Large Quizbowl Set Seven

Nevsky Prospekt

(1835) by Nikolai Gogol. Nevsky Prospekt is a major thoroughfare in Saint Petersburg. After describing the various types of people who walk down the street at different times of day, the story focuses on two men, who each pursue a beautiful woman. The first is Piskaryov, a painter who sees a dark-haired woman, follows her to the brothel where she works, and falls obsessively in love with her, eventually turning to opium to calm himself. He returns and proposes to the woman, but she mocks his advances, after which Piskaryov cuts his own throat. The second man, Lieutenant Pirogov, follows a blond woman. She turns out to be the wife of a German tinsmith, who beats Pirogov. The lieutenant plans to avenge himself, but abandons the idea after eating pastries and going dancing.

Mount Erebus

, a stratovolcano, is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (but tallest active one) and the southernmost active volcano in the world. Mount Erebus sits on Ross Island. It took its name from the primordial personification of darkness in Greek mythology. The northeast slope of Mount Erebus is known as "Fang Ridge," and the volcano's underground magma produces unique pieces of feldspar known as "Erebus crystals." In 1979 an Air New Zealand jet crashed into the side of Mount Erebus during a whiteout, killing over 250 people.

Jesse Jackson Sr

. (1941-) is a civil rights activist and politician who began as a protégé of Martin Luther King, Jr. He helped organize Operation Breadbasket, a department of the SCLC focused on economic issues. Jackson also worked on the Poor People's Campaign after King's assassination, but he clashed with King's appointed successor, Ralph Abernathy. He founded the civil rights organizations Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the National Rainbow Coalition, which later merged to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. His son Jesse Jackson Jr. was a congressman from Chicago before serving prison time for financial corruption.

One World Trade Center (New York City; David Childs, architect; completed 2014)

Construction began on One World Trade Center, alternatively known as 1 WTC and the Freedom Tower, in 2006, and was the main part of the project of rebuilding the World Trade Center following the 9/11 attacks as part of an overall plan for the site developed by architect Daniel Libeskind; it occupies the former site of the original 6 WTC. The building reaches a symbolic height of 1,776 feet, and is adjacent to a pair of memorial reflecting pools marking the foundations of the original Twin Towers. The new WTC complex includes a transportation hub designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. A new Two World Trade Center will likely not be completed until 2024.

On March 15, 44 BC (the Ides of March)

Roman statesman Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by the Liberatores ("Liberators"), a group of senators led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus. Caesar died at the base of the Roman Curia in the Theater of Pompey, just outside the Roman Senate. Caesar had recently been named dictator perpetuo—or "dictator in perpetuity"—which many senators believed would be the end of the Roman Republic. After the assassination, Caesar's adopted grandnephew Octavian (later Augustus) and his top general Marc Antony formed the Second Triumvirate with Marcus Lepidus; the trio deified Caesar and defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi.

On June 28, 1914 Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand

and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo by Serbian ultra-nationalist Gavrilo Princip, a member of a secret military society called the Black Hand. In response to the assassination, Austria-Hungary issued the July Ultimatum to Serbia, leading to the outbreak of World War I.

On June 5, 1968 Robert F. Kennedy was himself fatally shot

by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles. Kennedy was only the second sitting U.S. senator to be assassinated (the other was Huey Long in 1935). The day after winning the California presidential primary, Kennedy was leaving the Ambassador Hotel through the hotel kitchen when he was shot. Following Kennedy's death, it became policy for the Secret Service to provide protection to presidential candidates during the campaign. The Democratic nomination for 1968 eventually went to Hubert Humphrey, who lost the election to Richard Nixon.

On October 31, 1984 Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in New Delhi

by two of her Sikh bodyguards: Satwant Singh and Beant Singh. Her murder came four months after Operation Blue Star, a military raid on the sacred Sikh Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab. Gandhi had been on her way to give an interview with British actor Peter Ustinov when she was killed, and the incident led to widespread anti-Sikh riots throughout India in which thousands of Sikhs were killed. Indira Gandhi's oldest son, Rajiv, succeeded her as Prime Minister of India.

Mount Pinatubo

is a stratovolcano in the Zambales Mountains on the eastern coast of the island of Luzon in the Philippines. In the aftermath of its 1991 eruption, the global temperature briefly decreased by almost a full degree Fahrenheit due to the ejection of aerosols and sulfuric acid. That eruption was ten times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens; it killed at least 800 people and forced the evacuation of some 20,000 people. In its aftermath, monsoon rains created Lake Pinatubo in the resulting crater. In 2010, the indigenous Aeta people were formally granted domain over the volcano.

Mount Vesuvius

is a stratovolcano on the Gulf of Naples in Campania in south-central Italy. Mount Vesuvius, which last erupted in 1944, is the only active volcano on mainland Europe. The most notable eruption of Mount Vesuvius was in AD 79 when it buried the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. The only surviving eyewitness accounts of that eruption are a pair of letters written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus. The 1908 Summer Olympics were relocated from Rome to London after a surprise eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

Mount Rainier

is a stratovolcano that is the highest peak in the Cascades and in the state of Washington. It is located about 50 miles southeast of Seattle. The three principal peaks of Mount Rainier are Columbia Crest (the tallest), Point Success, and Liberty Cap; the Little Tahoma Peak is a remnant of an older, much larger Mount Rainier that has since eroded away. Mount Rainier has not erupted since the mid-to-late nineteenth century. The Nisqually Glacier, on Mount Rainier's southwestern slope, is used to track climate change. The Emmons Glacier on Mount Rainier is the largest glacier by area in the contiguous U.S., while the Carbon Glacier is the largest by volume. The entirety of Mount Rainier is in Mount Rainier National Park, the fifth national park established in the U.S.

Mount Saint Helens

is another stratovolcano in the Cascades of Washington state. It is about 100 miles south of Seattle and about 50 miles north of Portland. It last erupted in May 1980, killing 57 people in the most devastating volcanic eruption in U.S. history. Perhaps the most famous casualty of that eruption was an innkeeper named Harry Truman (no relation to the president of the same name) who refused to evacuate from the mountain. Because of an avalanche of volcanic debris during that eruption, Mount Saint Helens lost about 1300 feet in height; lahars (mudflows of pyroclastic material) reached all the way to the Columbia River. The volcano is surrounded by Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

Ultraviolet-Visible Spectrophotometry (UV-Vis)

quantifies the presence of compounds by shining light in the ultraviolet-to-visible range on a molecule, then measuring which wavelengths are absorbed. Parts of a molecule which absorb visible light are referred to as chromophores; since different molecules have different chromophores, the wavelength of maximum absorbance, or lambda-max, can be used to identify a compound. Beer's law is then used to quantify the concentration of the present compound. Samples are held in small square plastic or quartz tubes called cuvettes. The Woodward-Fieser rules empirically estimate the lambda-max from the types of bonds and functional groups in a molecule. UV-Vis has many uses in biology—for example: calculating the OD600 to measure bacterial growth rate, determining nucleic acid quality with the 260/280 ratio, measuring protein concentration in the Lowry and Bradford protein assays, and monitoring protein folding by measuring tryptophan or tyrosine absorbance.

