Wikipedia

12 Monkeys (Wikipedia) 12 Monkeys is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Terry Gilliam from a screenplay by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 short film La Jetée. It stars Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Brad Pitt, and Christopher Plummer. Set in a post-apocalyptic future devastated by disease, the film follows a convict who is sent back in time to gather information about the man-made virus that wiped out most of the human population on the planet.
1974 (Wikipedia) 1974 (MCMLXXIV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1974th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 974th year of the 2nd millennium, the 74th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1970s decade.
1985 (Wikipedia) 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1985th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 985th year of the 2nd millennium, the 85th year of the 20th century, and the 6th year of the 1980s decade.
2 Corinthians 9 (Wikipedia) 2 Corinthians 9 is the ninth chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It is authored by Paul the Apostle and Timothy (2 Corinthians 1:1) in Macedonia in 55–56 CE.
2014 Oso landslide A major landslide occurred 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Oso, Washington, United States, on March 22, 2014, at 10:37 a.m. local time. A portion of an unstable hill collapsed, sending mud and debris to the south across the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, engulfing a rural neighborhood, and covering an area of approximately 1 square mile (2.6 km2). Forty-three people were killed and 49 homes and other structures destroyed. The landslide has been described as one of, if not the most, deadly landslide in American history.
2024 State of the Union Address (Wikipedia) The 2024 State of the Union Address was given by the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden, on March 7, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. EST, in the chamber of the House of Representatives to the 118th Congress. On January 6, House Speaker Mike Johnson formally invited Biden to address the joint session of Congress. It had been planned to take place two days after Super Tuesday. The speech was expected to provide Biden a chance to address issues such as the economy, democracy, abortion rights, the United States–Mexico border crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas War.
20th century (Wikipedia) The 20th century began on 1 January 1901 (MCMI), and ended on 31 December 2000 (MM). It was the 10th and last century of the 2nd millennium and was marked by new models of scientific understanding, unprecedented scopes of warfare, new modes of communication that would operate at nearly instant speeds, and new forms of art and entertainment. Population growth was also unprecedented, as the century started with around 1.6 billion people, and ended with around 6.2 billion.
86-DOS (Wikipedia) 86-DOS (known internally as QDOS, for Quick and Dirty Operating System) is a discontinued operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for its Intel 8086-based computer kit.
A Clockwork Orange (film) (Wikipedia) A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel of the same name. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian near-future Britain.
A Few Good Men (Wikipedia) A Few Good Men is a 1992 American legal drama film based on Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 play. It was written by Sorkin, directed by Rob Reiner, and produced by Reiner, David Brown and Andrew Scheinman. It stars an ensemble cast including Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Pollak, J. T. Walsh, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Kiefer Sutherland. The plot follows the court-martial of two U.S. Marines charged with the murder of a fellow Marine and the tribulations of their lawyers as they prepare a case.
A Fistful of Dollars (Wikipedia) A Fistful of Dollars (Italian: Per un pugno di dollari) is a 1964 spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood in his first leading role, alongside Gian Maria Volonté, Marianne Koch, Wolfgang Lukschy, Sieghardt Rupp, José Calvo, Antonio Prieto and Joseph Egger. The film, an international co-production between Italy, West Germany and Spain, was filmed on a low budget (reported to be $200,000), and Eastwood was paid $15,000 for his role.
A Sound Garden (Wikipedia) A Sound Garden is an outdoor public art work in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is one of six such works on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) campus, which lies adjacent to Warren G. Magnuson Park on the northwestern shore of Lake Washington. Designed and built by sculptor Douglas Hollis from 1982 to 1983, the sound sculpture is composed of twelve 21-foot (6.4 m) high steel tower structures, at the top of each of which hangs an organ pipe attached to a weather vane that produces soft-toned sounds when stirred by the wind.
A-type main-sequence star (Wikipedia) An A-type main-sequence star (AV) or A dwarf star is a main-sequence (hydrogen burning) star of spectral type A and luminosity class V (five). These stars have spectra defined by strong hydrogen Balmer absorption lines. They measure between 1.4 and 2.1 solar masses (M☉) and have surface temperatures between 7,600 and 10,000 K. Bright and nearby examples are Altair (A7), Sirius A (A1), and Vega (A0). A-type stars do not have convective zones and thus are not expected to harbor magnetic dynamos. As a consequence, because they do not have strong stellar winds, they lack a means to generate X-ray emissions.
Abbie Hoffman (Wikipedia) Abbot Howard Hoffman (November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989) was an American political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party (“Yippies”) and was a member of the Chicago Seven. He was also a leading proponent of the Flower Power movement.
Aberdeen, Washington (Wikipedia) Aberdeen (/ˈæbərdiːn/) is a city in Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States. The population was 17,013 at the 2020 census. The city is the most populous in Grays Harbor County and the region’s economic center, bordering the cities of Hoquiam and Cosmopolis. Aberdeen is occasionally referred to as the “Gateway to the Olympic Peninsula”.
Above & Beyond (band) (Wikipedia) Above & Beyond are an electronic music group consisting of English DJs Jono Grant, Tony McGuinness and Finnish DJ Paavo Siljamäki. Formed in 2000, they are the owners of London-based electronic dance music labels Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep, and also host a weekly radio show titled Group Therapy Radio. The trio has been consistently ranked among DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs Poll, having placed at No. 6 in 2007, No. 4 in 2008 & 2009, No. 5 in 2010 & 2011, No. 51 in 2018, No. 22 in 2019, No. 19 in 2020, No. 21 in 2021, and most recently No. 30 in 2022.
Abraham Lincoln (Wikipedia) Abraham Lincoln (/ˈlɪŋkən/ LINK-ən; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and succeeded in defeating the insurgent Confederacy, abolishing slavery, expanding the power of the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.
Absolute magnitude (Wikipedia) In astronomy, absolute magnitude (M) is a measure of the luminosity of a celestial object on an inverse logarithmic astronomical magnitude scale. An object’s absolute magnitude is defined to be equal to the apparent magnitude that the object would have if it were viewed from a distance of exactly 10 parsecs (32.6 light-years), without extinction (or dimming) of its light due to absorption by interstellar matter and cosmic dust. By hypothetically placing all objects at a standard reference distance from the observer, their luminosities can be directly compared among each other on a magnitude scale. For Solar System bodies that shine in reflected light, a different definition of absolute magnitude (H) is used, based on a standard reference distance of one astronomical unit.
Acer macrophyllum (Wikipedia) Acer macrophyllum, the bigleaf maple or Oregon maple, is a large deciduous tree in the genus Acer. It is native to western North America, mostly near the Pacific coast, from southernmost Alaska to southern California. Some stands are also found inland in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada of central California, and a tiny population occurs in central Idaho.
Acer platanoides (Wikipedia) Acer platanoides, commonly known as the Norway maple, is a species of maple native to eastern and central Europe and western Asia, from Spain east to Russia, north to southern Scandinavia and southeast to northern Iran. It was introduced to North America in the mid-1700s as a shade tree. It is a member of the family Sapindaceae.
Achernar (Wikipedia) Achernar is the brightest star in the constellation of Eridanus and the ninth-brightest in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Eridani, which is Latinized from α Eridani and abbreviated Alpha Eri or α Eri. The name Achernar applies to the primary component of a binary system. The two components are designated Alpha Eridani A (the primary) and B (the secondary), with the latter known informally as Achernar B. As determined by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, this system is located at a distance of approximately 139 light-years (43 parsecs) from the Sun.
Acme, Washington (Wikipedia) Acme is a rural village in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. There is a general store, post office, gas station, diner, elementary school and two churches located there. Acme is also included in, and the source-name for, a larger census-designated place (CDP). The Census Bureau no longer tracks the population for the village itself, but for the entire CDP the population was 246 at the 2010 census.
Acrux (Wikipedia) Acrux is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Crux. It has the Bayer designation α Crucis, which is Latinised to Alpha Crucis and abbreviated Alpha Cru or α Cru. With a combined visual magnitude of +0.76, it is the 13th-brightest star in the night sky. It is the most southerly star of the asterism known as the Southern Cross and is the southernmost first-magnitude star, 2.3 degrees more southerly than Alpha Centauri. This system is located at a distance of 321 light-years from the Sun.
Actinopterygii (Wikipedia) Actinopterygii (/ˌæktɪnɒptəˈrɪdʒiaɪ/; from actino- ‘having rays’, and Ancient Greek πτέρυξ (ptérux) ‘wing, fins’), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of skin supported by radially extended thin bony spines called lepidotrichia, as opposed to the bulkier, fleshy lobed fins of the sister class Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish). Resembling folding fans, the actinopterygian fins can easily change shape and wetted area, providing superior thrust-to-weight ratios per movement compared to sarcopterygian and chondrichthyian fins. The fin rays attach directly to the proximal or basal skeletal elements, the radials, which represent the articulation between these fins and the internal skeleton (e.g., pelvic and pectoral girdles).
Acts of the Apostles (Wikipedia) The Acts of the Apostles (Koinē Greek: Πράξεις Ἀποστόλων, Práxeis Apostólōn; Latin: Actūs Apostolōrum) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire.
Acubens (Wikipedia) Acubens /ˈækjuːbɛnz/, Bayer designation Alpha Cancri (α Cancri, abbreviated Alpha Cnc, α Cnc), is a star system in the constellation of Cancer.
Acute triangle (Wikipedia) An acute triangle (or acute-angled triangle) is a triangle with three acute angles (less than 90°).
Ada Lovelace (Wikipedia) Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) was an English mathematician and writer, chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation.
Adams County, Washington (Wikipedia) Adams County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 20,613. The county seat is at Ritzville, and its largest city is Othello. The county was formed out of Whitman County in November 1883 and is named after John Adams, the second President of the United States.
Adams, Seattle (Wikipedia)
Adolf Hitler (Wikipedia) Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ]; 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Germany from 1933 until his suicide in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then taking the title of Führer und Reichskanzler in 1934. During his dictatorship, he initiated World War II in Europe by invading Poland on 1 September 1939. He was closely involved in military operations throughout the war and was central to the perpetration of the Holocaust: the genocide of about six million Jews and millions of other victims.
Adolph Menzel (Wikipedia) Adolph Friedrich Erdmann von Menzel (8 December 1815 – 9 February 1905) was a German Realist artist noted for drawings, etchings, and paintings. Along with Caspar David Friedrich, he is considered one of the two most prominent German painters of the 19th century, and was the most successful artist of his era in Germany. First known as Adolph Menzel, he was knighted in 1898 and changed his name to Adolph von Menzel.
Adriatic Sea (Wikipedia) The Adriatic Sea (/ˌeɪdriˈætɪk/) is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to the northwest and the Po Valley. The countries with coasts on the Adriatic are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy, Montenegro, and Slovenia.
Aegean Sea (Wikipedia) The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 km2 (83,000 sq mi). In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn connects to the Black Sea, by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, respectively. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639 m (8,658 ft) to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.
Aegean Sea Plate (Wikipedia) The Aegean Sea Plate (also called the Hellenic Plate or Aegean Plate) is a small tectonic plate located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea under southern Greece and western Turkey. Its southern edge is the Hellenic subduction zone south of Crete, where the African Plate is being swept under the Aegean Sea Plate. Its northern margin is a divergent boundary with the Eurasian Plate.
Afghanistan (Wikipedia) Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country’s largest city and serves as its capital. According to the World Population review, as of 2021, Afghanistan’s population is 40.2 million. The National Statistics Information Authority of Afghanistan estimated the population to be 32.9 million as of 2020.
Africa (Wikipedia) Africa is the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth’s land area and 6% of its total surface area. With 1.4 billion people as of 2021, it accounts for about 18% of the world’s human population. Africa’s population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, tribalism, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.
African Plate (Wikipedia) The African Plate, also known as the Nubian Plate, is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plate to the west (separated by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge); the Arabian Plate and Somali Plate to the east; the Eurasian Plate, Aegean Sea Plate and Anatolian Plate to the north; and the Antarctic Plate to the south.
Afton, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Afton is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,886 at the 2010 United States Census. It lies on a small bay where Valley Creek empties into the St. Croix River, several miles north of its confluence with the Mississippi River.
Agaric (Wikipedia) An agaric (/ˈæɡərɪk, əˈɡærɪk/) is a type of fungus fruiting body characterized by the presence of a pileus (cap) that is clearly differentiated from the stipe (stalk), with lamellae (gills) on the underside of the pileus. In the UK, agarics are called “mushrooms” or “toadstools”. In North America they are typically called “gilled mushrooms”. “Agaric” can also refer to a basidiomycete species characterized by an agaric-type fruiting body.
Agate (Wikipedia) Agate (/ˈæɡɪt/) is the banded variety of chalcedony, which comes in a wide variety of colors. Agates are primarily formed within volcanic and metamorphic rocks. The ornamental use of agate was common in Ancient Greece, in assorted jewelry and in the seal stones of Greek warriors, while bead necklaces with pierced and polished agate date back to the 3rd millennium BCE in the Indus Valley civilisation.
Agatha Christie (Wikipedia) Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world’s longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End since 1952. A writer during the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction”, Christie has been called the “Queen of Crime”. She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. Guinness World Records lists Christie as the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Age of Aquarius (Wikipedia) The Age of Aquarius, in astrology, is either the current or forthcoming astrological age, depending on the method of calculation. Astrologers maintain that an astrological age is a product of the Earth’s slow precessional rotation and lasts for 2,160 years, on average (one Great Year equals 25,920-year period of precession / 12 zodiac signs = 2,160 years).
Age of Enlightenment (Wikipedia) The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as natural law, liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
Akira (1988 film) (Wikipedia) Akira (Japanese: アキラ) is a 1988 Japanese animated cyberpunk action film directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, produced by Ryōhei Suzuki and Shunzō Katō, and written by Otomo and Izo Hashimoto, based on Otomo’s 1982 manga of the same name. Set in a dystopian 2019, it tells the story of Shōtarō Kaneda, the leader of a biker gang whose childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, acquires incredible telekinetic abilities after a motorcycle accident, eventually threatening an entire military complex amid chaos and rebellion in the sprawling futuristic metropolis of Neo-Tokyo.
Akira Kurosawa (Wikipedia) Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明 or 黒沢明, Kurosawa Akira, March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed 30 films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production.
Akkadian Empire (Wikipedia) The Akkadian Empire (/əˈkeɪdiən/) was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia, succeeding the long-lived civilization of Sumer. Centered on the city of Akkad (/ˈækæd/) and its surrounding region, the empire would unite Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule and exercised significant influence across Mesopotamia, the Levant, and Anatolia, sending military expeditions as far south as Dilmun and Magan (modern Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Oman) in the Arabian Peninsula.
Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Wikipedia) Akrotiri and Dhekelia (/ˌækroʊˈtɪəri ənd diˈkeɪliə/), officially the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (SBA), is a British Overseas Territory on the island of Cyprus. The areas, which include British military bases and installations that were formerly part of the Crown colony of Cyprus, were retained by the British under the 1960 treaty of independence signed by the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey and representatives from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. The territory serves an important role as a station for signals intelligence and provides a vital strategic part of the United Kingdom surveillance-gathering network in the Mediterranean and the Middle East.
Al-Fatiha (Wikipedia) Al-Fatiha (Arabic: ٱلۡفَاتِحَةِ, romanized: al-Fātiḥa, lit. ’the Opening’) is the first chapter (sura) of the Quran. It consists seven verses (ayat) which consist of a prayer for guidance and mercy.
Al-Karak (Wikipedia) Al-Karak (Arabic: الكرك) is a city in Jordan known for its medieval castle, the Kerak Castle. The castle is one of the three largest castles in the region, the other two being in Syria. Al-Karak is the capital city of the Karak Governorate.
Alabama (Wikipedia) Alabama (/ˌæləˈbæmə/) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered by Tennessee to the north; Georgia to the east; Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south; and Mississippi to the west. Alabama is the 30th largest by area and the 24th-most populous of the U.S. states.
Alajuela (Wikipedia) Alajuela (Spanish pronunciation: [alaˈxwela]) is a district in the Alajuela canton of the Alajuela Province of Costa Rica. As the seat of the Municipality of Alajuela canton, it is awarded the status of city. By virtue of being the city of the first canton of the province, it is also the capital of the Province of Alajuela.
Alan Turing (Wikipedia) Alan Mathison Turing OBE FRS (/ˈtjʊərɪŋ/; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, which can be considered a model of a general-purpose computer. He is widely considered to be the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence.
Åland (Wikipedia) Åland (Swedish: [ˈǒːland]; Finnish: Ahvenanmaa) is an autonomous and demilitarised region of Finland. Receiving its autonomy by a 1920 decision of the League of Nations, it is the smallest region of Finland by both area (1,580 km2) and population (30,129), constituting 0.51% of Finland’s land area and 0.54% of its population. Its only official language is Swedish and the capital city is Mariehamn.
Alaska (Wikipedia) Alaska (/əˈlæskə/ ə-LAS-kə) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. It borders British Columbia and Yukon in Canada to the east and it shares a western maritime border in the Bering Strait with Russia’s Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south. Technically a semi-exclave of the U.S., Alaska is the largest exclave in the world.
Albania (Wikipedia) Albania (/ælˈbeɪniə, ɔːl-/ a(w)l-BAY-nee-ə; Albanian: Shqipëri or Shqipëria), officially the Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika e Shqipërisë), is a country in Southeast Europe. The country is located in the Balkans on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea and shares land borders with Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, North Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south. Spanning an area of 28,748 km2 (11,100 sq mi), it displays a varied range of climatic, geological, hydrological and morphological conditions. The country’s landscapes range from rugged snow-capped mountains in the Albanian Alps and the Korab, Skanderbeg, Pindus and Ceraunian Mountains, to fertile lowland plains extending from the coasts of the Adriatic and Ionian seas. Tirana is the capital and largest city in the country, followed by Durrës, Vlorë, and Shkodër.
Albert (Discworld) (Wikipedia) Albert (originally known as Alberto Malich), Death’s manservant, butler, and cook, was once a wizard and founder of Unseen University; he attempted to gain immortality by reciting the Rite of AshkEnte (a ritual to summon Death) backwards, believing this would force Death to stay away from him. Instead it brought him directly to Death’s Domain. Since time in Death’s Domain does not flow in the same way as it does on the Discworld, Albert succeeded, in a way, in gaining immortality. Before he returned to the world in Mort, “Albert” had 91 days, three hours and five minutes of time left on the Disc, most of which he spent shopping and using the soap and baths at the “Young Men’s Reformed Cultist of the Ichor-God-Bel-Shamharoth’s Association” (Death is not very good at plumbing). After Soul Music, he had only a few seconds left, and could no longer leave Death’s Domain. Albert was a highly idiosyncratic cook, who believed everything needed to be fried to get rid of the germs, including porridge.
Albert Einstein (Wikipedia) Albert Einstein (/ˈaɪnstaɪn/ EYEN-styne; German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʔaɪnʃtaɪn]; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics. Relativity and quantum mechanics are the two pillars of modern physics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from relativity theory, has been dubbed “the world’s most famous equation”. His work is also known for its influence on the philosophy of science. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”, a pivotal step in the development of quantum theory. His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in “Einstein” becoming synonymous with “genius”. Einsteinium, one of the synthetic elements in the periodic table, was named in his honor.
Alberta (Wikipedia) Alberta (/ælˈbɜːrtə/ al-BUR-tə) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta borders British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territories to the north, and the U.S. state of Montana to the south. It is one of the only two landlocked provinces in Canada, with Saskatchewan being the other. The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains. The province has a predominantly continental climate but experiences quick temperature changes due to air aridity. Seasonal temperature swings are less pronounced in western Alberta due to occasional Chinook winds.
Albuquerque, New Mexico (Wikipedia) Albuquerque (/ˈælbəˌkɜːrki/ AL-bə-kur-kee; Spanish: [alβuˈkeɾke]), abbreviated ABQ, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Mexico. Its nicknames, The Duke City and Burque, both reference its founding in 1706 as La Villa de Alburquerque by Nuevo México governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdés. Named in honor of the Viceroy of New Spain, the 10th Duke of Alburquerque, the city was an outpost on El Camino Real linking Mexico City to the northernmost territories of New Spain. In 2006 the city celebrated its 300th anniversary.
Alcor (star) (Wikipedia) Alcor (/ˈælkɔːr/) is a binary star system in the constellation of Ursa Major. It is the fainter companion of Mizar, the two stars forming a naked eye double in the handle of the Big Dipper (or Plough) asterism in Ursa Major. The two both lie about 83 light-years away from the Sun, as measured by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite.
Aldebaran (Wikipedia) Aldebaran (Arabic: الدَّبَران, lit. ‘The Follower’) is a star located in the zodiac constellation of Taurus. It has the Bayer designation α Tauri, which is Latinized to Alpha Tauri and abbreviated Alpha Tau or α Tau. Aldebaran varies in brightness from an apparent visual magnitude 0.75 down to 0.95, making it the brightest star in the constellation, as well as (typically) the fourteenth-brightest star in the night sky. It is positioned at a distance of approximately 65 light-years from the Sun. The star lies along the line of sight to the nearby Hyades cluster.
Alderwood Manor, Washington (Wikipedia) Alderwood Manor is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 10,198 at the 2020 census. Prior to the 2000 census, Alderwood Manor was counted as part of the Alderwood Manor-Bothell North CDP.
Aldous Huxley (Wikipedia) Aldous Leonard Huxley (/ˈɔːldəs/ AWL-dəs; 26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Alec Guinness (Wikipedia) Sir Alec Guinness CH CBE (born Alec Guinness de Cuffe; 2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000) was an English actor. After an early career on the stage, Guinness was featured in several of the Ealing comedies, including Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), in which he played eight characters; The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination; and The Ladykillers (1955). He collaborated six times with director David Lean: Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1946); Fagin in Oliver Twist (1948); Col. Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Actor and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor; Prince Faisal in Lawrence of Arabia (1962); General Yevgraf Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago (1965); and Professor Godbole in A Passage to India (1984). In 1970, he played Jacob Marley’s ghost in Ronald Neame’s Scrooge. He also portrayed Obi-Wan Kenobi in George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy which brought him further recognition; for the original 1977 film, he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 50th Academy Awards.
Aleister Crowley (Wikipedia) Aleister Crowley (/ˈælɪstər ˈkroʊli/; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, philosopher, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the prophet entrusted with guiding humanity into the Æon of Horus in the early 20th century. A prolific writer, he published widely over the course of his life.
Alexander Lebedev (Wikipedia) Alexander Yevgenievich Lebedev (Russian: Александр Евгеньевич Лебедев, IPA: [ɐlʲɪˈksandr jɪvˈɡʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ˈlʲebʲɪdʲɪf]; born 16 December 1959) is a Russian businessman, and has been referred to as one of the Russian oligarchs. Until 1992, he was an officer in the First Chief Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the Soviet Union′s KGB and later one of the KGB’s successor-agencies, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).
Alexander Shulgin (Wikipedia) Alexander Theodore “Sasha” Shulgin (June 17, 1925 – June 2, 2014) was an American medicinal chemist, biochemist, organic chemist, pharmacologist, psychopharmacologist, and author. He is credited with introducing 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, commonly known as “ecstasy”) to psychologists in the late 1970s for psychopharmaceutical use and for the discovery, synthesis and personal bioassay of over 230 psychoactive compounds for their psychedelic and entactogenic potential.
Alexander the Great (Wikipedia) Alexander III of Macedon (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος, romanized: Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20, and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Egypt. By the age of 30, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history’s greatest and most successful military commanders.
Alexandria (Wikipedia) Alexandria (/ˌælɪɡˈzændriə, -ˈzɑːn-/ AL-ig-ZA(H)N-dree-ə; Arabic: الإسكندرية; Greek: Ἀλεξάνδρεια, Coptic: Ⲣⲁⲕⲟϯ - Rakoti or ⲁⲗⲉⲝⲁⲛⲇⲣⲓⲁ) is the second largest city in Egypt and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile River delta. Founded in c. 331 BC by Alexander the Great, Alexandria grew rapidly and became a major centre of Hellenic civilisation, eventually replacing Memphis, in present-day Greater Cairo, as Egypt’s capital. Called the “Bride of the Mediterranean” internationally, Alexandria is a popular tourist destination and an important industrial centre due to its natural gas and oil pipelines from Suez.
Alexei Navalny (Wikipedia) Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (Russian: Алексей Анатольевич Навальный, IPA: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]; 4 June 1976 – 16 February 2024) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and political prisoner. He organised anti-government demonstrations and ran for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia and against President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). He was recognised by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and was awarded the Sakharov Prize for his work on human rights.
Algae (Wikipedia) Algae (UK: /ˈælɡiː/, US: /ˈældʒiː/; singular alga /ˈælɡə/) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic, eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular microalgae, such as Chlorella, Prototheca and the diatoms, to multicellular forms, such as the giant kelp, a large brown algae which may grow up to 50 metres (160 ft) in length. Most are aquatic and lack many of the distinct cell and tissue types, such as stomata, xylem and phloem that are found in land plants. The largest and most complex marine algae are called seaweeds, while the most complex freshwater forms are the Charophyta, a division of green algae which includes, for example, Spirogyra and stoneworts.
Algebra (Wikipedia) Algebra is the branch of mathematics that studies algebraic structures and the manipulation of statements within those structures. It is a generalization of arithmetic that introduces variables and algebraic operations other than the standard arithmetic operations such as addition and multiplication.
Alger, Washington (Wikipedia) Alger is a census-designated place (CDP) in Skagit County, Washington, United States. The population was 403 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Algeria (Wikipedia) Algeria, officially the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. Algeria has a semi-arid climate, with the Sahara desert dominating most of the territory except for its fertile and mountainous north, where most of the population is concentrated. Spanning 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), it is the world’s tenth largest nation by area, and the largest nation in Africa. With a population of 44 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa, and the 32nd-most populous country in the world. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.
Alhamdulillah (Wikipedia) Alhamdulillah (Arabic: ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ, al-Ḥamdu lillāh) is an Arabic phrase meaning “praise be to God”, sometimes translated as “thank God”. This phrase is called Tahmid (Arabic: تَحْمِيد, lit. ‘Praising’). A longer variant of the phrase is al-ḥamdu l-illāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīn (ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ رَبِّ ٱلْعَالَمِينَ), meaning “all praise is due to God, Lord of all the worlds”, first verse of Surah Al-Fatiha.
Ali Siddiq (Wikipedia) Ali Siddiq is an American stand-up comedian, public speaker, and writer based in Houston, Texas. In 2013 Comedy Central named him the “#1 Comic to Watch”. ¶ In 2019 he was a finalist on NBC’s comedy competition show Bring the Funny.
Alice Bailey (Wikipedia) Alice Ann Bailey (June 16, 1880 – December 15, 1949) was a writer of more than twenty-four books on theosophical subjects, and was one of the first writers to use the term New Age. Bailey was born as Alice La Trobe-Bateman, in Manchester, England. She moved to the United States in 1907, where she spent most of her life as a writer and teacher.
Alice Liddell (Wikipedia) Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (née Liddell, /ˈlɪdəl/; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934) was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip became the classic 1865 children’s novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. She shared her name with “Alice”, the story’s protagonist, but scholars disagree about the extent to which the character was based upon her.
Alien (film) (Wikipedia) Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O’Bannon. Based on a story by O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, it follows the crew of the commercial space tug Nostromo, who, after coming across a mysterious derelict spaceship on an undiscovered moon, find themselves up against an aggressive and deadly extraterrestrial set loose on the Nostromo. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions, and was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The Alien and its accompanying artifacts were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the more human settings.
Aliens (film) (Wikipedia) Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film written and directed by James Cameron. It is the sequel to the 1979 science fiction horror film Alien, and the second film in the Alien franchise. Set in the far future, it stars Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley, the sole survivor of an alien attack on her ship. When communications are lost with a human colony on the moon where her crew first saw the alien creatures, Ripley agrees to return to the site with a unit of Colonial Marines to investigate. Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, and Carrie Henn are featured in supporting roles.
Alioth (Wikipedia) Alioth /ˈæliɒθ/, also called Epsilon Ursae Majoris, is a star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. The designation is Latinised from ε Ursae Majoris and abbreviated Epsilon UMa or ε UMa. Despite being designated “ε” (epsilon), it is the brightest star in the constellation and at magnitude 1.77 is the thirty-third brightest star in the sky.
Allen Ginsberg (Wikipedia) Irwin Allen Ginsberg (/ˈɡɪnzbɜːrɡ/; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.
Alluvium (Wikipedia) Alluvium (from Latin alluvius, from alluere ’to wash against’) is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is typically geologically young and is not consolidated into solid rock. Sediments deposited underwater, in seas, estuaries, lakes, or ponds, are not described as alluvium.
Alnilam (Wikipedia) Alnilam is the central star of Orion’s Belt in the equatorial constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designation ε Orionis, which is Latinised to Epsilon Orionis and abbreviated Epsilon Ori or ε Ori. This is a massive, blue supergiant star some 2,000 light-years distant. It is estimated to be 832,000 times as luminous as the Sun, and 64.5 times as massive.
Alnitak (Wikipedia) Alnitak is a triple star system in the constellation of Orion. It has the designations ζ Orionis, which is Latinised to Zeta Orionis and abbreviated Zeta Ori or ζ Ori, and 50 Orionis, abbreviated 50 Ori. The system is located at a distance of several hundred parsecs from the Sun and is one of the three main stars of Orion’s Belt along with Alnilam and Mintaka.
Alpha (Wikipedia) Alpha /ˈælfə/ (uppercase Α, lowercase α; Ancient Greek: ἄλφα, álpha, or Greek: άλφα, romanized: álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph aleph, which is the West Semitic word for “ox”. Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter A and the Cyrillic letter А.
Alpha Cassiopeiae (Wikipedia) Alpha Cassiopeiae or α Cassiopeiae, also named Schedar (/ˈʃɛdɑːr/), is a second-magnitude star in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia. Though listed as the “alpha star” by Johann Bayer, α Cas’s visual brightness closely matches the ‘beta’ (β) star in the constellation (Beta Cassiopeiae) and it may appear marginally brighter or dimmer, depending on which passband is used. However, recent calculations from NASA’s WISE telescope confirm that α Cas is the brightest in Cassiopeia, with an apparent magnitude of 2.240. Its absolute magnitude is 18 times greater than β Cas, and it is located over four times farther away from the Sun.
Alpha Centauri (Wikipedia) Alpha Centauri (α Centauri, Alpha Cen, or α Cen) is a triple star system in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It consists of three stars: Rigil Kentaurus (Alpha Centauri A), Toliman (B) and Proxima Centauri (C). Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun at 4.2465 light-years (1.3020 pc).
Alpha Coronae Borealis (Wikipedia) Alpha Coronae Borealis (α Coronae Borealis, abbreviated Alpha CrB, α CrB), officially named Alphecca /ælˈfɛkə/, is an eclipsing binary star in the constellation of Corona Borealis. It is located about 75 light years from the Sun and contains two main sequence stars, one class A and one class G.
Alpha Gruis (Wikipedia) Alpha Gruis is the brightest star in the southern constellation of Grus. It is officially named Alnair; Alpha Gruis is the star’s Bayer designation, which is Latinized from α Gruis and abbreviated α Gru. With an magnitude of 1.74, it is one of the brightest stars in the sky and one of the fifty-eight stars selected for celestial navigation. Alpha Gruis is a single, B-type main-sequence star located at a distance of 31 pc.
Alpha Phoenicis (Wikipedia) Alpha Phoenicis (α Phoenicis, abbreviated Alpha Phe or α Phe), formally named Ankaa /ˈæŋkə/, with the same pronunciation) is the brightest star in the constellation of Phoenix.
Alpine Lakes Wilderness (Wikipedia) The Alpine Lakes Wilderness is a large wilderness area spanning the Central Cascades of Washington state in the United States. The wilderness is located in parts of Wenatchee National Forest and Snoqualmie National Forest, and is approximately bounded by Interstate 90 and Snoqualmie Pass to the south and U.S. Route 2 and Stevens Pass to the north. The Alpine Lakes is the largest wilderness area near the population centers of Puget Sound, counted at 414,161 acres (167,605 ha) following the 2014 expansion.
Altair (Wikipedia) Altair is the brightest star in the constellation of Aquila and the twelfth-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Aquilae, which is Latinised from α Aquilae and abbreviated Alpha Aql or α Aql. Altair is an A-type main-sequence star with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.77 and is one of the vertices of the Summer Triangle asterism; the other two vertices are marked by Deneb and Vega. It is located at a distance of 16.7 light-years (5.1 parsecs) from the Sun. Altair is currently in the G-cloud—a nearby interstellar cloud, an accumulation of gas and dust.
Altair 8800 (Wikipedia) The Altair 8800 is a microcomputer designed in 1974 by MITS and based on the Intel 8080 CPU. Interest grew quickly after it was featured on the cover of the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics and was sold by mail order through advertisements there, in Radio-Electronics, and in other hobbyist magazines. According to Harry Garland, the Altair 8800 was the product that catalyzed the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. It was the first commercially successful personal computer. The computer bus designed for the Altair was to become a de facto standard in the form of the S-100 bus, and the first programming language for the machine was Microsoft’s founding product, Altair BASIC.
Altair BASIC (Wikipedia) Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft’s first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BASIC was the start of the Microsoft BASIC product range.
Aluminium (Wikipedia) Aluminium (Aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. It has a great affinity towards oxygen, forming a protective layer of oxide on the surface when exposed to air. Aluminium visually resembles silver, both in its color and in its great ability to reflect light. It is soft, nonmagnetic, and ductile. It has one stable isotope, 27Al, which is highly abundant, making aluminium the twelfth-most common element in the universe. The radioactivity of 26Al, a more unstable isotope, leads to it being used in radiometric dating.
Am star (Wikipedia) An Am star or metallic-line star is a type of chemically peculiar star of spectral type A whose spectrum has strong and often variable absorption lines of metals such as zinc, strontium, zirconium, and barium, and deficiencies of others, such as calcium and scandium. The original definition of an Am star was one in which the star shows “an apparent surface underabundance of Ca (and/or Sc) and/or an apparent overabundance of the Fe group and heavier elements”.
Amanita muscaria (Wikipedia) Amanita muscaria, commonly known as the fly agaric or fly amanita, is a basidiomycete of the genus Amanita. It is also a muscimol mushroom. Native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, Amanita muscaria has been unintentionally introduced to many countries in the Southern Hemisphere, generally as a symbiont with pine and birch plantations, and is now a true cosmopolitan species. It associates with various deciduous and coniferous trees.
Amaq News Agency (Wikipedia) Amaq News Agency (Arabic: وكالة أعماق الإخبارية) is a news outlet linked to the Islamic State (IS). Amaq is often the “first point of publication for claims of responsibility” for terrorist attacks in Western countries by the Islamic State. In March 2019, Amaq News Agency was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State.
American Civil War (en.wikipedia.com) The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (“the North”) and the Confederacy (“the South”), which had been formed by states that had seceded from the Union. The central cause of the war was the dispute over whether slavery would be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prevented from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
American Dream (Wikipedia) The American Dream is the national ethos of the United States, that every person has the freedom and opportunity to succeed and attain a better life. The phrase has had different meanings over time. Originally, the emphasis was on democracy, liberty and equality, rather than on material wealth and upward mobility.
American robin (Wikipedia) The American robin (Turdus migratorius) is a migratory bird of the true thrush genus and Turdidae, the wider thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, though the two species are not closely related, with the European robin belonging to the Old World flycatcher family. The American robin is widely distributed throughout North America, wintering from southern Canada to central Mexico and along the Pacific coast.
Amman (Wikipedia) Amman (English: /əˈmɑːn/; Arabic: عَمَّان, ʿAmmān pronounced [ʕamːaːn]) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country’s economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of 4,061,150 as of 2021, Amman is Jordan’s primate city and is the largest city in the Levant region, the fifth-largest city in the Arab world, and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the Middle East.
Amphibian (Wikipedia) Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniotic, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all tetrapods excluding the amniotes (tetrapods with an amniotic membrane, such as modern reptiles, birds and mammals). All extant (living) amphibians belong to the monophyletic subclass Lissamphibia, with three living orders: Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders), and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Evolved to be mostly semiaquatic, amphibians have adapted to inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living in freshwater, wetland or terrestrial ecosystems (such as riparian woodland, fossorial and even arboreal habitats). Their life cycle typically starts out as aquatic larvae with gills known as tadpoles, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
Amsterdam (Wikipedia) Amsterdam (/ˈæmstərdæm/ AM-stər-dam, UK also /ˌæmstərˈdæm/ AM-stər-DAM, Dutch: [ˌɑmstərˈdɑm]; literally, “The Dam on the River Amstel”) is the capital and most populated city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 921,402 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the “Venice of the North”, for its large number of canals, now designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Amurian microplate (Wikipedia) The Amurian microplate (or Amur microplate; also occasionally referred to as the China Plate, not to be confused with the South China Subplate) is a minor tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres.
Anacortes, Washington (Wikipedia)
Anatidae (Wikipedia) The Anatidae are the biological family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on all the world’s continents except Antarctica. These birds are adapted for swimming, floating on the water surface, and in some cases diving in at least shallow water. The family contains around 174 species in 43 genera (the magpie goose is no longer considered to be part of the Anatidae and is now placed in its own family, Anseranatidae).
Anatolian Sub-Plate (Wikipedia) The Anatolian Sub-Plate is a continental tectonic plate that is separated from the Eurasian plate and the Arabian plate by the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault respectively. Most of the country of Turkey is located on the Anatolian plate. Most significant earthquakes in the region have historically occurred along the northern fault, such as the 1939 Erzincan earthquake. The devastating 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake occurred along the active East Anatolian fault at a strike slip fault where the Arabian plate is sliding past the Anatolian plate horizontally.
Andesite (Wikipedia) Andesite (/ˈændəzaɪt/) is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predominantly of sodium-rich plagioclase plus pyroxene or hornblende.
Andorra (Wikipedia) Andorra, officially the Principality of Andorra, is a sovereign landlocked country on the Iberian Peninsula, in the eastern Pyrenees, bordered by France to the north and Spain to the south. Believed to have been created by Charlemagne, Andorra was ruled by the count of Urgell until 988, when it was transferred to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Urgell. The present principality was formed by a charter in 1278. It is currently headed by two co-princes: the bishop of Urgell in Catalonia, Spain and the president of France. Its capital and largest city is Andorra la Vella.
André the Giant (Wikipedia) André René Roussimoff (French: [ɑ̃dʁe ʁəne ʁusimɔf]; 19 May 1946 – 28 January 1993), better known by his ring name André the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor. Dubbed “the Eighth Wonder of the World”, Roussimoff was known for his great size, which was a result of gigantism caused by excess growth hormones.
Andrei Tarkovsky (Wikipedia) Andrei Arsenyevich Tarkovsky (Russian: Андрей Арсеньевич Тарковский, IPA: [ɐnˈdrʲej ɐrˈsʲenʲjɪvʲɪtɕ tɐrˈkofskʲɪj]; 4 April 1932 – 29 December 1986) was a Russian film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential directors in cinema history, Tarkovsky’s films explore spiritual and metaphysical themes, and are noted for their slow pacing and long takes, dreamlike visual imagery, and preoccupation with nature and memory.
Andrew Bayer (Wikipedia) Andrew Michael Bayer (born 1987) is an American DJ and Grammy-nominated music producer. He is best known for working with Anjunabeats as a multi-genre artist and English deep house sublabel Anjunadeep.
Andrew Johnson (Wikipedia) Andrew Johnson (December 29, 1808 – July 31, 1875) was an American politician who served as the 17th president of the United States from 1865 to 1869. He assumed the presidency following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, as he was vice president at that time. Johnson was a Democrat who ran with Abraham Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket, coming to office as the Civil War concluded. He favored quick restoration of the seceded states to the Union without protection for the newly freed people who were formerly enslaved as well as pardoning ex-Confederates. This led to conflict with the Republican-dominated Congress, culminating in his impeachment by the House of Representatives in 1868. He was acquitted in the Senate by one vote.
Andromeda (constellation) (Wikipedia) Andromeda is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century Greco-Roman astronomer Ptolemy, and one of the 88 modern constellations. Located in the northern celestial hemisphere, it is named for Andromeda, daughter of Cassiopeia, in the Greek myth, who was chained to a rock to be eaten by the sea monster Cetus. Andromeda is most prominent during autumn evenings in the Northern Hemisphere, along with several other constellations named for characters in the Perseus myth. Because of its northern declination, Andromeda is visible only north of 40° south latitude; for observers farther south, it lies below the horizon. It is one of the largest constellations, with an area of 722 square degrees. This is over 1,400 times the size of the full moon, 55% of the size of the largest constellation, Hydra, and over 10 times the size of the smallest constellation, Crux.
Andromeda Galaxy (Wikipedia) The Andromeda Galaxy is a barred spiral galaxy and is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. It was originally named the Andromeda Nebula and is cataloged as Messier 31, M31, and NGC 224. Andromeda has a diameter of about 46.56 kiloparsecs (152,000 light-years) and is approximately 765 kpc (2.5 million light-years) from Earth. The galaxy’s name stems from the area of Earth’s sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which itself is named after the princess who was the wife of Perseus in Greek mythology.
Andy Kaufman (Wikipedia) Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman (/ˈkaʊfmən/ KOWF-mən; January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a “comedian”, Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a “song and dance man”. He has sometimes been called an “anti-comedian”. He disdained telling jokes and engaging in comedy as it was traditionally understood, once saying in an interview, “I am not a comic, I have never told a joke. The comedian’s promise is that he will go out there and make you laugh with him. My only promise is that I will try to entertain you as best I can.”
Andy Warhol (Wikipedia) Andy Warhol (/ˈwɔːrhɒl/; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, producer, and leading figure in the pop art movement. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
Angola (Wikipedia) Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) country in both total area and population and is the seventh-largest country in Africa. It is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Angola has an exclave province, the province of Cabinda, that borders the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and most populous city is Luanda.
Anguilla (Wikipedia) Anguilla (/æŋˈɡwɪlə/ ang-GWIL-ə) is a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean. It is one of the most northerly of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, lying east of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and directly north of Saint Martin. The territory consists of the main island of Anguilla, approximately 16 miles (26 kilometres) long by 3 miles (5 km) wide at its widest point, together with a number of much smaller islands and cays with no permanent population. The territory’s capital is The Valley. The total land area of the territory is 35 square miles (91 km2), with a population of approximately 15,753 (2021).
Animal (Wikipedia) Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, have myocytes and are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and grow from a hollow sphere of cells, the blastula, during embryonic development. As of 2022, 2.16 million living animal species have been described—of which around 1.05 million are insects, over 85,000 are molluscs, and around 65,000 are vertebrates. It has been estimated there are around 7.77 million animal species. Animals range in length from 8.5 micrometres (0.00033 in) to 33.6 metres (110 ft). They have complex interactions with each other and their environments, forming intricate food webs. The scientific study of animals is known as zoology.
Annihilationism (Wikipedia) In Christianity, annihilationism (also known as extinctionism or destructionism) is the belief that after the Last Judgment, all damned humans and fallen angels including Satan will be totally destroyed, cremated, and their consciousness extinguished rather than suffering forever in Hell. Annihilationism stands in contrast to both the belief in eternal torment and to the universalist belief that everyone will be saved. However, it is also possible to hold to a partial annihilationism, believing unsaved humans to be obliterated or cremated, but demonic beings to suffer forever.
Annus mirabilis papers (Wikipedia) The annus mirabilis papers (from Latin annus mīrābilis, “miracle year”) are the four papers that Albert Einstein published in Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics), a scientific journal, in 1905. These four papers were major contributions to the foundation of modern physics. They revolutionized science’s understanding of the fundamental concepts of space, time, mass, and energy. Because Einstein published these remarkable papers in a single year, 1905 is called his annus mirabilis (miracle year in English or Wunderjahr in German).
Anoka County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Anoka County (/əˈnoʊkə/ ə-NOH-kə) is the fourth-most populous county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, its population was 363,887. The county seat and namesake of the county is the city of Anoka, which is derived from the Dakota word anoka meaning “on (or from) both sides”, referring to its location on both banks of the Rum River. The largest city in the county is Blaine, the tenth-largest city in Minnesota and the sixth-largest Twin Cities suburb.
Another Brick in the Wall (Wikipedia) “Another Brick in the Wall” is a three-part composition on Pink Floyd’s 1979 rock opera The Wall, written by bassist Roger Waters. “Part 2”, a protest song against corporal punishment, and rigid and abusive schooling, features a children’s choir. At the suggestion of producer Bob Ezrin, Pink Floyd added elements of disco.
Anselm of Canterbury (Wikipedia) Anselm of Canterbury OSB (/ˈænsɛlm/; 1033/4–1109), also called Anselm of Aosta (Italian: Anselmo d’Aosta) after his birthplace and Anselm of Bec (French: Anselme du Bec) after his monastery, was an Italian Benedictine monk, abbot, philosopher and theologian of the Catholic Church, who held the office of Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109. After his death, he was canonized as a saint; his feast day is 21 April.
Ant (Wikipedia) Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.
Antarctic Plate (Wikipedia) The Antarctic Plate is a tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica, the Kerguelen Plateau, and some remote islands in the Southern Ocean and other surrounding oceans. After breakup from Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent Pangea), the Antarctic plate began moving the continent of Antarctica south to its present isolated location, causing the continent to develop a much colder climate. The Antarctic Plate is bounded almost entirely by extensional mid-ocean ridge systems. The adjoining plates are the Nazca Plate, the South American Plate, the African Plate, the Somali Plate, the Indo-Australian Plate, the Pacific Plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia Plate.
Antarctica (Wikipedia) Antarctica (/ænˈtɑːrktɪkə/) is Earth’s southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km2 (5,500,000 sq mi). Most of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, with an average thickness of 1.9 km (1.2 mi).
Anthropic principle (Wikipedia) The anthropic principle, also known as the “observation selection effect”, is the hypothesis, first proposed in 1957 by Robert Dicke, that the range of possible observations that we could make about the universe is limited by the fact that observations could only happen in a universe capable of developing intelligent life in the first place. Proponents of the anthropic principle argue that it explains why this universe has the age and the fundamental physical constants necessary to accommodate conscious life, since if either had been different, we would not have been around to make observations. Anthropic reasoning is often used to deal with the notion that the universe seems to be finely tuned for the existence of life.
Antichrist (Wikipedia) In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist refers to people prophesied by the Bible to oppose Jesus Christ and substitute themselves in Christ’s place before the Second Coming. The term Antichrist (including one plural form) is found four times in the New Testament, solely in the First and Second Epistle of John. The Antichrist is announced as the one “who denies the Father and the Son.”
Antimatter (Wikipedia) In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or “partners”) of the corresponding particles in “ordinary” matter, and can be thought of as matter with reversed charge, parity, and time, known as CPT reversal. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radioactive decay, but only a tiny fraction of these have successfully been bound together in experiments to form antiatoms. Minuscule numbers of antiparticles can be generated at particle accelerators; however, total artificial production has been only a few nanograms. No macroscopic amount of antimatter has ever been assembled due to the extreme cost and difficulty of production and handling.
Antinomianism (Wikipedia) Antinomianism (Ancient Greek: ἀντί [anti] “against” and νόμος [nomos] “law”) is any view which rejects laws or legalism and argues against moral, religious or social norms (Latin: mores), or is at least considered to do so. The term has both religious and secular meanings.
Antlia (Wikipedia) Antlia (/ˈæntliə/; from Ancient Greek ἀντλία) is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means “pump” in Latin and Greek; it represents an air pump. Originally Antlia Pneumatica, the constellation was established by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. Its non-specific (single-word) name, already in limited use, was preferred by John Herschel then welcomed by the astronomic community which officially accepted this. North of stars forming some of the sails of the ship Argo Navis (the constellation Vela), Antlia is completely visible from latitudes south of 49 degrees north.
Aphanite (Wikipedia) Aphanites (adj. aphanitic; from Ancient Greek αφανης (aphanḗs) ‘invisible’) are igneous rocks that are so fine-grained that their component mineral crystals are not visible to the naked eye (in contrast to phanerites, in which the crystals are visible to the unaided eye). This geological texture results from rapid cooling in volcanic or hypabyssal (shallow subsurface) environments. As a rule, the texture of these rocks is not the same as that of volcanic glass (e.g., obsidian), with volcanic glass being non-crystalline (amorphous), and having a glass-like appearance.
Aphantasia (Wikipedia) Aphantasia (/ˌeɪfænˈteɪʒə/ ay-fan-TAY-zhə, /ˌæfænˈteɪʒə/ a-fan-TAY-zhə) is the inability to create mental imagery.
Apollo 11 (Wikipedia) Apollo 11 (July 16–24, 1969) was the American spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, and Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon’s surface six hours and 39 minutes later, on July 21 at 02:56 UTC. Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later, and they spent about two and a quarter hours together exploring the site they had named Tranquility Base upon landing. Armstrong and Aldrin collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of lunar material to bring back to Earth as pilot Michael Collins flew the Command Module Columbia in lunar orbit, and were on the Moon’s surface for 21 hours, 36 minutes before lifting off to rejoin Columbia.
Apostasy (Wikipedia) Apostasy (/əˈpɒstəsi/; Greek: ἀποστασία apostasía, ‘a defection or revolt’) is the formal disaffiliation from, abandonment of, or renunciation of a religion by a person. It can also be defined within the broader context of embracing an opinion that is contrary to one’s previous religious beliefs. One who undertakes apostasy is known as an apostate. Undertaking apostasy is called apostatizing (or apostasizing – also spelled apostacizing). The term apostasy is used by sociologists to mean the renunciation and criticism of, or opposition to, a person’s former religion, in a technical sense, with no pejorative connotation.
Apparent magnitude (Wikipedia) Apparent magnitude (m) is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object. An object’s apparent magnitude depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction of the object’s light caused by interstellar dust along the line of sight to the observer.
Applesoft BASIC (Wikipedia) Applesoft BASIC is a dialect of Microsoft BASIC, developed by Marc McDonald and Ric Weiland, supplied with Apple II computers. It supersedes Integer BASIC and is the BASIC in ROM in all Apple II series computers after the original Apple II model. It is also referred to as FP BASIC (from floating point) because of the Apple DOS command FP used to invoke it, instead of INT for Integer BASIC.
Apus (Wikipedia) Apus is a small constellation in the southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means “without feet” in Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. First depicted on a celestial globe by Petrus Plancius in 1598, it was charted on a star atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
Aquarius (constellation) (Wikipedia) Aquarius is an equatorial constellation of the zodiac, between Capricornus and Pisces. Its name is Latin for “water-carrier” or “cup-carrier”, and its old astronomical symbol is (♒︎), a representation of water. Aquarius is one of the oldest of the recognized constellations along the zodiac (the Sun’s apparent path). It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is found in a region often called the Sea due to its profusion of constellations with watery associations such as Cetus the whale, Pisces the fish, and Eridanus the river.
Aquila (constellation) (Wikipedia) Aquila is a constellation on the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for ’eagle’ and it represents the bird that carried Zeus/Jupiter’s thunderbolts in Greek-Roman mythology.
Ara (constellation) (Wikipedia) Ara (Latin for “the Altar”) is a southern constellation between Scorpius, Telescopium, Triangulum Australe, and Norma. It was (as Βωμός, Bōmǒs) one of the Greek bulk (namely 48) described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union.
Arabian Plate (Wikipedia) The Arabian Plate is a minor tectonic plate in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres.
Arabian Sea (Wikipedia) The Arabian Sea (Arabic: بَحرُ ٱلْعَرَبْ, romanized: baḥr al-ʿarab) is a region of sea in the northern Indian Ocean, bounded on the west by the Arabian Peninsula, Gulf of Aden and Guardafui Channel, on the northwest by Gulf of Oman and Iran, on the north by Pakistan, on the east by India, and on the southeast by the Laccadive Sea and the Maldives, on the southwest by Somalia. Its total area is 3,862,000 km2 (1,491,000 sq mi) and its maximum depth is 4,652 meters (15,262 feet). The Gulf of Aden in the west connects the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Gulf of Oman is in the northwest, connecting it to the Persian Gulf.
Archaea (Wikipedia) Archaea (/ɑːrˈkiːə/ ar-KEE-ə; sg.: archaeon /ɑːrˈkiːən/ ar-KEE-ən) is a domain of single-celled organisms. These microorganisms lack cell nuclei and are therefore prokaryotic. Archaea were initially classified as bacteria, receiving the name archaebacteria (in the Archaebacteria kingdom), but this term has fallen out of use.
Archean (Wikipedia) The Archean Eon (IPA: /ɑːrˈkiːən/ ar-KEE-ən, also spelled Archaean or Archæan), in older sources sometimes called the Archaeozoic, is the second of the four geologic eons of Earth’s history, preceded by the Hadean Eon and followed by the Proterozoic. The Archean represents the time period from 4,031 to 2,500 Ma (millions of years ago). The Late Heavy Bombardment is hypothesized to overlap with the beginning of the Archean. The Huronian glaciation occurred at the end of the eon.
Archimedean solid (Wikipedia) In geometry, an Archimedean solid is one of 13 convex polyhedra whose faces are regular polygons and whose vertices are all symmetric to each other. They were first enumerated by Archimedes. They belong to the class of convex uniform polyhedra, the convex polyhedra with regular faces and symmetric vertices, which is divided into the Archimedean solids, the five Platonic solids (each with only one type of polygon face), and the two infinite families of prisms and antiprisms. The pseudorhombicuboctahedron is an extra polyhedron with regular faces and congruent vertices, but it is not generally counted as an Archimedean solid because it is not vertex-transitive. An even larger class than the convex uniform polyhedra is the Johnson solids, whose regular polygonal faces do not need to meet in identical vertices.
Archimedes (Wikipedia) Archimedes of Syracuse (/ˌɑːrkɪˈmiːdiːz/ AR-kim-EE-deez; c. 287 – c. 212 BC) was an Ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor from the ancient city of Syracuse in Sicily. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Considered the greatest mathematician of ancient history, and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying the concept of the infinitely small and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems. These include the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, the area of an ellipse, the area under a parabola, the volume of a segment of a paraboloid of revolution, the volume of a segment of a hyperboloid of revolution, and the area of a spiral.
Arctic Ocean (Wikipedia) The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world’s five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately 14,060,000 km2 (5,430,000 sq mi) and is known as one of the coldest of oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, although some oceanographers call it the Arctic Mediterranean Sea. It has also been described as an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It is also seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean.
Arcturus (Wikipedia) Arcturus is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Boötes. With an apparent visual magnitude of −0.05, it is the fourth-brightest star in the night sky, and the brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere. The name Arcturus originated from ancient Greece; it was then cataloged as α Boötis by Johann Bayer in 1603, which is Latinized to Alpha Boötis. Arcturus forms one corner of the Spring Triangle asterism.
