NAQT YOU GOTTA KNOW

Lake Volta

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

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.

Matthew Brady

Studied under Samuel Morse, who popularized the daguerreotype in America, and became a portrait photographer in New York. When the Civil War broke out, he saw it as a potential source of memorabilia, and took photos at Bull Run in a mobile darkroom. His work expanded to hiring out crews of photographers to cover the entire war, essentially creating the practice of photojournalism. This photographer himself took portrait photos of prominent figures of both sides.

2000 Election

The closest election in American history. Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote to George W. Bush by a final count of 271—266 (one Gore elector abstained). Ralph Nader of the Green Party won an important 2.7% of the vote while Pat Buchanan of the Reform Party placed fourth. New Mexico and Oregon were initially too close to call but went to Gore, and Florida became the center of attention. Ballot confusion in Palm Beach County, intimidation of vote recounters in Miami-Dade County, and absentee ballots throughout Florida became significant issues, as Americans had to hear about butterfly ballots, hanging chads, and Florida Secretary of State Katharine Harris for the next five weeks. Gore officially conceded the election on December 13, 2000.

Zama

The final battle of the Second Punic War (202 BC) was fought near Carthage in what is now Tunisia. Scipio Africanus's victory at the Battle of the Great Plains in 203 BC forced Hannibal to leave Italy and return to North Africa for the final showdown. Prior to the battle, the Numidian king Masinissa switched sides, and brought his considerable cavalry force to join the Romans. This, coupled with Scipio's strategy of opening up his lines to allow Carthaginian elephants through without harming his troops, led to a complete Roman victory.

Cooperstown

The first five members elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. They were inducted in 1936.

Mitosis

The five stages of this biological process (the production of new body cells from existing ones) are interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Interphase is not technically a part of this process, though it is often discussed at the same time.

Mach number

These numbers measure speed. Based on a suggestion by Swiss aeronautical engineer Jakob Ackeret, it was named after Ernst Mach, an Austrian physicist who studied — among other things — the Doppler effect, sensory perception, and the origin of inertia. The number is defined as the ratio of the speed of an object to the speed of sound in the same medium. So an object moving at the speed of sound (which in dry air at 20°C is about 343 m/s) has a speed of Mach 1, and an object moving at twice the speed of sound has a speed of Mach 2.

Navajo

These people are also indigenous to the American southwest. After their homeland was devastated in a campaign led by Kit Carson (the namesake of Carson City, Nevada) they were driven from Arizona to New Mexico in the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo. During World War II, these people acted as "code-talkers" used their native language to securely transmit messages across the Pacific theater of the war. Today, they are the second largest federally-recognized tribe and administer the Four Corners Monument.

Shawnee

These people are native to the Ohio Valley. Their leader Blue Jacket allied with the Miami people to crush an American incursion into the region at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791. Later, the charismatic leader from this tribe, Tecumseh and his visionary brother Tenkswatawa, also known as "the Prophet," built a coalition of tribes to oppose U.S. expansion. After losing at Tippecanoe to William Henry Harrison, these people allied with the British in the War of 1812 and helped them take Detroit. However, their coalition collapsed after the death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames.

Invisible Hand

This is the metaphorical notion that producers and consumers acting in their own narrow interest (e.g., by trying to maximize income from their business) will create an overall benefit to society. This might happen by their rewarding technologies that make production more efficient, rewarding firms who can sell at lower cost, rewarding inventors who discover new processes, and so on. The phrase was introduced by Adam Smith in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, but the modern understanding (and broad-based application of the metaphor) is due to later thinkers.

Cassandra

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

A robot may not injure a human being or

through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

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, she fell in love with him and gave him a ball of twine to help him navigate the Labyrinth. Both she 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.

Gregory XIII

(1502-1585, pope 1572-1585) Introduced the Gregorian Calendar in 1582 to correct the previous Julian Calendar.

Juan Perón

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

The Parthian Empire

Was the second major empire to come out of Persia. This empire was founded by Arsaces I, who rebelled against the Seleucid Empire. This empire often fought with Rome, and at the 53 BC Battle of Carrhae, the Roman general Crassus was killed. The Parthian Empire was supplanted by the Sassanian Empire in AD 224.

Ostrogoths

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

James Watson and Francis Crick

Won in 1962 for discovering the molecular structure of DNA. They published the well-known double-helix structure based on "Photo 51," an X-ray diffraction image of DNA produced by Rosalind Franklin. Because Franklin died in 1958 (the Nobel committee does not award prizes posthumously), these two people instead shared the prize with Maurice Wilkins, a colleague of Franklin who provided them with the diffraction data. The pair also determined, with the help of Chargaff's rules, that the base pairs of adenine-thymine and cytosine-guanine were structurally similar within the DNA molecule.

Elasticity

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

Lakshmi

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

Thor Heyerdahl

(1914-2002) In 1947, he and his five companions sailed across the Pacific Ocean — going from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands — on a balsa-wood raft named Kon-Tiki, after the Incan sun god Kon-Tiki Viracocha. He later built two boats from papyrus (Ra, which failed in 1969, and Ra II, which succeeded in 1970) to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. These voyages demonstrated the possibility that ancient people could have migrated around the globe using only primitive rafts.

The Crucible

(Arthur Miller, 1953). Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting, but the work is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist "witch-hunts" of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires the servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hathorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hapsburg

Also known as Habsburg (Holy Roman Empire 1440-1806, Austria-Hungary 1867-1918, and Spain 1516-1700): This royal family ruled much of Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the end of World War I. Their first important ruler was Rudolf I, the King of Germany and Duke of Austria in the late thirteenth century. Other notable rulers included Charles V, Maria Theresa and Franz Joseph.

Charles Baudelaire

His translations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe—rendered by him as "Edgar Poe"—are the authoritative version of Poe's works in French; thanks to these translations, in the 19th century, Poe was viewed much more highly by Europeans than by Americans. Although he initially idolized Poe and strove to be Poe's worthy literary successor, he soured on this opinion by 1865, when he wrote a letter confessing "I wasted a great deal of time translating Edgar Poe and all I gained was that some people accused me of taking my poems from Poe."

Museo del Prado

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

Huns

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

Seine

Though only the second-longest river in France (behind the Loire), the river is of key importance, as it flows through Paris. Starting on the Plateau de Langres near Dijon, this river weaves northwest for 485 miles to enter the English Channel near Le Havre. Along the way, it passes through Troyes, Fontainebleau, and Rouen. The river is France's chief transport waterway, along with its tributaries the Marne and Oise.

Simón Bolívar

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

Babylonia

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

The Mississippi River

Is the longest or second-longest in North America, depending on how you count. (The Missouri River could be considered longer.) Referred to by Abraham Lincoln as "the father of waters," this river begins at Lake Itasca, Minnesota, and flows 2,340 miles to a vast delta on the Gulf of Mexico, forming portions of ten state borders and the world's third-largest drainage basin. The Mississippi picks up numerous major tributaries including the Illinois, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, and Red Rivers, and flows past numerous major cities, including Minneapolis, St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans.

Endoplasmic reticulum

This part of the cell is a network of tube-like membranes continuous with the nuclear envelope. Part of it are "rough" because they are covered in ribosomes, while other parts are "smooth" because they aren't. Proteins undergo modifications and folding to yield the final, functional protein structures in this part of the cell.

Septimius Severus

(145-211, reigned 193-211) Triumphed in the Year of the Five Emperors and founded the Severan dynasty. He was the first emperor to be born in Africa.

Nicholas I

(1796-1855; ruled 1825-1855): This person, who ruled Russia from the failure of the Decembrist Uprising to the middle of the Crimean War, has traditionally been portrayed as the embodiment of the Russian autocracy. His government pursued a policy of Official Nationality, defending a holy trinity of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Nationality," and established a repressive secret police force known as the Third Section. Contemporaries referred to him as the "Gendarme of Europe" after he helped the Habsburgs squelch the Hungarian Revolution of 1848.

Nicholas II

(1868-1918; ruled 1894-1917: The last of the Romanovs, ruled until his overthrow in the February Revolution of 1917. He is usually seen as both a kind man who loved his family and an incapable monarch who helped bring about the end of the tsarist state; he led his country through two disastrous wars, the Russo-Japanese War (which helped spark the Revolution of 1905), and World War I (which helped cause the 1917 revolutions), He is best known for his loving marriage to Alexandra and for allowing the "mad monk" Grigori Rasputin to influence court politics while treating the hemophilia of Alexei, the heir to the throne. He abdicated in 1917 and was shot in 1918.

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957, Chile; Nobel 1945): The first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, she was actually named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, but took her pen name from the Italian and French poets Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral respectively. At first a prominent educator, she wrote "Sonnets of Death" (1914) after the suicide of her fiancé. Those sonnets later appeared in her most famous collection, Desolation (1922). A native Chilean, she served as a diplomat both in the United States and Europe. Langston Hughes translated a portion of Mistral's poetry into English just after she died.

Martha Graham

(1894-1991) Was the first dancer invited to perform at the White House. As a choreographer, she developed the "Graham technique" that creates dramatic tension through "contraction" and "release" of major muscles. Her first major success was her 1958 concert-length ballet Clytemnestra, one of four collaborations with composer Halim Ed-Dabh. She performed the title role in Clytemnestra with her namesake dance company, whose dancers included Merce Cunningham and her husband, Erick Hawkins, both of whom went on to become choreographers in their own right. Hawkins danced the male lead in Appalachian Spring, a ballet with "an American theme" that she commissioned from Aaron Copland.

Tiger Woods

(1975-present) Born to an African-American father and a Thai mother, he appeared on The Mike Douglas Show with a golf club at age two. He won three straight U.S. Junior Amateurs, and then became the only golfer to win three straight U.S. Amateurs (1994-1996). In 1997 he became the youngest ever to win the Masters—by a whopping 12 strokes. At the 2000 U.S. Open, when he won by 15 strokes, he began a remarkable run of four straight major championships: British Open (by eight strokes, making him the youngest ever to complete the career Grand Slam), PGA Championship, and the 2001 Masters. He accumulated 14 major wins by 2008, when his career was derailed by injuries and personal issues, including infidelities leading to a highly publicized separation from his former wife. His long-awaited comeback reached its peak in 2019 when he won the Masters, his 15th major title.

Milton Friedman

(American, 1912-2006): Conservative thinker famous for his advocacy of monetarism (a revision of the quantity theory of money) in works like A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960 (1963). He is strongly associated with the ideals of laissez-faire government policy.

Atacama Desert

(Chile; 70,000 mi2) The Atacama's chief claim to fame is the rain shadow of the Andes, which makes it the driest hot desert in the world. The desert was the primary bone of contention in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883; Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia) that sought to control its nitrate resources, which were necessary for the production of explosives.

Taklamakan Desert

(China; 105,000 mi2) This desert is an extremely cold, sandy desert known for splitting the Silk Road into branches running north and south of it. It is bounded by the Kunlun, Pamir, and Tian Shan mountain ranges.

Madama Butterfly

(Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, 1904): The American naval lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is stationed in Nagasaki where, with the help of the broker Goro, he weds the young girl Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly) with a marriage contract with a cancellation clause. He later returns to America, leaving Cio-Cio-San to raise their son "Trouble" (whom she will rename "Joy" upon his return). When Pinkerton and his new American wife Kate do return, Cio-Cio-San gives them her son and stabs herself with her father's dagger. The opera is based on a play by David Belasco.

Painted Desert

(Northern Arizona; 7,500 mi2) This desert, which is shared by Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest National Parks, is known for its colorful, banded rock formations.

Frey

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

Frigg

(or Frigga): The wife of Odin, and mother by him of Balder, Hoder, Hermod, and Tyr. She is the goddess of the sky, marriage, and motherhood, and often works at her loom, spinning clouds.

Hecuba

(or Hecabe): The wife of Priam, she suffers the loss of most of her children but survives the fall of Troy. She is later turned into a dog.

The Yangtze

Is the longest river in China and Asia, and the third longest in the world. It rises in the Kunlun Mountains, flows across the Tibetan Plateau, passes the cities of Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shanghai, and empties into the South China Sea. Its basin is China's granary and is home to nearly a third of Chinese citizens. The river is dammed by the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, which reduced flooding but displaced 1.5 million people and buried over 1,300 known archaeological sites.

Treaty of Paris

Of 1898 ended the Spanish-American War and transferred Guam, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico to the U.S. while making Cuba (ostensibly) independent. The treaty was the beginning of American imperialism overseas, and it underwent a lengthy and contentious ratification.

Minoan Civilization

Was centered on the Greek island Crete and included nearby islands. The British archaeologist Arthur Evans unearthed much of what we know about the Minoans, including their palace at Knossos and their writing system, which he called Linear A.

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.

Ralph Ellison

(1919-1994) Is best known for his novel Invisible Man, whose unnamed narrator earns a college scholarship by participating in a degrading Battle Royal; after being kicked out of college and working at the Liberty Paint company (known for its pure white paint), he joins a political group called the Brotherhood. At the climax of the novel, the narrator is nearly lynched by a Black nationalist named Ras the Destroyer during riots in Harlem. His unfinished second novel was published posthumously in a long version called Three Days Before the Shooting... and a short version called Juneteenth.

1896 Summer

(Athens, Greece; April 6 - April 15, 1896): The first edition of the modern Olympics was the brainchild of Baron Pierre de Coubertin of France; winners were awarded silver medals. Some of the stranger events included one-handed weightlifting and 100-meter freestyle swimming for members of the Greek navy. Appropriately, Greek shepherd Spiridon Louis became the hero of the Games by winning the marathon.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

(December 7, 1941): On what President Franklin Roosevelt declared would be "a date which will live in infamy," Japanese carrier-based aircraft launched — without a formal declaration of war — a surprise attack on the American naval base on the Hawaiian island Oahu. The attack sank four battleships, most notably the USS Arizona, but all of the U.S. Navy's carriers were at sea and were unattacked. Shortly after the attack, Japan began invasions of Guam, Wake Island, the Philippines, and the British colony of Singapore. On December 8, with only Montana Representative Jeannette Rankin dissenting, the U.S. Congress declared war on Japan.

David Ricardo

(English, 1772-1823): He is best known for Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which introduced more-or-less modern notions of comparative advantage and its theoretical justification for unfettered international trade. He also put forth the so-called iron law of wages.

Mourning Becomes Electra

(Eugene O'Neill, 1931). This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted." Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia's father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.

Battle of Iwo Jima

(February 1945 - March 1945): The Allies sought to capture Iwo Jima, a small island midway between the Mariana Islands and the Japanese home islands, to provide an airbase for the eventual invasion of Japan. Under the leadership of General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the island's defenders built a complex network of underground tunnels and well-camouflaged artillery pieces that enabled them to hold out for a month against vastly superior forces. The battle is best known for Joe Rosenthal's photograph showing six American servicemen raising a flag atop Mount Suribachi.

Monmouth

(June 28, 1778): The last major battle of the Northern theater of the war; its outcome was inconclusive. American general Charles Lee was court-martialed for his actions at this battle. Molly Pitcher became famous for fighting in this battle in place of her husband.

Ticonderoga

(May 10, 1775): A small but symbolic victory for the American forces led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. The Green Mountain Boys captured this fort on Lake Champlain from the British and transported its cannons to Boston.

Qur'an

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

Tao Te Ching

(or The Way and Its Power): Philosophical text behind Daoism, a religion-philosophy founded by the semi-legendary Lao Tzu in the sixth century BC, though scholars now believe it was written about 200 years later, during the Warring States period of the late Zhou dynasty. The book instructs adherents in restraint and passiveness, allowing the natural order of the universe to take precedent.

Yorktown

(ended October 19, 1781): The siege of this town essentially ended the American Revolutionary War, although the Treaty of Paris wasn't signed until two years later. George Washington, with help from the French navy under the Comte de Grasse, surrounded the forces of Cornwallis and forced the British to surrender. General Charles O'Hara presented Cornwallis's sword of surrender.

Bannockburn

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

Donatello

(1386-1466): A Florentine sculptor who helped define Renaissance sculpture as distinct from that of the Gothic period. He is known for St. Mark and St. George in the Orsanmichele (a Florentine church), the bald Zuccone (which means "pumpkin-head," though it depicts the prophet Habbakuk), and the first equestrian statue to be cast since Roman times, the Gattamelata in Padua. He is also known for mastering the low-relief form schiacciato.

Agincourt

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

(1804-1864) An American author whose stories are often set in New England. In "The Minister's Black Veil," he wrote about Reverend Hopper, who stubbornly refuses to take off the title article of clothing. This author also wrote "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment," in which the title character shows off water from the Fountain of Youth. Both of those stories are included in his collection Twice-Told Tales. In "Rappaccini's Daughter," the title character is Beatrice, the child of a scientist who grows poisonous plants, who herself becomes poisonous. After Giovanni falls in love with Beatrice, he brings her an antidote so they can be together, but, instead of curing her, the antidote kills Beatrice. That story appears alongside "The Birth-Mark" and "Young Goodman Brown" in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse.

The Pickwick Papers

(1837) The London gentleman Samuel Pickwick, the president of his namesake "club," sets out with fellow members Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman, and Augustus Snodgrass on a series of coach journeys to sites in provincial England. While on their travels, the Pickwickians foil the attempt of Alfred Jingle to elope with Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell. Pickwick also befriends and employs the Cockney valet Sam Weller, who is known for grotesquely humorous sayings such as "out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing."

Guy de Maupassant

(1850-1893) A French author who frequently used ironic endings in his stories, including "The Necklace." In that story, Mathilde Loisel borrows the expensive-looking title piece of jewelry from Madame Forestier, and loses it at a high-class party. In order to afford a 36,000 francs replacement, she and her husband sell everything they own. Ten years later, Madame Forestier recognizes Mathilde on the street and informs her that the necklace was a fake. In "Boule de Suif," translated into English as "Ball of Fat," the title character is a prostitute who is on a carriage leaving Prussian-occupied Rouen. The travelers are detained by the Prussians until Boule de Suif sleeps with an officer, for which she is judged for the remainder of the trip even though her fellow passengers pressured her to do so.

Béla Bartók

(1881-1945). A young girl singing a folk tune to her son in 1904 inspired this composer to roam the Hungarian countryside with Zoltan Kodály, collecting peasant tunes. This influence permeated his music, including the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and the ballets The Wooden Prince (1916) and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). A virtuoso pianist and an innovative composer, he refused to teach composition, contributing to financial problems, especially after he fled Nazi-allied Hungary for the U.S. in 1940. He wrote many prominent instrumental pieces; best known are six string quartets, the educational piano piece Mikrokosmos, and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936).

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.

Alice Walker

(1944-) Won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer for her novel The Color Purple, whose protagonist, Celie, is repeatedly raped by her father, producing the children Olivia and Adam, both of whom are immediately taken away by her father. Celie deals with her trauma by writing letters to God. Celie marries Mister, who also abuses her; she has an affair with Shug Avery, a blues singer who is also Mister's mistress. Her short story "Everyday Use" is about the cultural differences between Dee and Maggie, the two daughters of a Southern woman known as Mama.

John F. Kennedy's Inauguration

(1961) Was the first presidential inauguration to be broadcast live in color. In his inaugural address, the president noted that "few generations" are tasked with "defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger." He stated that he "welcome[d]" the responsibility, saying that "[t]he energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world." In the most quoted moment of the speech, he then stated "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Poet Robert Frost recited his poem "The Gift Outright" during the ceremony, making Frost the first poet to participate in an inauguration; Frost also wrote a new poem to read, but was unable to do so in the bright sun of the day.

Trajan

(AD 53-AD 117, reigned AD 98-117) Led Rome to its greatest territorial extent. After succeeding Nerva, he defeated Decebalus to conquer the rich Kingdom of Dacia (modern-day Romania). He employed Apollodorus of Damascus to build Trajan's Column and Trajan's Bridge across the Danube. Near the end of his reign, he invaded the Parthian Empire, sacking its capital of Ctesiphon and annexing Armenia and Mesopotamia.

Cats

(Andrew Lloyd Webber based on poems by T. S. Eliot; 1981): The Jellicle tribe of cats roams the streets of London. They introduce the audience to various members: Rum Tum Tugger, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy. Old Deuteronomy must choose a cat to be reborn, and he chooses the lowly Grizabella after she sings "Memory." It is adapted from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

Battle of Okinawa

(April to June 1945): Codenamed Operation Iceberg, the invasion of this island was the last major ground battle in the Pacific theater of World War II. Kakazu Ridge and Shuri Castle were among the positions Japanese troops defended against U.S. Marine and Army units. It was the high point of Japanese kamikaze attacks; over 1,500 suicide missions were sent against the Allied invasion fleet. The heavy casualties sustained by both sides on this island and the suicidal bravery of the Japanese military encouraged American planners to use atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki instead of launching Operation Downfall, the projected late-1945 conventional invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Stuart

(England, 1603-1714 and Scotland, 1371-1714): The first king of England from this family was James I (James VI of Scotland), who commissioned the King James Bible and survived the Gunpowder Plot. Other notable rulers included Charles I (who was beheaded following the English Civil War) and Charles II (who was restored to power after Oliver Cromwell died). It was under the last Stuart ruler, Queen Anne, that the Acts of Union were passed and Great Britain was founded.

Battle of Iwo Jima

(February to March 1945): This island is an isolated volcanic island between the Marianas and Honshu; early in 1945 it was strategically important as a base for American air attacks on the Japanese home islands. The defenders were led by General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who attempted to prolong the battle indefinitely by digging an elaborate system of tunnels to protect his troops. The U.S Marines who stormed the island starting in February 1945 sustained thousands of casualties. Joe Rosenthal's photograph of Marines raising the flag on this island's Mount Suribachi is one of the best-known images of the Second World War.

Karl Marx

(German, 1818-1883): Also a historian and social philosopher, his principal contribution to economic thought was extending the labor theory of value to its logical conclusion, his theory of surplus value. This theory, along with his defense of economic materialism, appeared in Das Kapital (1867, 1885, 1894).

La bohème

(Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, 1896): This opera tells the story of four extremely poor friends who live in the Latin (i.e., Students') Quarter of Paris: Marcello the artist, Rodolfo the poet, Colline the philosopher, and Schaunard the musician. Rodolfo meets the seamstress Mimì who lives next door when her single candle is blown out and needs to be relit. Marcello is still attached to Musetta, who had left him for the rich man Alcindoro. In the final act, Marcello and Rodolfo have separated from their lovers, but cannot stop thinking about them. Musetta bursts into their garret apartment and tells them that Mimi is dying of consumption (tuberculosis); when they reach her, she is already dead. La bohème was based on a novel by Henry Murger and, in turn, formed the basis of the hit 1996 musical Rent by Jonathan Larson.

Battle of the Coral Sea

(May 1942): Resulting from a Japanese plan to capture Port Moresby, New Guinea, this battle was fought entirely by carrier-based aircraft, making it the first major naval battle in history in which the two opposing fleets never directly fired upon (or even sighted) each other. The U.S. Navy's carrier Lexington was sunk, and the Yorktown heavily damaged, while the Japanese navy lost the light carrier Shoho and saw its large carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku damaged. Ultimately, the invasion of Port Moresby was cancelled and the temporary loss of two Japanese carriers gave the U.S. an edge at the subsequent Battle of Midway.

Chisholm v. Georgia

(No majority opinion, Chief Justice John Jay, 4-1, 1793) Following the death of Robert Farquhar, his estate's executor, Alexander Chisholm — who, like Farquhar, was a South Carolina resident — sued the state of Georgia to collect money Georgia owed Farquhar for goods it purchased during the American Revolution. Georgia claimed that sovereign immunity protected it from Chisholm's suit. However, the Supreme Court held that Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution gave citizens the right to sue a state, finding against Georgia. The Court's ruling proved so controversial that it resulted in the 1794 passage of the Eleventh Amendment, which specifically prohibited U.S. or foreign citizens from filing a lawsuit against a state (with certain exceptions).

Germantown

(October 4, 1777): Washington's attack on this town was the Continental Army's last major effort to retake Philadelphia before the winter of 1777-1778. After this defeat, Washington's troops wintered at Valley Forge.

Lord Liverpool

(PM 1812-1827) Was Prime Minister at the time of victory at the Battle of Waterloo, and faced social turmoil, including the Peterloo Massacre of protesters in Manchester.

Lord Palmerston

(PM 1855-1858, 1859-1865): Was a long-serving Secretary of State and the first Prime Minister of the Liberal Party that succeeded the Whigs. He kept Britain neutral during the American Civil War.

South Pacific

(Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan, 1949): During the Pacific Theater of World War II, Nellie Forbush, a U.S. Navy nurse, has fallen in love with Émile, a French plantation owner. Émile helps Lieutenant Cable carry out an espionage mission against the Japanese. The mission is successful, and Émile and Nellie reunite. Featuring the songs "Some Enchanted Evening," "There is Nothing Like a Dame," and "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair," it is adapted from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.

Jean Piaget

(Swiss, 1896-1980): He is generally considered the greatest figure of 20th-century developmental psychology; he was the first to perform rigorous studies of the way in which children learn and come to understand and respond to the world around them. He is most famous for his theory of four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. His most famous works are The Language and Thought of a Child and The Origins of Intelligence in Children.

Vacuoles

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

Eadweard Muybridge

Initially gained fame in the 1860s for his photographs of Yosemite Valley, published under the alias "Helios," but is now likely more famous for helping Leland Stanford—the governor of California—settle an argument regarding whether a racehorse ever has all four feet off the ground during a gallop. He eventually did this to the satisfaction of the public with a series of tripwire-triggered cameras; the series of photos thus created was later exhibited in the form of a zoopraxiscope, an early motion-picture device Muybridge also invented. He also shot and killed his wife's lover, Major Harry Larkyns. He was acquitted on the basis of justifiable homicide, and the trial was later dramatized in Philip Glass's opera The Photographer.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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

Danube

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

Pokémon

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

1876 Election

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

The Jordan River

Rises in Syria from springs near Mount Hermon. It flows south to Lake Merom, through the Sea of Galilee, and into the Dead Sea, which is 1,300 feet below sea level. The river forms the nation of Jordan's boundary with the West Bank and northern Israel. In the New Testament, the river was the site of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In modern times, about 80% of its water is diverted for human use, a figure that has led to the shrinking of the Dead Sea and serious contention among bordering nations.

Limpopo River

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

Thames

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

The Brahmaputra

Runs 1,800 miles from its source in the Tibetan Himalayas; it starts eastward across the plateau, then turns south into the Indian state of Assam, and then enters Bangladesh, where it merges with the Ganges to form the world's largest delta. While serving as a historical route to Tibet, the river is also prone to disastrous flooding.

Bhagavad-Gita

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

Shiva's Consort

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

Hanuman

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

Agamemnon

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

Platonic Solids

There are only five regular polyhedra (three-dimensional shapes whose faces are all the same regular polygon). They are the tetrahedron (four equilateral triangles), cube (six squares), octahedron (eight equilateral triangles), dodecahedron (twelve regular pentagons), and icosahedron (20 equilateral triangles).

Switch

This part is simply a device that toggles between an open connection and a closed connection. They can also be used to toggle between two (or more) different closed connections.

Ajax the Great

This prince of Salamis is the son of Telamon. He once fights all afternoon in single combat with Hector; since neither one can decisively wound the other, they part as friends. His most glorious achievement is fighting the Trojans back from the ships almost singlehandedly. He commits suicide after the armor of Achilles is awarded to Odysseus rather than to himself.

José de San Martín

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

Pedro II

Was the Emperor of Brazil from 1831 to 1889. He became emperor at age 5 when his father abdicated. During his reign, Brazil was victorious in several conflicts with its neighbors, including the Platine War and War of the Triple Alliance.

Andreas Gursky

Whose work tends to feature high vantage points and scenes that produce horizontal bands of color, has taken some of the most expensive photographs ever sold. Among those are his 99 Cent II Diptychon, a shot of the shelves of a 99-cent store, and Rhein II, a photograph of the Rhine River with humans and buildings digitally edited out.

Niger River

Africa's third-longest, it flows in a great clockwise arc through Guinea, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria before entering the Gulf of Guinea. The medieval Mali and Songhai Empires were centered on this river, whose course was mapped by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park in the 1790s. In Nigeria, it receives the Benue River, its main tributary. The massive Niger Delta, known for its fisheries, wildlife, and petroleum, is an area of increasing social unrest.

Oder

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

Robert Mugabe

Became the first president of post-colonial Zimbabwe in 1980. Zimbabwe was the successor state to Rhodesia, the white-supremacist state in south-central Africa led by Ian Smith. As a leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union, he was a key figure in the civil and military struggle for African rights in Rhodesia. His regime came under increasing criticism for his failure to prevent hyperinflation and his suppression of political dissent. He resigned the presidency after a November 2017 coup and was replaced by Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Seamus Heaney

Called the "Heaneywulf," he dedicated this translation to poet Ted Hughes. This man, an acclaimed Irish poet himself, made the decision early on to render his translation in the same poetic form as the original: alliterative verse, in which the second half of each line uses alliteration to link it to the first half. He unconventionally chose "So!" as his rendering of Beowulf's opening shout of "Hwæt," which is often typically rendered as "hark" or "listen."

King Arthur

"The Once and Future King," was the son of Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine. Uther disguised himself as Igraine's husband Gorlois to sleep with her. This king wields the legendary sword Excalibur and rules the Britons from the castle of Camelot beside his wife, Queen Guinevere. The stories of him and his Knights of the Round Table are recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regnum Britanniae, works by Chrétien de Troyes, and Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur, among others. The different sources disagree on various details; for instance, some sources state that he received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, while in others he pulls the sword from a stone. After the Battle of Camlann, he gives Excalibur to his marshal, Sir Bedivere, and is taken to the isle of Avalon to die.

Mount Kosciuszko

(Australia): The name of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the Polish commander who fought in the American Revolutionary War, was appended to the tallest mountain in Australia by European explorers in the 19th century. When it was discovered that Mount Townsend was actually taller, the names were switched so that this mountain would remain the highest peak on the continent. The peak's name in Aboriginal languages, such as Jagungal or Tackingal, translates to "table-top mountain."

Lord North

(PM 1770-1782): The American War of Independence was lost during his ministry.

Thomas Hunt Morgan

(won in 1933) Discovered the basic mechanisms of genetic inheritance via his experiments on fruit flies, specifically the species Drosophila melanogaster. By conducting a series of experiments in his renowned "Fly Room" at Columbia University, he and his students tracked mutations, noting how various traits were inherited across successive generations of the flies. His data supported the idea of genetic linkage by noting that the probability of two genes being inherited together correlates inversely with their physical distance on a given chromosome, leading Morgan to postulate the mechanism of crossing over. Because of his work, the unit centimorgan is now used to measure the physical distance between genes.

The Euphrates

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

Pillars of Islam

Islam has five fundamental tenets of religious life, a group known as this. They are the declaration of faith (Shahadah), prayer (Salat), giving charity to those in need (Zakat), fasting during the month Ramadan (Sawm), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) to be performed once in each adherent's lifetime.

Iapetus

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

Even Functions

Satisfy the rule f(-x) = f(x) for every x in the domain of the function. The graph of an even function has reflection symmetry over the y-axis. These functions are so named because if a polynomial's exponents (on the variable) are all even, then the polynomial is classified as this; for instance, x2, 3x6, and -x8 + 7x4 are all even. There are other types of these functions, though, such as the cosine and absolute value functions.

Paul Dirac

(1902-1984) Was one of the first to attempt a generalization of quantum theory to relativistic speeds, the result of which was the Dirac equation.

Shirley Jackson

(1916-1965) An American short story author and novelist known for her works in the mystery and horror genres. Her most famous short story is "The Lottery," whose publication in The New Yorker was extremely controversial, garnering her hate mail. The story begins with village children gathering stones, foreshadowing the end result of the title event. Mr. Summers tells all of the village families to draw slips of paper from a black box, and Bill Hutchinson's has a black spot. The entire Hutchinson family then has to draw, and Tessie receives the black spot, meaning she has "won" the title event. The story ends with her yelling "It isn't fair" as the townspeople stone her to death.

Bunker Hill

(June 17, 1775): This British pyrrhic victory outside Boston resulted in the capture of the Charlestown Peninsula, but showed that colonial troops could stand up to British regulars. Most of the fighting actually occurred on Breed's Hill, not the hill that the battle was named after.

Namib Desert

(Namibia and Angola; 30,000 mi2) This desert, a coastal desert, is known for its bizarre Welwitschia and medicinal Hoodia plants. It is thought to be the oldest desert in the world.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

(Roger Taney, 7-2, 1857) Dred Scott was a slave purchased by John Emerson in the 1820s, and who at various points lived in Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory, both of which prohibited slavery. In 1853, Scott sued his then-owner John Sanford for his freedom. The Supreme Court ruled that no African-American — slave or free — was a citizen of the United States, and that therefore Scott lacked standing to initiate a lawsuit in the first place. In addition, the Court found the Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional, holding that Congress lacked authority to prohibit slavery in any new territory that was not originally part of the United States.

Romulus Augustulus

(460-507, reigned 475-476) Is traditionally regarded as the last Roman emperor. He was deposed in 476 by Odoacer, marking the end of the Western Roman Empire.

John Burgoyne

"Gentleman Johnny," as he was known due to his cultural tastes (he was also a playwright), he began his Revolutionary War career under Gage, returning to England after ineffectiveness in 1774-1775. Sent to reinforce Canada, he formulated a plan to isolate New England with the help of Barry St. Leger and William Howe. The plan worked as far as capturing Fort Ticonderoga but met resistance when he sent his Hessians to attack Bennington. Exhausted, his troops met trouble at Saratoga, being repulsed at Freedman's Farm, and being forced to surrender after Bemis Heights. Paroled on the condition he return to England; he was later appointed commander-in-chief of Ireland.

John Cabot

(1450-1499) A Genoese explorer, sailed for Henry VII of England. His 1497 voyage aboard the Matthew landed somewhere in eastern Canada, probably in what is today Newfoundland.

Michelangelo

(1475-1564): A Florentine "Renaissance man" also known for architecture (the dome of St. Peter's Basilica), painting (The Last Judgment and the Sistine Chapel ceiling), poetry, and military engineering. His sculpted masterpieces include David, a Pietà, Bacchus, and a number of pieces for the tomb of Pope Julius II (including Dying Slave and Moses). He preferred to work in Carraran marble.

Jacques Cartier

(1491-1557) This Frenchman went on three expeditions (1534-1542) for Francis I. On the second one, he sailed up the St. Lawrence River and named the hill behind the village of Hochelaga "Montréal."

Michael

(1597-1645; ruled 1613-1645): In 1613, near the end of the Time of Troubles, a zemskii sobor elected this 16-year-old as the new tsar. He was a grandnephew of Ivan the Terrible's "good" wife Anastasia and the son of a powerful churchman named Filaret (who soon became patriarch); as tsar, he has usually been seen as a nonentity dominated by Filaret and other relatives. Nevertheless, his election marked the return of relative stability and the succession of the Romanov dynasty.

Robert Millikan

(1868-1953; Not to be confused with Robert Mullikan, a chemist) Determined the charge of the electron by meticulously observing oil droplets in an electric field and noting the time it took them to fall a certain distance.

I am Prepared to Die

(1964) Was a speech delivered by Nelson Mandela during his prosecution for terrorism charges in the Rivonia Trial. In the three-hour speech, Mandela defended his leadership of the Spear of the Nation, the militant wing of the African National Congress working to end apartheid in South Africa. At the conclusion of the speech, Mandela restated his commitment to the "struggle of the African people" and declared "I am prepared to die." Mandela was convicted, then spent the next 27 years in prison before his release in 1990.

Samuel de Champlain

(c. 1567-1635) Another Frenchman, he went on several voyages (1603-1635), founding what is now Quebec City and becoming the first European to see Lake Huron.

Andromache

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

Alfred Marshall

(English, 1842-1924): His magnum opus, 1890's Principles of Economics, introduced the notions of consumer surplus, quasi-rent, demand curves, and elasticity, all fundamental concepts in introductory macro- and microeconomics.

Hellmuth Walter

Designed the Starthilfe (takeoff assist) rocket propulsion units for the Messerschmidt Me 163 and the vertical-takeoff Bachem Ba 349 aircrafts, used by the German Luftwaffe in World War II. He also was awarded a patent in 1925 for suggesting that a catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide could provide oxygen for combustion.

Malcolm X

On February 21, 1965 this Muslim activist was shot and killed in the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan by three members of the Nation of Islam, an organization that he had left in March 1964. The assassins were Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler, and Thomas 15X Johnson. He 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 his widow, have blamed Louis Farrakhan's harsh rhetoric for inciting the assassination.

Nestor

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

Annelida

(11,500 species): They are segmented worms and represent the first lineage of truly eucoelomate animals, meaning their body cavities are lined with tissue derived from the embryonic mesoderm. The classes in this phylum include the marine Polychaeta, as well as the mostly terrestrial Oligochaeta (including the earthworms, Lumbricus) and the mostly aquatic Hirudinea, or leeches. Characteristics of annelids include nephridia (kidney-like structures), blood vessels, and, in some classes, hermaphroditism.

Cnidaria

(10,000 species): Also called Coelenterata, the cnidarians develop from a diploblastic (two-layered) embryo, and have two separate tissue layers and radial body symmetry. Many of these organisims have two life stages, the mobile, usually bell-like medusa and the sessile polyp. All of them have nematocysts, or stinging cells, for capturing prey, and some can inflict painful stings on swimmers. Examples include the hydras, sea anemones, corals, jellyfishes, and Portuguese man-o-war (which is actually an aggregation of colonial cnidarians).

James Cook

(1728-1779): On his first voyage (1768-1771), this captain sailed aboard the Endeavour to observe the transit of the planet Venus from Tahiti. From there he went to New Zealand (discovering that it was two islands by sailing through what is now called the Cook Strait), then to Australia's Botany Bay. On his second voyage (1772-1775), he sailed aboard the Resolution and became the first to cross the Antarctic Circle. On his third voyage (1776-1779), he failed to find the Northwest Passage and was killed when he came into conflict with the inhabitants of Hawaii.

Deimos

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

Vespasian

(AD 9-AD 79, reigned AD 69-AD 79) Emerged from the Year of the Four Emperors in AD 69 to found the Flavian Dynasty, and later commissioned the Colosseum.

Patroclus

Achilles' foster brother and closest friend. Although he is a formidable hero, he is valued for his kind and gentle nature. He is killed by Hector while wearing the armor of Achilles.

Alfred the Great

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

Grand Theft Auto

An immensely successful Rockstar Games series that has repeatedly drawn criticism for its level of violence. Grand Theft Auto games are played in open world "sandboxes" that give the player the ability to do virtually anything they want. The series is set in satirized versions of real U.S. cities, with GTA III and GTA IV taking place in the New York knock-off Liberty City, GTA: Vice City taking place in a fictionalized Miami, and GTA: San Andreas and GTA V taking place in Los Santos, a send-up of Los Angeles.

The Proposition

(1631) By Judith Leyster. Leyster was a female artist whose entire body of work was once attributed to Frans Hals. The painting's two subjects are a woman sewing by candlelight and a man touching her right shoulder and offering her coins. Unlike in Vermeer's The Milkmaid, the foot warmer in this painting is partway under the woman's skirt, indicating that she is married, but potentially interested in a suitor. Despite this, the woman appears to be ignoring the man's romantic advances.

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

(1834-1904): A French sculptor primarily known as the creator of Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty. He also executed The Lion of Belfort and a statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in New York's Union Square.

The Purloined Letter

(1844) Written by Edgar Allan Poe. The police prefect "G" asks for Dupin's help regarding a devious official known as "Minister D." G believes the minister stole a letter that contains potential blackmail fodder regarding an unnamed but powerful man, and thus a huge reward is offered. However, the police cannot find the letter in Minister D's lodgings or on his person. One month later, "G" contacts Dupin again after the reward increases to 50,000 francs; Dupin asks for the reward immediately and amazingly produces the letter. Dupin, using a metaphor about a map game—in which players tasked with finding a name on a map can easily overlook large-print names—says Minister D hid the letter in plain sight, putting it amongst a bundle on the mantle. Once hearing of the theft, Dupin went to the apartment, located the letter, and then created a diversion so he could swap the letter with a taunting fake.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

(1886-1969) The leading architect of the International Style of skyscraper design, this person (like Walter Gropius) worked in the office of Peter Behrens. He directed the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933, shutting it down before the Nazis could do so. His works include the Barcelona Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition; two adjacent apartment buildings at 860 and 880 North Lake Shore Drive in Chicago; the New National Gallery in Berlin; and the Seagram Building in New York, which he co-designed with Philip Johnson. He asserted that "less is more" as a principle of his architectural style. His glass-covered steel structures influenced the design of office buildings in nearly every major city in the U.S.

McClure's Magazine

(1893-1929) Was founded explicitly to publish the investigative journalism now known as "muckraking." In 1901 its staff writer Ray Stannard Baker published What the U.S. Steel Corporation Really Is, and How It Works. In 1902 it ran Ida Tarbell's The History of the Standard Oil Company. Lincoln Steffens's series on political machines, Tweed Days in St. Louis, was later compiled as the 1906 book The Shame of the Cities. Willa Cather helped write its highly skeptical 1909 biography The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science.

Murray Gell-Mann

(1929-2019) Predicted the existence of quarks, which compose protons, neutrons, and other, heavier particles.

Tybalt

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

Diomedes

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

Centrioles

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

Madden NFL

The Madden series (which, prior to 1993, was simply known as John Madden Football due to licensing issues), has featured yearly installments since 1990 and is published by EA Sports (which also publishes the FIFA soccer series). Madden NFL traditionally features a different player on its box art each year; an apparent string of injuries to and poor seasons by players on the cover of that particular year's game has become known as the Madden Curse.

Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nicéphore

They functionally invented photography as we know it. They created the process of heliography, which he used to create View from the Window at Le Gras, the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene. This person another pioneer, partnered with this man and the two developed the physautotype method, which used lavender oil. After one of their deaths, the remaining one developed an even faster process, in which an iodized silver plate was exposed to light, treated with mercury fumes, and "fixed" with a solution of sodium thiosulfate; that process, daguerreotypy, bears his name.

Ribosomes

This part of the cell is the machine that coordinate protein synthesis, or translation. They consist of several RNA and protein molecules arranged into two subunits. They read the messenger RNA copy of the DNA and assemble the appropriate amino acids into protein chains.

Abdulaziz ibn Abdul Rahman Al Saud

Usually known in the West as Ibn Saud (1875-1953) was the first king of Saudi Arabia. He reconquered Riyadh, his family's ancestral homeland, in 1902, and began expanding Saudi power from there; in 1925, he conquered the Hejaz, the region where Mecca is located. He declared the formation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932; during his reign, American engineers discovered oil at Dammam in 1938. Every subsequent king of Saudi Arabia has been a son of this man, including the current (as of October 2019) king, Salman.

Syracuse

Was a major Greek colony on Sicily, founded by colonists from Corinth and Tenea. Its forces crushed the Sicilian Expedition of Athens, which proved to be the decisive turning point of the Peloponnesian War. Some 200 years later, the great scientist Archimedes died during the Roman takeover of this city.

Sumer

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

Apollo 13

Was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro region of the Moon. An improperly-refurbished No. 2 oxygen tank and subsequent improper repairs caused the tank to rupture during a routine "cryo-stir" before entering lunar orbit. The explosion also damaged the No. 1 oxygen tank and caused further leakage. To bring back the astronauts, the orbiter was put on a free-return trajectory around the Moon. NASA engineers also solved power-management, water-conservation, and trajectory planning problems with the help of Ken Mattingly, the primary Command Module pilot who had been grounded due to exposure to German measles. All three astronauts returned to Earth safely, and the landing site was re-assigned to the subsequent Apollo 14 mission.

Alfredo Stroessner

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

Theodosius (347-405

reigned 379-405) was the last man to rule both the eastern and western halves of the empire.

Benito Juárez

(1806-1872) Was a Liberal lawyer who became the first indigenous president of Mexico, and who led the opposition to the French-backed empire of Maximilian von Habsburg. Born to a Zapotec family in the state of Oaxaca, he became a key figure in the Liberal movement that deposed Santa Anna, and which initiated legal and social changes known as La Reforma ("the Reform"). An 1855 law named after him sought to eliminate special privileges given to members of the church and military, and was incorporated into a new constitution ratified in 1857. Conservative backlash soon led to the War of the Reform, which lasted from 1857 to 1861, and left the victorious Liberals with little money in the national treasury. France's emperor Napoleon III then used Mexico's foreign debts to as a pretext for an invasion known as the "French Intervention," which briefly imposed the Austrian archduke Maximilian as Mexico's second emperor. As the elected president of Mexico, he evaded capture by French and imperial troops while rallying Republican forces. After the departure of the French, Liberal troops captured and executed Maximilian on the Hill of the Bells in the city of Querétaro. He returned to Mexico City, and remained president until his death.

Giuseppe Verdi

(1813-1901) Was one of the most prolific and successful Italian opera composers of the Romantic period, and his operas include some of the most performed works in the repertoire. Aida is the tale of a captive Ethiopian princess (who longs for her homeland in the aria "O patria mia") who falls in love with the Egyptian general Radamès. Rigoletto tells the story of a hunchbacked jester who seeks revenge on the womanizing Duke of Mantua (who sings "La donna è mobile"), but instead ends up causing the death of his own daughter, Gilda. His late operas include two masterpieces based on the works of Shakespeare: Otello and Falstaff, the latter of which was both his last opera and his only successful comedy. His most successful non-operatic work is his Requiem, whose "Dies irae" movement has seen wide use in popular culture.

Bahaullah

(1817-1892) Was the founder of the Bahá'í faith. He was a follower of the Báb, the founder of a predecessor of Bahá'í called Bábism. At the Garden of Ridvan, he declared himself to be the fulfillment of the Báb's prophecy about "he whom God shall make manifest." He was exiled to the outer reaches of the Ottoman Empire for fear that his teachings would cause unrest. He was later imprisoned in Acre (in what is now Israel), where he spent much of his time writing texts such as the Kitab-i-Aqdas (literally, "the book of laws"). His other books include The Book of Certitude and Epistle to the Son of the Wolf.

Qing Dynasty

(1644-1911) The invading Manchus established the last dynasty to rule imperial China. An important institution of this dynasty was the banner system, which acted as a guaranteed welfare system for Manchus and gave them benefits in the imperial examination (positions were often duplicated, with one Han Chinese and one Manchu from the banners). The foundations of the dynasty were established under its second ruler, the Kangxi Emperor, who put down the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. He is also famous for the Kangxi dictionary, which is known for popularizing the system of Chinese radicals. During the last century of this dynasty's rule, China was weakened both by foreign attacks (the Opium Wars against Britain) and internal dissent (the devastating Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864). Attempts to modernize Qing rule (the Self-Strengthening Movement and the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898) proved inconclusive. Qing Dowager Express Cixi, who opposed the reformers, was implicated in the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign uprising of 1900 that caused eight Western nations to send military forces to Beijing. China's last emperor was Puyi, who came to the throne at the age of two in 1906. The 1911 Xinhai Revolution ended this dynasty and created the Republic of China.

Gottfried Leibniz

(1646-1716, German) Is known for his independent invention of calculus and the ensuing priority dispute with Isaac Newton. Most modern calculus notation, including the integral sign and the use of d to indicate a differential, originated with this mathematician. He also did work with the binary number system and did fundamental work in establishing boolean algebra and symbolic logic.

Peace of Westphalia

(1648) Is the collective name for two treaties ending the Thirty Years' War that were signed by the Holy Roman Empire, minor German states, Spain, France, Sweden, and the Dutch Republic. It confirmed the principle of "cuius regio eius religio" (that a ruler's religion determined that of his country) introduced by the Peace of Augsburg, but mandated relative tolerance of other (Christian) faiths. It adjusted the borders of German states and strengthened their princes with respect to the Emperor, and transferred most of Lorraine and some of Alsace to France.

Chikamatsu

(1653-1725): He was one of Japan's first professional dramatists (as opposed to playwright-actors). Originally named Sugimori Nobumori, he wrote more than 150 plays for both the bunraku (puppet theater) and the kabuki (popular theater). His scripts fall into two categories: historical romances (jidaimono) and domestic tragedies (sewamono). One of Chikamatsu's most popular plays was The Battles of Coxinga, an historical melodrama about an attempt to re-establish the Ming dynasty in China. He is also largely responsible for developing the sewamono (contemporary drama on contemporary themes) in the joruri, a style of chanted narration adapted to bunraku.

Peter I

(1672-1725; ruled 1682-1725): He is famous both for his push for Westernization and for his boisterous personality. His Grand Embassy to Europe enabled him to learn about Western life (and even to work in a Dutch shipyard); he later invited Western artisans to come to Russia, required the boyars (aristocrats) to shave their beards and wear Western clothing, and even founded a new capital, St. Petersburg — his "window on the West." He also led his country in the Great Northern War (in which Charles XII of Sweden was defeated at Poltava), created a Table of Ranks for the nobility, and reformed the bureaucracy and army. But he could also be violent and cruel: he personally participated in the torture of the streltsy, or musketeers, who rebelled against him, and had his own son executed.

Leonhard Euler

(1707-1783, Swiss) Is known for his prolific output and the fact that he continued to produce seminal results even after going blind. He invented graph theory by solving the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem, which asked whether there was a way to travel a particular arrangement of bridges so that you would cross each bridge exactly once. (He proved that it was impsosible to do so.) He also introduced the modern notation for e, an irrational number about equal to 2.718, which is now called Euler's number in his honor (but don't confuse it for Euler's constant, which is different); he also introduced modern notation for i, a square root of -1, and for trigonometric functions. He proved Euler's formula, which relates complex numbers and trigonometric functions: ei x = cos x + i sin x, of which a special case is the fact that ei π = -1, which Richard Feynman called "the most beautiful equation in mathematics" because it links four of math's most important constants.

Hector Berlioz

(1803-1869) Was the most prominent French composer of the early Romantic. His best-known work, the programmatic Symphonie fantastique (subtitled "An Episode in the Life of an Artist"), was inspired by his obsession with the actress Harriet Smithson, whom he would later marry (and divorce). The work, whose movements include vivid depictions of a "March to the Scaffold" and a "Dream of a Witches' Sabbath," uses a recurring melody known as an idée fixe. His Harold in Italy is a work for solo viola and orchestra, which the composer claimed was inspired in part by Lord Byron's poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Harold in Italy was commissioned by Niccolò Paganini, who subsequently abandoned the project because he felt that the viola was not sufficiently showcased, and who never performed the work. His opera Les Troyens (based on the Aeneid), is a massive production that—while never completely performed while he was alive—is now often listed among the greatest operas ever written.

Joseph Smith

(1805-1844) Was the founder of Mormonism (many of whose followers now call themselves Latter-Day Saints). He is said to have had a vision in which the angel Moroni directed him to a set of golden plates, from which he claimed to have translated the Book of Mormon, the founding scripture of Mormonism. Based on Ezekiel's vision of a New Jerusalem, he hoped to establish a latter-day Zion in America. He initially planned to establish his Zion in Independence, Missouri, but his followers were driven out of the area and moved to Nauvoo, Illinois. When the Nauvoo Expositor criticized him for his teachings on polygamy and other matters, he had the press destroyed and was charged with inciting a riot; while awaiting trial, he was killed by a mob.

Virginia Woolf

(1882-1941) This woman was an author who comes up in quiz bowl most often because of her novels, especially Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927). She makes this list, however, because of her essay "A Room of One's Own" (1929), in which she argued that a woman must have money and space in order to write and express herself. In the essay, she famously created the character of Judith Shakespeare, William Shakespeare's imagined sister, who could not achieve the status of her brother because she did not have the same access to education. She also addressed these themes in Three Guineas (1938).

William Rowan Hamilton

(1805-1865, Irish) Is known for a four-dimensional extension of complex numbers, with six square roots of -1 (±i, ±j, and ±k), called the quaternions.

Marie and Pierre Currie

(1867-1945) (1859-1906) Rigorously isolated and experimented on radioactive materials, forming the basis for early nuclear and particle physics.

Quartz

Is a mineral composed of Si O4 tetrahedra linked in a framework with oxygen atoms shared between neighboring tetrahedra to give an overall chemical formula of Si O2 (silicon dioxide). Inclusions of different elements give different varieties of this mineral, including amethyst (purple). It is the second-most abundant mineral in Earth's crust. It is often used in clocks because it exhibits piezoelectricity. It defines hardness 7 on the Mohs scale.

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.

Werner Heisenberg

(1901-1976) This scientist is most known for his matrix interpretation of quantum theory, which constructs observable quantities as operators that act on a system. His famous uncertainty principle (better translated, however, as "indeterminacy principle") states that the more accurately an object's position can be observed, the less accurately its momentum can. This is because shorter wavelengths of light (used as a sort of measuring-stick) have higher energies, and disrupt a particle's momentum more strongly. He earned the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the allotropic forms of hydrogen.

Margaret Mead

(1901-1978) For her best-known work, Coming of Age in Samoa, she interviewed young girls on the island Ta'u, which led her to conclude that adolescence in Samoan society was much less stressful than in the United States; in The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman claimed that she was lied to in those interviews. She also studied three tribes in New Guinea — the Arapesh, Mundugumor, and Tchambuli — for her book on Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.

John Cage

(1912-1992) Was an experimentalist composer whose works are known for aleatoric (chance-based) composition and other forms of indeterminacy. His best-known piece, 4′33″ (1952), is created from the ambient sounds of the concert space while the performer(s) sits silently on stage. His Music of Changes (1951), as well as numerous other works, were written utilizing the Chinese I Ching to determine musical content. His other innovations include works for "prepared piano," a piano which has had various objects inserted into its strings. A 639-year-long organ performance of his "As Slow As Possible" (1987) is currently underway in Germany, having begun in 2001.

Shirley Chisholm

(1924-2005) Who represented part of Brooklyn in the U.S. House from 1969-1983, was the first Black woman elected to Congress. She used the slogan "Unbought and Unbossed," which was also the title of her first autobiography. She was a founding member of both the Congressional Black Caucus (in 1971) and the Congressional Women's Caucus (in 1977). She also spearheaded a 1975 bill that expanded the federal school lunch program. In 1972, she ran for the Democratic nomination for president, becoming the first Black candidate and first woman candidate for the nomination; she received 152 delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. During the primary campaign, she visited segregationist candidate George Wallace in the hospital after he was shot.

Feldspars

Are a group of silicate minerals that are the most abundant minerals in the Earth's crust. They are categorized based on whether they contain potassium (orthoclase) or sodium and calcium (plagioclase). The continuous branch of Bowen's reaction series covers the transition from calcium-rich to sodium-rich plagioclases. Orthoclase defines hardness 6 on the Mohs scale.

Flannery O'Connor

(1925-1964) A Catholic American author who wrote in the "Southern Gothic" style. In her story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," Bailey takes his family on a vacation; when they stop at a diner, "the grandmother" talks with the owner Red Sammy about The Misfit, an escaped murderer. After the cat Patty Sing causes the family's car to crash into a ditch, a group of men led by the Misfit murder the family, including the grandmother, who claims The Misfit is one of her own children before he shoots her three times. In "Good Country People," Hulga has her prosthetic leg taken by Manley Pointer, a nihilistic atheist Bible salesman. She also wrote "Everything That Rises Must Converge," in which Julian rides on a newly-integrated bus with his mother.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(1928-2014, Colombia; Nobel Prize for Literature 1982): The master of magic realism, his birthplace, Aracataca was the model for the fictional town Macondo. The town played a prominent role in many of his works, such as Leaf Storm and his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which details the decline of the Buendía family over seven generations. A newspaper journalist in the 1950s, he exposed a naval scandal (chronicled in The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Other prominent novels include In Evil Hour, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth, a depiction of Simón Bolívar's final years.

Arnold Palmer

(1929-2016) A native of Latrobe, Pennsylvania, this man made golf popular with the masses, as his fans were known as "Arnie's Army." He won seven majors, including four Masters, and was the first golfer to earn one million dollars on the PGA Tour. Later her became one of the stars of the Senior Tour, winning the Senior PGA Open in 1980 and 1981. In 2002 he played in his last competitive Masters.

Campbell's Soup Can

By Andy Warhol. Pop Art parodies (or perhaps reflects) a world in which celebrities, brand names, and media images have replaced the sacred; Warhol's series of paintings may be the best illustration of this. Like the object itself, the paintings were often done by the mass-produceable form of serigraphy (silk screening). Also like the subject, the Warhol soup can painting existed in many varieties, with different types of soup or numbers of cans; painting 32 or 100 or 200 identical cans further emphasized the aspect of mass production in the work. The same approach underlies Warhol's familiar series of prints of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and other pop culture figures.

The Hudson River

Has been a historically significant American river since the early 17th century. Named for the English explorer Henry Hudson, it flows 315 miles through eastern New York state. After receiving the Mohawk River, the river flows past New York's capital, Albany, and West Point before forming the boundary between Manhattan and New Jersey. This river is also culturally significant as an inspiration for Washington Irving and the Hudson River School of American landscape painters.

Hermann Oberth

Imagined at the age of 14 a recoil rocket, which could propel itself by exhausting gas from its base. He also lends his name to an effect named after him, a phenomenon by which rockets operate more efficiently when moving at higher speeds, and formulated the idea behind multiple-stage rocketry. He also mentored many German rocket engineers through the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Spaceflight Society), whose formation was inspired partially by his writing.

Ansel Adams

Like Muybridge, he gained significant fame for his photographs of Yosemite National Park, including Moon and Half Dome. With Willard Van Dyke and Edward Weston, he founded Group f/64, named after the smallest common aperture setting of cameras at the time. He also developed a method to determine the optimum exposure for a negative, known as the Zone System, enabling him to create tremendous detail within small gradation of shade in black-and-white photography.

Seljuq

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

1800 Democratic-Republican

Thomas Jefferson narrowly beat the incumbent Federalist John Adams 73-65, marking the ascent of that party's power. At the time, all electoral votes were cast in the presidential race rather than having a separate ballot for the vice presidency. Thus, both Jefferson and Democratic-Republican VP candidate Aaron Burr had 73 electoral votes, and Burr refused to step aside. In the House of Representatives, neither man won the necessary nine state delegations outright until the 36th ballot, when James Bayard of Delaware cast a blank vote, turning the election in Jefferson's favor. The debacle led to the ratification of the 12th amendment in 1804. The Federalists never recovered; Alexander Hamilton's opposition to Adams led to a permanent split between the two, and Hamilton's opposition to Burr was one cause of their 1804 duel, in which Burr (then the vice president) killed Hamilton. This was the first peaceful transfer of power from one party to another.

Alice Walker

(1944-present) She is best known as the author of the novel The Color Purple (1982), but she is also renowned for her non-fiction writing about women's issues. She joined the writing staff for Ms. magazine, for which she wrote "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" (1975), stimulating interest in the then-forgotten Harlem Renaissance writer. She collected her critical essays on women's fiction in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (1983). Among other arguments, she memorably contrasted Virginia Woolf and Phyllis Wheatley, noting that the latter had none of the advantages Woolf considered necessary in "A Room of One's Own." Along with Maxine Hong Kingston and other female authors, she was arrested in March 2003 for protesting the Iraq War on the grounds that it would unfairly punish Iraqi women and children.

It's a Wonderful Life

(1946) Is a Christmas drama produced and directed by Frank Capra based on Philip Van Doren Stern's short story "The Greatest Gift." Set in the fictional town of Bedford Falls, the movie stars Jimmy Stewart as building and loan operator George Bailey, who plans to commit suicide on Christmas Eve over a financial disaster caused by the villainous Henry Potter. A guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (played by Henry Travers), stops George from killing himself by showing him what his hometown would be like had he never been born: for example, George would not have been able to save his younger brother from drowning in a frozen lake, or prevent the town pharmacist from accidentally poisoning a prescription.

Augusto Pinochet

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

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, she 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.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

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

Vandals

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

The "Tryst with Destiny" Speech

(1947) Was delivered by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the night of India's independence. Speaking minutes before independence became official at midnight, Nehru celebrated that Indians will "awake to life and freedom" and laid out his vision for a nation striving toward "peace, freedom, and democracy." Nehru also praised Mahatma Gandhi as "the Father of our Nation" and thanked him for holding "the torch of freedom" in the fight for independence.

Carol Moseley Braun

(1947-) Was a U.S. senator from Illinois from 1993-1999. She was the second popularly-elected Black U.S. senator (after Brooke), making her the first Black woman and the first Black Democrat elected to the Senate. Before becoming a senator, she was a state representative and Cook County Recorder of Deeds. In the Senate, she and Maryland senator Barbara Mikulski successfully challenged a policy stating that women could not wear pants on the Senate floor. She controversially met with and subsequently defended the actions of Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. She lost her 1998 re-election bid; she ran unsuccessfully in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary.

Seven Against Thebes

(Aeschylus, c. 467 BC) This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule Thebes together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of Thebes. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles's forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of Thebes by giving Polyneices a proper burial.

Aluminum

(Al, 13) Is the most common metal in Earth's crust, and the first metal in the p block of elements. First isolated by Hans Christian Ørsted, its primary ore is bauxite, from which it is refined using large amounts of electric current, via electrolysis, through the Bayer and Hall-Héroult processes. (Because this element exists only in a +3 oxidation state, it takes three moles of electrons to produce one mole of aluminum; as a result, it has been estimated that 5% of all electricity in the U.S. goes to purifying this element) It is found in the mineral corundum, which is found in many gems, including sapphires and rubies; the specific impurities found in a gem determine its color. It is also found in aluminosilicates, such as feldspar.

Bobby Orr

(1948-present): Born in Parry Sound, Ontario, this hockey player revolutionized the position of defenseman. The first blue liner to win the Art Ross Trophy (scoring title), he also won the Norris (best defenseman), Hart (league MVP), and Conn Smythe (playoff MVP) in the same season (1969-1970). That same year, he led the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup in three decades with the now famous "Goal." He recorded the highest ± rating ever for a single season, +124 in 1970-1971, and won eight straight Norris Trophies from 1968-1975. Unfortunately, his bad knees forced him into early retirement in 1979.

I Love Lucy

(1951-1957): During its six-season run, this show was one of America's most watched shows. It centered on Lucy Ricardo, played by comedian Lucille Ball, and her husband Ricky Ricardo, who was played by Ball's real-life husband Desi Arnaz. The show's other major characters were the Ricardos' neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz. In one of the show's most famous episodes, Lucy was hired to do a TV commercial for a health tonic called "Vitameatavegamin"; after drinking too much of it, Lucy becomes inebriated and is unable to pronounce the word correctly.

Les Misérables

(Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer, 1985): A partial retelling of the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, this work follows Jean Valjean, who was convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving niece. He breaks his parole and is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert. Several years later, the lives of Valjean, his adopted daughter Cosette, her lover Marius and his unrequited admirer Éponine, and Javert become intertwined on the barricades of an 1832 student rebellion in Paris. The longest-running show on London's West End, it features the songs "I Dreamed a Dream,", "Castle on a Cloud," "Master of the House," "Do You Hear the People Sing?", "One Day More," and "On My Own."

The Hershey-Chase experiment

(1952) By Alfred Hershey and Martha Chase, demonstrated that the material responsible for inheritance of traits was DNA rather than protein. The experiment was carried out by creating radiolabeled T2 bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria). In one population, the phages' DNA contained phosphorus-32 in its backbone; in the other population, the phages' proteins contained sulfur-35. The phages were then allowed to infect E. coli. After using a centrifuge to remove the viral coats from the bacteria, Hershey and Chase found that the viruses labeled with sulfur did not transfer their radioactivity to the cells, while the viruses labeled with phosphorus did. This result, combined with other experiments, demonstrated that the genetic material was DNA, not protein.

Stanley Milgram

(American, 1933-1984): Though he did the work that created the idea of "six degrees of separation" and the "lost-letter" technique, he is mainly remembered for his experiments on obedience to authority that he performed at Yale in 1961-1962. Milgram found that two thirds of his subjects were willing to administer terrible electric shocks to innocent, protesting human beings simply because a researcher told them the experimental protocol demanded it.

Bailey v. Patterson

(1962) Determined that African-Americans had the right to nonsegregated transportation services. This case was brought after the arrest of the Freedom Riders, who went to the South in 1961 to protest continuing segregation. Sam Bailey was an African-American civil rights activist who worked with Medgar Evers, and Joe Patterson was the Attorney General of Mississippi. The Supreme Court ruled per curiam that transportation services should already be unsegregated according to the law (calling the question "so well settled that it is foreclosed as a litigable issue") and that the federal judiciary in Mississippi should enforce this.

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. His other novels are The Broom of the System and The Pale King, the latter of which was left unfinished at his 2008 suicide. This man is also known for his essay collections, including Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

The "I Have a Dream" Speech

(1963) Was delivered by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington. King began his oration by calling the promise of the Declaration of Independence a "bad check" given to African Americans and urging action "until justice rolls down like waters." After singer Mahalia Jackson encouraged him to "tell them about the dream," King described his vision of former slaves and slaveholders sitting "at the table of brotherhood" and of his children being judged by "the content of their character" rather than by their race. The speech concluded by proclaiming "free at last, Great God almighty, we are free at last."

Rub' al-Khali

(Arabian Peninsula; 250,000 mi2) Its name means "Empty Quarter" in English, and it is sometimes considered the most inhospitable place on earth. It is known for the world's largest oil field, the Ghawar, and for once being part of the frankincense trade.

Mount Aconcagua

(Argentina): The subduction of the Nazca Plate formed Mount Aconcagua, the highest point in the Southern Hemisphere. It is near the city Mendoza in Argentina, and straddles the Polish Glacier, which provides a popular route for climbers looking to summit it.

Robert Goddard Was an early explorer of the theory and practice of launching rockets. His work provided the foundation for modern rocketry: in particular

gimballed engines (engines where the exhaust nozzles can change direction allowing the rocket to be steered), fuel pumps, steering with vanes, and gyroscopic stabilization. His seminal monograph on the subject was 1919's A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. The next year, he put forward a concept for a rocket launch to the moon that was widely ridiculed in the press as being unrealistic. He is the namesake of the NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Maryland.

Symphony No. 6 in F major "Pastoral"

op. 68 (1802-1808): As the title implies, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is a programmatic depiction of rural scenes; it is the composer's only truly programmatic symphony. The symphony's five movements, rather than the traditional four, each include a short title or description of their content: "Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country" (I), "Scene at the brook" (II), "Happy gathering of country folks" (III), "Thunderstorm" (IV), and "Happy and thankful feelings after the storm" (V). In the score for the second movement, Beethoven explicitly identifies several woodwind motifs as being based on bird calls.

Fidelio

op. 72, (1805; revised 1806 and 1814): This work is Beethoven's only opera. The libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner, with revisions by Stephan von Breuning and Georg Treitschke. Leonore wishes to rescure her husband Florestan from the prison of the evil Pizarro; to do so, she disguises herself as a boy named Fidelio so that the jailer Rocco will hire her to help him, and thus grant her access to her husband. Beethoven struggled with his opera: he first presented it as a three-act work before cutting it to the present two-act form, and wrote four separate overtures. The opera utilizes some spoken (rather than sung) dialogue, and includes "O what joy," a chorus sung by prisoners.

M*A*S*H

(1972-1983): Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family, this sitcom was a highly successful CBS sitcom that dealt with controversial social issues — in this case, war. Centering on the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea, it was adapted from the 1970 feature film of the same name directed by Robert Altman. Major characters included Hawkeye Pierce, a wisecracking surgeon played by Alan Alda; Sherman Potter, who was added to the show in season 4 after the previous commanding officer, Henry Blake, was killed off; and Corporal Klinger, who would dress in women's clothing in an attempt to be discharged from the army.

Derek Jeter

(1974-present; shortstop) Became the starting shortstop for the Yanks in 1996, winning the Rookie of the Year Award and helping New York capture its first championship since 1978. More post-season highlights followed, including three more titles (1998, 1999, 2000), the 2000 World Series MVP award, and a controversial homer against the Baltimore Orioles in Game One of the 1996 ALCS when a twelve-year-old fan turned his fly ball into a home run by reaching over the right-field wall to catch it. His heroics in the 2001 World Series, which was played later than usual due to 9/11, earned him the nickname "Mr. November." He holds numerous Yankee records, including the most hits and games played in franchise history. After his jersey number (2) was retired in 2017, the Yankees had retired all single-digit jersey numbers.

Actium

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

The Birds

(Aristophanes, c. 414 BC) At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a bird called a hoopoe (some translations refer to Tereus as "Epops," the Greek word for "hoopoe"). Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or "Cloudcuckooland." Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom "all things come." Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.

Death of a Salesman

(Arthur Miller, 1949). This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff's moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.

Battle of Stalingrad

(August 1942 - February 1943): With about two million casualties, this battle is often cited as the bloodiest battle in history. The battle arose out of Germany's summer campaign to capture vital oil supplies in the Caucasus Mountains, but Friedrich Paulus's 6th Army became bogged down in intense street fighting in the city, allowing Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov to launch Operation Uranus, which encircled Paulus's men by defeating the Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian forces guarding their flank. In the final days of the battle, Hitler promoted Paulus to field marshal, a not-so-subtle suggestion that Paulus should either fight to the death or commit suicide, as no German field marshal had ever been captured; Paulus surrendered anyway.

Sigmund Freud

(Austrian, 1856-1939): He founded the extremely influential discipline psychoanalysis, which used the free-association technique to identify fears and repressed memories. He argued that many problems were caused by mental states rather than by biochemical dysfunction — a purely materialist viewpoint then in vogue. He separated the psyche into the id (illogical passion), ego (rational thought), and superego (moral and social conscience). His best-known works are The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.

Kalahari Desert

(Botswana, Namibia, South Africa; 360,000 mi2) This desert is a large region, not all of which is arid enough to qualify as a desert. It is known for its red sand, large game reserves (meerkats, gemsbok, springbok, steenbok), and mineral deposits (notably uranium). Its San Bushmen speak a click language.

Valois

(France, 1328-1589): The first king of France, from this royal lineage was Philip VI, during whose reign the Hundred Years' War began and the Black Death struck France. Notable rulers from this group included Louis XI, who acquired Burgundy; Francis I, who began the French Renaissance; and Henry III, whose assassination in the French Wars of Religion ended the Valois dynasty.

Carmen

(Georges Bizet, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, 1875): He is a young gypsy who works in a cigarette factory in Seville. She is arrested by the corporal Don José for fighting, but cajoles him into letting her escape. They meet again at an inn where she tempts him into challenging his captain; that treason forces him to join a group of smugglers. In the final act, the ragtag former soldier encounters this character at a bullfight where her lover Escamillo is competing (the source of the "Toreador Song") and stabs her. The libretto was based on a novel by Prosper Merimée.