Chromatography

separates a complex mixture into its individual components, commonly illustrated by the separation of pen ink into many colors. Chromatography involves two components: a mobile phase, which moves, and a stationary phase, which interacts differently with different components of the mobile phase to produce a separation. For example, in thin-layer chromatography, a mixture is spotted on one end of a plate of silica gel (the stationary phase), then a solvent (the mobile phase) carries the components across the plate and separates them based on their polarity—polar substances will strongly interact with the polar silica gel and not move very far, while nonpolar substances will move very far. In gas chromatography (GC), substances are vaporized and run through a packed column, where the time it takes each component to travel through—the retention time—is determined. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) is like gas chromatography, but the sample remains in the liquid phase and is pushed through using pressures of up to 400 atmospheres. Ion-exchange chromatography uses stationary phases with acidic or basic functional groups to remove charged compounds; it can be used for water softening.

Liquid-Liquid Extraction

separates mixtures based on their relative solubilities in two immiscible solvents, such as oil and water. It is commonly performed by placing the mixture and solvents into a separatory funnel, shaking, then using the stopcock to remove one of the two phases. The partition coefficient quantifies the desired compound's relative solubility in the two phases. The material left over after the desired material has been extracted is called the raffinate. A variant of liquid-liquid extraction that uses phenol and chloroform as the two solvents is used to isolate DNA from cells.

Penelope

was the ever-faithful wife of Odysseus, the king of Ithaca whose long journey home is the subject of The Odyssey. While Odysseus was away, Penelope was courted by dozens of suitors led by Antinous, but she held them off with cunning: she told them she'd wed one when she finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's father Laertes, but she unwove her progress each night. When Odysseus returned, she tested his identity by asking the maid to move their bed, which cannot be done since the bed—crafted by Odysseus—had one post that was a living olive tree. Her only child is a son, Telemachus.

Clytemnestra

was the wife of King Agamemnon and the sister of Castor, Polydeuces, and Helen. When Agamemnon's troops were stuck at Aulis en route to Troy, he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia, which made Clytemnestra very angry. She later began an affair with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin; when Agamemnon returned to Mycenae after the Trojan War, Clytemnestra and Aegisthus murdered him and his concubine Cassandra. In response, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon's son Orestes killed both Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, continuing the curse of the House of Atreus.

The Queen of Spades

(1834) by Alexander Pushkin. The story begins at a late-night gambling party given by the Russian army officer Naroumov. There, Tomsky discusses his own grandmother, a countess who once lost a fortune paying the card game faro in Paris, and who subsequently sought assistance from the Comte de Saint-Germain (a real historical figure). Saint-Germain taught the countess how to win back her money by playing a sequence of three cards. After hearing this tale, an engineering officer of German descent named Herman schemes to meet the countess by courting her ward Lizaveta, who tells Herman how to secretly enter the house. Herman accosts the countess, who refuses to reveal the names of the cards. When Herman draws a pistol, the countess dies of fright. At the countess's funeral, her corpse appears to wink at Herman. That night, Herman is visited by the countess's ghost, who tells him that the cards are the three, seven, and ace. Herman goes to the gambling salon of Chekalinsky, where he wins a massive sum of money by betting on the three. The following night, Herman wins again by betting on the seven. On the third night he intends to bet everything on the ace, but the card that he actually plays is the queen of spades. When Herman looks at the card, it seems to wink at him as the countess had done. Herman goes insane and is put in an asylum, where he spends his days muttering "three seven ace! Three seven queen!"

The Nose

(1836) by Nikolai Gogol. On the morning of March 25, the barber Yakovlevich cuts open a loaf of bread, and discovers a nose inside it. The nose belongs to Major Kovalyov, who wakes up the same day to find a smooth patch of skin where his nose used to be. Upon encountering his missing nose, which is traveling in a carriage and wearing the uniform of a state councillor, Kovalyov chases it to a shopping center called the Gostiny Dvor. There, Kovalyov wonders how to approach the nose, since its uniform indicates that it has a higher status than him. Summoning his courage, Kovalyov tries to convince the nose to return to his face, but the nose claims not to recognize him. Kovalyov goes to a newspaper, intending to offer a reward for the nose's return, but the clerk refuses his absurd-sounding request. Kovalyov then speaks with the police, who later catch the nose attempting to flee to Riga. However, the doctor that Kovalyov consults is unable to re-attach the nose, even with an operation. Kovalyov writes a letter to Madame Alexandra Podtochina Grigorievna, accusing her of cursing him so that he will marry her daughter, but receives an uncomprehending reply. Finally, on April 7, Kovalyov wakes up with his nose reattached, and resumes his normal life.

The Overcoat

(1842) by Nikolai Gogol. Remarking on the story's importance to Russian literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky quipped "we all come out of Gogol's overcoat." The story's protagonist is Akaky Akakievich, a poor government clerk whose only joy in life is copying documents. His coworkers often make fun of his worn-out overcoat, so he visits his tailor Petrovich, who says that the coat must be replaced. Akaky scrimps to save up the necessary 80 roubles, and finally acquires the coat after receiving an unexpectedly large bonus. As he walks home from a party that was given in part to honor the new garment, Akaky is accosted by two ruffians who steal his overcoat. Akaky tries to seek justice from the municipal superintendent and from an "important personage," but both refuse to help him. Soon afterwards, Akaky contracts a fever and dies. His ghost is said to haunt the streets of Saint Petersburg, searching for the stolen cloak. Eventually, the "important personage" is accosted by a figure whom he believes to be Akaky's ghost, and is forced to surrender his own coat. However, the story's final words hint that the supposed "ghost" was actually an ordinary robber.

Ida B. Wells

(1862-1931) was an early investigative journalist and civil rights leader who helped found the NAACP. In the 1890s she investigated lynching, arguing that it was a form of controlling black communities rather than retribution for criminal acts. She documented the results of her research in pamphlets such as Southern Horrors and The Red Record. She accused Frances Willard, the president of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, of turning a blind eye to lynching.

How Much Land Does a Man Need?

(1886) by Leo Tolstoy. At the start of the story, a peasant named Pahom listens to his wife and sister-in-law debate whether it is better to live in the town or the country. Pahom thinks "if I had plenty of land, I wouldn't fear the Devil himself!"—which the Devil hears from behind the stove. Shortly thereafter, Pahom purchases land from a village woman. He becomes exceedingly jealous and protective of his property, causing him to quarrel with his neighbors and the local judges. Learning of rich land elsewhere, Pahom moves his family, but still is not satisfied. Desirous of acquiring even more land, Pahom visits the nomadic Bashkirs. Their chief, who is possibly the Devil in disguise, says that one thousand roubles will buy as much land as Pahom can walk around in a single day. However, if Pahom does not return to his starting point by sunset, both the money and the land are forfeit. In his greed, Pahom ventures too far. He sprints back while the chief laughs, just as the Devil did in one of Pahom's dreams. Pahom returns to the starting point just in time, but immediately drops dead from exhaustion. A servant buries Pahom in a grave that is six feet long, thus answering the story's title question: a man only needs six feet of land.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

(1886) by Leo Tolstoy. The story begins in a courtroom, as the death of the middle-aged magistrate Ivan Ilyich prompts other members of the legal profession to think about how the new vacancy will affect their status. The story then describes Ivan's unhappy marriage to Praskovya Fedorovna, and his move to Saint Petersburg. As he decorates his new house, Ivan has an accident while demonstrating how he wishes the curtains to be hung. The accident slowly causes Ivan to suffer increasing pain, during which he becomes dependant on the peasant servant Gerasim, and contemplates how meaningless his existence has been. At the end of his life, Ivan screams continuously for three days. Finally, Ivan sees light all around him at the same time that his son Vasya kisses his hand, and realizes that all he can do to end his family's suffering is to die. Ivan thus dies happily.

