ACMS Academic Bowl Review
Johannes Kepler
German astronomer who developed his 3 laws of planetary motion by the careful analysis of the data that his mentor, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, had compiled
Grimm
German brothers who collaborated to publish their fairy tales.
Centers for Disease Control
Give the full name of the acronym CDC.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid
Give the full name of the acronym DNA.
International Olympic Committee
Give the full name of the acronym IOC.
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation
Give the full name of the acronym LASER.
National Rifle Association
Give the full name of the acronym NRA.
New York Stock Exchange
Give the full name of the acronym NYSE.
Lake Tahoe
Glacial lake in the valley of the Sierra Nevada on the California-Nevada border
King Lear's daughters
Goneril, Regan, Cordelia
Trickle Down Economics
Government giving benefits to the wealthy in the expectation that middle and lower classes will benefit
American Gothic
Grant Wood, 1930 work
Northwest Territories
Great Bear Lake Canada's largest lake, the 4th largest in North America, located in the _________________________
Burial of Count Orgaz
Great work by El Greco
Euclid
Greek author of Elements, the first geometry textbook...Father of Geometry
Cilia
Hairlike projections that extend from the plasma membrane and are used for locomotion
Injun Joe
Half-breed who kills Dr. Robinson in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Gucci Gulch
Hallways outside of Congressional meeting rooms where lobbyists wearing Gucci shoes wait to have a word with members of Congress
Ugly Duckling
Hans Christian Andersen animal that grows into a graceful swan.
Antonio Guterres
He is a Portuguese politician and diplomat who is currently serving as the ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Ban Ki-Moon
He is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 2007 to December 2016.
Pope Francis
He is the current Bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church (a Jesuit from Argentina)
James Otis
He said "Taxation without representation is tyranny"
Thomas More
He was a English humanist that contributed to the world today by revealing the complexities of man. He wrote Utopia, a book that represented a revolutionary view of society.
Vittorio Orlando
He was the Italian representative at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He pushed for a revenge-based treaty at Versailles, hampering the 14 points.
Edmund Spenser
He wrote The Faerie Queene
Attorney General
Head of the Justice Department and the government's chief law enforcement officer
Yom Kippur
Hebrew name for the Day of Atonement, the holiest Jewish observance during which forgiveness of sins is sought through prayer and fasting
Paul Revere's Ride
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem about the invasion by the British.
Evangeline
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem set in Acadia
The Courtship of Miles Standish
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem with characters Priscilla Mullins, John Alden, and Miles Standish
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville's epic novel about a great white whale pursued by the monomania- cal Captain Ahab
Bartleby the Scrivener
Herman Melville; Short story narrated by a character known simply as the Lawyer.
Ramayana
Hindu epic about the godlike Rama
Odyssey
Homer's epic about events after the Trojan War
Corona
Hot, outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere
China's Sorrow
Huang he (yellow river) nickname due to being disastrous to civilizations because of flooding
Eiffel Tower
Huge tower erected on the Champ de Mars in 1889 for an international exposition.
Ulysses
Husband of the mythological Penelope.
Liberia
In 1820, the American Colonization Society created a colony in West Africa for freed slaves to go. By the 1840s this colony had its own constitution and became and independent nation...Monrovia is the capital
Meiji Restoration
In 1868, a Japanese state-sponsored industrialization and westernization effort that also involved the elimination of the Shogunate and power being handed over to the Japanese Emperor, who had previously existed as mere spiritual/symbolic figure.
John Hinkley Jr
In 1981, attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan
Geraldine Ferraro
In 1984 she was the first woman to appear on a major-party presidential ticket. She was a congresswoman running for Vice President with Walter Modale.
Roc
In Arabian mythology a bird of great size and strength, taken from tale in Arabian Nights
Mr. McGregor's garden
In Beatrix Potter's story, garden where Peter Rabbit shouldn't go
Yarmulke
In Orthodox Judaism and Conservative Judaism, skull cap worn by men and boys, especially while praying or studying
Works by Ernest Hemingway
In Our Time; The Sun Also Rises; A Farewell to Arms; For Whom the Bell Tolls; The Old Man and the Sea; Intruder in the Dust
Altitude
In geometry, line segment whose length is the height of a polygon or a polyhedron
postulate or axiom
In geometry, name given to a statement accepted as true without proof
Ganges
India's sacred river beginning in the Himalayas and emptying into the Bay of Bengal
Madagascar
Indian Ocean island whose capital is Antananrivo...(4th largest island in the world)
Hiawatha
Indian leader who lives with his wife, Minnehaha, near a lake called Gitchee Gumee in a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem
Archipelago
Indonesia is the Largest ______________________ or largest group of islands
Dutch East Indies
Indonesia...capital Jakarta is an Asian country formerly known as the ________________________
Sumatra
Indonesian island in the Indian Ocean northwest of Java and west of Malaysia (6th largest island in the world)...largest island completely within Indonesia
Airavata
Indra's white elephant
Salvation Army
International Christian organization organized by William Booth, a Methodist minis- ter, in London in 1865, providing help to the needy and operated in military fashion
Martinique
Island and overseas department of France in the Windward Islands of the West Indies
Cyprus
Island country in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey and west of Syria—it is the 3rd largest Mediterranean island and its inhabitants are about 4/5ths Greek and 1/5th Turkish
Bahamas
Island country made up of about 700 islands in the Atlantic east of Florida and Cuba...capital is Nassau
Java
Island in Indonesia...and the world's most populated island.
Borneo
Island in the Malay Archipelago, southwest of the Philippines, the southern part of which is located in Indonesia (3rd largest island in the world)
Treasure Island
Island on which Captain Flint's treasure is buried in Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 novel
Falklands
Islands in the Atlantic east of the Strait of Magellan controlled by Great Britain but claimed by Argentina, leading to a brief war in 1982
Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888
It has become one of the best-known poems in American literature...written by Ernest Thayer
Stromboli
Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the northeastern coast of Sicily famous for its volcano
Sardinia
Italian island that is the second largest in the Mediterranean Sea, located south of Corsica and west of the Italian mainland
Apennines
Italian mountain range extending from the Gulf of Genoa to the Strait of Messina
Vesuvius
Italian peak that is the only active volcano on the European mainland...near Naples, Italy
Po
Italy's largest waterway
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy of novels set in Middle Earth
Nikkei
Japanese stock index
Passover
Jewish festival that celebrates the flight of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.
Harper's Ferry
John Brown's scheme to invade the South with armed slaves, backed by sponsoring, northern abolitionists; seized the federal arsenal; Brown and remnants were caught by Robert E. Lee and the US Marines; Brown was hanged
Paradise Lost
John Milton's epic poem telling the story "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit / Of that forbidden tree"
The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck's epic novel about the migration of Okies during the Dust Bowl era
Jordan
Jordan's and Israel's only important river, one that rises in Syria and empties into the Dead Sea
John Yossarian
Joseph Heller's anti-hero who tries to escape his absurd situation of being a pilot by pleading insanity in Catch-22
Nepal
Kathmandu is the capital of...
Tybalt Capulet
Lady Capulet's nephew, Juliet's cousin
South America
Lake Maracaibo, a 5,220-square-mile Venezuelan lake that is actually an estuary, that is the largest in _____________________
Lake Volta
Large artificial lake in central Ghana
Caspian Sea
Largest lake in the world
Stone Mountain
Largest piece of exposed granite in the world...it features sculptures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson...Borglum designed it and Rushmore
Jim Crow
Laws designed to enforce segregation of blacks from whites
Deregulation
Lifting of restrictions on business and industry... especially during the Reagan administration
Big Ben
London's great bell in Parliament clock tower
Pan-American Highway
Longest highway, extending from Alaska to Chile
Thames
Longest river entirely within England, one that flows through London
Ernest Hemingway
Lost Generation writer, spent much of his life in France, Spain, and Cuba during WWI, notable works include A Farewell to Arms
Anne of Green Gables
Lucy Maud Montgomery novel set on Prince Edward Island
Roderick Usher
Mansion owner whose house splits apart and sinks into the tarn after he dies from shock upon the sudden appearance of his dead and buried sister in an Edgar Allan Poe short story
Elbridge Gerry
Massachusetts governor and later VP under Madison, created with the idea of Gerrymandering.
astronomical unit
Mean distance between the Earth and the sun, about 93 million miles
magnitude
Measure of a star's brightness
The Lottery
"'It isn't fair, it isn't right,' Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her."...Famous line by Shirley Jackson in "______________________"
The Wasteland
"April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land." is a Famous quote by T.S. Eliot in "_________________________"
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"... written by John Keats
James Madison
"Father of the Constitution," Federalist leader, and fourth President of the United States.
Trees
"I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree."....Famous line by Joyce Kilmer in "__________"
Dead Sea Scrolls
(Old Testament) a collection of written scrolls (containing nearly all of the Old Testament) found in a cave near the Dead Sea in the late 1940s
Our Town
(Thornton Wilder, 1938).It is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" "Love and Marriage" and "Death" A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.
John Jay
1st Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, negotiated with British for Washington
Alfred Wegener
A German scientist who proposed the theory of continental drift
Brave New World
Aldous Huxley novel set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F.—"After Ford"—in the book)
Bradbury, Ray
American science fiction writer and author of The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451
Richard Buckminster Fuller
American who developed energetic-synergetic geometry and known for his geodesic dome
Brutus No. 1
An Anti-Federalist essay which argued against a strong central government based on the belief that it would not be able to meet the needs of all US citizens.
J.M.W. Turner
An English romantic painter of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, known especially for his dramatic, lavishly colored landscapes and seascapes.
John Brown
An abolitionist who attempted to lead a slave revolt by capturing Armories in southern territory and giving weapons to slaves, was hung in Harper's Ferry after capturing an Armory
spoonerism
An accidental but humorous distortion of words in a phrase formed by interchanging the initial sounds
Hiram Maxim
An american inventor who created the machine gun.
Gaul
An ancient region and Roman province that included most of present-day France
The Song of Hiawatha
An epic by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, based on the story of an actual Native-American hero... The historical Hiawatha was an Onondaga from what is now New York State
St. Mark's Basilica
An example of Byzantine architecture in Venice, Italy; Both interior and exterior are lavishly decorated with elaborate mosaic, much of it in shimmering gold
Ernest Shackleton
An expedition by this Brit, famous for getting stuck in ice, claimed the first reaching of the South magnetic pole in 1909
Tuberculosis
An infectious disease that may affect almost all tissues of the body, especially the lungs...AKA Consumption
barometer
An instrument that measures atmospheric pressure
Easter Island
An island in the eastern Pacific Ocean owned by Chile, part of Polynesia, known for its giant human head statues.
Sparta
Ancient Greek city-state also called Lacedaemon and known for its military prowess.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
And miles to go before I sleep...poem by Robert Frost
Tetrahedron
Another name for a triangular pyramid or a polyhedron with four faces.
Troubadour
Any of the touring lyric poets or lute-playing poet-musicians of the late Middle Ages in France, Spain, and Italy
Geronimo
Apache chieftain who raided the white settlers in the Southwest as resistance to being confined to a reservation (1829-1909)
Alleghenies
Appalachian Mountain range extending from central Pennsylvania through western Maryland, eastern West Virginia, and western Virginia
Doppler effect
Apparent change in the frequency of sound, light, or radio waves caused by a change in the distance between the source of the wave and the receiver
Tax Day
April 15th (unless it falls on a weekend)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Archduke of Austria Hungary assassinated by a Serbian in 1914. His murder was one of the causes of WW I.
nimbus clouds
Are rain bearing clouds that are dark and ragged at the edges.
Green room
Area of a theater for use of actors when they are waiting off stage.
Hong Kong
Area off the coast of China, also called Formosa.
Federalists No. 10
Argued the latent causes of factions are sown in the nature of man...Written by James Madison
Frederic Henry
Army lieutenant during WWII who falls in love with Catherine Barkley in Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms
Lake o' the Cherokees
Artificially created lake in northeastern Oklahoma formed by the Pensacola Dam
My Fair Lady
As part of a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering, phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforms cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. It is adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.
Auguste Comte
As the Father of Sociology he coined the term sociology
Knickerbocker
As upper case K, any New Yorker; as lower case k, knee pants, word taken from the name of the fictitious author of Washington Irving's History of New York
Bangladesh
Asian country formerly called East Pakistan
Thailand
Asian country formerly known as Siam
China
Asian country referred to as Cathay by Marco Polo
Booth
Assassin who uttered Sic semper tyrannis after killing a U.S. President.
Nathuram Godse
Assassinated Mohandas K. Gandhi because he thought that Gandhi was too protective of Muslims.
Sirhan Sirhan
Assassinated Robert Kennedy on June 6, 1968 in Chicago after hearing pro-Israeli remarks in his victory statement after having won the California primaries.
collateral
Assets pledged by a debtor to a creditor to guarantee repayment of a debt
Percival Lowell
Astronomer who had mathematically calculated Pluto's existence and whose initials P.L. account for the first 2 letters in Pluto's name...he didn't discover Pluto
Nagasaki and Hiroshima
Atomic bombs were dropped on these Japanese cities during WWII
Squeaky Fromme
Attempted to assassinate President Ford...part of Charles Manson group
Katrina Van Tassel
Attractive young woman wooed by Brom Bones and Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Murray
Australia's longest permanently flowing river—it rises in the Australian Alps and empties into Encounter Bay
Ernest Thayer
Author of "Casey at the Bat"
O. Henry
Author of "The Gift of the Magi" and The Ransom of Red Chief
Tennessee Williams
Author of A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Joseph Heller
Author of Catch-22, which typifies postwar disillusionment by satirizing war.
Mary Shelley
Author of Frankenstein, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft
Thomas Hobbes
Author of Leviathan
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Author of Tarzan of the Apes
Stephen Crane
Author of The Red Badge of Courage; Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
A.A. Milne
Author of Winnie the Pooh
Congressional Medal of Honor
Award first authorized by Congress during the Civil War and presented as the U.S.'s highest military decoration—also called Medal of Honor
Oceanus Hopkins
Baby born on the Mayflower during the trans-Atlantic voyage
Epic of Gilgamesh
Babylonian epic composed in southern Mesopotamia before 2000 B.C. containing an account like that of the biblical flood and telling about the champion Enkidu created by the gods to oppose the king
3 B's of Classical Music
Bach, Beethoven, Brahms
Wild Wood
Badger's home in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind and the Willows
one person, one vote
Baker v. Carr ruling...everyones vote carries the same weight
split ticket
Ballot on which votes are cast for candidates of different political parties rather than for candidates of the same party
Casey
Baseball player who strikes out in the ninth inning resulting in "No joy in Mudville" in Ernest Lawrence Thayer's "Casey at the Bat"
Tom Canty
Beggar who changes clothes with a prince and becomes king in Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper
Totemism
Belief in totems, that is, in animals or other objects in nature considered as being related to a person, family, or group and serving as symbols for that person or group, and sometimes revered as its guardian
Kuiper Belt
Belt of small icy remnants remaining from the formation of the solar system and now orbiting the sun beyond Neptune from which comets come
Poor Richard's Almanac
Benjamin Franklin's highly popular collection of information, parables, and advice...first published in 1732
Grendel
Beowulf is an Old English epic in which there is a monster named ___________________
Reno, Nevada
Biggest Little City in the World
Celie
Black heroine of Alice Walker's The Color Purple who grows up in the Southern U.S. and suffers cruel treatment from her father and husband but finds a female friend
Benjamin Banneker
Black mathematician who served as a scientific assistant to Major Ellicott in surveying the Territory of Columbia and his calculations were used for 5 years in an almanac bearing his name
Uncle Remus
Black slave who tells the tales related by Joel Chandler Harris
Respiratory
Body system of which the throat is a part.