William Tell

(Gioacchino Rossini, Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, 1829): This man is a 14th-century Swiss patriot who wishes to end Austria's domination of his country. In the first act he helps Leuthold, a fugitive, escape the Austrian governor, Gessler. In the third act, Gessler has placed his hat on a pole and ordered the men to bow to it. When he refuses, Gessler takes his son, Jemmy, and forces him to shoot an apple off his son's head. He succeeds, but is arrested anyway. In the fourth act, he escapes from the Austrians and his son sets their house on fire as a signal for the Swiss to rise in revolt. The opera was based on a play by Friedrich von Schiller.

Aida

(Giuseppe Verdi, Antonio Ghislanzoni, 1871): This character is an Ethiopian princess who is held captive in Egypt. She falls in love with the Egyptian general Radamès and convinces him to run away with her; unfortunately, he is caught by the high priest Ramphis and a jealous Egyptian princess, Amneris. Radamès is buried alive, but finds that she has snuck into the tomb to join him.

Symphony No. 9 in D minor

"Choral", op. 125 (1822-1824): Beethoven's Ninth Symphony marks the first significant use of voices as part of a symphony, though they are only used in the final movement. The opening motif from the first movement reappears in altered form in a second movement scherzo, which itself is followed by a slow third movement that alternates between quadruple and triple time. The massive final movement, whose internal form closely resembles that of the entire symphony, utilizes both Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" and original texts by Beethoven himself. A typical performance takes approximately 75 minutes; the fourth movement alone takes 25.

Cicero

(106 BC-43 BC) Though he is better remembered today for his role in the political life of the Roman Republic, he (sometimes known as "Tully") was also a significant philosopher. He described the ideal state in such dialogues as On the Republic and On the Laws, while he discussed Epicurean and Stoic views on religion in On the Nature of the Gods. Through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, he was considered one of the most important of ancient philosophers. Indeed, Saint Augustine asserted that he turned to philosophy as a result of reading a now-lost work by this man known as the Hortensius.

Philip II

(1165-1223, reigned 1179-1223; house of Capet): He was the first of the great Capetian kings of France. Fighting and negotiating against Henry II, Richard I, and John of England, he won back Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, and other territories. He also took part in the famous Third Crusade (with Richard I and Frederick Barbarossa) and made use of the Albigensian crusade to pave the way for the annexation of Languedoc by his successor.

John Lackland

(1167-1216, r. 1199-1216) House of Plantagenet. Though he tried to seize the crown from his brother Richard while the latter was in Germany, Richard forgave him and made him his successor. Excommunicated by the Pope for four years for refusing to accept Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, he was also weak as a fighter, as French King Philip II routed him at Bouvines in 1214. A year later, England's barons forced him to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede, an event that marked the beginning of the development of the British constitution.

Louis VIII

(1187-1226, reigned 1223-1226; house of Capet): Though he reigned for only three years, his contributions to the rise of French power were enormous. He annexed Languedoc and captured Poitou from England. Perhaps more importantly, he established the systems of appanages (land grants) which replaced the older, local nobles with barons who owed their fiefs to the crown. This allowed for the subsequent rise in French royal (and national) power.

Las Navas de Tolosa

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

Yuan Dynasty

(1271-1368) Was a short-lived dynasty established by the invading Mongols, who destroyed the Jin and Song states. Its most notable ruler was Kublai Khan, whose invasions of Japan were thwarted by typhoons that the Japanese called the kamikaze, or "divine wind." This dynasty's rulers were hostile to many Chinese institutions, and thus received minimal support from the Chinese elites. The Red Turban rebellion of the 1350s marked the beginning of the end for this dynasty.

Charles V

(1338-1380, reigned 1364-1380; house of Valois): He had an inauspicious start (before his reign even began) with having to ransom his father, John II, from England for three million crowns and most of southwestern France. Later, with military advisor Bertrand du Guesclin, he recaptured almost all of that territory. He also concluded alliances with Portugal, Spain, and Flanders, reorganized the army, and restructured the collection of taxes while leading France's recovery from the devastation of the early period of the Hundred Years' War.

Zeami

(1363-1443), Also called Kanze Motokiyo: The second master of the Kanze theatrical school, which had been founded by his father, he is regarded as the greatest playwright of the No theater. He provided 30 to 40 of the approximately 230 plays in the modern repertoire. He revised the works of his father Kan'ami, such as Wind in the Pines, and wrote a number of his own dramas, including the samurai play Atsumori. Also a drama critic, he established the aesthetic standards by which plays have been judged ever since. His Fushi kaden (The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style) is a manual for his pupils.

Oxygen

(O, 8) Is by mass, the most common element in Earth's crust. It was discovered independently by Carl Scheele and Joseph Priestley; Priestley originally called it "dephlogisticated air." It normally exists in elemental form as a diatomic gas (O2), but it can also exist in a triatomic form, ozone (O3), which is known for its role in blocking UV rays in Earth's stratosphere. Diatomic oxygen is — despite having an even number of electrons — paramagnetic, meaning it has unpaired electrons. This points out a problem with traditional valence bond theories, which predict that oxygen should be diamagnetic; molecular orbital theory correctly explains this behavior. Because this element is easily capable of accepting electrons, reactions in which a species gives up electrons are known as oxidation reactions.

Treaty of Tordesillas

(1494) Ostensibly divided the New World (and, in later interpretations, the entire world) between Spain and Portugal. It resulted from a bull by (Spanish-born) Pope Alexander VI granting lands to Spain and established a line west of the Cape Verde islands between future Spanish possessions (west) and Portuguese possessions (east). The line passed through Brazil, allowing the Portuguese to establish a colony there, while Spain received the rest of the Americas. Endless wrangling and repeated revisions ensued.

Francis I

(1494-1547, reigned 1515-1547; house of Valois): His early military victories (like the Battle of Marignano), his lavish court, and his support of luminaries like Leonardo da Vinci augured a splendid reign. His rivalry with Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire, however, spelled his doom. He was captured in battle in 1525 and held for a humiliating ransom. Wars continued after his release, but bankruptcy and religious strife laid France low.

Platyhelminthes

(15,000 species): The flatworms are the most primitive phylum to develop from a triploblastic (three-layered) embryo. They have bilateral body symmetry, and are acoelomate (lacking a true body cavity), so that the space between the digestive tract and the body wall is filled with tissue. As the name implies, they are generally flat-bodied. They have a true head and brain, but the digestive system has only one opening, which functions as both mouth and anus. Most are hermaphroditic. This phylum includes parasites such as the tapeworms and flukes, as well as free-living (i.e., non-parasitic) organisms such as the planarians.

Nematoda

(15,000 species): The roundworms are unsegmented worms that live in a variety of habitats. They are pseudocoelomate; the three tissue layers are concentric, but the body cavity is not lined with tissue derived from the mesoderm (middle embryonic layer). They include both free-living and parasitic species; human parasites include hookworms and the causative agents of elephantiasis, trichinosis, and river blindness. Soil organisms from this phylum may be crop pests, while others are beneficial predators on other plant pests. The nematode species Caenorhabdis elegans is a common subject in genetics and developmental-biology labs.

Andrea Palladio

(1508-1580) Born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, he designed villas in and near Venice, including the Villa Rotonda and Villa Barbaro. He integrated Greco-Roman ideas of hierarchy, proportion, and order with contemporary Renaissance styles. His Four Books on Architecture from 1570 relates his theoretical principles. Among architects heavily influenced by him were Inigo Jones and Thomas Jefferson.

Ben-Hur

(1959) Is a historical epic from MGM Studios that stars Charlton Heston as the title prince of Jerusalem who is unjustly imprisoned on the flagship of Roman general Quintus Arrius after tiles falling from his roof nearly kill the governor of Judea. Ben-Hur features a massive, nine-minute-long chariot race in which Heston's character defeats Messala, played by Stephen Boyd. The film's score, composed by Miklós Rózsa, is the longest ever composed for a feature film. The film's eleven Oscars was a record that stood until Titanic (1997). More than 200 camels were used in the film, which was adapted from Lew Wallace's novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

Winston Churchill

(1874-1965, PM 1940-1945, 1951-1955): Best remembered as the U.K.'s wartime prime minister from the country's isolation in 1940 to victory in 1945. The son of a major Conservative politician, Randolph Churchill, the young man was a Liberal who served in Asquith's cabinet, becoming First Lord of the Admiralty before resigning over the failure of Gallipoli. As Stanley Baldwin's (PM 1923-1924, 1924-1929, 1935-1937) Chancellor of the Exchequer he put the U.K. on the gold standard. Winning a second term as Prime Minister during the Korean War, in later life he also won the Nobel Prize for Literature and wrote A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Maurice Ravel

(1875-1937). His Basque mother gave him an affinity for Spanish themes, as evident in "Rapsodie espagnole" and his most popular piece, "Bolero" (1928). He produced Pavane for a Dead Princess while a student of Gabriel Fauré, but was frustrated when the French Conservatory overlooked him for the Prix de Rome four times. He completed the ballet Daphnis et Chloé (1912) for Sergei Diaghilev, and followed it with Mother Goose and La Valse. He also re-orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. His health declined after a 1932 taxi accident; unsuccessful brain surgery ended his life.

Mata Hari

(1876-1917) Was an exotic dancer who used her neutral Dutch citizenship to spy for France, and possibly also for Germany, in World War I. Born Margaretha Zelle, she adopted the persona of a Malay princess to further her career, which brought her into sexual relationships with high-ranking military figures and nobles. In 1917, French intelligence determined she was spying for Germany while producing no worthwhile information of benefit to France, leading to her arrest and conviction, though scholarship is still sharply divided on whether she was merely a high-profile scapegoat. Both pop culture and academia have long been intrigued by the racy appeal of her story, embodied by her 1917 execution, at which she blew kisses to her firing squad, though photographic records disprove urban legends that she wore a lavish new outfit for her execution.

Constantin Brâncuși

(1876-1957): A Romanian sculptor who was a major figure in Modernism. He is best known for The Kiss (not to be confused with the Rodin work or the Klimt painting), Sleeping Muse, and Bird in Space. U.S. customs tried to tax his works as "industrial products" since they refused to recognize them as art, though he won a court case over the matter.

Pius XII

(1876-1958, pope 1939-1958) Signed the Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany in 1933, served as pope during World War II, and spoke infallibly to define the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

Enrico Fermi

(1901-1954) He is best known to the public as a main contributor to the Manhattan Project. His work with statistical physics laid the groundwork for modern electronics and solid-state technologies. He applied the Pauli exclusion principle to subatomic particles to create Fermi-Dirac statistics, which accurately predicted the low-temperature behavior of electrons. Particles that obey Fermi-Dirac statistics are called fermions in his honor. This scientist also suggested the existence of the neutrino in order to balance nuclear beta-decay chains.

Langston Hughes

(1901-1967) Was a leading poet of the Harlem Renaissance. His poems "I, Too" and "Let America Be America Again" address America's racist history and the feelings of exclusion it causes. His poem "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" invokes world rivers like the Euphrates and the Congo and repeats the line "My soul has grown deep like the rivers," while his poem "The Weary Blues" describes a blues performance on Lenox Avenue in Harlem. He also wrote the poem "Harlem," which asks "What happens to a dream deferred?" and which inspired the title of Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.

North by Northwest

(1959) Is a thriller from director Alfred Hitchcock starring Cary Grant as Roger Thornhill, an advertising executive framed for the murder of U.N. diplomat Lester Townsend. In one memorable and oft-parodied scene, Thornhill is chased through a field near Chicago by a crop duster airplane. At the film's climax, Thornhill and Eve Kendall (played by Eva Marie Saint) are chased by spies led by Phillip Vandamm across the top of Mount Rushmore. It features a MacGuffin (an object common in Hitchcock films—something desired by characters yet ultimately meaningless to the story) in the form of microfilm containing government secrets that is hidden inside a sculpture.

The Twilight Zone

(1959-1964): Rod Serling created this anthology series, whose iconic opening credits featured a theme composed by Bernard Herrmann and a narration warning that the viewer was "about to enter another dimension." One of its most famous episodes, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starred a young William Shatner as a salesman who becomes convinced that a gremlin nobody else can see is trying to crash the airplane on which he is flying.

Comparative Advantage

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

Io

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

Cindy Sherman

Made a series of Untitled Film Stills, consisting largely of self-portraits posed in the style a B-movie actress, which began a series of photos in which she modified popular photographic forms to respond to the stereotyping of women in the media. Her later series Fairy Tales and Disasters began including mannequins and prosthetic limbs, which she also used as the subject of her "Sex Pictures."

Lombards

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

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

(Edward Albee, 1962). The author Virginia Woolf has little to do with the story, except that Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. In fact, Albee got the title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president's daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha's problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.

John Stuart Mill

(English, 1806-1873): Also a social philosopher, he is mainly known in economic circles today for his work extending the ideas of Ricardo in Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844) (for example, the relationship between profits and wages), and also for exhaustively examining the necessity of private property in his Principles of Political Economy (1848).

John Maynard Keynes

(English, 1883-1946): He is most famous for The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which judged most of classical economic analysis to be a special case (hence "General Theory") and argued that the best way to deal with prolonged recessions was deficit spending.

Other symphonies

Of Mozart's first 38 symphonies, the "Little" G minor symphony (No. 25, K. 183) is the only one in a minor key. The "Paris" Symphony (No. 31 in D major, K. 297), written for that city, begins with a fast upward D major scale that can be classified as a "Mannheim rocket," a popular opening device for symphonies. Mozart's other notable symphonies include the "Haffner" (No. 35 in D major, K. 385), which is more familiar than the serenade; the Linz Symphony (No. 36 in C major, K. 425); and the Prague Symphony (No. 38 in D major, K. 504). There is no Symphony No. 37: Mozart added an introduction to a symphony by Michael Haydn (Joseph's brother) and scholars did not notice that the rest of the work was not by Mozart until 1907.

The Red River

Of the South is a major river of the southern Great Plains. The river forms most of the border between Oklahoma and Texas along its 1,360-mile length. That border formed part of the border between Mexico (and later the Republic of Texas) and the United States after the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. The river runs through the Louisiana cities Shreveport and Alexandria before emptying into the Mississippi south of Natchez, Mississippi.

North Macedonia

Officially became known as such in February 2019. For over two decades, the country's former name, Macedonia had been the subject of a dispute with Greece, which objected to the use of the name "Macedonia" due both to the name's ties to the ancient Kingdom of Macedon, and the fact that Greece itself contains an administrative region named "Macedonia." For many years, the country was referred to in the United Nations as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) due to the Greek objection, which also prevented Macedonia from joining the EU and NATO. The countries agreed to resolve the naming dispute in the 2018 Treaty of Prespa.

Long Day's Journey Into Night

(Eugene O'Neill, 1956). O'Neill wrote it fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family, but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O'Neill's own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.

Socrates

(c. 469 BC-399 BC) We have no writings from this philosipher's own hand, and know about him largely from the dialogues of his student Plato. Proclaiming his own ignorance of all things, he went around Athens engaging in question-and-answer sessions to search for truths or draw out contradictions (the "Socratic method"). The Athenian state disapproved of his conduct; he was put on trial for corrupting the city's youth, and sentenced to death by drinking hemlock. His trial, imprisonment, and death are recounted in Plato's Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, respectively.

Zeno of Elea

(c. 490 BC-430 BC) This philosopher was a student of Parmenides, who founded the Eleatic school in a Greek colony of the Italian peninsula. He is most famous today for his paradoxes, the best-known of which involve an arrow in flight and a race between Achilles and a tortoise. His paradoxes purport to show that physical movement is impossible, since any attempt to travel a distance must be preceded by moving half that distance, which must be preceded by moving half of half that distance, and so on.

Gregory I

(c. 540-604, pope 590-604) Was one of the "Latin Fathers" of the church and is considered the founder of the medieval papacy. After remarking that some English boys at a slave market were "not Angles, but angels," he sent Augustine of Canterbury on a mission to Christianize southern Britain. His writings include a Commentary on Job and Pastoral Care, and he is known as the Dialogist in Eastern traditions. He is credited with introducing Gregorian chant, named in his honor, into the Catholic rite.

Shonagon

(c. 966 - c. 1013): Like Lady Murasaki, this author was a lady-in-waiting of the Empress. Since Lady Murasaki and her were contemporaries and known for their wit, they were often rivals. Her only major work is the Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), which is considered the best source of information about life at the Japanese court during the Heian period (784-1185).

Muhammad

(c. AD 570-632) Was a prophet who founded Islam. Born in Mecca in the Year of the Elephant, he is said to have been visited by the angel Jibril (or Gabriel) in the cave of Hira, where Jibril revealed the Qur'an to him. During the Night Journey, he is said to have traveled on the horse Buraq to "the farthest mosque" and to have visited heaven. Because of plots against him in Mecca, he traveled from Mecca to Medina along with his followers and established the Islamic community there. When war broke out between his followers and the people of Mecca, he served as a military commander, winning several engagements, including the Battle of Badr. His death led to disputes among his followers as to whether Abu Bakr or Ali was his true successor.

Boris Godunov

(ca. 1551-1605; ruled 1598-1605): This man began his career as a boyar in Ivan the Terrible's oprichnina, and eventually became tsar himself. He first cemented his influence by marrying a daughter of one of Ivan's court favorites and arranging his sister Irina's marriage to Ivan's son Fyodor; then he became regent under Fyodor, and was elected tsar when Fyodor died in 1598. But he was rumored to have arranged the murder of Fyodor's brother Dmitrii, and the first of several "False Dmitris" launched a revolt against him. He died in the midst of growing unrest and is now best known as the subject of a Pushkin play and a Mussorgsky opera.

Henry Clay

(served 1825-1829 under President John Quincy Adams): He helped negotiate the "corrupt bargain" that led to John Quincy Adams winning the House vote that decided the presidency in 1824 and led to his appointment as Secretary of State. While he served in that post, his slave, Charlotte Dupuy, sued for her freedom in a move that foreshadowed the Dred Scott case. He lost presidential elections as a Whig candidate three times prior to his involvement in the Compromise of 1850.

Daniel Webster

(served 1841-1843 under Presidents Harrison and Tyler, then again from 1850-1852 under President Fillmore): He negotiated the Webster-Ashburton treaty that defined the border between Maine and New Brunswick (the Eastern border) and left his post in 1843 under pressure from Whigs, who had resigned in protest from Tyler's cabinet over the issue of the national bank. In his second term, he upheld the Compromise of 1850, which cost him popularity with his fellow New Englanders.

William H. Seward

(served 1861-1869 under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson): This man wanted to resign prior to Lincoln's inauguration, but the request was denied. Prior to the purchase of Alaska ("Seward's Folly"), he helped set the conditions that ended the Atlantic slave trade in the Lyons-Seward treaty between the U.S. and U.K. He survived an assassination attempt the night Lincoln was shot. The purchase of Alaska was completed on March 30, 1867 for close to two cents an acre from Russia.

Elihu Root

(served 1905-1909 under President T. Roosevelt): Succeeding Hay after Hay's death, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912 for attempting to bring nations together for arbitration and cooperative agreements. During his tenure, he moved the consular service under the umbrella of the civil service. His negotiations with Great Britain settled border disputes regarding Alaska and Canada, and he was a proponent of free trade policies with China that Hay established.

Cordell Hull

(served 1933-1944 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt): Known as "Father of the United Nations," he was a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 1945 for his work in founding that organization. He sent a namesake note to Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor making a futile attempt to force the Japanese out of French Indochina, China, and Manchukuo, in accordance with his predecessor's Stimson Doctrine.

George Marshall

(served 1947-1949 under President Truman): As a general, he oversaw the largest expansion of the U.S. military in its history and wrote the central strategy for the Allies in Europe. He helped devised, and is the namesake of, the Marshall Plan to help Europe recover after World War II from 1948 to 1952. After he left his post, he was president of the American Red Cross. He correctly predicted that Israel's declaration of statehood would lead to war and attempted to mediate the Chinese Civil War.

Dean Acheson

(served 1949-1953 under President Truman): The successor to Marshall, he is known primarily for developing the policy of containment — designed to prevent the spread of Communism — and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. His autobiography Present at the Creation is a major source for Cold War historians.

Henry Kissinger

(served 1973-1977 under Presidents Nixon and Ford): This man held the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks that resulted in SALT I with the Soviet Union and pursued the "détente" policy to de-escalate the Cold War. He was instrumental in opening relations with China in 1972. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for the negotiation of Paris Peace Accords and ceasefires that ended the Vietnam War. He used "shuttle diplomacy" to settle the Yom Kippur War among Egypt, Syria, and Israel.

Hillary Clinton

(served 2009-2013 under President Obama): This woman is a former Senator from New York and the wife of former president William Jefferson Clinton. President Clinton appointed her as the face of the failed 1993 health care bill. She also sought the Democratic nomination for President in 2008, losing to eventual President Barack Obama. During her term, she presented a "reset button" to Russia and accepted formal responsibility for failures in consulate security that led to death of Ambassador Christopher Stephens in Benghazi.

John Kerry

(served 2014-2016 under President Obama): He served as a senator from Massachusetts — spending the majority of his time as the junior senator to Ted Kennedy — and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He received the Democratic Party nomination for President in 2004, but lost the general election to George W. Bush. His major foreign policy involvement was in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

Gauge Bosons

(sometimes called vector bosons) Are fundamental bosons that carry the forces of nature. That is, forces result from particles emitting and absorbing this type of particle. The strong nuclear force is carried by gluons, the weak nuclear force is carried by the W, Z-, and Z+ particles, the electromagnetic force is carried by the photon, and gravity is carried by the (as yet unobserved) graviton. The name comes from the role of "gauge theories" in describing the forces (which are beyond the scope of this article).

Echinodermata

6,500 species): Characteristics of this phylum include an endoskeleton composed of many ossicles of calcium and magnesium carbonate, a water vascular system, a ring canal around the esophagus, and locomotion by tube feet connected to the water vascular system. Unique to this phylum is the five-fold radial symmetry obvious in sea stars (starfish), sea urchins, and sea lilies. Others, like sea cucumbers, have varying degrees of bilateral symmetry. In their body plan, a true head is absent; the anatomical terms oral (mouth-bearing) and aboral (away from the mouth) are used to describe orientation of the body surfaces. Feeding adaptations include particle feeding through the water vascular system, everting the stomach to engulf prey (sea stars), and a scraping device called Aristotle's lantern (sea urchins).

Sir Galahad

Is a Knight of the Round Table renowned for his purity and honor. He is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot and King Pelles's daughter Lady Elaine of Corbenic. This knight is the only member of Arthur's corps who can sit in the Siege Perilous, a seat at the Round Table set aside by Merlin for the knight who would complete the quest for the Holy Grail. His quest for the Holy Grail, which he completed alongside Sir Percival and Sir Bors, ended when he encountered the Fisher King, who asked him to take the chalice to Sarras. He is supposedly descended from the brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathea, who later visits him and allows him to ascend to Heaven.

The Legend of Zelda

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

Micas

Are a group of silicate minerals known for their perfect basal cleavage, meaning they can easily split into thin, parallel sheets. Common varieties of this mineral include black biotite and transparent muscovite. It is often found in igneous rocks called pegmatites and also serves as the main constituent of the metamorphic rock schist. They generally have a Mohs hardness between 3 and 4.

Partons

Are an older name that was used for the "internal parts" of hadrons before the discovery and widespread acceptance of the quark model. Models based on this particle are still used but, for the most part, it was determined that these particles were quarks and the term is rarely used at the high school level except in historical contexts.

Exponential Functions

Are those of the form f(x) = bx, where b (called the base) is a positive number other than 1. These types of functions are used to model unrestricted growth (such as compound interest, and animal populations with unlimited food and no predators) and decay (such as radioactive decay). The phrase "the exponential function" refers to the function f(x) = ex, where e is a specific irrational number called Euler's number, about equal to 2.718. These functions have the interesting property that their derivatives are proportional to themselves.

Call of Duty

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

Sir Percival

Is a Knight of the Round Table who accompanies Sir Galahad and Sir Bors on the successful quest for the Holy Grail. He is one of the sons of King Pellinore. He was raised in the woods by his (unnamed) mother until he turned 15. Although this knight fails to identify the Holy Grail during an early encounter with the wounded Fisher King that involved a bleeding lance, he later heals the Fisher King's wound at the end of the quest. In some stories, he loves a woman named Blanchefleur, and he is named as the father of Lohengrin in many Germanic sources.

The Lady of the Lake

Is a character who goes by many other names, among them Nimue and Vivien. In many stories, she is responsible for bestowing Excalibur upon King Arthur. She also gave Merlin his powers of sorcery and raised Sir Lancelot after his father's death. She is frequently associated with the isle of Avalon and is sometimes conflated with Morgan le Fay.

Sandstone

Is a clastic sedimentary rock, which means it is composed of pre-existing fragments of other rocks and minerals (usually quartz and feldspar). Common subgroups of this include arkose (containing over 25% feldspar), wackes (with a large amount of clay between mineral grains), and arenites (with a small amount of clay between mineral grains). Fine-grained sandstones make good aquifers because they are porous enough to allow percolation of water but still filter out pollutants.

Granite

Is a common igneous rock. This rock is felsic, meaning it is primarily composed of feldspar and quartz, and intrusive, meaning it crystallizes and solidifies underground. It can experience large-scale weathering, leading to the formation of structures like Yosemite National Park's Half Dome.

Gross Domestic Product

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

Knossos

Is an archaeological site on the island of Crete that contains remains from the Neolithic to the late Bronze Age. The site became the center of the Minoan civilization. In 1900 British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans began excavating its large palace complex, which yielded a large trove of tablets inscribed in Linear A (still undeciphered) and Linear B (shown to represent an ancient form of Greek but written long before the development of the Greek alphabet).

The Sphinx

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

Battle of Kadesh

One of the earliest battles in recorded history (1274 BC) was fought near the Orontes River in what is now Syria between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite king Muwatalli II. Although Ramses proclaimed a great victory for himself, he was lucky to achieve a stalemate after being ambushed by Hittite chariots. Kadesh was probably the largest chariot battle in history, with over 5,000 chariots engaged. The Egyptian chariots were smaller and faster than those used by the Hittites, which gave the Egyptians an advantage.

Baby naming

Or simchat bat. Jewish children are given Hebrew names. For boys, the name is formally announced, and blessings are recited, at the brit milah ceremony. For girls, the same is done at a separate event, often (but not necessarily) during a regular synagogue service in the first few weeks of the baby's life. This tradition is primarily observed in more liberal Jewish movements and is not considered religiously required, so practices vary and are evolving. The Hebrew name is used on special occasions such as being called to the Torah and being married, and is typically in the form "Yitzchak ben Avraham" (Isaac, son of Abraham) or (in egalitarian movements) "Yitzchak ben Avraham v'Sarah" (Isaac, son of Abraham and Sarah).

Tate

Originally known as the National Gallery of British Art when opened in 1897, it was renamed for its benefactor, sugar tycoon Sir Henry Tate. The original gallery has been renamed Tate Britain, and there are now three additional branches: Tate Modern in London, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives in Cornwall. The Tate awards the Turner Prize, a highly publicized award for British artists, and its collection includes Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein and many works by J. M. W. Turner.

Piano Sonatas

One of Mozart's best-known pieces is the "Rondo Alla Turca" from his Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K. 331. That sonata begins with a theme and variations that inspired Max Reger to write his Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Mozart. Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K. 457, is often performed with the highly chromatic Fantasy, K. 475. Other notable Mozart piano sonatas include the dramatic No. 8 in A minor, K. 310; the Sonata "for beginners" No. 16 in C major, K. 545; and the "Hunt" or "Trumpet" Sonata No. 18 in D, K. 576, his last. Mozart also finished four sonatas for piano duet (also known as "piano four hands") and one in D major for two pianos.

Analects

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

Umayyad

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

Mughal

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

Fatimid

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

Ayyubid

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

Ottoman

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

Safavid

These people were founded by a Sunni Sufi (mystic) order under Shah Ismail, and ruled Iran from 1502 until 1736. They forcibly converted Iran to Shi'ism, and later converted themselves (this sounds strange, and is — it's one of history's mysteries). They, the Ottomans, and the Mughals comprise the three "Gunpowder Empires" in what scholars of Islamic history consider the late medieval period. Under Abbas I, a European expert was hired to reform the military following defeats by both their Ottoman and Uzbek rivals. Abbas later captured Baghdad and expelled the Portugese from the Persian Gulf. Esfahan was their capital during their height.

Margaret Bourke-White

Was hired by Henry Luce to work for Fortune magazine, but became known for her work for Life, including the magazine's first cover. a picture of Fort Peck Dam. She and her future husband, the author Erskine Caldwell, produced the book You Have Seen Their Faces, a survey of sharecroppers in the South. She was later a World War II correspondent, and her pictures of the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Erla broadcast the tragedy back to the U.S. She also interviewed and photographed Mohandas Gandhi before his assassination.

Assyria

Was a region located along the Upper Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq. Its major cities included Aššur and Nineveh. It was ruled at various times by the Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian and Babylonian empires. In 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was founded by Ashur-Dan II; it lasted until 612 BC. Some of the empire's greatest rulers were Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, and Ashurbanipal. At its height, the Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled over all of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Levant (the eastern shore of the Mediterranean).

Delphi

Was a sacred site on the Greek mainland, which the Greeks thought was the center of the world. A major temple to Apollo at this site housed the Oracle of Delphi, a priestess known as the Pythia (a title that commemorates Apollo's slaying of the snake Python at Delphi). Every four years, it hosted the Panhellenic Pythian Games, which were second only to the Olympic Games in importance.

Arachne

Was a talented Lydian weaver who constantly boasted that her skills were better than that of any of the gods. She challenged the goddess Athena to a weaving competition, during which she 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 she won but Athena was insulted by her images and destroyed her work, and others say that Athena's weaving was superior. In all versions, though, Athena turns this poor woman into a spider.

Gene Kranz

Was a trained aeronautical engineer and pilot. He is best known for his Flight Directorship during the Mercury and Apollo projects. He presided over a departure from NASA's traditional incremental testing structure, in favor of a more aggressive, manned campaign ("all-up testing"). As part of the Apollo 13 "white team," he and his associates engineered the free-return trajectory and human-factors management that brought the Apollo 13 crew back safely after a near-fatal spacecraft anomaly.

Lydia

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

Zoroaster

Was an ancient Persian prophet who founded the dualistic religion Zoroastrianism around the 10th century BC. He is said to have had a revelation in which he saw a being who taught him about two primal spirits: a benevolent creator named Ahura Mazda and a malevolent spirit named Angra Mainyu or Ahriman. He also learned about the concepts of asha and druj, roughly equivalent to "truth" and "falsehood," and thereafter chose to dedicate his life to promoting asha.

Homer Hickam

Was inspired by seeing Sputnik fly overhead to study rocketry in his early teens. From his coal-company town in West Virginia, he and his rocket club, The Big Creek Missile Agency, designed modest-sized rockets and won the propulsion category of the 1960 National Science Fair. After serving in Vietnam, he worked at the US Army Missile Command in Germany and Huntsville. Later, he moved to NASA, where he specialized in astronaut training. He trained crews for the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment extra-vehicular activity (EVA) and the first two servicing missions.

Apollo 1

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

The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Was known as Zaire between 1971 and 1997. The 1971 name change came about under the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, a dictator who effectively seized power during the Congo Crisis of 1960-1965, during which he toppled and later executed Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. The name "Zaire" was derived from the Portuguese word for the Congo River, which itself was derived from a Bantu-language name for the river. Mobutu was ousted and forced into exile following the 1997 First Congo War by the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, a coalition led by Laurent Kabila. Four days after seizing power, Kabila changed the country's name back to the original name,

Lernaean Hydra

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

Voskhod 1/Voskhod 2

Were the only two missions of this program, and were superseded quickly by the Soyuz program. The spacecrafts made use of Sergei Korolev's designs. Korolev himself was preoccupied with the Moon race, again in a position of favor after the fall of Khrushchev (though Korolev died before the designs were used).The first mission was the first flight to contain multiple astronauts, and the second was the platform for the first EVA (extra-vehicular activity or "spacewalk"). Alexey Leonov, who conducted the spacewalk on the second mission also participated in the later Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

Lakota Sioux

Were the preeminent tribe of the northern Great Plains for most of the 19th century. They drove smaller tribes out of the Black Hills and had their territory recognized by the United States in two Treaties of Fort Laramie. When American prospectors invaded the Black Hills, this tribe fought back. With their allies the Cheyenne and Arapaho, these people—led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse—wiped out a U.S. cavalry force led by George Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Later, in the 1890s, a religious movement called the Ghost Dance spread among them. While trying to suppress it, U.S. forces slaughtered civilians from this tribe in the Wounded Knee massacre.

Fuses/Circuit breakers

When excess current flows through a fuse, the fuse deforms or disconnects so that no current can flow in the circuit. This protects the equipment in the circuit from being damaged by power surges and also protects the surroundings (as excess current can cause wires to overheat, starting a fire). They typically melt and thus must be completely replaced after tripping; a circuit breaker is a form of fuse that can be reset and restored after the circuit has been verified to be safe.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Who with Robert Capa and several others founded the cooperative Magnum Photos, was a master of candid photography who conceived of the goal of photography as the capture of the "decisive moment." His most famous photograph, an encapsulation of his philosophy, shows a man leaping from a ladder over a puddle behind the Gare Saint-Lazare train station in Paris.

Gregor Mendel's experiments

With pea plants (1860s) pioneered the study of genetics. Mendel, an Austrian monk, proposed the law of segregation, which holds that each organism has two alleles for each trait, which are segregated into gametes so that each gamete inherits one copy, as well as the law of independent assortment, which says that genes for individual traits are inherited independently. He supported both of those laws with experimental evidence by growing and counting pea plants. He worked with seven characteristics including plant height, seed shape, and color. His experiments primarily consisted of hybridizing plants with certain characteristics, and observing what fraction of the next generation had certain traits. His results were remarkably close to the values that would be predicted from modern genetics—close enough, in fact, that Mendel has been accused of manipulating his data.

Man Ray

Worked with Marcel Duchamp on a series of readymades before taking up photography. His earliest works were darkroom experiments in exposure called "rayographs." His later photographic work tended toward surrealism; perhaps the most prominent example is his Violon d'Ingres, a photograph of the model Kiki de Montparnasse with the f-holes from a violin superimposed on her back. With his assistant Lee Miller, he also rediscovered the technique of solarization.

Agni

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

Apocrypha

Protestants and Jews assign lower authority to this book because it was written between 300 and 100 BC, but Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider the books that make up it to be "deuterocanonical," meaning that they are just as important and divinely-inspired as other parts of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. The word means "something outside an accepted canon," and, in particular, in ancient Greek it meant "hidden things." Denominations differ as to which books make up this book, but Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch are almost always included.

Odd Functions

Satisfy the rule f(-x) = -f(x) for every x in the domain of the function. The graph of this type of function remains the same when it is rotated 180° around the origin. These types of functions are so named because if a polynomial's exponents (on the variable) are all odd, then the polynomial is classified as this; for instance, x3, 4x7, and -x5 + 2x3 are all odd. There are other types of these functions, such as the sine and cube root functions. Many functions are neither even nor odd, such as x2 + x. Only one function is both even and odd: the zero function, f(x) = 0.

Wernher von Braun

Was at one time a student of Oberth in the Spaceflight Society. He is best-known for leading Nazi Germany's development and construction of the V-2 rocket (literally, "vengeance weapon"), which wreaked destruction on southern England during World War II. After World War II, he was recruited to the US as part of Operation Paperclip, and proposed to launch a space station carrying a nuclear arsenal (though he hedged the concept as "particularly dreadful"). He presided over Mercury-Redstone development as Director of NASA's newly-opened Marshall Spaceflight Center, which produced the rockets used in the Mercury spaceflights, and the Saturn V rocket used to launch the Apollo spacecraft.

Helen of Troy

Was considered the most beautiful mortal woman during the Age of Heroes. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leda, and her siblings were Castor, Polydeuces (or Pollux), and Clytemnestra. When she married Menelaus, the king of Sparta, her 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 her as "the face that launched a thousand ships."

1824 Election

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

Super Mario

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

Arjuna

The chief hero of the Mahabharata, he is the son of Indra and one of five Pandava brothers, who fight a bitter war against their 100 cousins, Kauravas, culminating at the battle on "Kuru's Field." Before the battle, he asks his charioteer (Krishna) why he must fight. Krishna responds that he must follow a devotion to god (bhakti), and that even as he slays his brethren, it is for a just cause. Along with the rest of the Pandavas, this god is married to Draupadi.

D-Day

The codenames for the five beaches attacked in Operation Overlord on this day are Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. The first three were attacked by British and Canadian forces while the latter two were assaulted by American troops.

Picts

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

Beaufort wind force scale

The first official use of this scale was on the voyage of the HMS Beagle in 1831, which was led by Robert FitzRoy, who had been trained by the scale's namesake, Sir Francis Beaufort, a rear admiral in the British Navy. This scale is primarily based on wind speed, but also incorporates descriptions of wave height, sea conditions, and land conditions. It starts at 0, corresponding to "calm" winds with a speed less than 1 knot. In most parts of the world, it stops at 12, which is designated "hurricane-force winds." Scores of 2 to 6 are called "breezes," and scores of 7 to 10 are called "gales." Since 1946 the median wind speed for each step has been defined as 1.87 B3/2, where B is the number on this scale.

Nobel Prize Winners

The five original winners of this prestigious prize (1901) were Wilhelm Röntgen (physics, for the discovery of X rays), Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff (chemistry, for laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure), Emil Adolf von Behring (physiology or medicine, for his serum-therapy remedy for diphtheria), Sully Prudhomme (literature, for his idealistic poetry), and Henri Dunant and Frédéric Passy (peace, for founding the International Red Cross and the first French peace society, respectively).

The Waste Land

The five parts of T. S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece are "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death By Water," and "What the Thunder Said."

USS Missouri

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

Norns

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

Menelaus

The king of Sparta, he is the husband of Helen, the cause celebre of the war. He tries to win Helen back by fighting Paris in single combat, but Aphrodite carried Paris off when it seemed that he would win. Despite his notionally equal say in commanding the troops with his brother Agamemnon, in practice Agamemnon often dominates.

Sparta

Was for many years the predominant polis of the Peloponnese. This city was led by two kings, one each from the Agiad and Eurypontid families. The constitution of Lycurgus established the Gerousia, a council of elected elders plus the kings, which functioned as a high court and decided which matters to forward to the popular assembly, or apella (the analogue of the ecclesia of other city-states). The two kings were also joined by five annually elected ephors, who had broad executive powers. This city beat its rival Athens in the Peloponnesian War in the late 5th century BC but lost its position as the leading military power in all of Greece to Thebes in 371 BC.

Shoshone

These people also held lands on the northern plains, while their linguistic relatives the Comanche dominated the southern plains. Sacagawea, a member of this tribe, served as an interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark's Corps of Discovery. The tribe was later devastated by such attacks as the Bear River massacre and driven from their lands by white settlers. In an attempt to secure aid, the chief Pocatello led a mass conversion of Shoshone to Mormonism in 1875.

Nez Perce

These people lived along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest and maintained friendly relationships with Americans through most of the 19th century. When the U.S. attempted to remove them from their lands, however, they fought back, embarking on a 1,200-mile retreat that ended only when they were trapped just south of the Canadian border. In a speech, their leader Chief Joseph then declared "I will fight no more forever." He and the people were subsequently deported to Kansas.

Abbasid

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

(The Tragical History of the Life and Death of) Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe

c. 1593): Two scholars named Valdes and Cornelius teach Faustus how to summon a demon, which Faustus promptly does, conjuring Mephistophilis. Faustus then signs his soul over to Lucifer, in exchange for 24 years of healthy life with Mephistophilis as his dutiful servant. Faustus constantly rejects the pleas of an angel to accept the forgiveness of God, instead traveling and gaining worldly fame. At one point, he summons the "shade" of Helen of Troy, and exclaims "was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" On the night his deal is scheduled to expire, a clock's chimes announce that Faustus is running out of time to repent. He never does, so devils appear and drag him to hell.

The Glass Menageri

e (Tennessee Williams, 1944). Partly based on Williams' own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda's insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O'Connor to the house as a "gentleman caller" for Laura. While O'Connor is there, the horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.

Sir Christopher Wren

(1632-1723) When fire destroyed much of London in 1666, this architect was an Oxford astronomy professor who had designed his first building just four years earlier. Charles II named him the King's Surveyor of Works in 1669, and he was involved in rebuilding more than 50 London churches in the next half-century, including Saint Paul's Cathedral. An inscription near his tomb in Saint Paul's declares "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around you."

George Balanchine

(1904-1983) Trained in his native Georgia (the country) and Russia and briefly worked with Sergei Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes in Paris before being invited by impresario Lincoln Kirstein to the United States, where the two co-founded the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and its associated School of American Ballet. As artistic director of NYCB, he began the tradition of annually staging The Nutcracker at Christmas. One of his four wives — all dancers — was the company's first major star, Native American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief. He collaborated with composer Igor Stravinsky and visual artist Isamu Noguchi on the 30-minute ballet Orpheus.

Ben Hogan

(1912-1997) The PGA Tour's leading money winner from 1940-1942 and in 1946 and 1948, two events interrupted his playing career: service in World War II and a near-fatal 1949 head-on car accident. After each, though, he rose to the top of his game; he won nine majors overall (six after the accident), including four U.S. Opens. In 1953 he accomplished a feat matched only by Tiger Woods: winning three modern major championships in one season (the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open).

Factors of Production

There are three classical factors of this concept: land, labor, and capital (i.e., machinery and tools). Modern economists sometimes add a fourth, entrepreneurship.

Chris Evert

(1954-present). Queen of the Clay Courts, she won the French Open a record seven times and rolled off a 125-match win streak on the surface. As a 15-year-old, she upset Margaret Court, who had just won the Grand Slam. 1974 was the first of a record 13 straight years in which she won a major — several of them hard-fought against her rival, Martina Navratilova. In all, he took 18 Grand Slam singles titles, and was the first female player to win $1 million in her career. She was married to British tennis player John Lloyd for eight years, but they divorced in 1987, and she then wed Olympic skier Andy Mill.

Barack Obama's First Inauguration

(2009) Set a record for in-person attendance at any presidential inauguration. The swearing-in of this man did not go smoothly: Chief Justice John Roberts made a mistake in the words of the oath of office, and he accidentally spoke over him at one point. Roberts re-administered the oath of office to him the next day. His address was widely viewed as a sharp rebuke of George W. Bush; in his speech, he noted "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." The ceremony featured a performance of the quartet "Air and Simple Gifts," by film composer John Williams, which was actually mimed to an earlier taped recording, as there were concerns about the instruments remaining in tune on the cold January day.

Aurelian

(215-275, reigned 270-275) Reconquered the territory lost during the Crisis of the Third Century by defeating Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire and retaking Gaul and Britain.

Long Island

(August 27, 1776): The largest battle of the entire war, resulted in the British capture of New York. William Howe defeated George Washington.

Mobutu Sese Seko

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

The Jew of Malta

(Christopher Marlowe, c. 1589): After his massive fortune is seized by Malta's governor, Ferneze, to pay tribute to the Turks, the Jewish merchant Barabas embarks on a complex journey of revenge. Barabas uses his daughter Abigail to spark a jealous feud that leads to a duel in which the governor's son Lodowick is killed. Abigail then hides in a convent and converts to Christianity, leading Barabas and his slave Ithamore to poison all of the convent's occupants. Barabas eventually aids the Turks in conquering Malta, for which he is appointed governor, but betrays the Turks in favor of the Maltese, who kill Barabas in a boiling cauldron as they retake the island. The Jew of Malta is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Battle of the Bulge

(December 1944 - January 1945): This battle resulted from Germany's last major offensive operation on the Western Front. The German plan to sweep through the Ardennes Forest and capture the port city Antwerp, Belgium, benefited from Allied aircraft being grounded due to poor weather. During the battle, English-speaking German troops under Otto Skorzeny attempted to disguise themselves as Allied troops and infiltrate enemy lines. German forces also besieged the Belgian town Bastogne and requested its surrender, to which U.S. Army Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe replied "Nuts!"; the siege was eventually lifted by forces commanded by George Patton.

Plantagenet

(England, 1154-1399): This royal family rose to power when Geoffrey V of Anjou married Matilda, and their rule ended when Richard II was deposed in 1399. Some of their notable rulers included Richard I, John, and Edward I. The signing of the Magna Carta, the English conquest of Wales, and the beginning of the Hundred Years' War all occurred during their reign. The houses of Lancaster and York were cadet branches (new royal houses formed by non-inheriting members) of this family.

Capetians

(France, 987-1328): The first monarch, from this royal family was Hugh Capet, who was elected king following the death of Louis V. Their notable rulers included Philip II, who went on the Third Crusade; Louis IX, a canonized saint; and Philip IV, who expelled the Jews of France in 1306 and arrested the Knights Templar in 1307. The rule of this group ended when Philip IV's sons failed to produce male heirs.

The Barber of Seville

(Gioacchino Rossini, Cesare Sterbini, 1816): Count Almaviva loves Rosina, the ward of Dr. Bartolo. Figaro (who brags about his wit in "Largo al factotum") promises to help him win the girl. He tries the guise of the poor student Lindoro, a drunken soldier, and then a replacement music teacher, all of which are penetrated by Dr. Bartolo. Eventually they succeed by climbing in with a ladder and bribing the notary who was to marry Rosina to Dr. Bartolo himself. This opera is also based on a work of Pierre de Beaumarchais and is a prequel to The Marriage of Figaro.

Gibbons v. Ogden

(John Marshall, 6-0, 1824) Thomas Gibbons and Aaron Ogden were partners in a steamboat business that ferried people between New York and New Jersey. Ogden had purchased a license granting him a monopoly under New York law. After the partners suffered a disagreement and split up, Gibbons applied for and received a federal permit to run a similar business. Ogden sued Gibbons for violating Ogden's monopoly. In a unanimous decision, Marshall held that Congress' interstate regulatory power under the Commerce Clause had "no limitations other than are prescribed in the Constitution." Gibbons' federal permit trumped Ogden's state-granted monopoly.

Battle of Britain

(July 1940 - October 1940): This battle saw the British Royal Air Force (RAF) defeat the German air force, known as the Luftwaffe, effectively saving Britain from a proposed German amphibious invasion codenamed Operation Sea Lion. The primary German fighter plane was the Messerschmitt Bf 109, which engaged in numerous dogfights against British pilots flying Hurricane and Spitfire aircraft. Effective use of radar helped to repel German forces, forcing the Luftwaffe into nighttime raids against civilian targets, a campaign known as the Blitz.

1980 Winter

(Lake Placid, New York, United States; February 12-24, 1980): In an Olympics where a single man — American speed skater Eric Heiden — would win five gold medals and not be the biggest story, something very special had to happen. In what would become known as "The Miracle on Ice," the U.S. Olympic hockey team — led by head coach Herb Brooks and captain Mike Eruzione — defeated the powerful Soviet team 4-3 on February 22, 1980. Two days later, they defeated Finland to claim America's second Olympic hockey gold medal, the first being in 1960 at Squaw Valley.

Jena-Auerstedt

(October 14, 1806, Germany) In 1806 Napoleon turned his forces against Prussia. At the twin October battles, Napoleon and Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout worked together to smash a Prussian army led by the Duke of Brunswick, who was mortally wounded by Davout's troops near Auerstadt. The collapse of the Prussian army, widely considered the continent's most experienced and professional military force, shocked European observers. Napoleon felt that he had secured revenge for Frederick the Great's victory over France at Rossbach in the Seven Years' War (1757).

William Pitt the Younger

(PM 1783-1801, 1804-1806) Strengthened the role of the Prime Minister and pursued war against revolutionary France.

Limestone

A sedimentary rock primarily composed of calcium carbonate. It is often metamorphoses into marble. Because it is made from carbonate minerals, it is soluble in acid, and erosion of this rock can form karst topography. It is commonly used in the production of lime and cement and as a pH buffer in soil conditioners.

Final Fantasy

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

Sir William Howe

A veteran of the siege of Louisbourg, and the leader of the ascent to the Plains of Abraham (Quebec, 1759), he was dispatched in 1775 as second-in-command to Gage. After directing the attack on Bunker Hill, he succeeded Gage as commander, and coordinated a strategic retreat from Boston to Halifax. In Halifax, he coordinated a joint army-navy attack with his brother, Richard, an admiral, resulting in a campaign which allowed the British to control New York City. After his attempts to secure a peace in 1777 failed, he led the attack on Philadelphia, defeating Washington at Brandywine. After this, he wintered in Philadelphia, waiting for acceptance of his resignation, due to the failed peace negotiations. On May 25, 1778, he relinquished command to Sir Henry Clinton and returned home.

Lake Victoria

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

Upanishads

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

The Seminole

Another "civilized tribe," lived in what is now Florida and fought multiple wars against the U.S. to resist attempts to force them to move west. In the First Seminole War, Andrew Jackson invaded Spanish-controlled Florida and pushed the Seminoles out of the state's northern region. Twenty years later, leaders from this tribe like Osceola resisted removal in the Second Seminole War but were eventually driven to Oklahoma under the terms of the Treaty of Payne's Landing. In the 1850s, Billy Bowlegs led these people who remained in Florida in yet another war against American expansion, but he too was defeated.

Marquis de Lafayette

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

Burkina Faso

Assumed its current name in 1984, having previously been known as the Republic of Upper Volta. France controlled the region under the name French Upper Volta—which referred to its position along the upper course of the Volta River—for much of the 20th century, during which it was one part of French West Africa. Under the 1956 Basic Law, it was made a self-governing colony of France; two years later, it became fully independent under President Maurice Yaméogo, who was overthrown in 1966. A 1983 coup d'état brought military officer Thomas Sankara to power; the year after his ascent, he changed the country's name to a different name, which roughly translates as "land of the upright" in two native tongues. Sankara was assassinated in 1987.

Persian King Darius I's Invasion of Mainland Greece

Ended with a decisive victory for Miltiades and the Athenians at Marathon (490 BC). The defeated Persian commanders were Datis and Artaphernes. Among the few Athenian dead of the battle were archon Callimachus and the general Stesilaos. Legend has it that the Greek messenger Pheidippides ran to Athens with news of the victory, but collapsed upon arrival. This is the inspiration for the modern race known as the "marathon."

Sonic the Hedgehog

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

The Ohio River

Flows 981 miles through a significant industrial region of the central United States. Historically seen as the border between the northern and southern United States, this river is formed in downtown Pittsburgh by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, flowing past Wheeling, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Evansville, forming borders of five states before emptying into the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois. Other major tributaries of this river include the Kanawha, Kentucky, Tennessee, Wabash, and Cumberland Rivers.

The Abduction from the Seraglio (Die Entführung aus dem Serail

K. 384), While often called an opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, is, like The Magic Flute, actually a Singspiel with spoken dialogue (as opposed to sung recitatives). The action takes place at the home of the Ottoman Pasha Selim, and the music uses "Janissary" military instruments associated with "Turkish" music. Belmonte is trying to rescue his lover Konstanze from the Seraglio (harem); he is assisted by Pedrillo, his servant, while Osmin works for the Pasha. In the end, the Pasha releases Belmonte and Konstanze, much to Osmin's chagrin. Famous arias include Osmin's "O, wie will ich triumphieren" and Konstanze's incredibly difficult "Martern aller Arten." According to one story, Joseph II accused it of having "too many notes."

The Art Institute of Chicago

Located on the western edge of Grant Park in Chicago, the main building was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and features two lion statues at its entrance (which are often decorated for special occasions, e.g. with jerseys when Chicago sports teams are in the playoffs). It has an outstanding collection of French Impressionist and American works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge, Grant Wood's American Gothic, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

Martin Luther King Jr

On April 4, 1968 this civil rights activist was shot and killed on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. He had been in Memphis to show support for a strike by African-American sanitation workers. One notable response to the death of this man 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."

Rhone

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

Vishnu

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

Brit milah

Or bris in Yiddish and in the dialect of Ashkenazic Jews (those of European but non-Iberian descent), is the ritual of circumcising Jewish boys, that is, removing the foreskin of the penis. This practice derives from God's instruction to Abraham, after which Abraham circumcised himself and later circumcised his son Isaac. It is done to all boys when they reach eight days old (unless a health condition requires a delay) by a professional called a mohel. During the operation, the boy is held by a person (often a grandfather) designated the sandek, which is an honor. Medical anesthetic is not used, but often the baby is given a drop of wine. The ritual is followed by a s'udah, a celebratory meal.

Alfred Stieglitz

Pioneered the artistic style of photography and founded the journal Camera Work. After a fight over the importance of pictorialism with the National Arts Club, he founded the Photo-Secession movement. The husband of painter Georgia O'Keefe, he also founded the Little Galleries of the Photo Secession at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York City, which became known as simply "291."

Tagus

The Tagus is the principal river of the Iberian Peninsula. Rising in east-central Spain, it flows west for roughly 645 miles to the Atlantic, passing through Lisbon, Portugal on the way. The cities of Toledo and Santarém are on this river, and hydroelectric dams on the river produce huge artificial lakes, including the Sea of Castile.

Freya

The daughter of Njord and twin sister of Frey, she is also a Vanir hostage living with the Aesir. The goddess of love, passion, and human fertility, her possessions include a cloak that allows her to turn into a falcon, and the necklace Brisingamen. She travels in a chariot drawn by two cats.

Sputnik 1

The first artificial satellite, by the USSR kicked off the so-called "Space Race." The Space Race was manifestation of the Cold War where successes in launching objects and people into space was seen as a proxy for capacity to build intercontinental ballistic missiles. It was originally intended to carry many scientific instruments, but those instruments were descoped, in favor of a simple radio transmitter. That transmitter broadcasted a "beep" at a specified interval, allowing scientists to map its deceleration as a result of atmospheric drag. The second ship named after it, carried a dog called Laika.

Indra

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

Inverse Trigonometric Functions

The inverse functions of the trigonometric functions. (Note that "inverse" in this case refers to a function that "undoes" another, not to "multiplicative inverse," also called "reciprocal.") They are sometimes just called "inverse sine," etc, and are also given with the prefix "arc": arcsine, arccosine, arctangent, arccosecant, arcsecant, and arccotangent. They are sometimes notated in the form sin-1 for arcsine, but that notation can be confusing, so NAQT tends to prefer "arcsine," etc. Because the trigonometric functions are not bijective (see below), to have inverses it is necessary to restrict the domains of the inverse trigonometric functions; for instance, arcsin(x) is only defined for x between -1 and 1, inclusive.

Fujita-Pearson and Enhanced Fujita scales

These scales measure tornado strength. This scale was introduced in 1971 by Ted Fujita, a meteorology professor at the University of Chicago, and Allen Pearson, director of what is now the Storm Prediction Center. The original scale went from F0 (wind speeds lower than hurricane force, which should cause little to no damage) to F5 (wind speeds of 260 miles per hour, which should cause "incredible damage"). It also included an "inconceivable damage" category for tornados exceeding 319 miles per hour (theoretically possible, but no such tornado has ever been observed). In 2007 another similar scale was introduced, narrowing the speed ranges for each category: an EF5 begins at "just" 200 miles per hour.

Achilles

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

Ganesha

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

Monopoly

This happens occurs when there is only one firm producing goods for a given market. This allows that firm to set the price higher—and thus the quantity sold lower—than would otherwise occur. An oligopoly is a similar market environment where production is dominated by a few firms, whereas a monopsony is the opposite case: a market with only a single consumer.

Orders of Architecture

This is a term that primarily refers to the design of the columns used in the building. They are the Doric (simple, used for the Parthenon), Ionic (fancier, fluted with scrolls on their capitals), Corinthian (baroque, fluted with acanthus-like leaves for capitals), Tuscan (plain, similar to Doric), and Composite (mixture of Ionic and Corinthian). The first three orders originated with the Greeks; the latter two are Roman developments.

Rectifier

This part in a circuit is a device that converts AC or another variable signal into a positive-voltage signal. A half-wave rectifier simply zeroes out negative voltage, while a full-wave rectifier essentially acts as an absolute value function, converting negative voltage to positive voltage. It can be combined with a capacitor to approximately convert AC into DC.

Unemployment

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

Odysseus

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

Vostok 1

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

Edward Steichen

Was a member of the Photo-Secession movement. He was heavily featured in Camera Work and helped Stieglitz found 291. He later abandoned pictorial photography and worked for Vogue and Vanity Fair, where he produced some of the first fashion photographs. He later served as the director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, where he organized the exhibition The Family of Man.

The Akkadian Empire

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

Euclid

(c. 300 BC, Alexandrian Greek) Is principally known for the Elements, a textbook on geometry and number theory, that has been used for over 2,000 years and which grounds essentially all of what is taught in modern high school geometry classes. The Elements includes five postulates that describe what is now called Euclidean space (the usual geometric space we work in); the fifth postulate — also called the parallel postulate — can be broken to create spherical and hyperbolic geometries, which are collectively called non-Euclidean geometries. The Elements also includes a proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers.

Henry Hudson

(ca. 1565-1611): Sailing for the Dutch in 1609, he journeyed up the New York river now named for him as far as what is now Albany. On his final voyage (1610), this man sailed for England in search of the Northwest Passage aboard the Discovery. After sailing between Baffin Island and Labrador (now called the Hudson Strait), he turned south into what is now called Hudson Bay. There, most of his crew mutinied under the leadership of Robert Juet. He, his son, and some loyal crew members were placed in an open boat and left to die.

The Free Soil Party

(established 1848) Was created through a union of anti-slavery factions from the two major parties, the Barnburner Democrats and Conscience Whigs. Its platform, unlike that of James G. Birney's earlier Liberty Party (established 1840), did not aim to abolish slavery, but rather to cease its expansion. As a result, Free Soilers backed the Wilmot Proviso and opposed the Democratic Party on using popular sovereignty to decide slavery's status. In its first year, 1848, the party ended up with two senators and 14 Representatives in Congress. This party had a presidential candidate called Martin van Buren who managed to capture 10% of the popular vote, and his influence may have secured Whig candidate Zachary Taylor's close victory over Democrat Lewis Cass.

Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party

(established 1912), Better known as the Bull Moose Party, was created after he was unable to reclaim the Republican nomination from his former ally William Howard Taft. Roosevelt pitted his platform of New Nationalism, which promised reforms inspired by the Progressive movement, against Democrat Woodrow Wilson's more conservative New Freedom. In the most successful American third-party campaign ever, Roosevelt's 27% was still only enough to win six states; the split of the Republican voter base between him and Taft ensured a dominant victory for Wilson even though Wilson received only 42% of the vote.

Levellers and Diggers

(mid-17th century) During the English Civil War, the opponents of the monarchy included holders of a wide range of political beliefs. Those politicians and soldiers who wanted to extend suffrage and establish equality before the law were known as this first group, a pejorative term probably referring to the fact that they wanted all people to live on a common level. Some radicals, inspired by the Book of Acts, went even further in attempting to establish egalitarianism in the English countryside by trying to farm on common land. Because they dug up this land, they became known as the second group, but preferred to call themselves the "True Levellers." The first group, who were less radical than the second group, had considerably more influence on English politics. Several members of the first group leaders were invited to debate the main leaders of the New Model Army during the 1647 Putney Debates about the formation of a new English constitution. In the end, both the first group and the second group were suppressed by Oliver Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

Reform League

(mid-late 19th century) A variety of organizations, including this one, sprung up in 1865 to promote universal suffrage in the United Kingdom. Universal suffrage had been one of the demands of the Chartist Movement, but Parliament had not enacted it. This movement staged mass meetings to influence parliamentary proceedings, including a rally in Hyde Park in 1866 that forced the resignation of Spencer Walpole as Home Secretary. The platform was eventually enacted in 1867, during Benjamin Disraeli's prime ministry. The Second Reform Act of 1867 enfranchised urban working-class males in England and Wales (further bills enfranchised Scotland and Ireland the following year).

Paris

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

Ivan Pavlov

(won in 1904) Performed detailed research on the process of digestion, which he published in 1897 in The Work of the Digestive System. By surgically exposing selective sections of a dog's digestive system, he was able to study in detail how material moves through the stomach and intestines; he identified the timing of various gastric and pancreatic secretions. While he won the Nobel purely for his contributions to physiology, he's more well-known for performing the first psychological studies of classical conditioning. After observing the behavior of dogs upon repeatedly bringing them food, he noticed that the dogs would begin to salivate prior to food even arriving, providing the basis for the concepts of a conditioned response and conditioned stimulus.

Willem Einthoven

(won in 1924) Performed groundbreaking work related to electrocardiography. He invented a device called the string galvanometer to measure the electric current of the heart, which until then had been impossible without applying electrodes directly to the heart. This galvanometer would form the basis of the modern ECG (EKG) machine. His method of assigning three leads on human limbs, forming an inverted equilateral triangle centered on the heart, is still used in EKGs today, and is known as Einthoven's triangle. He also assigned the letters 'P', 'Q', 'R', 'S', and 'T' to the various deflections seen on an EKG; that notation, which describes the familiar QRS complex pattern, is also still used today.

Karl Landsteiner

(won in 1930) Known as the "father of transfusions," made important discoveries in the field of serology in the early 1900s, including the identification of the three major blood groups (A, B, and O). He determined that mixing blood from two individuals with incompatible blood types can lead to a dangerous form of blood clumping called agglutination. In 1937 (after he received the Nobel), he also identified the Rh factor (the "plus" or "minus" in one's blood type) in the blood of the rhesus monkey, a discovery which further increased the safety of blood transfusions. While studying in Vienna in 1908, he isolated the polio virus, providing the basis for Jonas Salk's vaccine against the disease.

The Rivals

(Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1775): Like Sheridan's later play The School for Scandal, The Rivals offers a satirical take on manners and courtship. The play's heroine is Lydia Languish, a wealthy heiress who loves reading novels, and who wants her own life to imitate the tropes of romantic fiction. To win Lydia's heart, the wealthy Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the impoverished "Ensign Beverley." Lydia is also desired by the "country gentleman" Bob Acres and the Irish baronet Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the latter of whom sends letters via the maid Lucy. However, O'Trigger's letters are actually read and answered by Lydia's guardian Mrs. Malaprop, who is infatuated with O'Trigger and uses the pseudonym "Delia" in her correspondence. (Mrs. Malaprop's comical speech patterns gave rise to the English word "malapropism," which refers to the accidental substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, but has a different meaning.) Jack's father Sir Anthony Absolute eventually exposes Jack's deception, infuriating Lydia. Jack then has an abortive duel with Sir Lucius, leading Mrs. Malaprop to admit that she is "Delia." At the end of the play, Lydia and Jack reconcile, as do their friends, the quarreling lovers Julia and Faulkland.

Salome

(Richard Strauss based on the play by Oscar Wilde, 1905): Jokanaan (John the Baptist) is imprisoned in the dungeons of King Herod. Herod's 15-year-old step-daughter Salome becomes obsessed with the prisoner's religious passion and is incensed when he ignores her advances. Later in the evening Herod orders Salome to dance for him (the "Dance of the Seven Veils"), but she refuses until he promises her "anything she wants." She asks for the head of Jokanaan and eventually receives it, after which a horrified Herod orders her to be killed; his soldiers crush her with their shields.

Romanov

(Russia, 1613-1917): Following the Time of Troubles, the sixteen-year-old Michael was appointed tsar and co-ruled with his father, Patriarch Filaret. Its rulers included Peter the Great (who westernized Russia and defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War), Catherine the Great (an "enlightened despot" who greatly expanded the borders of Russia), and Alexander II (who freed the serfs). This royal family ruled Russia as tsars and emperors until the Russian Revolution and Nicholas II's execution.

Adam Smith

(Scottish, 1723-1790): Though he wrote on nearly every subject of moral and social philosophy, he is basically remembered as the author of An Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and as the creator of the metaphor of the "invisible hand." This work more-or-less single-handedly founded the Classical school of economics.

Shanghai Tower

(Shanghai, China; Jun Xia, lead architect; completed 2015) When it opened in 2015, this 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.

William I

(The Conqueror) (1028-1087, r. 1066-1087) House of Normandy. Duke of Normandy from 1035, he was promised succession to the throne by Edward the Confessor, but when Edward gave the throne to Harold II in 1066, he invaded England, killing Harold and defeating the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. An able administrator, he authorized a survey of his kingdom in the 1086 Domesday Book. By that time he had replaced Anglo-Saxon nobles and clergy with Normans and other continentals.

Our Town

(Thornton Wilder, 1938). A sentimental story that takes place in the village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century, the play is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); "Love and Marriage" (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and "Death" (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.

Denali

(United States): Formerly and often called Mount McKinley, this mountain is the highest mountain in North America. It is in south-central Alaska, in Denali National Park. The West Buttress route is considered the best path to ascend the mountain. Frederick Cook, a man notorious for having faked the discovery of the North Pole, is now believed to have also faked his ascent of the mountain in 1906 as well, leaving a climbing party seven years later with the honor.

Great Sandy Desert

(Western Australia; 140,000 mi2) Part of the Western Desert, and the ninth largest in the world.

The Way of the World

(William Congreve, 1700): The Way of the World's complex plot (typical of Restoration comedy) concerns Mirabell and Millimant, two lovers who wish to marry. However, Millimant will lose "half her fortune" unless her choice of husband is approved by her aunt Lady Wishfort, who wants her to marry Sir Wilfull Witwoud. Mirabell enlists the married servants Waitwell and Foible to trick Lady Wishfort into falling in love with Sir Rowland, who is actually Waitwell in disguise, so that the compromised Lady Wishfort will be forced to agree to Mirabell and Millamant's marriage. The scheme is supported by Lady Wishfort's daughter, Mrs. Fainall, but exposed by a woman named Mrs. Marwood, who loves Mirabell. A resolution is reached when the rakish Mr. Fainall tries to blackmail his mother-in-law Lady Wishfort, who asks for Mirabell's help. Mirabell then produces an old contract that invalidates the blackmail attempt, securing Lady Wishfort's blessing for his marriage to Millamant.

Baker v. Carr

(William J. Brennan Jr., Earl Warren, 6-2, 1962): Charles W. Baker, a Tennessee citizen, sued the Tennessee secretary of state, Joe Carr, claiming that the state's electoral districts had been drawn to grossly favor one political party. The defendant argued that reapportionment issues were political, not judicial, matters, but the court disagreed and declared the issue justiciable before remanding the case to a lower court. Two years later, in Reynolds v. Sims, the court mandated the principle of "one man, one vote."

Hammer v. Dagenhart

(William R. Day, Edward Douglass White, 5-4, 1918): The Keating-Owen Act prohibited the interstate sale of goods produced by child labor, leading Roland Dagenhart to sue U.S. attorney W. C. Hammer in Charlotte since his two sons would be put out of work. The court ruled that the federal government did not have the right to regulate child labor; Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a notable dissent focusing on the lack of proper state regulation. The case was overturned by the 1941 case U.S. v. Darby Lumber Company case upholding the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Marriage of Figaro

(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1786): Figaro and Susanna are servants of Count Almaviva who plan to marry, but this plan is complicated by the older Marcellina who wants to wed Figaro, the Count — who has made unwanted advances to Susanna —, and Don Bartolo, who has a loan that Figaro has sworn he will repay before he marries. The issues are resolved with a series of complicated schemes that involve impersonating other characters, including the page Cherubino. The opera is based on a comedy by Pierre de Beaumarchais. Be careful: Many of the same characters also appear in The Barber of Seville!

Don Giovanni

(Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1787): (the Italian form of "Don Juan") This character attempts to seduce Donna Anna, but is discovered by her father, the Commendatore, whom he kills in a swordfight. Later in the act, his servant Leporello recounts his master's 2,000-odd conquests in the "Catalogue Aria." Further swordfights and assignations occur prior to the final scene, in which a statue of the Commendatore comes to life, knocks on the door to the room in which he is feasting, and then opens a chasm that takes him down to hell.

The Cambridge Five

(active 1934-1951) Was a quintet of British agents disillusioned about capitalism who were recruited as Soviet spies while attending Cambridge University. Supervised by Yuri Modin of the KGB, it included Donald MacLean, Guy Burgess, John Cairncross, Anthony Blunt, and Kim Philby. The KGB believed Maclean and Burgess to be exceptionally sloppy in maintaining their covers, but the two agents still passed over 9,000 secret wartime documents to the KGB before fleeing the U.K. in 1951, at which point the British press learned of the existence of the ring. Kim Philby maintained his innocence until 1963, when he defected during an intelligence mission to Beirut.

The Minotaur

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

SpaceX CRS-1

(also called SpX-1 or CRS-1) Was the first commercial mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). A structural failure in one of the nine Merlin engines that make up the Falcon 9 rocket first stage necessitated a longer burn with the remaining eight engines. That correction resulted in a proper orbital insertion for the primary payload (a Dragon resupply vehicle), but an unstable, decaying orbit for its secondary payload (an ORBCOMM satellite). This was taken as a proof of concept by SpaceX for the redundant, multiple-engine design. The craft successfully berthed with the ISS and successfully carried out its primary mission, re-supplying the space station and returning cargo to Earth.

Hydrogen

(atomic symbol H, atomic number 1) Is the first element on the periodic table and, by far, the most common element in the Universe. In addition to the main isotope (also called protium), there are two other significant isotopes of this element: deuterium (2H or D), which has one neutron, and tritium (3H or T), which has two neutrons. It naturally exists as a diatomic gas (H2), which was discovered by the British chemist Henry Cavendish. The element is highly flammable when exposed to high temperatures or electric current, a fact demonstrated by the Hindenburg disaster. It can react with nonmetals by losing an electron to form the H+ ion, or react with metals to form the hydride ion, H-.

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 Sino Japanese 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 this author published Libra, a novel about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's participation in a fictional conspiracy against John F. Kennedy. He 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. He 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 novels that this author has written include V., in which Herbert Stencil searches for the mysterious title entity, and Inherent Vice, about the Los Angeles private investigator Doc Sportello.

Sir Francis Drake

(c. 1543-1596): In 1576, Elizabeth I of England sent this pirate to find the unknown southern continent. His ship was the Pelican, which he renamed the Golden Hind. After sailing through the Strait of Magellan, he sailed up the western coast of South, Central, and North America as far as California, capturing Spanish ships and treasure along the way. After circumnavigating the globe and returning to England (1580), he concluded with one final adventure, by fighting against the Spanish Armada (1588).

Jomo Kenyatta

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

Hastings

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

Manzikert

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

Leptons

Are one of the classes of "fundamental particles" (meaning that they cannot be broken down into smaller particles). There are six "flavors" of this particle: the electron, the muon, the tauon, the electron neutrino (usually just called "the neutrino"), the muon neutrino, and the tauon neutrino. The three neutrinos are neutral and nearly massless (they were once thought to be entirely massless), while the other three have a charge of -1. All neutrinos are fermions, and the total number of this element is always conserved (counting regular leptons as +1 particle and anti-leptons as -1 particle). The word for this name of this particle comes from the Greek for "light" (the opposite of "heavy," not illumination), even though the muon and tauon are relatively massive.