The Bet

(1889) by Anton Chekhov. An old banker recalls a bet that he made 15 years ago at a party, in response to an argument about whether capital punishment is more or less cruel than life in prison. A lawyer suggests that life in prison is superior, because it would be better to have some existence than none at all. The rash banker bets two million roubles that the lawyer would not last five years in solitary confinement; the lawyer insists he could withstand 15 years, and the bet is on. The lawyer is often unhappy during the early years of his confinement in a lodge on the banker's estate. However, the lawyer betters himself by refusing wine and tobacco, and gradually studies languages, history, literature, philosophy, the Bible, theology, and science. Meanwhile, the banker grows steadily poorer, and realizes that paying off the bet will leave him bankrupt. On the last day of the bet, the banker resolves to kill the lawyer, and sneaks into the lodge while the lawyer is sleeping. There, the banker finds a letter in which the lawyer explains that years of study have taught him to scorn earthly knowledge and riches, and to care only about the salvation of his soul. The lawyer thus plans to leave the lodge five hours before 12 o'clock on November 14, 1885, when he would have won the bet. The banker departs without doing the lawyer harm and the lawyer carries out his plan, allowing the banker to avoid ruin. The banker then hides the lawyer's note in a safe, to avoid "unnecessary talk."

The Kreutzer Sonata

(1889) by Leo Tolstoy. Both Russia and the U.S. censored this novella, which describes the fatal results of an affair. As passengers on a train discuss marriage and love, a "nervous man" named Basile Posdnicheff breaks into the conversation, and insists that romantic love cannot endure for a lifetime. Posdnicheff recalls the dissipations of his bachelor days before explaining how he courted his wife, whom he accuses of trapping him into marriage with her physical charms. According to Posdnicheff, the idleness of the well-fed upper classes leads to an unhealthy emphasis on romance, giving women power over men. He advocates the ideal of celibacy even in marriage, astonishing the other train passengers. Posdnicheff describes quarrels with his wife, complaining that she was overly concerned with the health of their children, and that she eventually used contraception. As the marriage grows intolerable, Posdnifcheff's wife spends more time playing the piano, and is introduced by Posdnicheff to Troukhatchevsky, who studied the violin in Paris. Although Posdnicheff is initially suspicious of Troukhatchevsky, he is comforted by his wife's disavowal of interest in the musician, and by the elevated emotions he feels while listening to his wife and Troukhatchevsky play Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. However, Posdnicheff's jealousy returns during a work trip, when he receives a letter from his wife mentioning Troukhatchevsky. He takes a long journey back to his house, where he finds Troukhatchevsky's overcoat. Posdnicheff removes his shoes to walk more quietly, takes a dagger from the wall, and surprises the pair in the dining room. Because he does not wish to run after Troukhatchevsky without shoes, Posdnicheff turns on his wife, and fatally stabs her. Although jailed while awaiting trial, Posdnicheff is ultimately acquitted because of his wife's suspected infidelity.

Ward No. 6

(1892) by Anton Chekhov. The story is set in a run-down asylum, whose five inmates include the university-educated Ivan Gromov and the imbecilic Moiseika. Moiseika is the only inmate allowed to go into town, where he begs for items that are all confiscated by Nikita, the asylum's porter. The hospital is run by the medical assistant Sergei Sergeyitch and by the doctor Andrei Yefimitch Ragin, whose supervision gradually becomes lax. Andrei discusses philosophical issues with the postmaster Mikhail Averyanich, and later begins to engage in such conversations with Ivan. Dr. Yevgeny Hobotov, whom a local council appoints to work at the hospital, grows concerned at Andrei's long conversations with an inmate. Fearing that Andrei is not well, Mikhail proposes that they take a trip to Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Warsaw, but the journey goes poorly, and Andrei spends most of his money paying off Mikhail's gambling debts. Upon returning, Andrei finds out that he has been fired and replaced by Dr. Hobotov. Andrei withdraws into himself, and eventually shouts at Mikhail and Dr. Hobotov to leave him alone. Dr. Hobotov tricks Andrei into entering Ward No. 6, where mental patients are confined. When Andrei protests his incarceration, Nikita beats him. Andrei soon dies of a stroke; Mikhail and Andrei's servant Daryushka are the only people at the funeral.

The Lady with a Dog

(1899) by Anton Chekhov. The married banker Dmitri Gurov has been on vacation by himself in Yalta for two weeks when he hears of a "new face" attracting attention, a lady with a dog. Dmitri meets the woman, Anna Sergeyevna von Diderits. She is vacationing without her spouse, as her marriage is unhappy—just like Dmitri's. The two sleep together. After returning to Moscow, Dmitri cannot forget the memory of Anna, and realizes he has fallen in love. He pretends to be going to Saint Petersburg for business, but instead travels to Anna's hometown. There, he finds her at the debut of a play titled The Geisha. Dmitri confronts Anna at the performance, and she confesses that she too has fallen in love. Anna begins making excuses to visit Moscow every few months to see Dmitri. The two fall deeper in love, but do not know how to leave their marriages. The story ends on an unresolved note, stating "to both of them it was clear that the end was still very far off, and that their hardest and most difficult period was only just beginning."

Vladimir Nabokov

(1899-1977) was a Russian-American author. His 1955 novel Lolita depicts Humbert Humbert's obsession with the adolescent Ramsdale resident Dolores Haze, whom Humbert nicknames "Lolita. Humbert becomes Lolita's stepfather by marrying her mother Charlotte, who soon dies. Lolita and Humbert travel the U.S. before Humbert enrolls Lolita at the Beardsley School for Girls. There, Lolita is cast in a play written by Clare Quilty, and devises a plan of escape. In Nabokov's highly meta-fictional novel Pale Fire, a 999-line poem of the same name by John Shade is the subject of a lengthy commentary by the scholar Charles Kinbote. However, Kinbote's notes are more concerned with himself than with the poem, revealing that he thinks of himself as King Charles, the exiled monarch of the land of Zembla. Nabokov's other books include the novels Ada, or Ardor, which recounts an incestuous relationship; Invitation to a Beheading, about the condemned prisoner Cincinnatus, and The Defense, a Russian-language novel about the chess player Aleksandr Luzhin. In his memoir Speak, Memory, Nabokov wrote about his wife Vera and his scientific interest in butterflies.

Rosa Parks

(1913-2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, disobeying driver James F. Blake's order to move to the "colored section" of the bus. She collaborated with Edgar Nixon and other leaders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to organize the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted from December 1955 (four days after her arrest) until December 1956.

Kurt Vonnegut

(1922-2007) was an American novelist best known for the 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim, who experiences his life out of order after becoming "unstuck in time." Like Vonnegut, Billy survives the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Billy is also kidnapped by aliens called Tralfamadorians, and displayed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack. The Tralfamadorians have a fatalistic attitude towards mortality, which is mirrored in the novel's repetition of the phrase "so it goes" after any mention of death. Vonnegut's earlier novel Cat's Cradle describes a fictional religion called Bokononism, which was founded on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. The plot of Cat's Cradle partly focuses on ice-nine, a substance invented by Felix Hoenikker that has the power to destroy all life on Earth.