Byronic Hero
Bold, defiant, tormented, and suffering such as the characters created by Lord Byron in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and other works
Joseph Stalin
Bolshevik revolutionary, head of the Soviet Communists after 1924, and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. He led the Soviet Union with an iron fist, using Five-Year Plans to increase industrial production and terror to crush opposition
Jefferson Davis
Born in Kentucky...Senator from Mississippi...President of the Confederate States of America
event horizon
Boundary around a black hole's singularity, within which gravitational forces prevent everything, including light, from escaping
cosmology
Branch of astronomy dealing with the study of the universe and its origins
Algebra
Branch of mathematics that uses letters as symbols instead of numbers
Brasilia
Brazil's capital
Honeymoon period
Brief period of agreement between political parties or the short pleasant time period given to a new office holder by the press, the legislature, and the public
Baily's Beads
Brilliant spots of sunlight shining through valleys on the rim of the moon just after a total eclipse of the sun
David Lloyd George
Britain's prime minister at the end of World War I whose goal was to make the Germans pay for the other countries' staggering war losses
Mary Wollstonecraft
British feminist of the eighteenth century who argued for women's equality with men, even in voting, in her 1792 "Vindication of the Rights of Women."
Thomas Gage
British general who controlled Boston following the Boston Tea Party...arrested The Sons of Liberty
Mount Logan
Canada's highest mountain, located in the Yukon territory near the Alaska border
Mackenzie River
Canada's longest river found entirely within the Northwest Territories...runs from the Great Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean and named for a Scottish explorer.
Great Slave Lake
Canada's second largest lake, located in the Northwest Territories
Victoria
Canadian island in Nunavut in the Arctic Archipelago (9th largest island in the world)
Ellesmere
Canadian island in Nunavut in the Arctic Ocean separated from Greenland by a narrow passage and having Canada's northernmost point (10th largest island in the world)
Baffin
Canadian island in Nunavut west of Greenland (5th largest island in the world)
Kabul
Capital of Afghanistan
Yamoussoukro
Capital of Cote d'Ivoire in Africa
Addis Ababa
Capital of Ethiopia
Nuuk
Capital of Greenland
Pyongyang
Capital of North Korea
Mogadishu
Capital of Somalia where Black Hawk Down took place.
Colombo
Capital of Sri Lanka
Pikes Peak
Colorado mountain named after Zebulon Pike
Josep Broz Tito
Communist chief of Yugoslavia who was able to resist Soviet domination successfully.
Willie Stark
Corrupt Southern governor considered to be a fictional portrayal of real-life Huey Long in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men
Composite number
Counting number that is greater than one and has more than 2 factors
Myanmar
Country bordering Thailand that is called Burma
Canada
Country with the longest coastline
Babbitt
Crude and vulgar worshipper of material success at the expense of artistic values, from the name of the title character in a Sinclair Lewis novel
Simon Legree
Cruel slave driver who whips Uncle Tom to death
Jerome Powell
Current Chairman of the Federal Reserve (as of May 2019)
John Roberts, Jr.
Current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
Hoover Dam
Dam on the Colorado River that was built during the Great Depression...Boulder Dam
The Forbidden Forest
Dangerous woods alive with monsters bordering Hogwarts School in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series
"Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!"
David Farragut said this at the Battle of Mobile Bay
Afars and Issas
Djibouti's former name
yashmak
Double veil worn by Muslim women in public so that only the eyes show
Jan Oort
Dutch astronomer who proposed the existence of a cloudlike collection of ice chunks lying beyond Pluto, a mass now thought to be the birthplace of comets
Constantine the Great
Emperor of Rome who adopted the Christian faith and stopped the persecution of Christians (280-337)
William Herschel
English astronomer who discovered the planet Uranus
President of Mexico
Enrique Peña Nieto
Ponce de Leon
Explored Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth
Joad Family
Family from The Grapes of Wrath
Villi
Fingerlike projections lining the small intestine.
Virginia Dare
First English child born in America;John White's granddaughter; born in Jamestown
abscissa
First coordinate, x, of a pair (x,y) of Cartesian coordinates in a plane.
Scarlett O'Hara
Flirtatious, charming Southern belle who takes Rhett Butler as her third husband and saves her beloved plantation Tara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind
Cumulus
Fluffy, white clouds, usually with flat bottoms, that look like rounded piles of cotton.
Laputa
Flying land in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels where people engaged in inane projects while neglecting practical activities
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears."
Followed by..."I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him"...said by Marc Antony
Esophagus
Food tube leading from the pharynx to the stomach.
George Williams
Founded the YMCA
Roger Williams
Founder of Rhode Island colony
James Oglethorpe
Founder of the Georgia Colony
Thomas Cole
Founder of the Hudson River school, famous for his landscape paintings
The North Star
Frederick Douglass' newspaper
Blaise Pascal
French inventor of the calculating machine (1641)
Corsica
French island in the Mediterranean Sea on which Napoleon Bonaparte was born
Jacques-Louis David
French painter known for his classicism and his commitment to the ideals of the French Revolution. His works include The Oath of the Horatii (1785) and The Death of Marat (1793).
Laissez-faire
French phrase used to describe a "hands-off" political policy of not interfering
Wake
Funeral celebration, especially a watching over the body of the dead person before burial, often with feasting and drinking
Andromeda Galaxy
Galaxy nearest the Milky Way and visible to the naked eye
Great Basin
The area between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas. Dry desert, mostly.
Lagos
The most populated city of Nigeria
Exosphere
The outer layer of the thermosphere, extending outward into space.
Solid South
Those Southern states that once traditionally solidly supported the Democratic Party, its programs, and its candidates
Henry VIII of England
Tudor King of England who launched the English Reformation because the Roman Catholic Church opposed his actions of divorcing Catherine of Aragon and marrying Anne Boleyn. Also: severed ties with Rome and allowed the Bible to be printed in English legally for the first time.
Ankara
Turkey's capital formerly known as Angora
Mecca and Medina
Two holy cities for Muslims found in Saudi Arabia
Regressive Tax
Type of tax whose rate does not increase as the tax base increases such as the sales tax
Jefferson
U.S. Vice President who served under President John Adams.
US Virgin Islands
U.S. islands formerly known as Danish West Indies
John J. Pershing
US general who chased Villa over 300 miles into Mexico but didn't capture him...lead WWI allies
June 16, 1904
Ulysses is James Joyce's epic novel about one day, ______________________________, in the life of its 3 leading characters
YMCA
Young Men's Christian Association; founded to evangelize and assist young men; established in London, England by George Williams
Fern
Young girl who saves Wilbur the pig from being immediately slaughtered in E.B. White's Charlotte's Web
Billy Budd
Young sailor on a British warship who is falsely accused and hanged in Herman Melville's Billy Budd
Henry Fleming
Young soldier who becomes an unintentional hero in Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage
Harare
Zimbabwe's capital formerly known as Salisbury
NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)
a 1994 pact between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to establish free trade
Victoria Falls
a 355-foot waterfall on the Zambezi River in South Central Africa
Operation Fork
a British military operation conducted by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines during World War II to occupy and deny Iceland to Germany.
Second Crusade
a Crusade from 1145 to 1147 that failed because of internal disagreements among the crusaders and led to the loss of Jerusalem in 1187
Seine River
a French river that flows through the heart of Paris and then northward into the English Channel
Iliad
a Greek epic poem (attributed to Homer) describing the siege of Troy and the Trojan War
Lech Walesa
a Polish politician, trade-union organizer, philanthropist and human-rights activist
Pablo Picasso
a Spanish artist, founder of Cubism, which focused on geometric shapes and overlapping planes
Guernica
a Spanish town that was brutally bombed and was full of innocent civilians it was supposed to encourage fear, Picasso painted a famous painting capturing Guernica
Kandahar
a city in southern Afghanistan (was the first capital of Afghanistan)
Medina
a city in western Saudi Arabia; a city where Muhammad preached
Cumulonimbus
a cloud forming a towering mass with a flat base at fairly low altitude and often a flat top, as in thunderstorms.
cochlea
a coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sound waves trigger nerve impulses
Thousand Islands
a group of about 1800 islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway mainly in Ontario
Rh blood group
a group of antigens discovered on the red blood cells of rhesus monkeys that is also present to some extent in humans.
Rosetta Stone
a huge stone slab inscribed with hieroglyphics, Greek, and a later form of Egyptian that allowed historians to understand Egyptian writing.
Aral Sea
a lake east of the Caspian Sea lying between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that has lost 80% of its water due to human activities
Pocatello
a large city in Idaho (besides Boise)
Yellow Dog Democrat
a loyal democratic party voter
Atlas Mountains
a mountain range in northern Africa between the Mediterranean and the Sahara Desert
Uncle Tom's Cabin
a novel published by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 which portrayed slavery as brutal and immoral
NSC (National Security Council)
a part of the Executive branch that advises the President on foreign policy, defense, and intelligence matters—it is made up of the President, Vice President, and the secretaries of state and defense
Horn of Africa
a peninsula of northeastern Africa (the easternmost part of Africa) comprising Somalia and Djibouti and Eritrea and parts of Ethiopia
Ways and Means Committee
a permanent committee of the United States House of Representatives that makes recommendations to the House on all bills that would raise revenue
Scheherazade
a person who is an excellent storyteller, especially one who is able to keep an audience in suspense..as in the story teller of Arabian Nights
Silent Majority
a phrase popularized by President Nixon's November 3, 1969, speech in which he diffused demonstrations against his Vietnam policy
elegy
a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.
Analects
a record of the words and acts of the central Chinese thinker and philosopher Confucius and his disciples
Lapland
a region in northmost Europe inhabited by Lapps...AKA the Land of the Midnight Sun
SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission)
a regulatory board that oversees the nation's stock and financial markets
Nubian
a resident of a desert region, an ancient kingdom in the Nile Valley of southern Egypt and northern Sudan
Iris
a ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening
Zambezi River
a river in southern Africa, flowing east through Zimbabwe and Mozambique into the Indian Ocean...Victoria Falls is on this river
Orinoco River
a river mainly in Venezuela and part of South America's northernmost river system
Catch-22
a satirical novel by American author Joseph Heller.
"Fifty-Four Forty or Fight"
a slogan used in the 1844 presidential campaign as a call for the U.S. annexation of the entire Oregon Territory
Puget Sound
a sound near Seattle, Washington, U.S.
PAC (Political Action Committee)
a special interest lobby organized to raise money for a specific political activity
bear market
a stock market characterized by falling prices
Bull Market
a stock market characterized by rising prices
Arthur Miller
author of The Crucible; Death of a Salesman
Orientalism
discourse that positions the West as culturally superior to the East
Howard Carter
discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922
Prado Museum
has works of artists from the Spanish school; in Madrid
pH
hydrogen ion concentration
Uttar Pradesh
most populous state of India
Tinnitus
ringing or buzzing in the ears
Hertz
the unit of frequency, equal to one cycle per second
Oath of the Horatii
work by Jacques-Louis David...It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities, Rome and Alba Longa, and stresses the importance of patriotism and masculine self-sacrifice for one's country.
The Death of Marat
work by Jacques-Louis David...of the famous scene of assassination during the French Revolution
dark horse
Unexpected winner in a race, especially in politics
Parsec
Unit of length used to compute the distance of stars and equal to about 3.26 lightyears
John Muir
United States naturalist (born in England) who advocated the creation of national parks (1838-1914)
Henry Clay
United States politician from Kentucky responsible for the Missouri Compromise between free and slave states..The Great Compromiser
Joseph McCarthy
United States politician who unscrupulously accused many citizens of being Communists
Cascades
Mountain chain extending from northern California to British Columbia—it's known for Mount Rainier, its highest peak, and Mount St. Helens, both in Washington
Berkshires
Mountain chain in western Massachusetts
Sierra Madre
Mountain system in Mexico consisting of 3 ranges referred to as the Oriental, Occidental, and del Sur
Portuguese East Africa
Mozambique is an African country formerly called ...
Shah Jahan
Mughal ruler who built Taj Mahal
Sphincter
Muscle that opens and closes a body opening, such as the rectum.
Logrolling
Mutual trading of favors by politicians, as by voting for each other's projects
Fibonacci sequence
Name for the infinite sequence of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13, and so on
Little Dipper
Name of the figure formed by 7 stars in the constellation of Ursa Minor or Little Bear.
Mozambique Channel
Name the body of water that separates Madagascar from continental Africa.
Ishmael
Narrator and only survivor of the Pequod in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
NOAA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Federal agency focused on the condition of the oceans and the atmosphere.
Chiang Kai-shek
Nationalist leader of China during WWII.
Barbary States
Nations along the coast of North Africa to which the United States paid a yearly tribute so they would stop seizing our ships.
works by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nature, "Self-Reliance," "Experience," "The American Scholar" and a Harvard address
Kipling of the Klondike
Nickname given to Jack London
Mother of Canada
Nickname given to the St. Lawrence River and Seaway
Eternal City, or the City of the Seven Hills
Nicknames of Rome
Father of Astronomy
Nicolas Copernicus: Polish man who first proposed that all planets revolve around the sun.
Muses
Nine sisters who give song and inspiration to humanity; daughters of Zeus and Mnemonsyne (Memory)
3rd Amendment
No quartering of soldiers during peacetime
Pearl Buck
Nobel Prize winning American author of The Good Earth
Appalachian Mountains
North America's oldest and second largest mountain system, extending from Quebec, Canada, to Birmingham, Alabama—its tallest mountain is Mount Mitchell, in North Carolina
Adirondacks
Northeastern New York mountains, site of Lake Champlain and Mount Marcy, the state's highest point
Jutland
Northern European peninsula on which Denmark and northern Germany are located
aurora borealis
Northern Hemisphere aurora frequently called the "Northern Lights"
Luzon
Northern island of Philippines; conquered by Spain during the 1560s; site of major Catholic missionary effort.
Eric the Red
Norwegian adventurer who founded a colony on Greenland
Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother
Noted work by James Whistler...AKA Whistler's Mother
Maritime Provinces
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island
Jules Janssen and Norman Lockyer
Observed a yellow spectral line in sunlight during a solar eclipse, led to discovery of Helium.
Captain Ahab
Obsessed, one-legged captain of the whaling-ship Pequod who seeks revenge in capturing the white whale that cost him his leg in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
Secular
Of or related to worldly matters, the exact opposite of sacred, as describing things relating to church and religion
Carbohydrate
Of the 3 main classes of nutrients, the one that provides the main source of energy to the body.
lame duck
Officeholder serving out a term of office after having been defeated for reelection or when not running again for office
1803
Ohio became a state; Marbury v. Madison case; Louisiana Purchase done...all in this year?
Abacus
Oldest known mechanical computing aid, used as early as the 6th century B.C. in China
Nehru
One of Gandhi's disciples; governed India after independence (1947); committed to program of social reform and economic development; preserved civil rights and democracy.
Mary Magdalene
One of the women who followed Jesus. She was the first person to have seen the risen Lord.
Gobi Desert
One of the worlds largest deserts, covers part of China and present-day Mongolia.
Kashmir Conflict
Ongoing conflict for territorial control; between Pakistan & India; Origins of British imperialism
Edvard Munch
Painted...The Scream (1893)
Penumbra
Part of the Earth's or moon's shadow from which part of the solar disk is visible as during an eclipse
Tigris River
Part of the Tigris-Euphrates river system rising in Turkey before forming the Shatt al Arab, which flows into the Persian Gulf
Wings
Part of the stage on the right or left of the stage proper.
Matterhorn
Peak in the Pennine Alps on the Swiss-Italian border
Presidential Range
Peaks named after presidents in New Hampshire.
Rock of Gibraltar
Peninsula at the southern tip of Spain in the Strait of Gibraltar, connecting the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean
Asia Minor
Peninsula in Western Asia between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea frequently called Anatolia
Mugwumps
Person who deserts his political party to support another candidate, or one who straddles an issue, being unwilling to take a firm stand
Demagogue
Person who tries to stir the populace up through an emotional appeal in order to gain power
Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Trapper, and Leatherstocking
Various nicknames for Natty Bumpo in James Fenimore Cooper's The Leatherstocking Tales
Gerend
Verbal noun ending in -ing
Green Mountains
Vermont mountain range, part of the Appalachian Mountains system, whose highest point is Mount Mansfield
Lake Geneva
Very large Swiss lake, also called Lac Léman, located along the border between Switzerland and France between the Alps and the Jura Mountains and formed by damming the Rhône River
apogee
Point farthest from the Earth in the orbit of any Earth satellite
zenith
Point of the celestial sphere directly overhead a given position
Gdansk
Polish port on the Baltic Sea (famous strike happened there)
Starry Night
Vincent Van Gogh famous work of art.