The Mighty Handful

Five nationalist Russian composers are often referred to this. They are Modest Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), César Cui (1835-1918), and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908).

The Rio Grande

Has formed the border between Texas and four Mexican states since 1848. It flows south out of Colorado through New Mexico before reaching the international boundary near El Paso. Texas's Big Bend National Park is named for the sweeping curve this river cuts through the Sierra Madre Oriental. After leaving the mountains, the river flows past Laredo and Brownsville before it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Ganges

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

Requiem

Mozart's Requiem, K. 626, was his last composition; it was anonymously commissioned by the Count von Walsegg. Mozart died before he could finish it; many musicians have completed it, including Mozart's student Franz Xaver Süssmayr, and more recently Richard Maunder and Robert Levin. The scoring is notably for low-timbered instruments, omitting oboes and flutes and substituting basset horns for clarinets. The theme of the "Kyrie" was taken from "And With His Stripes We Are Healed," a chorus from Handel's Messiah. After the dramatic "Dies Irae," the "Tuba Mirum" begins with a trombone solo. The circumstances surrounding Mozart's death remain mysterious, and the (unfounded) rumor that Antonio Salieri murdered him gave rise to the Aleksandr Pushkin play Mozart and Salieri, which in turn inspired a Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov opera and Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, which became an Academy Award-winning film.

Pidyon ha-ben

Traditionally, by default, firstborn sons are obligated to assist in the Temple in Jerusalem. As there is currently no Temple, this requirement is symbolic, but it is traditional to "redeem" such people from their obligations if possible. Children in priestly families (kohanim, singular kohen, descendants of Moses's brother Aaron) and Levite families (descendants of Levi) cannot be redeemed from service. Traditionally, the child's father pays a kohen five silver coins in exchange for the child's freedom, shortly after the child becomes one month old. Blessings and a meal accompany the ritual.

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings

except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Symphony No. 5 in C minor

op. 67 (1804-1808): The iconic opening motif of the Fifth Symphony — a descending major third followed by a descending minor third, in a short-short-short-long rhythmic pattern — has become ubiquitous in popular culture, though the claim that it represents "fate knocking at the door" does not come from Beethoven himself. The work's third movement, a scherzo and trio in C minor, ends on a G major chord that proceeds directly into a C major final movement; that finale features one of the first orchestral uses (though not the first orchestral use) of trombones. The Fifth was premiered as part of a concert that also included the premiere of the Sixth Symphony.

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major "Emperor"

op. 73 (1809-1810): The "Emperor" concerto, composed near the end of Beethoven's "heroic decade," is the last concerto of any type that he completed. Beethoven defies traditional concerto structure in the opening movement by placing the most significant solo material for the piano at the beginning of the movement, rather than near its end. Beethoven did not give the work its title; it was first dubbed "Emperor" by Johann Cramer, who first published the work in England. The "Emperor," which was premiered by pianist Friedrich Schneider, is the only one of Beethoven's piano concertos that the composer himself never performed publicly.

Wolfgang Pauli

(1900-1958) His namesake exclusion principle prohibits most types of particles from occupying the same state, and forms the basis for chemical bonds.

Camden

(August 16, 1780): The American defeat was part of the British "southern strategy," which included the earlier capture of Charleston and Savannah. Charles Cornwallis inflicted a humiliating defeat on the forces of Horatio Gates.

LED

An light-emitting diode, is a diode that lights up when current passes through in the forward direction.

Loki

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

Basalt

Is the most common igneous rock—over 90% of volcanic rocks on Earth is this type. It is mafic, meaning it is rich in magnesium and iron, and extrusive, meaning it cools and solidifies on the Earth's surface. Lava containing gas bubbles may cool into vesicular basalt. It primarily composed of vesicles is known as scoria.

Apache

Lived in the American southwest and contested land claims with both Mexican and American settlers, having earlier gained a reputation for ferocity by raiding other tribes in the southwest for generations. A federal attempt to seize the chief from this tribe Cochise in 1861 led to a series of decades-long clashes with the U.S. government. One leader from this tribe, Geronimo, repeatedly broke out of reservations and fought American forces until he was eventually captured by Nelson Miles and exiled to Florida.

Articulation

This refers to the various techniques which may be used to modify the attack or performance of a single note or a series of notes. Some of the most common ones include staccato, meaning light or short; tenuto, meaning a note is to be held its entire value; and legato, meaning a series of notes is to be connected to one another very smoothly. Single notes may be given extra force by an accent mark.

Rhine

This river begins in the Swiss Alps, passes through Lake Constance (in German, the Bodensee), flows west along the German-Swiss border, then turns north to form part of the German-French border. The river then flows north and joins with the Meuse and Scheldt to enter the North Sea at a delta in the Netherlands. Cities along its course include Basel, Strasbourg, Mainz, Bonn, Cologne, and Rotterdam, and tributaries include the Main, Mosel, and Ruhr. The river has played a strategic role in most German conflicts since the time of the Gallic Wars, but was not established as an international waterway until the Rhine Commission of 1815. German myth tells of the Lorelei, a nymph who lured sailors on the Rhine to their deaths.

In a Zener diode

the breakdown voltage is well-defined with as sharp a transition as possible, so engineers can design a circuit around the breakdown voltage characteristic.

Negev Desert

(Israel; 4,700 mi2) This triangular desert covers the southern half of Israel.

The Potomac River

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

Hugo Chávez

Was the President of Venezuela from 1999 to 2013. He used Venezuela's large oil revenues to lead his Bolivarian Revolution and enact socialist policies. His original party was the Fifth Republic Movement. He had been imprisoned after a failed coup attempt in 1992. He died of cancer in 2013.

Vikings

Were seaborne raiders from Scandinavia who used longships to attack coastal regions of western Europe between the late 8th and 11th centuries. Although they are best known for pillaging English and Irish monasteries, this group of people also settled and traded on waterways all over northern and eastern Europe, founding cities in Russia and making voyages to Iceland, Greenland, and the New World. They also seized part of northern France from Charlemagne's heirs established the duchy of Normandy. During the 11th century, Normans fought as mercenaries and built castles in Sicily, southern Italy, France, and Britain. Norman Duke William earned the epithet "the Conqueror" for his victory over the Anglo-Saxons at the 1066 Battle of Hastings.

Kwame Nkrumah

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

Museum of Modern Art

Better known as "MoMA" and situated in Manhattan, it has been connected with the Rockefeller family since its founding in 1929. Its collection includes Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, and Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie.

Phobos

Both this moon ("fear") and Mars' smaller moon Deimos ("dread") were discovered by Asaph Hall III in 1877. At just 3,700 miles above the Martian surface, it orbits more closely to its planet than any other moon in the Solar System. Because it orbits Mars faster than Mars rotates, each day it appears (from the Martian surface) to set twice in the east. Geological features on this moon, including the Stickney Crater, are primarily named for either astronomers (Stickney was the maiden name of Asaph Hall's wife) or characters from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In 1971 the U.S.'s Mariner IX became the first spacecraft to provide close-up photos of this moon.

Conversion

A non-Jewish person who wishes to become Jewish may do so with the guidance and approval of a beit din, a Jewish court. Judaism does not seek converts; in fact, it is traditional for a rabbi to refuse a prospective convert three times, and only if they still persist should the rabbi take them as a student. A ger (convert) must study Judaism and explain their motivation to the satisfaction of the beit din, and must immerse in a mikveh (ritual bath). Men must also be circumcised, or if they were already circumcised, a drop of blood must be taken from the penis as a symbolic circumcision (hatafah dam brit). Different Jewish movements have different views on conversion, and some movements will not recognize conversions performed by rabbis from other movements. Conversion may be sought by gentiles wishing to marry a Jewish person, children raised as Jews but who are not technically Jewish (e.g., because their father is Jewish but their mother is not), or simply people who find Judaism attractive for other reasons.

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 tests 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.

Purim

Celebrated on the 14th of Adar (the sixth month) and commemorating the victory of the Jews — led by Esther and her cousin Mordechai — against Haman, who tried to destroy the Jews because of his anger at Mordechai. The story, recorded in the Book of Esther (read from a scroll, or megillah), takes place in Shushan, the capital city of the kingdom of the Persian King Ahasuerus (Achashvayrosh). On this day, it is traditional to dress up, get drunk, give to charity, eat triangular pastries called hamentaschen (meaning "Haman's ears" or "Haman's pockets" in German), and exchange gifts (mishloach manot) with friends.

Sukkot

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

Rosh HaShanah

Celebrated on the first and second days of the month of Tishrei, this day marks the beginning of the Jewish civil year. (The beginning of the ecclesiastic year is Pesach.) It is believed that on this holiday, people's souls are judged, and God "temporarily" decides their fate for the coming year. Between this day and Yom Kippur are the Ten Days of Repentance, when people are given a chance to reflect and repent. On this holiday, it is customary to wear white clothes and eat apples with honey for a sweet year, and pomegranates to represent being as fruitful as its many seeds. Other customs include the blowing of the shofar (an instrument made from a ram's horn) and a ceremony called Tashlich, in which Jews throw bread crumbs into running water to symbolize the cleansing of their sins.

Shiva

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

Differentiable Functions

Also studied in calculus, are functions for which the derivative can be found (because a particular limit, called a difference quotient, exists). Like continuity, it is really a property of a specific point, and this type of function is one that is differentiable at every point. Every type of this function is continuous, but some continuous functions are not differentiable; mathematicians thus say that differentiability is a stronger property than continuity. In terms of graphs, a differentiable function has a "smooth" graph with no corners or cusps (and also, because continuity is required, no holes, jumps, or asymptotes). All polynomials are differentiable, as are the sine and cosine functions, and exponential and logarithmic functions. However, the absolute value function f(x) = |x| is not differentiable because it has a "corner" at x = 0 (but recall that it is still continuous).

StarCraft

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

Shavuot

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

The Powhatan

Are an Algonquin-speaking people who lived in eastern Virginia when the English colony of Jamestown was founded in 1607. Led by their namesake, Chief Powhatan, the tribe maintained a tenuous relationship with colonists at Jamestown. Legendarily, John Smith was captured by these people and was only spared by the intercession of his daughter, Pocahontas. This Native American tribe were decimated by disease and enslavement by the mid-1600s; by the time Thomas Jefferson profiled the tribe in his Notes on the State of Virginia, they numbered only 300.

Baryons

Are composite (i.e., non-fundamental) particles made from three quarks. The most common examples are the proton (two up quarks and one down quark) and the neutron (two down quarks and one up). All of these particles are fermions. Quarks possess a characteristic called "color" (which has nothing to do with visual color) which can be either red, green, or blue (arbitrary names; again, no relation to the colors we see). This particle must have one quark of each color so that the "total color" (analogous to mixing red, green, and blue light) is colorless (i.e., "white"). The word for this particle comes from the Greek for "heavy." The total number of these particlesis conserved (again, counting anti-baryons as -1).

Typhon and Echidna

Are known as the Father and Mother of All Monsters due to their numerous monstrous offspring, including the two-headed dog Orthrus, the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, the Chimera, and Cerberus. He was the last son of Gaea and Tartarus, while Echidna's parentage is obscured by ancient sources; most often, she is listed as a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. In the Theogony, Hesiod describes a climactic battle between Zeus and this monster following Zeus' defeat of the Titans: he rips out Zeus' sinews and is nearly victorious, but Hermes restores Zeus's sinews and Zeus finally overpowers the giant monster. He was then trapped under Mount Etna, where he is believed to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Periodic Functions

Are those whose graph repeats a pattern (specifically, the graph has translational symmetry). Technically speaking, a function of one variable f is this kind if f(x+p) = f(x) for every x in the domain of the function and some positive number p, which is called the period, because the graph repeats itself every p units. While the trigonometric functions are this type of function most commonly encountered by high school math students, some other functions like triangle waves are also periodic; in general, functions representing waves tend to be this type. A Fourier series is a way to rewrite (almost) any type of this function in terms of only sine and cosine functions.

Quadratics

As mentioned above, polynomials of degree 2. The graph of this special kind of polynomial will be in the shape of a parabola that opens straight up (if the coefficient on the x2 term is positive) or straight down (if that coefficient is negative). It is possible to find the roots of this polynomial by graphing it, factoring it, completing the square on it, or using the quadratic formula (itself derived by completing the square) on it. If this polynomial is in the form ax2 + bx + c, then the expression b2 - 4ac, which appears in the quadratic formula, is called the discriminant. If the discriminant is positive, the polynomial will have two real roots; if the discriminant is zero, the polynomial will have one real root (said to have a multiplicity of 2); and if the discriminant is negative, the polynomial will have two non-real complex roots (and if the coefficients of the polynomial are real numbers, the complex roots will be conjugates of each other).

Shannon

At 230 miles, the river is Ireland's longest river. It flows from Lough Allen, and Loughs Ree and Derg are also on its course. At Limerick, the river widens into its namesake estuary and runs for 50 more miles before it enters the Atlantic. Peat bogs and marshes line the river for much of its course, and the river is considered a dividing line between Ireland's more cultivated east and wild west. A chief tributary is the Suck River. It does not pass through Dublin, although the Liffey does.

Henry II

(1133-1189; r. 1154-1189) House of Plantagenet. The son of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda, he married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, and invaded England the following year, forcing Stephen of Blois to acknowledge this man as his heir. While king he developed the common law and due process but fought with Thomas à Becket over submission to the Pope; he had Becket executed in 1170 but performed penance at Canterbury. Eleanor and his four sons conspired with French king Philip II against him on several occasions.

St. Louis IX

(1214-1270, reigned 1226-1270; house of Capet): He led the Seventh Crusade, which ended in military disaster, but after his ransoming he remained in the Holy Land to successfully negotiate for what he couldn't win. He returned to Europe with his reputation intact and negotiated a peace with England under which Henry III become his vassal. He stabilized the French currency and is generally held to have reduced corruption in the kingdom. He died leading a crusade against Tunisia. This man is the only canonized king of France.

Lake Peipus

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

Filippo Brunelleschi

(1377-1446) A friend of Donatello, he was a skilled sculptor and goldsmith, whose 1401 competition with Lorenzo Ghiberti for the commission of the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery is a frequent question topic (Ghiberti got the chief commission). As an architect, he is mainly known for the extraordinary octagonally-based dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (also known as the Florence Cathedral and often called the Duomo, though that is just the general Italian term for a cathedral), which dominates the Florentine skyline and is across the street from the Florence Baptistery. The task required an innovative supporting framework and occupied much of his career (as described in detail in Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists). Other projects include the Spedale degli Innocenti (a hospital), the Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo, and the Pazzi Chapel in the Cloisters of Santa Croce, all from 1421 to 1430.

Henry VIII

(1491-1547, r. 1509-1547) House of Tudor. The son of Tudor, he brought England into both the Renaissance and the Reformation. He patronized the philosopher Erasmus, the painter Hans Holbein the Younger, and the writer Thomas More. Originally a supporter of the Catholic Church — the Pope had named him "Defender of the Faith" — he named himself head of the Church of England in 1533 so that he could divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. Henry executed top ministers who crossed him, including Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More. He married six times, but only his third wife, Jane Seymour, bore him a son, the sickly Edward VI.

Caravaggio

(1571-1610; full name Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) Was an Italian painter who developed a style of painting involving chiaroscuro, or stark contrast between darkness and vibrant light, that was known as tenebrism. One of his best-known paintings is The Calling of Saint Matthew, in which Christ, who is at the right, points at a group of men sitting at a table illuminated by a shaft of light; scholars have debated whether a bearded man at the table is pointing at himself or at the young man sitting next to him. His Amor Vincit Omnia (meaning "Love Conquers All") shows a naked Cupid trampling musical instruments and a set of armor. He led a violent life; he was forced to flee Rome after being sentenced to death for murder. This artist was greatly influential during and after his life; artists who imitated or were influenced by his style were known as "Caravaggisti."

Judith Leyster

(1609-1660) Was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age who worked mainly in portraits and genre scenes. Her notable works include The Proposition, an early feminist work in which a woman pointedly ignores a man offering her a handful of gold coins in exchange for sex while she focuses on sewing by candlelight; the footwarmer under her dress indicates she is married and is behaving virtuously. Her Self-Portrait shows her unrealistically in fine dress, working on a canvas showing a man in blue playing the violin. She was married to fellow artist Jan Miense Molenaer; after her death, her work was largely attributed to either her husband or Frans Hals. She was unfortunately not credited as the painter of her works until the late 1800s.

Louis XIV

(1638-1715, reigned 1643-1715; house of Bourbon): His reign is often cited as the best historical example of an absolute monarchy. He led France against most of the rest of Europe to win the throne of Spain for his grandson (the War of the Spanish Succession). He championed classical art, religious orthodoxy, and instituted a great program of building throughout France. Known as the "Sun King," his 72-year reign is among the longest in recorded history.

The Night Watch

(1642) By Rembrandt van Rijn. The centerpiece of the collection of the Netherlands' Rijksmuseum, this painting depicts a schutterij, a type of civic guard common in Dutch Golden Age cities. The militia company is led by Frans Banning Cocq, who is depicted in black with a red sash, and his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, dressed in yellow. Other standout figures in the painting include a small woman in a yellow dress who carries a dead chicken, a symbol of the militia company. The painting is enormous, measuring nearly 12 feet high and 14 feet wide; it was even wider before it was cut down in the 18th century to fit in the Amsterdam Town Hall.

John Adam's Inauguration

(1797) Took place on March 4 at Congress Hall in the then-current national capital, Philadelphia, as work on the new national capital at Washington, D.C. was not yet complete. (He became the first president to live in the White House in 1800). He was also the first president to be sworn in by the chief justice. The transfer of power from Washington to him was the first peaceful transition from a living head of state to a succeeding head of state anywhere in the world in over 70 years. In his address, this president noted that he first read the new Constitution while in a foreign country, and praised it as the "result of good heads prompted by good hearts."

John Stuart Mill / Harriet Taylor Mill

(1806-1873) (1807-1858) He was a utilitarian philosopher who comes up in quiz bowl most often in conjunction with his works On Liberty (1859) and Utilitarianism (1863). He makes this list, however, because he wrote one of the most influential philosophical defenses of women's rights, The Subjection of Women (1869). He claimed that his wife, co-authored this text with him, a claim which is debated by historians. The husband and wife did write several essays together, including a tract advocating women's suffrage titled The Enfranchisement of Women (1851), and he recognized his wife as a major contributor to all his greatest works.

William Gladstone

(1809-1898, PM 1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886, 1892-1894): Noted Liberal Prime Minister who passed a Third Reform Act and modernized the military but failed to achieve Irish Home Rule. Queen Victoria loathed him. During Disraeli's ministry Gladstone's campaign sensationalized the "Bulgarian horrors," suggesting that Britain needed to resolve the "Eastern Question" about the fate of the Ottoman Empire.

Richard Wagner

(1813—1883) Was the most influential German opera composer of the 19th century. His four-opera Ring Cycle—consisting of Das Rheingold, Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried, and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods)—tells the story of a magical ring forged by the Nibelung (dwarf) Alberich, which Alberich curses after it is stolen by Odin; the second of these operas includes the orchestral excerpt "Ride of the Valkyries." His other operas include Lohengrin, the tale of a knight who arrives in a boat pulled by a swan, and which includes a "Bridal Chorus" popularly known as "Here Comes the Bride"; and Tristan and Isolde, whose prelude begins with an iconic chord (which has become known as the "Tristan chord") that is often cited as a break with common practice-era harmony. The annual Bayreuth Festival (in Bayreuth, Germany) showcases performances of his works. He was a virulent antisemite; Alberich, the villain of the Ring Cycle, is a racist caricature of a Jewish person.

Treaty of Ghent

(1814) Ended the War of 1812 between the U.S. and Britain. It was signed in this Belgian city but, due to the distances involved, could not prevent the Battle of New Orleans two weeks later. The treaty made no boundary changes and had minimal effect; both sides were ready for peace and considered the war a futile and fruitless endeavor.

Nicholas Nickleby

(1839) After his father dies, Nicholas Nickleby is sent to work at Dotheboys Hall by his cruel uncle Ralph. With the help of the disabled Smike, Nicholas beats the foul schoolmaster Wackford Squeers, and escapes to London. Nicholas's sister Kate works with the milliner Madame Mantalini, but must confront the attentions of the foppish Mr. Mantalini and Sir Mulberry Hawk. Nicholas finds employment in Portsmouth with the theater manager Vincent Crummles, then returns to London and works for the Cheeryble brothers. Smike dies, and Ralph commits suicide after learning that Smike was his son. Nicholas marries a woman named Madeline Bray, and Kate weds the Cheerybles' nephew, Frank.

A Christmas Carol

(1843) The cold-hearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley. Marley's ghost, who wears heavy chains made of cash boxes and other symbols of greed, tells Scrooge to expect the arrival of three spirits. During a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past, Scrooge is shown a holiday party given by his former employer Mr. Fezziwig, and is taken back to the moment when his fiancée Belle left him on account of his avarice. The Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge to the homes of his nephew Fred and his clerk Bob Cratchit, whose son Tiny Tim is near death. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge the grave of an unloved man—Scrooge himself. Scrooge has a change of heart, celebrates Christmas, and becomes a benefactor to the Cratchit family, preventing Tiny Tim from dying.

Harper's Weekly

(1857-1916) Was the most popular American magazine during the Civil War. In 1863 it published an article about a slave named Gordon along with a widely circulated photograph of his whipped, mutilated back that roused abolitionist sentiment across the North. George William Curtis, a co-founder of the Republican Party, was its political editor from 1863 to 1892, during which time he ran cartoons by Thomas Nast, including Nast's portrayals of Boss Tweed and the Tammany Hall political machine. (Although Nast's work did popularize American symbols like Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the Democratic donkey, Nast was not the inventor of those symbols.)

Emmeline Pankhurst

(1858-1928) She was the most prominent advocate for women's voting rights in the United Kingdom. As one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union, she called for direct action and frequent protests to force male politicians to grant votes to women. Her protests frequently got her arrested, and while in jail she and other suffragettes often went on hunger strikes. Initially, prison officials brutally force-fed the hunger-striking suffragettes. In 1913, Parliament passed the Cat and Mouse Act, which provided for hunger strikers to be released from jail and re-arrested after they regained their health. As a result of the advocacy of her and others, Parliament began to grant voting rights to women in 1918.

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.

David Lloyd George

(1863-1945, PM 1916-1922): A native Welsh speaker who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer under Asquith. Taking control during World War I, he represnted the U.K. at the Paris Peace Conference, leading to the Treaty of Versailles. After the war he split the Liberal Party by aiming to continue the coalition government together with the Conservative Bonar Law; the coalition collapsed after embarrassment over the independence of Ireland and a scandal over the sale of honors.

Gutzon Borglum

(1867-1941): An American known for crafting Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He is also known for The Mares of Diomedes and an unfinished (and later replaced) tribute to Confederate heroes on Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Frank Lloyd Wright

(1867-1959) Born in Wisconsin, this man worked under Louis Sullivan before founding a Chicago practice. His early homes, like the Robie House — which is adjacent to the campus of the University of Chicago — are in the "Prairie" style: horizontal orientation and low roofs. His "organic architecture" tries to harmonize with its inhabitants and site; examples include the Kaufmann House (also known as Fallingwater) in Pennsylvania; the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin; and Taliesin, his home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin. (There is also a Taliesin West, his home and studio in Arizona.) Other notable works by him are the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Larkin Building in Buffalo, the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which was one of few buildings to survive a 1923 earthquake (though it has since been demolished).

Charles Ives

(1874-1954) Was a modernist, experimental composer whose programmatic works often utilize polytonality (more than one active key center at a time), quote extensively from folk songs and earlier classical works, and have distinctly "American" themes. He also worked in the insurance industry, and was not widely-recognized as a composer until late in his life. His Piano Sonata No. 2 (1915), the "Concord" sonata, depicts four leading figures of the transcendentalist movement. His Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting" (1947), was awarded the 1947 Pulitzer Prize. Other notable works include the suite Three Places in New England (1914) and "The Unanswered Question" (1906).

Albert Einstein

(1879-1955) In one year — 1905, called his annus mirabilis, or "miracle year" — this scientist authored four papers that revolutionized modern physics. The first explained the photoelectric effect in terms of quantized electromagnetic radiation. The second formed the foundation for modern statistical physics by explaining the seemingly-random motion of particles in a fluid, a behavior called Brownian motion. The third reconciled Maxwellian electrodynamics with classical mechanics by positing a finite, constant speed of light, a theory now known as special relativity. The fourth paper contained his statement that the energy of a body is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared (that is, E = mc2). Ten years later, in 1915, this scientist published his theory of general relativity, which generalized special relativity to account for gravitational fields.

Fabian Society

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

David Ben-Gurion

(1886-1973) was a Zionist leader and principal figure in the founding of the state of Israel. He served as the first prime minister of Israel from 1948 to 1954, as a member of the political party Mapai; his second term as prime minister lasted from 1955 to 1963. He was born in what is now Poland and immigrated to the Ottoman district of Jerusalem in 1906. He became chairman of the Jewish Agency in 1935, and was the main political leader of the Jewish forces in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Akutagawa

(1892-1927): His mother died insane while he was a child, and his father was a failure who gave him up to relatives. Despite this inauspicious childhood, his 1915 short story "Rashomon" brought him into the highest literary circles and started him writing the macabre stories for which he is known. In 1927 he committed suicide by overdosing on pills, and his suicide letter "A Note to a Certain Old Friend" became a published work. "Rashomon" also was key to his international fame, as in 1951 Kurosawa Akira made a film entitled Rashomon, though the film's plot is more based on Akutagawa's other short story "In a Grove." One of Japan's two most prestigious literary prizes is named for Akutagawa; it is awarded for the best serious work of fiction by a new Japanese writer.

Jorge Luis Borges

(1899-1986) An Argentine author known for his philosophical stories. In "The Library of Babel," the narrator's universe is made of adjacent hexagonal rooms, forming a library containing all possible 410-page books consisting of 25 basic characters. Another story by him, "The Garden of Forking Paths," is framed as a manuscript written by Doctor Yu Tsun, a World War I spy, who is pursued by Richard Madden. He realizes that the title labyrinth is actually an unfinished novel, and eventually shoots Stephen Albert to communicate the location of a British artillery park. Those two stories appear along with "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in Borges's collection Ficciones. Borges also wrote "The Aleph," whose title location contains all other points in space.

Plessy v. Ferguson

(1896) Determined that state-imposed segregation was legal. Homer Plessy was seven-eighths white, but he was not allowed on a whites-only car on a Louisiana train. He claimed that forced segregation violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to "equal protection of the laws." Justice Henry Brown wrote that segregation was acceptable as long as there was no clear difference in quality between the railway cars, which is often referred to with the phrase "separate but equal." Justice John Marshall Harlan was the lone dissenter in the 8-1 decision; in his dissenting opinion, he stated "[o]ur Constitution is color-blind." Plessy was effectively overturned by Brown v. Board of Education.

George Gershwin

(1898-1937) His music blended classical traditions and genres with jazz and popular idioms. His "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and "Concerto in F" (1925) both feature solo piano and orchestra, while "An American in Paris" (1928) and "Cuban Overture" (1932) were inspired by his trips abroad. The lyrics for his vocal works were often written by his brother Ira; two of his best-known songs, "Embraceable You" and "I Got Rhythm," appeared in his Broadway musical Girl Crazy (1930). His opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the song standards "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So," featured an entirely African-American cast.

Lou Gehrig

(1903-1941; first base) Was born in Manhattan to German immigrants. A football and baseball player at Columbia University, he signed with the Yankees in 1923. He became a regular in 1925, replacing Wally Pipp at first base and beginning his streak of 2130 consecutive games played (since broken by Cal Ripken Jr. in 1995) that earned him the nickname "The Iron Horse." His batting feats include 184 RBI in 1931 (the AL record), 23 career grand slams (the ML record for many decades, since broken by Alex Rodriguez), a triple crown in 1934, and a .340 career batting average. When it was discovered that he was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—now commonly named for him, he delivered his famous "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth" speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. In deference to him, no Yankee was appointed captain until Thurman Munson in 1976.

Expressionism

(1905-1930s) Originating in Germany at the start of the 20th century, the movement sought to present the world from a purely subjective perspective, shaping images to maximize emotional effect and evoke certain moods or ideas. As such they favored meaning and emotional experience over physical reality. Two major sub-movements of this movement were The Bridge (Die Brücke) and The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter):

Eero Saarinen

(1910-1961) The son of architect Eliel Saarinen, he was born in Finland but spent most of his life in the U.S. and died in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He designed many buildings on the campuses of MIT and Yale, as well as Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. and the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. He may be best known for designing the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, though he died before it was completed. Many of his works are characterized by elegant, sweeping forms, such as the Kresge Auditorium at MIT.

Joe DiMaggio

(1914-1999; center field) Left the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League and joined New York for the 1936 season, where he helped Lou Gehrig drive the Yankees to their fifth championship and the first of nine that he would win with the Bombers. "The Yankee Clipper" won three Most Valuable Player awards (1939, 1941, 1947), two batting titles (1939, 1940), and two homer titles (1937, 1948). In 1941 "Joltin' Joe" hit safely in 56 consecutive games, a record that has never been challenged (he once hit in 61 straight for the Seals in 1933). His career totals are abbreviated because of his military service (1943-1945) and because of the distance to Yankee Stadium's left-field power alley, in those days known as Death Valley. He married Marilyn Monroe in 1954, but they divorced after nine months.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

(1918-1953 and 1915-1953) Were a married couple from New York City who supplied Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviets. The husband recruited many informants, whose raw intelligence was then typed up by the wife. The most important recruits they had were Russell McNutt, who worked at Oak Ridge Laboratory, and Ethel's brother David Greenglass, who worked at Los Alamos and ferried Julius diagrams of atomic weapons. They were found out in 1950 after the spy Klaus Fuchs implicated his courier, Harry Gold, setting off a chain of confessions and exposures that ended with David Greenglass, who exposed the husband and wife pair as part of a plea deal. They were then aggressively prosecuted by Roy Cohn (later a key figure in the McCarthy Era) and executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison. In 1995 the Venona Project confirmed that the husband bore the codename "Liberal" as a Soviet operative.

Gary Player

(1935-present) The most successful non-American golfer in history, this South African has won nine majors. When Player took his only U.S. Open crown in 1965, he not only became the first non-American to win that tournament in 45 years, but he also became one of three (now five) golfers (along with Nicklaus, Woods, Hogan, and Gene Sarazen) to win all four modern Grand Slam events. Nicknames include "The Black Knight" for his dress and "Mr. Fitness" for his devotion to exercise.

Edward Brooke III

(1919-2015) Was the Massachusetts Attorney General from 1963-1967 and a U.S. senator from Massachusetts from 1967-1979. He was the first Black state attorney general and the first popularly-elected Black U.S. senator. He was a moderate Republican who was often criticized for his opposition to protest movements and activists; in one speech, he controversially grouped Lester Maddox with Stokely Carmichael as "extremists of White Power and Black Power." He co-authored the Fair Housing Act of 1968 with Minnesota Democrat Walter Mondale. He was the first Senate Republican to call for Richard Nixon's resignation during Watergate.

Ray Bradbury

(1920-2012) An American author known for his science fiction works. "There Will Come Soft Rains," which appears in his collection The Martian Chronicles and takes its title from a Sara Teasdale poem, describes an empty house that survived a nuclear catastrophe. The house is fully automated and continues to operate even though the family is dead, a fact demonstrated by their silhouettes permanently burned on the side of the house. In his story "A Sound of Thunder," Eckels steps on a butterfly while hunting a T. Rex on a time-travel safari, which changes the future timeline so that the fascist Deutscher wins an election.

Maurice Richard

(1921-2000): Born in Montreal, Quebec, "The Rocket" was one of the most gifted offensive players in NHL history. He was the first NHL player to score 50 goals in a single season, doing so in 1944-1945, and also the first to score 500 goals in a career. The winner of eight Stanley Cups, his suspension by league president Clarence Campbell in 1955 led to "The Richard Riot" on March 17, 1955, which was quelled only by an appeal by him for peace. Many sociologists credit the this riot with contributing to the rise of the Quebec independence movement. The NHL began awarding the Rocket Richard Trophy in 1999 for the league's top regular-season goal scorer.

Lateran Treaty

(1929) Created the independent country of the Vatican City, made Catholicism the state religion of Italy (ended in 1984), and determined the proper remuneration for Church property taken by Italy. It was signed by Benito Mussolini and a representative of Pope Pius XI in the namesake papal residence, and ended the so-called "Roman Question" that arose out of the unification of Italy and the dissolution of the Papal States.

Martin Luther King Junior

(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.

Depression-era Art

(1930s) From 1929 to 1939, art in America reflected and embodied the despair associated with the Great Depression, often raising social issues and concerns of the public. American artists of the decade rejected European abstract art in favor of realism and raw human emotion in order to emphasize the true plight of the destitute. The photographer Dorothea Lange made the desperation of the Depression visible to the general public via documentary photography, such as with her works Migrant Mother, White Angel Breadline, and Ditched, Stalled and Stranded; later, Lange would document the struggle of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Painters such as Aaron Douglas and Jacob Lawrence developed the visual art aspect of the Harlem Renaissance (a period of rebirth and freedom of expression for African-Americans in the early 20th century), highlighting African-American life — such as in Douglas' Aspects of Negro Life series — and exposing social injustices committed towards Blacks — such as in Lawrence's 60-panel Migration series. Edward Hopper depicted somber and realistic scenes of city life, such as with his paintings Nighthawks, Chop Suey, Automat, and Early Sunday Morning. Similarly, Grant Wood explored country life — especially Midwestern subjects in rural Iowa — in such works as American Gothic, Daughters of Revolution, Parson Weems' Fable, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Appraisal, and The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa.

Mario Vargas Llosa

(1936-present, Peru): While attending military school in Lima, he wrote the play The Escape of the Inca (1952), but the harsh treatment he received there was the basis for his novel The Time of the Hero. Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) was his serious take on living under the dictatorship of Manuel Odría, while in 1977 he published the lighter, autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, about soap operas. Other important works include The War of the End of the World and A Fish in the Water, which discusses his political career; he ran for president of Peru in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.

Margaret Atwood

(1939-present, Canada). One of Canada's most prominent authors of literary fiction, she has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985 she published The Handmaid's Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a "handmaid" is to bear children for "the Commander" and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's unknown fate. She later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, she has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).

Margaret Smith Court

(1942-present). The most prolific winner, male or female, she amassed 62 Grand Slam titles, 24 of them in singles (3 Wimbledon, 5 French, 5 U.S., and 11 in her native Australia). Billie Jean King called Court "The Arm" because of her long reach, aided by her height of nearly six feet. In 1970 she became the second woman (after Maureen Connolly) to win the Grand Slam, taking 21 singles championships overall that year; less impressive was her 1973 loss to 55-year old Bobby Riggs. She did defeat King, Riggs's nemesis, 22 of 32 times. She retired in 1977 and became a lay minister.

Arthur Ashe

(1943-1993). He once claimed that he would consider himself a failure if he were remembered only for tennis. The first black man to win either the U.S. Championship (1968) or Wimbledon (1975), he was also the first American tennis player to earn over $100,000 in one year (1970). The author of Hard Road to Glory, a history of black athletes, he announced in 1992 that tainted blood from a 1983 heart surgery had given him the AIDS virus. Arthur Ashe Stadium, the current home of the U.S. Open, was named for him in 1997.

Murasaki

(c. 978 -c. 1015): Novelist, diarist, and lady-in-waiting. She was the author of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), the first known novel; the diary Murasaki Shikibu nikki; and a collection of tanka poems. The daughter of the court official Fujiwara Tametoki, she sat in on the classical Chinese literature lessons that her brother received, in spite of the Heian traditions against higher education for women.

Tom Watson

(1949-present) He became the major rival to Jack Nicklaus in the second half of the Golden Bear's career. His greatest achievements were at the British Open, a tournament he won five times between 1975 and 1983. He took eight major championships overall.

John Hay

(served 1898-1905 under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt): He negotiated the 1898 Treaty of Paris that ended the Spanish-American War and established the "open door policy" with China. He also served as Lincoln's personal secretary while working as a clerk in the Interior Department. He negotiated the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty that established the Panama Canal Zone in 1903.

Aaron Judge

(1992-present; right field) This baseball player took MLB by storm upon his debut in 2017. He homered in his first career at bat, won the year's Home Run Derby, and finished the season with 52 total home runs, a record for a rookie player. Standing 6 feet, 7 inches tall, he instantly became a fan favorite, adopting the nickname "All Rise" and becoming the focus of a small section at Yankee Stadium where fans wear judges' robes. He unusually wears the jersey number 99, which he received in the minor leagues. A free swinger, he also set a record in 2017 by striking out in 37 straight games.

Grutter v. Bollinger

(2003) Determined that affirmative action programs whose purpose is to increase diversity are legal. Barbara Grutter was a white applicant to the University of Michigan Law School who was denied, and Lee Bollinger was the university president. On the same day, the Supreme Court ruled on Gratz v. Bollinger, which addressed undergraduate admissions at Michigan. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the undergraduate affirmative action program was unconstitutional because it was based on a point system rather than a holistic look at applicants. Together, these decisions were viewed as upholding the Bakke decision made earlier. These cases were later strengthened by two Fisher v. University of Texas cases, in 2013 and 2016. At the time of Grutter, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor remarked "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today."

Archimedes

(287-212 BC, Syracusan Greek) Is best known for his "eureka" moment, in which he realized he could use density considerations to determine the purity of a gold crown; nonetheless, he was the preeminent mathematician of ancient Greece. He found the ratios between the surface areas and volumes of a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder, accurately estimated pi, and developed a calculus-like technique to find the area of a circle, his method of exhaustion.

Battle of Aegospotami

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

Salamis

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

Tours

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

Thorstein Veblen

(American, 1857-1929): He is primarily remembered for his The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), which introduced phrases like "conspicuous consumption." He is remembered for likening the ostentation of the rich to the Darwinian proofs of virility found in the animal kingdom.

The Phantom of the Opera

(Andrew Lloyd Webber; Charles Hart & Richard Stilgoe; Richard Stilgoe & Andrew Lloyd Webber; 1986): At the Paris Opera in 1881, the mysterious Phantom lures the soprano Christine Daaé to his lair ("The Music of the Night"). Christine falls in love with the opera's new patron, Raoul, so the Phantom drops a chandelier and kidnaps Christine. They kiss, but he disappears, leaving behind only his white mask. Adapted from the 1909 novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux, it is the longest-running show in Broadway history.

Battle of Okinawa

(April 1945 - June 1945): The largest amphibious assault of the Pacific Theater, this battle featured massive casualties among both combatants and civilians. The Japanese launched over 1,500 kamikaze attacks against the U.S. fleet, and even sent the massive battleship Yamato on a suicide mission; it was sunk by aircraft before reaching Okinawa. On the American side, both war correspondent Ernie Pyle and Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the commander-in-chief of the ground forces, were killed. Somewhat uniquely, the battle also saw large numbers of Japanese troops surrender, although many were native Okinawans forced into fighting.

Volpone

(Ben Jonson, 1605): Each character in this Jonson play is based on an animal archetype. The greedy Venetian noble Volpone (named for the Italian for "fox") cajoles gifts from men named Corbaccio ("raven"), Corvino ("crow"), and Voltore ("vulture") by faking a fatal illness, and separately promising his fortune to each man. At the urging of Volpone's servant Mosca ("fly"), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son Bonario by writing a new will that will name Volpone as sole heir. Volpone also engages in stratagems to sleep with Corvino's wife Celia, although his attempt to rape her is foiled by Bonario. In a subplot, the English traveler Peregrine humiliates a foolish fellow countryman named Sir Politick Would-Be. After a trial, Volpone fakes his death and names Mosca his sole heir; Mosca's ensuing behavior prompts Volpone to reveal himself, resulting in the punishment of all wrongdoing.

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas

(Earl Warren, 9-0, 1954): The suit was filed on behalf of Linda Brown, a third grader, who had to walk a mile to a blacks-only school when a whites-only school was much closer. Future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued the case for the plaintiff. The court overturned Plessy v. Ferguson and ruled that "separate but equal" facilities were not constitutional. A second case in 1955 required that desegregation proceed "with all deliberate speed" but Southern schools were notoriously slow in complying; it was not until 1970 that a majority had complied with the ruling.

Carbon

(C, 6) Is found, by definition, in all organic compounds. It is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe. It has three major isotopes: isotope 12, which is stable; isotope 13, which is used in NMR spectroscopy; and isotope 14, which is radioactive and is the basis of carbon dating. This element's ability to form four chemical bonds means that it has many different allotropes. The best-characterized natural allotropes are diamond, which consists of a tetrahedral network of carbon atoms, and graphite, which consists of planes of carbon atoms arranged in hexagons. Fullerenes such as buckyballs and carbon nanotubes, on the other hand, are generally produced synthetically; buckyballs are roughly spherical. More recently, graphene, which is a single layer of atoms shaped like graphite, has proven to have remarkable properties; for example, it is nearly transparent while being about 200 times stronger than an equivalent mass of steel.

Loving v. Virginia

(Earl Warren, 9-0, 1967) Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924 was an anti-miscegenation law that criminalized marriages between whites and non-whites. In 1958, Virginia residents Richard Loving (a white man) and Mildred Jeter (a woman of both African-American and Native American heritage) were married in Washington, D.C., which did not have such a statute. After returning to their Virginia home, they were arrested and convicted under the Racial Integrity Act. Striking down that Act as violating both the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice Warren wrote that "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

The Iceman Cometh

(Eugene O'Neill, 1939). A portrait of drunkenness and hopeless dreams. Regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their "pipe dreams," Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The "Iceman" is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality.

The Pyramids and the Nile

(July 21, 1798, Egypt) (August 1-3, 1798, Egypt) After his victory over Austria, Napoleon proposed crossing the Mediterranean and invading Egypt. While the stated goal of this expedition was to strike a blow against British trade with the Middle East and Asia, it also catered to Napoleon's fascination with antiquity. A team of scientists followed his military expedition, who's most lasting result was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, unearthed by soldiers digging to construct a fort in the Nile delta. Napoleon supposedly cried "Soldiers, forty centuries look down upon you" at the 1798 Battle of the Pyramids, where his troops used modern artillery and large square formations to ward off a cavalry charge by the Egyptian Mamluks. French control of Egypt, however, was dependent on communications across the Mediterranean, which were interrupted by the Royal Navy's attack on the French fleet in Aboukir Bay in early August. British victory at the Nile forced Napoleon to abandon his army and return to France.

Salamanca

(July 22, 1812, Spain) While Napoleon struggled against Austrians, Russians, and Prussians on the plains of central and eastern Europe, a smaller but no less violent conflict was fought for control of Spain and Portugal. During this "Peninsular War" (1807-1814), the throne of Spain was claimed by Napoleon's older brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Spanish and Portuguese resistance (the first "guerrilla" warfare, from the Spanish for "little war") was supported by the landing of British troops under the command of the Duke of Wellington. Wellington's triumph over Marshal Auguste Marmont at this battle in July 1812 was a decisive blow against the stability of Joseph's regime.

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 Shard

(London, England; Renzo Piano, architect; completed 2013) This skyscraper, 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. It 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.

A Raisin in the Sun

(Lorraine Hansberry, 1959). Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for Hansberry's play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").

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 this massacre was made by Boston silversmith Paul Revere. British sources often refer to the massacre as "The Incident on King Street."

Boris Godunov

(Modest Mussorgsky, 1874): The opera's prologue shows this character, the chief adviser of Ivan the Terrible, being pressured to assume the throne after Ivan's two children die. In the first act the religious novice Grigori decides that he will impersonate that younger son, Dmitri (the [first] "false Dmitri"), whom, it turns out, he had killed. Grigori raises a general revolt and his health falls apart as he is taunted by military defeats and dreams of the murdered tsarevich. The opera ends with him dying in front of the assembled boyars (noblemen).

The King and I

(Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1951): Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher, travels to Siam (now Thailand) to teach English to the King's many children and wives. Anna's western ways, the looming threat of British rule, and romance between Lun Tha and the concubine Tuptim all weigh heavily on the traditional, chauvinistic King. As the King dies, Anna kneels at his side, and the prince abolishes the practice of kowtowing. Adapted from Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and inspired by Anna Leonowens' memoirs, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1956 film starring Yul Brynner. Its songs include "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Getting to Know You," and "Shall We Dance?".

Montezuma II

(c. 1466-1520) He was one of the last rulers of the Aztec empire. In 1519 he allowed armed forces led by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés to enter the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. Several months later, the Spanish imprisoned leader within his own palace. After the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado took advantage of his captivity to massacre peaceful celebrants at a religious festival, the Aztecs selected a new ruler named Cuitláhuac, and the city erupted into conflicts that led to his death. The Spanish then fled during an escape that is called the "Noche Triste," or "Sad Night" because many conquistadors died while crossing the causeways that connected the island city Tenochtitlán to the shores of Lake Texcoco. By 1521, the ravages of smallpox and the help of indigenous Tlaxcalan allies allowed Cortés to conquer Tenochtitlán and to capture Cuauhtémoc, the final Aztec emperor.

The Art of Painting

(c. 1660s) By Jan Vermeer. This painting, alternatively known as The Allegory of Painting, may be either a self-portrait or a depiction of the artist's craft; the face of the artist dressed in black, who faces away from the viewer, cannot be seen. The blue-clad model in the painting stands near a window and may be portraying Clio, the Muse of History; she holds a trumpet and cradles a large yellow book presumed to be Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Behind the large candelabra in the painting, a map of the Low Countries hangs on the studio's back wall.

Phidias

(c. 480 - c. 430 BC): An Athenian considered the greatest of all Classical sculptors. He created the chryselephantine (gold and ivory) Statue of Zeus at Olympia (one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, now lost) and the statue of Athena in the Parthenon (now lost). He was supported by money from the Delian League (that is, the Athenian Empire) run by his friend Pericles; he was later ruined by charges of corruption generally considered to be part of a political campaign against Pericles.

Death

A deceased person's body is not embalmed; rather, it is ritually washed by members of a group called the chevra kadisha (literally "holy society"), who then dress the body in a simple linen garment (tachrich), place it in a simple wooden casket (no metal, so that the body's return to dust is hastened), and stay with the deceased while reciting psalms. At the funeral, there is no viewing. Eulogies may be given, and mourners may recite psalms (especially Psalm 23, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want) and El Malei Rachamim ("God, full of mercy"). Cremation is forbidden, and burial should take place as soon as possible. At the burial, mourners take turns shoveling dirt into the grave, but do not pass the shovel directly to one another. A common myth states that having a tattoo prevents one from being buried in a Jewish cemetery; though Judaism discourages tattoos, that is not true. Proper treatment of the dead is considered a critical mitzvah (both commandment and good deed) because the beneficiary (the deceased person) cannot offer repayment or express gratitude.

Inductor

A solenoid is a coil of wire. When electric current through the wire changes, a magnetic field is generated in the core (interior) of the solenoid. When a solenoid is used in a circuit, it is called this and serves to oppose changes in the current in the circuit. The strength of this part is its inductance, symbolized L and measured in henries (after Joseph Henry, who discovered the principles of self-inductance and mutual inductance, though Michael Faraday published his findings on electromagnetic induction first). The voltage across this part only depends on the change in current, so these parts are particularly used with alternating current. For standard (sinusoidal) alternating current, an inductor only changes the phase of the current through it. They function the same way as resistors when arranged in series or parallel.

Mount Fuji

A stratovolcano on the island of Honshu is Japan's tallest mountain. Nicknamed one of the "Three Holy Mountains" of Japan along with Mount Haku and Mount Tate. It last erupted in December 1707 in the lava-less Hoei Eruption. Because of its beautiful shape the volcano 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.

Form

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

Lake Tanganyika

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

Nighthawks

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

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben

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

Rijksmuseum

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

Priam

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

Medea

Was a sorceress from the island of Colchis; her father was King Aeëtes, and her aunt was the witch Circe. She 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. This sorceress 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 her for the princess Glauce; in vengeance, she killed two of her children and fled on a golden chariot.

Abraham

Was a patriarch common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which are collectively known as the Abrahamic religions. Unlike the other people in this article, he is not regarded as a historical figure in secular studies. He is the subject of the Biblical narrative of the covenant of the pieces, in which God promises that his descendants would inherit the Promised Land of Canaan/Israel; this tradition is the basis for the view that the Jewish people are God's chosen people. In Islam, he (Ibrahim) is considered a major link in the chain of prophets stretching from Adam to Muhammad. In Christianity, he is considered an exemplar of faith because of his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command.

Zambezi River

Weaving across southern Africa, this river rises in eastern Angola, passes through Zambia, flows along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe, crosses through Mozambique, and enters the Indian Ocean's Mozambique Channel near Chinde. Caprivi Strip was created to allow access to this river. The Cabora Bassa and Kariba Dams form large lakes of the same name. The most spectacular feature of this river is Victoria Falls, or Mosi-oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders"), which is over a mile wide and is the largest waterfall by flow rate in Africa.

Horatio Gates

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

The Achaemenid Empire

Or first Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, who defeated and incorporated the Babylonian Empire, Lydian Empire and Median Empire. Based in what is now Iran, the empire had its ceremonial capital at Persepolis. Under kings Darius and Xerxes, Persia unsuccessfully invaded Greece. The First Persian Empire came to an end when Darius III was defeated by Alexander the Great.

Iroquois Confederacy

Originally consisted of five tribes native to upstate New York: the Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Seneca, and Onondaga. The confederacy was founded based on the teachings of a prophet called the Great Peacemaker, whose followers included chief Hiawatha, the subject of a famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The confederacy gradually expanded to control much of the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions and also incorporated the Tuscarora people, who migrated from North Carolina after defeat in a colonial war. In the Beaver Wars, this tribe and their British allies came to dominate various Algonquin peoples allied with the French. This Indian tribe collapsed after the American Revolution, during which leaders like Joseph Brant stood by the British.

The Kingdom of Thailand

Had its name changed from "Siam" twice within a decade. Portuguese explorers began using the term "Siam" to refer to the region in the 1500s; such usage gained official prominence via its use by rulers from the Chakri dynasty. A rebellion and monarchical crisis in the 1930s led to the 1938 rise of Luang Phibunsongkhram, commonly known as Phibun. In 1939 Phibun officially changed the country's name to something new, or Prathet Thai, having a double meaning of "Land of the Thai" and "Land of the Free"—part of Phibun's campaign against China. Phibun allied with the Japanese during World War II but was forced out of power in 1944. In 1945, the country's post-war government changed the nation's name back to Siam; however, another monarchical crisis sparked by the 1946 assassination of Rama VIII led to Phidun's return to power in 1948 with U.S. support. In 1949 he once again renamed the country "Thailand."

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

His interest in science manifested first through his science fiction writings, but he gained more notoriety for his eponymous rocket equation. This equation, as published in 1903's Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Device, relates a rocket's speed with its mass, the speed of its exhaust, and the exhaust's mass (an application of Newton's laws of motion.) The equation is also connected with the idea of specific impulse, a measure of a rocket's efficiency. He also published theoretical studies on the capabilities of multi-stage, liquid-fueled engines, gyroscopes, and escape velocities.

Spectral Lines

Hydrogen produces an infinite series of these lines. The first five of those series are named after scientists who observed them before it was known that they were examples of the same phenomenon. From lowest to highest energy of the final level, they are known as the Lyman, Balmer, Paschen, Brackett, and Pfund series. Only the Balmer series exists in the visible spectrum.

1896 Election

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

Transposition

Instruments that are in concert pitch, or "in C," have their music written at the same pitch in which they sound. Concert pitch instruments include the piano, all string instruments, the flute, and nearly every woodwind and brass instrument that plays in bass clef. Other instruments are these types of instruments, meaning that their music is written at a different pitch than they sound. With few exceptions, music for these instruments is written above the sounding pitch, which can be determined by moving down the interval that the instrument's key is below C. For example, the French horn is in F, a perfect fifth below C; thus, a French horn playing a written G natural would sound a C natural, the pitch a perfect fifth below G natural. Similarly, a B-flat trumpet playing a written D would sound a C, a major second below.

Sir Guy Carleton

Irish-born, he led grenadiers across the Plains of Abraham in the 1759 siege of Quebec under his close friend General James Wolfe. He became governor of Quebec in 1768; at the time of the Intolerable Acts he sent troops from Canada to reinforce the British military presence in Boston. After the outbreak of war, Carleton repulsed Montgomery and Arnold's attempt to seize Quebec City. In 1776 his naval forces defeated Arnold again at Valcour Island in Lake Champlain. This man later resigned as governor after John Burgoyne arrived in Canada to lead the British expedition that met disaster at Saratoga. Sent back to Europe in June 1778, he sat out all but the end of the war, returning in 1782 as commander-in-chief after Cornwallis' surrender.

Louvre

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

Book of Mormon

Published in 1830 by the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. Mormons believe that the prophet Moroni revealed the location of this book to Smith, and then Smith translated it from a "reformed Egyptian" language. The book is inscribed on thin gold plates and documents the history of a group of Hebrews who migrated to America around 600 BC. This group divided into two tribes: the Lamanites (ancestors of American Indians), and the highly civilized Nephites, a chosen people instructed by Jesus but killed by the Lamanites around AD 421.

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.

The St. Lawrence River

Drains the Great Lakes and serves as a major waterway of eastern Canada. First explored and named by Jacques Cartier in the early 16th century, this river emerges from the northeastern corner of Lake Ontario in the Thousand Islands archipelago, forming the border between Ontario and New York. It receives the Ottawa and Saguenay Rivers and flows through Montréal and Quebec City. At its mouth, the Gulf of this river is one of the world's largest estuaries.

Tariff

Is a tax placed on the import (common) or export (rarer) of a good. They have various — often controversial — sociopolitical goals, but economists agree that they raise consumer prices relative to equilibrium (resulting in a lower quantity demanded). These things are similar to quotas, in which a government limits the amount of a good that may be imported.

The Irrawaddy

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

The Indus

Is the chief river of Pakistan and the source of the name of India. It rises in Tibet and flows 1,800 miles to a delta on the Arabian Sea southeast of Karachi. The five major tributaries of the Indus — the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej Rivers — are the source of the name of the Punjab region, which is Persian for "land of the five rivers." This river is the cradle of the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the world's earliest urban areas, whose main cities were Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

Ganymede

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

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

It opened in 1997 and is — like its sister instutition in New York — less famous for its collection than its building, a Frank Gehry design that seems to be an abstract sculpture all its own. Richard Serra's The Matter of Time is permanently installed here.

1960 Election

John F. Kennedy defeated vice president Richard Nixon 303-219 in a tight election winning the popular vote by just two-tenths of a percent. The first Kennedy-Nixon debate (September 26, 1960) is a classic in political science; those who saw the calm, handsome Kennedy and the tired, uncomfortable-looking Nixon on television were more likely to select Kennedy as the winner than were those who listened on radio. (Theodore White's notable The Making of the President series began with the 1960 election.) Voting irregularities in Texas and Illinois (especially in Richard Daley's Chicago) led to allegations of fraud, but a recount would not have been feasible, and Nixon did not press the issue. Nixon would go on to lose the 1962 California gubernatorial race (occasioning his famous statement "You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more").

Chloroplasts

Found only in plants and certain protists, it contains the green pigment chlorophyll and is the site of photosynthesis. Like the mitochondrion, it is a double-membrane-bound organelle, and it has its own DNA and ribosomes in the stroma. It contain grana, which are stacks of single membrane structures called thylakoids on which the reactions of photosynthesis occur.

String Quartets

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

Eddie Rickenbacker

(1890-1973) Before becoming a pilot, this man achieved fame as a race car driver; "Fast Eddie" competed in the Indianapolis 500 on four separate occasions. During World War I, he joined the U.S. Army as a driver, but was admitted to flight school with the help of Colonel Billy Mitchell, and went on to win the Medal of Honor and finish as the top American ace of the war, with 26 kills. He bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1927 and Eastern Airlines in 1938. While on a military mission in the Pacific in 1942, his plane crashed, but he and all but one crewman survived a brutal 24-day ordeal aboard small life rafts.

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, he 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.

Former Vice President Henry Wallace's Progressive Party

(established 1948) formed out of Wallace's disagreements with his replacement as FDR's vice president, incumbent Harry S. Truman, who had fired Wallace from his position as Secretary of Commerce. In addition to promoting leftist reforms, Wallace also wanted cooperation with the Soviet Union, though his association with the Soviets and Communism hurt his popularity. In spite of this, he still won 2.4% of the vote with well over a million votes in a contentious election that Truman barely won over Thomas Dewey.

Argos

A city-state or polis, was a major rival of Sparta. Both were on a large peninsula known as the Peloponnese. The city came to prominence in the 7th century BC under King Pheidon, who is sometimes credited with developing the use of citizen-soldiers known as hoplites in rectangular phalanx formations.

USS Arizona

A lead ship of the honor escort for President Wilson's trip to France in 1918, she was on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor when Japanese aircraft appeared just before 8:00 am on Sunday, December 7, 1941. This ship came under attack almost immediately, and at about 8:10 was hit by an 800-kilogram bomb just forward of turret two on the starboard side. Within a few seconds the forward powder magazines exploded, killing 1,177 of the crew, and the ship sank to the bottom of the harbor. In 1962 this ship's memorial opened and is now administered by the National Park Service.

USS Constitution

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

The Hittites

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

Olympia

Is on the Peloponnese. Like Delphi, this site was a major Panhellenic sacred site. The cult statue in its Temple of Zeus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The site also had athletic facilities for the Olympic Games held every four years.

USS Lawrence/USS Niagara

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

Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand

On June 28, 1914 this man 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.

Corinth's location

On the land route to the Peloponnese, and with a placement at the Isthmus of Corinth that allowed it to have harbors on the Saronic and Corinthian Gulfs—made it a major trade center. The tyrant Periander is credited with building the Diolkos, a four- to five-mile-long paved track across the Isthmus that allowed transport of ships and heavy goods much faster than could be achieved by sailing all the way around the Peloponnese.

USS Maine

The first edition of this ship, a second-class armored battleship, was launched in 1889 and in 1897 sailed for Havana to show the flag and protect American citizens. Shortly after 9:40 pm on February 15, 1898, the battleship was torn apart by a tremendous explosion. The court of inquiry convened in March was unable to obtain evidence associating the blast with any person or persons, but public opinion—inflamed by "yellow journalism"—was such that this ship's disaster led to the declaration of war on Spain on April 21, 1898.

USS Chesapeake

This ship was built at what is now the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, between 1798 and 1799. This ship was attacked by the British Leopard off Cape Henry in 1807 (which led to the duel between Commodores James Barron and Stephen Decatur), one of the causes of the War of 1812. She was captured off Boston in 1813 by the British frigate Shannon, on which occasion her commander, Captain James Lawrence, uttered his celebrated dying words, "Don't give up the ship," which have become a tradition in the U.S. Navy.

Nelson Mandela

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

Idi Amin

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

Barbara McClintock

(won in 1983) Described the existence of transposons, also called "jumping genes," from her observations that certain DNA sequences on the maize she was studying could change position on a chromosome. While studying generations of maize at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, she hypothesized that these "controlling elements" were regulatory in nature, and that their motion around the genome could be the driving factor behind how two identical genetic sequences can exert different functions. She is the only non-shared female recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Hector

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

Proteus

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

Wellington's Victory; or the Battle of Vitoria

op. 91 (1813): Also commonly known as the "Battle Symphony." This heavily programmatic work was originally written for the panharmonicon, an automated orchestra; Beethoven later revised the work for live performers. The work utilizes several familiar melodies — including "God Save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," and "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow" — and calls for special effects such as musket fire. The work is generally regarded as one of Beethoven's worst; even the composer himself acknowledged it as being a money-maker rather than serious art. Note that the piece specifically does not depict Wellington's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.

Language's Typing

Refers to how the type of data a variable holds is defined and can or can't change. Common types of variables are booleans, which can only be true or false; strings, which hold text; integers; and floats and doubles, which hold non-integer numbers. In statically typed languages, a variable is given a type the first time it is used and can't be changed; compilers check that all variables have the correct types while the program is compiling, which helps catch errors but also makes some tasks more difficult. Java, C, and C++ have static typing. Dynamically typed languages do not check types when compiling, which makes some tasks easier, but type errors (e.g., trying to multiply two strings) can occur while the program is running. Python and JavaScript are dynamically typed. Some languages support duck typing, which is sort of intermediate between static and dynamic typing. Duck typing essentially allows objects to do the same or similar things even if their classes have no formal relation. For example, airplanes and birds might both have a "fly" capability even though neither is a subclass of the other (or otherwise related).

Trigonometric Functions

Represent relations between angles and sides of triangles. They are often illustrated using points and segments related to a circle of radius 1 centered at the origin, called the unit circle. By far the most commonly discussed functions are the sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant, secant, and cotangent functions. There are many interesting relationships between these: the graphs of sine and cosine are translations of each other; the tangent function equals the sine function divided by the cosine function; the cosecant, secant, and cotangent functions are the reciprocals of the sine, cosine, and tangent functions, respectively; and there are many other relationships called trigonometric identities.

George Washington

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

Robert Peel

(1788-1850, PM 1834-1835, 1841-1846): Set out the founding principles of the Conservative Party in the Tamworth Manifesto and led the new party to its first general election victory. The Irish Famine accelerated his decision to repeal the Corn Laws, promoting free trade by removing grain tariffs. This act was achieved with Whig support and lost him the backing of his party.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

(1873-1943). A highly skilled pianist and conductor, he twice turned down conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He failed to reap the monetary benefits of his early pieces (notably the C-Sharp Minor Prelude of 1892), because he sold them cheaply to a publisher. Treated by hypnosis in 1901, he began a productive period with his Second Piano Concerto and the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909). He moved to the U.S. in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution. There his output decreased, though he did complete the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

(1904-1967) Oversaw much of the Manhattan Project, but was later stripped of his security clearance during the McCarthy-era Red Scare, as a result of his acquaintance with communists and his enmity with Edward Teller.

John Cage

(1912-1992). An American student of Arnold Schoenberg, he took avant-garde to a new level, and may be considered a Dada composer because he believed in aleatory, or "chance" music. His Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) used twelve radios tuned to different stations; the composition depended on what was on the radio at that time. The following year's 4′33″ required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and then close it; audience noise and silence created the music. He also invented the prepared piano, in which screws, wood, rubber bands, and other items are attached to piano strings in order to create a percussion sound.

Treaty of Versailles

(1919) Officially ended World War I between the Allies and Germany. It was signed at its namesake French palace after the Paris Peace Conference. It is noted for the "Big Four" (Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Vittorio Orlando) who headed the Allies' delegations, discussions of Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points (particularly the League of Nations), and its controversial disarmament, war guilt, and reparations clauses. The conference was also notable for up-and-coming world figures who attended (John Maynard Keynes, Ho Chi Minh, Jan Smuts, etc.).

Isabel Allende

(1942-present, Chile): Actually born in Peru, at age three she moved to her mother's native Chile. A successful news reporter in her twenties, she and her family fled to Venezuela after General Augusto Pinochet deposed her uncle Salvador Allende, setting up a dictatorship. Her formal literary career began at age 40, when she published The House of the Spirits, a magical-realist work that chronicles several generations of the Trueba family. Other works of fiction include the short-story collection Eva Luna (1989) and Paula (1995), which detailed her care for her terminally ill daughter.

Tony Blair

(1953-, PM 1997-2007): Won a famous landslide election victory in 1997 to end 18 years of Conservative rule as his "New Labour" movement abandoned traditional socialism and moved the Labour Party to the center. Re-elected in 2001 and 2005, his friendship and later enmity towards his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown (PM 2007-2010) ended with Brown succeeding him as Prime Minister. His close relationship with George W. Bush led to the U.K. joining the invasion of Iraq in 2003; his domestic legacy was higher public spending and the devolution of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland

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. He 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.

Wayne Gretzky

(1961-present): Born in Brantford, Ontario, "The Great One" was named Canada's athlete of the century. He holds or shares 61 NHL records, including career goals (894), assists (1,963), and points (2,857). The winner of ten scoring titles (Art Ross Trophies) and nine NHL MVP's (Hart Trophies), his #99 was retired league-wide. He won four Stanley Cups with Edmonton in the 1980s before a major trade sent him to Los Angeles in 1988. After a brief stint in St. Louis, he finished his career with the New York Rangers in 1999.

Porifera

(5,000 species): The sponges are all water-dwellers (98% marine, 2% freshwater), and are sometimes classified separately from other animals because of their asymmetric bodies and lack of distinct tissues. They are sessile (immobile) except in early dispersing stages, and collect food particles via the sweeping motions of flagellated cells called choanocytes koh-AN-oh-"sites".

Confucius

(551-479 BC) Was a Chinese philosopher whose teachings are the basis for Confucianism, a tradition sometimes described as a philosophy and sometimes as a religion. His disciples organized his teachings into the Analects. He emphasized such ideas as li (decorum and proper behavior) and ren (benevolence or humaneness). He taught that disorder often arose from the failure to call things by their proper names, so he advocated the rectification of names. His followers developed his teachings in different directions; the most famous of them, Mencius, emphasized the innate goodness of human beings.

John B. Watson

(American, 1878-1958): He was the first prominent exponent of behaviorism; he codified its tenets in Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, arguing that psychology could be completely grounded in objective measurements of events and physical human reactions. His most famous experiment involved conditioning an eleven-month-old boy to be apprehensive of all furry objects by striking a loud bell whenever a furry object was placed in his lap.

Lexington and Concord

(April 19, 1775): The first battles of the American Revolutionary War were skirmishes near Boston in these two towns, as well as Cambridge, Lincoln and Menotomy. British regulars under Francis Smith attempted to destroy the supplies of the colonial militia, but were stopped by Minutemen. Ralph Waldo Emerson described the first shot as the "shot heard round the world."

Tudor

(England, 1485-1603): This group rose to power when Henry aligned with the Lancasters in the War of the Roses. He became King Henry VII following his victory at Bosworth Field. Their notable rulers included Henry VIII (who broke with the Catholic Church in England and had six wives) and Elizabeth I (whose lack of a husband and heir led to the extinction of the house).

Cowpens

(January 17, 1781): A turning point in the American recapture of South Carolina. Daniel Morgan commanded the Continentals and Banastre Tarleton led the British. The battle was fought between the Pacolet and Broad Rivers.

Greedy

Are algorithms that make the locally optimum or "best" choice at every step. Such algorithms may or may not produce an overall best solution. Consider an algorithm for making change in which you pick the largest coin smaller than or equal to the amount of change you need to give. If you need to give 7¢ change, you first pick a nickel (5¢) and still have to make 2¢ change, so you pick a penny (1¢) and still have to make 1¢, so you add an additional penny and have broken the 7¢ into 5¢ + 1¢ + 1¢. In the U.S. coin system, this is optimal in the sense of using as few coins as possible, namely three coins. However, in a coin system that offered coins worth 1¢, 3¢, 4¢, and 5¢, the greedy algorithm would give the same solution, even though a solution with fewer coins is possible (4¢ + 3¢).

The Snake River

Is a major river of the northwestern United States. Rising in Yellowstone National Park, the river bisects southern Idaho along its 1,078-mile route. Flowing through Pocatello and Boise, it forms much of the border between Idaho and Oregon, including the famous Hells Canyon. This river was a vital route for travelers headed west on the Oregon Trail, who followed the river most of the way to its mouth on the Columbia River.

Functional Programming

Is a paradigm based on the execution of various functions to calculate values. Functions in this type of programming are free of side effects, meaning that they do not change the program state but only compute values. These languages use currying to evaluate functions with multiple inputs. ML and Haskell are functional programming languages.

Mount Etna

Is a stratovolcano in eastern Sicily that plays a significant role in ancient Greek myths. Zeus trapped the monster Typhon under this volcano and the volcano is also the site of Hephaestus's forges. It 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 this volcano known as Valle del Bove or "Valley of the Ox."

Auguste and Louis Lumière

Were brothers who invented an improved cinematograph, which made them very early pioneers in the film industry. However, they were also important in the history of still photography, as their autochrome process was the first widely used technique that produced color photographs.

Interest Rate

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

Okavango River

This river flows for about 1,000 miles from central Angola, through Namibia's Caprivi Strip, and into the Kalahari Desert of Botswana. There, rather than flowing into the sea, it terminates in a massive inland swamp known as the Okavango Delta, an area that — especially during the wet season — teems with wildlife in an otherwise inhospitable region.

Vedas

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

Sir Gawain

Is a Knight of the Round Table and the son of Morgause and King Lot of Orkney, making him the nephew of King Arthur. He is the hero of the Pearl Poet's 14th-century romantic epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which his loyalty and resolve are tested by the title Green Knight (secretly Lord Bertilak), who survives his beheading at the hands of this knight and returns a year later to return the favor. His brothers Gareth and Gaheris are killed during Lancelot's rescue of Queen Guinevere, sending him into a frenzy.

Brahma

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

The Cherokee

These people lived as one of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes" of the southeastern United States, along with the Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminoles. In the early 1800s, this tribe adopted many American cultural practices, from settled agriculture and representative government to an original alphabet created by Sequoyah. Though their sovereignty was acknowledged in the case Worcester v. Georgia, these people were still driven west along the Trail of Tears after some members signed the Treaty of New Echota. Today, they are the largest federally-recognized Native American tribe.

Muammar al-Gaddafi

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

Claudius

(10 BC-AD 54, reigned AD 41-54) Was Caligula's uncle. A noted scholar, he was the last person able to read ancient Etruscan. He oversaw the conquest of Britain and centralized power through a bureaucracy featuring talented freedmen like Tiberius Narcissus. In AD 49, he married his niece Agrippina the Younger, who then poisoned both Claudius's son Britannicus and the Emperor himself.

Zhou Dynasty

(1046-256 BC) Were chariot warriors who overthrew the Shang dynasty. Although they ruled for nearly 800 years, during much of the time period real power lay in the hands of feudal lords. The sacking of this dynasty's capital by barbarians in 771 BC marks the beginning of the Eastern Zhou and the Spring and Autumn Period (771 BC - 476 BC). During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Hundred Schools of Thought (including Confucianism) flourished, and Sun Tzu wrote his Art of War. The end of the this era devolved into the Warring States period (476 BC - 221 BC), during which power coalesced into seven independent feudal states. The state of Qin eventually grew powerful and efficient enough that it was able to defeat the other six states and complete the unification of China.

