by eight Palestinian terrorists, five of whom were shot dead by West German police. Jim McKay of ABC Sports remained on the air for hours, bringing American viewers up to date on the situation. Though the Olympics paused for 34 hours, the IOC ordered the games to continue and memorable performances were turned in by American swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals, and Russian gymnast Olga Korbut, who captivated audiences en route to winning three gold medals.

Ostrogoths

These people were one of numerous Germanic peoples subjected to the Huns north of the Danube. They threw off Hunnic domination after the death of Attila. After the last Roman emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed in 476, this tribe took advantage of the chaos to occupy Italy and establish their own kingdom. Their king Theodoric, known as "the Great," ruled from 493 to 526 and tried to restore peace to Italy. The philosopher Boethius worked as an official at Theodoric's court. This kingdom collapsed in the 6th century after the Byzantine generals Belisarius and Narses fought a series of destructive wars for control of the Italian peninsula.

Daniel Chester French

This American created The Minute Man for Concord, Massachusetts and Standing Lincoln for the Nebraska state capitol, but is best known for the seated statue in the Lincoln Memorial.

Zeno of Elea

This man was a student of Parmenides, who founded the Eleatic school in a Greek colony of the Italian peninsula. He is most famous today for his paradoxes, the best-known of which involve an arrow in flight and a race between Achilles and a tortoise. His paradoxes purport to show that physical movement is impossible, since any attempt to travel a distance must be preceded by moving half that distance, which must be preceded by moving half of half that distance, and so on.

George III

Though he lost the American colonies in the Revolutionary War, Britain's economic empire expanded during this king's reign. While his ministers kept their lives, they fell from power frequently, including both William Pitt, Lord Bute, and Lord North. Popular at home, he suffered from porphyria, causing the "madness" that ultimately led to the Regency period (1811-1820) of his son George IV.

Ruth Benedict

A colleague and friend of Mead, this anthropologist studied the Zuni, Dobu, and Kwakiutl cultures in Patterns of Culture, using them to illustrate the idea of a society's culture as "personality writ large." She also described Japanese culture in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, a work written during World War II at the request of the U.S. government.

Battle of Long Island

Also called the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, this largest battle of the Revolutionary War resulted in the British capture of New York. William Howe defeated George Washington.

Election of 1968

After Lyndon Johnson declined to run for re-election, and after Robert F. Kennedy was killed in California, the Democratic nomination went to Hubert Humphrey. Richard Nixon, gradually returning from political obscurity over the past six years, gained the Republican nomination. Alabama governor George Wallace ran as the American Independent candidate, becoming the last third-party candidate to win multiple electoral votes. Nixon edged Humphrey by half a million popular votes and a 301-191 electoral count, while Wallace won nearly ten million votes. Wallace's presence may well have tipped the election to the Republicans, who, after being out of power for 28 of the last 36 years, would hold the presidency for all but four years through 1992.

Tadeusz Kościuszko

After receiving military training in his native Poland and France, this engineer resigned his commission due to poor advancement prospect. Offering his assistance to the Americans, he helped fortify the Delaware River in 1776, earning himself the rank of colonel. That winter, he planned the building of Fort Mercer, and the next spring headed north with General Gates, becoming commander of the northern army and building fortifications which helped win the battle of Saratoga. In 1780, he worked on building defenses for West Point, then headed south when Gates was appointed command of the Southern Department. Serving under Nathaniel Greene, he distinguished himself in the Race to the Dan River, and at Charleston, but mishandled the siege of Ninety-Six. Following the war, he was granted American citizenship but returned home to Poland. Back home he resisted partition, and attempted to liberate the nation afterward.

Marquis de Lafayette

Approached by U.S. Minister to France Silas Deane, this general arrived in April 1777 with Baron de Kalb. First seeing action at Brandywine, his primary early action was in supporting Washington during the winter at Valley Forge. After participating at the battles of Barren Hill, Monmouth, and Newport, he returned to France, raising support for an expeditionary force. Returning to America a colonel, he served on the board that sentenced Major Andre to death, and then faced Andre's confederate Benedict Arnold in battle in 1781. Working in Virginia, he evaded Cornwallis' forces, until reinforcements arrived in June. Coordinating with Anthony Wayne, the two combined forces against Cornwallis in the battle of Green Spring. Pursuing Cornwallis to Yorktown, this man helped the siege there until Cornwallis' surrender.

Qur'an

Arabic for "recitation," it is the most sacred scripture of Islam. This text is subdivided into 114 chapters, called suras, which, with the exception of the first one, are arranged in descending order of length. According to Muslim belief, the angel Jibril [Gabriel] visited the prophet Muhammad in 610 and revealed this work to him. Various suras discuss absolute submission to Allah [God], happiness in Heaven versus torture in Hell, and the mercy, compassion, and justice of Allah. The third caliph, Uthman (644-656), formalized the text after many of his oral reciters were killed in battle.

Benjamin Disraeli

Before becoming Prime Minister, this man was instrumental in the passage of the Second Reform Act as leader of the House of Commons. Britain's only Prime Minister of Jewish descent, this leader was also a successful novelist. He promoted a strong, imperial foreign policy including investment in the Suez Canal and the peace achieved at the Congress of Berlin.

José Martí

Best known as a poet and a revolutionary, this man fought tirelessly for Cuban independence. Imprisoned at age sixteen and exiled from the island several times, he settled in New York for the last fifteen years of his life, where he wrote essays on Walt Whitman, Jesse James, and the threat of Latin American economic dependence on the United States. His Ill-Omened Friendship (1885) is considered the first Spanish modernist novel, and his poetry collections include Our America and Simple Verses; the poem "Guantanamera" was the inspiration for several songs. He was killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos while participating in an invasion with other Cuban exiles.

Pablo Neruda

Born Neftalí Reyes, this author adopted the surname of a 19th century Czech poet. Gabriela Mistral (see below) was the head of his school in the small city of Temuco. 1923 saw the publication of his best-known work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which led to diplomatic appointments. As a penniless consul in Burma in the 1930s, he wrote the surrealist collection Residence on Earth. He served in the Chilean senate in the 1940s, though government opponents forced him into exile over his Communist views. Crossing the Andes on horseback inspired his epic Canto general (1950). He died of cancer days after his friend Salvador Allende was executed.

Echinodermata

Characteristics of this phylum include an endoskeleton composed of many ossicles of calcium and magnesium carbonate, a water vascular system (WVS), a ring canal around the esophagus, and locomotion by tube feet connected to the WVS. Unique to members of this phylum is the five-fold radial symmetry obvious in sea stars (seafish), sea urchins, and sea lilies. Others, like sea cucumbers, have varying degrees of bilateral symmetry. In the body plan for this phylum, a true head is absent; the anatomical terms oral (mouth-bearing) and aboral (away from the mouth) are used to describe orientation of the body surfaces. Feeding adaptations include particle feeding through the WVS, everting the stomach to engulf prey (sea stars), and a scraping device called Aristotle's lantern (sea urchins).

Long Day's Journey Into Night

Eugene O'Neill wrote this play fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O'Neill's own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2

First painted in 1912, this Marcel Duchamp created a sensation when shown at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, where one critic referred to it as "an explosion in a shingle factory." Painted in various shades of brown, This painting portrays a nude woman in a series of broken planes, capturing motion down several steps in a single image. The painting reflects a Cubist sense of division of space, and its portrait of motion echoes the work of the Futurists.

Chisholm v. Georgia

Following the death of Robert Farquhar, his estate's executor, the defendant in this Supreme Court case sued the state of Georgia to collect money Georgia owed Farquhar for goods it purchased during the American Revolution. Georgia claimed that sovereign immunity protected it from that defendant's suit. However, the Supreme Court held that Article III Section 2 gave citizens the right to sue a state, finding against Georgia. The Court's ruling proved so controversial that it resulted in the 1794 passage of the Eleventh Amendment, which specifically prohibited U.S. or foreign citizens from filing a lawsuit against a state.

A Raisin in the Sun

Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for this Lorraine Hansberry play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").

Plato

His Socratic dialogues are our main source both for Socrates's philosophy and his own; this philosopher often put his own thoughts in Socrates' mouth. His dialogues include the Republic (about justice and the ideal city-state), the Symposium (about the nature of love), and the Meno (about whether virtue can be taught). This Athenian believed in a world of "forms"—or ideal versions of real things that lie beyond the human senses—which he discussed in such works as the Phaedo. He founded a school called the Academy, from which we get the common word.

Uffizi Gallery

Located in Florence, this museum was originally designed by Giorgio Vasari to serve as offices for the Florentine magistrates under Cosimo de Medici. After Cosimo I died in 1574, the new grand duke, Francis I, commissioned the conversion of its top floor into a galley. Its outstanding Renaissance holdings include The Birth of Venus and La Primavera, both by Sandro Botticelli, and Titian's Venus of Urbino.

Lady Macbeth

Macbeth's pursuit of the Scottish throne is largely driven by this Shakespearean character. After three witches predict that Macbeth will be king, this character fears that he is "too full 'o the milk of human kindness" to commit murder, and bids "spirits" to "unsex" her and imbue her with willpower. She insults his masculinity, and urges him to "screw [his] courage to the sticking-place" and kill King Duncan. When Macbeth is unable to frame two grooms for the murder, this character does so in his place. Later, she is wracked with guilt for her actions. While sleepwalking, she tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands, and cries "out, damned spot!" In the final act, the news of her death prompts Macbeth to deliver the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy.

Mollusca

Members of this Phylum are second in diversity only to the arthropods. Body plans within this phylum are diverse, but general characteristics include a soft body covered by a thin mantle, with a muscular foot and an internal visceral mass. There are two fluid-filled body cavities derived from mesodermal tissue; a small coelom and a large hemocoel that functions as an open circulatory system. Many members of this phylum have a shell composed of calcium carbonate and proteins, secreted by the mantle. Familiar groups within the Mollusca include the classes Gastropoda (slugs, snails), Bivalvia (clams, oysters, scallops), and Cephalopoda (nautilus, squids, octopi).

Progressive Party (1948)

Not to be confused with Robert La Folllette's 1924 party of the same name, this party formed out of Wallace's disagreements with his replacement as FDR's vice president, incumbent Harry S. Truman, who had fired Wallace from his position as Secretary of Commerce. In addition to promoting leftist reforms, Wallace also wanted cooperation with the Soviet Union, though his association with the Soviets and Communism hurt his popularity. In spite of this, he still won 2.4% of the vote with well over a million votes in a contentious election that Truman barely won over Thomas Dewey.

Franz Boas

Often called the founder of modern anthropology, this first professor of anthropology at Columbia University trained Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber, author Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. He conducted fieldwork on the Inuits of Baffin Island and the Kwakiutl (now referred to as Kwakwaka'wakw) on Vancouver Island. His publications include 1911's The Mind of Primitive Man, which describes a gift-giving ceremony known as the "potlatch."

The Glass Menagerie

Partly based on Williams' own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda's insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O'Connor to the house as a gentleman caller for Laura. While O'Connor is there, the horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.

Phidias

This Athenian considered the greatest of all Classical sculptors. He created the chryselephantine Statue of Zeus at Olympia and the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. He was supported by money from the Delian League run by his friend Pericles; he was later ruined by charges of corruption generally considered to be part of a political campaign against Pericles.

Apocrypha

Protestants and Jews assign lower authority to this text collection because it was written between 300 and 100 BC, but Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider the books that make up them to be "deuterocanonical," meaning that they are just as important and divinely-inspired as other parts of the Old Testament. Scholars differ as to which books make up this collection, but Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch are almost always included.

Battle of Adrianople

Taking place near modern Edirne, this battle signalled the beginning of the spread of Germanic peoples into the Western Roman Empire. The Romans were led by the eastern emperor Valens, while the Goths were led by Fritigern. Eager for glory, Valens decided not to wait on reinforcements from the western emperor Gratian, and instead attacked the Goths. In the battle, over two-thirds of the Roman army was killed, including Valens. The battle was chronicled by Ammianus Marcellinus, who thought it so important that he ended his history of the Roman Empire with the battle.

Hammer v. Dagenhart

The Keating-Own Act prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor, leading the defendant in this case to sue a U.S. attorney in Charlotte. The court ruled that the federal government did not have the right to regulate child labor; Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a notable dissent focusing on the lack of proper state regulation. The case was overturned by the 1941 U.S. v. Darby Lumber Company case upholding the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Inflation

The rate of this is the pace at which prices are rising, usually expressed in the form "2.5% per year." This is equivalent to the rate at which currency loses its value. This quantity is often measured by the consumer price index, which establishes a standard basket of goods that a family might buy and seeing how its total price changes over a year.

Norns

These goddesses of destiny are represented as the three sisters Urd (or Wyrd), Verdandi (or Verthandi), and Skuld. The counterparts of the Greek Fates, they tend the Well of Fate at the roots of Yggdrasil.

Mesons

These particles are composite particles generally made from a quark and an anti-quark. There are dozens of examples including the pion, kaon, J/Psi, Rho, and D. All of these particles are bosons. The quark and anti-quark must have the same color (such as red and anti-red) so that the resulting particle is colorless (or "white"). It is also possible to make this particle out of two (or more) quarks and the same number of anti-quarks, but this kind of particle (a "tetraquark") is rare.

Golgi Apparatus

Thie stack of flattened, folded membranes that forms this organelle acts as the "post office of the cell." Here proteins from the ribosomes are stored, chemically modified, "addressed" with carbohydrate tags, and packaged in vesicles for delivery.

Cycliophora

This most recently named phylum's only known member is Symbion pandora, a tiny invertebrate first identified in 1995 when a Danish biologist found specimens on the mouthparts of a Norwegian lobster. It is believed to be closely related to the marine phyla Entoprocta and Ectoprocta (Bryozoa), which are not discussed here.

Béla Bartók

A young girl singing a folk tune to her son in 1904 inspired this composer to roam the Hungarian countryside with Zoltan Kodály, collecting peasant tunes. This influence permeated his music, including the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and the ballets The Wooden Prince (1916) and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). A virtuoso pianist and an innovative composer, this man refused to teach composition, contributing to financial problems, especially after he fled Nazi-held Hungary for the U.S. in 1940. He wrote many prominent instrumental pieces; best known are six string quartets, the educational piano piece Mikrokosmos, and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936).

Arjuna

The chief hero of the Mahabharata, this son of Indra is one of five Pandava brothers who fight a bitter war against their one hundred cousins, Kauravas, culminating at the battle on "Kuru's Field." Before the battle, this hero asks his charioteer why he must fight. Krishna responds that he must follow a devotion to god (bhakti) and that even as he slays his brethren, it is for a just cause. Along with the rest of the Pandavas, this hero is married to Draupadi.

Marie Curie

Along with her husband Pierre, this woman rigorously isolated and experimented on radioactive materials, forming the basis for early nuclear and particle physics.

The Persistence of Memory

First shown in 1931, this Salvador Dali painting is probably the most famous of surrealist paintings. The landscape of the scene echoes Port Lligat, Dalí's home. The ants, flies, clocks, and the Port Lligat landscape are motifs in many other Dalí paintings, and the trompe l'oeil depiction of figures is typical of his works. It currently belongs to MOMA; its 1951 companion piece, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, hangs at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Battle of the Coral Sea

Resulting from a Japanese plan to capture Port Moresby in New Guinea, this battle was fought entirely by carrier-based aircraft, making it the first major naval battle in history in which the two opposing fleets never directly fired upon (or even sighted) each other. The U.S. Navy's carrier Lexington was sunk, and the Yorktown heavily damaged, while the Japanese Navy lost the light carrier Shoho and saw its large carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku damaged. Ultimately, the invasion of Port Moresby was cancelled and the temporary loss of two Japanese carriers gave the U.S. an edge at the subsequent Battle of Midway.

Thames River

Running from Thames Head near Cirencester to an estuary near Southend in Essex, this river is the principal river of England and flows through central London. The Houses of Parliament and the London Eye overlook this river, as does Big Ben. Flowing through Reading, Oxford, and Swindon, it is prevented from flooding London by its namesake Barrier near the Isle of Dogs. Though it is the longest river entirely in England, it trails the Severn (which also flows into Wales) as the longest river in the United Kingdom.

Henry Hudson

Sailing for the Dutch in 1609, this man journeyed up the New York river now named for him as far as present-day Albany. On his final voyage, he sailed for England in search of the Northwest Passage aboard the Discovery. After sailing between Baffin Island and Labrador, he turned south into what is now called Hudson Bay. There, most of his crew mutinied under the leadership of Robert Juet. This man, his son, and some loyal crew members were placed in an open boat and left to die.

Romeo and Juliet

Sergei Prokofiev composed this musical for the Bolshoi Ballet. Prokofiev originally intended to substitute a happier ending for Shakespeare's tragic one — stating "dead people cannot dance" — but conductor Yuri Fayer talked him out of it (in significant part for political reasons). The "Dance of the Knights" (also called "Montagues and Capulets") is an often-excerpted portion of the ballet noted for its pulsating, driving rhythm, while the Gavotte, or "Departure of the Guests," reuses a theme from Prokofiev's First Symphony (the "Classical"). The score, which calls for such nonstandard instruments as a tenor saxophone, maracas, tambourine, and celesta, was later transformed into three orchestral suites, as well as a set of ten works for solo piano. (The score underwent further revisions — not by Prokofiev himself — in 1940; choreographer Mark Morris has performed Prokofiev's original version with the "happier" ending.)

Hanuman

Son of the wind god Vaayu and Queen Anjana, this Hindu god has a human body with a monkey's head. As a boy he swallows the sun (mistaking it for a piece of fruit); the angry Indra whips him with a thunderbolt. In response the wind god Vaayu refuses to breathe air into the world, prompting Indra to apologize and the other gods to bestow immortality and shapeshifting ability on this deity. He figures prominently in the Ramayana, where he flies to Lanka to tell Sita that Rama will rescue her from Ravana.

Porifera

Sponges in this phylum are all water-dwellers (98% marine, 2% freshwater), and are sometimes classified separately from other animals because of their asymmetric bodies and lack of distinct tissues. They are sessile (immobile) except in early dispersing stages, and collect food particles via the sweeping motions of flagellated cells called choanocytes [koh-ANN-oh-sites].

James II

The 1678 Popish Plot against Charles II would have elevated the Roman Catholic king to the throne, had it been real and not fabricated by Titus Oates. This English leader's three years, however, did feature heavy favoritism toward Catholics, so much so that Protestants invited his son-in-law William of Orange to rule England, deposing this man in the bloodless Glorious Revolution. Exiled to Louis XIV's court, he made an attempt to regain his crown in 1690 but was routed at the Battle of the Boyne.

Mount Mitchell

The Black Mountain subrange of the Appalachians is the location of this mountain, the tallest peak in the United States found east of the Mississippi. This mountain, found in North Carolina, was the subject of a debate over its altitude between its namesake and Thomas Clingman, leading that namesake to attempt another ascent in which he fell to his death.

Battle of Manzikert

The Byzantine defeat at this 1071 battle by the Seljuk Turks was a severe blow to the Byzantine empire's control of Anatolia. The Seljuks were led by Alp Arslan, while Emperor Romanus IV led the Byzantines. The Byzantines split their forces in half before the battle by sending general Joseph Tarchaneiotes to Khliat, and were further weakened by the desertion of Andronicus Dukas. The Byzantine emperor was captured in this battle, but released by Alp Arslan after signing a peace treaty. Romanus IV was later deposed and blinded.

Wilderness Campaign

The first clash between Grant and Lee, this series of conflicts started with the Battle of the Wilderness (50 miles northwest of Richmond), where Southern leaders A.P. Hill and Ewell held the line, and over 17,000 Northerners fell. At Spotsylvania Court House, Meade assaulted Lee's men, but they repelled Meade at the "Bloody Angle." The trenches in which much of the fighting took place were similar to those later seen in World War I. Advancing within ten miles of Richmond, Grant met Lee at Cold Harbor (June 3); he lost 7,000 men to Lee's 1,500 and withdrew across the James River, but with the entire campaign he severely reduced Confederate strength in a war of attrition.

Gary Player

The most successful non-American golfer in history, this South African has won nine majors. When this player took his only U.S. Open crown in 1965, he not only became the first non-American to win that tournament in 45 years, but he also became one of three (now five) golfers (along with Nicklaus, Woods, Hogan, and Gene Sarazen) to win all four modern Grand Slam events. Nicknames include "The Black Knight" for his dress and "Mr. Fitness" for his devotion to exercise.

Christina's World

The namesake of this Andrew Wyeth is Christina Olson, who lived near the Wyeths' summer home in Cushing, Maine. In the 1948 painting, she lays in the cornfield wearing a pink dress, facing away from the viewer, her body partly twisted and hair blowing slightly in the wind. In the far distance is a three-story farmhouse with dual chimneys and two dormers, along with two sheds to its right. A distant barn is near the top middle of the painting. One notable aspect is the subtle pattern of sunlight, which strikes the farmhouse obliquely from the right, shines in the wheel tracks in the upper right, and casts very realistic-looking shadows on the namesake figure's dress. The Olson house was the subject of many Andrew Wyeth paintings for 30 years, and it was named to the National Register of Historic Places for its place in this painting.

Brahma

The third of the Trimurti, this god is the Creator. By dropping an egg into the cosmic waters, he hatches a younger form of himself that creates other beings. Also the chief priest, he has four heads that each point in a cardinal direction, representing the Four Vedas. He has a fifth head until Shiva plucked it off; as punishment for that act, Shiva is forced to wander as a beggar and carry this deity's severed skull as a bowl. His wife is Savitri, who curses him after he lets a cow-maiden stand in for her at an important ritual. Few people worship this god, either because of the curse or because he lost a power struggle to Vishnu.

Oedipus Rex

The title character of this play is a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, he sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. The title character then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that the title character himself was the killer. He initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads him to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that he would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant title character in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, he eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and the title character blinds himself with Jocasta's brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as the namesake character begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.

Mia Hamm

The youngest American, ever to play for a U.S. National team, this woman was a member of both the 1991 and 1999 Womens' World Cup Champions and the 1996 Olympic Gold Medal winning side. A UNC-Chapel Hill alum (BS 1994, Political Science), and two-time Hermann Trophy winner and Missouri Athletic Club Player of the Year winner (1992 & 1993), her #19 was retired by the Tar Heels, where she won 4 NCAA titles. In international play, she holds the all-time international scoring record, for men and women, when she scored career goal 108 on May 16, 1999, against Brazil in Orlando. One of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1997, the largest building on Nike's Corporate Campus in Beaverton, Oregon, is named for her.

Picts

These early medieval inhabitants of northern Britain, were known for their raids on the Roman frontier fortification of Hadrian's Wall. Their name may refer to their use of colorful tattoos. Their art is notable for elaborate stone carvings of mysterious beasts. Starting in the 9th century, these people's kingdoms were absorbed by the neighboring kingdom of the Scots.

Jack Nicklaus

This "Golden Bear" won the U.S. Amateur twice (1959 and 1961), and was the 1961 NCAA champion at Ohio State. He took his first major the following year at the U.S. Open, beating Arnold Palmer on Palmer's home course. This golfer became the youngest Masters champion at the time in 1963, and 23 years later became the oldest champion with a final round 65 in 1986. He has a record 18 major pro championships overall, including six Masters, five PGA Championships, four U.S. Opens, and three British Opens. He is still somewhat active on the Senior PGA Tour, and as a golf course architect.

Sonic the Hedgehog

This flagship Sega franchise stars a namesake blue hedgehog that runs at high speeds. A game from this franchise first appeared on the Sega Genesis console in 1991, and is accompanied in later games by allies such as Tails (an orange, two-tailed fox) and Knuckles (a red echidna). The series's villain is Dr. Eggman, known as Dr. Robotnik in the early Genesis games. Though the series has maintained popularity for over two decades, more recent games have had considerably less success than the first three Genesis games.

Alfred Marshall

This man's book Principles of Economics introduced the notions of consumer surplus, quasi-rent, demand curves, and elasticity, all fundamental concepts in introductory macro- and microeconomics.

Howard Hughes

This subject of the 2004 film The Aviator was a skilled aircraft pilot and designer who in the 1930s set speed records for flights across the United States and around the world. His most famous plane was the H-4 Hercules, or "Spruce Goose," a massive wooden plane that to this day holds the record for longest wingspan on an operational craft. Meant to carry as many as 750 troops, this man was the pilot during its lone flight, a one-minute hop in 1947. Also a movie producer, He is widely remembered for the various eccentricities, such as a pathological fear of germs and a refusal to cut his hair or nails, that he exhibited late in life.

Negev Desert

This triangular desert covers the southern half of Israel.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

A highly skilled pianist and conductor, this man twice turned down conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He failed to reap the monetary benefits of his early pieces (notably the C-Sharp Minor Prelude of 1892), because he sold them cheaply to a publisher. Treated by hypnosis in 1901, this composer began a productive period with his Second Piano Concerto (known affectionately by Julliard students as "Rocky II") and the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909). He moved to the U.S. in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution. There his output decreased, though he did complete the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934.

Battle of Hastings

A little more than two weeks after Stamford Bridge, Harold Godwinson was defeated by another claimant to the throne of England at this 1066 battle. That claimant was Duke William of Normandy, who is now known as William the Conqueror. This battle and Harold's death are depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry. This battle took place two weeks after William's landing at Pevensey.

The Creation of the World

A trip to the U.S. inspired Darius Milhaud to compose this 1922 ballet, which shows a heavy influence of jazz and blues, as well as traditional African rhythms. For this ballet, Milhaud omitted violas, substituting an alto saxophone. Choreographed by Jean Börlin and using a set designed by Cubist artist Ferdinand Leger, the ballet aims to depict the beginning of creation according to African tradition: the creator gods Mzame, Mbere, and Nkwa appear out of a seemingly empty void to create animals, plants, and then the first man and woman. The latter then perform a routine based on popular Dixieland dances and conclude the ballet in the tableau "The Man and the Woman Kiss."

Appalachian Spring

Aaron Copland had several working names for this ballet while composing it, including House of Victory and Ballet for Martha. The latter name refers to its choreographer, Martha Graham, who took its ultimate title from a line in Hart Crane's poem "The Bridge." Graham's ballet depicts a group of pioneers in Pennsylvania, including a newlywed couple, building a farmhouse and encountering a Revivalist preacher and his flock. The ballet's original set was designed by Graham's frequent collaborator Isamu Noguchi. Because this ballot was first performed in the Library of Congress, Copland was forced to limit the accompanying ensemble to just 13 musicians. The best-known section of the ballet by far is Copland's use of the traditional Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" in the penultimate section of the suite; the full ballet contains several more movements based on variations on the hymn.

H.M.S. Pinafore

Aboard this musical's title ship, Josephine promises her father, the captain, that she will marry Sir Joseph Porter, but Josephine secretly loves the common sailor Ralph Rackstraw, and the two plan to elope. A peddler named Buttercup reveals that she accidentally switched the captain and Ralph at birth: Ralph is of noble birth and should be captain, while the captain is nothing more than a common sailor. Ralph, now captain, marries Josephine, and the former captain marries Buttercup. Like The Pirates of Penzance, songs are named after their first lines; they include "We sail the ocean blue," "I'm called Little Buttercup," and "Pretty daughter of mine."

Isabel Allende

Actually born in Peru, at age three this woman moved to her mother's native Chile. A successful news reporter in her twenties, she and her family fled to Venezuela after General Augusto Pinochet deposed and executed her uncle Salvador Allende, setting up a dictatorship. Her formal literary career began at age 40, when she published The House of the Spirits, a magic realist work that chronicles several generations of the Trueba family. Other works of fiction include the short-story collection Eva Luna (1989) and Paula (1995), which detailed her care for her terminally ill daughter.

Francisco Pizarro

After receiving a commission from Emperor Charles V, this man went with his partner Diego de Almagro, the priest Hernando de Luque, and a small force to Peru. The invaders marched to the city of Cajamarca, where they seized the emperor Atahualpa and held him for ransom. Even though the Incas brought the Spanish a ransom of precious metal, this man killed Atahualpa and captured the Incan capital of Cuzco. In 1535 he founded Lima, where he was murdered six years later.

Phobos

Along with Deimos, this object was discovered by Asaph Hall III in 1877. At just 3700 miles above the Martian surface, this object orbits more closely to its planet than any other moon in the Solar System. Because it orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates, each day it appears (from the Martian surface) to set twice in the east each day. Geological features on this moon, including the Stickney Crater, are primarily named for either astronomers (Stickney was the maiden name of Asaph Hall's wife) or characters from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In 1971 the US's Mariner IX became the first spacecraft to provide close-up photos of this satellite.

Oder River

Along with the Neisse, this river forms the Germany-Poland border, as dictated at the Potsdam Conference in July and August of 1945. One of the largest rivers to enter the Baltic, it has been a major transport route for centuries. Ostrava in the Czech Republic and Breslau in Poland are on this river. Near its mouth is Stettin, which Churchill used as the northern terminus of his "Iron Curtain" (Trieste, in the South, is an Adriatic port not near a major river). At the mouth of this river are Usedom Island, Swinemuende, and Peenemuende, which were primary test sites for the German V-2 rocket in the 1940s.

Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major (Emperor)

Also called "emperor", this concerto, composed near the end of Beethoven's "heroic decade," is the last concerto of any type that he completed. Beethoven defies traditional concerto structure in the opening movement by placing the most significant solo material for the piano at the beginning of the movement, rather than near its end. Beethoven did not give the work its title; it was first dubbed "Emperor" by Johann Cramer, who first published the work in England. This concerto, which was premiered by pianist Friedrich Schneider, is the only one of Beethoven's piano concertos that the composer himself never performed publicly.

Beethoven's Wellington's Victory; or, the Battle of Vitoria

Also commonly known as the "Battle Symphony", this heavily programmatic work was originally written for the panharmonicon, an automated orchestra; Beethoven later revised the work for live performers. This work utilizes several familiar melodies—including "God Save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," and "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"—and calls for special effects such as musket fire. The work is generally regarded as one of Beethoven's worst; even the composer himself acknowledged it as being a money-maker rather than serious art.

Battle of Grunwald

Also known as the Battle of Tannenberg, this 1410 battle marked a major turning point in Eastern European history as it led to the decline of the Teutonic Knights and the rise of Poland-Lithuania. Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen led the Teutonic Knights, and King Władysław II Jagiello led Polish forces and Grand Duke Vytautas led the Lithuanians. After their defeat, the Teutonic Knights held out in Marienburg Castle until the Peace of Thorn in 1411.

Battle of Chalons

Also known as the battle of Catalaunian Fields, this battle between the Romans and the Huns fought in what is now France. The Roman army was commanded by Flavius Aetius and included Visigoths under Theodoric I, who was killed by an Ostrogoth during the battle. The Hunnic army was led by Attila, who was rampaging through Gaul. The battle ended with a victory for the Roman-Visigothic alliance, which stopped the Huns' advance into Gaul. The next year, Attila invaded Italy; however, in 453, Attila died and his empire broke up shortly after.

Loki

Although this god is a actually a giant, lives with the Aesir and is Odin's blood-brother. The god of fire and trickery, his many pranks include duping Hoder into killing Balder. His children include the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard Serpent Jormungandr, Hel (the ruler of the underworld), and Sleipnir. After killing Balder he was chained to three boulders with snakes dripping poison onto him.

Socrates

As he left no writings of his own, historians know of this philosopher largely from the dialogues of his student Plato. Proclaiming his own ignorance of all things, he went around Athens engaging in question-and-answer sessions to search for truths or draw out contradictions. The Athenian state disapproved of his conduct, and he was put on trial for corrupting the city's youth, which led to his death by drinking hemlock. His trial, imprisonment, and death are recounted in Plato's Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, respectively.

James I

At age one this king succeeded his mother Mary as King James VI of Scotland. As the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, he claimed the English throne upon the death of Elizabeth I. He was the intended target of Catholic fanatic Guy Fawkes' failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605. A believer in absolutism, this king dissolved Parliament from 1611 to 1621, favoring ministers Robert Cecil and the Duke of Buckingham instead. His rule saw English expansion into North America, through royal charter in Virginia and Puritan protest in Massachusetts.

Aaron Copland

At first a modernist, this composer was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s; there he finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theater. By the 1930s, he turned to simple themes, especially the American West: El Salón Mexico was followed by the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring (1944), the last containing the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts." His Third Symphony contained his Fanfare for the Common Man, while Lincoln Portrait featured spoken portions of the President's writings. This composer wrote several educational books, beginning with 1939's What to Listen For in Music.

Intervals

At the most basic level, these things—the distance between two pitches—are described with ordinal numbers (second, third, etc.), with the exceptions of unisons (two of the exact same note) and octaves (eight notes apart). The easiest way to find the basic one of these between two pitches is to start on the bottom pitch, label that line or space "1," and then count lines and spaces upwards until the next pitch is reached; for example, the one between C and F is a fourth: C is counted as "1," the lines/spaces for D and E are counted as "2" and "3," and the line/space for F is reached on "4." Unisons, fourths, fifths, and octaves may be classified as perfect, augmented, or diminished; seconds, thirds, sixths, and sevenths may be classified as major, minor, augmented, or diminished.

The Bacchae

At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.

Battle of Alesia

At this battle, Julius Caesar defeated the Celtic peoples of Gaul, establishing Roman rule of the lands beyond the Alps. The battle began when Caesar besieged Vercingetorix in the town of Alesia, shortly after the Roman defeat at Gergovia. The Romans built a wall to surround the city (a "circumvallation") and a second wall around that (a "contravallation") to protect themselves from the Gaulish relief army under Commius. When Commius launched a massive attack on the Romans, Caesar was able to defeat him and force the surrender of Vercingetorix. Although the Romans were outnumbered by as much as four to one, they proved victorious in what was the turning point of the Gallic Wars.

Wayne Gretzky

Born in Brantford, Ontario, this "Great One" was named Canada's athlete of the century. He holds or shares 61 NHL records, including career goals (894), assists (1,963), and points (2,857). The winner of ten scoring titles (Art Ross Trophies) and nine NHL MVP's (Hart Trophies), his #99 was retired league wide. He won four Stanley Cups with Edmonton in the 1980s before a major trade sent him to Los Angeles in 1988. After a brief stint in St. Louis, he would finish career with New York Rangers in 1999.

Purim

Celebrated on the 14th of Adar, this holiday commemorates the victory of the Jews, led by Esther and Mordechai, against Haman, who tried to destroy the Jews because of his anger at Mordechai. The story, recorded in the Book of Esther (read from a one-handed scroll called a megillah), takes place in Shushan, the capital city of the kingdom of the Persian King Ahasueras. On this holiday, it is traditional to dress up, get drunk, give charity, eat triangular pastries called hamentaschen, and exchange gifts (Mishloach Manot) with friends.

Yom Kippur

Celebrated on the tenth day of Tishrei, it is the Jewish Day of Atonement; at the end of this holiday, it is believed that one's fate is sealed. Jews are required to abstain from eating, drinking, washing, and sex. Forbidden fashions include jewelry, makeup, and leather shoes. One traditionally wears white clothes to symbolizing purity from sin. In the afternoon, the Book of Jonah is read. A full day of prayers begins with the Kol Nidre, an ancient incantation that forgives Jews from vows or promises unwittingly made during the past year. As on Rosh Hashanah, the shofar is blown.

The Creatures of Prometheus

Choreographer Salvatore Viganò asked Beethoven to write the music for this ballet for a performance for Austrian empress Maria Theresa. In the ballet, two statues come to life; Prometheus then takes them to Parnassus and exposes them to "the passions of human existence." They learn music from Orpheus, tragedy and comedy from the Muses, and dance from Pan and Bacchus. The ballet's overture, like Beethoven's First Symphony, begins with dissonant chords giving way into a lilting melody. Its finale contains a theme Beethoven would use in his "Eroica" Symphony (No. 3) and his Op. 35, the Eroica Variations for piano.

1980 Summer Olympics

Despite the glow from the Lake Placid Games, these Games were marred by a United States boycott ordered by President Jimmy Carter in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This lead was followed by Canada, West Germany, Japan, Kenya and China, while other Western nations left it up to their individual athletes, many of whom chose to partake. The result was an Eastern Bloc field day, with all 54 East German rowers earning a medal and the Soviets totaling 80 gold medals. British distance runner Sebastian Coe produced the West's best performance by winning the 1500-meter race.

Chuck Yeager

During World War II, this man served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, earning "ace in a day" status by shooting down five German aircraft in one mission. On October 14, 1947, this aviator, piloting a Bell X-1 plane nicknamed (in tribute to his wife) Glamorous Glennis, became the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound in level flight. Profiled in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, He re-set the speed record at more than Mach 2 in 1953, and he remained active in the Air Force, even flying combat missions over Vietnam in his mid-40s.

Albert Einstein

During his Annus Mirabilis, 1905, this man authored four papers that revolutionized modern physics. The first explained the photoelectric effect in terms of discretized electromagnetic radiation. The second formed the foundation for modern statistical physics by explaining the seemingly-random motion of particles in a fluid, a behavior called Brownian motion. The third reconciled Maxwellian electrodynamics with classical mechanics by positing a finite, constant speed of light. This is now known as special relativity. The fourth paper contained his statement that the energy of a body is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared. Ten years later, in 1915, this physicist published his theory of general relativity, which generalized special relativity to account for gravitational fields.

Matterhorn

Edward Compton and John Ruskin are among the artists inspired by this mountain, which is renowned for its almost perfectly pyramidal shape. The mountain is located on the border between Switzerland and Italy, near the Swiss town of Zermatt. The 1865 ascent by Edward Whymper, which claimed the lives of four mountaineers, was the celebrated first climb of the summit.