Italo Calvino

(1923-1985) was an Italian author. In his 1979 novel If on a winter's night a traveler, the even-numbered sections are presented as the first chapters of a number of different books, each of which breaks off abruptly at a climactic moment. The odd-numbered sections are addressed in the second person to "You," the reader of "Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler." You and a fellow book-lover named Ludmilla investigate oddities in the novels you are reading, in the process encountering a best-selling author named Silas Flannery, the deceitful translator Ermes Marana, and a scholar of Cimmerian literature named Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. Calvino's novel Invisible Cities is framed as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, who describes 55 fictional cities to the Mongol ruler. Calvino is also known for his fantastical short stories, some of which are collected in the volume Cosmicomics and narrated by an ancient being named Qfwfq.

Joseph Heller

(1923-1999) was an American novelist. He satirized Army bureaucracy in his novel Catch-22, which was based on his experiences as a bombardier on the Italian front during World War II. The novel is set in Rome and on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa, where John Yossarian is stationed with the 256th Squadron. "Catch-22" is a rule stating that airmen do not have to fly missions if they are insane, but that applying to be excused from flying missions is proof of sanity; consequently, there is no way to avoid the dangerous missions. Characters in the novel include the arch-capitalist mess officer Milo Minderbinder, who sets up a syndicate called M&M Enterprises, and Major Major Major, who is accidentally promoted to the rank of major because of his unusual name. The novel's main antagonist is Colonel Cathcart, who continually raises the number of missions that airmen must fly before they are allowed to go home. In 1994 Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time.

Shirley Chisholm

(1924-2005) was a Democratic politician from New York who achieved a number of firsts. In 1968, she was the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became both the first black major-party presidential candidate and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. (Margaret Chase Smith had run for the Republican nomination in 1964.) In 1970, Chisholm gave an acclaimed speech in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Medgar Evers

(1925-1963) was the NAACP's field secretary for Mississippi, in which capacity he planned boycotts and grassroots civil rights organizations. He advocated ending segregation at the University of Mississippi; after Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, he applied to law school there, but was rejected because he was black. In 1963, he was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the white supremacist network White Citizens' Councils.

Malcolm X

(1925-1965) was a black Muslim civil rights activist who changed his name from Malcolm Little upon converting to the Nation of Islam. He later repudiated the Nation of Islam and became a mainstream Sunni Muslim, completing the hajj in 1964. He was known for rejecting nonviolent activism, arguing in his speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" that violence might be necessary if the government continued to suppress the rights of African Americans. In 1965, he was assassinated while preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom.

Martin Luther King Jr.

(1929-1968) was a Baptist minister and the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s. He delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington. As leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he joined with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. His leadership of the Poor People's Campaign was cut short in 1968 when James Earl Ray assassinated him at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

James Meredith

(1933-) became the first African-American person admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962. Two people died in the riots sparked by his enrollment. In 1966, Meredith began the March Against Fear, planning to walk from Memphis to Jackson. On the second day, he was wounded by a sniper; thereafter, thousands of other civil rights activists completed the march in his name.

Stokely Carmichael

(1941-1998) was a leader of the Pan-African movement and the Black Power movement, who popularized the use of the term "Black Power." He replaced John Lewis as chair of SNCC; under his leadership, SNCC shifted from a policy of nonviolence to a more militant approach. He served as "honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party, but later distanced himself from that movement because he didn't believe that white activists should be allowed to participate. He ended up changing his name to Kwame Ture (in honor of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Touré) and moving to Guinea.

Al Sharpton

(1954-) is a Baptist minister and community leader from New York City. He is also a perennial political candidate who has run for the U.S. Senate, mayor of New York City, and president of the U.S. Sharpton began his activism career working under Jesse Jackson as part of Operation Breadbasket. He has been at the center of many controversies. In 1987, he helped handle publicity for Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused four white men of having raped her. Sharpton was also accused of making anti-Semitic remarks during the 1991 Crown Heights riot, a racial riot in which Jews were attacked after two children were injured by the motorcade of the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

David Foster Wallace

(1962-2008) was an American author. His massive 1996 novel Infinite Jest depicts a future North America in which years are named after corporate products. The novel is set mainly at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (where Hal Incandenza is a student). Hal's father, James, directs "the Entertainment," a dangerously enthralling film sought by Quebeçois terrorists known as the Wheelchair Assassins. Wallace's other novels are The Broom of the System and The Pale King, the latter of which was left unfinished at his 2008 suicide. Wallace is also known for his essay collections, including Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

Tiberius

(42 BC-AD 37, reigned AD 14-AD 37) was Augustus's stepson. During his father's reign, Tiberius led the conquests of Pannonia and Raetia in central Europe and became the imperial heir with the support of his mother Livia. Unhappy as emperor, he mostly resided in his island villa on Capri and left Lucius Sejanus to manage the state. However, when Sejanus attempted to seize power in AD 31, Tiberius had him arrested and executed. Tiberius was emperor when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified in AD 33.

Augustus

(63 BC-AD 14, reigned 27 BC-AD 14) was the first Roman emperor. Born Gaius Octavius, he was the grandnephew and heir of Julius Caesar. After Caesar was assassinated, Octavian formed the Second Triumvirate with Marc Antony and Marcus Lepidus to defeat Caesar's assassins. With the help of Marcus Agrippa, he sidelined Lepidus and defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium to seize the empire. Ruling as princeps, or first citizen, Augustus created the Praetorian Guard and added Egypt to the empire, but halted expansion into Germania after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

The Peterloo Massacre

(August 16, 1819) was a massacre in St. Peter's Field in Manchester, England during a protest led by Henry Hunt against the Corn Laws. Fourteen people were killed when British cavalry charged the crowd of tens of thousands. In the aftermath of the massacre, the government of Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, passed the Six Acts to curtail radical gatherings. The name given to the massacre alluded to Napoleon's final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier. The events in Manchester inspired the founding of the newspaper The Manchester Guardian, the predecessor to The Guardian, which is still widely read today. Plotters angry over the Peterloo Massacre and the Six Acts formed the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820 in the hope of murdering Liverpool and his entire cabinet.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

(August 23, 1572) was a series of murders carried out by Catholic mobs and the Swiss Guard against French Huguenots, an ethnic group of Protestants. It occurred a few days after the wedding of Margaret of Valois to the future King Henry IV. Catherine de' Medici, the mother of then-king Charles IX, allegedly ordered the murders two days after an assassination attempt on Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny. It is likely that the signal to begin the attacks was given by the ringing of matins bells at the church of Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris. The name of the massacre comes from the day on which it occurred, the night before the feast day of Bartholomew the Apostle.

Vista Tower

(Chicago; Jeanne Gang, architect; planned completion 2020) The Vista Tower, located near Chicago's Navy Pier, will be the third-tallest building in Chicago (behind the Willis Tower and the Trump International Hotel and Tower) upon its completion in 2020. When finished, the Vista Tower will be the tallest structure in the world designed by a female architect; the current tallest building designed by a woman, Aqua, is just a few blocks from the Vista Tower and was also designed by Gang. The Vista Tower's design consists of three connected portions of increasing height, with the tallest topping out at a planned 1,191 feet.