Marcus Aurelius

(121-180, reigned 161-180) Was the last of Rome's "Five Good Emperors." With Lucius Verus, he inherited the throne from his uncle Antoninus Pius and secured a decisive victory over the Parthian Empire. He then spent much of his reign dealing with the Antonine Plague and fighting the Marcomannic Wars. During this time he wrote the Meditations, a journal and major text of Stoic philosophy.

Aldous Huxley

(1894-1963, United Kingdom). This author belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included the Victorian evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley. Although he is depicted in his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian "World State" in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford's model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, he imagined a world in which the fictional "Bokanovsky's Process" is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the "Brave New World" speech from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with "civilization." After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.

George Gamow

(1904-1968) This scientist was one of the first to explain the implications of the Big Bang theory of cosmology. He correctly predicted the abundance of hydrogen and helium in the early universe, nicknamed Alpher-Bethe-Gamow theory (an intentional pun on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha, beta, and gamma, for which the otherwise unrelated physicist Hans Bethe was included), and also theorized that the the heat from the Big Bang would still be visible as the cosmic microwave background radiation. Although he received no Nobel for this prediction, the CMB's discoverers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, as well as two later observers, John Mather and George Smoot, did receive Nobels.

De Stijl

(1917-1920s) Also known as neoplasticism, this movement (Dutch for "The Style") was founded in Amsterdam in 1917 and sought to create paintings that were completely abstract, with no references to nature whatsoever. This movement's paintings are typically set on a white background, use black lines to shape rectangular spaces, use only black and the three primary colors (red, yellow, and blue), contain no modulation, and use only perpendicular lines (diagonals are forbidden). While the movement's theories were outlined by Theo van Doesburg (Neo-Plasticism: Composition VII (the three graces), Composition decentralisee, Composition in Gray (Rag-Time)), the principal practitioner of this movement was Piet Mondrian (Broadway Boogie Woogie, Victory Boogie Woogie, Tableau I, Composition II in Red, Blue, and Yellow, Lozenge Composition with Red, Black, Blue, and Yellow); other painters from this movement include Vilmos Huszar and Bart van der Leck. This movement also manifested itself in the architectural works of Gerrit Rietvald (Schroder House, Red Blue Chair), Robert van't Hoff (Villa Henny), and J. J. P. Oud (Gallery house at Weissenhof Estate).

Endo

(1923-1996): He converted to Catholicism at the age of 11, and majored in French literature. His first works, White Man and Yellow Man, explored the differences between Japanese and Western values and national experiences. Silence tells of the martyrdom of the Catholic converts of Portuguese priests. The Samurai recounts the tale of a samurai sent to establish trade relations between his shogun and Mexico, Spain, and Rome. The latter two novels are generally considered to be Shusaku's greatest achievements.

Fantasia

(1940) Is a Walt Disney animated film consisting of eight animated story segments overlaid with classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski and performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra. This soundtrack, which includes Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and The Rite of Spring, was the first to be produced in stereoscopic sound (i.e., "in stereo"). The marquee segment of the movie is The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which Mickey Mouse magically summons a horde of dancing brooms in the castle of the wizard Yen Sid ("Disney" spelled backwards). A portion of the film in which a black centaur buffs the hooves of a white centaur was edited out in 1969 before the film's re-release. A sequel, Fantasia 2000, was released in 1999.

Key

A piece of music is the "home" scale of the work. It is most often indicated by the work's signature, a collection of sharps or flats that appears at the beginning of the work and on each subsequent line of music. A pair of these things may be parallel (beginning on the same pitch, e.g., C major and C minor), or relative (having the same signature, e.g., C major and A minor). Most works of music between the Baroque and Romantic periods end in the same key as they begin, with the exception that works that start in a minor note may end in the parallel major. A work's note is often used as a descriptor in its title (e.g. Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor).

Loire

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

Liberal Party and Conservative Party

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

The Magyars

Like the Huns these people were a nomadic people of central Asia. Their language is Ugric, related to Finnish and a number of west Siberian languages. These people occupied the Danube basin shortly before 900. They exploited the decline of the Carolingian empire to carry out raids on East Francia and Italy. The 955 Battle of Lechfeld, won by Germany's Otto the Great, halted their expansion into central Europe. At the end of the 10th century, their grand prince was baptized with the name Stephen and crowned the first king of Hungary.

Uffizi Gallery

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

Battle of Adrianople

Taking place near what is now Edirne, Turkey, this battle (AD 378) signaled the beginning of the spread of Germanic peoples into the Western Roman Empire. The Romans were led by the eastern emperor Valens, while the Goths were led by Fritigern. Eager for glory, Valens decided not to wait on reinforcements from the western emperor Gratian, and instead attacked the Goths. In the battle, over two-thirds of the Roman army was killed, including Valens. The battle was chronicled by Ammianus Marcellinus, who thought it so important that he ended his history of the Roman Empire with the battle.

Mitochondria

The powerhouses of the cell. They are double-membrane-bound organelles that are the site of respiration and oxidative phosphorylation, processes that produce energy for the cell in the form of ATP. The inner membrane of this part of a cell forms folds called cristae, which are suspended in a fluid called the matrix. Its matrix contains DNA and ribosomes.

Wright Brothers

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

This part of a circuit is governed by Ohm's law

V = IR. In other words, the voltage drop across a resistor (V) equals the current passing through the resistor (I) times the resistor's resistance (R). According to Joule's first law, the power dissipated by a resistor is P = I2R. Combining that fact with Ohm's law yields P = IV. The total resistance of a circuit depends on whether this part is arranged in parallel (different branches connecting to the same pair of nodes) or series (same branch). If two of these parts having resistance R1 and R2 are placed in series, the total resistance across them is R = R1 + R2; if they are placed in parallel, then 1/R = 1/R1 +1/ R2. A rheostat can be made by taking a material of uniform resistivity and changing how much of the material is in the circuit. A potentiometer is a rheostat with two terminals and a connection in the middle, so the middle terminal can set a precise, variable dividing point between the ends; therefore, a potentiometer can be used as a voltage divider. Rheostats and potentiometers are often operated by knobs or sliders. A Wheatstone bridge is a diamond-shaped arrangement of two resistors of known resistance, one rheostat, and a resistor of unknown resistance. With a DC voltage source between the two known resistors, and also between the rheostat and the unknown resistor, this setup can be used to find the resistance of the unknown resistor: an ammeter (device to measure current) is connected across the two other nodes and the rheostat is adjusted until no current flows. The formula for solving a Wheatstone bridge uses Kirchhoff's laws: the total current flowing into any point in a circuit equals the total current flowing out of the point, and the total voltage change around any loop of a circuit is 0 V.

Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor quasi una Fantasia ("Moonlight")

op. 27 No. 2, (1801-1802): As with the "Emperor," Beethoven did not give the "Moonlight" sonata its nickname; it was coined several years after the composer's death by Ludwig Rellstab, who commented on the first movement's resemblance to moonlight on Lake Lucerne. Beethoven's score calls for the sustain pedal to be held down through the entirety of the first movement. Often overshadowed by the ubiquitous first movement is the violent third movement, a Presto agitato sonata-allegro form with an extended coda, which on a larger scale serves as a recapitulation for the entire sonata. Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Giulietta Guicciardi, his pupil.

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major "Eroica"

op. 55 (1803-1804): Beethoven's Third Symphony was composed during the first part of his middle stylistic period, often referred to as his "heroic decade." Beethoven may have been influenced in the work's composition by his personal confrontation with his growing deafness. The second movement is a solemn, C minor funeral march, while the finale is a playful set of variations on a melody Beethoven used in several other works. The composer originally intended to title the symphony "Bonaparte"; in a popular but possibly apocryphal story, Beethoven ripped the title page from the score upon hearing that Napoleon had declared himself emperor.

Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor "Appassionata"

op. 57 (1804-1806): Again, Beethoven had no hand in the popular title of this sonata: the "Appassionata" label was applied by a publisher some years after Beethoven's death. The sonata begins ominously: a theme descends in open octaves to the lowest note of the contemporary piano before rising again in an arpeggio, immediately repeated a minor second higher. The second movement has no stable conclusion, instead directly leading to the third through the use of a diminished seventh chord. The final movement's coda, which itself introduces new thematic material, is one of the most demanding and difficult passages in all of the composer's repertoire.

eSwatini

(also commonly stylized as Eswatini) Adopted its current name in 2018, following a proclamation to that effect by King Mswati III, who uses the title Ingwenyama. The tiny absolute monarchy, which is sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique, had previously been known as Swaziland since it became a British protectorate in 1906 following the Second Boer War. The country, which is mostly populated by ethnic Swazis, gained independence from Britain in 1968. The new name, which was adopted in part to mark 50 years of independence, means "the land of Swazis" in the country's native tongue, which is also known as Swazi.

Lao Tzu

(also given as Lao Tse or Laozi) (dates unknown, 6th century BC) Is a quasi-mythical thinker of the Taoist tradition, to whom the pivotal Tao te Ching is attributed. Concepts associated with him include that of the Tao, or "the way," and wu wei, or a life of non-action in accordance with the Tao. In later centuries, he was accorded godlike status as one of the Three Pure Ones of Taoism, and is frequently depicted as an old man with a donkey. To him is attributed the quote "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Innocent III

(c. 1160-1216, pope 1198-1216) Ordered the disastrous Fourth Crusade and excommunicated Venetian crusaders who changed course from Jerusalem to sack Constantinople. He also initiated the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France. This man also convened the Fourth Lateran Council, which defined the dogma of transubstantiation and required Muslims and Jews to wear identifying clothing. In 1209, he excommunicated King John for refusing to recognize the appointment of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury.

Ming Dynasty

(1368-1644) Was the last native dynasty of China; its rulers came from the Zhu family. The use of the word "china" to describe fine porcelain originated from this period, as these people were well-known for producing high-quality porcelain. Its founding ruler, Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Hongwu), was a peasant leader of the Red Turbans who helped expel the Mongol Yuan rulers from China. He was succeeded by his grandson, who quickly lost power to Zhu Di (Emperor Yongle). During the reign of the Yongle emperor, the eunuch Zheng He led treasure fleets on seven voyages to display Chinese greatness. Zhu Di moved China's capital to Beijing. After his death, this dynasty banned maritime commerce, which left the dynasty vulnerable to pirates. The dynasty came to an end after the rebellion of Li Zicheng, which was caused by inadequate government response to inflation, famine, and floods. Simultaneously, the Manchu people — tributaries of the Ming from northeast China in what is now Manchuria — marched on the Great Wall. The Manchus suppressed Li Zicheng's revolt and took power in Beijing themselves.

Lorenzo Ghiberti

(1378-1455): A Florentine sculptor and goldsmith who taught both Donatello and Filippo Brunelleschi. He is best known for two pairs of bronze doors on the Florence Baptistery (associated with the Duomo, or Florentine Cathedral). He produced a single, low-relief panel to win a 1401 competition (defeating Brunelleschi) for the commission to design the 28 panels for the north doors. After that, he was given another commission to design ten panels for the east doors. This latter work, by far his most famous, was dubbed the "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo.

Kosovo

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

Grunwald/Tannenberg

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

Alexander VI

(1431-1503, pope 1492-1503) Was a prominent member of the Borgia family and the father of Cesare and Lucrezia. He excommunicated the Florentine friar Savonarola in 1498. With his son Cesare, he was accused of inviting prostitutes into the Papal Palace to host the scandalous "Banquet of the Chestnuts." In international affairs, he assigned New World territory to Spain in the bull Inter Caetera, which became the basis for the Treaty of Tordesillas.

Julius II

(1443-1513; pope 1503-1513) Was nicknamed the "Warrior Pope" for his military ambition in expanding the Papal States. He joined the League of Cambrai to resist Venetian expansion in northern Italy. He also instituted the Swiss Guard and commissioned Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo created a number of notable sculptures as part of a plan for his tomb, including the Rebellious Slave, Dying Slave, and a "Horned Moses" based on a mistranslation of the Vulgate.

Christopher Columbus

(1451-1506): On his first voyage (1492), he sailed for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, taking the Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria and landing at San Salvador in the Bahamas (where he dubbed the Arawak inhabitants "Indians") before discovering Hispaniola and founding the settlement of Navidad there. On his second voyage (1493), he returned to Hispaniola before discovering Jamaica. On his third voyage (1498), he discovered South America, and on his fourth voyage (1502), he landed in Central America.

Richard III

(1452-1485, r. 1483-1485) House of York. He was made Duke of Gloucester in 1461 when his brother Edward IV deposed the Lancastrian king Henry VI, as part of the Wars of the Roses. Upon Edward's death in 1483, he served as regent to his nephew Edward V, but likely had the boy murdered in the Tower of London that year. Two years later, he died at the hands of Henry Tudor's Lancastrian forces at Bosworth Field, ending the Wars of the Roses and beginning the reign of Henry VII.

Constantinople

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

Guru Nanak

(1469-1539) Was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten gurus of Sikhism. Collections of his hymns formed the original basis for the Guru Granth Sahib, the primary scripture of Sikhism, which is regarded as the eleventh guru. Many miracle stories about his life are told in his biographies, which are collectively known as Janamsakhis. According to one such story, when he died, his body disappeared and was replaced with flowers, which were divided among Hindus and Muslims. According to another such story, he slept with his feet facing the Kaaba; when Muslims tried to move them away, the Kaaba moved so that his feet were still facing it.

Charles VIII

(1470-1498, reigned 1483-1498; house of Valois): His short reign is remarkable for the enormous cost in men and money of his Italian campaign, but more so for the number of his successors that followed his catastrophic lead. He was motivated by a desire to govern Naples, which he had theoretically inherited. He died before he could surpass or absolve his disastrous first campaign with another.

Leo X

(1475-1521; pope 1513-1521) Was a son of Lorenzo de Medici whose papacy included the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. He revived the unpopular sale of indulgences to fund the construction of St. Peter's Basilica. Martin Luther responded by publishing his 95 Theses, which he denounced in the papal bull Exsurge Domine. At his coronation, this man was given a white elephant named Hanno by Manuel I of Portugal; the animal was buried beneath the Vatican after its death.

Clement VII

(1478-1534, pope 1523-1534) Was pope during the 1527 Sack of Rome and refused to annul Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon. He is not to be confused with Antipope Clement VII, whose election in 1378 began the Western Schism.

Clement V

(c. 1260-1314, pope 1305-1314) Moved the seat of the papacy from Rome to the French city of Avignon, where it remained for 67 years in a period nicknamed the "Babylonian Captivity."

Ivan IV

(1530-1584; ruled 1533-1584): He is known in the West as "Ivan the Terrible," but his Russian nickname would be more accurately translated as "awe-inspiring" or "menacing" (the original meaning of the English word "terrible"). He was proclaimed Grand Prince of Muscovy in 1533 and tsar in 1547. Scholars differ on whether he was literate and on how auspiciously his reign began. Early in his reign, he pushed through a series of well-received reforms and called a zemskii sobor (assembly of the land), but he had an amazingly cruel streak and eventually became unstable: he temporarily abdicated in 1564, killed his favorite son, created a state-within-the-state called the oprichnina to wage war on the boyars, and participated in the torture of his enemies. He combined the absolutist tendencies of his predecessors with his own violent personality, helping to plunge the country into the subsequent period of civil strife known as the "Time of Troubles."

Sir Francis Walsingham

(1532-1590) Is best known as the "spymaster" to Elizabeth I. After the accession of Mary I to the English throne, he fled with several prominent Protestants to Europe; there, he became radicalized against Catholicism upon witnessing the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre. As personal secretary to Elizabeth, he amassed a web of contacts, including Thomas Phelippes, the cryptographer who uncovered Mary, Queen of Scots's complicity in the Babington Plot. In 1587 he recruited Antony Standen due to Standen's friendship with Tuscany's ambassador to Spain, an arrangement that produced so many advance details about the Spanish Armada that Lord Henry Seymour quipped "you have fought more with your pen than...our English navy fought with their enemies." Though it has never been proven, author Christopher Marlowe is commonly believed to have been a spy for this man.

Elizabeth I

(1533-1603, r. 1558-1603) House of Tudor. Known as the "Virgin Queen" because she never married, as Henry VIII's daughter by Anne Boleyn, the Catholic Church considered her illegitimate. After the death of her Catholic sister Mary I, she tried to restore religious order by declaring England a Protestant state but naming herself only "Governor" of the Church. She foiled attempts at her throne by Spanish king Philip II and Mary, Queen of Scots; the latter person reluctantly executed in 1587. Her reign saw great expansion of the English navy and the emergence of William Shakespeare, but when she died, the Crown went to Scottish king James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Henry III

(1551-1589, reigned 1574-1589; house of Valois): His reign was suffused with blood, at first because of the continuous Wars of Religion that pitted Catholics against Huguenots, but later because of the struggles that arose when it became clear that he was going to be the last of the Valois line. The War of the Three Henries broke out after his brother died and the then-Protestant Henry of Navarre (later Henry IV) became heir, leading the Catholic Holy League to strike out of fear for its interests. He was assassinated by a crazed friar in 1589.

Henry IV

(1553-1610, reigned 1589-1610; founder of the house of Bourbon): This man, the king of Navarre, became the heir to the throne when his brother died in 1584. After fighting Catholic opposition in the War of the Three Henries, he renounced Protestantism and accepted Catholicism (supposedly saying "Paris is well worth a mass") to become king. With the help of Maximilien Sully he erased the national debt and removed much of the religious strife with the Edict of Nantes (1598).

Hunters in the Snow

(1565) By Pieter Bruegel the Elder. This painting is the most famous of the five surviving paintings from Bruegel's Months of the Year cycle. Several black birds are perched in the barren, snowy trees above the hunters in this painting, who are returning home with their dogs, having had very little success in their hunt. The town's rivers and pond have frozen over, preventing its water wheel from working, but the denizens have taken advantage of this and are ice-skating. The painting features in several films by famous directors, such as Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Mirror.

James I

(1566-1625, r. 1603-1625) House of Stuart. At age one he succeeded his mother Mary as King James VI of Scotland. As the great-great-grandson of Henry VII, he claimed the English throne upon the death of Elizabeth I. He was the intended target of Catholic fanatic Guy Fawkes' failed Gunpowder Plot in 1605. A believer in absolutism, he dissolved Parliament from 1611 to 1621, favoring ministers Robert Cecil and the Duke of Buckingham instead. His rule saw English expansion into North America, through royal charter in Virginia and Puritan protest in Massachusetts.

Peter Paul Rubens

(1577-1640) Was a Flemish painter who also served as a diplomat; his travels on diplomatic affairs allowed him to study art held in many different areas of Europe. He worked in nearly all major genres of painting of his time, including portraits (such as his numerous depictions of his second wife, Helena Fourment), biblical scenes (such as his 1614 Descent from the Cross, part of a triptych), mythological works (such as his The Origin of the Milky Way, a scene also painted by Tintoretto), and various landscapes. His Marie de' Medici cycle is a set of 24 portraits and highly allegorical works showing events from the life of Marie de' Medici, who was the queen of France, wife of Henry IV, and mother of Louis XIII; the cycle includes The Coronation in Saint-Denis and The Triumph of Truth. He is known for his many depictions of the nude female body in a full-figured, fleshy state.

Frans Hals

(1582-1666) Was a Dutch painter who worked in the city of Haarlem, and who created some of the best-known portraits of the Dutch Baroque. Many of his works are tronies (from the Dutch word for "face"), which are portraits in which the subject has an unusual, artificial facial expression or costume. His best known painting is The Laughing Cavalier, a 1624 portrait of a man in a wide-brimmed hat and extravagant clothes with an upturned moustache and a bemused expression (notably, the subject of the portrait is not actually laughing); because the subject of the painting looks straight forward, the painting's eyes seem to follow the viewer. His other works include a portrait of a Gypsy Girl in a white shirt and red bodice, as well as Malle Babbe, which shows a witch-like folk character holding a stein as an owl sits on her shoulder.

Sojourner Truth

(1797-1883) This woman was born into slavery as Isabella Baumfree in Dutch-speaking New York. She gave herself the name that she now uses in 1843 when she converted to Methodism and informed her friends that the spirit had called her. She was already well known as an abolitionist speaker when she attended the 1851 Ohio Women's Rights Convention and declared that she had "as much muscle as any man" in her most famous speech, "Ain't I a Woman?".

Artemisia Gentileschi

(1593-1656) Was an Italian painter whose work includes numerous biblical and mythical scenes, as well as many self-portraits—including one showing her as Saint Catherine and another showing her at work painting. As a teenager, this artist was raped by painter Agostino Tassi; during the public trial that resulted after her father Orazio (also a painter) pressed charges, she testified against Tassi while being tortured to supposedly ensure that her account was truthful. Her most notable works include her depictions of Judith Slaying Holofernes, in which she showed herself as the biblical slayer of an Assyrian general; she may have also painted Tassi's face on Holofernes. The painting, which was partly inspired by a similar Caravaggio painting, is extremely graphic for its time: blood spurts from Holofernes's neck as Judith coldly saws through it with a sword.

Nicolas Poussin

(1594-1665) Was a French painter who did most of his productive work in Italy. His output mainly consisted of mythical, biblical, and historical scenes. Some of his notable works include Et in Arcadia Ego, a pastoral scene showing three shepherds and a woman examining a tomb on which the painting's title has been carved. The title—a Latin phrase roughly meaning "I am even in Arcadia"—refers to the universal nature of death, and is an artistic memento mori, or reminder of human mortality. His mythology paintings include A Dance to the Music of Time—which shows Apollo's chariot in the sky above four figures dancing in a circle as an elderly representation of Time plays a lyre—and a depiction of The Rape of the Sabine Women.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

(1598-1680): A Roman who — with the rarely asked-about Francesco Borromini — defined the Baroque movement in sculpture. He is principally known for his freestanding works, including David and The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Bernini's David differs from that of Michelangelo in that the hero is shown "in motion," having twisted his body to sling the rock. He is also known for his massive fountains in Rome, including the Triton and the Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Anthony van Dyck

(1599-1641) Was a Flemish painter who created his most recognizable works while living and working in England. He trained and worked for many years in the studio of Peter Paul Rubens. In 1632 he was appointed the court painter to Charles I of England, whom he depicted in numerous portraits, including several equestrian portraits showing the king atop a horse in full black armor. His Charles I at the Hunt shows the king leaning on a walking stick and casually looking over his left shoulder while resting his left hand on his hip, next to a horse that is lowering its head. While in England, he also painted many portraits of English nobility and other court figures, such as his works depicting Henrietta Maria and Princess Mary.

Diego Velázquez

(1599-1660) Was the leading Spanish painter of the Baroque era and served as court painter to Philip IV of Spain. His masterpieces include Las Meninas, which shows the Infanta Margaret Theresa alongside her maids, dwarfs, and a dog; the painting also includes a self-portrait of him, who is at work on a large canvas, as well as the king and queen, who appear in a mirror on the background wall. His mythology-inspired works include the Rokeby Venus (so named because it was first displayed in England at Rokeby Park), in which a nude reclining Venus gazes at herself in a mirror being held up by Cupid. He also painted The Surrender of Breda, showing the moment after a military victory when the Spanish general Ambrogio Spinola was given the key to the title Dutch city.

Charles I

(1600-1649, r. 1625-1649) House of Stuart. He came into conflict with Parliament almost from the beginning of his reign: when his minister, the Duke of Buckingham, asked for money to fight a costly war against France, he was forced to sign the Petition of Right (1628). From 1629 to 1640, he tried to rule England without Parliament, a period known as his "Personal Rule" (or, according to his critics, the "Eleven Years' Tyranny"). His attempts to impose English forms of church government on Presbyterian Scotland resulted in the Bishops' Wars (1639-1640), a military humiliation that forced him to call the Short Parliament (spring 1640) and Long Parliament (fall of 1640 and after). He and the Long Parliament bickered over a variety of issues, including the fate of his advisor the Earl of Strafford, parliamentarian proposals for reform of the English church, and finally the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland (October 1641). In January 1642 he tried to arrest five of his opponents during the sitting of the House of Commons; Parliament demanded control over England's militia and by August 1642 the country was plunged into civil war. He fled to (pro-parliamentarian) London, choosing instead to set up his own Cavalier court at the university town of Oxford. Within four years his armies were defeated; from January 1647 he was a prisoner of Parliament. In 1648 royalist forces in provincial England rose up in the so-called "Second English Civil War," which pushed hardliners in Parliament to put the king on trial. Parliament established a "High Court of Justice" to try the king for treason; he was beheaded at Whitehall on January 30, 1649.

Louis XIII

(1601-1643, reigned 1610-1643; house of Bourbon): Sometimes working with his chief minister Cardinal Richelieu and sometimes against, Louis XIII turned France into the pre-eminent European power during his reign. This was largely achieved via French victories in the Thirty Years' War. The Three Musketeers is set in the early years of his reign.

Pierre de Fermat

(1601-1665, French) Is remembered for his contributions to number theory including his little theorem, which states that if p is a prime number and a is any number at all, then ap - a will be divisible by p. He studied Fermat primes, which are prime numbers that can be written as 22n + 1 for some integer n, but is probably most famous for his "last theorem," which he wrote in the margin of Arithmetica by the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus with a note that "I have discovered a marvelous proof of this theorem that this margin is too small to contain." The theorem states that there is no combination of positive integers x, y, z, and n, with n > 2, such that xn + yn = zn, and mathematicians struggled for over 300 years to find a proof until Andrew Wiles completed one in 1995. (It is generally believed that he did not actually have a valid proof.) This mathematician and Blaise Pascal corresponded about probability theory.

Benjamin Disraeli

(1804-1881, PM 1868, 1874-1880): Before becoming Prime Minister, he was instrumental in the passage of the Second Reform Act as leader of the House of Commons. Britain's only Prime Minister of Jewish descent, he was also a successful novelist. He promoted a strong, imperial foreign policy including investment in the Suez Canal and the peace achieved at the Congress of Berlin.

Rembrandt van Rijn

(1606-1669) Was a Dutch painter widely regarded as one of the greatest painters to have ever lived. His The Night Watch is a massive canvas showing a militia company led by Frans Banninck Cocq, who appears at the painting's center in a red sash; behind Cocq is a woman with a chicken hanging from her belt. The painting was once larger than it is today; it was cut down to fit into a display space, with the trimmed parts lost. The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp shows the title surgeon using forceps to hold up the muscles of an arm for other physicians to see; the corpse being dissected is that of a recently-executed criminal. He is renowned for his many self-portraits, both as himself in normal clothing (such as with his Self-Portrait with Two Circles), and as other characters (including as the title figure in The Prodigal Son in the Tavern, alongside his wife Saskia).

The Laughing Cavalier

(1624) By Frans Hals. This portrait, whose unknown subject is not actually laughing, acquired its common title after being moved to the Bethnal Green Museum in Britain in the 1870s; before that, it was simply known as Portrait of a Man. The painting's subject is dressed in fine black clothing appropriate to Calvinist sensibilities of the Dutch Republic, wears a giant white collar, has a prominent upturned moustache, and is 26 years old according to an inscription at the upper right hand corner.

Charles II

(1630-1685; r. 1660-1685) House of Stuart. While Oliver Cromwell ruled the Commonwealth, he was crowned King of Scotland in 1651. After Cromwell died, he used the Declaration of Breda to restore himself to the English throne. He fought two lackluster wars against the Dutch, and needed protection from Louis XIV through the Treaty of Dover. His wife Catherine of Braganza produced no legitimate heirs, but this "Merry Monarch" has as many as 14 illegitimate children. Tolerant of Catholics, he dissolved Parliament over the issue in 1681 and refused to prevent his brother James from succeeding him.

Pierre Beauchamp

(1631-1705) Taught dance to French King Louis XIV at Versailles for over two decades. An early director of the Western world's first dance institution, the Académie Royale de Danse, he collaborated extensively with Molière's acting company and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. He is often credited with codifying the five basic feet positions in ballet. His system of dance notation, later revised by Raoul-Auger Feuillet and Pierre Rameau and today known as "Beauchamp-Feuillet notation," was used until the late 1700s.

The Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Nicolaes Tulp

(1632) By Rembrandt van Rijn. Commonly known as just The Anatomy Lesson. The painting depicts the yearly public dissection held by the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, several of whose members paid commissions in order to be included in the portrait. Tulp's successor as the city anatomist, Jan Deijman, was also depicted by Rembrandt giving an anatomy lesson. The man being dissected is a criminal, Aris Kindt, who was hanged for armed robbery. A famous anatomy treatise by Andreas Vesalius can be seen opened at the painting's bottom right corner.

Johannes Vermeer

(1632-1675) Was a Dutch painter who lived and worked in the city of Delft, which he depicted in his 1660 work View of Delft—one of the earliest prominent examples of a cityscape in painting. Only 34 recognized works by this artist have survived to the modern day. Of these, likely the best-known is Girl With a Pearl Earring, which shows a young woman in a blue and gold turban looking back over her left shoulder, highlighting the title piece of jewelry; the painting inspired a novel of the same name by Tracy Chevalier. His painting, The Music Lesson, shows a young girl with her back to the viewer playing a virginal, as a man standing next to her sings. His works have been the subject of theories advanced by artists and scholars, including British painter David Hockney, that claim Vermeer used a camera obscura to assist in painting his works.

James II

(1633-1701; r. 1685-1688) House of Stuart. The 1678 Popish Plot against Charles II would have elevated a Roman Catholic to the throne, had it been real and not fabricated by Titus Oates. His three years, however, did feature heavy favoritism toward Catholics, so much so that Protestants invited his son-in-law William of Orange to rule England, deposing him in the Glorious Revolution. Exiled to Louis XIV's court, he made an attempt to regain his crown in 1690 but was routed at the Battle of the Boyne.

Belshazzar's Feast

(1635) By Rembrandt van Rijn. The painting shows a scene from the Book of Daniel in which the king of Babylon, Belshazzar, uses the loot his father Nebuchadnezzar stole from the Temple in Jerusalem in order to throw a feast. During the feast, God's hand appears and writes a prophecy on the wall predicting Belshazzar's downfall—a vision that frightens the onlookers in the painting as well, one of whom is spilling a goblet in horror. The Hebrew letters in the painting are based on a font created by the Dutch rabbi Menasseh ben Israel, but are written top to bottom instead of right to left.

Isaac Newton

(1643-1727, English) In pure math includes generalizing the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, doing the first rigorous manipulation with power series, and creating his method for finding roots of differentiable functions. He is best known, however, for a lengthy feud between British and Continental mathematicians over whether he or Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus (whose differential aspect he called the method of fluxions). It is now generally accepted that they both did, independently.

Basho

(1644-1694), A pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa: Generally acknowledged as the master of the haiku form, the most notable influences on his work were Zen Buddhism and his travels throughout Japan. He is noted for works like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), which includes descriptions of local sights in both prose and haiku. He took his pseudonym from the name of the simple hut where he retired: Basho-an, which means "Cottage of the Plaintain Tree."

Robert Walpole

(1676-1745, PM 1721-1742): Generally recognized as the first British Prime Minister, he established personal control over a Whig-dominated Parliament on behalf of the German-speaking George I. He rose to power after many rivals were tarnished by the collapse of the South Sea Company. His long tenure continued under George II, but his attempts to avoid British military commitments worldwide led to his downfall during the War of the Austrian Succession.

Puritans

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

Treaty of Utrecht

(1713) Were a series of treaties signed in this Dutch city that (mostly) ended the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). They were signed by France and Spain for one side and by Britain, Savoy, and the United Provinces (The Netherlands) for the other. The treaty confirmed a Bourbon prince (Philip, Duke of Anjou) on the Spanish throne, ending Habsburg control, but took steps to prevent the French and Spanish thrones from being merged. Some Spanish possessions — including Sicily, the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, and Gibraltar — were given to the victors.

Giacomo Casanova

(1725-1798) Was an adventurer and libertine from the Republic of Venice. He is now best remembered for his affairs, to the extent that his name is synonymous with "womanizer," but among many other occupations, he also worked as a spy. His spying, which he described in his French-language memoir Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life), included a stint working for France gathering information on the British ships docked in Dunkirk. He spent much of his life in exile from his native Venice, running from the authorities to avoid being arrested for his debts, but was allowed to return to Venice in 1774 in exchange for performing espionage work for the republic.

Catherine II

(1729-1796; ruled 1762-1796): She wasn't really a Russian at all: she was born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst (a minor German principality) and was chosen as the bride of the future Peter III. She had thoroughly Russianized herself by the time Peter became tsar, and soon had him deposed; she then dispatched several claimants to the throne and crushed a peasant uprising led by Emilian Pugachev. She also corresponded with Enlightenment philosophes, granted charters of rights and obligations to the nobility and the towns, oversaw the partition of Poland, and expanded the empire. This woman is well known for her extravagant love life: her 21 acknowledged lovers included Grigorii Potemkin (who constructed the famous Potemkin village on an imperial inspection tour).

George III

(1738-1820, r. 1760-1820) House of Hanover. Though he lost the American colonies in the Revolutionary War, Britain's economic empire expanded during his reign. While his ministers kept their lives, they fell from power frequently, including William Pitt the Elder, Lord Bute, and Lord North. Popular at home, he suffered from porphyria, causing the "madness" that ultimately led to the Regency period (1811-1820) of his son George IV.

Phillis Wheatley

(1753-1784) Was born in Africa and brought to the United States as a slave in 1761; her last name is her slave's name. She was freed in the 1770s shortly after the release of her collection Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Her poem "On Being Brought from Africa to America" says that "mercy" brought her from her "Pagan land" and taught her "benighted soul" about God and Christian redemption. She praised George Washington in her poem "To His Excellency General Washington."

Miguel Hidalgo

(1753-1811) He was a parish priest who became the leader of Mexico's first independence movement. After Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 and ousted the Spanish king Ferdinand VII, political movements advocating Enlightenment ideas of representative government and local self-determination sprung up in many of Spain's American colonies. This man belonged to one such group, which officials in the viceroyalty of New Spain attempted to suppress. In response, he called his congregation together and issued a call for revolt known as the "Grito de Dolores," or "Cry of Dolores" on September 16, 1810. The rebels captured the cities Guanajuato and Guadalajara, but were unable to take Mexico City. In 1811, he was captured and executed by the colonial regime. The leadership of the independence movement then fell to another priest named José María Morelos, who was himself executed in 1815. Although his movement was unsuccessful, September 16 is still celebrated as Mexico's official Day of Independence.

Nathan Hale

(1755-1776) Only participated in one spying mission, which failed, but his purported final words have become part of American legend. At the age of 21, he was a soldier in the Continental Army and agreed to undertake a spying mission to pose as a neutral citizen, disguised as a Dutch schoolmaster, in New York City. He was almost immediately exposed (possibly by his Loyalist cousin) and subsequently interrogated by Commander-in-Chief William Howe and then hanged as a spy. His supposed final words, much quoted in Patriot propaganda, were "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

Mary Wollstonecraft

(1759-1797) She was a British author and philosopher who is best known for writing A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792). In that text, she argued that women are inherently equal to men, but appear inferior because they do not have the same access to education. Two years before, she had responded to Edmund Burke's conservative Reflections on the Revolution in France with her own A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Her daughter, Mary Shelley, is famous as the author of Frankenstein.

Meriwether Lewis / William Clark

(1774-1809) (1770-1838): This expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, departed from Camp Wood (near St. Louis) in 1804, sailing up the Missouri River. The group wintered at Fort Mandan in what is now North Dakota, where they met Sacajawea, the Shoshone wife of the fur trader Toussaint Charbonneau. The group's last winter was spent at Fort Clatsop, along the Columbia River in Oregon near the Pacific.

Alexander I

(1777-1825; ruled 1801-1825): He took the throne in 1801 when his repressive father Paul was assassinated and immediately set out on a more liberal course, but he left his strongest supporters disappointed. He is best known for his wars with Napoleon (first as an ally and then as an enemy), and for seeking to establish a Holy Alliance in the years that followed. He was an eccentric and a religious mystic. Some even say that he didn't really die in 1825: instead, they argue, he faked his own death, became a hermit, and died in a monastery in 1864.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

(1777-1855, German) Is considered the "Prince of Mathematicians" for his extraordinary contributions to every major branch of mathematics. His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae systematized number theory and stated the fundamental theorem of arithmetic (every integer greater than 1 has a prime factorization that is unique notwithstanding the order of the factors). In his doctoral dissertation, he proved the fundamental theorem of algebra (every non-constant polynomial has at least one root in the complex numbers), though that proof is not considered rigorous enough for modern standards. He later proved the law of quadratic reciprocity, and the prime number theorem (that the number of primes less than n is is approximately n divided by the natural logarithm of n). He may be most famous for the (possibly apocryphal) story of intuiting the formula for the summation of an arithmetic sequence when his primary-school teacher gave him the task — designed to waste his time — of adding the first 100 positive integers.

Agustín de Iturbide

(1783-1824) Was a royalist general who changed his allegiances to become the first ruler of independent Mexico. Like many Creoles, or people of European descent born in the Americas, he feared that the insurgency would upset colonial hierarchies of race and class. In 1820, however, a liberal revolution in Spain caused conservative Mexican elites to reconsider the benefits of independence. Iturbide reached out to the insurgent leader Vicente Guerrero, and agreed to endorse legal racial equality in exchange for Guerrero's military support. Early in 1821 Iturbide released the Plan of Iguala, which is also known as the "Plan of the Three Guarantees" or "Plan Trigarante" because it called for Mexican independence, a wholly Catholic state, and the equality of all races. Iturbide's Army of the Three Guarantees soon forced Juan O'Donoju, the last viceroy of New Spain, to acknowledge Mexican independence in the Treaty of Córdoba. In 1822 he became the first emperor of Mexico, but a revolt led by Antonio López de Santa Anna forced him into exile in 1823. When he returned to Mexico in 1824, he was quickly executed.

George Washington's First Inauguration

(1789) Was the first to be held under the nation's new Constitution. This president was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, though the president's term officially began on March 4 (and Vice President John Adams was inaugurated on April 21). He was sworn in at Federal Hall in New York City, which at the time was serving as the nation's capital. The oath of office was administered by Robert Livingston, the chancellor of New York and co-author of the Declaration of Independence. In his inaugural address, he claimed "no event could have filled me with greater anxieties" than assuming the presidency, and described how he was "summoned by my country" from "a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection."

Pius IX

(1792-1878; pope 1846-1878) Was the longest-reigning pope in history. He reigned during Italian unification and remained a "prisoner in the Vatican" after the capture of Rome led to the annexation of the Papal States. Afterward, he rejected a Law of Guarantees that sought to define the rights of the Church within the Kingdom of Italy. He defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the decree Ineffabilis Deus and established papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. He released a controversial list of 80 heresies in his Syllabus of Errors.

Lucretia Mott

(1793-1880) She was a Quaker who agitated for both abolitionism and women's rights. When she attended the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, the male delegates excluded Mott and the other female delegates from the convention and made them sit in a segregated area. She then turned her attention to women's rights. She was older than many of the other prominent delegates to the Seneca Falls Convention, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton, whom she mentored. She briefly served as the first president of the American Equal Rights Association. She was also one of the Quakers who founded Swarthmore College.

Antonio López de Santa Anna

(1794-1876) Was a general who served as president of Mexico eleven different times between 1833 and 1855. After gaining independence, many Latin American nations fell under the rule of caudillos, or charismatic leaders who exercised both military and political power. As one of these figures, he cultivated an image of himself as a savior of the Mexican nation, and even held an elaborate funeral for the leg that he lost during a conflict with France known as the "Pastry War." However, he proved unable to prevent the loss of Mexico's northern territories. Despite routing the defenders of the Alamo, he was defeated by the forces of Sam Houston at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto and was forced to recognize Texan independence. A little more than a decade later, he seized control of the government during the Mexican-American War, only to lose major battles at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec, and be forced into exile. He returned to Mexico in 1853 and tried to establish a permanent dictatorship, but was challenged by the Liberal Plan of Ayutla, and was driven from power in 1855.

Franz Schubert

(1797-1828) Was an early Romantic composer from Vienna whose relatively short life largely overlapped with that of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Schubert wrote over 600 lieder, or German art songs. These lieder include works notable on their own, such as his Op. 1 "Die Erlkönig"; the two song cycles Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise; and lieder which he used as the basis for theme and variations movements in other namesake works, such as the "Trout" Quintet (for piano and string quartet, based on his lied "The Trout," or "Die Forelle"). His orchestral output included numerous symphonies, the most well-known of which are No. 8 in B minor, the "Unfinished" (so named because Schubert only ever completed two movements), and No. 9 in C major, known as the "Great C Major" (in part to distinguish it from No. 6, the "Little C Major").

Mary Shelley

(1797-1851, United Kingdom). As the daughter of the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman), and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to her while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani's experiments in "animal electricity," she wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a "monster." This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein's brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. She presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney's efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.

Felix Mendelssohn

(1809-1847) Was a German musical prodigy who completed his first symphony when he was only 15 years old. His five completed, published symphonies are numbered for the order in which they were published, not the order in which they were written. His "Italian" (No. 4 in A major) and "Scottish" (No. 3 in A minor) symphonies were inspired by his travels in the namesake countries. Mendelssohn's journey through Scotland included a trip to Fingal's Cave, which inspired his "Hebrides" Overture, whose theme he sketched on a postcard to his sister Fanny (who was also a composer). When he was 17 years old, he wrote a concert overture inspired by Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream; many years later, he wrote a complete set of incidental music for the play, including his famous "Wedding March." His non-orchestral music includes eight books of Songs Without Words for solo piano.

Edgar Allan Poe

(1809-1849) An American author known for his works in the detective fiction, science fiction, and horror genres. In "The Cask of Amontillado," the narrator, Montresor, lures Fortunato into catacombs with the promise of the title wine, but ends up chaining Fortunato to a wall and burying him alive due to unnamed "insults." This man also wrote "The Tell-Tale Heart," in which an unnamed narrator murders an old man with a "vulture-eye" and buries him beneath his floorboards. However, while being questioned by police, the guilty narrator hears the constant beating of his victim's heart, and orders them to "tear up the planks" to reveal the body. Other short stories by him include "The Gold-Bug," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Robert Schumann

(1810-1854) Was a German composer and music critic who identified and promoted many of the other best-known composers of the 19th century. He edited Neue Zeitschrift für Musik ("New Journal for Music") and lauded the music of Frederic Chopin and Johannes Brahms while both were relatively unknown. His early music mainly consisted of works for solo piano, such as Carnaval, which features a musical cryptogram. In 1841, he began to write orchestral music; his four completed symphonies include No. 1 in B-flat major, "Spring," and No. 3 in E-flat major, the "Rhenish." He married Clara Wieck, the daughter of Friedrich Wieck, his piano teacher, and a virtuoso pianist and composer in her own right. He battled mental illness throughout much of his life; he spent the last two years of his life in a mental asylum after attempting and failing to commit suicide.

Franz Liszt

(1811-1886) Was a Hungarian virtuoso pianist and composer who created a sensation with his performance tours across Europe, spawning a phenomenon that was given the nickname "Lisztomania." Among his innovations in the performance space, he was the first pianist to give solo concert-length recitals, playing entirely from memory. As a composer, he was seen as the head of a more progressive "New German School" of music. His music for the piano includes the notoriously-difficult Transcendental Études and the Hungarian Rhapsodies, which are based on Hungarian folk music. He wrote numerous works inspired by the tale of Faust, including a Faust Symphony and a set of Mephisto Waltzes. He is also generally credited with inventing the orchestral genre of the symphonic poem or tone poem, a form later taken up by Richard Strauss; his own works in this genre include Les préludes.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

(1815-1902) She is most famous for writing the "Declaration of Sentiments" that she presented at the first women's rights conference in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848. She based the text of her declaration on the Declaration of Independence; it included the line, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal." She was a close collaborator for many years with Susan B. Anthony.

Alexander II

(1818-1881; ruled 1855-1881): He embarked on a program of Great Reforms soon after taking the throne near the end of the Crimean War. The most famous part of his program was the serf emancipation of 1861 — a reform which occurred almost simultaneously with the end of American slavery (and whose gradual nature disappointed liberals), But he also introduced a system of local governing bodies called zemstvos, tried to increase the rule of law in the court system, eased censorship, and reorganized the army. He became more reactionary after an attempted assassination in 1866, and was successfully assassinated in 1881.

Adams-Onís Treaty

(1819) Settled a boundary dispute between the U.S. and Spain that arose following the Louisiana Purchase. It was negotiated by then-Secretary of State John Quincy Adams and most notably sold Florida to the U.S. in exchange for the payment of its citizens' claims against Spain. It also delineated the U.S.-Spain border to the Pacific Ocean leading to its alternate name, the Transcontinental Treaty.

Alexandrina Victoria

(1819-1901, r. 1837-1901; Empress of India 1876-1901) House of Hanover. The second-longest-reigning monarch in British history (after Elizabeth II), she relinquished much of the remaining royal power, both to her husband Albert and to her favored prime ministers, Lord Melbourne, Robert Peel, and Benjamin Disraeli. After Albert's death in 1861, she largely went into seclusion, though she influenced the passage of the Reform Act of 1867, which doubled the number of Britons who could vote.

Susan B. Anthony

(1820-1906) This woman was one of the most outspoken and most famous proponents of women's suffrage in the United States. Along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, she co-founded the first women's temperance society in the 1850s after they were excluded from an all-male temperance society. Together, in 1868, the two women founded a journal called The Revolution, which was dedicated to promoting women's rights. The following year, Stanton and her formed the National Woman Suffrage Association. In 1872, she gained fame when she was arrested for voting in the presidential election. She defended herself by quoting the Fourteenth Amendment, but she was convicted.

Mary Baker Eddy

(1821-1910) Was the founder of Christian Science. Sickly for much of her life, she sought treatment from many different healers, including a mesmerist and magnetic healer named Phineas Quimby. This experience inspired her to write a book titled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in which she equated God with the mind and argued that sickness is spiritual, not material. Eddy believed that mental techniques could be used not only for healing, but also to harm people, which she termed "malicious animal magnetism." She founded the Christian Science Monitor and laid out guidelines for her church in the Manual of the Mother Church, which established Christian Science reading rooms.

Hiram Revels

(1827-1901) Was a U.S. senator from Mississippi from 1870-1871. This person, who was born free in North Carolina, was of mixed ancestry; he was both the first person with Black ancestry, and the first person with Native American ancestry, to serve in Congress. He was not popularly elected (the 17th Amendment had not yet been passed); rather, he was chosen by the Mississippi state senate. Democrats objected to Revels (a Republican) being seated; they claimed that since the 14th Amendment had only been ratified in 1868, he had only been a citizen for two years, not the nine years required to serve in the Senate. As a senator, he successfully argued that Georgia should not be readmitted to the Union until it allowed Black persons to serve in its state legislature. After his time in the senate, he served as the first president of what is now Alcorn State University, America's first land-grant HBCU.

Jules Verne

(1828-1905, France). He offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In his 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth's crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. He later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, he considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda, and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by traveling eastward.

Porfirio Díaz

(1830-1915) Was a Liberal general who established a long-lasting dictatorship that eventually led to the Mexican Revolution. In 1876 he issued the Plan of Tuxtepec and seized power from the Liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada. He then dominated Mexican politics for the next 35 years and served as president continuously between 1884 and 1911 despite his earlier use of the slogan "Effective Suffrage and No Re-Election." While in office, he skillfully manipulated federal, state, and local politics, suppressed dissent, tamed the fractious Mexican army, opened Mexico to foreign investment, and oversaw the beginnings of the country's industrial development. His supporters praised him as a brilliant statesman who had ended the upheavals of the mid-nineteenth century; his detractors stressed the inequality, corruption, and systematic brutality of the political and economic systems fostered by him and his positivist advisors, who were known as Científicos. In 1908 he discussed the possibility of his resignation during an interview with the American journalist James Creelman, which helped open the door to electoral mobilization, and eventually to armed rebellion. The Anti-Reelectionist forces of Francisco Madero revolted in 1910 and won their first victories in 1911, sparking uprisings elsewhere in the country. Díaz promptly resigned under terms stipulated in the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, and spent the last years of his life in comfortable European exile.

Johannes Brahms

(1833-1897) Is often described as one of the "Three B's" of classical music, along with J. S. Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, and his output covered the entire gamut of genres. His Symphony No. 1 in C minor is nicknamed "Beethoven's Tenth" due to the final movement's resemblance to the "Ode to Joy" in Beethoven's Ninth. His Symphony No. 3 in F major is based on a three-note F-A-F motto, representing the phrase "Frei aber froh," or "Free but happy." His Ein deutsches Requiem, or A German Requiem, is a non-liturgical concert work for chorus and orchestra. He was also a prolific composer of chamber music, writing numerous sonatas and trios. His Op. 49 No. 4 "Wiegenlied" is commonly known as "Brahms' Lullaby." During his lifetime, he was often viewed as the head of a more conservative school of music relative to composers like Wagner and Liszt.

The Queen of Spades

(1834) Written 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!"

Nevsky Prospekt

(1835) Written 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.

Charles Ives

(1874-1954). He learned experimentation from his father George, a local Connecticut businessman and bandleader. He studied music at Yale but found insurance sales more lucrative; his firm was the largest in New York during the 1910s. Privately, he composed great modern works, including the Second Piano (Concord) Sonata (with movements named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau); and Three Places in New England (1914). His Third Symphony won Ives a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, while his song "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" was based on a Vachel Lindsay poem. Poor health ended both his insurance and music careers by 1930.

The Nose

(1836) Written 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.

P. B. S. Pinchback

(1837-1921) Was the first Black governor in U.S. history, serving briefly as governor of Louisiana from 1872-1873. He was the son of a white slaveowner and a freed slave. After becoming a state senator in 1868, he was appointed lieutenant governor in 1871 after Lieutenant Governor Oscar Dunn (also a Black man) died in office. When Governor Henry Clay Warmoth was impeached in December 1872, this man became acting governor through the end of Warmoth's term in January 1873. Although he was selected as a U.S. senator in 1872, Louisiana's white Democrats effectively blocked him from ever taking his seat. After leaving politics, he became an active member of the Comité des Citoyens, a group of New Orleans citizens who organized Homer Plessy's challenge to Louisiana's segregated transportation laws, leading to the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson.

Oliver Twist

(1838) The orphan Oliver is brought up in a workhouse, where he horrifies the beadle Mr. Bumble by asking for more food. Oliver is then apprenticed to the undertaker Mr. Sowerberry. After fighting with the bully Noah Claypole, Oliver runs away to London. On the road he meets the pickpocket Jack Dawkins, known as the "Artful Dodger," who leads him to the den of the criminal Fagin. A kindly gentleman named Mr. Brownlow temporarily rescues Oliver, but he is returned to Fagin by the cruel Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy. During an attempt to rob a house, Oliver is shot. He is tended by an occupant of the house named Rose Maylie, who eventually learns that Oliver is being plotted against by his villainous half-brother, Monks. The novel ends happily, as Oliver's chief enemies die or emigrate, and he is left in the care of Mr. Brownlow and Rose, who is revealed to be his aunt.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

(1840-1893) Was a Russian composer of the Romantic era whose ballets The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, and Sleeping Beauty are all among the most performed works in the standard repertoire. He completed six numbered symphonies and an unnumbered symphony based on Lord Byron's poem Manfred. Although he was not a part of the group of nationalistic Russian composers known as "The Mighty Five," it was his correspondence with the Five's leader Mily Balakirev that led to his Romeo and Juliet, an "overture-fantasy" whose love theme has become ubiquitous in popular culture. His 1812 Overture, a programmatic work depicting Napoleon's army being driven out of Russia, quotes the melodies of "God Save the Tsar" and "La Marseillaise," and calls for cannons to be fired in the score. He was gay, and many have speculated that his death shortly after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the "Pathétique," was effectively suicide.

Auguste Rodin

(1840-1917): A French sculptor known for stormy relationships with "the establishment" of the École des Beaux-Arts ay-kohl day boh-zar and his mistress, fellow artist Camille Claudel. His works include The Age of Bronze, Honoré de Balzac, The Burghers of Calais, and a massive pair of doors for the Museum of Decorative Arts (the Gates of Hell) inspired by Dante's Inferno. That latter work included his most famous piece, The Thinker.

The Old Curiosity Shop

(1841) Thirteen-year-old Nell Trent goes to live with her grandfather, a gambling addict who owns a London shop filled with mysterious and horrible objects. His gambling causes him to lose the shop to the evil dwarfish moneylender Daniel Quilp. Nell's older brother Frederick plots to marry her off to Dick Swiveller to get a share of a supposed treasure trove, but Dick eventually marries a servant girl nicknamed "the Marchioness" instead. A major subplot concerns Quilp's efforts to frame a boy named Kit Nubbles for theft. At the end of the novel, Quilp drowns, and Nell dies shortly before her grandfather also passes away.

William Henry Harrison's Inauguration

(1841) Was inaugurated on March 4 after defeating Martin Van Buren in the election 1840. His death on April 4, exactly one month after his inauguration, kicked off a constitutional crisis, as it was unclear whether his vice president, John Tyler, would succeed him by actually becoming the president or merely serving as the "acting president." At his inauguration, this man delivered an 8,000-plus-word speech that lasted two hours. Popular notions in American folklore hold that his long speech, delivered without wearing a coat, led him to catch pneumonia; it is far more likely, however, that he died of misdiagnosed typhoid and poor medical treatment.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

(1841) Written by Edgar Allan Poe. This story marks the debut of C. Auguste Dupin, the predecessor of many future literary genius detectives. The unnamed narrator begins by musing on the unique mental challenges presented by the games of chess and whist, and then recalls how Dupin was once able to practically read the narrator's mind regarding an actor named Chantilly. Both the narrator and Dupin then read newspaper accounts of the murders of two women; the daughter was strangled and stuffed up a chimney, while the mother had her throat slashed so deep by a razor (also found at the scene) that her head falls off when she is moved. Neighbors testify they heard two voices but one was unidentifiable. Bags of money at the scene lead to the arrest of local banker Le Bon; Dupin deduces that, because the money remains, Le Bon is innocent and robbery is not the motive. Offering his services to a police prefect known as "G," Dupin notes the extreme strength required of both murders, the odd language, and tufts of hair. He realizes the murderer was non-human and places a newspaper ad for a missing orangutan. A sailor confesses to the crime: he bought an orangutan in Borneo but could not control it, and when he got angry that the orangutan grabbed the razor and mimicked the sailor's daily shave, the orangutan ran off in a bestial rage and killed the two women.

Antonín Dvořák

(1841-1904) Was a Czech composer who, ironically, wrote his two best-known works while living in America. From 1892 to 1895, he was the director of New York's National Conservatory of Music; while living in the U.S., he wrote his Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World") and his "American" String Quartet (No. 12). The "New World" symphony is among the most popular and oft-performed works in the standard repertoire; its Largo second movement begins with an iconic English horn solo that was later adapted into the song "Goin' Home." He claimed that the material of the symphony was inspired by the styles of both African-American and Native American melodies, though all of the actual music is his own. His other works include two sets of Slavonic Dances, which are based on various styles of folk music—but no actual folk melodies—from his native Bohemia, including the dumka and the furiant.

The Overcoat

(1842) Written 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.

Belle Boyd

(1844-1900) Was a society woman from Virginia whose 1866 memoir Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison provides a highly embellished chronicle of her exploits. She claims she listened through a hotel's closet door to learn of James Shields's troop maneuvers, which she reported to Stonewall Jackson's men by literally sprinting across a battlefield. Tracked by operatives of Allan Pinkerton, she was arrested in 1862 and eventually released in a prisoner exchange. Sailing to England with letters from Jefferson Davis, her blockade runner was captured, after which she reportedly seduced her guard to allow the blockade runner's captain to escape. Though her spying contributions were scant, she later became an actress and lecturer on her actions, with the result that she was frequently mythologized in post-war Southern propaganda.

Alexander III

(1845-1894; ruled 1881-1894): Those who hoped that the assassination of Alexander II would lead to liberalization saw the error of their ways when the new tsar, launched his program of "counter-reforms." Under him, the state enacted a series of Temporary Regulations (giving it the power to crack down on terrorism), increased censorship, tightened controls on Russia's universities, created a position of "land captain" to exert state control in the countryside, and either encouraged or ignored the first anti-Jewish pogroms.

Ferdinand Esterhazy

(1847-1923) Was the French military officer and spy for the German Empire who perpetrated the acts of espionage wrongfully pinned on Alfred Dreyfus in 1894, prompting the Dreyfus Affair. He is believed to have written a sensitive missive known as the bordereau that was found in a trash can by a janitor; this was the key evidence in blaming Dreyfus, whose handwriting was determined (by unqualified scholars) to be a match. Gradually, evidence came to light incriminating him, including a letter from the German attache in Paris acquired by Georges Picquart. He requested a closed-door trial that exonerated him in 1898, which was seen as a cover-up by French commanders to avoid embarrassment at convicting the wrong man.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

(1848) Ended the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) and was signed in its namesake neighborhood of Mexico City. Its most significant result was the "Mexican Cession" transferring California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of four other states to the U.S. It also made the Rio Grande the boundary between Texas and Mexico.

David Copperfield

(1850) Dickens's favorite of his own books, and the most autobiographical. After David's father dies, his mother marries the cruel Mr. Murdstone. David is sent to a school where he is tormented by the headmaster Creakle, but finds comfort in his friendships with Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth. While working in London, David befriends the optimistic but indebted Mr. Micawber. Eventually, David escapes his grim warehouse job by walking to Dover. There, he finds his great-aunt Betsey Trotwood, who arranges for David to be educated by the lawyer Mr. Wickfield. David keeps in touch with his old nurse Clara Peggotty, whose relative "Little Em'ly" is seduced and abandoned by David's former friend Steerforth. Youthful infatuation causes David to wed the flighty Dora Spenlow, who eventually dies. After helping to extricate Mr. Wickfield from the schemes of the "humble" clerk Uriah Heep, David marries Mr. Wickfield's daughter Agnes. Throughout the story, David progresses in the literary world, ultimately becoming a successful novelist.

Daniel Chester French

(1850-1931): An American who created The Minute Man for Concord, Massachusetts and Standing Lincoln for the Nebraska state capitol, but who is best known for the seated statue in the Lincoln Memorial.

Antoni Gaudí

(1852-1926) This architect created many extraordinary buildings in Barcelona in the early 20th century. His Art Nouveau-inspired works include the Casa Mila and Casa Batllo apartments, known from their undulating façades, and several works for patron Eusebi Guell, including the Parc Guell, a park in Barcelona. He spent 40 years working on the Expiatory Church of the Holy Family (also known as La Sagrada Familia), which will be finished in 2026. He was also fond of using hyperbolic paraboloids in his work.

H. H. Asquith

(1852-1928, PM 1908-1916): Liberal Prime Minister who made sweeping reforms, including limiting the power of the unelected House of Lords with the Parliament Act in order to introduce the "People's Budget" of 1911, which established state pensions. Not a successful wartime leader, he lost control of a coalition government during World War I and was forced to resign in favor of David Lloyd George.

Bleak House

(1853) This novel revolves around the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has dragged on for many years as family members fight over an inheritance. The title home (which is actually pleasant, rather than bleak) is owned by John Jarndyce, who cares for his young relatives Richard Carstone and Ada Clare. Ada has a companion named Esther Summerson, who narrates much of the novel, and is Dickens's only female narrator. Esther suffers a severe illness after caring for a sick boy named Jo, and learns that she is the illegitimate daughter of Lady Dedlock. The lawyer Mr. Tulkinghorn discovers Lady Dedlock's secret but is murdered by the maid Hortense, a crime that is investigated by Inspector Bucket. Lady Dedlock dies after fleeing home and the Chancery suit ends, as the disputed inheritance has been totally consumed by court costs. Other memorable characters in the novel include the merchant Krook, who dies of spontaneous human combustion; Mrs. Jellyby, who busies herself with charitable causes but neglects her own family, and Horace Skimpole, whose blithe irresponsibility burdens others.

Jose Marti

(1853-1895, Cuba): Best known as a poet and a revolutionary, he fought tirelessly for Cuban independence. Imprisoned at age sixteen and exiled from the island several times, he settled in New York for the last fifteen years of his life, where he wrote essays on Walt Whitman, Jesse James, and the threat of Latin American economic dependence on the United States. His Ill-Omened Friendship (1885) is considered the first Spanish modernist novel, and his poetry collections include Our America and Simple Verses, which contains the poem "Guantanamera," the inspiration for several songs. He was killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos while participating in an invasion with other Cuban exiles.

Hard Times

(1854) Thomas Gradgrind is a fact-obsessed utilitarian from Coketown, in the north of England. He superintends a school whose students include an ambitious boy named Bitzer, and Sissy Jupe, a young member of Mr. Sleary's traveling circus. Mr. Gradgrind arranges for his daughter Louisa to marry Josiah Bounderby, an unpleasant older banker who employs Mr. Grandgrind's son, Tom. The politician James Harthouse tries to seduce Louisa, who returns home to her father and causes him to see the error of his ways. Tom Gradgrind steals from Mr. Bounderby, unsuccessfully tries to frame a worker named Stephen Blackpool, and flees to America.

James Frazer

(1854-1941) He was a Scottish anthropologist who primarily studied mythology and comparative religion. His magnum opus, The Golden Bough, analyzed a wide range of myths that center on the death and rebirth of a solar deity; the original publication controversially discussed the crucifixion of Jesus as one such myth. The work's title refers to a gift given to Proserpine (Persephone) by Aeneas so that he could enter the underworld in the Aeneid.

Louis Sullivan

(1856-1924) He did not design the first skyscraper but did become a vocal champion of skyscrapers as reflections of the modern age. Though most associated with Chicago, his best-known work is the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis. His partnership with Dankmar Adler produced over 100 buildings. Later works, such as the Babson, Bennett, and Bradley Houses, reflect an organic architecture distinct from that of his onetime employee Frank Lloyd Wright. His dictum that "form should follow function" strongly influenced modern architecture; his writings helped break the profession from classical restraints.

Dred Scott v. Sandford

(1857) Determined that people of African ancestry did not have the rights of citizens in the United States. Dred Scott was a slave who had been taken to Illinois and free parts of the Louisiana Territory before being brought back to Missouri, and claimed that being brought to free territory made him free. Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that African-Americans were not citizens and thus did not have the right to bring a lawsuit in federal court. Taney's ruling further found that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional under the Property Clause. President James Buchanan supported the Court's decision in the case, which was delivered two days after his inauguration. This ruling was later overturned by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Ain't I a Woman

(1857) Was an extemporaneous speech by abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio. Truth, a former slave, proclaimed that she could "work as much and eat as much as a man" and "bear the lash as well" while repeatedly returning to the question "and ain't I a woman?" Truth also remarked that, even as a woman, "nobody ever helps me into carriages" because of her race. The speech was later published and popularized by feminist Frances Dana Barker Gage.

The Atlantic

(1857-present) Was founded in Boston as an abolitionist periodical by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., and many others. In 1862 it published Julia Ward Howe's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and in 1963 it published Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" for a nationwide audience. More recently, it ran Ta-Nehisi Coates's 2014 article "The Case for Reparations," which advocates reimbursing the descendants of American slaves. Despite its political emphasis, it has only ever endorsed three presidential candidates: Abraham Lincoln in 1864, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Franz Boas

(1858-1942) Often called the founder of modern anthropology, this first professor of anthropology at Columbia University trained Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber, author Zora Neale Hurston, and many others. He conducted fieldwork on the Inuits of Baffin Island and the Kwakiutl (now referred to as Kwakwaka'wakw) on Vancouver Island. His publications include 1911's The Mind of Primitive Man, which describes a gift-giving ceremony known as the "potlatch."

Max Planck

(1858-1947) He allowed quantum theory to move forward in the early 20th century by correctly modeling how an object radiates heat, solving the ultraviolet catastrophe, which was a predicted unbounded increase in the amount of radiation emitted at high frequencies. His Law of Radiation superseded the Rayleigh-Jeans Law. He suggested that electromagnetic energy could only be emitted in specific packages, called quanta (singular quantum, from the Latin for "how much"), positing that the energy of this photon was equal to its frequency times a fixed value h, now known as the Planck constant.

Aaron Copland

(1900-1990). At first a modernist, he was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s, where he finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theater. By the 1930s, he turned to simple themes, especially the American West: El Salón Mexico was followed by the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring (1944), the last containing the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts." His Third Symphony contained his Fanfare for the Common Man, while Lincoln Portrait featured spoken portions of Abraham Lincoln's writings. He wrote several educational books, beginning with 1939's What to Listen For in Music.

A Tale of Two Cities

(1859) Paris and London are the title cities of this novel, which famously begins "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times." At the start of the novel, the French doctor Alexandre Manette is released after 18 years in the Bastille, where he was imprisoned to prevent him from revealing the crimes of the Evrémonde family. Dr. Manette relocates to England with the help of his daughter Lucie and the Tellson's Bank employee Jarvis Lorry. Lucie marries Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who bears a striking resemblance to the English lawyer Sidney Carton. Darnay is also a member of the Evrémonde family. After returning to Paris during the French Revolution, Darnay is arrested as the result of a vendetta against the Evrémondes waged by the Defarges, a proletarian couple who encode information about their enemies into Madame Defarge's knitting. Carton expresses his love for Lucie by taking Darnay's place in jail, and goes to the guillotine thinking "it is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done." Lucie and Darnay escape with the help of the governess Miss Pross, who shoots Madame Defarge.

Venustiano Carranza

(1859-1920) Was the "First Chief" of the Constitutionalist army during the Mexican Revolution, and president of Mexico from 1917 to 1920. After the death of Francisco Madero, this man issued the Plan of Guadalupe, and became the nucleus of opposition to Victoriano Huerta's regime. His movement was supported by the generals Pablo González, Álvaro Obregón, and Pancho Villa, who assembled armies in northern Mexico and pushed south to the capital. The southern general Emiliano Zapata also allied with this man to remove Huerta from power. After Huerta was forced to resign in 1914, members of his movement held a convention in the city of Aguascalientes. The convention formed a new government that was supported by Villa and Zapata, but opposed by González and Obregón. Constitutionalist and Convention forces battled until 1915, when his adherents gained the upper hand and the Convention split into separate factions, some of which continued to fight the Constitutionalists for years. He went on to call for a new constitution, to be based on the Liberal Constitution of 1857. The ensuing Constitution of 1917 went far beyond the minor reforms that he had envisioned, and promoted land redistribution, workers' rights, anticlericalism, and national ownership of Mexico's natural resources. Over the next several years, he proved reluctant to enact the 1917 constitution's more radical provisions, or to give up control of the government. Obregón forced him to flee the capital in 1920, and likely had a role in his subsequent assassination.

Great Expectations

(1861) The narrator Philip Pirrip, who is nicknamed "Pip," is brought up by his sister and her kind husband, the blacksmith Joe Gargery. While visiting a churchyard, Pip meets the escaped convict Abel Magwitch, and renders him aid. Later, Pip is hired to "play" with a girl named Estella at Satis House, whose owner Miss Havisham was spurned on her wedding day and has worn a wedding dress ever since. When the lawyer Mr. Jaggers reveals that a mysterious benefactor will fund Pip's education, Pip assumes that Miss Havisham is making him a "gentleman" so that he can marry Estella. Instead, Estella marries the wealthy Bentley Drummle, who mistreats her. Pip discovers that his benefactor was actually the convict Magwitch, and tries to help Magwitch flee England with the help of Pip's friends Startop and Herbert Pocket. However, the escape is foiled by Compeyson, the man who jilted Miss Havisham. Pip's great expectations are dashed, but he becomes a better person, and is finally reunited with the widowed Estella. Dickens modified the novel's conclusion at the suggestion of the author Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who objected to an ending in which Estella weds another man.

The Gettysburg Address

(1863) Was delivered by Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of a cemetery on the site of the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania. Delivered following Edward Everett's two-hour dedication oration, Lincoln's remarks ran for just two minutes. The president opened by referring to the birth of the United States "four score and seven years ago," when the founders created a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Lincoln praised the dead of Gettysburg for giving "the last full measure of devotion" and said he hoped their sacrifice would lead to "a new birth of freedom." Only five manuscripts of the speech exist, with the most complete draft being the Bliss Copy now kept at the White House.

Abraham Lincoln's Second Inauguration

(1865) Took place a little over one month before his assassination. His second inaugural address is among the most quoted pieces of American oratory. After noting that the Union and the Confederacy "[b]oth read the same Bible, and pray to the same God," he concluded his speech by stating "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." Many scholars believe that photos of this president delivering his address show John Wilkes Booth on the Capitol balcony looking down at the president.

Herbert George Wells

(1866-1946, United Kingdom). This author used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, he wrote about a "Time Traveller" who visits the year AD 802,701, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, he helped to establish another of science fiction's key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the "Tripods" and "Black Smoke" that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance, but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. He also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In the 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like "Beast Folk." A year later he published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a "reign of terror." However, Griffin's invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.

The Moonstone

(1868) Written by Wilkie Collins. Rachel Verinder's 18th birthday party is marred by the theft of the Moonstone, a sacred gem plundered from India that Rachel had just inherited. Suspicion falls on a trio of Indian jugglers, but also on Rachel herself, who behaves oddly and breaks off her engagement with Franklin Blake when Franklin leads the search. The maid Rosanna Spearman is also suspected, especially after she commits suicide by jumping into quicksand. Local inspector Sergeant Cuff cannot solve the mystery, but one year later, Franklin returns from abroad and learns that Rosanna, who was secretly in love with him, began impeding the investigation after a paint smudge made her suspect he was the thief. Franklin then meets with Rachel, who claims she saw Franklin steal the Moonstone but never told anyone to save their reputations. Eventually, Franklin learns that he was secretly fed laudanum at the party by Dr. Candy, and while in a drugged stupor took the Moonstone to protect it. The Moonstone later turns up for sale, upon which it is stolen by the trio of Indians. The Indians also kill the seller, who is revealed to be Godfrey Ablewhite, another party guest whose personal debts prompted him to keep the Moonstone when the drugged Franklin gave it to him. Other characters who narrate portions of the book include Miss Drusilla Clack, an Evangelical who constantly hands out moralizing tracts; Gabriel Betteredge, a servant obsessed with Robinson Crusoe; and Dr. Candy's opium-addicted assistant Ezra Jennings, an odd man with multi-colored hair.

Puck

(1871-1915) Was a humor and satire magazine best remembered for its vivid political cartoons. Founded by Austrian-born Joseph Keppler, it often glorified American imperialism and had an anti-Catholic lens. Iconic cartoons over its 45-year run include Jay Gould using Wall Street as a "personal bowling alley," robber barons slicing up America with carving knives, John D. Rockefeller as a king with an huge crown of railroads, Uncle Sam as a schoolteacher looming over racist caricatures of its new territories, and Columbia admiring her bonnet of gunboats in a mirror. (Puck should not be confused with Punch, a British magazine of the same era also noted for its political cartoons.)