Taft-Hartley Act
Popular name for the June 23, 1947, Act that not only outlawed the closed shop (or the practice of hiring only union members) but also required unions to register and file a financial statement with the federal government and provided for a 60-day delay, or cooling-off period, for strikes that might cause a national crisis AKA the Labor Management Relations Act
ursury
Practice of lending money at an exorbitant or illegal rate of interest
Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma
Popocatépetl
Volcanic mountain in Mexico named with the Aztec for "Smoking Mountain"
Walter Mitty
Quiet, easy-going, timid man who dreams of glory and heroic actions in a story about his secret life by James Thurber
"Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door"
Quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
Recall
Vote to remove a public official from office
Shofar
Ram's horn blown in ancient times to communicate in battle and still blown today in synagogues on Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur
Brazzaville
Republic of the Congo's capital (across the Congo River from Kinshasa)
ex post facto law
Retroactive law making a previously legal act illegal and subject to punishment— such laws are prohibited by the U.S. Constitution
Grand Teton
Rocky Mountain peaks in western Wyoming whose highest peak is Grand Teton
Transubstantiation
Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church doctrine that in the Eucharist the elements of bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ
Nero
Roman Emperor notorious for his monstrous vice and fantastic luxury (was said to have started a fire that destroyed much of Rome in 64) but the Empire remained prosperous during his rule (37-68)...persecuted Christians
Transylvania
Romanian region used as the home of the fictional Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula
Versailles Palace
Royal palace built during the reign of Louis XIV that became the most impressive palace in all of Europe. It was the quintessential embodiment of baroque architecture.
Pericles
Ruler of Athens who zealously sought to spread Athenian democracy through imperial force
Avonlea
Rural Prince Edward Island village that is the setting for Anne of Green Gables
Wolf Larsen
Ruthless ship captain in Jack London's The Sea Wolf
Joule
SI unit of energy
Newton
SI unit of force
Pascal
SI unit of pressure
Asteroid B-612
Saint Exupéry's celestial land with 3 miniature volcanoes cleaned each week by the Little Prince
yoga
Sanskrit word for "union" that identifies a Hindu school of thought and its set of mental and physical exercises aimed at producing spiritual enlightenment
Thomas Aquinas
Scholar from Italy who argued that the most basic religious truths could be proved by sound reasoning
K2
Second highest mountain in the world
David
Second king of Israel and name of a Michelangelo masterpiece
Rosa Parks
Secretary of NAACP, spurred the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Bermuda
Self-governing British colony made up of about 300 coral islands in the Atlantic southwest of Cape Hatteras (Hamilton is the capital)
James Buchanan
Senator from Pennsylvania...became 15th President...failed to prevent outbreak of the Civil War
Algorithm
Set of specific, sequenced instructions for solving a problem, especially on a computer
Pianosa
Setting of Catch-22. An island, near the Italian coast in the Mediterranean Sea. (by Heller)
Globe
Shakespeare's theater in London
Anne Hathaway
Shakespeare's wife's name
Eliza Doolittle
She is transformed from from a poor, smart-mouthed flower girl with terrible English to a more refined, polite, and intelligent woman in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman's shocking collection of emotional poems
Lottery
Shirley Jackson short story
Lord Byron
Was an important British Romantic poet. His works include "She walks in Beauty" and the unfinished "Don Juan." Many consider him to embody the spirit of Romanticism. He died from an illness contracted while in Greece, where he was supporting their independence movement.
Cholesterol
Waxy, fatty substance produced by the liver.
Divergent
Which book series did Veronica Roth write?
Italy
Which country did the first "recorded" sign language come from?
Bell
Which famous person declared that Deaf people should marry hearing people to avoid "breeding more Deaf"?
Whitestone
Who was the first deaf woman to win the crown for the Miss America pageant?
Joyce Kilmer
Who wrote "Trees"?
Ayn Rand
Who wrote Anthem; The Fountainhead; and Atlas Shrugged?
Dolly Madison
Wife of President James Madison, set the precedent for First Ladies...said to have saved the George Washington portrait
Cirrus
Wispy, feathery clouds made of ice crystals that form at high levels.
Monte Cristo
Small, barren Mediterranean island where the hero of an Alexander Dumas novel discovers a treasure
Gallbladder
Small, pear-shaped pouch attached to the common bile duct.
bit
Smallest unit of information handled by a computer, represented by either a 1 or a 0
Polyhedron
Solid figure that is bounded by four or more polygonal faces, that is, a close plane figure bounded by 3 or more straight line segments
Lake Maracaibo
South America's largest lake known for oil located in Venezuela (actually an estuary)
Bolivia
South American country formerly known Upper Peru (has two capitals)
Suriname
South American country formerly known as Dutch Guiana (Paramaribo is the capital)...Dutch is the official language
John C. Calhoun
South Carolina Senator - advocate for state's rights, limited government, and nullification
Malay Peninsula
Southeast Asian peninsula made up of the island of Singapore, west Thailand, and western Malaysia
Indochina
Southeast Asian peninsula occupied by Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam
Lake Pontchartrain
Southeastern Louisiana lake spanned by a causeway that is the world's longest bridge and longest overwater causeway
Capri (island)
Southern Italian island in the Bay of Naples, famous for its Blue Grotto
Daisy Buchanan
Southern belle Jay Gatsby so loves that he moves to Long Island to be near her even though she has married another in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel...The Great Gatsby
schism
Split or division within a group, especially a church
Vulagate
St. Jerome's 4th-century translation of the Bible into Latin, authorized as the official text of the Roman Catholic Church
Polaris
Star also called the North Star or polestar.
New Hampshire
State to hold the first presidential primary each Primary Season
Alaska
State whose motto is "North to the Future".
West Virginia
State whose motto is Montani semper liberi or "Mountaineers are always free".
Corollary
Statement that can be proved easily by applying a theorem
John Brown's Body
Stephen Vincent Benét's epic Civil War poem
Works by E.B. White
Stuart Little; Charlotte's Web; The Trumpet of the Swan
Tinker v. Des Moines (1969)
Students in an Iowa school were suspended for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam war. Ruled that this suspension was unconstitutional, and that public school students do not "shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door."
Brigham Young
Successor to the Mormons after the death of Joseph Smith; responsible for the survival of the sect and its establishment in Salt Lake City, Utah
Ichabod Crane
Tall, skinny schoolteacher frightened by an apparently Headless Horseman in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Burj Khalifa
Tallest Building in the world, located in Dubai, UAE
Mount Mitchell
Tallest peak east of the Rockies......6,684 ft...in NC.
Jane Porter
Tarzan's beloved in Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel Tarzan of the Apes and its sequels
Duty
Tax charged on an imported good
excise tax
Tax coming from the sale of alcohol, gasoline, and tobacco
Ziggurat
Temple of Sumerian origin in the form of a pyramidal tower with each story smaller than the one below it.
President Pro Tempore of the Senate
Temporary president of the Senate, who presides when the Vice President is absent
Memphis
Tennessee city where a $65-million pyramid on the bank of the Wolf River is located.
double jeopardy
Term designating the trying of a person for an offense he was acquitted of at a previous trial, one prohibited by the 5th Amendment to the Constitution
Amino acids
Term for the "building blocks of proteins".
Chord
Term other than diameter that designates a line segment whose endpoints lie on a circle
Banana Republic
Term used to describe a Central American nation dominated by United States business interests
Fiddler on the Roof
Tevye is a lowly Jewish milkman in Tsarist Russia, and his daughters are anxious to get marriedThe families leave their village, Anatevka, after a pogrom. It is adapted from Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem.
Pax Romana
The "Roman Peace", that is, the state of comparative concord prevailing within the boundaries of the Roman Empire from the reign of Augustus (27 B.C.E.-14 C.E.) to that of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 C.E.)
Middle Earth
World where the hobbits and others live in J.R.R. Tolkien's works
Mount Kanchenjunga
World's 3rd highest mountain, located in the Himalaya on the border between Nepal and India
Yangtze
World's 3rd longest river and China's longest
Congo
World's 5th longest, which begins in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and empties into the Atlantic
Himalayas
World's highest mountain system, which forms a barrier separating India from the Tibetan plateau in China and is named with the Sanskrit for "Snowy Range"
Mauna Loa
World's largest volcano, located on the island of Hawaii
Lake Tanganyika
World's longest freshwater lake and 2nd deepest, bordered by Burundi, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Zambia
Boy Scouts
Worldwide boys' organization with the motto "Be Prepared".
Habeas Corpus
Writ requiring the appearance of prisoner in court to determine if he has been legally detained
Ovid
Wrote "Metamorphoses"
Thornton Wilder
Wrote "Our Town"
Loraine Hansberry
Wrote A Raisin in the Sun
William Faulkner
Wrote The Sound and the Fury; A Fable; The Reivers; Light in August; Soldier's Pay; Sanctuary; Absalom, Absalom!; The Hamlet; Intruder in the Dust; As I Lay Dying
Emma Lazarus
Wrote the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty "The New Colossus"
President of China
Xi Jinping
Willy Loman
title character in Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman who, believing himself to be worthless, kills himself
(To) throw one's hat in the ring
to run for public office, from a Western boxing phrase popularized by Theodore Roosevelt when he decided to run for President in 1912
Gila River
tributary of the Colorado that flows westward through Arizona; Phoenix lies near it; the 1853 Gadsden Purchase bought land south of the river from Mexico
Cleopatra VII
tried to reestablish Egypt's independence; her involvement with Rome led to her suicide and defeat...last Egyptian pharaoh
Couplet
two consecutive lines of poetry that rhyme; couplets often signal the EXIT of a character or end of a scene
Bosporus and Dardanelles
two key straits which connect the Black Sea to the Mediterranean
Isaac Asimov
author of I, Robot...listed the 3 rules of robotics
W.W. Jacobs
author of the Indian story "The Monkey's Paw"
Ambrose Bierce
author of: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "The Devil's Dictionary"
Battle of Bosworth Field
battle when Henry Tudor (supported by Lancasters) defeated York family (Richard III) in 1485
Jane Grey
became queen at age 16, ruled for nine days before being beheaded by Mary Tudor
Phillip II of France
known as Philip Augustus, was King of France from 1180 to 1223. His predecessors had been known as kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, he became the first French monarch to style himself "King of France".
Mount Washington
known for its extreme winds and cold temperatures, the highest peak in New Hampshire and New England in general; located in the White Mountains (a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains)
Cones
retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.
Belle of Amherst
romantic nickname given to Emily Dickinson
Murphy's Law
satirical maxim stating that if anything can go wrong, it will
Iran-Contra Affair
scandal including arms sales to the Middle East in order to send money to help the Contras in Nicaragua even though Congress had objected
Jay Gatsby
"Can't repeat the past? Why, of course you can." Mysterious rich man living lavishly on Long Island who tries to revive his romance with Daisy Buchanan but is shot and killed in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight."...Famous quote by _________________________________ in Uncle Tom's Cabin
Ataturk
"Father of the Turks" who helped to create Republic of Turkey and wanted to modernize [westernize] Turkey as well as separate religion and government
Charles Babbage
"Grandfather of the Modern Computer" who in the 1830s developed in England the basic idea for a mechanical digital computer with his machine called the analytic engine
Nattie Bumppo
"Hawkeye" is a fictional character and the protagonist of James Fenimore Cooper's pentalogy of novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales.
Gone with the Wind
"I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."...Famous line by Margaret Mitchell in _________________
The Old Man and the Sea
"I must be worthy of the great DiMaggio who does all things perfectly even with the pain of the bone spur in his heel."....Famous line by Ernest Hemingway in ______________________
Allen Ginsberg
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, / dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix."....Famous line by _________________ in "Howl"
Annabel Lee
"In her sepulcher there by the sea— / In her tomb by the sounding sea."...Famous line by Edgar Allan Poe in "_______________________"
Marco Polo
"Livres des merveilles du monde" (Book of the world's marvels)...Italian explorer who wrote about his travels to Central Asia and China.
Graves
"Most everybody in the world climbs into their _____________________ married."....Famous line by Thornton Wilder in Our Town
Noted songs of Steven Foster
"Oh! Susanna", "Camptown Races", "Old Folks at Home" ("Swanee River"), "My Old Kentucky Home", "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair", and "Beautiful Dreamer"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"One if by land, and two if by sea."...Famous line by ___________________________________ in "Paul Revere's Ride"
God
"Poems are made by fools like me, / But only __________ can make a tree."....Famous line by Joyce Kilmer in "Trees"
George Bernard Shaw
"Pygmalion" author. Story that would later become "My Fair Lady" musical/movie.
Article VI of the Constitution
"The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States...shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." is found in this article.
Route 66
"The Mother Road" to opportunity, finished in 1926, that connected Chicago to Los Angeles
Poe Poems
"The Raven"; "The Bells"; "To Helen"; "Annabel Lee"
little cat feet
"The fog comes / On __________________________."....Famous line by Carl Sandburg in "Fog"
and miles to go before I sleep
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / _________________________________________ .".... Famous line by Robert Frost in "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
Self-Reliance
"To be great is to be misunderstood."....Famous line by Ralph Waldo Emerson in "________________________"
The Road Not Taken
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference."...Famous line by Robert Frost in "____________________________"
Harlem
"What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / Like a raisin in the sun? / Or fester like a sore— / And then run?".....Famous line by Langston Hughes in "____________"
The Sun Also Rises
"You are all a lost generation."....Famous line by Ernest Hemingway in ____________________
E.E. Cummings
"next to of course god america i".... associated with modernist free-form poetry. much of his work has idiosyncratic syntax and uses lower case spellings for poetic expression.
Georges Clemenceau
"tiger of France", the French prime minister who wanted to ensure that Germany (after WWI) would never again threaten France; at the Paris Peace Conference.
Herbert Spencer
English sociologist and philosopher who applied the theory of natural selection to human societies...survival of the fittest ...called Social Darwinism
Puddleby-on-the-Marsh
English town where Dr. John Dolittle, the character created by Hugh Lofting, lives
Camelot
English town where King Arthur had his court and Round Table
Jane Goodall
English zoologist noted for her studies of chimpanzees in the wild (born in 1934)
William Penn
Englishman and Quaker who founded the colony of Pennsylvania (1644-1718)
John Wesley
Englishman who along with his brother Charles founded the Methodist Church in the 18th century
Henry Briggs
Englishman who proposed a logarithm system to the base 10
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Fictional character created by Irving, supposed to represent New Yorkers, historical reminder that Dutch settled the place, used as author of History of New York
Ferdinand de Lesseps
French diplomat who supervised the construction of the Suez Canal (1805-1894), but failed to build a canal across Nicaragua for the French
Song of Roland
French epic poem written about 1100 telling of Charlemagne's defeat by the Basques in Spain, especially about his nephew in command of the rear guard who fights to the end, blowing his horn for help only when it is too late
Napoleon Bonaparte
French general who became emperor of the French (1769-1821)
Joan of Arc
French heroine and military leader inspired by religious visions to organize French resistance to the English and to have Charles VII crowned king
John James Audubon
French-American naturalist who was known for his paintings of wild birds in their natural surroundings, best known for his work Birds of America.
Freedom Riders
Group of civil rights workers who took bus trips through southern states in 1961 to protest illegal bus segregation
Bloomsbury Group
Group of early 20th-century writers in the university quarter of London, unofficially led by Virginia Woolf
West Indies
Group of islands between North and South America including the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Bahamas
Big Dipper
Group of stars in Ursa Major containing 7 bright stars, 2 of which point toward the North Star
constellation
Group of stars, one of 88, usually forming some type of geometric figure
Polynesia
Group of widely scattered islands of the central Pacific Ocean whose name means "many islands"—it includes the Hawaiian Islands and Samoa
Micronesia
Group of widely scattered islands of the western Pacific Ocean whose name means "small islands"—it includes the Carolines and the Marianas
Roundheads
Group who supported Parliament in the English Civil War and were also called Parliamentarians.
ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)
the organization formed in 1920 to defend civil liberties
IRS (Internal Revenue Service)
the part of the Department of Treasury that collects federal taxes
Occident
the parts of the world that lie west of Asia, especially the countries of Europe and the western hemisphere
Appalachian Spring
work by Aaron Copland
"Water Lillies"
work by Claude Monet
Napoleon Crossing the Alps
work by Jacques-Louis David of the French leader
The Scream
work by Norwegian Edvard Munch
The Devil and Daniel Webster
work by Stephen Vincent Benet
Robert Penn Warren
wrote "All the King's Men"
Leo Tolstoy
wrote "Anna Karenina", "War and Peace"; Russian writer, realistic fiction
Fyodor Dostoevsky
wrote "Crime and Punishment"; "The Brothers Karamazov"; was a Russian writer, essayist, and philosopher
Maya Angelou
wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"; African-American autobiographer and poet...read "On the Pulse of Morning" at Clinton's inauguration
Oscar Wilde
wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray"; Irish playwright, poet, and author of numerous short stories and one novel...arrested for being a homosexual male
L. Frank Baum
wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Hans Christian Anderson
wrote fairy tales like The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling
Blue Mosque
Mosque built by Sultan Ahmet I in the 1600s in the heart of Istanbul, represents high point of Ottoman achievement.
Nitrogen
Most abundant gas in the atmosphere
Steven Foster
Most loved American composer of popular music with "Camptown Races" and My Old Kentucky Home"
Mount Ararat
Mount in Turkey on which Noah's Ark is believed to have come to a rest
66
Number of books in the Protestant Bible
Stratford-upon-Avon
Where was Shakespeare born and buried?
Lake Superior
Which body of water is this area in: Isle Royale National Park?
Chronicles of Narnia
Which book series did C.S. Lewis write?
James Bond
Which book series did Ian Fleming write?
Goosebumps
Which book series did R.L. Stine write?
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
Which book series did Rick Riordan write?
Twilight
Which book series did Stephenie Meyer write?
Hunger Games
Which book series did Suzanne Collins write?
Ceylon
former name of sri lanka when it was a british colony
Mount Elbrus
found in the Caucasus Mountains in Russia it is the highest peak in Europe
Blue Grotto
found on the island of Capri in Italy
William Booth
founded Salvation Army in 1865 in London
Florence Nightingale
English nurse remembered for her work during the Crimean War (1820-1910)...Lady with the Lamp
Kent State Massacre
Four killed, nine wounded by Ohio National Guard during protest of U.S. invasion of Cambodia
Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku
Four main islands of Japan
Third Crusade
(1189 - 1192) Crusade led by King Richard the Lionhearted to recapture the city of Jerusalem from Islamic forces led by Saladin; failed in attempt.
Wars of the Roses
(1455-1485) civil war for the English crown between the York (white rose) and Lancaster (red rose) families
Cardinal Richelieu
(1585-1642) Minister to Louis XIII. His three point plan (1. Break the power of the nobility, 2. Humble the House of Austria, 3. Control the Protestants) helped to send France on the road to absolute monarchy.
John Paul Jones
American naval commander in the American Revolution (1747-1792) said " I have not yet begun to fight."
John Steinbeck
American novelist who wrote "The Grapes of Wrath". (1939) A story of Dustbowl victims who travel to California to look for a better life.
Giuseppe Garibaldi
(1807-82) An Italian radical who emerged as a powerful independent force in Italian politics. He planned to liberate the Two Kingdoms of Sicily.
James Whistler
(1834-1903) A member of the realist movement, although his works were often moody and eccentric. Best known for his Arrangement in Black and Grey, No.1, also known as Whistler's Mother.
Napoleon III
(1852-1870) Former Louis Napoleon, who became president of the Second Republic of France in 1848 and engineered a coup d'etat, ultimately making himself head of the Second Empire.
Crimean War
(1853-1856) Russian war against Ottomans for control of the Black Sea; intervention by Britain and France cause Russia to lose; Russians realize need to industiralize.
Mary Cassatt
American painter whose sensitive portrayals made her one of the prominent new impressionists...The Boating Party
Roald Amundsen
(1872-1928) (Norwegian) was first to reach South Pole and to fly over North Pole
Edict of Nantes
1598 - Granted the Huguenots (French Protestants) liberty of conscience and worship.
Edict of Milan
313 CE Constantine makes Christianity the primary religion of the Roman Empire
Aristarchus of Samos
3rd-century B.C. Greek astronomer who formulated the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun
Confucius
(551-479 BCE) A Chinese philosopher known also as Kong Fuzi and created one of the most influential philosophies in Chinese history...wrote the "Analects"
Oliver Twist
A Charles Dickens novel. Follows the story of how the title character was born into poverty. After being orphaned and mistreated by his guardians, he escapes only to fall in with street urchins who trick him, led by an infamous jewish criminal known as Fagin.
Ka'ba
(Arabic for "cube") a pre-islamic cubed building in Mecca believed by muslims to have been built by Abraham. It is the center of the Muslim Pilgrimage
Simon Bolivar
1783-1830, Venezuelan statesman: leader of revolt of South American colonies against Spanish rule. "The Liberator"
Divine Comedy
Dante's epic about himself and the Roman poet Virgil taking a trip through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio), and Paradise (Paradiso)
Mercantilism
Economic system followed by the major trading nations from the 1500s to the late 1700s based on a nation's wealth in gold and silver held in its treasury
Jane Eyre
A Charlotte Bronte novel in which a woman goes through various hardships in her life, facing abusive guardians, and oppressive environment, and hard times, until she is finally happy when she gets with the man she loves.
Green Mountain Boys
Group of Vermont Soldiers who captured Fort Ticonderoga in 1775...lead by Ethan Allen
Cork, Limerick, Kilkenny
(besides Dublin) the major cities of Ireland
Beowulf
A hero who fights Grendel, Grendel's Mother and a fire breathing dragon; protagonist
Mount of Olives
A hill outside Jerusalem where Jesus entered the Garden of Gethsemane after the Last Supper.
Insulin
A hormone produced by the pancreas or taken as a medication by many diabetics
Lindy Hop
A jazzy dance in which couples swing, balance, and twirl
Hudson Bay
A large inland sea to the north of the province of Ontario...largest bay
Anatolia
A large peninsula at the western edge of Asia; also called Asia Minor
Title IX
A law that bans gender discrimination in schools that receive federal funds
Shangri-La
Himalayan mountain kingdom where James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon is set
Troposphere
0-17 km above Earth's surface, site of weather, organisms, contains most atmospheric water vapor. (temperature decreases with increasing altitude, pressure decreases)...lowest level of the atmosphere
Snake
1,038-mile-long river rising in Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park and joining the Columbia River in Washington
Columbia
1,240-mile-long river that rises in the Canadian Rockies in British Columbia, flows into Washington and along the Washington-Oregon border before emptying into the Pacific Ocean
Colorado
1,450-mile-long river that rises in Colorado and flows into Utah, Arizona, and Nevada, then forms the Arizona-California border before emptying into the Gulf of California—it flows through Arizona's Grand Canyon
Jody Tiflin
10-year-old boy who is the main character in John Steinbeck's "The Red Pony"
First Crusade
1099 CE, Jerusalem fell to the Christian crusaders; the only successful crusade.
Poem of the Cid
12th-century Spanish epic featuring the hero of the wars against the Moors in the 11th century
John Locke
17th century English philosopher who opposed the Divine Right of Kings and who asserted that people have a natural right to life, liberty, and property.
Mahabharata
18-book Sanskrit epic, the world's longest poem, ascribed to the Hindu sage Vyasa and including the Bhagavad-Gita—its title means "Great King Bharata"
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
1842 - Established Maine's northern border and the boundaries of the Great Lake states...between US and Britain
Gadsden Purchase
1853 purchase by the United States of southwestern lands from Mexico...boundary Gila River (AZ and NM)
The Gilded Age
1870s - 1890s; time period looked good on the outside, despite the corrupt politics & growing gap between the rich & poor...(named by Mark Twain)
Mary Leakey
English paleontologist (the wife of Louis Leakey) who discovered the Zinjanthropus skull that was 1,750,000 years old (1913-1996)
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
1929 Capone's men executed 7 members of the O'Banion gang in Chicago.
Edward VIII
1936 Served in the First World War and wanted to marry an American (Wallis Simpson) and was forced to abdicate the throne to do so. 325 day rule was one of the shortest and he was never crowned king. He was accused of pro Nazi feelings and was forced to the Bahamas as governor.
Kennedy
1940 Harvard graduate whose senior thesis was "Why England Slept".
Truman Doctrine
1947, President Truman's policy of providing economic and military aid to any country threatened by communism or totalitarian ideology, mainly helped Greece and Turkey
Nakita Khrushchev
1953 became the leader of the USSR shortly after Stalin died. He was responsible for building the Berlin Wall and was leader during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Silent Spring
1962 book by Rachel Carson that started the environmental movement
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1964 Congressional resolution authorizing President Johnson to take military action in Vietnam
James Fenimore Cooper
1st truly American novelist noted for his stories of Indians and the frontier life; man's relationship w/ nature & westward expansion...he Leather-Stocking Tales: The Pioneers; The Last of the Mohicans; The Prairie; The Pathfinder; The Deerslayer
skew
2 lines that are neither parallel nor intersecting
Frost-Nixon Interviews
2 years after the resignation, Frost wanted to resurrect his career, and Nixon wanted to resurrect his image to the public as he was releasing his memoir. Nixon still remained a crook in the eyes of the public.
Affirmative Action
2-word phrase for programs seeking to correct past discrimination by giving special treatment based on race or gender
Benign Neglect
2-word term for a policy of watchful inactivity toward the black civil rights movement (a misinterpreted phrase in 1970 as President Nixon's urban affairs adviser)
DMZ (demilitarized zone)
2.5 mile stretch between North Korea and South Korea where both countries agreed to place no soldiers or weapons
Vaudeville
20th century variety theatre.
Potomac River
250-mile-long river forming the boundary between Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia and flowing past Washington, D.C., and Mount Vernon—it rises in the Allegheny Mountains and empties into the Chesapeake Bay
Blue Moon
2nd full moon in a month
Hispaniola
2nd largest island in the Caribbean, divided into Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Stratosphere
2nd layer of atmosphere; extends from 10 to 30 miles up; location of ozone layer; absorbs 95% of Ultraviolet radiation; temperature increases with altitude increase.
Haiku
3 unrhymed lines (5, 7, 5) usually focusing on nature
Advice and Consent Clause
3-word phrase designating a check by the Senate on the power of the President to make appointments and treaties, from Article I, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution
Ways and Means
3-word term for the methods by which the government raises money
Hudson
300-mile-long river in New York that rises in the Adirondacks and empties into the Atlantic Ocean at New York City
Ronald Reagan
40th President of the USA
Scout
6-year-old girl who narrates the story of her attorney father's defense of a black man accused of the rape of a white woman in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (Jean Louise Finch)
Charlemagne
800 AD crowned by the Pope as the head of the Holy Roman Empire, which extended from northern Spain to western Germany and northern Italy. His palace was at Aachen in central Europe
Big Bend National Park
800,000-acre park in Texas situated on the bend of the Rio Grande.
St. Lawrence River
800-mile-long river from Lake Ontario that empties into the Gulf of St. Lawrence—it links the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes by means of the St. Lawrence Seaway, makes up part of New York's border, and is called the "Mother of Canada"
Martin Luther
95 Thesis, posted in 1517, led to religious reform in Germany, denied papal power and absolutist rule. Claimed there were only 2 sacraments: baptism and communion.
fiscal year
A 12-month pd, October through September, for planning the federal budget (begins October 1)
Bay of Bengal
A Bay that the Ganges River flows into, North of the Indian Ocean, On the eastern side of India, South of Tibet, West of China...largest Bay
Louis Leakey
A British archaeologist and naturalist whose work was important in establishing human evolutionary development in Africa.
Fourth Crusade
A Crusade from 1202 to 1204 that was diverted into a battle for Constantinople and failed to recapture Jerusalem causing damage to Byzantine Empire
Homer
A Greek poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey
Alfred Dreyfus
A Jewish military captain in the French Army, he was falsely accused of treason, and his affair split France apart
stare decisis
A Latin phrase meaning "let the decision stand." Most cases reaching appellate courts are settled on this principle.
Nicolaus Copernicus
A Polish astronomer who proved that the Ptolemaic system was inaccurate, he proposed the theory that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system.
Nikita Khrushchev
A Soviet leader during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Also famous for denouncing Stalin and allowed criticism of Stalin within Russia.
Clement Clarke Moore
A Visit from St. Nicholas poet.
The Tyger
A William Blake poem. A poem following an animal, which is depicted as a fearsome beast which tears through jungles.
Helen of Troy
A beautiful Greek woman, daughter of Zeus and Leda, who was kidnapped by Paris of Troy. The Trojan War began when the Greeks tried to get her back. Sister of Castor and Pollux.
Jesse Jackson
A black candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1988 election who attempted to appeal to minorities, but eventually lost the nomination to Michael Dukakis
Fez
A brimless felt cap in the shape of a truncated cone, usually red with a black tassel...also a city in Morocco
Pantheon
A building built in Rome during the reign of Augustus as a temple to all the gods of ancient Rome
Agra
A city in India where the Taj Mahal lies. It was made as a tomb for the Mogul ruler Shah Jahan's wife.
La Nina
A climate event in the eastern Pacific Ocean in which surface waters are colder than normal.
Idiom
A common, often used expression that doesn't make sense if you take it literally.
John the Baptist
A cousin of Jesus, older by six months. His baptizing and preaching in the wilderness prepared the way for Jesus.
Haymarket Square Riot
A demonstration of striking laborers in Chicago in 1886 that turned violent, killing a dozen people and injuring over a hundred.
Kalahari
A desert in southwestern Africa - largely Botswana
Oxymoron
A figure of speech that combines opposite or contradictory terms in a brief phrase.
Lucy
A forty percent complete skeleton discovery of an Australopithecus afarensis, or a species within the category of hominid. She was rediscovered on November 24, 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia.
Langston Hughes
A leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "My People"
Gilgamesh
A legendary Sumerian king who was the hero of an epic collection of mythic stories
Samuel Wilson
A meat packer from Troy, New York and was the man behind Uncle Sam
Southern Alps
A mountain chain in New Zealand
Mount Aconcagua
A mountain in the Andes, in western Argentina, the highest mountain in the Americas and the Western Hemisphere.
Giuseppe Verdi
A nineteenth-century Italian composer, a master of Italian grand opera. among his best-known operas are Aida, Otello, Rigoletto, and La Traviata.
Ray
A part of a line, with one endpoint, that continues without end in one direction...Synonym for half-line
Euripides
A playwright who wrote about 90 tragedies and included strong female characters and smart slaves...most noted for Medea; the Trojan Women; and The Bacchae
Tennis Court Oath
A pledge made by the members of France's National Assembly in 1789, in which they vowed to continue meeting until they had drawn up a new constitution
Kabuki
A popular type of Japanese drama combined with music and dance, it is the type of theatre in Japan (Played by all male actors)
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
A prominent advocate of women's rights, she organized the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention with Lucretia Mott
Rosie the Riveter
A propaganda character designed to increase production of female workers in the factories. It became a rallying symbol for women to do their part.
Normandy
A region in northwestern France on the English channel (site of D-Day invasion)
Rhine River
A river in Western Europe that flows from eastern Switzerland into the North Sea.
The Martian Chronicles
A science fiction short story collection by Ray Bradbury which chronicles the colonization of Mars by humans fleeing from a troubled and eventually atomically devastated Earth, and the conflict between aboriginal Martians and the new colonists.
Mary Poppins
A series of eight children's books written by Australian-British writer P. L. Travers and published over the period 1934 to 1988.