Arden Hills, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Arden Hills is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 9,552 at the 2010 census. Bethel University and Seminary is located in the city of Arden Hills. Also, the campus of University of Northwestern – St. Paul straddles the Arden Hills – Roseville border. The headquarters of Land O’Lakes and Catholic United Financial, a fraternal benefit society, are located there as well.
Argentina (Wikipedia) Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of 2,780,400 km^2 (1,073,500 sq mi), making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. It shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state subdivided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and a part of Antarctica.
Argo Navis (Wikipedia) Argo Navis (the Ship Argo), or simply Argo, is one of Ptolemy’s 48 constellations, now a grouping of three IAU constellations. It is formerly a single large constellation in the southern sky. The genitive is “Argus Navis”, abbreviated “Arg”. Flamsteed and other early modern astronomers called it Navis (the Ship), genitive “Navis”, abbreviated “Nav”.
Argon (Wikipedia) Argon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ar and atomic number 18. It is in group 18 of the periodic table and is a noble gas. Argon is the third most abundant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, at 0.934% (9340 ppmv). It is more than twice as abundant as water vapor (which averages about 4000 ppmv, but varies greatly), 23 times as abundant as carbon dioxide (400 ppmv), and more than 500 times as abundant as neon (18 ppmv). Argon is the most abundant noble gas in Earth’s crust, comprising 0.00015% of the crust.
Aries (constellation) (Wikipedia) Aries is one of the constellations of the zodiac. It is located in the Northern celestial hemisphere between Pisces to the west and Taurus to the east. The name Aries is Latin for ram. Its old astronomical symbol is Aries symbol (♈︎). It is one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is a mid-sized constellation, ranking 39th overall size, with an area of 441 square degrees (1.1% of the celestial sphere).
Aristotle (Wikipedia) Aristotle (/ˈærɪˌstɒtəl/; Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης Aristotélēs, pronounced [aristotélɛːs]; 384–322 BCE) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Aristotle Onassis (Wikipedia) Aristotle Socrates Onassis (/oʊˈnæsɪs/, US also /-ˈnɑː-/; Greek: Αριστοτέλης Ωνάσης, romanized: Aristotélis Onásis, pronounced [aristoˈtelis oˈnasis]; 20 January 1906 – 15 March 1975) was a Greek and Argentine business magnate. He amassed the world’s largest privately-owned shipping fleet and was one of the world’s richest and most famous men. He was married to Athina Mary Livanos, had a long-standing affair with opera singer Maria Callas and was married to American former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
Arithmetic (Wikipedia) Arithmetic (from Ancient Greek ἀριθμός (arithmós) ’number’, and τική [τέχνη] (tikḗ [tékhnē]) ‘art, craft’) is an elementary part of mathematics that consists of the study of the properties of the traditional operations on numbers—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and extraction of roots. In the 19th century, Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano formalized arithmetic with his Peano axioms, which are highly important to the field of mathematical logic today.
Arizona (Wikipedia) Arizona (/ˌærɪˈzoʊnə/ ARR-ih-ZOH-nə; Navajo: Hoozdo Hahoodzo [hoː˥z̥to˩ ha˩hoː˩tso˩]; O’odham: Alĭ ṣonak [ˈaɭi̥ ˈʂɔnak]) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th-largest and the 14th-most-populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Four Corners region with Utah to the north, Colorado to the northeast, and New Mexico to the east; its other neighboring states are Nevada to the northwest, California to the west and the Mexican states of Sonora and Baja California to the south and southwest.
Arkansas (Wikipedia) Arkansas (/ˈɑːrkənsɔː/ AR-kən-saw) is a landlocked state in the south-central region of the Southern United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage language, a Dhegiha Siouan language, and referred to their relatives, the Quapaw people. The state’s diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains, which make up the U.S. Interior Highlands, to the densely forested land in the south known as the Arkansas Timberlands, to the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi River and the Arkansas Delta.
Arlington, Washington (Wikipedia) Arlington is a city in northern Snohomish County, Washington, United States, part of the Seattle metropolitan area. The city lies on the Stillaguamish River in the western foothills of the Cascade Range, adjacent to the city of Marysville. It is approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of Everett, the county seat, and 40 miles (64 km) north of Seattle, the state’s largest city. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Arlington had a population of 19,868; its estimated population is 20,075 as of 2021.
Armenia (Wikipedia) Armenia (/ɑːrˈmiːniə/ ar-MEE-nee-ə), officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south. Yerevan is the capital, largest city and financial center.
Arrow of time (Wikipedia) The arrow of time, also called time’s arrow, is the concept positing the “one-way direction” or “asymmetry” of time. It was developed in 1927 by the British astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, and is an unsolved general physics question. This direction, according to Eddington, could be determined by studying the organization of atoms, molecules, and bodies, and might be drawn upon a four-dimensional relativistic map of the world (“a solid block of paper”).
Arsenic (Wikipedia) Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid. It has various allotropes, but only the grey form, which has a metallic appearance, is important to industry.
Arthur C. Clarke (Wikipedia) Sir Arthur Charles Clarke CBE FRAS (16 December 1917 – 19 March 2008) was an English science fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host.
Article Three of the United States Constitution (Wikipedia) Article Three of the United States Constitution establishes the judicial branch of the U.S. federal government. Under Article Three, the judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as lower courts created by Congress. Article Three empowers the courts to handle cases or controversies arising under federal law, as well as other enumerated areas. Article Three also defines treason.
Ashkenazi Jews (Wikipedia) Ashkenazi Jews (/ˌɑːʃkəˈnɑːzi, ˌæʃ-/ A(H)SH-kə-NAH-zee; Hebrew: יְהוּדֵי אַשְׁכְּנַז, romanized: Yehudei Ashkenaz, lit. ‘Jews of Germania’; Yiddish: אַשכּנזישע ייִדן, romanized: Ashkenazishe Yidn), also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim, constitute a Jewish diaspora population that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally spoke Yiddish and largely migrated towards northern and eastern Europe during the late Middle Ages due to persecution. Hebrew was primarily used as a literary and sacred language until its 20th-century revival as a common language in Israel.
Asia (Wikipedia) Asia (/ˈeɪʒə/ AY-zhə, UK also /ˈeɪʃə/ AY-shə) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometers, about 30% of Earth’s total land area and 8% of Earth’s total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilizations. Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world’s population.
Asiago cheese (Wikipedia) Asiago (UK: /ˌæsiˈɑːɡoʊ, ˌæzi-/ ASS-ee-AH-goh, AZ-, US: /ˌɑːsi-, ˌɑːʒi-, ˌɑːʃi-/ AH-s(h)ee-, AH-zhee-, Italian: [aˈzjaːɡo]) is a cow’s milk cheese, first produced in Asiago in Italy, that can assume different textures according to its aging, from smooth for the fresh Asiago (called Asiago Pressato, which means ‘Pressed Asiago’) to a crumbly texture for the aged cheese (Asiago d’allevo, which means ‘Breeding farm Asiago’). The aged cheese is often grated in salads, soups, pastas, and sauces while the fresh Asiago is sliced to prepare panini or sandwiches; it can also be melted on a variety of dishes and cantaloupe. It is classified as a Swiss-type or Alpine cheese.
Asotin County, Washington (Wikipedia) Asotin County (/əˈsoʊtən/) is a county in the far southeastern corner of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,285. The county seat is at Asotin, and its largest city is Clarkston. The county was created out of Garfield County in 1883 and derives its name from a Nez Perce word meaning “Eel Creek.” Asotin County is part of the Lewiston–Clarkston metropolitan area, which includes Nez Perce County, Idaho, and Asotin County.
Associative property (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs.
Astatine (Wikipedia) Astatine is a chemical element; it has symbol At and atomic number 85. It is the rarest naturally occurring element in the Earth’s crust, occurring only as the decay product of various heavier elements. All of astatine’s isotopes are short-lived; the most stable is astatine-210, with a half-life of 8.1 hours. Consequently, a solid sample of the element has never been seen, because any macroscopic specimen would be immediately vaporized by the heat of its radioactivity.
Asterism (astronomy) (Wikipedia) An asterism is an observed pattern or group of stars in the sky. Asterisms can be any identified pattern or group of stars, and therefore are a more general concept than the 88 formally defined constellations. Constellations are based on asterisms, but unlike asterisms, constellations outline and today completely divide the sky and all its celestial objects into regions around their central asterisms. For example, the asterism known as the Big Dipper comprises the seven brightest stars in the constellation Ursa Major. Another is the asterism of the Southern Cross, within the constellation of Crux.
Astrakhan Oblast (Wikipedia) Astrakhan Oblast (Russian: Астраха́нская о́бласть, romanized: Astrakhanskaya oblastʹ; Kazakh: Астрахан облысы, romanized: Astrakhan oblysy) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southern Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Astrakhan. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,010,073.
Astrobiology (Wikipedia) Astrobiology is a scientific field within the life and environmental sciences that studies the origins, early evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe by investigating its deterministic conditions and contingent events. As a discipline, astrobiology is founded on the premise that life may exist beyond Earth.
Astronomy (Wikipedia) Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole.
Atlanta (Wikipedia) Atlanta (/ætˈlæntə/ at-LAN-tə) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, although a portion of the city extends into neighboring DeKalb County. With a population of 498,715 living within the city limits, it is the eighth most populous city in the Southeast and 38th most populous city in the United States according to the 2020 U.S. census. It is the core of the much larger Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to more than 6.1 million people, making it the eighth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Situated among the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains at an elevation of just over 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level, it features unique topography that includes rolling hills, lush greenery, and the most dense urban tree coverage of any major city in the United States.
Atlantic Ocean (Wikipedia) The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world’s five oceans, with an area of about 106,460,000 km2 (41,100,000 sq mi). It covers approximately 20% of Earth’s surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the “Old World” of Africa, Europe, and Asia from the “New World” of the Americas in the European perception of the World.
Atum (Wikipedia) Atum (/ɑ.tum/, Egyptian: jtm(w) or tm(w), reconstructed [jaˈtaːmuw]; Coptic ⲁⲧⲟⲩⲙ Atoum), sometimes rendered as Atem or Tem, is the primordial god in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose. He created himself and is the father of Shu and Tefnut, the divine couple, who are the ancestors of the other Egyptian deities. Atum is also closely associated with the evening sun. As a primordial god and as the evening sun, Atum has chthonic and underworld connections. Atum was relevant to the ancient Egyptians throughout most of Egypt’s history. He is believed to have been present in ideology as early as predynastic times, becoming even more prevalent during the Old Kingdom and continuing to be worshiped through the Middle and New Kingdom, though he becomes overshadowed by Re around this time.
Auburn, Washington (Wikipedia) Auburn is a city in King County, Washington, United States (with a small portion crossing into neighboring Pierce County). The population was 87,256 at the 2020 Census. Auburn is a suburb in the Seattle metropolitan area, and is currently ranked as the 14th most populous city in the state of Washington.
Auckland (Wikipedia) Auckland (/ˈɔːklənd/ AWK-lənd; Māori: Tāmaki Makaurau) is the most populous city of New Zealand and the fifth largest city in Oceania. It has an urban population of about 1,478,800 (June 2023). It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, and which has a total population of 1,739,300 as of June 2023. While Europeans continue to make up the plurality of Auckland’s population, the city became multicultural and cosmopolitan in the late-20th century, with Asians accounting for 31% of the city’s population in 2018. Auckland has the fourth largest foreign-born population in the world, with 39% of its residents born overseas. With its large population of Pasifika New Zealanders, the city is also home to the biggest ethnic Polynesian population in the world. The Māori-language name for Auckland is Tāmaki Makaurau, meaning “Tāmaki desired by many”, in reference to the desirability of its natural resources and geography.
August Vandekerkhove (Wikipedia) August Vandekerkhove (Kanegem, 15 October 1838 – Mâcon, 24 March 1923) was a Belgian writer, art-painter and inventor. He wrote under the pseudonym S.U.Zanne. He started a movement he called Cosmosofie (Cosmosophy), which he claimed it to be the anti-thesis of Theosophy.
Auriga (constellation) (Wikipedia) Auriga is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. Its name is Latin for ‘(the) charioteer’, associating it with various mythological beings, including Erichthonius and Myrtilus. Auriga is most prominent during winter evenings in the northern Hemisphere, as are five other constellations that have stars in the Winter Hexagon asterism. Because of its northern declination, Auriga is only visible in its entirety as far south as -34°; for observers farther south it lies partially or fully below the horizon. A large constellation, with an area of 657 square degrees, it is half the size of the largest, Hydra.
Australia (continent) (Wikipedia) The continent of Australia, sometimes known in technical contexts by the names Sahul (/səˈhuːl/), Australia-New Guinea, Australinea, or Meganesia to distinguish it from the country of Australia, is located within the Southern and Eastern hemispheres. The continent includes mainland Australia, Tasmania, the island of New Guinea (Papua New Guinea and Western New Guinea), the Aru Islands, the Ashmore and Cartier Islands, most of the Coral Sea Islands, and some other nearby islands. Situated in the geographical region of Oceania, Australia is the smallest of the seven traditional continents.
Australia (Wikipedia) Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7,617,930 square kilometres (2,941,300 sq mi), Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.
Australian Plate (Wikipedia) The Australian Plate is a major tectonic plate in the eastern and, largely, southern hemispheres. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, Australia remained connected to India and Antarctica until approximately 100 million years ago when India broke away and began moving north. Australia and Antarctica had begun rifting by 96 million years ago and completely separated a while after this, some believing as recently as 45 million years ago, but most accepting presently that this had occurred by 60 million years ago.
Austria (Wikipedia) Austria (Austrian German: Österreich), formally the Republic of Austria (Austrian German: Republik Österreich), is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine federal states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous city and federal state. Austria is bordered by Germany to the northwest, Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia to the northeast, Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The country occupies an area of 83,879 km2 (32,386 sq mi) and has a population of around 9 million.
Autonomous communities of Spain (Wikipedia) In Spain, an autonomous community (Spanish: comunidad autónoma) is the first sub-national level of political and administrative division, created in accordance with the Spanish Constitution of 1978, with the aim of guaranteeing limited autonomy of the nationalities and regions that make up Spain.
Autumn (Wikipedia) Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March (Southern Hemisphere). Autumn is the season when the duration of daylight becomes noticeably shorter and the temperature cools considerably. Day length decreases and night length increases as the season progresses until the Winter Solstice in December (Northern Hemisphere) and June (Southern Hemisphere). One of its main features in temperate climates is the striking change in colour for the leaves of deciduous trees as they prepare to shed.
Avant-garde (Wikipedia) The avant-garde (/ˌævɒ̃ˈɡɑːrd/; In French: [avɑ̃ɡaʁd] ‘advance guard’ or ‘vanguard’, literally ‘fore-guard’) is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.
Avocado oil (Wikipedia) Avocado oil is an edible oil extracted from the pulp of avocados, the fruit of Persea americana. It is used as an edible oil both raw and for cooking, where it is noted for its high smoke point. It is also used for lubrication and in cosmetics.
Axiom of choice (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the axiom of choice, abbreviated AC or AoC, is an axiom of set theory equivalent to the statement that a Cartesian product of a collection of non-empty sets is non-empty. Informally put, the axiom of choice says that given any collection of sets, each containing at least one element, it is possible to construct a new set by choosing one element from each set, even if the collection is infinite.
Axon (Wikipedia) An axon (from Greek ἄξων áxōn, axis), or nerve fiber (or nerve fibre: see spelling differences), is a long, slender projection of a nerve cell, or neuron, in vertebrates, that typically conducts electrical impulses known as action potentials away from the nerve cell body. The function of the axon is to transmit information to different neurons, muscles, and glands. In certain sensory neurons (pseudounipolar neurons), such as those for touch and warmth, the axons are called afferent nerve fibers and the electrical impulse travels along these from the periphery to the cell body and from the cell body to the spinal cord along another branch of the same axon. Axon dysfunction can be the cause of many inherited and acquired neurological disorders that affect both the peripheral and central neurons. Nerve fibers are classed into three types – group A nerve fibers, group B nerve fibers, and group C nerve fibers. Groups A and B are myelinated, and group C are unmyelinated. These groups include both sensory fibers and motor fibers. Another classification groups only the sensory fibers as Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV.
Ayn Rand (Wikipedia) Alice O’Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (/aɪn/), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system she named Objectivism. Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, she achieved fame with her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead. In 1957, Rand published her best-known work, the novel Atlas Shrugged. Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays.
Azerbaijan (Wikipedia) Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia’s republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.
Aztec philosophy (Wikipedia) Aztec philosophy was a school of philosophy that developed out of Aztec culture. The Aztecs had a well-developed school of philosophy, perhaps the most developed in the Americas and in many ways comparable to Ancient Greek philosophy, even amassing more texts than the ancient Greeks. Aztec cosmology was in some sense dualistic, but exhibited a less common form of it known as dialectical monism. Aztec philosophy also included ethics and aesthetics. It has been asserted that the central question in Aztec philosophy was how people can find stability and balance in an ephemeral world.
B Reactor (Wikipedia) The B Reactor at the Hanford Site, near Richland, Washington, was the first large-scale nuclear reactor ever built. The project was a key part of the Manhattan Project, the United States nuclear weapons development program during World War II. Its purpose was to convert natural (not isotopically enriched) uranium metal into plutonium-239 by neutron activation, as plutonium is simpler to chemically separate from spent fuel assemblies, for use in nuclear weapons, than it is to isotopically enrich uranium into weapon-grade material. The B reactor was fueled with metallic natural uranium, graphite moderated, and water-cooled. It has been designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark since August 19, 2008 and in July 2011 the National Park Service recommended that the B Reactor be included in the Manhattan Project National Historical Park commemorating the Manhattan Project. Visitors can take a tour of the reactor by advance reservation.
B-type main-sequence star (Wikipedia) A B-type main-sequence star (B V) is a main-sequence (hydrogen-burning) star of spectral type B and luminosity class V. These stars have from 2 to 16 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 10,000 and 30,000 K. B-type stars are extremely luminous and blue. Their spectra have strong neutral helium absorption lines, which are most prominent at the B2 subclass, and moderately strong hydrogen lines. Examples include Regulus, Algol A and Acrux.
Bab-el-Mandeb (Wikipedia) The Bab-el-Mandeb (Arabic: باب المندب, lit. ‘Gate of Lamentation’, Tigrinya: ባብ ኣል ማንዳብ), the Gate of Grief or the Gate of Tears, is a strait between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and by extension the Indian Ocean.
Baby boomers (Wikipedia) Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the mid-20th century baby boom. The dates, the demographic context, and the cultural identifiers may vary by country. Most baby boomers are the children of either the Greatest Generation or the Silent Generation, and are often parents of Millennials.
Babylon (Wikipedia) Babylon is an ancient city located on the lower Euphrates river in southern Mesopotamia. Babylon functioned as the main cultural and political centre of the Akkadian-speaking region of Babylonia, with its rulers establishing two important empires in antiquity, namely the 18th century BC Old Babylonian Empire and the 7th–6th century BC Neo-Babylonian Empire, and the city would also be used as a regional capital of other empires, such as the Achaemenid Empire. Babylon was one of the most important urban centres of the ancient Near East until its decline during the Hellenistic period.
Bacteria (Wikipedia) Bacteria (/bækˈtɪəriə/; sg.: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep biosphere of Earth’s crust. Bacteria play a vital role in many stages of the nutrient cycle by recycling nutrients and the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere. The nutrient cycle includes the decomposition of dead bodies; bacteria are responsible for the putrefaction stage in this process. In the biological communities surrounding hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, extremophile bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds, such as hydrogen sulphide and methane, to energy. Bacteria also live in mutualistic, commensal and parasitic relationships with plants and animals. Most bacteria have not been characterised and there are many species that cannot be grown in the laboratory. The study of bacteria is known as bacteriology, a branch of microbiology.
Bahrain (Wikipedia) Bahrain (/bɑːˈreɪn/ bah-RAYN, /bæxˈreɪn/; Arabic: البحرين, romanized: al-Baḥrayn, lit. ‘Two Seas’, locally [æl bɑħˈreːn]), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, is an island country in West Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an additional 33 artificial islands, centered on Bahrain Island which makes up around 83 percent of the country’s landmass. Bahrain is situated between Qatar and the northeastern coast of Saudi Arabia, to which it is connected by the King Fahd Causeway. The population of Bahrain is 1,501,635 as of May 14, 2023, based on elaborations of the United Nations data, of whom 712,362 are Bahraini nationals. Bahrain spans some 760 square kilometres (290 sq mi), and is the third-smallest nation in Asia after the Maldives and Singapore. The capital and largest city is Manama.
Bainbridge Island, Washington (Wikipedia) Bainbridge Island is a city and island in Kitsap County, Washington. It is located in Puget Sound. The population was 23,025 at the 2010 census and an estimated 25,298 in 2019, making Bainbridge Island the second largest city in Kitsap County.
Baja California (Wikipedia) Baja California (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈbaxa kaliˈfoɾnja]; ‘Lower California’), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California (English: Free and Sovereign State of Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mexico. Before becoming a state in 1952, the area was known as the North Territory of Baja California (Territorio Norte de Baja California). It has an area of 70,113 km2 (27,071 sq mi) (3.57% of the land mass of Mexico) and comprises the northern half of the Baja California Peninsula, north of the 28th parallel, plus oceanic Guadalupe Island. The mainland portion of the state is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean; on the east by Sonora, the U.S. state of Arizona, and the Gulf of California; on the north by the U.S. state of California; and on the south by Baja California Sur.
Bald eagle (Wikipedia) The bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (Haliaeetus albicilla), which occupies the same niche as the bald eagle in the Palearctic. Its range includes most of Canada and Alaska, all of the contiguous United States, and northern Mexico. It is found near large bodies of open water with an abundant food supply and old-growth trees for nesting.
Bald Hill (Snohomish County, Washington) (Wikipedia) Bald Hill is a 737-foot (225 m) hill in Snohomish County, Washington. The Skykomish River once flowed north of the hill but at some point in recent geologic history was diverted to its present course on the south side of the hill, moving the confluence with the Snoqualmie River (creating the Snohomish River) several miles upstream. In 1952, most of Bald Hill and adjacent Devils Butte were Washington State Forest land. As of 2016, Devils Butte is part of Lord Hill Regional Park, and the Bald Hill area was still listed by Washington State Department of Natural Resources as State Forest Trust, formerly Forest Board Trust land.
Balenciaga (Wikipedia) Balenciaga SA (/bəˌlɛnsiˈɑːɡə/ bə-LEN-see-AH-gə) is luxury fashion house founded in 1919 by the Spanish couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga in San Sebastian, Spain. Balenciaga produces ready-to-wear footwear, handbags, and accessories, and licenses its name and branding to Coty for fragrances. It is currently owned by the French corporation Kering.
Ballard Avenue Historic District (Wikipedia) The Ballard Avenue Historic District is a section of downtown Ballard in Seattle, Washington, that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 (ID #76001885). The district consists of Ballard Avenue N.W. between N.W. Market Street and N.W. Dock Place, and is located near to and along Salmon Bay.
Ballard Bridge (Wikipedia) The Ballard Bridge, also known as the 15th Avenue Bridge, is a double-leaf bascule bridge in Seattle, Washington. It carries 15th Avenue NW over Seattle’s Salmon Bay between Ballard to the north and Interbay to the south. The Ballard Bridge follows the Fremont Bridge in the east in the succession of bridges spanning the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which connects Lake Washington in the east to Puget Sound in the west.
Ballard Locks (Wikipedia) The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, or Ballard Locks, is a complex of locks at the west end of Salmon Bay in Seattle, Washington’s Lake Washington Ship Canal, between the neighborhoods of Ballard to the north and Magnolia to the south.
Ballard, Seattle (Wikipedia) Ballard is a neighborhood in the northwestern area of Seattle, Washington, United States. Formerly an independent city, the City of Seattle’s official boundaries define it as bounded to the north by Crown Hill (N.W. 85th Street), to the east by Greenwood, Phinney Ridge and Fremont (along 3rd Avenue N.W.), to the south by the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and to the west by Puget Sound’s Shilshole Bay. Other neighborhood or district boundaries existed in the past; these are recognized by various Seattle City Departments, commercial or social organizations, and other Federal, State, and local government agencies.
Balmoral Reef Plate (Wikipedia) The Balmoral Reef Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) located in the south Pacific north of Fiji. Clockwise from the north, it borders the Pacific Plate, the Australian Plate, Conway Reef Plate, and the New Hebrides Plate. The northern and western borders are a divergent boundary while the rest of the borders are transform and convergent boundaries. The Balmoral Reef Plate’s ocean crust is less than 12 million years old and is spreading between the New Hebrides and Tonga subduction. The plate forms the west central part of the seafloor of the North Fiji Basin.
Baltic Sea (Wikipedia) The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain.
Banda Sea Plate (Wikipedia) The Banda Sea Plate is a minor tectonic plate underlying the Banda Sea in southeast Asia. This plate also carries a portion of Sulawesi Island, the entire Seram Island, and the Banda Islands. Clockwise from the east it is bounded by the Bird’s Head Plate of western New Guinea, Australian Plate, Timor Plate, Sunda Plate, and the Molucca Sea Collision Zone. The western border is a convergent boundary largely responsible for the mountains in western Sulawesi, subduction zones also exist on the eastern border near Seram and the southern border with the Timor Plate. A small rift is located in the middle of Sulawesi. It is a very seismically active area home to many volcanoes and the site of many large earthquakes, the largest of which was the 1938 Banda Sea earthquake which measured around 8.4 on the moment magnitude scale.
Bangkok (Wikipedia) Bangkok, officially known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon and colloquially as Krung Thep, is the capital and most populous city of Thailand. The city occupies 1,568.7 square kilometres (605.7 sq mi) in the Chao Phraya River delta in central Thailand and has an estimated population of 10.539 million as of 2020, 15.3 percent of the country’s population. Over 14 million people (22.2 percent) lived within the surrounding Bangkok Metropolitan Region at the 2010 census, making Bangkok an extreme primate city, dwarfing Thailand’s other urban centres in both size and importance to the national economy.
Bangladesh (Wikipedia) Bangladesh, officially the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world and is among the most densely populated countries with a population of nearly 170 million in an area of 1,47,570 square kilometers (56,977 Sq. miles). Bangladesh shares land borders with India to the north, west, and east, and Myanmar to the southeast. To the south, it has a coastline along the Bay of Bengal. It is narrowly separated from Bhutan and Nepal by the Siliguri Corridor, and from China by the mountainous Indian state of Sikkim in the north. Dhaka, the capital and largest city, is the nation’s political, financial, and cultural centre. Chittagong is the second-largest city and is the busiest port on the Bay of Bengal. The official language of Bangladesh is Bengali while Bangladeshi English is also used in the government and official documents alongside Bengali.
Barack Obama (Wikipedia) Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. As a member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African-American president in U.S. history. Obama previously served as a U.S. senator representing Illinois from 2005 to 2008, and as an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
Barber paradox (Wikipedia) The barber paradox is a puzzle derived from Russell’s paradox. It was used by Bertrand Russell as an illustration of the paradox, though he attributes it to an unnamed person who suggested it to him. The puzzle shows that an apparently plausible scenario is logically impossible. Specifically, it describes a barber who is defined such that he both shaves himself and does not shave himself, which implies that no such barber exists.
Barcelona (Wikipedia) Barcelona (/ˌbɑːrsəˈloʊnə/ BAR-sə-LOH-nə, Catalan: [bəɾsəˈlonə], Spanish: [baɾθeˈlona]) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits, its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the province of Barcelona and is home to around 4.8 million people, making it the fifth most populous urban area in the European Union after Paris, the Ruhr area, Madrid and Milan. It is one of the largest metropolises on the Mediterranean Sea, located on the coast between the mouths of the rivers Llobregat and Besòs, bounded to the west by the Serra de Collserola mountain range.
Bardo (Wikipedia) In some schools of Buddhism, bardo (Classical Tibetan: བར་དོ་ Wylie: bar do) or antarābhava (Sanskrit, Chinese and Japanese: 中有, romanized in Chinese as zhōng yǒu and in Japanese as chū’u) is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. The concept arose soon after Gautama Buddha’s death, with a number of earlier Buddhist schools accepting the existence of such an intermediate state, while other schools rejected it. The concept of antarābhava, an intervening state between death and rebirth, was brought into Buddhism from the Vedic-Upanishadic (later Hindu) philosophical tradition. Later Buddhism expanded the bardo concept to six or more states of consciousness covering every stage of life and death. In Tibetan Buddhism, bardo is the central theme of the Bardo Thodol (literally Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State), the Tibetan Book of the Dead, a text intended to both guide the recently deceased person through the death bardo to gain a better rebirth and also to help their loved ones with the grieving process.
Bardo Thodol (Wikipedia) The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan: བར་དོ་ཐོས་གྲོལ, Wylie: bar do thos grol, ‘Liberation through hearing during the intermediate state’), commonly known in the West as The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is a terma text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). It is the best-known work of Nyingma literature. In 1927 the text was one of the first examples of both Tibetan and Vajrayana literature to be translated into a European language and arguably continues to this day to be the best known.
Barge (Wikipedia) Barge often refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but on inland waterways, most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. The term barge has a rich history, and therefore there are many other types of barges.
Baring, Washington (Wikipedia) Baring is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 255 at the 2020 census, up from 220 at the 2010 census. It is located on U.S. Highway 2 about 23 miles (37 km) west of Stevens Pass, along a very flat and straight three-mile section of highway that has been dubbed the “Baring Straight” (a play on the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia), since US-2 is otherwise hilly and curvy through the mountains. The settlement was first known as “Salmon”, but by 1909 it was known as Baring.
Bartolomeo Cristofori (Wikipedia) Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (Italian pronunciation: [bartoloˈmɛːo kriˈstɔːfori di franˈtʃesko]; May 4, 1655 – January 27, 1731) was an Italian maker of musical instruments famous for inventing the piano.
Bartonian (Wikipedia) The Bartonian is, in the International Commission on Stratigraphy’s (ICS) geologic time scale, a stage or age in the middle of the Eocene Epoch or Series. The Bartonian Age spans the time between 41.2 and 37.71 Ma. It is preceded by the Lutetian and is followed by the Priabonian Age.
Basalt (Wikipedia) Basalt (UK: /ˈbæsɔːlt, -əlt/; US: /bəˈsɔːlt, ˈbeɪsɔːlt/) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of all volcanic rock on Earth is basalt. Rapid-cooling, fine-grained basalt is chemically equivalent to slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro. The eruption of basalt lava is observed by geologists at about 20 volcanoes per year. Basalt is also an important rock type on other planetary bodies in the Solar System. For example, the bulk of the plains of Venus, which cover ~80% of the surface, are basaltic; the lunar maria are plains of flood-basaltic lava flows; and basalt is a common rock on the surface of Mars.
Bash (Unix shell) (Wikipedia) Bash is a Unix shell and command language written by Brian Fox for the GNU Project as a free software replacement for the Bourne shell. The shell’s name is an acronym for Bourne Again Shell, a pun on the name of the Bourne shell that it replaces and the notion of being “born again”. First released in 1989, it has been used as the default login shell for most Linux distributions and it was one of the first programs Linus Torvalds ported to Linux, alongside GCC. A version is also available for Windows 10 and Windows 11 via the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It is also the default user shell in Solaris 11. Bash was also the default shell in BeOS, and in versions of Apple macOS from 10.3 (originally, the default shell was tcsh) to 10.15 (macOS Catalina), which changed the default shell to zsh, although Bash remains available as an alternative shell.
BASIC (Wikipedia) BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College in 1963. They wanted to enable students in non-scientific fields to use computers. At the time, nearly all computers required writing custom software, which only scientists and mathematicians tended to learn.
Batholith (Wikipedia) A batholith (from Ancient Greek bathos ‘depth’ and lithos ‘rock’) is a large mass of intrusive igneous rock (also called plutonic rock), larger than 100 km2 (40 sq mi) in area, that forms from cooled magma deep in the Earth’s crust. Batholiths are almost always made mostly of felsic or intermediate rock types, such as granite, quartz monzonite, or diorite (see also granite dome).
Bay Area Rapid Transit (Wikipedia) Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves 50 stations along six routes and 131 miles (211 kilometers) of track, including a 9-mile (14 km) spur line running to Antioch, which uses diesel multiple-unit vehicles, and a 3-mile (4.8 km) automated guideway transit line serving the Oakland International Airport. With an average of 146,500 weekday passengers as of the fourth quarter of 2022 and 41,286,400 annual passengers in 2022, BART is the fifth-busiest heavy rail rapid transit system in the United States.
Bayport, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Bayport is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,024 at the 2020 census. ⁋ Bayport is located along the St. Croix River, one mile south of Stillwater.
Baytown Township, Washington County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Baytown Township is an urban township in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 1,533 at the 2000 census. The unincorporated community of Siegel is located within Baytown Township.
Beacon Food Forest (Wikipedia) Beacon Food Forest is a 7-acre food forest in development adjacent to Jefferson Park on Beacon Hill in Seattle, Washington in the vicinity of 15th Avenue South and South Dakota Street. As the area sits on land owned by Seattle Public Utilities, it is believed to be the largest food forest on public land in the United States. The project also has more traditional private allotments, similar to those in other local P-Patch gardens.
Beacon Hill, Seattle (Wikipedia) Beacon Hill is a hill and neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington. It is roughly bounded on the west by Interstate 5, on the north by Interstate 90, on the east by Rainier Avenue South, Cheasty Boulevard South, and Martin Luther King Junior Way South, and on the south by the Seattle city boundary. It is part of Seattle’s South End.
Beaux Arts Village, Washington (Wikipedia) Beaux Arts (/ˈboʊz ˈɑːrts/) is a town located in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States. It is the smallest municipality in the county, with a population of 299 as of the 2010 census and a land area of 0.1 sq mi.
Bedrock (Wikipedia) In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet.
Beehive Cluster (Wikipedia) The Beehive Cluster (also known as Praesepe (Latin for “manger”, “cot” or “crib”), M44, NGC 2632, or Cr 189), is an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. One of the nearest open clusters to Earth, it contains a larger population of stars than other nearby bright open clusters holding around 1,000 stars. Under dark skies, the Beehive Cluster looks like a small nebulous object to the naked eye, and has been known since ancient times. Classical astronomer Ptolemy described it as a “nebulous mass in the breast of Cancer”. It was among the first objects that Galileo studied with his telescope.
Beirut (Wikipedia) Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. As of 2014, Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast. Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years, and was one of Phoenicia’s most prominent city states, making it one of the oldest cities in the world (see Berytus). The first historical mention of Beirut is found in the Amarna letters from the New Kingdom of Egypt, which date to the 14th century BC.
Bel Shamharoth (Wikipedia) Bel Shamharoth is a chthonic god of the Underworld and the Dungeon Dimensions of Discworld who is drawn — with extra tenacles — greatly from the works of HP Lovecraft and is encountered in the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic.
Belarus (Wikipedia) Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Covering an area of 207,600 square kilometres (80,200 sq mi) and with a population of 9.2 million, Belarus is the 13th-largest and the 20th-most populous country in Europe. The country has a hemiboreal climate and is administratively divided into six regions. Minsk is the capital and largest city; it is administered separately as a city with special status.
Belgium (Wikipedia) Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the south, and the North Sea to the west. It covers an area of 30,689 km2 (11,849 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.5 million, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe, with a density of 376/km2 (970/sq mi). Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, historically a somewhat larger region than the Benelux group of states, as it also included parts of northern France. The capital and largest metropolitan region is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.
Belize (Wikipedia) Belize (/bɪˈliːz, bɛ-/, bih-LEEZ, beh-; Belize Kriol English: Bileez) is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a water boundary with Honduras to the southeast.
Bellaire, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Bellaire is an unincorporated community in White Bear Township, Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States.
Bellatrix (Wikipedia) Bellatrix is the third-brightest star in the constellation of Orion, positioned 5° west of the red supergiant Betelgeuse (Alpha Orionis). It has the Bayer designation γ Orionis, which is Latinized to Gamma Orionis. With a slightly variable magnitude of around 1.6, it is typically the 25th-brightest star in the night sky. Located at a distance of 250±10 light-years from the Sun, it is a blue giant star around 7.7 times as massive as the sun with 5.75 times its diameter.
Bellevue, Washington (Wikipedia) Bellevue (/ˈbɛlvjuː/ BEL-vew) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as a satellite city, a suburb, a boomburb, or an edge city. Its population was 122,363 at the 2010 census and 151,854 in the 2020 census. The city’s name is derived from the French term belle vue (“beautiful view”).
Bellingham, Washington (Wikipedia) Bellingham (/ˈbɛlɪŋhæm/ BEL-ing-ham) is the most populous city in, and county seat of Whatcom County in the U.S. state of Washington. It lies 21 miles (34 km) south of the U.S.–Canada border and in between Vancouver, British Columbia (located 52 miles (84 km) to the northwest) and Seattle (90 miles (140 km) to the south).
Belltown, Seattle (Wikipedia) Belltown is the most densely populated neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, located on the city’s downtown waterfront on land that was artificially flattened as part of a regrading project. Formerly a low-rent, semi-industrial arts district, in recent decades it has transformed into a neighborhood of trendy restaurants, boutiques, nightclubs, and residential towers as well as warehouses and art galleries. The area is named after William Nathaniel Bell, on whose land claim the neighborhood was built.
Benin (Wikipedia) Benin (/bɛˈniːn/ ben-EEN, /bɪˈniːn/ bin-EEN; French: Bénin [benɛ̃], Fon: Benɛ, Fula: Benen), officially the Republic of Benin (French: République du Bénin), and also known as Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, Burkina Faso to the North-west, and Niger to the North-east. The majority of its population lives on the southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital is Porto-Novo, and the seat of government is in Cotonou, the most populous city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of 114,763 km2 (44,310 sq mi), and its population in 2021 was estimated to be approximately 13 million. It is a small, tropical country. It is one of the least developed, with an economy heavily dependent on agriculture, and is an exporter of palm oil and cotton. Some employment and income arise from subsistence agriculture.
Benjamin Franklin (Wikipedia) Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a leading writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.
Benjamin Harrison (Wikipedia) Benjamin Harrison (August 20, 1833 – March 13, 1901) was an American politician who served as the 23rd president of the United States from 1889 to 1893. He was a member of the Harrison family of Virginia—a grandson of the ninth president, William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Founding Father. A Union Army veteran and a Republican, he defeated incumbent Grover Cleveland to win the presidency.
Benton County, Washington (Wikipedia) Benton County is a county in the south-central portion of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 206,873. The county seat is Prosser, and its largest city is Kennewick. The Columbia River demarcates the county’s north, south, and east boundaries.
Bering Strait (Wikipedia) The Bering Strait (Russian: Берингов пролив, romanized: Beringov proliv) is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia-United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58’ 37" W longitude, slightly south of the Arctic Circle at about 65° 40’ N latitude. The Strait is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer in the service of the Russian Empire.
Berlin (Wikipedia) Berlin (/bɜːrˈlɪn/, bur-LIN; German: [bɛʁˈliːn] is the capital and largest city of Germany, both by area and by population. Its more than 3.85 million inhabitants make it the European Union’s most populous city, as measured by population within city limits. Simultaneously, the city is one of the States of Germany. Berlin is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and Brandenburg’s capital Potsdam is nearby. Berlin’s urban area has a population of around 4.5 million and is therefore the most populous urban area in Germany. The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region has around 6.2 million inhabitants and is Germany’s second-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr region, and the sixth-biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union.
Bermuda (Wikipedia) Bermuda (/bərˈmjuːdə/; historically known as the Bermudas or Somers Isles) is a British Overseas Territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. The closest land outside the territory is in the American state of North Carolina, about 1,035 km (643 mi) to the west-northwest.
Bern (Wikipedia) Bern (Swiss Standard German: [bɛrn]) or Berne is the de facto capital of Switzerland, referred to as the “federal city”. With a population of about 133,000 (as of 2022), Bern is the fifth-most populous city in Switzerland, behind Zurich, Geneva, Basel and Lausanne. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 36 municipalities, had a population of 406,900 in 2014. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000.
Bernie Sanders (Wikipedia) Bernard Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician and activist serving as the senior United States senator from Vermont. Sanders is the longest serving independent in U.S. congressional history but has a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career and sought the party’s presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, coming second in both campaigns. He is often seen as a leader of the U.S. progressive movement.
Bertrand Russell (Wikipedia) Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science and various areas of analytic philosophy, especially philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Beryllium (Wikipedia) Beryllium is a chemical element; it has symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form minerals. Gemstones high in beryllium include beryl (aquamarine, emerald, red beryl) and chrysoberyl. It is a relatively rare element in the universe, usually occurring as a product of the spallation of larger atomic nuclei that have collided with cosmic rays. Within the cores of stars, beryllium is depleted as it is fused into heavier elements. Beryllium constitutes about 0.0004 percent by mass of Earth’s crust. The world’s annual beryllium production of 220 tons is usually manufactured by extraction from the mineral beryl, a difficult process because beryllium bonds strongly to oxygen.
Beta Aurigae (Wikipedia) Beta Aurigae (Latinized from β Aurigae, abbreviated Beta Aur, β Aur), officially named Menkalinan /mɛŋˈkælɪnæn/, is a binary star system in the northern constellation of Auriga. The combined apparent visual magnitude of the system is 1.9, making it the second-brightest member of the constellation after Capella. Using the parallax measurements made during the Hipparcos mission, the distance to this star system can be estimated as 81.1 light-years (24.9 parsecs), give or take a half-light-year margin of error.
Beta Cassiopeiae (Wikipedia) Beta Cassiopeiae (β Cassiopeiae, abbreviated Beta Cas or β Cas), officially named Caph /ˈkæf/, is a Delta Scuti variable star in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It is a giant star belonging to the spectral class F2. The white star of second magnitude (+2.28 mag, variable) has an absolute magnitude of +1.3 mag.
Beta Ceti (Wikipedia) Beta Ceti (β Ceti, abbreviated Beta Cet, β Cet), officially named Diphda /ˈdɪfdə/, is the brightest star in the constellation of Cetus. Although designated ‘beta’, it is actually brighter than the ‘alpha’ star in the constellation, Menkar, by half a magnitude. This orange giant is easy to identify due to its location in an otherwise dark section of the celestial sphere. Based on parallax measurements, it lies at an estimated distance of 96.3 light-years (29.5 parsecs) from the Sun.
Beta Pictoris (Wikipedia) Beta Pictoris (abbreviated β Pictoris or β Pic) is the second brightest star in the constellation Pictor. It is located 63.4 light-years (19.4 pc) from the Solar System, and is 1.75 times as massive and 8.7 times as luminous as the Sun. The Beta Pictoris system is very young, only 20 to 26 million years old, although it is already in the main sequence stage of its evolution. Beta Pictoris is the title member of the Beta Pictoris moving group, an association of young stars which share the same motion through space and have the same age.
Beta Ursae Minoris (Wikipedia) Kochab /ˈkoʊkæb/, Bayer designation Beta Ursae Minoris (β Ursae Minoris, abbreviated β UMi, Beta UMi), is the brightest star in the bowl of the Little Dipper asterism (which is part of the constellation of Ursa Minor)), and only slightly fainter than Polaris, the northern pole star and brightest star in Ursa Minor. Kochab is 16 degrees from Polaris and has an apparent visual magnitude of 2.08. The distance to this star from the Sun can be deduced from the parallax measurements made during the Hipparcos mission, yielding a value of 130.9 light-years (40.1 parsecs).
Betelgeuse (Wikipedia) Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star of spectral type M1-2 and one of the largest visible to the naked eye. It is usually the tenth-brightest star in the night sky and, after Rigel, the second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. It is a distinctly reddish, semiregular variable star whose apparent magnitude, varying between +0.0 and +1.6, has the widest range displayed by any first-magnitude star. At near-infrared wavelengths, Betelgeuse is the brightest star in the night sky. Its Bayer designation is α Orionis, Latinised to Alpha Orionis and abbreviated Alpha Ori or α Ori.
Bhutan (Wikipedia) Bhutan (/buːˈtɑːn/ boo-TAHN; Dzongkha: འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, romanized: Druk Yul [ʈuk̚˩.yː˩]), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་རྒྱལ་ཁབ་, romanized: Druk Gyal Khap), is a landlocked country in South Asia situated in the Eastern Himalayas between China in the north and India in the south. With a population of over 727,145 and a territory of 38,394 square kilometres (14,824 sq mi), Bhutan ranks 133rd in land area and 160th in population. Bhutan is a constitutional monarchy with a king (Druk Gyalpo) as the head of state and a prime minister as the head of government. Vajrayana Buddhism is the state religion and the Je Khenpo is the head of the state religion.
Big Bang (Wikipedia) The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang.
Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four) (Wikipedia) Big Brother is a fictional character and symbol in George Orwell’s dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is ostensibly the leader of Oceania, a totalitarian state wherein the ruling party, Ingsoc, wields total power “for its own sake” over the inhabitants. In the society that Orwell describes, every citizen is under constant surveillance by the authorities, mainly by telescreens (with the exception of the Proles). The people are constantly reminded of this by the slogan “Big Brother is watching you”: a maxim that is ubiquitously on display throughout the novel.
Big Diomede Island (Wikipedia) Big Diomede Island or Tomorrow Island (Russian: Остров Ратманова, romanized: ostrov Ratmanova; Ratmanov Island, Chukot: Имэлин; Inupiaq: Imaqłiq) is the western island of the two Diomede Islands in the middle of the Bering Strait. The island is home to a Russian military base which is located midway along the island’s North shore. The island is a part of the Chukotsky District of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of Russia. The border separating Russia and the United States runs north–south through the 2.5 mile wide strait that runs between the two Islands.
Big Dipper (Wikipedia) The Big Dipper (US, Canada) or the Plough (UK, Ireland) is a large asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major; six of them are of second magnitude and one, Megrez (δ), of third magnitude. Four define a “bowl” or “body” and three define a “handle” or “head”. It is recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures. The North Star (Polaris/), the current northern pole star and the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper (Little Bear), can be located by extending an imaginary line through the front two stars of the asterism, Merak (β) and Dubhe (α). This makes it useful in celestial navigation.
Big Stone Lake (Wikipedia) Big Stone Lake (Dakota: Íŋyaŋ Tháŋka Bdé) is a long, narrow freshwater lake and reservoir on the border between western Minnesota and northeastern South Dakota in the United States.
Bill Clinton (Wikipedia) William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist “Third Way” political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.
Binary star (Wikipedia) A binary star or binary star system is a system of two stars that are gravitationally bound to and in orbit around each other. Binary stars in the night sky that are seen as a single object to the naked eye are often resolved using a telescope as separate stars, in which case they are called visual binaries. Many visual binaries have long orbital periods of several centuries or millennia and therefore have orbits which are uncertain or poorly known. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy (spectroscopic binaries) or astrometry (astrometric binaries). If a binary star happens to orbit in a plane along our line of sight, its components will eclipse and transit each other; these pairs are called eclipsing binaries, or, together with other binaries that change brightness as they orbit, photometric binaries.
Binary Star § Astrometric binaries (Wikipedia) Astronomers have discovered some stars that seemingly orbit around an empty space. Astrometric binaries are relatively nearby stars which can be seen to wobble around a point in space, with no visible companion. The same mathematics used for ordinary binaries can be applied to infer the mass of the missing companion. The companion could be very dim, so that it is currently undetectable or masked by the glare of its primary, or it could be an object that emits little or no electromagnetic radiation, for example a neutron star.
Biology (Wikipedia) Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary information encoded in genes, which can be transmitted to future generations. Another major theme is evolution, which explains the unity and diversity of life. Energy processing is also important to life as it allows organisms to move, grow, and reproduce. Finally, all organisms are able to regulate their own internal environments.
Birch Bay, Washington (Wikipedia) Birch Bay is a protected bay of the east shore of the Salish Sea, between Semiahmoo Bay and Lummi Bay; approximately 100 miles (160 km) north of Seattle and 35 miles (56 km) south of Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Birchwood Village, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Birchwood Village is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 863 at the 2020 census.
Bird (Wikipedia) Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (/ˈeɪviːz/), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweight skeleton. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5.5 cm (2.2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) common ostrich. There are about ten thousand living species, more than half of which are passerine, or “perching” birds. Birds have wings whose development varies according to species; the only known groups without wings are the extinct moa and elephant birds. Wings, which are modified forelimbs, gave birds the ability to fly, although further evolution has led to the loss of flight in some birds, including ratites, penguins, and diverse endemic island species. The digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have further evolved for swimming. The study of birds is called ornithology.
Bird-of-paradise (Wikipedia) The birds-of-paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia. The family has 44 species in 17 genera. The members of this family are perhaps best known for the plumage of the males of the species (the majority) which are sexually dimorphic, in particular the very long elaborate feathers extending from the beak, wings, tail or head. For the most part they are confined to dense rainforest habitat. The diet of all species is dominated by fruit and to a lesser extent arthropods. The birds-of-paradise have a variety of breeding systems, ranging from monogamy to lek-type polygamy.
Bird’s Head Plate (Wikipedia) The Bird’s Head Plate is a minor tectonic plate incorporating the Bird’s Head Peninsula, at the western end of the island of New Guinea. Hillis and Müller consider it to be moving in unison with the Pacific Plate. P. Bird considers it to be unconnected to the Pacific Plate.
Bishop (Wikipedia) A bishop is an ordained member of the clergy who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance and administration of dioceses. The role or office of the bishop is called episcopacy. Organizationally, several Christian denominations utilize ecclesiastical structures that call for the position of bishops, while other denominations have dispensed with this office, seeing it as a symbol of power. Bishops have also exercised political authority within their dioceses.
Bitter Lake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Bitter Lake is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, named after its most notable feature, Bitter Lake. It was a mostly natural forest of Douglas-fir and Western Redcedar, inhabited by Native Americans, until the late 19th century. Development especially picked up when the Seattle-to-Everett Interurban streetcar reached the lake in 1906. A sawmill operated in the area until 1913, when most of the trees had been cut down.
Black Eye Galaxy (Wikipedia) The Black Eye Galaxy (also called Sleeping Beauty Galaxy or Evil Eye Galaxy and designated Messier 64, M64, or NGC 4826) is a relatively isolated spiral galaxy 17 million light-years away in the mildly northern constellation of Coma Berenices. It was discovered by Edward Pigott in March 1779, and independently by Johann Elert Bode in April of the same year, as well as by Charles Messier the next year. A dark band of absorbing dust partially in front of its bright nucleus gave rise to its nicknames of the “Black Eye”, “Evil Eye”, or “Sleeping Beauty” galaxy. M64 is well known among amateur astronomers due to its form in small telescopes and visibility across inhabited latitudes.
Black hole (Wikipedia) A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass can deform spacetime to form a black hole. The boundary of no escape is called the event horizon. Although it has a great effect on the fate and circumstances of an object crossing it, it has no locally detectable features according to general relativity. In many ways, a black hole acts like an ideal black body, as it reflects no light. Moreover, quantum field theory in curved spacetime predicts that event horizons emit Hawking radiation, with the same spectrum as a black body of a temperature inversely proportional to its mass. This temperature is of the order of billionths of a kelvin for stellar black holes, making it essentially impossible to observe directly.
Black Sea (Wikipedia) The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Turkey, and Ukraine. The Black Sea is supplied by major rivers, principally the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester. Consequently, while six countries have a coastline on the sea, its drainage basin includes parts of 24 countries in Europe.
Blade Runner (Wikipedia) Blade Runner is a 1982 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos, it is an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The film is set in a dystopian future Los Angeles of 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants led by Roy Batty (Hauer) escapes back to Earth, burnt-out cop Rick Deckard (Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down.
Blaine, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Blaine is a suburban city in Anoka and Ramsey counties in Minnesota, United States. Once a rural town, Blaine’s population has increased significantly in the last 60 years. For several years, Blaine led the Twin Cities metro region in new home construction. The population was 70,222 at the 2020 census. The city is mainly in Anoka County, and is part of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.
Blaine, Washington (Wikipedia) Blaine is a city in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The city’s northern boundary is the Canada–U.S. border; the Peace Arch international monument straddles the border of both countries. The population was 5,884 at the 2020 census. Since Blaine is located right on the border with Canada, it is the northernmost city on Interstate 5.
Blakely Harbor (Wikipedia) Blakely Harbor is an inlet on the east shore of Bainbridge Island, Washington, south of Eagle Harbor.
Bless your heart (Wikipedia) “Bless your heart” is a phrase common to the Southern United States. The phrase has multiple meanings and is used to express genuine sympathy but sometimes as an insult that conveys condescension, derision, or contempt. It may also be spoken as a precursor to an insult to mitigate its severity. Meanings range from sincerity to exasperation, and are primarily imparted through context and tone. While common in the South, it is primarily used by individuals who wish to “be sweet” and do not wish to “act ugly.”
Bloedel Reserve (Wikipedia) The Bloedel Reserve is a 150-acre (0.6 km2) forest garden on Bainbridge Island, [Washington](Washington, United States.
Blue giant (Wikipedia) In astronomy, a blue giant is a hot star with a luminosity class of III (giant) or II (bright giant). In the standard Hertzsprung–Russell diagram, these stars lie above and to the right of the main sequence.
Blue Ridge, Seattle (Wikipedia) North Beach / Blue Ridge is a neighborhood in the city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Blue supergiant (Wikipedia) A blue supergiant (BSG) is a hot, luminous star, often referred to as an OB supergiant. They are usually considered to be those with luminosity class I and spectral class B9 or earlier, although sometimes A-class supergiants are also deemed blue supergiants.
BNSF Railway (Wikipedia) BNSF Railway (reporting mark BNSF) is the largest freight railroad in the United States. One of six North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 36,000 employees, 33,400 miles (53,800 km) of track in 28 states, and over 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that provide rail connections between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles (272 million kilometers) in 2010, more than any other North American railroad.
Boat (Wikipedia) A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size, shape, cargo or passenger capacity, or its ability to carry boats.
Bob Marley (Wikipedia) Robert Nesta Marley OM (6 February 1945 – 11 May 1981; baptised in 1980 as Berhane Selassie) was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter. Considered one of the pioneers of reggae, his musical career was marked by fusing elements of reggae, ska, and rocksteady, as well as his distinctive vocal and songwriting style. Marley’s contributions to music increased the visibility of Jamaican music worldwide, and made him a global figure in popular culture to this day. Over the course of his career, Marley became known as a Rastafari icon, and he infused his music with a sense of spirituality. He is also considered a global symbol of Jamaican music and culture and identity, and was controversial in his outspoken support for democratic social reforms. In 1976, Marley survived an assassination attempt in his home, which was thought to be politically motivated. He also supported legalization of marijuana, and advocated for Pan-Africanism.