Margaret Mead

For her best-known work, Coming of Age in Samoa, this anthropologist interviewed young girls on the island of Ta'u, which led her to conclude that adolescence in Samoan society was much less stressful than in the United States; in The Fateful Hoaxing of this anthropologist, Derek Freeman claimed that she was lied to in those interviews. She also studied three tribes in New Guinea — the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli — for her book on Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.

Baron von Steuben

Formerly part of Frederick the Great's staff, this Prussian was recommended by Ben Franklin to George Washington. Accepted by the Continental Congress, he joined Washington at Valley Forge, and began training the army. Appointed major general and inspector general in May 1777, he aided in the Battle of Monmouth, then spent two years writing the Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, an army training manual. Sent to Virginia in 1780 to oppose Benedict Arnold's actions, illness caused him to turn over his troops to Lafayette, but he recovered in time to aid in the siege of Yorktown.

The Legend of Zelda

Games in the this series star the green-clad Link, who typically must rescue the eponymous princess from the evil Ganon (who sometimes appears in his humanoid form, Ganondorf). Recurring weapons in the series include the Master Sword, boomerang, bombs, and hookshot. Much of the series's lore centers on the Triforce, a set of three golden triangles whose constituent parts represent power, wisdom, and courage.

Matsuo Basho

Generally acknowledged as the master of the haiku form, the most notable influences on this man's work were Zen Buddhism and his travels throughout Japan. He is noted for works like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), which includes descriptions of local sights in both prose and haiku. He took his pseudonym from the name of the simple hut where he retired: Basho-an, which means "Cottage of the Plaintain Tree."

Pea Plant Experiments

Gregor Mendel supported his laws of segregation and independent assortment with experimental evidence by growing and counting this experiment's eponymous plants. He worked with seven characteristics including plant height, seed shape, and color. His experiments primarily consisted of hybridizing plants with certain characteristics, and observing what fraction of the next generation had certain traits. His results were remarkably close to the values that would be predicted from modern genetics—close enough, in fact, that Mendel has been accused of manipulating his data.

Charles Lindbergh

In May 1927, this man made the first non-stop, solo, trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, a single-engine Ryan aircraft. Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island and landed at Le Bourget Field in Paris 33-and-a-half hours later. He married Anne Morrow in 1929, and the 1932 kidnapping and murder of their son Charles Jr. was deemed "The Crime of the Century"; ultimately, Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and executed. Prior to the U.S.'s entry into World War II, this aviator urged the U.S. to remain neutral and was active with the America First Committee, though during the war he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific.

George Gershwin

Known at first for producing popular songs and musicals with his older brother Ira, this composer successfully melded jazz and popular music with classical forms, most famously the Rhapsody in Blue (1924), the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra (1925), and the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935), based on a story by DuBose Heyward. His first major hit was 1919's "Swanee," sung by Al Jolson, and his 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing was the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gershwin died of a brain tumor at age 38.

M*A*S*H

Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family, his show twas a highly successful CBS sitcom that dealt with controversial social issues—in this case, war. Centering on the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea, it was adapted from the 1970 feature film of the same name directed by Robert Altman. Major characters included Hawkeye Pierce, a wisecracking surgeon played by Alan Alda; Sherman Potter, who was added to the show in season 4 after the previous commanding officer, Henry Blake, was killed off; and Corporal Klinger, who would dress in women's clothing in an attempt to be discharged from the army.

Rijksmuseum

Located in Amsterdam, this is the national museum of The Netherlands. Currently housed in a Gothic Revival building designed by P. J. H. Cuypers and completed in 1885, its most distinguished works include Rembrandt's Night Watch, Franz Hals's The Merry Drinker, and Jan Vermeer's The Kitchen Maid.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Located on the edge of Central Park, this museum's main building on Fifth Avenue was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Its collection includes El Greco's View of Toledo, Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates, and John Singer Sargent's Madame X.

The Art Institute of Chicago

Located on the western edge of Grant Park in Chicago, the main building of this museum was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and features two lion statues at its entrance. It has an outstanding collection of French Impressionist and American works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte-1884, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge, Grant Wood's American Gothic, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

Terry Sawchuk

Nicknamed "Ukey", this athlete played more games (971), won more games (447), and recorded more shutouts (103) than any other netminder in NHL history. In 1952, he recorded eight straight wins, including four shutouts, in the playoffs for Detroit. Winning 5 Vezina Trophies in his career for lowest team GAA (the criteria during his era), He also won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 1950-51. Always deeply psychologically troubled, he died in a household accident in 1970 while a member of the New York Rangers.

Progressive Party (1924)

Not to be confused with Henry Wallace's 1948 party of the same name, this party was created Robert La Follette to run for president on his own brand of Progressive ideals different from those of Roosevelt, his onetime rival. Running on promises resembling those of the earlier Populists, La Follette grabbed 17% of the vote in the 1924 election with 13 electoral votes from his home state of Wisconsin. He came close to Democrat nominee John W. Davis in votes, but neither could prevent Republican Calvin Coolidge's re-election.

James Cook

On his first voyage, this man sailed aboard the Endeavour to observe the transit of the planet Venus from Tahiti. From there he went to New Zealand (discovering that it was two islands by sailing through the Cook Strait), then to Australia's Botany Bay. On his second voyage, he sailed aboard the Resolution and became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. On his third voyage, he failed to find the Northwest Passage and was killed when he came into conflict with the inhabitants of Hawaii.

Christopher Columbus

On his first voyage, this man sailed for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, taking the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria and landing at San Salvador in the Bahamas (where he dubbed the Arawak inhabitants "Indians") before discovering Hispaniola and founding the settlement of Navidad there. On his second voyage (1493), he returned to Hispaniola before discovering Jamaica. On his third voyage (1498), he discovered South America, and on his fourth voyage (1502), he landed in Central America.

Battle of Antietam

On this bloodiest day of the Civil War, 12,000 Union men lost their lives, as did 10,000 Confederates. Lee planned a northern invasion into Maryland but a Union soldier discovered those battle plans wrapped around three cigars. Instead, Lee marched his army toward Sharpsburg Creek. Meanwhile, Jackson's forces captured Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and rushed to reunite with Lee. McClellan had a large enough force to capture the entire rebel army but did not use all of his troops nor coordinate one solid attack. This battle was actually a series of five skirmishes; in one of them, dubbed "The Bloody Lane," 2000 Union soldiers fell in a few minutes. As it was, Union forces drove the Confederates back across the Potomac.

Analects

One of the "Four Books" used by the ancient Chinese for civil service study, this religious text contains the sayings (aphorisms) of Confucius. The philosopher Confucius did not write or edit the words that make up this text; his disciples compiled them in the 5th or 4th century BC. Confucianism is more of a philosophical system than a religion, and Confucius thought of himself more as a teacher than as a spiritual leader. This work also contain some of the basic ideas found in Confucianism, such as ren (benevolence) and li (proper conduct).

Vishnu

One of the Trimurti, this god is the Preserver, protecting the world. When needed, this god descends to Earth as an avatar, or incarnation. Nine have appeared so far: Matsya, Kurma (tortoise), Varah (boar), Narasimha (man-lion), Vamana (dwarf), Parashurama, Rama, Krishna, and Buddha. A tenth, Kalki, will appear with a flaming sword to save humans from the darkness. Some cult followers worship this Hindu god as Narayana, the primal being. He has dark blue skin, rides with the eagle Garuna, and sits on the snake Shesha. His symbols are the conch, disc, club, and lotus; his chief wives are Lakshmi and Bhu (the Earth). Kama, the god of love, may be his son.

Sumer

One of the first civilizations to arise in Mesopotamia, this civilization was a collection of city-states including Eridu, Uruk, and Ur. This civilization created cuneiform, the first known writing system, which was made by putting wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets.

Agni

Part of a trinity with Surya (the sun) and Vaayu (the wind), this god can be brought to life by rubbing two sticks together. Since he is responsible for sacrificial fires, he is the patron of priests. He has a red body, two heads, three legs, four arms, and seven tongues; he often carries a flaming javelin. In the Mahabharata, this deity's grandfather is one of seven great sages; with the help of Krishna, he devours the Khandav forest.

Battle of Lake Peipus

The Russian victory at this 1242 battle ended territorial claims of the Teutonic Knights on Russian soil. The Russians were led by Alexander Nevsky and Andrey Yaroslavich, while the Livonian Order (a branch of the Teutonic Order) was led by Hermann of Dorpat. It is also known as the Battle on the Ice because the lake it was named for was frozen at the time.

Yijing

The basis for ancient Chinese philosophy and religion, this text was created between 1500 and 1000 BC, though legend has it that the dragon-emperor Fuxi derived its eight trigrams from a turtle shell. The trigrams consist of three either broken (yin) or unbroken (yang) lines, and by reading pairs of these trigrams randomly, one could learn about humans, the universe, and the meaning of life. Qin emperor Shi Huangdi burned most scholarly books, but this text escaped because it was not seen as threatening.

Battle of Okinawa

The largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater, this battle featured massive casualties among both combatants and civilians. The Japanese launched over 1,500 kamikaze attacks against the U.S. fleet, and even sent the massive battleship Yamato on a one-way suicide mission; it was sunk by aircraft before reaching the site of this battle. On the American side, both war correspondent Ernie Pyle and Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, were killed. Somewhat uniquely, the battle also saw large numbers of Japanese troops surrender, although many were natives forced into fighting.

Guernica

The namesake of this Pablo Picasso painting was a Basque town bombed by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War in April 1937. Picasso had already been commissioned to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair, and he completed his massive, black, white, and grey anti-war mural by early June 1937. Picasso's Cubist approach to portraying the figures adds to the sense of destruction and chaos. This painting was in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York until 1981, when it was returned to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Spain.

Mount Aconcagua

The subduction of the Nazca Plate formed this mountain, the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere. Found near the city of Mendoza in Argentina, this peak straddles the Polish Glacier, which provides a popular route for climbers looking to ascend to the summit.

Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

The title character in this musical returns to London from Australia, where the evil Judge Turpin, who lusted after his wife, unjustly imprisoned him. His daughter, Joanna, escapes Turpin - of whom she had been a ward during her father's incarceration - and falls in love with the sailor Anthony Hope. The vengeful protagonist begins murdering his customers, and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into meat pies. That character kills the Judge but, in his fury, accidentally kills a mad beggar woman who was really his long-lost wife. Mrs. Lovett's shop boy, Tobias, grows scared and kills him. Its famously complex score includes "The Worst Pies in London," "Johanna," and "God, That's Good".

Don Giovanni

The title character of this Opera attempts to seduce Donna Anna, but is discovered by her father, the Commendatore, whom he kills in a swordfight. Later in the act, his servant Leporello recounts his master's 2,000-odd conquests in the "Catalogue Aria." Further swordfights and assignations occur prior to the final scene in which a statue of the Commendatore comes to life, knocks on the door to the room in which the title character is feasting, and then opens a chasm that takes him down to hell.

Mozart's Piano Concertos

These Mozart pieces are numbered from 1-27, though six of them are arrangements of works by other composers. One of these, No. 8 in C major, K. 246, is named for Countess Lützow, for whom it was written, and No. 9 in E flat major, K. 271, is nicknamed "Jeunehomme" (although recent scholarship suggests the title should actually be "Jenamy," after an acquaintance of Mozart named Victoire Jenamy). The first movement of the Jeunehomme" one of these unusually (for the time) has the soloist start playing very early—in the second measure—and its last movement Rondo includes a slow minuet section. No. 21 in C, K. 467, is often nicknamed "Elvira Madigan" because it was used in the 1967 Swedish film of that name. No. 26 in D, K. 537, is called the "Coronation," because it was played at the coronation of Leopold II. Mozart also wrote these for two pianos (No. 10 in E flat major, K. 365) and three pianos (No. 7 in F major, K. 242, nicknamed "Lodron").

Liberal and Conservative Parties

These New York parties act as ideological checks on Democrats and Republicans respectively, generally cross-endorsing their candidates when they are found acceptable, but occasionally running alternative candidates when they deem the mainstream parties' nominees too moderate or compromising. James Buckley served a Senate term from 1971 to 1977 as a Conservative from New York after defeating both a Republican and Democrat in the 1970 election

1936 Summer Olympics

These Olympic games are best remembered for Alabama native Jesse Owens' amazing work on the track against a backdrop of Nazi propaganda emphasizing Aryan superiority. The American athlete won the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, long jump, and 4 x 100-meter sprint relay. Despite the growing strength of the Nazi state, the German people became enamored with Owens and named a Berlin street for him after his 1980 death. On other fronts, the Olympics were broadcast on television for the first time (as seen in the film Contact) and also saw the introduction of the relay of the Olympic torch.

Ribosomes

These organelles are the machines that coordinate protein synthesis, or translation. They consist of several RNA and protein molecules arranged into two subunits. These objects read the messenger RNA copy of the DNA and assemble the appropriate amino acids into protein chains.

Vikings

These people were seaborne raiders from Scandinavia who used longships to attack coastal regions of western Europe between the late 8th and 11th centuries. Although they are best known for pillaging English and Irish monasteries, they also settled and traded on waterways all over northern and eastern Europe, founding cities in Russia and making voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and the New World. People from this group seized part of northern France from Charlemagne's heirs and established the duchy of Normandy.

Ayyubid Dynasty

These rulers were Kurds who took control of Egypt under the Zengids. In 1171 Salah ad-Din (Saladin) abolished the Fatimid caliphate, and later took Damascus as well. He retook Jerusalem from the Crusader kingdoms; however, subsequent Crusades undid some of these gains. It was in their times that the Sunni revival came to Egypt. The sultan al-Kamil gave Jerusalem to Frederick II in a peace treaty and was visited by St. Francis of Assisi. They followed the practice of collective sovereignty, and were often politically divided. The woman Shajar ad-Durr was the last to rule Egypt.

Bobby Hull

This "Golden Jet" was the star of the Chicago Blackhawks of the 1960s, he won three Art Ross Trophies and led the NHL in goals seven times. In June of 1972, he defected to the fledgling WHA's Winnipeg Jets for a record 10-year, $2.75 million deal, where he would star and help make Winnipeg one of the four WHA teams to merge with the NHL in 1978-79. He is also the father of Brett Hull, making the duo is the only father-son combination to score 500 each in NHL history.

Battle of Bunker Hill

This British pyrrhic victory outside Boston resulted in the capture of the Charlestown Peninsula, but showed that colonial troops could stand up to British regulars. Most of the fighting actually occurred on Breed's Hill.

Minoans

This Bronze Age civilization was centered on the Greek island of Crete and included nearby islands. British archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed much of what we know about them, including their palace at Knossos and their writing system, which he called Linear A.

Philip II

This Capetian king won back Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, and other territories while negotiating and fighting against Henry II, Richard I, and John of England. He also took part in the famous Third Crusade (with Richard I and Frederick Barbarossa) and made use of the Albigensian crusade to pave the way for the annexation of Languedoc by his successor.

Broadway Boogie Woogie

This Piet Mondrian painting simultaneously echoes the bright lights of a marquee, resembles a pattern of streets as seen from above, and creates a feeling of vitality and vibrancy, not unlike the music itself. This work can be found at the MOMA.

Pokémon

This RPG series about animal-like "pocket monsters" was the basis for the long-running Japanese animated series about trainer Ash Ketchum. These games are typically released in pairs that differ in which characters are available, such as Red/Blue, Gold/Silver, X/Y, and 2016's Sun/Moon. Notable creatures from this game include Pikachu, Charizard, Lucario, Greninja, and Mewtwo. A mobile version was released in 2016 to massive success.

Zeami

This author, the second master of the Kanze theatrical school, which had been founded by his father, he is regarded as the greatest playwright of the No theater. He provided 90 of the approximately 230 plays in the modern repertoire. Among his best works are Atsumori, The Robe of Feathers, Birds of Sorrow, and Wind in the Pines. Also a drama critic, he established the aesthetic standards by which plays have been judged ever since. His Fushi kaden (The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style) is a manual for his pupils.

Battle of Quebec

This battle was the culmination of a failed invasion of Canada by American colonists during the Revolutionary War. In a blinding snowstorm, the American general Richard Montgomery was killed in battle, Benedict Arnold was wounded, and Daniel Morgan was captured.

Munn v. Illinois

This case's plaintiff owned a set of Chicago grain elevators and charged oppressively high fees for their use. In 1871, the Illinois legislature passed a law setting maximum rates for grain storage. On appeal to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the business claimed that the Illinois statute violated Fourteenth Amendment due process rights regarding private property. Chief Justice Waite's opinion upheld the Illinois law, and proclaimed that "when private property is devoted to a public use, it is subject to public regulation." The decision was a landmark in the history of government regulation of businesses, especially railroads.

Proteus

This character begins the play as an innocent lover, but develops into the primary antagonist after he visits his friend Valentine in Milan, and becomes infatuated with Valentine's love, Silvia. Although he has sworn that he will be faithful to a woman in Verona named Julia, he breaks his promise and tries to win Silvia for himself. To this end, this character betrays Valentine by telling Silvia's father, the duke, that Valentine and Silvia plan to elope. After the duke exiles Valentine, Silvia rejects this character because of his treachery towards his friend, and his unfaithfulness to Julia. When Silvia escapes to the woods to find Valentine, this character follows her and rescues her from outlaws. Silvia continues to reject this character, who threatens to rape her ("I'll force thee yield to my desire") before Valentine intervenes. He then repents, and Julia, who has been disguised as his male page, reveals herself. This character then reunites with Julia and resumes his friendship with Valentine, whom the duke permits to marry Silvia.

Jerome Robbins

This choreographer is probably best known for his work with Leonard Bernstein. He broke through as a choreographer with an experimental ballet about three sailors on leave in New York City, Fancy Free, which he then helped rework into the hit 1944 musical On the Town. Known for being temperamental and difficult to work with, he conceived, choreographed, and directed the 1957 original production of West Side Story and won an Oscar for co-directing the 1961 film version (despite quitting early in the process due to creative differences). He also choreographed and directed the original production of Fiddler on the Roof. He acted as an uncredited "show doctor," rescuing several floundering Broadway shows, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Funny Girl.

Mr. Ed

This classic sitcom centered on the title talking horse—a palomino whose voice was provided by Allan Lane—and his owner, architect Wilbur Post. Much of the show's humor derived from the fact that Mr. Ed would solely speak to Wilbur, which naturally led to hijinks. Mr. Ed should not be confused with Francis the Talking Mule, who would solely speak to his owner Peter Stirling; he appeared in a number of film comedies during the 1950s.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

This composer is best known for reviving the Tudor style and folk traditions in English music, as exemplified in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1909). He completed nine symphonies, the foremost his Second (London) in 1914; other principal symphonies included the First (Sea), Third (Pastoral) and Seventh (sinfonia antarctica). His orchestral work The Lark Ascending was based on a George Meredith poem, while Sir John in Love (1924) was a Shakespearean opera that featured the "Fantasia on Greensleeves." Hugh the Drover and The Pilgrim's Progress are other major operas by this composer.

Maurice Ravel

This composer's Basque mother gave him an affinity for Spanish themes, as evident in Rapsodie espagnole and his most popular piece, Bolero (1928). He produced Pavane for a Dead Princess while a student of Gabriel Fauré, but was frustrated when the French Conservatory overlooked him for the Prix de Rome four times. He completed the ballet Daphnis et Chloe (1912) for Diaghilev, which was followed by Mother Goose and La Valse, and also re-orchestrated Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. His health declined after a 1932 taxi accident; unsuccessful brain surgery ended his life.

Sphinx

This creature, identified in the Theogony as "Phix," was a hybrid monster whose parentage varies widely from source to source. She was a lion-bodied, winged monster with the face of a human, who terrorized the city of Thebes in the generations before Oedipus. She would give a riddle—"What creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?"—and eat anyone who was unable to answer correctly. It is possible that this monster was sent to Thebes from Ethiopia by either the goddess Hera or the war god Ares. Eventually, Oedipus correctly answered the riddle—"Man"—and this creature threw herself off her mountainside perch to her death.

Isis

This daughter of Geb and Nut protected love, motherhood, and fate in the Egyptian mythos. Many of her roles are similar to the goddess Hathor, but she is often equated with the Greek Demeter. Her powers were gained through tricking the god Ra. By placing a snake in his path, which poisoned him, she forced him to give some power to her before she would cure him.

Cassandra

This daughter of Priam and Hecuba has an affair with the god Apollo, who grants her the gift of prophecy. Unable to revoke the gift after they quarrel, Apollo curses her by preventing anyone from believing her predictions. Among her warnings is that the Trojan horse contains Greeks. After Troy falls she is given to Agamemnon, who tactlessly brings her home to his wife Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus then kill Agamemnon and this figure, leaving Agamemnon's son Orestes (egged on by sister Electra) to avenge the deaths and kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus.

Amon

This deity began as a local god of Thebes, governing the air, fertility and reproduction, his wife was Mut, and his son Khon. Later, he became linked with the sun god Ra, and the two combined under one name. In this form, he became worshipped beyond Egypt, and identified with Zeus and Jupiter. His appearance in art was as a man in a loincloth, with a headdress topped by feathers, but other appearances show him with the head of a ram. The temple of this god and Ra at Karnak was the largest ever built.

Mojave Desert

This desert is bounded by the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges along the San Andreas and Garlock Faults. It lies between the Great Basin and the Sonoran Desert and it contains the lowest and driest point of North America, Death Valley. It is most strongly associated with the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia).

Safavid Dynasty

This dynasty was founded by a Sunni Sufi (mystic) order under Shah Ismail, and ruled Iran from 1502 until 1736. They forcibly converted Iran to Shi'ism, and later converted themselves. Together with the Ottomans and Mughals, they form the three "Gunpowder Empires" in what Islamicists consider the late medieval period. Under Abbas I, a European expert was hired to reform the military following defeats by both their Ottoman and Uzbek rivals. Abbas later captured Baghdad and expelled the Portugese from the Persian Gulf. Esfahan was their capital during their height.

Qin Dynasty

This dynasty, despite its short duration, is usually considered the origin of many of the institutions of imperial China. The founding emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi, has gained an ill-deserved reputation in traditional Chinese historiography because he destroyed many Confucian texts in his infamous book burning. He also standardized weight measurements, unified the Chinese script, and used conscripts to build the Great Wall. After his death, the suicide of the crown prince led to a period of incompetent rule and revolts that caused the collapse of this dynasty.

Davisson-Germer experiment

This experiment confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis by showing that electrons can exhibit wave-like behavior. The experimenters fired electrons at a nickel crystal, and measured the diffraction patterns using an electron counter called a Faraday box (or Faraday cup) mounted on an arc so that it could detect electrons emitted at various angles. The peak intensity was observed at 50 degrees and 54 electronvolts, corresponding to the diffraction predicted for X-rays by Bragg's law. (Note that diffraction is a property of waves, not particles, and thus could only be observed if electrons can act as waves.)

Stern-Gerlach experiment

This experiment demonstrated that the angular momentum of an atom is quantized. A beam of silver atoms was fired through an inhomogeneous magnetic field (one that varies through space). Instead of hitting a screen in a continuous distribution, they hit at discrete points, demonstrating the quantized nature of angular momentum. This experiment was actually performed several years before the concept of electron spin was even proposed. A variant on this experiment was used to create an energy source for the first hydrogen maser.

Meselson-Stahl experiment

This experiment proved that DNA replication is semiconservative, meaning that when a double-helix strand of DNA is duplicated, the result is two double-helix strands, each of which has one helix from the parent molecule and one newly-synthesized helix. Its creators used E. coli grown in a medium containing only nitrogen-15; they were then allowed to synthesize DNA in an environment containing only nitrogen-14 over two generations. The net result was that in the second generation, half the DNA molecules contained nitrogen-15 in one strand and nitrogen-14 in the other, while the other half of the molecules contained only nitrogen-14.

Hanukkah

This festival lasts for eight days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev (the third month). It celebrates the victory of the small Maccabee army against the large Greek army of Antiochus, as well as the recapture and purification of the Temple in Jerusalem (ca. 168 BC). It is traditional to light the eight-branched Menorah each night and spin the dreidel. Exchanging presents is only a recent tradition developed in the U.S.

Nicholas II

This final Romanov Tsar was overthrown in the 1917 February Revolution. He led his country through two disastrous wars, the Russo-Japanese War (which helped spark the Revolution of 1905), and World War I (which helped cause the 1917 revolutions.) He is best known for his marriage to Alexandra Romanov and for allowing the crazed monk Grigorii Rasputin to influence court politics while treating the hemophilia of Alexei, the heir to the throne. He abdicated in 1917 and was shot in 1918.

Hillary Clinton

This former New York senator was the face of a failed 1993 health care bill. After losing the 2008 presidential nomination to Barack Obama, this secretary of state presented a "reset button" to Russia and accepted formal responsibility for failures in consulate security that led to death of Ambassador Christopher Stephens in Benghazi.

Umayyad Dynasty

This group ruled as caliphs from Damascus from 661-750. They came to power in the civil war following the death of Uthman when Mu'awiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan defeated the forces of Ali Ibn Abi Talib after the latter's assassination. Denounced in traditional Islamic historiography for their secular rule, they introduced hereditary transmission of office into Islam and favored Arabs at the expense of other Muslims. Under 'Abd al-Malik, their namesake Mosque was constructed in Damascus. In the 10th century, an they re-established the dynasty in Cordoba, Spain.

Columbia River

This is a vital waterway of the Pacific Northwest. Rising in the Rockies of British Columbia, this river flows through Lake Revelstoke before entering Washington state. Grand Coulee Dam along this river in Washington forms Lake Roosevelt. When it was completed in 1943, Grand Coulee was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world; it is still America's largest electric power plant. This river receives the Yakima and Snake Rivers before forming much of the Washington-Oregon border, receiving the Willamette River in Portland before emptying into the Pacific where Lewis and Clark sighted the ocean.

Helium

This is the lightest noble gas and the second most abundant element in the Universe (after hydrogen). Discovered by Sir William Ramsey, Pierre Janssen, and Norman Lockyer, it has two stable isotopes. Because of their different quantum properties, the isotopes of this element actually have significantly different physical properties. One of this element's isotopes can exist in a zero-viscosity state known as superfluidity when its temperature drops below the lambda point. This element has the lowest boiling point of any element; its liquid form is used for devices that need intense cooling, such as MRI machines.

Nestor

This king of Pylos is too old to participate in the fighting of the Trojan War, but serves as an advisor. He tells tales of "the good old days" to the other heroes.

Henry III

This king's reign was suffused with blood, at first because of the continuous Wars of Religion that pitted Catholics against Huguenots, but later because of the struggles that arose when it became clear that he was going to be the last of the Valois line. The War of the Three Henries broke out after his brother died and the then-Protestant Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV) became heir, leading the Catholic Holy League to strike out of fear for its interests. He was assassinated by a crazed friar in 1589.

Lakshmi

This last and greatest treasure born from the "churning of the ocean" is the goddess of prosperity and patron to moneylenders. The epitome of feminine beauty, she sits or stands on a lotus flower and appears in her own avatars alongside Vishnu: Sita to his Rama; Padma the lotus to Vamana the dwarf; Radha (or Rukmini) to Krishna. A form of the mother goddess (Shakti, or Devi), she also represents virtue and honesty.

Hugo Chávez

This leader was the President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. He used Venezuela's large oil revenues to lead his Bolivarian Revolution and enact socialist policies. His original party was the Fifth Republic Movement. He died of cancer in 2013.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

This man is considered the founder of a school of anthropology known as structural functionalism, which focuses on identifying the groups within a society and the rules and customs that define the relationships between people. His own early fieldwork was conducted in the Andaman Islands and Western Australia, where he studied the social organization of Australian tribes. After teaching in Australia, South Africa, and at the University of Chicago, he returned to England, where he founded the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford.

William Rowan Hamilton

This man is known for extending the notion of complex numbers to four dimensions by inventing the quaternions, a non-commutative field with six square roots of -1: ±i, ±j, and ±k with the property that ij = k, jk = i, and ki = j.

James Frazer

This man was a Scottish anthropologist who primarily studied mythology and comparative religion. His magnum opus, The Golden Bough, analyzed a wide range of myths that center on the death and rebirth of a solar deity; the original publication controversially discussed the crucifixion of Jesus as one such myth. The work's title refers to a gift given to Persephone by Aeneas so that he could enter the underworld in the Aeneid.

Leonard Bernstein

This man was a prolific composer and conductor who gave numerous televised "Young People's Concerts" during his eleven-year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969). His concert works include his Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" (1942), and a jazz clarinet concerto premiered by Benny Goodman: "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" (1949). He is best known for his works for the stage, which include the musical West Side Story (1957), the ballet Fancy Free (1944), and the operetta Candide (1956; revised 1989). He also composed the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront.

José de San Martín

This man was an Argentine general who liberated Argentina and Chile from Spain with Bernardo O'Higgins. He won the Battle of San Lorenzo in 1813. Later, his crossing of the Andes resulted in victories at the Battles of Chacabuco and Maipu in Chile. He took part in the liberation of Peru before moving to Europe in 1824.

Arnold Schoenberg

This man was an Austrian composer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1934. He was the leading figure and mentor of the "Second Viennese School," which also included Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who were his students. In 1908, this man began composing atonal music, which has no tonic pitch or key center. He also developed the twelve-tone method of composition, one of the most influential musical styles of the 20th century and first fully realized in his Suite for Piano, Op. 25 (1923). His other musical innovations include the technique of klangfarbenmeoldie ("tone-color melody"), which was used in the third movement of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909).

Byron Nelson

This man won five major championships overall, but is best known for having the single most dominant year in golf history. In 1945 he won a record 18 tournaments in 30 starts, including 11 consecutive tournaments, a feat no one has come close to matching. He was so even-tempered and mechanically sound that the USGA named its mechanical club and ball-testing device, the "Iron Byron," after him.

Ernest Rutherford

This man's gold foil experiment provided the first evidence that the atom was made up of a large, positively-charged nucleus, surrounded by a cloud of negatively-charged electrons. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. This physicist was also an early leader in nuclear fission techniques, having discovered the decay of carbon-14 and providing the impetus for modern carbon dating. As part of this research, he discovered the proton and neutron, the latter in cooperation with James Chadwick. He is also the only native New Zealander with an element named after him.

George Marshall

This man's namesake plan helped Europe recover after World War II from 1948 to 1952. After he left his post, he was president of the American Red Cross. He correctly predicted that Israel's declaration of statehood would lead to war and attempted to mediate the Chinese Civil War.

Kurt Gödel

This mathematician was a logician best known for his two incompleteness theorems proving that every formal system that was powerful enough to express ordinary arithmetic must necessarily contain statements that were true, but which could not be proved within the system itself.

Vostok 1

This mission transported the first human (Yuri Gagarin) into space. Gagarin's April 12, 1961 flight is still celebrated as Yuri's Night. During this mission, Gagarin completed a single orbit around Earth before re-entering and parachuting out of his capsule.

Battle of Salamis

This naval battle was a major turning point in the Greco-Persian Wars, as it signaled the beginning of the end of Persian attempts to conquer Greece. The battle is named after an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. Xerxes was so confident in victory that he watched the battle from a throne on the slopes of Mount Aegaleus. The Athenian general Themistocles devised a plan to lure the large, slow Persian ships into the narrow straits where the Greek ships were able to outmaneuver and destroy much of the Persian fleet. The Persian admiral Ariabignes was killed in hand-to-hand combat, and the Queen of Halicarnassus, Artemisia, had to sink some of her allies' ships to escape.

Green Party

This party never attracted as large of a share of the vote as other third parties, but the ticket of Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke pulled 2.7% of the popular vote in the infamous 2000 presidential election, possibly influencing Republican George W. Bush's extremely narrow victory over Democrat Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote. This party continues to nominate candidates for presidential elections, and cites ecological sustainability, social justice, and fair democracy among its goals.

Period of the Three Kingdoms

This period has had an enormous cultural impact thanks to the classic Chinese novel that bears its name. After a period of disunion, the lands of the former Han dynasty coalesced into three kingdoms: Cao Wei north of the Yangtze, Eastern Wu in the lower Yangtze, and Shu Han in the Sichuan region. The Battle of Red Cliffs (AD 208) was fought during this period. Under the leadership of the Sima family, Cao Wei managed to defeat the other two kingdoms. The reunification was, however, short-lived. For the next four centuries, China went through a period known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

Epicurus

This philosopher believed that pleasure was the highest (or only) good, and that the absence of pain (aponia) was the highest pleasure. They also believed that human happiness consisted of a kind of tranquillity known as ataraxia. Critics of this man's thoughts accused his school of promoting hedonism and making selfishness into a good, though they did not believe themselves to be hedonists.

Niels Bohr

This physicist reconciled Rutherford's results from the gold foil experiment with Planck's quantum theory to create a model of the atom in which electrons resided in specific energy levels at specific stable radii. This model was the basis for Balmer's work with spectroscopy and Rydberg's energy formula, which explicitly stated the frequency of light that an electron would emit if it went from a higher energy to a lower energy. This man and his son fled to the US in World War II under the pseudonym Baker and contributed to the Manhattan Project.

The Little Foxes

This play, set on a plantation in 1900, attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina's husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon.

Ivan Pavlov

This psychologist is largely remembered for his idea of the "conditioned reflex," for example, the salivation of a dog at the sound of the bell that presages dinner, even though the bell itself is inedible and has no intrinsic connection with food. He won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for Physiology or Medicine for unrelated work on digestive secretions.

Interest rate

This quantity is a "price of money," inasmuch as it is the amount one must pay to use somebody else's money for a given period of time; the term is also used for the payment the lender receives for loaning out his money. Because inflation lowers the value of currency, economists routinely distinguish between nominal rates of this (the actual amount earned by a lender/saver) and real rates (which are corrected for the inflation rate). A savings account earning 5% of this quantity is not acquiring the ability to buy more things if prices are also going up by 5% per year!

Euphrates River

This river defines the western border of Mesopotamia; it also rises in the Zagros Mountains of Turkey and its shores are home to Fallujah and Babylon. It is the longer of the two rivers with a course of 1,740 miles (compared to the Tigris' 1,180). Both the Tigris and this river have changed courses several times leaving ruins in the desert where cities have been abandoned.

Monopoly

This situation occurs when there is only one firm producing goods for a given market. This allows that firm to set the price higher—and thus the quantity sold lower—than would otherwise occur.

Hecuba

This wife of Priam suffers the loss of most of her children but survives the fall of Troy during the Trojan War. She is later turned into a dog.

Form

This word, which refers to a work's overall structure, is often depicted via a series of capital letters, with each different letter representing a large section of contrasting material. Basic types of this quality include binary ("AB" or "AABB"), ternary ("ABA"), and strophic ("A" endlessly repeated, commonly found in folk songs or religious hymns with multiple verses). Other types of this quality include rondo, in which several statements of a single theme are each separated by contrasting material (e.g. "ABACA"). They are not usually represented by capital letters include the various types of theme and variations, as well as sonata-allegro form (which at its most basic level includes an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation).

John McEnroe

Though perhaps best known for his fiery temper and abuse of referees (with taunts like "You can't be serious!"), this tennis player was the dominant player of the early 1980s. As a 17-year old amateur qualifier, he made the semifinals of Wimbledon, and in 1979 he won the first of three straight U.S. Opens. He almost ended Borg's run of Wimbledons in a five-set thriller in 1980, but succeeded the following year. In 1984, McEnroe compiled an 82-3 record, winning Wimbledon and his fourth U.S. Open, for a total of seven majors. An outstanding doubles player as well, he won 77 titles, many with partner Peter Fleming. He also played in the Davis Cup 12 times, captaining the U.S. team in 2000.

Doctor Faustus

Two scholars named Valdes and Cornelius teach this play's title character how to summon a demon, which he promptly does, conjuring Mephistophelis. Faustus then signs his soul over to Lucifer, in exchange for 24 years of healthy life with Mephistophilis as his dutiful servant. That character constantly rejects the pleas of an angel to accept the forgiveness of God, instead traveling and gaining worldly fame. At one point, he summons the "shade" of Helen of Troy, and exclaims "was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" On the night his deal is scheduled to expire, a clock's chimes announce that this character is running out of time to repent. He never does, so devils appear and drag him to hell.

Battle of Midway

Universally considered the turning point in the Pacific Theater, this battle saw the Japanese lose four aircraft carriers, a blow from which they never fully recovered. Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned to lure the U.S. fleet into a trap, but the Americans had broken the Japanese code, allowing them to pull off a stunning victory, with dive bombers from the Enterprise sinking the carriers Kaga, Akagi, and Hiryu, while those from the hastily-repaired Yorktown sank the carrier Soryu.

Book of Mormon

Users of this religious text believe that the prophet Moroni revealed the location of this text to Smith, and that Smith translated it from a "reformed Egyptian" language. According to Mormon lore, it was inscribed on thin gold plates, and documents the history of a group of Hebrews who migrated to America around 600 BC. This group divided into two tribes: the Lamanites (ancestors of American Indians), and the highly civilized Nephites, a chosen people instructed by Jesus but killed by the Lamanites around 421.

Benedict Arnold

Volunteering for service following the Battle of Lexington, this man joined Ethan Allen in the attack on Fort Ticonderoga. Appointed by Washington to capture Quebec, he was severely wounded in the failed December 1775 assault that also saw the death of General Richard Montgomery. Arming a flotilla on Lake Champlain, he attacked the British forces at Valcour Island, earning accolades, perhaps at the cost of the support of other officers. Passed over for promotion, Washington personally persuaded him not to resign. Promoted following his defense of Danbury, he again considered resignation, but won victory at Ft. Stanwix, and commanded advance battalions at Saratoga, being wounded in the fight. Sent to command Philadelphia, he lived extravagantly among Loyalists, and skirted several regulations to raise money, prompting investigations. After marrying Peggy Shippen, he made overtures to the British, alerting them to a plan to invade Canada, and planning to betray his expected command of West Point. When his contact, Major John Andre was captured, he escaped. Later, as part of the British army he raided New London, Connecticut, and led several raids on Virginia.