Suez Canal
A ship canal in northeastern Egypt linking the Red Sea with the Mediterranean Sea
Voodoo Economics
A slanderous term used by George H. W. Bush in reference to President Ronald Reagan's economic policies, which came to be known as "Reaganomics".
Jackson Pollock
A twentieth-century American painter, famous for creating abstract paintings by dripping or pouring paint on a canvas in complex swirls and spatters.
Prism
A solid figure that has two congruent, parallel polygons as its bases. Its sides are parallelograms
Bile
A substance produced by the liver that breaks up fat particles.
Federalism
A system in which power is divided between the national and state governments
Gaza Strip
A territory along the Mediterranean Sea just northeast of the Sinai Peninsula; part of the land set aside for Palestinians, which was occupied by Israel in 1967.
Sea of Galilee
A thirteen-mile by seven-mile body of fresh water through which the Jordan River runs.
Fagin
A villain in the novel Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. The unscrupulous, miserly Fagin teaches Oliver Twist and other orphaned boys to pick pockets and steal for him.
El Nino
A warm ocean current that flows along the coast of Peru every seven to fourteen years
2nd Amendment
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Onomatopoeia
A word that imitates the sound it represents.
Luminosity
Absolute brightness of a star as compared with that of the sun
Mount Etna
Active volcano on the island of Sicily (Italy)
Pope John Paul II
Activist conservative pope from Poland 1978-2005 who helped bring down European communism
Lord Byron's only child
Ada Lovelace (the first programmer in history)
Mount Kenya
Africa's second highest mountain
Booker T. Washington
African American progressive who supported segregation and demanded that African American better themselves individually to achieve equality.
Zimbabwe
African country formerly called Southern Rhodesia (country listed last in alphabetical order)
Tanzania
African country formerly called Tanganyika and Zanzibar
Bostwana
African country formerly known as Beuchanaland
Djibouti
African country formerly known as French Somaliland and later as the French Territory of Afars and Issas
Angola
African country formerly known as Portuguese West Africa
Burkina Faso
African country formerly known as Upper Volta
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
African country formerly known as Zaire (called the Belgian Congo from 1908-1960 and the Congo from 1960-1971)
Ghana
African country formerly known as the Gold Coast
Lake Albert
African lake in the Great Rift Valley between Uganda and Zaire..named for the husband of Queen Victoria and located NW of Lake Victoria
Trickle Down
Economy where government gives benefits such as tax breaks and capital gains reductions to the wealthy in the expectation that middle and lower classes will benefit as a result
Robert Jordan
American fighting in the Spanish Civil War who falls in love with Maria in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls
Cities in Egypt
Alexandria, Port Said, Giza are all...
Ptolemy
Alexandrian astronomer who proposed a geocentric system of astronomy that was undisputed until Copernicus (2nd century AD).
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Alfred, Lord Tennyson work about a battle of the Crimean War at the Battle of Balaclava
The Color Purple
Alice Walker novel
Pat Summit
All time winningest NCAA coach Passed away at 64 from Alzheimer's
Howl
Allen Ginsberg work..."I saw the best minds of my generation..."
Apportionment
Allocation of legislative seats to constituencies
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Along with John Marshall, he is often considered considered one of the greatest justices in Supreme Court history. His opinions and famous dissents in favor of individual liberties are still frequently quoted today.
John Jacob Astor
American fur trader and financier, he founded the fur-trading post of Astoria and the American fur company (he died on the Titanic)
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce story about the hanging of Peyton Farquhar
Fourth Amendment
Amendment that protects against unreasonable search and seizure
Trinity Test
America's extremely secret testing of its atomic power in New Mexico on July 16th, 1945
Norman Rockwell
America's most beloved illustrator...Saturday Evening Post
Hudson River School
American artistic movement founded by Thomas Cole, that produced romantic renditions of local landscapes.
Carl Sagan
American astronomer who popularized astronomy through his Cosmos series
Alcott, Louisa May
American author of Little Women; Little Men; Eight Cousins; Jo's Boys
Alex Haley
American author of the 1900s who wrote "Roots", a multi-generational novel about the horrors of slavery in the early U.S
Wallis Simpson
American commoner and divorcee who led to abdication of throne from Edward VIII to George VI
Greeley
American credited with saying, "Go West, young man, and grow up with the country."
Grace Hopper
American who directed the work that developed COBOL, a computer language
Horace Greeley
An American newspaper editor and founder of the Republican party. His New York Tribune was America's most influential newspaper 1840-1870. Greeley used it to promote the Whig and Republican parties, as well as antislavery and a host of reforms.
Edmond Halley
English astronomer who predicted that the great comet he observed in 1682 was the same one observed in 1531 and 1607 and that it would reappear 76 years later
Ursa Major
Another name for the Big Dipper.
durable goods
Another term for capital goods, that is, manufactured products that are long-lasting, such as machine tools, refrigerators, and automobiles
Superman
Any man having more than human powers, from the name of a comic strip character created by Jerome Siegel and Joe Schuster
Grandfather Clause
Any of the laws added to 7 Southern state constitutions between 1895 and 1910 designed to disenfranchise Negroes by means of high standards of literacy and property qualifications from which were exempt only those whose forebears had voted before 1867—these laws were declared unconstitutional in 1915, and the term is now applied to any type of legal exemption based on prior status
Veda
Any one or all 4 of the sacred books of Hinduism written in an early dialect of Sanskrit
Little Eva
Augustine St. Clare's daughter who dies in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin—her full name is Evangeline St. Clare
Tom Sawyer
Aunt Polly's nephew who gets into one scrape after another in Mark Twain's novel about a young boy growing up in St. Petersburg, Missouri
Evangeline Bellefontaine
Beautiful woman separated from her betrothed Gabrielle Lajeunesse after the Acadians are expelled in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Evangeline
Virginia Woolf
English author whose work used such techniques as stream of consciousness and the interior monologue...Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; The Waves
Melbourne
Australia's 2nd most populated city (in the state of Victoria)
Mount Kosciusko
Australia's highest peak
Rwandan Genocide
Beginning on April 6, 1994, Hutus began slaughtering the Tutsis in the African country of Rwanda. More than 800,000 were eventually killed.
Joseph Priestley
English chemist who discovered oxygen, discovered that plants release oxygen
Truman Capote
Author of In Cold Blood, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Ralph Ellison
Author of Invisible Man, a novel about the black search for identity
sanctuary
Building or holy place within a church dedicated to the worship of the divinity
Lady Brett Ashley
British aristocrat who has a series of affairs in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises
Carroll
British author who created the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter.
Romania
Bucharest is the capital of
Aung San Suu Kyi
Burmese political leader and first and incumbent State Counsellor of Myanmar ; she won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to promote democracy in the country of Myanmar (Burma).
Justinian
Byzantine emperor in the 6th century A.D. who reconquered much of the territory previously ruler by Rome, initiated an ambitious building program , including Hagia Sofia, as well as a new legal code
The armpit of Africa
Cameroon's location
Oliver Cromwell
English general and statesman who led the parliamentary army in the English Civil War (1599-1658)
Saigon
Capital of South Vietnam, capture of this city marks the conclusion of the civil war in 1975...now Ho Chi Minh City
Bern
Capital of Switzerland
Dodoma
Capital of Tanzania
Bangkok
Capital of Thailand
Kinshasa
Capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (across the Congo River from Brazzaville)
William Bligh
Captain of HMS Bounty (Mutiny on the Bounty) and sailed to Tahiti to collect breadfruit trees. In 1806 he was made Governor of New South Wales.
Pulitzer Prizes
Carl Sandburg won three __________________________: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Cities in Morocco
Casablanca, Fez, Tangier, Marrakech are all...
Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Russia
Caspian Sea, a 143,250-square-mile salt lake that is the world's largest inland body of water, bordered by _______________________________
Shakers
Celibate religious group, now virtually extinct, established in the U.S. in 1774 by Ann Lee and known for the fine design of its furniture and handcrafts— also known as the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing Millennial Church, Children of Truth, or Althians
Lake Nicaragua
Central America's largest lake, located in Nicaragua
Belize
Central American country formerly known as British Honduras
Hindu Kush
Central Asian chain of mountains forming part of the boundary between eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan
Carpathian Mountains
Central European mountains extending about 900 miles along the Slovakian- Polish border into Ukraine and Romania
Rhett Butler
Character who makes money running guns and supplies during the Civil War and becomes Scarlett O'Hara's third husband in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind
John Alden
Character who relays Miles Standish's proposal of marriage to Priscilla Mullens in a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem
Moon of Pluto
Charon
Earl Warren
Chief Justice during the 1950's and 1960's who used a loose interpretation to expand rights for both African-Americans and those accused of crimes.
Sir Isaac Newton
English inventor of differential calculus (1665) and integral calculus (1665) and discoverer of the binomial theorem
Beijing
China's capital formerly called Peking
Yellow
Chinese river sometimes called "China's Sorrow" because of its many floods bringing death and hunger—also known as Huang He (Ho)
Pei
Chinese-American architect who designed the Louvre's glass pyramid.
Trinity
Christian doctrine of one God comprising 3 divine persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (or Holy Spirit or Divine Spirit)
Benghazi
City in Libya where 4 Americans killed in terrorist attack - became a US election scandal on idea that Clinton and Obama withheld military support
Mecca
City in western Arabia; birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad, and ritual center of the Islamic religion.
Mudville
City where Casey at the Bat plays his fateful game
Bull Run
Civil War battle also known as Mananas.
Falkland War
Claim by Britain on the Falkland/South Orkney Islands led to disputes with Argentina and eventually led to the ________________________ (1982)(only shot ever fired in the Antarctic)
Virgil
Classical Roman poet, author of Aeneid
Rider
Clause or amendment having little or no relationship to the main issue of the bill to which it is added—such additions are frequently used in the Senate but rarely used in the House
A Visit from St. Nicholas
Clement Clarke Moore poem usually called... "Twas the Night Before Christmas"
Nebula
Cloudlike region of gas and dust among the stars
Stratus
Clouds that form in flat layers and often cover much of the sky.
Gertrude Stein
Coined the term the "Lost Generation" during a conversation with Hemingway. "All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death."
Arabian Nights
Collection of 1,001 Persian, Indian, and Arabian folktales, allegedly told by Scheherazade to her husband one a night in order to stay alive
Oceania
Collective name for the many islands of the Pacific Ocean, including Micronesia, Polynesia, and sometimes Australia—sometimes called the South Seas
Radcliffe
College from which Helen Keller graduated cum laude in 1904.
Margaret Mead
Coming of Age in Samoa...United States anthropologist noted for her claims about adolescence and sexual behavior in Polynesian cultures (1901-1978)
Warren Commission
Commission made by LBJ after killing of John F. Kennedy. (Point is to investigate if someone paid for the assasination of Kennedy.) Conclusion is that Oswald killed Kennedy on his own. Commissioner is Chief Justice Warren.
Coordinates
Components of an ordered pair giving the location of a point in the Cartesian plane.
Puccini
Composer of "La Boheme", "Tosca" and "Madame Butterfly"
Disenfranchisement
Condition of being deprived of the right to vote
Bill of Attainder Clause
Congress cannot pass a law that singles out a person for punishment without trial
Whip
Congressional leader whose job is to keep party members united in their vote
Cordell Hull
Congressman from Tennessee, he became the Secretary of State under FDR and served in that position longer than anyone in American history. He is often called the "Father of the United Nations." He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945.
Andromeda
Constellation close to Pegasus featuring the Great Spiral Galaxy
Retina
Contains sensory receptors that process visual information and sends it to the brain
Inflation
Continual increase in prices throughout a nation's economy
yellow dog contract
Contract between a worker and an employer in which, as a condition of employment, the worker agrees not to join a union
Dialogue
Conversation between characters.
Sri Lanka
Country off India's southeast coast named Ceylon until 1972
Rosenbergs
Couple executed for giving military secrets to the Soviets in the 1950's
Olfactory
Cranial nerve that carries the sensation of smell from the nose to the brain.
James Flagg
Creator of Uncle Sam image amount several propaganda posters of WWI
Porgy
Crippled black hero in a DuBose Heyward novel about the Deep South rendered in operatic form by George Gershwin ( ________________ and Bess)
Tycho Brahe
Danish astronomer who laid the groundwork for Kepler's three laws of planetary motion with his observations of planets
Vitus Bering
Danish explorer who explored the northern Pacific Ocean for the Russians and discovered the Bering Strait (1681-1741)
Umbra
Darkest part of the shadow cast by the Earth or moon during an eclipse
Anastasia
Daughter of Nicholas II thought to have died when the Romanov family was executed in 1918. Since 1918, several women have claimed to be her.
The Twelve Caesars
De vita Caesarum...is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire written by Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus
Bubonic plague
Deadly disease also called the Black Death which destroyed a fourth of the population in Europe in the 1300s.
Works by Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman; All My Sons; The Crucible; After the Fall; The Price; The American Clock
Samuel Tilden
Democratic nominee for president in 1876, loses narrowly to Rutherford B. Hayes...his election was to end Reconstruction
Hoovervilles
Depression shantytowns, named after the president whom many blamed for their financial distress
Atacama Desert
Desert found on the Western border of the Andes Mountains and on the border of Chile, Peru and Bolivia
Great Sandy
Desert in Northwest Australia
Kalihari Desert
Desert of Southern Africa
George Ferris
Determined, courageous, and innovative, this Pennsylvania engineer proposes to transcend the Paris exposition's Eiffel Tower, and he makes history by building the first Ferris wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair; succumbs to typhoid fever in 1896
Clyde William Tombaugh
Discoverer of Pluto based on calculations of Percival Lowell
Smallpox
Disease the WHO announced in 1979 has been wiped out.
Headless Horseman
Disguise Brom Bones takes on to terrorize Ichabod Crane in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
Lost Generation
Disillusioned American writers living in Europe following WWI, as labeled by Gertrude Stein and later used by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises
Absolute value
Distance from zero to a number on a number line
Theodor Geisel
Dr. Seuss' real name
Dracula's castle
Dracula's home in the Carpathian Mountains in Bram Stoker's Dracula
Patagonia
Dry plateau region found in southern Argentina.
Erasmus
Dutch humanist and theologian who was the leading Renaissance scholar of northern Europe...Wrote "The Praise of Folly"
Geocentric Theory
Earth is the center of the Universe...by Ptolemy
Zanzibar
East African island that became international slave-trading center in the 1700s...now part of Tanzania
Kamchatka Peninsula
Eastern Russian peninsula between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea
Stagflation
Economic condition of the late 1960s and 1970s marked by very slow growth and high inflation, as indicated by its name, a combination of stagnation and inflation
Cotopaxi
Ecuadorian mountain that is one of the world's highest active volcanoes
Tarzan
Edgar Rice Burroughs character—he is also known as John Clayton, Lord Greystoke
The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser's allegorical epic poem dedicated to Queen Elizabeth and featuring knights portraying different moral virtues
James Cook
English navigator who claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain and discovered several Pacific islands (1728-1779).
Poland
Home country of Nicolas Copernicus
Imhotep
Egyptian architect of the first known pyramid, the Step Pyramid near Saqqarah built for King Zoser.
Giza
Egyptian suburb of Cairo where the largest pyramid ever exists.
Van Allen belt
Either of 2 zones of electrically charged particles that surround the earth
View of Toledo
El Greco's best known work about a town in Spain
Uncle Tom
Elderly black slave considered by others to be subservient to whites in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin
Plebiscite
Election that usually involves a simple "yes" or "no" vote by the entire electorate on an issue, a candidate, or a territorial question
Gamma
Electromagnetic rays like X rays, but with a shorter wavelength.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Elegy to Lincoln that tracks the grieving process; by Walt Whitman
Constantine
Emperor of the Roman Empire who moved the capital to Constantinople. He eventually converted to Christianity as well.
Election of 1876
Ended reconstruction because neither canidate had an electorial majority. Hayes was elected, and then ended reconstruction as he secretly promised...he defeated Tilden
Frederick Douglass
Escaped slave and great black abolitionist who fought to end slavery through political action
Article I of the Constitution
Establishes Congress as the Legislative Branch of Federal Government and lists the powers of Congress.