Bohr model (Wikipedia) In atomic physics, the Bohr model or Rutherford–Bohr model is an obsolete model of the atom, presented by Niels Bohr and Ernest Rutherford in 1913. It consists of a small, dense nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. It is analogous to the structure of the Solar System, but with attraction provided by electrostatic force rather than gravity, and with the electron energies quantized (assuming only discrete values).
Bolivia (Wikipedia) Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in western-central South America. It is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The seat of government and administrative capital is La Paz, which contains the executive, legislative, and electoral branches of government, while the constitutional capital is Sucre, the seat of the judiciary. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located on the Llanos Orientales (eastern tropical lowlands), a mostly flat region in the east of the country.
Boltzmann brain (Wikipedia) The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it might be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously form in a void, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, rather than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. Physicists use the Boltzmann brain thought experiment as a reductio ad absurdum argument for evaluating competing scientific theories.
Bong (Wikipedia) A bong (also known as a water pipe) is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances.
Book of Exodus (Wikipedia) The Book of Exodus (from Ancient Greek: Ἔξοδος, romanized: Éxodos; Biblical Hebrew: שְׁמוֹת Šəmōṯ, ‘Names’; Latin: Liber Exodus) is the second book of the Bible. It is a narrative of the Exodus, the origin myth of the Israelites leaving slavery in Biblical Egypt through the strength of their deity named Yahweh, who according to the story chose them as his people. The Israelites then journey with the legendary prophet Moses to Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gives the 10 commandments and they enter into a covenant with Yahweh, who promises to make them a “holy nation, and a kingdom of priests” on condition of their faithfulness. He gives them their laws and instructions to build the Tabernacle, the means by which he will come from heaven and dwell with them and lead them in a holy war to conquer Canaan (the “Promised Land”), which has earlier, according to the myth of Genesis, been promised to the “seed” of Abraham, the legendary patriarch of the Israelites.
Book of Isaiah (Wikipedia) The Book of Isaiah (Hebrew: ספר ישעיהו, [ˈsɛ.fɛr jə.ʃaʕ.ˈjaː.hu]) is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. It is identified by a superscription as the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet Isaiah ben Amoz, but there is extensive evidence that much of it was composed during the Babylonian captivity and later. Johann Christoph Döderlein suggested in 1775 that the book contained the works of two prophets separated by more than a century, and Bernhard Duhm originated the view, held as a consensus through most of the 20th century, that the book comprises three separate collections of oracles: Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1–39), containing the words of the 8th-century BCE prophet Isaiah; Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40–55), the work of an anonymous 6th-century BCE author writing during the Exile; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56–66), composed after the return from Exile. Isaiah 1–33 promises judgment and restoration for Judah, Jerusalem and the nations, and chapters 34–66 presume that judgment has been pronounced and restoration follows soon. While virtually no scholars today attribute the entire book, or even most of it, to one person, the book’s essential unity has become a focus in more recent research.
Book of Leviticus (Wikipedia) The Book of Leviticus (/lɪˈvɪtɪkəs/, from Ancient Greek: Λευιτικόν, Leuïtikón; Biblical Hebrew: וַיִּקְרָא‎, Wayyīqrāʾ, ‘And He called’; Latin: Liber Leviticus) is the third book of the Torah (the Pentateuch) and of the Old Testament, also known as the Third Book of Moses. Many hypotheses presented by scholars as to its origins agree that it developed over a long period of time, reaching its present form during the Persian Period, from 538 to 332 BC, although this is disputed.
Book of Malachi (Wikipedia) The Book of Malachi (Hebrew: מַלְאָכִ֔י, Malʾāḵī) is the last book of the Neviim contained in the Tanakh, canonically the last of the Twelve Minor Prophets. In most Christian orderings, the grouping of the prophetic books is the last section of the Old Testament, making Malachi the last book before the New Testament.
Book of Proverbs (Wikipedia) The Book of Proverbs (Hebrew: מִשְלֵי, Mišlê; Greek: Παροιμίαι; Latin: Liber Proverbiorum, “Proverbs (of Solomon)”) is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible traditionally ascribed to King Solomon and his students later appearing in the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different forms: in the Greek Septuagint (LXX) it became Παροιμίαι (Paroimiai, “Proverbs”); in the Latin Vulgate the title was Proverbia, from which the English name is derived.
Book of Revelation (Wikipedia) The Book of Revelation, also erroneously called the Book of Revelations, is the final book of the New Testament (and therefore the final book of the Christian Bible). Written in Koine Greek, its title is derived from the first word of the text: apokalypsis, meaning ‘unveiling’ or ‘revelation’. The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament canon. It occupies a central place in Christian eschatology.
Books of Kings (Wikipedia) The Book of Kings (Hebrew: סֵפֶר מְלָכִים, Sēfer Məlāḵīm) is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books (1–2 Kings) in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Israel also including the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel.
Boötes (Wikipedia) Boötes (/boʊˈoʊtiːz/ boh-OH-teez) is a constellation in the northern sky, located between 0° and +60° declination, and 13 and 16 hours of right ascension on the celestial sphere. The name comes from Latin: Boōtēs, which comes from Greek: Βοώτης, translit. Boṓtēs ‘herdsman’ or ‘plowman’ (literally, ‘ox-driver’; from βοῦς boûs ‘cow’).
Boron (Wikipedia) Boron is a chemical element; it has symbol B and atomic number 5. In its crystalline form it is a brittle, dark, lustrous metalloid; in its amorphous form it is a brown powder. As the lightest element of the boron group it has three valence electrons for forming covalent bonds, resulting in many compounds such as boric acid, the mineral sodium borate, and the ultra-hard crystals of boron carbide and boron nitride.
Borosilicate glass (Wikipedia) Borosilicate glass is a type of glass with silica and boron trioxide as the main glass-forming constituents. Borosilicate glasses are known for having very low coefficients of thermal expansion (≈3 × 10−6 K−1 at 20 °C), making them more resistant to thermal shock than any other common glass. Such glass is subjected to less thermal stress and can withstand temperature differentials without fracturing of about 165 °C (300 °F). It is commonly used for the construction of reagent bottles and flasks as well as lighting, electronics, and cookware.
Bosnia and Herzegovina (Wikipedia) Bosnia and Herzegovina (Serbo-Croatian: Bosna i Hercegovina, Босна и Херцеговина), sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe, situated on the Balkan Peninsula. It borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. In the south it has a 20 kilometres (12 miles) long coast on the Adriatic Sea, with the town of Neum being its only access to the sea. Bosnia has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern regions, the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, and in the northeast it is predominantly flat. Herzegovina, the smaller, southern region, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous. Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city.
Boston (Wikipedia) Boston (US: /ˈbɔːstən/), officially the City of Boston, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Massachusetts, and the cultural and financial center of New England in the Northeastern United States, with an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km2) and a population of 675,647 in 2020. Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area is the eleventh-largest in the country.
Bothell, Washington (Wikipedia) Bothell (/ˈbɒθəl/) is a city in King and Snohomish counties in the U.S. state of Washington. It is part of the Seattle metropolitan area, situated near the northeast end of Lake Washington. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 48,161 residents.
Botswana (Wikipedia) Botswana, officially the Republic of Botswana, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Botswana is topographically flat, with approximately 70 percent of its territory being the Kalahari Desert. It is bordered by South Africa to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the north and Zimbabwe to the northeast. Being a country of slightly over 2.4 million people, and roughly the size of France, Botswana is one of the most sparsely populated countries in the world. It is essentially the nation state of the Tswana people, who make up 79% of the population.
Boulevard Park, Washington (Wikipedia) Boulevard Park is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 5,287 at the 2010 census. Boulevard Park was part of the Riverton-Boulevard Park CDP in 2000 but was split for the 2010 census into its own CDP.
Brain in a vat (Wikipedia) In philosophy, the brain in a vat (BIV) is a scenario used in a variety of thought experiments intended to draw out certain features of human conceptions of knowledge, reality, truth, mind, consciousness, and meaning. It is a modernized version of René Descartes’s evil demon thought experiment, originated by Gilbert Harman. Found in many science fiction stories, it outlines a scenario in which a mad scientist, machine, or other entity might remove a person’s brain from the body, suspend it in a vat of life-sustaining liquid, and connect its neurons by wires to a supercomputer that would provide it with electrical impulses identical to those a brain normally receives. According to such stories, the computer would then be simulating reality (including appropriate responses to the brain’s own output) and the “disembodied” brain would continue to have perfectly normal conscious experiences, such as those of a person with an embodied brain, without these being related to objects or events in the real world.
Brave New World (Wikipedia) Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story’s protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Brazil (1985 film) (Wikipedia) Brazil is a 1985 science-fiction dystopian black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam and written by Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard. The film stars Jonathan Pryce and features Robert De Niro, Kim Greist, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Bob Hoskins, and Ian Holm.
Brazil (Wikipedia) Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest and easternmost country in South America and in Latin America. Brazil is the world’s fifth-largest country by area and the seventh most populous. Its capital is Brasília, and its most populous city is São Paulo. The federation is composed of the union of the 26 states and the Federal District. It is the only country in the Americas to have Portuguese as an official language. Brazil is one of the most multicultural and ethnically diverse nations, due to over a century of mass immigration from around the world.
Breccia (Wikipedia) Breccia (/ˈbrɛtʃiə, ˈbrɛʃ-/) is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix.
Bremerton, Washington (Wikipedia) Bremerton is a city in Kitsap County, Washington. The population was 43,505 at the 2020 census and an estimated 44,122 in 2021, making it the largest city on the Kitsap Peninsula. Bremerton is home to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and the Bremerton Annex of Naval Base Kitsap. Bremerton is connected to downtown Seattle by two ferries: a 60-minute ferry that carries both vehicles and walk-on passengers, and a 28-minute Fast Ferry that carries passengers and a limited number of bicycles.
Brier, Washington (Wikipedia) Brier is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is bordered by Mountlake Terrace to the west, Lynnwood to the north, Bothell to the east, and Lake Forest Park to the south. The population was 6,560 at the 2020 census.
British Antarctic Territory (Wikipedia) The British Antarctic Territory (BAT) is a sector of Antarctica claimed by the United Kingdom as one of its 14 British Overseas Territories, of which it is by far the largest by area. It comprises the region south of 60°S latitude and between longitudes 20°W and 80°W, forming a wedge shape that extends to the South Pole, overlapped by the Antarctic claims of Argentina (Argentine Antarctica) and Chile (Chilean Antarctic Territory). The claim to the region has been suspended since the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961.
British Columbia (Wikipedia) British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada. Situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, forests, lakes, mountains, inland deserts and grassy plains. British Columbia borders the province of Alberta to the east, the territories of Yukon and the Northwest Territories to the north, and the US states of Washington, Idaho and Montana to the south and Alaska to the northwest. With an estimated population of over 5.3 million as of 2023, it is Canada’s third-most populous province. The capital of British Columbia is Victoria, while the province’s largest city is Vancouver. Vancouver and its suburbs together make up the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada; with the 2021 census recording 2.6 million people in Metro Vancouver.
British Indian Ocean Territory (Wikipedia) The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) is an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom situated in the Indian Ocean, halfway between Tanzania and Indonesia. The territory comprises the seven atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands, many very small, amounting to a total land area of 60 square kilometres (23 square miles). The largest and most southerly island is Diego Garcia, 27 square kilometres (10 square miles), the site of a Joint Military Facility of the United Kingdom and the United States. Official administration is remote from London, though the local capital is often regarded as being on Diego Garcia.
British Overseas Territories (Wikipedia) The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) are the 14 territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom that, while not forming part of the United Kingdom itself, are part of its sovereign territory. The permanently inhabited territories are delegated varying degrees of internal self-governance, with the United Kingdom retaining responsibility for defence, foreign relations and internal security, and ultimate responsibility for good governance. Three of the territories are chiefly or only inhabited by military or scientific personnel, the rest hosting significant civilian populations. All fourteen have the British monarch as head of state. These UK government responsibilities are assigned to various departments of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and are subject to change.
Broadview, Seattle (Wikipedia) Broadview is a neighborhood in northwestern Seattle, Washington, United States.
Broadway (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Broadway is a major north–south thoroughfare in Seattle, Washington. The 1.6-mile-long (2.6 km) arterial runs north from Yesler Way at Yesler Terrace through the First Hill and Capitol Hill neighborhoods to East Roy Street. Broadway East (the directional designation changes at East Denny Way) continues north to East Highland Drive. North of there the street is made up of shorter segments: one from just south of East Blaine Street to just north of East Miller Street, another from East Roanoke Street to East Shelby Street, and the last from East Allison Street to Fuhrman Avenue East.
Broccoli (Wikipedia) Broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) is an edible green plant in the cabbage family (family Brassicaceae, genus Brassica) whose large flowering head, stalk and small associated leaves are eaten as a vegetable. Broccoli is classified in the Italica cultivar group of the species Brassica oleracea. Broccoli has large flower heads, usually dark green, arranged in a tree-like structure branching out from a thick stalk which is usually light green. The mass of flower heads is surrounded by leaves. Broccoli resembles cauliflower, which is a different but closely related cultivar group of the same Brassica species.
Bromine (Wikipedia) Bromine is a chemical element; it has symbol Br and atomic number 35. It is a volatile red-brown liquid at room temperature that evaporates readily to form a similarly coloured vapour. Its properties are intermediate between those of chlorine and iodine. Isolated independently by two chemists, Carl Jacob Löwig (in 1825) and Antoine Jérôme Balard (in 1826), its name was derived from the Ancient Greek βρῶμος (bromos) meaning “stench”, referring to its sharp and pungent smell.
Bronze (Wikipedia) Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such as arsenic or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as strength, ductility, or machinability.
Bronze Age (Wikipedia) The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age system proposed in 1836 by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen for classifying and studying ancient societies and history. It is also considered the second phase, of three, in the Metal Ages.
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Brooklyn Center is a first-ring suburban city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. In 1911, the area became a village formed from parts of Brooklyn Township and Crystal Lake Township. In 1966, Brooklyn Center became a charter city. The city has commercial and industrial development. The majority of land use is single-family homes. The population was 33,782 at the 2020 census, and the city has become the most ethnically diverse community in the state.
Brooklyn Park, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Brooklyn Park is a suburban city on the west bank of the Mississippi River, upstream from (north of) downtown Minneapolis in northern Hennepin County. It is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The population was 86,478 at the 2020 census. The city still has undeveloped land and farms, including the historic Eidem Homestead, a 1900s working farm that is a popular tourist attraction for families and school field trips. Brooklyn Park is considered both a second- and third-tier suburb of Minneapolis, because much of the land north of 85th Avenue was developed after 2000.
Bruce Lee (Wikipedia) Bruce Lee (Chinese: 李小龍; born Lee Jun-fan, 李振藩; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was a Hong Kong and American martial artist and actor. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with promoting Hong Kong action cinema and helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films.
Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary (Wikipedia) The Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary is a city park in the Mississippi River corridor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Just east of the city’s downtown district, the sanctuary includes towering limestone and sandstone bluffs that date back more than 450 million years, spring-fed wetlands, abundant bird life, and dramatic views of the downtown Saint Paul skyline and Mississippi River. The park was opened to the public on May 21, 2005, and was named after its early supporter U.S. Representative Bruce Vento.
Brute fact (Wikipedia) In contemporary philosophy, a brute fact is a fact that cannot be explained in terms of a deeper, more “fundamental” fact. There are two main ways to explain something: say what “brought it about”, or describe it at a more “fundamental” level. For example, a cat displayed on a computer screen can be explained, more “fundamentally”, in terms of certain voltages in bits of metal in the screen, which in turn can be explained, more “fundamentally”, in terms of certain subatomic particles moving in a certain manner. If one were to keep explaining the world in this way and reach a point at which no more “deeper” explanations can be given, then one would have found some facts which are brute or inexplicable, in the sense that we cannot give them an ontological explanation. As it might be put, there may exist some things that just are.
Bryant, Seattle (Wikipedia) Bryant is a residential neighborhood in northeast Seattle, Washington. According to the City of Seattle’s neighborhood maps (as pictured), it is bounded by 35th Avenue NE and NE 45th Place on the west, beyond which is Ravenna; Sand Point Way NE and 45th Ave NE on the east, beyond which are Laurelhurst and Windermere; and NE 75th Street and NE 65th Street on the north, beyond which are View Ridge and Wedgwood.
Bryn Mawr-Skyway, Washington (Wikipedia) Bryn Mawr-Skyway (pronounced /ˌbrɪnˈmɑːr/ from Welsh for “big hill”) is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 17,397 at the 2020 census.
Buckner Mountain (Wikipedia) Buckner Mountain (sometimes called Mount Buckner) is a tall peak in the North Cascades of Washington state and in the Stephen Mather Wilderness of North Cascades National Park. At 9,114 feet (2,778 m) in elevation it is the highest in Skagit County and one of about ten of Washington’s non-volcanic peaks above 9,000 feet high. It is ranked as the 14th highest peak in the state, and the third highest peak in North Cascades National Park.
Budapest (Wikipedia) Budapest is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and it was the largest city on the Danube river; today it is the second largest one. The city has an estimated population of 1,752,286 over a land area of about 525 square kilometres (203 square miles). Budapest, which is both a city and municipality, forms the centre of the Budapest metropolitan area, which has an area of 7,626 square kilometres (2,944 square miles) and a population of 3,303,786. It is a primate city, constituting 33% of the population of Hungary.
Buddhism (Wikipedia) Buddhism (/ˈbʊdɪzəm/ BUU-dih-zəm, US also /ˈbuːd-/ BOOD-), also known as Buddha Dharma, Bauddha and Dharmavinaya (transl. “doctrines and disciplines”), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in present-day North India as a śramaṇa–movement in the 5th century BCE, and gradually spread throughout much of Asia via the Silk Road. It is the world’s fourth-largest religion, with over 520 million followers (Buddhists) who comprise seven percent of the global population.
Bulgaria (Wikipedia) Bulgaria (/bʌlˈɡɛəriə, bʊl-/; Bulgarian: България, romanized: Bŭlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located west of the Black Sea and south of the Danube river, Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi) and is the 16th largest country in Europe. Sofia is the nation’s capital and largest city; other major cities include Burgas, Plovdiv, and Varna.
Bullitt Center (Wikipedia) The Bullitt Center is a commercial office building at the intersection of the Central District neighborhood, and Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington. It was officially opened on Earth Day, April 22, 2013. The Bullitt Center was designed to be the greenest commercial building in the world, and was certified as a “Living Building” by the International Living Future Institute in April 2015.
Burien, Washington (Wikipedia) Burien (/ˈbjʊəriən/ BURE-ee-ən) is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located south of Seattle on Puget Sound. As of the 2020 census, Burien’s population was 52,066, which is a 56.3% increase since incorporation in 1993, making it the 25th most populous city in Washington. An annexation in 2010 increased the city’s population significantly.
Burkina Faso (Wikipedia) Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa. It covers an area of 274,223 km^2 (105,878 sq mi), bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. As of 2021, the country had an estimated population of 23,674,480. Previously called the Republic of Upper Volta (1958–1984), it was renamed Burkina Faso by President Thomas Sankara. Its citizens are known as Burkinabè, and its capital and largest city is Ouagadougou.
Burlington, Washington (Wikipedia) Burlington is a city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. Its population was recorded as 9,152 in the 2020 census. Burlington is located approximately halfway between Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. The city is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Burma Plate (Wikipedia) The Burma Plate is a minor tectonic plate or microplate located in Southeast Asia, sometimes considered a part of the larger Eurasian Plate. The Andaman Islands, Nicobar Islands, and northwestern Sumatra are located on the plate. This island arc separates the Andaman Sea from the main Indian Ocean to the west.
Burundi (Wikipedia) Burundi, officially the Republic of Burundi, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the junction between the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa. It is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west; Lake Tanganyika lies along its southwestern border. The capital city is Gitega and the largest city is Bujumbura.
Butter (Wikipedia) Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 80% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread, melted as a condiment, and used as a fat in baking, sauce-making, pan frying, and other cooking procedures.
Butterfly (en.wikipedia.org) Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran suborder Rhopalocera, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The group comprises the superfamilies Hedyloidea (moth-butterflies in the Americas) and Papilionoidea (all others). The oldest butterfly fossils have been dated to the Paleocene, about 56 million years ago, though they likely originated in the Late Cretaceous, about 101 million years ago.
Butterfly Cluster (Wikipedia) The Butterfly Cluster (cataloged as Messier 6 or M6, and as NGC 6405) is an open cluster of stars in the southern constellation of Scorpius. Its name derives from the resemblance of its shape to a butterfly.
Byblos (Wikipedia) Byblos (/ˈbɪblɒs/ BIB-loss; Greek: Βύβλος), also known as Jebeil, Jbeil or Jubayl (Arabic: جُبَيْل, romanized: Jubayl, locally Jbeil [ʒbeːl]; Phoenician: 𐤂𐤁𐤋, gbl, probably Gebal), is a city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. It is believed to have been first occupied between 8800 and 7000 BC and continuously inhabited since 5000 BC, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. During its history, Byblos was part of numerous civilisations, including Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, Fatimid, Genoese, Mamluk and Ottoman. The city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
C. S. Lewis (Wikipedia) Clive Staples Lewis FBA (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
Cabinda Province (Wikipedia) Cabinda (formerly called Portuguese Congo, Kongo: Kabinda) is an exclave and province of Angola, a status that has been disputed by several political organizations in the territory. The capital city is also called Cabinda, known locally as Tchiowa, Tsiowa or Kiowa. The province is divided into four municipalities—Belize, Buco-Zau, Cabinda and Cacongo.
Caelum (Wikipedia) Caelum /ˈsiːləm/ is a faint constellation in the southern sky, introduced in the 1750s by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille and counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name means “chisel” in Latin, and it was formerly known as Caelum Sculptorium (“Engraver’s Chisel”); it is a rare word, unrelated to the far more common Latin caelum, meaning “sky”, “heaven”, or “atmosphere”. It is the eighth-smallest constellation, and subtends a solid angle of around 0.038 steradians, just less than that of Corona Australis.
Cal Anderson Park (Wikipedia) Cal Anderson Park is a public park on Seattle, [Washington](Washington’s Capitol Hill that includes Lincoln Reservoir and Bobby Morris Playfield.
Calcium (Wikipedia) Calcium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar to its heavier homologues strontium and barium. It is the fifth most abundant element in Earth’s crust, and the third most abundant metal, after iron and aluminium. The most common calcium compound on Earth is calcium carbonate, found in limestone and the fossilised remnants of early sea life; gypsum, anhydrite, fluorite, and apatite are also sources of calcium. The name derives from Latin calx “lime”, which was obtained from heating limestone.
Calculus (Wikipedia) Calculus is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations.
California (Wikipedia) California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2 million residents across a total area of approximately 163,696 square miles (423,970 km2), it is the most populous U.S. state and the third-largest by area. It is also the most populated subnational entity in North America and the 34th most populous in the world. The Greater Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas are the nation’s second and fifth most populous urban regions respectively, with the former having more than 18.7 million residents and the latter having over 9.6 million. Sacramento is the state’s capital, while Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state and the second most populous city in the country. San Francisco is the second most densely populated major city in the country. Los Angeles County is the country’s most populous, while San Bernardino County is the largest county by area in the country. California borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, the Mexican state of Baja California to the south; and it has a coastline along the Pacific Ocean to the west.
Calochortus nuttallii (Wikipedia) Calochortus nuttallii, also known as the sego lily, is a bulbous perennial plant that is endemic to the Western United States. The common name of sego comes from a similar Shoshone word. It is the state flower of Utah.
Calvin Coolidge (Wikipedia) Calvin Coolidge (born John Calvin Coolidge Jr.; /ˈkuːlɪdʒ/; July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933) was an American attorney and politician who served as the 30th president of the United States from 1923 to 1929.
Calymmian (Wikipedia) The Calymmian Period (from Ancient Greek: κάλυμμα, romanized: kálymma, meaning “cover”) is the first geologic period in the Mesoproterozoic Era and lasted from 1600 Mya to 1400 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Calystegia silvatica (Wikipedia) The morning glory Calystegia silvatica (syn. Calystegia sepium silvatica, C. inflata, and C. sylvestris) is known by the common name giant bindweed or large bindweed. It is the largest species of bindweed and is a strong rampant climber.
Cambrian (Wikipedia) The Cambrian Period ( /ˈkæmbri.ən, ˈkeɪm-/ KAM-bree-ən, KAYM-; sometimes symbolized Ꞓ) is the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established as “Cambrian series” by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latin name for ‘Cymru’ (Wales), where Britain’s Cambrian rocks are best exposed. Sedgwick identified the layer as part of his task, along with Roderick Murchison, to subdivide the large “Transition Series”, although the two geologists disagreed for a while on the appropriate categorization. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where “soft” parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some later periods.
Camelopardalis (Wikipedia) Camelopardalis /kəˌmɛləˈpɑːrdəlɪs/ is a large but faint constellation of the northern sky representing a giraffe. The constellation was introduced in 1612 or 1613 by Petrus Plancius. Some older astronomy books give Camelopardalus or Camelopardus as alternative forms of the name, but the version recognized by the International Astronomical Union matches the genitive form, seen suffixed to most of its key stars.
Cameroon (Wikipedia) Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It shares boundaries with Nigeria to the west and north, Chad to the northeast, the Central African Republic to the east, and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Its coastline lies on the Bight of Biafra, part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West Africa and Central Africa, it has been categorized as being in both camps. Its nearly 27 million people speak 250 native languages, in addition to the national tongues of English and French, or both.
Canada (Wikipedia) Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world’s second-largest country by total area, with the world’s longest coastline. Its border with the United States is the world’s longest international land border. The country is characterized by a wide range of both meteorologic and geological regions. It is sparsely inhabited, with the vast majority residing south of the 55th parallel in urban areas. Canada’s capital is Ottawa and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.
Canary Islands (Wikipedia) The Canary Islands (/kəˈnɛəri/, Spanish: Canarias, Spanish: [kaˈnaɾjas]), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish region, autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are 100 kilometres (62 miles) west of Morocco and the Western Sahara. They are the southernmost of the autonomous communities of Spain. The islands have a population of 2.2 million people and are the most populous special territory of the European Union.
Cancer (constellation) (Wikipedia) Cancer is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac and is located in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Its old astronomical symbol is ♋︎. Its name is Latin for crab and it is commonly represented as one. Cancer is a medium-size constellation with an area of 506 square degrees and its stars are rather faint, its brightest star Beta Cancri having an apparent magnitude of 3.5. It contains two stars with known planets, including 55 Cancri, which has five: one super-earth and four gas giants, one of which is in the habitable zone and as such has expected temperatures similar to Earth. At the (angular) heart of this sector of our celestial sphere is Praesepe (Messier 44), one of the closest open clusters to Earth and a popular target for amateur astronomers.
Canes Venatici (Wikipedia) Canes Venatici (/ˈkeɪniːz vɪˈnætɪsaɪ/) is one of the 88 constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It is a small northern constellation that was created by Johannes Hevelius in the 17th century. Its name is Latin for ‘hunting dogs’, and the constellation is often depicted in illustrations as representing the dogs of Boötes the Herdsman, a neighboring constellation.
Canis Major (Wikipedia) Canis Major is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included in Ptolemy’s 48 constellations, and is counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin for “greater dog” in contrast to Canis Minor, the “lesser dog”; both figures are commonly represented as following the constellation of Orion the hunter through the sky. The Milky Way passes through Canis Major and several open clusters lie within its borders, most notably M41.
Canis Minor (Wikipedia) Canis Minor /ˌkeɪnɪs ˈmaɪnər/ is a small constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. In the second century, it was included as an asterism, or pattern, of two stars in Ptolemy’s 48 constellations, and it is counted among the 88 modern constellations. Its name is Latin for “lesser dog”, in contrast to Canis Major, the “greater dog”; both figures are commonly represented as following the constellation of Orion the hunter.
Cannabis (drug) (Wikipedia) Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various traditional medicines for centuries. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the main psychoactive component of cannabis, which is one of the 483 known compounds in the plant, including at least 65 other cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol (CBD). Cannabis can be used by smoking, vaporizing, within food, or as an extract.
Cannabis ruderalis (Wikipedia) Cannabis ruderalis is a variety, subspecies, or species of Cannabis native to Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. It contains a relatively low quantity of psychoactive compound tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) Some scholars accept C. ruderalis as its own species due to its unique traits and phenotypes which distinguish it from C. indica and C. sativa; others debate whether ruderalis is a subdivision under C. sativa.
Canon (film) (Wikipedia) Canon is a 1964 National Film Board of Canada animated short co-directed by Norman McLaren and Grant Munro that offers a visual representation of the canon musical form through three animated segments. The soundtrack combines both a recorded classical score by Eldon Rathburn and electronic sounds produced via synthesizer.
Canon (music) (Wikipedia) In music, a canon is a contrapuntal (counterpoint-based) compositional technique that employs a melody with one or more imitations of the melody played after a given duration (e.g., quarter rest, one measure, etc.). The initial melody is called the leader (or dux), while the imitative melody, which is played in a different voice, is called the follower (or comes). The follower must imitate the leader, either as an exact replication of its rhythms and intervals or some transformation thereof. Repeating canons in which all voices are musically identical are called rounds—familiar singalong versions of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and “Frère Jacques” that call for each successive group of voices to begin the same song a bar or two after the previous group began are popular examples.
Cape Alava (Wikipedia) Cape Alava is a cape in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Located in Clallam County, Washington. The cape is situated within Olympic National Park and the Makah Indian Reservation, and is accessible via a 3-mile (5 km) boardwalk hike from a ranger station in the park.
Capitol Hill, Seattle (Wikipedia) Capitol Hill is a densely populated residential district in Seattle, Washington, United States. One of the city’s most popular nightlife and entertainment districts, it is home to a historic gay village and vibrant counterculture community.
Capricornus (Wikipedia) Capricornus /ˌkæprɪˈkɔːrnəs/ is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for “horned goat” or “goat horn” or “having horns like a goat’s”, and it is commonly represented in the form of a sea goat: a mythical creature that is half goat, half fish.
Captain Midnight broadcast signal intrusion (Wikipedia) On April 27, 1986, American electrical engineer and business owner John R. MacDougall (using the pseudonym “Captain Midnight”) jammed the Home Box Office (HBO) satellite signal on Galaxy 1 during a showing of the film The Falcon and the Snowman. The message, broadcast for four and a half minutes, was seen by the eastern half of the United States (accounting for more than half of HBO’s 14.6 million subscribers at the time) protesting HBO’s rates for satellite dish owners, which he considered too expensive. MacDougall was working at his second job as an operations engineer at the Central Florida Teleport uplink station in Ocala, Florida, and vied with a technician at HBO’s communications center in Hauppauge, New York, for control of the transmission. The technician attempted to increase uplink power but gave up because of the risk of damaging the satellite. MacDougall eventually abandoned his control of the satellite.
Carbon (Wikipedia) Carbon (from Latin carbo ‘coal’) is a chemical element; it has symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 electrons. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon makes up about 0.025 percent of Earth’s crust. Three isotopes occur naturally, 12C and 13C being stable, while 14C is a radionuclide, decaying with a half-life of 5,700 years. Carbon is one of the few elements known since antiquity.
Carbon star (Wikipedia) A carbon star (C-type star) is typically an asymptotic giant branch star, a luminous red giant, whose atmosphere contains more carbon than oxygen. The two elements combine in the upper layers of the star, forming carbon monoxide, which consumes most of the oxygen in the atmosphere, leaving carbon atoms free to form other carbon compounds, giving the star a “sooty” atmosphere and a strikingly ruby red appearance. There are also some dwarf and supergiant carbon stars, with the more common giant stars sometimes being called classical carbon stars to distinguish them.
Carboniferous (Wikipedia) The Carboniferous (/ˌkɑːrbəˈnɪfərəs/ KAR-bə-NIF-ər-əs) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago (mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, 298.9 mya. In North America, the Carboniferous is often treated as two separate geological periods, the earlier Mississippian and the later Pennsylvanian.
Caribbean (Wikipedia) The Caribbean (/ˌkærɪˈbiːən, kəˈrɪbiən/ KARR-ih-BEE-ən, kə-RIB-ee-ən, locally /ˈkærɪbiːæn/ KARR-ih-bee-an; Spanish: el Caribe; French: les Caraïbes; Dutch: de Caraïben) is a subregion of the Americas that includes the Caribbean Sea and its islands, some of which are surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some of which border both the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean; the nearby coastal areas on the mainland are sometimes also included in the region. The region is south-east of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and north of South America.
Caribbean Plate (Wikipedia) The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America.
Caribbean Sea (Wikipedia) The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and southwest, to the north by the Greater Antilles starting with Cuba, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, and to the south by the northern coast of South America. The Gulf of Mexico lies to the northwest. The entire Caribbean Sea area, the numerous islands of the West Indies, and adjacent mainland coastal regions are collectively known as the Caribbean.
Carina (constellation) (Wikipedia) Carina (/kəˈraɪnə, kəˈriːnə/ kə-RY-nə, -⁠REE-) is a constellation in the southern sky. Its name is Latin for the keel of a ship, and it was the southern foundation of the larger constellation of Argo Navis (the ship Argo) until it was divided into three pieces, the other two being Puppis (the poop deck), and Vela (the sails of the ship).
Carkeek Park (Wikipedia) Carkeek Park is a 216 acres (87 ha) park located in the Broadview neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. The park contains Piper Orchard, Pipers Creek (and its tributaries Venema Creek and Mohlendorph Creek), play and picnic areas, picnic shelters, and hiking trails. A pedestrian bridge across the main lines of the BNSF Railway connects to the Carkeek Park sand beach on Puget Sound. Park program activities are largely out of the Carkeek Park Environmental Learning Center.
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (Wikipedia) Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (8 March 1714 – 14 December 1788), also formerly spelled Karl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, and commonly abbreviated C. P. E. Bach, was a German Classical period composer and musician, the fifth child and second surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach.
Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Gardens (Wikipedia) The Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Gardens (7 acres) are botanical gardens located on the grounds of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks at 3015 NW 54th Street, Seattle, Washington.
Carnelian (Wikipedia) Carnelian (also spelled cornelian) is a brownish-red mineral commonly used as a semiprecious stone. Similar to carnelian is sard, which is generally harder and darker; the difference is not rigidly defined, and the two names are often used interchangeably. Both carnelian and sard are varieties of the silica mineral chalcedony colored by impurities of iron oxide. The color can vary greatly, ranging from pale orange to an intense almost-black coloration. Significant localities include Yanacodo (Peru); Ratnapura (Sri Lanka); and Thailand. It has been found in Indonesia, Brazil, India, Russia (Siberia), and Germany. In the United States, the official State Gem of Maryland is also a variety of carnelian called Patuxent River stone.
Caroline Plate (Wikipedia) The Caroline Plate is a minor tectonic plate that straddles the Equator in the eastern hemisphere located north of New Guinea. It forms a subduction zone along the border with the Bird’s Head Plate and other minor plates of the New Guinea region to the south. A transform boundary forms the northern border with the Pacific Plate. Along the border with the Philippine Sea Plate is a convergent boundary that transitions into a rift.
Carpal tunnel syndrome (Wikipedia) Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the collection of symptoms and signs associated with median neuropathy at the carpal tunnel. Most CTS is related to idiopathic compression of the median nerve as it travels through the wrist at the carpal tunnel (IMNCT). Idiopathic means that there is no other disease process contributing to pressure on the nerve. As with most structural issues, it occurs in both hands, and the strongest risk factor is genetics.
Cartesian coordinate system (Wikipedia) In geometry, a Cartesian coordinate system (UK: /kɑːrˈtiːzjən/, US: /kɑːrˈtiːʒən/) in a plane is a coordinate system that specifies each point uniquely by a pair of real numbers called coordinates, which are the signed distances to the point from two fixed perpendicular oriented lines, called coordinate lines, coordinate axes or just axes (plural of axis) of the system. The point where they meet is called the origin and has (0, 0) as coordinates.
Cascade Range (Wikipedia) The Cascade Range or Cascades is a major mountain range of western North America, extending from southern British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to Northern California. It includes both non-volcanic mountains, such as many of those in the North Cascades, and the notable volcanoes known as the High Cascades. The small part of the range in British Columbia is referred to as the Canadian Cascades or, locally, as the Cascade Mountains. The highest peak in the range is Mount Rainier in Washington at 14,411 feet (4,392 m).
Cascadia subduction zone (Wikipedia) The Cascadia subduction zone is a 960 km (600 mi) fault at a convergent plate boundary, about 112-160 km (70-100 mi) off the Pacific Shore, that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States. It is capable of producing 9.0+ magnitude earthquakes and tsunamis that could reach 30m (100 ft). The Oregon Department of Emergency Management estimates shaking would last 5-7 minutes along the coast, with strength and intensity decreasing further from the epicenter. It is a very long, sloping subduction zone where the Explorer, Juan de Fuca, and Gorda plates move to the east and slide below the much larger mostly continental North American Plate. The zone varies in width and lies offshore beginning near Cape Mendocino, Northern California, passing through Oregon and Washington, and terminating at about Vancouver Island in British Columbia.
Cashmere, Washington (Wikipedia) Cashmere is a city in Chelan County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Wenatchee–East Wenatchee Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 3,248 at the 2020 census.
Caspian Sea (Wikipedia) The Caspian Sea is the world’s largest inland body of water, often described as the world’s largest lake and sometimes referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, west of the broad steppe of Central Asia, south of the fertile plains of Southern Russia in Eastern Europe, and north of the mountainous Iranian Plateau. It covers a surface area of 371,000 km2 (143,000 sq mi) (excluding the highly saline lagoon of Garabogazköl to its east), an area approximately equal to that of Japan, with a volume of 78,200 km3 (19,000 cu mi). It has a salinity of approximately 1.2% (12 g/L), about a third of the salinity of average seawater. It is bounded by Kazakhstan to the northeast, Russia to the northwest, Azerbaijan to the southwest, Iran to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southeast.
Cassiopeia (constellation) (Wikipedia) Cassiopeia is a constellation and asterism in the northern sky named after the vain queen Cassiopeia, mother of Andromeda, in Greek mythology, who boasted about her unrivaled beauty. Cassiopeia was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century Greek astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. It is easily recognizable due to its distinctive ‘W’ shape, formed by five bright stars.
Cast-iron cookware (Wikipedia) Heavy-duty cookware made of cast iron is valued for its heat retention, durability, ability to maintain high temperatures for longer time duration, and non-stick cooking when properly seasoned. Seasoning is also used to protect bare cast iron from rust. Types of cast iron cookware include frying pans, dutch ovens, griddles, waffle irons, flattop grills, panini presses, crepe makers, deep fryers, tetsubin, woks, potjies, and karahi.
Castor (star) (Wikipedia) Castor is the second-brightest object in the zodiac constellation of Gemini. It has the Bayer designation α Geminorum, which is Latinised to Alpha Geminorum and abbreviated Alpha Gem or α Gem. With an apparent visual magnitude of 1.58, it is one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Castor appears singular to the naked eye, but it is actually a sextuple star system organized into three binary pairs. Although it is the ‘α’ (alpha) member of the constellation, it is fainter than ‘β’ (beta) Geminorum, Pollux.
cat (Unix) (Wikipedia) cat is a standard Unix utility that reads files sequentially, writing them to standard output. The name is derived from its function to (con)catenate files (from Latin catenare, “to chain”). It has been ported to a number of operating systems. ¶ The other primary purpose of cat, aside from concatenation, is file printing — allowing the computer user to view the contents of a file. Printing is the most common use of cat.
Catalan number (Wikipedia) In combinatorial mathematics, the Catalan numbers are a sequence of natural numbers that occur in various counting problems, often involving recursively defined objects. They are named after the French-Belgian mathematician Eugène Charles Catalan.
Catalonia (Wikipedia) Catalonia (/ˌkætəˈloʊniə/; Catalan: Catalunya [kətəˈluɲə]; Spanish: Cataluña [kataˈluɲa]; Occitan: Catalonha [kataˈluɲa]) is an autonomous community of Spain, designated as a nationality by its Statute of Autonomy. Most of its territory (except the Val d’Aran) lies on the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula, to the south of the Pyrenees mountain range. Catalonia is administratively divided into four provinces or eight vegueries (regions), which are in turn divided into 42 comarques. The capital and largest city, Barcelona, is the second-most populous municipality in Spain and the fifth-most populous urban area in the European Union.
Cathcart, Washington (Wikipedia) Cathcart is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 2,458 at the 2010 census. Based on per capita income, one of the more reliable measures of affluence, Cathcart ranks 45th of 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked. Cathcart was named for Isaac Cathcart, a lumberman, entrepreneur, and Snohomish County pioneer.
Cathedral (Wikipedia) A cathedral is a church that contains the cathedra (Latin for ‘seat’) of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of “cathedral” are usually specific to those Christian denominations with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and some Lutheran churches. Church buildings embodying the functions of a cathedral first appeared in Italy, Gaul, Spain, and North Africa in the 4th century, but cathedrals did not become universal within the Western Catholic Church until the 12th century, by which time they had developed architectural forms, institutional structures, and legal identities distinct from parish churches, monastic churches, and episcopal residences. The cathedral is more important in the hierarchy than the church because it is from the cathedral that the bishop governs the area under his or her administrative authority
Cathetus (Wikipedia) In a right triangle, a cathetus (originally from the Greek word Κάθετος; plural: catheti), commonly known as a leg, is either of the sides that are adjacent to the right angle. It is occasionally called a “side about the right angle”. The side opposite the right angle is the hypotenuse. In the context of the hypotenuse, the catheti are sometimes referred to simply as “the other two sides”.
Cathode-ray tube (Wikipedia) A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a frame of video on an analog television set (TV), digital raster graphics on a computer monitor, or other phenomena like radar targets. A CRT in a TV is commonly called a picture tube. CRTs have also been used as memory devices, in which case the screen is not intended to be visible to an observer. The term cathode ray was used to describe electron beams when they were first discovered, before it was understood that what was emitted from the cathode was a beam of electrons.
Catholic Church (Wikipedia) The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.378 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2021. It is among the world’s oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization. The church consists of 24 sui iuris churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The Diocese of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small independent city-state enclave within the Italian capital city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state.
Cattle (Wikipedia) Cattle (Bos taurus) are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus Bos. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult males are referred to as bulls.
Cedar Park, Seattle (Wikipedia) Cedar Park is a neighborhood in the Lake City district of Seattle, Washington. The name generally refers to the residential neighborhoods east of Lake City adjoining Lake Washington.
Cedar River (Washington) (Wikipedia) The Cedar River is a river in the U.S. state of Washington. About 45 miles (72 km) long, it originates in the Cascade Range and flows generally west and northwest, emptying into the southern end of Lake Washington. Its upper watershed is a protected area called the Cedar River Watershed, which provides drinking water for the greater Seattle area.
Celestial sphere (Wikipedia) In astronomy and navigation, the celestial sphere is an abstract sphere that has an arbitrarily large radius and is concentric to Earth. All objects in the sky can be conceived as being projected upon the inner surface of the celestial sphere, which may be centered on Earth or the observer. If centered on the observer, half of the sphere would resemble a hemispherical screen over the observing location.
Cenozoic (Wikipedia) The Cenozoic (/ˌsiːnəˈzoʊ.ɪk, ˌsɛn-/ SEE-nə-ZOH-ik, SEN-ə-; lit. ’new life’) is Earth’s current geological era, representing the last 66 million years of Earth’s history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals and angiosperms (flowering plants). It is the latest of three geological eras, preceded by the Mesozoic and Paleozoic. The Cenozoic started with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, when many species, including the non-avian dinosaurs, became extinct in an event attributed by most experts to the impact of a large asteroid or other celestial body, the Chicxulub impactor.
Centaurus (Wikipedia) Centaurus /sɛnˈtɔːrəs, -ˈtɑːr-/ is a bright constellation in the southern sky. One of the largest constellations, Centaurus was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. In Greek mythology, Centaurus represents a centaur; a creature that is half human, half horse (another constellation named after a centaur is one from the zodiac: Sagittarius). Notable stars include Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to the Solar System, its neighbour in the sky Beta Centauri, and V766 Centauri, one of the largest stars yet discovered. The constellation also contains Omega Centauri, the brightest globular cluster as visible from Earth and the largest identified in the Milky Way, possibly a remnant of a dwarf galaxy.
Central African Republic (Wikipedia) The Central African Republic (CAR), formerly known as Ubangi-Shari, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest, and Cameroon to the west. Bangui is the country’s capital and largest city, at the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Central African Republic covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres (240,000 sq mi). As of 2021, it had an estimated population of around 5.5 million. As of 2024, the Central African Republic is the scene of a civil war, which has been ongoing since 2012.
Central African Republic Civil War (Wikipedia) The Central African Republic Civil War is an ongoing civil war in the Central African Republic (CAR) involving the government, rebels from the Séléka coalition, and Anti-balaka militias.
Central America (Wikipedia) Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the south, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Central America is usually defined as consisting of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Within Central America is the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, which extends from northern Guatemala to central Panama. Due to the presence of several active geologic faults and the Central America Volcanic Arc, there is a high amount of seismic activity in the region, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, which has resulted in death, injury, and property damage.
Central Asia (Wikipedia) Central Asia is a subregion of Asia that stretches from the Caspian Sea in the southwest and Eastern Europe in the northwest to Western China and Mongolia in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. It includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The countries as a group are also colloquially referred to as the “-stans” as all have names ending with the Persian suffix “-stan” (meaning “land of”) in both respective native languages and most other languages.
Central District, Seattle (Wikipedia) The Central Area, commonly called the Central District or The CD, is a mostly residential district in Seattle located east of downtown and First Hill (12th Avenue and Rainier Avenue); west of Madrona, Leschi and Mt. Baker; south of Capitol Hill, and north of Rainier Valley. Historically, the Central District has been one of Seattle’s most racially and ethnically diverse neighborhoods, and was once the center of Seattle’s black community and a major hub of African-American businesses.
Central Europe (Wikipedia) Central Europe is a geographical region of Europe between Eastern, Southern, Western and Northern Europe. Central Europe is known for its cultural diversity; however, countries in this region also share historical and cultural similarities.
Central Intelligence Agency (Wikipedia) The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; /ˌsiː.aɪˈeɪ/), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, and analyzing national security information from around the world, primarily through the use of human intelligence (HUMINT) and conducting covert action through its Directorate of Operations. As a principal member of the United States Intelligence Community (IC), the CIA reports to the Director of National Intelligence and is primarily focused on providing intelligence for the President and Cabinet of the United States. Following the dissolution of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman created the Central Intelligence Group under the direction of a Director of Central Intelligence by presidential directive on January 22, 1946, and this group was transformed into the Central Intelligence Agency by implementation of the National Security Act of 1947.
Cepheus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Cepheus is a constellation in the far northern sky, named after Cepheus, a king of Aethiopia in Greek mythology. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the second century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 constellations in the modern times.
Cetus (Wikipedia) Cetus (/ˈsiːtəs/) is a constellation, sometimes called ’the whale’ in English. The Cetus was a sea monster in Greek mythology which both Perseus and Heracles needed to slay. Cetus is in the region of the sky that contains other water-related constellations: Aquarius, Pisces and Eridanus.
Chad (Wikipedia) Chad, officially the Republic of Chad, is a country located at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. The landlocked country is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon to the southwest, Nigeria to the southwest (at Lake Chad), and Niger to the west. Chad has a population of 16 million, of which 1.6 million live in the capital and largest city of N’Djamena. With a total area of around 1,300,000 km2 (500,000 sq mi), Chad is the fifth-largest country in Africa and the twentieth largest nation by area in the world.
Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager (Wikipedia) Chad Vader: Day Shift Manager is an American fan web sitcom created by Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, who wrote, directed, and appeared in the series, which parodies Star Wars. The show’s central character is Chad Vader, the day-shift manager at the fictional supermarket Empire Market, who clashes with his customers and employees.
Chalcedony (Wikipedia) Chalcedony (/kælˈsɛdəni/ kal-SED-ə-nee, or /ˈkælsəˌdoʊni/ KAL-sə-doh-nee) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monoclinic. Chalcedony’s standard chemical structure (based on the chemical structure of quartz) is SiO2 (silicon dioxide).
Chalcolithic (Wikipedia) The Chalcolithic (also called the Copper Age and Eneolithic) is an archaeological period characterized by the increasing use of smelted copper. It follows the Neolithic and precedes the Bronze Age. It occurs at different periods in different areas, and is absent in some parts of the world, such as Russia. Stone tools were still predominantly used during this period.
Chamaeleon (Wikipedia) Chamaeleon (/kəˈmiːliən/) is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It is named after the chameleon, a kind of lizard. It was first defined in the 16th century.
Chamber music (Wikipedia) Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers, with one performer to a part (in contrast to orchestral music, in which each string part is played by a number of performers). However, by convention, it usually does not include solo instrument performances.
Charles Eastman (Wikipedia) Charles Alexander Eastman (February 19, 1858 – January 8, 1939, born Hakadah and later named Ohíye S’a, sometimes written Ohiyesa) was an American physician, writer, and social reformer. He was the first Native American to be certified in Western medicine and was “one of the most prolific authors and speakers on Sioux ethnohistory and American Indian affairs” in the early 20th century.
Charles Fort (Wikipedia) Charles Hoy Fort (August 6, 1874 – May 3, 1932) was an American writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The terms “Fortean” and “Forteana” are sometimes used to characterize various such phenomena. Fort’s books sold well and are still in print. His work continues to inspire admirers, who refer to themselves as “Forteans”, and has influenced some aspects of science fiction.
Charles Manson (Wikipedia) Charles “Charlie” Milles Manson (né Maddox; November 12, 1934 – November 19, 2017) was an American criminal, cult leader and musician who led the Manson Family, a cult based in California, in the late 1960s. Some of the members committed a series of at least nine murders at four locations in July and August 1969. In 1971, Manson was convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder for the deaths of seven people, including the film actress Sharon Tate. The prosecution contended that, while Manson never directly ordered the murders, his ideology constituted an overt act of conspiracy.
Charlie Chaplin (Wikipedia) Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry’s most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy.
Chechnya (Wikipedia) Chechnya, officially the Chechen Republic, is a republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, between the Caspian Sea and Black Sea. The republic forms a part of the North Caucasian Federal District, and shares land borders with Georgia to its south; with the Russian republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia-Alania to its east, north, and west; and with Stavropol Krai to its northwest.
Chehalis River (Washington) (Wikipedia) The Chehalis River (/ʃəˈheɪlɪs/ shə-HAY-lis) is a river in Washington in the United States. It originates in several forks in southwestern Washington, flows east, then north, then west, in a large curve, before emptying into Grays Harbor, an estuary of the Pacific Ocean. The river is the largest solely contained drainage basin in the state.
Chelan County, Washington (Wikipedia) Chelan County (/ʃəˈlæn/, shə-LAN) is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 79,074. The county seat and largest city is Wenatchee. The county was created out of Okanogan and Kittitas Counties on March 13, 1899. It derives its name from a Chelan Indian word meaning “deep water,” likely a reference to 55-mile (89 km)-long Lake Chelan, which reaches a maximum depth of 1,486 feet (453 m).
Chemical compound (Wikipedia) A chemical compound is a chemical substance composed of many identical molecules (or molecular entities) containing atoms from more than one chemical element held together by chemical bonds. A molecule consisting of atoms of only one element is therefore not a compound. A compound can be transformed into a different substance by a chemical reaction, which may involve interactions with other substances. In this process, bonds between atoms may be broken and/or new bonds formed.
Chemical element (Wikipedia) A chemical element is a chemical substance that cannot be broken down into other substances. The basic particle that constitutes a chemical element is the atom, and each chemical element is distinguished by the number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms, known as its atomic number. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8, meaning that each oxygen atom has 8 protons in its nucleus. This is in contrast to chemical compounds and mixtures, which contain atoms with more than one atomic number.
Chemically peculiar star (Wikipedia) In astrophysics, chemically peculiar stars (CP stars) are stars with distinctly unusual metal abundances, at least in their surface layers.
Chemistry (Wikipedia) Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during reactions with other substances. Chemistry also addresses the nature of chemical bonds in chemical compounds.
Chert (Wikipedia) Chert (/ˈtʃɜːrt/) is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a chemical precipitate or a diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood.
Chester A. Arthur (Wikipedia) Chester Alan Arthur (October 5, 1829[b] – November 18, 1886) was an American politician who served as the 21st president of the United States from 1881 to 1885. He was a Republican lawyer from New York who briefly served as the 20th vice president under President James A. Garfield. Arthur assumed the presidency after Garfield’s death on September 19, 1881, and served the remainder of his term until March 4, 1885.
Chicago (Wikipedia) Chicago (/ʃɪˈkɑːɡoʊ/ shih-KAH-goh, locally also /ʃɪˈkɔːɡoʊ/ shih-KAW-goh; Miami-Illinois: Shikaakwa; Ojibwe: Zhigaagong) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and the third-most populous in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is also the most populous city in the Midwest. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area.
Children of Men (Wikipedia) Children of Men is a 2006 dystopian action thriller film directed and co-written by Alfonso Cuarón. The screenplay, based on P. D. James’ 1992 novel The Children of Men, was credited to five writers, with Clive Owen making uncredited contributions. The film is set in 2027 when two decades of human infertility have left society on the brink of collapse. Asylum seekers seek sanctuary in the United Kingdom, where they are subjected to detention and refoulement by the government. Owen plays civil servant Theo Faron, who tries to help refugee Kee (Clare-Hope Ashitey) escape the chaos. Children of Men also stars Julianne Moore, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Pam Ferris, Charlie Hunnam, and Michael Caine.
Chile (Wikipedia) Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Chile had a population of 17.5 million as of the latest census in 2017 and has a territorial area of 756,102 square kilometers (291,933 sq mi), sharing borders with Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. The country also controls several Pacific islands, including Juan Fernández, Isla Salas y Gómez, Desventuradas, and Easter Island, and claims about 1,250,000 square kilometers (480,000 sq mi) of Antarctica as the Chilean Antarctic Territory. The capital and largest city of Chile is Santiago, and the national language is Spanish.
Chilton County, Alabama (Wikipedia) Chilton County is a county located in the central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 45,014. The county seat is Clanton. Its name is in honor of William Parish Chilton, Sr. (1810–1871), a lawyer who became Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and later represented Montgomery County in the Congress of the Confederate States of America.
China (Wikipedia) China (Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó), officially the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world’s second-most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and borders fourteen countries by land, tied with Russia as having the most of any country in the world. With an area of nearly 9.6 million square kilometres (3,700,000 sq mi), it is the world’s third largest country by total land area. The country consists of 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities, and two special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). The national capital is Beijing, and the most populous city and largest financial center is Shanghai.