The Wounded Knee Massacre

(December 29, 1890) was the killing of 200 to 300 Lakota Sioux on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The massacre began when, during an observation of the Ghost Dance ritual, a deaf Lakota named Black Coyote refused to surrender his rifle to James Forsyth's 7th U.S. Cavalry. After the rifle discharged, the cavalrymen opened fire. Miniconjou chief Spotted Elk was among those killed in the massacre, for which twenty soldiers were controversially awarded the Medal of Honor; despite frequent protests, those awards have not been rescinded by Congress. The day after the Wounded Knee Massacre, surviving Lakota confronted the soldiers in the Drexel Mission Fight. The historian Dee Brown titled his 1970 history of Native Americans in the West Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

The St. Valentine's Day Massacre

(February 14, 1929) was the murder of seven members of Bugs Moran's North Side Gang in Chicago. The murders were carried out by gangsters under the command of Al Capone. It is widely believed that former members of a gang known as Egan's Rats, including Fred Burke, were the gunmen. The victims were lured to a warehouse in Lincoln Park with the promise of crates of stolen whiskey, which was especially valuable during Prohibition. The only survivor was a dog named Highball. Jack McGurn, one of the gunmen, avoided charges in the massacre thanks to the so-called "Blond Alibi" after taking the chief witness against him across state lines and marrying her. The St. Valentine's Day Massacre turned public opinion against Capone and led to him being named "Public Enemy No. 1."

Infrared spectroscopy

(IR) acquires information about the chemical groups present in a compound based on which wavelengths of infrared light the bonds in those groups absorb. When IR-active bonds absorb infrared light, they undergo a change in dipole moment and are excited to a higher-energy vibrational mode, which have names like "stretching," "wagging," and "scissoring." The output of an IR experiment (called an "IR spectrum") is a graph of absorbance on the y-axis against wavenumbers, measured in cm−1 (inverse centimeters), on the x-axis. The most distinguishable IR peak is that of a carbonyl group, which displays a very strong absorbance at 1700 cm−1, while peaks below 1500 cm−1 produce a complex pattern unique to the compond being analyzed, called the fingerprint region. Samples are typically prepared by grinding them into a potassium bromide pellet or by creating a mull with the oil Nujol.

Bloody Sunday

(January 22, 1905) is usually considered the first event of the Revolution of 1905 in Russia. The sequence of events leading up to the massacre began with the Putilov Incident, in which four ironworkers in St. Petersburg were fired because they were members of a labor movement. The resulting strike left St. Petersburg iwthout electricity. On January 22, Father Georgy Gapon of the Russian Orthodox Church led protestors on a march to the Winter Palace to petition Tsar Nicholas II for better working conditions and higher wages. The Imperial Guard fired on the protestors near the Narva Gate. The Revolution of 1905 ultimately led to the establishment of the Russian Duma (parliament) and the adoption of a new constitution. The term "Bloody Sunday" is also used for several other incidents, including several events in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The Tiananmen Square Protests

(June 4, 1989) were a series of student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square during the spring of 1989. One day after the death of former Politburo member Hu Yaobang, students gathered in the public square to demonstrate for greater political freedom. The students camped out in the square for over a month, and similar movements took place throughout China. One famous symbol of the protests was the Goddess of Democracy statue erected in the square. Within the Chinese government, Zhao Ziyang was sympathetic to the students' demands, but the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping viewed the protests as a challenge to his authority. Martial law was declared on May 20, and the People's Liberation Army began clearing the square late at night on June 3. The resulting massacre is sometimes known as the June 4 Incident. In an effort to circumvent Chinese censorship, some people also refer to the massacre using terms such as "May 35th" or "VIIV" (the Roman numerals for 6 and 4). A famous photograph, known as "Tank Man," shows an anonymous protestor standing in front of a row of tanks.

The My Lai Massacre

(March 16, 1968) was a mass murder of at least 300 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in a hamlet codenamed "Pinkville" in Vietnam's Quang Nai Province by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War. The only man convicted for his role in the massacre was William Calley, who defended himself by saying he was "just following orders" given by Ernest Medina. Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr. attempted to radio for help and later rescued a four-year-old girl, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Photographs of the massacre were taken by Ronald Haeberle. Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the events of the My Lai Massacre through extensive interviews with Calley. Hersh later broke the story of the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison during the Iraq War.

The Boston Massacre

(March 5, 1770) occurred when British troops stationed in Boston under Captain Thomas Preston opened fire on a crowd of civilians. Five men in the crowd were killed, including former slave Crispus Attucks. The crowd was originally upset that British private Hugh White had struck a wigmaker's apprentice in the head earlier that day. Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson ordered an inquiry into the event, which led to the arrest of thirteen people. Eight soldiers were defended at their trial by John Adams, and six were acquitted of murder charges. A notable engraving of the Boston Massacre was made by Boston silversmith Paul Revere. British sources often refer to the massacre as "The Incident on King Street."

The Kent State Shootings

(May 4, 1970) took place during a nonviolent anti-war demonstration by students at Ohio's Kent State University. The students were protesting the Nixon administration's bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Ohio governor Jim Rhodes called in the National Guard, which fired into the crowd and killed four students: Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheur. A photograph taken by John Filo of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller won the Pulitzer Prize. Ten days later, two students at the historically black Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed under similar circumstances, but those shootings received far less press attention. The protest song "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was written shortly after the massacre.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance

(NMR) uses magnetic fields to determine the arrangement of nuclei in a molecule. Typical NMR methods only work on nuclei that have nonzero spin, such as 1H and 13C—the nonzero spin means that the nuclei oscillate between two spin states in a phenomenon called Larmor precession. NMR measures the frequency at which each nucleus oscillates, whose deviation from a reference nucleus (such as tetramethylsilane) depends on the local electron density and is called the chemical shift. Nuclei that have more electron density (due to proximity to electron-donating groups like alkyl groups) are said to be "shielded" and have lower chemical shifts, while those that have less electron density (due to proximity to electron-withdrawing groups like halogens) are said to be "deshielded" and have higher chemical shifts. Peaks in NMR can be "split" into several peaks due to J-coupling if they are adjacent to identical nuclei, like the three hydrogens of a methyl group. NMR is the theoretical basis for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in medicine.

The Rape of Nanking

(beginning December 13, 1937 and lasting six weeks) was a period of mass murder committed in Nanking (today generally spelled "Nanjing") by the Japanese army early in the Second SinoJapanese War. At the time, Nanjing was the capital of the Republic of China. The Japanese troops were commanded by Prince Yasuhiko Asaka and Iwane Matsui. One famous anecdote from the massacre concerns a contest between two Japanese soldiers to kill 100 Chinese civilians with a sword. Since Japan was not yet at war with the various Western nations, Chinese civilians who were able to make their way into the "Nanking Safety Zone" around the foreign embassies were safe from harm. Episcopalian missionary John Magee extensively photographed the massacre. In 1997, the American-born Chinese author Iris Chang wrote a bestselling account of the massacre titled The Rape of Nanking.

Don DeLillo

(born 1936) is an American author. His 1985 breakout novel White Noise is narrated by Jack Gladney, a professor of "Hitler Studies" at a Midwestern college. After a chemical spill results in an "Airborne Toxic Event," Jack's wife Babette begins taking a mysterious drug called Dylar. Three years later DeLillo published Libra, a novel about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's participation in a fictional conspiracy against John F. Kennedy. DeLillo also wrote the 1997 novel Underworld, in which the waste management executive Nick Shay buys the baseball that was hit by New York Giants player Bobby Thomson in the 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World."