Christopher Wren

When fire destroyed much of London in 1666, this man was an Oxford astronomy professor who had designed his first building just four years earlier. Charles II named him the King's Surveyor of Works in 1669, and he was involved in rebuilding more than 50 London churches in the next half-century, including Saint Paul's Cathedral. An inscription near his tomb in Saint Paul's declares, "Reader, if you seek a monument, look around you."

Mount Fuji

Yamanaka and Kawaguchi are two lakes found along the slopes of this mountain, the tallest in Japan. Found only about an hour's drive from Tokyo, this peak has significance in the Shinto religion, being sacred to the goddess Sengen-Sama. The mountain was also depicted in a series of 36 prints drawn by Katsushika Hokusai.

Sukkot

t Celebrated on the 15th of Tishrei, this holiday commemorates the booths that the Israelites lived in following the Exodus from Egypt; it also celebrates the harvest. Traditionally, Jews build booths, in which they live and eat for seven days. In synagogue, four symbolic species (the palm, the etrog [a large yellow citrus], myrtle, and willow) are waved in seven directions. Each night, in the sukkah, it is traditional to invite a Biblical figure to be your guest for that night.

Battle of Hampton Roads

A channel in southeastern Virginia was the site of this first major fight between two ironclad ships. The Confederates raised an old wooden boat, the Merrimack, and fit it with ten guns and iron armor plates. Renaming the Virginia, it was captained by Franklin Buchanan. The Union countered by constructing a large oval with a rotating gun, called the Monitor and piloted by John Worden. The Virginia tore through Union wooden ships (Cumberland, Congress, Minnesota) but when the Monitor arrived, the two ironclads fought to a stalemate - thus the Union maintained its blockade. The South deliberately destroyed the Virginia two months later, while the Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in December 1862.

Filippo Brunelleschi

A friend of Donatello, this architect was a skilled sculptor and goldsmith whose 1401 competition with Lorenzo Ghiberti for the commission of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery is a frequent question topic. As an architect, he is mainly known for the extraordinary octagonally-based dome of the Santa Maria del Fiore (also known as the Florence Cathedral), which dominates the Florentine skyline. The task required an innovative supporting framework and occupied much of his career (as described in detail in Vasari's Lives of the Artists). Other projects include the Spedale degli Innocenti (a hospital), the Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo, and the Pazzi Chapel in the Cloisters of Santa Croce, all from 1421 to 1430.

Confucius

A pivotal thinker from China's Spring and Autumn period, his views on proper conduct and filial piety still influence China to this day. Many sayings attributed to this man were compiled by his disciples following his death in a text known as the Analects. This philosopher put much importance on ren, the inner state which allows one to behave compassionately toward others, and on a concept called li, which can help individuals attain ren.

Colombia Disaster

According to this disaster's Accident Investigation Board, this disaster was due to a piece of foam from the external fuel tank hitting and breaching the left wing of the Orbiter during launch. The breach damaged the heat shielding, allowing hot gas to enter the Orbiter during re-entry. Ultimately, that damage caused the vehicle to disintegrate over Texas.

McCulloch v. Maryland

After the Second Bank of the United States began calling in loans owned by the states, Maryland passed a law taxing out-of-state banks, leading to this Supreme Court Case The federal bank refused to pay, so the state sued its Baltimore cashier. The court ruled that the federal government had the right to establish the bank even though it was not expressly enumerated in the Constitution and also noted that since "the power to tax was the power to destroy," Maryland could not tax the bank without destroying federal sovereignty.

Rodeo

Agnes DeMille choreographed this ballet and danced the lead role at its premiere. It tells the story of a tomboy Cowgirl in the American West (the characters are not given specific names). She falls in love with the Head Wrangler, who prefers the more feminine Rancher's Daughter. The Cowgirl winds up dancing and eventually kissing the Champion Roper, who earlier competed for the Rancher's Daughter's hand. This ballet is split into five sections: "Buckaroo Holiday," which introduces the characters; "Corral Nocturne," in which the oboe and bassoon depict the Cowgirl's loneliness; "Ranch House Party," which was omitted from the orchestral version; "Saturday Night Waltz" and "Hoe-down," which is based on the folk song "Bonaparte's Retreat." "Hoe-down" was famously used in the "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" ad campaign in the 1990s.

Antigone

Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, this is one of the three surviving "Theban plays" by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus's daughter, the title character, disobeys Creon's order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon's son Haemon, who is betrothed to the title character, Creon sentences her to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, she hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.

Earth's Moon

Also called Luna, this is the fifth largest Satellite in the universe, the largest relative to the size of the planet it orbits, and the second densest. The USSR's Luna unmanned spacecraft first reached this place in 1959, and Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit this object, in 1968. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty guarantees the rights of all nations to explore the moon for peaceful purposes.

Upanishads

Also called Vedanta, or "last part of the Vedas," these texts were written in Sanskrit between 900 and 500 BC. Part poetry but mainly prose, the earlier works from this collection of texts laid the foundation for the development of several key Hindu ideas, such as connecting the individual soul (atman) with the universal soul (Brahman). Spiritual release, or moksha, could be achieved through meditation and asceticism. The name of this text means "to sit down close," as pupils did when a teacher recited them.

Pelé

Also known as "the Black Pearl", this man led the Brazilian national team to three World Cup victories in 1958, 1962, and 1970 (though he was injured for most of '62 finals) and to permanent possession of the Jules Rimet Trophy. In his professional and international career, he played in 1,363 matches and scored 1,282 goals. He made his professional debut with Brazil's Santos in 1956 and played with them until 1974. In 1975, he came out of retirement to promote the game in the United States by starring for the NASL's New York Cosmos, earning him 1976 NASL MVP honors; his retirement game in 1977 at Giants Stadium against his old club Santos drew over 75,000 people, the largest crowd to see a soccer match in the U.S. before the 1984 Olympics. He later became Brazil's Minister of Sport and, in 1999, the National Olympic Committees named him the IOC's Athlete of the Century, despite having never partaken in an Olympic Games.

Shiva

Also known as Lord Mahesh, this god is the Destroyer in the Trimurti. Developed from Rudra, the Vedic god of death, he is often shown sitting on a tiger skin and riding the bull Nandi. He is also associated with a lingam (phallus). He has three eyes, of which the third (in the middle of his head) is all-knowing; when it opens, the world is destroyed and regenerated. Lord of all underworld beings, he wears a necklace of skulls and another made of a snake. He carries a trident as a weapon and has a blue throat, the result of drinking poison while the ocean churns. Parvati, one of his several consorts, bears him two sons: Kartikeya (the god of war) and Ganesha.

D-Day

Also known as Operation Overlord, this was the largest amphibious assault in history, as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower's forces attacked the German Atlantic Wall defenses on the beaches of Normandy, France. Due to his wife's birthday, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was absent at the start the invasion, which saw American forces land at Utah and Omaha Beaches, British forces land at Gold and Sword Beaches, and Canadian forces land at Juno Beach. After the landings, Allied forces erected prefabricated artificial Mulberry harbors to aid in transporting goods to France.

The Crucible

Although Arthur Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting for this play, it is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist "witch-hunts" of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hathorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Beethoven's Missa solmenis (in D major)

Although it uses the traditional text, Beethoven intended this work for concert performance rather than liturgical use. Beethoven became increasingly fascinated by the fugue during his third stylistic period; his Missa solemnis includes two immense examples that conclude the Gloria and Credo movements. The composer dedicated the work to his patron, the Austrian Archduke Rudolf. It should not be confused with Beethoven's earlier C major mass, op. 86 (1807).

Ex Parte Merryman

Although not a Supreme Court Case, this federal court case was heard by Chief Justice Roger Taney while "circuit-riding" when the court was not in session. Lieutenant John Merryman of the Maryland cavalry took an active role in evicting Union soldiers from Maryland following the attack on Fort Sumter. Abraham Lincoln declared a secret suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and had a number of opposition leaders, including Merryman, arrested. Taney found the president had acted unconstitutionally (only Congress can suspend the writ), but Lincoln simply ignored his ruling.

Magyars

Although they are not the Huns, this group of Central Asian Nomads spoke Ugric, related to Finnish and a number of west Siberian languages. they occupied the Danube basin shortly before 900. They also exploited the decline of the Carolingian empire to carry out raids on East Francia and on Italy. The 955 Battle of Lechfeld, won by Germany's Otto the Great, halted their expansion into central Europe. At the end of the 10th century, their grand prince was baptized with the name Stephen and crowned the first king of Hungary.

Walter Gropius

Although this architect also designed the Fagus Factory (Alfeld, Germany) and the Pan American Building (New York City), he is better known for founding the Bauhaus. This architect would later head Harvard's architecture department from 1938-52, shifting its focus to incorporate modern design and construction techniques.

Michel Platini

Arguably France's greatest footballer, this midfielder won three straight European Footballer of the Year Awards beginning in 1983. He led Italian side Juventus FC to success in both Serie A (Italy's First Division) and UEFA (European) competitions. In 1985, he led Serie A in scoring for a third straight year, a unique achievement as well as leading Juventus to its only European Cup triumph, the tragic game at Heysel (Belgium) against Liverpool in which 39 Italian supporters were fatally crushed in the stands. He also led his French national side to triumph in the Euro 1984, setting the Euro scoring record. After his retirement in 1987, he was instrumental in organizing France's bid for the 1998 World Cup.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral)

As the title implies, this symphony is a programmatic depiction of rural scenes; it is the composer's only truly programmatic symphony. The symphony's five movements, rather than the traditional four, each include a short title or description of their content: "Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country" (I), "Scene at the brook" (II), "Happy gathering of country folks" (III), "Thunderstorm" (IV), and "Happy and thankful feelings after the storm" (V). In the score for the second movement, Beethoven explicitly identifies several woodwind motifs as being based on bird calls.

The Birds

At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a bird called a hoopoe. Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or "Cloudcuckooland." Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom "all things come." Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.

Battle of Actium

At this battle, the fleet of Octavian defeated the combined forces of Cleopatra and Mark Antony at this battle near modern-day Preveza in the Ambracian Gulf of Greece. Marcus Agrippa commanded Octavian's fleet, which consisted of small, nimble Liburnian ships. Antony's fleet consisted of massive Quinqueremes, which were less mobile. Following his victory in the battle, Octavian titled himself Princeps, and later Augustus. To some, this battle signals the end of the Roman Republic.

The Miraculous Mandarin

Based on a story by Melchior Lengyel, This Bela Bartok ballet opens by depicting a large city, with rapid ascending and descending notes on the strings followed by a theme of minor seconds and a brass imitation of car horns. In the ballet, a group of robbers force a girl to dance at the window of their apartment as a "Lockspiel," or decoy game, to lure in potential victims. After the criminals successfully rob an old lecher and a poor young man, the girl lures a rich Chinese man into the apartment; glissandos in the brass mark his entrance. After that title character tries unsuccessfully to capture the girl, the tramps jump on him—symbolized by the repetition of the minor second intervals heard at the beginning of the ballet—and stab him three times, then hang him from a lamp. However, his body begins to glow strangely. The girl then convinces the robbers to free the man, whom she then embraces, allowing him to die peacefully. The material of the ballet made it controversial upon its 1926 premiere; the mayor of Cologne, where the ballet debuted, had it banned on moral grounds.

Eddie Rickenbacker

Before becoming a pilot, this man achieved fame as a race car driver; "Fast Eddie" competed in the Indianapolis 500 on four separate occasions. During World War I, he joined the U.S. Army as a driver, but was admitted to flight school with the help of Colonel Billy Mitchell, and went on to win the Medal of Honor and finish as the top American ace of the war with 26 kills. This man bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1927 and Eastern Airlines in 1938. While on a military mission in the Pacific in 1942, his plane crashed, but he and all but one crewman survived a brutal 24-day ordeal aboard small life rafts.

Duke Frederick

Before the opening of the play, this character overthrew his brother, Duke Senior, and seized control of the court. There, this character harbors his brother's daughter Rosalind as a companion to his own daughter, Celia. When this character banishes Rosalind out of fear that she is plotting against him, Celia volunteers to go with her beloved cousin, and suggests that they reunite with Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden. At the same time, a young nobleman named Orlando flees to the Forest of Arden to escape his brother Oliver's mistreatment. This character suspects that Orlando is in the company of Celia and Rosalind, and seizes Oliver's lands until Orlando can be produced. After Oliver departs to search for his brother, this Duke is not heard of again until the end of the play, when Oliver and Orlando's brother Jaques reports that this character suddenly repented of his crimes after meeting "an old religious man." He then relinquishes the crown to Duke Senior, and restores the property of Duke Senior's supporters.

King Claudius

Before the start of Hamlet, this character became the ruler of Denmark by pouring poison into the ear of his sleeping brother, King Hamlet. He then married Gertrude, King Hamlet's widow. In the play's first act, Prince Hamlet learns of this character's treachery by speaking to King Hamlet's ghost. Hamlet then arranges for a troupe of actors to perform a play titled The Murder of Gonzago, which Hamlet revises to increase the similarities to his father's death. This uncle of Prince Hamlet is disturbed by the performance, and storms out during the murder scene. Later, he prays for forgiveness, causing Hamlet to delay killing him out of fear that this character's soul would go to heaven. As Hamlet feigns madness, this villain sends him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who unknowingly carry a letter calling for Hamlet's execution. After Hamlet escapes and returns to Denmark, this character arranges for Hamlet to fight a duel with Laertes, who seeks revenge for the death of his father, Polonius, and sister, Ophelia. Laertes uses a poison-tipped sword, and this character prepares a poisoned drink as a back-up. When Laertes falls in combat he reveals the plot, prompting Hamlet to stab this character with the poisoned sword, and to make him drink from the poisoned cup.

Battle of Singapore

Before this battle, Japanese aircraft sank the British battleship Prince of Wales and drove obsolete British aircraft from the skies over the Malay Peninsula. Allied troops were driven back toward this battle's site, Britain's major base in the Far East. Reinforcements from Britain and Australia arrived too late to repair the situation, and British general Arthur Percival was forced to surrender in February 1942. The loss of this battle's location stunned the British Empire. Many Indian prisoners captured at this battle switched sides to fight for the Japanese; British and Australian POWs labored in terrible conditions on the Siam-Burma railway depicted in the novel The Bridge over the River Kwai.

Manfred von Richthofen

Better known as the Red Baron, this man was credited with shooting down 80 enemy aircraft, making him the top overall ace of World War I. His personal command, Jagdgeschwader 1, became known as his "Flying Circus" due to the variety of colors used on its planes. He died on April 21, 1918, when he was shot aboard his red Fokker triplane; though the Royal Air Force credited Canadian ace Roy Brown with the kill, it is more likely that he was brought down by ground fire from Australian troops in the trenches.

Bill Tilden

Between 1920 and 1925, this tennis player won six straight U.S. championships and took Wimbledon both times he played. He was nicknamed "Big Bill" for two reasons: He stood 6-foot-2 with his trademark "cannonball" serve and he faced "Little Bill" Johnston in six out of seven U.S. finals. In all, he won ten majors (seven U.S., three Wimbledon) and turned professional in 1930—winning a pro title at age 42 and competing in barnstorming tours until he was 50. This athlete also loved the theater; he performed in several Broadway shows (including the lead in "Dracula"), but lost a lot of money backing failed ventures.

Gordie Howe

Born in Floral, Saskatchewan, this man, nicknamed "Mr. Hockey", was equally adept with his stick as he was with his fists. His namesake "hat trick" was later joked to consist of a goal, an assist, and a fight in a game. A six-time Art Ross Trophy winner, he played 26 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, retiring in 1971. After a two-year retirement, he returned to the fledgling WHA, to play with his sons on the Houston Aeros. He played his last NHL season at the age of 52 in 1980 with the Hartford Whalers, finishing as the NHL's career points leader until 1989.

Battle of Leyte Gulf

By some measures the largest naval battle in history, this battle resulted from the Japanese Sho-Go plan to halt the American reconquest of the Philippines. The plan nearly worked when American Admiral William "Bull" Halsey was baited into moving all of his battleships and large carriers away from the landing site, but an American force of small escort carriers and destroyers held off a Japanese task force that included four battleships. Another Japanese force tried to pass through the Surigao Strait, but, in the last ever combat between opposing battleships, the American Seventh Fleet crossed their "T" and annihilated the force.

Passover

Celebrated for seven days beginning on the 15th day of Nissan, this holiday commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. It is also the ancient Hebrew New Year (superceded in that role by Rosh Hashanah). On the first two days, Jews have a festival dinner called a seder, where they retell the story of the Exodus, from a book called a hagaddah. Jews are required to abstain from eating or owning leavened bread for the duration of the festival; matzah (usually a square flat unleavened bread) is eaten instead. On this holiday, the Song of Songs is recited. It also begins a cycle of seven weeks, called the Omer, a period of semi-mourning.

Billy the Kid

Choreographed by Eugene Loring, this ballet depicts episodes in the life of the title Old West outlaw. Early in the ballet, the protagonist's mother is accidentally killed in a gunfight; he then stabs the man who killed her. Sections from the ballet include "Card Game at Night" and a "Gun Battle" that features percussion imitating the title shootout. At the end of the ballet, when Billy is resting in the desert, a posse led by Pat Garrett finds and kills him. The story of Billy's life is bookended at the beginning and end by a section called "The Open Prairie," which depicts settlers moving westwards. The ballet makes extensive use of cowboy songs, such as "The Old Chisholm Trail" and "Goodbye Old Paint" in its depiction of a frontier town, and features a "Jarabe," a Mexican dance in 5/8 time.

Cnidaria

Creatures from this phyla develop from a diploblastic (two-layered) embryo, and have two separate tissue layers and radial body symmetry. Many of these creatures have two life stages, the mobile, usually bell-like medusa and the sessile polyp. All creatures in this phylum have nematocysts, or stinging cells, for capturing prey, and some can inflict painful stings on swimmers. Examples include the hydras, sea anemones, corals, jellyfishes, and Portuguese man-o-war.

All for Love

Dryden wrote that he "professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare" in this play, subtitled "The World Well Lost", which retells the story of the Roman leader Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Dryden's version of the tale, the Roman general Ventidius actively tries to separate the two lovers, and encourages Antony to believe that Cleopatra has been secretly consorting with the Roman Dolabella. Another of the central characters in this play is Antony's wife Octavia, who travels to Alexandria to convince Antony to reconcile. At the end of the play, the eunuch Alexas falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra has committed suicide. Antony falls upon his sword, and the grief-stricken Cleopatra lets herself be bitten by a poisonous snake. The dead lovers are then eulogized by Serapion, a priest of Isis.

Volpone

Each character in this Ben Jonson play is based on an animal archetype. The greedy title character, a Venetian noble (named for the Italian for "fox") cajoles gifts from men named Corbaccio ("raven"), Corvino ("crow"), and Voltore ("vulture") by faking a fatal illness, and separately promising his fortune to each man. At the urging of that character's servant Mosca ("fly"), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son Bonario by writing a new will that will name that same character as sole heir. That character also engages in stratagems to sleep with Corvino's wife Celia, although his attempt to rape her is foiled by Bonario. In a subplot, the English traveler Peregrine humiliates a foolish fellow countryman named Sir Politick Would-Be. After a trial, the title character fakes his death and names Mosca his sole heir; Mosca's ensuing behavior prompts him to reveal himself, resulting in the punishment of all wrongdoing.

Ferdinand Magellan

Emperor Charles V endorsed this man's proposal to sail around the Americas and across the Pacific, and the expedition left in 1519. He began with five ships: the San Antonio, Trinidad, Concepción, Santiago, and Victoria. The expedition discovered and navigated the Strait of Magellan in 1520, reaching the Philippines in 1521. There, he was killed in battle on the island of Mactan. Only the Victoria, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, returned to Spain in 1522.

Romanov

Following the Time of Troubles, a member of this family was appointed Tsar and co-ruled with his father, Patriarch Filaret. Its rulers included Peter the Great (who westernized Russia and defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War), Catherine the Great (an enlightened despot who greatly expanded the borders of Russia), and Alexander II (who freed the serfs). This family ruled Russia as Tsars and Emperors until the Russian Revolution and Nicholas II's execution.

Hermitage

Founded in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1764 by Catherine the Great, this museum's buildings include the Winter Palace, which was once the residence of Russia's tsars. Its most famous pieces include Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son and Henri Matisse's Red Room.

American Gothic

Grant Wood painted this painting after a visit to Eldon, Iowa, when he saw a Carpenter Gothic style house with a distinctive Gothic window in its gable. Upon returning to his studio, he used his sister Nan and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, as the models for the two figures. The pitchfork and the clothing were more typical of 19th-century farmers than contemporary ones. This painting is among the most familiar regionalist paintings, and it is said to be the most parodied of all paintings. It hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was submitted for a competition by Wood upon its completion in 1930.

Battle of Bataan

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers struck the Philippine island of Luzon, forcing the Americans to retreat to the the sight of this battle, where they held out for four months. General Douglas MacArthur vowed "I shall return" before evacuating to Australia and leaving command to Jonathan Wainwright, who retreated to the island of Corregidor and surrendered on May 6. The prisoners from this battle were sent on a "death march" 80 miles to San Fernando with minimal food, water, and medical supplies; those that fell behind were beaten. Japanese General Masaharu Homma was executed in 1946 for his role in the war crime.

Sir Francis Drake

In 1576, Elizabeth I of England sent this man to find the unknown southern continent. His ship was the Pelican, which he renamed the Golden Hind. After sailing through the Strait of Magellan, He sailed up the western coast of South, Central, and North America as far as California, capturing Spanish ships and treasure along the way. After circumnavigating the globe and returning to England, he fought against the Spanish Armada.

Amelia Earhart

In 1932 this aviatrix became the first woman to make a trans-Atlantic solo flight, and three years later she became the first pilot of either gender to fly solo from Hawaii to California. In June 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan embarked on a 29,000-mile, around-the-world flight in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. They completed most of the journey, but became lost and eventually disappeared on the leg between Lae, New Guinea, and Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. Speculation as to their ultimate fate continues to this day.

1986 Summer Olympics

In addition to being the first Olympics to be held at high altitude, these Games saw U.S. long jumper Bob Beamon set a record of 8.90 meters that would remain untouched for 23 years. The Games ended on a controversial note: to protest the Mexican government's killing of at least 250 unarmed demonstrators on the eve of the Games, Tommie Smith and John Carlos staged a silent protest with a black gloved, raised fist "Black Power" salute during the award ceremony for the 200-meter race.

Mickey Mantle

In high school, this athlete's leg was nearly amputated because of osteomyelitis, the first of his many leg problems. Known as the "Commerce Comet" because of his speed and because he grew up in Commerce, Oklahoma, he became the Yankee center fielder following DiMaggio's retirement in 1951. He played on 12 pennant winners and seven World Championship clubs. He holds Series records for home runs (18), RBI (40), runs (42), walks (43), extra-base hits (26), and total bases (123). During the regular season, his switch hitting powered 536 homeruns and won him 4 homer titles ('55, '56, '58, '60), 3 MVP awards ('56, '57, '62), and in 1956 a triple crown. In 1961 he and teammate Roger Maris both had a chance of passing Ruth's 1927 mark of 60, but injuries forced him out of the race (Maris hit 61). He was elected to the Hall of Fame alongside Whitey Ford in 1974.

Diomedes

In his day of glory, this Trojan War hero kills Pandarus and wounds Aeneas before taking on the gods. He stabs Aphrodite in the wrist and, with Athena as his charioteer, wounds Ares in the stomach. Along with Odysseus, he also conducts a successful night raid against King Rhesus.

Diego Maradona

In the infamous "Hand of God" goal, this footballer directed the ball into the net with his hand illegally, undetected by officials on the pitch. A two-time South American Player of the Year (1978 and 1979) before joining FC Barcelona in 1982 after the World Cup in Spain, in 1984, he moved on to FC Napoli, where he would help his side claim two Serie A Championships and a UEFA Cup win in 1989. He was banned for failing a drug test in 1991 and by the time he returned, he was no longer his old playing self, though he did lead a stirring performance for Argentina at the 1994 World Cup in the U.S., before being banned again for failing another drug test during the tournament. He finally retired in 1997 from his original team, Argentina's Boca Juniors.

She Stoops to Conquer

In this comedy, sometimes called The Mistakes of a Night, a wealthy gentleman's son named Charles Marlow is sent to visit the country home of Mr. Hardcastle, who has a beautiful daughter named Kate. On the way, Marlow and his companion George Hastings stop at an alehouse where Kate's half-brother, Tony Lumpkin, tricks them into thinking they are miles from their destination. Tony directs the travelers to Mr. Hardcastle's house, claiming it is an inn. There, Marlow and Hastings rudely treat the Hardcastles as innkeepers, which the Hardcastles patiently endure for the sake of their friendship with Marlow's wealthy father. At the same time, Kate discovers that Marlow is timid and reserved around high-born ladies, but is rakishly charming to lower-class women. Kate therefore "stoops" to impersonating a barmaid in order to woo Marlow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hardcastle attempts to make her niece Constance Neville marry Tony. Constance, however, is secretly engaged to Hastings, and the pair try to obtain a casket of jewels that belongs to Constance, but which Mrs. Hardcastle carefully guards. In the end, Kate wins Marlow, and Tony discovers that he is older than the Hardcastles have led him to believe. Upon discovering he is an adult, Tony refuses the arranged marriage, freeing Constance to marry Hastings.

Election of 1876

In this election, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel Tilden, best known for battling Tammany Hall and the Tweed Ring in New York. Tilden won the popular vote and seemed to win the election, but results in Florida, South Carolina, and Louisiana were contested, as was one vote in Oregon; if Hayes swept these votes, he would win the electoral count 185 to 184. In Congress, an informal bargain was reached (often called the Compromise of 1877) in which Hayes won the election in exchange for Reconstruction being brought to an end.

Election of 1896

In this election, Republican William McKinley swept the North and Northeast to beat Democrat William Jennings Bryan. The most prominent issue, the gold standard versus free silver coinage, led to Bryan's famous "Cross of Gold" speech. Shunned by Eastern press, Bryan, a legendary orator, traveled 18,000 miles through 27 states and was heard by some 3 million people. McKinley would not accept Bryan's challenge to debate, comparing it to putting up a trapeze and competing with a professional athlete. McKinley instead had a "front porch" campaign, as railroads brought voters by the thousands to hear him speak in his hometown of Canton, Ohio. Mark Hanna, McKinley's campaign manager, is often considered the first modern campaign manager. The election also represented the demise of the Populist Party and ushered in a 16-year period of Republican rule. The gold question would disappear soon after the election with gold strikes in Australia and Alaska.

Election of 1912

In this election, three presidents--Teddy Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Woodrow Wilson--earned electoral votes. Roosevelt, displeased with his successor Taft, returned to lead the progressive Republican faction; after Taft got the Republican nomination, Roosevelt was nominated by the Progressive Party (nicknamed the "Bull Moose" Party). Wilson won with 435 electoral votes to Roosevelt's 88 and Taft's 8, making Taft the only incumbent to finish third in a re-election bid. Though Wilson did set forth his New Freedom program, his dominating win must be credited largely to the splitting of the Republican vote by Roosevelt and Taft.

The King and I

In this musical, Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher, travels to Siam (now Thailand) to teach English to the King's many children and wives. Anna's western ways, the looming threat of British rule, and romance between Lun Tha and the concubine Tuptim all weigh heavily on the traditional, chauvinistic King. As the King dies, Anna kneels at his side, and the prince abolishes the practice of kowtowing. Adapted from Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and inspired by Anna Leonowens' memoirs, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1956 film starring Yul Brynner. Its songs include "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Getting to Know You," and "Shall We Dance?".

Annie Get Your Gun

In this musical, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show comes to town, and performer Frank Butler challenges anyone to a shooting contest. Annie Oakley wins the contest and joins the show. She and Frank fall in love, but Frank quits out of jealousy that Annie is a better shooter than he is. The title role was originated by Ethel Merman, and songs in the show include "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," and "Anything You Can Do."

Evita

In this musical, Che Guevara narrates the life story of Eva Peron, a singer and film actress who marries Juan Peron. Juan is elected President of Argentina, and Eva's charity work makes her immensely popular among her people ("Don't Cry for Me Argentina") before her death from cancer. It was made into a 1996 film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas.

The Pirates of Penzance

In this musical, Frederic, having turned twenty-one, is released from his apprenticeship to the title pirates. Reaching shore for the first time, Frederic falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley. Frederic realizes that he was apprenticed until his twenty-first birthday, and, having been born on February 29, he must return to his apprenticeship. Mabel vows to wait for him. The Major-General and the police pursue the pirates, who surrender. The pirates are forgiven, and Mabel and Frederic reunite. As the work is actually a light opera, most of the songs are simply titled after their first lines; the most memorable ones include "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry" and "I am the very model of a modern Major-General."

The Sound of Music

In this musical, Maria, a young woman studying to be a nun in Nazi-occupied Austria, becomes governess to the seven children of Captain von Trapp. She teaches the children to sing ("My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi"), and she and the Captain fall in love and get married. After Maria and the von Trapps give a concert for the Nazis ("Edelweiss"), they escape Austria ("Climb Ev'ry Mountain"). It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film starring Julie Andrews.

Guys and Dolls

In this musical, Nathan Detroit runs an underground craps game but needs a location. To make enough money to use the Biltmore garage for his game, he bets notorious gambler Sky Masterson that Sky can't convince a girl of Nathan's choice to go to Havana with him for dinner; Nathan chooses the righteous missionary Sarah Brown. Sky wins the bet but ends up having to bring a dozen sinning gamblers to a revival meeting. As Nathan attends the meeting, his long-suffering fiancé Adelaide, a nightclub dancer, is increasingly frustrated that their fourteen-year engagement has not led to marriage. At the meeting, Sky bets a large amount of money against the gamblers' souls, winning, and eventually convincing Sarah to marry him and Nathan to marry Adelaide. Adapted from short stories by Damon Runyon, the musical includes songs like "A Bushel and a Peck," "Luck Be a Lady," and "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat."

West Side Story

In this musical, Riff and Bernardo lead two rival gangs: the blue-collar Jets and the Sharks from Puerto Rico. Tony, a former Jet, falls in love with the Bernardo's sister Maria and vows to stop the fighting, but he kills Bernardo after Bernardo kills Riff in a "rumble." Maria's suitor Chino shoots Tony, and the two gangs come together. Notable songs include "America," "Tonight," "Somewhere," "I Feel Pretty," and "Gee, Officer Krupke." Adapted from Romeo and Juliet, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1961 film starring Natalie Wood.

Fiddler on the Roof

In this musical, Tevye is a lowly Jewish milkman in Tsarist Russia ("If I Were a Rich Man"), and his daughters are anxious to get married ("Matchmaker"). Tzeitel marries the tailor Motel ("Sunrise, Sunset," "The Bottle Dance"), Hodel gets engaged to the radical student Perchik, and Chava falls in love with a Russian named Fyedka. The families leave their village, Anatevka, after a pogrom. It is adapted from Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem.

My Fair Lady

In this musical, as part of a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering, phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforms cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. After Eliza falls for Freddy Eynsforth-Hill, Higgins realizes that he is in love with Eliza. Eliza returns to Higgins' home in the final scene. It is adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.

The Phantom of the Opera

In this musical, set at the Paris Opera in 1881, the mysterious Phantom lures the soprano Christine Daae to his lair ("The Music of the Night"). Christine falls in love with the opera's new patron, Raoul, so the Phantom drops a chandelier and kidnaps Christine. They kiss, but he disappears, leaving behind only his white mask. Adapted from the eponymous 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux, it is the longest-running show in Broadway history.

Jesus Christ Superstar

In this musical, set the week leading up to the crucifixion, Judas grows angry with Christ's claims of divinity, and Mary Magdalene laments her romantic feelings for Christ. Judas hangs himself, and Christ, though frustrated with God, accepts his fate. Among the songs in this musical are "I Don't Know How to Love Him," "Gethsemane," and "Trial Before Pilate."

Cats

In this musical, the Jellicle tribe of cats roams the streets of London. They introduce the audience to various members: Rum Tum Tugger, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy. Old Deuteronomy must choose a cat to be reborn, and he chooses the lowly Grizabella after she sings "Memory." It is adapted from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

A Streetcar Named Desire

In this play, Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams's two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment. Stella's husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche's artifice; he ruins Blanche's chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.

The Jew of Malta

In this play, after his massive fortune is seized by Malta's governor Ferneze to pay tribute to the Turks, the Jewish merchant Barabas embarks on a complex journey of revenge. Barabas uses his daughter Abigail to spark a jealous feud that leads to a duel in which the governor's son Lodowick is killed. Abigail then hides in a convent and converts to Christianity, leading Barabas and his slave Ithamore to poison all of the convent's occupants. Barabas eventually aids the Turks in conquering Malta, for which he is appointed governor, but betrays the Turks in favor of the Maltese, who kill Barabas in a boiling cauldron as they retake the island. This play is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

The Iceman Cometh

In this play, regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their "pipe dreams," Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The title character is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality.

Fancy Free

Leonard Bernstein composed this first ballet choreographed by American dancer Jerome Robbins. Inspired by Paul Cadmus's painting The Fleet's In!,the ballet depicts the antics of three sailors on shore leave in New York City, where they meet two beautiful women. To determine which one will leave dateless, the sailors hold a dance contest, performing a galop, waltz, and a Cuban danzón. However, the women cannot choose a winner, and the sailors quickly start fighting. The women run away, but the men reconcile and the ballet ends with them crossing paths with another attractive woman and starting to pursue her. This ballet's success catapulted both Bernstein and Robbins to stardom; Bernstein later adapted it into a musical and a film under the title On the Town; the musical features the song "New York, New York."

The Rivals

Like his later play "The School for Scandal", this Richard Sheridan play offers a satirical take on manners and courtship. The play's heroine is Lydia Languish, a wealthy heiress who loves reading novels, and who wants her own life to imitate the tropes of romantic fiction. To win Lydia's heart, the wealthy Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the impoverished "Ensign Beverley." Lydia is also desired by the "country gentleman" Bob Acres and the Irish baronet Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the latter of whom sends letters via the maid Lucy. However, O'Trigger's letters are actually read and answered by Lydia's guardian Mrs. Malaprop, who is infatuated with O'Trigger and uses the pseudonym "Delia" in her correspondence. (Mrs. Malaprop's comical speech patterns gave rise to the English word "malapropism," which refers to the accidental substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, but has a different meaning.) Jack's father Sir Anthony Absolute eventually exposes Jack's deception, infuriating Lydia. Jack then has an abortive duel with Sir Lucius, leading Mrs. Malaprop to admit that she is "Delia." At the end of the play, Lydia and Jack reconcile, as do their friends, the quarreling lovers Julia and Faulkland.

Swan Lake

Many modern performances of this ballet are based on a revised version of Tchaikovsky's score prepared after Tchaikovsky's death by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and Riccardo Drigo. The ballet opens at Prince Siegfried's 21st birthday party, where Siegfried's mother scolds him for not finding a wife; she plans for him to choose a spouse at a ball the following evening. After the "Dance of the Goblets," Siegfried, his tutor Wolfgang, and his friend Benno go hunting. They are about to shoot a swan when it turns into the beautiful Odette. Odette reveals she was cursed by the sorcerer von Rothbart to turn into a swan during the daytime. The curse can only be broken if one who has never loved before declares his love for her. Odette and the other victims of von Rothbart's curse live on the title lake, which was created by Odette's mother's tears. Their presence is usually signified by one of the ballet's recurring musical themes, a B-minor motif for oboe and harp. Odette and Siegfried begin to fall in love, but morning breaks and Odette returns to her swan form. At the palace, the ball begins with nationalistic dances, including Neapolitan and Hungarian dances and a mazurka. Von Rothbart arrives with his daughter Odile, disguised to look like Odette. (Odette and Odile are normally played by the same ballerina, who wears white as Odette and black as Odile.) They successfully trick Siegfried into declaring his love for Odile, dooming Odette to live as a swan forever. He hurries back to the lake, where he and Odette drown themselves, killing von Rothbart in the process. The exact ending varies from production to production, with some happier than others.

1994 Winter Olympics

Massachusetts native Nancy Kerrigan and Oregonian Tonya Harding were among America's leading hopes for gold in women's figure skating during these Olympic Games. During the Olympic Trials in Detroit, Kerrigan was viciously attacked by an unknown assailant, who would later be traced back to Harding. In the ensuing media circus, both Kerrigan and Harding were sent to Norway, but their thunder was stolen by Ukrainian skate Oksana Baiul, who edged out silver medallist Kerrigan, while Harding placed eighth. Sweden won the ice hockey gold by defeating Canada in a shootout; future Colorado Avalanche forward Peter Forsberg's game-winning effort against Canadian goalie Sean Burke was immortalized on a Swedish postage stamp. In speed skating, Bonnie Blair won her third straight gold in the 500-meters and second straight in the 1,000-meters, perennial hard luck kid Dan Jansen won Olympic gold in his last race, the 1,000 meters, and Norwegian Johann Olav Koss won three gold medals, all in world-record times.

Annelida

Members of these Phyla are segmented worms and represent the first lineage of truly eucoelomate (having a body cavity lined with mesoderm-derived tissue) animals; their body cavities are lined with tissue derived from the embryonic mesoderm. Classes of this phylum include the marine Polychaeta, as well as this phyla mostly terrestrial Oligochaeta (including the earthworms, Lumbricus) and the mostly-aquatic Hirudinea, or leeches. Characteristics of annelids include nephridia (kidney-like structures), blood vessels, and, in some classes, hermaphroditism.