China–United States trade war (Wikipedia) An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump began setting tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the goal of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. says are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires transfer of American technology to China. In response to US trade measures, the Chinese government accused the Trump administration of engaging in nationalist protectionism and took retaliatory action. After the trade war escalated through 2019, in January 2020 the two sides reached a tense phase one agreement; it expired in December 2021 with China failing by a wide margin to reach its targets for U.S. imports to China. By the end of the Trump presidency, the trade war was met with some criticism. His successor, Joe Biden, however, has kept the tariffs in place.
Chinatown–International District, Seattle (Wikipedia) The Chinatown–International District of Seattle, Washington (also known as the abbreviated CID) is the center of the city’s Asian American community. Within the district are the three neighborhoods known as Chinatown, Japantown and Little Saigon, named for the concentration of businesses owned by people of Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese descent, respectively. The geographic area also once included Manilatown.
Chinatown, San Francisco (Wikipedia) The Chinatown centered on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street in San Francisco, California, (Chinese: 唐人街; pinyin: tángrénjiē; Jyutping: tong4 jan4 gaai1) is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the largest Chinese enclaves outside Asia. It is also the oldest and largest of the four notable Chinese enclaves within San Francisco. Since its establishment in the early 1850s, it has been important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that has retained its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity.
Chinese Communist Party (Wikipedia) The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang. In 1949, Mao proclaimed the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Since then, the CCP has governed China and has had sole control over the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Successive leaders of the CCP have added their own theories to the party’s constitution, which outlines the party’s ideology, collectively referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics. As of 2023, the CCP has more than 98 million members, making it the second largest political party by membership in the world after India’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Chisago County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Chisago County (/ʃɪˈsɑːɡoʊ/ shi-SAH-goh) is a county in the east-central part of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The county covers an area of 442 square miles (1,140 square kilometers) and, as of the 2020 Census, had a population of 56,621 people. It is part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Chlorine (Wikipedia) Chlorine is a chemical element; it has symbol Cl and atomic number 17. The second-lightest of the halogens, it appears between fluorine and bromine in the periodic table and its properties are mostly intermediate between them. Chlorine is a yellow-green gas at room temperature. It is an extremely reactive element and a strong oxidising agent: among the elements, it has the highest electron affinity and the third-highest electronegativity on the revised Pauling scale, behind only oxygen and fluorine.
Chordate (Wikipedia) A chordate (/ˈkɔːrdeɪt/ KOR-dayt) is a deuterostomic animal belonging to the phylum Chordata (/kɔːrˈdeɪtə/ kor-DAY-tə). All chordates possess, at some point during their larval or adult stages, five distinctive physical characteristics (synapomorphies) that distinguish them from other taxa. These five synapomorphies are a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, an endostyle or thyroid, pharyngeal slits, and a post-anal tail. The name “chordate” comes from the first of these synapomorphies, the notochord, which plays a significant role in chordate body plan structuring and movements. Chordates are also bilaterally symmetric, have a coelom, possess a closed circulatory system, and exhibit metameric segmentation.
Christian universalism (Wikipedia) Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God. “Christian universalism” and “the belief or hope in the universal reconciliation through Christ” can be understood as synonyms. Opponents of this school, who hold that eternal damnation is the ultimate fate of some or most people, are sometimes called “infernalists.”
Christianity (Wikipedia) Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world’s largest religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories and are a minority in all others. Most Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God, whose coming as the messiah was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible (called the Old Testament in Christianity) and chronicled in the New Testament.
Christoph Probst (Wikipedia) Christoph Ananda Probst (6 November 1919 – 22 February 1943) was a German student of medicine and member of the White Rose (Weiße Rose) resistance group.
Chuck Norris (Wikipedia) Carlos Ray “Chuck” Norris (born March 10, 1940) is an American martial artist and actor. He is a black belt in Tang Soo Do, Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo. After serving in the United States Air Force, Norris won many martial arts championships and later founded his own discipline Chun Kuk Do. Shortly after, in Hollywood, Norris trained celebrities in martial arts. Norris went on to appear in a minor role in the spy film The Wrecking Crew (1969). Friend and fellow martial artist Bruce Lee invited him to play one of the main villains in Way of the Dragon (1972). While Norris continued acting, friend and student Steve McQueen suggested he take it seriously. Norris took the starring role in the action film Breaker! Breaker! (1977), which turned a profit. His second lead Good Guys Wear Black (1978) became a hit, and he soon became a popular action film star.
Chuckanut Formation (Wikipedia) The Chuckanut Formation in northwestern Washington (named after the Chuckanut Mountains, near Bellingham), its extension in southwestern British Columbia (the Huntingdon Formation), and various related formations in central Washington (including the Swauk, Roslyn, Manastash, and Chumstick) are fluvial sedimentary formations of Eocene age, deposited from about 54 million years ago to around 34 million years ago. The nature of the deposits and included plant fossils indicate a low-lying coastal plain with a subtropical climate; the nature of the sediments indicates metamorphic sources in northeastern Washington.
Chuckanut Mountains (Wikipedia) The Chuckanut Mountains (from “Chuckanut”, an indigenous word meaning “long beach far from a narrow entrance”), or Chuckanuts, are located on the northern Washington state coast of the Salish Sea, just south of Bellingham, Washington. Being a part of the Cascade Range, they are the only place where the Cascades come west down to meet the sea. The Chuckanuts are considered to be a part of the Puget Lowland Forest Ecoregion.
Church (building) (Wikipedia) A church, church building or church house is a building used for Christian worship services and other Christian religious activities. The earliest identified Christian church is a house church founded between 233 and 256. From the 11th through the 14th centuries, there was a wave of church construction in Western Europe.
Cicero (Wikipedia) Marcus Tullius Cicero (/ˈsɪsəroʊ/ SISS-ə-roh; Latin: [ˈmaːr.kʊs ˈtʊl.lʲi.jʊs ˈkɪ.kɛ.roː]; 3 January 106 BC – 7 December 43 BC) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, scholar, philosopher, and academic skeptic, who tried to uphold optimate principles during the political crises that led to the establishment of the Roman Empire. His extensive writings include treatises on rhetoric, philosophy and politics, and he is considered one of Rome’s greatest orators and prose stylists. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and served as consul in 63 BC.
Cincinnati (Wikipedia) Cincinnati (/ˌsɪnsɪˈnæti/ SIN-si-NAT-ee) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line with Kentucky. The city is the economic and cultural hub of the Cincinnati metropolitan area. With an estimated population of 2,256,884, it is Ohio’s largest metropolitan area and the nation’s 30th-largest, and with a city population of 309,317, Cincinnati is the third-largest city in Ohio and 64th in the [United States](United States). Throughout much of the 19th century, it was among the top 10 U.S. cities by population, surpassed only by New Orleans and the older, established settlements of the United States eastern seaboard, as well as being the sixth-most populous city from 1840 until 1860.
Circinus (Wikipedia) Circinus is a small, faint constellation in the southern sky, first defined in 1756 by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. Its name is Latin for compass, referring to the drafting tool used for drawing circles (it should not be confused with Pyxis, a constellation that represents a mariner’s compass which points north). Its brightest star is Alpha Circini, with an apparent magnitude of 3.19. Slightly variable, it is the brightest rapidly oscillating Ap star in the night sky. AX Circini is a Cepheid variable visible with the unaided eye, and BX Circini is a faint star thought to have been formed from the merger of two white dwarfs. Two sun-like stars have planetary systems: HD 134060 has two small planets, and HD 129445 has a Jupiter-like planet. Supernova SN 185 appeared in Circinus in 185 AD and was recorded by Chinese observers. Two novae have been observed more recently, in the 20th century.
Circle (Wikipedia) A circle is a shape consisting of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is called the radius.
Circle Pines, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Circle Pines is a city in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 5,025 at the 2020 census.
Cirque (Wikipedia) A cirque (French: [siʁk]; from the Latin word circus) is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion. Alternative names for this landform are corrie (from Scottish Gaelic: coire, meaning a pot or cauldron) and cwm (Welsh for ‘valley’; pronounced [kʊm]). A cirque may also be a similarly shaped landform arising from fluvial erosion.
Cisuralian (Wikipedia) The Cisuralian is the first series/epoch of the Permian. The Cisuralian was preceded by the Pennsylvanian and followed by the Guadalupian. The Cisuralian Epoch is named after the western slopes of the Ural Mountains in Russia and Kazakhstan and dates between 298.9 ± 0.15 – 272.3 ± 0.5 Ma.
Clallam County, Washington (Wikipedia) Clallam County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 77,155, with an estimated population of 77,805 in 2022. The county seat and largest city is Port Angeles; the county as a whole comprises the Port Angeles, WA Micropolitan Statistical Area. The name is a Klallam word for “the strong people”. The county was formed on April 26, 1854. Located on the Olympic Peninsula, it is south from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which forms the Canada–US border, as British Columbia’s Vancouver Island is across the strait.
Clark County, Washington (Wikipedia) Clark County is the southernmost county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 503,311, making it Washington’s fifth-most populous county. Its county seat and largest city is Vancouver. It was the first county in Washington, first named Vancouver County in 1845 before being renamed for William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1849. It was created by the Provisional Government of Oregon in Oregon Country on August 20, 1845, and at that time covered the entire present-day state. Clark County is the third-most-populous county in the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro Metropolitan Statistical Area, and is across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon.
Class (biology) (Wikipedia) In biological classification, class (Latin: classis) is a taxonomic rank, as well as a taxonomic unit, a taxon, in that rank. It is a group of related taxonomic orders. Other well-known ranks in descending order of size are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, order, family, genus, and species, with class ranking between phylum and order.
Clastic rock (Wikipedia) Clastic rocks are composed of fragments, or clasts, of pre-existing minerals and rock. A clast is a fragment of geological detritus, chunks, and smaller grains of rock broken off other rocks by physical weathering. Geologists use the term clastic to refer to sedimentary rocks and particles in sediment transport, whether in suspension or as bed load, and in sediment deposits.
Cle Elum, Washington (Wikipedia) Cle Elum (/kli ˈɛləm/ klee ELL-um) is a city in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,872 at the 2010 census. About 84 miles (135 km) by car from Seattle, Cle Elum is a popular area for camping and outdoor activities. It is also unofficially considered the starting point of Eastern Washington when driving east on I-90 from Seattle, although this is somewhat arbitrary since many consider either the town of Easton, anywhere east of Keechelus Lake, or the wildlife crossing bridge over I-90 to be the starting point.
Clearwater River (Idaho) (Wikipedia) The Clearwater River is in the northwestern United States, in north central Idaho. Its length is 74.8 miles (120.4 km), it flows westward from the Bitterroot Mountains along the Idaho-Montana border, and joins the Snake River at Lewiston. In October 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition descended the Clearwater River in dugout canoes, putting in at “Canoe Camp,” five miles (8 km) downstream from Orofino; they reached the Columbia Bar and the Pacific Ocean about six weeks later.
Clematis lasiantha (Wikipedia) Clematis lasiantha, the pipestem clematis, is a creamy-white flowering liana vine, belonging to subgenus Clematis of the large genus Clematis.
Cleomedes (crater) (Wikipedia) Cleomedes is a prominent lunar impact crater located in the northeast part of the visible Moon, to the north of Mare Crisium. It was named after Greek astronomer Cleomedes. It is surrounded by rough ground with multiple crater impacts. The irregular crater Tralles intrudes into the northwest rim. To the east is Delmotte. North of Cleomedes is a triple-crater formation with Burckhardt occupying the center.
Cliff House, San Francisco (Wikipedia) The Cliff House is a neo-classical style building perched on the headland above the cliffs just north of Ocean Beach, in the Outer Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco, California. The building overlooks the site of the Sutro Baths ruins, Seal Rocks, and is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, operated by the National Park Service (NPS). The Cliff House is owned by the NPS; the building’s terrace hosts a room-sized camera obscura.
Climate Pledge Arena (Wikipedia) Climate Pledge Arena is a multi-purpose indoor arena in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located north of Downtown Seattle in the 74-acre (30 ha) entertainment complex known as Seattle Center, the site of the 1962 World’s Fair, for which it was originally developed. After opening in 1962, it was subsequently bought and converted by the city of Seattle for entertainment purposes. From 2018 to 2021, the arena underwent a $1.15 billion redevelopment; the renovation preserved the original exterior and roof, which was declared a Seattle Landmark in 2017 and was listed on the Washington Heritage Register as well as the National Register of Historic Places in 2018. The renovated venue has a capacity of 17,151 for ice hockey and 18,300 for basketball.
Clinton, Washington (Wikipedia) Clinton is a community and census-designated place (CDP) located on southern Whidbey Island in Island County, Washington, United States. The town was named after Clinton, Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the village was 928. However, the post office serves at least 2,500 people.
Clive Davis (Wikipedia) Clive Jay Davis (born April 4, 1932) is an American record producer, A&R executive, record executive, and lawyer. He has won five Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as a non-performer, in 2000.
Clyde Hill, Washington (Wikipedia) Clyde Hill is a city located in King County, Washington. It is part of the Eastside region, located to the east of Seattle, and is bordered by the cities and towns of Bellevue, Kirkland, Medina, Yarrow Point and Hunts Point. The population was 2,984 at the 2010 census.
Cobb County, Georgia (Wikipedia) Cobb County is a county in the U.S. state of Georgia, located in the Atlanta metropolitan area in the north central portion of the state. As of 2020 Census, the population was 766,149. It is the state’s third most populous county, after Fulton and Gwinnett counties. Its county seat is Marietta; its largest city is Mableton.
Cockroach (Wikipedia) Cockroaches (or roaches) are insects belonging to the order Blattodea (Blattaria). About 30 cockroach species out of 4,600 are associated with human habitats. Some species are well-known pests.
Coco Chanel (Wikipedia) Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel (/ʃəˈnɛl/ shə-NEL, French: [ɡabʁijɛl bɔnœʁ kɔko ʃanɛl]; 19 August 1883 – 10 January 1971) was a French fashion designer and businesswoman. The founder and namesake of the Chanel brand, she was credited in the post–World War I era with popularizing a sporty, casual chic as the feminine standard of style. This replaced the “corseted silhouette” that was dominant beforehand with a style that was simpler, far less time consuming to put on and remove, more comfortable, and less expensive, all without sacrificing elegance. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century. A prolific fashion creator, Chanel extended her influence beyond couture clothing, realizing her aesthetic design in jewellery, handbags, and fragrance. Her signature scent, Chanel No. 5, has become an iconic product, and Chanel herself designed her famed interlocked-CC monogram, which has been in use since the 1920s.
Cocos Plate (Wikipedia) The Cocos Plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it. The Cocos Plate was created approximately 23 million years ago when the Farallon Plate broke into two pieces, which also created the Nazca Plate. The Cocos Plate also broke into two pieces, creating the small Rivera Plate. The Cocos Plate is bounded by several different plates. To the northeast it is bounded by the North American Plate and the Caribbean Plate. To the west it is bounded by the Pacific Plate and to the south by the Nazca Plate.
Cogito, ergo sum (Wikipedia) The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”, is the “first principle” of René Descartes’s philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It later appeared in Latin in his Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito. As Descartes explained in a margin note, “we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt.” In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum (“I doubt, therefore I am — or what is the same — I think, therefore I am”). Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes presented it as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”).
Cohen the Barbarian (Wikipedia) Ghenghiz Cohen, known as Cohen the Barbarian, is a hero in the classical sense, i.e., a professional thief, brawler and ravisher of women. Cohen is introduced in the second Discworld novel, The Light Fantastic, with significant returns in Interesting Times and then with his last appearance in The Last Hero. His name and character are an obvious echo of Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and Genghis Khan, and of the common Jewish surname Cohen.
Coherence (film) (Wikipedia) Coherence is a 2013 American independent surrealist science fiction psychological thriller film directed by James Ward Byrkit in his directorial debut. The film had its world debut on September 19, 2013, at Fantastic Fest and stars Emily Foxler as a woman who must deal with strange occurrences following the close passing of a comet.
Colombia (Wikipedia) Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuela to the east and northeast, Brazil to the southeast, Ecuador and Peru to the south and southwest, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and Panama to the northwest. Colombia is divided into 32 departments. The Capital District of Bogotá is also the country’s largest city hosting the main financial and cultural hub. Other major urbes include Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Santa Marta, Cúcuta, Ibagué, Villavicencio and Bucaramanga. It covers an area of 1,141,748 square kilometers (440,831 sq mi) and has a population of around 52 million. Its rich cultural heritage—including language, religion, cuisine, and art—reflects its history as a colony, fusing cultural elements brought by immigration from Europe and the Middle East, with those brought by the African diaspora, as well as with those of the various Indigenous civilizations that predate colonization. Spanish is the official language, although Creole, English and 64 other languages are recognized regionally.
Colorado (Wikipedia) Colorado (/ˌkɒləˈrædoʊ, -ˈrɑːdoʊ/, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West sub-region of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The United States Census Bureau estimated the population of Colorado at 5,839,926 as of July 1, 2022, a 1.15% increase since the 2020 United States census.
Colorado Springs, Colorado (Wikipedia) Colorado Springs is a home rule municipality in, and the county seat of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. It is the largest city in El Paso County, with a population of 478,961 at the 2020 United States Census, a 15.02% increase since 2010. Colorado Springs is the second-most populous city and the most extensive city in the state of Colorado, and the 40th-most populous city in the United States. It is the principal city of the Colorado Springs, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the second-most prominent city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. It is located in east-central Colorado, on Fountain Creek, 70 miles (113 km) south of Denver.
Columba (constellation) (Wikipedia) Columba is a faint constellation designated in the late sixteenth century, remaining in official use, with its rigid limits set in the 20th century. Its name is Latin for dove. It takes up 1.31% of the southern celestial hemisphere and is just south of Canis Major and Lepus.
Columbia Center (Wikipedia) The Columbia Center, formerly named the Bank of America Tower and Columbia Seafirst Center, is a skyscraper in downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The 76-story structure is the tallest building in Seattle and the state of Washington, reaching a height of 933 ft (284 m). At the time of its completion, the Columbia Center was the tallest structure on the West Coast; as of 2017, it is the fourth-tallest, behind buildings in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Columbia City, Seattle (Wikipedia) Columbia City is a neighborhood located in the southeastern part of Seattle, Washington in the Rainier Valley district. It has a landmark-protected historic business district and is one of the few Seattle neighborhoods with a long history of ethnic and income diversity.
Columbia County, Washington (Wikipedia) Columbia County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,952, making it the second-least populous county in Washington. The county seat and largest city is Dayton. The county was created out of Walla Walla County on November 11, 1875, and is named after the Columbia River (which does not flow through the county). Columbia County is included in the Walla Walla, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Columbia Heights, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Columbia Heights is a city in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 21,973 at the 2020 census.
Columbia Plateau (Wikipedia) The Columbia Plateau is a geologic and geographic region that lies across parts of the U.S. states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. It is a wide flood basalt plateau between the Cascade Range and the Rocky Mountains, cut through by the Columbia River.
Columbia River (Wikipedia) The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: Wimahl or Wimal; Sahaptin: Nch’i-Wàna or Nchi wana; Sinixt dialect swah’netk’qhu) is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river forms in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, Canada. It flows northwest and then south into the U.S. state of Washington, then turns west to form most of the border between Washington and the state of Oregon before emptying into the Pacific Ocean. The river is 1,243 miles (2,000 kilometers) long, and its largest tributary is the Snake River. Its drainage basin is roughly the size of France and extends into seven states of the United States and one Canadian province. The fourth-largest river in the United States by volume, the Columbia has the greatest flow of any North American river entering the Pacific. The Columbia has the 36th greatest discharge of any river in the world.
Columbia River Basalt Group (Wikipedia) The Columbia River Basalt Group is the youngest, smallest and one of the best-preserved continental flood basalt province on Earth, covering over 210,000 km2 (81,000 sq mi) mainly eastern Oregon and Washington, western Idaho, and part of northern Nevada. The basalt group includes the Steens and Picture Gorge basalt formations.
Columbia River drainage basin (Wikipedia) The Columbia River drainage basin is the drainage basin of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. It covers 668,000 km2 or 258,000 sq mi. In common usage, the term often refers to a smaller area, generally the portion of the drainage basin that lies within eastern Washington.
Columbidae (Wikipedia) Columbidae (/kəˈlʌmbɪdiː/) is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily feed on seeds, fruits, and plants. The family occurs worldwide, but the greatest variety is in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms.
Coma Berenices (Wikipedia) Coma Berenices is an ancient asterism in the northern sky, which has been defined as one of the 88 modern constellations. It is in the direction of the fourth galactic quadrant, between Leo and Boötes, and it is visible in both hemispheres. Its name means “Berenice’s Hair” in Latin and refers to Queen Berenice II of Egypt, who sacrificed her long hair as a votive offering. It was introduced to Western astronomy during the third century BC by Conon of Samos and was further corroborated as a constellation by Gerardus Mercator and Tycho Brahe. It is the only modern constellation named for a historic person.
Coma Star Cluster (Wikipedia) The Coma Star Cluster (also known as Melotte 111 or Collinder 256) is a small but nearby open cluster located in the constellation Coma Berenices. The cluster contains about 40 brighter stars (between magnitudes 5 and 10) with a common proper motion. The brighter stars of the cluster make out a distinctive “V” shape as seen when Coma Berenices is rising. The cluster used to represent the tail of Leo. However, in around 240 BC, Ptolemy III renamed it for the Egyptian queen Berenice’s legendary sacrifice of her hair.
Comet Tavern (Wikipedia) Comet Tavern is a restaurant on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Commander-in-chief (Wikipedia) A commander-in-chief or supreme commander is the person who exercises supreme command and control over an armed force or a military branch. As a technical term, it refers to military competencies that reside in a country’s executive leadership, a head of state, head of government, or other designated government official.
Commonplace book (Wikipedia) Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae (often with the compiler’s responses), notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Entries are most often organized under subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective." Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts; sometimes they were required of young women as evidence of their mastery of social roles and as demonstrations of the correctness of their upbringing. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.
Commutative property (Wikipedia) In mathematics, a binary operation is commutative if changing the order of the operands does not change the result.
Compass (drawing tool) (Wikipedia) A compass, more accurately known as a pair of compasses, is a technical drawing instrument that can be used for inscribing circles or arcs. As dividers, it can also be used as a tool to mark out distances, in particular, on maps. Compasses can be used for mathematics, drafting, navigation and other purposes.
Compass (Wikipedia) A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with magnetic north. Other methods may be used, including gyroscopes, magnetometers, and GPS receivers.
Concerto (Wikipedia) A concerto (/kənˈtʃɛərtoʊ/; plural concertos, or concerti from the Italian plural) is, from the late Baroque era, mostly understood as an instrumental composition, written for one or more soloists accompanied by an orchestra or other ensemble. The typical three-movement structure, a slow movement (e.g., lento or adagio) preceded and followed by fast movements (e.g. presto or allegro), became a standard from the early 18th century.
Concrete, Washington (Wikipedia) Concrete is a town in north-central Skagit County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Mount Vernon-Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area, and had a population of 801 at the 2020 census.
Cone (Wikipedia) A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base (frequently, though not necessarily, circular) to a point called the apex or vertex.
Connecticut (Wikipedia) Connecticut (/kəˈnɛtɪkət/ kə-NET-ik-ət) is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. As of the 2020 United States census, Connecticut was home to over 3.6 million residents, its highest decennial count ever, growing every decade since 1790. The state is bordered by Rhode Island to its east, Massachusetts to its north, New York to its west, and Long Island Sound to its south. Its capital is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport. Historically, the state is part of New England as well as the tri-state area with New York and New Jersey. The state is named for the Connecticut River which approximately bisects the state. The word Connecticut is derived from various anglicized spellings of Quinnetuket, a Mohegan-Pequot word for “long tidal river”.
Constellation (Wikipedia) A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object.
Constitution of the United States (Wikipedia) The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States. It superseded the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, on March 4, 1789. Originally including seven articles, the Constitution delineates the national frame and constrains the powers of the federal government. The Constitution’s first three articles embody the doctrine of the separation of powers, in which the federal government is divided into three branches: the legislative, consisting of the bicameral Congress (Article I); the executive, consisting of the president and subordinate officers (Article II); and the judicial, consisting of the Supreme Court and other federal courts (Article III). Article IV, Article V, and Article VI embody concepts of federalism, describing the rights and responsibilities of state governments, the states in relationship to the federal government, and the shared process of constitutional amendment. Article VII establishes the procedure subsequently used by the 13 states to ratify it. The Constitution of the United States is the oldest and longest-standing written and codified national constitution in force in the world.
Contiguous United States (Wikipedia) The contiguous United States (officially the conterminous United States) consists of the 48 adjoining U.S. states and the District of Columbia of the United States of America in central North America. The term excludes the only two non-contiguous states, which are Alaska and Hawaii (they are also the last two states to be admitted to the Union), and all other offshore insular areas, such as the U.S. territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The colloquial term “Lower 48” is also used, especially in relation to Alaska.
Continent (Wikipedia) A continent is any of several large geographical regions. Continents are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria. A continent could be a single landmass or a part of a very large landmass, as in the case of Asia or Europe. Due to this, the number of continents varies; up to seven or as few as four geographical regions are commonly regarded as continents. Most English-speaking countries recognize seven regions as continents. In order from largest to smallest in area, these seven regions are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. Different variations with fewer continents merge some of these regions; examples of this are merging North America and South America into America, Asia and Europe into Eurasia, and Africa, Asia, and Europe into Afro-Eurasia.
Convergent boundary (Wikipedia) A convergent boundary (also known as a destructive boundary) is an area on Earth where two or more lithospheric plates collide. One plate eventually slides beneath the other, a process known as subduction. The subduction zone can be defined by a plane where many earthquakes occur, called the Wadati–Benioff zone. These collisions happen on scales of millions to tens of millions of years and can lead to volcanism, earthquakes, orogenesis, destruction of lithosphere, and deformation. Convergent boundaries occur between oceanic-oceanic lithosphere, oceanic-continental lithosphere, and continental-continental lithosphere. The geologic features related to convergent boundaries vary depending on crust types.
Conway Reef Plate (Wikipedia) The Conway Reef Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) located in the south Pacific west of Fiji. The western boundary is with the New Hebrides Plate while the eastern is with the Australian Plate. A short transform boundary also exists with the Balmoral Reef Plate. Much of the plate underlies the south central portion of the North Fiji Basin.
Conway, Washington (Wikipedia) Conway is a census-designated place (CDP) in Skagit County, Washington, United States. First settled in 1873 by Thomas P. Jones and Charles Villeneuves, its population was 91 at the 2010 census. It is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Coon Rapids, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Coon Rapids is a northern suburb of Minneapolis, and is the second-largest city by population in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 63,599 at the 2020 census, making it the fifteenth largest city in Minnesota and the seventh largest Twin Cities suburb.
Copper (Wikipedia) Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from Latin: cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orange color. Copper is used as a conductor of heat and electricity, as a building material, and as a constituent of various metal alloys, such as sterling silver used in jewelry, cupronickel used to make marine hardware and coins, and constantan used in strain gauges and thermocouples for temperature measurement.
Cor Caroli (Wikipedia) Cor Caroli /ˌkɔːr ˈkærəlaɪ/ is a binary star designated Alpha Canum Venaticorum or α Canum Venaticorum. The International Astronomical Union uses the name “Cor Caroli” specifically for the brighter star of the binary. Alpha Canum Venaticorum is the brightest point of light in the northern constellation of Canes Venatici.
Cordilleran ice sheet (Wikipedia) The Cordilleran ice sheet was a major ice sheet that periodically covered large parts of North America during glacial periods over the last ~2.6 million years.
Corona Australis (Wikipedia) Corona Australis is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its Latin name means “southern crown”, and it is the southern counterpart of Corona Borealis, the northern crown. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. The Ancient Greeks saw Corona Australis as a wreath rather than a crown and associated it with Sagittarius or Centaurus. Other cultures have likened the pattern to a turtle, ostrich nest, a tent, or even a hut belonging to a rock hyrax.
Corona Borealis (Wikipedia) Corona Borealis is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its brightest stars form a semicircular arc. Its Latin name, inspired by its shape, means “northern crown”. In classical mythology Corona Borealis generally represented the crown given by the god Dionysus to the Cretan princess Ariadne and set by her in the heavens. Other cultures likened the pattern to a circle of elders, an eagle’s nest, a bear’s den, or even a smokehole. Ptolemy also listed a southern counterpart, Corona Australis, with a similar pattern.
Corvus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Corvus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name means “crow” in Latin. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a raven, a bird associated with stories about the god Apollo, perched on the back of Hydra the water snake. The four brightest stars, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and Beta Corvi, form a distinctive quadrilateral in the night sky.
Corvus (Wikipedia) Corvus is a widely distributed genus of medium-sized to large birds in the family Corvidae. It includes species commonly known as crows, ravens, and rooks. The species commonly encountered in Europe are the carrion crow, hooded crow, common raven, and rook; those discovered later were named “crow” or “raven” chiefly on the basis of their size, crows generally being smaller. The genus name is Latin for “raven”.
Corymbia citriodora (Wikipedia) Corymbia citriodora, commonly known as lemon-scented gum and other common names, is a species of tall tree that is endemic to north-eastern Australia. It has smooth white to pink bark, narrow lance-shaped to curved adult leaves, flower buds in groups of three, white flowers and urn-shaped or barrel-shaped fruit.
Cosmology (en.wikimedia.org) Cosmology (from Ancient Greek κόσμος (cosmos) ’the universe, the world’, and λογία (logia) ‘study of’) is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term cosmology was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount’s Glossographia, and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosopher Christian Wolff, in Cosmologia Generalis. Religious or mythological cosmology is a body of beliefs based on mythological, religious, and esoteric literature and traditions of creation myths and eschatology. In the science of astronomy, cosmology is concerned with the study of the chronology of the universe.
Costa Rica (Wikipedia) Costa Rica (UK: /ˌkɒstə ˈriːkə/, US: /ˌkoʊstə/ (listen); Spanish: [ˈkosta ˈrika]; literally “Rich Coast”), officially the Republic of Costa Rica (Spanish: República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America. Costa Rica is bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, as well as maritime border with Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around five million in a land area of 51,060 km2 (19,710 sq mi). An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José, with around two million people in the surrounding metropolitan area.
Cottage Grove, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Cottage Grove is a city 10 miles (16 km) south of Saint Paul in Washington County in the State of Minnesota. It lies on the north bank of the Mississippi River, north of the confluence with the St. Croix River. Cottage Grove and nearby suburbs form the southeast portion of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.69 million residents. Its population was 38,839 at the 2020 census.
Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park (Wikipedia) Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park is a regional park in King County, Washington, near the towns of Bellevue and Issaquah. The park was established in June 1983 to protect the central core of Cougar Mountain, the park covers 3,115 acres (12.61 km2) with 38 miles (61 km) of hiking trails and 12 miles (19 km) of equestrian trails.
Country (Wikipedia) A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. When referring to a specific polity, the term “country” may refer to a sovereign state, states with limited recognition, constituent country, or a dependent territory. Most sovereign states, but not all countries, are members of the United Nations. There is no universal agreement on the number of “countries” in the world since several states have disputed sovereignty status, limited recognition and a number of non-sovereign entities are commonly called countries.
Cowlitz County, Washington (Wikipedia) Cowlitz County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 110,730. The county seat is Kelso, and its largest city is Longview. The county was formed in April 1854. Its name derives from the anglicized version of the Cowlitz Indian term Cow-e-liske, meaning either ‘river of shifting sands’ or ‘capturing the medicine spirit.’ Cowlitz comprises the Longview, WA Metropolitan statistical area, which is also included in the Portland-Vancouver-Salem, OR-WA Combined statistical area.
CP/M (Wikipedia) CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. CP/M is a disk operating system and its purpose is to organize files on a magnetic storage medium, and to load and run programs stored on a disk. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors.
CP/M-86 (Wikipedia) CP/M-86 is a discontinued version of the CP/M operating system that Digital Research (DR) made for the Intel 8086 and Intel 8088. The system commands are the same as in CP/M-80. Executable files used the relocatable .CMD file format.[nb 1] Digital Research also produced a multi-user multitasking operating system compatible with CP/M-86, MP/M-86, which later evolved into Concurrent CP/M-86. When an emulator was added to provide PC DOS compatibility, the system was renamed Concurrent DOS, which later became Multiuser DOS, of which REAL/32 is the latest incarnation. The FlexOS, DOS Plus, and DR DOS families of operating systems started as derivations of Concurrent DOS as well.
Crab (Wikipedia) Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting “tail” (abdomen), usually hidden entirely under the thorax (brachyura means “short tail” in Greek). They live in all the world’s oceans, in freshwater, and on land, are generally covered with a thick exoskeleton, and have a single pair of pincers. They first appeared during the Jurassic Period.
Crane (bird) (Wikipedia) Cranes are a type of large bird with long legs and necks in the biological family Gruidae of the order Gruiformes. The family has 15 species placed in four genera which are Antigone, Balearica, Leucogeranus, and Grus. They are large birds with long necks and legs, a tapering form, and long secondary feathers on the wing that project over the tail. Most species have muted gray or white plumages, marked with black, and red bare patches on the face, but the crowned cranes of the genus Balearica have vibrantly-coloured wings and golden “crowns” of feathers. Cranes fly with their necks extended outwards instead of bent into an S-shape and their long legs outstretched.
Crater (constellation) (Wikipedia) Crater is a small constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its name is the latinization of the Greek krater, a type of cup used to water down wine. One of the 48 constellations listed by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, it depicts a cup that has been associated with the god Apollo and is perched on the back of Hydra the water snake.
Cretaceous (Wikipedia) The Cretaceous (IPA: /krɪˈteɪʃəs/ krih-TAY-shəs) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic. The name is derived from the Latin creta, “chalk”, which is abundant in the latter half of the period. It is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation Kreide.
Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (Wikipedia) The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction, was a sudden mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kilograms (55 pounds) also became extinct, with the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians. It marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and with it the Mesozoic era, while heralding the beginning of the Cenozoic era, which continues to this day.
Crimea (Wikipedia) Crimea (/kraɪˈmiːə/ kry-MEE-ə) is a peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine. To the east, the Crimean Bridge, constructed in 2018, spans the Strait of Kerch, linking the peninsula with Krasnodar Krai in Russia. The Arabat Spit, located to the northeast, is a narrow strip of land that separates the Syvash lagoons from the Sea of Azov. Across the Black Sea to the west lies Romania and to the south is Turkey. The population is 2.4 million, and the largest city is Sevastopol. The region has been under Russian occupation since 2014.
Croatia (Wikipedia) Croatia (/kroʊˈeɪʃə/, kroh-AY-shə; Croatian: Hrvatska, pronounced [xř̩ʋaːtskaː]), officially the Republic of Croatia (Croatian: Republika Hrvatska), is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe. Its coast lies entirely on the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Italy to the west. Its capital and largest city, Zagreb, forms one of the country’s primary subdivisions, with twenty counties. Other major urban centers include Split, Rijeka and Osijek. The country spans 56,594 square kilometres (21,851 square miles), and has a population of nearly 3.9 million.
Crocus City Hall attack (Wikipedia) On 22 March 2024, at around 20:00 MSK (UTC+3), a coordinated attack occurred at the Crocus City Hall music venue in Krasnogorsk, Russia, on the western edge of Moscow. Four gunmen carried out a mass shooting, as well as slashing attacks on the people gathered at the venue and used incendiary devices to set the venue on fire. Investigators said the following day the attack had killed at least 133 people, with more than 100 concertgoers injured. The Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS–KP), a South-Central Asia-based regional affiliate of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility in a statement through the Amaq News Agency shortly after the attack.
Crown Hill, Seattle (Wikipedia) Crown Hill is a neighborhood in the city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Crucifixion of Jesus (Wikipedia) The crucifixion and death of Jesus occurred in 1st-century Judea, most likely in 30 CE or 33 CE. It is described in the four canonical gospels, referred to in the New Testament epistles, attested to by other ancient sources, and considered an established historical event. There is no consensus among historians on the details.
Crustacean (Wikipedia) Crustaceans are invertebrate animals of the subphylum Crustacea (/krəˈsteɪʃə/), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthropods including decapods (shrimps, prawns, crabs, lobsters and crayfish), seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, opossum shrimps, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can be treated as a subphylum under the clade Mandibulata. It is now well accepted that the hexapods (insects and entognathans) emerged deep in the Crustacean group, with the completed group referred to as Pancrustacea. The three classes Cephalocarida, Branchiopoda and Remipedia are more closely related to the hexapods than they are to any of the other crustaceans (oligostracans and multicrustaceans).
Crux (Wikipedia) Crux (/krʌks/) is a constellation of the southern sky that is centred on four bright stars in a cross-shaped asterism commonly known as the Southern Cross. It lies on the southern end of the Milky Way’s visible band. The name Crux is Latin for cross. Even though it is the smallest of all 88 modern constellations, Crux is among the most easily distinguished as its four main stars each have an apparent visual magnitude brighter than +2.8. It has attained a high level of cultural significance in many Southern Hemisphere states and nations.
Cryogenian (Wikipedia) The Cryogenian (from Ancient Greek: κρύος, romanized: krýos, meaning “cold” and γένεσις, romanized: génesis, meaning “birth”) is a geologic period that lasted from 720 to 635 million years ago. It forms the second geologic period of the Neoproterozoic Era, preceded by the Tonian Period and followed by the Ediacaran.
Cryonics (Wikipedia) Cryonics (from Greek: κρύος kryos meaning ‘cold’) is the low-temperature freezing (usually at −196 °C or −320.8 °F or 77.1 K) and storage of human remains, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future. Cryonics is regarded with skepticism within the mainstream scientific community. It is generally viewed as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.
Cube (1997 film) (Wikipedia) Cube is a 1997 Canadian science fiction horror-thriller film directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali. A product of the Canadian Film Centre’s First Feature Project, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlett, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings, Wayne Robson, and Maurice Dean Wint star as individuals trapped in a bizarre and deadly labyrinth of cube-shaped rooms.
Curiosity (rover) (Wikipedia) Curiosity is a car-sized Mars rover exploring Gale crater and Mount Sharp on Mars as part of NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral (CCAFS) on November 26, 2011, at 15:02:00 UTC and landed on Aeolis Palus inside Gale crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17:57 UTC. The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover’s touchdown target after a 560 million km (350 million mi) journey.
Custer, Washington (Wikipedia) Custer is a census-designated place (CDP) in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 366 at the 2010 census.
Cygnus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Cygnus is a northern constellation on the plane of the Milky Way, deriving its name from the Latinized Greek word for swan. Cygnus is one of the most recognizable constellations of the northern summer and autumn, and it features a prominent asterism known as the Northern Cross (in contrast to the Southern Cross). Cygnus was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
Cyprus (Wikipedia) Cyprus (/ˈsaɪprəs/), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, north of the Sinai Peninsula, south of the Anatolian Peninsula, and west of the Levant. It is geographically a part of West Asia, but its cultural ties and geopolitics are overwhelmingly Southeast European. Cyprus is the third largest and third-most populous island in the Mediterranean. It is east of Greece, north of Egypt, south of Turkey, and west of Lebanon and Syria. Its capital and largest city is Nicosia. The northeast portion of the island is de facto governed by the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.
Cyrus the Great (Wikipedia) Cyrus II of Persia (Old Persian: 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁 Kūruš; c. 600–530 BC), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Hailing from Persis, he brought the Achaemenid dynasty to power by defeating the Median Empire and embracing all of the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East, expanding vastly and eventually conquering most of West Asia and much of Central Asia to create what would soon become the largest polity in human history at the time. Widely considered the world’s first superpower, the Achaemenid Empire’s largest territorial extent was achieved under Darius the Great, whose rule stretched from the Balkans (Eastern Bulgaria–Paeonia and Thrace–Macedonia) and the rest of Southeast Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east.
Cytisus scoparius (Wikipedia) Cytisus scoparius (syn. Sarothamnus scoparius), the common broom or Scotch broom, is a deciduous leguminous shrub native to western and central Europe. In Britain and Ireland, the standard name is broom; this name is also used for other members of the Genisteae tribe, such as French broom or Spanish broom; and the term common broom is sometimes used for clarification. In other English-speaking countries, the most common name is “Scotch broom” (or Scots broom); however, it is known as English broom in Australia.
Czech Republic (Wikipedia) The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The Czech Republic has a hilly landscape that covers an area of 78,871 square kilometers (30,452 sq mi) with a mostly temperate continental and oceanic climate. The capital and largest city is Prague; other major cities and urban areas include Brno, Ostrava, Plzeň and Liberec.
Dagestan (Wikipedia) Dagestan (/ˌdæɡɪˈstæn, -ˈstɑːn/ DAG-ə-STA(H)N; Russian: Дагестан; IPA: [dəɡʲɪˈstan]), officially the Republic of Dagestan, is a republic of Russia situated in the North Caucasus of Eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. It is located north of the Greater Caucasus, and is a part of the North Caucasian Federal District. The republic is the southernmost tip of Russia, sharing land borders with the countries of Azerbaijan and Georgia to the south and southwest, the Russian republics of Chechnya and Kalmykia to the west and north, and with Stavropol Krai to the northwest. Makhachkala is the republic’s capital and largest city; other major cities are Derbent, Kizlyar, Izberbash, Kaspiysk, and Buynaksk.
Dakota Access Pipeline (Wikipedia) The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) or Bakken pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long (1,886 km) underground pipeline in the United States that has the ability to transport up to 750,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil per day. It begins in the shale oil fields of the Bakken Formation in northwest North Dakota and continues through South Dakota and Iowa to an oil terminal near Patoka, Illinois. Together with the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline from Patoka to Nederland, Texas, it forms the Bakken system. The pipeline transports 40 percent of the oil produced in the Bakken region.
Dakota County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Dakota County is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Minnesota, located in the east central portion of the state. As of the 2020 census, the population was 439,882. The population of Dakota County was estimated to be 447,440 in 2023. The county seat is Hastings. Dakota County is named for the Dakota Sioux tribal bands who inhabited the area.
Dakota people (Wikipedia) The Dakota (pronounced [daˈkˣota], Dakota: Dakȟóta or Dakhóta) are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government in North America. They compose two of the three main subcultures of the Sioux people, and are typically divided into the Eastern Dakota and the Western Dakota.
Damascus (Wikipedia) Damascus (/dəˈmæskəs/ də-MASS-kəs, UK also /dəˈmɑːskəs/ də-MAH-skəs; Arabic: دِمَشق‎, romanized: Dimaşk, IPA: [diˈmaʃq]) is the capital of Syria, the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth holiest city in Islam. Known colloquially in Syria as aš-Šām (الشَّام‎) and dubbed, poetically, the “City of Jasmine” (مَدِيْنَةُ الْيَاسْمِينِ‎ Madīnat al-Yāsmīn), Damascus is a major cultural center of the Levant and the Arab world.
Daniel J. Boorstin (Wikipedia) Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in 1975 and served until 1987. He was instrumental in the creation of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.
Daniel Webster (Wikipedia) Daniel Webster (January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the U.S. Congress and served as the 14th and 19th U.S. Secretary of State under Presidents William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, and Millard Fillmore. Webster was one of the most prominent American lawyers of the 19th century, arguing over 200 cases before the United States Supreme Court in his career. During his life, Webster had been a member of the Federalist Party, the National Republican Party, and the Whig Party. He was among the three members of the Great Triumvirate along with Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun.
Darmok (Wikipedia) In this episode, the crew of the Enterprise is unable to establish meaningful communication with the crew of an alien vessel, which is resolved by the struggle of the ships’ captains to defend each other from a vicious beast. It is often cited as one of the best episodes of both The Next Generation series and the entire family of Star Trek television series.
Darrington, Washington (Wikipedia) Darrington is a town in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located in a North Cascades mountain valley formed by the Sauk and North Fork Stillaguamish rivers. Darrington is connected to nearby areas by State Route 530, which runs along the two rivers towards the city of Arlington, located 30 miles (48 km) to the west, and Rockport. It had a population of 1,347 at the 2010 census.
Darth Vader (Wikipedia) Darth Vader is a character in the Star Wars franchise. He is the primary antagonist of the original film trilogy and, as Anakin Skywalker, is the protagonist of the prequel trilogy. Originally a slave on the planet Tatooine, he becomes a powerful Jedi. He is lured to the dark side of the Force by Chancellor Palpatine, and becomes the Sith Lord Darth Vader. After being severely wounded in a lightsaber battle, he is transformed into a cyborg. He is the husband of Padmé Amidala and the biological father of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa.
Dave Tucker (geologist) (Wikipedia) David Samuel Tucker is a geologist, author, and union organizer in Washington state. He is a research associate at Western Washington University. He was an instructor at North Cascades Institute, and the director of the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center (now closed). He writes the blog Northwest Geology Field Trips, a blog aimed at laypeople detailing where to find interesting geology in the Pacific Northwest. In 2015, he published a popular book on Washington geology, Geology Underfoot in Western Washington. He resides in Bellingham, Washington. In the 1980s he worked as a mountaineering guide in the Cascades, Mexico, and South America.
David Lean (Wikipedia) Sir David Lean CBE (25 March 1908 – 16 April 1991) was an English film director, producer, screenwriter, and editor, widely considered one of the most important figures of British cinema. He directed the large-scale epics The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), and A Passage to India (1984). He also directed the film adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), as well as the romantic drama Brief Encounter (1945).
Dawn (spacecraft) (Wikipedia) Dawn is a retired space probe that was launched by NASA in September 2007 with the mission of studying two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt: Vesta and Ceres. In the fulfillment of that mission—the ninth in NASA’s Discovery Program—Dawn entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011, and completed a 14-month survey mission before leaving for Ceres in late 2012. It entered orbit around Ceres on March 6, 2015. In 2017, NASA announced that the planned nine-year mission would be extended until the probe’s hydrazine fuel supply was depleted. On November 1, 2018, NASA announced that Dawn had depleted its hydrazine, and the mission was ended. The derelict probe remains in a stable orbit around Ceres.
Dayton, Ohio (Wikipedia) Dayton (/ˈdeɪtən/) is a city in and the county seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, United States. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. As of the 2020 census, the city proper had a population of 137,644, making it the sixth-most populous city in Ohio. Dayton anchors the state’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, the Dayton metropolitan area, which had 814,049 residents. Dayton is located within Ohio’s Miami Valley region, 50 miles (80 km) north of Cincinnati and 60 miles (97 km) west of Columbus. It is a principal city of the Dayton–Springfield–Sidney combined statistical area, home to a population of 1,086,512.
Dead Sea (Wikipedia) The Dead Sea (Arabic: اَلْبَحْر الْمَيِّت, romanized: al-Baḥr al-Mayyit, or اَلْبَحْر الْمَيْت, al-Baḥr al-Mayt; Hebrew: יַם הַמֶּלַח, romanized: Yām hamMelaḥ), also known by other names, is a landlocked salt lake bordered by Jordan to the east and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Israel to the west. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.
Death (Discworld) (Wikipedia) Death is a fictional character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series and a parody of several other personifications of death. Like most Grim Reapers, he is a black-robed skeleton who usually carries a scythe. His jurisdiction is specifically the Discworld itself; he is only a part, or minion, of Azrael: the universal Death. He has been generally used by Pratchett to explore the problems of human existence, and has become more sympathetic throughout the series.
Decagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a decagon (from the Greek δέκα déka and γωνία gonía, “ten angles”) is a ten-sided polygon or 10-gon. The total sum of the interior angles of a simple decagon is 1440°.
Deception Pass (Wikipedia) Deception Pass (Lushootseed: sčudᶻ) (Samish: Xwchsónges) is a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island, in the northwest part of the U.S. state of Washington. It connects Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A pair of bridges known collectively as Deception Pass Bridge cross Deception Pass. The bridges were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Deception Pass Bridge (Wikipedia) Deception Pass Bridge is the common name for two two-lane bridges on Washington State Route 20 connecting Whidbey Island in Island County, to Fidalgo Island in Skagit County, in the U.S. state of Washington. It was a Washington State Highways project, and included project elements built by young workers from the Civilian Conservation Corps. Completion of the bridge was a factor in the decision to build Naval Air Station Whidbey Island and helped Oak Harbor flourish. The bridge is a commonly photographed landmark of the Puget Sound region.
Deciduous (Wikipedia) In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous (/dɪˈsɪdʒu.əs/) means “falling off at maturity” and “tending to fall off”, in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, after flowering; and to the shedding of ripe fruit. The antonym of deciduous in the botanical sense is evergreen.
Deductive reasoning (Wikipedia) Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false.
Delaware (Wikipedia) Delaware (/ˈdɛləwɛər/ DEL-ə-wair) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the nearby Delaware River, in turn named after Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and Virginia’s first colonial governor.
Dellwood, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Dellwood is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States and a suburb of St. Paul. The population was 1,063 at the 2010 census.
Delphinus (Wikipedia) Delphinus (Pronounced /dɛlˈfaɪnəs/ or /ˈdɛlfɪnəs/) is a small constellation in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere, close to the celestial equator. Its name is the Latin version for the Greek word for dolphin (δελφίς). It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. It is one of the smaller constellations, ranked 69th in size. Delphinus’ five brightest stars form a distinctive asterism symbolizing a dolphin with four stars representing the body and one the tail. It is bordered (clockwise from north) by Vulpecula, Sagitta, Aquila, Aquarius, Equuleus and Pegasus.
Delridge, Seattle (Wikipedia) Delridge is a district in Seattle, Washington, United States that stretches along Delridge Way, an arterial that follows the eastern slope of the valley of Longfellow Creek, from near its source just within the southern city limits north to the West Seattle Bridge over the Duwamish River. It is generally associated with the neighborhing district of West Seattle, or even considered a sub-district of West Seattle.
Delta Cassiopeiae (Wikipedia) Delta Cassiopeiae (δ Cassiopeiae, abbreviated Delta Cas, δ Cas) is an eclipsing binary star system in the northern circumpolar constellation of Cassiopeia. Based on parallax measurements taken during the Hipparcos mission, it is approximately 99.4 light-years (30.5 parsecs) from the Earth.[
Delta Ursae Majoris (Wikipedia) Delta Ursae Majoris (δ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Delta UMa, δ UMa), formally named Megrez /ˈmiːɡrɛz/, is a star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. With an apparent magnitude of +3.3, it is the dimmest of the seven stars in the Big Dipper asterism. Parallax measurements yield a distance estimate of 80.5 light-years (24.7 parsecs) from the Sun.
Deming, Washington (Wikipedia) Deming is a census-designated place (CDP) in Whatcom County, Washington, United States, along the Nooksack River. It is named for its first postmaster, George Deming. The community population was 353 at the 2010 census.
Democratic Republic of the Congo (Wikipedia) The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Zaire, or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, the DRC is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 105 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the most populous Francophone country in the world. The national capital and largest city is Kinshasa, which is also the economic center. The country is bordered by the Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania (across Lake Tanganyika), Zambia, Angola, the Cabinda exclave of Angola, and the South Atlantic Ocean.
Demolition Man (film) (Wikipedia) Demolition Man is a 1993 American science fiction action film directed by Marco Brambilla in his directorial debut. It stars Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, and Nigel Hawthorne. Stallone is John Spartan, a risk-taking police officer who has a reputation for causing destruction while carrying out his work. After a failed attempt to rescue hostages from evil crime lord Simon Phoenix (Snipes), they are both sentenced to be cryogenically frozen in 1996. Phoenix is thawed for a parole hearing in 2032, but escapes. Society has changed and all violent crime has seemingly been eliminated. Unable to deal with a criminal as dangerous as Phoenix, the authorities awaken Spartan to help capture him again. The story makes allusions to many other works including Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World and H. G. Wells’s The Sleeper Awakes.
Dendrite (Wikipedia) A dendrite (from Greek δένδρον déndron, “tree”) or dendron is a branched protoplasmic extension of a nerve cell that propagates the electrochemical stimulation received from other neural cells to the cell body, or soma, of the neuron from which the dendrites project. Electrical stimulation is transmitted onto dendrites by upstream neurons (usually via their axons) via synapses which are located at various points throughout the dendritic tree.
Deneb (Wikipedia) Deneb (/ˈdɛnɛb/) is a first-magnitude star in the constellation of Cygnus. Deneb is one of the vertices of the asterism known as the Summer Triangle and the “head” of the Northern Cross. It is the brightest star in Cygnus and the 19th brightest star in the night sky, with an average apparent magnitude of +1.25. A blue supergiant, Deneb rivals Rigel as the most luminous first-magnitude star. However, its distance, and hence luminosity, is poorly known; its luminosity is somewhere between 55,000 and 196,000 times that of the Sun. Its Bayer designation is α Cygni, which is Latinised to Alpha Cygni, abbreviated to Alpha Cyg or α Cyg.
Denim (Wikipedia) Denim is a sturdy cotton warp-faced textile in which the weft passes under two or more warp threads. This twill weave produces a diagonal ribbing that distinguishes it from cotton duck. Denim, as it is recognized today, was first produced in Nîmes, France.
Denmark (Wikipedia) Denmark (Danish: Danmark, pronounced [ˈtænmɑk]) is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It is the metropolitan part of and the most populous constituent of the Kingdom of Denmark, a constitutionally unitary state that includes the autonomous territories of the Faroe Islands and Greenland in the North Atlantic Ocean. Metropolitan Denmark is the southernmost of the Scandinavian countries, lying south-west and south (Bornholm and Ertholmene) of Sweden, south of Norway, and north of Germany, with which it shares a short border, Denmark’s only land border.
Denny Blaine Park (Wikipedia) Denny Blaine Park is a 2 acres (8,100 m2) water-front park in the Denny-Blaine neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. With picturesque views of Bellevue directly across the lake and Mount Rainier in the distance, it is primarily used for picnicking, sunbathing, and swimming. The park has also been one of Seattle’s unofficial queer- and trans-friendly clothing optional beaches since the 1970s.
Denny Mountain (Wikipedia) Denny Mountain is summit near Snoqualmie Pass in Washington state. The Alpental ski area is located on the mountain’s eastern flank.
Denny Triangle, Seattle (Wikipedia) The Denny Triangle is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, that stretches north of Downtown Seattle to the grounds of Seattle Center. Its generally flat terrain was originally a steep hill, taken down as part of a mammoth construction project in the first decades of the 20th century known as the Denny Regrade, which is another name for the neighborhood on the regraded area. The name Denny Triangle, referring to the northeastern portion of this regrading project, is a term that has gained currency as this neighborhood has seen increasing development in the first decades of the 21st century.
Denny-Blaine, Seattle (Wikipedia) Denny-Blaine (also known as Harrison) is a neighborhood in east central Seattle, Washington. It is bounded on the east by Lake Washington; on the south by E. Howell Street, beyond which is Madrona; on the west by 32nd Avenue, beyond which is Madison Valley; and on the north by Lake Washington Boulevard E., Hillside Drive E., and E. Prospect Street, beyond which are Washington Park and Madison Park.