Rio de la Plata
Estuary, or funnel-shaped bay, between Argentina and Uruguay
Elements
Euclid was the Greek author of "__________________", the first geometry textbook
Danube
Europe's 2nd longest, which begins in the Black Forest in Germany and empties into the Black Sea
Lake Ladoga
Europe's largest lake, located in Russia northeast of St. Petersburg
Alps
Europe's largest mountain system, beginning near the Mediterranean Sea, form- ing a border between France and Italy, and extending to Slovenia
Balkan
European peninsula bordered by the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the Aegean, Mediterranean, Ionian, and Adriatic seas, occupied by Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, mainland Greece, European Turkey, and parts of Croatia, Slovenia, and Yugoslav states
Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Evangeline; The Courtship of Miles Standish; The Song of Hiawatha, "Paul Revere's Ride"
line-item veto
Executive power President Clinton used for the first time in 1997 when he rejected 3 individual items in the bills to cut taxes and balance the budget (struck down in 1998)
Blance Dubois
Faded Southern belle who moves in with her sister and brother-in-law in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire
Waterloo
Famous 1815 battle fought in Belgium.
John Keats
Famous for his odes, especially Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Stella!"
Famous line by Tennessee Williams in A Streetcar Named Desire
Oh Captain! My Captain!
Famous poem about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Walt Whitman
Agribusiness
Farming business as opposed to farming in general
Alberta Clipper
Fast moving low pressure area which generally affects Canada and upper Midwest and Great Lakes. Can produce snow and bitter cold winds.
Aeschylus
Father of Tragedy; wrote Oresteia
Antoine Lavoisier
Father of modern chemistry
Horace Mann
Father of the Public School System...United States educator who introduced reforms that significantly altered the system of public education (1796-1859)
Kalevala
Finnish national epic, compiled from popular songs and oral tradition by Finnish philosopher Elias Lonnrott
Marmee
First name of Mrs. March, the single mother raising 4 daughters in Louisa M. Alcott's Little Women
Lovelace, Ada
First programmer in history, Lord Byron's only child
Wyoming
First state to grant suffrage to women...gave women right to vote, 1870
Zen
Form of Buddhism emphasizing enlightenment through meditation
Voodoo
Form of animism that involves demons, gods, and communication with the dead, common in the Caribbean area, especially Haiti (where it was officially sanctioned as a religion in 2003)
Wicca
Form of witchcraft or pagan nature religion practiced in the 20th century, espe- cially in the U.S. and Britain
subpoena
Formal order to appear before a legislature or a legislative committee (or to a court of law)
Formosa
Former name of Taiwan
River Shannon
Found in Ireland, it is the longest river in the British Isles
Crater Lake
Found in Oregon, it is the deepest lake in the United States
Lake Baikal
Found in Siberia...it is the oldest and deepest lake in the world
Joseph Smith
Founded Mormonism in New York in 1830 with the guidance of an angel. 1843, Smith's announcement that God sanctioned polygamy split the Mormons and let to an uprising against Mormons in 1844; translated the Book of Mormon and died a martyr.
Tahiti
French Polynesia's largest island, in the Windward Group of the Society Islands...Paul Gauguin loved this island and painted it natives
Huguenots
French Protestants influenced by John Calvin
Sherwood Forest
Home of Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men
René Descartes
French co-founder of analytical geometry known for his Cartesian coordinates
Loire
France's longest river, one that flows through the Loire Valley, an area known for its many châteaux or castles
The Third of May, 1808
Francisco de Goya work
Holly Golightly
Free-spirited heroine in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's
Cone
Geometric solid with exactly one circular base and exactly one vertex
A Thousand Points of Light
George H.W. Bush's phrase calling for volunteer and charity work
Voo Doo Economics
George H.W. Bush's term for Ronald Reagan's economic policy
Dresden
German city ferociously firebombed by the Allies from February 13 to 15, 1945
Nibelungenlied
German national epic written about A.D. 1200 whose title means "Song of the Nibelungs," telling the story of the hero Siegfried, who has a cloak of invisibility and wants to marry Kriemhild
Johann Gutenberg
German printer who was the first in Europe to print using movable type and the first to use a press (1400-1468)
Max Weber
German sociologist and pioneer of the analytic method in sociology (1864-1920)
Thomas Mann
German that wrote The Magic Mountain in 1924, one of the books burned by the Nazis
Beat Generation
Group of 1950s and 1960s anti-establishment writers centered in California and New York, such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs
September 1, 1939
Germany invades Poland at the onset of WWII
American Civil Liberties Union
Give the full name of the acronym ACLU.
Starbuck
God-fearing chief mate on the Pequod who tries to dissuade Captain Ahab in his quest for the white whale in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
Ernest Rutherford
Gold foil experiment, discovered nucleus and protons
G-8
Group of 8 industrialized countries: Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Canada, USA, Japan, Italy; whose leaders meet annually to discuss economic policy
Embargo
Government order prohibiting some or all trade with a foreign nation
eminent domain
Government's right to take, or to authorize the taking of, private property for the public's use, with fair compensation given
Ptolomy
Greco-Egyptian astronomer and geographer whose Almagest stated that the earth was the center of the universe and that it had no motion
Finger Lakes
Group of 11 long glacial lakes in upstate New York
Archimedes of Syracuse
Greek known for determining that the approximate value of π lies between 3 10/70 and 3 10/71
Diophantus of Alexandria
Greek sometimes called the "Father of Algebra"
Pythagoras
Greek whose "Pythagorean theorem" states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides
Sophocles
Greek writer of tragedies; author of Oedipus Rex and Antigone
Eratosthenes of Cyrene
Greek, known for his Sieve that was used to determine prime numbers, who calculated that the circumference of the earth was 25,000 miles
Hundred-Acre-Wood
Home of Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends in a series of books by A.A. Milne
Elysian Fields (or Elysium)
Home of the blessed after death in Greek mythology
Billy Pilgrim
Hero of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five who travels between the fire-bombing of Dresden in 1945 and the planet Tralfamadore in the distant future
Works and Days
Hesiod's epic filled with maxims for farmers
Pearl
Hester Prynne's illegitimate child by the minister Arthur Dimmesdale in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Roger Chillingworth
Hester Prynne's wronged and estranged husband who returns as her nemesis in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Blue Chip Stock
High-priced stock with an excellent earnings record
La Paz
Highest capital in elevation...along with Sucre it is a capitol of Bolivia
Mont Blanc
Highest mountain in the Alps, located on the French-Italian-Swiss border
Ben Nevis
Highest mountain in the British Isles, located in western Scotland
Lake Titicaca
Highest navigable lake, located on the border between Peru and Bolivia
Clingman's Dome
Highest peak in the Great Smoky Mountains and in Tennessee—it is located on the Tennessee-North Carolina border
Annapurna
Himalaya mountain at over 26,000 feet in north-central Nepal that was the highest one climbed before Mount Everest was scaled
Brom Bones
Ichabod Crane's rival for the love of Katrina Van Tassel in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"
The Republic
Ideal state created by Plato
Kitchen Cabinet
Informal group of personal advisers to an elected official, a 2-word term first used to designate the group that advised President Andrew Jackson
sextant
Instrument, named for its shape as approximately 1/6 of a circle, that replaced the astro- labe and was used by navigators to find the altitude of the sun or a star until after WWII
Quorum
Number of members that must be in attendance in order for the votes and other actions of the group to be valid
Bali
Indonesian island in the Lesser Sundas east of Java
Great Britain
Island off the western coast of Europe made up of England, Scotland, and Wales (8th largest island in the world)
Avalon
Island where King Arthur was taken after he died
Greenland
Island within the Arctic Circle owned by Denmark. (largest world island)
Leonardo Fibonacci
Italian who established the Hindu-Arabic numbers as the standard computational symbols, of 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 . . . which is named for him
Giovanni Domenico Cassini
Italian-born French astronomer who discovered 4 satellites of Saturn and detected the division of its rings that still bears his name...mission to Saturn bore his name
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain short story
Clara Barton
Nurse during the Civil War; founder of the American Red Cross
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
James Thurber novel where A man daydreams about fantastic adventures struggling over dull daily life.
Ghent Altarpiece
Jan van Eyck great work, in St Bavo's Cathedral, in Belgium
British East Africa
Kenya is Formerly known as ...
Mount Fuji
Japan's highest mountain, located on the island of Honshu
Honshu
Japan's largest and most populous island. (7th largest island in the world)
Shinto
Japan's state religion prior to 1945, emphasizing worship of nature, ancestors, and ancient heroes
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jazz Age author of The Great Gatsby
Sic
Latin term for "in such a way," inserted parenthetically into a text to indicate that an error was in the original quotation
Kashmir
K2 is the World's 2nd highest mountain, located in the _______________ region of Pakistan/China/India border
Bourgeoisie
Karl Marx's term for the business class, or those who own the means of production
Lennie Small
Kind, half-witted giant of a man who is killed by his friend George Milton to keep a lynch mob from harming him in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
Spanish Armada
King Philip II of Spain sent an armada to attack England, the English fought back and won this ended Spanish domination of the seas
Slaughterhouse Five
Kurt Vonnegut novel about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a chaplain's assistant named Billy Pilgrim.
Siberia
Lake Baikal is the Deepest lake, located in _____________
Pearl of Siberia, or the Sacred Sea
Lake Baikal's nicknames
Lake Nasser
Lake formed by the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River and located in southeast Egypt and northern Sudan
Lake of the Ozarks
Lake formed by the Bagnell Dam in Missouri
Lake Placid
Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York
Lake of the Woods
Lake located on the boundary of Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota
Lake Champlain
Lake on the border of New York and Vermont
Looking-Glass land
Land inhabited by chessmen and others where Alice arrives after passing through the mirror in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass
Lilliput
Land where people are 6 inches tall in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Brobdingnag
Land where people are 60 feet tall in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Dream Deferred
Langston Hughes asks..."What happens to a __________________?/ Does it dry up/ Like a raisin in the sun?
conglomerate
Large corporation formed by the merger or acquisition of a number of companies in widely diversified industries
Sierra Nevada
Large granite mountain range in eastern California whose highest point is Mount Whitney
Lake Mead
Largest artificial lake in the U.S., located behind Hoover Dam (created by the dam along the Colorado River)
Sicily
Largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, located in southern Italy and separated from the mainland by the Strait of Messina
Cuba
Largest island in the West Indies and the island nation that is the only Communist state in the Americas
Great Bear Lake
Largest lake in Canada
Lake Okeechobee
Largest lake in the southern U.S., located in south-central Florida
George II
Last British monarch born outside of Great Britain
Mexico
Latin American country in which the Pyramid of the Sun was built at Teotihuacan.
caveat emptor
Latin phrase literally meaning "Let the buyer beware" used to warn consumers that they need to proceed cautiously in making purchases, and that the seller may be attempting to deceive them
E pluribus unum
Latin phrase meaning "out of many, one" or "from many, one," the motto on the Great Seal of the U.S.
Brady Bill
Law passed in 1993 requiring a waiting period on sales of handguns, along with a criminal background check on the buyer...by Clinton...named for Reagan's Press Secretary (who was shot in 1981 assassination attempt of Reagan)
Blue laws
Laws regulating entertainment or business on Sundays
Pope Urban II
Leader of the Roman Catholic Church who asked European Christians to take up arms against Muslims, starting the Crusades
Young, Brigham
Leader who in 1846 led Mormons from Illinois across the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains to the Great Salt Lake Basin in present-day Utah where they settled
Louis Armstrong
Leading African American jazz musician during the Harlem Renaissance; he was a talented trumpeter whose style influenced many later musicians.
Epiglottis
Leaf-shaped structure that acts like a lid to prevent swallowed food from entering the windpipe.
James Clark Ross
Led a British expedition that broke through pack ice to enter Ross Sea, discovers Cape Adare, Admiralty Range, Ross Island, Mount Erebus, and charts the Great Ice Barrier for 300 miles. Establishes new farthest south record of 78°S.
Due Process of Law Clause
Legal proceedings guaranteed by the 5th, 6th, and 14th Amendments protecting individual rights and liberties
Saint George
Legendary Christian martyr (died c. A.D. 303) and patron of England believed to have slain a dragon
El Dorado
Legendary city of great riches located in South America, according to some, on the Amazon River
Atlantis
Legendary island said to be in the Atlantic Ocean west of Gibraltar, believed to have sunk beneath the sea
Fountain of Youth
Legendary spring Ponce de Leon sought in the Americas for its mythical waters believed to keep one eternally young
Platt Amendment
Legislation that severely restricted Cuba's sovereignty and gave the US the right to intervene if Cuba got into trouble
War and Peace
Leo Tolstoy's epic novel focusing on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 and Russia's resistance to the attack
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Letters written by MLK encouraging non-violent protest against segregation.
Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace novel. Movie staring Charlton Heston that won a lot of Oscars.
Wonderland
Lewis Carroll's underworld to which Alice descends through a rabbit hole
Tiber
Long Italian river that rises in the Apennine Mountains and flows through Rome
Baja California
Long, narrow, peninsula, it extends south from Mexico's northwestern border with the United States
James Hilton
Lost Horizon author that created the mountain kingdom of Shangri-La
Dead Sea
Lowest spot on the Earth's surface and the world's saltiest body of water, located on the border of Israel and Jordan
Orlando Furioso
Ludovico Ariosto's Italian epic poem depicting the struggle between Christians and the Arab-Muslim tribes known as Saracens
Os Lusíadas
Luis de Camoes' epic dealing mainly with the exploits of Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and his "discovery" of India
Philip II of Macedon
Macedonian king who sought to unite Greece under his banner until his death or murder. He was succeeded by his son Alexander the Great..
Never-never land
Magic land of lost boys, Indians, fairies, and pirates in James Barrie's Peter Pan
Narnia
Magical land entered by a passageway behind a wardrobe in C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia
Joint Chiefs of Staff
Main military advisers to the President and the secretary of defense
Timbuktu
Mali trading city that became a center of wealth and learning, located on the Niger River
Prairie Provinces
Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada's "breadbasket", culturally diverse, agriculture
Aladdin's palace
Marble, gold, and silver palace of the boy who found the magic lamp in The Arabian Nights
Thames River
This largest river in England runs through London and empties into the North Sea.
Reynard the Fox
Medieval beast-epic featuring the struggle for power between the fox Reynard and the wolf Isengrim
Astrolabe
Medieval instrument consisting of a graduated circle with a movable arm used by astronomers and navigators to find the altitude of the sun or a star
Crete
Mediterranean island that is the largest of the Greek islands, the one on which the Minoan civilization reached its peak
Dixiecrat
Member of the dissident group of Democrats in the South who formed the States Rights Party in 1948 to oppose the civil rights program of the regular Democratic Party
Zealots
Members of a radical Jewish sect that rebelled against the Romans in the 1st century A.D.
Cloture
Method of cutting off debate to force a vote on a particular question in Congress
Cramer's Rule
Method of solving systems of equations using determinants
Iran
Mideast country formerly called Persia...capital Tehran
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes' epic novel about a crazed gentleman who sets out to redress the wrongs of the world
Pinochet, Augusto
Military dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990 who was known for his widespread use of torture and for liquidating thousands of opponents of his regime.