Danube River

Most of this river is in Eastern Europe, but it begins in Germany's Black Forest (or Schwarzwald) near Freiburg, crossing Bavaria before it enters Austria. In all, it passes through (or touches the borders of) 10 nations on its 1,785-mile course ending at the Black Sea. Chief tributaries include the Drava and Sava, and it passes through 4 national capitals: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, and Belgrade. Formerly known as the Ister, it was often used to define a northern border for the Roman Empire.

Mozart's String Quartets

Mozart wrote most of these pieces in sets of three or six; he also wrote two standalone concertos for a total of 23. The most famous of these pieces are probably the six "Haydn" ones (Nos. 14-19). The collection begins with the highly chromatic Spring Quartet in G major, K. 387, and ends with the even more chromatic Dissonant one of these in C major, K. 465, which begins with an extremely dissonant Adagio introduction. They also include the Hunt one of these, No. 17 in B flat major, K. 458, so named for its "hunting-horn" melodies. The other famous collection of these Mozart pieces is the set of three Prussian Quartets (Nos. 21-23), dedicated to Friedrich Wilhelm II, which make prominent use of the cello. Between these two sets, Mozart wrote the Hoffmeister Quartet, No. 20 in D major, K. 499, for his friend Anton Hoffmeister.

Franz Beckenbauer

Nicknamed "Der Kaiser," this footballer invented the position of attacking sweeper, helping him to become the only man ever to win the World Cup as both team captain and as manager (1974 as a player, 1990 as manager). His first World Cup saw him help West Germany to the 1966 World Cup Final, where they lost to host England 4-2 at Wembley Stadium. 1972 saw West Germany win the European Championship and this man named European Footballer of the Year. Two years later, he had one of the single greatest football years in history, captaining FC Bayern München to the Bundesliga (German First Division), European Cup (now known as the UEFA Champions League) championships and West Germany to the World Cup, the nation's second triumph. In 1976, he left Germany for the NASL's New York Cosmos, where he teamed with Pelé and was named 1977 NASL MVP. He now serves as the FC Bayern München club president.

Walter Hagen

Nicknamed "The Haig," this athlete was the first great pro golfer, appearing in over 2,500 exhibitions. A five-time PGA Champion, including four straight from 1924 to 1927, This man won eleven majors overall, and he was known most for his showmanship and his ability to recover from poor shots with spectacular ones. He captained the U.S. Ryder Cup team six of the first seven times the event was held.

Centrioles

Not found in plant cells, these structures are paired organelles with nine sets of microtubule triplets in cross section. They are important in organizing the microtubule spindle needed to move the chromosomes during mitosis.

The Nutcracker

Now a Christmastime favorite, This Tchaikovsky ballet was choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The plot, based on an E. T. A. Hoffmann story, opens at a Christmas party, where Drosselmeyer gives his daughter Clara the titular toy, which her brother Fritz soon breaks. At night, the living room becomes a battleground between the evil Mouse King and toys and gingerbread soldiers, led by that character. Clara throws her slipper at the Mouse King, distracting him long enough for the title charcter to kill him. He then turns into a prince and leads Clara into a magical forest where the "Waltz of the Snowflakes" marks the end of act one. In act two Clara and the prince arrive in the Land of Sweets, where they witness dances representing delicacies from around the world, including Arabian coffee and Spanish chocolate, as well as the Chinese "Dance of the Reed Flutes" and the Russian "Trepak." Mother Ginger has a group of clowns ("Polcinelles") emerge from her skirt to dance before the orchestra plays the "Waltz of the Flowers" and the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier dance a pas de deux. Finally, the Sugar Plum Fairy dances alone to music that marks one of the first orchestral uses of the celesta.

Michelson-Morley experiment

Often called the most famous failed experiment in science, this experiment disproved the existence of the luminiferous aether, a hypothetical medium through which light waves supposedly moved. The experiment used an interferometer, a device that splits a beam of light and aims it using mirrors to allow the beam to interfere with itself; the interferometer was mounted on a slab of marble floating in a pool of mercury so that it could turn without friction, to eliminate the possibility that the interferometer was misoriented. While this experiment's creators expected to find a shift in the interference pattern's fringes as a result of the ether, the experiment showed that the Earth had no motion relative to the ether, suggesting that the ether did not exist.

USS Lawrence

Oliver Hazard Perry's decisive victory over the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813 ensured American control of the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. In the battle, this ship, Perry's flagship, was severely damaged and four-fifths of her crew killed or wounded. Commodore Perry and a small contingent rowed a half-mile through heavy gunfire to another American ship, the USS Niagara. Boarding and taking command, he brought her into battle and soundly defeated the British fleet. Perry summarized the fight in a now-famous message to General William Henry Harrison: "We have met the enemy and they are ours."

Margaret Atwood

One of Canada's most prominent authors of literary fiction, this author has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985 she published The Handmaid's Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a "handmaid" is to bear children for "the Commander" and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's unknown fate. She later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, this author has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).

Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions

One of these corrected Hubble's flawed optics by installing COSTAR (a corrective optics system), while removing the High-Speed Photometer to make room. It also replaced the original Wide Field and Planetary Camera, or WFPC "wiff-pick", with WFPC2, which a camera that had optical correction built in. Another one of these replaced the Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) and Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) with improved successors. Yet another replaced failed gyroscope systems. A 2002 one of these replaced the Faint Object Camera (FOC) with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and also repaired NICMOS, which was installed during an earlier one of these. A later one of these was originally cancelled after the Columbia Disaster by then-NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, but was revived by Michael Griffin, who took over the post in 2005. That same mission installed WFC3 (made from some parts of the original WFPC) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and conducted other repairs.

I and the Village

Painted in 1911, this work is among Marc Chagall's earliest surviving paintings. It is a dreamlike scene that includes many motifs common to Chagall, notably the lamb and peasant life. In addition to the two giant faces—a green face on the right and a lamb's head on the left—other images include a milkmaid, a reaper, an upside-down peasant woman, a church, and a series of houses, some of them upside-down. This painting is currently housed at MOMA.

Francis Marion

Previously an Indian fighter, this "Swamp Fox" was given command of Fort Sullivan in 1776. Commanding the 2nd South Carolina, he fought at Savannah, and escaped capture when the British recaptured Charleston. From there, this general fought a successful guerilla campaign against British troops, forcing Cornwallis to appoint Colonel Banastre Tarleton to eliminate him. Promoted to brigadier general in 1781, and later given command of the North and South Carolina militias, he fought the British at Eutaw Springs.

All in the Family

Producer Norman Lear created this sitcom, which was based on the successful British series Till Death Us Do Part. It starred Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as the central couple, Archie and Edith Bunker; Archie was notable for his prejudicial attitudes, while Edith—whom Archie would refer to as his "dingbat"—was his long-suffering wife. The show also featured Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson, who would later be given his own eponymous spinoff, The Jeffersons, in which he and his wife moved on up to a "deluxe apartment in the sky" on the East Side of Manhattan.

K2

Qogir, Ketu, and Mount Godwin-Austen are other names for this mountain, which gains its most common name from its distinction of being the second-tallest mountain in the world. The "K" in its name stands for Karakoram, the mountain range in Pakistan and China in which the peak is found. The House's Chimney and the Black Pyramid are features of this mountain, which also possesses a different second-place record: behind the Annapurna Massif, it boasts the next-highest fatality rate among attempted climbers of any mountains above 8,000 meters.

Limpopo River

Rising as the Crocodile (or Krokodil) River in South Africa's Witwatersrand region, it forms the Transvaal's border with Botswana and Zimbabwe, then crosses through Mozambique. Deforestation in Mozambique contributed to massive flooding of this river in 2000. Perhaps the most famous description of this river comes from Rudyard Kipling, who in "The Elephant's Child" referred to it as "the great grey-green, greasy" and "all set about with fever-trees".

The Twilight Zone

Rod Sterling created this anthology series, whose iconic opening credits featured a theme composed by Bernard Herrmann and a narration warning that the viewer was "about to enter another dimension." One of its most famous episodes, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starred a young William Shatner as a salesman who becomes convinced that a gremlin nobody else can see is trying to crash the airplane on which he is flying. It is the subject of a popular poem by John Fraser.

The Three-Cornered Hat

Sergei Diaghilev commissioned this ballet based on a novella by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón; the costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso. The title headgear is worn by the ballet's main villain, a magistrate (corregidor), who attempts to seduce the main female character, a miller's wife. The miller and his wife then trick the magistrate: the miller's wife flirtatiously offers the magistrate some grapes, but then leads him on a chase past the miller, hiding in a bush, who beats the magistrate. That night, the magistrate sends a deputy to arrest the miller on falsified charges; after the arrest, the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays to signify the "knocking of fate." The magistrate goes to the miller's home, but falls into a river, causing the miller's wife to flee. The magistrate then undresses and gets into the miller's bed; the miller, having escaped from prison, decides to seduce the magistrate's wife and secretly switches clothes with him. The magistrate, dressed in the miller's clothes, is then arrested by his deputy. The miller and his wife arrive and toss the magistrate up and down in a blanket.

Robert Peel

Set out the founding principles of the Conservative Party in the Tamworth Manifesto and led the new party to its first general election victory. The Irish Famine accelerated his decision to repeal the Corn Laws, promoting free trade by removing grain tariffs. This act was achieved with Whig support and lost him the backing of his party.

Shiva's consort

Several incarnations of the Hindu "mother goddess" take this moniker. Parvati, the most benevolent form, is the reincarnation of Sati, who threw herself into the fire. Durga is a demon-slayer who rides a lion into battle and carries a weapon in each of her many arms. Kali is a black-skinned goddess of destruction, who defeats the demon leader Raktavija by drinking all of his blood. Although Kali's dance can destroy the world, Shiva throws himself at her feet to calm her, turning her into Parvati.

Museum of Modern Art

Situated in Manhattan, this museum has been connected with the Rockefeller family since its founding in 1929. Its collection includes Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, and Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie.

Odin

Sometimes called "All-Father", he is the leader of the Aesir, the principal group of Norse gods. He is a god of war, death, wisdom, poetry, and knowledge, and rides the eight-legged horse Sleipnir. He hung himself for nine days on the world tree Yggsdrasil, pierced by his own spear, to gain knowledge, and traded one of his eyes for a drink from Mimir's well to gain wisdom.

Gluons

Sometimes called Vector Bosons, these particles are fundamental bosons that carry the forces of nature. That is, forces result from particles emitting and absorbing these bosons. The strong nuclear force is carried by these particles.

William I

Sometimes referred to as "the conqueror", this leader, then the Duke of Normandy, was promised succession to the throne by Edward the Confessor. When Edward gave the throne to Harold II in 1066, this monarch invaded England, killing Harold and defeating the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. An able administrator, he authorized a survey of his kingdom in the 1086 Domesday Book. By that time this king had replaced Anglo-Saxon nobles and clergy with Normans and other continentals.

Louis XIII

Sometimes working with his chief minister, Cardinal Richelieu, and sometimes against, this king turned France into the pre-eminent European power during his reign. This was largely achieved via French victories in the Thirty Years' War. The Three Musketeers is set in the early years of his reign.

Nephthys

Termed the "lady of the castle," for her role as guardian of the tomb, this goddess sided against her own husband, Set, in his battle against Osiris, but when Set was destroyed, she collected the bits of his body, and brought him back to life, much as Isis had done for Osiris. Isis' sister, she was also said to be Osiris' mistress, leading to much complaint from Isis. Due to her close ties to all the other gods, she was rarely associated with a cult of her own.

Battle of Tours

The Franks' victory at this 732 battle was a major turning point in the history of Europe. After conquering Iberia, the Umayyads advanced into France as far as Poitiers. The Franks were led by Charles Martel, while the Umayyads were led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi. The battle was preceded by a pact between the Berber governor Munuza and Odo, Duke of Aquitaine, though Odo was present at this battle. The best contemporary source for the battle is the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754.

Mount Everest

The border between Nepal and China straddles the summit of this Himalayan mountain, which, at a height of over 29,000 feet, is the tallest mountain in the world. The Khumbu Icefall and the cliff-like Three Steps are hazards faced by potential climbers of this mountain, a feat first accomplished by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Local "Sherpas" act as guides for mountaineers in the area, though they walked out of the job over dangerous working conditions in 2014 after sixteen Sherpas were killed in an avalanche.

Election of 1824

The candidates in this election were John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, William Crawford, and Andrew Jackson, all Democratic-Republicans. After John C. Calhoun decided to seek the vice presidency and Crawford (from Georgia) had a stroke, Jackson took most of the South and won the popular vote. Jackson had 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37, but since none had more than 50% of the vote, the House decided the election. Adams won in the House with support from Clay, and Jacksonians cried foul when Clay was made Secretary of State (the so-called "corrupt bargain"), giving fuel to Jackson's victorious 1828 campaign. Jackson is the only candidate to lose a presidential race despite having the most electoral votes, and he is one of five (with Tilden, Cleveland, Gore, and Clinton) to lose despite winning the popular vote. The election also led to the founding of the Democratic Party.

Marbury v. Madison

The controversy behind this Supreme Court case began in John Adams' final day in office in 1801, when he signed commissions for 42 federal judges (the so-called "midnight judges"). His successor, Thomas Jefferson, opted to not deliver most of the commissions. One appointee, the plaintiff in this Supreme Court Case, sued the new secretary of state to force the delivery of his commission. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had granted the court original jurisdiction in such cases, but the Constitution did not. The court ruled that the Judiciary Act conflicted with the Constitution and was therefore void. Therefore the plaintiff's request was denied for lack of jurisdiction. This case established the principle of judicial review, the power of the court to nullify unconstitutional laws.

Ma'at

The daughter of Ra, this goddess predated the universe, and served over the creation of it, ensuring balance between everything. Primarily seen as the keeper of order, this deity was responsible for seasons, day and night, rainfall, and star movements. A symbolic offering of this goddess in the form a statuette was given to the gods, as she encompassed all other offerings. Her aspect as god of justice also showed through her role in the death ritual, where her ostrich feather symbol was weighed against the hearts of the dead in the underworld. Judges wore effigies of her, and the supreme head of courts was said to be the priest of this goddess.

Battle of Marathon

The defeated Persian commanders at this battle, which ended Darius' invasion of Greece, were Datis and Artaphernes. Among the few Athenian dead of the battle were archon Callimachus and the general Stesilaos. Legend has it that the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran to Athens with news of the victory, but collapsed upon arrival. This is the inspiration for the modern race known by this battle's name.

Gideon v. Wainwright

The defendant in this case was accused of breaking into a pool hall in Florida. Because his crime was not capital, the court declined to provide him with an attorney. After he was convicted, that defendant sued the director of the Florida corrections office, and took his case to the Supreme Court. The court overruled Betts v. Brady and held that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments required appointed counsel in all trials. Gideon was retried and found innocent. The case is the subject of the book Gideon's Trumpet.

Lexington and Concord

The first battles of the American Revolutionary War were skirmishes near Boston in these two towns, as well as Cambridge, Lincoln and Menotomy. British regulars under Francis Smith attempted to destroy the supplies of the colonial militia, but were stopped by Minutemen. Ralph Waldo Emerson described the first shot as the "shot heard round the world."

Bourbon

The first king from this family was Henry IV, who was victorious in the War of the Three Henrys and issued the Edict of Nantes guaranteeing religious freedom. Notable rulers from this family included Louis XIV and Louis XVI (who was beheaded during the French Revolution). Following Napoleon's fall, this family briefly ruled France again until the July Revolution of 1830.

Stuart

The first king from this family was James I (James VI of Scotland), who commissioned the King James Bible and survived the Gunpowder Plot. Other notable rulers included Charles I (who was beheaded following the English Civil War) and Charles II (who was restored to power after Oliver Cromwell died). It was under the last Queen from this house, Anne, that the Acts of Union were passed and Great Britain was founded.

Qing dynasty

The invading Manchus established this last dynasty to rule imperial China. An important institution of thisdynasty was the banner system, which acted as a guaranteed welfare system for Manchus and gave them benefits in the imperial examination (positions were often duplicated, with one Han Chinese and one Manchu from the banners). The foundations of this dynasty were established under its second ruler, the Kangxi Emperor who put down the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. He is also famous for the Kangxi dictionary, which is known for popularizing the system of Chinese radicals. During the last century of this dynasty's rule, China was weakened both by foreign attacks and internal dissent. Attempts to modernize Qing rule, like the Self-Strengthening Movement and the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898, proved inconclusive. Their Dowager Express Cixi, who opposed the reformers, was implicated in the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign uprising of 1900 that caused eight Western nations to send military forces to Beijing. China's last emperor was Puyi, who came to the throne at the age of two in 1906. The 1911 Xinhai Revolution ended this Dynasty and created the Republic of China.

Agamemnon

The king of Mycenae, this mythological charater shares supreme command of the Greek troops in the Trojan War with his brother, Menelaus. An epithet of his, "king of heroes," reflects this status. As a commander, however, he often lacks good public relations skills, as shown by his feud with Achilles (book 1) and by his ill-considered strategy of suggesting that all the troops go home (book 2). Upon his return home, he is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus.

Menelaus

The king of Sparta, this Greek is the husband of Helen, the cause celebre of the Trojan War. He tries to win Helen back by fighting Paris in single combat but Aphrodite carried Paris off when it seems that this man will win. Despite his notionally equal say in commanding the troops with his brother Agamemnon, in practice Agamemnon often dominates.

Chords

The most common types of these are built of successive notes that are each a third above the previous. A triad consists of three notes referred to as the root, third, and fifth—the third and fifth being that respective interval above the root. Triads are classified as either major, minor, augmented, or diminished, based on whether the successive pitches are separated by major or minor thirds. Adding a successive pitch above the fifth results in a seventh one of these (since that new pitch is a seventh above the root). Although many types of sevenths are possible, the most common are the major, major-minor (or dominant), minor, half-diminished, and fully-diminished. Larger kinds of these, such as ninth and thirteenth, appear commonly in jazz.

Battle of Agincourt

The outnumbered army of King Henry V of England defeated the army of King Charles VI of France under Charles d'Albret at this 1415 battle. French commanders Jean le Maingre and Charles d'Orleans were captured. This battle occurred about one month after the English victory at the Siege of Harfleur. Five years after this battle, Henry was recognized as the heir to the French throne through the Treaty of Troyes.

Gibbons v. Ogden

The plaintiff and defendant in this case were partners in a steamboat business that ferried people between New York and New Jersey. The defendant had purchased a license granting him a monopoly under New York law. After the partners suffered a disagreement and split up, the plaintiff applied for and received a federal permit to run a similar business. He then sued the defendant for violating his monopoly. In a unanimous decision, Marshall held that Congress' interstate regulatory power under the Commerce Clause had "no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution."

Muller v. Oregon

The plaintiff in this Supreme Court case was fined for violating an Oregon law that limited the working hours of female employees; he appealed, claiming the law was an unconstitutional restriction of freedom of contract. Arguing on behalf of Oregon, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis invoked scientific evidence to support the notion that excessive working hours were deleterious to a woman's health. Oregon's statute was upheld on the grounds that the state had a compelling interest in protecting the health of its female workers. One side effect of the decision was the judicial justification of sex discrimination in legislation.

Griswold v. Connecticut

The plaintiffs from this case, who were directors of Planned Parenthood, were charged with violating an 1879 Connecticut contraception ban after they opened a birth control clinic. Justice Douglas' majority opinion held that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras," and that "emanations" of those guarantees create a Constitutional "right to privacy" that protects intensely personal decisions, such as the right of married couples to choose whether or not to use birth control. Connecticut's law was struck down.

Atacama Desert

The rain shadow of the Andes which makes this place the driest desert in the world. The desert was the primary bone of contention in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883, Chile defeats Peru and Bolivia) that sought to control its nitrate resources (which were necessary for the production of explosives).

Unemployment

The rate of this refers to the percentage of the population that is actively seeking work but cannot find a job. It can be cyclical (common in seasonal industries like fieldwork), frictional (the natural time between jobs that exists in most labor markets), or structural (when workers' skills do not match those required by open jobs).

Dred Scott v. Sandford

The slave at the center of this Supreme Court case was purchased by John Emerson in the 1820s and who at various points lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, both of which prohibited slavery. In 1853, he sued his then-owner for his freedom. The Supreme Court ruled that no African-American—slave or free—was a citizen of the United States, and that therefore the defendant lacked standing to initiate a lawsuit in the first place. In addition, the Court found the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional, holding that Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in any new territory that was not originally part of the United States.

The Mikado

The title character in this musical has made flirting a capital crime in Titipu, so the people have appointed an ineffectual executioner named Ko-Ko. Ko-Ko's ward, Yum-Yum, marries the wandering musician Nanki-Poo, and the two lovers fake their execution. The title character visits the town and forgives the lovers of their transgression. It includes the song "Three Little Maids From School Are We."

Lysistrata

The title character of this comedy is an Athenian woman who decides to end the Peloponnesian War, which was still ongoing when the play premiered in 411 BC At the beginning of the play, she assembles a secret "Council of Women," whose members represent many different regions of Greece. Once the women have gathered, she reveals her proposal: all Greek women should abstain from having sex until the men agree to stop fighting. Although her plan draws protests from her bawdy neighbor Calonice, and from the amorous wife Myrrhine, the Spartan Lampito reluctantly supports the idea, and helps to convince the other women. As Athenian women capture the Acropolis, the female representatives from other regions return home to enlist their compatriots in the plan. The ensuing events include conflicts between a chorus of old women and a chorus of old men, and a personal plea to Myrrhine from her husband, Cinesias. Both genders suffer from sexual deprivation, but the women of Greece remain united. With the aid of a beautiful girl called Diallage, or Reconciliation, the title character convinces the frenzied men to agree to an equitable peace.

Battle of Kosovo

This 1389 battle between Serbians and Ottomans eventually led to the subjugation of Serbia. Both Prince Lazar of Serbia and Sultan Murad I died during the battle. Bayezid I, who was present at this battle, became the Ottoman Sultan once his father died.

Isaac Newton

The work of this man in pure math includes generalizing the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, doing the first rigorous manipulation with power series, and creating a namesake method for the finding roots. He is best known, however, for a lengthy feud between British and Continental mathematicians over whether he or Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus. It is now generally accepted that they both did, independently.

Gauge Bosons

These are fundamental bosons that carry the forces of nature. That is, forces result from particles emitting and absorbing these bosons. The strong nuclear force is carried by gluons, the weak nuclear force is carried by the W, Z-, and Z+ particles, the electromagnetic force is carried by the photon, and gravity is carried by the (as yet unobserved) graviton.

Wright Brothers

These aviators operated a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio, before creating the first successful, powered, heavier-than-air, manned airplane. For several years, utilizing both a wind tunnel they built as well as test flights, they created and refined gliders before adding an engine to their design. Finally, on December 17, 1903, the Flyer I made a 12-second flight at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They made several more launches that day, staying aloft for 59 seconds on the fourth, and last, flight.

Platyhelminthes

These flatworms are the most primitive phylum to develop from a triploblastic (three-layered) embryo. They have bilateral body symmetry, and are acoelomate (lacking a true body cavity), so that the space between the digestive tract and the body wall is filled with tissue. As the name implies, they are generally flat-bodied. They have a true head and brain, but the digestive system has only one opening that functions as both mouth and anus. Most are hermaphroditic. This phylum includes parasites such as the tapeworms and flukes, as well as free-living (i.e., non-parasitic) organisms such as the planarians.

Quarks

These fundamental particles come in six flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top (sometimes, "truth"), and bottom (sometimes, "beauty"). The up, charm, and top flavors have a charge of +2/3, while the down, strange, and bottom have a charge of -1/3. All of these particles are fermions and they combine in pairs to form mesons and in triples to form baryons. The enormous mass of the top flavor (178 GeV) made it difficult to create in particle accelerators, but its discovery in 1995 confirmed an essential element of the "Standard Model" of particle physics. This particle's name comes from a line in Finnegans Wake that appealed to Murray Gell-Mann. The study of these things (and the strong nuclear force) is quantum chromodynamics.

Suffragettes

These militant advocates for women's suffrage became are especially with Emmeline Pankhurst and her organization, the Women's Social and Political Union. In the 1910s, many of these people adopted militant tactics to draw attention to their cause, including Emily Davison's protest at the Epsom Derby in 1913 when she was trampled and killed by the King's horse, a slashing attack by Mary Richardson on Diego Velázquez's Rokeby Venus in 1914, and the 1914 bombing of the Coronation Chair inside Westminster Abbey. Many members of this reform movement who were arrested went on hunger strikes, leading the government of Herbert Asquith to pass the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed hunger strikers to be released and subsequently re-arrested. This group achieved its goal in 1918, when Parliament finally extended voting rights to women over the age of thirty who met property qualifications.

Sirens

These monsters were beautiful women who appeared harmless and sang a beautiful song to passing sailors, only to prove vicious and bloodthirsty when the sailors ventured too close. The Greeks often said that these creatures were the daughters of the river god Achelous, while the Romans named their father as Phorcys. In the Argonautica, Chiron warns Jason that Orpheus will be instrumental on his journey, and Orpheus later saves all of Jason's crew (save Butes) by playing his lyre when they pass these creatures to drown out their beautiful and alluring song. Odysseus also encountered them, tying himself to the mast of his ship so that he could safely hear their song while his crew plugged their ears with beeswax, on the advice of the sorceress Circe.

Mitochondria

These organelles are double-membrane-bound organelles that are the site of respiration and oxidative phosphorylation, processes that produce energy for the cell in the form of ATP. The inner membrane of this organelle forms folds called cristae [KRIS-tee], which are suspended in a fluid called the matrix.

Leptons

These particles are one of the classes of "fundamental particles" (meaning that they cannot be broken down into smaller particles). There are six "flavors" of these particles: the electron, the muon, the tauon, the electron neutrino (usually just called "the" neutrino), the muon neutrino, and the tauon neutrino. The three neutrinos are neutral (and were once thought to be massless), while the other three have a charge of -1. This particle's name comes from the Greek for "light" (as in "not heavy"), even though the muon and tauon are fairly massive.

Bosons

These particles, which have an integral spin, are not fermions. The spin of a composite particle is determined by the total spin (i.e., the component of its intrinsic angular momentum along one axis) of its particles. For instance, an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons) has four half-integral spin values. No matter how they are added up, the result will be an integral spin value, so an alpha particle is a composite one of these particles. The Pauli Exclusion Principle does not apply to these particles.

Franks

These people settled in Gaul late in the 5th century, displacing the Roman official Syagrius. Clovis, the first great ruler of their Merovingian dynasty, converted to (Catholic) Christianity in 496. The close association between these people and the papacy benefited both parties in an age when their mutual enemies (such as the Visigoths) were either heretics or still pagan. Merovingian Gaul was wracked by civil war among contending kings from this tribe; by the beginning of the 8th century the Merovingians had lost effective power to their chief ministers, the "mayors of the palace." In 751 mayor Pepin the Short, with permission from the pope, deposed the last Merovingian and established a new Carolingian dynasty of Frankish kings. Pepin's son was Charlemagne, who subjugated much of western Europe and presided over a revival of learning known as the "Carolingian Renaissance." On Christmas Day 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome. Charlemagne's grandsons quarreled over rights to his inheritance, splitting this group's empire into a cluster of regional domains. The westernmost ("West Francia") became the kingdom of France; the eastern one beyond the Rhine ("East Francia") retained the imperial title as the Holy Roman Empire.

Visigoths

These people were one of a number of Germanic peoples scattered by the advance of the Huns. They took refuge south of the Danube under the protection of the Roman Empire. When that "protection" was revealed to consist of abuse, fraud, and starvation, they rebelled and caused disorder in Rome's Balkan provinces. When the emperor Valens sent in the army to restore order, this tribe led by Fritigern shattered the Roman army at Adrianople (378), where Valens was killed. For the next forty years, groups of these people wandered the Roman world searching for a place to settle. In 410 they, led by Alaric, sacked Rome itself. By the middle of the fifth century, they had settled in southern Gaul (the "kingdom of Toulouse") and the Iberian peninsula. Christians among this group, like those among their Ostrogothic and Vandalic neighbors, subscribed to the heretical "Arian" beliefs, which caused conflict with their Roman subjects until kings from this tribe converted at a 589 church council. Driven out of southern Gaul by the hostile Franks, this group retained control over most of what is now Spain until their king Roderic was killed by Islamic invaders from North Africa in 711.

Vandals

These people were one of several who crossed the frozen Rhine River into Roman Gaul on New Years' Eve, 406. From Gaul they moved into Spain and across the Strait of Gibraltar to attack Roman Africa. By 439 this tribe had occupied Carthage, gaining control of the grain trade and possession of a substantial navy. This they used to embark on a second career as Mediterranean pirates; their sack of Rome in 455 under King Gaiseric was reputedly much more destructive than the Visigothic one 45 years earlier. The ravages of this group so dismayed Roman observers that their name is still used to indicate senselessly destructive behavior. Like the Ostrogoths, thiese people were targets of the Byzantine emperor Justinian's attempted reconquest of the western Mediterranean; Justinian's general Belisarius smashed their army at Tricamerum in December 533.

Byrophytes

These plants are small enough that water and nutrients can diffuse to all parts of the plant without any specialized vascular tissue. They lack true leaves and roots, instead fastening themselves to the ground with rhizoids. These plants have a prominent gametophyte stage that is usually dioicous, meaning that an individual plant produces only one type of gamete (either sperm or egg). The short-lived sporophyte grows from the female gametophyte.

Pterophytes

These plants can grow taller thanks to vascular tissues that provide structural support and transport water and other materials throughout the plant. Many of them do have true leaves and roots. Plants in this phylum have a prominent sporophyte stage that grows from a small, short-lived gametophyte. Gametophytes from these plants may be dioicous or monoicous, producing both sperm and egg on the same plant.

Monocots

These plants produce pollen grains that have a single furrow (monosulcate); flower parts in multiples of three; numerous, fibrous roots; parallel leaf veins; and stems with scattered vascular bundles. They also lack secondary growth, remaining herbaceous throughout their lives. Dicots, on the other hand, tend to have pollen with three furrows (tricolpate); flower parts in multiples of four or greater; taproot systems; stems with rings of vascular tissue; and branching leaf veins. Many of them exhibit secondary growth that produces wood.

Puritans

These reformers were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who tried to push the English Reformation further by clearing the Church of England of any remaining Roman Catholic influences. Their name is applied inconsistently to groups espousing a variety of different religious positions; today, it often refers to somebody who is opposed to seeking pleasure. When studying 17th-century England, it is important to note the distinction between "separatists" who wanted to break away from the Church of England and "non-separatist" who wanted to reform the church while remaining members of it. The pilgrims who sailed on the Mayflower were separatists; the main group of colonists who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony under John Winthrop were non-separatists. After the English Civil War, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, this group enjoyed a brief period of power in England, during which time they closed theaters, limited sports, and instituted harsh penalties for breaking the Sabbath.

Vedas

These religious texts consist strictly of four hymnbooks: the Rig (prayers in verse), Sama (musical melodies), Yajur (prose prayers), and Atharva (spells and incantations). Each of these texts also contains a Brahmana (interpretation), and also incorporate treatises on meditation (Aranyakas) as well as the Upanishads. Written in an archaic form of Sanskrit by early Aryan invaders, possibly between 1500 and 1200 BC, these texts concentrate on sacrifices to deities, such as Indra (god of thunder), Varuna (cosmic order), and Agni (fire). The major gods Vishnu and Shiva appear as minor deities in these works; their elevation, as well as the concept of karma, does not develop until the Upanishads.

Nematoda

These roundworms are unsegmented worms that live in a variety of habitats. They are pseudocoelomate; the three tissue layers are concentric, but the body cavity is not lined with tissue derived from the mesoderm (middle embryonic layer). They include both free-living and parasitic species; human parasites include hookworms and the causative agents of elephantiasis, trichinosis, and river blindness. Soil members of this phylum may be crop pests, while others are beneficial predators on other plant pests. Caenorhabdis elegans, a species from this Phyla, is a common subject in genetics and developmental-biology labs.

Mughal Dynasty

These rulers ruled most of India from the early 16th until the mid-18th century, and claimed descent from both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. Their empire was founded by Babur and expanded under his grandson Akbar. The Taj Mahal was built under Shah Jahan, who brought the empire to the brink of bankruptcy. One member of this Dynasty, Aurangzeb, excluded Hindus from public office, and the empire began to break up soon after his death in 1707.

Fatimid Dynasty

These rulers were Isma'ili Shi'ite Imams who founded their state in North Africa in 909 under the caliph al-Mahdi. They conquered Egypt in 969 under al-Muizz and built Cairo, becoming the Abbasids' rivals. At its height their regime reached into Yemen and Syria, and they had a network of missionaries spreading Isma'ili doctrines into Abbasid territory and beyond. In the eleventh century, the caliph al-Hakim, considered insane, disappeared, giving rise to the Druze religion. A later succession dispute gave rise to the sect of the Assassins. The last caliph, al-Adil, died in 1171.

Battle of Camden

This American defeat was part of the British "southern strategy," which included the earlier capture of Charleston and Savannah. At this 1781 battle, Charles Cornwallis inflicted a humiliating defeat on the forces of Horatio Gates.

Ottomans

These rulers were Turks of uncertain origin who conquered the Balkans and the Middle East and brought the central Islamic lands into the European state system. Their key military victories were the defeat of the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, the capture of Constantinople in 1453, and the defeat of the Mamluks in 1517. During the 15th century their lands replaced Palestine as the major target of the Crusades. They reached their height under Suleyman the Magnificient, who beseiged Vienna in 1529. The empire's remnants became Turkey after World War I.

Mamluk Dynasty

These rulers were slave soldiers of foreign origin who deposed the Ayyubids in 1250. Baybars, who turned back the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Jalut, is a popular figure in Arabic heroic literature. In 1291 they drove the last Crusaders from Palestine. Their reign is divided into a "Bahri" period from 1250-1382 and a "Circassian" period from 1382-1517. They were defeated by the Ottomans, who conquered Egypt in 1517.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

These two men's expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, departed from Camp Wood in 1804, sailing up the Missouri River. The group wintered at Fort Mandan in present-day North Dakota, where they met Sacajawea, the Shoshone wife of fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. The group's last winter was spent at Fort Clatsop, along the Columbia River in Oregon near the Pacific.

Luddites

These vocal opponents of textile mechanization opposed the Industrial Revolution, and are said to have taken their name from Ned Ludd, who broke two stocking frames in 1779. Between 1811 and 1813, organized groups of from this movement clashed with the British military at mills in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. In response, Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act, which made industrial sabotage a capital crime. While these reformers were suppressed relatively quickly, the perpetrators of the Swing Riots in Kent in 1830 employed similar tactics by demolishing threshing machines to protest the mechanization of agriculture. Today, their name refers more generally to anybody who is uncomfortable with technology.

Richard I

This "Lion-Hearted" third son of Henry II spent only five months of his reign in England. He went on the Third Crusade to Jerusalem, winning many victories in the Holy Land, but on his way back was captured and ransomed by Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. He also fought Philip II in Normandy, and died while defending his possessions in Aquitaine.

Balder

This "fairest of the Aesir" is the god of light, joy, and beauty. He dreamed of his own death, so Frigga extracted promises from everything not to harm him, but she skipped mistletoe. Loki tricked this deity's blind brother Hoder into killing him with a spear of mistletoe.

Chris Evert

This "queen of the Clay Courts" won the French Open a record seven times and rolled off a 125-match win streak on the surface. As a 15-year old, she upset Margaret Court, who had just won the Grand Slam. 1974 was the first of a record 13 straight years in which she won a major—several of them hard fought against her rival, Martina Navratilova. In all, this athlete took 18 Grand Slam singles titles, and was the first female player to win $1 million in her career. She was married to British tennis player John Lloyd for eight years, but they divorced in 1987, and she then wed Olympic skier Andy Mill.

Achilles

This "swift-footed" warrior is the greatest on the Greek side in the Trojan War. His father is Peleus, a great warrior in his own right, and his mother is Thetis, a sea nymph. The consequences of his rage at Agamemnon for confiscating his geras (prize of honor) are the subject of the Iliad. He kills Hector, but is killed by a poisoned arrow in the heel, the only vulnerable place on his body.

Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa

This 1212 battle was a major turning point in the Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula. A Christian alliance of Alfonso VIII of Castile, Sancho VII of Navarre, Afonso II of Portugal, and Peter II of Aragon defeated Muhammad al-Nasir and the Almohads.

Battle of Bannockburn

This 1314 battle was a decisive victory for Robert the Bruce, King of Scots, over King Edward II of England. The English attempted to lift the siege of Stirling Castle. This battle began with single combat between Robert the Bruce and Sir Henry de Bohun. The Earl of Moray commanded the Scottish vanguard near the Church of St. Ninian.

Campbell's Soup Can

This Andy Warhol series of paintings was done by the mass-produceable form of serigraphy (silk screening). Also like their subject, these paintings existed in many varieties, often with different types or numbers; painting 32 or 100 or 200 identical cans further emphasized the aspect of mass production aspect in the work. The same approach underlies Warhol's familiar series of prints of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and other pop culture figures.

Rod Laver

This Australian tennis player weighed just 145 pounds in his playing days but his massive left arm generated incredible topspin shots. The only player to win the Grand Slam twice—in 1962 as an amateur, and in 1969 as a professional—this athlete took 11 major singles titles overall. Turning pro in 1963, He won five U.S. Pro Championships; had he been allowed to play the majors from '63 to '67, he likely would hold the wins record instead of Pete Sampras. Martina Navratilova and Sampras both idolized this man, the first to earn $1 million in a career

Arnold Schoenberg

This Austrian pioneered dodecaphony, or the twelve-tone system, which treated all parts of the chromatic scale equally. His piece Pierrot lunaire, broke from Romanticism. His students, especially Alban Berg and Anton Webern, further elaborated on his theories. Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1933, he moved from Berlin to Los Angeles, where he completed A Survivor from Warsaw. The first two acts of his unfinished opera, Moses und Aron, are still frequently performed.