Denver (Wikipedia) Denver (/ˈdɛnvər/ DEN-vər; Arapaho: niineniiniicie; Lakota: ȟeská otȟúŋwahe) is a consolidated city and county and the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United States and the fifth most populous state capital. It is the principal city of the Denver–Aurora–Lakewood, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and the first city of the Front Range Urban Corridor.
Denver International Airport (Wikipedia) Denver International Airport (IATA: DEN, ICAO: KDEN, FAA LID: DEN), locally known as DIA, is an international airport in the Western United States, primarily serving metropolitan Denver, Colorado, as well as the greater Front Range Urban Corridor. At 33,531 acres (52.4 sq mi; 135.7 km2), it is the largest airport in the Western Hemisphere by land area and the second largest on Earth, behind King Fahd International Airport. Runway 16R/34L, with a length of 16,000 feet (3.03 mi; 4.88 km), is the longest public use runway in North America and the seventh longest on Earth. The airport is 25 miles (40 km) driving distance from Downtown Denver, 19 miles (31 km) farther than the former Stapleton International Airport, the facility DEN replaced: the airport land was originally part of Adams County until the construction of the airport in 1995, and is actually located in between Commerce City and Aurora with the Southwest side connecting strip of neighborhoods (on the route of Peña Blvd) being the only connection with the rest of the city of Denver: many airport-related services, such as hotels, are located in Aurora.
Depression (mood) (Wikipedia) Depression is a mental state of low mood and aversion to activity. It affects more than 280 million people of all ages (about 3.5% of the global population). Depression affects a person’s thoughts, behavior, feelings, and sense of well-being. Depressed people often experience loss of motivation or interest in, or reduced pleasure or joy from, experiences that would normally bring them pleasure or joy. Depressed mood is a symptom of some mood disorders such as major depressive disorder and dysthymia; it is a normal temporary reaction to life events, such as the loss of a loved one; and it is also a symptom of some physical diseases and a side effect of some drugs and medical treatments. It may feature sadness, difficulty in thinking and concentration and a significant increase or decrease in appetite and time spent sleeping. People experiencing depression may have feelings of dejection or hopelessness and may experience suicidal thoughts. It can either be short term or long term.
Derivative (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the derivative shows the sensitivity of change of a function’s output with respect to the input. Derivatives are a fundamental tool of calculus. For example, the derivative of the position of a moving object with respect to time is the object’s velocity: this measures how quickly the position of the object changes when time advances.
Des Moines, Washington (Wikipedia) Des Moines (/dəˈmɔɪnz/ də-MOYNZ) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 32,888 as of the 2020 census. The city is located on the east shore of Puget Sound, near the center of the Seattle metropolitan area. It is bordered by the suburbs of Federal Way to the south, Kent to the east, SeaTac to the northeast, Burien to the north, and Normandy Park to the northwest.
Detroit (Wikipedia) Detroit (/dɪˈtrɔɪt/ dih-TROYT, locally also /ˈdiːtrɔɪt/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the most populous U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. Detroit had a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census, making it the 27th-most populous city in the United States. The metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 4.3 million people, making it the second-largest in the Midwest after the Chicago metropolitan area, and the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the nation. Regarded as a cultural center, Detroit is known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive background. Time named Detroit as one of the fifty World’s Greatest Places of 2022 to explore.
Deuterostome (Wikipedia) Deuterostomes (from Greek: lit. ‘mouth second’) are bilaterian animals of the superphylum Deuterostomia (/ˌdjuːtərəˈstoʊmi.ə/), typically characterized by their anus forming before the mouth during embryonic development. Deuterostomia is further divided into 4 phyla; Chordata, Echinodermata, Hemichordata, the extinct Vetulicolia known from Cambrian fossils. The extinct clade Cambroernida is also thought to be a member of Deuterostomia.
Devonian (Wikipedia) The Devonian (/dɪˈvoʊni.ən, dɛ-/ də-VOH-nee-ən, deh-) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era during the Phanerozoic eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian period at 419.2 million years ago (Ma), to the beginning of the succeeding Carboniferous period at 358.9 Ma. It is named after Devon, South West England, where rocks from this period were first studied.
Diabetes (Wikipedia) Diabetes mellitus, often known simply as diabetes, is a group of common endocrine diseases characterized by sustained high blood sugar levels. Diabetes is due to either the pancreas not producing enough insulin, or the cells of the body becoming unresponsive to the hormone’s effects. Classic symptoms include thirst, polyuria, weight loss, and blurred vision. If left untreated, the disease can lead to various health complications, including disorders of the cardiovascular system, eye, kidney, and nerves. Untreated or poorly treated diabetes accounts for approximately 1.5 million deaths every year.
Diana, Princess of Wales (Wikipedia) Diana, Princess of Wales (born Diana Frances Spencer; 1 July 1961 – 31 August 1997) was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of Charles III (then Prince of Wales) and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her activism and glamour made her an international icon, and earned her enduring popularity.
Digital Research (Wikipedia) Digital Research, Inc. (DR or DRI) was a privately held American software company created by Gary Kildall to market and develop his CP/M operating system and related 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit systems like MP/M, Concurrent DOS, FlexOS, Multiuser DOS, DOS Plus, DR DOS and GEM. It was the first large software company in the microcomputer world. Digital Research was originally based in Pacific Grove, California, later in Monterey, California.
Digon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a bigon, digon, or a 2-gon, is a polygon with two sides (edges) and two vertices. Its construction is degenerate in a Euclidean plane because either the two sides would coincide or one or both would have to be curved; however, it can be easily visualised in elliptic space. It may also be viewed as a representation of a graph with two vertices, see “Generalized polygon”.
Dimetrodon (Wikipedia) Dimetrodon (/daɪˈmiːtrəˌdɒn/ or /daɪˈmɛtrəˌdɒn/; lit. ’two measures of teeth’) is an extinct genus of non-mammalian synapsid belonging to the family Sphenacodontidae that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early [Permian](Permian period, around 295–272 million years ago. With most species measuring 1.7–4.6 m (5.6–15.1 ft) long and weighing 28–250 kg (62–551 lb), the most prominent feature of Dimetrodon is the large neural spine sail on its back formed by elongated spines extending from the vertebrae. It was an obligate quadruped (it could only walk on four legs) and had a tall, curved skull with large teeth of different sizes set along the jaws.
Dinosaur (Wikipedia) Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is a subject of active research. They became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event 201.3 mya and their dominance continued throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The fossil record shows that birds are feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier theropods during the Late Jurassic epoch, and are the only dinosaur lineage known to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event approximately 66 mya. Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs—birds—and the extinct non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds.
Diocese (Wikipedia) In church governance, a diocese or bishopric is the ecclesiastical district under the jurisdiction of a bishop.
Diomede Islands (Wikipedia) The Diomede Islands (/ˌdaɪ.əˈmiːdiː/; Russian: острова́ Диоми́да, romanized: ostrova Diomida), also known in Russia as Gvozdev Islands (Russian: острова́ Гво́здева, romanized: ostrova Gvozdeva), consist of two rocky, mesa-like islands: * The Russian island of Big Diomede (part of Chukotka), also known as Imaqłiq, Inaliq, Nunarbuk or Ratmanov Island. * The U.S. island of Little Diomede (part of Alaska) or Iŋaliq, also known as Krusenstern Island
Discourse on the Method (Wikipedia) Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences (French: Discours de la Méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences) is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation “Je pense, donc je suis” (“I think, therefore I am”, or “I am thinking, therefore I exist”), which occurs in Part IV of the work. A similar argument, without this precise wording, is found in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), and a Latin version of the same statement Cogito, ergo sum is found in Principles of Philosophy (1644).
Discovery Park (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Discovery Park is a 534-acre (2.16 km2) park on the shores of Puget Sound in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. As the city’s largest public park, it contains 11.81 miles (19.01 km) of walking trails. The Discovery Park Loop Trail, designated a National Recreation Trail in 1975, runs 2.8 miles (4.5 km) through the park, connecting to other trails. Forests, beaches, prairies, and bluffs dominate the landscape of the park. Daybreak Star Cultural Center is within the park’s boundaries. The West Point Lighthouse is located on West Point, the westernmost point of the park and the entire city of Seattle. On the south side of the North Beach strip is the West Point Treatment Plant which is almost entirely concealed from the marsh, beach, and trail.
Discworld (Wikipedia) Discworld is a comic fantasy book series written by the English author Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat planet balanced on the backs of four elephants which in turn stand on the back of a giant turtle. The series began in 1983 with The Colour of Magic and continued until the final novel The Shepherd’s Crown, which was published in 2015, following Pratchett’s death. The books frequently parody or take inspiration from classic works, usually fantasy or science fiction, as well as mythology, folklore and fairy tales, and often use them for satirical parallels with cultural, political and scientific issues.
Dissociative (Wikipedia) Dissociatives, colloquially dissos, are a subclass of hallucinogens which distort perception of sight and sound and produce feelings of detachment – dissociation – from the environment and/or self. Although many kinds of drugs are capable of such action, dissociatives are unique in that they do so in such a way that they produce hallucinogenic effects, which may include dissociation, a general decrease in sensory experience, hallucinations, dream-like states or anesthesia. Despite most dissociatives’ main mechanism of action being tied to NMDA receptor antagonism, some of these substances, which are nonselective in action and affect the dopamine and/or opioid systems, may be capable of inducing more direct and repeatable euphoria or symptoms which are more akin to the effects of typical “hard drugs” or common drugs of abuse. This is likely why dissociatives are considered to be addictive with a fair to moderate potential for abuse, unlike psychedelics. Despite some dissociatives, such as phencyclidine (PCP) possessing stimulating properties, most dissociatives seem to have a general depressant effect and can produce sedation, respiratory depression, nausea, disorientation, analgesia, anesthesia, ataxia, cognitive and memory impairment as well as amnesia.
Dissolution of the Soviet Union (Wikipedia) The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was dissolved on 26 December 1991 by Declaration № 142-Н of the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, formally establishing the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a sovereign state and subject of international law. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union’s federal government and General Secretary (also President) Mikhail Gorbachev’s effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system in an attempt to stop a period of political stalemate and economic backslide.
Djibouti (Wikipedia) Djibouti, officially the Republic of Djibouti, is a country in the Horn of Africa, bordered by Somalia to the south, Ethiopia to the southwest, Eritrea in the north, and the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden to the east. The country has an area of 23,200 km2 (8,958 sq mi).
Dmitiry Muratov (Wikipedia) Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov (Russian: Дмитрий Андреевич Муратов; born 29 October 1961) is a Russian journalist, television presenter and the former editor-in-chief of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Maria Ressa for “their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Wikipedia) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (retrospectively titled Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in some later printings) is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, where Earth’s life has been greatly damaged by a nuclear global war, leaving most animal species endangered or extinct. The main plot follows Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who has to “retire” (i.e. kill) six escaped Nexus-6 model androids, while a secondary plot follows John Isidore, a man of sub-par IQ who aids the fugitive androids.
Do Kwon (Wikipedia) Kwon Do-Hyung (Korean: 권도형), more commonly known as Do Kwon, is the South Korean co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based Terraform Labs, the parent company of crashed stablecoin TerraUSD and cryptocurrency Luna. TerraUSD and Luna collapsed in May 2022, wiping out almost $45 billion market capitalization in one week and causing hundreds of billions in losses in the larger crypto market. Kwon faces legal and social pressure regarding his role in the Terra crash. Various jurisdictions, including South Korea, Singapore, and the United States are taking legal action against Kwon.
Dodecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a dodecagon, or 12-gon, is any twelve-sided polygon.
Dodgeball (Wikipedia) Dodgeball is a team sport in which players on two opposing teams try to throw balls and hit opponents while avoiding being hit themselves. The objective of each team is to eliminate all members of the opposing team by hitting them with thrown balls, catching a ball thrown by an opponent, or inducing an opponent to commit a violation, such as stepping outside the court.
Domain (biology) (Wikipedia) In biological taxonomy, a domain (/dəˈmeɪn/ or /doʊˈmeɪn/) (Latin: regio), also dominion, superkingdom, realm, or empire, is the highest taxonomic rank of all organisms taken together. It was introduced in the three-domain system of taxonomy devised by Carl Woese, Otto Kandler and Mark Wheelis in 1990.
Don Miguel Ruiz (Wikipedia) Miguel Ángel Ruiz Macías (born August 27, 1952), better known as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of Toltec spiritual and neoshamanistic texts. His work is best-received among members of the New Thought movement that focuses on ancient teachings as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment. Ruiz is listed as one of the Watkins 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2018. Some have associated Ruiz’s work with Carlos Castaneda, author of The Teachings of Don Juan.
Donald Trump (Wikipedia) Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Donnie Darko (Wikipedia) Donnie Darko is a 2001 American science fiction psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and produced by Flower Films. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Mary McDonnell, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Noah Wyle, Stu Stone, Daveigh Chase, and James Duval. Set in October 1988, the film follows Donnie Darko, an emotionally troubled teenager who inadvertently escapes a bizarre accident by sleepwalking. He has visions of Frank, a mysterious figure in a rabbit costume who informs him that the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds.
Dorado (Wikipedia) Dorado (US: /dɒˈreɪdoʊ, /also UK: /-ɑːdoʊ/) is a constellation in the southern sky. It was named in the late 16th century and is now one of the 88 modern constellations. Its name refers to the dolphinfish (Coryphaena hippurus), which is known as dorado in Spanish, although it has also been depicted as a swordfish. Dorado contains most of the Large Magellanic Cloud, the remainder being in the constellation Mensa. The South Ecliptic pole also lies within this constellation.
DOS (Wikipedia) DOS (/dɒs/, /dɔːs/) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft’s MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible systems from other manufacturers include DR-DOS (1988), ROM-DOS (1989), PTS-DOS (1993), and FreeDOS (1998). MS-DOS dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995.
Double star (Wikipedia) In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes.
Double-slit experiment (Wikipedia) In modern physics, the double-slit experiment demonstrates that light and matter can satisfy the seemingly incongruous classical definitions for both waves and particles. This ambiguity is considered evidence for the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. This type of experiment was first performed by Thomas Young in 1801, as a demonstration of the wave behavior of visible light. In 1927, Davisson and Germer and, independently George Paget Thomson and his research student Alexander Reid demonstrated that electrons show the same behavior, which was later extended to atoms and molecules. Thomas Young’s experiment with light was part of classical physics long before the development of quantum mechanics and the concept of wave–particle duality. He believed it demonstrated that Christiaan Huygens’ wave theory of light was correct, and his experiment is sometimes referred to as Young’s experiment or Young’s slits.
Douglas Adams (Wikipedia) Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 a BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy developed into a “trilogy” of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams’s contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy’s Hall of Fame.
Douglas County, Washington (Wikipedia) Douglas County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 42,938. The county seat is Waterville, while its largest settlement is East Wenatchee. The county was created out of Lincoln County on November 28, 1883 and is named for American statesman Stephen A. Douglas.
Douglas Creek (Washington) (Wikipedia) Douglas Creek is a creek in Douglas County, Washington. It rises in Douglas County, flows through Moses Coulee then empties to Wanapum Lake on the Columbia River. The course of the creek through Moses Coulee displays an “outdoor geologic laboratory” exhibiting basalt formations and relics of the Missoula floods of the last ice age. The watershed of Douglas Creek proper covers 132,056 acres (53,441 ha), about 11% of the county, but including McCarteny Creek the entire Moses Coulee drainage is 1,000 square miles (2,600 km2) or a little more than half of the county. The creek’s flow reaches the Columbia River “during storm water runoff events”, otherwise being absorbed into the aquifer.
Downtown Seattle (Wikipedia) Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by Elliott Bay, and on the south by reclaimed land that was once tidal flats. It is bounded on the north by Denny Way, beyond which are Lower Queen Anne (sometimes known as “Uptown”), Seattle Center, and South Lake Union; on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which is Capitol Hill to the northeast and Central District to the east; on the south by S Dearborn Street, beyond which is Sodo; and on the west by Elliott Bay, a part of Puget Sound.
Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (Wikipedia) The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT), also referred to as the Metro Bus Tunnel, is a 1.3-mile-long (2.1 km) pair of public transit tunnels in Seattle, Washington, United States. The double-track tunnel and its four stations serve Link light rail trains on the 1 Line as it travels through Downtown Seattle. It runs west under Pine Street from 9th Avenue to 3rd Avenue, and south under 3rd Avenue to South Jackson Street. 1 Line trains continue north from the tunnel to Northgate station and south through the Rainier Valley past Seattle–Tacoma International Airport to Angle Lake station as part of Sound Transit’s light rail network.
Draco (constellation) (Wikipedia) Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Its name is Latin for dragon. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. The north pole of the ecliptic is in Draco. Draco is circumpolar from northern latitudes. There it is never setting and therefore can be seen all year.
Drainage basin (Wikipedia) A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, the drainage divide, made up of a succession of elevated features, such as ridges and hills. A basin may consist of smaller basins that merge at river confluences, forming a hierarchical pattern.
Drake Passage (Wikipedia) The Drake Passage is the body of water between South America’s Cape Horn, Chile, Argentina, and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. The passage is named after the 16th-century English explorer and privateer Sir Francis Drake.
Dream argument (Wikipedia) The dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore, any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and rigorously tested to determine whether it is in fact reality.
Dryden, Washington (Wikipedia) Dryden is a small unincorporated community in Chelan County, Washington, United States. It is situated along the Wenatchee River in the fertile Wenatchee Valley between the towns of Cashmere and Leavenworth. The community serves as a supply and shipping point for local farms and orchards.
Dublin (Wikipedia) Dublin (/ˈdʌblɪn/; Irish: Baile Átha Cliath, pronounced [ˈbˠalʲə aːhə ˈclʲiə] or [ˌbʲlʲaː ˈclʲiə]) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2022 census, the municipal area had a population of 592,713, while Dublin City and its suburbs had a population of 1,263,219, and County Dublin had a population of 1,458,154.
Dubuque, Iowa (Wikipedia) Dubuque (/dəˈbjuːk/, dəb-YOOK) is a city in and the county seat of Dubuque County, Iowa, United States, located along the Mississippi River. At the time of the 2020 census, the population of Dubuque was 59,667. The city lies at the junction of Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin, a region locally known as the Tri-State Area. It serves as the main commercial, industrial, educational, and cultural center for the area. Geographically, it is part of the Driftless Area, a portion of North America that escaped all three phases of the Wisconsin Glaciation.
Duck (Wikipedia) Duck is the common name for numerous species of waterfowl in the family Anatidae. Ducks are generally smaller and shorter-necked than swans and geese, which are members of the same family. Divided among several subfamilies, they are a form taxon; they do not represent a monophyletic group (the group of all descendants of a single common ancestral species), since swans and geese are not considered ducks. Ducks are mostly aquatic birds, and may be found in both fresh water and sea water.
Duck and Cover (film) (Wikipedia) Duck and Cover is a 1951 American civil defense animated and live action social guidance film that is often mischaracterized as propaganda. It has similar themes to the more adult-oriented civil defense training films. It was widely distributed to United States schoolchildren in the 1950s, and teaches students what to do in the event of a nuclear explosion.
Duluth, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Duluth (/dəˈluːθ/ də-LOOTH) is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of St. Louis County. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota’s Arrowhead Region, the city is a hub for tourism and cargo shipping. Commodities shipped from the Port of Duluth include coal, iron ore, grain, limestone, cement, salt, wood pulp, steel coil, and wind turbine components. Duluth is south of the Iron Range and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Dunlap, Seattle (Wikipedia) Dunlap is a neighborhood in south Seattle, Washington, just north of Rainier Beach. It is home to Dunlap Elementary School, part of the Seattle Public Schools. Dunlap is named after Joseph Dunlap, the first homesteader in the area.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (Wikipedia) Dwight David Eisenhower (/ˈaɪzənhaʊ.ər/ EYE-zən-how-ər; born David Dwight Eisenhower; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969), nicknamed Ike, was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and achieved the five-star rank as General of the Army. Eisenhower planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
Dystopia (Wikipedia) A dystopia (from Ancient Greek δυσ (dus) ‘bad’, and τόπος (tópos) ‘place’), also called a cacotopia or anti-utopia, is a community or society that is extremely bad or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence, and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality, not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.
Eagan, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Eagan (/ˈiːɡən/ EE-gən) is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota. It is south of Saint Paul and lies on the south bank of the Minnesota River, upstream from the confluence with the Mississippi River. Eagan and the other nearby suburbs form the southern section of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. Eagan’s population was 68,855 at the 2020 census. The city was home to the headquarters of Northwest Airlines (now Delta Air Lines).
Early Cretaceous (Wikipedia) The Early Cretaceous (geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name) is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma.
Early Jurassic (Wikipedia) The Early Jurassic Epoch (in chronostratigraphy corresponding to the Lower Jurassic Series) is the earliest of three epochs of the Jurassic Period. The Early Jurassic starts immediately after the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, 201.3 Ma (million years ago), and ends at the start of the Middle Jurassic 174.7 ±0.8 Ma.
Early Triassic (Wikipedia) The Early Triassic is the first of three epochs of the Triassic Period of the geologic timescale. It spans the time between 251.9 Ma and 247.2 Ma (million years ago). Rocks from this epoch are collectively known as the Lower Triassic Series, which is a unit in chronostratigraphy.
Earth (Wikipedia) Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only place known in the universe where life has originated and found habitability. Earth is the only planet known to sustain liquid surface water, with ocean water extending over 70.8% of the planet, making it an ocean world. Most of all other water is retained in Earth’s polar regions, with large sheets of ice covering ocean and land, dwarfing Earth’s groundwater, lakes, rivers and atmospheric water. The other 29.2% of the Earth’s surface is land, consisting of continents and islands, and is widely covered by vegetation. Below the planet’s surface lies the crust, consisting of several slowly moving tectonic plates, which interact to produce mountain ranges, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Inside the Earth’s crust is a liquid outer core that generates the magnetosphere, deflecting most of the destructive solar winds and cosmic radiation.
Earth Abides (Wikipedia) Earth Abides is a 1949 American post-apocalyptic science fiction novel by George R. Stewart. The novel tells the story of the fall of civilization from deadly disease and the emergence of a new culture with simpler tools. Set in the 1940s in Berkeley, California, the story is told by Isherwood Williams, who emerges from isolation in the mountains to find almost everyone dead.
Earth science (Wikipedia) Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth’s four spheres: the biosphere, hydrosphere/cryosphere, atmosphere, and geosphere (or lithosphere). Earth science can be considered to be a branch of planetary science but with a much older history.
Earth–Moon system (Wikipedia) The Earth and the Moon form the Earth-Moon satellite system with a shared center of mass, or barycenter. This barycenter stays located at all times 1,700 km (1,100 mi) (about a quarter of Earth’s radius) beneath the Earth’s surface, making the Moon seemingly orbit the Earth.
Earthrise (Wikipedia) Earthrise is a photograph of Earth and part of the Moon’s surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as “the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”.
East African Rift (Wikipedia) The East African Rift (EAR) or East African Rift System (EARS) is an active continental rift zone in East Africa. The EAR began developing around the onset of the Miocene, 22–25 million years ago. It was formerly considered to be part of a larger Great Rift Valley that extended north to Asia Minor.
East Asia (Wikipedia) East Asia is a region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. Hong Kong and Macau, two small coastal cities located in the south of China, are autonomous regions under Chinese sovereignty. The economies of Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau are some of the world’s largest and most prosperous economies. East Asia borders Siberia and the Russian Far East to the north, Southeast Asia to the south, South Asia to the southwest, and Central Asia to the west. To the east is the Pacific Ocean and to the southeast is Micronesia (a Pacific Ocean island group that is classified as part of Oceania).
Easter Microplate (Wikipedia) Easter Plate is a tectonic microplate located to the west of Easter Island off the west coast of South America in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, bordering the Nazca Plate to the east and the Pacific Plate to the west. It was discovered from looking at earthquake distributions that were offset from the previously perceived Nazca-Pacific Divergent boundary. This young plate is 5.25 million years old and is considered a microplate because it is small with an area of approximately 160,000 square kilometres (62,000 sq mi). Seafloor spreading along the Easter microplate’s borders have some of the highest global rates, ranging from 50 to 140 millimetres (2.0 to 5.5 in)/yr.
Eastern Europe (Wikipedia) Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, whilst its western boundary is defined in various ways. Most definitions include the countries of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania while less restrictive definitions may also include some or all of the Balkans, the Baltic states, the Caucasus and the Visegrád group.
Eastlake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Eastlake is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, so named because of its location on the eastern shore of Lake Union. Its main thoroughfare is Eastlake Avenue E., which runs from Howell Street at the northeast corner of Downtown north over the University Bridge to the University District, where it connects to Roosevelt Way N.E. and 11th Avenue N.E. A second thoroughfare is Boylston Avenue E.; as an arterial, it parallels Interstate 5 for the four blocks between E. Newton Street to the south and E. Roanoke Street to the north, acting as an extension of Capitol Hill’s Lakeview Boulevard E.
Eatonville, Washington (Wikipedia) Eatonville is a town in Pierce County, Washington, United States. It is 32 mi (51 km) south of Tacoma. The population was 2,845 at the 2020 census. The town motto is “Better Together.”
Ecclesiastes (Wikipedia) Ecclesiastes (/ɪˌkliːziˈæstiːz/, ih-KLEE-zee-ASS-teez; Biblical Hebrew: קֹהֶלֶת, romanized: Qōheleṯ, Ancient Greek: Ἐκκλησιαστής, romanized: Ekklēsiastēs) is one of the Ketuvim (“Writings”) of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament. The title commonly used in English is a Latin transliteration of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word קֹהֶלֶת (Kohelet, Koheleth, Qoheleth or Qohelet). An unnamed author introduces “The words of Kohelet, son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1) and does not use his own voice again until the final verses (12:9–14), where he gives his own thoughts and summarises the statements of Kohelet; the main body of the text is ascribed to Kohelet himself.
Ecliptic (Wikipedia) The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun’s movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic against the background of stars. The ecliptic is an important reference plane and is the basis of the ecliptic coordinate system.
Ectasian (Wikipedia) The Ectasian Period (from Ancient Greek: ἔκτασις, romanized: éktasis, meaning “extension”) is the second geologic period in the Mesoproterozoic Era and lasted from 1400 Mya ago to 1200 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Ecuador (Wikipedia) Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Ecuador also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometers (621 mi) west of the mainland. The country’s capital is Quito, but its largest city is Guayaquil.
Edgar Allan Poe (Wikipedia) Edgar Allan Poe (né Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States, and of American literature. He was one of the country’s earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
Ediacaran (Wikipedia) The Ediacaran Period ( /ˌiːdiˈækərən, ˌɛdi-/ EE-dee-AK-ər-ən, ED-ee-) is a geological period of the Neoproterozoic Era that spans 96 million years from the end of the Cryogenian Period at 635 Mya, to the beginning of the Cambrian Period at 538.8 Mya. It is the last period of the Proterozoic Eon as well as the so-called Precambrian “supereon”, before the beginning of the subsequent Cambrian Period marks the start of the Phanerozoic Eon, where recognizable fossil evidence of life becomes common.
Edison screw (Wikipedia) Edison screw (ES) is a standard lightbulb socket for electric light bulbs. It was developed by Thomas Edison (1847–1931), patented in 1881, and was licensed in 1909 under General Electric’s Mazda trademark. The bulbs have right-hand threaded metal bases (caps) which screw into matching threaded sockets (lamp holders). For bulbs powered by AC current, the thread is generally connected to neutral and the contact on the bottom tip of the base is connected to the “live” phase.
Ediz Hook (Wikipedia) Ediz Hook is a 3-mile-long (4.8 km) sand spit that extends from northern shore of the Olympic Peninsula at Port Angeles in northcentral Clallam County, Washington, USA, northeasterly into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, located about 15-mile (24 km) west of the larger Dungeness Spit. It is relatively narrow at points, but broader toward the base and the northeast tip.
Edmonds, Washington (Wikipedia) Edmonds is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located in the southwest corner of the county, facing Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located 15 miles (24 km) north of Seattle and 18 miles (29 km) southwest of Everett. With a population of 42,853 residents in the 2020 U.S. census, Edmonds is the third most populous city in the county.
Edwin Hubble (Wikipedia) Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology.
Ego death (Wikipedia) Ego death is a “complete loss of subjective self-identity”. The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero’s Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
Egypt (Wikipedia) Egypt (Arabic: مصر Miṣr [mesˁr], Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [mɑsˤr]), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and the Sinai Peninsula in the southwest corner of Asia. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip of Palestine and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northeast separates Egypt from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Cairo is the capital and largest city of Egypt, while Alexandria, the second-largest city, is an important industrial and tourist hub at the Mediterranean coast. At approximately 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the 14th-most populated country in the world, and the third-most populated in Africa, behind Nigeria and Ethiopia.
El Salvador (Wikipedia) El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador’s capital and largest city is San Salvador. The country’s population in 2023 was estimated to be 6.5 million.
Eleanor Roosevelt (Wikipedia) Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (/ˈɛlɪnɔːr ˈroʊzəvɛlt/; October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962) was an American political figure, diplomat, and activist. She served as the first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945, during her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four terms in office, making her the longest-serving first lady of the United States. Roosevelt served as United States Delegate to the United Nations General Assembly from 1945 to 1952. President Harry S. Truman later called her the “First Lady of the World” in tribute to her human rights achievements.
Electricity (Wikipedia) Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwell’s equations. Common phenomena are related to electricity, including lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electric discharges and many others.
Electronic body music (wikipedia.org) Electronic body music (EBM) is a genre of electronic music that combines elements of industrial music and synth-punk with elements of dance music. It developed in the early 1980s in Western Europe, as an outgrowth of both the punk and the industrial music cultures. It combines sequenced repetitive basslines, programmed dance music rhythms, and mostly undistorted vocals and command-like shouts with confrontational or provocative themes.
Electronic music (Wikipedia) Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means (electroacoustic music). Pure electronic instruments depended entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator, theremin, or synthesizer. Electromechanical instruments can have mechanical parts such as strings, hammers, and electric elements including magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers. Such electromechanical devices include the telharmonium, Hammond organ, electric piano and the electric guitar.
Elementary algebra (Wikipedia) Elementary algebra, also known as college algebra, encompasses the basic concepts of algebra. It is often contrasted with arithmetic: arithmetic deals with specified numbers, whilst algebra introduces variables (quantities without fixed values).
Ellensburg, Washington (Wikipedia) Ellensburg is a city in and the county seat of Kittitas County, Washington, United States. It is located just east of the Cascade Range near the junction of Interstate 90 and Interstate 82. The population was 18,666 at the 2020 census. and was estimated to be 19,596 in 2021.
Elliott Bay (Wikipedia) Elliott Bay is a part of the Central Basin region of Puget Sound. It is in the U.S. state of Washington, extending southeastward between West Point in the north and Alki Point in the south. Seattle was founded on this body of water in the 1850s and has since grown to encompass it completely. The waterway it provides to the Pacific Ocean has served as a key element of the city’s economy, enabling the Port of Seattle to become one of the busiest ports in the United States.
Elvis Presley (Wikipedia) Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), commonly referred to by his first name, Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Known as the “King of Rock and Roll”, he is regarded as one of the most significant cultural figures of the 20th century. Presley’s energized interpretations of songs and sexually provocative performance style, combined with a singularly potent mix of influences across color lines during a transformative era in race relations, brought both great success and initial controversy.
Émile Zola (Wikipedia) Émile Édouard Charles Antoine Zola (/ˈzoʊlə/, also US: /zoʊˈlɑː/, French: [emil zɔla]; 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was a French novelist, journalist, playwright, the best-known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism, and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in his renowned newspaper opinion headlined J’Accuse…! Zola was nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902.
Emily Dickinson (Wikipedia) Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, into a prominent family with strong ties to its community. After studying at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she briefly attended the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family’s home in Amherst. Evidence suggests that Dickinson lived much of her life in isolation. Considered an eccentric by locals, she developed a penchant for white clothing and was known for her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even to leave her bedroom. Dickinson never married, and most friendships between her and others depended entirely upon correspondence.
Empire of the Sun (band) (Wikipedia) Empire of the Sun is an Australian electronic music duo formed in 2007. The duo is a collaboration between Luke Steele, of alternative rock band The Sleepy Jackson, and Nick Littlemore, of electronic dance band Pnau.
Empty set (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the empty set is the unique set having no elements; its size or cardinality (count of elements in a set) is zero. Some axiomatic set theories ensure that the empty set exists by including an axiom of empty set, while in other theories, its existence can be deduced. Many possible properties of sets are vacuously true for the empty set.
England (Wikipedia) England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea area of the Atlantic Ocean to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
Enigma machine (Wikipedia) The Enigma machine is a cipher device developed and used in the early- to mid-20th century to protect commercial, diplomatic, and military communication. It was employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II, in all branches of the German military. The Enigma machine was considered so secure that it was used to encipher the most top-secret messages.
Enki (Wikipedia) Enki (Sumerian: 𒀭𒂗𒆠 DEN-KI) is the Sumerian god of water, knowledge (gestú), crafts (gašam), and creation (nudimmud), and one of the Anunnaki. He was later known as Ea (Akkadian: 𒀭𒂍𒀀) or Ae in Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) religion, and is identified by some scholars with Ia in Canaanite religion. The name was rendered Aos in Greek sources (e.g. Damascius).
Enneadecagon (Wikipedia)
Enrico Fermi (Wikipedia) Enrico Fermi (Italian: [enˈriːko ˈfermi]; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and later naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world’s first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project. He has been called the “architect of the nuclear age” and the “architect of the atomic bomb”. He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.
Enterprise, Alabama (Wikipedia) Enterprise is a city in the southeastern part of Coffee County and the southwestern part of Dale County in Southeastern Alabama, United States. Its population was 28,711 at the 2020 census. Enterprise is the primary city of the Enterprise micropolitan statistical area (with the portion of the city in Dale County part of the Ozark micropolitan statistical area). It was originally a part of Enterprise–Ozark micropolitan area before being split; for a longer while it was originally part of the Dothan-Enterprise-Ozark combined statistical area but is now its own separate primary statistical area in later censuses.
Entropy (Wikipedia) Entropy is a scientific concept, as well as a measurable physical property, that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to the principles of information theory. It has found far-ranging applications in chemistry and physics, in biological systems and their relation to life, in cosmology, economics, sociology, weather science, climate change, and information systems including the transmission of information in telecommunication.
Enumclaw, Washington (Wikipedia) Enumclaw (/ˈiːnəmklɔː/EE-nəm-klaw) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 12,543 at the 2020 census.
Eoarchean (Wikipedia) The Eoarchean (IPA: /ˌiːoʊ.ɑːrˈkiːən/ EE-oh-ar-KEE-ən; also spelled Eoarchaean) is the first era of the Archean Eon of the geologic record. It spans 431 million years, from the end of the Hadean Eon 4031 Mya to the start of the Paleoarchean Era 3600 Mya. The beginnings of life on Earth have been dated to this era and evidence of archaea and cyanobacteria date to 3500 Mya, comparatively shortly after the Eoarchean. At that time, the atmosphere was without oxygen and the pressure values ranged from 10 to 100 bar (around 10 to 100 times the atmospheric pressure today).
Eocene (Wikipedia) The Eocene (IPA: /ˈiːəsiːn, ˈiːoʊ-/ EE-ə-seen, EE-oh-) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (Ma). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name Eocene comes from the Ancient Greek ἠώς (ēṓs, “dawn”) and καινός (kainós, “new”) and refers to the “dawn” of modern (’new’) fauna that appeared during the epoch.
Epic of Gilgamesh (Wikipedia) The Epic of Gilgamesh (/ˈɡɪlɡəmɛʃ/) is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian poems about Bilgamesh (Sumerian for “Gilgamesh”), king of Uruk, dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2100 BC). These independent stories were later used as source material for a combined epic in Akkadian. The first surviving version of this combined epic, known as the “Old Babylonian” version, dates back to the 18th century BC and is titled after its incipit, Shūtur eli sharrī (“Surpassing All Other Kings”). Only a few tablets of it have survived. The later Standard Babylonian version compiled by Sîn-lēqi-unninni dates from the 13th to the 10th centuries BC and bears the incipit Sha naqba īmuru (“He who Saw the Abyss”, lit. ‘“He who Sees the Unknown”’). Approximately two-thirds of this longer, twelve-tablet version have been recovered. Some of the best copies were discovered in the library ruins of the 7th-century BC Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.
Epistle to the Ephesians (Wikipedia) The Epistle to the Ephesians is the tenth book of the New Testament. According to its text, the letter was written by Paul the Apostle, an attribution that Christians traditionally accepted. However, starting in 1792, some scholars have claimed the letter is actually Deutero-Pauline, meaning that it is pseudepigrapha written in Paul’s name by a later author strongly influenced by Paul’s thought. According to one scholarly source, the letter was probably written “by a loyal disciple to sum up Paul’s teaching and to apply it to a new situation fifteen to twenty-five years after the Apostle’s death”.
Epistle to the Philippians (Wikipedia) The Epistle to the Philippians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and Timothy is named with him as co-author or co-sender. The letter is addressed to the Christian church in Philippi. Paul, Timothy, Silas (and perhaps Luke) first visited Philippi in Greece (Macedonia) during Paul’s second missionary journey from Antioch, which occurred between approximately 49 and 51 AD. In the account of his visit in the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and Silas are accused of “disturbing the city”.
Epistle to the Romans (Wikipedia) The Epistle to the Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament, and the longest of the thirteen Pauline epistles. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by Paul the Apostle to explain that salvation is offered through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Epsilon Canis Majoris (Wikipedia) Epsilon Canis Majoris is a binary star system and the second-brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinised from ε Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Epsilon CMa or ε CMa. This is the 22nd-brightest star in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 1.50. About 4.7 million years ago, it was the brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of −3.99. Based upon parallax measurements obtained during the Hipparcos mission, it is about 430 light-years distant from the Sun.
Epsilon Geminorum (Wikipedia) Epsilon Geminorum or ε Geminorum, formally named Mebsuta /mɛbˈsuːtə/, is a star in the constellation of Gemini, on the outstretched right ’leg’ of the twin Castor. The apparent visual magnitude of +3.06 makes it one of the brighter stars in this constellation. The distance to this star is determined at 860 light-years (260 parsecs).
Epsilon Virginis (Wikipedia) Epsilon Virginis (ε Virginis, abbreviated Epsilon Vir, ε Vir), formally named Vindemiatrix /vɪndiːmiˈeɪtrɪks/, is a star in the zodiac constellation of Virgo. The apparent visual magnitude of this star is +2.8, making it the third-brightest member of Virgo. Based upon parallax measurements made by the Gaia spapecraft, Vindemiatrix lies at a distance of about 108 light-years (33 parsecs) from the Sun, give or take 0.7 light-years.
Epworth, Iowa (Wikipedia) Epworth is a city in Dubuque County, Iowa, United States. It is part of the Dubuque, Iowa Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,023 at the 2020 census, up from 1,428 in 2000.
Equal Rites (Wikipedia) Equal Rites is a comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett. Published in 1987, it is the third novel in the Discworld series and the first in which the main character is not Rincewind. The title is wordplay on the phrase “Equal Rights”.
Equatorial Guinea (Wikipedia) Equatorial Guinea (Spanish: Guinea Ecuatorial; French: Guinée équatoriale; Portuguese: Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea (Spanish: República de Guinea Ecuatorial, French: République de Guinée équatoriale, Portuguese: República da Guiné Equatorial), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa, with an area of 28,000 square kilometres (11,000 sq mi). Formerly the colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name refers to its location near both the Equator and in the African region of Guinea. As of 2021, the country had a population of 1,468,777, over 85% of whom are members of the Fang people, the country’s dominant ethnic group. The Bubi people, indigenous to Bioko, are the second largest group at approximately 6.5% of the population.
Equilateral triangle (Wikipedia) In geometry, an equilateral triangle is a triangle in which all three sides have the same length. In the familiar Euclidean geometry, an equilateral triangle is also equiangular; that is, all three internal angles are also congruent to each other and are each 60°. It is also a regular polygon, so it is also referred to as a regular triangle.
Equilibrium (film) (Wikipedia) Equilibrium is a 2002 American science fiction dystopian action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer, and starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson, and Taye Diggs. Miramax Films released Equilibrium on December 6, 2002, and it grossed $5.3 million on a budget of $20 million.
Equuleus (Wikipedia) Equuleus (/ɪˈkwuːliəs/ ih-KWOO-lee-əs) is a faint constellation located just north of the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for “little horse”, a foal. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is the second smallest of the modern constellations (after Crux), spanning only 72 square degrees. It is also very faint, having no stars brighter than the fourth magnitude.
Eric (novel) (wikipedia.org) Eric, stylized as Faust Eric, is the ninth Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett. It was originally published in 1990 as a “Discworld story”, in a larger format than the other novels and illustrated by Josh Kirby. It was later reissued as a normal paperback without any illustrations, and in some cases, with the title given on the cover and title pages simply as Eric. (The page headers, however, continued to alternate between Faust and Eric.)
Eric Frank Russell (Wikipedia) Eric Frank Russell (January 6, 1905 – February 28, 1978) was a British writer best known for his science fiction novels and short stories. Much of his work was first published in the United States, in John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction and other pulp magazines. Russell also wrote horror fiction for Weird Tales and non-fiction articles on Fortean topics. Up to 1955 several of his stories were published under pseudonyms, at least Duncan H. Munro and Niall(e) Wilde.
Ericameria nauseosa (Wikipedia) Ericameria nauseosa (formerly Chrysothamnus nauseosus), commonly known as chamisa, rubber rabbitbrush, and gray rabbitbrush, is a shrub in the sunflower family (Aster) found in the arid regions of western North America.
Eridanus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Eridanus (/ɪˈrɪdənəs/) is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. It is represented as a river. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. It is the sixth largest of the modern constellations, and the one that extends farthest in the sky from north to south. The same name was later taken as a Latin name for the real Po River and also for the name of a minor river in Athens.
Eridu (Wikipedia) Eridu (Cuneiform: NUN.KI 𒉣𒆠; Sumerian: eridugki; Akkadian: irîtu) was a Sumerian city located at Tell Abu Shahrain (Arabic: تل أبو شهرين), also Abu Shahrein or Tell Abu Shahrayn, an archaeological site in southern Mesopotamia. It is located in Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq near the modern city of Basra. Eridu is traditionally believed to be the earliest city in southern Mesopotamia based on the Sumerian King List.
Eritrea (Wikipedia) Eritrea (/ˌɛrɪˈtriːə/ ERR-ih-TREE-ə or /-ˈtreɪ-/ -⁠TRAY-; Tigrinya: ኤርትራ, romanized: Ertra, pronounced [ʔer(ɨ)trä]), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in the Horn of Africa region of Eastern Africa, with its capital and largest city at Asmara. It is bordered by Ethiopia in the south, Sudan in the west, and Djibouti in the southeast. The northeastern and eastern parts of Eritrea have an extensive coastline along the Red Sea. The nation has a total area of approximately 117,600 km2 (45,406 sq mi), and includes the Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands.
Erma Bombeck (Wikipedia) Erma Louise Bombeck (née Fiste; February 21, 1927 – April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for her newspaper humor column describing suburban home life, syndicated from 1965 to 1996. She also published 15 books, most of which became bestsellers.
Ernest Rutherford (Wikipedia) Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson, OM FRS HonFRSE (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. Rutherford has been described as “the father of nuclear physics”, and “the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday”. In 1908, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.” He was the first Oceanian Nobel laureate, and the first to perform the awarded work in Canada.
Ernst Zermelo (Wikipedia) Ernst Friedrich Ferdinand Zermelo (/zɜːrˈmɛloʊ/, German: [tsɛɐ̯ˈmeːlo]; 27 July 1871 – 21 May 1953) was a German logician and mathematician, whose work has major implications for the foundations of mathematics. He is known for his role in developing Zermelo–Fraenkel axiomatic set theory and his proof of the well-ordering theorem. Furthermore, his 1929 work on ranking chess players is the first description of a model for pairwise comparison that continues to have a profound impact on various applied fields utilizing this method.
Erwin Schrödinger (Wikipedia) Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ForMemRS HonMRIA (UK: /ˈʃrɜːdɪŋə, ˈʃroʊdɪŋə/, US: /ˈʃroʊdɪŋər/; German: [ˈɛɐ̯vɪn ˈʃʁøːdɪŋɐ]; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as Schroedinger or Schrodinger, was a Nobel Prize–winning Austrian and naturalized Irish physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum theory. In particular, he is recognized for postulating the Schrödinger equation, an equation that provides a way to calculate the wave function of a system and how it changes dynamically in time. He coined the term “quantum entanglement”, and was the earliest to discuss it, doing so in 1932.
Eskimo Nebula (Wikipedia) The Eskimo Nebula (NGC 2392), also known as the Clown-faced Nebula, Lion Nebula, or Caldwell 39, is a bipolar double-shell planetary nebula (PN). It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1787. The formation resembles a person’s head surrounded by a parka hood. It is surrounded by gas that composed the outer layers of a Sun-like star. The visible inner filaments are ejected by a strong wind of particles from the central star. The outer disk contains unusual, light-year-long filaments.
Esperance, Washington (Wikipedia) Esperance is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. Esperance is an enclave of the city of Edmonds, Washington. The population was 4,007 at the 2020 census, up from 3,601 at the 2010 census.
Estonia (Wikipedia) Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,200 other islands and islets on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of 45,339 square kilometres (17,505 sq mi). The capital city Tallinn and Tartu are the two largest urban areas of the country. The Estonian language is the indigenous and the official language of Estonia; it is the first language of the majority of its population, as well as the world’s second most spoken Finnic language.
Eswatini (Wikipedia) Eswatini (/ˌɛswɑːˈtiːni/ ESS-wah-TEE-nee; Swazi: eSwatini [ɛswáˈtʼiːni]), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and also known by its former official name Swaziland (/ˈswɑːzilænd/ SWAH-zee-land) and formerly the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its north, west, south, and southeast. At no more than 200 km (120 mi) north to south and 130 km (81 mi) east to west, Eswatini is one of the smallest countries in Africa; despite this, its climate and topography are diverse, ranging from a cool and mountainous highveld to a hot and dry lowveld.
Eta Geminorum (Wikipedia) Eta Geminorum (η Geminorum, abbreviated Eta Gem, η Gem), formally named Propus /ˈproʊpəs/, is a triple star system in the constellation of Gemini. It is a naked-eye variable star around 380 light years from the Sun.
Ethiopia (Wikipedia) Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the East, Kenya to the South, South Sudan to the West, and Sudan to the Northwest. Ethiopia covers a land area of 1,112,000 square kilometres (472,000 sq. miles). As of 2024, it is home to around 129 million inhabitants, making it the 13th-most populous country in the world, the 2nd-most populous in Africa after Nigeria, and the most populated landlocked country on Earth. The national capital and largest city, Addis Ababa, lies several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country into the African and Somali tectonic plates.
Eugene V. Debs (Wikipedia) Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American socialist, political activist, trade unionist, one of the founding members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and five-time candidate of the Socialist Party of America for President of the United States. Through his presidential candidacies as well as his work with labor movements, Debs eventually became one of the best-known socialists living in the United States.
Eukaryote (Wikipedia) The eukaryotes (/juːˈkærioʊts, -əts/) constitute the domain of Eukarya, organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms are eukaryotes. They constitute a major group of life forms alongside the two groups of prokaryotes: the Bacteria and the Archaea. Eukaryotes represent a small minority of the number of organisms, but due to their generally much larger size, their collective global biomass is much larger than that of prokaryotes.
Eurasia (Wikipedia) Eurasia (/jʊəˈreɪʒə/ yoor-AY-zhə, also UK: /-ʃə/ -⁠shə) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent. The concepts of Europe and Asia as distinct continents date back to antiquity, but their borders have historically been subject to change, for example to the ancient Greeks Asia originally included Africa but they classified Europe as separate land. Eurasia is connected to Africa at the Suez Canal, and the two are sometimes combined to describe the largest contiguous landmass on Earth, Afro-Eurasia.
Eurasian Plate (Wikipedia) The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent and the area east of the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia. It also includes oceanic crust extending westward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and northward to the Gakkel Ridge.
Europe (Wikipedia) Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east. Europe shares the landmass of Eurasia with Asia, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Asia and Africa. Europe is commonly considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea, and the waterways of the Turkish straits.
Eurostar (Wikipedia) Eurostar is an international high-speed rail service connecting the United Kingdom with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Most Eurostar trains travel through the Channel Tunnel between the United Kingdom and France, owned and operated separately by Getlink.
Everett, Washington (Wikipedia) Everett (/ˈɛvərɪt/; Lushootseed: dᶻəɬigʷəd) is the county seat and largest city of Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle and is one of the main cities in the metropolitan area and the Puget Sound region. Everett is the seventh-largest city in the state by population, with 110,629 residents as of the 2020 census. The city is primarily situated on a peninsula at the mouth of the Snohomish River along Port Gardner Bay, an inlet of Possession Sound (itself part of Puget Sound), and extends to the south and west.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Wikipedia) Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American absurdist comedy-drama film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo and Jonathan Wang. The film incorporates elements from several genres and film media, including surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, immigrant narrative, and animation. Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Quan Wang, a Chinese-American immigrant who, while audited by the IRS, discovers that she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from destroying the multiverse. The film also stars Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jamie Lee Curtis, and James Hong.
Everywhere at the End of Time (Wikipedia) Everywhere at the End of Time is the eleventh and final recording by the Caretaker, an alias of English electronic musician Leyland Kirby. Released between 2016 and 2019, its six studio albums use degrading loops of sampled ballroom music to portray the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Inspired by the success of An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011), Kirby produced Everywhere as his final major work under the alias. The albums were produced in Kraków and released over six-month periods to “give a sense of time passing”, with abstract album covers by his friend Ivan Seal. The series drew comparisons to the works of composer William Basinski and electronic musician Burial, while the later stages were influenced by avant-gardist composer John Cage.
Existence (Wikipedia) Existence is the ability of an entity to interact with reality. In philosophy, it refers to the ontological property of being.
Existential quantification (Wikipedia) In predicate logic, an existential quantification is a type of quantifier, a logical constant which is interpreted as “there exists”, “there is at least one”, or “for some”. It is usually denoted by the logical operator symbol ∃, which, when used together with a predicate variable, is called an existential quantifier (“∃x” or “∃(x)” or “(∃x)”). Existential quantification is distinct from universal quantification (“for all”), which asserts that the property or relation holds for all members of the domain. Some sources use the term existentialization to refer to existential quantification.
Expanded memory (Wikipedia) In DOS memory management, expanded memory is a system of bank switching that provided additional memory to DOS programs beyond the limit of conventional memory (640 KiB).
Explorer Plate (Wikipedia) The Explorer Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, which is partially subducted under the North American Plate. Along with the Juan de Fuca Plate and Gorda Plate, the Explorer Plate is a remnant of the ancient Farallon Plate, which has been subducted under the North American Plate. The Explorer Plate separated from the Juan de Fuca Plate roughly 4 million years ago. In its smoother, southern half, the average depth of the Explorer plate is roughly 2,400 metres (7,900 ft) and rises up in its northern half to a highly variable basin between 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) and 2,200 metres (7,200 ft) in depth.
Expression (mathematics) (Wikipedia) In mathematics, an expression or mathematical expression is a finite combination of symbols that is well-formed according to rules that depend on the context. Mathematical symbols can designate numbers (constants), variables, operations, functions, brackets, punctuation, and grouping to help determine order of operations and other aspects of logical syntax.
Extended memory (Wikipedia) In DOS memory management, extended memory refers to memory above the first megabyte (2^20 bytes) of address space in an IBM PC or compatible with an 80286 or later processor. The term is mainly used under the DOS and Windows operating systems. DOS programs, running in real mode or virtual x86 mode, cannot directly access this memory, but are able to do so through an application programming interface called the Extended Memory Specification (XMS). This API is implemented by a driver (such as HIMEM.SYS) or the operating system, which takes care of memory management and copying memory between conventional and extended memory, by temporarily switching the processor into protected mode. In this context, the term “extended memory” may refer to either the whole of the extended memory or only the portion available through this API.
Extended mind thesis (Wikipedia) In philosophy of mind, the extended mind thesis (EMT) says that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain or even the body, but extends into the physical world. The EMT proposes that some objects in the external environment can be part of a cognitive process and in that way function as extensions of the mind itself. Examples of such objects are written calculations, a diary, or a PC; in general, it concerns objects that store information. The EMT considers the mind to encompass every level of cognition, including the physical level.
Extrusive rock (Wikipedia) Extrusive rock refers to the mode of igneous volcanic rock formation in which hot magma from inside the Earth flows out (extrudes) onto the surface as lava or explodes violently into the atmosphere to fall back as pyroclastics or tuff. In contrast, intrusive rock refers to rocks formed by magma which cools below the surface.
f-number (Wikipedia) An f-number is a measure of the light-gathering ability of an optical system such as a camera lens. It is calculated by dividing the system’s focal length by the diameter of the entrance pupil (“clear aperture”). The f-number is also known as the focal ratio, f-ratio, or f-stop, and it is key in determining the depth of field, diffraction, and exposure of a photograph. The f-number is dimensionless and is usually expressed using a lower-case hooked f with the format f/N, where N is the f-number.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Wikipedia) Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized in his short story collection Tales of the Jazz Age. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Fables (comics) (Wikipedia) Fables is an American comic book series created and written by Bill Willingham, published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. Willingham served as sole writer for its entirety, with Mark Buckingham penciling more than 110 issues. The series featured various other pencillers over the years, most notably Lan Medina and Steve Leialoha. Fables was launched in July 2002 and concluded in July 2015. It was revived in 2022 with a 12-issue continuation to the main series, as well as a 6-issue spin-off miniseries Batman vs. Bigby! A Wolf in Gotham, both published under DC Black Label.
Facebook (Wikipedia) Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name derives from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities. Since 2006, Facebook allows everyone to register from 13 years old (or older), except in the case of a handful of nations, where the age limit is 14 years. As of December 2022, Facebook claimed 3 billion monthly active users. As of October 2023 Facebook ranked as the 3rd most visited website in the world with 22.56% of its traffic coming from the United States. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
Falcon Heights, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Falcon Heights is a suburb of Saint Paul and a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 5,321 at the 2010 census. It became a village in 1949 and a city in 1973.
Falkland Islands (Wikipedia) The Falkland Islands (/ˈfɔː(l)klənd, ˈfɒlk-/ FAW(L)K-lənd, FOLK-; Spanish: Islas Malvinas [ˈislas malˈβinas]) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about 300 mi (480 km) east of South America’s southern Patagonian coast and about 752 mi (1,210 km) from Cape Dubouzet at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of about 52°S. The archipelago, with an area of 4,700 sq mi (12,000 km2), comprises East Falkland, West Falkland, and 776 smaller islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, but the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs. The capital and largest settlement is Stanley on East Falkland.