Thomas Pynchon

(born 1937) is a reclusive American novelist. His 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow follows Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in World War II whose sexual encounters seem to predict the locations of future V-2 rocket strikes. A number of characters in the novel are trying to find the secret of a mysterious device called the Schwärzgerat, which is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number 00000. Pynchon also wrote The Crying of Lot 49, in which Oedipa Maas suspects that she has become entangled in an ancient conflict between the Thurn und Taxis and Trystero mail delivery services. Other Pynchon novels include V., in which Herbert Stencil searches for the mysterious title entity, and Inherent Vice, about the Los Angeles private investigator Doc Sportello.

Salman Rushdie

(born 1947) is a novelist born in India, who holds British and American citizenship. Rushdie's 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight's Children follows Saleem Sinai, a man with an enormous nose who is born at precisely the moment that India becomes independent, giving him telepathic powers. Other members of the novel's title group—the people born within an hour of independence—include Shiva, a child with enormous knees, and the magical Parvati-the-witch. Rushdie's 1988 novel The Satanic Verses begins as the actors Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are miraculously saved after their plane explodes over the English Channel. Upon being betrayed by Gibreel, Saladin seeks revenge by ruining Gibreel's relationship with the mountaineer Allie Cone. The Satanic Verses was condemned in a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa accused Rushdie of blasphemy, and ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie, his editors, and his publishers. In 1998, Iran agreed not to actively seek Rushdie's death. Rushdie described his years of hiding in the memoir Joseph Anton; the title refers to the pseudonym that Rushdie adopted, which was inspired by the authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Rushdie's other novels include The Moor's Last Sigh, which is narrated by the swiftly aging Moraes Zogoiby; The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was loosely inspired by the legend of Orpheus; and the young adult books Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life.

Zadie Smith

(born 1975) is a British novelist. Her 2000 debut novel White Teeth depicts the Bengali Muslim Samad Iqbal and his English friend Archie Jones, who both live in London. Samad's son Magid becomes an atheist scientist who joins Marcus Chalfen's project to develop a genetically modified "FutureMouse," while Magid's twin brother Millat joins a Muslim fundamentalist group called KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation). Both twins sleep with Archie's daughter, Irie. Smith's other novels include NW, which takes place in northwest London; Swing Time, which describes a troubled dancer named Tracey; and the academic novel On Beauty, which is loosely based on E. M. Forster's novel Howards End.

Mass Spectrometry

(mass spec or MS) identifies an unknown compound by ionizing it, fragmenting it into pieces, then passing it through electromagnetic fields to separate the pieces based on their mass-to-charge ratio (m/z). A mass spectrum plots the abundance of each fragment aginst the m/z—the spectrum features a base peak (the peak of highest intensity) and a series of peaks whose spacing tells you what elements are present—for instance, a peak spacing of 14 typically indicates a CH2 or methylene unit. The different isotopes of elements can also produce characteristic peak patterns—for instance, two equal-intensity peaks spaced 2 units apart and 79 units away from the next peak indicates bromine. When analyzing proteins, fragmentation is often undesirable, so "soft" ionization methods such as matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) or electrospray ionization (ESI) are used. In forensics, mass spectrometry is often "coupled" to gas chromatography in GC-MS; gas chromatography first separates the unknown mixture, then mass spec identifies the individual components of the mixture.

Pandora

(meaning "gifted" or "all gifts") was the first human woman in Greek mythology. Hephaestus sculpted her from clay as a punishment for humanity after Prometheus stole fire from the gods. The primary myth of Pandora relates how she released all the evils of the world by opening a jar ("Pandora's Box"), and when she closed the lid only hope remained within. Pandora married the Titan Epimetheus, and their daughter Pyrrha survived the Greek flood with her husband Deucalion.

Hecuba

(or Hekabe) was the wife of King Priam, and therefore the Queen of Troy, during the Trojan War. Her children included Paris—who kidnapped Helen—and Hector, the great Trojan warrior who was slain by Achilles. In Book VI of the Iliad, she leads the Trojan woman in prayer to Zeus on behalf of the Trojan warriors. After the war, Hecuba was grief-stricken upon learning of the death of her youngest daughter Polyxena, and she was given to Odysseus as a slave.

Mount Fuji

, a stratovolcano on the island of Honshu, is Japan's tallest mountain. Mount Fuji is one of the "Three Holy Mountains" of Japan, along with Mount Haku and Mount Tate. Mount Fuji last erupted in December 1707 in the lava-less Hoei Eruption. Because of its beautiful shape, Mount Fuji is a frequent muse for artists, including the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose woodblock series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji includes The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Aokigahara, popularly known as the "Suicide Forest," is on the volcano's northwestern slope.

Burj Khalifa (Dubai, UAE; Adrian Smith, architect; completed 2009)

As of 2019, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates is both the tallest building in the world and the tallest man-made structure ever built. The structure was named in honor of Sheikh Khalifa, the president of the UAE. The burj—Arabic for "tower"—is part of a complex in downtown Dubai that also includes the world's second-largest mall by area and one of the world's largest fountains. The building has three curved wings in a 'Y'-shape that act as buttresses supporting the building's massive height. That exact height, 2,722 feet, was kept a closely-guarded secret until the building opened.

Jorge Luis Borges

BOR-hayss (1899-1986) was an Argentine short story writer who often dealt with meta-fictional themes. His story "The Library of Babel" depicts an infinite library made up of hexagonal rooms, which contain every possible 410-page book. In "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," the fictional 20th-century author Pierre Menard writes a line-by-line reproduction of Cervantes's Don Quixote, which is much more interesting than the original because of the historical context in which the new version was produced. Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" describes an imaginary realm, created by a secret society of intellectuals, that gradually intrudes into the world of the story. "The Aleph" is named after a point from which every other point in the universe can be perceived. Many of Borges's best-known stories appeared in the collections Ficciones and Labyrinths, the latter of which is named after a common motif in Borges's work. For example, in "The Garden of Forking Paths" the author Ts'ui Pên tries to create a metaphorical "labyrinth" by writing a novel in which every event is followed by every possible outcome. The story is narrated by Ts'ui Pên's descendent, Dr. Yu Tsun, who kills the Sinologist Stephen Albert to convey a coded message to German forces during World War I.

Taipei 101 (Taipei, Taiwan; Chu Yuan Lee, architect; completed 2004)

Taipei 101, named for its 101 floors, was the tallest building in the world when it opened in 2004, with a height of 1,674 feet; it lost the title to the Burj Khalifa in 2010. The building was originally known as the Taipei World Financial Center. The main part of the structure consists of eight stacked sections of eight floors each (Chinese numerology considers eight a lucky number); those sections resemble both floors of a pagoda as well as ancient Chinese money boxes (which themselves inspired the design of modern Chinese take-out containers). The upper floors of the building contain a tuned mass damper, a large round structure that absorbs vibrations and keeps the building from shaking during high winds and other inclement weather.