Louis XIV

This Bourbon king's reign is often cited as the best historical example of an absolute monarchy. This king led France against most of the rest of Europe to win the throne of Spain for his grandson (the War of the Spanish Succession). He championed classical art, religious orthodoxy, and instituted a great program of building throughout France. Known as the "Sun King," his 72-year-reign is the second longest in recorded history.

John Stuart Mill

This British economist and social philosopher is mainly known for his work extending the ideas of Ricardo in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844) (for example, the relationship between profits and wages) but also for exhaustively examining the necessity of private property in his Principles of Political Economy (1848).

Jane Goodall

This British primatologist is best known for her work with chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her first research was carried out with Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. In her pioneering work with primates, which is detailed in such books as In the Shadow of Man, she discovered that chimpanzees have the ability to use tools, such as inserting grass into termite holes to "fish" for termites.

Louis IX

This Capetian king led the Seventh Crusade that ended in military disaster, but after his ransoming remained in the Holy Land to successfully negotiate for what he couldn't win. He returned to Europe with his reputation intact and negotiated a peace with England that saw Henry III become his vassal. He stabilized the French currency and is generally held to have reduced corruption in the kingdom. He died leading a crusade against Tunisia. This ruler is the only canonized king of France.

Han Dynasty

This Dynasty is considered a golden age of Chinese civilization; its influence was so great that the majority ethnic group in China is still named after them. Its founder, Liu Bang (later Emperor Gaozu), was born a peasant. Through resourceful recruitment of talented followers and strategic violation of ceasefire agreement with his rival Xiang Yu, Liu Bang managed to reunite China and established his capital at Chang'an (modern Xi'an). Instability in the early years of this dynasty was caused by the depredations of the nomadic Xiongnu, a problem that was solved by its seventh emperor, Wudi. Emperor Wu, considered one of the greatest rulers of China, began a war of conquest against the Xiongnu and greatly expanded China's frontiers. He also formalized China's bureaucracy, sent envoys like Zhang Qian to Central Asia, and established Confucianism as the official state doctrine. Despite his success, his campaigns drained the treasury and his successors were unable to maintain the land he conquered. After a series of poor rulers, the Wang family, who claimed legitimacy through wives of various emperors, and their leader Wang Mang toppled this dynasty. Wang Mang established the Xin (meaning "new") dynasty and attempted to restore the ways of the Zhou dynasty. But he was unable to maintain power because of a catastrophic changing of the course of the Yellow River, which spawned peasant protest movements like the Red Eyebrows. Eventually, a scion of the Liu family, Liu Xiu, restored this dynasty, moving the capital to Luoyang and establishing the Eastern branch of this dynasty. Subsequent rebellions called the Yellow Turbans and the Five Pecks of Rice hastened the end of this dynasty.

Zhou Dynasty

This Dynasty was made up of chariot warriors who overthrew the Shang dynasty. Although they ruled for nearly 800 years, during much of the time period, real power lay in the hands of feudal lords. The sacking of their capital by barbarians in 771 BC marks the beginning of the Eastern branch of this family and the Spring and Autumn Period (771 BC - 476 BC). During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Hundred Schools of Thought (including Confucianism) flourished and Sun Tzu wrote his Art of War. The end of this era devolved into the Warring States period (476 BC - 221 BC), during which power coalesced into seven independent feudal states. The state of Qin eventually grew powerful and efficient enough that it was able to defeat the other six states and complete the unification of China.

Medea

This Euripides play retells the myth of a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts' quest, the play depicts that title character's vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. That character uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce's father Creon. Not content with this, she seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront her, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons, and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play's ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.

Donatello

This Florentine sculptor helped define Renaissance sculpture as distinct from that of the Gothic period. He is known for St. Mark and St. George in the Or San Michele, the bald Zuccone (which depicts the Prophet Habbakuk), and the first equestrian statue to be cast since Roman times, the Gattamelata in Padua. He is also known for mastering the low relief form of schiacciato.

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

This French sculptor primarily known as the creator of Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty. He also executed The Lion of Belfort and a statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in New York's Union Square.

Karl Marx

This German economist, historian, and social philosopher's principal contribution to economic thought was extending the labor theory of value to its logical conclusion, his theory of surplus value. This theory, along with his defense of economic materialism, appeared in Das Kapital.

Indra

This Hindu god of rain, thunder, and war wields the thunderbolt (vajra) and rides Airavat, the four-tusked white elephant. In early Vedic times he was king of the gods who ruled swarga; many Rig Veda hymns are devoted to him. With the aid of both the Marut storm gods and his favorite drink, soma, this deity leads the Aryan conquest of India. He also defeats the dragon Vritra, who had stolen the world's water.

Guy Carleton

This Irish-born general led grenadiers across the Plains of Abraham in the 1759 siege of Quebec under his close friend General Wolfe. He entered the war as second in command to Thomas Gage before taking command after Gage's 1775 recall. This man then directed British troops from Canada to Boston after the Battle of Concord, resulting in a revolt. He alsp repulsed efforts by Montgomery and Benedict Arnold to capture Montreal and Quebec, routing a second attempt by Arnold, by defeating an American naval buildup on Lake Champlain. Following this, he attempted to support Burgoyne's failed plan to isolate New England. Brought back to Britain to govern Armagh in Ireland in 1777, he sat out all but the end of the war, returning in 1782 as commander-in-chief after Cornwallis' surrender.

Lydia

This Iron Age kingdom encompassed most of western Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) and had its capital at Sardis. They are credited with inventing coins, and their last king, Croesus, was famous for being fabulously wealthy. When Croesus asked the Oracle at Delphi about his war plans, Croesus was told that if he attacked the Persians, he would destroy a great empire. This came true as Cyrus the Great defeated Croesus and sacked Sardis.

Alfred the Great

This King of Wessex in southwestern England expelled the rival Danes from the Mercian town of London in 886, eventually conquering most of the Danelaw territory. He also kept England from the worst of the Dark Ages by encouraging his bishops to foster literacy; in addition, he translated Boethius, Augustine, and the Venerable Bede's works into Anglo-Saxon.

Arnold Palmer

This Latrobe, Pennsylvania native made golf popular with the masses, as his fans were known as "Arnie's Army." He won seven majors, including four Masters, and was the first golfer to earn one million dollars on the PGA Tour. Later he became one of the stars of the Senior Tour, winning the Senior PGA Open in 1980 and 1981. In 2002 he played in his last competitive Masters.

Daphnis and Chloe

This Maurice Ravel ballet was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and choreographed by Michel Fokine and is based on the only surviving work by Greek author Longus. The ballet starts in a sacred grotto, where Daphnis, Chloe, and other youths arrive to give an offering to three statues of the Nymphs. When cowherd Dorcon challenges Daphnis to a dance contest for a kiss from Chloe, Dorcon is humiliated. A group of pirates abduct Chloe and take her to their island, where she is forced to dance for their leader Bryaxis. The god Pan saves Chloe; after reuniting her with Daphnis, Pan is reminded of his own love for the nymph Syrinx. Daphnis and Chloe then reenact Pan's courtship of Syrinx. The rest of the company joins in a bacchanalian "Danse générale" featuring a wordless chorus. Ravel reworked the music from this ballet into two suites often performed in the concert hall.

Carmen

This Opera's title character is a young gypsy who works in a cigarette factory in Seville. She is arrested by the corporal Don José for fighting, but cajoles him into letting her escape. They meet again at an inn where she tempts him into challenging his captain; that treason forces him to join a group of smugglers. In the final act, the ragtag former soldier encounters the title at a bullfight where her lover Escamillo is competing and stabs her. The libretto was based on a novel of Prosper Merimée.

Ben Hogan

This PGA Tour's leading money winner from 1940-42 and in 1946 and 1948, two events interrupted his playing career: service in World War II and a near-fatal 1949 head-on car accident. After each, though, this man rose to the top of his game; he won nine majors overall (six after the accident), including four U.S. Opens. In 1953 he accomplished a feat matched only by Tiger Woods: winning three modern major championships in one season: the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

This Pablo Picasso painting depicts five women in a brothel. However, the images of the women are partly broken into disjointed, angular facets. The degree of broken-ness is rather mild compared to later Cubist works, but it was revolutionary in 1907. The rather phallic fruit arrangement in the foreground reflects the influence of Cezanne's "flattening of the canvas." The two central figures face the viewer, while the other three have primitive masks as faces, reflecting another of Picasso's influences. It is currently housed at the MOMA.

Tony Blair

This Prime Minister won a famous landslide election victory in 1997 to end 18 years of Conservative rule as his "New Labour" movement abandoned traditional socialism and moved the Labour Party to the centre. Re-elected in 2001 and 2005, his friendship and later enmity towards his Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown ended with Brown succeeding him as Prime Minister. His close relationship with George W. Bush led to the UK joining the invasion of Iraq in 2003; his domestic legacy was higher public spending and the devolution of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Battle of Cowpens

This Revolutionary War battle was a turning point in the American recapture of South Carolina. Daniel Morgan commanded the Continentals and Banastre Tarleton led the British. The Battle was fought between the Pacolet and Broad Rivers.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

This Roman Sculpture defined the Baroque movement in sculpture. He is principally known for his freestanding works including David and The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. His David differs from that of Michelangelo in that the hero is shown "in motion," having twisted his body to sling the rock. He is also known for his massive fountains in Rome including the Triton and the Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Constantin Brancusi

This Romanian sculptor was a major figure in Modernism. He is best known for The Kiss, Sleeping Muse, and Bird in Space. He's also the center of anecdote in which U.S. customs taxed his works as "industrial products" since they refused to recognize them as art.

The Marriage of Figaro

This Rossini opera's title character and Susanna are servants of Count Almaviva who plan to marry, but this plan is complicated by the older Marcellina who wants to wed that character, the Count who has made unwanted advances to Susanna, and Don Bartolo who has a loan that the title character has sworn he will repay before he marries. The issues are resolved with a series complicated schemes that involve impersonating other characters including the page Cherubino. The opera is based on a comedy by Pierre de Beaumarchais.

Peter 1

This Russian Tsar is famous both for his push for Westernization and for his boisterous personality. His Grand Embassy to Europe enabled him to learn about Western life (and even to work in a Dutch shipyard); he later invited Western artisans to come to Russia, required the boyars to shave their beards and wear Western clothing, and even founded a new capital, St. Petersburg--his "window on the West." He also led his country in the Great Northern War (in which Charles XII of Sweden was defeated at Poltava), created a Table of Ranks for the nobility, and reformed the bureaucracy and army.

Iapetus

This Saturn's third-largest moon after Titan and Rhea and, like them, was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. It was named based upon a suggestion from John Herschel (son of the discoverer of Uranus, William Herschel) for the Titans of Greek mythology, the brothers and sisters of Cronos (Saturn). This moon has a distinctive two-tone coloration; part of it is red-brown, while part is bright gray. Features on this celestial body are named for people and places from the French Song of Roland, including Charlemagne Crater and the bright northern region Roncevaux Terra. In 2004 the Cassini orbiter found an equatorial ridge running over 800 miles long and 10 miles wide that gives This moon some of the highest peaks in the solar system; its existence has not yet been explained.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester

This Shakespearean character describes how his hunchbacked appearance has made him "determined to prove a villain" in a monologue that begins "now is the winter of our discontent / made glorious summer by this son of York." In the aftermath of a Yorkist victory in the Wars of the Roses, this Richard III charcter plots against his brothers King Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence, and causes Edward to imprison Clarence in the Tower of London. Assassins sent by this character later kill Clarence, who is drowned in a "malmsey-butt," or cask of wine. He also marries and kills the Lady Anne, and orders the deaths of Edward's children (the "princes in the tower"). Although he becomes king, he soon faces a rebellion led by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. On the eve of a battle at Bosworth Field, this man is haunted by the ghosts of those he wronged. The battle turns against this character (who cries "a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"), and Richmond is crowned as King Henry VII of England.

Iago

This Shakespearean character is passed over for a promotion to lieutenant in favor of the less-experienced Michael Cassio. In addition, he believes that his wife, Emilia, may have cheated on him with Othello. Consequently, this character vows revenge. At the start of the play, he and his associate Roderigo alert the Venetian senator Brabantio that Brabantio's daughter, Desdemona, has eloped with Othello. After Desdemona testifies that she married Othello willingly, the Duke of Venice places Othello in charge of defending Cyprus. On the island, this character ingratiates himself with Othello, and deceitfully warns the general against the "green-eyed monster" of jealousy. He then places Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room, causing Othello to believe that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair. Once Othello has murdered Desdemona, Emilia exposes this character's plot. Before killing himself, Othello stabs this character, who survives to be arrested by Cassio.

Caliban

This Shakespearean character is the son of the Algerian witch Sycorax, who once ruled the island where this character was born. After Sycorax died the island fell under the control of the magician Prospero, an exiled duke of Milan. Prospero taught this character language, and showed kindness to him, until this character tried to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda. In response, Prospero enslaved this character, and began treating him as a subhuman creature. When the play begins, thus character longs to overthrow Prospero but still fears Prospero's magic, which is stronger than that of his god, Setebos. Trinculo and Stephano, two drunkards who are shipwrecked and separated from the rest of their crew, give this character liquor; he then conspires with them to kill Prospero. When the group hears music played by the spirit Ariel, this character delivers a speech beginning "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises" that demonstrates sensitivity and loss. The plot to unseat Prospero quickly fails, and this character vows to be "wise hereafter." Unlike Ariel, he is not freed at the end of the play.

Hernan Cortés

This Spanish conquistador participated in the conquest of Cuba. In 1519 the Cuban governor Diego Velázquez commissioned this man to sail west and explore the mainland coast. Fearing that Velazquez would change his mind, this man left Cuba secretly and began a mission of conquest rather than exploration. On the coast of the Yucatan his expedition was joined by the Spanish castaway Jeronimo de Aguilar and a Nahua captive known as "La Malinche" or "Doña Marina," who served as translators. After traveling north, this man and his men defied the authority of Velazquez by founding the city of Veracruz, an act which allowed him to take legal control of the expedition. The Spanish then pressed inland, surviving an attempted massacre in the city of Cholula and making allies with the Tlaxcalans, who were traditional enemies of the Aztecs. Upon reaching the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, this explorer and his men were welcomed by the Aztec emperor Montezuma II. He then took Montezuma prisoner, but was forced to return to the coast to deal with a punitive expedition sent by Velazquez and commanded by Panfilo de Narvaez. Although this man won the new arrivals over to his side, the situation in Tenochtitlan deteriorated as the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado murdered celebrants at a festival. Shortly after this Spaniard returned to the city, Montezuma was killed and the Spanish were forced to flee during the Noche Triste (Night of Sorrows). After escaping, this man marshalled Spanish and indigenous forces to fight the Aztecs, who were successively led by the emperors Cuitlahuac and Cuauhtemoc. After the Aztec defenders were seriously weakened by an outbreak of smallpox, this man and his followers captured Tenochtitlan in 1521 and rebuilt it as Mexico City. Much of our knowledge of the conquest of Mexico comes from a follower named Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who wrote detailed memoirs of the expedition.

Our Town

This Thorton Wilder play takes place in the village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century. It is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); "Love and Marriage" (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and "Death" (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.

Alexander I

This Tsar took the throne in 1801 when his father Paul was assassinated and immediately set out on a more liberal course, but he left his strongest supporters disappointed. He is best known for his wars with Napoleon (first as an ally and then as an enemy), and for seeking to establish a Holy Alliance in the years that followed. This Tsar was known as an eccentric and a religious mystic. Some even say that he didn't really die in 1825: instead, they argue, he faked his own death, became a hermit, and died in a monastery in 1864.

Catherine II

This Tsar was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst and was chosen as the bride of the future Peter III. After ascending to the throne, this ruler dispatched several claimants to the throne and crushed a peasant uprising led by Emilian Pugachev. She also corresponded with Enlightenment philosophes, granted charters of rights and obligations to the nobility and the towns, oversaw the partition of Poland, and expanded the empire. This woman was well known for her extravagant love life: her 21 acknowledged lovers included Grigorii Potemkin (who constructed the famous Potemkin village on an imperial inspection tour).

Nicholas I

This Tsar, who ruled Russia from the failure of the Decembrist Uprising to the middle of the Crimean War, has traditionally been portrayed as the embodiment of the Russian autocracy. His government pursued a policy of Official Nationality, defending a holy trinity of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality," and established a repressive secret police force known as the Third Section. Contemporaries referred to him as the "Gendarme of Europe" after he helped the Habsburgs squelch the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

Marco Polo

This Venetian merchant was first brought to China by his father Niccolo, who served Kublai Khan as an envoy. This man served as governor of Yangzhou, and was captured by the Genoese at the battle of Curzola. He dictated his memoir, a text known as Il Milione, to his prison cellmate Rusticiano of Pisa.

Billy Martin

This alert, combative second baseman for the Yankees from 1950-1957, made a famous catch in the seventh game of the 1952 World Series when Jackie Robinson lifted a bases loaded pop-up near the pitcher's mound. In 1953 he was named World Series MVP after batting .500 and winning the final game with a single in the bottom of the ninth. As Yankee manager, he won two pennants and one World Series (1977). Strung extremely tight--he almost came to blows with Reggie Jackson during a nationally televised game--his barroom brawls and arguments with the Yankee front office cost him many jobs. His five terms managing one club is tied for the major league record.

Stoicism

This ancient Greek school of thought idealized freedom from emotions. It was founded by Zeno of Citium, who taught at the "painted porch" in Athens. An important idea form this school of thought was that of the "pneuma," or the "breath of life," which is the life force that structures matter and the soul. Important thinkers include Epictetus, a slave whose views were recorded by his student Arrian in the Discourses, and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Clifford Geertz

This anthropologist is best known for his work in symbolic anthropology, a view that he expounded in his book The Interpretation of Cultures. In that book, he introduced the term "thick description" to describe his method of analyzing behavior within its social context. One such "thick description" appears in his essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in which he discusses cockfighting as a symbolic display of a certain kind of masculinity.

Bronislaw Malinowski

This anthropologist studied at the London School of Economics, where he would later spend most of his career. He described the "kula ring" gift exchanges found in the Trobriand Islands in Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and the use of magic in agriculture in Coral Gardens and Their Magic. He also argued, in opposition to Sigmund Freud, that the Oedipus complex was not a universal element of human culture in his book on Sex and Repression in Savage Society.

Antonio Gaudi y Cornet

This architect created many extraordinary buildings in Barcelona in the early 20th century. His Art Nouveau-inspired works include the Casa Mila and Casa Batllo apartments, known from their undulating facades, and several works for patron Eusebi Guell. He spent 40 years working on the Expiatory Church of the Holy Family, better known as La Sagrada Familia; although its spindle-like towers are in place, the building remains unfinished, and this man's models for it were destroyed in the Spanish Civil War. He was also fond of using hyperbolic paraboloids in his work.

Louis Sullivan

This architect did not design the first skyscraper but did become a vocal champion of skyscrapers as reflections of the modern age. Though most associated with Chicago, his best-known work is the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis. His partnership with Dankmar Adler produced over 100 buildings. Later works, such as the Babson, Bennett, and Bradley Houses, reflect an organic architecture distinct from that of Wright. His dictum that "form should follow function" strongly influenced modern architecture; his writings helped break the profession from classical restraints.

Frank Lloyd Wright

This architect was born in Wisconsin, where he worked under Louis Sullivan before founding a Chicago practice. His early homes, like the Robie House at the University of Chicago, are in the "Prairie" style: horizontal orientation and low roofs. His "organic architecture" tries to harmonize with its inhabitants and site: Examples include the Kaufmann House (also known as Fallingwater) in Pennsylvania; the Johnson Wax Museum in Racine, Wisconsin; and Taliesin West, his Arizona home and studio. (The original Taliesin, in Wisconsin, burned down in 1914). Other notable works by this painter are the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Larkin Building in Buffalo, the Unity Temple in Oak Park, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, one of few buildings to survive a 1923 earthquake.

Irrawaddy River

This place is the chief river of Myanmar (also known as Burma). It flows 1,350 miles past Yangon (formerly Rangoon) and Mandalay to the Gulf of Martaban, an arm of the Bay of Bengal. Its delta is one of the world's most important rice-growing regions, and its name is thought to come from the Sanskrit word for "elephant."

Derek Jeter

This athlete became the starting shortstop for the Yankees in 1996, winning the Rookie of the Year Award and helping New York capture its first championship since 1978. More post-season highlights followed, including three more titles ('98, '99, '00), the 2000 Series MVP, and a controversial homer against the Baltimore Orioles in Game One of the 1996 ALCS when twelve year old Jeffrey Maier turned his fly ball into a home run by reaching over the right field wall to catch it. His junior-high yearbook dubbed him "most likely to play shortstop for the New York Yankees."

Joe McCarthy

This athlete began managing the Yankees in 1931. They finished second, beginning a nine-year run of second or better. From 1936 to 1939 his Yankees won four World Series in a row; from 1936 to 1943, seven pennants and six World Series. His .615 winning percentage (2125-1333) is tops for a big league skipper, and he is tied with Casey Stengel for most world championship teams managed (7). Besides winning--he never had a losing season in the majors--his teams are best remembered for their offense. The 1931 Yankees scored 1067 runs, the most of any team since 1900, while his 1936 club scored the second most, with 1065.

Ken Dryden

This athlete had a standout career at Cornell University before joining the Montreal Canadiens organization in 1970. In 1970-71, he starred in the playoffs, winning Conn Smythe Trophy honors (playoff MVP), before going on to win Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year) honors the next season. Along with Tony Esposito, he served as Canada's goalie during the legendary 1972 Summit Series with the USSR. He sat out the entire 1973-74 season in a contract dispute, and worked as a legal clerk and obtaining his law degree from McGill. He currently serves as the President of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Joe DiMaggio

This athlete left the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League and joined New York for the 1936 season, where he helped Lou Gehrig drive the Yankees to their fifth championship and the first of nine that he would win with the Bombers. "The Yankee Clipper" won 3 Most Valuable Player awards ('39, '41, '47), 2 batting titles ('39, '40), and 2 homer titles ('37, '48). In 1941 he hit safely in 56 consecutive games, a record that has never been challenged (he once hit in 61 straight for the Seals in 1933). His career totals are abbreviated because of his military service ('43-'45) and because of the distance to Yankee Stadium's left field power alley, in those days known as Death Valley. He wedded Marilyn Monroe in 1954, but they divorced after nine months.

Casey Stengel

This athlete managed the Yankees to 10 pennants and 7 championships, including a record five in a row from '49-'53. The "Old Perfessor" did not use a set lineup or pitching rotation, instead using a bewildering number of platoon arrangements. Somehow this did not undermine his defense, as his Yankees led the league in double plays six times. Remembered as a player for his two game-winning homeruns, one an inside-the-parker, against the Yankees in the 1923 World Series, off the field his vaudevillian personality involved him in many famous incidents. When in 1958 he was called in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly to testify on why baseball should be exempt from antitrust regulation, he testified with an hour's worth of infamous quotes. When the baffled politicians let him go and called on Mickey Mantle to answer their questions, he replied, "My views are about the same as Casey's."

Arthur Ashe

This athlete once claimed that he would consider himself a failure if he were remembered only for tennis. The first black man to win either the U.S. Championship (1968) or Wimbledon (1975), he was also the first American tennis player to earn over $100,000 in one year (1970). The author of Hard Road to Glory, a history of black athletes, he announced in 1992 that tainted blood from a 1983 heart surgery had given him the AIDS virus. A stadium named for him is the current home of the U.S. Open.

Bobby Orr

This athlete revolutionized the hockey position of defenseman. The first blue liner to win the Art Ross Trophy (scoring title), he also won the Norris (best defenseman), Hart (league MVP), and Conn Smythe (playoff MVP) in the same season (1969-70). That same year, he led the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup in three decades with the now famous "Goal." He recorded the highest +/- rating ever for a single season, +124 in 1970-71 and won eight straight Norris Trophies from 1968-75. Unfortunately, his bad knees forced him into early retirement in 1979.

Whitey Ford

This athlete was called "The Chairman of the Board" because of the cool, corporate-like efficiency of his pitching style. His 236 wins against 106 defeats yields a .690 winning percentage, third best, first for a pitcher with 200 or more victories. In the 1960, '61, and '62 Series, he pitched 33 consecutive scoreless innings, breaking Babe Ruth's World Series record of 29-2/3 innings of shutout ball. His other World Series records include wins (10), losses (8), innings pitched (146), hits (132), bases on balls (34), and strikeouts (94). Under Casey Stengel he was commonly rested against poor teams so that he could be used against contenders (or in relief), making his 2.75 career ERA even more impressive. Cy Young award in 1961.

Yogi Berra

This athlete was notorious for swinging at bad pitches, but his bat collided with them often enough to hit a catcher's record 306 homeruns that lasted for more than thirty years. His hitting, fielding, and ability to lead the Yankee pitching staff earned him 3 MVP awards ('51, '54, '55). He also stared in the World Series, collecting 71 hits while playing on 10 championship teams, both records. Hired as Yankee manager in 1964, he lead the Yankees to the pennant but was fired following their Series loss to the Cardinals. His 1973 pennant with the Mets made him the only manager besides Joe McCarthy to take home the flag in both leagues. Like Casey Stengel, he was famous for his quotes, including "It aint' over 'til it's over," "It's deja vu all over again," and "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."

Andre Agassi

This athlete's father boxed for Iran in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics; his own Olympic exploits included the 1996 tennis gold. Born in Las Vegas, he reached the world's #3 ranking at age 18 but was better known for his image than for his play. Perhaps the greatest returner and baseline player ever, this athlete won his first major on Wimbledon grass in 1992. Briefly married to Brooke Shields, he fell to #141 in the world in 1997, but after they divorced, this man rededicated himself to the game. In 1999 he won the French Open, becoming just the fifth man to complete the career Grand Slam. In all, he has won eight major singles titles (five since 1999), and is now married to women's great Steffi Graf.

Le Corbusier

This author of "Towards a New Architecture" Once claimed that "A house is a machine for living in." His floor plans were influenced by Cubist principles of division of space, and the Villa Savoye (Poissy, France) is his best-known early work. He wrote of the "Radiant City" begun anew, a completely planned city with skyscrapers for residents. Applications of his approach to government buildings, however, largely failed, as did many urban renewal projects produced on the same ideological foundation.

Jules Verne

This author offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In his 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth's crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. This author later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, this man considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda, and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by crossing the International Date Line.

Douglas Adams

This author wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, this man created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels. The Hitchhiker's series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the "paranoid android" Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice "Don't Panic," encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster". Besides the Hitchhiker's series, This series also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

Ray Bradbury

This author's science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community of Green Town is the setting of his novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in his 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. He also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in his works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which "firemen" burn books . The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large "parlor walls." Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan, and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the "Mechanical Hound," but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.

Pulcinella

This ballet is usually regarded as the first work of Stravinsky's neoclassical period. Choreographed by Léonide Massine, it was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev wanted to update a commedia dell'arte play attributed at the time to Giovanni Pergolesi (that attribution has recently been challenged). The one-act ballet tells the story of the title character, a stock character of commedia dell'arte, and his lover Pimpinella, as well as two girls, Prudenza and Rosetta, and their suitors, Florindo and Cloviello. The protagonist kisses Rosetta after she dances for him, enraging Pimpinella as well as the two suitors, who, jealous of the title character, beat him up and appear to kill him. However, the his "body" is actually his friend Furbo, who impersonated him and played dead. That character, disguised as a magician, appears, reveals himself, and marries Pimpinella, who forgives him.

The Rite of Spring

This ballet, subtitled "Pictures of Pagan Russia," was written for the Ballets Russes, and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. Inspired by Russian folklorist Nicholas Roerich, who designed the original sets, it is in two parts, "The Adoration of the Earth" and "The Sacrifice." It opens with a high-pitched bassoon solo based on a Lithuanian folk song, which is followed by the dissonant "Augurs of Spring", which features E-major and E-flat-major chords superimposed on each other and played with seemingly random accents. The piece ends with a girl forced to dance herself to death. Changes of meter are frequent, sometimes changing measure to measure. The original instrumentation featured several unusual percussion instruments, including a gong, tambourines, antique cymbals, and the guiro. Most infamously, a riot broke out at its Paris premiere, although contemporary reports give differing accounts on the Rite's role.

Vicksburg Campaign

This campaign was launched by Grant to take control of the Mississippi River and cut off the western Confederate states from the east. Grant ordered regiments led by James McPherson, John McClernand, and William Tecumseh Sherman through bayous west of the Mississippi to Hard Times. They were up against rebel forces under Joseph Johnston and John Pemberton. Sherman and McPherson drove Johnston from Jackson, Mississippi on May 14, and the Union scored a victory at Champion's Hill two days later, but could not drive the Southerners out of this campaign's namesake, so Grant laid siege to the town. Outnumbered 71,000 to 20,000 and on the brink of starvation, Pemberton finally surrendered his men; Johnston withdrew east.

Lou Gehrig

This baseball player was born in Manhattan to German immigrants. A football and baseball player at Columbia University, he signed with the Yankees in 1923. He became a regular in 1925, replacing Wally Pipp at first base and beginning his streak of 2130 consecutive games played (since broken by Cal Ripen, Jr. in 1995) that earned him the nickname "The Iron Horse." His batting feats include 184 RBI in 1931 (the AL record), 23 career grand slams (the ML record), a triple crown in 1934, and a .340 career batting average. When it was discovered that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis--ALS is commonly referred to as this man's disease--he delivered his famous "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. In deference to him, no Yankee was appointed captain until Thurman Munson in 1976.

Battle of Gettysburg

This battle marked both the farthest northward advancement by the Confederacy and the turning point that led to its defeat. Lee, along with Longstreet, A.P. Hill, and Richard Ewell, led the southern Pennsylvania attack; J.E.B. Stuart was supposed to monitor Union movement with his cavalry but strayed so far east of this battle's location that his force did not return (exhausted) until the second day. George Meade replaced Hooker as leader of the Union side; Southern forces drove Northerners through the town but could not secure key positions at Cemetery Ridge and Little and Big Round Tops. Low on supplies, on the final day Lee ordered an attack on the center; George Pickett led his famous "charge" through open fields, where the Union mowed down one-third of his 15,000 men. The Confederates lost 20,000 and Lee retreated to Virginia.

Battle of El Alamain

This battle marked the turning point in the African campaign. Named for an Egyptian coastal town 65 miles west of Alexandria, it saw the British Eighth Army under Bernard Montgomery defeat the German Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel, preventing the Nazis from capturing the Suez Canal and oil fields in the Middle East. Following the battle, Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria as part of Operation Torch, and by May 1943 all Axis forces in North Africa had surrendered.

Battle of Aegospotami

This battle on the Hellespont ended the Peloponnesian War and the Athenian Empire. After a setback at the Battle of Arginusae in 406 BC, the Spartans reinstated Lysander as the commander of their fleet. The result was a complete victory for Sparta; only a fraction of the Athenian fleet survived, including the general Conon, and the ship Paralus, which brought the news of defeat to Athens. Following the battle, the Spartans besieged Athens and forced its surrender.

Battle of the Bulge

This battle resulted from Germany's last major offensive operation on the Western Front. The German plan to sweep through the Ardennes Forest and capture the port city of Antwerp, Belgium, benefited from Allied aircraft being grounded due to poor weather. During the battle, English-speaking German troops under Otto Skorzeny attempted to disguise themselves as Allied troops and infiltrate enemy lines. German forces also besieged the Belgian town of Bastogne and requested its surrender, to which U.S. Army Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe replied "Nuts!"; the siege was eventually lifted by forces commanded by George Patton.

Battle of Britain

This battle saw the British Royal Air Force (RAF) defeat the German air force, known as the Luftwaffe, effectively saving Britain from a proposed German amphibious invasion codenamed Operation Sea Lion. The primary German fighter plane was the Messerschmitt Bf 109, which engaged in numerous dogfights against British pilots flying Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft. Effective use of radar helped to repel German forces, forcing the Luftwaffe into nighttime raids against civilian targets in a campaign known as "the Blitz".

Battle of Kadesh

This battle was fought near the Orontes River in modern-day Syria between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II. Although Ramses proclaimed a great victory for himself, he was lucky to achieve a stalemate after being ambushed by Hittite chariots. It was probably the largest chariot battle in history, with over 5,000 chariots engaged. The Egyptian chariots were smaller and faster than those used by the Hittites, which gave the Egyptians an advantage.

Battle of Shiloh

This battle was named after a church in Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee (100 miles southwest of Nashville). Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston led a force north from Corinth, Mississippi. Ulysses S. Grant, who had just captured Fort Donelson, brought five Union divisions to face him. At first, the South led the attack, but Union troops held the "Hornets' Nest" for hours, killing Johnston in the process. Beauregard took over, but by the second day Northern Generals Don Carlos Buell and Lew Wallace (who wrote Ben-Hur) brought reinforcements, causing the Confederates to retreat. More than 13,000 Union and 10,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives.

Battle of the Milvian Bridge

This battle was part of the civil war that ensued when Maxentius usurped the throne of the western half of the Roman Empire from Constantine. Prior to the battle, Constantine supposedly had a vision of God promising victory to his forces if he painted his shields with the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol. Constantine was indeed victorious, and Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River during the battle. Eventually, Constantine was able to abolish the Tetrarchy, become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, and end persecution of the Christians.

Battle of Thermopylae

This battle was the first of the second Persian invasion of Greece. Although the Persians under Xerxes I and his general Mardonius defeated the Spartans, King Leonidas and his Spartan troops put up a heroic defense of the pass at this battle's location. The Greeks were betrayed by Ephialtes, who told the Persians about a path that led behind the Spartans. The battle was part of Themistocles' plan to halt the advance of the Persians. The other part of his plan was to block the Persian navy at Artemisium, and a battle occurred there simultaneously.

Battle of Monmouth

This battle was the last major one of the Northern theater of the Revolutionary War, and its outcome was inconclusive. American general Charles Lee was court-martialed for his actions at this battle. Molly Pitcher became famous for fighting in this battle in place of her husband.

Baker v. Carr

This case began when a Tennessee citizen, sued the Tennessee secretary of State, claiming that the state's electoral districts had been drawn to grossly favor one political party. The defendant argued that reapportionment issues were political, not judicial, matters, but the court disagreed and declared the issue justiciable before remanding the case to a lower court. Two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, the court mandated the principle of "one man, one vote."

Loving v. Virginia

This case challenged Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which criminalized marriages between whites and non-whites. In 1958, two Virginia residents were married in Washington, D.C., which did not have such a statute. After returning to their Virginia home, they were arrested and convicted under the Racial Integrity Act. Striking down that Act as violating both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice Warren wrote that "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

Angelo

This character is entrusted with the rule of Vienna by Duke Vicentio, who pretends to leave the city but actually remains present, disguised as "Friar Lodowick." He enforces antiquated laws against fornication, resulting in Claudio's arrest and imminent execution. Claudio's sister, the novice nun Isabella, pleads for Claudio to be pardoned; This character agrees, but only if Isabella will have sex with him. After debate, Duke Vincentio proposes a "bed trick." Isabella pretends that she is willing to have sex with this character in absolute darkness and silence, which allows Mariana, a woman who was once betrothed to him, to take Isabella's place. Although the plan works, and this character believes that he had sex with Isabella, he goes back on his word and orders Claudio's execution. This forces the duke to arrange a "head trick," in which the head of the pirate Ragozine is presented to this character, and Claudio's life is saved. Once the duke "returns" to Vienna, Isabella and Mariana petition him to right their wrongs. He initially denies the charges brought against him, but confesses once he learns that the duke and Friar Lodowick are the same person. This character's life is spared for Mariana's sake, and the duke proposes marriage to Isabella.

Regan

This character, along with Goneril, is the elderly King Lear's two evil daughters. After Lear bequeaths his kingdom to them, they conspire to undermine Lear's remaining power and defeat Cordelia, Lear's sole loyal daughter. Angered by the treatment that he has received from his heirs, Lear leaves this character's home in the middle of a thunderstorm. Gloucester, who desires Lear's reinstatement, aids Cordelia's invading army; he is exposed, and this character and Cornwall gouge Gloucester's eyes out. While Albany and Cornwall arrange their armies to fight Cordelia, this character and Goneril both romantically pursue the villainous Edmund. This love triangle results in Goneril killing this character with poison. Goneril also tries to have Albany killed, but commits suicide when the plot is exposed. Cordelia is captured and executed, and Lear dies of grief soon afterward, leaving the redeemed Albany and Edmund's half-brother Edgar to take charge of the realm.

Bob Fosse

This choreographer came to prominence in the 1953 film Kiss Me Kate. While he and dance partner Carol Haney only had small roles, the dance that Fosse choreographed for them in the number "From This Moment On" launched his career. His unique style, featuring turned-in knees, rolled shoulders, sideways movement, and "jazz hands," found its greatest expression on Broadway, where he choreographed the musicals The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Redhead, Sweet Charity, Pippin, and Chicago. Many of his works featured his wife Gwen Verdon, who won four Tonys under his choreography or direction. This man also directed the films Cabaret and All That Jazz, winning an Oscar for Cabaret. Many commentators have described his cameo as The Snake in a 1974 film adaptation of The Little Prince as a forerunner to the dance style of Michael Jackson.