Arthur Dimmesdale
Minister with whom Hester Prynne has a child in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
McCarthyism
Misuse of information through accusations and sensationalism that deprives individuals of their rights in order to reach a goal, from the name of a Wisconsin senator who engaged in such practices in order to suppress what he saw as communism
Works by Herman Melville
Moby-Dick; Typee; Omoo; White-Jacket; Pierre; Billy Budd; Benito Cereno
Chingachgook
Mohican Indian chief and longtime friend of Natty Bumppo in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking novels
River Bank
Mole and Rat's home in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind and the Willows
Appropriation
Money granted by a legislature for some specific use
pork
Money, jobs, etc., as doled out from the government not on merit but because of political connections
No. 5, 1948
Most noted Jackson Pollock work
Indonesia
Most populous Muslim country and 4th most populous in the world
Pyrenees
Mountain chain that forms a natural barrier between France and Spain
Mount Olympus
Mountain in Greece said by the early Greeks to be the home of the Gods
Mount Rushmore
Mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota featuring the sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln
Balkans
Mountain range from the Yugoslav border across central Bulgaria to the Black Sea
Urals
Mountain range in Russia and Kazakhstan and considered to be one of the boundaries between Europe and Asia
Caucasus Mountains
Mountain range in Russia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan, rising between the Black and the Caspian seas—often considered Europe's southeastern limit
Black Hills
Mountain range located in southwestern South Dakota and eastern Wyoming whose highest point is Mount Harney in South Dakota
Skinner Box
Named for its developer, B.F. Skinner, a box that contains a responding mechanism and a device capable of delivering a consequence to an animal in the box whenever it makes the desired response
Strait of Messina
Narrow passageway between Sicily and Italy
1936 Berlin Olympics
Nazis hide evidence of anti-Semitism - black man named Jesse Owens wins 6 medals and Hitler storms out
Proxima Centauri
Nearest star to the sun, at 1.3 parsecs, or 4.3 light-years away
White Mountains
New Hampshire mountains (found some in Maine too), part of the Appalachian Mountains system, whose highest point is Mount Washington is in the Presidential Range
Catskills
New York mountain range, part of the Appalachian Mountains system, whose highest point is Slide Mountain
Mount Cook
New Zealand's highest peak, named for an English navigator
Washington Post
Newspaper that first reported about the Watergate Scandal
T.S. Garp
Novelist who loves wrestling and whose son loses an eye in a bizarre auto accident in John Irving's The World According to Garp
City of Light(s)
Nickname for Paris
Hanoi Hilton
Nickname for most well-known POW camp in North Vietnam; prisoners were treated brutally and tortured
Old Lady of Threadneedle Street
Nickname for the Bank of England
Foggy Bottom
Nickname for the U.S. Department of State
Roof of the World
Nickname given to Everest and the Tibetan plateau
Occidentalism
Non Western societies presenting the west as corrupt, imperialistie and hypocritical
William Sydney Porter
O. Henry's real name
Saratoga
October 7, 1777, New York Revolutionary War battle also called Battle of Freeman's Farm.
Afrikaans
Official language of South Africa other than English.
Mann Act
Official name for the so-called "white slave traffic act" of 1910, prohibiting interstate transport of women for "immoral purposes"
Green Knowe
Old English house where children of today play with children of the past in Lucy Boston's works
mossback
Old-fashioned, extremely conservative, or reactionary person, one who changes opinions so slowly that moss could grow on his back like on a turtle
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace
One of the world's largest churches, was built during the 1980s in the French-speaking country of Cote d'Ivoire
Cassini Probe
Orbiter around Saturn and its moon
Cartel
Organization of independently operated businesses formed to eliminate price competition among members, thereby increasing their profits
O'Lan
Originally a slave owned by the Hwang family; Wang Lung's wife; a realist and a survivor; resourceful and intelligent in Pearl Buck's The Good Earth
Topsy
Orphan slave girl in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin known for saying "I 'spect I growed"
Milo Minderbinder
Owner of M & M Enterprises who tries to run the war in Joseph Heller's Catch-22
New Guinea
Pacific Ocean island north of Australia named for its resemblance to a country on Africa's west coast—part of this island is in Indonesia (2nd largest island in the world)
Galapágos Islands
Pacific Ocean islands along the equator owned by Ecuador and famous for their unusual assortment of animals
Castor and Pollux
Pair of Greek twins, one of whom was fathered by the King of Sparta and the other of whom was fathered by Zeus.
Indus
Pakistan's longest river, rising in Tibet and emptying into the Arabian Sea
1972 Munich Olympics
Palestinian terrorist group Black September abducted and killed Israeli Olympic athletes to bring attention to their cause.
Manuel Noriega
Panama leader who was overthrown in a 1989 US invasion; Tried and imprisoned for drug trafficking
Spanish Flu
Pandemic that spread around the world in 1918 after WWI, killing more than 50 million people
Euphrates
Part of the Tigris-Euphrates river system rising in Turkey that joins the Tigris before forming the Shatt al Arab, which flows into the Persian Gulf
Lake Saint Clair
Part of the waterway connecting Lakes Huron and Erie
Seder
Passover meal at which the story of the release of the ancient Israelites from bondage in Egypt is read aloud
John Hancock
Patriot leader and president of the Second Continental Congress; first person to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Sinai
Peninsula in northeastern Egypt linking Asia with Africa and bordered by the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, and the Gulf of Suez to the west
Crimean
Peninsula in southern Ukraine bordered by the Black Sea on the east, south, and west and by the Sea of Azov to the northeast
Yucatan
Peninsula on which Belize and parts of Mexico and Guatemala are located
Iberian
Peninsula on which Spain and Portugal are located, separated from the rest of Europe by the Pyrenees and from Africa by the Strait of Gibraltar
Murasaki Shikibu
Perhaps Japan's greatest author, a woman active at the Heian court who is best known for "The Tale of Genji", which she wrote around 1000 C.E.
incumbent
Person who is holding an office, particularly at the time the officeholder is running for reelection
J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan author
The Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle novel
Cruel and unusual punishment
Phrase designating punishment prohibited by the 8th Amendment, such as torture, or the death penalty when not considered appropriate for the crime
Clear and present danger
Phrase for the standard by which the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether exer- cise of the First Amendment's right of free speech should be limited or punished
Banbury Cross
Place to which one rides "a cock horse / to see a fine lady upon a white horse" in a nursery rhyme
perigee
Point closest to the Earth in the orbit of any Earth satellite
Perihelion
Point closest to the sun in the orbit of a comet and other orbiting bodies
nadir
Point of the celestial sphere directly below a given position
Tammany Hall
Political machine in New York, headed by Boss Tweed.
Queequeg
Polynesian harpooner and Ishmael's friend in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
Dashiell Hammett
Popular American writer of noir, or detective, fiction. Many of his novels, including Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, became successful movies.
Vasco da Gama
Portuguese explorer. In 1497-1498 he led the first naval expedition from Europe to sail to India, opening an important commercial sea route.
Azores
Portuguese volcanic islands in the Atlantic about 900 miles west of the mainland of Portugal
Patronage
Power of a government official to appointment someone to an office or grant a political favor
Mitochondria
Powerhouse of the cell, organelle that is the site of ATP (energy) production
War on Poverty
President LBJ's domestic social welfare program
Capitals of South Africa
Pretoria, Cape Town, Bloemfontein
Pollyanna
Pretty, well-behaved orphan known as the "Glad Girl" since she remains happy and cheerful in difficult times in an Eleanor Porter novel of the same name
Justin Trudeau
Prime Minister of Canada; 23rd PM of Canada; Liberal Party; 2nd youngest PM in Canadian history; son of former PM Pierre Trudeau; diverse staff
Tojo Hideki
Prime Minister of Japan (1941-1944) and leading advocate of Japanese military conquest during World War II.
Prince Edward
Prince who changes clothes with beggar Tom Canty in Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper"
Uncas
Principal native American character in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans
Azkaban
Prison housing criminals who are wizards in a J.K. Rowling novel
Mike Hammer
Private eye who uses violence to achieve his goals in Mickey Spillane's novels
Referendum
Procedure for submitting proposed laws or key issues to voters for a direct public vote
Assimilation
Process by which cells convert food into living tissue after digestion.
Gerrymandering
Process of redrawing legislative boundaries for the purpose of benefiting the party in power.
Proletariat
Propertyless industrial working class, who according to Karl Marx were in a fundamental conflict with the bourgeoisie...workers
Tom Joad
Protagonist of The Grapes of Wrath: an Oklahoma tenant farmer's son...played by Henry Fonda in movie
Greek who helped develop trigonometry
Ptolemy
Marie Antoinette
Queen of France (as wife of Louis XVI) who was unpopular her extravagance and opposition to reform contributed to the overthrow of the monarchy; she was guillotined along with her husband (1755-1793)
DDT
Rachel Carson wrote about its dangers in Silent Spring.
Ozarks
Range of hills in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma whose highest peaks are the Boston Mountains in Arkansas
Pennine Alps
Range of the Alps along the Swiss-Italian border from the Great St. Bernard Pass to the Simplon Pass
Article VII of the Constitution
Ratification of the Constitution is explained in this article.
Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury novel
supply-side economics
Reagan administration economic theory stressing the reduction of taxes on corporations as a means of encouraging business growth and stabilizing the economy
Miles Standish
Real-life "Indian fighter" with red hair who appears in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's long poem about him and his courtship
Holden Caulfield
Rebellious 16-year-old who says he had a "lousy childhood" in J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye
Albedo
Reflecting power of a planet expressed as a power of reflected light to the total amount falling on the surface
Civil Disobedience
Refusal to obey a law to demonstrate how unjust it is, an action popularized by a Henry David Thoreau essay
Gold Coast
Region of the Atlantic coast of West Africa occupied by modern Ghana; named for its gold exports to Europe from the 1470s onward.
Xanadu
Region where "a stately pleasure dome" is located in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan
sect
Religious group that has broken away from a larger one
Smith, Joseph
Religious leader who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or Mormon religion, in 1830 in New York
Franchise
Right to vote—also called suffrage (Wyoming was the first to grant women the right to vote, in 1869; its opposite is disenfranchisement)
Hudson River
River in eastern New York that flows into the Atlantic Ocean
Murray River
River located in the northern border of Victoria...It flows through New South Wales...longest river in Australia with water in it year round
Darling River
River located in the northern part of New South Wales...combines with the Murray River
Darling
River rising in Australia's Great Dividing Range, and later joining the Murray River—its flow is intermittent but it is about 100 miles longer than the Murray
Elbe
River rising in the Czech Republic and flowing through Germany before emptying into the Black Sea
Rhone
River that rises in Switzerland and flows through France before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea
Rhine
River that rises in Switzerland and flows through Germany and the Netherlands before emptying into the North Sea
Vladimir Lenin
Russian founder of the Bolsheviks and leader of the Russian Revolution and first head of the USSR (1870-1924).
Leon Trotsky
Russian revolutionary and Communist theorist who helped Lenin and built up the army
Jim
Runaway slave who embarks on a raft voyage down the Mississippi with Huck Finn in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Volga
Russian river that is Europe's longest
Anton Checkhov
Russian writer - fiction and plays - late 19th c. - "The Cherry Orchard"/"Three Sisters"
Boris Pasternak
Russian author of "Dr. Zhivago", a novel condemning the brutality of the Stalin era (1890-1960)
Dostoyevsky
Russian author of Crime and Punishment.
St. Petersburg
Russian city formerly called Petrograd, then Leningrad
Kubla Kahn
Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem that takes place in Xanadu
Hogwarts
School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, founded in A.D. 1000, that Harry Potter attends in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series
Battle of Little Bighorn
Sioux forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull surrounded and defeated Custer and his troops
Utopia
Sir Thomas More's perfect society on an imaginary island off the coast of South America
Alamogordo, New Mexico
Site of the first successfully tested atomic bomb in July 1945
Cape of Good Hope
Southern tip of Africa; first circumnavigated in 1488 by Portuguese in search of direct route to India.
Cape Horn
Southern tip of South America
Arabian
Southwest Asian peninsula between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf
Vyacheslav Molotov
Soviet foreign minister who divided the capitalist countries into two groups, the "smart and dangerous imperialists monsters" and the "fools"....known for helping to petition Poland with Nazi Germany and his name is used for "the poor man's grenade."
Mikhail Gorbachev
Soviet leader of the 1980s who worked with Reagan to end the Cold War
Fransisco Goya
Spanish Romantic Artist of The Third of May, 1808
Vasco Nunez de Balboa
Spanish explorer who became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean in 1510 while exploring Panama
El Greco
Spanish painter (born in Greece) remembered for his religious works characterized by elongated human forms and dramatic use of color (1541-1614)... View of Toledo
Rods
Specialized visual receptors that play a key role in night vision and peripheral vision.
Strait of Dover
Strait connecting the North Sea with the English Channel between France and England
Pillars of Hercules
Strait of Gibraltar; mountain peak on the Africa side and the Rock of Gibraltar on the Europe side
Portuguese
Strait of Magellan is a Strait at the tip of South America between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, the only body of water directly linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—it is named for a ___________________ explorer
Quentin Compson
Suicidal offspring of the Compson family in Yoknapatawpha County in William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!
Jean Bernoulli
Swiss discoverer of exponential calculus who coined the term integral
John Calvin
Swiss theologian (born in France) whose tenets (predestination and the irresistibly of grace and justification by faith) defined Presbyterianism (1509-1564)
Uncle Sam
Symbol of the U.S. depicted as an old man with a white beard, top hat, frock coat, and striped pants...created by James Flagg
honorarium
Symbolic payment to a speaker for services for which no fee has been set
Spoils System
System of rewarding supporters with appointment to political office after an election victory
Filibuster
Tactic of making long speeches in order to obstruct the passage of a particular bill, especially in the U.S. Senate
French Polynesia
Tahiti is the Island associated with William Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty, and is the largest island in _______________________.
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia
The Atlas mountains are Northwestern African mountains in __________________________
Powder Keg of Europe
The Balkans; they had a long history of nationalist uprisings and ethnic clashes. Nowhere was a dispute more likely to occur than on the Blakan Peninsula
John Sousa
The March King...Stars and Stripes Forever
Tom Clancy
The Hunt for Red October; Redstorm Rising; Clear and Present Danger; Patriot Games; Red Rabbit; The Teeth of the Tiger
49th Parallel
The Oregon Treaty of 1846 established an U.S./Canadian (British) border along this parallel. The boundary along the 49th parallel extended from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Rhesus Monkey
The Rh blood group was named after the ___.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel
Parana and Uruguay
The Rio de la Plata is the Estuary found where the ___________________ and __________________ rivers meet the Atlantic Ocean.
Kelvin
The SI base unit of temperature
Victoria Falls
The Smoke that Thunders, is the native name of this falls, the world's largest by volume.
Faberge Eggs
jeweled eggs given to the Romanovs
Leif Ericson
The Viking explorer believed to be the first European to reach the New World (in about 1000 AD). Landed in Newfoundland which was called Vinland.
Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
The ____________________________, in Southern Louisiana, is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world, spanning 23.83 miles.
Social Darwinism
The application of ideas about evolution and "survival of the fittest" to human societies - particularly as a justification for their imperialist expansion...by Herbert Spencer
Kenneth Grahame
The author of "The Wind in the Willows".
Justinian Code
The body of Roman law collected by order of the Byzantine emperor, Justinian around A.D. 534.
Cuzco
The capital city of the Incan Empire, Located in present-day Peru
Abuja
The capital of Nigeria is _____
Patriotism
The central theme of The Devil and Daniel Webster, because the Devil can't take Webster's soul because he isn't an American citizen.
Cornea
The clear tissue that covers the front of the eye
Halley's Comet
The comet discovered in 1705 that repeats itself every 76 years and last appeared in 1986. (2051 it's back again)
Great Bear (Ursa Major)
The constellation that contains the Big Dipper and helps locate the North Star
Charles Grassley R-Iowa
The current President Pro Tempore of the Senate (as of May 2019)
Mariana(s) Trench
The deepest spot in the oceans, over 35,000 feet deep, near the Philippines...in the Pacific
Charon
The ferryman of the underworld, who conveyed the souls of the dead across the river Styx.
J. Edgar Hoover
The first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who investigated and harassed alleged radicals.
Saturday Evening Post
The first general interest magazine in America...Norman Rockwell
Mother Ann Lee
The founder of the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing, or Shakers.
Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto
The four largest moons of Jupiter...Galilean moons
Mt. Whitney
The highest point in the United States outside Alaska (located in California)
The Glass Menagerie
The horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged in this work. (Tennessee Williams)
Mali
The kingdom in West Africa that followed the Kingdom of Ghana; its wealth is also based on trans-Saharan trade; this kingdom encouraged the spread of Islam.