Family (biology) (Wikipedia) Family (Latin: familia, pl.: familiae) is one of the nine major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the “walnut family”.
Fantastic Planet (Wikipedia) Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète sauvage; Czech: Divoká planeta, lit. ‘The Wild Planet’) is a 1973 French-language experimental independent adult animated science fiction art film, directed by René Laloux and written by Laloux and Roland Topor, the latter of whom also completed the film’s production design. The film was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague. The film was an international co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia. The allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by French writer Stefan Wul.
Farallon Plate (Wikipedia) The Farallon Plate was an ancient oceanic plate. It formed one of the three main plates of Panthalassa, alongside the Phoenix Plate and Izanagi Plate, which were connected by a triple junction. The Farallon Plate began subducting under the west coast of the North American Plate—then located in modern Utah—as Pangaea broke apart and after the formation of the Pacific Plate at the centre of the triple junction during the Early Jurassic. It is named for the Farallon Islands, which are located just west of San Francisco, California.
Fargo, North Dakota (Wikipedia) Fargo is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, North Dakota, United States. According to the 2020 census, its population was 125,990, making it the most populous city in the state and the 219th-most populous city in the United States. Fargo, along with its twin city of Moorhead, Minnesota, and the adjacent cities of West Fargo, North Dakota and Dilworth, Minnesota, form the core of the Fargo–Moorhead, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The MSA had a population of 248,591 in 2020.
Faroe Islands (Wikipedia) The Faroe or Faeroe Islands (/ˈfɛəroʊ/ FAIR-oh), or simply the Faroes (Faroese: Føroyar, pronounced [ˈfœɹjaɹ]; Danish: Færøerne [ˈfeɐ̯ˌøˀɐnə]), are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. The official language of the country is Faroese, which is closely related to and partially mutually intelligible with Icelandic.
Fatima Gate (Wikipedia) Fatima Gate, also known as the Good Fence Crossing, is a former border crossing between Lebanon and Israel. On the Lebanese side, it is close to the village of Kfar Kila and on the Israeli side, it is west of Metula. The crossing has been closed since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon at the end of the 1982-2000 South Lebanon conflict, and since the summer of 2000 has been the site of many anti-Israeli demonstrations and cross-border stone throwing from Lebanon to Israel.
Fauntleroy, Seattle (Wikipedia) Fauntleroy is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Seattle, Washington. Part of West Seattle and situated on Puget Sound’s Fauntleroy Cove (into which Fauntleroy Creek flows from its source in Fauntleroy Park), it faces Vashon Island, Blake Island, and the Kitsap Peninsula to the west. On sunny days, many locations in the neighborhood offer views of the Olympic Mountains, which are about 40 miles (64 km) to the west. The neighborhood adjoins Lincoln Park to the north, Fauntlee Hills to the east, and Arbor Heights to the south. Within Fauntleroy is an area known as Endolyne (the “end of the line” of the Fauntleroy Park streetcar route in the early 1900s). Fauntleroy is home to an eponymous Washington State Ferries terminal, providing service to Vashon Island and Southworth.
Federal Security Service (Wikipedia) The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB, ФСБ; Russian: Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации, tr. Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii, IPA: [fʲɪdʲɪˈralʲnəjə ˈsluʐbə bʲɪzɐˈpasnəstʲɪ rɐˈsʲijskəj fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨɪ]; ФСБ России) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union’s KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) which was reorganized into the FSB in 1995. The three major structural successor components of the former KGB that remain administratively independent of the FSB are the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Protective Service (FSO), and the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation (GUSP).
Federal Way, Washington (Wikipedia) Federal Way is a city in King County, Washington, United States and part of the Seattle metropolitan area. One of the most recently incorporated cities in the county, its population was 101,030 at the 2020 census. Federal Way is the 10th most populous city in Washington and the 5th most populous in King County.
Feet of Clay (novel) (Wikipedia) Feet of Clay is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the nineteenth book in the Discworld series, published in 1996. The story follows the members of the City Watch, as they attempt to solve murders apparently committed by a golem, as well as the unusual poisoning of the Patrician, Lord Vetinari.
Feldspar (Wikipedia) Feldspar (/ˈfɛl(d)ˌspɑːr/ FEL(D)-spar; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the plagioclase (sodium-calcium) feldspars and the alkali (potassium-sodium) feldspars. Feldspars make up about 60% of the Earth’s crust, and 41% of the Earth’s continental crust by weight.
Fenelon Place Elevator (Wikipedia) The Fenelon Place Elevator (also known as the Fourth Street Elevator) is a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge funicular railway located in Dubuque, Iowa, United States. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. It was included as a contributing property in the Cathedral Historic District in 1985, and in the Fenelon Place Residential Historic District in 2015.
Fentanyl (Wikipedia) Fentanyl is a potent synthetic piperidine opioid primarily used as an analgesic. It is 50 times more potent than heroin and 100 times more potent than morphine; its primary clinical utility is in pain management for cancer patients and those recovering from painful surgeries. Fentanyl is also used as a sedative. Depending on the method of delivery, fentanyl can be very fast acting and ingesting a relatively small quantity can cause overdose. Fentanyl works by activating μ-opioid receptors. Fentanyl is sold under the brand names Actiq, Duragesic and Sublimaze, among others.
Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany (Wikipedia) Ferdinando de’ Medici (9 August 1663 – 31 October 1713) was the eldest son of Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Marguerite Louise d’Orléans. Ferdinando was heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with the title Grand Prince, from his father’s accession in 1670 until his death in 1713. He is remembered today primarily as a patron of music. An excellent musician himself (sometimes called “the Orpheus of princes”), he attracted top musicians to Florence and thus made it an important musical center. Through his patronage of Bartolomeo Cristofori, Ferdinando made possible the invention of the piano.
Ferndale, Washington (Wikipedia) Ferndale is a city in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 11,415 at the 2010 census. It is the third largest city in Whatcom County and located near the Lummi Nation.
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (Wikipedia) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a 1986 American teen comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by John Hughes. The film stars Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, and Alan Ruck, with supporting roles from Jennifer Grey, Jeffrey Jones, Cindy Pickett, Edie McClurg, Lyman Ward, and Charlie Sheen. It tells the story of a high school slacker, Ferris, who skips school with his best friend Cameron and his girlfriend Sloane for a day in Chicago, regularly breaking the fourth wall to explain his techniques and inner thoughts.
Ferry (Wikipedia) A ferry is a watercraft that carries passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water taxi or water bus.
Ferry County, Washington (Wikipedia) Ferry County is a county located on the northern border of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 7,178, making it the fourth-least populous county in Washington. The county seat and largest city is Republic. The county was created out of Stevens County in February 1899 and is named for Elisha P. Ferry, the state’s first governor.
Fidalgo Island (Wikipedia) Fidalgo Island is an island in Skagit County, Washington, located about 60 mi (97 km) north of Seattle. To the east, it is separated from the mainland by the Swinomish Channel, and from Whidbey Island to the south by Deception Pass. The island is named after the Spanish explorer and cartographer Salvador Fidalgo, who explored the area in 1790.
Fife Heights, Washington (Wikipedia) Fife Heights is a census-designated place (CDP) in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,919 at the 2020 census. The community is bordered by Federal Way on the north, Milton on the east, Fife on the south, and Tacoma on the west. It is contained within the Puyallup Indian Reservation.
Fife, Washington (Wikipedia) Fife is a city in Pierce County, Washington, United States and a suburb of Tacoma. The population was 10,999 at the 2020 census. Fife is contained within the Puyallup Indian Reservation.
Fiji (Wikipedia) Fiji (/ˈfiːdʒi/ FEE-jee, /fiːˈdʒiː/ fee-JEE; Fijian: Viti, [ˈβitʃi]; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, Fijī), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about 1,100 nautical miles (2,000 km; 1,300 mi) north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists of an archipelago of more than 330 islands—of which about 110 are permanently inhabited—and more than 500 islets, amounting to a total land area of about 18,300 square kilometres (7,100 sq mi). The most outlying island group is Ono-i-Lau. About 87% of the total population of 924,610 live on the two major islands, Viti Levu and Vanua Levu. About three-quarters of Fijians live on Viti Levu’s coasts, either in the capital city of Suva, or in smaller urban centres such as Nadi (where tourism is the major local industry) or Lautoka (where the sugar-cane industry is dominant). The interior of Viti Levu is sparsely inhabited because of its terrain.
Finland (Wikipedia) Finland (Finnish: Suomi [ˈsuo̯mi]; Swedish: Finland [ˈfɪ̌nland]), officially the Republic of Finland (Finnish: Suomen tasavalta; Swedish: Republiken Finland; listen to all), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, opposite Estonia. Finland covers an area of 338,145 square kilometres (130,559 sq mi) and has a population of 5.6 million. Helsinki is the capital and largest city. The vast majority of the population are ethnic Finns. Finnish and Swedish are the official languages, with Swedish being the native language of 5.2% of the population. Finland’s climate varies from humid continental in the south to boreal in the north. The land cover is predominantly boreal forest biome, with more than 180,000 recorded lakes.
Fircrest, Washington (Wikipedia) Fircrest is a city in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 7,156 at the 2020 census.
First Blood (Wikipedia) First Blood is a 1982 American action film directed by Ted Kotcheff and co-written by and starring Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam War veteran John Rambo. It co-stars Richard Crenna as Rambo’s mentor Sam Trautman and Brian Dennehy as Sheriff Will Teasle. It is the first installment in the Rambo franchise, followed by Rambo: First Blood Part II.
First Epistle of John (Wikipedia) The First Epistle of John is the first of the Johannine epistles of the New Testament, and the fourth of the catholic epistles. There is no scholarly consensus as to the authorship of the Johannine works. The author of the First Epistle is termed John the Evangelist, who most modern scholars believe is not the same as John the Apostle. Most scholars believe the three Johannine epistles have the same author, but there is no consensus if this was also the author of the Gospel of John.
First Epistle to the Thessalonians (Wikipedia) The First Epistle to the Thessalonians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle, and is addressed to the church in Thessalonica, in modern-day Greece. It is likely among the first of Paul’s letters, probably written by the end of AD 52, in the reign of Claudius although some scholars believe the Epistle to the Galatians may have been written by AD 48.
First Hill, Seattle (Wikipedia) First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is named for the hill on which it is located, which in turn is so named for being the first hill encountered while traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washington. First Hill is bounded on the west by Interstate 5, beyond which is Downtown, on the north by E. Pike and E. Madison Streets, beyond which is Capitol Hill, and on the south by Yesler Way, beyond which is the International District. The City of Seattle provides conflicting information about its eastern limit, beyond which are Cherry Hill and the Central District. Some describe it as being bounded by Broadway and Boren Avenues, while others describe it as being bounded by 12th Avenue.
Fish (Wikipedia) A fish (pl.: fish or fishes) is an aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animal that lacks limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of living fish species are ray-finned fish, belonging to the class Actinopterygii, with around 99% of those being teleosts.
Fitzgerald Theater (Wikipedia) The Fitzgerald Theater is the oldest active theatre in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the home of American Public Media’s Live from Here (formerly A Prairie Home Companion). It was one of many theaters built by the Shubert Theatre Corporation, and was initially named the Sam S. Shubert Theater. It was designed by the noted Chicago architectural firm of Marshall and Fox, architects of several theaters for the Shuberts. In 1933, it became a movie outlet known as the World Theater. The space was purchased by Minnesota Public Radio in 1980, restored with a stage in 1986 as a site for Prairie Home, and renamed in 1994 after St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Flat Earth (Wikipedia) Flat Earth is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of the Earth’s shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography.
Flint (Wikipedia) Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Historically, flint was widely used to make stone tools and start fires.
Florence (Wikipedia) Florence (/ˈflɒrəns/ FLORR-ənss; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse]) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 360,930 inhabitants in 2023, and 984,991 in its metropolitan area.
Florida (Wikipedia) Florida is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico; Alabama to the northwest; Georgia to the north; the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean to the east; and the Straits of Florida and Cuba to the south. It is the only state that borders both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. With a population exceeding 21 million, it is the third-most populous state in the nation and ranks 8th in population density as of 2020. It spans 65,758 square miles (170,310 km2), ranking 22nd in area among the 50 states. The Miami metropolitan area, anchored by the cities of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, is the state’s largest metropolitan area with a population of 6.138 million, and the state’s most-populous city is Jacksonville with a population of 949,611. Florida’s other major population centers include Tampa Bay, Orlando, Cape Coral, and the state capital of Tallahassee.
Fluorine (Wikipedia) Fluorine is a chemical element; it has symbol F and atomic number 9. It is the lightest halogen and exists at standard conditions as pale yellow diatomic gas. Fluorine is extremely reactive as it reacts with all other elements except for the light inert gases. It is highly toxic.
Fluorite (Wikipedia) Fluorite (also called fluorspar) is the mineral form of calcium fluoride, CaF2. It belongs to the halide minerals. It crystallizes in isometric cubic habit, although octahedral and more complex isometric forms are not uncommon.
Flute (Wikipedia) The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute produces sound when the player’s air flows across an opening. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, flutes are edge-blown aerophones. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist or flutist.
Fluvial processes (Wikipedia) In geography and geology, fluvial processes are associated with rivers and streams and the deposits and landforms created by them. When the stream or rivers are associated with glaciers, ice sheets, or ice caps, the term glaciofluvial or fluvioglacial is used.
Focal length (Wikipedia) The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the inverse of the system’s optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system converges light, while a negative focal length indicates that the system diverges light. A system with a shorter focal length bends the rays more sharply, bringing them to a focus in a shorter distance or diverging them more quickly. For the special case of a thin lens in air, a positive focal length is the distance over which initially collimated (parallel) rays are brought to a focus, or alternatively a negative focal length indicates how far in front of the lens a point source must be located to form a collimated beam. For more general optical systems, the focal length has no intuitive meaning; it is simply the inverse of the system’s optical power.
Foliation (geology) (Wikipedia) Foliation in geology refers to repetitive layering in metamorphic rocks. Each layer can be as thin as a sheet of paper, or over a meter in thickness. The word comes from the Latin folium, meaning “leaf”, and refers to the sheet-like planar structure. It is caused by shearing forces (pressures pushing different sections of the rock in different directions), or differential pressure (higher pressure from one direction than in others). The layers form parallel to the direction of the shear, or perpendicular to the direction of higher pressure. Nonfoliated metamorphic rocks are typically formed in the absence of significant differential pressure or shear. Foliation is common in rocks affected by the regional metamorphic compression typical of areas of mountain belt formation (orogenic belts).
Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) (Wikipedia) The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (Russian: Служба внешней разведки Российской Федерации, tr. Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii, IPA: [ˈsluʐbə ˈvnʲɛʂnʲɪj rɐˈzvʲɛtkʲɪ]) or SVR RF (Russian: СВР РФ) is Russia’s external intelligence agency, focusing mainly on civilian affairs. The SVR RF succeeded the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the KGB in December 1991. The SVR has its headquarters in the Yasenevo District of Moscow.
Fornax (Wikipedia) Fornax (/ˈfɔːrnæks/) is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, partly ringed by the celestial river Eridanus. Its name is Latin for furnace. It was named by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1756. Fornax is one of the 88 modern constellations.
Fort Snelling (unorganized territory), Minnesota (Wikipedia) Fort Snelling is an unorganized territory of Hennepin County in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is named after historic Fort Snelling, which is located within its boundaries. The district also includes Coldwater Spring park, Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, parts of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, and several government facilities. As of the 2020 census the territory had a population of 322 people.
Fossil (Wikipedia) A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. ‘obtained by digging’) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved in amber, hair, petrified wood and DNA remnants. The totality of fossils is known as the fossil record.
Fountain (Duchamp) (Wikipedia) Fountain is a readymade sculpture by Marcel Duchamp in 1917, consisting of a porcelain urinal signed “R. Mutt”. In April 1917, an ordinary piece of plumbing chosen by Duchamp was submitted for an exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, the inaugural exhibition by the Society to be staged at the Grand Central Palace in New York. When explaining the purpose of his readymade sculpture, Duchamp stated they are “everyday objects raised to the dignity of a work of art by the artist’s act of choice.” In Duchamp’s presentation, the urinal’s orientation was altered from its usual positioning. Fountain was not rejected by the committee, since Society rules stated that all works would be accepted from artists who paid the fee, but the work was never placed in the show area. Following that removal, Fountain was photographed at Alfred Stieglitz’s studio, and the photo published in the Dada journal The Blind Man. The original has been lost.
Four corners of the world (Wikipedia) Several cosmological and mythological systems portray four corners of the world or four quarters of the world corresponding approximately to the four points of the compass (or the two solstices and two equinoxes). At the center may lie a sacred mountain, garden, world tree, or other beginning-point of creation. Often four rivers run to the four corners of the world, and water or irrigate the four quadrants of Earth.
France (Wikipedia) France (French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛːz]), is a country located primarily in Western Europe. It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world.
Francis Bacon (Wikipedia) Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban PC (/ˈbeɪkən/; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon led the advancement of both natural philosophy and the scientific method and his works remained influential even in the late stages of the Scientific Revolution.
Frank Oz (Wikipedia) Frank Oz (born Frank Richard Oznowicz; May 25, 1944) is an American actor, puppeteer, and filmmaker.
Frank Sinatra (Wikipedia) Francis Albert Sinatra (/sɪˈnɑːtrə/; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the “Chairman of the Board” and later called Ole ‘Blue Eyes, Sinatra was one of the most popular entertainers of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. He is among the world’s best-selling music artists with an estimated 150 million record sales.
Frank Sinatra Has a Cold (Wikipedia) “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” is a profile of Frank Sinatra written by Gay Talese for the April 1966 issue of Esquire. The article is one of the most famous pieces of magazine journalism ever written and is often considered not only the greatest profile of Frank Sinatra but one of the greatest celebrity profiles ever written. The profile is one of the seminal works of New Journalism and is still widely read, discussed and studied. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the “Best Story Esquire Ever Published”. Vanity Fair called it “the greatest literary-nonfiction story of the 20th century”. The illustrations that accompanied the original article were made by Edward Sorel, who also did the artwork for the Esquire issue’s front cover.
Franklin County, Washington (Wikipedia) Franklin County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 96,749. The county seat and largest city is Pasco. The county was formed out of Whitman County on November 28, 1883, and is named for Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (Wikipedia) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (/ˈdɛlənoʊ ˈroʊzəvɛlt, -vəlt/ DEL-ə-noh ROH-zə-velt, -⁠vəlt; January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. He previously served as the 44th governor of New York from 1929 to 1933, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1920, and a member of the New York State Senate from 1911 to 1913.
Franklin Falls (Wikipedia) Franklin Falls is a waterfall on the South fork of the Snoqualmie River, the first of three major waterfalls on the South Fork Snoqualmie River. The falls are located near Snoqualmie Pass in King County, Washington, United States, between the north and south lanes of Interstate 90, just east of exit 47. The falls actually consist of three tiers, totaling about 135 feet (41 m). The first drop is a very scenic 15-foot (4.6 m) block-shaped fall. The second drop is a 25-foot (7.6 m) fanning cascade. The final drop begins as a 25-foot slide, which bends to the right, then plunges over the final 70-foot (21 m) drop seen from the base of the falls. The falls are popular canyoneering destination. The upper two drops are north of the freeway.
Frédéric Chopin (Wikipedia) Frédéric François Chopin (born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin; 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849) was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period, who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose “poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation”.
Frederick Douglass (Wikipedia) Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1817 or 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery in Maryland, he became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, becoming famous for his oratory and incisive antislavery writings. Accordingly, he was described by abolitionists in his time as a living counterexample to enslavers’ arguments that enslaved people lacked the intellectual capacity to function as independent American citizens. Northerners at the time found it hard to believe that such a great orator had once been enslaved. It was in response to this disbelief that Douglass wrote his first autobiography.
Frederick the Great (Wikipedia) Frederick II (German: Friedrich II.; 24 January 1712 – 17 August 1786) was King in Prussia from 1740 until 1772, and King of Prussia from 1772 until his death in 1786. His most significant accomplishments include his military successes in the Silesian wars, his reorganisation of the Prussian Army, the First Partition of Poland, and his patronage of the arts and the Enlightenment. Frederick was the last Hohenzollern monarch titled King in Prussia, declaring himself King of Prussia after annexing Royal Prussia from the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772. Prussia greatly increased its territories and became a major military power in Europe under his rule. He became known as Frederick the Great (German: Friedrich der Große) and was nicknamed “Old Fritz” (German: der Alte Fritz).
Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci (Wikipedia) Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci or The Flute Concert is an 1852 oil on canvas history painting by the German painter Adolph Menzel. It depicts Frederick the Great, King of Prussia playing the flute at an evening concert at Sanssouci and is now in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.
Frederick William I of Prussia (Wikipedia) Frederick William I (German: Friedrich Wilhelm I.; 14 August 1688 – 31 May 1740), known as the Soldier King (German: Soldatenkönig), was King in Prussia and Elector of Brandenburg from 1713 until his death in 1740, as well as Prince of Neuchâtel. Frederick William instituted major military reforms, and expanded the army to new limits. He also made efforts to reduce crime and corruption in his state and centralized his authority during his 27 years reign, cementing Prussia as a regional power. His other notable decisions would be the selling of Prussian overseas colonies and the foundation of the Canton system, as well as the conquest of the port of Stettin. He was succeeded by his son, Frederick the Great.
Free will (Wikipedia) Free will is the notional capacity or ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Freemasonry (Wikipedia) Freemasonry or Masonry refers to fraternal organisations guilds of stonemasons that, from the end of the 14th century, regulated the qualifications of stonemasons and their interaction with authorities and clients. Modern Freemasonry broadly consists of two main recognition groups: Regular Freemasonry, which insists that a volume of scripture be open in a working lodge, that every member professes belief in a Supreme Being, that no women be admitted, and that the discussion of religion and politics do not take place within the lodge; and Continental Freemasonry, which consists of the jurisdictions that have removed some, or all, of these restrictions.
Freeway Park (Wikipedia) Freeway Park, officially known as Jim Ellis Freeway Park, is an urban park in Seattle, Washington, United States, connecting the city’s downtown to the Washington State Convention Center and First Hill. The park sits atop a section of Interstate 5 and a large city-owned parking lot; 8th Avenue also bridges over the park. An unusual mixture of brutalist architecture and greenery, the 5.2-acre (21,000 m2) park, designed by Lawrence Halprin’s office under the supervision of Angela Danadjieva, opened to the public on July 4, 1976, at a cost of $23.5 million. A later addition to the park opened in 1982 winds several blocks up First Hill, with a staircase and wheelchair ramp.
Freiberg (Wikipedia) Freiberg is a university and former mining town in Saxony, Germany. It is a Große Kreisstadt (large county town) and the administrative centre of Mittelsachsen district.
Fremont Bridge (Seattle) (Wikipedia) The Fremont Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Fremont Cut in Seattle, Washington. The bridge, which connects Fremont Avenue North and 4th Avenue North, connects the neighborhoods of Fremont and Queen Anne.
Fremont Cut (Wikipedia) The Fremont Cut is a canal in Seattle, Washington, United States, that connects Lake Union to the east with Salmon Bay to the west. It is part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound, and is 5,800 feet (1,800 m) long and 270 feet (82 m) wide. The center channel is 100 feet (30 m) wide and 30 feet (9.1 m) deep.
Fremont Rocket (Wikipedia) The Fremont Rocket is a sculpture of a rocket in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, US. The rocket had been displayed at an army surplus store in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood until 1991, when a news radio broadcast said the store was dismantling its “circa 1950 Cold War rocket fuselage [sic]”, prompting the Fremont Business Association to buy it for $750. The Business Association took a few years to overcome problems with assembling and erecting the rocket, finally placing it at its current location at N 35th St. and Evanston Ave N. on June 3, 1994.
Fremont Troll (Wikipedia) The Fremont Troll (also known as The Troll, or the Troll Under the Bridge) is a public sculpture in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington in the United States.
Fremont, Seattle (Wikipedia) Fremont is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. Originally a separate city, it was annexed to Seattle in 1891. It is named after Fremont, Nebraska, the hometown of two of its founders: Luther H. Griffith and Edward Blewett.
French Guiana (Wikipedia) French Guiana (/ɡiˈɑːnə/ or /ɡiˈænə/; French: Guyane, [ɡɥijan]; French Guianese Creole: Lagwiyann or Gwiyann, [la.ɡwi.jãn]) is an overseas department and region of France located on the northern coast of South America in the Guianas and the West Indies. Bordered by Suriname to the west and Brazil to the east and south, French Guiana covers a total area of 84,000 km2 (32,000 sq mi) and a land area of 83,534 km^2 (32,253 sq mi), and is inhabited by 295,385 people.
French Polynesia (Wikipedia) French Polynesia (/ˌpɒlɪˈniːʒə/ POL-in-EE-zhə; French: Polynésie française [pɔlinezi fʁɑ̃sɛːz]; Tahitian: Pōrīnetia Farāni) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) in the South Pacific Ocean. The total land area of French Polynesia is 3,521 square kilometres (1,359 sq mi), with a population of 278,786 (Aug. 2022 census) of which at least 205,000 live in the Society Islands and the remaining population lives in the rest of the archipelago.
Fridley, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Fridley is a city in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. Its population was 29,590 at the 2020 census. It was first settled as a placed named Manomin where Rice Creek flows into the Mississippi river and the Red River Oxcart trail crosses the creek. Fridley was incorporated in 1949 as a village, and became a city in 1957. It is part of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area as a northern “first-ring” or “inner-ring” suburb. Most of the growth in Fridley occurred between 1950 and 1970. Fridley borders Minneapolis to the southwest. Neighboring first-ring suburbs are Columbia Heights to the south and Brooklyn Center to the west, across the Mississippi River.
Fuckparade (Wikipedia) The Fuckparade is an annual summer technoparade in Berlin. The event began in 1997 as a demonstration against the increasing commercialisation of culture and public life and the misuse of the right of assembly by purely commercial ventures, in particular the Love Parade. The event has had problems with the authorities since 2001, but in 2007 the Federal Administrative Court of Germany decided that it met the definition of a demonstration.
Fugue (Wikipedia) In classical music, a fugue (/fjuːɡ/) is a contrapuntal, polyphonic compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches), which recurs frequently throughout the course of the composition. It is not to be confused with a fuguing tune, which is a style of song popularized by and mostly limited to early American (i.e. shape note or “Sacred Harp”) music and West Gallery music. A fugue usually has three main sections: an exposition, a development, and a final entry that contains the return of the subject in the fugue’s tonic key. Fugues can also have episodes—parts of the fugue where new material is heard, based on the subject—a stretto, when the fugue’s subject “overlaps” itself in different voices, or a recapitulation. A popular compositional technique in the Baroque era, the fugue was fundamental in showing mastery of harmony and tonality as it presented counterpoint.
Fungiculture (Wikipedia) Fungiculture is the cultivation of fungi such as mushrooms. Cultivating fungi can yield foods (which include mostly mushrooms), medicine, construction materials and other products. A mushroom farm is involved in the business of growing fungi.
Fungus (Wikipedia) A fungus (pl: fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately from the other eukaryotic kingdoms, which by one traditional classification include Plantae, Animalia, Protozoa, and Chromista.
Futuna Plate (Wikipedia) The Futuna Plate is a very small tectonic plate located near the south Pacific island of Futuna. It is sandwiched between the Pacific Plate to the north and the Australian Plate to the south with the Niuafo’ou Plate to the east.
G-Cloud (Wikipedia) The Galactic (G) cloud or G cloud, also known as the G-Cloud (or G-Cloud complex) is an interstellar cloud located next to the Local Interstellar Cloud, within the Local Bubble. It is unknown whether the Solar System is embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud or in the region where the two clouds are interacting, although the Solar System is currently moving towards the G-Cloud. The G-Cloud contains the stars Alpha Centauri (a triple star system that includes Proxima Centauri) and Altair (and possibly others).
G-type main-sequence star (Wikipedia) A G-type main-sequence star (spectral type: G-V), also often, and imprecisely, called a yellow dwarf, or G star, is a main-sequence star (luminosity class V) of spectral type G. Such a star has about 0.9 to 1.1 solar masses and an effective temperature between about 5,300 and 6,000 K. Like other main-sequence stars, a G-type main-sequence star converts the element hydrogen to helium in its core by means of nuclear fusion, but can also fuse helium when hydrogen runs out. The Sun, the star in the center of the Solar System to which the Earth is gravitationally bound, is an example of a G-type main-sequence star (G2V type). Each second, the Sun fuses approximately 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium in a process known as the proton–proton chain (4 hydrogens form 1 helium), converting about 4 million tons of matter to energy. Besides the Sun, other well-known examples of G-type main-sequence stars include Alpha Centauri, Tau Ceti, and 51 Pegasi.
Gabon (Wikipedia) Gabon (/ɡəˈbɒn/ gə-BON; French pronunciation: [ɡabɔ̃]; Sangu: Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (French: République gabonaise), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo on the east and south, and the Gulf of Guinea to the west. It has an area of 270,000 square kilometres (100,000 sq mi) and a population of 2.3 million people. There are coastal plains, mountains (the Cristal Mountains and the Chaillu Massif in the centre), and a savanna in the east. Libreville is the country’s capital and largest city.
Gacrux (Wikipedia) Gacrux is the third-brightest star in the southern constellation of Crux, the Southern Cross. It has the Bayer designation Gamma Crucis, which is Latinised from γ Crucis and abbreviated Gamma Cru or γ Cru. With an apparent visual magnitude of +1.63, it is the 26th brightest star in the night sky. A line from the two “Pointers”, Alpha Centauri through Beta Centauri, leads to within 1° north of this star. Using parallax measurements made during the Hipparcos mission, it is located at a distance of 88.6 light-years (27.2 parsecs) from the Sun. It is the nearest M-type red giant star to the Sun.
Galactic Center (Wikipedia) The Galactic Center is the rotational center, the barycenter, of the Milky Way galaxy. Its central massive object is a supermassive black hole of about 4 million solar masses, which is called Sagittarius A*, a compact radio source which is almost exactly at the galactic rotational center. The Galactic Center is approximately 8 kiloparsecs (26,000 ly) away from Earth in the direction of the constellations Sagittarius, Ophiuchus, and Scorpius, where the Milky Way appears brightest, visually close to the Butterfly Cluster (M6) or the star Shaula, south to the Pipe Nebula.
Galápagos Microplate (Wikipedia) The Galapagos Microplate (GMP) is a geological feature of the oceanic crust located at 1°50’ N, offshore of the west coast of Colombia. The GMP is collocated with the Galapagos Triple Junction, which is an atypical ridge-ridge-ridge triple junction. At the Galapagos Triple Junction, the Pacific Plate, Cocos Plate, and Nazca Plate meet incompletely, forming two counter-rotating microplates at the junction of the Cocos-Nazca, Pacific-Cocos, and Pacific-Nazca spreading ridges.
Galaxy (Wikipedia) A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek galaxias (γαλαξίας), literally ‘milky’, a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. Galaxies, averaging an estimated 100 million stars, range in size from dwarfs with less than a hundred million stars, to the largest galaxies known – supergiants with one hundred trillion stars, each orbiting its galaxy’s center of mass. Most of the mass in a typical galaxy is in the form of dark matter, with only a few percent of that mass visible in the form of stars and nebulae. Supermassive black holes are a common feature at the centres of galaxies.
Galaxy filament (Wikipedia) In cosmology, galaxy filaments are the largest known structures in the universe, consisting of ‘walls’ of gravitationally bound galactic superclusters. These massive, thread-like formations can reach 80 megaparsecs h−1 (or of the order of 160 to 260 million light-years) and form the boundaries between voids. Galaxy filaments form the cosmic web and define the overall structure of the observable universe.
Galileo Galilei (Wikipedia) Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de’ Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced /ˌɡælɪˈleɪ.oʊ ˌɡælɪˈleɪ.iˌ/ (GAL-ih-LAY-oh GAL-ih-LAY-ee, Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]). He was born in the city of Pisa, then part of the Duchy of Florence. Galileo has been called the “father” of observational astronomy, modern physics, the scientific method, and modern science.
Gallium (Wikipedia) Gallium is a chemical element; it has the symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Discovered by the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, gallium is in group 13 of the periodic table and is similar to the other metals of the group (aluminium, indium, and thallium).
Gamma Cephei (Wikipedia) Gamma Cephei (γ Cephei, abbreviated Gamma Cep, γ Cep) is a binary star system approximately 45 light-years away in the northern constellation of Cepheus. The primary (designated Gamma Cephei A, officially named Errai /ɛˈreɪ.iː/, the traditional name of the system) is a stellar class K1 orange giant or subgiant star; it has a red dwarf companion (Gamma Cephei B). An exoplanet (designated Gamma Cephei Ab, later named Tadmor) has been confirmed to be orbiting the primary.
Gamma Geminorum (Wikipedia) Gamma Geminorum (γ Geminorum, abbreviated Gamma Gem, γ Gem), formally named Alhena /ælˈhiːnə/, is the third-brightest object in the constellation of Gemini. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 1.9, making it easily visible to the naked eye even in urban regions. Based upon parallax measurements with the Hipparcos satellite, it is located at a distance of roughly 109 light-years (33 parsecs) from the Sun.
Gang war in Haiti (Wikipedia) Since 2020, Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, has been the site of an ongoing gang war between two major criminal groups and their allies: the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies (FRG9 or G9) and the G-Pep. The Government of Haiti and Haitian security forces have struggled to maintain their control of Port-au-Prince amid this conflict, with gangs reportedly controlling up to 90% of the city by 2023.
Gare de Lyon (Wikipedia) The Gare de Lyon, officially Paris-Gare-de-Lyon, is one of the seven large mainline railway stations in Paris, France. It handles about 148.1 million passengers annually according to the estimates of the SNCF in 2018, with SNCF railways and the RER D accounting for around 110 million and the RER A accounting for 38 million, making it the second-busiest station of France after the Gare du Nord and one of the busiest in Europe.
Garfield County, Washington (Wikipedia) Garfield County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,286, making it the least populous county in Washington; with about 3.2 inhabitants per square mile (1.2/km2), it is also the least densely populated county in Washington. The county seat and only city is Pomeroy.
Garnet (Wikipedia) Garnets ( /ˈɡɑːrnɪt/) are a group of silicate minerals that have been used since the Bronze Age as gemstones and abrasives.
Gary Kildall (Wikipedia) Gary Arlen Kildall (/ˈkɪldˌɔːl/; May 19, 1942 – July 11, 1994) was an American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur. During the 1970s, Kildall created the CP/M operating system among other operating systems and programming tools, and subsequently founded Digital Research, Inc. to market and sell his software products.
Gas Works Park (Wikipedia) Gas Works Park is a park located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a 19.1-acre (77,000 m2) public park on the site of the former Seattle Gas Light Company gasification plant, located on the north shore of Lake Union at the south end of the Wallingford neighborhood. The park was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 2, 2013, over a decade after being nominated.
Gastropoda (Wikipedia) Gastropods (/ˈɡæstrəpɒdz/), commonly known as slugs and snails, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda (/ɡæsˈtrɒpədə/).
Gauls (Wikipedia) The Gauls (Latin: Galli; Ancient Greek: Γαλάται, Galátai) were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul (Gallia). They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language.
Gaza City (Wikipedia) Gaza (/ˈɡɑːzə/ GAH-zə; Arabic: غَزَّة, romanized: Ġazzah, IPA: [ˈɣazza]), also called Gaza City, is the largely destroyed Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of 590,481 (in 2017), making it the largest city in the State of Palestine.
Gaza Strip (Wikipedia) The Gaza Strip (/ˈɡɑːzə/; Arabic: قِطَاعُ غَزَّةَ Qiṭāʿ Ġazzah [qɪˈtˤɑːʕ ˈɣaz.za]), or simply Gaza, is a polity and the smaller of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the West Bank). On the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest and Israel on the east and north.
Gem Lake, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Gem Lake is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 528 at the 2020 census.
Gemini (constellation) (Wikipedia) Gemini is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the northern celestial hemisphere. It was one of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd century AD astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. Its name is Latin for twins, and it is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux in Greek mythology. Its old astronomical symbol is ♊︎.
General relativity (Wikipedia) General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein’s theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton’s law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second order partial differential equations.
Generation Alpha (Wikipedia) Generation Alpha (often shortened to Gen Alpha) is the demographic cohort succeeding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 2010s as starting birth years to the mid-2020s as the ending birth years (see § Date and age range definitions). Named after alpha, the first letter in the Greek alphabet, Generation Alpha is the first to be born entirely in the 21st century and the third millennium. Most members of Generation Alpha are the children of millennials.
Generation X (Wikipedia) Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the demographic cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the late 1970s as its ending birth years, with the generation being generally defined as people born from 1965 to 1980. By this definition and U.S. Census data, there are 65.2 million Gen Xers in the United States as of 2019. Most of Generation X are the children of the Silent Generation and early Baby Boomers; Xers are also often the parents of Millennials and Generation Z.
Generation Z (Wikipedia) Generation Z (often shortened to Gen Z), colloquially known as Zoomers, is the demographic cohort succeeding Millennials and preceding Generation Alpha. Researchers and popular media use the mid-to-late 1990s as starting birth years and the early 2010s as ending birth years. Most members of Generation Z are the children of Generation X or older Millennials.
Geode (Wikipedia) A geode (/ˈdʒiː.oʊd/; from Ancient Greek γεώδης (geṓdēs) ’earthlike’) is a geological secondary formation within sedimentary and volcanic rocks. Geodes are hollow, vaguely spherical rocks, in which masses of mineral matter (which may include crystals) are secluded. The crystals are formed by the filling of vesicles in volcanic and subvolcanic rocks by minerals deposited from hydrothermal fluids; or by the dissolution of syn-genetic concretions and partial filling by the same or other minerals precipitated from water, groundwater, or hydrothermal fluids.
Geography (Wikipedia) Geography (from Ancient Greek γεωγραφία geōgraphía; combining gê ‘Earth’ and gráphō ‘write’) is the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not merely where objects are, but also how they have changed and come to be. While geography is specific to Earth, many concepts can be applied more broadly to other celestial bodies in the field of planetary science. Geography has been called “a bridge between natural science and social science disciplines.”
Geological formation (Wikipedia) A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics (lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock exposed in a geographical region (the stratigraphic column). It is the fundamental unit of lithostratigraphy, the study of strata or rock layers.
Geology (Wikipedia) Geology (from Ancient Greek γῆ (gê) ’earth’, and λoγία (-logía) ‘study of, discourse’) is a branch of natural science concerned with the Earth and other astronomical objects, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Earth sciences, including hydrology. It is integrated with Earth system science and planetary science.
Geometry (Wikipedia) Geometry (from Ancient Greek γεωμετρία (geōmetría) ’land measurement’; from γῆ (gê) ’earth, land’, and μέτρον (métron) ‘a measure’) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (Wikipedia) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (/ˈheɪɡəl/; German: [ˈɡeːɔʁk ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈheːɡl̩]; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher and one of the most influential figures of German idealism and 19th-century philosophy. His influence extends across the entire range of contemporary philosophical topics, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
George Carlin (Wikipedia) George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) was an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic. Regarded as one of the most important and influential stand-up comedians of all time, he was dubbed “the dean of counterculture comedians”. He was known for his black comedy and reflections on politics, the English language, psychology, religion, and taboo subjects. His “seven dirty words” routine was central to the 1978 United States Supreme Court case F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5–4 decision affirmed the government’s power to censor indecent material on public airwaves.
George H. W. Bush (Wikipedia) George Herbert Walker Bush (June 12, 1924 – November 30, 2018) was an American politician, diplomat, and businessman who served as the 41st president of the United States from 1989 to 1993. A member of the Republican Party, he also served as the 43rd vice president from 1981 to 1989 under Ronald Reagan, and in various other federal positions prior to that.
George III (Wikipedia) George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 1738 – 29 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 25 October 1760 until his death in 1820. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with George as its king. He was concurrently Duke and Prince-elector of Hanover in the Holy Roman Empire before becoming King of Hanover on 12 October 1814. He was a monarch of the House of Hanover, who, unlike his two predecessors, was born in Great Britain, spoke English as his first language, and never visited Hanover.
George Orwell (Wikipedia) Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and support of democratic socialism.
George R. Stewart (Wikipedia) George Rippey Stewart Jr. (May 31, 1895 – August 22, 1980) was an American historian, toponymist, novelist, and a professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His 1959 book, Pickett’s Charge, a detailed history of the final attack at Gettysburg, was called “essential for an understanding of the Battle of Gettysburg”. His 1949 post-apocalyptic novel Earth Abides won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951.
George Soros (Wikipedia) George Soros HonFBA (born György Schwartz on August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. As of October 2023, he had a net worth of US$6.7 billion, having donated more than $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, of which $15 billion has already been distributed, representing 64% of his original fortune. Forbes called Soros the “most generous giver” (in terms of percentage of net worth). He is a resident of New York.
George W. Bush (Wikipedia) George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 46th governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000.
George Washington (Wikipedia) George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army in June 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and then served as president of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which created and ratified the Constitution of the United States and the American federal government. Washington has been called the “Father of his Country” for his manifold leadership in the nation’s founding
George, Washington (Wikipedia) George is a city in Grant County, Washington, United States. The population was 809 at the 2020 census. The “humorous homage” to President George Washington has landed George, Washington on lists of unusual place names.
Georgetown, Seattle (Wikipedia) Georgetown is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is bounded on the north by the mainlines of the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad, beyond which is the Industrial District; on the west by the Duwamish River, across which is South Park; on the east by Interstate 5, beyond which is Beacon Hill; and on the south by Boeing Field.
Georgia (country) (Wikipedia) Georgia (Georgian: საქართველო, romanized: sakartvelo, IPA: [sakʰartʰʷelo]) is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is part of the Caucasus region, bounded by the Black Sea to the west, Russia to the north and northeast, Turkey to the southwest, Armenia to the south, and Azerbaijan to the southeast. Georgia covers an area of 69,700 square kilometres (26,900 sq mi). It has a population of 3.7 million, of which over a third live in the capital and largest city, Tbilisi. Georgians, who are indigenous to the region, constitute a majority and a titular nation in Georgia.
Georgia (U.S. state) (Wikipedia) Georgia is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee and North Carolina; to the northeast by South Carolina; to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean; to the south by Florida; and to the west by Alabama. Georgia is the 24th-largest state in area and 8th most populous of the 50 United States. Its 2020 population was 10,711,908, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Atlanta, a “beta(+)” global city, is both the state’s capital and its largest city. The Atlanta metropolitan area, with a population of more than 6 million people in 2021, is the 8th most populous metropolitan area in the United States and contains about 57% of Georgia’s entire population.
Georgia Depression (Wikipedia) The Georgia Depression is a depression in the Pacific Northwest region of western North America. The depression includes the lowland regions of southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Washington along the shores of the Salish Sea.
Gerald Ford (Wikipedia) Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (/ˈdʒɛrəld/ JERR-əld; born Leslie Lynch King Jr.; July 14, 1913 – December 26, 2006) was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from 1974 to 1977. He previously served as the leader of the Republican Party in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 to 1973, and as the 40th vice president under President Richard Nixon from 1973 to 1974. Ford succeeded to the presidency when Nixon resigned in 1974, but was defeated for election to a full term in 1976. Ford is the only person to serve as president without winning an election for president or vice president
German Empire (Wikipedia) The German Empire (German: Deutsches Reich), also referred to as Imperial Germany, the Second Reich or simply Germany, was the period of the German Reich from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the November Revolution in 1918, when the German Reich changed its form of government from a monarchy to a republic.
Germany (Wikipedia) Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second-most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between the Baltic and North seas to the north, and the Alps to the south. Its 16 constituent states are bordered by Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, and France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west. The nation’s capital and most populous city is Berlin and its main financial centre is Frankfurt; the largest urban area is the Ruhr.
Gettysburg Address (Wikipedia) The Gettysburg Address is a speech that U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivered during the American Civil War at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery, now known as Gettysburg National Cemetery, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on the afternoon of November 19, 1863, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated Confederate forces in the Battle of Gettysburg, the Civil War’s deadliest battle. It remains one of the best known speeches in American history.
Gettysburg Battlefield (Wikipedia) The Gettysburg Battlefield is the area of the July 1–3, 1863 military engagements of the Battle of Gettysburg within and around the borough of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Locations of military engagements extend from the 4-acre (1.6 ha) site of the first shot at Knoxlyn Ridge on the west of the borough, to East Cavalry Field on the east. A military engagement prior to the battle was conducted at the Gettysburg Railroad trestle over Rock Creek, which was burned on June 27.
Ghana (Wikipedia) Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It lies adjacent to the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, sharing a border with Ivory Coast in the west, Burkina Faso in the north, and Togo in the east. Ghana covers an area of 239,567 km^2 (92,497 sq mi), spanning diverse biomes that range from coastal savannas to tropical rainforests. With nearly 35 million inhabitants, Ghana is the second-most populous country in West Africa. The capital and largest city is Accra; other significant cities include Kumasi, Tamale, and Sekondi-Takoradi.
Giant star (Wikipedia) A giant star has a substantially larger radius and luminosity than a main-sequence (or dwarf) star of the same surface temperature. They lie above the main sequence (luminosity class V in the Yerkes spectral classification) on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram and correspond to luminosity classes II and III. The terms giant and dwarf were coined for stars of quite different luminosity despite similar temperature or spectral type (namely K and M) by Ejnar Hertzsprung in 1905 or 1906.
Gibraltar (Wikipedia) Gibraltar (/dʒɪˈbrɔːltər/ jih-BRAWL-tər, Spanish: [xiβɾalˈtaɾ]) is a British Overseas Territory and city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean (Strait of Gibraltar). It has an area of 6.7 km2 (2.6 sq mi) and is bordered to the north by Spain (Campo de Gibraltar). The landscape is dominated by the Rock of Gibraltar, at the foot of which is a densely populated town area, home to some 32,688 people (2022 estimate), primarily Gibraltarians.
Ginkgo biloba (Wikipedia) Ginkgo biloba, commonly known as ginkgo or gingko (/ˈɡɪŋkoʊ, ˈɡɪŋkɡoʊ/ GINK-oh, -⁠goh), also known as the maidenhair tree, is a species of gymnosperm tree native to East Asia. It is the last living species in the order Ginkgoales, which first appeared over 290 million years ago. Fossils very similar to the living species, belonging to the genus Ginkgo, extend back to the Middle Jurassic epoch approximately 170 million years ago. The tree was cultivated early in human history and remains commonly planted.
GitHub (Wikipedia) GitHub, Inc. (/ˈɡɪthʌb/) is a platform and cloud-based service for software development and version control, allowing developers to store and manage their code. It uses Git software, providing the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
Glacial erratic (Wikipedia) A glacial erratic is a glacially deposited rock differing from the type of rock native to the area in which it rests. Erratics, which take their name from the Latin word errare (“to wander”), are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres. Erratics can range in size from pebbles to large boulders such as Big Rock (16,500 tonnes or 18,200 short tons) in Alberta.
Glacier, Washington (Wikipedia) Glacier is a census-designated place in the North Fork Nooksack River Valley, at an elevation of 906 ft., just 10 miles northwest of the Mount Baker Summit towering nearly 10,000 ft above it, in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 300 at the 2020 census.
Glengarry Glen Ross (film) (Wikipedia) Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 American tragedy film directed by James Foley and written by David Mamet, based on his 1984 Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. The film depicts two days in the lives of four real estate salesmen, and their increasing desperation when the corporate office sends a motivational trainer with the threat that all but the top two salesmen will be fired within one week.
Globular cluster (Wikipedia) A globular cluster is a spheroidal conglomeration of stars that is bound together by gravity, with a higher concentration of stars towards their centers. They can contain anywhere from tens of thousands to many millions of member stars, all orbiting in a stable, compact formation. Globular clusters are similar in form to dwarf spheroidal galaxies, and the distinction between the two is not always clear. Their name is derived from Latin globulus (small sphere). Globular clusters are occasionally known simply as “globulars”.
Gmail (Wikipedia) Gmail is an email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also accessible through the official mobile application. Google also supports the use of third-party email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols.
Gnathostomata (Wikipedia) Gnathostomata (/ˌnæθoʊˈstɒmətə/; from Ancient Greek: γνάθος (gnathos) ‘jaw’ + στόμα (stoma) ‘mouth’) are the jawed vertebrates. Gnathostome diversity comprises roughly 60,000 species, which accounts for 99% of all living vertebrates, including humans. In addition to opposing jaws, living gnathostomes have true teeth (a characteristic which has subsequently been lost in some), paired appendages (pectoral and pelvic fins, arms, legs, wings, etc.), the elastomeric protein of elastin, and a horizontal semicircular canal of the inner ear, along with physiological and cellular anatomical characters such as the myelin sheaths of neurons, and an adaptive immune system that has the discrete lymphoid organs of spleen and thymus, and uses V(D)J recombination to create antigen recognition sites, rather than using genetic recombination in the variable lymphocyte receptor gene.
Gnosticism (Wikipedia) Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: γνωστικός, romanized: gnōstikós, Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos], ‘having knowledge’) is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the biblical deity Yahweh) who is responsible for creating the material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.
God (Wikipedia) In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic thought, a god is “a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshipped for doing so, or something that represents this spirit or being”. Belief in the existence of at least one god is called theism.
Gödel, Escher, Bach (Wikipedia) Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, also known as GEB, is a 1979 book by Douglas Hofstadter. By exploring common themes in the lives and works of logician Kurt Gödel, artist M. C. Escher, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the book expounds concepts fundamental to mathematics, symmetry, and intelligence. Through short stories, illustrations, and analysis, the book discusses how systems can acquire meaningful context despite being made of “meaningless” elements. It also discusses self-reference and formal rules, isomorphism, what it means to communicate, how knowledge can be represented and stored, the methods and limitations of symbolic representation, and even the fundamental notion of “meaning” itself.
Gödel’s Loophole (Wikipedia) Gödel’s Loophole is an “inner contradiction” in the Constitution of the United States which Austrian-American logician, mathematician, and analytic philosopher Kurt Gödel postulated in 1947. The loophole would permit the American democracy to be legally turned into a dictatorship. Gödel told his friend Oskar Morgenstern about the existence of the flaw and Morgenstern told Albert Einstein about it at the time, but Morgenstern, in his recollection of the incident in 1971, never mentioned the exact problem as Gödel saw it. This has led to speculation about the precise nature of what has come to be called “Gödel’s Loophole”. It has been called “one of the great unsolved problems of constitutional law” by F. E. Guerra-Pujol.
Going Postal (Wikipedia) Going Postal is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 33rd book in his Discworld series, released in the United Kingdom on 25 September 2004. Unlike most of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, Going Postal is divided into chapters, a feature previously seen only in Pratchett’s children’s books and the Science of Discworld series. These chapters begin with a synopsis of philosophical themes, in a similar manner to some Victorian novels and, notably, to Jules Verne stories. The title refers to both the contents of the novel, as well as to the term ‘going postal’.
Gold (Wikipedia) Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from the Latin word aurum) and the atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal, a group 11 element, and one of the noble metals. It is one of the least reactive chemical elements, being the second-lowest in the reactivity series. It is solid under standard conditions.
Gold Bar, Washington (Wikipedia) Gold Bar is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located on the Skykomish River between Sultan and Index, connected by U.S. Route 2. The population was 2,403 at the 2020 census.
Golden Valley, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Golden Valley is a western and first-ring suburb of Minneapolis in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 22,552 at the 2020 census. The city is mostly residential and is bordered by U.S. Highway 12 (Interstate 394). Over 15% of the city is parks or nature reserves. The Floyd B. Olson Memorial Highway also runs through the heart of the city providing a direct route to the Minneapolis industrial district.
Goleta Beach (Wikipedia) Goleta Beach is a region of coastline located near Goleta, California, just east of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus. A portion of the shore of Goleta Bay is managed by the County of Santa Barbara, as the Goleta Beach County Park (GBCP). The beach itself is partly man-made as sand was spread onto an existing sandspit in 1945. The beach is a seasonal habitat for migrating shorebirds, including the snowy plover, an endangered species, and is occasionally closed due to nourishment efforts.
Gorda Plate (Wikipedia) The Gorda Plate, located beneath the Pacific Ocean off the coast of northern California, is one of the northern remnants of the Farallon Plate. It is sometimes referred to (by, for example, publications from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program) as simply the southernmost portion of the neighboring Juan de Fuca Plate, another Farallon remnant.
Gospel of John (Wikipedia) The Gospel of John (Ancient Greek: Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, romanized: Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven “signs” culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the resurrection of Jesus) and seven “I am” discourses (concerned with issues of the church–synagogue debate at the time of composition) culminating in Thomas’ proclamation of the risen Jesus as “my Lord and my God”. The gospel’s concluding verses set out its purpose, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”
Gospel of Luke (Wikipedia) The Gospel of Luke tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. Together with the Acts of the Apostles, it makes up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts, accounting for 27.5% of the New Testament. The combined work divides the history of first-century Christianity into three stages, with the gospel making up the first two of these – the life of Jesus the Messiah from his birth to the beginning of his mission in the meeting with John the Baptist, followed by his ministry with events such as the Sermon on the Plain and its Beatitudes, and his Passion, death, and resurrection.
Gospel of Mark (Wikipedia) The Gospel of Mark is the second of the four canonical gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to his death, the burial of his body, and the discovery of his empty tomb. It portrays Jesus as a teacher, an exorcist, a healer, and a miracle worker, though it does not mention a miraculous birth or divine pre-existence. He refers to himself as the Son of Man. He is called the Son of God but keeps his messianic nature secret; even his disciples fail to understand him. All this is in keeping with the Christian interpretation of prophecy, which is believed to foretell the fate of the messiah as suffering servant.
Gospel of Matthew (Wikipedia) The Gospel of Matthew is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells how Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, comes to his people (the Jews) but is rejected by them and how, after his resurrection, he sends the disciples to the gentiles instead. Matthew wishes to emphasize that the Jewish tradition should not be lost in a church that was increasingly becoming gentile. The gospel reflects the struggles and conflicts between the evangelist’s community and the other Jews, particularly with its sharp criticism of the scribes and Pharisees with the position that through their rejection of Christ, the Kingdom of God has been taken away from them and given instead to the church.
Gottfried Silbermann (Wikipedia) Gottfried Silbermann (January 14, 1683 – August 4, 1753) was a German builder of keyboard instruments. He built harpsichords, clavichords, organs, and fortepianos; his modern reputation rests mainly on the latter two.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Wikipedia) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who invented calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics and statistics. Leibniz has been called the “last universal genius” due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became less common during the Industrial Revolution and spread of specialized labor after his lifetime. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science by devising a cataloguing system whilst working at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, that would have served as a guide for many of Europe’s largest libraries. Leibniz’s contributions to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German.