Twyla Tharp

This choreographer made her mark in the mid-1970s with the "crossover ballets" Deuce Coupe (performed by the Joffrey Ballet to music by The Beach Boys) and Push Comes to Shove (starring Mikhail Baryshnikov), both marked by a fusion of diverse musical and dance styles. She found success on Broadway with the "jukebox musical" Movin' Out, set to the catalog of Billy Joel; she subsequently built musicals around the songs of Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. She created the children's ballet The Princess and the Goblin and collaborated with director Milos Forman on the Hollywood films Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus.

Pierre Beauchamp

This choreographer taught dance to French King Louis XIV at Versailles for over two decades. An early director of the Western world's first dance institution, the Académie Royale de Danse, he collaborated extensively with Molière's acting company and composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. He is often credited with codifying the five basic feet positions in ballet. His system of dance notation, later revised by Raoul-Auger Feuillet and Pierre Rameau, was used until the late 1700s.

George Balanchine

This choreographer trained in his native Georgia and Russia and briefly worked with Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes in Paris before being invited by impresario Lincoln Kirstein to the United States, where the two co-founded the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and its associated School of American Ballet. As artistic director of NYCB, this man began the tradition of annually staging The Nutcracker at Christmas. One of his four wives—all dancers—was the company's first major star, Native American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief. He collaborated with composer Igor Stravinsky and visual artist Isamu Noguchi on the 30-minute ballet Orpheus.

Alvin Ailey

This choreographer was a pioneering African-American choreographer. He originally danced in the Horton Dance Company run by his mentor Lester Horton. After Horton's unexpected death in 1953, this man took over as its artistic director. In 1958 he formed his namesake American Dance Theater in New York City. His best-known work, Revelations, was based on his upbringing in Texas and is divided into three parts titled "Pilgrim of Sorrow," "Take Me to the Water," and "Move Members, Move." "Move Members, Move" emphasizes gospel music, including the traditional spiritual "Sinner Man," and concludes with the number "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," which recreates a joyous church service.

Michel Fokine

This choreographer was accepted to the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age 9, eventually becoming a teacher there. He choreographed a four-minute ballet for Anna Pavlova called The Dying Swan, set to "The Swan" from The Carnival of the Animals (the title comes from a Tennyson poem entitled "The Dying Swan"). He mentored Vaslav Nijinsky (see below) and featured him in early works like Les Sylphides, a ballet based on the music of Frédéric Chopin. After Sergei Diaghilev (see below) hired this man to work for the Ballets Russes in Paris, this man showcased Nijinsky's talents in several ballets based on the work of famous composers, such as Scheherazade, The Firebird, Petrushka, Daphnis et Chloé, and The Spirit of the Rose. However, once Nijinsky turned to choreography, this man quit the Ballets Russes, only returning after Nijinsky's dismissal.

Martha Graham

This choreographer was the first dancer invited to perform at the White House. As a choreographer, she developed a namesake technique that creates dramatic tension through "contraction" and "release" of major muscles. Her first major success was her 1958 concert-length ballet Clytemnestra, one of four collaborations with composer Halim Ed-Dabh. She performed the title role in Clytemnestra with her namesake dance company, whose dancers included Merce Cunningham and her husband, Erick Hawkins, both of whom went on to become choreographers in their own right. Hawkins danced the male lead in Appalachian Spring, a ballet with "an American theme" that she commissioned from Aaron Copland.

Akkadian Empire

This civilization was the first empire in the world, and consisted of Sumerians and Akkadian-speaking Semites. The empire was founded by Sargon the Great, who conquered all of Mesopotamia in the 24th and 23rd centuries BC.

The Frogs

This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax." Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists "weigh" their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who should be brought back to life.

The Clouds

This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist Strepsiades fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or "Thinkery" of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.

Charles Ives

This composer learned experimentation from his father George, a local Connecticut businessman and bandleader. He studied music at Yale but found insurance sales more lucrative; his firm of Ives and Myrick was the largest in New York during the 1910s. Privately, this man composed great modern works, including the Second Piano (Concord) Sonata (with movements named after Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau); and Three Places in New England (1914). His Third Symphony won Ives a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, while his song "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" was based on a Vachel Lindsay poem. Poor health ended both his insurance and music careers by 1930.

Benjamin Britten

This composer revived of the opera in the U.K., most notably with Peter Grimes (1945), the story of a fisherman who kills two of his apprentices. He broke through with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), a tribute to his composition teacher, and wrote incidental music for works by his friend W.H. Auden. With his companion, the tenor Peter Pears, Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and wrote operas such as Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. His non-operatic works include The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946) and War Requiem (1961), based on the antiwar poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed during World War I.

Dmitri Shostakovich

This composer's work was emblematic of both the Soviet regime and his attempts to survive under its oppression. His operas, such as The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, were well received at first--until Stalin severely criticized his work in Pravda in 1936. Fearful for his security, this man wrote several conciliatory pieces (Fifth, Seventh/Leningrad, and Twelfth Symphonies) in order to get out of trouble. He made enemies, however, with his Thirteenth Symphony, Babi Yar. Based on the Yevtushenko poem, Babi Yar condemned anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Milton Friedman

This conservative thinker is famous for his advocacy of monetarism (a revision of the quantity theory of money) in works like A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1963). He is strongly associated with the ideals of laissez-faire government policy.

Seven Against Thebes

This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule the title city together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of that city. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles's forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of the title city by giving Polyneices a proper burial.

Minotaur

This creature was a half-man, half-bull monster kept in the Labyrinth on Crete by King Minos. Minos prayed to Poseidon to send a snow-white bull as a sign of support during Minos' quarrel with his brothers for the throne of Crete, but instead of sacrificing the animal to the sea god, Minos kept it for himself. Angered, Poseidon caused Minos' wife Pasiphaë to lust after the bull, so Daedalus built her a wooden cow so she could mate with the bull. The product of this encounter was the Minotaur (lit. "Bull of Minos"). After Minos' son Androgeus was killed by Athenians, Minos demanded seven Athenians males youths and seven Athenian female youths, to be selected by lots every seven or nine years (accounts vary) as retribution; these victims were fed to the Minotaur. On the third drawing of the lots, the Athenian hero Theseus volunteered to vanquish the beast; with the help of Minos' daughter Ariadne, who gave Theseus a ball of string so he could find his way out of the Labyrinth, Theseus slew the Minotaur. On the return voyage from Crete, Theseus forgot to change his sails from black back to white, and his father Aegeus jumped into the sea, believing his son had died.

Lernaean Hydra

This creature was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna. This monster was a multi-headed water serpent that breathed poisonous gas and had toxic blood, and every time one head was cut off, two more grew back in its place. It dwelled in the Spring of Amymone in the swamp or lake of Lerna near the Peloponnese, beneath which was said to be an entrance to the Underworld. This monster was killed by Heracles as his second labor for Eurystheus during a battle in which Heracles' nephew Iolaus provided aid by cauterizing the neck stumps after Heracles cut each head off, preventing additional heads from growing back. After killing the monster, Heracles dipped his arrows in this creature's blood; the poisoned arrows were later used against the Stymphalian Birds, Geryon, and the centaur Nessus.

Cerberus

This creature was the three-headed (or, according to Hesiod's Theogony, 50-headed) dog who guarded the gates to the Underworld. A child of Typhon and Echidna, this monster is described as a hellhound with a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and the tail of a deadly snake. As Heracles' twelfth and final labor, he had to bring this creature back from the Underworld, which he did following an intense wrestling match. Prior to the task, Heracles was instructed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and freed Theseus from being stuck on a chair in Hades. In Virgil's Aeneid, the Cumaean Sibyl gives it three drugged honeycakes so that she and Aeneas can enter the Underworld.

Freyr

This deity was the son of Njord, and twin brother of Freya. He is one of the Vanir, a second group of Norse gods, but lives with the Aesir as a hostage. The god of fertility, horses, sun, and rain, his possessions include the magic ship Skidbladnir. He travels in a chariot drawn by the golden boar Gullinbursti, and had to give away his magic sword to win the hand of the giantess Gerda.

Sahara Desert

This desert is the world's second largest. Notable features include the Atlas Mountains (which bound the western Sahara on the north) and the Sahel, a savannah-like strip that bounds it on the south. It is dominated by rocky regions (hamada), sand seas (ergs), and salt flats (shatt) and dry river valleys (wadi) that are subject to flash floods. Its inhabitants include the Berbers and Tuaregs.

Gobi Desert

This desert, Asia's second largest, is bounded on the north by the Altai Mountains. It is known for its role in the Silk Road trading route and the Nemegt Basin, where fossilized dinosaur eggs and human artifacts have been found.

Painted Desert

This desert, which is shared by Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest National Parks, is known for its colorful, banded rock formations.

Tang dynasty

This dynasty is considered another golden age of Chinese culture: during this period important poets such as Li Bai (or Li Po) and Du Fu lived and the printing press was invented. This dynasty, which reunited China after the collapse of the short-lived Sui dynasty, was ruled by the Li family and its capital was at Chang'an (modern day Xi'an). Its first ruler, like the founder of the Han Dynasty, used the title of Emperor Gaozu. Gaozu forced by his second son, Li Shimin (later Emperor Taizong), to abdicate after Li Shimin killed two of his brothers in an ambush. Despite his bloody path to power, Taizong is considered to be one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history, subjugating much of what is now western China and parts of central Asia. After his death, power came to be concentrated in the hands of Empress Wu. Empress Wu (or Wu Zetian), the only woman to become emperor of China, called her rule the "Second Zhou dynasty." Wu was a notable supporter of Buddhism and promoted the imperial examination, but succession troubles resulted in the premature end of her dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the An Lushan rebellion (also called An Shi rebellion) wrecked the foundations of this dynasty. Although it was suppressed, the An Lushan rebellion concentrated power in the hands of regional military overlords. The dynasty had a tumultuous end in 907 that marked the beginning of the Five dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

Song dynasty

This dynasty is known for its devotion to cultural activities instead of warfare and for the establishment of Neo-Confucianism as state doctrine, with the imperial examination as the primary way of recruiting talent. It was also during this dynasty that gunpowder and the compass were discovered. This dynasty, even in its early years, could not rule all of China proper and was forced to relinquish parts of northern China to the "barbarian" Liao dynasty, paying tribute for peace. Although like most dynasties, it began as the ventures of a military leader, its first ruler, Taizu, realized that his rival generals could take power from him. He then induced all his major commanders to retire, setting up the dominance of the scholarly elite over the military elite throughout this dynasty. This policy was continued by his successors. In the north, however, the Liao dynasty was eventually replaced by the militaristic Jin dynasty, who captured the Song capital at Kaifeng along with two Emperors. The remnants of the court fled across the Yangtze and established the Southern branch of this dynasty with a new capital at Hangzhou, maintaining peace with the Jin through annual tribute. This state of affairs was brought to an end after this dynasty aided the Mongols in crushing the Jin, only to discover that they themselves were the next target. Despite the might of the Mongol war machine, the Song dynasty managed to repel major Mongol offensives for nearly 40 years, before it was finally defeated.

Carbon

This element is found, by definition, in all organic compounds. It is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe. It has three major isotopes: isotope 12, which is stable; isotope 13, which is used in NMR spectroscopy; and isotope 14, which is radioactive and is the basis of carbon dating. This element's ability to form four chemical bonds means that it has many different allotropes. The best-characterized natural isotopes are diamond, which consists of a tetrahedral network of this element's atoms, and graphite, which consists of planes of these atoms arranged in hexagons. Fullerenes such as buckyballs and nanotubes, on the other hand, are generally produced synthetically; buckyballs are roughly spherical. More recently, graphene, which is a single layer of atoms shaped like graphite, has proven to have remarkable properties; for example, it is nearly transparent while being about 200 times stronger than an equivalent mass of steel.

Oxygen

This element is, by mass, the most common element in Earth's crust. It was discovered independently by Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestley; Priestley originally called it "dephlogisticated air." It normally exists in elemental form as a diatomic gas, but it can also exist in a triatomic form, ozone, which is known for its role in blocking UV rays in Earth's stratosphere. Its diatomic form is, despite having an even number of electrons, paramagnetic, meaning it has unpaired electrons. This points out a problem with traditional valence bond theories, which predict that this element should be diamagnetic; molecular orbital theory correctly explains this behavior. Because it is easily capable of accepting electrons, reactions in which a species gives up electrons are known as oxidation reactions.

Sulfur

This element was widely known in the ancient world, and is referred to in the Bible as brimstone. Its nature as an element was first recognized by Antoine Lavoisier. Its most stable allotrope is an eight-membered ring that exists as a yellow solid. It is most often isolated by injecting superheated steam into the ground in the Frasch process. As an element, it is used in the vulcanization process to cross-link the polymer strands of rubber to increase rubber's strength; similarly, its diatomic bonds hold many proteins together. Industrially, though, the majority of this element is used to make H2SO4. This element's compounds are noted for their strong and unpleasant odors; small quantities of one of these compounds, are frequently added to natural gas, which is normally odorless, to help detect gas leaks.

Gold foil experiment

This experiment discovered the positively-charged nucleus of the atom; as a result, it disproved J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model. The experimenters fired alpha particles (helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold foil. (They also used other elements, including silver.) The scattered particles were detected by a screen containing zinc sulfide, which fluoresced when the alpha particles hit it. While most of the alpha particles went straight through the foil with minimal scattering, a small fraction of alpha particles were reflected back at the source. This result was unexpected, as backscattering could only occur if the alpha particles were colliding with a particle massive enough to reverse their momentum. Ernest Rutherford said "It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you."

Miller-Urey experiment

This experiment was an attempt to demonstrate a possible mechanism—proposed by John Haldane and Alexander Oparin—for how life could form from inorganic chemicals. Its creators modeled Earth's prebiotic atmosphere as a mixture of water, methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen. They allowed those four substances to react in an apparatus over a one-week period; the apparatus included a heater to convert the water to water vapor and an electrode to simulate lightning strikes. The resulting mixture contained more than 20 distinct amino acids that formed spontaneously; a more modern "volcanic" version of the experiment produced even more amino acids by including sulfur compounds.

Double-slit experiment

This experiment, which predated the development of quantum mechanics by over a century, demonstrated that light can behave as either a wave or a particle. After passing a beam of light through two narrowly spaced slits, Thomas Young observed the characteristic light and dark fringes of interference seen when light acts as a wave. More modern versions that add detectors showing which slit the light passes through, however, show that the light passes through one slit or the other, acting as photons; moreover, the interference pattern disappears.

Tudor

This family rose to power when a member of this family aligned with the Lancasters in the War of the Roses. He became King Henry VII following his victory at Bosworth Field. Their notable rulers included Henry VIII (who broke with the Catholic Church in England and had six wives) and Elizabeth I (whose lack of a husband and heir led to the extinction of the house).

Habsburg

This family ruled much of Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of World War I. Their first important ruler was Rudolf I, the King of Germany and Duke of Austria in the late thirteenth Century. Other notable rulers included Charles V, Maria Theresa and Franz Joseph.

Capetians

This family's first monarch was Hugh Capet, who was elected king following the death of Louis V. Their notable rulers included Philip II, who went on the Third Crusade, Louis IX, a canonized saint, and Philip IV,who expelled the Jews of France in 1306 and arrested the Knights Templar in 1307. The rule of this royal ended when Philip IV's sons failed to produce male heirs.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

This feminist is most famous for writing the "Declaration of Sentiments" that she presented at the first women's rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. This woman based the text of her declaration on the Declaration of Independence; it included the line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." She was a close collaborator for many years with Susan B. Anthony.

Bobby Jones

This golfer, an Atlanta native, never turned pro, but won thirteen major championships in eight years, including four U.S. Amateurs. In 1930 he won what was then considered the Grand Slam, taking both the British and U.S. Amateur and Open Championships. After that season, he retired from golf to practice law, but helped design a golf course in Augusta, Georgia that became the permanent site of the Masters in 1934.

Simone de Beauvoir

This feminist was a French writer and philosopher perhaps best known for her feminist treatise The Second Sex (1949). In that work, she argued that "womanhood" is defined by its differences from masculinity, which is perceived as normal. The Second Sex contains the famous line, "One is not born a woman, but becomes one." The book is divided into two parts, titled "Facts and Myths" and "Lived Experience." She was a lover of Jean-Paul Sartre. She is often considered one of the pioneers of "second-wave" feminism, which emphasizes sexuality, the workplace, and other forms of inequality over the first-wave focus on voting and property rights.

Margaret Sanger

This feminist was an early advocate of birth control and reproductive rights who founded the American Birth Control League, which later evolved into Planned Parenthood. As a young nurse living in New York City, this woman wrote columns about sexual education for the New York Call titled "What Every Mother Should Know" and "What Every Girl Should Know." She gave up nursing after one of her patients died of a self-induced abortion, and instead dedicated herself to educating women about contraception. In 1914, she began writing a newsletter called The Woman Rebel, in part to challenge the Comstock law, which prohibited the sending of "obscene" texts by mail, since she considered education about contraception to be an issue of free speech.

Sojourner Truth

This feminist was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree in Dutch-speaking New York. She gave herself her name in 1843 when she converted to Methodism and informed her friends that the spirit had called her. She was already well known as an abolitionist speaker when she attended the 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention and declared that she had "as much muscle as any man" in her most famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?"

Virginia Woolf

This feminist was the author of Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). She makes this list, however, because of her essay A Room of One's Own (1929), in which she argued that a woman must have money and space in order to write and express herself. In the essay, this author famously created the character of Judith Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's imagined sister, who could not achieve the status of her brother because she did not have the same access to education. She also addressed these themes in Three Guineas (1938).

Battle of Zama

This final major battle of the 2nd Punic War was fought near Carthage in modern-day Tunisia. Scipio Africanus's victory at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BC forced Hannibal to leave Italy and return to North Africa for the final showdown. Prior to the battle, the Numidian king Masinissa switched sides, and brought his considerable cavalry force to join the Romans. This, coupled with Scipio's strategy of opening up his lines to allow Carthaginian elephants through without harming his troops, led to a complete Roman victory.

Guadalcanal Campaign

This first Allied counteroffensive in the Pacific, which targeted an island in the Solomons, sought to secure communications between the U.S. Pacific coast and Australia. "Operation Watchtower" was the codename for the initial U.S. Marine landings, which secured an airbase at Henderson Field and held off a Japanese counterattack on Edson's Ridge. The naval battle of Savo Island took place between American ships and Japanese forces (the so-called "Tokyo Express") trying to resupply troops during this campaign. By early 1943, Allied dominance of the seas and skies around this campaign's site forced Japan to withdraw its remaining troops.

Sputnik 1

This first artificial satellite, by the USSR kicked off the so-called "Space Race." This satellite was originally intended to carry many scientific instruments, but those instruments were descoped, in favor of a simple radio transmitter. That transmitter broadcasted a "beep" at a specified interval, allowing scientists to map its deceleration as a result of atmospheric drag.

Margaret Thatcher

This first female prime minister of the UK was known as the "Iron Lady." Her divisive 1980s Conservative premiership saw the collapse of British heavy industry and its replacement by a services-based economy, especially focused on banking. Re-elected in 1983 after winning the Falklands War, she clashed with the mine workers' leader Arthur Scargill as well as her right-hand man Michael Heseltine, and after losing popularity due to a poll tax was ousted by her own party in favor of John Major.

USS Nautilus

This first nuclear-powered submarine was the sixth of its fleet to bear its name. She was launched on January 21, 1954. Eight months later, on September 30, 1954, She became the first commissioned nuclear-powered ship in the U.S. Navy. On the morning of January 17, 1955, Nautilus' Cmdr. Wilkinson signaled "Underway on Nuclear Power." In 1958 she departed Pearl Harbor under top secret orders to conduct "Operation Sunshine," the first crossing of the North Pole by a ship.

Election of 1860

This four-candidate election saw the Republican Party, founded in 1854, win in its second election, aided by the fragmenting of the Democrats. John Bell took Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, John Breckinridge swept the other slave states, and Abraham Lincoln nearly swept the free states. Though winning under 40% of the total popular vote, Lincoln dominated the electoral count with 180 to a combined 123 for his opponents. Seven southern states seceded before Lincoln even took office, and war soon followed.

John Burgoyne

This general was nicknamed "Gentleman Johnny," due to his cultural tastes. He began his Revolutionary War career under Thomas Gage, returning to England after ineffectiveness in 1774-5. Sent to reinforce Canada, he formulated a plan to isolate New England, with the help of Barry St. Leger and William Howe. The plan worked as far as capturing Fort Ticonderoga, but met resistance when he sent his Hessians to attack Bennington. Exhausted, his troops met trouble at Saratoga, being repulsed at Freedman's Farm, and being forced to surrender after Bemis Heights. This man, paroled on condition he returned to England, was later appointed commander-in-chief of Ireland.

Lollards

This group agitated for the reform of Western Christianity and followed the example of John Wycliffe, a theologian whose criticism of the Church got him fired from his position at the University of Oxford in 1381. Wycliffe is best known today for being one of the first to translate the Bible into English (the first of his translations came out in 1382 and circulated widely). He and these reformers also challenged the privileged status of the clergy, calling at various times for a lay clergy, an end to clerical celibacy, the end of confession to priests, and a ban on priests holding temporal offices. They were driven underground, especially after the suppression of a 1414 uprising by Sir John Oldcastle, but their ideas presaged many of those later adopted during the English Reformation. In the wake of Oldcastle's Rebellion, Wycliffe was posthumously declared a heretic at the 1415 Council of Constance, after which his corpse was exhumed and posthumously beheaded.

Hittites

This group created a large empire in the late Bronze Age centered on their capital of Hattusa in Anatolia (the western portion of what is now Turkey). Their empire engaged in the first widespread use of iron and chariots in war. Under King Muwatalli II, they were defeated by the Egyptians under Ramses II at the Battle of Kadesh, which involved as many as 5000 chariots. This empire came to an end less than a century later as part of the Bronze Age collapse.

Huns

This group entered central Europe from the steppes north of the Black and Caspian Seas. Historians disagree on what, if any, components of these people's advance should be identified with the Xiongnu, a confederation of Central Asian nomads that fought against Han China before being dispersed in the third century. The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that they inflicted "tremendous slaughter" on Germanic and Roman enemies alike. Their great leader, Attila, known as the "scourge of God," was defeated at the Catalaunian Fields (near Chalons in what is now northern France) by an alliance of Romans and Visigoths. After Attila's death in 453, a rebellion of Germanic subject peoples broke up the empire of these people.

Lombards

This group moved into northern Italy after the peninsula had been devastated by the war between the Byzantines and the Ostrogoths. Their dukes and kings shared control of Italy with the remaining Byzantine garrisons. Although they were Catholics, their relationship with the papacy was often turbulent. Papal requests for assistance led to the 8th century invasion by Frankish forces under Charlemagne, who crushed their kingdom and seized their "iron crown." Their historian, Paul the Deacon, retired to the abbey of Monte Cassino to write a chronicle of his now-vanquished people.

Abbasid Dynasty

This group reigned as caliphs from Baghdad from 750-1258, and later from Cairo from 1261-1517. They rode to power on widespread disaffection with the Umayyads and the sense that a member of the Prophet's family was best qualified to lead the community. Their greatest rulers were al-Mansur, Harun ar-Rashid, and al-Mamun the Great. During the 9th century, however, power began to devolve onto increasingly autonomous local dynasties, and they fell under the control of outside forces such as the Buyids and Seljuqs. When the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, the caliph as-Mustazim was wrapped in a carpet and trampled to death by horses.

Denali

This highest mountain in North America, also called Mount McKinley, is located in south-central Alaska. It is the highlight of a namesake national park. The West Buttress route is considered the best path to ascend this mountain. Frederick Cook, a man notorious for having faked the discovery of the North Pole, is now believed to have also faked his ascent of the mountain in 1906 as well, leaving a climbing party seven years later with the honor.

Eddie Shore

This hockey player, nicknamed "The Edmonton Express" is the epitome of "Old-Time Hockey," as stated in the 1977 film Slap Shot. As a blue liner for the Boston Bruins he was named a first team NHL All-Star for eight of nine years during the 1930s and is the only defenseman to win 4 Hart Trophies as NHL MVP. He later went on to be the owner/GM of the AHL's Springfield Indians and the anecdotes about his stingy ways are now hockey lore.

Osiris

This husband of Isis, father of Horus, and brother of Set served as god of the underworld, and protector of the dead. In addition to his role as the chief and judge of the underworld (as a result of the above-mentioned murder by Set), He also served as a god of vegetation and renewal; festivals honoring his death occurred around the time of the Nile flood's retreat. Statues representing him were made of clay and grain, which would then germinate. This diety was represented either as a green mummy, or wearing the Atef, a plumed crown.

Grand Theft Auto

This immensely successful Rockstar Games series that has repeatedly drawn criticism for its level of violence. These games are played in open world "sandboxes" that give the player the ability to do virtually anything they want. The series is set in satirized versions of real U.S. cities, with the third and fourth installations taking place in the New York knock-off Liberty City, the Vice City installment taking place in a fictionalized Miami, and the 5th taking place in Los Santos, a send-up of Los Angeles.

Io

This innermost of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter (the moons discovered by Galileo), the fourth-largest moon in the solar system, the densest moon, and the most geologically active body in the solar system due to its more than 400 volcanoes. This object's features are named for characters from a story in Greek mythology; fire, volcano, and thunder deities from other mythologies; and characters from Dante's Inferno. This satellite plays a significant role in shaping Jupiter's magnetosphere. Pioneer 10 first passed by this place in December 1973.

Sino-Japanese War

This invasion of China was the primary cause of World War II in East Asia. As early as 1931, Japanese forces occupied Manchuria and set up a puppet state called "Manchukuo." The Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937 resulted in open war between Japan and China. Japanese forces committed notorious atrocities during the invasion of China, including the 1937 massacres known as the "Rape of Nanking." The Chinese war effort was hindered by internal conflict between Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Kuomintang government and the communist insurgency led by Mao Zedong. Between 1942 and 1945 central China was largely cut off from the outside world due to Japanese conquest of coastal ports; Allied support was limited to air power deployed over the Himalayas from India, including the fighter pilots known as the "Flying Tigers."

Tybalt

This is a hot-headed member of the Capulet family who is the beloved cousin of Juliet. During the public brawl that begins the play, this character provokes the peaceful Benvolio. At a ball given by the Capulets, this character recognizes the disguised Romeo and calls for a sword, but is prevented from fighting by Lord Capulet. He then demands a duel with Romeo, who does not wish to fight one of Juliet's kinsmen. Romeo's friend Mercutio is shocked by this "vile submission," and calls this character "king of cats" while challenging him to a duel. Romeo tries to intervene in the duel, which allows this character to kill Mercutio. Romeo then kills this character, and is banished from Verona.

Mercury

This is one of just two elements that is a liquid at standard temperature and pressure (the only other one is bromine). It has been known since antiquity, and is found in ores such as cinnabar. Older names for it, reflecting its liquid nature, include hydrargyrum (the source of its symbol) and quicksilver. Because it is a very dense liquid, it is commonly used in barometers to measure atmospheric pressure; the pressure exerted by the atmosphere equals the pressure exerted by a column containing 760 millimeters of this element. Alloys of this metal with other metals are called amalgams, some of which have been used as dental fillings. Chronic exposure to this chemical can cause psychological problems; its use in hatmaking led to the expression "mad as a hatter." More recently, concerns about this element exposure have led to its banning in thermometers.

Anglo-Saxons

This is the conventional designation for a group of Germanic peoples who migrated from northwestern Europe (the North Sea coast of Germany and mainland Denmark) to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. These settlers conquered or displaced the Roman and British inhabitants of the island. By the early 7th century, seven of this group's kingdoms across southern and eastern Britain were known collectively as the Heptarchy (a group of seven rulers). Christian missionaries arrived from Italy and Ireland to convert these pagan. Cultural products of the newly Christian kingdoms included illuminated manuscripts; the writings of the monastic historian the Venerable Bede, and the epic poem Beowulf. These kingdoms were hard-hit by the Viking raids of the 9th century; only Wessex, the southwesternmost kingdom, survived and repelled the Scandinavian raiders. The kings of Wessex then unified this group's territories as a single kingdom of England.

Nitrogen

This is the most abundant element in Earth's atmosphere. First isolated as "noxious air" by Daniel Rutherford, this element exists primarily as a diatomic molecule containing two triple-bonded nitrogen atoms. Because its gas is extremely stable, this elements diatomic form is unusable for many biological and chemical purposes. To make it useful, it often undergoes fixation to convert it into usable species such as the ammonium ion—as it is by bacteria in the root nodules of legume plants—or ammonia gas, as is done industrially in the Haber-Bosch process. Conversely, its stability makes it useful in preventing unwanted combustion reactions. It also has a relatively low boiling point (-196°C), which makes its liquid form useful as a refrigerant.

Aluminum

This is the most common metal in Earth's crust, and the first metal in the p block of elements. First isolated by Hans Christian Oersted, its primary ore is bauxite, from which it is refined using large amounts of electric current, via electrolysis, through the Bayer and Hall-Héroult processes. It is found in the mineral corundum, which is found in many gems, including sapphires and rubies; the specific impurities found in a gem determine its color. It is also found in aluminosilicates such as feldspar.

Henry IV

This king of Navarre, who founded to house of Bourbon, became the heir to the throne when Henry III's brother died in 1584. After fighting Catholic opposition in the War of the Three Henries, he renounced Protestantism and accepted Catholicism in order to enter Paris and become king. With the help of Maximilien Sully he erased the national debt and removed much of the religious strife with the Edict of Nantes (1598).

Charles VIII

This king's short reign is remarkable for the enormous cost in men and money of his Italian campaign but more so for the number of his successors that to followed his catastrophic lead. He was motivated by a desire to govern Naples, which he had theoretically inherited. He died before he could surpass or absolve his disastrous first campaign with another.

Lake Tanganyika

This lake is the second-deepest in the world, surpassed only by Lake Baikal. Due its extreme depth (over 4,700 feet), it contains seven times as much water as Lake Victoria. A source of the Lualaba River, it is shared by Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, and Zambia. On its Tanzanian shore is the town of Ujiji, at which Henry Morton Stanley "found" Dr. David Livingstone in 1871.

Lake Chad

This lake's surface area has been reduced by over 90% since the 1960s due to droughts and diversion of water from such sources as the Chari River. This lake is at the intersection of Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, but most of the remaining water is in Chad and Cameroon. It is very shallow and has no outlet, so seasonal rainfall causes large fluctuations in its area.

Battle of Cannae

This largest battle of the 2nd Punic War represented one of the worst defeats in Roman history. The Carthaginians were led by Hannibal, while the Romans were led by the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. Hannibal employed a double-envelopment tactic, surrounded the Roman army, and destroyed it. Although a total disaster for the Romans, it resulted in their adopting of the Fabian strategy, in which battles are avoided in favor of a war of attrition. This eventually wore down Hannibal's army, and the Carthaginians had to leave Italy.

Lake Volta

This largest man-made lake was created by the construction of Ghana's Akosombo Dam across the Volta River in the 1960s. The lake covers the area where the Black Volta and White Volta rivers formerly converged. The Akosombo Dam can provide over a gigawatt of power, enough to supply nearby aluminum smelters utilizing the energy-intensive Hall-Héroult process and the needs of the rest of the country.

Triton

This largest moon of Neptune and the only large moon with a retrograde orbit (that is, an orbit opposite to the rotation of its planet), this is the seventh-largest moon in the solar system and is thought to have been captured from the Kuiper Belt. For over 100 years after its 1846 discovery, this was thought to be Neptune's only moon; Nereid wasn't discovered until 1949 (there are 13 known satellites now). This satellite is geologically active and has geysers that are assumed to erupt nitrogen. Because of the activity, impact craters on this moon are relatively scarce; most of the larger craters were formed by volcanic activity. This moon orbits around Neptune in almost a perfect circle. Voyager 2 visited this place in 1989 and is the only space probe to have done so (and none are currently planned). Much of this place's western hemisphere consists of an unexplained series of fissures and depressions sometimes called "cantaloupe terrain." Its features are named after various water spirits, monsters, or sacred waters from mythology.

Charon

This largest satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto wasn't discovered until 1978. Unlike Pluto, which is covered with nitrogen and methane ices, this place appears to be covered in water ice and may also have active cryo-geysers. Because the center of mass of the its system lies outside of either one, this moon doesn't truly orbit Pluto; when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, an argument was made (but not accepted) to classify its system as binary. The IAU still considers this place, which is roughly half the size but has only 11% the mass of Pluto, to be a satellite. The New Horizons mission visited both this place and Pluto in 2015.

Charles I

This last English absolute monarch had to sign the Petition of Right after a controversy involving the Duke of Buckingham. From 1630 to 1641 he tried to rule solo, but financial troubles forced him to call the Short and Long Parliaments. His attempt to reform the Scottish Church was the last straw, as Parliament entered into the English Civil War. They defeated this king, convicting him of treason and executing him.

Bernardo O'Higgins

This leader of Chilean independence, was the illegitimate son of an Irish-Spanish officer and a Chilean mother. His early attempt at rebellion against the Spanish crown ended in defeat at Rancagua in 1813, after which he went into exile in Argentina. He returned to Chile with San Martín in 1817, and served as that country's Supreme Director until 1823.

Porfirio Díaz

This leader was a Liberal general who established a long-lasting dictatorship that eventually led to the Mexican Revolution. In 1876 he issued the Plan of Tuxtepec and seized power from the Liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. This ruler then dominated Mexican politics for the next 35 years, and served as president continuously between 1884 and 1911 despite his earlier use of the slogan "Effective Suffrage and No Re-Election." While in office, he skillfully manipulated federal, state, and local politics, suppressed dissent, tamed the fractious Mexican army, opened Mexico to foreign investment, and oversaw the beginnings of the country's industrial development. His supporters praised him as a brilliant statesman who had ended the upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century; his detractors stressed the inequality, corruption, and systematic brutality of the political and economic systems fostered by this man and his positivist advisors, who were known as Científicos. In 1908 he discussed the possibility of his resignation during an interview with the American journalist James Creelman, which helped open the door to electoral mobilization, and eventually to armed rebellion. The Anti-Reelectionist forces of Francisco Madero revolted in 1910 and won their first victories in 1911, sparking uprisings elsewhere in the country. This leader promptly resigned under terms stipulated in the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, and spent the last years of his life in comfortable European exile.

Aldous Huxley

This man belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included a well-known Victorian evolutionist. Although this man depicted his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian "World State" in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford's model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, he imagined a world in which the fictional "Bokanovsky's Process" is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the "Brave New World" speech from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with "civilization." After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.

Venustiano Carranza

This leader was the "First Chief" of the Constitutionalist army during the Mexican Revolution, and president of Mexico from 1917 to 1920. After the death of Madero, this man issued the Plan of Guadalupe, and became the nucleus of opposition to Huerta's regime. His movement was supported by the generals Pablo González, álvaro Obregón, and Pancho Villa, who assembled armies in northern Mexico and pushed south to the capital. The southern general Emiliano Zapata also allied with this man to remove Huerta from power. After Huerta was forced to resign in 1914, members of this leader's movement held a convention in the city of Aguascalientes. The convention formed a new government that was supported by Villa and Zapata, but opposed by González and Obregón. Constitutionalist and Convention forces battled until 1915, when this man's adherents gained the upper hand and the Convention split into separate factions, some of which continued to fight the Constitutionalists for years. This ruler went on to call for a new constitution, to be based on the Liberal Constitution of 1857. The ensuing Constitution of 1917 went far beyond the minor reforms that he had envisioned, and promoted land redistribution, workers' rights, anticlericalism, and national ownership of Mexico's natural resources. Over the next several years, this President proved reluctant to enact the 1917 constitution's more radical provisions, or to give up control of the government. Obregón forced this man to flee the capital in 1920, and likely had a role in this man's subsequent assassination.

Haile Selassie

This leader was the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. A 1936 invasion by fascist Italy forced him to live in exile in England until 1941, when he was restored to the throne with the assistance of the British military. Many members of the Rastafarian movement consider this man to be a sacred and messianic figure. Ethiopia suffered a severe famine in the early 1970s, and he was overthrown in 1974. The military government that replaced him was known as the Derg.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

This leader was the leader of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. He supported the Free Officers Movement led by Muhammad Naguib that overthrew King Farouk in 1952, but he then took power while accusing of Naguib of allying with the Muslim Brotherhood. He nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956, leading to a confrontation with Britain, France, and Israel. From 1958 to 1961, this man served as president of the United Arab Republic, a short-lived federation of Egypt and Syria. He was succeeded in 1970 by his ally Anwar Sadat.

Loire River

This longest French river begins in the Cevennes range of southern France, flows north to the center of the country, then flows due west to the Bay of Biscay. Many notable cities are on the river, including Nevers, Orleans, Blois, Tours, and Nantes. It is sometimes called the "last wild river in Western Europe," and many proposed dams on the river have not been built because of opposition to the flooding of land and to interference with Atlantic salmon. This river's valley is particularly known for its vineyards and for its châteaux, a collection of over 300 castles dating to the 16th and 17th centuries.

Existentialism

This loosely defined movement of 19th- and 20th-century focused on the importance of leading an "authentic" life. Many thinkers that are now thought of as members of this school would either not have recognized the term, as it emerged after their time, or would not have accepted it as a description of their outlook. The movement is often identified with the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who asserted that this school "is a humanism." Others associated with the movement include the 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard (who wrote Either/Or), the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger (who wrote Being and Time), and Sartre's contemporary Albert Camus (who wrote The Myth of Sisyphus).

Max Planck

This man allowed quantum theory to move forward in the early 20th century by correctly modeling how an object radiates heat, solving the ultraviolet catastrophe, which was a predicted unbounded increase in the amount of radiation emitted at high frequencies. His Law of Radiation superseded the Rayleigh-Jeans Law, which was used until that point. He suggested that electromagnetic energy could only be emitted in specific packages, called quanta, positing that the energy of this photon was equal to its frequency times a fixed value h.