Ernest Rutherford

(1871-1937) His gold foil experiment provided the first evidence that each atom is made up of a large, positively-charged nucleus, surrounded by a cloud of negatively-charged electrons. He won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this work. This scientist was also an early leader in nuclear fission techniques, having discovered the decay of carbon-14 and providing the impetus for modern carbon dating. As part of this research, he discovered the proton and neutron, the latter in cooperation with James Chadwick. He is also the only native New Zealander with an element named after him (Rutherfordium, atomic number 104).

Ralph Vaughan Williams

(1872-1958). Best known for reviving the Tudor style and folk traditions in English music, as exemplified in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1909). This man completed nine symphonies, the foremost his Second (London) in 1914; other principal symphonies included the First (Sea), Third (Pastoral) and Seventh (Sinfonia Antarctica). His orchestral work The Lark Ascending was based on a George Meredith poem, while Sir John in Love (1924) was a Shakespearean opera that featured the "Fantasia on Greensleeves." Hugh the Drover and The Pilgrim's Progress are other major operas.

Francisco Madero

(1873-1913) Led the 1910 revolution against Porfirio Díaz, and served as president of Mexico from 1911 to 1913. As the idealistic son of a wealthy Coahuilan family, he was in some ways an unlikely revolutionary. However, his idealism allowed him to challenge Díaz with a boldness that more powerful politicians and generals had lacked. After the Creelman interview was released, He wrote a book titled The Presidential Succession in 1910, which argued that it was time for Díaz to be replaced, and which revived Díaz's former slogan, "Effective Suffrage and No Re-Election." He then ran for president, but was arrested before the election. After escaping from prison, he issued the Plan of San Luis Potosí, which called for a general revolt in November 1910. Dissatisfaction with the Díaz regime coalesced around this man, who unseated the dictator and took power after democratic elections were held in the fall of 1911. However, he was unable to satisfy the far-reaching demands of the diverse coalition that had brought him to power. He was also disliked by the American ambassador Henry Lane Wilson and by former supporters of the Díaz regime, many of whom retained their positions in the government and army. In February 1913, Wilson encouraged General Victoriano Huerta to participate in a coup against Madero. After a period of fighting within Mexico City that is known as the Decena Trágica, or Tragic Ten Days, he was forced to resign. Huerta became president, and he was murdered a few days later.

Sidney Reilly

(1873-1925) Known as the "Ace of Spies," was an extremely prolific Russian-born spy primarily in the service of the U.K. and Japan, though he also worked for Germany and Russia. His identity was likely created by William Melville, a Scotland Yard agent for whom he worked as an informant. His global career included stints in Port Arthur, where he stole defense plans that allowed Japan to sneak-attack Port Arthur to spark the Russo-Japanese War; in France, where he snuck onto a Rothschild family yacht to try to convince William Knox D'Arcy to sell his oil rights to the British government; in Germany, where he pretended to be a factory foreman named Karl Hahn to steal weapons plans for Britain; and in Russia, where he may have led a failed 1918 plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks. Undercover agents in Russia eventually exposed him, leading to his execution in 1925.

Arnold Schoenberg

(1874-1951) Was an Austrian composer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1934. He was the leading figure and mentor of the "Second Viennese School," which also included Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who were his students. In 1908, he began composing atonal music, which has no tonic pitch or key center. He also developed the twelve-tone method of composition, one of the most influential musical styles of the 20th century and first fully realized in his Suite for Piano, Op. 25 (1923). His other musical innovations include the technique of klangfarbenmelodie ("tone-color melody"), which was used in the third movement of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909).

Arnold Schoenberg

(1874-1951). This Austrian pioneered dodecaphony, or the twelve-tone system, which treated all parts of the chromatic scale equally. His early influences were Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss, as evident in his Transfigured Night (1900) for strings. Yet by 1912, with the Sprechstimme (halfway between singing and speaking) piece Pierrot lunaire, he broke from Romanticism and developed expressionist pieces free from key or tone. His students, especially Alban Berg and Anton Webern, further elaborated on his theories. Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1933, he moved from Berlin to Los Angeles, where he completed A Survivor from Warsaw. The first two acts of his unfinished opera, Moses und Aron, are still frequently performed.

Emiliano Zapata/Pancho Villa

(1879-1919) and (1878-1923) Were both early supporters of Francisco Madero, opponents of Victoriano Huerta, and leaders of the Convention forces during the Mexican Revolution. The second man chiefly operated in northern Mexico, while the first was based in his home state, Morelos, south of Mexico City. In 1911 the second man and Pascual Orozco led Maderista forces at the Battle of Ciudad Juárez, while the first issued the Plan of Ayala, which called for the breakup of large haciendas and the restoration of communal lands known as ejidos. During Madero's presidency the second man was imprisoned by Victoriano Huerta, who also conducted a brutal military campaign against the peasant supporters of the first man. After Madero's death, the second man joined Carranza's army as the leader of the División del Norte, or Division of the North, and the first man established himself as the central leader of the various southern guerrilla movements. At the Convention of Aguascalientes, the second man's supporters sought to promote the rights of peasants and workers; Zapatistas took a less active role at the meeting but were willing to support the Convention government in opposition to Carranza. In the subsequent fighting, the first man's soldiers took the capital several times but were unable to hold it after 1915, the same year that the second man suffered defeats at the battles of Celaya and Agua Prieta. The first man retreated to Morelos and carried out local land reforms as the Constitutionalists focused on defeating the second man, who sought to obtain supplies by carrying out a 1916 raid on the American town of Columbus, New Mexico. In response to this incursion, the U.S. sent a "punitive expedition" led by General John J. Pershing to (unsuccessfully) pursue the second man across northern Mexico. The influence of the second and the first man declined, and both were eventually assassinated. However, the two men remain symbols of the Revolution's popular aspirations. The first man in particular has served as an inspiration to later movements such as the Chiapas-based EZLN, or Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

Margaret Sanger

(1879-1966) She was an early advocate of birth control and reproductive rights; she founded the American Birth Control League, which evolved into Planned Parenthood. As a young nurse living in New York City, she wrote columns about sexual education for the New York Call titled "What Every Mother Should Know" and "What Every Girl Should Know." She gave up nursing after one of her patients died of a self-induced abortion, and instead dedicated herself to educating women about contraception. In 1914, she began writing a newsletter called The Woman Rebel, in part to challenge the Comstock Act, which prohibited the sending of "obscene" material by mail, since she considered education about contraception to be an issue of free speech.

Michel Fokine

(1880-1942) Was accepted to the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age nine, eventually becoming a teacher there. He choreographed a four-minute ballet for Anna Pavlova called The Dying Swan, set to "The Swan" from The Carnival of the Animals (the title comes from a Tennyson poem entitled "The Dying Swan"). He mentored Vaslav Nijinsky and featured him in early works like Les Sylphides, a ballet based on the music of Frédéric Chopin. After Sergei Diaghilev hired him to work for the Ballets Russes in Paris, he showcased Nijinsky's talents in several ballets based on the work of famous composers, such as Scheherazade, The Firebird, Petrushka, Daphnis et Chloé, and The Spirit of the Rose. However, once Nijinsky turned to choreography this man quit the Ballets Russes, only returning after Nijinsky's dismissal.

Mustafa Kamal Ataturk

(1881-1938) was the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey and the country's first president. He rose to prominence as a commander of Ottoman forces at the Battle of Gallipoli during World War I. After the war, he dissolved the Ottoman Empire and the Islamic caliphate and created a secular nationalist state based in Ankara. Among the reforms he initiated were a Hat Law replacing the fez with Western-style hats, the adoption of family surnames, and use of the Latin alphabet for the written Turkish language.

Alfred Radcliffe-Brown

(1881-1955) This anthropologist is considered the founder of a school of anthropology known as structural functionalism, which focuses on identifying the groups within a society and the rules and customs that define the relationships between people. His own early fieldwork was conducted in the Andaman Islands and Western Australia, where he studied the social organization of Australian tribes. After teaching in Australia, South Africa, and at the University of Chicago, he returned to England, where he founded the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Oxford.

Igor Stravinsky

(1882-1971). He studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Sergei Diaghilev: The Firebird and Petrushka. His Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913), however, is what inaugurated music's Modern era. A pagan story featuring polytonal music, The Rite of Spring shocked the audience so much that riots ensued, leading a stunned man to pursue rational, "neoclassical" music, such as his Symphony of Psalms. In 1940 he moved to Hollywood, where he composed his one full-length opera, The Rake's Progress, with libretto by W. H. Auden. Late in life, he adopted the serialist, twelve-tone style of Anton Webern, producing the abstract ballet Agon (1957).

Clement Attlee

(1883-1967, PM 1945-1950): Won a huge Labour landslide victory in 1945 between the end of the war in Europe and victory in Japan. He founded the modern welfare state based on the Beveridge Report, including the National Health Service under his minister Nye Bevan. Attlee's Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, took the U.K. out of Palestine and sent troops to the Korean War.

Walter Gropius

(1883-1969) Though he designed the Fagus Factory (Alfeld, Germany) and the Pan American Building (New York City), he is best known for founding the Bauhaus. Beginning in Weimar in 1919 and moving to a Gropius-designed facility in Dessau in 1925, the Bauhaus school emphasized functionalism, the application of modern methods and materials, and the synthesis of technology and art. Its faculty included artists Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Josef Albers. He would later head Harvard's architecture department from 1938 to 1952, shifting its focus to incorporate modern design and construction techniques.

Bronisław Malinowski

(1884-1942) The Polish-born boy studied at the London School of Economics, where he would later spend most of his career. He described the "kula ring" gift exchanges found in the Trobriand Islands in Argonauts of the Western Pacific, and the use of magic in agriculture in Coral Gardens and Their Magic. He also argued, in opposition to Sigmund Freud, that the Oedipus complex was not a universal element of human culture in his book on Sex and Repression in Savage Society.

Niels Bohr

(1885-1962) This physicist reconciled Rutherford's results from the gold foil experiment with Max Planck's quantum theory to create a model of the atom (the model was named after him) in which electrons resided in specific energy levels at specific stable radii. This model was the basis for Johann Balmer's work with spectroscopy and Johannes Rydberg's energy formula, which explicitly stated the frequency of light that an electron would emit if it went from a higher energy to a lower energy. He and his son fled to the U.S. in World War II under the pseudonym "Baker," and contributed to the Manhattan Project.

How Much Land Does a Man Need?

(1886) Written 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) Written 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.

Cosmopolitan

(1886-present) Began as a classy, largely inoffensive magazine until 1965, when Helen Gurley Brown became its editor and made it a women's magazine geared towards fashion and romantic relationships. (Three years prior, Brown rose to fame for her popular, controversial non-fiction book Sex and the Single Girl.) This new angle was viewed as misogynistic by most leading feminists; copies were burned alongside Playboy at protests against the 1968 Miss America pageant. In 1989 it ran an article falsely stating heterosexual women cannot contract HIV, prompting protests from ACT UP and other gay organizations.

The Michelson-Morley experiment

(1887), Conducted by Albert Michelson and Edward Morley at what is now Case Western Reserve University, disproved the existence of the luminiferous aether, a hypothetical medium through which light waves supposedly moved. (The aether is sometimes called simply "ether," but is not to be confused with ethers from organic chemistry.) The experiment used an interferometer, a device that splits a beam of light and aims it using mirrors to allow the beam to interfere with itself; the interferometer was mounted on a slab of marble floating in a pool of mercury so that it could turn without friction, to eliminate the possibility that the interferometer was misoriented. While Michelson and Morley expected to find a shift in the interference pattern's fringes as a result of the ether, the experiment showed that the Earth had no motion relative to the ether, suggesting that the ether did not exist. Often called the most famous failed experiment in science, the Michelson-Morley experiment is a fundamental test of special relativity.

Ruth Benedict

(1887-1948) A colleague and friend of Margaret Mead, she studied the Zuni, Dobu, and Kwakiutl cultures in Patterns of Culture, using them to illustrate the idea of a society's culture as "personality writ large." She also described Japanese culture in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, a work written during World War II at the request of the U.S. government.

Erwin Schrödinger

(1887-1961) This scientist contributed to the early formulations of quantum theory as a foil to Werner Heisenberg, Niels Bohr, and Paul Dirac, criticizing their Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics with thought experiments like his famous Schrödinger's Cat argument. He formulated both the time-independent and time-dependent equations named after him, which are partial differential equations that describe how quantum systems behave. His work was the basis for Heisenberg's matrix formalism, Feynman's path-integral formalism, and quantum mechanical perturbation theory, which considers the effects of a small disturbance to a quantum system.

The Bet

(1889) Written 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."

Ivan Pavlov's Classical Conditioning Experiments

(1901) Were among the first to study the ways in which unrelated unconditioned and neutral stimuli could be linked together through repetition to produce a conditioned response. Pavlov, who studied the digestive tracts of dogs (work that won him the 1904 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine), noticed that his canine subjects began to salivate as soon as they saw the lab assistant who normally fed them, which he called "psychic secretion." Pavlov designed an experiment in which dogs heard the sound of a metronome (commonly misidentified as a bell) and were then presented with food. With repetition, the neutral stimulus of the metronome became linked to the unconditioned stimulus of food and the unconditioned response of salivation to produce the conditioned response of salivating at the sound of the metronome.

The Kreutzer Sonata

(1889) Written 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.

Vaslav Nijinsky

(1889-1950) Was known as the greatest male dancer of his era, but what he really wanted to do was choreograph. His boss at the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, gave him the opportunity in 1912 with The Afternoon of a Faun, set to the music of Claude Debussy, and a year later a riot broke out at the premiere of another ballet he choreographed, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. (The exact cause of the riot is unclear.) In 1919 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He never danced again in public, and spent much of the rest of his life in various asylums and institutions.

Casey Stengel

(1889-1975; manager) He managed the Yankees to ten pennants and seven championships, including a record five in a row from 1949 to 1953. The "Old Perfessor" did not use a set lineup or pitching rotation, instead using a bewildering number of platoon arrangements. Somehow this did not undermine his defense, as his Yankees led the league in double plays six times. Remembered as a player for his two game-winning home runs, one an inside-the-parker, against the Yankees in the 1923 World Series, off the field his vaudevillian personality involved him in many famous incidents. When in 1958 he was called in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly to testify on why baseball should be exempt from antitrust regulation, he testified with an hour's worth of classic "Stengelese." When the baffled politicians let him go and called on Mickey Mantle to answer their questions, he replied, "My views are about the same as Casey's."

Sergei Prokofiev

(1891-1953). He wrote seven symphonies, of which the First ("Classical," 1917) is the most notable. While in Chicago, he premiered the opera The Love for Three Oranges, based on Italian commedia dell'arte. He moved to Paris in 1922, where he composed works for Sergei Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, including The Prodigal Son. In 1936 he returned to the USSR, where he completed the popular children's work Peter and the Wolf and the score for the film Alexander Nevsky. When Stalin denounced this man as "decadent," the composer was forced to write obsequious tributes to the premier. He survived Stalin, but only by a few hours; both died on March 5, 1953.

Zora Neale Hurston

(1891-1960) Set many of her works in her hometown of Eatonville, Florida. Her best-known novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is about Janie Crawford, whose sexual awakening is compared to the blossoming of a pear tree. Janie successively marries Logan Killicks, Jody Starks, and Tea Cake; when Tea Cake attacks her after being bitten by a rabid dog during a hurricane, she shoots him. She was also a prominent anthropologist, collecting African-American folklore in books like Mules and Men. Her work was relatively unknown until 1975, when Alice Walker published the article, "In Search For [this woman]".

Ward No. 6

(1892) Written 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.

Manfred von Richthofen

(1892-1918) Better known as the "Red Baron," this man was credited with shooting down 80 enemy aircraft, making him the top overall ace of World War I. His personal command, Jagdgeschwader 1, became known as "Richthofen's Flying Circus" due to the variety of colors used on its planes. He died on April 21, 1918, when he was shot aboard his red Fokker triplane; though the Royal Air Force credited Canadian ace Roy Brown with the kill, it is more likely that he was brought down by ground fire from Australian troops in the trenches.

Louis de Broglie

(1892-1987) His work quantifying the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics earned him the 1929 Nobel Prize in Physics. His doctoral thesis, which proposed that all particles have a characteristic wavelength dependent on their momentum, was so groundbreaking that the reviewers passed it directly to Albert Einstein, who endorsed it. In opposition to the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, he later worked to define a purely causal interpretation, but his work remained unfinished until David Bohm refined it in the 1950s.

The Final Problem

(1893) Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes stories made Doyle a celebrity, but Doyle, feeling cheapened by the work, decided to kill off Holmes in this story. The story begins with Watson welcoming in a bleeding Holmes, who recounts that Professor Moriarty—Holmes's alleged archnemesis, despite first appearing in this story—has just tried to kill Holmes via a staged car accident, a falling brick, and an armed thug. Holmes plans to go to Europe to defeat Moriarty without alerting him; however, despite Holmes disguising himself as an Italian priest and giving Watson circuitous instructions, Moriarty tails them by rail, though Holmes and Watson evade him. In Strasbourg, Holmes learns that Scotland Yard has busted Moriarty's organization but have failed to catch the man himself, leading Holmes to continue to Switzerland. During a hike to the Reichenbach Falls, a messenger tells Watson that a sick woman at their hotel needs a doctor; Holmes knows this is a trap laid by Moriarty but says nothing. Finding no such woman, Watson rushes back to the falls, where footprints and signs of a struggle convince him that Moriarty found Holmes and, during a fight, both fatally tumbled over the waterfall.

George Herman "Babe" Ruth

(1895-1948; pitcher and outfield) The rough son of a saloon keeper, grew up on the Baltimore waterfront and in the St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. Released after signing a baseball contract with the minor-league Baltimore Orioles, he was bought by the Boston Red Sox and played with them for six seasons, winning 89 games and three World Series, and, in 1919, setting a new single-season home-run record: 29. Already famous as a player, eater, and carouser, Boston sold him to New York for the 1920 season, where his fame became legend. Moved from the pitcher's mound to the outfield, he won nine home-run titles and four World Series from 1920 to 1934. In 1927 he hit 60 home runs and led the "Murderers' Row" Yankee lineup to a sweep of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. He hit his controversial "Called Shot" homer against the Cubs during the third game of the 1932 World Series after allegedly gesturing towards the centerfield stands. Since his retirement from baseball in 1935, many of his most famous pitching and batting records have been surpassed, but power hitting as a legitimate approach towards playing baseball continues. Before this baseball player, the homer was a rare occurrence.

Lázaro Cárdenas

(1895-1970) Was a revolutionary general who served as president from 1934 to 1940, and who worked to fulfill the Constitution of 1917's promises of land reform and nationalization of key resources. After Carranza's death, Mexico was ruled by the "Sonoran dynasty" of Álvaro Obregón and Plutarco Elías Calles, who stabilized the country and implemented limited reforms. Calles also founded a forerunner of the PRI, or Institutional Party of the Revolution, which dominated Mexican politics throughout the 20th century. After stepping down as president, Calles continued to control Mexican politics from 1928 to 1934 during a period known as the "Maximato." However, this man surprised Calles by turning against him, and forcing him into exile. As president, he also broke up large estates into communal ejidos, promoted organized labor, and expropriated foreign-owned oil fields in 1938 to form the national oil company Pemex, or Petróleos Mexicanos. These actions made him very popular, but once he left office the Mexican government's commitment to economic redistribution soon waned. In 1988 Lázaro's son Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas challenged PRI control of politics by running for president as the candidate of the PRD, or Party of the Democratic Revolution. Although electoral fraud prevented Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas from winning, his challenge helped to bring about political changes that eventually led Vicente Fox of the PAN, or National Action Party, to be elected president in 2000.

The Cross of Gold Speech

(1896) Was delivered by former Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in support of the "free silver" economic policy. Bryan lambasted "the idle holders of idle capital," who benefitted from a currency based on the gold standard. Instead, Bryan supported bimetallism as a way to make "the masses prosperous." At the end of the speech, he dismissed the gold standard as a "crown of thorns" and proclaimed "You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." The speech catapulted Bryan to prominence and helped him secure the Democratic nomination for president, though he lost the election to Republican William McKinley.

Jimmy Doolittle

(1896-1993) This man served as a flight instructor for the U.S. Army during World War I, and after the war became a celebrated race pilot, reaching a world-record speed of 296 miles per hour in 1932. Rejoining the military after Pearl Harbor, he personally led the "Doolittle Raid," in which 16 B-25 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and bombed the Japanese home islands in April 1942. Following the raid, he commanded the Eighth Air Force that launched massive bombing raids against Germany.

Amelia Earhart

(1897-1937?) More than 70 years after her disappearance, she still remains the most famous female aviator. In 1932 she became the first woman to make a trans-Atlantic solo flight, and three years later she became the first pilot of any gender to fly solo from Hawaii to California. In June 1937, she and navigator Fred Noonan embarked on a 29,000-mile, around-the-world flight in a twin-engine Lockheed Electra. They completed most of the journey but became lost and eventually disappeared on the leg between Lae, New Guinea, and Howland Island in the Pacific Ocean. Speculation as to their ultimate fate continues to this day.

Wiley Post

(1898-1935) In 1931, he and navigator Harold Gatty completed a circumnavigation of the globe aboard the Winnie Mae, an experience that the two wrote about in Around the World in Eight Days. Two years later, he became the first solo pilot to complete an around-the-world trip. He then began investigating the possibility of high-altitude flight and, using a pressurized suit of his own design, reached a height of 50,000 feet and may have been the first to encounter and use the jet stream. Today, this man is mainly remembered for the circumstances of his death; while flying through Alaska with world-famous humorist Will Rogers as his passenger, he crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, and both men died.

George Gershwin

(1898-1937). Known at first for producing popular songs and musicals with his older brother Ira, he successfully melded jazz and popular music with classical forms, most famously the Rhapsody in Blue (1924), the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra (1925), and the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935), based on a story by DuBose Heyward. His first major hit was 1919's "Swanee," sung by Al Jolson, and his 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing was the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. He died of a brain tumor at age 38.

The Lady with a Dog

(1899) Written 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."

Ernest Hemingway

(1899-1961) An American author many of whose stories feature the semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams. Adams appears in "Big Two-Hearted River," in which he goes on a fishing trip to the town of Seney, Michigan. In "Hills Like White Elephants," a woman named Jig talks with a man at a train station, considering an unnamed "procedure," which is implied to be an abortion. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" begins with the description of a frozen leopard carcass; its protagonist, Harry, is a writer who dies of gangrene while on an African safari with his wife Helen. He also apocryphally wrote a six-word story consisting of the words "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Kawabata

(1899-1972): Recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first Japanese author to win the Nobel. His works combine classic Japanese values with modern trends, and often center on the role of sex in people's lives. Many of his short stories are only a few pages long, a form given the name "palm-of-the-hand." He is best known for three novels: Thousand Cranes, based on the tea ceremony and inspired by The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain, about the relationship of an old man and his daughter-in-law; and Snow Country, about an aging geisha. A friend of Mishima Yukio, he was also associated with right-wing causes and openly protested the Cultural Revolution in China. He committed suicide two years after Mishima.

Miguel Asturias

(1899-1974, Guatemala; Nobel 1967): This man left his native Guatemala in 1923 to study in Paris. There he discovered Mayan mythology, and translated the Popol Vuh into Spanish; the theme would pervade his work, such as 1963's Mulata de tal. He most famous novel, El señor presidente (1946), was a satire against the oppressive Guatalemalan dictatorship. He also completed a trilogy that blasted exploitation by the American-led United Fruit Company, and the short-story collection Weekend in Guatemala (1956), based on the CIA-led overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz's liberal government.

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 his 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. His 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

(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. His 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 his best-known stories appeared in the collections Ficciones and Labyrinths, the latter of which is named after a common motif in his 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.

Jorge Luis Borges

(1899-1986, Argentina): One-quarter English, this man learned that language before he learned Spanish. Educated in Europe during World War I, he met a circle of avant-garde poets in Spain, which inspired him to found the ultraismo movement and publish the collection Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923) when he returned to Argentina. While working in a library, he developed his greatest short stories, collected in A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), and The Aleph (1949). By his fifties, a disorder inherited from his father had taken his eyesight, but in 1962 he completed the influential story collection Labyrinths.

Aaron Copland

(1900-1990) Was one of a litany of American composers who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, for whom he wrote the solo keyboard part in his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924; revised as Symphony No. 1 in 1928). "El Salón México" (1936) was the first of his highly successful "Populist" works based on folk or folk-like themes, which also included his three major ballets: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). His opera The Tender Land (1954) included the chorus "The Promise of Living." He utilized modified serial techniques in his later works; he composed very little in his last 25 years.

Yasser Arafat

(1929-2004) was the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 until shortly before his death in 2004. In the late 1950s, he and other Palestinian refugees founded the political party Fatah, which in the late 1960s became the dominant faction within the PLO. Under his leadership, the PLO was based in Jordan until it was expelled in 1970 in Black September. With Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, he negotiated the 1993 Oslo Accords establishing the Palestinian National Authority.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

(1902) Written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This novel was the first Holmes story to appear after "The Final Problem." Holmes is solicited by James Mortimer, whose friend Charles Baskerville recently died in terror, with nearby canine footprints consistent with a myth about a hellish hound who kills Baskerville heirs. The next heir, Henry, is almost shot by a bearded pursuer in London, leading Holmes to send Watson to Baskerville Hall to protect Henry while he investigates. At the estate on the moors, Watson learns that two neighbors, the Stapleton siblings, are behaving oddly, as are the Baskerville servants, the Barrymores, and Laura Lyons, the woman Charles was supposed to meet the night of his death. Watson learns that Mr. Barrymore is skulking around to secretly aid his brother, an escaped convict, and discovers through Laura that a shadowy figure walking the moors at night is actually Holmes, laying low. Holmes discovers that Laura was used by Jack Stapleton to lure Charles onto the moors, where Stapleton—a distant heir of the Baskervilles—killed Charles with his huge pet dog. Holmes and Watson then use Henry as bait; the ruse works, and they kill Stapleton's dog, who has been painted with phosphorus to appear spectral. Stapleton drowns in the Grimpen Mire while fleeing, and Holmes and Watson learn Stapleton's supposed "sister" is actually his wife, who refused to help her villainous husband.

Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones

(1902-1971) An Atlanta native, and the greatest amateur golfer of all time, he never turned pro, but won thirteen major championships in eight years, including four U.S. Amateurs. In 1930 he won what was then considered the Grand Slam, taking both the British and U.S. Amateur and Open Championships. After that season, he retired from golf to practice law, but helped design a golf course in Augusta, Georgia that became the permanent site of the Masters in 1934.

Charles Lindbergh

(1902-1974) In May 1927, he made the first non-stop, solo, trans-Atlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis, a single-engine Ryan aircraft. He took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island and landed at Le Bourget Field in Paris 33½ hours later. This man later married Anne Morrow in 1929, and the 1932 kidnapping and murder of their son Charles Jr. was called "The Crime of the Century"; ultimately, Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and executed. Prior to the U.S.'s entry into World War II, he urged the U.S. to remain neutral and was active with the America First Committee, though during the war he flew 50 combat missions in the Pacific.

Eddie Shore

(1902-1985): Born in Fort Qu'Appele, Saskatchewan, "The Edmonton Express" is the epitome of "Old-Time Hockey," as stated in the 1977 film Slap Shot. As a blue-liner for the Boston Bruins he was named a first-team NHL All-Star for eight of nine years during the 1930s, and is the only defenseman to win four Hart Trophies as NHL MVP. He later went on to be the owner/GM of the AHL's Springfield Indians, and the anecdotes about his stingy ways are now hockey lore.

Ruhollah Khomeini

(1902-1989) was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and served as Iran's supreme leader from the country's 1979 establishment until his 1989 death. He was known by the title ayatollah, given to those who are experts in Shi'ite religious theology and jurisprudence. He emerged as Iran's leader in the wake of the revolution that overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Iran, and which led to the Iranian hostage crisis. He was commonly referred to the U.S. as the "Great Satan."

George Orwell

(1903-1950, United Kingdom). He condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. His speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay "Shooting an Elephant" and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay "Politics and the English Language"). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, he wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner, and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of "Animalism" such as "Four legs good, two legs bad." However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Four years later, he imagined a future Britain subsumed into Oceania, a superpower under the harsh rule of "Big Brother", in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother, but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes ("Newspeak"), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, "we've always been at war with Eastasia," "war is peace," "Big Brother is watching you").

Pablo Neruda

(1904-1973, Chile; Nobel 1971): Born Neftali Reyes, he adopted the surname of the 19th-century Czech poet Jan Neruda. Gabriela Mistral was the head of his school in the small city Temuco. In 1923 his best-known work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, was published, which led to diplomatic appointments. As a penniless consul in Burma in the 1930s, he wrote the surrealist collection Residence on Earth. He served in the Chilean senate in the 1940s, though government opponents forced him into exile over his Communist views. Crossing the Andes on horseback inspired his epic Canto general (1950). He died of cancer days after his friend Salvador Allende was deposed.

Treaty of Portsmouth

(1905) Ended the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). It was signed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine after negotiations brokered by Theodore Roosevelt (for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize). Japan had dominated the war and received an indemnity, the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria, and half of Sakhalin Island, but the treaty was widely condemned in Japan because the public had expected more.

Howard Hughes

(1905-1976) Subject of the 2004 film The Aviator, this man was a skilled aircraft pilot and designer who in the 1930s set speed records for flights across the United States and around the world. His most famous plane was the H-4 Hercules, or "Spruce Goose," a massive wooden plane that to this day holds the record for longest wingspan on an operational craft. Meant to carry as many as 750 troops, he by himself was the pilot during its lone flight, a one-minute hop in 1947. Also, a movie producer, he is widely remembered for the various eccentricities, such as a pathological fear of germs and a refusal to cut his hair or nails, that he exhibited late in life.

Agnes de Mille

(1905-1993) The niece of the film director Cecil B. DeMille and granddaughter of the economist Henry George, worked extensively with American Ballet Theater, but the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo commissioned her most famous work, Rodeo. That ballet, featuring music by Aaron Copland (possibly assisted by an uncredited Leonard Bernstein), details a love rectangle between characters known as American Cowgirl, Champion Roper, Head Wrangler, and Rancher's Daughter. Her other notable stage ballets include Three Virgins and a Devil and Fall River Legend (based on the life of Lizzie Borden). She also found success in musical theater, creating a revolutionary "dream ballet" for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!.

Dmitri Shostakovich

(1906-1975). His work was emblematic of both the Soviet regime and his attempts to survive under its oppression. His operas, such as The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, were well received at first—until Joseph Stalin severely criticized his work in Pravda in 1936. Fearful for his security, he wrote several conciliatory pieces (Fifth, Seventh/Leningrad, and Twelfth Symphonies) in order to get out of trouble. He made enemies, however, with his Thirteenth Symphony ("Babi Yar"). Based on the Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem, Babi Yar condemned anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Kurt Godel

(1906-1978, Austrian) Was a logician best known for his two incompleteness theorems, which state that if a formal logical system is powerful enough to express ordinary arithmetic, it must contain statements that are true yet unprovable. Unfortunately, he developed paranoia late in life and eventually refused to eat because he feared his food had being poisoned; he died of starvation.

Cubism

(1907-1930s) With a name also coined by Louis Vauxcelles, the movement was developed almost entirely by Pablo Picasso, whose Les Demoiselles d'Avignon introduced the movement in 1907. Influenced by the simple geometries of African masks, Picasso's movement sought to allow an object to be viewed from many sides at once by breaking down the figures into angles and shapes. The movement as a whole can be subdivided into three movements: analytical, (1907-1912), synthetic,(1912-c. 1930), and curvilinear (1930s). Analytical was highly experimental, showing jagged edges and sharp multifaceted lines, such as in Picasso's Girl With a Mandolin. Synthetic was inspired by collages and featured flattened forms of normal objects, such as in Picasso's Mandolin and Guitar. Curvilinear contrasted with the flattened and firm edges of synthetic by featuring more flowing, rounded lines, such as in Georges Braque's Houses at l'Estaque. Besides the aforementioned pioneers of this movement, Picasso (whose other Cubist works include Guernica and The Poet) and Braque (Pitcher and Violin, Viaduct at l'Estaque, Still Life with Metronome), other prominent members of this group include Juan Gris (Portrait of Picasso, Guitar and Pipe), Jean Metzinger (Deux Nus, Tea Time), Robert Delaunay (Simultaneous Windows on the City, La Ville de Paris), Albert Gleizes (The Bathers, Portrait de Jacques Nayral), Fernand Leger (Still Life with a Beer Mug), and Henri Le Fauconnier (L'Abondance).

The Rutherford gold foil experiment

(1908-1913), Sometimes named after Rutherford's assistants Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, discovered the positively-charged nucleus of the atom; as a result, it disproved J. J. Thomson's plum pudding model. The experimenters fired alpha particles (helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold foil. (They also used other elements, including silver.) The scattered particles were detected by a screen containing zinc sulfide, which fluoresced when the alpha particles hit it. While most of the alpha particles went straight through the foil with minimal scattering, a small fraction of alpha particles were reflected back at the source. This result was unexpected, as backscattering could only occur if the alpha particles were colliding with a particle massive enough to reverse their momentum. Rutherford said "It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you."

Richard Wright

(1908-1960) Wrote the 1940 bestseller Native Son. The protagonist of that novel, Bigger Thomas, gets a job as a chauffeur for Mary Dalton, but he suffocates her with a pillow for fear of being discovered in bed with her. Bigger later rapes and murders his girlfriend Bessie, and is ultimately sentenced to death for the murders. His memoir Black Boy describes his youth in the Jim Crow South and his move to Chicago, where he joins and then becomes disillusioned with the Communist Party. He also wrote Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of novellas including "Big Boy Leaves Home" and "Fire and Cloud."

Simone de Beauvoir

(1908-1986) This woman was a French writer and philosopher perhaps best known for her feminist treatise The Second Sex (1949). In that work, de Beauvoir argued that "womanhood" is defined by its differences from masculinity, which is perceived as normal. The Second Sex contains the famous line, "One is not born a woman, but becomes one." The book is divided into two parts, titled "Facts and Myths" and "Lived Experience." One fact about her often mentioned in quiz bowl questions is that she was a lover of Jean-Paul Sartre. She is often considered one of the pioneers of "second-wave" feminism, which emphasizes sexuality, the workplace, and other forms of inequality over the first-wave focus on voting and property rights.

Claude Lévi-Strauss

(1908-2009) In the 1930s, he did fieldwork with the Nambikwara people of Brazil, which formed the basis for his thesis on "The Elementary Structures of Kinship." He held the chair in social anthropology at the Collège de France from 1959 to 1982, during which time he published such books as The Savage Mind and a tetralogy about world mythology whose volumes include The Raw and the Cooked. He pioneered in applying the structuralist methods of Ferdinand de Saussure to anthropology, which led him to study cultures as sets of binary oppositions.

The Millikan oil-drop experiment

(1909), Performed by Robert A. Millikan and Harvey Fletcher to measure the charge of the electron. In the first step, the terminal velocity of an oil drop was measured, which means that the drag force (which can be calculated using Stokes' law) equals the force of gravity. From this, the mass can be calculated. Then, by turning on an electric field, the particle starts to move upward with a terminal velocity when the electric force balances out the forces of gravity and drag. Using this, and the mass of the drop, the total charge on the drop can be calculated. Millikan and Fletcher found that the total charge on the drops were always quantized—that is, always an integer multiple of some constant; specifically, the constant they found is about 1.59 × 10-19 coulombs, within 1% of the currently accepted value.

Futurism

(1909-1914) Inspired by the scientific and technological advances of the start of the 20th century, a group of Italian artists came together to form this movement in 1909, seeking to represent the glory of machines and speed in their art; in his "The Futurist Manifesto", Filippo Marinetti declared that "a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace." They used a cubist-inspired approach to represent figures in multiple states at once, thus giving their works an animated yet shattered feel. Notable artists from this movement include Umberto Boccioni (Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, Development of a Bottle in Space, The City Rises, Dynamism of a Cyclist), Giacomo Balla (Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, Abstract Speed + Sound), Carlo Carra (Funeral of the Anarchist Galli), and Gino Severini (Armored Train in Action, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin). Although Marcel Duchamp is not usually associated with this movement, his Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (which caused an uproar at the Armory Show in 1913) displays many characteristics of this type of painting.

Metaphysical painting

(1910-1920s) Influenced by the work of late 19th-century German philosophers, metaphysical painters sought to create enigmatic scenes which beckoned viewers to interpret a meaning based on symbols, suggestions, and impressions, thus foreshadowing the Surrealist paintings of the following decades. In many of these paintings, human figures are represented by shadows or lifeless dummies and are placed in mysterious settings of seemingly infinite space, giving the canvasses dreamlike, eerie, and vaguely threatening qualities. Additionally, the paintings were given intentionally enigmatic titles to contribute to their cryptic effect. This type of painting was based on the works of Italian artists Giorgio de Chirico (The Disquieting Muses, The Song of Love, Melancholy and Mystery of a Street, Le Reve Transforme), Giorgio's brother Alberto Savinio, and former person from this movement Carlo Carra (The Oval of Apparition). The movement came to an end in the 1920s after an argument between de Chirico and Carra over who had founded the group.

Samuel Barber

(1910-1981) Was a classicist composer best known for his "Adagio for Strings" (1936), which he adapted from his String Quartet, and which was premiered under the baton of the legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other major orchestral works include his Piano Concerto (1962), his ballet score Cave of the Heart (1947) based on the Greek tale of Medea, and his single-movement "First Symphony" (1936, revised 1943). His vocal works include "Dover Beach" (1931) and "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" (1947). For much of his life, he maintained a romantic relationship with the opera composer Gian-Carlo Menotti. His first opera, Vanessa (1958), won the Pulitzer Prize; his second major opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1966), was a flop.

Sam Snead

(1912-2002) No golfer has won more PGA Tournaments than Snead's 81, and he amassed 135 victories worldwide. Nicknamed "Slammin' Sammy," he won seven major professional championships between 1942 and 1954, but he is known more for the one he never won: the U.S. Open. In 1939 he led the Open for 71 holes but lost on the last hole when he took an eight. In the 1960s and '70s he won a record six Senior PGA Championships.

Suprematism

(1913-1920s) Immediately prior to the Russian Revolution, a group of Russian artists formed the independent this movement, so named because they believed that non-objective reality was greater than anything that could be achieved by representation; in his "The Non-Objective World: The Manifesto of Suprematism", suprematist founder Kazimir Malevich stated "By 'Suprematism' I mean the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art. To the artist in this movement the visual phenomena of the objective world are, in themselves, meaningless; the significant thing is feeling." This movement's works often consist of simple geometric shapes of limited color placed at diagonals or some thoughtful arrangement on a white background. Major works by Kazimir Malevich in this style include Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying, Black Square, Black Circle, Suprematist Composition: White on White, and Suprematism. After the communists took control of Russia, the movement died out, much like many other abstract art movements under totalitarian governments.

Benjamin Britten

(1913-1976). Reviver of the opera in the U.K., most notably with Peter Grimes (1945), the story of a fisherman who kills two of his apprentices. He broke through with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), a tribute to his composition teacher, and wrote incidental music for works by his friend W. H. Auden. With his companion, the tenor Peter Pears, he founded the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and wrote operas such as Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. His non-operatic works include The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946) and War Requiem (1961), based on the anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed during World War I.

Octavio Paz

(1914-1998, Mexico; Nobel 1990): A prominent poet and essayist, he supported leftist causes in Mexico; he fought briefly for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He published the poetry collection Luna silvestre at age 19, and his 584-line poem The Sun Stone deals with the planet Venus, an important symbol to the Aztecs. While studying in Los Angeles, he observed flamboyantly-dressed Mexican-American pachucos ("zoot-suiters"), who inspired him to write about Mexico and its Native American/mestizo heritage in his pivotal essay collection The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Another prose work, In the Light of India (1997), reflected his part-(East) Indian heritage.

J. D. Salinger

(1919-2010) An American author best known for the novel The Catcher in the Rye. Many of his short stories featured the Glass family, including "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," in which Seymour and Muriel Glass are on vacation at a Florida resort. Seymour meets a young girl named Sybil Carpenter and talks with her about the title creatures, before returning to his hotel room and shooting himself. In "For Esmé—with Love and Squalor," the narrator Sergeant X replies to a wedding invitation with two distinct memories; in the first, he meets Esmé, an English orphan, during a church choir practice, and in the second, set during his time as a soldier in Bavaria, he receives a letter containing a wristwatch from Esmé. Both of those stories are included in his collection Nine Stories.

The Wizard of Oz

(1939) Is an MGM adaptation of L. Frank Baum's children's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The cast includes Frank Morgan as the title wizard, Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West, and Judy Garland as the protagonist, Dorothy Gale, who, with her dog Toto, is whisked from Kansas to the mystical land of Oz by a tornado. This movie was one of the first films to use three-strip Technicolor, although the credits and the framing sequences set in Kansas were filmed in sepia-toned black-and-white. The film won two Oscars, including Best Original Song for "Over the Rainbow," but lost the Best Picture award to Gone With the Wind.

Dada

(1916-1925) Deriving its name from a nonsense word that literally means "hobby horse" (supposedly chosen by stabbing a knife into a dictionary), this movement was an anti-art movement in Zurich, Cologne, Berlin, Paris, and New York that rejected artistic and social norms in order to protest the establishment. Fervently opposed to the useless slaughter of World War I, they rejected conventional methods of representation and exhibition: they abandoned oil and canvas, often did work on glass, and accepted "readymades" (commonplace objects selected and exhibited as works of art) as valid art forms. This movement's works often relied on location or accident, such as if a glass should shatter, the artist would hail the accident as an enhancement or an achievement brought about by chance; much like many other abstract artists, they favored artistic concept over execution. The foremost proponent of this movement was Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades include Fountain, L.H.O.O.Q., In Advance of the Broken Arm, and Bicycle Wheel, in addition to the aforementioned non-Dada painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2. Duchamp's piece The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), consists of two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust, and utilizes chance procedures; when the glass broke in a shipping crate and received a large crack, Duchamp left the cracks intact, incorporating the "accident" into the piece. Other key artists in this movement include Jean Arp (Cloud Shepherd, Shirt Front and Fork), Man Ray (Lampshade, Le Violon d'Ingres), Raoul Hausmann (Mechanical Head (The Spirit of Our Time), Kp'erioum, ABCD (Self-portrait)), Hannah Hoch (Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Beer-Belly of the Weimar Republic), Francis Picabia, and Hans Richter.

Gwendolyn Brooks

(1917-2000) Became the first African-American person to win a Pulitzer in 1950 for her poetry collection Annie Allen. Many of her works reflect her experiences in Bronzeville, a neighborhood on Chicago's South Side that became a center of African-American life during the Great Migration. Her best-known poem, "We Real Cool," is set at the Golden Shovel and consists of three-word sentences starting with "We," such as "We / Lurk late" and "We / Jazz June." Though primarily a poet, she also wrote the novel Maud Martha.

I. M. Pei

(1917-2019) Born in China, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1935. Though he has also designed moderate-income housing, he is best known for large-scale projects. His works include the Mile High Center in Denver, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, the John Hancock Building in Boston, the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Fragrant Hill Hotel in Beijing, and the recent Miho Museum of Art in Shiga, Japan. He may be best known for two fairly recent works: the glass pyramid erected outside the Louvre in 1989, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, completed in 1995.

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk

(1918) was a "separate peace" signed by the Bolshevik government of the new USSR and Germany. The USSR needed to make peace to focus on defeating the "Whites" (royalists) in the Russian Civil War, and it gave up Ukraine, Belarus, and the three Baltic countries after Germany invaded, an outcome worse than a German offer which chief Soviet negotiator Leon Trotsky had rejected. The treaty was negotiated in Brest (in what is now Belarus) and was nullified by the subsequent Treaty of Versailles following Germany's defeat.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

(1918-1970) was the president of Egypt from 1954 to 1970. As a young military commander, he helped form the Free Officers, who led a 1952 coup that overthrew Egypt's king, Farouk I. He precipitated the Suez Crisis by nationalizing the Suez Canal in 1956. He championed a pan-Arabist sentiment that eventually led to Egypt's brief union with Syria as the United Arab Republic in 1958. He oversaw Egypt's disastrous defeat by Israel in the Six-Day War (1967).

Anwar Sadat

(1918-1981) was president of Egypt from 1970 to 1981. He succeeded Nasser, a fellow member of the Free Officers, upon the latter's sudden death. He launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel in 1973. Five years later, due in large part to the efforts of U.S. president Jimmy Carter, He signed the Camp David Accords with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, for which Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated in 1981 by an Islamist military officer associated with the radical group Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Richard Feynman

(1918-1988). He developed a mathematical formalism called the path integral formulation of quantum theory that utilized the "sum over histories," taking into account all possible paths a particle could take. This constituted the creation of quantum electrodynamics and earned him the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics. He also used the sum over histories in developing Feynman diagrams, which illustrate the interaction of subatomic particles. Aside from being a prolific physicist, he was also an accomplished bongo player and sketch artist.

Leonard Bernstein

(1918-1990) Was a prolific composer and conductor who gave numerous televised "Young People's Concerts" during his eleven-year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969). His concert works include his Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" (1942), and a jazz clarinet concerto premiered by Benny Goodman: "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" (1949). He is best known for his works for the stage, which include the musical West Side Story (1957), the ballet Fancy Free (1944), and the operetta Candide (1956; revised 1989). He also composed the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront.

Jerome Robbins

(1918-1998) Is probably best known for his work with Leonard Bernstein. He broke through as a choreographer with an experimental ballet about three sailors on leave in New York City, Fancy Free, which he then helped rework into the hit 1944 musical On the Town. Known for being temperamental and difficult to work with, he conceived, choreographed, and directed the 1957 original production of West Side Story and won an Oscar for co-directing the 1961 film version (despite quitting early in the process due to creative differences). He also choreographed and directed the original production of Fiddler on the Roof. He acted as an uncredited "show doctor," rescuing several floundering Broadway shows, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Funny Girl.

Gone With the Wind

(1939) Is an adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's 1936 novel of the same name. The film was produced by David O. Selznick and directed by Victor Fleming, who had just directed The Wizard of Oz. The movie is set during the Civil War on the Georgia plantation of Tara and stars Vivien Leigh in an Oscar-winning role as Scarlett O'Hara, who marries Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) despite pining after the married Ashley Wilkes. Near the end of the film, Scarlett suffers a miscarriage after a fight with Rhett, who then leaves her; when Scarlett asks him, "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" he famously responds "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

The Little Albert Experiment

(1920) Was carried out by psychologist John Watson, with assistance from Rosalie Rayner, to test if it was possible to intentionally condition fear in an otherwise normal child. Watson initially exposed an infant test subject (identified by the pseudonym "Albert") to numerous white, fluffy stimuli, such as a rat, a rabbit, and wool; the infant displayed no fear of these items. Watson then began to expose the infant to a white rat, while banging a bar with a hammer to create a loud, scary noise whenever the infant interacted with the rat. Eventually, Albert began to react with distress when exposed to any white fluffy stimuli, including a Santa Claus mask. The experiment has been heavily criticized on both ethical grounds (for the infliction of trauma on an infant) and on procedural grounds (as one child identified as potentially being "Little Albert" may have been born with serious cognitive impairment).

Isaac Asimov

(1920-1992, United States). Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, this man was one of genre science fiction's "Big Three" writers. During the 1930s' and 1940s' "Golden Age" of science fiction pulp magazines, he worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as "Nightfall," which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and "Robbie," the first of his many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word "robot" was introduced by the Czech author Karel Čapek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Before him, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God's power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. He challenged this trope by creating the "Three Laws of Robotics," which robots in his stories are obligated to follow:

John Paul II

(1920-2005; pope 1978-2005) Was from Poland, making him the first non-Italian pope in over 400 years. In 1981, he was shot by Mehmet Ali Agca, a member of the Turkish terrorist group Grey Wolves; he survived and forgave Agca while visiting him in prison. He defended the sanctity of life in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae and declared evolution to be compatible with Catholic theology. He denounced Marxist "liberation theology" in Latin America and may have inspired the Solidarity movement during a 1979 visit to his home country.

Ray Bradbury

(1920-2012, United States). His science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community Green Town is the setting of Bradbury's novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in his 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. He also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in his works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in his 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which "firemen" burn books. The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large "parlor walls." Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan, and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the "Mechanical Hound," but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.

Betty Friedan

(1921-2006) She was a writer and activist best known as the author of The Feminine Mystique (1963) and as the most prominent co-founder of the National Organization for Women. In 1957, she conducted a survey of graduates of her alma mater, Smith College, and found that many of them were unhappy with their lives. She then labeled this general unhappiness "the problem with no name." She then began writing The Feminine Mystique, in which she argued that being a housewife is unfulfilling and advocated for women to seek education and work outside the home.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment

(1922), Conducted by Otto Stern and Walther Gerlach, demonstrated that the angular momentum of an atom is quantized. A beam of silver atoms was fired through an inhomogeneous magnetic field (one that varies through space). Instead of hitting a screen in a continuous distribution, they hit at discrete points, demonstrating the quantized nature of angular momentum. This experiment was actually performed several years before the concept of electron spin was even proposed. A variant on this experiment was used to create an energy source for the first hydrogen maser.

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 this author 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. His 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.

Bob Fosse

(1927-1987) Came to prominence in the 1953 film Kiss Me Kate. While he and dance partner Carol Haney only had small roles, the dance that he choreographed for them in the number "From This Moment On" launched his career. His unique style, featuring turned-in knees, rolled shoulders, sideways movement, and "jazz hands," found its greatest expression on Broadway, where he choreographed the musicals The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Redhead, Sweet Charity, Pippin, and Chicago. Many of his works featured his wife Gwen Verdon, who won four Tonys under his choreography or direction. He also directed the films Cabaret and All That Jazz, winning an Oscar for Cabaret. Many commentators have described his cameo as The Snake in a 1974 film adaptation of The Little Prince as a forerunner to the dance style of Michael Jackson.

Emeritus Benedict XVI

(1927-present, pope 2005-2013) Resigned the papacy in 2013, becoming the first person to do so since the 15th century.

Kurt Vonnegut

(1922-2007, United States). This author's fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, this author was a prisoner of war in Germany, and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time," and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. He also wrote the novel Cat's Cradle, which describes a substance called "ice-nine" that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel's narrator, John. Another thread in Cat's Cradle concerns the "bittersweet lies" of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth.

Helen Gurley Brown

(1922-2012) This woman was best known as the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965 until 1997. She first came to prominence when she argued in Sex and the Single Girl (1962) that women ought to achieve financial security and pursue sexual relationships prior to marriage. As editor of Cosmopolitan, she asserted that women could "have it all," by which she meant love, sex, and money.

The Davisson-Germer experiment

(1923-1927) Performed by Clinton Davisson and Lester Germer, confirmed the de Broglie hypothesis by showing that electrons can exhibit wave-like behavior. The experimenters fired electrons at a nickel crystal, and measured the diffraction patterns using an electron counter called a Faraday box (or Faraday cup) mounted on an arc so that it could detect electrons emitted at various angles. The peak intensity was observed at 50 degrees and 54 electronvolts, corresponding to the diffraction predicted for X-rays by Bragg's law. (Note that diffraction is a property of waves, not particles, and thus could only be observed if electrons can act as waves.)

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 the 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. Another one of his novels Invisible Cities is framed as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, who describes 55 fictional cities to the Mongol ruler. This authour 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 he wrote a sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time.

Chuck Yeager

(1923-2020) During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, earning "ace in a day" status by shooting down five German aircraft in one mission. On October 14, 1947, this man — piloting a Bell X-1 plane nicknamed (in tribute to his wife) Glamorous Glennis — became the first pilot to exceed the speed of sound in level flight. Profiled in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff, he re-set the speed record at more than Mach 2 in 1953, and he remained active in the Air Force, even flying combat missions over Vietnam in his mid-40s.

Time

(1923-present) Was the U.S.'s first weekly newsmagazine. Its founder, Henry Luce, used its near-instant success to create a stable of influential magazines, including Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. Since 1927 it has designated various figures as "Person of the Year" (originally "Man of the Year"), the first being Charles Lindbergh; controversial picks for the award include Adolf Hitler in 1938 and Joseph Stalin in both 1939 and 1942. In June 1994, Time was criticized for darkening the mugshot of O. J. Simpson on its cover, especially juxtaposed against Newsweek's largely undoctored version on their cover the same month. After 9/11, Time's cover showed the second plane flying into the Twin Towers and used a black border in place of its iconic red border.

Carlos Fuentes

(1928-2012, Mexico): Though born into a well-to-do family, he often dealt with the betrayed ideals from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the subject of both his first novel, Where the Air is Clear (1958), and his most successful book, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Other notable novels include Terra nostra, set during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, and The Old Gringo, which portrays Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico. Fuentes also wrote absurdist plays and essay collections on Mexican and American art and literature.

Terry Sawchuk

(1929-1970): Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, "Ukey" played more games (971), won more games (447), and recorded more shutouts (103) than any other netminder in NHL history. In 1952, he recorded eight straight wins, including four shutouts, in the playoffs for Detroit. Winning five Vezina Trophies in his career for lowest team GAA (the criteria during his era), he also won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 1950-1951. Always deeply psychologically troubled, he died in a household accident in 1970 while a member of the New York Rangers.

Surrealism

(1924-1930s) According to André Breton's "Surrealist Manifesto," this movement is "pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought"; inspired by the work of psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, this movement sought to represent an unseen world of dreams, subconscious thoughts, and unspoken communication. Similar to metaphysical painting and Dada, this movement's works are not meant to be clearly understood — they are meant to puzzle, challenge, and fascinate by means of confusing titles, unusual arrangements of reality-based subjects, and abounding contradictions. Painters associated with this movement include Salvador Dalí (The Persistence of Memory, Swans Reflecting Elephants, Metamorphosis of Narcissus), Joan Miró (Dog Barking at the Moon, The Tilled Field, Harlequin's Carnival), René Magritte (Time Transfixed, The Treachery of Images, The Son of Man), former Dadaist Max Ernst (Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, The Elephant Celebes), Frida Kahlo (Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, The Two Fridas, The Little Deer), former metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico (whose stark color contrasts and veristic style strongly influenced surrealist painting), and Yves Tanguy. Surrealist sculptors included Alexander Calder (Lobster Trap and Fish Tail, Flamingo), Meret Oppenheim (Object), and Alberto Giacometti (Woman with Her Throat Cut, L'Homme qui marche I). The Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel created a number of films in this style, collaborating with Dalí on Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) — which Roger Ebert called the "most famous short film ever made" — and L'Age d'Or (The Golden Age).

James Baldwin

(1924-1987) Grew up in Harlem, which he portrayed in his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain. That novel is about the teenage John Grimes and his fanatically religious stepfather Gabriel. In his novel Giovanni's Room, an American named David has an affair with the title Italian bartender. His novel If Beale Street Could Talk, about the love between Tish and a man named Fonny who has been falsely accused of rape, was made into a 2018 movie directed by Barry Jenkins. He also wrote several essays, including an examination of race and religion in The Fire Next Time. His essay collection Notes of a Native Son begins with "Everybody's Protest Novel," which is critical of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Native Son.

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, she 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.

Mishima

(1925-1970), A pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake: He was a novelist whose central theme was the disparity between traditional Japanese values and the spiritual emptiness of modern life. He failed to qualify for military service during World War II, so he worked in an aircraft factory instead. His first novel, Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku), was successful enough to allow him to write full-time. His four-volume epic The Sea of Fertility (Hojo no umi, consisting of Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel), is about self-destructive personalities and the transformation of Japan into a modern, but sterile, society. He also organized the Tate no kai — a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts — committed ritual suicide after a public speech failed to galvanize the armed forces into overthrowing the government.

Margaret Thatcher

(1925-2013, PM 1979-1990): The U.K.'s first female prime minister was known as the "Iron Lady." Her divisive 1980s Conservative premiership saw the collapse of British heavy industry and its replacement by a services-based economy, especially focused on banking. Re-elected in 1983 after winning the Falklands War, she clashed with the mine workers' leader Arthur Scargill as well as her right-hand man Michael Heseltine, and after losing popularity due to a poll tax was ousted by her own party in favor of John Major (PM 1990-1997).

Yogi Berra

(1925-2015; catcher) Was notorious for swinging at bad pitches, but his bat collided with them often enough to hit a catcher's record 306 home runs that lasted for more than 30 years (since passed by Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, and Mike Piazza). His hitting, fielding, and ability to lead the Yankee pitching staff earned him three MVP awards (1951, 1954, 1955). He also starred in the World Series, collecting 71 hits while playing on 10 championship teams, both records. Hired as Yankee manager in 1964, he led the Yanks to the pennant but was fired following their Series loss to the Cardinals. His 1973 pennant with the Mets made him the only manager besides Joe McCarthy to take home the flag in both leagues. Like Casey Stengel, he was famous for his quotes, including "It aint' over 'til it's over," "It's deja vu all over again," and "Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets."

Clifford Geertz

(1926-2006) He is best known for his work in symbolic anthropology, a view that he expounded in his book The Interpretation of Cultures. In that book, he introduced the term "thick description" to describe his method of analyzing behavior within its social context. One such "thick description" appears in his essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," in which he discusses cockfighting as a symbolic display of a certain kind of masculinity.

Gordie Howe

(1926-2016): Born in Floral, Saskatchewan, "Mr. Hockey," was equally adept with his stick as he was with his fists. A "Gordie Howe hat trick" was later joked to consist of a goal, an assist, and a fight. A six-time Art Ross Trophy winner, he played 26 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, retiring in 1971. After a two-year retirement, he returned to the fledgling WHA, to play with his sons on the Houston Aeros. He played his last NHL season at the age of 52 in 1980 with the Hartford Whalers, finishing as the NHL's career points leader until 1989.

Elizabeth II

(1926-present, r. 1952-present) House of Windsor. Representative of the modern ceremonial monarchy, she and her husband "Prince" Philip Mountbatten have traveled the globe representing British interests. Marital failures by her sons Charles, Prince of Wales and Andrew have plagued her reign. She superseded Victoria as the longest-reigning British monarch.

Frank Gehry

(1929-present) Winner of the 1989 Pritzker Prize, he is best-known today for large-scale compositions like the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle (formerly known as the EMP Museum and Experience Music Project), the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and the recent, controversial Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. (Bilbao natives describe the latter as "the artichoke," because of its layers of abstract titanium structures.) He often uses uncommon materials such as plywood and limestone; his designs range from Kobe's Fishdance Restaurant, shaped like a giant fish, to the soft-sculpture look of the so-called "Fred and Ginger" buildings in Prague. He also designs furniture: the Easy Edges line is made of laminated cardboard; the Gehry Collection consists of chairs named for hockey terms (e.g. Cross Check and Power Play).

The Maltese Falcon

(1930) Written by Dashiell Hammett. This classic of the "hard-boiled" genre follows Sam Spade, a San Francisco private eye hired by "Ms. Wonderly" to tail Floyd Thursby, with whom her sister has eloped. The next day, Sam's partner Miles Archer is found dead, shot by Thursby, who is also dead. The cops suspect Spade, who is sleeping with Archer's wife. Spade learns that "Ms. Wonderly" is actually Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a woman hunting for a priceless statuette called the Maltese Falcon alongside the obese Caspar Gutman and a homosexual Middle Easterner named Joel Cairo. At a private meeting in which Gutman explains how Brigid, Thursby, and Cairo found the Falcon in Constantinople, Spade suddenly faints, having been drugged by Gutman. Spade returns to his office, where a ship captain gives him a package containing the falcon, then dies. Brigid calls, urgently requesting Spade's help, but Spade returns home only to find Brigid, Gutman, and Cairo waiting, demanding the Falcon. Spade reminds them that one of them will be pegged for the murders, and they turn on each other. Gutman decides his bodyguard, Wilmer, will be the patsy, but when they discover the Falcon is a fake, Wilmer escapes. Cairo and Gutman leave to find the real Falcon, but Spade doesn't let Brigid go, certain she cannot be trusted. She confesses she shot both Archer and Thursby but is in love with Spade; Spade, refusing to "play the sap" for her, turns her over to the cops, who report that Wilmer has just murdered Gutman. The novel's 1941 film adaptation, starring Humphrey Bogart, is considered a film noir masterpiece.

Lorraine Hansberry

(1930-1965) Is best known for her play A Raisin in the Sun. That play is about the Younger family, who debate how to use $10,000 in life insurance money. Walter wants to invest the money in a liquor store, while his mother Mama wants to buy a house in the white neighborhood Clybourne Park. Mama's daughter Beneatha wants to spend the money on medical school and, unlike the other members of the family, explores her African heritage. Her other works include the play The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window and the autobiography To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

Hafez al-Assad

(1930-2000) was the president of Syria from 1971 to 2000. This man, a member of the Alawite minority sect within Islam, was the commander of the Syrian Air Force when he came to power as a member of the Ba'ath Party. Along with Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, he launched the Yom Kippur War against Israel in 1973. In 1982, he brutally crushed an Islamist uprising led by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Syrian city of Hama. He was succeeded as president of Syria by his son, Bashar al-Assad.

Stephen Sondheim

(1930-present) Is one of the most celebrated lyricists and composers in musical theater. His career has included eight Tony Awards. He was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II (of Rodgers and Hammerstein), and was the lyricist for West Side Story, working alongside composer Leonard Bernstein. Musicals for which he was both lyricist and composer include Company (1970), a series of scenes about an unmarried bachelor and his married friends; Sweeney Todd (1979), about a barber's murderous quest for revenge; Into the Woods (1987), a dark mash-up of several fairy tales; and Sunday in the Park with George (1984), which portrays a fictionalized version of the painter Georges Seurat and won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Alvin Ailey

(1931-1989) Was a pioneering African-American choreographer. He originally danced in the Horton Dance Company run by his mentor Lester Horton. After Horton's unexpected death in 1953, he took over as its artistic director. In 1958 he formed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. His best-known work, Revelations, was based on his upbringing in Texas and is divided into three parts, titled "Pilgrim of Sorrow," "Take Me to the Water," and "Move Members, Move." "Move Members, Move" emphasizes gospel music, including the traditional spiritual "Sinner Man," and concludes with the number "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," which recreates a joyous church service.

Mickey Mantle

(1931-1995; center field) Was born to play baseball—his father named him for Hall of Fame catcher Mickey Cochrane—but his left leg wasn't. In high school it was nearly amputated because of osteomyelitis, the first of his many leg problems. Known as the "Commerce Comet" because of his speed and because he grew up in Commerce, Oklahoma, he became the Yankee center fielder following DiMaggio's retirement in 1951. He played on twelve pennant winners and seven World Championship clubs. He holds World Series records for home runs (18), RBI (40), runs (42), walks (43), extra-base hits (26), and total bases (123). During the regular season, his switch-hitting powered 536 home runs and won him four homer titles (1955, 1956, 1958, 1960), three MVP awards (1956, 1957, 1962), and a triple crown (1956). In 1961 he and teammate Roger Maris both had a chance of passing Ruth's 1927 mark (60), but injuries forced him out of the race (Maris hit 61). He was elected to the Hall of Fame alongside Whitey Ford in 1974.

Toni Morrison

(1931-2019) Was the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature and won a Pulitzer for her novel Beloved. Beloved is about Sethe, a slave who escaped from Sweet Home plantation in Kentucky to 124 Bluestone Road in Cincinnati. Sethe is haunted by the ghost of Beloved, a daughter she killed to prevent her from being returned to slavery. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, is about Pecola Breedlove, a Black foster child who considers herself ugly and wishes she had blue eyes. Her other acclaimed novels include Song of Solomon, about the life of Macon Dead III, who is nicknamed "Milkman" because he is breastfed by his mother for a long time.

John Coolidge Adams

(1947-present) Was a minimalist composer whose music, like that of Charles Ives, often features an "American" program. He may be best known for his opera Nixon in China (1987), which dramatizes the 1972 presidential visit and meeting with Mao. His other operas include Doctor Atomic (2005), which is about the Manhattan Project. He composed "On the Transmigration of Souls" (2002) to memorialize the September 11th attacks; that work received the Pulitzer Prize. Other major works for orchestra include Harmonium (1980), Harmonielehre (1985), Shaker Loops (1978), and his Violin Concerto (1993).

Powell v. Alabama

(1932) Determined that defendants must be given legal counsel in a way that gives counsel enough time to do their job. This case was brought by nine young African-Americans, known as the Scottsboro Boys, eight of whom had been covincted of rape and sentenced to death. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause required states—in cases where the death penalty was a possibility—to inform defendants that they had a right to counsel, to appoint an attorney to represent defendants who could not afford one, and to do so in a manner that allowed the appointed attorney adequate time to prepare a defense (a requirement later expanded in Gideon v. Wainwright). Eventually, the rape victims recanted their story; some of the defendants were convicted anyways. Three years after ruling in Powell, the Court ruled in the related case of Norris v. Alabama (1935) that Black people could not be systematically excluded from juries.

Andrew Young Jr.

(1932-) Served as a U.S. representative from Georgia from 1973-1977. He was the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when Martin Luther King Jr. was the group's president; he is one of the men shown pointing in the direction of the shot in the notable photo taken moments after King's assassination in 1968. In 1977 Jimmy Carter appointed him as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; his tenure in that role ended following a controversy in which he met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He also served as mayor of Atlanta from 1982-1990 and was the co-chair of the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inauguration

(1933) Took place in the midst of the Great Depression. The president opened his inaugural address by proclaiming his "firm belief" that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." After declaring that "[o]ur greatest primary task is to put people to work," he requested from Congress "broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." This was the last presidential inauguration to take place on March 4; He was inaugurated for his second term on January 20, 1937, per the Twentieth Amendment.

Murder on the Orient Express

(1934) Written by Agatha Christie. This novel features Christie's popular Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who is snowbound on the title train in the Balkans when a passenger named Samuel Ratchett is found stabbed to death. Thanks to a scrap of paper in Ratchett's compartment referencing "little Daisy Armstrong," Poirot realizes Ratchett is actually Lanfranco Cassetti, a man who was acquitted on technicality of kidnapping and murder (a crime inspired by the real-life kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby). Poirot discovers that all the passengers—including former Russian princess Natalia Dragomiroff—are concealing their pasts and each had a motive to kill Cassetti, and Poirot correctly deduces that all of them stabbed Cassetti. However, Poirot's alternate theory, that a stranger entered the snowbound train and randomly killed Ratchett, is the one presented to local authorities.

Gloria Steinem

(1934-present) This woman is a journalist who founded and edited Ms. magazine. For an article in Show magazine in 1963, she went undercover as a Playboy bunny. Having had an abortion herself, she became a prominent advocate of abortion rights. She worked as a writer for New York magazine when she founded Ms., a feminist magazine devoted to women's issues. The magazine also popularized the use of the title "Ms." to address women regardless of marital status. She also wrote the book Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (1983), and the phrase "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" is often attributed to her.

Oe

(1935-present): Novelist and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first work, Shiiku (The Catch), describes a friendship between a Japanese boy and a black American POW, and won him the Akutagawa award while he was still a student. His early works are filled with insanity, abuse, perverse sex, and violence, but his later works — including A Personal Matter (Kojinteki-na taiken) and The Silent Cry (Man'en gannen no futtoboru) — reflect the experience of being the father of a brain-damaged child. His fiction centers on the alienation following Japan's surrender, and his political writings focus on the search for cultural and ideological roots.

Francis

(1936-present, pope 2013-present) Served as the Archbishop of Buenos Aires before ascending to the papacy upon the resignation of Benedict XVI. He is the first Jesuit pope, the first pope from the Americas, and the first pope from outside of Europe since Gregory III in the 8th century. When asked in 2013 for his view on gay clergy members, he responded "Who am I to judge?". He also had a historic meeting with Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church in Havana in 2016, and the two issued a joint declaration denouncing the persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

Sino-Japanese War

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

Saddam Hussein

(1937-2006) was the president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He came to power as a member of the pan-Arabist Ba'ath Party. During the 1980s, he led Iraq in the decade-long Iran-Iraq War. In the midst of that conflict, he launched the genocidal Al-Anfal Campaign against Kurdish civilians in northern Iraq. In 1990, he ordered the invasion of neighboring Kuwait, which led to the First Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm. He was deposed following 2003 the American invasion of Iraq; he was tried and executed by the new Iraqi government in 2006.

Philip Glass

(1937-present) Was a minimalist composer who is best known for his trilogy of "Portrait Operas," which include Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1979), and Akhnaten (1983). Einstein on the Beach is particularly notable for its use of solfege syllables and numbers in place of a standard libretto. His style is heavily influenced by Indian musical traditions, and focuses on additive processes; this focus can be seen in his early minimal works "Strung Out" (1967) and "Music in Fifths" (1969). Glass is a prolific composer of film scores; his most prominent include his scores for The Truman Show, The Hours, and Notes on a Scandal.

The Big Sleep

(1939) Written by Raymond Chandler. Wealthy patriarch General Sternwood hires private eye Philip Marlowe to help his daughter Carmen, who is being blackmailed by bookseller Arthur Geiger. Sternwood also worries about Regan, his daughter Vivian's missing husband. Pretending to be a gay book collector, Marlowe learns that Geiger's bookstore is a pornography front, and after staking out Geiger's home, he hears gunshots and sees two cars speeding away. Geiger is dead, and Carmen Sternwood is naked and drugged in front of a camera from which the film has been taken. The next day, Sternwood's chauffeur is found dead in a car driven off a pier. Marlowe meets with Joe Brody, who is taking over Geiger's bookstore, when Carmen busts in with a gun, demanding the photographs in Brody's possession. Marlowe forces her to leave, then learns the chauffeur killed Geiger to protect Carmen from disrepute; Brody, also spying on Geiger that night, pursued and killed the chauffeur. Geiger's homosexual lover then arrives and kills Brody, thinking Brody killed Geiger. With the case seemingly solved, Marlowe still wonders about Vivien's missing husband Regan, as well as the missing wife of Eddie Mars, a criminal who backed Geiger's business. Carmen and Vivien each try to seduce Marlowe while Marlowe investigates those disappearances. On returning to Sternwood's house, Carmen asks Marlowe to teach her to shoot; at the lesson, she tries to shoot Marlowe, but Marlowe put blanks in the gun. This proves Marlowe's theory: Carmen is a nymphomaniac who killed Regan when he spurned her advances. Vivien admits she hid the body and lied to save her father from shame, and she promises to put Carmen in an asylum.

Lee Trevino

(1939-present) Nicknamed "Supermex" for his Mexican-American heritage, he came from a poor Dallas family and served in the Marines, but came from nowhere to win the 1968 U.S. Open. He won six majors: the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship twice each, his second PGA in 1984 at age 44. That last win was most impressive because it came after the 1975 Western Open, where he was struck by lightning on the golf course.