Auckland
The largest city in New Zealand, located on north island
Ho Chi Minh City
The largest city in Vietnam, named for the President of Northern Vietnam, formerly Saigon.
Mesosphere
The layer of Earth's atmosphere immediately above the stratosphere
Ethan Allen
The leader of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont who, along with Benedict Arnold, caputed Fort Ticonderoga.
Karachi
The most populated city in Pakistan
Ethiopia
The most populated landlocked country...Addis Ababa is capital
Dolly
The name given to a female sheep born in 1996 at the Roslyn Institute in Scotland. She was the first mammal born after cloning via the somatic cell nuclear transfer procedure
Grover's Corners, New Hampshire
The name of the town in Thornton Wilder's Our Town.
Bundestag
The powerful lower house of the German parliament; elects the chancellor.
River Jordan
The river that formed the eastern border of Canaan. Many, including Jesus, were given the Baptism of repentance in this river by St. John the Baptist.
Danube River
The second-longest river of Europe. It flows from southern Germany east into the Black Sea.
Philip II of Spain
The son of Charles V who later became husband to Mary I and king of Spain and Portugal. He supported the Counter Reformation and sent the Spanish Armada to invade England (1527-1598) He was a intolerant, Catholic king.
Thermosphere
The uppermost layer of the atmosphere, in which temperature increases as altitude increases
Forbidden City
The walled section of Beijing where emperors lived between 1121 and 1924. A portion is now a residence for leaders of the People's Republic of China.
Golden Triangle
The world's second largest opium and heroin producing area, located in northern Laos, Thailand, and Burma.
Thomism
Theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and his followers
Domino Theory
Theory asserting that if a key country falls to communism, its neighbors will do likewise
Barnstorm
To make an election campaign trip, stopping often to give campaign speeches
Ulna
Thinner, longer bone of the forearm.
Jane Seymour
Third wife of Henry VIII who gave birth to Edward VI and died during childbirth
The Jungle
This 1906 work by Upton Sinclair pointed out the abuses of the meat packing industry. The book led to the passage of the 1906 Meat Inspection Act.
Article II of the Constitution
This article describes the role and power of the Executive Branch. The President and Vice President.
Marbury v. Madison
This case establishes the Supreme Court's power of Judicial Review
Usurp
To seize and hold the power or position of another by force.
Robert Peary
Thought to be the first to reach the North Pole in 1909.
Alpha Centauri
Triple star, brightest in the constellation Centaurus, and second closest to earth
Okies
Tom Joad is the First-born son and hero of the family of ________________ traveling to California seeking work in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
Becky Thatcher
Tom Sawyer's sweetheart in Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Jerusalem Delivered
Torquato Tasso's epic poem about the First Crusade (1096-1099)
Works by John Steinbeck
Tortilla Flat; In Dubious Battle; Of Mice and Men; The Grapes of Wrath; Cannery Row; The Pearl; East of Eden; The Winter of Our Discontent
Sam Spade
Tough private detective in San Francisco in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon
Oort Cloud
Trans-Plutonian asteroid belt where comets originate
Henry David Thoreau
Transcendentalist; Walden; "Civil Disobedience"
Treaty of Ghent
Treaty that ended the War of 1812 and maintained prewar conditions
scalene triangle
Triangle with no congruent sides
Wabash River
Tributary of Ohio river, source in northern Indiana, makes up much of Indiana border with Illinois
Jabez Stone
Unfortunate New Hampshire farmer who said he would sell his soul to the devil in Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Devil and Daniel Webster"
William Lloyd Garrison
United States abolitionist who published an anti-slavery journal called The Liberator (1805-1879)
Chester Nimitz
United States admiral of the Pacific fleet during World War II who used aircraft carriers to destroy the Japanese navy (1885-1966)
Jesse Owens
United States athlete and Black American whose success in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin outraged Hitler (1913-1980)
Oliver Hazard Perry
United States commodore who led the fleet that defeated the British on Lake Erie during the War of 1812
George Custer
United States general who was killed along with all his command by the Sioux at the battle of Little Bighorn (1839-1876)
Duke Ellington
United States jazz composer and piano player and bandleader (1899-1974)...Harlem Renaissance
Ralph Waldo Emerson
United States writer and leading exponent of transcendentalism (1803-1882)...Self-Reliance
Zion National Park
Utah park where tributaries of the Virgin River have carved canyons in the Navajo Sandstone...last park listed alphabetically.
Erewhon
Utopia created by Samuel Butler in a novel so titled—its name is an anagram of "Nowhere"
Cloudcuckooland
Utopian kingdom of birds and men in Aristophanes' The Birds—also called Nephelococ-cygia
May 8, 1945
V-E Day; when Germany officially surrenders
August 15, 1945
V-J Day (Victory over Japan in WWII)
Orinoco
Venezuela's longest river
Aeneid
Virgil's epic poem that records some of the events before and after the Trojan War
Asorbic Acid
Vitamin C/water soluble vitamin/pervents and treats scurvy & maintains the intergitiy of connective tissue
Samoa
Volcanic island group in the South Pacific Ocean, about midway between Hawaii and Sydney, made up of Western Samoa and American Samoa
Mount Pinatubo
Volcanic mountain on the island of Luzon in the Philippines that erupted in 1991 for the first time in 600 years
Krakatoa
Volcano in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia, between the islands of Sumatra and Java, that exploded in 1883, killing about 36,000 people
The Monkey's Paw
W.W. Jacobs novel (from India), about a guest that grants 3 wishes, but be careful of what you wish for.
Dark Matter
Web of intergalactic matter thought to contain more material than all of the stars in the universe
Kunta Kinte
West African shipped to America in the 18th century to be a slave in Alex Haley's "non-fiction" novel Roots
Don
Western Russian river emptying into the Sea of Azov
England, Scotland, and Wales
What countries make up Great Britain?
England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland
What countries make up the United Kingdom?
Americans with Disabilities Act
What does ADA stand for?
let the buyer beware
What does Caveat Emptor mean?
James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay
Who wrote the Federalist Papers?
Carl Sandburg
Widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920)
Atticus Finch
Widowed Southern lawyer with 2 children who defends a black man accused of the rape of a white woman in a Harper Lee novel
Jack Burden
Willie Stark's aide who serves as the narrator in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men
Triple Crown
Winning The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes.
Hester Prynne
Woman who has to wear a red letter A on her dress as punishment for her adul- tery in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
Andes Mountains
World's longest chain of mountains above sea level, stretching along South America's west coast from Cape Horn to Panama and Venezuela
Radian
a unit of angle measure based on arc length
Ampere
a unit of electric current equal to a flow of one coulomb per second.
jugular
a vein that carries blood back to the heart from the head; a vein that joins the head and the heart
Strait of Magellan
a waterway near the southern tip of South America
Suffragettes
a woman seeking the right to vote through organized protest.
Great Rift Valley
area in Africa where parts of the plateau's surface dropped and early human fossils are found
Article IV of the Constitution
addresses relationship between the federal and state governments
Huang He
aka Yellow River, A river in northern China that flows east for about 3,000 miles, emptying into the Yellow Sea.
NLRB (National Labor Relations Board)
an agency charged with mediating disputes between labor and management
OSHA
an agency concerned with issuing safety standards and seeing that businesses comply with those standards
AEC (Atomic Energy Commission)
an agency directing the development and use of atomic energy
DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration)
an agency of the Department of Justice that enforces federal laws and regulations dealing with narcotics and other dangerous drugs
ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission)
an agency regulating surface transportation between the states
FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
an agency that coordinates emergency preparedness and response to natural or other types of disasters
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
an agency that investigates federal law violations
CBO (Congressional Budget Office)
an agency that provides Congress with basic budget information
EPA (Environmental Protection Agency)
an agency whose goal is to coordinate government action in protecting the environment
Artful Dodger
an agile, clever trickster or con artist, a streetwise thief...character in Oliver Twist
Aristophanes
an ancient Greek dramatist remembered for his comedies (448-380 BC)...Lysistrat;, The Bird;, The Frog;, The Clouds; and The Wasps
Manchu Picchu
an ancient stone city built by the Inca. Likely a royal retreat for the Inca Kings in the Andes.
Aleutian Islands
an archipelago in the North Pacific extending southwestern from Alaska
HUD (Housing and Urban Development)
an executive department responsible for improving the cost and quality of housing, for helping cities improve their economies, and for developing new communities
FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation)
an independent agency insuring deposits at U.S. banks and savings and loans
FTC (Federal Trade Commission)
an independent agency overseeing free and fair economic competition and protecting consumers from unfair business practices
FCC (Federal Communications Commission)
an independent agency regulating interstate and foreign communications by radio, TV, wire, and cable
epitaph
an inscription on a tombstone or burial place
Lazarus
brother to Mary and Martha, raised to life by Jesus after being dead for 4 days
The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals).
Lhasa
capital of Tibet from the 7th century until 1951, now occupied by China
Hanoi
capital of Vietnam after reunification; capital of independent North Vietnam during the war
Manhattan Project
code name for the secret United States project set up in 1942 to develop atomic bombs for use in World War II
Ursa Minor (Little Bear)
commonly known as the Little Dipper; the North Star (Polaris) is located at the tip of the handle
Duterte
controversial President of the Philippines
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency)
created in 1947, to gather information about foreign governments and other groups, including those involved in terrorism or organized crime
Article III of the Constitution
creates the Judicial Branch and the Supreme Court but allows Congress to establish lower courts.
Indira Gandhi
daughter of Nehru who served as prime minister of India from 1966 to 1977...Assassinated in 1984
astigmatism
defective curvature of the cornea or lens of the eye
Article V of the Constitution
describes the process for amending the Constitution
Gibson
desert located on the west coast of Australia
Maria Theresa
empress of Austria whose main enemy was Prussia, mother of Marie Antoinette
"Go west, young man, go west"
famous Horace Greeley saying
hyperopia
farsightedness
Red Scare
fear that communists were working to destroy the American way of life
Sinclair Lewis
first American novelist to win Nobel...satirized middle-class America in his novel Main Street and Babbitt
Elizabeth Blackwell
first female doctor in the United States...an abolitionist, women's rights activist
Donatello's David
first known life-size freestanding bronze nude in European art since antiquity; severed head of the giant Goliath beneath David's feet, celebrated heroism of the Florentines over the Milanese in 1428
Rhone River
flows through Switzerland and France to the Mediterranean Sea.
Siam
former name of Thailand
Northern Rhodesia
former name of Zambia
Southern Rhodesia
former name of Zimbabwe
Monte Carlo
gambling resort in Monaco, a country on the Mediterranean Sea
Jacob
grandson of Abraham, son of Isaac and Rebekah, brother of Esau, and the traditional ancestor of Israelites. His name was changed to Israel, and his 12 sons became the 12 Tribes of Israel.
suspend
habeas corpus... a Legal order that protects people from being jailed illegally on weak evidence or none at all except during an invasion or rebellion...a right that by law, Congress cannot ________________________
Wang Lung
hard-working Chinese peasant who is unfaithful to his loyal wife O'Lan with a dancing-girl in Pearl Buck's The Good Earth
Angel Falls
highest waterfall in the world...in Venezuela
Glaucoma
increased intraocular pressure results in damage to the retina and optic nerve with loss of vision
Great Victoria
largest desert in Australia
Baffin Island
largest island in Canada and 5th in the world
laser
light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation
38th Parallel
line of latitude that separated North and South Korea
Plasma
liquid portion of blood; it is mostly salt water
Willis Tower
located in Chicago, Illinois, formerly known as the Sears Tower. United occupies 13 floors and is its largest tenant.
George Pullman
made his fortune by designing and building sleeper cars that made long distance rail travel more comfortable. Built a company town near Chicago for his employees. (name is associated with a strike)
Professor Henry Higgins
name of the phonetics expert who transforms Eliza into a refined lady in *Pygmalion* (and in movie My Fair Lady)
Moons of Uranus
named for characters in Shakespeare works
myopia
nearsightedness
Gawain
nephew of Arthur; brave knight of the round table...fought the Green Knight
Australian Alps
older than the European alps and Himalayas, highest mountains in Australia
HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee)
one formed in 1938 in the U.S. House of Representatives to investigate subversive activities
Rachel Carson
one of the first people to realize the global dangers of pesticide abuse (DDT). Wrote Silent Spring.
Mutiny on the Bounty
the 1932 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, based on the mutiny against Lieutenant William Bligh, commanding officer of the Bounty in 1789
Coal Types
peat, lignite, bituminous, anthracite
Delmarva Peninsula
peninsula with land in Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware
Permafrost
permanently frozen layer of soil beneath the surface of the ground
Judicial Review
phrase designating the Supreme Court's power to examine the constitutionality of Presidential or Congressional actions or the actions of government agencies as an integral part of the system of checks and balances
T.S. Elliot
poet, wrote "The Waste Land", one of most influential poems of the last century
Marseilles
port city in France; the French national anthem was named after it
Cataracts
rapids along a river, such as those along the Nile in Egypt...or a clouding of the lens of the eye
Edwin Hubble
research proved universe still expanding; proved galaxies exist outside of the milky way; classification system for galaxies; telescope named after him
Rip Van Winkle
short story by Washington Irving... It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America who falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains and wakes up 20 years later, having missed the American Revolution
Hagia Sophia
the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople, built by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian (Turkey's president recently converted it back to a mosque)
Pope Leo X
sold indulgences to pay for St. Peter's... excommunicated Martin Luther
Dom Pedro
son of the king of Portugal who became emperor of an independent Brazil
The Thinker
statue of man lost in deep thought by Auguste Rodin
Mauna Kea
tallest mountain when measured from base to peak
Vinson Massif
tallest peak in Antarctica
Luxor
temple complex in upper Egypt in Thebes where kings were buried or celebrated. lots of temples and ceremonial things. Located next to Valley of the Kings.
pork-barrel legislation
term designating legislation providing appropriations for projects not considered essential but approved because they benefit a legislator's district
Power of the Purse
term designating the influence that legislatures have over public policy because of their power to decide how money is used for legislative programs
French Indochina
the French colonies of Cambodia and Laos and Vietnam were formerly organized as French Indochina
Diet
the Japanese parliament
Barbary Coast
the Mediterranean coast of northern Africa that was famous for its Moorish pirates
mole
the SI base unit used to measure the amount of a substance
Geneva
the Swiss city where Calvin was asked to establish a Christian community...today it is a center of international peace efforts.
pupil
the adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
the agency in charge of space exploration
Abyssinia
the ancient name for Ethiopia
Dhaka
the capital and largest city of Bangladesh
Shoemaker-Levy 9
the comet that struck Jupiter in 1994
President of the Senate
the current Vice President serves as...
Atacama
the driest desert in the world that is found in western Chile in South America
ERA (Equal Rights Amendment)
the failed amendment guaranteeing equal rights for men and women, passed by Congress in 1972 but never approved
Acadia
the first U.S. National Park east of the Mississippi River.
Dido
the founder and first queen of Carthage, bargaining with the local tribes to give her enough land that could be covered by and ox hide, after the founding of Carthage to escape from an unwanted marriage she constructed a funeral pyre, on which she stabbed herself before the people
Jane Addams
the founder of Hull House, which provided English lessons for immigrants, daycares, and child care classes
The Galilean moons
the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto
Lake Victoria
the largest lake in Africa and the 2nd largest fresh water lake in the world
Tel Aviv-Yafo
the largest manufacturing center in Israel
Orange River
the longest river in Southern Africa, named after a dynastic house of the Netherlands (longest river in the borders of South Africa, but starts in Lesotho)
GOP
the nickname by which the Republican Party is known
Reapportionment
the process of reassigning representation based on population, after every census
Cartography
the science of making maps and globes
candela
the standard unit of luminous intensity
Phobos and Deimos
the two moons of Mars
Pullman Strike
violent 1894 railway workers' strike which began outside of Chicago and spread nationwide
Kofi Annan
was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006, he and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
James Bowie
was ordered by Sam Houston to go down and destroy the Alamo. Decided to stay and fight with Neill the commander at the Alamo. He said he would rather die than give the Alamo to the enemy...noted for his knife