Robert Mugabe

This man became the first president of post-colonial Zimbabwe in 1980 and has led that country ever since. Zimbabwe was the successor state to Rhodesia, the white-supremacist state in south-central Africa led by Ian Smith. This man, the leader of the Zimbabwe National African Union, was a key figure in the civil and military struggle for African rights in Rhodesia. His regime has come under increasing criticism for his failure to prevent hyperinflation and his suppression of political dissent. Morgan Tsvangirai, a leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, is one of this man's chief rivals.

Tom Watson

This man became the major rival to Jack Nicklaus in the second half of the Golden Bear's career. His greatest achievements were at the British Open, a tournament he won five times between 1975 and 1983. He took eight major championships overall, and still competes occasionally on the regular PGA Tour, though mostly on the Senior Tour, where he won the 2001 Senior PGA Championship.

Kwame Nkrumah

This man became the prime minister of the Gold Coast in 1952 and declared independence from Britain in 1957, renaming the country Ghana. He was the first African leader to declare independence from a colonial power. This man supported pan-Africanism, an ideology that proposed continent-wide cooperation and union of African peoples. His regime racked up large debts through military reform and the building of the Akosombo Dam to create Lake Volta. A 1966 coup ended this man's rule over Ghana.

Mobutu Sese Seko

This man came to power during the "Congo Crisis," which resulted in the assassination of elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba and the death in a plane crash of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. He changed the name of his country from "Congo" to "Zaire" (it reverted to "Democratic Republic of the Congo" after his fall). Despite its atrocious human rights record, this man's regime was supported by the United States because This man took an anti-Communist position during the Cold War. Rebels led by Laurent Kabila overthrew this man in 1997.

George Orwell

This man condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay "Shooting an Elephant" and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay "Politics and the English Language"). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, this man wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner, and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of "Animalism" such as "Four legs good, two legs bad." However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Four years later, he imagined a future Britain (known as Oceania) under the harsh rule of "Big Brother" in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother, but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes ("Newspeak"), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, "we've always been at war with Eastasia," "war is peace," "Big Brother is watching you").

Erwin Schrodinger

This man contributed to the early formulations of quantum theory as a foil to Heisenberg, Bohr, and Dirac, criticizing their Copenhagen interpretation with thought experiments like his famous Schrödinger's Cat argument. He formulated both the time-independent and time-dependent Schrödinger equations, partial differential equations which described how quantum systems behaved. Schrödinger's work was the basis for Heisenberg's matrix formalism, Feynman's path integral formalism, and quantum mechanical perturbation theory, which considers the effects of a small disturbance to a quantum system.

Horatio Gates

This man first met George Washington after being wounded during the attack on Fort Duquense during the Seven Years' War. Recommended by Washington to be adjutant general of the army at the outbreak of revolution, he organized the army around Boston into an effective force. Promoted to major general in 1776, he was assigned to command troops in New York originally intended to invade Canada. Briefly put in charge of Philadelphia, he then directed the defense of New York against Burgoyne's invasion attempt, leading to victory at Saratoga. Following this he became involved in the Conway cabal, an attempt to replace Washington, which led to coldness between the two. Placed in command of the South over Washington's objections by Congress, he tried to raise adequate forces, but lost the battle of Camden to Cornwallis, and was replaced by Nathaniel Greene. Washington then accepted this general back as his deputy, a position he held until the end of the war.

Archimedes

This man is best known for his "Eureka moment" of using density considerations to determine the purity of a gold crown; nonetheless, he was the preeminent mathematician of ancient Greece. He found the ratios between the surface areas and volumes of a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder, accurately estimated pi, and presaged the summation of infinite series with his "method of exhaustion."

Vladislav Tretiak

This man is first Russian player in Hockey Hall of Fame. He came to North American prominence when he starred in 1972 Summit Series against Canada. A 10-time World Champion, he also won three gold medals (1972, 1976, and 1984). The decision to pull him after the first period of the U.S./USSR game in the 1980 Olympics is considered to be part of the reason the U.S. went on to win the gold. He played for CSKA Moscow (Central Red Army) for 15 years and, since his retirement, he now serves as the goaltending coach for the Chicago Blackhawks.

Gottfried Leibniz

This man is known for his independent invention of calculus and the ensuing priority dispute with Isaac Newton. Most modern calculus notation, including the integral sign and the use of d to indicate a differential, originated with this mathematician. He also invented binary numbers and did fundamental work in establishing boolean algebra and symbolic logic.

Werner Heisenberg

This man is most known for his matrix interpretation of quantum theory, which constructs observable quantities as operators, which act on a system. His famous uncertainty principle (better translated, however, as "indeterminacy principle") states that the more accurately an object's position can be observed, the less accurately its momentum can. This is because shorter wavelengths of light (use as a sort of measuring-stick) have higher energies, and disrupt a particle's momentum more strongly. He earned the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the allotropic forms of hydrogen.

Pierre de Fermat

This man is remembered for his contributions to number theory including his "little theorem" that ap - a will be divisible by p if p is prime. He also studied his namesake primes (those of the form 22n+1) and stated his "Last Theorem" that xn + yn = zn has no solutions if x, y, and z are positive integers and n is a positive integer greater than 2. He and Blaise Pascal founded probability theory. In addition, he discovered methods for finding the maxima and minima of functions and the areas under polynomials that anticipated calculus and inspired Isaac Newton.

Francisco Madero

This man led the 1910 revolution against Porfirio Díaz, and served as president of Mexico from 1911 to 1913. After the Creelman interview was released, he wrote a book titled The Presidential Succession in 1910, which argued that it was time for Díaz to be replaced, and which revived Díaz's former slogan of "Effective Suffrage and No Re-Election." This ruler then ran for president, but was arrested before the election. After escaping from prison, he issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí, which called for a general revolt in November 1910. Dissatisfaction with the Díaz regime coalesced around this man, who unseated the dictator and took power after democratic elections were held in the fall of 1911. However, he was unable to satisfy the far-reaching demands of the diverse coalition that had brought him to power. This ruler was also disliked by the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson and by former supporters of the Díaz regime, many of whom retained their positions in the government and army. In February 1913, Wilson encouraged General Victoriano Huerta to participate in a coup against this man. After a period of fighting within Mexico City that is known as the Decena Trágica, or Tragic Ten Days, this president was forced to resign. Huerta became president, and this man was murdered a few days later.

H. G. Wells

This man used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, this author wrote about a "Time Traveller" who visits the year 802,701 A.D, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, this man helped to establish another of science fiction's key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the "Tripods" and "Black Smoke" that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance, but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. He also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In his 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like "Beast Folk." A year later this man published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a "reign of terror." However, Griffin's invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

This man was Japan's first professional dramatist. Originally named Sugimori Nobumori, this man wrote more than 150 plays for both the bunraku (puppet theater) and the kabuki (popular theater). His scripts fall into two categories: historical romances (mono) and domestic tragedies (wamono). One of his most popular plays was The Battles of Coxinga, an historical melodrama about an attempt to re-establish the Ming dynasty in China. He is also largely responsible for developing the sewamono (contemporary drama on contemporary themes) in the joruri, a style of chanted narration adapted to bunraku.

Antonio López de Santa Anna

This man was a general who served as president of Mexico 11 different times between 1833 and 1855. After gaining independence, many Latin American nations fell under the rule of caudillos, or charismatic leaders who exercised both military and political power. As one of these figures, this general cultivated an image of himself as a savior of the Mexican nation, and even held an elaborate funeral for the leg that he lost during a conflict with France known as the "Pastry War." However, he proved unable to prevent the loss of Mexico's northern territories. Despite routing the defenders of the Alamo, this man was defeated by the forces of Sam Houston at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, and was forced to recognize Texan independence. A little more than a decade later, he seized control of the government during the Mexican-American War, only to lose major battles at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec, and be forced into exile. He returned to Mexico in 1853 and tried to establish a permanent dictatorship, but was challenged by the Liberal Plan of Ayutla, and was driven from power in 1855.

Philip Glass

This man was a minimalist composer who is best known for his trilogy of "Portrait Operas," which include Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1979), and Akhnaten (1983). Einstein on the Beach is particularly notable for its use of solfege syllables and numbers in place of a standard libretto. HIs style is heavily influenced by Indian musical traditions, and focuses on additive processes; this focus can be seen in his early minimal works "Strung Out" (1967) and "Music in Fifths" (1969). This man is a prolific composer of film scores; his most prominent include his scores for The Truman Show, The Hours, and Notes on a Scandal.

John Coolidge Adams

This man was a minimalist composer whose music, like that of Charles Ives, often features an "American" program. He may be best known for his opera Nixon in China (1987), which dramatizes the 1972 presidential visit and meeting with Mao. His other operas include Doctor Atomic (2005), which is about the Manhattan Project. He composed "On the Transmigration of Souls" (2002) to memorialize the September 11th attacks; that work received the Pulitzer Prize. Other major works for orchestra include Harmonium (1980), Harmonielehre (1985), Shaker Loops (1978), and his Violin Concerto (1993).

Mishima Yukio

This man was a novelist whose central theme was the disparity between traditional Japanese values and the spiritual emptiness of modern life. He failed to qualify for military service during World War II, so worked in an aircraft factory instead. His first novel, Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku), was successful enough to allow him to write full time. His four-volume epic, The Sea of Fertility (Hojo no umi, consisting of Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel), is about self-destructive personalities and the transformation of Japan into a modern, but sterile, society. This author, who organized the Tate no kai, a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts, committed ritual suicide after a public speech failed to galvanize the armed forces into overthrowing the government.

Miguel Hidalgo

This man was a parish priest who became the leader of Mexico's first independence movement. After Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 and ousted the Spanish king Ferdinand VII, political movements advocating Enlightenment ideas of representative government and local self-determination sprung up in many of Spain's American colonies. He belonged to one such group, which officials in the viceroyalty of New Spain attempted to suppress. In response, He called his congregation together and issued a call for revolt known as the "Grito de Dolores," or "Cry of Dolores" on September 16, 1810. The rebels captured the cities of Guanajuato and Guadalajara, but were unable to take Mexico City. In 1811, He was captured and executed by the colonial regime. The leadership of the independence movement then fell to another priest named José María Morelos, who was himself executed in 1815. Although His movement was unsuccessful, September 16 is still celebrated as Mexico's official Day of Independence.

Ronaldo

This man was twice World Footballer of the Year, winning those honors in 1997 (while with FC Barcelona) and 1998 (with Inter). While he was on the Brazil squad that won World Cup `94 in the US, he was expected to star in the 1998 World Cup, where he helped Brazil to the Finals, winning the Golden Ball Award as tournament MVP. That MVP performance was tarnished slightly by a poor showing (one blamed by the media on a supposed all-night session of "Tomb Raider" on PlayStation) that kept Brazil from its fifth title. Injuries have plagued him over the past few seasons, but, when healthy, he is still among the world's elite players.

Lázaro Cárdenas

This man was a revolutionary general who served as president from 1934 to 1940, and who worked to fulfill the Constitution of 1917's promises of land reform and nationalization of key resources. After Carranza's death, Mexico was ruled by the "Sonoran dynasty" of álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, who stabilized the country and implemented limited reforms. Calles also founded a forerunner of the PRI, or Institutional Party of the Revolution, which dominated Mexican politics throughout the 20th century. After stepping down as president, Calles continued to control Mexican politics from 1928 to 1934 during a period known as the "Maximato." However, this leader surprised Calles by turning against him, and forcing him into exile. As president, this man also broke up large estates into communal ejidos, promoted organized labor, and expropriated foreign-owned oil fields in 1938 to form the national oil company Pemex, or Petróleos Mexicanos. These actions made this leader very popular, but once he left office the Mexican government's commitment to economic redistribution soon waned. In 1988 this ruler's son Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas challenged PRI control of politics by running for president as the candidate of the PRD, or Party of the Democratic Revolution. Although electoral fraud prevented Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas from winning, his challenge helped to bring about political changes that eventually led Vicente Fox of the PAN, or National Action Party, to be elected president in 2000.

Agustín de Iturbide

This man was a royalist general who changed his allegiances to become the first ruler of independent Mexico. Like many Creoles, or people of European descent born in the Americas, he feared that the insurgency would upset colonial hierarchies of race and class. In 1820, however, a liberal revolution in Spain caused conservative Mexican elites to reconsider the benefits of independence. This man reached out to the insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero, and agreed to endorse legal racial equality in exchange for Guerrero's military support. Early in 1821 he released the Plan of Iguala, which is also known as the "Plan of the Three Guarantees" or "Plan Trigarante" because it called for Mexican independence, a wholly Catholic state, and the equality of all races. His Army of the Three Guarantees soon forced Juan O'Donoju, the last viceroy of New Spain, to acknowledge Mexican independence in the Treaty of Córdoba. In 1822, he became the first emperor of Mexico, but a revolt led by Antonio López de Santa Anna forced Iturbide into exile in 1823. When this man returned to Mexico in 1824, he was quickly executed.

Vaslav Nijinsky

This man was known as the greatest male dancer of his era, was mainly passionate about choreography. His boss at the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, gave him the opportunity in 1912 with The Afternoon of a Faun, set to the music of Debussy, and a year later a riot broke out at the premiere of another ballet he choreographed, his choreography of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. In 1919, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He never danced again in public, and spent much of the rest of his life in various asylums and institutions.

Montezuma II

This man was one of the last rulers of the Aztec empire. In 1519 he allowed armed forces led by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés to enter the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. Several months later, the Spanish imprisoned him within his own palace. After the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado took advantage of this man's captivity to massacre peaceful celebrants at a religious festival, the Aztecs selected a new ruler named Cuitláhuac, and the city erupted into conflicts that led to this man's death. The Spanish then fled during an escape that is called the "Noche Triste," or "Sad Night" because many conquistadors died while crossing the causeways that connected the island city of Tenochtitlán to the shores of Lake Texcoco. By 1521, the ravages of smallpox and the help of indigenous Tlaxcalan allies allowed Cortés to conquer Tenochtitlán and to capture Cuauhtémoc, the final Aztec emperor.

Muammar al-Gaddafi

This man was the leader of Libya from 1969 to 2011. Gaddafi's "Free Officers Movement," modeled after the Egyptian organization of the same name, overthrew King Idris I in 1969. The Little Green Book collects ideas and sayings associated with Gaddafi's pan-Arabist ideology. The U.S. and Britain criticized his terrorist associations and blamed him for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Scotland which killed 270 people. After a discotheque in Berlin was bombed in 1986, the U.S. attacked several sites in Libya. This ruler was overthrown and killed by supporters of the National Transitional Council during the Libyan Civil War in 2011.

Julius Nyerere

This man was the leader of Tanganyika and then Tanzania from 1961 to 1985. (Tanzania was formed by the 1964 merger of Tanganyika with Zanzibar.) Tanganyika gained independence before this man came to power due to negotiations between him and British Governor Richard Turnbull. He put forward his socialist plans in the Arusha Declaration of 1967. His policies were known by the term ujamaa, signifying family unity in Swahili. Under his leadership, literacy improved significantly, but poverty remained high, especially among rural laborers uprooted by his centralized economic planning. His Chama Cha Mapinduzi, or Party of the Revolution, remains as the dominant power in Tanzania politics.

Juan Perón

This man was the president of Argentina from 1946 to 1955 and 1973 to 1974. He became widely admired after his 1945 marriage to actress Eva Duarte, who was immortalized in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita. The backbone of his political support were working-class people known as descamisados, meaning "shirtless ones". His policies came to be called Perónism, represented by the three flags of economic independence, political sovereignty and social justice, which represented a Third Way between capitalism and communism. Upon his death in 1974, he was succeeded as President by his third wife, Isabel.

Idi Amin

This man was the president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He was a military leader who came to power in a coup when Prime Minister Milton Obote was out of the country. While in power, he encouraged death squads such as the Public Safety Unit and the State Research Bureau, and he has been blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths. In 1972 this ruler expelled tens of thousands of Asians from Uganda. This leader allowed Palestinian hijackers to land a captured Air France plane at Entebbe Airport in 1976; Jewish hostages on board were freed by Operation Thunderbolt, an Israeli commando operation during which Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of the future Prime Minister Benjamin, was killed. A 1979 invasion by Tanzania forced this man from power; he fled to exile in Saudi Arabia.

Elihu Root

This man won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 for attempting to bring nations together for arbitration and cooperative agreements. During his tenure, he moved the consular service under the umbrella of the civil service. His negotiations with Great Britain settled border disputes regarding Alaska and Canada, and he was a proponent of free trade policies with China that Hay established.

Kurt Vonnegut

This man's fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, he was a prisoner of war in Germany, and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time," and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other his other novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. This man also wrote the novel Cat's Cradle, which describes a substance called "ice-nine" that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel's narrator John. Another thread in Cat's Cradle concerns the "bittersweet lies" of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth.

Akutagawa Ryunosuke

This man's mother died insane while he was a child, and his father was a failure who gave him up to relatives. Despite this inauspicious childhood, his 1915 short story Rashomon brought him into the highest literary circles and started him writing the macabre stories for which he is known. In 1927 he committed suicide by overdosing on pills, and his suicide letter A Note to a Certain Old Friend became a published work. Rashomon also was key to his international fame, when Kurosawa Akira made it into a film in 1951. One of Japan's two most prestigious literary prizes is named for this writer; it is awarded for the best serious work of fiction by a new Japanese writer.

Louis de Broglie

This man's work quantifying the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics earned him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics. His doctoral thesis, which proposed that all particles have a characteristic wavelength dependent on their momentum, was so groundbreaking that the reviewers passed it directly to Einstein, who endorsed it. In opposition to the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, this man later worked to define a purely causal interpretation, but his work remained unfinished until David Bohm refined it in the 1950s.

Gabriel García Marquez

This master of magic realism, used his birthplace of Aracataca was the model for the fictional town of Macondo. The town played a prominent role in many of his works, such as Leaf Storm and his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which details the decline of the Buendía family over seven generations. A newspaper journalist in the 1950s, he exposed a naval scandal (chronicled in The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Other prominent novels include In Evil Hour, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth, a depiction of Simón Bolívar's final years.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

This mathematician is considered the "Prince of Mathematicians" for his extraordinary contributions to every major branch of mathematics. His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae systematized number theory and stated the fundamental theorem of arithmetic. He also proved the fundamental theorem of algebra, the law of quadratic reciprocity, and the prime number theorem. He may be most famous for the (possibly apocryphal) story of intuiting the formula for the summation of an arithmetic series when given the busywork task of adding the first 100 positive integers by his primary school teacher.

Euclid

This mathematician is principally known for the Elements, a textbook on geometry and number theory, that was used for over 2,000 years and which grounds essentially all of what is taught in modern high school geometry classes. He is known for his five postulates that define Euclidean (i.e., "normal") space, especially the fifth (the "parallel postulate") which can be broken to create spherical and hyperbolic geometries. He also proved the infinitude of prime numbers.

David Beckham

This midfielder for Manchester United FC is known as much for his talent as his marriage to Victoria Adams, better known as "Posh Spice." One of the FA Premiership's finest midfielders, he was named runner-up for both the 1999 European Footballer of the Year and the 1999 World Footballer of the Year. He also helped guide Manchester United to the rare 1999 "Treble," helping the Red Devils secure the FA Cup (Open Cup competition for all English sides), Carling FA Premiership Title (regular season champion of England's top division) and UEFA Champions' League (championship for national league champions of UEFA countries). These three titles made ManU only the fourth team (and first English team) to accomplish the feat. His results with the English national side have been mixed, including his now infamous booking against rival Argentina in World Cup '98, and his obscene gesture to English fans at the opening game of Euro 2000.

Apollo 11

This mission saw the first Moon landing and moonwalk by astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (astronaut Michael Collins piloted the Command Module in lunar orbit and never walked on the moon). After the Lunar Module landed in the Sea of Tranquility, Armstrong said, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." Later stepping onto the lunar surface, he said, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." According to Chris Kraft, NASA officials chose Armstrong as the first to walk on the Moon because he was more humble than Aldrin, and because he was the Commander. However, the stated reason was that Armstrong's seat was closer to the door. Like other Apollo missions, this mission was launched atop a Saturn V booster.

Bull Moose Party

This party was created after Theodore Roosevelt was unable to reclaim the Republican nomination from his former ally William Howard Taft. Roosevelt pitted his platform of New Nationalism, which promised reforms inspired by the Progressive movement, against Democrat Woodrow Wilson's more conservative New Freedom. In the most successful American third party campaign ever, Roosevelt's 27% was still only enough to win 6 states; the split of the Republican voter base between him and Taft ensured a dominant victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson despite only receiving 42% of the vote.

Apollo 13

This mission was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro region of the Moon. An improperly-refurbished No. 2 oxygen tank and subsequent improper repairs caused the tank to rupture during a routine "cryo-stir" before entering lunar orbit. The explosion also damaged the No. 1 oxygen tank and caused further leakage. To bring back the astronauts, the orbiter was put on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. NASA engineers also solved power-management, water-conservation, and trajectory planning problems with the help of Ken Mattingly, the primary Command Module pilot who had been grounded due to exposure to German measles. All three astronauts returned to Earth safely, and the landing site was re-assigned to a subsquent mission.

Medusa

This monster is the only mortal member of the Gorgons, a trio of monstrous daughters of Phorcys and Ceto who had brass hands, fangs, and venomous snakes for hair; the other two were Stheno and Euryale. Many early sources state that she was born a monster, though Ovid's Metamorphoses state that she was a beautiful woman until she was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple and cursed by the goddess. Gazing directly into this monster's eyes resulted in the onlooker being turned into stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to retrieve her head by the tyrant Polydectes, whom Perseus then killed with the head. Perseus gave the head of this monster to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the aegis. When this gorgon was beheaded, the winged horse Pegasus and the giant warrior Chrysaor emerged, her sons by Poseidon. According to Ovid, this creature's head was also used to petrify the Titan Atlas.

Calydonian Boar

This monster was a monstrous beast sent by Artemis to wreak havoc in Calydon after king Oeneus neglected to honor her while sacrificing to the gods. Oeneus's son Meleager led a group of heroes, including Theseus, the twins Castor and Polydeuces (or Pollux), and Achilles's father Peleus, as well as the huntress Atalanta, on what became known as its namesake Hunt. Atalanta drew first blood, and Meleager finished off the beast. Meleager, who had fallen in love with Atalanta, then insisted on honoring her by giving her the hide. Meleager's uncles protested, Meleager killed them, and Meleager's mother avenged the death of her brothers by burning up the log that represented Meleager's lifespan, killing him.

Polyphemus

This monster was the son of Poseidon and the sea nymph Thoosa. The most notable myth involving this monster is his appearance in Book IX of Homer's Odyssey. Odysseus and his crew land on his island after escaping the Lotus-Eaters. This cyclops eats two of Odysseus' crew, imprisons the rest in his cave, and eats four more before the survivors can escape. To escape, Odysseus gets him drunk on wine and blinds the one-eyed giant with a stick; the next morning, Odysseus and his crew ride out of his cave, hiding underneath the Cyclops' sheep. When this monster asks Odysseus' name, Odysseus responds "No one" or "No man" (translations vary), and this monster prays to his father Poseidon to make Odysseus' journey home treacherous. In another myth, he falls in love with the nymph Galatea, who in turn loves the human Acis. This monster then kills Acis with a boulder out of jealousy.

Typhon

This monster's offspring includes the two-headed dog Orthrus, the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, the Chimera, and Cerberus. He was the last son of Gaea and Tartarus. In the Theogony, Hesiod describes a climactic battle between Zeus and this monster following Zeus' defeat of the Titans: He rips out Zeus' sinews and is nearly victorious, but Hermes restores Zeus's sinews and Zeus finally overpowers the giant monster. This monster was then trapped under Mount Etna, where he is believed to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Arthropoda

This most diverse and successful animal phylum on earth (incorporating about 75% of all described animal species), the phylum are characterized by jointed legs and a chitinous exoskeleton. Like annelids, they are segmented, but unlike annelids, their segments are usually fused into larger body parts with specialized functions (such as the head, thorax, and abdomen of an insect). Members of this Phylum are often divided into four subphyla: Uniramia (insects, centipedes, millipedes); Chelicerata (arachnids, sea spiders, horseshoe crabs); Crustacea (shrimps, lobsters, crabs, crayfish, barnacles, pillbugs), and Trilobitomorpha (the trilobites, now extinct).

National Gallery

This museum in Trafalgar Square in London houses a synoptic collection of pre-1900 paintings assembled by government purchase and donation. It is home to British masterpieces including John Constable's The Haywain and both Rain, Steam and Speed and The Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W. Turner. The museum also boasts several major highlights of European painting, from arguably the best known of van Gogh's Sunflowers series to exemplar Baroque works like Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, The Judgment of Paris by Rubens, and the Rokeby Venus of Velázquez. Major works of the Italian and north European Renaissance are also represented, including van Eyck's The Arnolfini Wedding, Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, Raphael's Portrait of Pope Julius II, and the later of Leonardo's two versions of Madonna of the Rocks.

Louvre

This museum is located on the right bank of the Seine River in the heart of Paris. Housed in a palace of the same name, which was a royal residence until 1682, this museum was permanently opened to the public as a museum by the French Revolutionary government in 1793. During renovations carried out in the 1980s, a controversial steel-and-glass pyramid designed by I. M. Pei was installed at its entrance. Works housed within the Sully, Richelieu, and Denon Wings of this museum include ancient Greek sculptures such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.

Les Misérables

This musical is a partial retelling of the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, this work follows Jean Valjean, who was convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving niece. He breaks his parole and is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert. Several years later, the lives of Valjean, his adoptive daughter Cosette, her lover Marius and his former lover Éponine, and Javert become intertwined on the barricades of an 1832 student rebellion in Paris. The longest-running show on London's West End, it features the songs "I Dreamed a Dream," "Master of the House," "Do You Hear the People Sing?", "One Day More," and "On My Own."

Cabaret

This musical is set in the seedy Kit-Kat Club in Weimar Berlin, where the risqué Master of Ceremonies presides over the action ("Wilkommen"). The British lounge singer Sally Bowles falls in love with the American writer Cliff Bradshaw, but the two break up as the Nazis come to power. Adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1972 film starring Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, it is based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.

Rent

This musical tells the story of impoverished artists living in the East Village of New York City during the AIDS crisis circa 1990. It is narrated by filmmaker Mark Cohen, whose ex-girlfriend Maureen just left him for a woman (Joanne), and whose recovering heroin addict roommate Roger meets the dying stripper Mimi. Mark and Roger's former roommate and itinerant philosopher/hacker Collins comes to town, where he is robbed, then saved by the transvestite Angel, with whom he moves in. Meanwhile, the former fourth roommate of Mark, Roger, and Collins - Benny - has married into a wealthy family and bought the building Mark and Roger now live in, from which he wants to evict them. An adaptation of Puccini's opera La bohéme, this musical won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and includes songs like "La Vie Bohéme" and "Seasons of Love".

Articulation

This musical term refers to the various techniques which may be used to modify the attack or performance of a single note or a series of notes. Some of the most common of these include staccato, meaning light or short; tenuto, meaning a note is to be held its entire value; and legato, meaning a series of notes is to be connected to one another very smoothly. Single notes may be given extra force by an accent mark.

Agnes de Mille

This niece of film director Cecil B. DeMille and granddaughter of economist Henry George worked extensively with American Ballet Theater, but Rodeo, her most famous work, was commissioned by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. That ballet, featuring music by Aaron Copland (possibly assisted by an uncredited Leonard Bernstein), details a love rectangle between characters known as American Cowgirl, Champion Roper, Head Wrangler, and Rancher's Daughter. Her other notable stage ballets include Three Virgins and a Devil and Fall River Legend (based on the life of Lizzie Borden). This choreographer De Mille also found success in musical theater, creating a revolutionary "dream ballet" for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!.

Così fan tutte

This opera is, along with The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, one of Mozart's collaborations with Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Soldiers Guglielmo and Ferrando, who love sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, respectively, brag about the fidelity of their fiancées; in a coffeeshop, Don Alfonso makes a bet that he can make the sisters fall in love with other men in one day. Don Alfonso disguises the two men as Albanians after bribing the sisters' maid Despina; at first they resist (see Fiordiligi's aria "Come Scoglio"), but after Dorabella and Guglielmo trade a medallion and a heart-shaped locket, Fiordiligi is seduced by Ferrando. In the end, the sisters "almost" marry the wrong husbands, and only realize they've been tricked when the two men return to the stage half in disguise, half out.

La Bohème

This opera tells the story of four extremely poor friends who live in the French (i.e., Students') Quarter of Paris: Marcello the artist, Rodolfo the poet, Colline the philosopher, and Schaunard the musician. Rodolfo meets the seamstress Mimi who lives next door when her single candle is blown out and needs to be relit. Marcello is still attached to Musetta, who had left him for the rich man Alcindoro. In the final act, Marcello and Rodolfo have separated from their lovers, but cannot stop thinking about them. Musetta bursts into their garret apartment and tells them that Mimi is dying of consumption (tuberculosis); when they reach her, she is already dead. This Opera was based on a novel by Henry Murger and, in turn, formed the basis of the hit 1996 musical Rent by Jonathan Larson.

Boris Godunov

This opera's prologue shows the title character, the chief adviser of Ivan the Terrible, being pressured to assume the throne after Ivan's two children die. In the first act the religious novice Grigori decides that he will impersonate that younger son, Dmitri, whom, it turns out, the title character had killed. Grigori raises a general revolt and that character's health falls apart as he is taunted by military defeats and dreams of the murdered tsarevich. The opera ends with him dying in front of the assembled boyars.

Nucleus

This organelle is the "command central" of the cell because it contains almost all of the cell's DNA, which encodes the information needed to make all the proteins that the cell uses. The DNA appears as chromatin through most of the cell cycle but condenses to form chromosomes when the cell is undergoing mitosis. Commonly seen within the nucleus are dense bodies called nucleoli, which contain ribosomal RNA. In eukaryotes, this organelle is surrounded by a selectively-permeable nuclear envelope.

Anti-Masonic Party

This party became America's first third party by riding the tide of anti-Masonic sentiment following the 1826 disappearance of Freemason whistleblower William Morgan. For the 1832 election, this party selected William Wirt in the first presidential nominating convention in United States history. Running against eventual winner Andrew Jackson, a Democrat seeking re-election, and Henry Clay, a National Republican, Wirt managed to receive 8% of the popular vote and 7 electoral votes from Vermont. Vermont and Pennsylvania both elected governors from this party, and Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and other states all sent members of this party to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Communist Party of the United States of America

This party is notable mainly for attempts to outlaw it, such as the 1940 Smith Act which criminalized organizations advocating the violent overthrow of the government, and the inquiries of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senators Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. Though the 1951 Supreme Court case of Dennis v. U.S. ruled that there is no First Amendment right to advocate the overthrow of the government, general concerns about freedom of speech put an end to prosecutions of individuals solely for belonging to this Party by the early 1960s. This party ran Gus Hall for President four times, but was never a significant force at the ballot box.

Socialist Party

This party is usually associated with Eugene V. Debs, the face of the American socialist movement at its peak. He ran for president five times from 1900 to 1920, and managed to increase his vote counts with each successive campaign. He attracted over 900,000 votes twice: in 1912 with 6% of the vote, almost making it a four-way race, and in 1920, when Debs famously ran his campaign while imprisoned. Starting in 1928, his successor, Norman Thomas, ran for president six consecutive times, though the party was not quite able to replicate Debs's success.

Shannon River

This place is Ireland's longest river. It flows from Lough Allen, and Loughs Ree and Derg are also on its course. At Limerick, the river widens into its namesake estuary and runs for 50 more miles before it enters the Atlantic. Peat bogs and marshes line the river for much of its course, and this river is considered a dividing line between Ireland's more cultivated east and wild west. A chief tributary is the Suck River. It does not pass through Dublin, although the Liffey does.

Free Soil Party

This party was created through a union of anti-slavery factions from the two major parties, the Barnburner Democrats and Conscience Whigs. Its platform, unlike that of James G. Birney's earlier Liberty Party (established 1840), did not aim to abolish slavery, but rather to cease its expansion. As a result, this party backed the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Democratic Party on using popular sovereignty to decide slavery's status. In its first year, 1848, the party ended up with two Senators and fourteen Representatives in Congress. Presidential candidate Martin van Buren managed to capture 10% of the popular vote with this party, and his influence may have secured Whig candidate Zachary Taylor's close victory over Democrat Lewis Cass.

Dixiecrat Party

This party was founded by Southern Democrats to oppose president Truman's re-election bid, in response to his actions advancing civil rights. When Truman was nominated by the Democrats in 1948, members from the South stormed out of the convention, creating a further divide within the party. With South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as its candidate, this party, while receiving the same amount of votes as Henry Wallace, won 39 electoral votes from 4 Southern states. Though it was a temporary split, the issue of civil rights did not disappear.

Know-Nothing Party

This party, also known as the American Party, formed from the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant nativism of early America. Secret societies like the Order of the Star Spangled Banner had been sprouting up since the 1840s, but this Party was not a unified entity until the 1854 elections, when it won 52 of the 234 seats in the House, including the position of Speaker of the House. The 1856 presidential election was the first one for both this party behind Millard Fillmore and the Republican Party behind John C. Frémont. Fillmore received 22% of the popular vote but only 8 electoral votes from Maryland; Frémont won 11 states with 33% of the popular vote. Strong Southern support, however, allowed Democrat James Buchanan an easy win.

Ra

This personification of the midday sun was also venerated as Atum (setting sun) and Khepri (rising sun), which were later combined with him. He traveled across the sky each day and then each night, the monster Apep would attempt to prevent his return. Other myths held that this god spent the night in the underworld consoling the dead. He was also considered god of the pharaohs, and from the fourth dynasty onward all pharaohs termed themselves "sons of" this deity and after death they joined his entourage. He was portrayed with the head of a falcon, and crowned with the sun disc.

Diogenes

This philosopher was a student of Antisthenes, who founded the ancient school of philosophy known as Cynicism. The Cynics rejected conventional social norms in search of a truly virtuous life. According to legend, this thinker lived in a tub or a barrel on the street, and wandered Athens holding a lamp in his futile search for an honest man.

Aristotle

This philosopher was a student of Plato; in turn, he became a tutor to Alexander the Great. Many of his works come to us in the form of lectures he gave at his school, known as the Lyceum. His philosophical output includes the Nicomachean Ethics, which argues that virtues consist in a "golden mean" between two extremes; the Physics, which describes motion and change in terms of "four causes" that make a given thing what it is; and the Metaphysics, which describes the structure of reality. His Poetics discusses the types of drama and considers an effect of tragedies known as catharsis, or the purging of bad feelings.

Pragmatism

This philosophical movement values ideas based on their practical application (what is sometimes known as the "cash value" of an idea). Its prominent thinkers include William James and John Dewey (who wrote Democracy and Education). The founder of this school of thought was James's friend C. S. Peirce, who expounded its ideas in such essays as "The Fixation of Belief" and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear."

Chordata

This phylum is divided into three subphyla: Urochordata, the sea squirts; Cephalochordata, the lancelets, and the true vertebrates (Vertebrata, the most diverse subphylum). Defining traits of chordates include pharyngeal gill slits, a notochord, a post-anal tail, and a dorsal hollow nerve cord. In vertebrates, some of these structures are found only in embryonic stages. The lancelet Amphioxus (Branchiostoma) is often used as a demonstration organism in biology labs.

Murray Gell-Mann

This physicist predicted the existence of quarks, which compose protons, neutrons, and other, heavier particles.

George Gamow

This physicist was one of the first to explain the implications of the Big Bang theory of cosmology. He correctly predicted the abundance of hydrogen and helium in the early universe, nicknamed Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory (an intentional pun on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha, beta, and gamma, for which the otherwise unrelated physicist Hans Bethe was included), and also theorized that the the heat from the Big Bang would still be visible as the cosmic microwave background radiation. Although he received no Nobel for this prediction, the CMB's discoverers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, as well as two later observers, John Mather and George Smoot, did receive Nobels.

Requiem

This piece was Mozart's last composition; it was anonymously commissioned by the Count von Walsegg. Mozart died before he could finish it; many musicians have completed it, including Mozart's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and more recently Richard Maunder and Robert Levin. The scoring is notably for low-timbered instruments, omitting oboes and flutes and substituting basset horns for clarinets. The theme of the "Kyrie" was taken from "And With His Stripes We Are Healed," a chorus from Handel's Messiah. After the dramatic "Dies Irae," the "Tuba Mirum" begins with a trombone solo. The circumstances surrounding Mozart's death remain mysterious, and the (unfounded) rumor that Antonio Salieri murdered him gave rise to the Aleksandr Pushkin play Mozart and Salieri, which in turn inspired a Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov opera and Peter Shafer's Amadeus, which became an Academy Award-winning film.

Hudson River

This place has been a historically significant American river since the early 17th century. Named for an English explorer, it flows 315 miles through eastern New York state. After receiving the Mohawk River, this river flows past New York's capital of Albany and West Point before forming the boundary between Manhattan and New Jersey. It is also culturally significant as an inspiration for Washington Irving and a namesake School of American landscape painters.

Indus River

This place is the chief river of Pakistan as well as being the ultimate source of the name of India. It rises in Tibet and flows 1,800 miles to a delta on the Arabian Sea southeast of Karachi. The five major tributaries of this river, the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej Rivers, are the source of the name of the Punjab region, which is Persian for "Land of the Five Rivers". It was the cradle of the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the world's earliest urban areas, whose main cities were Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

This play centers on a fight between two sons (Gooper and Brick) over the estate of father "Big Daddy" Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie ("the cat"). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with--and win the inheritance for--Brick.