Bobby Hull

(1939-present): Born in Point Anne, Ontario; "The Golden Jet" was the star of the Chicago Blackhawks of the 1960s. He won three Art Ross Trophies and led the NHL in goals seven times. In June 1972, he defected to the fledgling WHA's Winnipeg Jets for a record ten-year, $2.75 million deal, where he helped make Winnipeg one of the four WHA teams to merge with the NHL in 1978-1979. He is also the father of Brett Hull; the duo is the only father-son combination to score 500 each in NHL history.

The Clark Doll Experiment

(1940) Studied the perception of race in children. Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth Clark were a married team of psychologists and the first African Americans to receive doctorates in psychology at Columbia University. In a series of studies, they presented children across the country—from all races—with dolls that were identical except for skin color and hairstyle. They then asked the children to identify the "nice doll," the "bad doll," and other questions involving subjective judgments. The results of the study indicated that children of all races showed a preference for the white doll, indicating that racism in American society created an inherent sense of inferiority in Black children even by the age of five. The Clark's research was cited by the Supreme Court in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education ordering the desegregation of schools.

The War Speeches

(1940) Were a series of addresses given by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Parliament during the Battle of France in World War II. The first speech promised "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" in the fight against Germany and stated Britain's commitment to "victory at all costs." The second speech described Allied losses and the evacuation at Dunkirk, acknowledging the possibility of invasion but declaring "we shall fight on the beaches" and "defend our island whatever the cost will be." The final message came when the fall of France was imminent and claimed that the fight to come would go down as Britain's "finest hour."

And Then There Were None

(1940) Written by Agatha Christie. This novel is an example of a "country house mystery," a genre popularized by Christie in which possible suspects are limited due to the crime's isolated locale. The novel concerns ten murderers who have escaped justice and who are invited to an island mansion. After a mysterious record accuses each guest of their crimes, they begin turning up dead one by one. Vera Claythorne and Philip Lombard are the final two survivors; Vera, suspecting Philip of being the killer, shoots him dead, then returns to her room and hangs herself. The novel ends with a fisherman recovering a message in a bottle written by Justice Wargrave, one of the victims, who confesses he orchestrated all the killings in the name of "true justice." The novel was previously published under the title Ten Little Indians and an even earlier title that included a racial slur and was taken from a popular minstrel song whose lyrics—which allude to each victim's death—are framed and hung in the mansion's bedrooms.

John Lewis

(1940-2020) Represented Georgia in the U.S. House from 1987 until his death in 2020. He was a leader of the civil rights movement: he was one of the original Freedom Riders, served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was one of the "Big Six" organizers of the 1963 March on Washington. He also worked with Hosea Williams to organize the first Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights, which was brutally stopped by Alabama State Troopers, who attacked the marchers and fractured his skull after the marchers passed over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In 2016, he was among the House Democrats who led a sit-in protest in the House chamber demanding action on gun-control legislation. Shortly before his 2020 death, he wrote a brief essay noting "Together, you can redeem the soul of our nation."

Jack Nicklaus

(1940-present) Nicknamed "The Golden Bear," he won the U.S. Amateur twice (1959 and 1961), and was the 1961 NCAA champion at Ohio State. He took his first major the following year at the U.S. Open, beating Arnold Palmer on Palmer's home course. He became the youngest Masters champion at the time in 1963, and 23 years later became the oldest champion with a final round 65 in 1986. He has a record 18 major pro championships overall, including six Masters, five PGA Championships, four U.S. Opens, and three British Opens. This golfer is still somewhat active on the Senior PGA Tour, and as a golf course architect.

Ken Dryden

(1947-present): Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he had a standout career at Cornell University before joining the Montreal Canadiens organization in 1970. In 1970-1971, he starred in the playoffs, winning Conn Smythe Trophy honors (playoff MVP), before going on to win Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year) honors the next season. Along with Tony Esposito, he served as Canada's goalie during the legendary 1972 Summit Series with the USSR. He sat out the entire 1973-1974 season in a contract dispute, and worked as a legal clerk, obtaining his law degree from McGill. He currently serves as the President of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Citizen Kane

(1941), Directed by Orson Welles, is considered by many (including the American Film Institute) to be the greatest film ever made. Through flashbacks, it tells the story of fictional publishing mogul Charles Foster Kane (played by Welles and loosely based on real-life newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst), who buys the New York Inquirer, unsuccessfully runs for governor of New York, and tries to make his second wife an opera star before dying at his Florida estate, Xanadu. In the present day, reporter Jerry Thompson fruitlessly attempts to discover the meaning of Kane's dying word, "Rosebud," which turns out to be the brand name of Kane's beloved childhood sled, an object burned by unsuspecting servants as the film ends.

Jesse Jackson Senior

(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. He 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.

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.

Twyla Tharp

(1941-present) Made her mark in the mid-1970s with the "crossover ballets" Deuce Coupe (performed by the Joffrey Ballet to music by The Beach Boys) and Push Comes to Shove (starring Mikhail Baryshnikov), both marked by a fusion of diverse musical and dance styles. She found success on Broadway with the "jukebox musical" Movin' Out, set to the catalog of Billy Joel; she subsequently built musicals around the songs of Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. She created the children's ballet The Princess and the Goblin and collaborated with director Milos Forman on the Hollywood films Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus.

Casablanca

(1942) Stars Humphrey Bogart as American expatriate Rick Blaine living in Vichy-controlled Morocco during World War II. The film opens with Ugarte, a local criminal, attempting to sell "letters of transit" at Rick's nightclub, Rick's Café Américain. Ingrid Bergman stars opposite Bogart as Rick's former lover Ilsa Lund, whose current husband, an anti-Nazi resistance leader, needs the letters. In one memorable scene, Ilsa's husband, Victor Laszlo, leads a crowd in singing "La Marseillaise" in response to a group of Nazis singing "Die Wacht am Rhein." Famous quotes from the filminclude "Round up the usual suspects," "Here's looking at you, kid," and "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

Muammar Gaddafi

(1942-2011) was the leader of Libya from 1969 to 2011, during which time he was variously styled as "Colonel," "Revolutionary Chairman," and "Brotherly Leader." He espoused what he called "Islamic socialism" in his Green Book. He coined the word jamahiriya, which can be roughly translated as "state of the masses." Gaddafi funded various Islamist militant operations around the world, most notably the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. He was deposed and killed in 2011 during the Arab Spring.

Burt Rutan

(1943-present) A legendary aircraft designer, he gained worldwide attention in 1986 when his Voyager plane, piloted by his brother Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck Yeager), completed a non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling. More recently, this man designed the Global Flyer, aboard which Steve Fossett made a solo, non-stop circumnavigation without refueling in 2005, and SpaceShipOne, which in 2004 won the $10 million Ansari X Prize by making the first privately funded space flights.

Billie Jean King

(1943-present). Her records themselves are impressive: 12 Grand Slam singles wins (including six Wimbledons) and 20 overall Wimbledon titles. However she, is best known for advancing women's athletics. Her brother, Randy Moffitt, pitched for the San Francisco Giants; she herself reached a #4 world ranking in 1960 and turned pro eight years later. At the time, prize money for women was paltry, so she co-founded the Virginia Slims Tour, and in 1971 became the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a year. Two years later, in front of over 30,000 at the Astrodome, she whipped Bobby Riggs in the "Battle of the Sexes." She retired in 1983, but not before winning a singles tournament at age 39.

The Jewel Voice Broadcast

(1945), Formally titled "The Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War," was a radio message by Emperor Hirohito announcing Japan's defeat and surrender in World War II. Army officers who opposed the speech tried to destroy the recording of it the night before it aired, an attempted coup called the Kyujo Incident. In the speech, Hirohito recognized the power of America's "new and most cruel bomb" and urged his people to "endure the unendurable" in order to save their nation. The message was written in classical Japanese, making it difficult for most Japanese citizens to understand. It was the first time the emperor directly addressed common people.

Reggie Jackson

(1946-present; right field) Known as "Mr. October" because of his World Series slugging, in the sixth game of the 1977 World Series he hit three home runs off three different pitchers on three consecutive swings of his bat. He and Babe Ruth, who did it twice, are the only players to homer three times in one World Series game. His .755 slugging average is the highest in World Series history. Soon after joining the Yankees in 1977 he created a sensation by proclaiming himself "the straw that stirs the drink." The wild atmosphere surrounding him and the Yankees was captured by a teammate in a book called The Bronx Zoo. This baseball player won four home run titles (1973, 1975, 1980, 1983), hit 563 home runs, and set a major-league record for strikeouts (2,597).

Francisco Pizarro

(c. 1475-1541): After receiving a commission from Emperor Charles V, this man went with his partner Diego de Almagro, the priest Hernando de Luque, and a small force to Peru (1530). The invaders marched to the city Cajamarca, where they seized the emperor Atahualpa and held him for ransom. Even though the Incas brought the Spanish a ransom of precious metal, he killed Atahualpa and captured the Incan capital, Cuzco. In 1535 he founded Lima, where he was murdered six years later.

Shelley v. Kraemer

(1948) Determined that racially restrictive housing covenants could not be enforced by courts. Louis Kraemer was a white person in a white neighborhood in St. Louis that did not allow residents to sell their houses to African-Americans or Asian-Americans. The Shelleys were an African-American family that bought a house in the neighborhood. Chief Justice Fred Vinson determined that any state action enforcing the covenant would be discriminatory, and would therefore violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The case was decided 6-0, with three justices recusing themselves because they had racially restrictive housing covenants for their own houses. The creation of racially restrictive housing covenants was outlawed by the Fair Housing Act of 1968. An important precursor to the Shelley decision was the 1940 case Hansberry v. Lee, brought by the father of Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun.

The Ed Sullivan Show

(1948-1971): This long-running CBS variety show occupied the same time slot — Sunday night at 8 pm — for over two decades. For most of that time, it broadcast live from what is now called the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, which is currently the home of the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Among the characters it bequeathed to American popular culture were a Spanish ventriloquist known as "Señor Wences" and an Italian mouse puppet named Topo Gigio. In 1964, the Beatles appeared on the show for three straight weeks, appearances which are credited with launching the "British Invasion" in popular music.

Rashomon

(1950) Is an Akira Kurosawa film based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's 1922 short story "In a Grove" (not his story "Rashomon"). The film depicts a trial in which a bandit (Tajomaru), a woodcutter (Kikori), a samurai (through a medium), and the samurai's wife recount the events that led to the samurai's death. A common thread through the four stories is the presence of an expensive dagger no longer at the crime scene. The marked differences in the characters' stories, however, led to the term "Rashomon effect" to describe the unreliability of eyewitnesses. During the woodcutter's testimony, the group is interrupted by the cries of an abandoned baby, a crisis that reveals some insights into the characters.

The first Asch Conformity Experiment

(1951) Was designed and run by Solomon Asch at Swarthmore College in an attempt to see whether individuals would conform to the thinking of a group of peers in a situation in which the group was clearly wrong. Participants in the experiment were paired with seven other people—all of whom were in on the plan. The groups were shown a "base" line, then were shown three other lines, and were asked to pick which of the three other lines was the same length as the "base" line. On pre-planned trials, the seven confederates each intentionally picked a line that was clearly a different length than the "base" line. In nearly 40 percent of these trials, the subject of the experiment also gave an incorrect answer, likely to conform with the answer provided by the others.

The "Checkers" Speech

(1952) Was a television and radio address made by Richard Nixon during the 1952 presidential election. Nixon was running for vice-president on the Republican ticket with Dwight Eisenhower, but had been accused of illegally using a campaign slush fund for personal spending. In the speech, Nixon explained his finances and argued that he never benefited from political gifts, except for a cocker spaniel named Checkers that had been given to his daughters. The speech was inspired by a 1944 speech by Franklin Roosevelt defending his dog, Fala.

The Miller-Urey experiment

(1952) Was an attempt to demonstrate a possible mechanism—proposed by John Haldane and Alexander Oparin—for how life could form from inorganic chemicals. Stanley Miller and Harold Urey modeled Earth's prebiotic atmosphere as a mixture of water, methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3), and hydrogen. They allowed those four substances to react in an apparatus over a one-week period; the apparatus included a heater to convert the water to water vapor and an electrode to simulate lightning strikes. The resulting mixture contained more than 20 distinct amino acids that formed spontaneously; a more modern "volcanic" version of the experiment produced even more amino acids by including sulfur compounds.

Douglas Adams

(1952-2001, United Kingdom). This author wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, he created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless; and the authorized sequel And Another Thing..., which was written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer after he died). The Hitchhiker's series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the "paranoid android" Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice "Don't Panic," encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster." Besides the Hitchhiker's series, Adams also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

Vladislav Tretiak

(1952-present): Born in Moscow, USSR, he is the first Russian player in Hockey Hall of Fame. He came to North American prominence when he starred in 1972 Summit Series against Canada. A ten-time World Champion, he also won three gold medals (1972, 1976, and 1984). The decision to pull him after the first period of the U.S./USSR game in the 1980 Olympics is considered to be part of the reason the U.S. went on to win the gold. He played for CSKA Moscow (Central Red Army) for 15 years and, after retiring, served as the goaltending coach for the Chicago Blackhawks.

Andrew Wiles

(1953-present, British) Is best known for proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture that all rational semi-stable elliptic curves are modular forms. When combined with work already done by other mathematicians, this immediately implied Fermat's last theorem (see above).

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka

(1954) Determined that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. Brown was actually only one of a set of consolidated cases brought by African-Americans in multiple states, all of which were decided along with Brown. In all of those cases, African-Americans were turned down when they tried to enroll their children in white-only schools. Thurgood Marshall, who later became the first Black Supreme Court justice, argued the case for the families. Though many lower courts ruled for the schools, based on the "separate but equal" doctrine established in Plessy, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote a unanimous decision stating that segregated schools are inherently unequal and therefore a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In a ruling the next year, the Supreme Court determined that school integration should occur "with all deliberate speed." This inexact wording led many districts in the South to stall the implementation of integration as long as possible.

The Honeymooners

(1955-1956): The show is considered the first TV spinoff, as it centered on a character — Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden — who had previously been introduced on The Jackie Gleason Show. Ralph's wife Alice was frequently the recipient of his bombastic threats, such as "Bang zoom, straight to the moon!". Like I Love Lucy, the show also centrally featured a neighbor couple — in this case, Ed and Trixie Norton. Although it is now considered a classic sitcom, it was not very popular at the time, and only 39 episodes aired in its original one-season run.

Gunsmoke

(1955-1975): With 635 episodes that aired over 20 seasons, this show was the longest-running prime-time series in American television history until The Simpsons overtook it. Set in Dodge City, Kansas in the late 19th century, it centered on U.S. marshal Matt Dillon. For several seasons in the early 1960s, it featured a young Burt Reynolds as the blacksmith Quint Asper.

National Review

(1955-present) Was founded by the foremost leader of the American conservative movement in the 20th century, William F. Buckley Jr., and aimed from its outset to define and promote right-wing thought. Its earliest editors were staunch anti-Communists like Whittaker Chambers. Under Buckley, the magazine expanded conservatism's allies to include libertarians while disavowing anti-Semitic and nativist elements, such as the John Birch Society. After Barry Goldwater's defeat in 1964, the magazine rallied conservatism behind the up-and-coming Ronald Reagan. Buckley parlayed his success with the magazine into hosting PBS's Firing Line from 1966 to 1999.

The Secret Speech

(1956) Formally titled "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences," was a report given by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the Congress of the Communist Party denouncing the regime of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. Khrushchev specifically criticized Stalin for making his own rivals in the Communist Party and the Red Army into "enemies of the people," as well as for glorifying himself above the party and the country. The controversial speech contributed to the split between the Soviet Union and Communist China and to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Martina Navratilova

(1956-present). Born in Prague, she defected to the United States in 1975 because the Czech Tennis Federation had taken most of her earnings. A bit heavy early in her career, she won the first two of her nine Wimbledons in 1978-79 but subsequent losses led her to pursue a grueling fitness regimen. This paid off: She won 18 singles Grand Slams (58 overall), 167 total singles titles, and even more doubles crowns, many with partner Pam Shriver. A Wimbledon finalist at 37, Navratilova retired from singles in 1994, but returned to play doubles in 2000. In 2003 she tied Billie Jean King with 20 overall Wimbledons, taking the mixed doubles at age 46.

Bjorn Borg

(1956-present). On both grass and clay in the late 1970s, resistance to Borg was futile; he won Wimbledon five straight years (1976-80) and the French Open six times, for a total of 11 majors. He got started at age nine, after his father won a tennis racket in a ping-pong tournament and gave it to him. He took his first French in 1974 and dominated through 1981, when John McEnroe finally knocked him off at Wimbledon. He then inexplicably retired at 26; he tried an unsuccessful comeback in the early 1990s. Despite his great success, he never won the U.S. Open (reaching the final four times). He played at the Australian Open only once, usually preferring to take the winter months off.

12 Angry Men

(1957) Explores themes of morals, justice, and doubt as it follows the deliberations of a jury over the guilt of an 18-year-old defendant on a charge of patricide. Deliberations initially stall when Juror 8, played by Henry Fonda, is the only one to vote "not guilty"; a series of secret ballots and conversations gradually erode the jury's certainty, and they ultimately vote to acquit. The last holdout, Juror 3, played by Lee Cobb, is implied to be locked into his "guilty" vote because of his anger over his poor relationship with his own son. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to Bridge on the River Kwai.

The Meselson-Stahl experiment

(1958) Proved that DNA replication is semiconservative, meaning that when a double-helix strand of DNA is duplicated, the result is two double-helix strands, each of which has one helix from the parent molecule and one newly-synthesized helix. Matthew Meselson and Franklin Stahl used E. coli grown in a medium containing only nitrogen-15; they were then allowed to synthesize DNA in an environment containing only nitrogen-14 over two generations. The net result was that in the second generation, half the DNA molecules contained nitrogen-15 in one strand and nitrogen-14 in the other, while the other half of the molecules contained only nitrogen-14.Temperature scales: The scales most frequently used to measure temperatures in science are the Kelvin and Celsius scales. The Celsius scale, developed by Swedish scientist Anders Celsius in the early 1700s, assigns a value of 0°C to the freezing point of water (at a pressure of 1 atmosphere), and 100°C to the boiling point of water (at the same pressure). Prior to 2019, the Kelvin scale is based on the triple point of water, the point at which water's solid, liquid, and gaseous phases can coexist in equilibrium: 1 K was defined as 1/273.16 of the temperature of water at its triple point. (In 2019 the definition was changed to be in terms of the Boltzmann constant, but the value is still essentially as just described.)

Mr. Ed

(1958-1966): This classic sitcom centered on the title talking horse — a palomino whose voice was provided by Allan Lane — and his owner, the architect Wilbur Post. Much of the show's humor derived from the fact that Mr. Ed would solely speak to Wilbur, which naturally led to hijinks. Mr. Ed should not be confused with Francis the Talking Mule, who would solely speak to his owner Peter Stirling; he appeared in a number of film comedies during the 1950s.

John McEnroe

(1959-present). Though perhaps best known for his fiery temper and abuse of referees (with taunts like "You can't be serious!"), he was the dominant player of the early 1980s. As a 17-year old amateur qualifier, he made the semifinals of Wimbledon, and in 1979 he won the first of three straight U.S. Opens. He almost ended Borg's run of Wimbledons in a five-set thriller in 1980, but succeeded the following year. In 1984, he compiled an 82-3 record, winning Wimbledon and his fourth U.S. Open, for a total of seven majors. An outstanding doubles player as well, he won 77 titles, many with partner Peter Fleming. He also played in the Davis Cup 12 times, captaining the U.S. team in 2000.

The Andy Griffith Show

(1960-1968): One of the most popular TV series of its decade, it starred its title actor as Andy Taylor, the sheriff in the sleepy small town of Mayberry, North Carolina. The show is almost as well known for its distinctive supporting characters, including a gas station attendant named Gomer Pyle and Andy's awkward deputy sheriff, Barney Fife. Ron Howard rose to fame as a child actor on the show, playing Andy's son Opie, before going on to an adult career as a prolific actor and director.

The Milgram Obedience Experiment

(1961) (often just called the "Milgram experiment") Was carried out at Yale University by psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram was inspired to conduct the experiment by the high-profile trial of Adolf Eichmann, who claimed the Nazis carrying out the Holocaust did it because they were merely "following orders." In Milgram's experiment, the subject was led to believe they were administering electric shocks to a "learner" (who was assisting in running the experiment) to punish the learner for making mistakes. Subjects were ordered to increase the voltage to dangerously high levels as the experiment continued, as the learner screamed in pain and pleaded with them to stop; if they stopped to question whether the experiment was safe, they were told to continue. Over 60 percent of participants eventually administered shocks so powerful that they would have killed the learner had they been real.

The Bobo Doll Experiment

(1961) Was carried out by Albert Bandura at Stanford University, who wanted to study the effect of watching an adult model on the behavior of children. Children in the experiment observed an adult interacting with a "Bobo doll," a large self-righting toy designed to look like a clown. In some cases, the adult completely ignored the doll; in other cases, the adult was highly aggressive toward the doll, to the extent of throwing it, hitting it with a mallet, and yelling at it. Bandura found that children who observed an adult acting aggressively toward the doll were far more likely to act aggressively towards the doll themselves, as compared to children who watched a model ignoring the doll. The experiment provided support for the idea of social learning theory, which holds that behaviors may be learned by observing models.

Barack Obama

(1961-) Was a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005-2008 and was the U.S. president from 2009-2017. He rose to national prominence in 2004, while an Illinois state senator and candidate for the U.S. Senate; in that year, he gave a fiery keynote address at the Democratic National Convention titled "The Audacity of Hope," which later became the title of his second book, after his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father. He defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary, then—with running mate Joe Biden—beat Republican candidate John McCain in the 2008 presidential election during the Great Recession. Among the signature legislation passed during the Obama administration was the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Act, the latter of which overhauled financial regulations and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Don Mattingly

(1961-present; first base) Was the best first baseman in baseball for most of the 1980's. He holds the major league record for most grand slams in a season (6 in 1987, tied by Travis Hafner in 2006). He twice led the league in hits (1984 and 1985), won the league batting title by edging out teammate Dave Winfield on the final day of the 1984 season, and drove in the most runs in 1985 to win the MVP award. "Donnie Baseball" also won nine Gold Gloves, but World Series glory eluded "the Hitman." His Yankees never played in the Fall Classic. He managed the Dodgers from 2011 to 2015 and has managed the Marlins since 2016.

Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States

(1964) Determined that the United States could end racial discrimination in public accommodations. As soon as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, Moreton Rolleston Jr. filed a lawsuit claiming that he was allowed to prevent African-Americans from staying at his motel. The Supreme Court decided unanimously that the Commerce Clause in Article I of the Constitution allowed the federal government to desegregate hotels and motels because those businesses are impacted by interstate travel, as part of a judicial trend over the 20th century which widened the scope of the Commerce Clause. The plot of land where the Heart of Atlanta Motel once stood is now occupied by the Atlanta Hilton.

Kamala Harris

(1964-) Served as California's attorney general from 2011-2017 and as a U.S. senator from California from 2017-2021. After dropping out of the 2020 Democractic primary, she was selected as Joe Biden's running mate in the 2020 presidential election; she subsequently became the first person of color, first Asian-American, and first woman to be vice president in U.S. history. Prior to her, two other women (Geraldine Ferraro and Sarah Palin) had been unsuccessful vice-presidential nominees. She began her political career by defeating incumbent Terence Hallinan in 2003 to become San Francisco's district attorney. During her time as California's attorney general, she continued her predecessor Jerry Brown's policy of refusing to defend Proposition 8 (California's ban on gay marriage) in court; she later officiated at the wedding of Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier, parties to the Supreme Court case Hollingsworth v. Perry. Her father is from Jamaica; her mother is from India.

Mario Lemieux

(1965-present): Born in Montreal, Quebec, "Super Mario" scored his first NHL goal on the first shift of his first game, against Boston in 1984. He led the Pittsburgh Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cups in 1991-1992. After a bout with Hodgkin's disease, he returned to lead the NHL in scoring in 1995-1996 and 1996-1997. He then later helped bail the Penguins out of bankruptcy by becoming the lead owner of the team in 1999.

Ex Parte Merryman

(Roger Taney, 1861): This was not actually a Supreme Court case, but a federal court case heard by Chief Justice Roger Taney while "circuit-riding" when the court was not in session. Lieutenant John Merryman of the Maryland cavalry took an active role in evicting Union soldiers from Maryland following the attack on Fort Sumter. Abraham Lincoln declared a secret suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and had a number of opposition leaders, including Merryman, arrested. Taney found the president had acted unconstitutionally (only Congress can suspend the writ), but Lincoln simply ignored his ruling.

The Original Small-World Experiment

(1966-1967) Was carried out by Stanley Milgram (who also carried out the obedience experiment) to examine the interconnectedness of Americans. Milgram mailed a number of people in Nebraska and Kansas a package, and asked them to send it to a target in Boston. If they knew the individual in Boston, they could send it directly to the target; if they did not, they were instructed to send it to a personal acquaintance who they believed would be most likely to know the person in Boston. This process continued until the package reached the final person in Boston. The experiment showed that, of the packages that did make their way to Boston, they typically did so in five or six steps, leading to the coining of the phrase "six degrees of separation." The experiment was an important early study of social networks.

Loving v. Virginia

(1967) Determined that states could not ban interracial marriages, striking down anti-miscegenation laws. Richard Loving, a white man, married Mildred Jeter, who was African-American, in Washington, D.C. When the couple moved to Virginia, they were in violation of the state's Racial Integrity Act of 1924, and they were told they would either have to spend a year in prison or leave the state. When that decision was upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the Virginia law violated the Fourteenth Amendment, as its only purpose was racial discrimination. The couple remained married and in Virginia. Richard Loving was killed by a drunk driver in 1975. Mildred Loving died in 2008; the year before her death, she issued a statement of support for extending the ruling in Loving to allow same-sex couples to wed, as well.

Martin Seligman's Learned Helplessness Experiments

(1967) Were instrumental in identifying that individuals who believe they are powerless to stop a harmful stimulus will eventually stop trying to avoid it at all. Seligman divided a number of dogs into three groups: one group which received no electric shocks, one group that received electric shocks but could stop them by pressing a lever, and one group which was led to believe they had no control over when the shocks stopped or started. Each group of dogs was then placed into a new situation where they were given shocks but presented an easy means of escape. While the first two groups of dogs each quickly escaped from the shocks, the third group—those given no control over the initial shocks—made no attempt at escape. The experiment had major implications for the understanding and treatment of clinical depression via therapy.

Rolling Stone

(1967-present) Was founded in San Francisco as a rock and roll magazine, but it quickly became notable for its experimental political journalism. In 1970 the magazine won acclaim for its pieces on the tragic Altamont Free Concert and on Charles Manson while he was in jail awaiting trial. The magazine is indelibly associated with the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson—his seminal novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the political piece Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 first appeared in this magazine. After becoming more Hollywood-geared in the 1990s, in the 2000s it re-oriented itself towards politics. In 2014 it generated public outcry over its allegedly "glamorizing" cover photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers.

Cory Booker

(1969-) Was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey from 2006-2013 and has been a U.S. senator from New Jersey since 2013. Her first (unsuccessful) campaign for the Newark mayorship, in 2002, was chronicled in the Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight. While she was mayor of Newark, Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to her schools. When U.S. senator Frank Lautenberg died in 2013, she won a special election to fill Lautenberg's seat, then kept the seat in the 2014 regular election. In the Senate, she was part of a coalition that supported the 2018 First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill. She ran unsuccessfully in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Steffi Graf

(1969-present). Her most devastating shot earned her the moniker "Fraulein Forehand." She turned pro at age 13 and steadily rose through the rankings, garnering the #1 ranking and her first major (French) in 1987. The following year, she made history by winning the Grand Slam and the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics, the only player ever to go 5-for-5 in one year. Seven Wimbledons, six French, five U.S., and four Australians add up to 22 major career singles crowns — the last coming at the French in 1999 after two years of major back injuries. She retired that fall, and is now raising her son Jaden with her husband Andre Agassi.

Mariano Rivera

(1969-present, closing pitcher) Born in Panama, he spent his entire 17-year career with the Yankees, spending much of it as the team's closer. He primarily made use of a highly effective cutter, a moving fastball that broke an unusual amount of hitters bats. While he was a dominant closer for his entire career, recording a record 652 saves and managing an incredible 2.21 career ERA, he was even more dominant in the playoffs, where his ERA was a mere 0.70. He was the first person to be unanimously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, reaching Cooperstown in 2019. He was also the final player in MLB history to wear the number 42, which was retired league-wide to honor Jackie Robinson; players who wore the number at the time were permitted to continue wearing it, and Rivera was the last such player to retire.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

(1970-1977): This sitcom centered on Mary Richards, a young woman who moves to Minneapolis, where she goes to work in the newsroom at WJM-TV. No fewer than three supporting characters eventually got their own spinoffs: Phyllis, which starred Cloris Leachman; Rhoda, which starred Valerie Harper; and Lou Grant, which — unlike both the other two spinoffs this show itself — was a drama rather than a sitcom. The show is considered groundbreaking for its portrayal of Mary as an independent single woman.

Phil Mickelson

(1970-present) Known as "Lefty" due to his swing (though he is naturally right-handed), this golfer won The Masters in 2004, 2006, and 2010, and has also won a PGA Championship and British Open. Though he has never reached number 1 in the World Golf Ranking, he was a constant force during the 2000s, finishing second in the U.S. Open six times. In 2018, he won "The Match," a pay-per-view event against Tiger Woods using the match play format; the win earned him $9 million.

Andre Agassi

(1970-present). His father boxed for Iran in the 1948 and 1952 Olympics; his own Olympic exploits included the 1996 tennis gold. Born in Las Vegas, he reached the world's #3 ranking at age 18 but was better known for his image than for his play. Perhaps the greatest returner and baseline player ever, he won his first major on Wimbledon grass in 1992. Briefly married to Brooke Shields, he fell to #141 in the world in 1997, but after they divorced, he rededicated himself to the game. In 1999 he won the French Open, becoming just the fifth man to complete the career Grand Slam. In all, he has won eight major singles titles (five since 1999), and is now married to women's great Steffi Graf.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

(1971) Was designed by Philip Zimbardo to study the effects of power dynamics in custodial situations. Participants—college students at Stanford University—were randomly assigned to be "guards" or "prisoners" for a two-week period; the guards were instructed to refer to the prisoners only by their number, not their name. Although the experience was designed to be structured, by the second day prisoners had begun to rebel against the guards, and guards (including one nicknamed "John Wayne") began to implement sadistic practices designed to degrade, humiliate, and dehumanize inmates. The experiment was stopped after only six days when Christina Maslach, a psychology graduate student, raised ethical objections. Zimbardo later analyzed the experiment in a book which compared the events of the Stanford prison to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Many aspects of the experiment and its legitimacy have been questioned or disputed by contemporary researchers and experiment participants.

All in the Family

(1971-1979): Producer Norman Lear created this sitcom, which was based on the successful British series Till Death Us Do Part. It starred Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as the central couple, Archie and Edith Bunker; Archie was notable for his prejudicial attitudes, while Edith — whom Archie would refer to as his "dingbat" — was his long-suffering wife. The show also featured Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson, who would later be given his own spinoff, The Jeffersons, in which he and his wife "moved on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky" on the East Side of Manhattan.

Ms.

(1971-present) Is a pioneering feminist magazine, founded by Gloria Steinem and Dorothy Pitman Hughes. In its first decade, it favored changes to common phrases and nouns to make them gender-neutral. Its preview cover showed the goddess Kali holding domestic objects in her eight hands, while its first proper cover depicted Wonder Woman. In 1972, before Roe v. Wade, it ran an article about 53 women who admitted to getting abortions despite it still being illegal. While editor of Ms. in 1975, Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" after locating the author's unmarked grave.

Pete Sampras

(1971-present). This man burst onto the scene in 1990, when he became the youngest man ever to win the U.S. Open. He would take five U.S. Opens and two Australian Opens, but his greatest accomplishments came on the Wimbledon grass. Starting in 1993 he won Wimbledon seven times in eight years, losing only to Richard Krajicek in the quarterfinals in 1996. The last Wimbledon win (2000) gave him the all-time men's major record, passing Roy Emerson's 12. Married to actress Bridgette Wilson, he silenced his critics (who thought he was washed up) by defeating Andre Agassi for the 2002 U.S. Open title — then he retired.

Alex Rodriguez

(1975-present, shortstop/third base) Nicknamed "A-Rod," he began his career as a phenom shortstop with the Seattle Mariners. After the 2000 season, he signed the largest contract in baseball history and joined the Texas Rangers; he was traded to the Yankees in 2004 and signed an even more lucrative contract extension three years later. He changed positions to third base upon joining the Yankees due to Derek Jeter occupying the former. While he eclipsed 3,100 hits, hit 696 home runs, and recorded an MLB record 25 grand slams, his later career was marred by issues related to performance-enhancing drugs. Due to his involvement in the Biogenesis scandal, he was suspended for the entire 2014 season. He was part of the Yankees' 2009 World Series-winning team.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke

(1978) Determined that public systems could take race into account, but could not set specific racial quotas, in determining who, to admit to a university, thus upholding affirmative action. Allan Bakke was a white person who was rejected from the University of California Medical School at Davis. The medical school set aside sixteen positions each year for minorities, and Bakke contended that he was more qualified than the minorities. The decision was confusing, with Justice Lewis Powell being the only justice who was both for using race as a criterion and against quotas. Four other justices supported the use of quotas, and the remaining four were against all affirmative action. Bakke was admitted to the medical school; he eventually became an anesthesiologist in Minnesota.

Camp David Accords

(1978) Were negotiated at the presidential retreat Camp David by Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin; they were brokered by U.S. President Jimmy Carter. They led to a peace treaty the next year that returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, guaranteed Israeli access to the Red Sea and Suez Canal, and more-or-less normalized diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries. This isolated Egypt from the other Arab countries and led to Sadat's assassination in 1981.

The Name of the Rose

(1980) Written by Umberto Eco. This mystery is set in 1327 at a Catholic conference to resolve a potential heresy. William of Baskerville and his novice, Adso of Melk, are tasked with investigating the death of the comical manuscript artist Adelmo. The abbey's librarian, Malachi, bars the two men from entering a mysterious, labyrinthine library, so they meet with Jorge of Burgos, a blind monk who hates laughter. The next day, after the monk Venantius is found dead in a vat of pig blood, William and Adso find that both victims had sought out a book from a secret room called the Finis Africae. Upon breaking into the labyrinth, they find odd writings left by Venantius; later, the monks discover that Venantius's fingers and tongue were stained black. Eventually, William and Adso realize the letters above rooms in the library spell out regions of the world, and they locate the Finis Africae behind a mirror. As the conference ramps up, a monk named Severinus tells William about an odd book in his own library, but he is murdered before he can say more and the book goes missing. On the sixth day, Malachi is killed; his tongue and fingers are also black. On the final day of the conference, William and Adso enter the Finis Africae and find Jorge of Burgos within. Severinus's secret book is a sequel to Aristotle's Poetics, whose thoughts on comedy will undermine Christianity. Jorge poisoned the pages, knowing any reader would lick his fingers to turn them. Jorge then eats the manuscript, killing himself, but not before using Adso's lantern to set the library ablaze. William and Adso escape.

Alesia

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

Venus and Serena Williams

(1980-present and 1981-present). Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe may have preceded them as trailblazing African-American players, but the sisters have taken the game to new levels and to more people. Born in Compton, California and coached from an early age by father Richard, this person broke through first, reaching the final of the U.S. Open in 1997. The second won a Grand Slam before the first did (1999 U.S. Open), but the first hit #1 by sweeping Wimbledon and the U.S. Opens in both 2000 and 2001. For a long time the second could not beat her older sister, but that changed in 2002, when she took four straight major finals against the first person. With her 2003 win at Wimbledon, the second now has six majors to the first person's four. On the side, both are fashion designers, while the first also designs interiors.

Ronald Reagan's First Inauguration

(1981) Was the first in nearly 150 years to take place on the west side of the Capitol, so that the new president faced the National Mall as he was sworn in. His inauguration coincided with the release of the 52 Americans who were held for 444 days during the Iran hostage crisis. In his address, he noted that while in U.S. history, the "orderly transfer of authority" in an inauguration was "a commonplace occurrence," that "[i]n the eyes of many in the world, this every-4-year ceremony we accept as normal is nothing less than a miracle." His address ended by describing the diary of Martin Treptow, an American soldier who was killed during World War I. The inauguration set a record for television viewership (approximately 42 million) that stands to this day.

Roger Federer

(1981-present) Swiss superstar became the number-one player in the world in February 2004 and held that spot until he was eclipsed by Rafael Nadal in August 2008, a full 237 weeks later. He was 21 when he earned his first of eight Wimbledon championships in 2003, and he stayed dominant for nearly 15 years, earning his 20th major title at the 2018 Australian Open. At the 2008 Olympics, he earned a gold medal in men's doubles with fellow Swiss star Stan Wawrinka. In 2017, he founded the Laver Cup, a team event that pits European players against the rest of the world.

Rafael Nadal

(1986-present) Like his long-time rival Roger Federer, he has won a total of 20 majors. Known as the greatest clay court player in history, he earned 13 of his major wins at the French Open at Roland-Garros. He is considered part of the "Big Four" of 21st-century tennis players (with Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Murray), and is the only left-handed player among them. He and Andre Agassi are the only two singles players to win each of the four Grand Slam tournaments and an Olympic gold medal, which he won in 2008. He is from Mallorca in the Balearic Islands.

Novak Djokovic

(1987-present) The Serbian-born Djokovic has made more money playing than any other player in history, over $145 million. In 2015, he reached the finals of 15 straight tournaments in which he entered, and won three of the four Grand Slam events. After winning the French Open in 2016, he became the third man ever to hold all four Grand Slam titles at once. At the 2020 U.S. Open, he was controversially disqualified after a ball he hit accidentally hit a line judge in the throat; he had been the top seed of the tournament and was the first top seed to receive a disqualification at a major event. As of 2020, he is coached by Croatian tennis legend Goran Ivaniševic.

Rory McIlroy

(1989-present) He won his first major championship at the U.S. Open in 2011, and despite being just 22 years old, he finished at 16 strokes under par, a record for the tournament. He won three more majors in the following three years, and became the top-ranked golfer in the world in 2012; after doing so, he and Luke Donald took turns at the top spot for over a year. He briefly regained the top ranking in 2020, a year in which he and Dustin Johnson raised over £1.5 million for coronavirus relief in a televised skins game. Though he is from Northern Ireland, he has expressed interest in competing for Ireland in international competition instead of the U.K.

Jordan Spieth

(1993-present) In 2015, the year he turned 22, this golfer won both the Masters and the U.S. Open, and finished second at the PGA Championship. His Masters win was the first in which the same golfer lead after all four days since Raymond Floyd did it in 1976, and it included an 8-under-par opening day and a record-tying 18-under-par result for the tournament. He has struggled more in recent years, failing to win any PGA Tour events since his British Open win in July 2017.

Naomi Osaka

(1997-present) Just weeks before turning 21, she bested Serena Williams to win the 2018 U.S. Open. Months later, she won her second major in as many tries at the 2019 Australian Open. She is the first Japanese-born player to win any Grand Slam title. As of 2020, she is the highest-paid female athlete in the world, with annual earnings of over $37 million—the highest single-year total of any female athlete ever, easily beating a record once held by fellow tennis star Maria Sharapova. She has Japanese and Haitian ancestry.

Chartists

(19th century) Another working-class reform movement in industrial England was this movement, so named because it advocated the adoption of the People's Charter of 1838. The document for this group was written by six members of Parliament and six workers. It called for democratization of the political system by instituting universal suffrage, secret ballots, the abolition of property qualifications to stand for election, salaries for members of Parliament, constituencies of equal size, and annual parliamentary elections. This movement inspired several mass rallies, peaking in size in 1848 as the rest of Europe was swept up in revolution. The movement did not directly inspire any political reforms, but Parliament gradually granted five of the six demands made by this movement (the demand for annual elections was the only one never implemented).

Donald Trump's Inauguration

(2017) Aroused a great deal of controversy due to his administration's claims about attendance numbers. Press secretary Sean Spicer cited false Washington Metro ridership numbers to attempt to show that more people attended his inauguration than Obama's; Kellyanne Conway later described these numbers as "alternative facts." During his address, he described poverty, crime, gangs, and drugs as "American carnage" and invoked the World War II-era isolationist group by stating "from this day forward, it's going to be only America first." The Women's March on Washington, which took place the day after the inauguration, involved over 400,000 people and protested his misogynist and offensive behavior.

Joseph Biden's Inauguration

(2021) Became the oldest person to ever be president when he was sworn in at 78 years old. His vice president, Kamala Harris, also made history as the first woman and first person of color to hold the vice presidency. His inauguration had extremely limited in-person attendance due to the COVID-19 pandemic; a "field of flags" was set up on the National Mall in lieu of spectators. In his inaugural address, given two weeks to the day after an insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol trying to overturn the election result, he proclaimed "at this hour, my friends, democracy has prevailed," before calling on Americans to "end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal." During the ceremony, 22-year-old Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman read her poem "The Hill We Climb."

Han Dynasty

(206 BC - AD 220) Is considered a golden age of Chinese civilization; its influence was so great that the majority ethnic group in China is still called the name of this dynasty. Its founder, Liu Bang (later Emperor Gaozu), was born a peasant. Through resourceful recruitment of talented followers and strategic violation of ceasefire agreement with his rival Xiang Yu, Liu Bang managed to reunite China and established his capital at Chang'an (modern Xi'an). Instability in the early years of the this dynasty was caused by the depredations of the nomadic Xiongnu, a problem that was solved by its seventh emperor, Wudi. Emperor Wu, considered one of the greatest rulers of China, began a war of conquest against the Xiongnu and greatly expanded China's frontiers. He also formalized China's bureaucracy, sent envoys like Zhang Qian to Central Asia, and established Confucianism as the official state doctrine. Despite his success, his campaigns drained the treasury and his successors were unable to maintain the land he conquered. After a series of poor rulers, the Wang family — who claimed legitimacy through wives of various emperors — and their leader Wang Mang toppled this dynasty. Wang Mang established the Xin (meaning "new") dynasty and attempted to restore the ways of the Zhou dynasty, but he was unable to maintain power because of a catastrophic changing of the course of the Yellow River, which spawned peasant protest movements like the Red Eyebrows. Eventually, a scion of the Liu family — Liu Xiu — restored this dynasty, moving the capital to Luoyang and establishing the Eastern Han. Subsequent rebellions called the Yellow Turbans and the Five Pecks of Rice hastened the end of this dynasty.

Qin Dynasty

(221-206 BC), Despite its short duration, is usually considered the origin of many of the institutions of imperial China. The founding emperor, Qin Shi Huangdi (usually shorted as Qin Shi Huang), has gained an ill-deserved reputation in traditional Chinese historiography because he destroyed many Confucian texts in his infamous book burning. Qin Shi Huang also standardized weight measurements, unified the Chinese script, and used conscripts to build the Great Wall. After his death, the suicide of the crown prince led to a period of incompetent rule and revolts that caused the collapse of the this dynasty.

Diocletian

(244-305, reigned 284-305) Stabilized the empire after the Crisis of the Third Century. He took power by defeating Carinus at the Battle of the Margus before creating the Tetrarchy, a new system of imperial rule with two senior emperors and two junior emperors. He unsuccessfully attempted to curb inflation with his Edict on Maximum Prices and led the last and largest persecution of Christians. In 305, he became the first emperor to voluntarily step down, retiring to his palace in Split, Croatia.

Constantine

(272-335, reigned 306-335) Was the son of Constantius Chlorus, one of the junior members of Diocletian's Tetrarchy. Proclaimed emperor by his father's men, he defeated Maxentius at the Battle of Milvian Bridge to seize Italy and then defeated his brother-in-law Licinius to win the east. He proposed the Edict of Milan giving tolerance to Christians and oversaw the Christian Council of Nicea. He also converted the city of Byzantium into Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire for the next 1,100 years.

Epicurus

(341 BC-270 BC) This philosopher's namesake school, Epicureanism, believed that pleasure was the highest (or only) good, and that the absence of pain (aponia) was the highest pleasure. They also believed that human happiness consisted of a kind of tranquillity known as ataraxia. Critics of Epicureanism accused his school of promoting hedonism and making selfishness into a good, though he did not believe themselves to be hedonists.

Tiberius

(42 BC-AD 37, reigned AD 14-37) Was Augustus's stepson. During his father's reign, he 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, he had him arrested and executed. He was emperor when Jesus of Nazareth was crucified around AD 33.

Chordata

(44,000 species): This phylum that contains humans is divided into three subphyla: Urochordata, the sea squirts; Cephalochordata, the lancelets, and Vertebrata, the true vertebrates, which is the most diverse subphylum. Defining traits of chordates include pharyngeal gill slits, a notochord, a post-anal tail, and a dorsal hollow nerve cord. In vertebrates, some of these structures are found only in embryonic stages. The lancelet Amphioxus (Branchiostoma) is often used as a demonstration organism in biology labs.

Thermopylae

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

Mollusca

(50,000 species): This phylum are second in diversity only to the arthropods. Body plans within this phylum are diverse, but general characteristics include a soft body covered by a thin mantle, with a muscular foot and an internal visceral mass. There are two fluid-filled body cavities derived from mesodermal tissue: a small coelom and a large hemocoel that functions as an open circulatory system. Many organisms from this phylum have a shell composed of calcium carbonate and proteins, secreted by the mantle. Familiar groups within the Mollusca include the classes Gastropoda (slugs, snails), Bivalvia (clams, oysters, scallops), and Cephalopoda (nautilus, squids, octopi).

Tang Dynasty

(618-907) Is considered another golden age of Chinese culture: during this, important poets such as Li Bai (or Li Po) and Du Fu lived, and the printing press was invented. The dynasty reunited China after the collapse of the short-lived Sui dynasty, was ruled by the Li family, and had its capital at Chang'an (modern day Xi'an). Its first ruler, like the founder of the Han Dynasty, used the title of Emperor Gaozu. Gaozu was forced by his second son, Li Shimin (later Emperor Taizong), to abdicate after Li Shimin killed two of his brothers in an ambush. Despite his bloody path to power, Taizong is considered to be one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history, subjugating much of what is now western China and parts of central Asia. After his death, power came to be concentrated in the hands of Empress Wu. Empress Wu (or Wu Zetian) was the only woman to become emperor of China, and called her rule the "Second Zhou dynasty." Wu was a notable supporter of Buddhism and promoted the imperial examination, but succession troubles resulted in the premature end of her dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the An Lushan rebellion (also called the An Shi rebellion) wrecked the foundations of the dynasty. Although it was suppressed, the An Lushan rebellion concentrated power in the hands of regional military overlords. The dynasty had a tumultuous end in 907 that marked the beginning of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.

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, he 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, he 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.

Hadrian

(76-138, reigned 117-138) Was Trajan's younger cousin who succeeded him as emperor. At the start of his reign, he withdrew from Trajan's conquests in the east. While traveling in Greece, he joined the Eleusinian Mysteries; while visiting Egypt, his beloved companion Antinous drowned in the Nile. He also commissioned Hadrian's Wall to mark the border of Roman Britain and crushed the Bar Kokhba revolt in Judea.

Song Dynasty

(960-1279) Is known for its devotion to cultural activities instead of warfare and for the establishment of Neo-Confucianism as state doctrine, with the imperial examination as the primary way of recruiting talent. It was also during this dynasty that gunpowder and the compass were discovered. This dynasty, even in its early years, could not rule all of China proper and was forced to relinquish parts of northern China to the "barbarian" Liao dynasty, paying tribute for peace. Although like most dynasties, it began as the ventures of a military leader, its first ruler, Taizu, realized that his rival generals could take power from him. He then induced all his major commanders to retire, setting up the dominance of the scholarly elite over the military elite throughout this dynasty. This policy was continued by his successors. In the north, however, the Liao dynasty was eventually replaced by the militaristic Jin dynasty, who captured this dynasty's capital, Kaifeng along with two Emperors. The remnants of the court fled across the Yangtze and established the Southern Song with a new capital at Hangzhou, maintaining peace with the Jin through annual tribute. This state of affairs was brought to an end after this Song dynasty aided the Mongols in crushing the Jin, only to discover that they themselves were the next target. Despite the might of the Mongol war machine, this dynasty managed to repel major Mongol offensives for nearly 40 years, before it was finally defeated.

Caligula

(AD 12-AD 41, reigned AD 37-41) Was the son of Germanicus, Tiberius's popular nephew, and earned his nickname translating to little boot, from his father's soldiers. Though initially moderate, he became increasingly tyrannical, supposedly trying to build a palace on Lake Nemi and to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul. In AD 41, Cassius Chaerea led a conspiracy of senators and Praetorian guards that killed him and his immediate family.

Three Kingdoms

(AD 184-280) This short and turbulent period has had an enormous cultural impact thanks to the classic Chinese novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. After a period of disunion, the lands of the former Han dynasty coalesced into three kingdoms: Cao Wei north of the Yangtze, Eastern Wu in the lower Yangtze, and Shu Han in the Sichuan region. The Battle of Red Cliffs (AD 208) was fought during this period. Under the leadership of the Sima family, Cao Wei managed to defeat the other two kingdoms. The reunification was, however, short-lived. For the next four centuries, China went through a period known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties.

Battle of the Milvian Bridge

(AD 312) Was part of the civil war that ensued when Maxentius usurped the throne of the western half of the Roman Empire from Constantine. Prior to the battle, Constantine supposedly had a vision of God promising victory to his forces if he painted his shields with the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol. Constantine was indeed victorious, and Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River during the battle. Eventually, Constantine was able to abolish the Tetrarchy, become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, and end persecution of Christians.

Nero

(AD 37-AD 68, reigned AD 54-68) Was the son of Agrippina the Younger. The emperor provoked scandal by performing as an actor and musician. He ordered his mother's death in AD 58, and ordered the deaths of Seneca the Younger and several others after the Pisonian Conspiracy. He supposedly "fiddled" during the Great Fire of Rome and persecuted Christians after it. In AD 68, he was deposed by the Senate and committed suicide.

The Battle of Chalons

(AD 451) Was an epic battle between the Romans and the Huns fought in what is now France. The Roman army was commanded by Flavius Aetius and included Visigoths under Theodoric I, who was killed by an Ostrogoth during the battle. The Hunnic army was led by Attila, who was rampaging through Gaul. The battle ended with a victory for the Roman-Visigothic alliance, which stopped the Huns' advance into Gaul. The next year, Attila invaded Italy; however, in 453, Attila died and his empire broke up shortly after.

My Fair Lady

(Frederick Loewe; Alan Jay Lerner; Alan Jay Lerner; 1956): As part of a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering, the phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforms the Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. After Eliza falls for Freddy Eynsforth-Hill, Higgins realizes he is in love with Eliza. Eliza returns to Higgins' home in the final scene. It is adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, and its most famous songs are "The Rain in Spain" and "Get Me to the Church on Time."

Oresteia

(Aeschylus, c. 458 BC) Originally a four-play cycle, only three works (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) survive; a "satyr play" entitled Proteus has been lost. Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon's adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Electra, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue Orestes for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, Orestes appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, Orestes is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or "The Kindly Ones." The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.

B. F. Skinner

(American, 1904-1990): He was one of the leading proponents of behaviorism in works like Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He argued that all human actions could be understood in terms of physical stimuli and learned responses, and that there was no need to study — or even believe in — internal mental states or motivations; in fact, doing so could be harmful. Guided by his ideas, he trained animals to perform complicated tasks, including teaching pigeons to play table tennis.

Abraham Maslow

(American, 1908-1970): He is principally known for two works, Motivation and Personality and Toward a Psychology of Being, that introduced his theory of the hierarchy of needs (food, shelter, love, esteem, etc.) and its pinnacle, the need for self-actualization. Self-actualized people are those who understand their individual needs and abilities and who have families, friends, and colleagues that support them and allow them to accomplish things on which they place value. The lowest unmet need on the hierarchy tends to dominate conscious thought.

Jesus Christ Superstar

(Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, 1971): In the week leading up to the crucifixion, Judas grows angry with Christ's claims of divinity, and Mary Magdalene laments her romantic feelings for Christ. Judas hangs himself, and Christ, though frustrated with God, accepts his fate. It includes the songs "I Don't Know How to Love Him," "Gethsemane," and "Trial Before Pilate."

Evita

(Andrew Lloyd Webber; Tim Rice; Tim Rice; 1978): Che (possibly Che Guevara, but it's also South American slang for just "a guy") narrates the life story of Eva "Evita" Perón, a singer and actress who marries Juan Perón. Juan becomes President of Argentina, and Eva's charity work makes her immensely popular among her people ("Don't Cry for Me Argentina") before her death from cancer. It was made into a 1996 film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas.

Lawrence v. Texas

(Anthony Kennedy, William Rehnquist, 6-3, 2003) In 1998, a false police report led Houston police to the apartment of John Lawrence; upon entering, deputies claimed they found Lawrence having sex with another man, Tyron Gardner. Both men were charged with homosexual conduct, still a misdemeanor in Texas. Justice Kennedy's majority opinion held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause protected a person's "liberty" to engage in consensual homosexual activity, and declared the Texas law unconstitutional. The decision in Lawrence overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) — in which the court upheld a similar Georgia law — and has been cited as a key predecessor of both U.S. v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges.

Fort Sumter

(April 12, 1861). Built on an island in 1829, the fort was one of three that the United States maintained in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. In order to claim true independence from the Union, Jefferson Davis decided that the forts needed to be taken; a Confederate force under P. G. T. Beauregard ordered the small Union garrison, controlled by Major Robert Anderson, to surrender. Anderson refused, shots were fired, and the Union commander surrendered two days later with only one soldier killed. The Union made two unsuccessful attempts to recapture the fort with ironclad ships in 1863, but Confederate forces finally abandoned the fort when they left Charleston in February 1865.

Vicksburg Campaign

(April 29 - July 4, 1863). This campaign was launched by Ulysses S. Grant to take control of the Mississippi River and cut off the western Confederate states from the east. Grant ordered forces led by James McPherson, John McClernand, and William Tecumseh Sherman through bayous west of the Mississippi to Hard Times, Louisiana. They were up against Confederate defenders under Joseph Johnston and John Pemberton. Sherman and McPherson drove Johnston from Jackson, Mississippi on May 14, and the Union scored a victory at Champion's Hill two days later but could not drive the Southerners out of this city, so Grant laid siege to the town. Outnumbered 71,000 to 20,000 and on the brink of starvation, Pemberton finally surrendered his men; Johnston withdrew east.

The Frogs

(Aristophanes, c. 405 BC) This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave, Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax." Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists "weigh" their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who should be brought back to life.

Francois Quesnay

(French, 1694-1774): He was the undisputed leader of the Physiocrats, the first systematic school of economic thought. Among its tenets were the economic and moral righteousness of laissez-faire policies and the notion that land is the ultimate source of all wealth.

Lysistrata

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

The Clouds

(Aristophanes, c. 423 BC) This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist, Strepsiades, fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or "Thinkery" of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.

The Mikado

(Arthur Sullivan; W. S. Gilbert; 1885): The Mikado (Emperor of Japan) has made flirting a capital crime in Titipu, so the people have appointed an ineffectual executioner named Ko-Ko. Ko-Ko's ward, Yum-Yum, marries the wandering musician Nanki-Poo, and the two lovers fake their execution. The Mikado visits the town and forgives the lovers of their transgression. It includes the song "Three Little Maids From School Are We."

1996 Summer

(Atlanta, Georgia, United States; July 25 - August 8, 1996): In what have been called "The Coke Games," due to their exceptional commercialization in the city of Coke's business headquarters, the sweltering Georgia heat and organizational problems made these Games a veritable nightmare. But a bombing in Centennial Olympic Park that killed one person and injured 100 remains the Games' most memorable event. The bombing was eventually traced to Eric Rudolph. Irish swimmer Michelle Smith won three gold medals in the pool, only to be plagued by rumors of steroid use. Carl Lewis got his ninth gold by winning the long jump for the fourth consecutive Games, while American sprinter Michael Johnson became the first man to win the 200-meter and 400-meter races, the former in a world-record 19.32 seconds.

Gold

(Au, 79) Was known to the ancients as a relatively inert metal. Its atomic symbol comes from its Latin name, aurum. It is resistant to attack by most acids, but it (along with platinum) will dissolve in aqua regia, a mixture of concentrated nitric acid and hydrochloric acid. Among all metals, it has the highest electronegativity and electron affinity; it occasionally is found in a -1 oxidation state as Au-. Widely used in jewelry, it also has a number of scientific uses. Ernest Rutherford's foil experiment involving this element demonstrated the existence of a positively charged nucleus. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) often requires that specimens be "sputtered," or thinly coated, with gold atoms to allow imaging. Suspensions of this element's compounds have been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis.

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.

Guadalcanal Campaign

(August 1942 to February 1943): This first Allied counteroffensive in the Pacific targeted an island in the Solomons, to secure communications between the U.S. Pacific coast and Australia. "Operation Watchtower" was the codename for the initial U.S. Marine landings, which secured an airbase at Henderson Field and held off a Japanese counterattack on Edson's Ridge. The naval battle of Savo Island took place between American ships and Japanese forces (the so-called "Tokyo Express") trying to resupply troops on this island. By early 1943, Allied dominance of the seas and skies around Guadalcanal forced Japan to withdraw its remaining troops.

The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre

(August 23, 1572) Was a series of murders carried out by Catholic mobs and the Swiss Guard against Huguenots, or French 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.

Alfred Adler

(Austrian, 1870-1937): He was another close associate of Freud who split with him over Freud's insistence that sexual issues were at the root of neuroses and most psychological problems. He argued in The Neurotic Constitution that neuroses resulted from people's inability to achieve self-realization; in failing to achieve this sense of completeness, they developed "inferiority complexes" that inhibited their relations with successful people and dominated their relations with fellow unsuccessful people, a theory given the general name "individual psychology."

Every Man in His Humour

(Ben Jonson, 1598): Set in Jonson's contemporary London, this comedy is a "humours play," in which each character is a stock type governed by a corresponding "humour" (as theorized in Greek medicine). The plot chiefly concerns Knowell, an old gentleman who worries that his son Edward is becoming too involved with Wellbred, a fun-loving gallant Londoner. Knowell secretly follows his son to London; meanwhile, Wellbred's brother-in-law, the merchant Kitely, worries that Wellbred's behavior will give his business a bad reputation, all the while suspecting his own wife of infidelity. Various subplots involve Knowell's mischievous servant Brainworm, the braggart-captain Bobadill, and two friends of Wellbred who try to be fashionably and poetically melancholic. In the end, the kindly Justice Clement settles all of the grievances amassed over the course of the play. A follow-up, Every Man Out of His Humour, was written one year later.

1936 Summer

(Berlin, Germany; August 1-16, 1936): These games are best remembered for Alabama native Jesse Owens' amazing work on the track against a backdrop of Nazi propaganda emphasizing Aryan superiority. The American athlete won the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, long jump, and 4×100-meter sprint relay. Despite the growing strength of the Nazi state, the German people became enamored with Owens and named a Berlin street for him after his 1980 death. On other fronts, the Olympics were broadcast on television for the first time (as seen in the film Contact) and also saw the introduction of the relay of the Olympic torch.

Hohenzollern

(Brandenburg 1415-1618, Prussia 1525-1918, Germany 1871-1918, and Romania 1866-1947): This house began as Burgraves of Nuremburg, but eventually gained such titles as Margrave of Brandenburg, Duke and later King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany, and King of Romania. Some of its notable rulers included Frederick the Great (an enlightened ruler who led Prussian troops during the Seven Years' War) and Wilhelm II (the Emperor of Germany during World War I).

John Kenneth Galbraith

(Canadian, 1908-2006): His liberal popular writings like The Affluent Society and The New Industrial State (with their emphasis on public service and the limitations of the marketplace) ensure his coming up again and again.

Gobi Desert

(China and Mongolia; 500,000 mi2) This desert, Asia's second largest desert (after the Arabian Desert), is bounded on the north by the Altai Mountains. It is known for its role in the Silk Road trading route and the Nemegt Basin, where fossilized dinosaur eggs and human artifacts have been found.

Mount Everest

(China and Nepal): The border between Nepal and China straddles the summit of the Himalayan peak of this mountain, which, at a height of over 29,000 feet, is the tallest mountain in the world. The Khumbu Icefall and the cliff-like Three Steps are hazards faced by potential climbers of this mountain. It was first summited by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. Local Sherpas act as guides for mountaineers in the area, though they walked out of the job over dangerous working conditions in 2014 after 16 of them were killed in an avalanche.

Muller v. Oregon

(David Brewer, Melville Fuller, 9-0, 1908) Oregon laundry owner Curt Muller was fined for violating an Oregon law that limited the working hours of female employees; he appealed, claiming the law was an unconstitutional restriction of freedom of contract. Arguing on behalf of Oregon, future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis invoked scientific evidence to support the notion that excessive working hours were deleterious to a woman's health. Oregon's statute was upheld on the grounds that the state had a compelling interest in protecting the health of its female workers. One side effect of the decision was the judicial justification of sex discrimination in legislation.

Fredericksburg

(December 13, 1862). At this site, about 50 miles south of Washington, Union commander Ambrose Burnside (who had replaced George McClellan) tried to take the initiative and cross the Rappahannock River in a march toward Richmond. He met Robert E. Lee's forces, which were well entrenched on Marye's Heights behind the town. Burnside's army took heavy losses assaulting the heights, and fell back across the Rappahannock. A later attempt to flank the Confederate position was foiled by heavy rain during the so-called "Mud March" of January 1863.

Erik Erikson

(German-born American, 1902-1994): He is best known for his theories on how social institutions reflect the universal features of psychosocial development; in particular, how different societies create different traditions and ideas to accommodate the same biological needs. He created a notable eight-stage development process and wrote several "psychohistories" explaining how people like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi were able to think and act the way they did.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

(December 1941): Japanese plans for domination of the Pacific called for a surprise attack on the U.S. Navy base in Hawaii; wrecking the American Pacific Fleet would allow the Japanese navy to invade southeast Asia with minimal opposition. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned the Japanese strike, which sent carrier-based dive bombers and torpedo bombers to Oahu on Sunday, December 7, 1941. Four American battleships, including the USS Arizona, were sunk; the American aircraft carriers were at sea away from this place at the time of the attack. The losses sustained at this place shocked the previously neutral United States into entering World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt's address to Congress described December 7 as a "date which will live in infamy."

Austerlitz

(December 2, 1805, Czech Republic) Napoleon's Grand Army then struck east at Austria and Russia, the land-bound members of the Third Coalition. Napoleon's first move was to force the surrender of 30,000 Austrians under General Mack at Ulm. The French then turned east into the heart of Austria, where they seized Vienna and awaited counterattack by the Russians. At this battle, on December 2, 1805, a mostly-Russian coalition army collided with the waiting French. (The Russians, led in person by Tsar Alexander I, were joined by the scattered remains of the Austrian army under Holy Roman Emperor Francis II. This battle is thus known as the "Battle of the Three Emperors.") The allies, planning to advance their left, abandoned the Pratzen Heights, a dominating hill in the center of the battlefield. Napoleon seized the heights, splitting the Russian army and then defeating each half in turn. The resulting Peace of Pressburg (December 26, 1805) ended the War of the Third Coalition and brought about the downfall of the Holy Roman Empire.

Trenton

(December 26, 1776): Occurred early in the morning after George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas night. The Hessians, under the command of Johann Rall, were surprised and about two-thirds of them were captured.

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.

Quebec

(December 31, 1775): The culmination of a failed invasion of Canada by American colonists. In a blinding snowstorm, the American general Richard Montgomery was killed in battle, Benedict Arnold was wounded, and Daniel Morgan was captured.

The Blue Rider

(Der Blaue Reiter) (1911) So named because of the founders' love for horses and the color blue (and the namesake of an early painting by Kandinsky), the sub-movement was formed in Munich mainly around Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. Its members began to reject representational art and move towards abstraction, as they saw abstraction as a means of conceiving the natural world in terms that could surpass representation; according to Kandinsky's influential essay Concerning the Spiritual in Art, blue is the color of spirituality, and the darker the blue, the more it awakens the human desire for the eternal. In addition to Kandinsky (The Rider, Composition VI, Improvisation 28, The Cow) and Marc (Large Blue Horses, Fighting Forms, Animals in Landscape), other members of this group include Alexej von Jawlensky (Variation), Marianne von Werefkin, August Macke (View into a Lane), and Gabriele Munter (Dorfstrasse in Blau).

The Bridge

(Die Brücke) (1905) Founded by Ernst Kirchner in Dresden, Die Brücke is so named because members of the movement saw themselves as the bridge between traditional and modern painting. Inspired by Fauvism, members of this sub-movement followed similar ideals, utilizing violent juxtapositions of color; however, paintings of this sub-movement were noticeably more intense, reflecting emotional agitation through scenes of city streets and sexually charged events in country settings. Besides Kirchner (Street, Dresden, Playing Naked People, Bathers at Moritzburg), other prominent members of this group include Erich Heckel (Bathers in the Reeds, Weisses Haus in Dangast), Karl Schmidt-Rotluff (Woman with a Bag, The Factory), Fritz Bleyl, Emil Nolde (Blumengarten), Max Pechstein (Under the Trees), and Otto Mueller (Landscape with Yellow Nudes).

The Magic Flute

(Die Zauberflöte, K. 620): The libretto, by Emanuel Schikaneder, who took the role of Papageno at the premier, incorporates many Masonic elements (both Schikaneder and Mozart were Masons). Tamino is saved from a serpent by three maidens of the Queen of the Night, but Papageno, a bird-catcher, claims credit. Both are shown their counterparts — Pamina and Papagena — but must face several trials at the hands of the sorcerer Sarastro, who heads a cult of Isis and Osiris and is assisted by Monostatos, a treacherous Moor. The Queen of the Night, who has two very difficult arias ("O zittre nicht, mein lieber Sohn" and "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen," the latter of which is often just called "the Queen of the Night's aria"), attempts to stop Tamino and Pamina from joining Sarastro, but is magically exiled with Monostatos.

Burj Khalifa

(Dubai, UAE; Adrian Smith, architect; completed 2009) As of 2019, this skyscraper 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.

Miranda v. Arizona

(Earl Warren, 5-4, 1966) In 1963, Phoenix police arrested Ernesto Miranda on suspicion of kidnapping and rape; he subsequently confessed to those crimes. During his initial interrogation by police, Miranda was never informed of his Fifth or Sixth Amendment rights. Writing for a thin majority, Chief Justice Warren stated that "[p]rior to any questioning, [a] person must be warned that he has a right to remain silent, that any statement he does make may be used as evidence against him, and that he has a right to the presence of an attorney, either retained or appointed," laying the groundwork for the iconic "Miranda warnings."

The Bacchae

(Euripides, c. 405 BC) At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans the worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.

Medea

(Euripides, c. 431 BC) This Euripides play retells the myth of a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts' quest, the play depicts her vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. She uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce's father Creon (a different character than the Creon who appears in Sophocles's Theban plays). Not content with this, she seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront her, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play's ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.

Iron

(Fe, 26) Is the most common metal in the Earth, and one of the major components of the Earth's core. It was known to the ancients; its atomic symbol comes from the Latin name ferrum. This element's namesake of ferromagnetism; one of its ores is magnetite, Fe3O4, which contains iron in both of its most common oxidation states, 2+ and 3+. Iron(II) sulfide, FeS2, is formally known as pyrite, but because of its appearance has long been known as fool's gold. This element can react with oxygen in the air to form iron(III) oxide, Fe2O3, in a relatively slow but exothermic process; this process is used in "all-day" heat patches. Hydrated iron(III) oxide is better known as rust; rust only forms when iron is exposed to both oxygen and water. Its isotope 56 is one of the most strongly bound of all nuclei, with the lowest mass per nucleon. This element is one of the heaviest elements that is normally produced by stellar nucleosynthesis. The largest use of this element is in steel.

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 massacre turned public opinion against Capone and led to him being named "Public Enemy No. 1."

Fall of Singapore

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

Bourbon

(France, 1589-1792): The first king from this royal family was Henry IV, who was victorious in the War of the Three Henrys and issued the Edict of Nantes guaranteeing religious freedom. Notable rulers from this group included Louis XIV and Louis XVI (who was beheaded during the French Revolution). Following Napoleon's fall, they briefly ruled France again until the July Revolution of 1830. Spain has also been ruled mostly by these people since 1700. Marco Polo (c. 1254 - c. 1324): The Venetian merchant brothers Niccolò and Maffeo Polo traveled to China in 1261, serving Kublai Khan from 1266 to 1269. Kublai sent them back to Europe as envoys in 1269; when they returned to China in 1274 they brought Niccolò's son Marco along. The Polos served Kublai Khan until 1292, with Marco spending time as governor of Yangzhou. After being captured by the Genoese at the naval Battle of Curzola, Marco Polo dictated his memoir — a text known as Il Milione — to his prison cellmate, Rusticiano (or Rusticello) of Pisa.

Guys and Dolls

(Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling, and Abe Burrows, 1950): Nathan Detroit runs an underground craps game but needs a location. To make enough money to use the Biltmore garage for his game, he bets the notorious gambler Sky Masterson that Sky can't convince a girl of Nathan's choice to go to Havana with him for dinner; Nathan chooses the righteous missionary Sarah Brown. Sky wins the bet but ends up having to bring a dozen sinning gamblers to a revival meeting. As Nathan attends the meeting, his long-suffering fiancée Adelaide, a nightclub dancer, is increasingly frustrated that their 14-year engagement has not led to marriage. At the meeting, Sky bets a large amount of money against the gamblers' souls, winning, and eventually convinces Sarah to marry him and Nathan to marry Adelaide. Adapted from short stories by Damon Runyon, the musical includes the songs "A Bushel and a Peck," "Luck Be a Lady," and "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat."

Cabaret

(Fred Kander; John Ebb; Jon Masteroff; 1966): Cabaret is set in the seedy Kit-Kat Club in Berlin during the Weimer era. The risqué Master of Ceremonies presides over the action ("Wilkommen"). The British lounge singer Sally Bowles falls in love with the American writer Cliff Bradshaw, but the two break up as the Nazis come to power. Adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1972 film starring Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, it is based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.

Roe v. Wade

(Harry Blackmun, Warren Burger, 7-2, 1973): Norma McCorvey (under the alias Jane Roe), a rape victim, sued Dallas County attorney Henry Wade for the right to an abortion. When the case reached the Supreme Court, the plaintiff depended on the growing recognition of a "right to privacy," which began with the 1965 case Griswold v. Connecticut. The court struck down state anti-abortion laws as "unconstitutionally vague," held that the word "person" in the Constitution "does not include the unborn," and legalized abortion in the first trimester. McCorvey later joined the pro-life movement and claimed that she was not actually raped and that she was pressured into filing the case by her ambitious attorney Sarah Weddington.