Empire State Building (New York City; [Firm of] Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, architects; completed 1931)

The Empire State Building, which has a height of 1,250 feet (1,454 feet including antenna) surpassed the nearby Chrysler Building to become the tallest building in the world upon its 1931 completion, holding that title for four decades until the construction of the original World Trade Center. Following the 9/11 attacks, the building was once again the tallest in New York. The Empire State Building, like the Chrysler Building, is a classic example of Art Deco architecture, an early-20th-century style known for its streamlined, modern appearance. The building is an iconic symbol of New York and pop culture, appearing prominently in the film King Kong. Original plans for the building included a mooring station for zeppelins at its apex, but this never came to fruition.

Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; César Pelli, architect; completed 1998)

The Petronas Towers are the world's tallest twin towers, at 1,483 feet each. Upon their completion, they surpassed the (at the time) Sears Tower to become the tallest buildings in the world; they lost that overall title to Taipei 101 in 2004. The towers are named for Petronas, Malyasia's government-owned petroleum and gas company, which is headquartered in the towers. Architect Pelli designed the cross-section of the towers to resemble the Islamic symbol of the Rub el Hizb, while their exteriors resemble an ancient minaret, a tower attached to a mosque from which a muezzin issues a call to prayer. The towers are connected by a skybridge on their 41st and 42nd floors, allowing visitors to move between them. In the coming years, the towers will be exceeded in height by two other Kuala Lumpur skyscrapers: the slightly taller Exchange 106 and the massive, 2,185-foot PNB 118.

Abraj Al-Bait (Mecca, Saudi Arabia; [Firms of] Dar Al-Handasah and SL Rasch, architects; completed 2011)

The Saudi government funded construction of the Abraj Al-Bait complex, a set of seven massive hotels whose central tower reaches a height of 1,972 feet. The complex overlooks the Great Mosque of Mecca, which contains the Kaaba (the holiest place in Islam) and was built to offer modern accommodations to Muslims participating in the annual Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca. The Abraj Al-Bait, whose name means "Tower of the House" in Arabic, contains the world's largest clock face (over 140 feet in diameter) and as of 2019 is the world's most expensive building, with construction costs exceeding $15 billion. The complex was built by the Saudi Binladin Group, a company founded by Osama bin Laden's father.

The Shard (London, England; Renzo Piano, architect; completed 2013)

The Shard, originally known as London Bridge Tower, is the tallest building in the U.K, with a height of 1,016 feet. It gets its name from its appearance: the glass-enclosed, pyramid-like structure tapers as it rises to a set of points at the top, giving the impression of several shards of glass leaning against one another. The Shard was designed by Pritzker-winning Italian architect Renzo Piano, who also designed Paris's Georges Pompidou Center and New York's Whitney Museum of Art. Despite being in London, the tower is primarily owned by the state of Qatar and is a broadcast headquarters for the English branch of the Qatari media network Al Jazeera.

Shanghai Tower (Shanghai, China; Jun Xia, lead architect; completed 2015)

When it opened in 2015, the Shanghai Tower—with a height of 2,073 feet—was the second-tallest building in the world, a title it still holds as of 2019. The tower, which is located in Shanghai's Pudong District, is adjacent to both the Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai World Financial Centre, two of the world's other tallest buildings. By far, the tower's most notable architectural feature is the fact that the building twists as it ascends—the top of the building is rotated approximately 120 degrees clockwise from the base. Its 118th floor is home to the second-highest observation deck in the world; the Ping An Financial Center in Shenzhen, China has an observation deck about one foot higher.

Willis Tower (Chicago; Bruce Graham and Fazlur Rahman Khan, architects on behalf of the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill; completed 1973)

When it opened in Chicago, Illinois in 1973, the Willis Tower was the tallest building in the world, with a height of 1,450 feet. The building was originally (and is still commonly) known as the Sears Tower, as it was built as a new headquarters for Sears, Roebuck & Co.; it was officially renamed after the insurance company Willis Group Holdings, Ltd., in 2009. The building's design, inspired by a pack of cigarettes, consists of a three-by-three set of "tubes" of varying heights. The tower contains a 103rd-floor "Skydeck" from which as many as four U.S. states (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan) are visible on a clear day, and which also contains several glass balconies that extend out from the building, allowing visitors to look straight down to the street below.

Kilauea

is a shield volcano that is the most active of the five volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii. The name "Kilauea" means "spewing" or "spreading" in the Hawaiian language. In Hawaiian mythology, the volcano is the home of the fire goddess Pele. The three primary craters of Kilauea are Halemaʻumaʻu Crater, Puʻu Crater, and Puʻu ʻOʻo Crater. In addition, part of the volcano is covered by the Kaʻu Desert, a plain of dried lava and volcanic ash. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is on the rim of Kilauea's caldera.

Titrations

calculate the concentration of a solution by adding in small volumes of a reactant of known concentration until a chemical change, like a pH indicator changing color, occurs. Acid-base titrations are usually performed in a thin glass tube called a buret and use pH indicators like phenolphthalein and bromothymol blue. The Henderson-Hasselbalch equation can be used to calculate the pH at any point during a titration. The equivalence point is the point at which equal amounts of acid and base have been mixed and there is a sharp inflection point in the pH curve. Redox titrations use an oxidation-reduction reaction instead of an acid-base reaction. In complexometric titrations, the analyte forms a coordination complex with the titrant. Karl Fischer titrations use electrolysis to determine the amount of water in a substance.

Calorimetry

calculates the heat or enthalpy change of a chemical or physical process by using specialized vessels to measure a change in temperature. A very simple calorimeter can be made by placing a thermometer in an insulating polystyrene coffee cup and sealing it with a lid, causing the reaction inside to occur at constant pressure. Bomb calorimeters are very sturdy containers used to conduct combustion reactions at constant volume. Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) is a variant which can be used to determine the binding affinites and stoichiometry of proteins and enzymatic reactions. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) is another variant that measures how a compound's heat capacity changes with temperature; it is commonly used to determine properties of polymers such as their melting point or glass transition temperature.

Flame Tests

detect the presence of elements by dipping a wooden splint or nichrome wire in a sample of the element or its salt, then placing the sample over a Bunsen burner. The unique emission spectrum of the element present then causes the flame to briefly change color. The D lines of sodium produce one of the strongest flame test colors: a bright yellow. Because of this, sodium can contaminate samples, so flames are usually viewed through a cobalt blue glass to filter out the yellow. Other notable flame test colors include red, produced by lithium, calcium and strontium; lilac, produced by potassium; green, produced by barium; and blue, produced by copper, selenium, arsenic, and indium.

Mauna Loa

is a shield volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii that is the most massive above-sea volcano on Earth. It should not be confused with Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano that is the tallest mountain in Hawaii. Both Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are taller than Mount Everest when measuring from base-to-summit rather than from sea level. Along with Kilauea, Mauna Loa forms the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park, which was established in 1916 by Woodrow Wilson. When Mauna Loa erupted in 1942, four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government gagged the press from reporting on the eruption.

Krakatoa

is a stratovolcanic island in the Sunda Strait between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java. Prior to its massive 1883 eruption, there were three separate volcanic peaks: Perboewatan (completely destroyed by the eruption), Rakata (extant), and Danan (almost completely destroyed). The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa killed more than 35,000 people and is believed to have produced the loudest sound ever. Krakatoa is one of the largest volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. The continued activity of Krakatoa formed a new island, Anak Krakatau (or "Child of Krakatoa") in 1927.