Mourning Becomes Electra

This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted." Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia's father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.

Death of a Salesman

This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff's moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.

Laocoon

This priest of Apollo shares Cassandra's doubt about the merits of bringing the Trojan horse into the Troy. "Timeo danaos et dona ferentes," he says (according to Vergil), "I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts." Later, while sacrificing a bull, two serpents from the sea crush both him and his two young sons. The death of this figure is often blamed on Athena (into whose temple the serpent disappeared) but more likely the act of Poseidon, a fierce Greek partisan.

Ymir

This primordial giant formed in the void of Ginnungagap from fire and ice. He gave birth to the frost giants and created the primordial cow Audhumla. He was killed by Odin and his brothers, who used his body to construct most of the universe.

Ajax

This prince of Salamis is the son of Telamon. During one day of the Trojan War, he fights all afternoon in single combat with Hector; since neither one can decisively wound the other, they part as friends. This Greek's most glorious achievement is fighting the Trojans back from the ships almost singlehandedly.

Ptah

This principal god of the city of Memphis was portrayed as a mummy, or wearing the beard of the gods on his chin. His godhood was achieved by himself, much like his creation power, done merely by act of will. A patron of craftsmen, he also was seen as a healer, in the form of a dwarf. In the death trilogy, he was seen as the god of embalming. His wife was the cat headed Sekhmet and his son was the lotus god Nefertem.

Voskhod

This program was quickly superseded by the Soyuz program. The spacecraft used in this program made use of Sergei Korolev's design. This program's missions were the first to contain multiple astronauts, and the platform for the first spacewalk.

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

This project marked a definite end to the Space Race, and was a symbol of the de-escalation of tensions between the US and the USSR. Deke Slayton, an original Mercury 7 astronaut grounded for medical reasons until 1973, was accompanied by Tom Stafford and Vance Brand on this last launch of Apollo before the advent of the Space Shuttle. The mission demonstrated that two dissimilar spacecraft could rendezvous and dock while in space, and also enabled a crew to photograph the Sun's corona through an artificial eclipse created by the Apollo spacecraft. Each spacecraft involved in this mission also carried out independent experiments.

Nathanael Greene

This prominent Rhode Island politician raised a militia company but was not elected their captain due to his partial lameness. Following his work in the siege of Boston, he marched his army to Long Island, where they aided in the battles around New York. Following the loss of Fort Washington, this general led forces into victory at the Battle of Trenton, and then again distinguished himself by protecting Washington's force at the Battle of Brandywine. Greene then led the main force at Germantown, and led the evacuation of positions along the Delaware River in fall 1777. The next year, this man's logistical talents led Washington to appoint him quartermaster general, a position he only accepted if he were allowed to retain field troops. He then led those troops as the right wing in the Battle of Monmouth. The quartermaster general position led to conflicts with the Continental Congress, leading this"fighting Quaker" to resign in 1780. Appointed to command to replace the traitor Benedict Arnold, he was sent south following Gates' loss at Camden. Joining with Daniel Morgan, he retreated from Cornwallis' forces for two months until a crippling counterattack at Guilford Courthouse, which gave a costly victory to the British. Until the end of the war, he led a spirited offensive against Lord Rawdon's, and later Duncan Stuart's, forces, besieging Augusta and Ninety-Six, and establishing headquarters in Charleston following Washington's victory at Yorktown.

Octavio Paz

This prominent poet and essayist supported leftist causes in Mexico and fought briefly for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He published the poetry collection Luna silvestre at age 19, and his 584-line poem The Sun Stone deals with the planet Venus, an important symbol to the Aztecs. While studying in Los Angeles, he observed flamboyantly dressed Mexican-American pachucos ("zoot-suiters"), who inspired him to write about Mexico and its Native American/mestizo heritage in his pivotal essay collection, The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Another prose work, In the Light of India (1997), reflected his part-(East) Indian heritage.

Okavango River

This river flows for about 1,000 miles from central Angola, through Namibia's Caprivi Strip, and into the Kalahari Desert of Botswana. There, rather than flowing into the sea, it terminates in a massive inland swamp known as this river's Delta, an area that, especially during the wet season, teems with wildlife in an otherwise inhospitable region.

Sigmund Freud

This psychologist founded the extremely influential discipline of psychoanalysis, which used the technique of "free association" to identify fears and repressed memories. He argued that many problems were caused by mental states rather than by biochemical dysfunction--a purely materialist viewpoint then in vogue. He separated the psyche into the id (illogical passion), ego (rational thought), and superego (moral and social conscience). His best known works are The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, though many others come up frequently in quiz bowl.

Erik Erikson

This psychologist is best known for his theories on how social institutions reflect the universal features of psychosocial development; in particular, how different societies create different traditions and ideas to accommodate the same biological needs. He created a notable eight-stage development process and wrote several "psychohistories" explaining how people like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi were able to think and act the way they did.

Jean Piaget

This psychologist is generally considered the greatest figure of 20th-century developmental psychology; he was the first to perform rigorous studies of the way in which children learn and come to understand and respond to the world around them. He is most famous for his theory of four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. His most famous works are The Language and Thought of a Child and The Origins of Intelligence in Children.

Carl Jung

This psychologist was a close associate of Freud's who split with him over the degree to which neuroses had a sexual basis. He went on to create the movement of "analytic psychology" and introduced the controversial notion of the "collective unconscious"--a socially shared area of the mind. He coined the terms "anima," "animus," "introversion," "extroversion," and "archetypes."

Alfred Adler

This psychologist was another close associate of Freud who split with him over Freud's insistence that sexual issues were at the root of neuroses and most psychological problems. He argued in The Neurotic Constitution that neuroses resulted from people's inability to achieve self-realization; in failing to achieve this sense of completeness, they developed "inferiority complexes" that inhibited their relations with successful people and dominated their relations with fellow unsuccessful people, a theory given the general name of "individual psychology."

Key

This quality in a piece of music is the "home" scale of the work. It is most often indicated by the work's key signature, a collection of sharps or flats that appears at the beginning of the work and on each subsequent line of music (a list of signatures may be found here). A pair of these things may be parallel (beginning on the same pitch, e.g., C major and C minor), or relative (having the same key signature, e.g., C major and A minor). Most works of music between the Baroque and Romantic periods end in the same one of these as they begin, with the exception that works in minor may end in the parallel major. These are often used as a descriptor in its title.

Kawabata Yasunari

This recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature was the first Japanese author to be so honored. His works combine classic Japanese values with modern trends and often center on the role of sex in people's lives. His works are often only a few pages long, a form given the name "palm-of-the-hand." He is best known for three novels: Thousand Cranes, based on the tea ceremony and inspired by The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain, about the relationship of an old man and his daughter-in-law; and Snow Country, about an aging geisha. A friend of Mishima Yukio, he was also associated with right-wing causes and openly protested the Cultural Revolution in China. He committed suicide two years after Mishima.

Assyria

This region located along the Upper Tigris River in modern-day Northern Iraq had major cities which included Aššur and Nineveh. This civilization was ruled at various times by the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian and Babylonian empires. In 911 BC, this civilization was founded by Ashur-Dan II, and it lasted until 612 BC. Some of the empire's greatest rulers were Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal. At its height, it ruled over all of Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Levant (the eastern shore of the Mediterranean).

Second Battle of Bull Run

This resounding victory by Lee and Jackson pushed Union forces back to Washington, D.C. President Lincoln had replaced McClellan with John Pope, who would supposedly be united with the Army of the Potomac, commanded by Henry Halleck. Lee maneuvered Jackson's troops behind those of Pope; Jackson detained Pope's men at Manassas while Lee sent James Longstreet to crush Pope's left flank. Halleck's army was supposed to land at Aquia, but instead retreated to defend Washington, ceding all of Virginia to the Confederacy and marking a low point in the Union effort.

Rhine River

This river begins in the Swiss Alps, passes through Lake Constance, flows west along the German-Swiss border, then turns north to form part of the German-French border. It then flows north and joins with the Meuse and Scheldt to enter the North Sea at a delta in the Netherlands. Cities along its course include Basel, Strasbourg, Mainz, Bonn, Cologne, and Rotterdam, and tributaries include the Main, Mosel, and Ruhr. This river has played a strategic role in most German conflicts since the time of the Gallic Wars, but was not established as an international waterway until the Rhine Commission of 1815. German myth tells of the Lorelei, a nymph who lured sailors on this river to their deaths.

St. Lawrence River

This river drains the Great Lakes and serves as a major waterway of eastern Canada. First explored and named by Jacques Cartier in the early 16th century, this river emerges from the northeastern corner of Lake Ontario in the Thousand Islands archipelago, forming the border between Ontario and New York. This river receives the Ottawa and Saguenay Rivers and flows through Montreal and Quebec City. At its mouth, the gulf of this river is one of the world's largest estuaries.

Ohio River

This river flows 981 miles through a significant industrial region of the central United States. Historically seen as the border between the northern and southern United States, this river is formed in downtown Pittsburgh by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, flowing past Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Evansville, forming borders of five states before emptying into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. Other major tributaries of this river include the Kanawha, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wabash, and Cumberland Rivers.

Robert Millikan

This scientist determined the charge of the electron by meticulously observing oil droplets in an electric field and noting the time it took them to fall a certain distance.

Rio Grande

This river has formed the border between Texas and four Mexican states since 1848. It flows south out of Colorado through New Mexico before reaching the international boundary near El Paso. Texas's Big Bend National Park is named for the sweeping curve this river cuts through the Sierra Madre Oriental. After leaving the mountains, this river flows past Laredo and Brownsville before it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Missouri River

This river is North America's longest, at 2,341 miles. It is formed in western Montana by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers. It flows past Bismarck, North Dakota and Kansas City before emptying into the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. Lewis and Clark used this river as a route for exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. It is regulated by a number of major dams, including Fort Peck in Montana and Oahe Dam in South Dakota.

Mekong River

This river is the chief river of Southeast Asia. It originates in eastern Tibet, forms much of the Laos-Thailand border, flows south through Cambodia, and enters the South China Sea in southern Vietnam just south of Ho Chi Minh City. The capital cities of Vientiane and Phnom Penh are on this river. The building of dams and clearing of rapids are a source of diplomatic conflict between China, Laos, and Cambodia.

Tigris River

This river is the eastern of the two that define the historic region of Mesopotamia (meaning, "The Land Between Two Rivers") that was home to the ancient civilizations of Sumer and Akkad. It rises in Turkey, then flows southeast by Mosul, Tikrit, and Baghdad before joining the Euphrates to make the Shatt-al-Arab, which subsequently empties into the Persian Gulf.

Mississippi River

This river is the second-longest in North America behind the Missouri. Referred to by Abraham Lincoln as "the father of waters," it begins at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and flows 2,340 miles to a vast delta on the Gulf of Mexico, forming portions of ten state borders and the world's third-largest drainage basin. This river picks up numerous major tributaries including the Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Red Rivers and flows past numerous major cities including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans.

Jordan River

This river rises in Syria from springs near Mount Hermon. It flows south to Lake Merom, through the Sea of Galilee, and into the Dead Sea, which lies 1,300 feet below sea level. The river forms the nation of Jordan's boundary with the West Bank and northern Israel. In the New Testament, the river was the site of the baptism of John the Baptist. In modern times, about 80% of its water is diverted for human use, a figure that has led to the shrinking of the Dead Sea and serious contention among bordering nations.

Brahmaputra River

This river runs 1,800 miles from its source in the Tibetan Himalayas; it starts eastward across the plateau, then turns south into the Indian state of Assam, and then enters Bangladesh where it merges with the Ganges to form the world's largest delta. While serving as a historical route to Tibet, the river is also prone to disastrous flooding.

Niger River

This river, Africa's third-longest, flows in a great clockwise arc through Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria before entering the Gulf of Guinea. The medieval Mali and Songhai Empires were centered on this river, whose course was mapped by Scottish explorer Mungo Park in the 1790s. In Nigeria, it receives the Benue River, its main tributary. The massive Niger Delta, known for its fisheries, wildlife, and petroleum, is an area of increasing social unrest.

Hohenzollern

This royal house began as Burgraves of Nuremburg, but eventually gained such titles as Margrave of Brandenburg, Duke and later King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany, and King of Romania. Some of its notable rulers included Frederick the Great (an Enlightened ruler who established the military might of Prussia) and Wilhelm II (the Emperor of Germany during World War I).

Orange-Nassau

This royal house was founded by William the Silent, who led the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish in the Eighty Years War, resulting in the recognition of the Netherlands' independence in 1648. In 1688, a member of this house, at the invitation of Parliament, invaded England with his wife Mary in what is called the Glorious Revolution. This house is currently led by Willem-Alexander, the King of the Netherlands.

Avesta

This sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism consists of five parts: Gathas (poems written by Zoroaster), Visparat (homages to spiritual leaders), Vendidad (legal and medical doctrine), Yashts (hymns to angels and heroes), and Khurda (lesser rituals and hymns). The Gathas may be as old as the 7th century BC, when Zoroaster is thought to have lived, but most of this text was put together by the Sassanid Persian dynasty, between 200 and 640. Zoroastrianism centers on the eternal struggle between a good entity (Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd) and its evil counterpart (Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman); the religion is still practiced by about 120,000 Parsees in Bombay and a few thousand adherents in Iran and Iraq.

Skepticism

This school of thought encourages the rejection of truths unless they are supported by sufficient evidence. The academic school of this philosophy, which states that no truths can be certain, was led by such men as Arcesilaus and Carneades. Another form of this philosophy is known as "Pyrrhonian," after Pyrrho of Elis, who is considered the founder of skepticism. The thinker Sextus Empiricus, who lived in the second century AD, provided one of the most complete accounts of this idea in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism.

Positivism

This school of thought encourages the use of the scientific method to discover the laws that govern society. It was founded by the 19th-century Frenchman Auguste Comte, who believed that society develops through three stages (which he termed the theocratic, metaphysical, and positive).

Empiricism

This school of thought is the view that all knowledge derives from sensory experience. John Locke, whose works include An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, thought that the mind starts out as a tabula rasa and that we gain knowledge through experiences. Other philosophers from this school include George Berkeley (who wrote A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge) and David Hume (who wrote An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).

Scholasticism

This school of thought was taught at medieval Christian universities and sought to reconcile Christian thought with classical thinkers such as Aristotle. This school included Thomas Aquinas, who provided five arguments for the existence of God in his Summa Theologica. Other thinkers include Pierre Abelard and Peter Lombard.

Richard Feynman

This scientist developed a mathematical formalism called the path integral formulation of quantum theory that utilized the "sum over histories," taking into account all possible paths a particle could take. This constituted the creation of quantum electrodynamics and earned him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. He also used the sum over histories in developing his namesake diagrams, which illustrate the interaction of subatomic particles. Aside from being a prolific physicist, this man was also an accomplished bongo player and sketch artist.

Parthian Empire

This second major Persian Empire was founded by Arsaces I, who rebelled against the Seleucid Empire. they often fought with Rome, and at the 53 BC Battle of Carrhae, the Roman general Crassus was killed. This Empire was supplanted by the Sassanian Empire in AD 224.

Mount Kenya

This second tallest mountain in Africa shares its name with the country in which it is located. British geographer and political theorist Halford Mackinder led the group that was the first to ascend the peak, which bypassed the Darwin Glacier and proceeded up the Diamond Glacier. Like Kilimanjaro, it was formed by a now-dormant volcano, and, like Kilimanjaro, part of its notoriety rests on a book. This mountain's name appears in an anthropological study of the Kikuyu by Jomo Kenyatta.

Congo River

This second-longest river in Africa flows in a counterclockwise arc some 2,900 miles to the Atlantic Ocean. The Upper part of this river's principal sources are Lualaba, which rises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga province, and Zambia's Chambeshi River. Boyoma Falls (formerly Stanley Falls), a section of seven cataracts near Kisangani, marks the true beginning of this river. Forming the Malebo Pool near the world capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the Lower part of this river flows past Angola's Cabinda exclave as it enters the ocean. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness depicts the often cruel conditions this river's basin endured as a Belgian colony.

Madden NFL

This series has featured yearly installments since 1990 and is published by EA Sports (which also publishes the FIFA soccer series). This series traditionally features a different player on its box art each year; an apparent string of injuries to and poor seasons by players on the cover of that particular year's game has become known as this game's namesake Curse.

WarCraft

This series, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, helped popularize the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, in which players fight against each other by constructing buildings and armies as quickly as possible. The first game in the series pitted Humans against Orcs; later games added Night Elves and Undead. A 2004 MMORPG (massively multiplayer online RPG), set in this game's universe, has had over 10 million subscribers.

Rama

This seventh avatar of Vishnu is hero of the Ramayana. Born as a prince to King Dasharatha and Queen Kaushalya, he wins the hand of his wife Sita in a competition held by Sita's father, King Janaka; only he can string Shiva's bow. When his aunt Kaikeyi schemes to deprive him of Dasharatha's throne by putting her son Bharata there, he and Sita are banished to a forest for 14 years. During that time, the ten-headed demon Ravana kidnaps Sita but this deity rescues her and killed Ravana. Bharata abdicates; this god then makes Sita walk through fire to prove that Ravana had not corrupted her.

USS Chesapeake

This ship was built at what is now the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, between 1798 and 1799. She was attacked by the British Leopard off Cape Henry in 1807 (which led to the duel between Commodores James Barron and Stephen Decatur), one of the causes of the War of 1812. She was captured off Boston in 1813 by the British frigate Shannon, on which occasion her commander, Capt. James Lawrence, uttered his celebrated dying words, "Don't give up the ship," which have become a tradition in the U.S. Navy.

USS Monitor

This ship was sent to end the CSS Virginia's rampage and the two ironclads battled for 3 1/2 hours before the Virginia ran aground in its attempt to ram the USS Minnesota. Visibly damaged, the Virginia retreated and this ship withdrew to protect the Minnesota. The Confederates destroyed the Virginia soon after to prevent her capture by Union forces. This ironclad, victorious in her first battle, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, NC. The shipwreck is a national underwater sanctuary under the purview of the NOAA.

USS Arizona

This ship, a lead ship of the honor escort for President Wilson's trip to France in 1918, was on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor when Japanese aircraft appeared just before 8:00 am on Sunday, December 7, 1941. This ship came under attack almost immediately, and at about 8:10 was hit by an 800-kilogram bomb just forward of turret two on the starboard side. Within a few seconds the forward powder magazines exploded, killing 1,177 of the crew, and the ship sank to the bottom of the harbor. In 1962 a memorial to this ship opened and is now administered by the National Park Service.

USS Maine

This ship, a second-class armored battleship, was launched in 1889. A part of the "Great White Fleet," in 1897 this ship sailed for Havana to show the flag and protect American citizens. Shortly after 9:40 pm on February 15, 1898, the battleship was torn apart by a tremendous explosion. The court of inquiry convened in March was unable to obtain evidence associating the blast with any person or persons, but public opinion—inflamed by "yellow journalism"—was such that this ship's sinking led to the declaration of war on Spain on April 21, 1898.

Yuan Dynasty

This short-lived dynasty established by the invading Mongols, who destroyed the Jin and Song states. Its most notable ruler was Kublai Khan, whose invasions of Japan were thwarted typhoons that the Japanese called the kamikaze, or "divine wind." Their rulers were hostile to many Chinese institutions and thus received minimal support from the Chinese elites. The Red Turban rebellion of the 1350s marked the beginning of the end for the Yuan.

The Honeymooners

This show is considered the first TV spinoff, as it centered on a character—Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden—who had previously been introduced on The Jackie Gleason Show. Ralph's wife Alice was frequently the recipient of his bombastic threats, such as "Bang zoom, straight to the moon!". Like I Love Lucy, the show also centrally featured a neighbor couple—in this case, Ed and Trixie Norton. Although The Honeymooners is now considered a classic sitcom, it was not very popular at the time, and only 39 episodes aired in its original one-season run.

Battle of Yorktown

This siege essentially ended the American Revolutionary War, although the Treaty of Paris wasn't signed until two years later. George Washington, with help from the French navy under the Comte de Grasse, surrounded the forces of Cornwallis and forced the British to surrender. General Charles O'Hara presented Cornwallis's sword of surrender.

Anubis

This son of Osiris and Nepthys, and god of embalming to the Egyptians was typically pictured with the head of a jackal. He also served as the god of the desert and the watcher of the tombs. He also served to introduce the dead to the afterlife, and as their judge. To decide the fate of the dead, this god would weigh the heart of the dead against the feather of truth. He is sometimes identified with Hermes or Mercury.

Babe Ruth

This son of a saloon keeper grew up on the Baltimore waterfront and in the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. Released after signing a baseball contract with the minor league Baltimore Orioles, he was bought by the Boston Red Sox and played with them for six seasons, winning 87 games and 3 World Series, and, in 1919, setting a new single-season home record of 29. Already famous as a player, eater, and carouser, Boston sold him to New York for the 1920 season, where his fame became legend. Moved from the pitchers mound to the outfield, he won 9 homer titles and 4 World Series from 1920 to 1934. In 1927 he hit 60 home runs and lead the Yankee lineup known as Murderers Row to a sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He hit his controversial "Called Shot" homer against the Cubs during the third game of the 1932 World Series after allegedly gesturing towards the centerfield stands. Since his retirement from baseball in 1935, many of his most famous pitching and batting records have been surpassed, but power hitting as a legitimate approach towards playing baseball continues.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

This suit was filed on behalf of Linda Brown, a third grader, who had to walk a mile to a blacks-only school when a whites-only school was much closer. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case for the plaintiff. The court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were not constitutional. A second case in 1955 required that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed" but Southern schools were notoriously slow in complying; it was not until 1970 that a majority had complied with the ruling.

Fletcher v. Peck

This suit was the result of a 1795 incident where the Georgia legislature corruptly sold land along the Yazoo River (now in Mississippi) to private citizens in exchange for bribes. The legislators were mostly defeated in the next elections and the incoming politicians voided the sales. In the meantime, the defendant in this lawsuit sold some of the land in question to Robert Fletcher, who then sued him, claiming that he did not have clear title. The Supreme Court held that the state legislature did not have the power to repeal the sale. This was one of the earliest cases in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law.

Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major (Eroica)

This symphony was composed during the first part of his middle stylistic period, often referred to as his "heroic decade." Beethoven may have been influenced in the work's composition by his personal confrontation with his growing deafness. The second movement is a solemn, C minor funeral march, while the finale is a playful set of variations on a melody Beethoven used in several other works. The composer originally intended to title the symphony "Bonaparte"; in a popular but possibly apocryphal story, Beethoven ripped the title page from the score upon hearing that Napoleon had declared himself emperor.

Tariff

This tax is placed on the import (common) or export (rarer) of a good. They have various—often controversial—sociopolitical goals, but economists agree that they raise consumer prices relative to equilibrium (resulting in a lower quantity demanded). They are analyzed similar to quotas, in which a government limits the amount of a good that may be imported.

Twelve-tone technique

This technique was developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s, and is one method of writing atonal music—music that has no key or tonic pitch. Works using this technique are based on a tone row constructed from each of the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale, each used only once. This row may be inverted and/or presented in retrograde (backwards), a combination of possibilities often represented in a namesake matrix (for an example, see here; curious readers may experiment with creating their own row/matrix here). This technique is one form of serialism, the rigid structuring of various musical elements within a work. A work of total serialism applies the same process to dynamics, articulations, and other basic elements of music as well as pitch.

Billie Jean King

This tennis player had 12 Grand Slam singles wins (including six Wimbledons) and 20 overall Wimbledon titles. This athlete, however, is best known for advancing women's athletics. Her brother, Randy Moffitt, pitched for the San Francisco Giants; she herself reached a #4 world ranking in 1960 and turned pro eight years later. At the time, prize money for women was paltry, so she co-founded the Virginia Slims Tour, and in 1971 became the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a year. Two years later, in front of over 30,000 at the Astrodome, she whipped Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes." She retired in 1983, but not before winning a singles tournament at age 39.

Margaret Smith Court

This tennis player was a prolific winner of 62 Grand Slam titles, 24 of them in singles (3 Wimbledon, 5 French, 5 U.S., and 11 in her native Australia). Billie Jean King called her "The Arm" because of her long reach, aided by her height of nearly six feet. In 1970 she became the second woman (after Maureen Connolly) to win the Grand Slam, taking 21 singles championships overall that year; less impressive was her 1973 loss to 55-year old Bobby Riggs. She did defeat King, Riggs's nemesis, 22 of 32 times. She retired in 1977 and became a lay minister.

Bjorn Borg

This tennis player won Wimbledon five straight years (1976-80) and the French Open six times, for a total of 11 majors. He got started at age nine, after his father won a tennis racket in a ping-pong tournament and gave it to him. He took his first French in 1974 and dominated through 1981, when John McEnroe finally knocked him off at Wimbledon.This athlete then inexplicably retired at 26; he tried an unsuccessful comeback in the early 1990s. Despite his great success, he never won the U.S. Open (reaching the final four times). He played at the Australian Open only once, usually preferring to take the winter months off.

Steffi Graf

This tennis player's most famous shot earned her the moniker "Fraulein Forehand." She turned pro at age 13 and steadily rose through the rankings, garnering the #1 ranking and her first major (French) in 1987. The following year, she made history by winning the Grand Slam and the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics, the only player ever to go 5-for-5 in one year. Seven Wimbledons, six French, five U.S., and four Australians add up to 22 major career singles crowns—the last coming at the French in 1999 after two years of major back injuries. She retired that fall, and is now raising her son Jaden with her husband Andre Agassi.

Invisible Hand

This term refers to the metaphorical notion that producers and consumers acting in their own narrow interest (e.g., by trying to maximize income from their business) will create an overall benefit to society. This might happen by their rewarding technologies that make production more efficient, rewarding firms who can sell at lower cost, rewarding inventors who discover new processes, and so on. The phrase was introduced by Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, but the modern understanding (and broad-based application of the metaphor) is due to later thinkers.

Reform Party

This was created to follow up on Ross Perot's 1992 independent campaign for President, in which he won 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes, making him the most successful alternative candidate by vote count since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Reform Party members agreed on the need for a balanced budget and changes to the electoral process, and were generally opposed to free trade agreements and immigration. The lack of a unified platform on other issues led to constant infighting over the party's goals and an inability to capitalize on Perot's initial success. Perot ran under the Reform banner again in the 1996 election, taking 8% of the vote. The Reform Party is perhaps best known for candidate Jesse Ventura's surprise victory in the 1998 election for governor of Minnesota. In the 2000 election cycle, a conservative faction led by Pat Buchanan took over the party, leading to the departure of many Perot supporters including Ventura, who left the party midway through his governorship, and causing the effective end of the Reform Party. Buchanan received several disputed votes under the Reform Party line on the infamous 2000 Florida "butterfly ballot."

SpaceX CSR-1

This was the first commercial mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). A structural failure in one of the nine Merlin engines that make up the Falcon 9 rocket first stage necessitated a longer burn with the remaining eight engines. That correction resulted in a proper orbital insertion for the primary payload (a Dragon resupply vehicle), but an unstable, decaying orbit for its secondary payload (an ORBCOMM satellite). This was taken as a proof of concept by its sponsor for the redundant, multiple-engine design. The craft successfully berthed with the ISS and successfully carried out its primary mission, re-supplying the space station and returning cargo to Earth.

Ming Dynasty

This was the last native dynasty of China; its rulers came from the Zhu family. The use of the word "china" to describe fine porcelain originated from this period, as this dynasty was well-known for producing high-quality porcelain. Its founding ruler, Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Hongwu), was a peasant leader of the Red Turbans who helped expel the Mongol Yuan rulers from China. He was succeeded by his grandson, who quickly lost power to Zhu Di (Emperor Yongle). During the reign of the Yongle emperor, the eunuch Zheng He led treasure fleets on seven voyages to display Chinese greatness. Zhu Di moved China's capital to Beijing. After his death, this dynasty banned maritime commerce, which left the dynasty vulnerable to pirates. This dynasty came to an end after the rebellion of Li Zicheng, which was caused by inadequate government response to inflation, famine, and floods. Simultaneously, the Manchu people, tributaries of the Ming from northeast China ("Manchuria") in modern day Manchuria, marched on the Great Wall. The Manchus suppressed Li Zicheng's revolt and took power in Beijing themselves.

Gloria Steinem

This woman is a journalist who founded and edited Ms. magazine. For an article in Show magazine in 1963, she went undercover as a Playboy bunny. Having had an abortion herself, she became a prominent advocate of abortion rights. She worked as a writer for New York magazine when she founded Ms., a feminist magazine devoted to women's issues. The magazine also popularized the use of the title "Ms." to address women regardless of marital status. This feminist also wrote the book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), and the phrase "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" is often attributed to her.

Betty Friedan

This woman was a writer and activist best known as the author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and as the most prominent co-founder of the National Organization for Women. In 1957, she conducted a survey of graduates of her alma mater, Smith College, and found that many of them were unhappy with their lives. She labeled this general unhappiness "the problem with no name." She then began writing The Feminine Mystique, in which she argued that being a housewife is unfulfilling and advocated for women to seek education and work outside the home.

Emmeline Pankhurst

This woman was the most prominent advocate for women's voting rights in the United Kingdom. As one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union, she called for direct action and frequent protests to force male politicians to grant votes to women. Her protests frequently got her arrested, and while in jail she and other suffragettes often went on hunger strikes. Initially, prison officials brutally force-fed the hunger-striking suffragettes. In 1913, Parliament passed the Cat and Mouse Act, which provided for hunger strikers to be released from jail and re-arrested after they regained their health. As a result of the advocacy of this feminist and others, Parliament began to grant voting rights to women in 1918.

Hadith

This word refers to a report of the words or actions of a Muslim religious figure, most frequently the Prophet Muhammad. Each consists of a matn, or text of the original oral law itself, as well as an isnad, or chain of authorities through which it has been passed by word of mouth through the generations. Collectively, these works point Muslims toward the Sunna, or practice of the Prophet, which together with the Qur'an forms the basis for shari'a , usually translated as Islamic law.

Beethoven's Fidelio, op. 72

This work is Beethoven's only opera. The libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner, with revisions by Stephan von Breuning and Georg Treitschke. Leonore wishes to rescure her husband Florestan from the prison of the evil Pizarro; to do so, she disguises herself as a boy, the opera's namesake, so that the jailer Rocco will hire her to help him, and thus grant her access to her husband. Beethoven struggled with his opera: he first presented it as a three-act work before cutting it to the present two-act form, and wrote four separate overtures. The opera utilizes some spoken (rather than sung) dialogue, and includes "O what joy," a chorus sung by prisoners.

Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor (Appassionata)

This work's title was applied by a publisher some years after Beethoven's death. This sonata begins ominously: a theme descends in open octaves to the lowest note of the contemporary piano before rising again in an arpeggio, immediately repeated a minor second higher. The second movement has no stable conclusion, instead directly leading to the third through the use of a diminished seventh chord. The final movement's coda, which itself introduces new thematic material, is one of the most demanding and difficult passages in all of the composer's repertoire.

Chartists

This working-class movement in industrial England was so named because it advocated the adoption of the People's Charter of 1838, which was written by six members of Parliament and six workers and called for the democratization of the political system by instituting universal suffrage, secret ballots, the abolition of property qualifications to stand for election, salaries for members of Parliament, constituencies of equal size, and annual parliamentary elections. This reform movement inspired several mass rallies, peaking in size in 1848 as the rest of Europe was swept up in revolution. They did not directly inspire any political reforms, but Parliament gradually granted five of the six demands of the Charter (the demand for annual elections was the only one never implemented).

Carlos Fuentes

Though born into a well-to-do family, this man has often dealt with the betrayed ideals from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the subject of both his first novel, Where the Air is Clear (1958), and his most successful book, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Other notable novels include Terra nostra, set during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, and The Old Gringo, which portrays Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico. This author has also penned absurdist plays and essay collections on Mexican and American art and literature.

Stanley Milgram

Though he did the work that created the idea of "six degrees of separation" and the "lost-letter" technique, this psychologist is mainly remembered for his experiments on "obedience to authority" that he performed at Yale in 1961-1962. He found that two-thirds of his subjects were willing to administer terrible electric shocks to innocent, protesting human beings simply because a researcher told them the experimental protocol demanded it.

Louis VIII

Though he reigned for only three years, this king's contributions to the rise of French power were enormous. He annexed Languedoc and captured Poitou from England. Perhaps more importantly, he established the systems of appanages (land grants) which replaced the older, local nobles with barons who owed their fiefs to the crown. This allowed for the subsequent rise in French royal (and national) power.

John Lackland

Though he tried to seize the crown from his brother Richard while the latter was in Germany, Richard forgave this king and made him his successor. Excommunicated by the Pope for four years for refusing to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, this English monarch was also weak as a fighter, as French King Philip II routed him at Bouvines in 1214. A year later, England's barons forced this leader to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede, an event that marked the beginning of the development of the British constitution.

Tempo

Traditionally, this quality, the speed of a piece, is indicated through the use of Italian-language terms. Some of the most common markings of this quality are largo (very slow), adagio (slow), andante ("walking speed"), allegro (fast), and presto (very fast). This quality may also be indicated by a metronome marking, which indicates the number of a certain type of note per minute (e.g., quarter note = 120). They are often modified with Italian adjectives, such as allegro con fuoco (fast, with fire), which can make them more unique. Movements from larger works are often referred to by this quality (e.g. "the Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th symphony"); entire works may also be named for it.

Peninsular Campaign

Union commander George McClellan devised this plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia by sending 110,000 men up the peninsula between the York and James rivers. Advised of Northern maneuvers, Southern commander Joseph Johnston detached a force to defend the peninsula. He also sent a small unit (led by Stonewall Jackson) that crushed Union reinforcements in the West. After Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines (June 1), Davis replaced him with Robert E. Lee. Lee concentrated his force north of the Chickahominy River; in the Seven Days' Battles (June 25-July 1), the Confederates broke through Union defenses, leading to McClellan's retreat down the James toward Harrison's Landing, and failure of this campaign.

Nile River

Usually cited as the longest in the world, this river flows about 4,132 miles in a generally south-to-north direction from its headwaters in Burundi to Egypt's Mediterranean Sea coast, where it forms a prototypical delta. Over 80% of its flow comes from the shorter Blue headstream, which arises from Ethiopia's Lake Tana and meets the longer White strain of this river, whose headwaters include Lake Victoria, at Khartoum. At the first of its six cataracts is the Aswan High Dam, which forms Lake Nasser and greatly reduces the annual floods.

Germantown

Washington's attack on this city was the Continental Army's last major effort to retake Philadelphia before the winter of 1777-1778. After this defeat, Washington's troops wintered at Valley Forge.

Zambezi River

Weaving across southern Africa, this river rises in eastern Angola, passes through Zambia, flows along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, crosses through Mozambique, and enters the Indian Ocean's Mozambique Channel near Chinde. Namibia's Caprivi Strip was created to allow access this river. The Cabora Bassa and Kariba Dams form large lakes of the same name. The most notable feature of this river is Victoria Falls, or Mosi-oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders"), which is over a mile wide and is the largest waterfall by flow rate in Africa. This river separates Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Charles II

While Cromwell ruled the Commonwealth, this man was crowned King of Scotland in 1651. After Cromwell died, this English king used the Declaration of Breda to restore himself to the English throne. He fought two lackluster wars against the Dutch, and needed protection from Louis XIV through the Treaty of Dover. His wife Catherine of Braganza produced no legitimate heirs, but this "Merry Monarch" has as many as 14 illegitimate children. Tolerant of Catholics, he dissolved Parliament over the issue in 1681 and refused to prevent his brother James from succeeding him.

Mario Vargas Llosa

While attending military school in Lima, this author wrote the play The Escape of the Inca (1952), but the harsh treatment he received there was the basis for his best-known novel, The Time of the Hero. Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) was his serious take on living under the dictatorship of Manuel Odría, while in 1977 he published the lighter, autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, about soap operas. Other important works include The War of the End of the World and A Fish in the Water, which discusses his political career; he ran for president of Peru in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.

The Abduction from the Seraglio

While often called an opera, this Mozart piece, is, like The Magic Flute, actually a Singspiel with spoken dialogue (as opposed to sung recitatives). The action takes place at the home of the Ottoman Pasha Selim, and the music uses "Janissary" military instruments associated with "Turkish" music. Belmonte is trying to rescue his lover Konstanze from the title harem; he is assisted by Pedrillo, his servant, while Osmin works for the Pasha. In the end, the Pasha releases Belmonte and Konstanze, much to Osmin's chagrin. Famous arias include Osmin's "O, wie will ich triumphieren" and Konstanze's incredibly difficult "Martern aller Arten." According to one story, Joseph II accused it of having "too many notes."

1912 Summer Olympics

While the Swedes introduced electronic timers during these Olympics, the athletic hero was United States decathlete and Native American Jim Thorpe. He won the pentathlon, placed fourth in the high jump, and seventh in the long jump. Finally, Thorpe went on to win the decathlon with a score so astounding that it would still have won him the silver medal in 1948. During the medal presentation, Swedish king Gustav V said, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete" to which Thorpe purportedly replied "Thanks, King."

Battle of Stalingrad

With about two million casualties, this battle is often cited as the bloodiest in history. The battle arose out of Germany's summer campaign to capture vital oil supplies in the Caucasus Mountains, but Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army became bogged down in intense street fighting in the city, allowing Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov to launch Operation Uranus, which encircled Paulus's men by defeating the Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian forces guarding their flank. In the final days of the battle, Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal, a not-so-subtle suggestion that Paulus should either fight to the death or commit suicide, as no German field marshal had ever been captured; Paulus surrendered anyway.