Helium

(He, 2) Is the lightest noble gas and the second most abundant element in the Universe (after hydrogen). Discovered by Sir William Ramsey, Pierre Janssen, and Norman Lockyer, it has two stable isotopes, helium-3 and helium-4, with helium-4 by far the more common. Because of their different quantum properties (the helium-3 nucleus is a fermion, while the helium-4 nucleus is a boson), the isotopes of this element actually have significantly different physical properties. Helium-4 can exist in a zero-viscosity state known as superfluidity when its temperature drops below the lambda point. It has the lowest boiling point of any element; the liquid form of this element is used for devices that need intense cooling, such as MRI machines. This element here on Earth results from radioactive decay, since the helium nucleus is equivalent to an alpha particle.

Plessy v. Ferguson

(Henry B. Brown, Melville Fuller, 7-1, 1896): Homer Plessy (who was legally classified as an "octoroon," meaning one-eighth black) bought a first-class ticket on the East Louisiana Railway. He sat in the whites-only car in violation of an 1890 Louisiana law mandating separate accommodations. He was convicted, but appealed to the Supreme Court against John Ferguson, a Louisiana judge. The court upheld the law provided that "separate but equal" facilities were provided. John Marshall Harlan issued a famous dissent claiming "Our constitution is color-blind." The case was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

Mercury

(Hg, 80) Is one of just two elements that is a liquid at standard temperature and pressure (the only other one is bromine). It has been known since antiquity, and is found in ores such as cinnabar. Older names for it, reflecting its liquid nature, include hydrargyrum (the source of its symbol) and quicksilver. Because it is a very dense liquid, it is commonly used in barometers to measure atmospheric pressure; the pressure exerted by the atmosphere equals the pressure exerted by a column containing 760 millimeters of mercury. Alloys of this element with other metals are called amalgams, some of which have been used as dental fillings. Chronic exposure to mercury can cause psychological problems; its use in hatmaking led to the expression "mad as a hatter." More recently, concerns about this element's exposure have led to the banning of the use of this element in thermometers.

Gideon v. Wainwright

(Hugo Black, Earl Warren, 9-0, 1963): Clarence Earl Gideon was accused of breaking into a pool hall in Florida. Because his crime was not capital, the court declined to provide him with an attorney. He was convicted, sued Louie Wainwright — the director of the corrections office — and took his case to the Supreme Court. The court overruled Betts v. Brady and held that the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments required appointed counsel in all trials. Gideon was retried and found innocent. The case is the subject of the book Gideon's Trumpet.

Annie Get Your Gun

(Irving Berlin, Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields, 1946): Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show comes to town, and performer Frank Butler challenges anyone to a shooting contest. Annie Oakley wins the contest and joins the show. She and Frank fall in love, but Frank quits out of jealousy that Annie is a better shooter than he is. The title role was originated by Ethel Merman. The show includes the songs "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," and "Anything You Can Do."

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 without 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 is also used for several other incidents, including several events in Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Battle of Bataan

(January to May 1942): Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers struck the Philippine island Luzon, forcing the Americans to retreat to this Peninsula, where they held out for four months. General Douglas MacArthur vowed "I shall return" before evacuating to Australia and leaving command to Jonathan Wainwright, who retreated to the island of Corregidor and surrendered on May 6. The prisoners from here were sent on a "death march" 80 miles to San Fernando with minimal food, water, and medical supplies; those that fell behind were beaten. Japanese General Masaharu Homma was executed in 1946 for his role in the war crime.

Mount Fuji

(Japan): Yamanaka and Kawaguchi are two lakes found along the slopes of this mountain, the tallest mountain in Japan. It is only about an hour's drive from Tokyo, and has significance in the Shinto religion, being sacred to the goddess Sengen-Sama. The mountain was also depicted in the series of prints Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, drawn by Hokusai.

Fiddler on the Roof

(Jerry Bock; Sheldon Harnick; Joseph Stein; 1964): Tevye is a lowly Jewish milkman in tsarist Russia ("If I Were a Rich Man"), and his daughters are anxious to get married ("Matchmaker"). Tzeitel marries the tailor Motel ("Sunrise, Sunset," "The Bottle Dance"), Hodel gets engaged to the radical student Perchik, and Chava falls in love with a Russian named Fyedka. The families leave their village, Anatevka, after a pogrom. It is adapted from Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem.

Marbury v. Madison

(John Marshall, 4-0, 1803) On his final day in office in 1801, John Adams signed commissions for 42 federal judges (the so-called "midnight judges"). His successor, Thomas Jefferson, opted to not deliver most of the commissions. One appointee, William Marbury, sued the new secretary of state, James Madison, to force the delivery of his commission. The Judiciary Act of 1789 had granted the court original jurisdiction in such cases, but the Constitution did not. The court ruled that the Judiciary Act conflicted with the Constitution and was therefore void. Therefore Marbury's request was denied for lack of jurisdiction. This case established the principle of judicial review, the power of the court to nullify unconstitutional laws.

Fletcher v. Peck

(John Marshall, 6-0, 1810): In 1795 the Georgia legislature corruptly sold land along the Yazoo River (now in Mississippi) to private citizens in exchange for bribes. The legislators were mostly defeated in the next elections and the incoming politicians voided the sales. In the meantime, John Peck sold some of the land in question to Robert Fletcher, who then sued him, claiming that he did not have clear title. The Supreme Court held that the state legislature did not have the power to repeal the sale. This was one of the earliest cases in which the Supreme Court struck down a state law.

McCulloch v. Maryland

(John Marshall, 9-0, 1819): After the Second Bank of the United States began calling in loans owed by the states, Maryland passed a law taxing out-of-state bank. The federal bank refused to pay, so the state sued its Baltimore cashier, James McCulloch. The court ruled that the federal government had the right to establish the bank even though it was not expressly enumerated in the Constitution and also noted that since "the power to tax was the power to destroy," Maryland could not tax the bank without destroying federal sovereignty.

The Duchess of Malfi

(John Webster, 1613): This play is a product of the Jacobean period, in which the thrilling, macabre, and fantastic were prevalent on stage. The play follows the widowed Duchess, who loves Antonio Bologna, a good-hearted nobleman below her station. Her twin brother Ferdinand denounces her affection for Antonio out of incestuous envy. Her other brother, a Cardinal, hires the former galley-slave Bosola to spy on her. Bosola discovers the Duchess and Antonio have married (and had children), so the Cardinal sends them into exile. Ferdinand subsequently imprisons the Duchess, terrorizes her with asylum patients, and arranges for her to see statues resembling the dead bodies of her husband and children. Executioners sent by Ferdinand then kill the Duchess and her maid Cariola. Paranoia overtakes both brothers; the Cardinal kills his mistress Julia with a poisoned bible, and Ferdinand imagines he has become a werewolf. Bosola, disgusted by his own actions, tries to murder the Cardinal but mistakenly kills Antonio instead. In a climactic confrontation, Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand all kill each other, leaving the son of the Duchess and Antonio to inherit what remains.

Rent

(Jonathan Larson, 1996): Rent tells the story of impoverished artists ("bohemians") living in the East Village of New York City during the AIDS crisis circa 1990 (though the temporal references are inconsistent, so no specific year can be pinned down). It is narrated by the filmmaker Mark Cohen, whose ex-girlfriend Maureen just left him for a woman (Joanne), and whose recovering-heroin-addict roommate Roger meets the dying stripper (and fellow heroin addict) Mimi. Mark and Roger's former roommate, the itinerant philosopher and hacker Collins comes to town, where he is robbed, then saved by the transvestite Angel, with whom he moves in. Meanwhile, the former fourth roommate of Mark, Roger, and Collins — Benny — has married into a wealthy family and bought the building Mark and Roger now live in, from which he wants to evict them. The title refers to both the rent money that Mark and Roger cannot and will not pay Benny, and to their community being rent apart (torn) by the AIDS epidemic, poverty, and drug addiction. Rent is an adaptation of Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème (with most characters corresponding directly, e.g. Mark to Marcello). It won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is most famous for the songs "Seasons of Love" and "La Vie Bohème".

Gettysburg

(July 1-3, 1863). This marked both the farthest northward advance by the Confederacy and the turning point that led to its defeat. Robert E. Lee, along with James Longstreet, A. P. Hill, and Richard Ewell, led the attack into southern Pennsylvania; J. E. B. Stuart was supposed to monitor Union movement with his cavalry, but strayed so far east of here that his force did not return (exhausted) until the second day of battle. George Meade replaced Joseph Hooker as leader of the Union army; Southern forces drove Northerners through the town of Gettysburg but could not secure key positions at Cemetery Ridge and Little and Big Round Tops. Low on supplies, on the third and final day Lee ordered an attack on the center; George Pickett led his famous "charge" through open fields, where the Union mowed down one-third of his 15,000 men. The Confederates lost 20,000 and Lee retreated to Virginia.

Battle of Kursk

(July 1943 - August 1943): Fought in western Russia, this battle was the largest tank battle in history, with about 6,000 tanks engaged. Thanks to a complex spy network, the Soviet leadership was well-informed about German plans to launch Operation Citadel against the Kursk salient, and constructed massive defensive fortifications. After the German advance was stopped, a successful Soviet counterattack was launched. The German Army never again was able to mount a major attack on the Eastern Front.

Marengo

(June 14, 1800, northern Italy) The coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9, 1799) brought down France's existing government (the Directory) and made Napoleon himself "first consul," the effective leader of France. While Napoleon was absent in Egypt, a coalition of Austria, Russia, and Britain had pushed French troops back on all fronts. In 1800 Napoleon marched over the Alps to roll back Austrian gains in Italy. His troops, overextended in an attempt to relieve the Austrian siege of Genoa, were hit by an Austrian surprise attack on June 14, 1800. General Louis Desaix led a column of French reinforcements to Napoleon's aid; the additional troops drove off the Austrian army, but Desaix was shot and killed.

Waterloo

(June 18, 1815, Belgium) Napoleon's escape from Elba began a period known as the "Hundred Days," in which the emperor briefly returned to the throne of France. The struggle between the restored emperor and the "Seventh Coalition" began when Napoleon's Army of the North marched into the Low Countries, hoping for a showdown with the British, Dutch, and Prussians before the Austrian and Russian armies gathering further east could come to their aid. The French brushed aside Allied advance guards at the two preliminary battles Quatre Bras and Ligny on June 16. Napoleon's victory over the Prussians at Ligny led him to falsely believe that he had enough time to pursue and defeat the British without further Prussian interference. On June 18 Napoleon's advance on Brussels approached the crossroads of Mont St. Jean, where the Duke of Wellington had set up a defensive position for a combined army of British Peninsular War veterans, Dutch, and pro-British Germans. On the French left, British troops defended the walled farm Hougoumont from a series of infantry assaults; in the center, Marshal Michel Ney's massed cavalry charge was broken by the square formations of the British infantry; on the right, Gebhard von Blücher's Prussian army arrived to attack the French army in the flank. Napoleon's final gamble was to commit his Imperial Guard to a renewed assault on the Allied center. The guardsmen were cut down by the fire of British light infantry, leading to the general collapse of the French army. Napoleon was exiled once more, this time to the isolated South Atlantic island St. Helena, where he died in 1821.

Petersburg Campaign

(June 1864 - April 1865). After Cold Harbor, Ulysses S. Grant moved south to lay siege to this railroad hub, 25 miles from Richmond. The trenches in which much of the fighting took place were similar to those later used in World War I. On July 30, Pennsylvania coal miners detonated four tons of powder in a tunnel underneath the Confederate line; this "Battle of the Crater" killed many defenders. Although the South held this city, its supplies ran thin in the winter of 1865. Grant finally destroyed the Confederate right flank at Five Forks (April 1-2), 14 miles southwest of Petersburg. This resounding defeat led to Robert E. Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House one week later, effectively ending the Civil War.

Battle of Midway

(June 1942): This battle is considered the turning point of World War II in the Pacific. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto launched attacks on both this Island — an atoll northwest of Hawaii — and the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, but the Americans had broken the Japanese naval code and were forewarned. Admiral Chester W. Nimitz's American fleet lost the aircraft carrier Yorktown, but American dive-bombers destroyed four Japanese carriers: Soryu, Akagi, Kaga, and Hiryu. The loss of four irreplaceable aircraft carriers and the death of the best-trained Japanese pilots crippled Japanese naval aviation for the duration of the war.

Battle of Midway

(June 1942): Universally considered the turning point in the Pacific Theater, the battle saw the Japanese lose four aircraft carriers, a blow from which they never fully recovered. Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned to lure the U.S. fleet into a trap, but the Americans had broken the Japanese code, allowing them to pull off a stunning victory, with dive bombers from the Enterprise sinking the carriers Kaga, Akagi, and Hiryu, while those from the hastily-repaired Yorktown sank the carrier Soryu.

Petronas Towers

(Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; César Pelli, architect; completed 1998) These 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.

West Side Story

(Leonard Bernstein; Stephen Sondheim; Arthur Laurents; 1957): Riff and Bernardo lead two rival gangs: the blue-collar Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. Tony, a former Jet, falls in love with Bernardo's sister Maria and vows to stop the fighting, but he kills Bernardo after Bernardo kills Riff in a "rumble." Maria's suitor Chino shoots Tony, and the two gangs come together. Notable songs include "America," "Tonight," "Somewhere," "I Feel Pretty," and "Gee, Officer Krupke." Adapted from Romeo and Juliet, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1961 film starring Natalie Wood.

1994 Winter

(Lillehammer, Norway; February 12-27, 1994): Massachusetts native Nancy Kerrigan and Oregonian Tonya Harding were among America's leading hopes for gold in women's figure skating. During the Olympic Trials in Detroit, Kerrigan was viciously attacked by an unknown assailant, who would later be traced back to Harding. In the ensuing media circus, both Kerrigan and Harding were sent to Norway, but their thunder was stolen by Ukrainian skater Oksana Baiul, who edged out silver medalist Kerrigan, while Harding placed eighth. Sweden won the ice hockey gold by defeating Canada in a shootout; future Colorado Avalanche forward Peter Forsberg's game-winning effort against Canadian goalie Sean Burke was immortalized on a Swedish postage stamp. In speed skating, Bonnie Blair won her third straight gold in the 500-meters and second straight in the 1,000-meters, perennial hard-luck kid Dan Jansen won Olympic gold in his last race, the 1,000 meters, and Norwegian Johann Olav Koss won three gold medals, all in world-record times.

The Little Foxes

(Lillian Hellman, 1939). Set on a plantation in 1900, Hellman attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina's husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon: "the little foxes that spoil the vines."

1984 Summer

(Los Angeles, California, United States; July 28 - August 12, 1984): Virtually every Communist nation skipped these games, leaving the door open for a "USA all the way" feeling, as the Americans took home 83 gold medals out of a total of 174. Among the highlights were American sprinter Carl Lewis' repeat of Jesse Owens' 1936 performance: winning the 100-meter dash, 200-meter dash, long jump, and 4×100 meter sprint relay. In gymnastics, West Virginia native Mary Lou Retton won the all-around gold medal.

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 massacre through extensive interviews with Calley. Hersh later broke the story of the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison during the Iraq War.

Hampton Roads

(March 9, 1862). A channel in southeastern Virginia was the site of the first major fight between two ironclad ships. The Confederates raised an old wooden boat, the Merrimack, and fit it with ten guns and iron armor plates. Renamed the Virginia, it was captained by Franklin Buchanan. The Union countered by constructing a large oval with a rotating gun, called the Monitor and piloted by John Worden. The Virginia tore through Union wooden ships (the Cumberland, Congress, and Minnesota) but when the Monitor arrived, the two ironclads fought to a stalemate; the Union thus maintained its naval blockade of the Confederacy. The South deliberately destroyed the Virginia two months later. The Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras in December 1862.

Peninsular Campaign

(March-July 1862). Union commander George McClellan devised this plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia by sending 110,000 men up the peninsula between the York and James Rivers. Advised of Northern maneuvers, Southern commander Joseph Johnston detached a force to defend the peninsula. He also sent a small unit (led by Stonewall Jackson) that crushed Union reinforcements in the Shenandoah Valley. After Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines (June 1), Davis replaced him with Robert E. Lee. Lee concentrated his force north of the Chickahominy River; in the Seven Days' Battles (June 25 - July 1), the Confederates broke through Union defenses, leading to McClellan's retreat down the James toward Harrison's Landing, and the failure of the campaign.

Ivan Pavlov

(Russian 1849-1936): He was more of a physiologist than a psychologist, but questions about him are more often classified as psychology than biology by question writers. He is largely remembered for his idea of the conditioned reflex, for example, the salivation of a dog at the sound of the bell that presages dinner, even though the bell itself is inedible and has no intrinsic connection with food. He won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for Physiology or Medicine for unrelated work on digestive secretions.

Chancellorsville

(May 1-4, 1863). A victory for the South, but with great cost, as Stonewall Jackson lost his life. Lincoln called on "Fighting Joe" Hooker to command the Union army; Hooker took a force of 134,000 and provoked Robert E. Lee and Jackson's 60,000 men into battle. Jackson moved around Hooker and counterattacked the Union flank on May 2. That night, while Jackson was on reconnaissance, his own men mistook him for a Northerner and shot him; he died of pneumonia eight days later. The following morning, a cannonball blast hit the Chancellor House, knocking Hooker unconscious; Union troops, led by John Sedgwick, then retreated. Casualties for the North outnumbered those of the South, 17,000 to 13,000.

Battle of the Coral Sea

(May 1942): This battle resulted from Japanese ambitions to invade Port Moresby, an Allied base in New Guinea. Frank Jack Fletcher's American fleet damaged two Japanese aircraft carriers, Shokaku and Zuikaku. The U.S. Navy's major loss was the carrier Lexington. The battle, a tactical draw, prevented the Japanese from attacking Port Moresby. It is notable for being the first naval battle fought entirely by aircraft — neither fleet was ever in visual range of the other's ships.

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.

Abraj Al-Bait

(Mecca, Saudi Arabia; [Firms of] Dar Al-Handasah and SL Rasch, architects; completed 2011) The Saudi government funded construction of this bulding 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. This skyscraper, 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 Music Man

(Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey, 1957): The swindler Harold Hill attempts to con the families of River City, Iowa by starting a boys' band. While there, he falls in love with the librarian Marian Paroo. The scheme is exposed, but the town forgives him. Notable songs include "Trouble" (the origin of the phrase "trouble in River City"), "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Shipoopi," "Gary, Indiana," and "Till There was You."

1968 Summer

(Mexico City, Mexico; October 12-27, 1968): In addition to being the first Olympics to be held at high altitude, these Games saw U.S. long jumper Bob Beamon set a record of 8.90 meters that would remain untouched for 23 years. The Games ended on a controversial note: to protest the Mexican government's killing of at least 250 unarmed demonstrators on the eve of the Games, Tommie Smith and John Carlos staged a silent protest with a black-gloved, raised-fist "Black Power" salute during the award ceremony for the 200-meter race. This didn't sit well with the International Olympic Committee, who promptly ordered them home.

Munn v. Illinois

(Morrison Waite, 7-2, 1877) Ira Munn owned a set of Chicago grain elevators and charged oppressively high fees for their use. In 1871, the Illinois legislature passed a law setting maximum rates for grain storage. On appeal to the Supreme Court, lawyers for the business claimed that the Illinois statute violated Fourteenth-Amendment due process rights regarding private property. Chief Justice Waite's opinion upheld the Illinois law, and proclaimed that "when private property is devoted to a public use, it is subject to public regulation." The decision was a landmark in the history of government regulation of businesses, especially railroads.

1980 Summer

(Moscow, Soviet Union; July 19 - August 3, 1980): Despite the glow from the Lake Placid Games, these Games were marred by a United States boycott ordered by President Jimmy Carter in response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. This lead was followed by Canada, West Germany, Japan, Kenya, and China, while other Western nations left it up to their individual athletes, many of whom chose to partake. The result was an Eastern Bloc field day, with all 54 East German rowers earning a medal and the Soviets totaling 80 gold medals. British distance runner Sebastian Coe produced the West's best performance by winning the 1500-meter race.

1972 Summer

(Munich, West Germany; August 26 - September 11, 1972): One of the most tragic Olympics ever, these Games saw the kidnapping and killing of eleven Israeli athletes by eight Palestinian terrorists, five of whom were shot dead by West German police. Jim McKay of ABC Sports remained on the air for hours, bringing American viewers up to date on the situation. Though the Olympics paused for 34 hours, the IOC ordered the games to continue, and memorable performances were turned in by American swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals, and Russian gymnast Olga Korbut, who captivated audiences en route to winning three gold medals.

Nitrogen

(N, 7) Is the most abundant element in Earth's atmosphere. The element which was first isolated as "noxious air" by Daniel Rutherford, exists primarily as a diatomic molecule containing two triple-bonded type of this element atoms (N2). Because it is extremely stable, N2 is unusable for many biological and chemical purposes. To make it useful, it often undergoes fixation to convert it into usable nitrogen species such as the ammonium ion (NH4+) — as it is by bacteria in the root nodules of legume plants—or ammonia gas (NH3), as is done industrially in the Haber-Bosch process. Conversely, its stability makes it useful in preventing unwanted combustion reactions. It also has a relatively low boiling point (-196°C), which makes this element useful as a refrigerant.

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.

Orange-Nassau

(Netherlands, 1544-present): This house was founded by William the Silent, who led the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish in the Eighty Years' War, resulting in the recognition of the Netherlands' independence in 1648. In 1688, William III of this royal house, at the invitation of Parliament, invaded England with his wife Mary in what is called the Glorious Revolution. This family is currently led by Willem-Alexander, the King of the Netherlands.

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.

Empire State Building

(New York City; [Firm of] Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, architects; completed 1931) This skyscraper, 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. This 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.

Sahara Desert

(Northern Africa; 3.5 million mi2) This desert is the world's second largest desert, but its largest hot desert. The Atlas Mountains bound the western part of this desert on the north, and the Sahel — a savannah-like strip — bounds it on the south. It is dominated by rocky regions (hamada), sand seas (ergs), and salt flats (shatt) and dry river valleys (wadi) that are subject to flash floods. The Berber and Tuareg peoples are native to the Sahara.

Leipzig

(October 16-19, 1813, Germany) The following year the Russian army marched west into central Europe at the head of a "Sixth Coalition" that brought the previously defeated Austrians and Prussians back into hostilities against France. At this battle in central Germany, coalition forces met a hastily-assembled replacement army raised by Napoleon after the disaster in Russia. More than 600,000 men fought in this four-day struggle, popularly known as the "Battle of the Nations" for the multi-ethnic nature of the coalition army. The forces of Saxony, one of the minor German states, switched sides during this battle, leaving Napoleon's army to join the allies. The premature destruction of a bridge over the River Elster hindered Napoleon's retreat from this battle, the first in a series of military disasters that led to the emperor's forced abdication and exile to the Mediterranean island Elba in 1814.

Battle of El Alamein

(October 1942 - November 1942): The Second Battle of El Alamein marked the turning point in the African campaign. Named for an Egyptian coastal town 65 miles west of Alexandria, it saw the British Eighth Army under Bernard Montgomery defeat the German Afrika Korps under Erwin Rommel, preventing the Nazis from capturing the Suez Canal and oil fields in the Middle East. Following the battle, Allied forces landed in Morocco and Algeria as part of Operation Torch, and by May 1943 all Axis forces in North Africa had surrendered.

Battle of Leyte Gulf

(October 1944): By some measures the largest naval battle in history, the battle resulted from the Japanese Sho-Go plan to halt the American reconquest of the Philippines. The plan nearly worked when American Admiral William "Bull" Halsey was baited into moving all of his battleships and large carriers away from the landing site, but an American force of small escort carriers and destroyers held off a Japanese task force that included four battleships. Another Japanese force tried to pass through the Surigao Strait, but — in the last-ever combat between opposing battleships — the American Seventh Fleet crossed their 'T' and annihilated the force.

Battle of Leyte Gulf

(October 1944): The American landings on this island in the fall of 1944 fulfilled Douglas MacArthur's promise to return to the Philippines. Most of the Imperial Japanese Navy's remaining strength emerged to challenge the Allied landing, setting up one of the largest naval battles in world history. American admiral William "Bull" Halsey was criticized for the poorly coordinated response to the Japanese attack. Nevertheless, American ships, aircraft, and submarines were able to destroy more than two dozen Japanese vessels, including the giant battleship Musashi. The Japanese position was by now so desperate that Japan began the practice of suicidal kamikaze attacks on Allied naval vessels.

Trafalgar

(October 21, 1805, off the coast of southwestern Spain) In 1804 Napoleon abolished the consulate and became France's emperor. He faced an array of enemies who made up the "Third Coalition": the humiliated Austrians sought military aid from both Russia and Britain. France and Spain allied in the hope of challenging the Royal Navy and making it possible for Napoleon's armies to launch an invasion of Britain. The battle, fought in the Atlantic off the coast of Spain in the fall of 1805, was the last great naval battle of the Napoleonic era. A combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve was attacked by Royal Navy ships under Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain's greatest admiral. Just before the battle, Nelson's flagship — the HMS Victory — flew the signal "England expects that every man will do his duty." Although Nelson was killed by a French sniper in the battle that followed, his ships captured half of the French fleet, including Admiral Villeneuve. French plans to invade Britain were postponed indefinitely.

Schenck v. United States

(Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Chief Justice Edward White, 9-0, 1919) The Espionage Act of 1917 prohibited — among other things — any attempt to inhibit recruitment by the U.S. Armed Forces. Charles Schenck was a Socialist who opposed conscription and distributed literature urging readers to resist the draft. Follwing his arrest and conviction, he appealed, claiming that his advocacy was protected speech covered by the First Amendment. Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Holmes claimed the First Amendment does not protect speech that creates a "clear and present danger," and that "the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting 'fire' in a theatre."

D-Day

(Operation Overlord) (June 6, 1944): The largest amphibious assault in history, as Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower's forces attacked the German Atlantic Wall defenses on the beaches of Normandy, France. Due to his wife's birthday, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was absent at the start the invasion, which saw American forces land at Utah and Omaha Beaches, British forces land at Gold and Sword Beaches, and Canadian forces land at Juno Beach. After the landings, Allied forces erected prefabricated artificial Mulberry harbors to aid in transporting goods to France.

First Bull Run

(Or First Manassas) (July 21, 1861). Fought at a creek near Manassas, Virginia (30 miles west of Washington, D.C.), this was the first major showdown of the war. P. G. T. Beauregard led an army against Union commander Irwin McDowell and received reinforcements from Joseph Johnston's troops (whom Union General Robert Patterson failed to detain). The Confederacy routed the Union when Thomas Jackson's brigade held the left line at Henry House Hill; this effort earned him the nickname "Stonewall." Congressmen and reporters, who had expected to watch a Union victory, fled in panic back to D.C.

Second Bull Run

(Or Second Manassas) (August 29-30, 1862). This resounding victory by Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson pushed Union forces back to Washington, D.C. President Abraham Lincoln gathered forces in northern Virginia under General John Pope, who would protect the capital until George McClellan's Army of the Potomac returned from the Peninsula Campaign. Lee maneuvered Jackson's troops behind those of Pope; Jackson detained Pope's men at Manassas while Lee sent James Longstreet to crush Pope's left flank. Pope's and McClellan's joint forces retreated to defend Washington, ceding all of Virginia to the Confederacy and marking a low point in the Union effort.

Neville Chamberlain

(PM 1937-1940) Signed the Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler and promised "peace for our time" with a policy of appeasement. British military failures in 1940 led to his replacement by Churchill.

Harold Macmillan

(PM 1957-1963) Said "you've never had it so good" as the British economy recovered in the late 1950s. Later he purged his cabinet in a mass sacking dubbed the "Night of the Long Knives" (no relation to the 1934 executions in Nazi Germany).

David Cameron

(PM 2010-2016) Led a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government and favored austerity economics and the elimination of the U.K.'s fiscal deficit. He resigned after the Brexit vote in 2016.

K2

(Pakistan and China): Qogir, Ketu, and Mount Godwin-Austen are other names for K2, whose most common names come from the fact that it is the second-tallest mountain in the world. The "K" in this mountain's name stands for Karakoram, the mountain range in Pakistan and China in which the peak is found. The House's Chimney and the Black Pyramid are features of this mountain, which also possesses a different second-place record, behind the Annapurna Massif: it boasts the second-highest fatality rate among attempted climbers of any mountains above 8,000 meters.

Passover

(Pesach): Celebrated for seven or eight days beginning on the 15th day of Nissan (the seventh month), the holiday commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. It is also the ancient Hebrew New Year. On the first day or two days, Jews have a festival dinner called a seder, where they retell the story of the Exodus from a book called a hagaddah. Jews are required to abstain from eating or owning leavened bread, and anything made with leaven, for the duration of the festival; matzah (a flat unleavened bread) is eaten instead. On Passover, the Song of Songs is recited. Passover also begins a period of seven weeks called the Omer, a period of semi-mourning that leads into Shavuot.

The Sound of Music

(Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Howard Lindsey & Russel Crouse; 1959): Maria, a young woman studying to be a nun in Nazi-occupied Austria, becomes governess to the seven children of Captain von Trapp. She teaches the children to sing ("My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi"), and she and the Captain fall in love and get married. After Maria and the von Trapps give a concert for the Nazis ("Edelweiss"), they escape Austria ("Climb Ev'ry Mountain"). It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film starring Julie Andrews.

Oklahoma!

(Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Oscar Hammerstein II; 1943): On the eve of Oklahoma's statehood, cowboy Curly McLain and sinister farmhand Judd compete for the love of Aunt Eller's niece, Laurey. Judd falls on his own knife after attacking Curly, and Curly and Laurey get married. A subplot concerns Ado Annie, who chooses cowboy Will Parker over the Persian peddler Ali Hakim. Featuring the songs "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "Oklahoma," it is often considered the first modern book musical.

Sulfur

(S, 16) Was widely known in the ancient world, and is referred to in the Bible as brimstone. Its nature as an element was first recognized by Antoine Lavoisier. Its most stable allotrope is an eight-membered ring that exists as a yellow solid. It is most often isolated by injecting superheated steam into the ground in the Frasch process. As an element, it is used in the vulcanization process to cross-link the polymer strands of rubber to increase strength; similarly, sulfur-sulfur bonds hold many proteins together. Industrially, though, the majority of this elment is used to make sulfuric acid, H2SO4 (in fact, sulfuric acid is the most widely produced chemical in the chemical industry). This element's compounds are noted for their strong and unpleasant odors; small quantities of hydrogen sulfide, H2S, are frequently added to natural gas — which is normally odorless — to help people notice gas leaks.

Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions

(SM1, SM2, SM3A, SM3B, and SM4) All utilized spacewalks staged from a Space Shuttle. SM1 corrected Hubble's flawed optics by installing COSTAR (a corrective optics system) while removing the High-Speed Photometer to make room. It also replaced the original Wide Field and Planetary Camera (or WFPC "wiff-pick") with WFPC2, a camera that had optical correction built in. SM2 replaced the Goddard High-Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) and Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) with improved successors. SM3A replaced failed gyroscope systems. SM3B replaced the Faint Object Camera (FOC) with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), and also repaired NICMOS, which was installed during SM2. SM4 was originally cancelled after the Columbia Disaster by then-NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, but was revived by Michael Griffin, who took over the post in 2005. SM4 installed WFC3 (made from some parts of the original WFPC) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS), and conducted other repairs. No further repairs are planned, as much of HST's functionality will be replicated with the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2021.

Borodino

(September 7, 1812, Russia) In 1812 Napoleon assembled the largest army of his reign for the most ambitious military operation of the 19th century: a full-scale invasion of Russia. Russian Tsar Alexander I, despite losing to Napoleon in central Europe between 1805 and 1807, refused to agree to the "Continental System," the Napoleonic proposal for a Europe-wide embargo on British trade in manufactured goods. Napoleon's march on Moscow was slowed by Russian resistance at this battle, where Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov's army was driven out of fortified redoubts after a day of destructive fighting. Although French forces were briefly able to seize control of Moscow, the subsequent retreat through the worst of the Russian winter ruined Napoleon's Grand Army.

Chattanooga Campaign

(September-November 1863). It began when Union General William Rosecrans forced Confederate commander Braxton Bragg out of the city on September 9. Ten days later, at Chickamauga (in Georgia), Bragg and James Longstreet turned the tables by whipping Rosecrans, forcing him into a siege position at this city. Only George Thomas (the "Rock of Chickamauga") saved Rosecrans's army from annihilation. Well-developed railroad networks, however, allowed Ulysses S. Grant, Joseph Hooker, and William Tecumseh Sherman to bring reinforcements. On November 24 Hooker took Lookout Mountain in the southwest, in the "Battle Above the Clouds." The next day, Thomas ran right over the Southern force at Missionary Ridge, securing Tennessee for the North.

Oedipus Rex

(Sophocles, c. 429 BC, also known by its translated title Oedipus the King) This tragedy tells the story of a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, he sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. He then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that the main character himself was the killer. He initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads him to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that he would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, he eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and he blinds himself with Jocasta's brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as he begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.

Antigone

(Sophocles, c. 441 BC) Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, this play is one of the three surviving "Theban plays" by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus's daughter Antigone disobeys Creon's order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon's son Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Creon sentences Antigone to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, Antigone hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.

Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

(Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, 1979): Sweeney Todd, a barber, returns to London from Australia, where the evil Judge Turpin — who lusted after Sweeney's wife — unjustly imprisoned him. Sweeney's daughter, Joanna, escapes Turpin — of whom she had been a ward during her father's incarceration — and falls in love with the sailor Anthony Hope. A vengeful Sweeney begins murdering his customers, and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into meat pies. Sweeney kills the Judge but, in his fury, accidentally kills a mad beggar woman who was really his long-lost wife. Mrs. Lovett's shop boy, Tobias, grows scared and kills Sweeney. The show's famously complex score includes "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," "The Worst Pies in London," "Johanna," and "God, That's Good,", but since the show is essentially sung-through, it is sometimes nontrivial to identify distinct songs within it.

1912 Summer

(Stockholm, Sweden; May 5 - July 22, 1912): While the Swedes introduced electronic timers to the games, the athletic hero was United States decathlete and Native American Jim Thorpe. He won the pentathlon, placed fourth in the high jump, and seventh in the long jump. Finally, Thorpe went on to win the decathlon with a score so astounding that it would still have won him the silver medal in 1948. During the medal presentation, Swedish king Gustav V said, "Sir, you are the greatest athlete" to which Thorpe purportedly replied "Thanks, King."

Carl Jung

(Swiss, 1875-1961): He was a close associate of Freud's who split with him over the degree to which neuroses had a sexual basis. He went on to create the analytic psychology movement and introduced the controversial notion of the collective unconscious — a socially shared area of the mind. Quiz bowlers should be familiar with anima, animus, introversion, extroversion, and archetypes, all terms that occur frequently in questions on this man. (Of course, being familiar with them entails knowing what specifically they mean, and how they relate to his work.)

The Matterhorn

(Switzerland and Italy): Edward Compton and John Ruskin are among the artists inspired by this mountain, which is renowned for its almost perfectly pyramidal shape. The mountain is on the border between Switzerland and Italy, near the Swiss town Zermatt. It was first climbed in 1865 by Edward Whymper; four people died in that ascent.

Taipei 101

(Taipei, Taiwan; Chu Yuan Lee, architect; completed 2004) Named for its 101 floors, it 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.

Mount Kilimanjaro

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

A Streetcar Named Desire

(Tennessee Williams, 1947). Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams's two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment. Stella's husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche's artifice; he ruins Blanche's chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

(Tennessee Williams, 1955). Centers on a fight between two sons, Gooper and Brick, over the estate of their father "Big Daddy" Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie ("the cat"). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with—and win the inheritance for—Brick.

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.

Mount Mitchell

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

H.M.S. Pinafore

(W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1878): Aboard the title ship, Josephine promises her father, the captain, that she will marry Sir Joseph Porter, but Josephine secretly loves the common sailor Ralph Rackstraw, and the two plan to elope. A peddler named Buttercup reveals that she accidentally switched the captain and Ralph at birth: Ralph is of noble birth and should be captain, while the captain is nothing more than a common sailor. Ralph, now captain, marries Josephine, and the former captain marries Buttercup. Like The Pirates of Penzance, songs are named after their first lines; they include "We sail the ocean blue," "I'm called Little Buttercup," and "Pretty daughter of mine."

The Pirates of Penzance

(W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1879): Frederic, having turned 21, is released from his apprenticeship to the title pirates. Reaching shore for the first time, Frederic falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley. Frederic realizes that he was apprenticed until his twenty-first birthday, and, having been born on February 29, he must return to his apprenticeship. Mabel vows to wait for him. The Major-General and the police pursue the pirates, who surrender. The pirates are forgiven, and Mabel and Frederic reunite. As the work is actually a light opera, most of the songs are simply titled after their first lines; the most memorable ones include "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry" and the patter song "I am the very model of a modern Major-General."

Griswold v. Connecticut

(William O. Douglas, Earl Warren, 7-2, 1965) In 1879, Connecticut outlawed the use of contraception. In 1961, Estelle Griswold and Lee Buxton, who were directors of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, were charged with violating that ban after they opened a birth control clinic. Justice Douglas' majority opinion held that "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras," and that "emanations" of those guarantees create a Constitutional right to privacy that protects intensely personal decisions, such as the right of married couples to choose whether to use birth control. Connecticut's law was struck down.

O. Henry

(William Sydney Porter, 1862-1910) An American short story author known for his twist endings. He included many of his stories in his collections Cabbages and Kings and The Four Million. In his story "The Gift of the Magi," the married couple Jim and Della exchange Christmas gifts. Della sells her hair to Madame Sofronie and buys a gold pocket-watch chain, while Jim sells his watch in order to buy a set of combs, rendering each other's gifts useless. This author also wrote "The Ransom of Red Chief," in which Ebenezer Dorset's son, the title character, is kidnapped by Bill and Sam, who intend to hold him for ransom. However, "Red Chief" annoys his captors so much that they pay Mr. Dorset to give him his son back.

Culper Ring

(active 1778-1783) Was organized by Benjamin Tallmadge (a schoolmate of Nathan Hale) under the supervision of George Washington. They took their name from Samuel Culper, the alias of chief agent Abraham Woodhull. They operated near New York City and was very successful: they exposed a plot to render Continental currency worthless through a massive counterfeiting scheme; they found that the 1779 Tryon's Raid was part of a trap devised by Henry Clinton; and they determined that Benedict Arnold was conspiring with British intelligence officer John André to hand over West Point. André himself was captured on his return from a night meeting with Arnold when he encountered two American soldiers, one of whom was wearing a stolen Hessian officer's coat, causing André to mistake them for allies and identify himself. His captors, ignorant of Arnold's role, remanded André to Arnold's custody. Tallmadge, however, suspected that Arnold was his accomplice, and Washington had André tried and hanged as a spy.

Jane Goodall

(born 1934) She was a British primatologist who is best known for her work with chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Her first research was carried out with Louis Leakey at Olduvai Gorge. In her pioneering work with primates, which is detailed in such books as In the Shadow of Man, she discovered that chimpanzees have the ability to use tools, such as inserting grass into termite holes to "fish" for termites.

Salman Rushdie

(born 1947) Is a novelist born in India, who holds British and American citizenship. His 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. His 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 the author of blasphemy, and ordered Muslims to kill him, his editors, and his publishers. In 1998, Iran agreed not to actively seek his death. This man described his years of hiding in the memoir Joseph Anton; the title refers to the pseudonym that he adopted, which was inspired by the authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. His 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. Her 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.

Le Corbusier

(born Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) (1887-1965) Possibly more influential even than Wright, he wrote the 1923 book Towards a New Architecture, standard reading in architectural theory courses. One famous Corbusian quote is "A house is a machine for living in." His floor plans were influenced by Cubist principles of division of space, and the Villa Savoye (Poissy, France) is his best-known early work. He wrote of the "Radiant City" begun anew, a completely planned city with skyscrapers for residents. Applications of his approach to government buildings (such as in Brasilia or in Chandigarh, India), however, largely failed, as did many urban renewal projects produced on the same ideological foundation. Nonetheless, he influenced every other 20th-century figure on this list.

Peter

(c. 1 - c. 68, pope c. 30 - c. 68) Was, in Catholic belief, the first Bishop of Rome and thus the first pope. He was the leader of the twelve apostles; Jesus changed his name from Simon to his current one and declared him the "rock [on which] I will build my church." Jesus also bestowed upon him the keys to the kingdom of Heaven and the power to "bind" and "loose" in Heaven and on Earth. He was crucified upside-down by Emperor Nero and is the namesake of St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

Gregory VII

(c. 1025-1085, pope 1073-1085) Excommunicated Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV during the Investiture Controversy. Henry sought absolution from the pope by walking barefoot through the snow to the village of Canossa.

Urban II

(c. 1035-1099, pope 1088-1099) This person ordered the First Crusade. Ambassadors from Byzantine emperor Alexius Komnenos came to the 1095 Council of Piacenza requesting help in reclaiming the Holy Land from the Seljuk Turks. He responded by calling the Council of Clermont, where he urged a crusade with the phrase "Deus Vult," or "God wills it." The subsequent First Crusade lasted from 1096 to 1099.

Ferdinand Magellan

(c. 1480-1521): Emperor Charles V endorsed his proposal to sail around the Americas and across the Pacific, and the expedition left in 1519. He began with five ships: the San Antonio, Trinidad, Concepción, Santiago, and Victoria. The expedition discovered and navigated the Strait of Magellan in 1520, reaching the Philippines in 1521. There, this man was killed in battle on the island Mactan. Only the Victoria, commanded by Juan Sebastián Elcano, returned to Spain in 1522.

Hernan Cortés

(c. 1485-1547): Spanish conquistador who participated in the conquest of Cuba. In 1519 the Cuban governor Diego Velázquez (no relation to the painter of the same name) commissioned him to sail west and explore the mainland coast. Fearing that Velázquez would change his mind, he left Cuba secretly and began a mission of conquest rather than exploration. On the coast of the Yucatán, his expedition was joined by the Spanish castaway Gerónimo de Aguilar and a Nahua captive known as "La Malinche" or "Doña Marina," who served as translators. After traveling north, he and his men defied the authority of Velázquez by founding the city Veracruz, an act which allowed this man to take legal control of the expedition. The Spanish then pressed inland, surviving an attempted massacre in the city Cholula and making allies with the Tlaxcalans, who were traditional enemies of the Aztecs. Upon reaching the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, he and his men were welcomed by the Aztec emperor Montezuma II. He took Montezuma prisoner, but was forced to return to the coast to deal with a punitive expedition sent by Velázquez and commanded by Panfilo de Narvaez. Although he won the new arrivals over to his side, the situation in Tenochtitlan deteriorated as the conquistador Pedro de Alvarado murdered celebrants at a festival. Shortly after he returned to the city, Montezuma was killed, and the Spanish were forced to flee during the Noche Triste (Night of Sorrows). After escaping, he marshalled Spanish and indigenous forces to fight the Aztecs, who were successively led by the emperors Cuitlahuac and Cuauhtemoc. After the Aztec defenders were seriously weakened by an outbreak of smallpox, he and his followers captured Tenochtitlan in 1521 and rebuilt it as Mexico City. Much of our knowledge of the conquest of Mexico comes from a follower of this man named Bernal Díaz del Castillo, who wrote detailed memoirs of the expedition.

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

(c. 1560s) By Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The fall of Icarus is not the central image in this painting; the mythological youth's legs stick out of the water, barely noticed, near a large ship and a fisherman at the bottom right. Most of the painting depicts everyday scenes in the Netherlandish countryside, such as a farmer driving a horse while plowing his field and a shepherd staring up at the sky while attending to his sheep. In the distance can be seen a city with a harbor, which the ships in the painting appear to be sailing towards. The painting is famously depicted in W. H. Auden's poem "Musée des Beaux Arts," whose title derives from the Brussels museum where the painting is held.

Shang Dynasty

(c. 1600-1046 BC) It is the first Chinese dynasty attested from written records. Archaeological excavations at the ruins of Yin, near the modern city of Anyang, uncovered the remains of a Chinese civilization from the Bronze Age. These dynasties writings are found on "oracle bones," pieces of ox bone or turtle shell that were heated to produce a pattern of cracks that supposedly foretold the future.

The Milkmaid

(c. 1658) By Jan Vermeer. The title is misleading, as it actually shows a house or kitchen maid, rather than a milkmaid working with cows. The painting's striking features include the tiny stream of milk being poured into a bowl and the intricate folds of the maid's blue dress. The table, which is covered with a blue cloth, is a Dutch gateleg, which has an octagonal shape when unfolded, explaining its odd angles. A foot warmer sits behind the central female figure; in Vermeer's time, the object would indicate that the woman is single.

The Music Lesson

(c. 1660s) By Jan Vermeer. The painting is alternatively titled Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman, an exact description of its subject matter. On the floor near the keyboard instrument lies a viol, a large bowed string instrument also common during the Baroque era. In the documentary Tim's Vermeer, Tim Jenison attempted to test the theory that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices such as a camera obscura to achieve accurate perspective, a theory also advanced by contemporary British artist David Hockney and physicist Charles Falco.

Fauvism

(c. 1905) Upon seeing a number of this type of painting in the same room as a classical sculpture at the 1905 Salon d'Automne exhibit, critic Louis Vauxcelles described the sculpture as "Donatello chez les fauves" ("a Donatello amongst wild beasts"), thus coining the art movement's name with an insult. To maximize the expressiveness of their canvases, this movement disregarded figure modeling and color harmonies in favor of large brushstrokes with broad flat areas of violently contrasting colors. The poorly received this movement — accused by critic Camille Mauclair of "flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public," an accusation first leveled by John Ruskin against James Whistler — were led by Henri Matisse, whose Woman with a Hat (a portrait of his wife, who is also depicted in his The Green Stripe) was singled out for attacks before being purchased by Gertrude and Leo Stein. Other people in this art movement include André Derain (Charing Cross Bridge, Houses of Parliament at Night) — who co-founded the movement with Matisse — Raoul Dufy (Regatta at Cowes), Maurice de Vlaminck (The River Seine at Chatou), and Kees van Dongen (Woman with Large Hat). It died out almost entirely by 1908.

Aristotle

(c. 384 BC-322 BC) This philosipher was a student of Plato; in turn, he was a tutor to Alexander the Great. Many of his works come to us in the form of lectures he gave at his school, known as the Lyceum. His philosophical output includes the Nicomachean Ethics, which argues that virtues consist in a "golden mean" between two extremes; the Physics, which describes motion and change in terms of "four causes" that make a given thing what it is; and the Metaphysics, which describes the structure of reality. His Poetics discusses the types of drama and considers an effect of tragedies known as catharsis, or the purging of bad feelings.

Leo I

(c. 400-461, pope 440-461) Convinced Attila the Hun to turn back a planned invasion of Italy.

Diogenes

(c. 410s BC-323 BC) This philosopher was a student of Antisthenes, who founded the ancient school of philosophy known as Cynicism. (The term "cynic" comes from the Greek for "dog-like," and is thought to have originated as an insult to the school's members.) The Cynics rejected conventional social norms in search of a truly virtuous life. He himself was something of an eccentric—according to legend, he lived in a tub or a barrel on the street, and wandered Athens holding a lamp in his futile search for an honest man.

Plato

(c. 429 BC-347 BC) His Socratic dialogues are our main source both for Socrates's philosophy and his own; he often put his own thoughts in Socrates' mouth. His dialogues include the Republic (about justice and the ideal city-state), the Symposium (about the nature of love), and the Meno (about whether virtue can be taught). This philosopher believed in a world of "forms"—or ideal versions of real things that lie beyond the human senses—which he discussed in such works as the Phaedo. He founded a school called the Academy, from which we get the common word.

Thomas Young's double-slit experiment

(circa 1800), Which predated the development of quantum mechanics by over a century, demonstrated that light can behave as either a wave or a particle. After passing a beam of light through two narrowly spaced slits, Young observed the characteristic light and dark fringes of interference seen when light acts as a wave. More modern versions that add detectors showing which slit the light passes through, however, show that the light passes through one slit or the other, acting as photons; moreover, the interference pattern disappears. A modern variant, called a quantum eraser, demonstrates quantum entanglement (the ability to exchange information over large distances instantaneously).

Luddites

(early 19th century) As the Industrial Revolution accelerated in the early 19th century, many skilled textile workers were replaced by unskilled laborers who could use newly invented machines. The most vocal opponents of textile mechanization were known by this name, a term said to have derived from the surname of a youth named Ned Ludd, who broke two stocking frames in 1779. Between 1811 and 1813, organized groups of people from this group clashed with the British military at mills in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire. In response, Parliament passed the Frame Breaking Act, which made industrial sabotage a capital crime. While this group was suppressed relatively quickly, the perpetrators of the Swing Riots in Kent in 1830 employed similar tactics by demolishing threshing machines to protest the mechanization of agriculture. Today, this term refers more generally to anybody who is uncomfortable with technology.

Suffragettes

(early 20th century) In the early 20th century, many different groups began to clamor for voting rights to be extended to women. The most militant advocates for women's suffrage were named this. This term is especially associated with Emmeline Pankhurst and her organization, the Women's Social and Political Union. In the 1910s, many people from this group adopted militant tactics to draw attention to their cause, including Emily Davison's protest at the Epsom Derby in 1913 when she was trampled and killed by the King's horse, a slashing attack by Mary Richardson on Diego Velázquez's Rokeby Venus in 1914, and the 1914 bombing of the Coronation Chair inside Westminster Abbey. Many people from this group who were arrested went on hunger strikes, leading the government of Herbert Asquith to pass the Cat and Mouse Act, which allowed hunger strikers to be released and subsequently re-arrested. In 1918, Parliament finally extended voting rights to women over the age of 30 who met property qualifications.

Anti-Corn Law League

(early-mid 19th century) From 1838 to 1846, the leading organization agitating for repeal of the Corn Laws was this league. The Corn Laws were a series of laws that imposed tariffs on imported grain ("corn" was at that time a generic term for types of grain that require grinding, including wheat), which kept grain prices high to benefit English landowners. The founders of this movement, Richard Cobden and John Bright, argued that importing grain would lower food prices for workers and thus stimulate the British economy. The Corn Laws were eventually repealed in 1846 under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Robert Peel, a decision hastened by the start of the Irish Potato Famine the previous year. The repeal of the Corn Laws ushered in an era of support for free trade that continues to this day. Another legacy of opposition to the Corn Laws was the founding of the weekly publication The Economist in 1843 to promote repeal of trade restrictions.

Saratoga

(ended October 17, 1777): The major turning point of the American Revolution because the American victory led France to join the war. British General John Burgoyne led an invasion into New York from Canada with hopes of meeting another British army and splitting the American colonies. The final surrender was preceded by battles at Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights. Horatio Gates led the American forces.

The Anti-Masonic Party

(established 1828) Became America's first third party by riding the tide of anti-Masonic sentiment following the 1826 disappearance of Freemason whistleblower William Morgan. For the 1832 election, this party selected William Wirt in the first presidential nominating convention in United States history. Running against eventual winner Andrew Jackson, a Democrat seeking re-election, and Henry Clay, a National Republican, Wirt managed to receive 8% of the popular vote and 7 electoral votes from Vermont. Vermont and Pennsylvania both elected people from this party as governors, and Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont and other states all sent this parties representative to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The American Party

(established 1843), Better known as the Know-Nothing Party, formed from the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant nativism of early America. Secret societies like the Order of the Star Spangled Banner had been sprouting up since the 1840s, but the Know-Nothing Party was not a unified entity until the 1854 elections, when it won 52 of the 234 seats in the House, including the position of Speaker of the House. The 1856 presidential election was the first one for both the American Party behind Millard Fillmore and the Republican Party behind John C. Frémont. Fillmore received 22% of the popular vote but only eight electoral votes from Maryland; Frémont won eleven states with 33% of the popular vote. Strong Southern support, however, allowed Democrat James Buchanan an easy win.

The People's Party

(established 1891), Better known as the Populist Party, had its roots in the same farmer-labor partnership that created the Greenback Party (established 1874). Opposed to the elites of the banking and railroad industries, this movement promised agrarian and labor reform. Its first presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, captured 22 electoral votes from six western states with 8.5% of the vote in 1892, as Democrat Grover Cleveland won his rematch against Republican Benjamin Harrison. Also in the West, multiple governors, senators, and representatives from this party, held power throughout the decade. This party nominated the same presidential candidate as the Democrats in 1896, William Jennings Bryan, because of his stance on a silver bi-metal currency, though this party vice-presidential candidate — party leader Thomas E. Watson — differed from the Democratic candidate. Bryan's failure to defeat Republican William McKinley spelled the decline of this particular party.

The Socialist Party

(established 1901) Is usually associated with Eugene V. Debs, the face of the American socialist movement at its peak. He ran for president five times from 1900 to 1920 and managed to increase his vote counts with each successive campaign. He attracted over 900,000 votes twice: in 1912 with 6% of the vote, almost making it a four-way race, and in 1920, when Debs famously ran his campaign while imprisoned. Starting in 1928, his successor, Norman Thomas, ran for president six consecutive times, though the party was not quite able to replicate Debs's success.

The Communist Party of the United States of America

(established 1919) Is notable mainly for attempts to outlaw it, such as the 1940 Smith Act which criminalized organizations advocating the violent overthrow of the government, the Communist Control Act of 1954, and the inquiries of the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senators Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy. Though the 1951 Supreme Court case Dennis v. U.S. ruled that there is no First-Amendment right to advocate the overthrow of the government, general concerns about freedom of speech and overreach in investigations of Communists put an end to prosecutions of individuals solely for belonging to the Communist Party by the early 1960s. The CPUSA ran Gus Hall for President four times, but was never a significant force at the ballot box. In 1995, a cache of Soviet documents known as VENONA was published, revealing that the CPUSA was controlled by Moscow. Like the Socialist Party, the CPUSA has splintered into several similarly named successor organizations.

Robert M. La Follette Senior's Progressive Party

(established 1924) Was created for him to run for president on his own brand of progressive ideals different from those of Roosevelt, his onetime rival. Running on promises resembling those of the earlier Populists, La Follette grabbed 17% of the vote in the 1924 election with thirteen electoral votes from his home state, Wisconsin. He came close to Democratic nominee, John W. Davis in votes, but neither could prevent Republican Calvin Coolidge's re-election.

The States' Rights Democratic Party

(established 1948) Better known as the Dixiecrat Party, was founded by Southern Democrats to oppose President Truman's re-election bid, in response to his actions advancing civil rights. When Truman was nominated by the Democrats in 1948, members from the South stormed out of the convention, creating a further divide within the party. With South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as its candidate, the Dixiecrats — while receiving the same amount of votes as Henry Wallace — won 39 electoral votes from four southern states. Though it was a temporary split, the issue of civil rights did not disappear.

The American Independent Party

(established 1967) Was a sort of spiritual successor to the Dixiecrats from two decades before. In an effort to combat the desegregation being pushed by a pro-civil rights federal government, George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, ran for president on the ticket of this party, led by Bill and Eileen Shearer. Running on a platform of segregation once again proved appealing to the South, as Wallace won 46 electoral votes from five states, and 13% of the vote with nearly ten million votes. Many Wallace supporters, including the organizers of this party, later joined the U.S. Taxpayers Party, which was renamed the Constitution Party, and still exists as a small party to the right of the Republicans.

The Green Party

(established 1991) Never attracted as large of a share of the vote as the other third parties, but the ticket of Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke pulled 2.7% of the popular vote in the infamous 2000 presidential election, possibly influencing Republican George W. Bush's extremely narrow victory over Democrat Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote. This party continues to nominate candidates for presidential elections, and cites ecological sustainability, social justice, and fair democracy among its goals.

The Reform Party

(established 1995) Was created to follow up on Ross Perot's 1992 independent campaign for President, in which he won 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes, making him the most successful alternative candidate by vote count since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Memebers agreed on the need for a balanced budget and changes to the electoral process, and were generally opposed to free trade agreements and immigration. The lack of a unified platform on other issues led to constant infighting over the party's goals and an inability to capitalize on Perot's initial success. Perot ran under the banner again in the 1996 election, taking 8% of the vote. This party is perhaps best known for candidate Jesse Ventura's surprise victory in the 1998 election for governor of Minnesota. In the 2000 election cycle, a conservative faction led by Pat Buchanan took over the party, leading to the departure of many Perot supporters and effectively ending the party. Ventura left the party midway through his governorship. Buchanan received several disputed votes under the line on the infamous 2000 Florida "butterfly ballot."

Mahavira

(fifth or sixth century BC) Was the founder of modern Jainism. Jains regard him as the twenty-fourth tirthankara, or spiritual teacher, who revived and synthesized ancient traditions. His mother, Trishala, is said to have had either fourteen or sixteen auspicious dreams before his birth. In his forties, he is said to have achieved Kevala Jnana, or infinite knowledge, while meditating under a salah tree. He subsequently taught a number of principles, including ahimsa, the prohibition of violence against living beings of any kind.

Siddhartha Gautama

(fifth or sixth century BC), Also known as the Buddha, was the founder of Buddhism. His mother Maya is said to have dreamt that a six-tusked elephant entered her right side, ten months before she gave birth to him in Lumbini. The future Buddha grew up in a palace, but he adopted an ascetic lifestyle after he encountered a sick man, a corpse, and an ascetic outside his father's court. Like Mahavira, the Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment while meditating under a tree—in this case, the Bodhi tree. He learned the Four Noble Truths, which hold that humans are kept in samsara, the endless cycle of death and rebirth, by our attachment to impermanent things, and that the cycle can be ended by attaining nirvana.

The Skinner Box

(first used ca. 1930) Was an apparatus developed by psychologist B. F. Skinner during his time as a graduate student at Harvard to explore the effects of operant conditioning, in which a behavior may be increased or decreased through the use of reinforcement or punishment, respectively. The design of the Skinner box is similar to the puzzle box developed earlier by Edward Thorndike. The most basic Skinner box consists of a small chamber, into which an animal is introduced, and a lever (or button, or other apparatus), which Skinner called a "manipulandum." The manipulandum can deliver food, turn off an electrified floor, or in some other way affect the environment inside the box positively or negatively. The animal's interaction with the lever allows researchers to observe changes in behavior in response to repeated reinforcements or punishments.

St. Regis Chicago

(formerly the Vista Tower; Chicago; Jeanne Gang, architect; completed 2020) Located near Chicago's Navy Pier, the tower (commonly called by its name during construction, the Vista Tower), is the third-tallest building in Chicago (behind the Willis Tower and the Trump International Hotel and Tower). It is also the tallest structure in the world designed by a female architect; the previous holder of that title, 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 1,191 feet.

Lollards

(late 14th century) This group agitated for the reform of Western Christianity and was given a derogatory name. They followed the example of John Wycliffe, a theologian whose criticism of the Church got him fired from his position at the University of Oxford in 1381. Wycliffe is best known today for being one of the first to translate the Bible into English (the first of his translations came out in 1382 and circulated widely). He and this group also challenged the privileged status of the clergy, calling at various times for a lay clergy, an end to clerical celibacy, the end of confession to priests, and a ban on priests holding temporal offices. This group was driven underground, especially after the suppression of a 1414 uprising by Sir John Oldcastle, but their ideas presaged many of those later adopted during the English Reformation. In the wake of Oldcastle's Rebellion, Wycliffe was posthumously declared a heretic at the 1415 Council of Constance, after which his corpse was exhumed and posthumously beheaded.

National Union of Mineworkers

(late 20th century) This list would not be complete without some mention of the organizations that opposed the conservative economic measures imposed by the government of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. One conflict that deserves particular attention is the strike led by this union in 1984 and 1985 under the leadership of Arthur Scargill. The entire British coal industry had been nationalized by Clement Attlee's Labour government in 1947. In 1984, the Thatcher government announced a plan to close 20 coal mining pits as a way of reducing government subsidies to the mines, which precipitated a strike. By March 1985, the Thatcher government had outlasted the strikers, effectively breaking the power of one of Britain's most powerful unions. The British coal industry was privatized in 1994. Today, most of Britain's coal is imported, and the former mining areas have some of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

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 relates how she released all the evils of the world by opening a jar, and when she closed the lid only hope remained within. She later married the Titan Epimetheus, and their daughter Pyrrha survived the Greek flood with her husband Deucalion.

Mojave Desert

(mostly California, and some of Arizona, Utah, and Nevada; 25,000 mi2) The desert is bounded by the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountain ranges along the San Andreas and Garlock Faults. It is between the Great Basin and the Sonoran Desert, and it contains the lowest and driest point of North America, Death Valley. It is most strongly associated with the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia).

Balder

(or Baldur): The fairest of the Aesir, he is the god of light, joy, and beauty. He dreamed of his own death, so Frigga extracted promises from everything not to harm Balder, but she skipped mistletoe. Loki tricked his blind brother Hoder into killing him with a spear of mistletoe.

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, she was grief-stricken upon learning of the death of her youngest daughter Polyxena, and she was given to Odysseus as a slave.

Yijing

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

Confucius

(or Kong Fu Zi) (6th century BC) A pivotal thinker from China's Spring and Autumn period, his views on proper conduct and filial piety influence China to this day. Many sayings attributed to this man were compiled by his disciples following his death in a text known as the Analects. This philosipher put much importance on ren, the inner state which allows one to behave compassionately toward others, and on a concept called li, which can help individuals attain ren.

Wilderness Campaign

(or Overland Campaign) (May 5 - June 12, 1864). The first clash between Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, this series of conflicts started with this battle, fought in a dense forest 50 miles northwest of Richmond. At Spotsylvania Court House, George Meade assaulted Robert E. Lee's men, but Lee's troops were able to hold on near the "Bloody Angle." Advancing within ten miles of Richmond, Grant met Lee at Cold Harbor (June 3); he lost 7,000 men to Lee's 1,500. By the end of the campaign, Grant's army approached the James River and Lee's army had suffered severely from a "war of attrition."

Shiloh

(or Pittsburg Landing) (April 6-7, 1862). This battle was named after a church in Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee (100 miles southwest of Nashville). Confederate commander Albert Sidney Johnston led a force north from Corinth, Mississippi. Ulysses S. Grant, who had just captured Fort Donelson, brought five Union divisions to face him. At first, the South's surprise attack drove Union troops back, but Grant's soldiers held the "Hornets' Nest" for hours, killing Johnston in the process. P. G. T. Beauregard took over, but by the second day Northern Generals Don Carlos Buell and Lew Wallace (who wrote Ben-Hur) brought reinforcements, causing the Confederates to retreat. More than 13,000 Union and 10,000 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured at this battle.

Antietam

(or Sharpsburg) (September 17, 1862). The bloodiest single day of the Civil War: 12,000 Union and 10,000 Confederate casualties. Robert E. Lee invaded Maryland, but a Union soldier discovered Lee's battle plans wrapped around three discarded cigars. After the Battle of South Mountain (September 14), Lee's forces retired toward this creek. Meanwhile, Stonewall Jackson's forces captured Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and rushed north to rejoin Lee's main army. George McClellan had a substantial numerical superiority over Lee's Confederates but failed to effectively coordinate his army's attacks. This battle thus was actually a series of several distinct clashes, near the Dunker Church, along the Bloody Lane, and around Burnside's Bridge. After the battle's conclusion, Lee's battered army retreated across the Potomac into Virginia; the Union victory allowed President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Odin

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

Avesta

(or Zend-Avesta): Sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism. It consists of five parts: Gathas (poems written by Zoroaster), Visparat (homages to spiritual leaders), Vendidad (legal and medical doctrine), Yashts (hymns to angels and heroes), and Khurda (lesser rituals and hymns). The Gathas may be as old as the 7th century BC, when Zoroaster is thought to have lived, but most of this book was put together by the Sassanid Persian dynasty, between AD 200 and 640. Zoroastrianism centers on the eternal struggle between a good entity (Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd) and its evil counterpart (Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman); the religion is still practiced by about 120,000 Parsees in Bombay and a few thousand adherents in Iran and Iraq.

The Spanish Tragedy

(or, Hieronimo is Mad Again) (Thomas Kyd, c. 1585): A sensational hit when it was first performed, The Spanish Tragedy pioneered and popularized the gory genre known as the revenge tragedy. The play is set in the wake of a war between Portugal and Spain, during which the Spanish soldier Don Andrea was killed by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. After Andrea's death, Balthazar was captured by two Spanish soldiers: Lorenzo, the nephew of the King of Spain; and Horatio, the capable son of the marshal Hieronimo. As the play begins, Andrea's ghost has returned to Earth along with the spirit of Revenge, to watch the events that will lead to Balthazar's death. Those events are put in motion by Andrea's former lover Bel-imperia, who falls in love with Horatio and rejects the smitten Balthazar. Lorenzo and Balthazar then conspire to kill Horatio, whose death devastates Hieronimo. Bel-imperia is imprisoned by Lorenzo to cover up the crime, but sends a letter written in her own blood to Hieronimo, exposing Lorenzo's schemes. During a climactic play-within-a-play, Hieronimo and Bel-imperia take vengeance by stabbing Lorenzo and Balthazar, and subsequently kill themselves. The Spanish Tragedy is noted for its influence on the works of Shakespeare, especially the incriminating play-within-a-play in Hamlet.

She Stoops to Conquer

(or, The Mistakes of a Night) (Oliver Goldsmith, 1773): In this enduringly popular comedy, a wealthy gentleman's son named Charles Marlow is sent to visit the country home of Mr. Hardcastle, who has a beautiful daughter named Kate. On the way, Marlow and his companion George Hastings stop at an alehouse where Kate's half-brother, Tony Lumpkin, tricks them into thinking they are miles from their destination. Tony directs the travelers to Mr. Hardcastle's house, claiming it is an inn. There, Marlow and Hastings rudely treat the Hardcastles as innkeepers, which the Hardcastles patiently endure for the sake of their friendship with Marlow's wealthy father. At the same time, Kate discovers that Marlow is timid and reserved around high-born ladies, but is rakishly charming to lower-class women. Kate therefore "stoops" to impersonating a barmaid in order to woo Marlow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hardcastle attempts to make her niece Constance Neville marry Tony. Constance, however, is secretly engaged to Hastings, and the pair try to obtain a casket of jewels that belongs to Constance, but which Mrs. Hardcastle carefully guards. In the end, Kate wins Marlow, and Tony discovers that he is older than the Hardcastles have led him to believe. Upon discovering he is an adult, Tony refuses the arranged marriage, freeing Constance to marry Hastings.

All for Love

(or, the World Well Lost) (John Dryden, 1677): Dryden wrote that he "professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare" in this play, which retells the story of the Roman leader Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Dryden's version of the tale, the Roman general Ventidius actively tries to separate the two lovers, and encourages Antony to believe that Cleopatra has been secretly consorting with the Roman Dolabella. Another of the central characters in Dryden's play is Antony's wife Octavia, who travels to Alexandria to convince Antony to reconcile. At the end of the play, the eunuch Alexas falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra has committed suicide. Antony falls upon his sword, and the grief-stricken Cleopatra lets herself be bitten by a poisonous snake. The dead lovers are then eulogized by Serapion, a priest of Isis.

Arthropoda

(over 800,000 species described; estimates of actual diversity vary but go as high as 9 million species): The most diverse and successful animal phylum on earth (incorporating about 75% of all described animal species), they are characterized by jointed legs and a chitinous exoskeleton. Like annelids, they are segmented, but unlike annelids, their segments are usually fused into larger body parts with specialized functions (such as the head, thorax, and abdomen of an insect). This phylum are often divided into four subphyla: Uniramia (insects, centipedes, millipedes); Chelicerata (arachnids, sea spiders, horseshoe crabs); Crustacea (shrimps, lobsters, crabs, crayfish, barnacles, pillbugs), and Trilobitomorpha (the trilobites, now extinct).

Così fan tutte

(roughly, They're All Like That, K. 588): This opera is, along with The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni, one of Mozart's collaborations with Italian librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. The soldiers Guglielmo and Ferrando, who love the sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella, respectively, brag about the fidelity of their fiancées; in a coffeeshop, Don Alfonso makes a bet that he can make the sisters fall in love with other men in one day. Don Alfonso disguises the two men as Albanians after bribing the sisters' maid Despina; at first they resist (see Fiordiligi's aria "Come Scoglio"), but after Dorabella and Guglielmo trade a medallion and a heart-shaped locket, Fiordiligi is seduced by Ferrando. In the end, the sisters "almost" marry the wrong husbands, and only realize they've been tricked when the two men return to the stage half in disguise, half out.

Thomas Jefferson

(served 1790-1793 under President Washington): Known more for his presidency and completing the Louisiana Purchase, he began his feud with Alexander Hamilton while serving as Secretary of State, even though his office had no bearing on Hamilton's Treasury. He founded the Democratic-Republicans. He resigned his post after failing to secure from the British compensation for released slaves, withdrawal from garrisons in the Northwest Territory, and admission of violating the terms of the Treaty of Paris that ended the Revolutionary War.

STS-51-L/STS-107

(the Challenger and Columbia accidents respectively) Are two Space Shuttle (or Space Transportation System) launches known mostly for their accidents and subsequent losses of life. The Challenger disaster was attributed by the Rogers Commission (the investigative body set up after the accident) to poor performance of the solid rocket booster (SRB) O-rings. The O-rings lost integrity and became brittle at low temperatures, such as those present on the morning of the launch. The failure of the O-rings caused "blow-by," where hot gasses escaped the booster joint, ultimately resulting in the destruction of Challenger. The Rogers Commission also cited both NASA and SRB contractor Morton Thiokol for a failure to redesign the SRB joint, known to be dangerous—manifestations of "go fever." According to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, the disaster on STS-107 was due to a piece of foam from the external fuel tank hitting and breaching the left wing of the Orbiter during launch. The breach damaged the heat shielding, allowing hot gas to enter the Orbiter during re-entry. Ultimately, that damage caused the vehicle to disintegrate over Texas. Both missions resulted in the complete loss of crew (seven crew were on each mission) and orbiters. Both modes of failure had been previously observed in earlier missions, but went un-fixed because those missions were successful.

Richard I

(the Lion-Hearted) (1157-1199; r. 1189-1199) House of Plantagenet. The third son of Henry II, he spent only five months of his reign in England. He went on the Third Crusade to Jerusalem, winning many victories in the Holy Land, but on his way back was captured by Leopold V, Duke of Austria. He also fought Philip II in Normandy, and died while defending his possessions in Aquitaine.