Mount Etna

is a stratovolcano in eastern Sicily that plays a significant role in ancient Greek myths. Zeus trapped the monster Typhon under Mount Etna, and the volcano is also the site of Hephaestus's forges. Mount Etna overlooks the Sicilian town of Catania. It most recently erupted in 2015. Earlier eruptions occurred in 1928 (destroying the village of Mascali) and in 1669, after which the volcano was thought to have gone dormant. There is a large depression on the side of Mount Etna known as Valle del Bove, or "Valley of the Ox."

Distillation

separates a mixture of liquids based on their boiling point by heating, causing the more volatile component to vaporize and condense in a different container while the other components remain in the original vessel. In the laboratory, the vapors are usually cooled with a water-based Liebig condenser or Vigreux condenser, and the product is collected in a round-bottomed receiving flask. In industry, multiple rounds of distillation are performed in a single "column" packed with trays, each of which can be modeled as a "theoretical plate." Oil refining relies on fractional distillation, in which different products are pulled out of the mixture at various trays along the column. Azeotropes are mixtures that cannot be separated because at the specified pressure and composition, both components boil at the same temperature.

Atalanta

was a fierce warrior who drew first blood in the Calydonian Boar hunt led by Meleager, who gifted her the Boar's hide when it was finally killed. Atalanta's father left her to die on a mountaintop because he wanted a son, but she was saved by a she-bear and later became a hunter of Artemis. According to some sources, Atalanta was also the only female Argonaut. She married Hippomenes after he beat her in a footrace by slowing her down with golden apples given to him by Aphrodite; their son, Parthenopaios, was one of the Seven Against Thebes.

Cassandra

was a princess of Troy, one of the children of King Priam and Queen Hecuba. She and her twin brother Helenus were both priests of Apollo and thus blessed with the gift of prophecy; however, after Cassandra spurned the advances of Apollo, he cursed her to never have her prophecies believed. During the Trojan War, Cassandra was raped in the Temple of Athena by Ajax the Lesser, which led Athena to wreck his ship on his journey home. After the war, Cassandra was made the concubine of Agamemnon, and the two were killed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when they returned to Mycenae.

Medea

was a sorceress from the island of Colchis; her father was King Aeëtes, and her aunt was the witch Circe. Medea encountered the hero Jason when he and the Argonauts came to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece, and she helped him yoke fire-breathing oxen and sow dragon's teeth. Medea left Colchis with Jason, and on the voyage home she killed both her brother Absyrtus and the giant bronze automaton Talos. She and Jason had several children together, but Jason ultimately left Medea for the princess Glauce; in vengeance, she killed two of her children and fled on a golden chariot.

Arachne

was a talented Lydian weaver who constantly boasted that her skills were better than that of any of the gods. Arachne challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving competition, during which Arachne wove a tapestry depicting the gods' transgressions against mankind and Athena depicted four contests between mortals and the gods. The result of the competition depends on the sources: some say that Arachne won but Athena was insulted by her images and destroyed Arachne's work, and others say that Athena's weaving was superior. In all versions, though, Athena turns Arachne into a spider.

Helen of Troy

was considered the most beautiful mortal woman during the Age of Heroes. Helen was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and her siblings were Castor, Polydeuces (or Pollux), and Clytemnestra. When Helen married Menelaus, the king of Sparta, Helen's father Tyndareus forced the Greek kings to swear an oath to fight for her if she were kidnapped. When she was abducted by (or eloped with) Paris, a prince of Troy, the whole Greek world plunged into the Trojan War. For this reason, Christopher Marlowe had Doctor Faustus refer to Helen as "the face that launched a thousand ships."

On April 14, 1865 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln

was shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth during a showing of the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Lincoln died the next morning at Petersen House across the street. The assassination was part of a wider plot that included failed attempts to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Prior to shooting the president, Booth shouted the Virginia state motto, sic semper tyrannis ("thus always to tyrants"). Booth fled the theater after the attack. After a two-week manhunt, he was found in a barn in northern Virginia, where he refused to surrender and was killed by Union soldier Boston Corbett. Samuel Mudd, a doctor, was controversially imprisoned for treating the broken leg that Booth suffered during his escape.

On November 22, 1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy

was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, who targeted the presidential motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as the vehicles rode through Dallas's Dealey Plaza. Texas Governor John Connolly was also severely injured in the shooting, which was captured on tape in the Zapruder film. Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president aboard Air Force One later that day. Oswald never faced trial for the assassination, as he himself was shot and killed by bar owner Jack Ruby while being transported by federal agents. The Kennedy assassination was investigated by the Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman.

On February 21, 1965 Muslim activist Malcolm X

was shot and killed in the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan by three members of the Nation of Islam, an organization that Malcolm X left in March 1964. The assassins were Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson. Malcolm X was about to give a speech to the Organization of Afro-American Unity when he was shot 21 times with a shotgun. Many people, including Malcolm X's widow, have blamed Louis Farrakhan's harsh rhetoric for inciting the assassination.

On April 4, 1968 civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

was shot and killed on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. King had been in Memphis to show support for a strike by African-American sanitation workers. One notable response to the death of King was the speech given by Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy that night in Indianapolis, in which he quoted the words of the Greek playwright Aeschylus about "pain which cannot forget" that "falls drop by drop upon the heart."

On January 30, 1948 Indian independence advocate Mohandas Gandhi

was shot three times at point-blank range by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist. The shooting occurred just as Gandhi was beginning his daily interfaith service at Birla House in New Delhi. Godse was apprehended by Herbert Reiner Jr., an American diplomat. During his trial, Godse criticized Gandhi's accepting behavior toward Muslims and blamed Gandhi for the 1947 Partition of India. Gandhi's death was reported to the nation via radio by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that evening.

On May 4, 1610 King Henry IV of France

was stabbed to death by François Ravaillac, a Catholic fanatic who claimed to have had visions instructing him to convince Henry to convert the Huguenots (Protestants) to Catholicism. Ravaillac stabbed Henry—the first French king from the Bourbon Dynasty—on the Rue de la Ferronnerie when the king's coach stopped in traffic. One of the king's advisors, Hercule, Duke of Montbazon, was wounded in the attack but survived. Henry IV was survived by his wife Marie de' Medici, who served as regent for their son Louis XIII until he took power in 1617.

Danaë

was the daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. The king consulted an oracle to ask if he would ever have a son, and the oracle replied that he wouldn't, but his daughter would, and that grandson would overthrow him. In response, he shut Danaë up in a chamber in his palace, but Zeus appeared in the form of a shower of gold and impregnated her; shortly thereafter, her son Perseus was born. Acrisius then cast Danaë and Perseus out to sea in a chest, but with the assistance of Poseidon they were rescued by the fisherman Dictys. Danaë had no interest in marrying Dictys's brother King Seriphos, who agreed not to pursue her if Perseus could kill the Gorgon Medusa.

Ariadne

was the daughter of King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë, making her a princess of Crete. Minos's palace in Knossos is sometimes referred to as the "dancing ground of Ariadne." When Theseus came to Crete to kill the Minotaur, Ariadne fell in love with him and gave him a ball of twine to help him navigate the Labyrinth. Ariadne and Theseus left Crete together, but he later abandoned her on the island of Naxos where she was saved by Dionysus, whom she married. Her wedding diadem was placed in the heavens as the constellation Corona Borealis.