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco (Wikipedia) Grace Cathedral is an American cathedral of the Episcopal Church in San Francisco, California. On top of Nob Hill, Grace is the cathedral church of the Episcopal Diocese of California, led by Bishop Marc Andrus since 2006, while the cathedral’s local parish has been led by Dean Malcolm Clemens Young since 2015.
Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies (Wikipedia) Grandfather Cuts Loose the Ponies (also known as the Wild Horse Monument) is a public art sculpture created by David Govedare in 1989–1990 and situated near Vantage, Washington. It consists of 15 life-size steel horses which appear to be galloping across a ridge above the Columbia River. Presented as a gift for the centenary of Washington’s statehood, the sculpture was conceived as a memorial to the wild horses which once roamed the region. According to the Seattle Times, it is one of the most-seen public artworks in Washington state.
Granite (Wikipedia) Granite (/ˈɡrænɪt/ GRAN-it) is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies underground. It is common in the continental crust of Earth, where it is found in igneous intrusions. These range in size from dikes only a few centimeters across to batholiths exposed over hundreds of square kilometers.
Granite Falls, Washington (Wikipedia) Granite Falls is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located between the Pilchuck and Stillaguamish rivers in the western foothills of the Cascade Range, northeast of Lake Stevens and Marysville. The city is named for a waterfall north of downtown on the Stillaguamish River, also accessible via the Mountain Loop Highway. It had a population of 3,364 at the 2010 census.
Granite Mountain (King County, Washington) (Wikipedia) Granite Mountain is a tall peak in the Cascade Range in King County, Washington 16 miles (26 km) east of North Bend. A fire lookout on the summit can be reached by trail. The fire lookout was first constructed in 1924 and was then rebuilt 31 years later. It is still maintained by volunteers June through September each year.
Granny Weatherwax (Wikipedia) Esmerelda “Esme” Weatherwax (also Granny Weatherwax or Mistress Weatherwax) is a fictional character from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. She is a witch and member of the Lancre coven. She is the self-appointed guardian of her small country, and frequently defends it against supernatural powers. She is one of the Discworld series’s main protagonists, having major roles in seven novels.
Grant County, Washington (Wikipedia) Grant County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 99,123. The county seat is Ephrata, and the largest city is Moses Lake. The county was formed out of Douglas County in February 1909 and is named for U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Grant is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States, and a suburb of St. Paul. The population was 4,096 at the time of the 2010 census.
Gravity (Wikipedia) In physics, gravity (from Latin gravitas ‘weight’) is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things that have mass. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong interaction, 1036 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 1029 times weaker than the weak interaction. As a result, it has no significant influence at the level of subatomic particles. However, gravity is the most significant interaction between objects at the macroscopic scale, and it determines the motion of planets, stars, galaxies, and even light.
Grays Harbor (Wikipedia) Grays Harbor is an estuarine bay located 45 miles (72 km) north of the mouth of the Columbia River, on the southwest Pacific coast of Washington state, in the United States. It is a ria, which formed at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels flooded the Chehalis River. The bay is 17 miles (27 km) long and 12 miles (19 km) wide. The Chehalis River flows into its eastern end, where the city of Aberdeen stands at that river’s mouth, on its north bank, with the somewhat smaller city of Hoquiam immediately to its northwest, along the bayshore. Besides the Chehalis, many lesser rivers and streams flow into Grays Harbor, such as the Hoquiam River and Humptulips River. A pair of low peninsulas separate it from the Pacific Ocean, except for an opening about two miles (3 km) in width. The northern peninsula, which is largely covered by the community of Ocean Shores, ends in Point Brown. Facing that across the bay-mouth is Point Chehalis, at the end of the southern peninsula upon which stands the town of Westport.
Grays Harbor County, Washington (Wikipedia) Grays Harbor County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 75,636. Its county seat is Montesano, and its largest city is Aberdeen. Grays Harbor County is included in the Aberdeen Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Great A’Tuin (Wikipedia) Great A’Tuin is the Giant Star Turtle (of the fictional species Chelys galactica) who travels through the Discworld universe’s space, carrying four giant elephants (named Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon, and Jerakeen) who in turn carry the Discworld. The narration has described A’Tuin as “the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram”.
Great Attractor (Wikipedia) The Great Attractor is a purported gravitational attraction in intergalactic space and the apparent central gravitational point of the Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies. This supercluster contains the Milky Way galaxy, as well as about 100,000 other galaxies.
Great Red Spot (Wikipedia) The Great Red Spot is a persistent high-pressure region in the atmosphere of Jupiter, producing an anticyclonic storm that is the largest in the Solar System. It is the most recognizable feature on Jupiter, owing to its red-orange color whose origin is still unknown. Located 22 degrees south of Jupiter’s equator, it produces wind-speeds up to 432 km/h (268 mph). Observations from 1665 to 1713 are believed to be of the same storm; if this is correct, it has existed for at least 358 years. It was next observed in September 1831, with 60 recorded observations between then and 1878, when continuous observations began.
Greatest Generation (Wikipedia) The Greatest Generation, also known as the G.I. Generation and the World War II Generation, is the demographic cohort following the Lost Generation and preceding the Silent Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1901 to 1927. They were shaped by the Great Depression and were the primary generation composing the enlisted forces in World War II. Most people of the Greatest Generation are the parents of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers, and, in turn, are the children of the Lost Generation.
Greece (Wikipedia) Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe, located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland, the Ionian Sea to the west, and the Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin, featuring thousands of islands. It has a population of nearly 10.3 million (as of 2024). Athens is the nation’s capital and the largest city, followed by Thessaloniki and Patras.
Greeley, Colorado (Wikipedia) Greeley is the home rule municipality city that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Weld County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 108,795 at the 2020 United States Census, an increase of 17.12% since the 2010 United States Census. Greeley is the tenth most populous city in Colorado. Greeley is the principal city of the Greeley, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area and is a major city of the Front Range Urban Corridor. Greeley is located in northern Colorado and is situated 49 miles (79 km) north-northeast of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.
Green Lake (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Green Lake (Lushootseed: dxʷƛ̕əš) is a freshwater lake in north central Seattle, Washington, within Green Lake Park. The park is surrounded by the Green Lake neighborhood to the north and east, the Wallingford neighborhood to the south, the Phinney Ridge neighborhood to the west, and Woodland Park to the southwest. It is a glacial lake, its basin having been dug 50,000 years ago by the Vashon glacier, which also created Lake Washington, Union, Bitter and Haller Lakes.
Green Lake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Green Lake is a neighborhood in north central Seattle](/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle/), Washington. Its centerpiece is the lake and park after which it is named.
Greenland (Wikipedia) Greenland (Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat, pronounced [kalaːɬːit nʉnaːt]; Danish: Grønland, pronounced [ˈkʁɶnˌlænˀ]) is a North American autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the larger of two autonomous territories within the Kingdom, the other being the Faroe Islands; the citizens of both territories are full citizens of Denmark. As Greenland is one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the European Union, citizens of Greenland are European Union citizens. The capital and largest city of Greenland is Nuuk. Greenland lies between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. It is the world’s largest island, and is the location of the northernmost area of the world – Kaffeklubben Island off the northern coast is the world’s northernmost undisputed point of land, and Cape Morris Jesup on the mainland was thought to be so until the 1960s.
Greenschist (Wikipedia) Greenschists are metamorphic rocks that formed under the lowest temperatures and pressures usually produced by regional metamorphism, typically 300–450 °C (570–840 °F) and 2–10 kilobars (29,000–145,000 psi). Greenschists commonly have an abundance of green minerals such as chlorite, serpentine, and epidote, and platy minerals such as muscovite and platy serpentine. The platiness gives the rock schistosity (a tendency to split into layers). Other common minerals include quartz, orthoclase, talc, carbonate minerals and amphibole (actinolite).
Greenwood, Seattle (Wikipedia) Greenwood is a neighborhood in north central Seattle, Washington, United States. The intersection of Greenwood Avenue North and North 85th Street is the commercial center. Greenwood is known for its numerous bars, restaurants, coffee houses, theatres and specialty stores. Greenwood’s main thoroughfares are Greenwood Avenue North and North 80th and 85th streets.
Gregory Rift (Wikipedia) The Gregory Rift (Ufa la Gregori, in Swahili) is the eastern branch of the East African Rift fracture system. The rift is being caused by the separation of the Somali plate from the Nubian plate, driven by a thermal plume. Although the term is sometimes used in the narrow sense of the Kenyan Rift, the larger definition of the Gregory Rift is the set of faults and grabens extending southward from the Gulf of Aden through Ethiopia and Kenya into Northern Tanzania, passing over the local uplifts of the Ethiopian and Kenyan domes. Ancient fossils of early hominins, the ancestors of humans, have been found in the southern part of the Gregory Rift.
Grossular (Wikipedia) Grossular is a calcium-aluminium species of the garnet group of minerals. It has the chemical formula of Ca3Al2(SiO4)3 but the calcium may, in part, be replaced by ferrous iron and the aluminium by ferric iron. The name grossular is derived from the botanical name for the gooseberry, grossularia, in reference to the green garnet of this composition that is found in Siberia. Other shades include cinnamon brown (cinnamon stone variety), red, and yellow. Grossular is a gemstone.
Groundhog Day (film) (Wikipedia) Groundhog Day is a 1993 American fantasy comedy film directed by Harold Ramis from a screenplay by him and Danny Rubin. Starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, and Chris Elliott, it tells the story of Phil Connors (Murray), a cynical television weatherman covering the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, who becomes trapped in a time loop, forcing him to relive February 2 repeatedly. The film also features Stephen Tobolowsky, Brian Doyle-Murray, Marita Geraghty, Angela Paton, Rick Ducommun, Rick Overton, and Robin Duke.
Grover Cleveland (Wikipedia) Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was an American politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. He is the only U.S. president to serve non-consecutive presidential terms. Cleveland was the first Democrat to win the presidency after the Civil War, and was one of two Democratic presidents, followed by Woodrow Wilson in 1912, in an era when Republicans dominated the presidency between 1869 and 1933. He won the popular vote in three presidential elections—1884, 1888, and 1892. Benjamin Harrison won the electoral college vote, and thus the presidency, in 1888.
Grus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Grus (/ˈɡrʌs/, or colloquially /ˈɡruːs/) is a constellation in the southern sky. Its name is Latin for the crane, a type of bird. It is one of twelve constellations conceived by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. Grus first appeared on a 35-centimetre-diameter (14-inch) celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius and was depicted in Johann Bayer’s star atlas Uranometria of 1603. French explorer and astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille gave Bayer designations to its stars in 1756, some of which had been previously considered part of the neighbouring constellation Piscis Austrinus. The constellations Grus, Pavo, Phoenix and Tucana are collectively known as the “Southern Birds”.
Guadalupian (Wikipedia) The Guadalupian is the second and middle series/epoch of the Permian. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lopingian. It is named after the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and Texas, and dates between 272.95 ± 0.5 – 259.1 ± 0.4 Mya. The series saw the rise of the therapsids, a minor extinction event called Olson’s Extinction and a significant mass extinction called the end-Capitanian extinction event. The Guadalupian was previously known as the Middle Permian.
Guards! Guards! (Wikipedia) Guards! Guards! is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the eighth in the Discworld series, first published in 1989. It is the first novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. The first Discworld point-and-click adventure game borrowed heavily from the plot of Guards! Guards!
Guatemala (Wikipedia) Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically bordered to the south by the Pacific Ocean and to the northeast by the Gulf of Honduras.
Gulf (Wikipedia) A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean into a landmass, typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of salt water that are enclosed by the coastline. Many gulfs are major shipping areas, such as the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Finland, and Gulf of Aden.
Gulf of Aden (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Aden (Arabic: خليج عدن; Somali: Gacanka Cadmeed) is a deepwater gulf of the Indian Ocean between Yemen to the north, the Arabian Sea to the east, Djibouti to the west, and the Guardafui Channel, Socotra and Somalia to the south. In the northwest, it connects with the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, and it connects with the Arabian Sea to the east. To the west, it narrows into the Gulf of Tadjoura in Djibouti. The Aden Ridge lies along the middle of the Gulf and is causing it to widen about 15mm per year.
Gulf of Aqaba (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Aqaba (Arabic: خَلِيج الْعَقَبَة, romanized: Khalīj al-ʿAqaba) or Gulf of Eilat (Hebrew: מפרץ אילת, romanized: Mifrátz Eilát) is a large gulf at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian Peninsula. Its coastline is divided among four countries: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The northernmost coral reef in the world is situated near the Eilat shore.
Gulf of Bahrain (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Bahrain is an inlet of the Persian Gulf on the east coast of Saudi Arabia, separated from the main body of water by the peninsula of Qatar. It surrounds the islands of Bahrain. The King Fahd Causeway crosses the western section of the Gulf of Bahrain, connecting Saudi Arabia to Bahrain.
Gulf of Guinea (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. Null Island, defined as the intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian (zero degrees latitude and longitude), is in the gulf.
Gulf of Mexico (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Mexico (Spanish: Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southwest and south by the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, and Quintana Roo; and on the southeast by Cuba. The Southern U.S. states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, which border the Gulf on the north, are often referred to as the “Third Coast” of the United States (in addition to its Atlantic and Pacific coasts).
Gulf of Oman (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Oman or Sea of Oman (Arabic: خليج عمان khalīj ʿumān; Persian: دریای عمان daryâ-ye omân), also known as Gulf of Makran or Sea of Makran (Arabic: خلیج مکران khalīj makrān; Persian: دریای مکران daryâ-ye makrān), is a gulf in the Indian Ocean that connects the Arabian Sea with the Strait of Hormuz, which then runs to the Persian Gulf. It borders Iran and Pakistan on the north, Oman on the south, and the United Arab Emirates on the west.
Gulf of St. Lawrence (Wikipedia) The Gulf of St. Lawrence fringes the shores of the provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, in Canada, plus the islands Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, possessions of France, in North America.
Gulf of Suez (Wikipedia) The Gulf of Suez (Arabic: خليج السويس, romanized: khalīǧ as-suwais; formerly بحر القلزم, baḥar al-qulzum, lit. “Sea of Calm”) is a gulf at the northern end of the Red Sea, to the west of the Sinai Peninsula. Situated to the east of the Sinai Peninsula is the smaller Gulf of Aqaba. The gulf was formed within a relatively young but now inactive Gulf of Suez Rift rift basin, dating back about 26 million years. It stretches some 300 kilometres (190 mi) north by northwest, terminating at the Egyptian city of Suez and the entrance to the Suez Canal. Along the mid-line of the gulf is the boundary between Africa and Asia. The entrance of the gulf lies atop the mature Gemsa oil and gas field. The gulf is considered one of the world’s important maritime zones due to being an entrance to the Suez Canal.
Gum Wall (Wikipedia) The Gum Wall is a brick wall covered in used chewing gum under Pike Place Market in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. It is located on Post Alley near Pike Street, south of the market’s main entrance off 1st Avenue. Parts of the gum coating alongside the walls are several inches thick, and the coating is 15 feet (4.6 m) high along a 50-foot-long (15 m) section. The Market Theater Gum Wall has become a tourist attraction and local landmark since it was unintentionally created in the 1990s.
Guyana (Wikipedia) Guyana (/ɡaɪˈɑːnə/ or /ɡaɪˈænə/ ghy-A(H)N-ə), officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern coast of South America, part of the historic mainland British West Indies. Guyana is an indigenous word which means “Land of Many Waters”. Georgetown is the capital of Guyana and is also the country’s largest city. Guyana is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, Brazil to the south and southwest, Venezuela to the west, and Suriname to the east. With a land area of 214,969 km2 (83,000 sq mi), Guyana is the third-smallest sovereign state by area in mainland South America after Uruguay and Suriname, and is the second-least populous sovereign state in South America after Suriname; it is also one of the least densely populated countries on Earth. It has a wide variety of natural habitats and very high biodiversity. The country also hosts a part of the Amazon rainforest, the largest tropical rainforest in the world.
GW-BASIC (Wikipedia) GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the original IBM PC. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft.
Hacker News (Wikipedia) Hacker News (sometimes abbreviated as HN) is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as “anything that gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity.”
Hadean (Wikipedia) The Hadean (IPA: /heɪˈdiːən, ˈheɪdiən/ hay-DEE-ən, HAY-dee-ən) is the first and oldest of the four known geologic eons of Earth’s history. The Hadean eon started with the planet’s formation about 4.54 Bya, now defined as (4567.30 ± 0.16) Mya set by the age of the oldest solid material in the Solar System found in some meteorites about 4.567 billion years old. The proposed interplanetary collision that created the Moon occurred early in this eon, and the Late Heavy Bombardment is hypothesized to have occurred at the end of the eon. The Hadean ended 4.031 billion years ago, and was succeeded by the Archean eon.
Hadith (Wikipedia) Ḥadīth (/ˈhædɪθ/ or /hɑːˈdiːθ/; Arabic: حديث, ḥadīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ħadiːθ]; pl. aḥādīth, أحاديث, ʾaḥādīṯ, Arabic pronunciation: [ʔaħaːdiːθ], lit. ’talk’ or ‘discourse’) or Athar (Arabic: أثر, ʾAṯar, lit. ‘remnant’ or ’effect’) refers to what most Muslims and the mainstream schools of Islamic thought believe to be a record of the words, actions, and the silent approval of the Islamic prophet Muhammad as transmitted through chains of narrators. In other words, the ḥadīth are attributed reports about what Muhammad said and did (see: Oral tradition).
Hail (Wikipedia) Hail is a form of solid precipitation. It is distinct from ice pellets (American English “sleet”), though the two are often confused. It consists of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Ice pellets generally fall in cold weather, while hail growth is greatly inhibited during low surface temperatures.
Haiti (Wikipedia) Haiti (/ˈheɪti/ HAY-tee; French: Haïti [a.iti]; Haitian Creole: Ayiti [ajiti]), officially the Republic of Haiti (French: République d’Haïti; Haitian Creole: Repiblik d Ayiti), is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of The Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Haiti is 27,750 km2 (10,714 sq mi), the third largest country in the Caribbean, and has an estimated population of 11.4 million, making it the most populous Caribbean country. The capital is Port-au-Prince.
Haller Lake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Haller Lake (Lushootseed: sisaɬtəb) is a small lake and neighborhood in north central Seattle, Washington, named for Theodore N. Haller, who platted the neighborhood in 1905. His father, Granville O. Haller, was one of Seattle’s early settlers, an army officer who amassed a large estate in the region.
Hallucinogen (Wikipedia) Hallucinogens are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorized as either being psychedelics, dissociatives, or deliriants.
Halogen (Wikipedia) The halogens (/ˈhælədʒən, ˈheɪ-, -loʊ-, -ˌdʒɛn/) are a group in the periodic table consisting of six chemically related elements: fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), iodine (I), and the radioactive elements astatine (At) and tennessine (Ts), though some authors would exclude tennessine as its chemistry is unknown and is theoretically expected to be more like that of gallium. In the modern IUPAC nomenclature, this group is known as group 17.
Hamas (Wikipedia) Hamas (UK: /həˈmæs/ hə-MASS, US: /həˈmɑːs/ hə-MAHSS; Arabic: حماس, romanized: Ḥamās, IPA: [ħaˈmaːs]), an acronym of its official name, the Islamic Resistance Movement (حركة المقاومة الإسلامية Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah), is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist political and military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Headquartered in Gaza City, it has a presence in the West Bank, the larger of the two Palestinian territories, in which its secular rival Fatah exercises control.
Hamlin Park (Wikipedia) Hamlin Park is an 80-acre public park in Shoreline, Washington. The park includes a wooded area with trails, a softball/baseball field with bleachers, two playgrounds, and a picnic shelter. An orienteering course with waypoint markers is laid out within the park.
Hand (Wikipedia) A hand is a prehensile, multi-fingered appendage located at the end of the forearm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, monkeys, and lemurs. A few other vertebrates such as the koala (which has two opposable thumbs on each “hand” and fingerprints extremely similar to human fingerprints) are often described as having “hands” instead of paws on their front limbs. The raccoon is usually described as having “hands” though opposable thumbs are lacking.
Hanford Site (Wikipedia) The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington. It has also been known as Site W and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, the site was home to the Hanford Engineer Works and B Reactor, the first full-scale plutonium production reactor in the world. Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atomic bomb, which was tested in the Trinity nuclear test, and in the Fat Man bomb used in the bombing of Nagasaki.
Hans Hermann von Katte (Wikipedia) Hans Hermann von Katte (28 February 1704 – 6 November 1730) was a Lieutenant of the Prussian Army, and a friend, tutor and possible lover of the future King Frederick II of Prussia, who was at the time the Crown Prince. Katte was executed by Frederick’s father, the Prussian King Frederick William I, when Frederick plotted to escape from Prussia to Britain. It was possible that Frederick intended to defect to the service of the British King George II (his maternal uncle) and possibly return to Prussia to depose his father.
Hans Scholl (Wikipedia) Hans Fritz Scholl (German: [hans ʃɔl]; 22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement’s literature, he was found guilty of high treason for distributing anti-Nazi material and was executed by the Nazi regime in 1943 during World War II.
Harlan Ellison (Wikipedia) Harlan Jay Ellison (May 27, 1934 – June 28, 2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction and for his outspoken, combative personality. His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known works include the 1967 Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”, considered by some to be the single greatest episode of the Star Trek franchise (he subsequently wrote a book about the experience that includes his original teleplay), his A Boy and His Dog cycle (which was made into a film), and his short stories “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” and “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”. He was also editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.
Harry S. Truman (Wikipedia) Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a United States senator from Missouri from 1935 to 1945 and briefly as the 34th vice president in 1945 under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Assuming the presidency after Roosevelt’s death, Truman implemented the Marshall Plan in the wake of World War II to rebuild the economy of Western Europe and established both the Truman Doctrine and NATO to contain the expansion of Soviet communism. He proposed numerous liberal domestic reforms, but few were enacted by the conservative coalition that dominated the Congress.
Harvard architecture (Wikipedia) The Harvard architecture is a computer architecture with separate storage and signal pathways for instructions and data. It is often contrasted with the von Neumann architecture, where program instructions and data share the same memory and pathways.
Hastings, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Hastings (/ˈheɪstɪŋz/ HAY-stingz) is a city mostly in Dakota County, Minnesota, of which it is the county seat, with a portion in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. It is near the confluence of the Mississippi, Vermillion, and St. Croix Rivers. The population was 22,154 at the 2020 census. It is named for the first elected governor of Minnesota, Henry Hastings Sibley.
Hawaii (Wikipedia) Hawaii (/həˈwaɪi/ hə-WY-ee; Hawaiian: Hawaiʻi, [həˈvɐjʔi] or [həˈwɐjʔi]) is a state in the Western United States, about 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the U.S. mainland in the Pacific Ocean. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state in the tropics.
Hawkeye Point (Wikipedia) Hawkeye Point is the highest natural point in Iowa at 1,670 feet (510 m). It is approximately 4.5 miles (7.2 km) north of Sibley on the eastern side of SR 60 and approximately 3.5 miles (5.6 km) south of the Iowa-Minnesota state border. The high ground lies 100 feet (30 m) due south of an old silo.
Hawthorne Hills, Seattle (Wikipedia) Hawthorne Hills is a residential neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. It is officially split between the neighborhoods of Bryant and Windermere, but is generally recognized as a distinct neighborhood. The northern boundary is Northeast 65th Street. The southern and eastern boundary is Sand Point Way. The western boundary is 40th Avenue Northeast. Hawthorne Hills is bounded on the north by View Ridge, on the east by Windermere, on the south by Laurelhurst, and on the west by Bryant. There is a sign for the neighborhood along Sand Point Way.
Heat death of the universe (Wikipedia) The heat death of the universe (also known as the Big Chill or Big Freeze) is a hypothesis on the ultimate fate of the universe, which suggests the universe will evolve to a state of no thermodynamic free energy, and will therefore be unable to sustain processes that increase entropy. Heat death does not imply any particular absolute temperature; it only requires that temperature differences or other processes may no longer be exploited to perform work. In the language of physics, this is when the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium. The Heat Death theory has become the leading theory in the modern age with the fewest unpredictable factors.
Hedera helix (Wikipedia) Hedera helix, the common ivy, European ivy, or just ivy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Araliaceae. It is native to most of Europe and parts of western Asia. Ivy is a clinging evergreen vine that grows on tree trunks, walls, and fences in gardens, waste spaces, and wild habitats. Ivy is popular as an ornamental plant, but escaped plants have become naturalised outside its native range. Ivy has considerable cultural significance and symbolism.
Helen Keller (Wikipedia) Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, disability rights advocate, political activist and lecturer. Born in West Tuscumbia, Alabama, she lost her sight and her hearing after a bout of illness when she was 19 months old. She then communicated primarily using home signs until the age of seven, when she met her first teacher and life-long companion Anne Sullivan. Sullivan taught Keller language, including reading and writing. After an education at both specialist and mainstream schools, Keller attended Radcliffe College of Harvard University and became the first deafblind person in the United States to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Helium (Wikipedia) Helium (from Greek: ἥλιος, romanized: helios, lit. ‘sun’) is a chemical element; it has symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements, and it does not have a melting point at standard pressures. It is the second-lightest and second most abundant element in the observable universe, after hydrogen. It is present at about 24% of the total elemental mass, which is more than 12 times the mass of all the heavier elements combined. Its abundance is similar to this in both the Sun and Jupiter, because of the very high nuclear binding energy (per nucleon) of helium-4, with respect to the next three elements after helium. This helium-4 binding energy also accounts for why it is a product of both nuclear fusion and radioactive decay. The most common isotope of helium in the universe is helium-4, the vast majority of which was formed during the Big Bang. Large amounts of new helium are created by nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars.
Hendecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a hendecagon (also undecagon or endecagon) or 11-gon is an eleven-sided polygon. (The name hendecagon, from Greek hendeka “eleven” and –gon “corner”, is often preferred to the hybrid undecagon, whose first part is formed from Latin undecim “eleven”.
Hennepin County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Hennepin County (/ˈhɛnəpɪn/ HEN-ə-pin) is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. Its county seat is Minneapolis, the state’s most populous city. The county is named in honor of the 17th-century explorer Father Louis Hennepin. The county extends from Minneapolis to the suburbs and outlying cities in the western part of the county. The county’s natural areas are covered with extensive woods, hills, and lakes.
Henry Clay (Wikipedia) Henry Clay Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Kentucky in both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He was the seventh House speaker as well as the ninth secretary of state. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1824, 1832, and 1844 elections. He helped found both the National Republican Party and the Whig Party. For his role in defusing sectional crises, he earned the appellation of the “Great Compromiser” and was part of the “Great Triumvirate” of Congressmen, alongside fellow Whig Daniel Webster and Democrat John C. Calhoun.
Henry David Thoreau (Wikipedia) Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay “Civil Disobedience” (originally published as “Resistance to Civil Government”), an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.
Henry Ford (Wikipedia) Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. He was the founder of Ford Motor Company, and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. Ford created the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, and his conversion of the automobile from an expensive luxury into an accessible conveyance profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.
Henry II of England (Wikipedia) Henry II (5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189), also known as Henry Curtmantle, was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. During his reign he controlled England, substantial parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France (including Normandy, Aquitaine and Anjou), an area that altogether was later called the Angevin Empire, and also held power over Scotland and the Duchy of Brittany.
Heptadecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a heptadecagon, septadecagon or 17-gon is a seventeen-sided polygon.
Heptagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a heptagon or septagon is a seven-sided polygon or 7-gon.
Heptagram (Wikipedia) A heptagram, septagram, septegram or septogram is a seven-point star drawn with seven straight strokes.
Herbert Hoover (Wikipedia) Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874 – October 20, 1964) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 31st president of the United States from 1929 to 1933. A member of the Republican Party, he held office during the onset of the Great Depression. A wealthy mining engineer before his presidency, Hoover led the wartime Commission for Relief in Belgium, served as the director of the U.S. Food Administration, and served as the U.S. Secretary of Commerce.
Hercules (constellation) (Wikipedia) Hercules is a constellation named after Hercules, the Roman mythological hero adapted from the Greek hero Heracles. Hercules was one of the 48 constellations listed by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations today. It is the fifth-largest of the modern constellations and is the largest of the 50 which have no stars brighter than apparent magnitude +2.5.
Herman Melville (Wikipedia) Herman Melville (born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846), a romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia; and Billy Budd, Sailor, a posthumously published novella. Although his reputation was not high at the time of his death, the 1919 centennial of his birth was the starting point of a Melville revival, and Moby-Dick grew to be considered one of the great American novels.
Hermann Göring (Wikipedia) Hermann Wilhelm Göring (or Goering;[a] German: [ˈhɛʁman ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈɡøːʁɪŋ]; 12 January 1893 – 15 October 1946) was a German politician, military leader, and convicted war criminal. He was one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party, which governed Germany from 1933 to 1945.
Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (Wikipedia) The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (abbreviated as H–R diagram, HR diagram or HRD) is a scatter plot of stars showing the relationship between the stars’ absolute magnitudes or luminosities and their stellar classifications or effective temperatures. The diagram was created independently in 1911 by Ejnar Hertzsprung and by Henry Norris Russell in 1913, and represented a major step towards an understanding of stellar evolution.
Hexadecagon (Wikipedia) In mathematics, a hexadecagon (sometimes called a hexakaidecagon or 16-gon) is a sixteen-sided polygon.
Hexagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a hexagon (from Greek ἕξ, hex, meaning “six”, and γωνία, gonía, meaning “corner, angle”) is a six-sided polygon. The total of the internal angles of any simple (non-self-intersecting) hexagon is 720°.
Hezbollah (Wikipedia) Hezbollah (/ˌhɛzbəˈlɑː/, /ˌxɛz-/; Arabic: حزب الله, romanized: Ḥizbu ’llāh, lit. ‘Party of Allah’ or ‘Party of God’) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militant group, led since 1992 by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. Hezbollah’s paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.
High Efficiency Image File Format (Wikipedia) High Efficiency Image File Format (HEIF) is a container format for storing individual digital images and image sequences. The standard covers multimedia files that can also include other media streams, such as timed text, audio and video.
Hilltop, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Hilltop is a city in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 958 at the 2020 census.
Hinkhouse Peak (Wikipedia) Hinkhouse Peak is a 7,560-foot-elevation (2,300-meter) mountain summit located on the shared border of Okanogan County and Chelan County in Washington state. It is part of the Okanogan Range which is a sub-range of the North Cascades Range. Hinkhouse Peak is situated on land administered by the Okanogan–Wenatchee National Forest. The nearest higher neighbor is Liberty Bell Mountain, 1.52 miles (2.45 km) to the south.
Hippie (Wikipedia) A hippie, also spelled hippy, especially in British English, is someone associated with the counterculture of the 1960s, originally a youth movement that began in the United States during or around 1964 and spread to different countries around the world. The word hippie came from hipster and was used to describe beatniks who moved into New York City’s Greenwich Village, in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, and Chicago’s Old Town community. The term hippie was used in print by San Francisco writer Michael Fallon, helping popularize use of the term in the media, although the tag was seen elsewhere earlier.
History of email (Wikipedia) The history of email entails an evolving set of technologies and standards that culminated in the email systems in use today.
History of the alphabet (Wikipedia) The history of the alphabet goes back to the consonantal writing system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Most or nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to this Semitic proto-alphabet. Its first origins can be traced back to a Proto-Sinaitic script developed in Ancient Egypt to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in Egypt. Unskilled in the complex hieroglyphic system used to write the Egyptian language, which required a large number of pictograms, they selected a small number of those commonly seen in their Egyptian surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values, of their own Canaanite language. This script was partly influenced by the older Egyptian hieratic, a cursive script related to Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Semitic alphabet became the ancestor of multiple writing systems across the Middle East, Europe, northern Africa, and Pakistan, mainly through Ancient South Arabian, Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew (closely related and initially virtually identical to the Phoenician alphabet or even derived from it) and later Aramaic (derived from the Phoenician alphabet), four closely related members of the Semitic family of scripts that were in use during the early first millennium BCE.
Hogfather (Wikipedia) Hogfather is the 20th Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, and a 1997 British Fantasy Award nominee. It was first released in 1996 and published by Victor Gollancz. It came in 137th place in The Big Read, a BBC survey of the most loved British books of all time, making it one of fifteen books by Pratchett in the Top 200.
Hollywood Babylon (Wikipedia) Hollywood Babylon is a book by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, which details the purported scandals of famous Hollywood denizens from the 1900s to the 1950s. The book was banned shortly after it was first published in the U.S. in 1965, and remained unavailable until reprinted ten years later. Upon its second release in 1975, The New York Times said of it, “If a book such as this can be said to have charm, it lies in the fact that here is a book without one single redeeming merit.” The Daily Beast described Anger’s book as “essentially a work of fiction. There is no doubt that many—if not all—of the stories Anger shares in his slim bible have no merit.” Film historian Kevin Brownlow repeatedly criticized the book, citing Anger as saying his research method was “mental telepathy, mostly”.
Holocene (Wikipedia) The Holocene (/ˈhɒl.əsiːn, -oʊ-, ˈhoʊ.lə-, -loʊ-/) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 9,700 years before the Common Era (BCE) (11,650 cal years BP, or 300 HE). It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene together form the Quaternary period. The Holocene has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1. It is considered by some to be an interglacial period within the Pleistocene Epoch, called the Flandrian interglacial.
Holy Spirit (Wikipedia) In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is the divine force, quality, and influence of God over the Universe or over his creatures. In Nicene Christianity, the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost is the third person of the Trinity. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as an agent of divine action or communication. In the Baha’i Faith, the Holy Spirit is seen as the intermediary between God and man and “the outpouring grace of God and the effulgent rays that emanate from His Manifestation”.
Honduras (Wikipedia) Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, and to the north by the Gulf of Honduras, a large inlet of the Caribbean Sea. Its capital and largest city is Tegucigalpa.
Honey bee (Wikipedia) A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus Apis of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmopolitan distribution of honey bees, introducing multiple subspecies into South America (early 16th century), North America (early 17th century), and Australia (early 19th century).
Hong Kong (Wikipedia) Hong Kong (US: /ˈhɒŋkɒŋ/ or UK: /hɒŋˈkɒŋ/; Chinese: 香港, Cantonese: [hœ́ːŋ.kɔ̌ːŋ]), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and a special administrative region in China. With 7.4 million residents of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated territories in the world.
Hood Canal (Wikipedia) Hood Canal is a fjord forming the western lobe, and one of the four main basins of Puget Sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is one of the minor bodies of water that constitute the Salish Sea. Hood Canal is not a canal in the sense of an artificial waterway—it is a natural feature.
Hood Canal Bridge (Wikipedia) The Hood Canal Bridge (officially William A. Bugge Bridge) is a floating bridge in the northwest United States, located in western Washington. It carries State Route 104 across Hood Canal in Puget Sound and connects the Olympic and Kitsap Peninsulas. At 7,869 feet (1.490 mi; 2.398 km) in length (floating portion 6,521 feet (1.235 mi; 1.988 km)), it is the longest floating bridge in the world located in a saltwater tidal basin, and the third longest floating bridge overall. It opened in 1961 and was the second concrete floating bridge constructed in Washington. Since that time, it has become a vital link for local residents, freight haulers, commuters, and recreational travelers. The convenience it provides has had a major impact on economic development, especially in eastern Jefferson County.
Hoosier Hill (Wikipedia) Hoosier Hill is the highest natural point in the U.S. state of Indiana with a claimed elevation of 1,257 feet (383 meters) above sea level. Hoosier Hill’s claimed elevation is based on SRTM digital elevation data which is now considered to be outdated. Using newer elevation tools such as USGS’s 3DEP, the top of Hoosier Hill is closer to 1,255.48 feet (382.67 meters) above sea level. Hoosier Hill is in the rural area of Franklin Township, Wayne County to the northwest of Bethel. The nearest intersection to the high point is Elliot Road and County Line Road. The nearest major landmark is Interstate 70 and Richmond 11 miles (18 km) to the south.
Horologium (constellation) (Wikipedia) Horologium (Latin hōrologium, the pendulum clock, from Greek ὡρολόγιον, lit. ‘an instrument for telling the hour’) is a constellation of six stars faintly visible in the southern celestial hemisphere. It was first described by the French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in 1756 and visualized by him as a clock with a pendulum and a second hand. In 1922 the constellation was redefined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) as a region of the celestial sphere containing Lacaille’s stars, and has since been an IAU designated constellation. Horologium’s associated region is wholly visible to observers south of 23°N.
Horror film (Wikipedia) Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horse (Wikipedia) The horse (Equus ferus caballus) is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BCE, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BCE. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.
Houlton, Wisconsin (Wikipedia) Houlton is an unincorporated census-designated place located in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, United States. Houlton is located across the St. Croix River from Stillwater, Minnesota, in the town of St. Joseph. Houlton has no post office but has been assigned the ZIP code 54082. As of the 2010 census, its population was 386.
Hrun the Barbarian (Wikipedia) In the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, Hrun appears as an archetypal fantasy barbarian: hulking and muscle-bound yet slow-witted, battle-prone, alcoholic, and fond of virgins. Hrun stole his magical talking sword, Kring, after a battle, but regrets it due to the sword’s talkativeness.
Hubble Deep Field (Wikipedia) The Hubble Deep Field (HDF) is an image of a small region in the constellation Ursa Major, constructed from a series of observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. It covers an area about 2.6 arcminutes on a side, about one 24-millionth of the whole sky, which is equivalent in angular size to a tennis ball at a distance of 100 metres. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Space Telescope’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days between December 18 and 28, 1995.
Hudson Bay (Wikipedia) Hudson Bay, sometimes called Hudson’s Bay (usually historically), is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada with a surface area of 1,230,000 km2 (470,000 sq mi). It is located north of Ontario, west of Quebec, northeast of Manitoba, and southeast of Nunavut, but politically entirely part of Nunavut. It is an inland marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. The Hudson Strait provides a connection between the Labrador Sea and the Atlantic Ocean in the northeast, while the Foxe Channel connects the Hudson Bay with the Arctic Ocean in the north. It drains a very large area, about 3,861,400 km2 (1,490,900 sq mi), that includes parts of southeastern Nunavut, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, all of Manitoba, and parts of the U.S. states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Montana. Hudson Bay’s southern arm is called James Bay.
Hudson Strait (Wikipedia) Hudson Strait (French: Détroit d’Hudson) in Nunavut links the Atlantic Ocean and the Labrador Sea to Hudson Bay in Canada. This strait lies between Baffin Island and Nunavik, with its eastern entrance marked by Cape Chidley in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nunavut and Resolution Island, off Baffin Island. The strait is about 750 km (470 mi) long with an average width of 125 km (78 mi), varying from 70 km (43 mi) at the eastern entrance to 240 km (150 mi) at Deception Bay.
Hudson, Wisconsin (Wikipedia) Hudson is a city and county seat of St. Croix County, Wisconsin, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, its population was 14,755. It is part of the Minneapolis–St. Paul Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The village of North Hudson is directly north of Hudson.
Hugo (software) (Wikipedia) Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. Steve Francia originally created Hugo as an open source project in 2013. Since v0.14 in 2015, Hugo has continued development under the lead of Bjørn Erik Pedersen with other contributors. Hugo is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Human (Wikipedia) Humans, or modern humans (Homo sapiens), are the most common and widespread species of primate. A great ape characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligence, humans have a large brain and resulting cognitive skills that enable them to thrive in varied environments and develop complex societies and civilizations. Humans are highly social and tend to live in complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families and kinship networks to political states. As such, social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms, languages, and rituals, each of which bolsters human society. The desire to understand and influence phenomena has motivated humanity’s development of science, technology, philosophy, mythology, religion, and other frameworks of knowledge. Humans in fact study themselves, through such domains as anthropology, social science, history, psychology and medicine.
Humptulips River (Wikipedia) The Humptulips River is a river in Grays Harbor County, Washington, in the United States. Its main tributaries are the East Fork Humptulips River, about 20 miles (32 km) long (32 km), and West Fork Humptulips River, about 30 miles (48 km) long (48 km). After the forks join, the main river is approximately 20 miles (32 km) long.
Hungary (Wikipedia) Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning 93,030 square kilometres (35,920 sq mi) of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and Slovenia to the southwest, and Austria to the west. Hungary has a population of 9.6 million, mostly ethnic Hungarians and a significant Romani minority. Hungarian is the official language, and Budapest is the country’s capital and largest city.
Hunts Point, Washington (Wikipedia) Hunts Point is a town in the Eastside, a region of King County, Washington, United States, and part of the Seattle metropolitan area. The town is on a small peninsula surrounded by Lake Washington, and is near the suburbs of Medina (to the southwest), Clyde Hill (to the south), Yarrow Point (on another peninsula to the east), and Kirkland (to the northeast), as well as the city of Bellevue (to the east). As of the 2010 census, the town had a total population of 394.
Hurricane Katrina (Wikipedia) Hurricane Katrina was a devastating and deadly Category 5 Atlantic hurricane that caused 1,836 fatalities and damages estimated between $97.4 billion to $145.5 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. At the time, it was the costliest tropical cyclone on record, later tied by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Katrina was the twelfth tropical cyclone, the fifth hurricane, and the third major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. It was also the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the contiguous United States, gauged by barometric pressure.
Hurricane Ridge (Wikipedia) Hurricane Ridge is a mountainous area in Washington’s Olympic National Park. Approximately 18 miles (29 km) by road from Port Angeles, the ridge is open to hiking, skiing, and snowboarding and is one of the two most visited sites in the national park (along with the Hoh Rainforest).
Hyak, Washington (Wikipedia) Hyak is an unincorporated community located on Snoqualmie Pass in Kittitas County, Washington. It is located within the Snoqualmie Pass CDP.
Hydra (constellation) (Wikipedia) Hydra is the largest of the 88 modern constellations, measuring 1303 square degrees, and also the longest at over 100 degrees. Its southern end borders Libra and Centaurus and its northern end borders Cancer. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy. Commonly represented as a water snake, it straddles the celestial equator.
Hydrogen (Wikipedia) Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest element and, at standard conditions, is a gas of diatomic molecules with the formula H2. It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, and highly combustible. Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe, constituting roughly 75% of all normal matter. Stars such as the Sun are mainly composed of hydrogen in the plasma state. Most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as water and organic compounds. For the most common isotope of hydrogen (symbol 1H) each atom has one proton, one electron, and no neutrons.
Hydrus (Wikipedia) Hydrus /ˈhaɪdrəs/ is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in late 1597 (or early 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. Its name means “male water snake”, as opposed to Hydra, a much larger constellation that represents a female water snake. It remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.
Hypochaeris glabra (Wikipedia) Hypochaeris glabra is a species of flowering plant in the tribe Cichorieae within the family Asteraceae known by the common name smooth cat’s ear. It is native to Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East but it can be found on other continents where it is an introduced species and a widespread weed. It has become widespread in Africa, southern and southeastern Asia, Australia, and parts of the Americas (especially California).
Hypotenuse (Wikipedia) In geometry, a hypotenuse is the side of a right triangle opposite the right angle. It is the longest side of any such triangle; the two other shorter sides of such a triangle are called catheti or legs. The length of the hypotenuse can be found using the Pythagorean theorem, which states that the square of the length of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two legs. Mathematically, this can be written as 𝑎^2 + 𝑏^2 = 𝑐^2, where a is the length of one leg, b is the length of another leg, and c is the length of the hypotenuse.
I-90 Mississippi River Bridge (Wikipedia) The I-90 Mississippi River Bridge, or the Dresbach Bridge, consists of a pair of parallel bridges that traverse the Mississippi River, connecting the La Crosse, Wisconsin area to Dresbach in rural Winona County, Minnesota. The current bridge was fully opened to traffic in October 2016, replacing a previous 1967 plate girder bridge. It is part of the Interstate 90 route. There is another automobile crossing a few miles south of this bridge; the Mississippi River Bridge, a combination of two bridges, and the La Crosse West Channel Bridge, connecting La Crescent, Minnesota and La Crosse, Wisconsin.
I, a Man (Wikipedia) I, a Man is a 1967 American erotic drama film written, directed and filmed by Andy Warhol. It debuted at the Hudson Theatre in New York City on August 25, 1967. The film depicts the main character, played by Tom Baker, in a series of sexual encounters with eight women. Warhol created the movie as a response to the popular erotic Scandinavian film I, a Woman, which had opened in the United States in October 1966.
Iberian Peninsula (Wikipedia) The Iberian Peninsula (IPA: /aɪˈbɪəriən/), also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in South-western Europe, defining the westernmost edge of Eurasia. Separated from the rest of the European landmass by the Pyrenees, it includes the territories of Peninsular Spain and Continental Portugal, comprising most of the region, as well as the tiny adjuncts of Andorra, the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, and, pursuant to the traditional definition of the Pyrenees as the peninsula’s northeastern boundary, a small part of France. With an area of approximately 583,254 square kilometres (225,196 sq mi), and a population of roughly 53 million, it is the second-largest European peninsula by area, after the Scandinavian Peninsula.
IC 1613 (Wikipedia) IC 1613 (object 1613 in the Index Catalogues (IC), also known as Caldwell 51) is an irregular dwarf galaxy, visible in the constellation Cetus near the star 26 Ceti. It was discovered in 1906 by Max Wolf, and is approaching Earth at 234 km/s.
Ice (Wikipedia) Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 °C, 32 °F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally occurring crystalline inorganic solid with an ordered structure, ice is considered to be a mineral. Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaque bluish-white color.
Iceland (Wikipedia) Iceland (Icelandic: Ísland, pronounced [ˈistlant]) is a Nordic island country between the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is linked culturally and politically with Europe and is the region’s most sparsely populated country. Its capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which is home to about 36% of the country’s roughly 380,000 residents. The official language of the country is Icelandic.
Icosagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, an icosagon or 20-gon is a twenty-sided polygon. The sum of any icosagon’s interior angles is 3240 degrees.
Idaho (Wikipedia) Idaho (/ˈaɪdəhoʊ/ EYE-də-hoh) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington and Oregon to the west. The state’s capital and largest city is Boise. With an area of 83,570 square miles (216,400 km2), Idaho is the 14th largest state by land area, but with a population of approximately 1.8 million, it ranks as the 13th least populous and the 7th least densely populated of the 50 U.S. states.
Idealism (Wikipedia) Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest form of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered “real”. The radical latter view is often first credited to the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato as part of a theory now known as Platonic idealism. Other than in some Western philosophy, idealism also appears in some Indian philosophy, namely in Vedanta, one of the orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy, and in some streams of Buddhism.
Idiocracy (Wikipedia) Idiocracy is a 2006 American science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge from a screenplay written by Judge and Etan Cohen. The plot follows United States Army librarian Joe Bauers and prostitute Rita, who undergo a government hibernation experiment. Joe and Rita awake five hundred years later in a dystopian anti-intellectual society. The cast includes Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, Terry Crews, David Herman, Justin Long, Andrew Wilson, and Brad Jordan.
IDS Center (Wikipedia) The IDS Center is an office skyscraper located at 80 South 8th Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Completed in 1973, it is the tallest building in Minneapolis, and the tallest building in the state at a height of 792 feet (241 m). It originally stood 775 feet 6 inches (236.37 m), though a 16-foot (4.9 m) garage for window washing equipment was added between 1978 and 1979. The structure rises to 910 feet (10,900 in) when including communications spires on the roof, indisputably the highest points in the city. The IDS was constructed as the headquarters of Investors Diversified Services, Inc.—now Ameriprise Financial. It also housed the headquarters of Dayton Hudson Corporation (now Target Corporation) from 1972 until 2001.
If on a winter’s night a traveler (Wikipedia) If on a winter’s night a traveler (Italian: Se una notte d’inverno un viaggiatore) is a 1979 novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino. The postmodernist narrative, in the form of a frame story, is about the reader trying to read a book called If on a winter’s night a traveler. Each chapter is divided into two sections. The first section of each chapter is in second person, and describes the process the reader goes through to attempt to read the next chapter of the book they are reading. The second half is the first part of a new book that the reader (“you”) finds. The second half is always about something different from the previous ones. The book was published in an English translation by William Weaver in 1981.
Igneous rock (Wikipedia) Igneous rock (igneous from Latin igneus ‘fiery’), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava.
Illegal number (Wikipedia) An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal to possess, utter, propagate, or otherwise transmit in some legal jurisdiction. Any piece of digital information is representable as a number; consequently, if communicating a specific set of information is illegal in some way, then the number may be illegal as well.
Illinois (Wikipedia) Illinois (/ˌɪləˈnɔɪ/ IL-ə-NOY) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Chicago is its largest city, and the state’s capital is Springfield; other major metropolitan areas include Metro East (of Greater St. Louis), Peoria and Rockford. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area.
Immanuel Kant (Wikipedia) Immanuel Kant (UK: /kænt/, US: /kɑːnt/, German: [ɪˈmaːnu̯eːl ˈkant]; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher (a native of the Kingdom of Prussia) and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant’s comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy.
IMSAI 8080 (Wikipedia) The IMSAI 8080 is an early microcomputer released in late 1975, based on the Intel 8080 (and later 8085) and S-100 bus. It is a clone of its main competitor, the earlier MITS Altair 8800. The IMSAI is largely regarded as the first “clone” microcomputer. The IMSAI machine runs a highly modified version of the CP/M operating system called IMDOS. It was developed, manufactured and sold by IMS Associates, Inc. (later renamed to IMSAI Manufacturing Corp). In total, between 17,000 and 20,000 units were produced from 1975 to 1978.
Incremental game (Wikipedia) Incremental games, also known as clicker games, clicking games (on PCs) or tap games (in mobile games), are video games whose gameplay consists of the player doing simple actions such as clicking on the screen repeatedly. This “grinding” earns the player in-game currency which can be used to increase the rate of currency acquisition. In some games, even the clicking becomes unnecessary at some point, as the game plays itself, including in the player’s absence, hence the moniker idle game.
Index, Washington (Wikipedia) Index (Lushootseed: x̌əx̌aʔusalʔtxʷ) is a town in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 178 at the 2010 census.
India (Wikipedia) India, officially the Republic of India (ISO: Bhārat Gaṇarājya), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country as of June 2023; and from the time of its independence in 1947, the world’s most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia.
Indian Mounds Regional Park (Saint Paul, Minnesota) (Wikipedia) Indian Mounds Regional Park is a public park in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, featuring six burial mounds overlooking the [Mississippi River](Mississippi River). The oldest mounds were constructed about 2,500 years ago by local Indigenous people linked to the Archaic period, who may have been inspired by the burial style known as the Hopewell Tradition. Mdewakanton Dakota people are also known to have interred their dead here well into that period. At least 31 mounds were destroyed by development in the late 19th century. This burial mound group includes the tallest mounds constructed by people Indigenous to Minnesota and Wisconsin (except for the unique 45-foot (14 m) Grand Mound outside International Falls, Minnesota). Indian Mounds Regional Park is a component of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park System. In 2014, the extant Mounds Group was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination document describes the archaeology and context. A Cultural Landscape Study provides more context about the cultural landscape.
Indian Ocean (Wikipedia) The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world’s five oceanic divisions, covering 70,560,000 km2 (27,240,000 sq mi) or approx. 20% of the water on Earth’s surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by the Southern Ocean, or Antarctica, depending on the definition in use. Along its core, the Indian Ocean has large marginal, or regional seas, such as the Andaman Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, and the Laccadive Sea.
Indian Plate (Wikipedia) The Indian Plate (or India Plate) is a minor tectonic plate straddling the equator in the Eastern Hemisphere. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, the Indian Plate broke away from the other fragments of Gondwana 100 million years ago and began moving north, carrying Insular India with it. It was once fused with the adjacent Australian Plate to form a single Indo-Australian Plate, and recent studies suggest that India and Australia have been separate plates for at least 3 million years. The Indian Plate includes most of modern South Asia (the Indian subcontinent) and a portion of the basin under the Indian Ocean, including parts of South China, western Indonesia, and extending up to but not including Ladakh, Kohistan, and Balochistan.
Indiana (Wikipedia) Indiana (/ˌɪndiˈænə/ (listen)) is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th state on December 11, 1816. It is bordered by Lake Michigan to the northwest, Michigan to the north, Ohio to the east, the Ohio River and Kentucky to the south and southeast, and the Wabash River and Illinois to the west.
Indianapolis (Wikipedia) Indianapolis (/ˌɪndiəˈnæpəlɪs/ IN-dee-ə-NAP-əl-iss), colloquially known as Indy, is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion County was 977,203 in 2020. The “balance” population, which excludes semi-autonomous municipalities in Marion County, was 887,642. It is the 15th most populous city in the U.S., the third-most populous city in the Midwest, after Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, and the fourth-most populous state capital after Phoenix, Arizona, Austin, Texas, and Columbus. The Indianapolis metropolitan area is the 33rd most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with 2,111,040 residents. Its combined statistical area ranks 28th, with a population of 2,431,361. Indianapolis covers 368 square miles (950 km2), making it the 18th largest city by land area in the U.S.
Indonesia (Wikipedia) Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guinea. Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelagic state and the 14th-largest country by area, at 1,904,569 square kilometres (735,358 square miles). With over 280 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth-most-populous country and the most populous Muslim-majority country. Java, the world’s most populous island, is home to more than half of the country’s population.
Indus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Indus is a constellation in the southern sky first professionally surveyed by Europeans in the 1590s and mapped on a globe by Petrus Plancius by early 1598. It was included on a plate illustrating southern constellations in Bayer’s sky atlas Uranometria in 1603. It lies well south of the Tropic of Capricorn but its triangular shape can be seen for most of the year from the Equator. It is elongated from north to south and has a complex boundary. The English translation of its name is generally given as the Indian, though it is unclear which indigenous people the constellation was originally supposed to represent.
Infinity (Wikipedia) Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number. It is often denoted by the infinity symbol ∞.
Inflation (Wikipedia) In economics, inflation is a general increase in the prices of goods and services in an economy. This is usually measured using the consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reduction in the purchasing power of money. The opposite of CPI inflation is deflation, a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. The common measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index. As prices faced by households do not all increase at the same rate, the consumer price index (CPI) is often used for this purpose.
Initial singularity (Wikipedia) The initial singularity is a singularity predicted by some models of the Big Bang theory to have existed before the Big Bang. The instant immediately following the initial singularity is part of the Planck epoch, the earliest period of time in the history of our universe.
Inorganic compound (Wikipedia) In chemistry, an inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds, that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as inorganic chemistry.