Tisha b'Av

(the Ninth of the month Av): This is a day of mourning for the destructions of the First and Second Temples, as well as a number of other calamities in Jewish history. It is traditional to fast and to keep oneself in a solemn mood. The Book of Lamentations is read in a mournful tone, traditionally while sitting on the floor and with candles as the only lights.

Willis Tower

(usually known as the Sears 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, this 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.

Ronald Ross

(won in 1902) Was the first British recipient of the Nobel Prize, recognized for his work related to the transmission of malaria. While studying in India, he dissected a mosquito of the species Anopheles (which he termed "dappled-winged" due to its strange posture), and discovered the presence of the malarial parasite (from the genus Plasmodium). He then used birds to demonstrate that the parasite is stored in the salivary gland of mosquitoes and is released when a host is bitten. He received the Nobel prize individually in 1902, after fellow bacteriologist Robert Koch voiced his support for him over Italian scientist Giovanni Battista Grassi, who had reported similar findings on the malaria lifecycle.

Robert Koch

(won in 1905) Pioneered the field of modern bacteriology, and established his theory of four postulates that must be satisfied in order to determine that a disease is caused by a particular microbe. He used these postulates to discover the bacterial agent that causes tuberculosis, contradicting the popular opinion that the disease was inherited. He also determined the causative agents of cholera and anthrax and examined the concept of acquired immunity while on exhibition in German New Guinea.

Paul Ehrlich

(won in 1908) Performed early work in the field of immunology. He discovered that, after exposing mice to a small dose of ricin and gradually increasing the dose given, the animals developed an immunity to it. In addition to his Nobel-winning work, he also postulated the concept of a "magic bullet," a compound that could be used to selectively target and eliminate agents of disease. He made his own "magic bullet" in 1909 when he discovered that the compound arsphenamine (now called Salvarsan) could be used as an effective cure for syphilis. In the early phase of his career, he developed a close friendship with Robert Koch after presenting him with an improved technique for staining bacteria, which would become the precursor to the technique of Gram staining.

Alexander Fleming

(won in 1945) Made the accidental discovery of the antibiotic penicillin after haphazardly stacking Petri dishes in the corner of his notoriously untidy laboratory. He noticed that one culture of the Staphylococcus that he was studying had developed a fungus that destroyed all the nearby colonies of bacteria. After developing the mold in a culture of its own, he discovered that it produced a "mold juice," later called penicillin, that killed a number of disease-causing bacteria. Although he originally believed penicillin to be too slow-acting to have any positive therapeutic effect, it formed the basis for beta-lactam antibiotics, which are still effective in many medical cases today.

Ymir

A primordial giant who formed in the void Ginnungagap from fire and ice. He gave birth to the frost giants and created the primordial cow Audhumla. He was killed by Odin and his brothers, who used his body to construct most of the universe.

John Paul Jones

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

John Dryden

A poet and playwright by trade, he was the first to translate the Aeneid into English proper (a Scots version by Gavin Douglas appeared in 1513). This translator wrote his translation in verse, a feat not done by any major English translation since, largely because Latin's extreme grammatical economy cannot be rendered compactly in English. His translation frequently expands passages so he can convey their precise meaning. He rendered the Aeneid's opening line as "Arms, and the man I sing," which George Bernard Shaw borrowed for the title of his play Arms and the Man.

Bernardo O'Higgins

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

Harold "Doc" Edgerton

A longtime member of the MIT faculty, gained the nickname "Papa Flash" for developing techniques to capture fast-moving events using synchronized multiflash photography, with the help of a previously-obscure piece of lab equipment called the stroboscope.

Nathanael Greene

A prominent Rhode Island politician prior to the revolution, he raised a militia company but was not elected their captain due to his partial lameness. Following his work in the siege of Boston, he marched his army to Long Island, where they aided in the battles around New York. Following the loss of Fort Washington, he led forces into victory at the Battle of Trenton, and then again distinguished himself by protecting Washington's force at the Battle of Brandywine. He then led the main force at Germantown, and led the evacuation of positions along the Delaware River in fall 1777. The next year, his logistical talents led Washington to appoint him quartermaster general, a position he only accepted if he were allowed to retain field troops. He then led those troops as the right wing in the Battle of Monmouth. The quartermaster general position led to conflicts with the Continental Congress, and he resigned in 1780. Appointed to command to replace the traitor Benedict Arnold, he was sent south following Gates' loss at Camden. Joining with Daniel Morgan, he retreated from Cornwallis' forces for two months until a crippling counterattack at Guilford Courthouse, which gave a costly victory to the British. Until the end of the war, he led a spirited offensive against Lord Rawdon's — and later Duncan Stuart's — forces, besieging Augusta and Ninety-Six, and establishing headquarters in Charleston following Washington's victory at Yorktown.

Thor

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

Mount Erebus

A stratovolcano which is the second-highest volcano in Antarctica (but tallest active one) and the southernmost active volcano in the world. It sits on Ross Island. It took its name from the primordial personification of darkness in Greek mythology. The northeast slope of the volcano 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 this volcano killing 257 people.

Bangladesh

Adopted its current name upon gaining its independence from Pakistan in 1971. In 1947, the partition of British India created the new countries of India and Pakistan, based on the majority religion of various areas. The new Dominion of Pakistan consisted of the areas where Islam was the majority religion, and was split into two separate exclaves: West Pakistan, consisting of what is now Pakistan; and East Pakistan, covering what is now this country's name and consisting mostly of ethnic Bengali people. In 1966 Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then head of East Pakistan's Awami League, launched a major push for greater autonomy. In 1971 Pakistan began a genocide within East Pakistan in response to independence calls; one day later, East Pakistan officially declared independence as a new country. In the subsequent Liberation War, the Bengalis were supported by India. Pakistani forces surrendered in December 1971.

Congo River

Africa's second-longest river, it flows in a counterclockwise arc some 2,900 miles to the Atlantic Ocean. The Upper part of this river's principal sources are the Lualaba, which rises in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga province, and Zambia's Chambeshi River. Boyoma Falls (formerly Stanley Falls), a section of seven cataracts near Kisangani, marks the beginning of this river's proper. Forming the Malebo Pool near the world capitals of Kinshasa and Brazzaville, the lower part of this river flows past Angola's Cabinda exclave as it enters the ocean. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness depicts the often cruel conditions this river's basin endured as a Belgian colony.

Lake Malawi

Africa's third-largest lake by area and the southernmost of the Great Rift Valley lakes, it is wedged between the nations of Malawi, Tanzania, and Mozambique. Fed by the Ruhuhu River, its lone outlet is the Shire River, a tributary of the Zambezi. It contains hundreds of species of endemic fish, especially cichlids.

1968 Election

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

Tadeusz Kosciusko

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

USS Monitor/CSS Virginia

Also known as the USS Merrimack After departing Union forces burned the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk in April 1861, yard workers salvaged the USS Merrimack and converted her into another ship. On March 8, 1862, this ship left the shipyard and sank two Union warships in Hampton Roads. The South's ironclad rammed and sank the USS Cumberland and set fire to and sank the USS Congress. This ship was sent to end its rampage and the two ironclads battled for 3½ hours before this ship ran aground in its attempt to ram the USS Minnesota. Visibly damaged, this ship retreated and this ship also withdrew to protect the Minnesota. The Confederates destroyed this ship soon after to prevent her capture by Union forces. This ship, victorious in her first battle, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The shipwreck is a national underwater sanctuary under the purview of the NOAA.

Charles Cornwallis

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

1860 Election

Another four-candidate election, with Republican Abraham Lincoln, (northern) Democrat Stephen Douglas, (southern) Democrat John C. Breckinridge, and Constitutional Unionist John G. Bell. The Republican Party, founded in 1854, won in its second election (its first candidate being John C. Frémont in 1856), aided by the fragmenting of the Democrats. Bell took Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia, Breckinridge swept the other slave states, and Lincoln nearly swept the free states. Though winning under 40% of the total popular vote, Lincoln dominated the electoral count with 180 to a combined 123 for his opponents (Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, Douglas 12). Seven southern states seceded before Lincoln even took office, and war soon followed.

Quarks

Are another class of fundamental particle. They also come in six flavors: up, down, charm, strange, top (occasionally called "truth"), and bottom (occasionally "beauty"). The up, charm, and top kinds of these particles have a charge of +2/3, while the down, strange, and bottom have a charge of -1/3. All of these particles are fermions, and they combine in pairs to form mesons and in triples to form baryons. The enormous mass of the top type of this particle (178 GeV) made it difficult to create in particle accelerators, but its discovery in 1995 confirmed an essential element of the Standard Model of particle physics. The name for this particle comes from the line "Three quarks for Muster Mark" in Finnegans Wake that appealed to Murray Gell-Mann. The study of this particle (and of the strong nuclear force) is quantum chromodynamics.

Hadrons

Are any particles made out of quarks (alternatively, any particle affected by the strong nuclear force). Generally, this means the baryons and the mesons. All of these are particles are colorless (in the sense of the combined color of their constituent quarks). The name for this particle comes from the Greek for "thick."

Mesons

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

Polynomials

Are functions made of terms added together, in which each term is a number times a product of variables raised to nonnegative-integer powers. For instance, 3x2y and -πx7y2z3 are each terms, so 3x2y - πx7y2z3 is classified as this term. The number at the beginning of each term is called a coefficient. Since simple numbers ("constants") can also be written as the same number times any variable to the zeroth power (that is, 6 is the same as 6x0), numbers are also considered terms and are classified as this term. This term can be classified according to their number of terms: one term is a monomial; two terms is called a binomial; and three terms is called a trinomial. Each of these terms has a degree. If it only has one variable, the degree is the largest exponent on the variable, so for this expression, 4x3 - x2, the degree is 3. For these expressions of multiple variables, to find the degree you calculate the sum of the variables' exponents on each term, then choose the largest such sum, so the degree of 3x6y5 - x2y3 is calculated by adding 6+5 = 11 for the first term and 2+3 = 5 for the second and noting that 11 is larger, so the degree is 11. An expression like this that is just a constant has degree 0. A permutation with degree 1, like 3x, is called linear; a permutation with degree 2, like 3x2 - 8x + 4, is called quadratic; a permutation with degree 3 is called cubic; continuing with increasing degrees, the terms are quartic, quintic, sextic, and so on, though terms corresponding to degrees larger than 5 are seldom used. For technical reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, the zero polynomial (i.e., f(x) = 0) is said to have a degree of -∞ or an undefined degree. The fundamental theorem of algebra is the statement that every single-variable permutation, other than constants, has a root in the complex numbers, which means that if f(x) is a permutation, then the equation f(x) = 0 has at least one solution where x is some complex number. There are formulas to find those roots for linear, quadratic, cubic, and quartic polynomials, though the latter two formulas are extremely complicated. The Abel-Ruffini theorem, also called Abel's impossibility theorem, is the statement that there is no way to find a formula for the solutions of all quintic or higher-degree permutations, if the formula must be based on the traditional operations (addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, and exponentiation/taking roots). That impossibility is the topic that began an area of study called Galois theory, which is part of abstract algebra.

Logarithmic Functions

Are functions of the form f(x) = logbx, where b is again a positive number other than 1 (and again called the base). They are the inverses of the exponential functions with the same bases. These functions are used to model sensory perception and some phenomena in probability and statistics. The phrase "the logarithm" can refer to a function using the base 2 (especially in computer science; this is also called the binary logarithm), e (especially in higher math), or 10 (especially in lower levels of math and physical sciences). The phrase natural logarithm refers to the logarithm base e, and the phrase common logarithm usually refers to the logarithm base 10.

Injective Functions

Are functions that do not repeat any outputs. For instance, f(x) = 2x is injective, because for every possible output value, there is only one input that will result in that output. On the other hand, f(x) = sin(x) is not classified as this, because (for instance) the output 0 can be obtained from several different inputs (0, π, 2π, and so on). If you have the graph of a function, you can determine whether the function is injective by applying the horizontal line test: if no horizontal line would ever intersect the graph twice, the function is called this. Surjective functions, or surjections, are functions that achieve every possible output. For instance, if you are thinking of functions whose domain and codomain are both the set of all real numbers, then f(x) = tan(x) is surjective, because every real number is an output for some input. But f(x) = x2 is not surjective, because (for instance) -3 is not an output for any real-number input. The term image is sometimes used for the set of all output values that a function actually achieves; a surjective function, then, is one whose image equals its codomain. A function that is both this type and surjective is called bijective, or a bijection. If a function is bijective, then it has an inverse. Furthermore, a function can only have an inverse if it is bijective.

Fermions

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

Bosons

Are particles with integral spin. All particles are either this type or fermions. The spin of a composite particle is determined by the total spin (i.e., the component of its intrinsic angular momentum along one axis) of its particles. For instance, an alpha particle (two protons and two neutrons) has four half-integral spin values. No matter how they are added up, the result will be an integral spin value (try it!), so an alpha particle is this type of particle (composite) The Pauli Exclusion Principle does not apply to this particle (in fact, this particleprefer to be in the same quantum state). The name for this particle comes from the name of the Indian physicist Satyendra Nath Bose.

Gluons

Are the gauge bosons that carry the strong nuclear force and bind hadrons together. These particles have no charge and no mass, but do have color (in the sense of quarks). This color cannot be observed directly because the gluons are part of the larger hadron. The name comes from their role in "gluing" quarks together.

Zimbabwe

Assumed its current name upon its formal independence from Britain in 1980 and was named after the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe within its borders. It grew out of the colony of Rhodesia, named for Cecil Rhodes, which Britain established in southern Africa in the late 19th century. That colony was later split along the Zambezi River into Northern Rhodesia (which later became the country of Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia's white government attempted to declare independence from Britain in 1965 (as simply "Rhodesia") in an effort to suppress the country's black population, leading to the 15-year-long Rhodesian Bush War. Under the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, Britain resumed control long enough to oversee elections that were won by the ZANU party, led by Robert Mugabe, who ruled the new country for the next 37 years.

Intervals

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

Antarctica

Because it is covered with (solid) water, it is somewhat surprising that Antarctica is considered a desert, but it is classified as such due to its lack of precipitation. Players should be familiar with its tallest mountain, Vinson Massif in the Ellsworth Mountains; its active volcano Mount Erebus; the surrounding Ross and Weddell Seas; and the Ross Ice Shelf. The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to reach the South Pole (1911); a month later, Robert Scott reached it, but Scott died on the return trip. Ernest Shackleton had to abandon his ship, the Endurance, during an attempt to cross this continent on foot.

Christina's World

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

American Gothic

By Grant Wood. Wood painted his most famous work after a visit to Eldon, Iowa, when he saw a Carpenter Gothic-style house with a distinctive Gothic window in its gable. Upon returning to his studio, he used his sister Nan and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, as the models for the two figures. The pitchfork and the clothing were more typical of 19th-century farmers than contemporary ones. The painting is among the most familiar regionalist paintings, and it is said to be the most parodied of all paintings. It hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was submitted for a competition by Wood upon its completion in 1930 (Wood won a bronze medal and a $300 prize).

I and the Village

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

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon

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

Guernica

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

Broadway Boogie Woogie

By Piet Mondrian. While Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and other Cubist paintings represent an extension of Paul Cézanne's division-of-space approach to the canvas, Mondrian's De Stijl works are a still further abstraction, such that the canvas is often divided up into rectangular "tile patterns," as in Composition with Red Blue and Yellow. The painting simultaneously echoes the bright lights of a marquee, resembles a pattern of streets as seen from above, and creates a feeling of vitality and vibrancy, not unlike the music itself. This work can also be found at the MOMA.

The Persistence of Memory

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

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 heat change 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. Bombs 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.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Came to prominence thanks to his portraits of his longtime friend, the musician Patti Smith. He produced many celebrity portraits and still-life images of flowers, but is likely most famous for his homoerotic work depicting the BDSM subculture of 1970s New York. Shortly after his 1989 death from AIDS complications, his exhibition "The Perfect Moment" culminated in a 1990 obscenity trial in Cincinnati.

Yom Kippur

Celebrated on the tenth day of Tishrei, it is the Jewish Day of Atonement; at the end of this holiday, it is believed that one's fate is sealed. Jews are required to abstain from eating, drinking, washing, and sex, as well as indulgent dress such as jewelry, make-up, and leather. One traditionally wears white clothes to symbolize purity. In the afternoon, the Book of Jonah is read. A full day of prayers begins with the Kol Nidre, which releases Jews from vows or promises to God. As on Rosh HaShanah, the shofar is blown unless it is Shabbat, in which case the shofar is blown only during the final service, N'ila (meaning "closing," since the Temple gates were closed for this service).

Mourning

Commences immediately upon hearing of a death, when one traditionally recites a blessing that translates to "Blessed are you, Lord our God, king of the Universe, the judge of truth" ("...dayan ha-emet") and one may tear their clothes. (The latter tradition is sometimes echoed with mourners wearing a ribbon at a funeral, which they ritually tear.) After burial, shiva begins—a seven-day period of mourning (colloquially in English, "sitting shiva") during which the family of the deceased person receives visitors at home, shares recollections of the deceased, prays communally, and eats traditional comfort foods (e.g., eggs, whose round shape recalls the cycle of life). Mourners minimize vanity (keeping personal grooming to a minimum, covering mirrors, not wearing fancy clothes such as those involving leather) and avoid joyous events. A period of less intense mourning, shloshim (literally, "thirty") lasts 30 days after burial, during which mourners continue avoiding joyous events, and specifically in the case of people mourning a parent, a less intense period of mourning lasts a year following the death. Mourners recite kaddish yatom (colloquially just kaddish), a prayer praising God but containing no direct reference to death, throughout the mourning period. On each (Hebrew-calendar) anniversary of a death, family members light a yahrzeit candle, which burns for 24 hours in memory of the deceased.

Rational Functions

Consist of one polynomial divided by another polynomial. The denominator polynomial cannot be the zero polynomial, because dividing by zero is undefined. Examples therefore include 1/x, x2/(x - 3), and (x2 + 1)/(x2 - 1). Every polynomial can be considered to be this kind of function because 1 is a polynomial and dividing by 1 doesn't change an expression (so to consider the polynomial x3 as a rational function, think of it as x3/1). It is often instructive to study the asymptotes of rational functions, which are places in which their graphs approach a line (or occasionally other shape), usually getting infinitely close to but not crossing it. That analysis may require performing long division on the numerator and denominator polynomials to find their greatest common factor.

Lake Chad

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

Hermitage

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

Duke Frederick

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

Lady Macbeth

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

Angelo

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

Richard Duke of Gloucester

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

Caliban

From The Tempest: He is the son of the Algerian witch Sycorax, who once ruled the island where Caliban was born. After Sycorax died the island fell under the control of the magician Prospero, an exiled duke of Milan. Prospero taught the young boy language, and showed kindness to him, until he tried to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda. In response, Prospero enslaved him, and began treating him as a subhuman creature. (His exact nature is unknown, but he seems to be physically distinct from the other characters in the play. At various points, he is called a "monster," a "demi-devil," a "strange fish," a "thing of darkness," a "moon-calf," and a "freckled whelp" who lacks a "human shape.") When the play begins, he longs to overthrow Prospero but still fears Prospero's magic, which is stronger than that of his god, Setebos. Trinculo and Stephano, two drunkards who are shipwrecked and separated from the rest of their crew, give him liquor; this character then conspires with them to kill Prospero. When the group hears music played by the spirit Ariel, he delivers a speech beginning "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises" that demonstrates sensitivity and loss. The plot to unseat Prospero quickly fails, and he vows to be "wise hereafter." Unlike Ariel, he is not freed at the end of the play.

King Claudius

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

Iago

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

Talmud

Hebrew for "instruction," this book is a codification of Jewish oral law, based on the Torah. It consists of the Mishnah (the laws themselves), and the Gemara (scholarly commentary on the Mishnah). The Gemara developed in two Judaic centers, Palestine and Babylonia, so there are two Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian), the latter considered more authoritative. Rabbis and lay scholars finished the Babylonian book around 600.

George Eastman

His invention of a dry-plate process improved the robustness of photographs, which he then built further on by developing a gelatin emulsion that was applied to paper, then removed and varnished with collodion after exposure. This film, which was carried in rolls, was easier to transport than plates and allowed for multiple exposures without fully reloading a camera. His crowning achievement was the compact, handheld Kodak camera.

George Chapman

His translations of Homer's two great epics, published as The Whole Works of Homer, were the first in English and remained the definitive English version for centuries, rivaled only perhaps by Alexander Pope's 1715 translations. He found it too difficult to fit his translation into the original Greek dactylic hexameter, and thus wrote his Iliad in iambic pentameter and his Odyssey in iambic hexameter. He rendered the Iliad's opening invocation of the muses as "Achilles' baneful wrath resound." His translation, noted for its vivid beauty, was celebrated in John Keats's 1816 poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer."

J. R. R. Tolkien

His version of Beowulf is in prose, not verse, and is often regarded as sacrificing ease-of-reading in the name of a truer and more faithful translation into modern English. The translation is done not through a poetic lens but a linguistic one, as this man was a devoted scholar of Old English. He renders "Hwæt" as the archaic-sounding "Lo!". In addition, he adapted the first 2,000 lines of Beowulf into a freer, inexact folktale version he titled "Sellic Spell." Print versions of his translation often include his 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics," which revived interest in Beowulf as a beautiful poem rather than as a historical text.

USS Nautilus

In 1951 Congress authorized construction of the world's first nuclear-powered submarine. On December 12 of that year, the Navy Department announced that she would be the sixth ship of the fleet to bear this name. She was launched on January 21, 1954. Eight months later, on September 30, 1954, this ship became the first commissioned nuclear-powered ship in the U.S. Navy. On the morning of January 17, 1955, this ship's Commander Wilkinson signaled "Underway on Nuclear Power." In 1958 she departed Pearl Harbor under top-secret orders to conduct "Operation Sunshine," the first crossing of the North Pole by a ship.

Marriage

In Judaism this process is a complex ritual that varies according to the couple's and their community's relationships with Judaism. For the sake of brevity, here we will discuss them between a Jewish man and a Jewish woman. Jewish attitudes and approaches toward non-heterosexual marriages are too varied and evolving to summarize here, and Judaism discourages Jewish people from marrying non-Jewish people (intermarriage). In many communities, especially Ashkenazic ones, the wedding is preceded by an aufruf: on the Shabbat (Saturday) before the wedding, the groom is (or in egalitarian congregations, the bride and the groom are) called to the Torah to receive an honor and a blessing, after which the congregation sings to them and pelts them with candy, representing a sweet life. Immediately before the wedding proper, two witnesses sign a ketubah, or marriage contract, which details the groom's obligations toward the bride (home, food, clothing, sex, faithfulness). In egalitarian movements the wording is adjusted and the bride and groom also sign. The ketubah is frequently a beautiful, illuminated document, and the couple will often display it in their home. The wedding ceremony takes place under a chuppah, a canopy supported on four poles, symbolizing the couple's home. The bride's face is veiled—recalling Genesis, in which Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah rather than Rachel by having the bride veiled at the ceremony, but to prevent such an occurrence, the groom removes the veil to verify that he will marry the correct person. The bride walks around the groom three or seven times. The groom presents the bride with an object of value (typically a ring), and in egalitarian weddings, vice versa. Seven blessings (Hebrew: sheva b'rachot) formalize the marriage. The groom breaks a glass (or in egalitarian movements, the bride and groom may break a glass together) to remind the community that even at a joyous occasion there is still sorrow (particularly with respect to the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem). The cermony is followed by a festive meal and party. Dancing is common, especially the hora, and it is traditional to lift the bride and groom on chairs. Traditionally, a special version of birkat ha-mazon (grace after meals) is recited.

National Gallery

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

1948 Electon

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

Edwin Land

Initially made his name developing filters for polarizing light. He then developed the instant, self-developing film, which worked by squeezing the negative film against a positive sheet, then using a reagent to transfer and quickly develop the image. The first commercially viable instant camera was produced and sold in 1948 by Land's Polaroid Corporation.

Mordred

Is King Arthur's illegitimate son by his half-sister Morgause (they were unaware of their shared parentage), possibly making him the rightful heir to Camelot. He is best known as a traitorous figure who crowns himself King of the Britons while King Arthur is in Gaul fighting the mythical Emperor Lucius of Rome. He is also frequently linked with Queen Guinevere: some accounts say that he reported the queen's affair with Lancelot to Arthur, some say that he took Guinevere as a concubine during his usurpation of Arthur's throne, and some say that his wife was Guinevere's sister Gwenhwyfach. Arthur killed Mordred at the Battle of Camlann.

The United Arab Emirates

Is a federation of seven internal states (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Umm Al Quwain, and Ras Al Khaimah) that were previously known as the Trucial States and which united in 1971. The Trucial States were a group of seven sheikhdoms that signed treaties (or truces) with Great Britain beginning in 1820. These states lay along what Britain termed the "Pirate Coast" of the Persian Gulf; the treaties were intended to protect British ships from raids. In the late 19th century, these treaties evolved into an Exclusive Agreement, in which Britain promised the emirates military protection. In 1968, Britain announced it would withdraw military support from the region. Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi, negotiated an agreement among the Trucial States to join together and became the first president of this new country when it was established in December 1971.

The Delaware River

Is a historically significant river of the eastern United States. From its source in the Catskills, the river flows 301 miles, forming the border between Delaware and New Jersey. It flows past Trenton, New Jersey and Philadelphia, where it receives the Schuylkill River before emptying into the Atlantic. George Washington crossed this river on Christmas night in 1776 to surprise the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton.

Graph

Is a mathematical concept often used in algorithms, in which a set of vertices is connected by a set of edges. In visual representations, the vertices are shown as dots, with edges shown as lines between the two vertices they connect. A path between two vertices is a sequence of edges that starts at the first vertex and ends at the last. A cycle is a path that begins and ends at the same vertex. It is called weighted if every edge has a number representing the "cost" of traveling the edge; they are used, for example, in analyzing navigation, with vertices representing cities, edges representing roads between them, and weights representing distance (or travel time). It is called directed if each edge has an inherent direction (an edge going from vertex A to vertex B, but not from B to A), e.g., representing a one-way road Another part of this concept are networks, and this is the origin of the term social network: if vertices represent people and edges represent who knows whom, a social network is a collection of people and the relationships between them. They are used to organize data (often in trees, which are graphs in which you can reach any vertex from any other vertex, but there are no cycles), analyze navigation/travel (broadly construed, such as the flow of fluid in a complex pipe system), manage tasks and scheduling (with edges representing dependencies), and more. Dijkstra's algorithm is used to find the shortest path between two vertices of this concept (possibly a weighted graph, in which case "shortest" means least total weight). Prim's algorithm and Kruskal's algorithm are used to find a graph's minimum spanning tree, that is a tree connecting all its vertices whose edges have the smallest possible total weight.

Corundum

Is a mineral composed of aluminum oxide. Common gem forms of this mineral include rubies (turned red by inclusions of chromium) and sapphires (which can take a variety of colors from inclusions of iron, titanium, or vanadium). It defines hardness 9 on the Mohs scale.

Diamond

Is a mineral composed of carbon atoms in a "diamond cubic" crystal structure. Among natural materials, this mineral has one of the highest thermal conductivities and highest hardnesses; it defines hardness 10 on the Mohs scale. They are almost always found in igneous rocks called kimberlites.

Confirmation

Is a modern ritual (developed in the 19th century) and is non-obligatory. It is primarily used in more secular movements, and represents the fact that a person has continued formal Jewish education past the bar/bat mitzvah and has now completed that formal education. Rituals vary widely, but generally there is recognition in the synagogue of the confirmation class (all at once, unlike for b'nai mitzvah), religious gifts may be given, and—as with nearly all Jewish events—food is served.

Ghana

Is a nation of former British holdings on Africa's west coast, the most prominent of which was the Gold Coast. The Gold Coast was so named by multiple European powers for the rich gold reserves found within the area; in time, the region also became heavily involved in the slave trade. Britain incorporated its Gold Coast Colony in 1821 after seizing the chartered lands of the African Company of Merchants, which had continued to trade in slaves after Britain had outlawed the trade in 1807; Britain subsequently subsumed other nations' holdings in the region into the British Gold Coast. The modern push for independence began in the late 1940s, and was led by Kwame Nkrumah, who later served as this country's first prime minister and first president. Britain combined its Gold Coast, Northern Territories, Ashanti, and Togoland colonies into a single entity, which became the Dominion of Ghana in 1957. It became a fully independent republic in 1960.

Merlin

Is a powerful wizard who serves as Arthur's chief advisor. When he was a child, King Vortigern was told that the boy's blood was necessary to keep his tower from constantly collapsing; however, this wizard identified a pool beneath the tower in which two dragons fought as the source of the instability. Some sources credit him with constructing the Round Table as well as Stonehenge. His primary apprentice is the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur's half-sister on his mother's side. Some sources have this man wind up trapped in an enchanted tomb (possibly in a cave, possibly in a tree) by a figure identified as Vivien or Nimue (the Lady of the Lake). In other tales, this wizard dies and is buried in the legendary forest Brocéliande.

Object-oriented Programming

Is a programming paradigm that involves the creation of objects from classes that can hold data and transform it in various ways. A class is a definition of the fundamental properties than an object has, while objects are specific examples of a class (for instance, the general idea of a dog is a class, while your pet dog would be an object.) Inheritance allows subclasses to be defined so that the properties of a parent class are present in the sub-class (for example, "schnauzer" might be a subclass of "dog"). In composition, an object contains or references another object (which might or might not be of the same class, e.g., a dog's digestive system might be another object). This type of programming also often uses encapsulation to hide unnecessary details from other aspects, e.g., a dog's digestive system doesn't need to know about its circulatory system. Polymorphism is the idea that different classes may be able to do the same things in potentially different ways, e.g., animals all eat but they do so in different ways. Java and C++ are examples of languages that use this type of programming.

Algorithm

Is a set of detailed instructions for solving a problem, such as "sort a list" or "divide two numbers." It can be described in human language, a programming language, or in other ways, but they are written in detail to explain how to handle all possible inputs (e.g., the list to sort or the numbers to divide) or fail if the task is impossible (e.g., if dividing two numbers and the second is 0). The word derives from the name of Al-Khwarizmi, a Persian scholar also credited with some of the most fundamental principles in algebra. Computer scientists analyze how many steps are needed (time complexity) and how much memory they need for temporary storage of intermediate results (space complexity). The worst-case situations are expressed using big O notation; for example, if an algorithm to sort a list of n items might need up to n2 to sort the list, the algorithm's worst-case time complexity is O(n2). (This is a simplification of the mathematics of asymptotic notation.)

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 this volcano are taller than Mount Everest when measuring from base-to-summit rather than from sea level. Along with Kilauea, this volcano forms the Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park which was established in 1916 by Woodrow Wilson. When it erupted in 1942 four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor the U.S. government gagged the press from reporting on the eruption.

Kilauea

Is a shield volcano that is the most active of the five volcanoes on the Big Island of Hawaii. The name 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 this volcano 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 this volcano's caldera.

Calcite

Is a stable mineral form of calcium carbonate. Less stable forms of calcium carbonate (called polymorphs), such as aragonite, eventually convert to this. It is found in the shells of many marine organisms, including plankton, echinoderms, and bivalves. This makes calcite a major constituent of sedimentary rocks, especially limestone. Many optical devices utilize calcite because it exhibits birefringence (double refraction). This mineral defines hardness 3 on the Mohs scale.

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 this volcano killed more than 35,000 people and is believed to have produced the loudest sound ever. It is one of the largest volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire. The continued activity of this volcano formed a new island, Anak Krakatau (or "Child of Krakatoa") in 1927.

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. This volcano, which last erupted in 1944, is the only active volcano on mainland Europe. The most notable eruption of the volcano 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 this volcano.

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 this volcano 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 this volcano's southwestern slope, is used to track climate change. The Emmons Glacier on this volcano is the largest glacier by area in the contiguous U.S., while the Carbon Glacier is the largest by volume. The entirety of this volcano is in Mount Rainier National Park, the fifth national park established in the U.S.

Recursion

Is a technique used in some algorithms. Sometimes an algorithm calls itself to solve a smaller case of the problem, until it reaches a simple base case that is already solved. For example, an algorithm to calculate n factorial uses the fact that n! = n·(n−1)!, so it calls itself on n−1 and keeps going with smaller values until it reaches the base case of 1!, which is just 1. The tail type of this concept is the use of this concept as the last step of an algorithm. Algorithms that use this are often more optimized by compilers. Recursive algorithms can have their big O runtime calculated by the Master theorem.

The Columbia River

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

Programming Language

Is a way to write algorithms and other instructions in a way that can (usually after additional steps) be understood and executed by a computer. Almost all of these languages have ways of defining variables, which hold data, and functions, which are sets of instructions that achieve some task (such as performing an algorithm). Java, JavaScript (which is not the same as Java), C, C++, and Python are common languages. These languages can be categorized by their paradigm (which is a general sense of how the code tends to be structured), typing (see below), how they are run (compiled or interpreted), and in other ways.

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, the volcano 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.

Divorce

Is discouraged, but permitted, in Judaism. It is effected by a document called a get. By Jewish law, a husband must present a wife with a get of his own free will, and traditionally (but not by law) she must choose to accept it. The former presents an obvious problem when a wife wishes to be divorced but her husband does not. This is a considerable problem in observant Jewish communities and has led to a variety of attempted solutions of varying acceptance and effectiveness (usually in the form of some sort of prenuptial agreement, but occasionally more creative, less legal forms).

The Missouri River

Is formed in western Montana by the confluence of the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers. It flows past Bismarck, North Dakota and Kansas City before emptying into the Mississippi just north of St. Louis. Lewis and Clark used this river as a route for exploration of the Louisiana Purchase. The river is regulated by a number of major dams, including Fort Peck in Montana and Oahe Dam in South Dakota.

Athens

Is on the peninsula of Attica, across the Saronic Gulf from Corinth. It is often called the birthplace of democracy. Its political institutions included the ecclesia, an assembly open to all male citizens, which elected officials and enacted legislation; and the boule, a group of male citizens chosen by lot who served for a year at a time. The boule oversaw day-to-day operations of the government and set the agenda for the ecclesia. The size of the boule and the functions of both assemblies changed due to constitutional reforms enacted by Solon, Cleisthenes, Ephialtes, and Pericles. The ecclesia could banish a citizen for ten years, a practice known as ostracism. The rise to power of this city during the Persian Wars sparked the Peloponnesian War, which the city lost.

The Mekong

Is the chief river of Southeast Asia. It originates in eastern Tibet, forms much of the Laos-Thailand border, flows south through Cambodia, and enters the South China Sea in southern Vietnam just south of Ho Chi Minh City. The capital cities Vientiane and Phnom Penh are on the Mekong. The building of dams and clearing of rapids are a source of diplomatic conflict among China, Laos, and Cambodia.

Anglo-Saxons

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

Queen Guinevere

Is the daughter of Leodegrance and the wife of King Arthur. In one story, she is abducted by Meleagant (or Melwas), a king of Somerset, and rescued by Lancelot, beginning an illicit affair between the two. After the affair is revealed to Arthur (in some sources by Mordred, in others by Agravain), Arthur orders her to be burned at the stake; she is rescued from that fate by Lancelot in a battle that results in the deaths of Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris and the permanent exile of Lancelot. Some sources say that this queen spent her final days hiding in the Tower of London or in a nearby convent.

Bar/bat mitzvah

Is the designation that a Jewish person has reached adulthood. Traditionally this is at age 13 for boys/men and age 12 for girls/women. Although a bar/bat mitzvah occurs upon the birthday regardless of whether any ceremony takes place, traditionally the occasion is marked at a service at the synagogue around that time; the honoree will wear a tallit (prayer shawl) for the first time, be called up for an honor (aliyah) for the first time, read from the Torah (first five books of the Bible) and haftarah (a portion of one of the prophets' books, linked to the week's Torah portion), and give a d'var Torah, a discourse on the meaning of the week's Torah portion. A celebratory meal or party often follows. The bar mitzvah for boys dates back to ancient times in varying forms; the bat mitzvah mainly arose in the 20th century. After becoming bar mitzvah, a man is responsible for fulfilling the 613 commandments in the Torah and may be counted toward a minyan (quorum required for certain prayers); in egalitarian movements the same applies to a woman who has become bat mitzvah.

The Tigris

Is the eastern of the two rivers that define the historic region Mesopotamia (meaning "the Land Between Two Rivers"), which was home to the ancient civilizations Sumer and Akkad. It rises in Turkey, then flows southeast by Mosul, Tikrit, and Baghdad before joining the Euphrates to make the Shatt-al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.

Sir Lancelot

Is the foremost among the Knights of the Round Table, an expert swordsman and jouster who is the primary figure of the Vulgate Cycle. The son of King Ban of Benwick, this knight was raised by the Lady of the Lake, which earned him the epithet "du Lac" or "of the Lake." Another of his epithets is "Knight of the Cart," which he earned for riding in a dwarf's cart while searching for Guinevere after she was kidnapped. Aside from his adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere, he is known for fathering Sir Galahad with Elaine of Corbenic, who had tricked him into sleeping with her by disguising herself as Guinevere. After his betrayal of Arthur was revealed, he fled to France and was therefore not present during the Battle of Camlann.

Titan

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

The Mackenzie River

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

The Colorado River

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

Medusa

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

Complier

Is used with many programming languages to convert human-readable code into instructions that a machine can execute. C and C++ programs are often compiled by GCC into code specific for the machine the compiler is running on. Java's compiler instead compiles into a less specific format called bytecode, which is executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Since compiled Java can be run on any machine with a JVM, Java is referred to as "write once, run anywhere." Some languages are not compiled before running but instead have their code turned into machine instructions as they run, such as JavaScript and Python; these languages are called interpreted.

Battle of Granicus

Issus (333 BC) was the second major battle between Alexander the Great and the Persian Empire, and the first to feature Darius III. The battle was fought along the Pinarus River near what is now Iskenderun in Turkey's Hatay province. Before the battle, Darius was able to surprise Alexander and cut him off from the main force of Macedonians. However, the battle ended with Darius fleeing the field and the capture of his tent and family. The battle was the subject of a 1528 painting by Albrecht Altdorfer, the leader of the Danube School.

Transformer

It is a pair of solenoids connected to a central core, which permits the circulation of magnetic flux. Because the flux in the core is constant, an alternating current in one coil produces a changing magnetic field, inducing an alternating current in the second coil. If the coils have different numbers of turns of wire (as is typical), the current in the second coil will have a different voltage than the current in the first coil. Therefore, these parts are used to "step up" or "step down" voltage, for example in power transmission lines and in adapters for household electronics.

Hadith

It is a report of the words or actions of a Muslim religious figure, most frequently the prophet Muhammad. Each consists of a matn, or text of the original oral law itself, as well as an isnad, or chain of authorities through which it has been passed by word of mouth through the generations. Collectively, this book points Muslims toward the Sunna, or practice of the Prophet, which together with the Qur'an forms the basis for shari'a, usually translated as Islamic law.

Edward FitzGerald

It is difficult to overstate how popular this man's translation of Persian polymath Omar Khayyám's poetry was during the Victorian era. His translations, revised five times until 1889, present a view of the Middle East as an exotic land of sensual (but refined) pleasures and emphasize Khayyám's irreligious worldview, which was very pleasing to Victorian tastes. It also cannot be overstated just how loose his translations are: scholars believe that some of the quatrains in the Rubáiyát may be total inventions of this man. Among the many works that take their titles from his Rubáiyát are Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger and Eugene O'Neill's play Ah, Wilderness!.

Vostok 6

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

Po

Italy's longest river at 405 miles, it passes through Piedmont and Lombardy before entering the Adriatic 30 miles south of Venice. It flows through Turin and Cremona, and it passes near Milan, Padua, Pavia, and Mantua. The river has a long history of floods, and the manmade levees called argini which protect towns and crops can exacerbate the floods. Pollution, especially from Milan, is becoming a major environmental concern.

Cannae

Known as the largest battle of the Second Punic War (216 BC) it represented one of the worst defeats in Roman history. The Carthaginians were led by Hannibal, while the Romans were led by the consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. Hannibal employed a double-envelopment tactic, surrounded the Roman army, and destroyed it. Although a total disaster for the Romans, it resulted in the revival of the Fabian strategy, in which battles are avoided in favor of a war of attrition. This eventually wore down Hannibal's army, and the Carthaginians had to leave Italy.

Sergei Korolev

Known until his death by the pseudonym "Chief Designer", headed design and construction for the Soviet long-range ballistic missile program, as well as the R-7 ICBM program. This work urged similar innovations in the U.S. Earlier in his career, he designed a rocket-powered glider, though he was imprisoned and forced into slave labor during the Great Purge. In the 1950s, he personally oversaw Sputnik and Sputnik 2, and he returned to the R-7, modifying it for lunar insertion of robotic probes. His final years were spent devising soft-landing methods for manned lunar missions.

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project

Marked a definite end to the Space Race, and was a symbol of the de-escalation of tensions between the US and the USSR. Deke Slayton, an original Mercury 7 astronaut grounded for medical reasons until 1973, was accompanied by Tom Stafford and Vance Brand on the last launch of Apollo before the advent of the Space Shuttle. The mission demonstrated that two dissimilar spacecraft could rendezvous and dock while in space (an Apollo Command Module and Soyuz 19 docked), and also enabled the crew of Soyuz to photograph the Sun's corona through an artificial eclipse created by the Apollo spacecraft. Each spacecraft also carried out independent experiments.

Last Three Symphonies

Mozart wrote Symphonies Nos. 39-41 in about three months in the summer of 1788, for unknown reasons. (It is unclear if any of them were performed in his lifetime, although No. 40 probably was.) Of the three, only No. 39 in E flat major, K. 543, has a slow introduction; unusually, it omits oboes entirely. No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, on the other hand, was revised to reduce the oboe part and add clarinets; the last movement may have inspired the third movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. No. 41 in C major, K. 551, probably got its nickname of "Jupiter" from Johann Peter Salomon. Its first movement quotes Mozart's aria "Un bacio di mano" ("A kiss on her hand"), composed for Pasquale Anfossi's opera Il curioso indiscreto; its last movement presents five themes which are all brought together in a massive fugato at the end.

Piano Concertos

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

Nude Descending a Staircase

No. 2, By Marcel Duchamp. This painting was painted in 1912 and created a sensation when shown at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, where one critic referred to it as "an explosion in a shingle factory." Painted in various shades of brown, it portrays a nude person in a series of broken planes, capturing motion down several steps in a single image. The painting reflects a Cubist sense of division of space, and its portrait of motion echoes the work of the Futurists.

Abraham Lincoln

On April 14, 1865 this U.S. President 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. he 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.

Mohandas Gandhi

On January 30, 1948 this Indian independence advocate was shot three times at point-blank range by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist. The shooting occurred just as he 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 this man's accepting behavior toward Muslims and blamed this man for the 1947 Partition of India. His death was reported to the nation via radio by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that evening.

Robert F. Kennedy

On June 5, 1968 he was himself fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles. This man 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, he was leaving the Ambassador Hotel through the hotel kitchen when he was shot. Following his 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.

Julius Caesar

On March 15, 44 BC, sometimes called the Ides of March, this Roman statesman was stabbed 23 times by the Liberatores ("Liberators"), a group of senators led by Gaius Cassius Longinus and Marcus Junius Brutus. He died at the base of the Roman Curia in the Theater of Pompey, just outside the Roman Senate. This man 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, his adopted grandnephew Octavian (later Augustus) and his top general Marc Antony formed the Second Triumvirate with Marcus Lepidus; the trio deified him and defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi.

King Henry IV

On May 4, 1610 this king of France was stabbed to death by François Ravaillac, a Catholic fanatic who claimed to have had visions instructing him to convince this man to convert the Huguenots (Protestants) to Catholicism. Ravaillac stabbed this king—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. He was survived by his wife Marie de' Medici, who served as regent for their son Louis XIII until he took power in 1617.

John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963 this U.S. President 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. This assassination was investigated by the Warren Commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren, which concluded that Oswald was the lone gunman.

Indira Gandhi

On October 31, 1984 this Indian prime minister 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. She 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. Her oldest son, Rajiv, succeeded her as Prime Minister of India.

Francis Marion

Previously an Indian fighter, Marion was given command of Fort Sullivan in 1776. Commanding the 2nd South Carolina, he fought at Savannah, and escaped capture when the British retook Charleston. From there, he fought a successful guerilla campaign against British troops, forcing Cornwallis to appoint Colonel Banastre Tarleton to eliminate him. Tarleton's frustration at the task led to the remark "But as for this damned old fox, the devil himself could not catch him," creating Marion's nickname, "Swamp Fox." Promoted to brigadier general in 1781, and later given command of the North and South Carolina militias, he fought the British at Eutaw Springs.

Elbe

Rising in the Krkonose Mountains of the Sudetenland in the Czech Republic, the river flows near Prague, then enters eastern Germany and flows northwest to the North Sea. It receives the Vltava (or Moldau), the Saale, and the Havel/Spree, and the many large cities on its course include Dresden, Dessau, Magdeburg, Wittenberg, and Hamburg. Like the Oder, this river has been a key transportation route for many centuries.

By using these laws in dozens of stories (some of which were collected in the book I

Robot), he helped to promote a conception of robots as useful machines rather than inhuman monsters. He is also known for his Foundation series, which was inspired by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Foundation series begins when the "psychohistorian" Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire will soon fall and creates the title organization to limit the length of the ensuing Dark Age. This man eventually linked together his Robot and Foundation series into a far-reaching "history of the future," which also includes the novels The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust.

Apollo 11

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

Chromatography

Separates a complex mixture into its individual components, commonly illustrated by the separation of pen ink into many colors. This process 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. This process for gases (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 (HPLC) is like gas in this test, but the sample remains in the liquid phase and is pushed through using pressures of up to 400 atmospheres. Ion-exchange through this test uses stationary phases with acidic or basic functional groups to remove charged compounds; it can be used for water softening.

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.

WarCraft

Series developed by Blizzard Entertainment that helped popularize the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, in which players fight against each other by constructing buildings and armies as quickly as possible. The first game in the series pitted Humans against Orcs; later games added Night Elves and Undead. The 2004 MMORPG (massively multiplayer online RPG) World of Warcraft, set in the same universe, has had over 10 million subscribers.

Franks

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

Continuous Functions

Studied in calculus, are functions where the limit approaching each point equals the function's value at that point. In particular, there are no holes, jumps, or asymptotes "in the middle of the graph." It is really a property of a specific point; this type of function is a function that is continuous at every point. Continuity is often explained as a function's graph being drawable in one motion without lifting the writing utensil from the paper. All polynomials are continuous, as are the sine and cosine functions, exponential and logarithmic functions, and the absolute value function. Some examples of non-continuous functions are many rational functions, as they often have holes or asymptotes; the tangent, cosecant, secant, and cotangent functions, which have asymptotes; and the floor and ceiling functions, which have jumps.

The Mycenaeans

Succeeded the Minoans as the preeminent Greek civilization. Much of their territory was on the Greek mainland, including the city of Mycenae itself. Their writing system is called Linear B. They disappeared in the late Bronze Age collapse. Homer's Iliad is set during this civilization's period, and Agamemnon is said to have been the King of Mycenae.

Triton

The largest moon of Neptune and the only large moon with a retrograde orbit (that is, an orbit opposite to the rotation of its planet), this moon is the seventh-largest moon in the solar system and is thought to have been captured from the Kuiper Belt. For over 100 years after its 1846 discovery, it was thought to be Neptune's only moon; Nereid wasn't discovered until 1949. (There are fourteen known satellites now.) This moon is geologically active and has geysers that are assumed to erupt nitrogen. Because of the activity, impact craters on this moon are relatively scarce; most of the larger craters were formed by volcanic activity. It orbits around Neptune in almost a perfect circle. Voyager 2 visited this moon in 1989 and is the only space probe to have done so (and no more are currently planned). Much of its western hemisphere consists of an unexplained series of fissures and depressions sometimes called "cantaloupe terrain." This moon's features are named after various water spirits, monsters, and sacred waters from mythology.

Charon

The largest satellite of the dwarf planet Pluto, this moon wasn't discovered until 1978. (As of 2013, Pluto has five known moons, the last two discovered in 2011 and 2012.) Unlike Pluto, which is covered with nitrogen and methane ices, this moon appears to be covered in water ice and may also have active cryo-geysers. Because the center of mass lies outside of either one, this moon doesn't truly orbit Pluto; when Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, an argument was made (but not accepted) to classify this moon with its planet as a binary system. The IAU still considers this rock a moon, which is roughly half the size but has only 11% the mass of Pluto, to be a satellite. The New Horizons mission visited this moon and Pluto in 2015. It was named by its discoverer, James Christy of the Flagstaff Naval Observatory; the IAU approved the name in 1985. Internationally it is pronounced like the Greek mythological figure, "CARE-on", but Christy's choice of name was inspired by his wife Charlene, so NASA and New Horizons personnel use "SHARE-on".

Chords

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

Polyphemus

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

Mount Kenya

The second-tallest mountain in Africa is this one, which shares its name with the country in which it is located. British geographer and political theorist Halford Mackinder led the first group to ascend the peak, which bypassed the Darwin Glacier and proceeded up the Diamond Glacier. Like Kilimanjaro, it was formed by a now-dormant volcano, and, like Kilimanjaro, part of its notoriety rests on a book. Facing Mount Kenya, an anthropological study of the Kikuyu people by Jomo Kenyatta, was one of the first such texts by an African ethnographer to gain fame.

Rama

The seventh avatar of Vishnu is hero of the Ramayana. Born as a prince to King Dasharatha and Queen Kaushalya, he wins the hand of his wife Sita in a competition held by Sita's father, King Janaka; only he can string Shiva's bow. When his aunt Kaikeyi schemes to deprive him of Dasharatha's throne by putting her son Bharata there, he and Sita are banished to a forest for 14 years. During that time, the ten-headed demon Ravana kidnaps Sita, but this god rescues her and kills Ravana. Bharata abdicates; he makes Sita walk through fire to prove that Ravana had not corrupted her.

The Yellow River

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

Temperature scales

The scales most frequently used to measure this phenomenon in science are the Kelvin and Celsius scales. The Celsius scale, developed by Swedish scientist Anders Celsius in the early 1700s, assigns a value of 0°C to the freezing point of water (at a pressure of 1 atmosphere), and 100°C to the boiling point of water (at the same pressure). Prior to 2019, the Kelvin scale is based on the triple point of water, the point at which water's solid, liquid, and gaseous phases can coexist in equilibrium: 1 K was defined as 1/273.16 of the temperature of water at its triple point. (In 2019 the definition was changed to be in terms of the Boltzmann constant, but the value is still essentially as just described.) Kelvins are treated like all other SI units: a temperature of 100 K is read as "one hundred kelvins," not "one hundred degrees kelvin." Differences on the Celsius scale have the same magnitude as differences on the Kelvin scale: a gap of 1°C between temperatures is the same as a gap of 1 K. Therefore the lowest possible temperature, absolute zero (0 K) is equal to -273.15°C, and (at a pressure of 1 atmosphere) water freezes at 273.15 K and boils at 373.15 K.

Heimdall

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

Golgi apparatus

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

Scales

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

Lysosomes

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

Serenades and Divertimentos

These include two of Mozart's most familiar pieces, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525, and A Musical Joke, K. 522. Eine kleine Nachtmusik, originally scored for string quartet and double bass, is often translated as "a little night music" (but more accurately as "a little serenade"); it includes a lovely "Romanze" second movement as well as the more famous first movement. A Musical Joke is exactly that: a parody of bad composition, ending with chords in four different keys, and including almost every possible kind of "mistake." Mozart's other Serenades include the "Gran Partita" for 13 instruments (No. 10 in B flat major, K. 361), as well as the "Posthorn" and "Haffner" (not to be confused with the symphony!).

Dynamics

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

Cilia and flagella

These parts of the cell are important organelles of motility, that is, they allow the cell to move. One of them is long, whip-like structures, while the other is short, hair-like projections. Both contain a 9 + 2 arrangement of microtubules in cross-section (two microtubules in the middle, nine pairs in a circle around the outside) and are powered by molecular motors of kinesin and dynein molecules.

Visigoths

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

Mamluk

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

Farm Security Administration

These photographers during the Great Depression documented the plight of poor farmers. Dorothea Lange may have produced the single most enduring image among them, a portrait of Florence Owens Thompson staring worriedly into the middle distance as two of her children bury their faces in her neck, called Migrant Mother. Walker Evans, another FSA photographer, collaborated with writer James Agee on a study of three sharecropping families in Alabama, called Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Gordon Parks, whose photo of an FSA cleaning woman was both posed and titled in ironic homage to Grant Wood's American Gothic, was a pioneering African-American photographer who later directed the film Shaft.

Supply and Demand

This concept embodies the general idea that, at any given price, producers are willing to produce a given amount of a good and consumers are willing to buy a different amount. As the price rises, firms will be willing to supply more goods, but fewer will be demanded; conversely, as price falls, consumers will demand more goods, but fewer will be supplied. On a graph showing price and quantity on its two axes, this is represented by a downward-sloping demand curve and an upward-sloping supply curve. Where the two curves intersect, there is an equilibrium; economists predict this equilibrium quantity will be produced (and consumed) in a free market.

Krishna

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

Hanukkah

This festival lasts for eight days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev (the third month). It celebrates the victory of the small Maccabee army against the large Greek army of Antiochus, and the Maccabees' recapture and re-purification of the Temple in Jerusalem (c. 168 BC). When they did so, they found only a small amount of oil to light the menorah in the Temple, and it would take a week to make more; miraculously, the oil burned for the full week. To commemorate this, on each night, observers use a "helper candle" called the shamash to light candles in a menorah (more properly called a chanukiah, as a menorah only has six branches while a chanukiah has nine): one candle (besides the shamash) on the first night, two on the second night, and so on. Furthermore, it is traditional to eat foods fried in oil; in the United States, potato pancakes called latkes are popular; in Israel, fried jelly donuts called sufganiyot are more common. Children play a game with a spinning a top called the dreidel, which contains the Hebrew letters that form the initials of a phrase that translates as "a great miracle happened there" (in Israel, they say "a great miracle happened here"). Exchanging presents is only a recent tradition developed in the U.S. to make Jewish children feel less left out as their Christian peers get Christmas presents (or, if you are cynical, the tradition was invented by toymakers to sell more toys).

Arthur Waley

This man was a specialist in East Asian literature; he translated Lady Murasaki's The Tale of Genji beginning in 1925, and two decades later he published his translation of the Chinese novel Journey to the West under the title Monkey. "Monkey," which refers to the ape-like character Sun Wukong, is one of several Westernized names he assigned to the novel's characters: the Buddhist monk Tang Sanzang is given the more Sanskrit name "Tripitaka"; the hog-like Zhu Bajie is renamed "Pigsy"; and Sha Wujing is renamed "Sandy." He subtitled his translation "A Folk-Tale of China" and edited out or abridged many minor episodes to emphasize the humor in the novel, which, in its original form, contains many diversions with deep allegorical and philosophical meaning.

Richard Burton

This man was an explorer and polymath who collected and translated stories from the Arabian Nights for many years before finally producing a collected edition—published as The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night—in 1885. The most notable feature of his translation is that he did not censor or cut any of the sexually explicit content in the stories; because of the morals of Victorian society, this meant that his translation was at first only published privately by the Kama Shastra Society, which he co-founded with Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot. Arbuthnot and this translator also collaborated on a translation of the Kama Sutra.

William Tyndale

This man's translation of the Old and New Testaments were the first complete English versions published by printing press, and were the first to use original Hebrew and Greek sources rather than drawing from the Vulgate, which was the only biblical translation with Catholic approval. His New Testament was first printed in Cologne in 1525 (even in England, his work was deemed heretical). His versions coined countless popular phrases, including "the powers that be," "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," "am I my brother's keeper?", and "the salt of the earth." He was arrested and killed before he could finish his work on the Old Testament; the Matthew Bible, published in 1537, cobbled together his unfinished work. His translations were the main source for the King James Bible; modern scholars estimate at least 75% of the KJV is this man's work.

Earth's moon

This moon, also called Luna, is the fifth-largest satellite in the solar system, the largest relative to the size of the planet it orbits, and the second densest. The USSR's Luna unmanned spacecraft first reached this moon in 1959, and Apollo 8 became the first manned mission to orbit this moon, in 1968. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty guarantees the rights of all nations to explore the moon for peaceful purposes. The flat dark lunar plains are called maria (singular: mare) and are mainly concentrated on the near side of the moon. The most famous one is Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 first landed on this moon in 1969. The Apollo program landed on this moon five more times.

Guggenheim

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

Capacitor

This part is a charge-storing disconnection in a circuit, usually made of parallel plates separated by a medium that blocks the passage of charge. The inner medium is called a dielectric. The governing equation of this part of a circut is Q = C ΔV: the charge stored on the capacitor (Q, typically measured in coulombs) equals the capacitor's capacitance (C, typically measured in farads, or more likely in smaller units like microfarads) times the voltage across the capacitor (ΔV). The total capacitance of a circuit depends on whether these parts are arranged in parallel or series, but in the opposite fashion as for resistors: If two capacitors having capacitance C1 and C2 are placed in parallel, the total capacitance across them is C = C1 + C2; if they are placed in series, then 1/C = 1/C1 +1/ C2. This is because wiring these parts in parallel effectively expands the area of the parallel plates, so configuring these parts in parallel increases total capacitance.

Resistor

This part is an element that impedes the flow of current, creating a voltage drop. Resistance is measured in ohms, named for Georg Ohm and symbolized by a capital omega (Ω).

Ground

This part of a circuit ground or earth is a point on a circuit that is connected to the ground. This is to prevent accidental discharge of electricity from an unexpected connection—a person who touches an ungrounded circuit might cause electricity to pass through their body. This lets this part act as a known reference point of voltage for analyzing circuits: any grounded point in the circuit is typically understood to have zero voltage.

Op-amp

This part of a circuit is a five-port device that changes a voltage difference across two ports, multiplied by a factor (gain), into a voltage on an output port, using power supplied to two power ports. There are various ways to wire this part, often feeding an output back into an input, to accomplish interesting tasks like subtracting and multiplying voltages. An ideal copy of this part is assumed to have infinite gain, so when solving a circuit, the two inputs must reach a point with no voltage difference across them. Real of this kind of parts have finite gain, impedance across their inputs, resistance on their output, and a finite bandwidth or spread of operating frequencies when used with alternating current.

Source

This part of a circut is any device that provides voltage or current. Direct current (DC) sources like batteries provide constant current, while alternating current (AC) sources like household electric outlets provide current that changes at a regular frequency with a constant average voltage. In alternating-current circuits, capacitors and inductors can help tune a circuit's efficiency by contributing to a phenomenon called impedance, which is the complex analogue of resistance. A circuit's reactance is the imaginary part of its impedance and depends on the frequency of the circuit. When reactance is balanced, we find the frequency at which the circuit loses the least energy, or its resonant frequency.

Nucleus

This part of the cell is the "command central" of the cell because it contains almost all of the cell's DNA, which encodes the information needed to make all the proteins that the cell uses. The DNA appears as chromatin through most of the cell cycle, but condenses to form chromosomes when the cell is undergoing mitosis. Within this part there are dense bodies called nucleoli, which contain ribosomal RNA. In eukaryotes, it is surrounded by a selectively-permeable nuclear envelope.

Diode

This part permits the flow of current in only one direction. Ideally, it permits any amount of current in one direction but has a very high resistance to current in the opposite direction. In practice, there is a minimum voltage that must be provided before current will flow, called the bias voltage, and there is a voltage past which the resistance of this part reduces and current flows backward, called the breakdown voltage.

Inflation

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

Decibel scale

This scale can describe any kind of power, but is most commonly used to describe the intensity of sound waves. It is one tenth of a larger unit, the bel (abbreviated B), named after inventor Alexander Graham Bell. The intensity of a sound is given by the formula I = 10 log(P1/P0), where P1 is the intensity of the sound being measured (in watts per square meter) and P0 is a reference intensity, which is based on the least powerful sound wave that can be detected by the average human ear (namely 10-12 W/m2). A 10-dB increase in sound intensity corresponds to multiplying the energy of the sound wave by 10. A normal conversation has a volume of about 70 dB.

pH scale

This scale developed by S. P. L. Sørensen in 1909, is used to quantify acidity. The amount (power of hydrogen) of a solution is defined as the opposite of the (base-10) logarithm of the concentration of protons in a solution: pH = -log10[H+]. (The brackets are standard notation in chemistry for "the concentration of.") Thus, greater concentrations of protons correspond to smaller values. At 25°C, the neutral (neither acidic nor basic) is 7; solutions with a value less than 7 are considered acidic, and solutions with a value greater than 7 are considered basic.

Saffir-Simpson scale

This scale is a measure of wind speed and damage from hurricanes. It was developed in 1971 by Herbert Saffir, a civil engineer, and Robert Simpson, then the director of the National Hurricane Center. It rates hurricanes on a 1-to-5 scale: a 1 corresponds to a wind speed of 74 to 95 miles per hour, which causes "some damage." A 5 causes "catastrophic damage," with wind speeds over 157 miles per hour and affected areas uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Richter scale

This scale measures earthquake intensity. Developed by Caltech professor Charles Francis Richter, it measures the shaking intensity associated with earthquakes, as quantified by the amplitude of vibrations on a seismograph. A magnitude-5.0 earthquake will have an amplitude 10 times larger than that of a magnitude 4.0 quake. The energy associated with an earthquake is actually proportional to the 3/2 power of the magnitude: a 1-point difference on this scale corresponds to a 103/2-fold (about 31.6) difference in energy. Because of difficulties in measuring the magnitudes of large earthquakes, this scale scale has been superseded by the moment magnitude scale, which uses a different formula but retains the logarithmic nature (and correlates to measurements on the Richter scale).

Pauling scale

This scale, devised by Linus Pauling in 1932, is one of several scales that measure electronegativity, the extent to which atoms attract electrons in chemical bonds. Higher values correspond to stronger attractions. Francium has the lowest value, about 0.7, while fluorine has the highest value, about 4.0. (Noble gases are not assigned values on the Pauling scale, since they were not known to form any bonds when Pauling devised it.) Differences in electronegativity characterize bonds: the greater the difference, the more ionic the bond.

Aeneas

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

Twelve-tone Technique

This technique was developed by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 1920s, and is one method of writing atonal music—music that has no key or tonic pitch. These works are based on a tone row constructed from each of the twelve pitches of the chromatic scale, each used only once. This row may be inverted and/or presented in retrograde (backwards), a combination of possibilities often represented in a twelve-tone matrix. This technique is one form of serialism, the rigid structuring of various musical elements within a work. A work of total serialism applies the same process to dynamics, articulations, and other basic elements of music as well as pitch.

Constance Garnett

This translator learned Russian from the exiled Russian revolutionaries Feliks Volkhovsky and Sergey Stepnyak, the latter of whom was influential in the publication of her first translations. His translations introduced the English-speaking world to Dostoyevsky and Chekhov; in addition to these authors, she created—for the time—authoritative editions of the near-complete works of Leo Tolstoy (whom she met while visiting Russia) and Ivan Turgenyev. While his late-Victorian translations have drawn a fair amount of modern criticism—Joseph Brodsky notably accused her of being "the reason English-speaking readers can barely tell the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky"—her work was instrumental in popularizing Russian literature in the English world.

Divide-and-conquer

This type of algorithm uses recursion to split problems into smaller subproblems with smaller input sets. By solving the same problem on each of these subproblems, then combining the outputs in some way, this type of algorithm can efficiently solve problems on big input sets. Merge sort (a sorting algorithm), binary search (an algorithm for finding an item in a sorted list), and Karatsuba's algorithm (an algorithm for multiplying integers) are examples of divide-and-conquer algorithms.

1912 Election

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

Tempo

Traditionally the speed of a piece is indicated through the use of Italian-language terms. Some of the most common markings are largo (very slow), adagio (slow), andante ("walking speed"), allegro (fast), and presto (very fast). A work's speed may also be indicated by a metronome marking, which indicates the number of a certain type of note per minute (e.g., quarter note = 120). The speed of a piece are often modified with further Italian terms, such as allegro con fuoco (fast, with fire), which can make them more unique. Movements from larger works are often referred to by how fast they are (e.g. "the Allegretto from Beethoven's 7th symphony"); entire works may also be named for their tempo (e.g., Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings).

Titania and Oberon

Uranus's largest moons, are named for characters from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Other Uranian moons are named for characters from either Shakespeare or Alexander Pope.) They were discovered on the same day in 1787 by William Herschel, who also discovered Uranus itself in 1781. In 1986 Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to date to visit the Uranian moons. Because Uranus orbits the sun almost on its side and these two moons orbit Uranus in the same plane as its equator, the moons have extreme seasons: the first one's poles spend over 42 years in nonstop sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness. Most of this first moon's features are named for settings or female characters from Shakespeare — its largest crater is Gertrude Crater, after Hamlet's mother — while most of the second moon's are named after settings or male characters from Shakespeare. However, this second moon's largest feature is Mommur Chasma, which is named from a French epic poem.

Nile River

Usually cited as the longest river in the world, this river flows about 4,132 miles in a generally south-to-north direction from its headwaters in Burundi to Egypt's Mediterranean Sea coast, where it forms a prototypical delta. Over 80% of this river's flow comes from the shorter Blue Nile headstream, which arises from Ethiopia's Lake Tana and meets the longer White Nile — whose headwaters include Lake Victoria — at Khartoum. At the first of this river's six cataracts is the Aswan High Dam, which forms Lake Nasser and greatly reduces the annual floods.

Benedict Arnold

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

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. Her 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, she 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.

Theodore von Kármán

Was a fluid dynamicist by training. As a graduate student at Göttingen, he described the so-called Kármán vortex street (a form of turbulence in flow going past a cylinder, which is responsible for driving the vibration or "singing" of power lines) and went on to provide the theoretical basis for the idea of turbulent flows. He contributed to the construction of the wind tunnel at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory, which eventually became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He also formed the company Aerojet to develop short-takeoff aircraft technologies. The Kármán line is the accepted boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space, and the Kármán ogive is the shape of the cone of rockets curving into the main body, which minimizes drag during rocket burn.

Chimera

Was a hybrid monster who was also a child of Typhon and Echidna. She is most commonly described as a lioness with a goat's head protruding from her back and a tail that ended in a snake's head. She was a fire-breathing menace to Lycia until Bellerophon slew her on orders from King Iobates. Flying on the back of Pegasus, Bellerophon shot at this monster and ultimately killed the beast by affixing a block of lead to his spear and causing it to melt the block with her fiery breath, suffocating her in the process.

The Calydonian Boar

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

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 she spurned the advances of Apollo, he cursed her to never have her prophecies believed. During the Trojan War, she 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, she was made the concubine of Agamemnon, and the two were killed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthus when they returned to Mycenae.

Sri Lanka

Was referred to by numerous different names in various ancient Greek, Sanskrit, and Arabic texts, including Taprobana and Serendib, and the island became widely known as Ceylon following Portuguese arrival in 1505. The Portuguese gave the island the name Ceilão, which was translated into English as "Ceylon." The Portuguese, who clashed with the island's Kingdom of Kandy, were largely driven off the island by a coalition of the Dutch and the island's Sinhalese people beginning in the 1640s. In 1796, the island passed into British hands after the Dutch were conquered by Napoleon. As part of the divestment of British colonies following World War II, the Dominion of Ceylon became an independent Commonwealth of Nations state in 1948. It adopted a new name in 1972.

Pedro I

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

Haile Selassie

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

Salvador Allende

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

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 her 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 her and Perseus out to sea in a chest, but with the assistance of Poseidon they were rescued by the fisherman Dictys. She had no interest in marrying Dictys's brother King Seriphos, who agreed not to pursue her if Perseus could kill the Gorgon Medusa.

Julius Nyerere

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

Thebes

Was the main city of Boeotia, a region of the southern Greek mainland just west of Attica. This city allied with Sparta during the Peloponnesian War, but the two cities quickly became enemies following the war. Thebes established the Sacred Band, an elite force of 300 soldiers consisting of pairs of male lovers and broke the hegemony of Sparta at the 371 BC Battle of Leuctra. However, this city fell from power quickly, fighting on the losing side at the 338 BC Battle of Chaeronea against the Macedonians led by Philip II, and the city was destroyed three years later by Alexander the Great following an unsuccessful revolt.

Cerberus

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

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 her very angry. She later began an affair with Aegisthus, Agamemnon's cousin; when Agamemnon returned to Mycenae after the Trojan War, she and Aegisthus murdered him and his concubine Cassandra. In response, she and Agamemnon's son Orestes killed both Cassandra and Aegisthus, continuing the curse of the House of Atreus.

Tristan and Iseult

Were a pair of lovers who predate the stories of King Arthur but nonetheless appear in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles. He was a knight who brings her back to Cornwall to marry his uncle King Mark after killing Morholt, an Irish knight extorting the king. During the return journey, the pair ingest a powerful potion and fall deeply in love with each other, but she nevertheless marries Tristan's uncle. The love potion, however, forces the pair to continuously seek one another out, and King Mark eventually discovers their affair. He escapes his execution and later marries a different woman known as Iseult of the White Hands. Their story inspired Richard Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde.

The Sirens

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

Laocoon

Yet another son of Priam and Hecuba, this priest of Apollo shares Cassandra's doubt about the merits of bringing the Trojan horse into the city. "Timeo danaos et dona ferentes," he says (according to Vergil), "I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts." Later, while sacrificing a bull, two serpents from the sea crush both him and his two young sons. The death of this man is often blamed on Athena (into whose temple the serpent disappeared) but was more likely the act of Poseidon, a fierce Greek partisan.

Thales (c. 620 BC-546 BC) This philosopher was a pre-Socratic thinker from the Greek colony of Miletus who many consider to be the "first philosopher." Rejecting mythical explanations of the universe's nature

he believed that the first principle of all existence, the natural element from which all things emerged, was water. He was also a civil engineer and mathematician, and is credited with discovering that if a circle goes through all three vertices of a triangle and one side of the triangle is a diameter of the circle, then the triangle is a right triangle. He is sometimes thought of as the founder of a "Milesian school" of philosophy, whose other members include Anaximander and Anaximenes.

Missa solemnis (in D major)

op. 123 (1819-1823): Generically, a "missa solemnis" ("solemn mass") is a setting of the Catholic liturgy on a more grand scale than a "missa brevis" ("short mass"). Although it uses the traditional text, Beethoven intended the work for concert performance rather than liturgical use. Beethoven became increasingly fascinated by the fugue during his third stylistic period; his Missa solemnis includes two immense examples that conclude the Gloria and Credo movements. The composer dedicated the work to his patron, the Austrian Archduke Rudolf. The Missa solemnis should not be confused with Beethoven's earlier C major mass, op. 86 (1807).