Insect (Wikipedia) Insects (from Latin insectum) are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes and one pair of antennae. Their blood is not totally contained in vessels; some circulates in an open cavity known as the haemocoel. Insects are the most diverse group of animals; they include more than a million described species and represent more than half of all known living organisms. The total number of extant species is estimated at between six and ten million; potentially over 90% of the animal life forms on Earth are insects. Insects may be found in nearly all environments, although only a small number of species reside in the oceans, which are dominated by another arthropod group, crustaceans, which recent research has indicated insects are nested within.
Instagram (Wikipedia) Instagram is an American photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users’ content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social networking service, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 25 languages including English, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.
Intel 8080 (Wikipedia) The Intel 8080 ("eighty-eighty") is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibility. The initial specified clock rate or frequency limit was 2 MHz, with common instructions using 4, 5, 7, 10, or 11 cycles. As a result, the processor is able to execute several hundred thousand instructions per second. Two faster variants, the 8080A-1 (sometimes referred to as the 8080B) and 8080A-2, became available later with clock frequency limits of 3.125 MHz and 2.63 MHz respectively. The 8080 needs two support chips to function in most applications: the i8224 clock generator/driver and the i8228 bus controller. It is implemented in N-type metal–oxide–semiconductor logic (NMOS) using non-saturated enhancement mode transistors as loads thus demanding a +12 V and a −5 V voltage in addition to the main transistor–transistor logic (TTL) compatible +5 V.
Intel 8085 (Wikipedia) The Intel 8085 ("eighty-eighty-five") is an 8-bit microprocessor produced by Intel and introduced in March 1976. It is software-binary compatible with the more-famous Intel 8080 with only two minor instructions added to support its added interrupt and serial input/output features. However, it requires less support circuitry, allowing simpler and less expensive microcomputer systems to be built. The “5” in the part number highlighted the fact that the 8085 uses a single +5-volt (V) power supply by using depletion-mode transistors, rather than requiring the +5 V, −5 V and +12 V supplies needed by the 8080. This capability matched that of the competing Z80, a popular 8080-derived CPU introduced the year before. These processors could be used in computers running the CP/M operating system.
Intel 8086 (Wikipedia) The 8086 (also called iAPX 86) is a 16-bit microprocessor chip designed by Intel between early 1976 and June 8, 1978, when it was released. The Intel 8088, released July 1, 1979, is a slightly modified chip with an external 8-bit data bus (allowing the use of cheaper and fewer supporting ICs), and is notable as the processor used in the original IBM PC design.
Interbay, Seattle (Wikipedia) Interbay is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington consisting of the valley between Queen Anne Hill on the east and Magnolia on the west, plus filled-in areas of Smith Cove and Salmon Bay. The neighborhood is bounded on the north by Salmon Bay, part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, across which is Ballard; on the south by what remains of Smith Cove, an inlet of Elliott Bay; on the east by 15th Avenue W. and Elliott Avenue W.; and on the west by the BNSF Railway. The Ballard Bridge crosses the ship canal from Interbay to Ballard.
Interesting Times (Wikipedia) Interesting Times is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the seventeenth book in the Discworld series, set in the Aurient (a fictional analogue of the Orient).
Interlaken Park (Wikipedia) Interlaken Park is a 51.7-acre (0.209 km2) park in Seattle, Washington. A heavily wooded hillside and ravine, it forms the division between Capitol Hill to the south and Montlake to the north. Interlaken Drive E. runs through the park north to south, and E. Interlaken Boulevard, part of which is now closed to traffic, does so northwest to southeast. Louisa Boren Park, once part of Interlaken Park, lies directly south.
Interstate 35W (Minnesota) (Wikipedia) Interstate 35W (I-35W) is an Interstate Highway in the US state of Minnesota, passing through downtown Minneapolis. It is one of two through routes for I-35 through the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the other being I-35E through downtown Saint Paul.
Interstate 405 (Washington) (Wikipedia) Interstate 405 (I-405) is a north–south auxiliary Interstate Highway serving the Seattle region of Washington, United States. It bypasses Seattle east of Lake Washington, traveling through the Eastside area of King and Snohomish counties, providing an alternate route to I-5. The 30-mile (48 km) freeway serves the cities of Renton, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Bothell. I-405 terminates at I-5 in Tukwila and Lynnwood, and also intersects several major highways, including SR 167, I-90, SR 520, and SR 522.
Interstate 5 in Washington (Wikipedia) Interstate 5 (I-5) is an Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States that serves as the region’s primary north–south route. It spans 277 miles (446 km) across the state of Washington, from the Oregon state border at Vancouver, through the Puget Sound region, to the Canadian border at Blaine. Within the Seattle metropolitan area, the freeway connects the cities of Tacoma, Seattle, and Everett.
Interstate 90 (Wikipedia) Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at 3,021 miles (4,862 km). It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, Great Plains, Midwest, and the Northeast, ending in Boston, Massachusetts. The highway serves 13 states and has 16 auxiliary routes, primarily in major cities such as Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Rochester.
Interstate 94 (Wikipedia) Interstate 94 (I-94) is an east–west Interstate Highway connecting the Great Lakes and northern Great Plains regions of the United States. Its western terminus is just east of Billings, Montana, at a junction with I-90; its eastern terminus is in Port Huron, Michigan, where it meets with I-69 and crosses the Blue Water Bridge into Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, where the route becomes Ontario Highway 402. It thus lies along the primary overland route from Seattle (via I-90) to Toronto (via Ontario Highway 401) and is the only east–west Interstate Highway to have a direct connection to Canada.
Interstate Park (Wikipedia) Interstate Park comprises two adjacent state parks on the Minnesota–Wisconsin border, both named Interstate State Park. They straddle the Dalles of the St. Croix River, a deep basalt gorge with glacial potholes and other rock formations. The Wisconsin park is 1,330 acres (538 ha) and the Minnesota park is 298 acres (121 ha). The towns of Taylors Falls, Minnesota and St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin are adjacent to the park. Interstate Park is within the Saint Croix National Scenic Riverway and the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve. The western terminus of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail is on the Wisconsin side. On the Minnesota side, two areas contain National Park Service rustic style buildings and structures that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Interurban Trail (King County) (Wikipedia) The Interurban Trail are a pair of trails in Washington. The interurban Trail North is a bicycle route running from Downtown Seattle through Shoreline and to the Snohomish County, Washington line. The Interurban Trail South is a rail trail in King and Pierce counties.
Intrusive rock (Wikipedia) Intrusive rock is formed when magma penetrates existing rock, crystallizes, and solidifies underground to form intrusions, such as batholiths, dikes, sills, laccoliths, and volcanic necks.
Iodine (Wikipedia) Iodine is a chemical element with the symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists at standard conditions as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid that melts to form a deep violet liquid at 114 °C (237 °F), and boils to a violet gas at 184 °C (363 °F). The element was discovered by the French chemist Bernard Courtois in 1811 and was named two years later by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, after the Ancient Greek Ιώδης ‘violet-coloured’.
Ion (Wikipedia) An ion (/ˈaɪ.ɒn, -ən/) is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge. The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by convention. The net charge of an ion is not zero because its total number of electrons is unequal to its total number of protons.
Ionian Sea (Wikipedia) The Ionian Sea (Modern Greek: Ιόνιο Πέλαγος, romanized: Iónio Pélagos, IPA: [iˈoni.o ˈpelaɣos]; Italian: Mar Ionio or Mar Jonio, IPA: [mar ˈjɔːnjo]; Albanian: Deti Jon, IPA: [ˈdɛti ˈjɔn]) is an elongated bay of the Mediterranean Sea. It is connected to the Adriatic Sea to the north, and is bounded by Southern Italy, including Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily, and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania (and western Apulia, Italy) to the north, and the west coast of Greece, including the Peloponnese.
Ionic compound (Wikipedia) In chemistry, an ionic compound is a chemical compound composed of ions held together by electrostatic forces termed ionic bonding. The compound is neutral overall, but consists of positively charged ions called cations and negatively charged ions called anions. These can be simple ions such as the sodium (Na+) and chloride (Cl−) in sodium chloride, or polyatomic species such as the ammonium and carbonate ions in ammonium carbonate. Individual ions within an ionic compound usually have multiple nearest neighbours, so are not considered to be part of molecules, but instead part of a continuous three-dimensional network. Ionic compounds usually form crystalline structures when solid.
Iota Virginis (Wikipedia) Iota Virginis (ι Virginis, abbreviated Iota Vir, ι Vir) is a binary star in the constellation of Virgo. Its apparent magnitude is 4.08. Based on its parallax, it is assumed to be relatively nearby, at 71.8 light-years (22.0 parsecs).
Iowa (Wikipedia) Iowa (/ˈaɪəwə/) is a state in the upper Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north.
Iran (Wikipedia) Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), also known by its Western-given name Persia, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Iraq to the west and Turkey to the northwest, Azerbaijan, Armenia, the Caspian Sea and Turkmenistan to the north, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south.
Iraq (Wikipedia) Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia and in the geopolitical region known as the Middle East. With a population of over 46 million, it is the 14th-most populous country on the Asian continent and the 33rd-most populous country in the world. It is a federal parliamentary republic that consists of 18 governorates. The country is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest, and Syria to the west. The capital and largest city is Baghdad. The Iraqi people are diverse, with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. As part of the Arab and Muslim world, most Iraqis are Muslims – minority faiths include Christianity, Yazidism, Mandaeism, Yarsanism, and Zoroastrianism. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish; others also recognized in specific regions are Turkish (Turkmen), Suret (Assyrian), and Armenian.
Iron Age (Wikipedia) The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Copper and Bronze Ages. It has also been considered as the final Age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progressing to protohistory (before written history). In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age (subdivided into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic) and Bronze Age. These concepts originated in describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East, but they now include other parts of the Old World.
Isaac Asimov (Wikipedia) Isaac Asimov (/ˈæzɪmɒv/ AZ-ih-mov; c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the “Big Three” science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. A prolific writer, he wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards. Best known for his hard science fiction, Asimov also wrote mysteries and fantasy, as well as much non-fiction.
Isaac Newton (Wikipedia) Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a “natural philosopher”), widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists and among the most influential scientists of all time. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, established classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing infinitesimal calculus.
Islam (Wikipedia) Islam (/ˈɪslɑːm/; Arabic: ۘالِإسلَام, al-ʾIslām [ɪsˈlaːm], transl. “Submission [to God]”) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centered on the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam, called Muslims, number approximately 1.9 billion globally and are the world’s second-largest religious population after Christians.
Islamic State – Khorasan Province (Wikipedia) The Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS–K or IS–KP) is a regional branch of the Salafi jihadist group Islamic State (IS) active in South-Central Asia, primarily Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS–K seeks to destabilize and replace current governments within historic Khorasan region with the goal of establishing a caliphate across South and Central Asia, governed under a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, which they plan to expand beyond the region.
Island County, Washington (Wikipedia) Island County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 86,857. Its county seat is Coupeville, while its largest city is Oak Harbor.
Isosceles triangle (Wikipedia) In geometry, an isosceles triangle (/aɪˈsɒsəliːz/) is a triangle that has two sides of equal length. Sometimes it is specified as having exactly two sides of equal length, and sometimes as having at least two sides of equal length, the latter version thus including the equilateral triangle as a special case. Examples of isosceles triangles include the isosceles right triangle, the golden triangle, and the faces of bipyramids and certain Catalan solids.
Israel (Wikipedia) Israel (/ˈɪzri.əl, -reɪ-/; Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל Yisrāʾēl [jisʁaˈʔel]; Arabic: إِسْرَائِيل ʾIsrāʾīl), officially the State of Israel (מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל Medīnat Yisrāʾēl [mediˈnat jisʁaˈʔel]; دَوْلَة إِسْرَائِيل Dawlat Isrāʾīl), is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Lebanon to the north, by Syria to the northeast, by Jordan to the east, by the Red Sea to the south, by Egypt to the southwest, by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and by the Palestinian territories – the West Bank along the east and the Gaza Strip along the southwest. Tel Aviv is the financial, economic, and technological center of the country, while its seat of government is in its proclaimed capital of Jerusalem, although Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem is unrecognized internationally.
Israel in Egypt (Wikipedia) Israel in Egypt, HWV 54, is a biblical oratorio by the composer George Frideric Handel. Most scholars believe the libretto was prepared by Charles Jennens, who also compiled the biblical texts for Handel’s Messiah. It is composed entirely of selected passages from the Old Testament, mainly from Exodus and the Psalms.
Israel–Hamas war (Wikipedia) An armed conflict between Israel and Hamas-led Palestinian militant groups[s] has been taking place chiefly in and around the Gaza Strip since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched a surprise attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip. After clearing Hamas militants from its territory, the Israeli military embarked on an extensive aerial bombardment of the Gaza Strip followed by a large-scale ground invasion beginning on 27 October. Clashes have also occurred in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and with Hezbollah along the Israel–Lebanon border. The fifth war of the Gaza–Israel conflict since 2008, it is part of the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the most significant military escalation in the region since the Yom Kippur War 50 years earlier.
Israeli Declaration of Independence (Wikipedia) The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel (Hebrew: הכרזה על הקמת מדינת ישראל), was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and soon to be first Prime Minister of Israel. It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day. The event is celebrated annually in Israel as Independence Day, a national holiday on 5 Iyar of every year according to the Hebrew calendar.
Issaquah Alps (Wikipedia) The Issaquah Alps is the unofficial name for the highlands near Issaquah, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, including Cougar Mountain, Squak Mountain, Tiger Mountain, Taylor Mountain, Rattlesnake Ridge, Rattlesnake Mountain, and Grand Ridge. The term was invented in 1977 by noted nature author Harvey Manning within the pages of his trail guidebook Footsore 1, elevating their status from foothills to “Alps” to advocate preservation. Manning himself lived on a developed section of Cougar Mountain in his “200 meter hut”.
Issaquah, Washington (Wikipedia) Issaquah (/ˈɪsəkwɑː/ ISS-ə-kwah) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 40,051 at the 2020 census. Located in a valley and bisected by Interstate 90, the city is bordered by the Sammamish Plateau to the north and the “Issaquah Alps” to the south. It is home to the headquarters of the multinational retail company Costco. Issaquah is included in the Seattle metropolitan area.
Italo Calvino (Wikipedia) Italo Calvino (/kælˈviːnoʊ/, also US: /kɑːlˈ-/, Italian: [ˈiːtalo kalˈviːno]; 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952–1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979).
Italy (Wikipedia) Italy (Italian: Italia [iˈtaːlja]), officially the Italian Republic or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern and Western Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, it consists of a peninsula delimited by the Alps and surrounded by several islands; its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical region. Italy shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and the enclaved microstates of Vatican City and San Marino. It has a territorial exclave in Switzerland, Campione, and some islands in the African Plate. Italy covers an area of 301,230 km2 (116,310 sq mi), with a population of about 60 million. It is the third-most populous member state of the European Union, the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the tenth-largest country in the continent by land area. Italy’s capital and largest city is Rome.
Ivory Coast (Wikipedia) Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d’Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is the port city of Abidjan. It borders Guinea to the northwest, Liberia to the west, Mali to the northwest, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) to the south. With 30.9 million inhabitants in 2023, Ivory Coast is the third-most populous country in West Africa. Its official language is French, and indigenous languages are also widely used, including Bété, Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin, and Cebaara Senufo. In total, there are around 78 different languages spoken in Ivory Coast. The country has a religiously diverse population, including numerous followers of Islam, Christianity, and traditional faiths like Animism.
J. R. R. Tolkien (Wikipedia) John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE FRSL (/ˈruːl ˈtɒlkiːn/, ROOL TOL-keen; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Jack Kerouac (Wikipedia) Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (/ˈkɛru.æk/; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Jack Parsons (Wikipedia) John Whiteside Parsons (born Marvel Whiteside Parsons; October 2, 1914 – June 17, 1952) was an American rocket engineer, chemist, and Thelemite occultist. Associated with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Parsons was one of the principal founders of both the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Aerojet Engineering Corporation. He invented the first rocket engine to use a castable, composite rocket propellant, and pioneered the advancement of both liquid-fuel and solid-fuel rockets.
Jacob’s Ladder (1990 film) (Wikipedia) Jacob’s Ladder is a 1990 American psychological horror film directed by Adrian Lyne, produced by Alan Marshall and written by Bruce Joel Rubin. The film stars Tim Robbins as Jacob Singer, an American postman whose experiences before and during his military service in Vietnam result in strange, fragmentary visions and bizarre hallucinations that continue to haunt him. As his ordeal worsens, Jacob desperately attempts to figure out the truth. The film’s supporting cast includes Elizabeth Peña and Danny Aiello.
Jadeite (Wikipedia) Jadeite is a pyroxene mineral with composition NaAlSi2O6. It is hard (Mohs hardness of about 6.5 to 7.0), very tough, and dense, with a specific gravity of about 3.4. It is found in a wide range of colors, but is most often found in shades of green or white. Jadeite is formed only in the subduction zones of continental margins, where rock undergoes metamorphism at high pressure but relatively low temperature.
James A. Garfield (Wikipedia) James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was an American politician who served as the 20th president of the United States from March 1881 until his death in September that year; he was assassinated in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before his candidacy for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.
James Bay (Wikipedia) James Bay (French: Baie James; Cree: ᐐᓂᐯᒄ, romanized: Wînipekw, lit. ‘dirty water’) is a large body of water located on the southern end of Hudson Bay in Canada. It borders the provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and is politically part of Nunavut. Its largest island is Akimiski Island.
James Brown (Wikipedia) James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American musician. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is referred to by various honorific nicknames, some of which include “the Hardest Working Man in Show Business”, “Godfather of Soul”, “Mr. Dynamite”, and “Soul Brother No. 1”. In a career that lasted more than 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres. Brown was one of the first 10 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at its inaugural induction in New York on January 23, 1986.
James Cameron (Wikipedia) James Francis Cameron CC (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era. He often uses novel technologies with a classical filmmaking style. He first gained recognition for writing and directing The Terminator (1984) and found further success with Aliens (1986), The Abyss (1989), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), as well as Avatar (2009) and its sequels. He directed, wrote, co-produced, and co-edited Titanic (1997), winning three Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Film Editing. He is a recipient of various other industry accolades, and three of his films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Jane Roberts (Wikipedia) Dorothy Jane Roberts (May 8, 1929 – September 5, 1984) was an American author, poet, psychic, and spirit medium, who channeled a personality who called himself “Seth.” Her publication of the Seth texts, known as the Seth Material, established her as one of the preeminent figures in the world of paranormal phenomena.
January 6 United States Capitol attack (Wikipedia) On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., was attacked by a mob of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep Trump in power by occupying the Capitol and preventing a joint session of Congress counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the certification of the election results. According to the House select committee investigating the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election.
Janusz Korczak (Wikipedia) Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit (22 July 1878 or 1879 – 7 August 1942), was a Polish Jewish pediatrician, educator, children’s author and pedagogue known as Pan Doktor (“Mr. Doctor”) or Stary Doktor (“Old Doctor”). He was an early children’s rights advocate, in 1919 drafting a children’s constitution. ¶ After spending many years working as a principal of an orphanage in Warsaw, he refused sanctuary repeatedly and stayed with his orphans when the entire population of the institution was sent from the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp during the Grossaktion Warschau of 1942.
Japan (Wikipedia) Japan (Japanese: 日本, [ɲihoɴ], Nippon or Nihon, and formally 日本国, Nippon-koku or Nihon-koku) is an island country in East Asia. It is in the northwest Pacific Ocean and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans an archipelago of 14,125 islands, with the five main islands being Hokkaido, Honshu (the “mainland”), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Tokyo is the nation’s capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto.
Jasper (Wikipedia) Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases, is an opaque, impure variety of silica, usually red, yellow, brown or green in color; and rarely blue. The common red color is due to iron(III) inclusions. Jasper breaks with a smooth surface and is used for ornamentation or as a gemstone. It can be highly polished and is used for items such as vases, seals, and snuff boxes. The specific gravity of jasper is typically 2.5 to 2.9. Jaspillite is a banded-iron-formation rock that often has distinctive bands of jasper.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Wikipedia) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: /ˈruːsoʊ/, US: /ruːˈsoʊ/ French: [ʒɑ̃ ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher (philosophe), writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational thought.
Jefferson County, Washington (Wikipedia) Jefferson County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 32,977. The county seat and only incorporated city is Port Townsend. The county is named for Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson Park (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Jefferson Park is a 52.4 acres (0.212 km2) public park and golf course on top of Beacon Hill in Seattle, Washington, bounded on the east by 24th Avenue S. and 24th Place S., on the west by 15th Avenue S., on the north by S. Spokane Street, and on the south by Cheasty Boulevard S.
Jerusalem (Wikipedia) Jerusalem (/dʒəˈruːsələmˌ -zə-/ jə-ROO-sə-ləm, -⁠zə-; Hebrew: יְרוּשָׁלַיִם Yerushaláyim, pronounced [jeʁuʃaˈlajim]; Arabic: القُدس al-Quds, pronounced [al.quds], local pronunciation: [il.ʔuds]) is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both the State of Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital. Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, and Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim is widely recognized internationally.
Jesus (Wikipedia) Jesus (c. 6 to 4 BC – AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many other names and titles, was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the central figure of Christianity, the world’s largest religion. Most Christians believe Jesus to be the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited messiah, the Christ that is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.
Jim Henson (Wikipedia) James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, and filmmaker who achieved worldwide notice as the creator of The Muppets and Fraggle Rock (1983–1987) and director of The Dark Crystal (1982) and Labyrinth (1986). He was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in both Leland, Mississippi, and University Park, Maryland.
Jim Morrison (Wikipedia) James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971) was an American singer, songwriter and poet who was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band the Doors. Due to his energetic persona, poetic lyrics, distinctive voice, erratic and unpredictable performances, along with the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most influential frontmen in rock history. Since his death, his fame has endured as one of popular culture’s top rebellious and oft-displayed icons, representing the generation gap and youth counterculture.
Jimmy Carter (Wikipedia) James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter was the 76th governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975, and a Georgia state senator from 1963 to 1967. At age 99, he is both the oldest living former U.S. president and the longest-lived president in U.S. history.
Jimmy Chérizier (Wikipedia) Jimmy Chérizier (also called “Babekyou” or “Barbecue”; born 1976 or 1977) is a Haitian gang leader and former police officer who is the head of Fòs Revolisyonè G9 an fanmi e alye (“Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies”, abbreviated “G9” or “FRG9”), a federation of over a dozen Haitian gangs based in Port-au-Prince. Chérizier is currently considered one of the most powerful gang leaders in Haiti. He is believed to be responsible for numerous large-scale massacres in the Port-au-Prince area.
Jingo (novel) (Wikipedia) Jingo is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, part of his Discworld series. It was published in 1997.
Joe Biden (Wikipedia) Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (/ˈbaɪdən/, BY-dən; born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who is the 46th and current president of the United States. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 47th vice president from 2009 to 2017 under President Barack Obama and represented Delaware in the United States Senate from 1973 to 2009.
Joe Biden classified documents incident (Wikipedia) On January 9, 2023, CBS News reported that attorneys for U.S. President Joe Biden discovered classified government documents in his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., and in his personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware, dating to his time in the United States Senate and his vice presidency in the Obama administration. The number of documents was later revealed to be between 25 and 30. By June 2023, classified documents from Biden’s Senate tenure were discovered in materials donated to the University of Delaware.
Johann Joachim Quantz (Wikipedia) Johann Joachim Quantz (German: [kvants]; 30 January 1697 – 12 July 1773) was a German composer, flutist and flute maker of the late Baroque period. Much of his professional career was spent in the court of Frederick the Great. Quantz composed hundreds of flute sonatas and concertos, and wrote On Playing the Flute, an influential treatise on flute performance. His works were known and appreciated by Bach, Haydn and Mozart.
Johann Nikolaus Forkel (Wikipedia) Johann Nikolaus Forkel (22 February 1749 – 20 March 1818) was a German musicologist and music theorist, generally regarded as among the founders of modern musicology. His publications include Johann Sebastian Bach: His Life, Art, and Work, the first substantial survey on the life and works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Johann Sebastian Bach (Wikipedia) Johann Sebastian Bach (31 March [O.S. 21 March] 1685 – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the Brandenburg Concertos; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schubler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and vocal music such as the St Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Bach revival, he has been generally regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music.
Johannes Kepler (Wikipedia) Johannes Kepler (/ˈkɛplər/; German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs -]; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation. The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science. He has been described as the “father of science fiction” for his novel Somnium.
John C. Calhoun (Wikipedia) John Caldwell Calhoun (/kælˈhuːn/; March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was an American statesman and political theorist who served as the seventh vice president of the United States from 1825 to 1832. Born in South Carolina, he adamantly defended American slavery and sought to protect the interests of white Southerners. Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer and proponent of a strong federal government and protective tariffs. In the late 1820s, his views changed radically, and he became a leading proponent of states’ rights, limited government, nullification, and opposition to high tariffs. Calhoun saw Northern acceptance of those policies as a condition of the South’s remaining in the Union. His beliefs heavily influenced the South’s secession from the Union in 1860 and 1861. He was the first of two vice presidents to resign from the position, the second being Spiro Agnew, who resigned in 1973.
John Cage (Wikipedia) John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He was also instrumental in the development of modern dance, mostly through his association with choreographer Merce Cunningham, who was also Cage’s romantic partner for most of their lives.
John Denver (Wikipedia) Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (December 31, 1943 – October 12, 1997), known professionally as John Denver, was an American singer and songwriter. He was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s and one of the bestselling artists in that decade. AllMusic has called Denver “among the most beloved entertainers of his era”.
John F. Kennedy (Wikipedia) John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to as JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress prior to his presidency.
John Locke (Wikipedia) John Locke FRS (/lɒk/; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the “father of liberalism”. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Sir Francis Bacon, Locke is equally important to social contract theory. His work greatly affected the development of epistemology and political philosophy. His writings influenced Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, as well as the American Revolutionaries. His contributions to classical republicanism and liberal theory are reflected in the United States Declaration of Independence. Internationally, Locke’s political-legal principles continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law.
John Louis Emil Dreyer (Wikipedia) John Louis Emil Dreyer (13 February 1852 – 14 September 1926), also Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer, was a Danish astronomer who spent most of his career working in Ireland. He spent the last decade of his life in Oxford, England.
John Muir (Wikipedia) John Muir (/mjʊər/ MURE; April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914), also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks”, was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, botanist, zoologist, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States.
John Stewart Bell (Wikipedia) John Stewart Bell FRS (28 July 1928 – 1 October 1990) was a physicist from Northern Ireland and the originator of Bell’s theorem, an important theorem in quantum physics regarding hidden-variable theories.
John von Neumann (Wikipedia) John “Johnny” von Neumann (/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/; Hungarian: Neumann János Lajos, pronounced [ˈnɒjmɒn ˈjaːnoʃ ˈlɒjoʃ]; December 28, 1903 – February 8, 1957) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, computer scientist, engineer and polymath. He was regarded as having perhaps the widest coverage of any mathematician of his time and was said to be “the last representative of the great mathematicians who were equally at home in both pure and applied mathematics”. He integrated pure and applied sciences.
John Walter Gregory (Wikipedia) John Walter Gregory, FRS, FRSE, FGS (27 January 1864 – 2 June 1932) was a British geologist and explorer, known principally for his work on glacial geology and on the geography and geology of Australia and East Africa.
Join, or Die (Wikipedia) Join, or Die. is a political cartoon showing the disunity in the American colonies. Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the original publication by The Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754, is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by an American colonist in Colonial America. It was based on a superstition that if a snake was cut in pieces and the pieces were put together before sunset, the snake would return to life.
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Wikipedia) The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; Persian: برنامه جامع اقدام مشترک, romanized: barnāmeye jāme’e eqdāme moshtarak (برجام, BARJAM)), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program reached in Vienna on July 14, 2015, between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany) together with the European Union.
Jordan (Wikipedia) Jordan (Arabic: الأردن, romanized: al-ʾUrdunn [al.ʔur.dunː]), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in West Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan River. Jordan is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south and east, Iraq to the northeast, Syria to the north, and the Palestinian West Bank and Israel to the west. The Dead Sea is located along its western border and the country has a 26 km (16 mi) coastline in its southwest on the Gulf of Aqaba’s Red Sea, which separates Jordan from Egypt. Amman is Jordan’s capital and largest city, as well as its economic, political, and cultural centre.
Jordanus (constellation) Jordanus (the Jordan River) was a constellation introduced in 1612 (or 1613) on a globe by Petrus Plancius and first shown in print by ‍‍Jakob Bartsch ‍in ‍his ‍book ‍‍Usus ‍Astronomicus ‍Planisphaerii ‍Stellati ‍(1624). One end lay in the present-day Canes Venatici and then it flowed through the areas now occupied by Leo Minor and Lynx, ending near Camelopardalis. This constellation was not adopted in the atlases of Johann Bode and fell into disuse.
Jørgen Haagen Schmith (Wikipedia) Jørgen Haagen Schmith, also spelled Jørgen Haagen Schmidt (18 December 1910 – 15 October 1944), known during the war by the codename Citronen (Danish for ’the Lemon’), was a renowned fighter in the Danish resistance movement during the German Occupation of Denmark (1940–1945). He was a saboteur, including his involvement in the bombing of the Forum Copenhagen. He was also a rescuer and liquidator. He died after a multi-hour firefight with German soldiers on 15 October 1944.
Joseph Baker (Royal Navy officer) (Wikipedia) Joseph Baker (1767–1817) was an officer in the Royal Navy, best known for his role in the mapping of the Pacific Northwest Coast of America during the Vancouver Expedition of 1791–1795. Mount Baker is named after him.
Joseph Campbell (Wikipedia) Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. Campbell’s best-known work is his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), in which he discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero shared by world mythologies, termed the monomyth.
Josh Kirby (Wikipedia) Ronald William “Josh” Kirby (27 November 1928 – 23 October 2001) was a British commercial artist. Over a career spanning 60 years, he was the artist for the covers of many science fiction books including Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels.
Juan de Fuca Plate (Wikipedia) The Juan de Fuca Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) generated from the Juan de Fuca Ridge that is subducting beneath the northerly portion of the western side of the North American Plate at the Cascadia subduction zone. It is named after the explorer of the same name. One of the smallest of Earth’s tectonic plates, the Juan de Fuca Plate is a remnant part of the once-vast Farallon Plate, which is now largely subducted underneath the North American Plate.
Juan Fernández Plate (Wikipedia) The Juan Fernandez Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) in the Pacific Ocean. With a surface area of approximately 105 km2, the microplate is located between 32° and 35°S and 109° and 112°W. The plate is located at a triple junction between the Antarctic Plate, the Nazca Plate, and the Pacific Plate. Approximately 2,000 km to the west of South America, it is, on average, 3,000 meters deep with its shallowest point coming to approximately 1,600 meters, and its deepest point reaching 4,400 meters.
Judaism (Wikipedia) Judaism (Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת‎ Yahăḏūṯ) is the oldest Abrahamic religion. Judaism is monotheistic, and widely an ethnic religion. It comprises the collective spiritual, cultural, and legal traditions of the Jewish people, having originated as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Contemporary Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the cultic religious movement of ancient Israel and Judah, around the 6th/5th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions. Religious Jews regard Judaism as their means of observing the Mosaic covenant, which was established between God and the Israelites, their ancestors. Jewish religious doctrine encompasses a wide body of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization.
Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Wikipedia) Julien Offray de La Mettrie (French: [ɔfʁɛ də la metʁi]; November 23, 1709 – November 11, 1751) was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his 1747 work L’homme machine (Man a Machine).
Julius Caesar (Wikipedia) Gaius Julius Caesar (/ˈsiːzər/; Latin: [ˈɡaːiʊs ˈjuːliʊs ˈkae̯sar]; 12 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC) was a Roman general and statesman. A member of the First Triumvirate, Caesar led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars before defeating his political rival Pompey in a civil war, and subsequently became dictator from 49 BC until his assassination in 44 BC. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire.
Julius Fučík (journalist) (Wikipedia) Julius Fučík (Czech: [ˈjulɪjus ˈfutʃiːk]) (23 February 1903 – 8 September 1943) was a Czech journalist, critic, writer, and active member of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. For his part at the forefront of the anti-Nazi resistance during the Second World War, he was imprisoned and tortured by the Gestapo in Prague, and executed in Berlin. While in prison, Fučík recorded his interrogation experiences on small pieces of paper, which were smuggled out and published after the war as Notes from the Gallows. The book established Fučík as a symbol of resistance to oppression, as well as an icon of communist propaganda.
Jupiter (Wikipedia) Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, and slightly less than one one-thousandth the mass of the Sun. Jupiter is the third brightest natural object in the Earth’s night sky after the Moon and Venus, and it has been observed since prehistoric times. It was named after Jupiter, the chief deity of ancient Roman religion.
Jurassic (Wikipedia) The Jurassic (/dʒʊˈræsɪk/ juu-RASS-ik) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period 201.4 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately 145 Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic Era and is named after the Jura Mountains, where limestone strata from the period were first identified.
Just Do It (Wikipedia) Just Do It or JDI for short is a trademark of shoe company Nike. The slogan was coined in 1988 at an advertising agency meeting. The founder of the Wieden+Kennedy agency, Dan Wieden, credits the inspiration for his “Just Do It” Nike slogan to death row Gary Gilmore’s last words: “Let’s do it.” From 1988 to 1998, Nike increased its share of the North American domestic sport-shoe business from 18% to 43% (from $877 million to $9.2 billion in worldwide sales). In many Nike-related situations, “Just Do It” appears alongside the Nike logo, known as the Swoosh.
Kabbalah (Wikipedia) Kabbalah (Hebrew: קַבָּלָה Qabbālā, literally “reception, tradition”) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal (מְקוּבָּל‎ Məqūbbāl “receiver”). The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its origin in medieval Judaism to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof (אֵין סוֹף‎, “The Infinite”)—and the mortal, finite universe (God’s creation). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.
Kafr Kila, Lebanon (Wikipedia) KafarKila (Arabic: كفركلا, also, Kfarkila, Kfarkela, Kafarkela) is a village in Southern Lebanon. Kafarkila name means “The village of the pasturage”.
Kali tragus (Wikipedia) Kali tragus is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae. It is known by various common names such as prickly Russian thistle, windwitch, or common saltwort. It is widely known simply as tumbleweed because in many regions of the United States, it is the most common and most conspicuous plant species that produces tumbleweeds. Informally, it also is known as “‘salsola”, which was its generic name until 2007.
Kaliningrad Oblast (Wikipedia) Kaliningrad Oblast (Russian: Калининградская область, romanized: Kaliningradskaya oblastʹ) is the westernmost federal subject of the Russian Federation. It is a semi-exclave situated on the Baltic Sea. The oblast is surrounded by two European Union and NATO members: Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east. Its coastline faces the Baltic Sea to the northwest and a maritime border with Sweden to the west. The largest city and administrative centre of the province (oblast) is the city of Kaliningrad, formerly known as Königsberg. The port city of Baltiysk is Russia’s only port on the Baltic Sea that remains ice-free in winter. Kaliningrad Oblast had a population of roughly 1 million in the Russian Census of 2021.
Kalmykia (Wikipedia) Kalmykia, officially the Republic of Kalmykia, is a republic of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. The republic is part of the Southern Federal District, and borders Dagestan to the south and Stavropol Krai to the southwest; Volgograd Oblast to the northwest and north and Astrakhan Oblast to the north and east; Rostov Oblast to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. Through the Caspian Depression, the Kuma river forms Kalmykia’s natural border with Dagestan. Kalmykia is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the predominant religion.
Kansas (Wikipedia) Kansas (/ˈkænzəs/) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. The tribe’s name (natively kką:ze) is often said to mean “people of the (south) wind” although this was probably not the term’s original meaning. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison.
Kansas City, Missouri (Wikipedia) Kansas City, Missouri (KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090, making it the 37th most-populous city in the United States. It is the urban central city of the Kansas City metropolitan area, which straddles the Missouri–Kansas state line and has a population of 2,392,035. Most of the city lies within Jackson County, with portions spilling into Clay, Cass, and Platte counties. Kansas City was founded in the 1830s as a port on the Missouri River at its confluence with the Kansas River from the west. On June 1, 1850, the town of Kansas was incorporated; shortly after came the establishment of the Kansas Territory. Confusion between the two ensued, and the name Kansas City was assigned to distinguish them soon after.
Katie Britt (Wikipedia) Katie Elizabeth Britt (née Boyd; born February 2, 1982) is an American politician and attorney who is the junior United States senator from Alabama since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Britt is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama and the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate. She was president and CEO of the Business Council of Alabama from 2019 to 2021, and was chief of staff for her Senate predecessor, Richard Shelby, from 2016 to 2018.
Katt Williams (Wikipedia) Micah “Katt” Williams (born September 2, 1971) is an American stand-up comedian and actor. He played Money Mike in Friday After Next, was a recurring guest on Wild ’n Out, portrayed Bobby Shaw in My Wife and Kids, provided the voice of A Pimp Named Slickback in The Boondocks and Seamus in Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, and portrayed Lord Have Mercy in Norbit. In 2008, he voiced himself in the video game Grand Theft Auto IV.
Kazakhstan (Wikipedia) Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a landlocked country mostly in Central Asia, with a part in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbekistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, with a coastline along the Caspian Sea. Its capital is Astana, while the largest city and leading cultural and commercial hub is Almaty. Kazakhstan is the world’s ninth-largest country by land area and the largest landlocked country. It has a population of 20 million and one of the lowest population densities in the world, at fewer than 6 people per square kilometre (16 people/sq mi). Ethnic Kazakhs constitute a majority, while ethnic Russians form a significant minority. Officially secular, Kazakhstan is a Muslim-majority country, although ethnic Russians in the country form a sizeable Christian community.
Keechelus Lake (Wikipedia) Keechelus Lake (/ˈkɛtʃələs/) is a lake and reservoir in the northwest United States, near Hyak in Kittitas County, Washington. Approximately fifty miles (80 km) southeast of Seattle and a few miles southeast of Snoqualmie Pass, it is the source of the Yakima River.
Kendall, Washington (Wikipedia) Kendall is a census-designated place (CDP) in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 191 at the 2010 census.
Kenmore, Washington (Wikipedia) Kenmore is a city in King County, Washington, United States, along the northernmost shore of Lake Washington. It is a suburban commuter town at the mouth of the Sammamish River, 12 miles (19 km) northeast of downtown Seattle and 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Bothell. The population was 20,460 at the 2010 census. Kenmore Air Harbor is the largest seaplane-only passenger facility of its kind in the United States.
Kennesaw Mountain (Wikipedia) Kennesaw Mountain is a mountain between Marietta and Kennesaw, Georgia in the United States with a summit elevation of 1,808 feet (551 m). It is the highest point in the core (urban and suburban) metro Atlanta area, and fifth after further-north exurban counties are considered. The local terrain averages roughly 1,000 feet (300 m) AMSL.
Kent, Washington (Wikipedia) Kent is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue metropolitan area and had a population of 136,588 as of the 2020 census, making it the 4th most populous municipality in greater Seattle and the 6th most populous in Washington state. The city is connected to Seattle, Bellevue and Tacoma via State Route 167 and Interstate 5, Sounder commuter rail, and commuter buses.
Kentucky (Wikipedia) Kentucky (US: /kənˈtʌki/ kən-TUK-ee, UK: /kɛn-/ ken-), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. Kentucky borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north, West Virginia to the northeast, Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south, and Missouri to the west. Its northern border is defined by the Ohio River. Its capital is Frankfort and its largest city is Louisville. Its population was approximately 4.5 million in 2020.
Kenya (Wikipedia) Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Kenya), is a country in East Africa. With a population of more than 47.6 million in the 2019 census, Kenya is the 28th-most-populous country in the world and 7th most populous in Africa. Kenya’s capital and largest city is Nairobi, while its oldest and second-largest city, is the major port city of Mombasa, situated on Mombasa Island in the Indian Ocean and the surrounding mainland. Mombasa was the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate, which included most of what is now Kenya and southwestern Somalia, from 1889 to 1907. Other important cities include Kisumu and Nakuru. Kenya is bordered by South Sudan to the northwest, Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the east, Uganda to the west, Tanzania to the south, and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. Kenya’s geography, climate and population vary widely, ranging from cold snow-capped mountaintops (Batian, Nelion and Point Lenana on Mount Kenya) with vast surrounding forests, wildlife and fertile agricultural regions to temperate climates in western and rift valley counties and further on to dry less fertile arid and semi-arid areas and absolute deserts (Chalbi Desert and Nyiri Desert).
Kermadec Plate (Wikipedia) The Kermadec Plate is a long and narrow tectonic plate located west of the Kermadec Trench in the south Pacific Ocean. Also included on this tectonic plate is a small portion of the North Island of New Zealand and the Kermadec Islands. It is separated from the Australian Plate by a long divergent boundary which forms a back-arc basin. This area is highly prone to earthquakes and tsunamis.
Ketamine (Wikipedia) Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic used medically for induction and maintenance of anesthesia. It is also used as a treatment for depression, a pain management tool, and as a recreational drug. Ketamine is a novel compound that was derived from phencyclidine in 1962, in pursuit of a safer anesthetic with fewer hallucinogenic effects.
Kettering, Ohio (Wikipedia) Kettering is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio and Greene County, Ohio, United States. It is an inner suburb of Dayton. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 57,862, making it the largest suburb in the Dayton metropolitan area.
King County, Washington (Wikipedia) King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the state’s most populous city.
King James Version (Wikipedia) The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.
Kingdom (biology) (Wikipedia) In biology, a kingdom is the second highest taxonomic rank, just below domain. Kingdoms are divided into smaller groups called phyla (singular phylum).
Kingston, Washington (Wikipedia) Kingston (formerly Appletree Cove) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Kitsap County, Washington, United States. The population was 2,515 at the 2020 census. Kingston is along the shores of Appletree Cove and Puget Sound, and is home to a major Washington State Ferry terminal linking it to Edmonds.
Kirkland, Washington (Wikipedia) Kirkland is a city in King County, Washington, United States. A suburb east of Seattle, its population was 92,175 in the 2020 U.S. census which made it the sixth largest city in the county and the twelfth largest in the state.
Kitsap County, Washington (Wikipedia) Kitsap County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 275,611. Its county seat is Port Orchard, and its largest city is Bremerton. The county was formed out of King County and Jefferson County on January 16, 1857, and is named for Chief Kitsap of the Suquamish Tribe. Originally named Slaughter County, it was soon renamed.
Kitsap Peninsula (Wikipedia) The Kitsap Peninsula (/ˈkɪtˌsæp/) lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. “Kitsap”, encompasses all of Kitsap County except Bainbridge and Blake Islands, as well as the northeastern part of Mason County and the northwestern part of Pierce County. The highest point on the Kitsap Peninsula is Gold Mountain. The U.S. Navy’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and Naval Base Kitsap (comprising the former NSB Bangor and NS Bremerton) are on the peninsula. Its main city is Bremerton.
Kittitas County, Washington (Wikipedia) Kittitas County (/ˈkɪtɪtæs/) is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. At the 2020 census, its population was 44,337. Its county seat and largest city is Ellensburg. The county was created in November 1883 when it was carved out of Yakima County. Kittitas County comprises the Ellensburg, Washington, Micropolitan Statistical Area.
Klein bottle (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the Klein bottle (/ˈklaɪn/) is an example of a non-orientable surface; that is, informally, a one-sided surface which, if traveled upon, could be followed back to the point of origin while flipping the traveler upside down. More formally, the Klein bottle is a two-dimensional manifold on which one cannot define a normal vector at each point that varies continuously over the whole manifold. Other related non-orientable surfaces include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. While a Möbius strip is a surface with a boundary, a Klein bottle has no boundary. For comparison, a sphere is an orientable surface with no boundary.
Klickitat County, Washington (Wikipedia) Klickitat County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 22,735. The county seat and largest city is Goldendale. The county is named after the Klickitat tribe.
Klickitat River (Wikipedia) The Klickitat River is a tributary of the Columbia River, nearly 96 miles (154 km) long, in south-central Washington in the United States. It drains a rugged plateau area on the eastern side of the Cascade Range northeast of Portland, Oregon. In 1986, 10 miles (16 km) of the river were designated Wild and Scenic from the confluence with Wheeler Creek, near the town of Pitt, to the confluence with the Columbia River.
KMSP Tower (Wikipedia) The KMSP Tower is a high aerial guyed mast used for the transmission of FM radio and over-the-air television in Shoreview, Minnesota. The structure was apparently the tallest in Minnesota until the construction of the KPXM Tower in 1997.
Knight of faith (Wikipedia) The knight of faith (Danish: troens ridder) is an individual who has placed complete faith in himself and in God and can act freely and independently from the world. The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard vicariously discusses the knight of faith in several of his pseudonymic works, with the most in-depth and detailed critique exposited in Fear and Trembling and in Repetition.
Kosovo (Wikipedia) Kosovo, officially the Republic of Kosovo, is a country in Southeast Europe with partial diplomatic recognition. Kosovo lies landlocked in the centre of the Balkans, bordered by Serbia to the north and east, North Macedonia to the southeast, Albania to the southwest, and Montenegro to the west. Most of central Kosovo sits on the plains of Metohija and the Kosovo field. The Accursed Mountains and Šar Mountains rise in the southwest and southeast, respectively. Kosovo’s capital and largest city is Pristina.
Kshama Sawant (Wikipedia) Kshama Sawant (/kʃʌmɑː sɑːˈwʌnt/; born October 17, 1973) is an Indian-American politician and economist who served on the Seattle City Council from 2014 to 2024. She is a member of Socialist Alternative, the first and only member of the party to date to be elected to public office.
Kurt Gödel (Wikipedia) Kurt Friedrich Gödel (/ˈɡɜːrdəl/ GUR-dəl, German: [kʊʁt ˈɡøːdl̩] i; April 28, 1906 – January 14, 1978) was a logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel had an immense effect upon scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, a time when others such as Bertrand Russell, Alfred North Whitehead, and David Hilbert were using logic and set theory to investigate the foundations of mathematics, building on earlier work by the likes of Richard Dedekind, Georg Cantor and Gottlob Frege.
Kuwait (Wikipedia) Kuwait (/kʊˈweɪt/; Arabic: الكويت al-Kuwayt, Gulf Arabic pronunciation: [ɪl‿ɪkweːt] or [lɪkweːt]), officially the State of Kuwait (Arabic: دولة الكويت Dawlat al-Kuwayt), is a country in West Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the north and Saudi Arabia to the south. Kuwait also shares maritime borders with Iran. Kuwait has a coastal length of approximately 500 km (311 mi). Most of the country’s population reside in the urban agglomeration of the capital and largest city Kuwait City. As of 2022, Kuwait has a population of 4.45 million people of which 1.45 million are Kuwaiti citizens while the remaining 3 million are foreign nationals from over 100 countries.
Kyrgyzstan (Wikipedia) Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Asia, lying in the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. Bishkek is the capital and largest city of the country. Kyrgyzstan is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and China to the east and southeast. Ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the country’s 7 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians.
L. Frank Baum (Wikipedia) Lyman Frank Baum (/bɔːm/; May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author best known for his children’s fantasy books, particularly The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, part of a series. In addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels (not including four lost, unpublished novels), 83 short stories, over 200 poems, and at least 42 scripts. He made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen; the 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book became a landmark of 20th-century cinema.
La Conner, Washington (Wikipedia) La Conner is a town in Skagit County, Washington, United States with a population of 965 at the 2020 census. It is included in the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. The town hosts several events as part of the annual Skagit Valley Tulip Festival held in April.
Labrador Sea (Wikipedia) The Labrador Sea (French: mer du Labrador; Danish: Labradorhavet) is an arm of the North Atlantic Ocean between the Labrador Peninsula and Greenland. The sea is flanked by continental shelves to the southwest, northwest, and northeast. It connects to the north with Baffin Bay through the Davis Strait. It is a marginal sea of the Atlantic.
Lacamas Creek (Wikipedia) Lacamas Creek is in Clark County, Washington, United States, and flows about 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from headwaters near Camp Bonneville to Lacamas Lake and Round Lake in Camas, and eventually into the Washougal River. Its name is derived from that of the native camas plant. Lacamas Creek is fed by numerous streams, but the five largest tributaries are Matney Creek, Shanghai Creek, Fifth Plain Creek, China Ditch, and Dwyer Creek.
Lacerta (Wikipedia) Lacerta is one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Its name is Latin for lizard. A small, faint constellation, it was defined in 1687 by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius. Its brightest stars form a “W” shape similar to that of Cassiopeia, and it is thus sometimes referred to as ‘Little Cassiopeia’. It is located between Cygnus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda on the northern celestial sphere. The northern part lies on the Milky Way.
Lake Ballinger (Wikipedia) Lake Ballinger is a freshwater lake with a surface area of 103 acres in southern Snohomish County, Washington. It is bordered by the cities of Mountlake Terrace to the east and Edmonds to the west. It is fed by Hall Creek at its north end and its outflow is McAleer Creek at its east end, going on to feed Lake Washington.
Lake City, Seattle (Wikipedia) Lake City is the northeast region of Seattle, centered along Lake City Way NE (SR-522), 7–8 miles (11–13 km) northeast of Downtown Seattle. A broader definition of the Lake City area includes all the land between 15th Avenue NE and Lake Washington, and between NE 95th and 98th streets to the Seattle city limits at NE 145th Street. Lake City encompasses much of the Thornton Creek watershed, the focus of a long restoration campaign by citizens and Seattle Public Utilities staff to enhance the residential environment of Lake City.
Lake Crescent (Wikipedia) Lake Crescent is a deep lake located entirely within Olympic National Park in Clallam County, Washington, United States, approximately 17 miles (27 km) west of Port Angeles on U.S. Route 101 and nearby to the small community of Piedmont. At an official maximum depth of 624 feet (190 m) it is officially the second deepest lake in Washington (after Lake Chelan). A lake-wide bathymetric survey was performed from 2013 to 2014 by Eian Ray and Jeff Engea and the results of this survey showed the maximum depth as being 596 feet. Using GIS statistical analysis, this survey also showed the lake contains approximately 0.5 cubic miles of fresh water.
Lake Elmo, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Lake Elmo is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 11,335 at the 2020 census. According to 2022 census estimates, the city is estimated to have a population of 13,449.
Lake Erie (Wikipedia) Lake Erie (/ˈɪəri/ EER-ee; French: Lac Érié) is the fourth-largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and also has the shortest average water residence time. At its deepest point Lake Erie is 210 feet (64 m) deep, making it the only Great Lake whose deepest point is above sea level.
Lake Forest Park, Washington (Wikipedia) Lake Forest Park is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located northeast of Seattle. It was developed in the 20th century as a bedroom community with single-family housing on medium to large-sized lots. Less than 4% of the city’s land is zoned commercial, largely concentrated in one location, and there are no industrial areas.
Lake Huron (Wikipedia) Lake Huron (/ˈhjʊərɒn, -ən/ HURE-on, -⁠ən) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrologically, it comprises the easterly portion of Lake Michigan–Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Michigan, to which it is connected by the 5-mile-wide (8.0 km), 20-fathom-deep (120 ft; 37 m) Straits of Mackinac. It is shared on the north and east by the Canadian province of Ontario and on the south and west by the U.S. state of Michigan. The name of the lake is derived from early French explorers who named it for the indigenous people they knew as Huron (Wyandot) inhabiting the region.
Lake Itasca (Wikipedia) Lake Itasca (/aɪˈtæskə/ eye-TASS-kə) is a small glacial lake, approximately 1.8 square miles (4.7 km2; 1,200 acres) in area. Located in southeastern Clearwater County, in the Headwaters area of north central Minnesota, it is notable for being the headwater of the Mississippi River. The lake is in Itasca State Park. It has an average depth of 20 to 35 feet (6.1 to 10.7 m) and is 1,475 feet (450 m) above sea level.
Lake Michigan (Wikipedia) Lake Michigan (/ˈmɪʃɪɡən/) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume (1,180 cu mi (4,900 km3)) and the third-largest by surface area (22,404 sq mi (58,030 km2)), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that of Lake Huron through the 3+1⁄2-mile (5.6-kilometre) wide, 295-foot (90-metre; 49-fathom) deep Straits of Mackinac, giving it the same surface elevation as its easterly counterpart; the two are technically a single lake.
Lake of the Woods (Wikipedia) Lake of the Woods (French: Lac des Bois; Ojibwe: Pikwedina Sagainan, lit. ‘“inland lake of the sand hills”’) is a lake occupying parts of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba and the U.S. state of Minnesota. Lake of the Woods is over 70 miles (110 km) long and wide, containing more than 14,552 islands and 65,000 miles (105,000 km) of shoreline. It is fed by the Rainy River, Shoal Lake, Kakagi Lake and other smaller rivers. The lake drains into the Winnipeg River and then into Lake Winnipeg. Ultimately, its outflow goes north through the Nelson River to Hudson Bay.
Lake Ontario (Wikipedia) Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border spans the centre of the lake.
Lake Phalen (Wikipedia) Lake Phalen is an urban lake located in Saint Paul, Minnesota and in its suburb of Maplewood. It is one of the largest lakes in Saint Paul and is the centerpiece of the Phalen Regional Park System. The lake drains into the Mississippi River after traveling through Phalen Creek. The lake and surrounding 494-acre (2.00 km2) park receive around 500,000 visitors each year.
Lake Samish (Wikipedia) Lake Samish (/ˈsæmɪʃ/ SAM-ish) is a lake south of Bellingham, Washington, United States.
Lake Sammamish (Wikipedia) Lake Sammamish is a freshwater lake 8 miles (13 km) east of Seattle in King County, Washington, United States. The lake is 7 miles (11 km) long and 1.5 miles (2 km) wide, with a maximum depth of 105 feet (32 m) and a surface area of 8 sq mi (21 km2). It lies east of Lake Washington and west of the Sammamish Plateau, and stretches from Issaquah in the south to Redmond in the north. At Issaquah it is fed by Issaquah Creek, and at Redmond it drains to Lake Washington via the Sammamish River, named after the native people who once lived along its entire length.
Lake Stevens, Washington (Wikipedia) Lake Stevens is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States, that is named for the lake it surrounds. It is located 6 miles (9.7 km) east of Everett and borders the cities of Marysville to the northwest and Snohomish to the south. The city’s population was 35,630 at the 2020 census.
Lake Stickney, Washington (Wikipedia) Lake Stickney is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 15,413 at the 2020 census. The CDP was known as Paine Field-Lake Stickney prior to 2010. The new Lake Stickney CDP no longer contains the Paine Field airport.
Lake Superior (Wikipedia) Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and the third-largest by volume, holding 10% of the world’s surface fresh water. Located in central North America, it is the northernmost and westernmost of the Great Lakes of North America, straddling the Canada–United States border with the Canadian province of Ontario to the north and east and the U.S. states of Minnesota to the west and Wisconsin and Michigan to the south. It drains into Lake Huron via St. Marys River, then through the lower Great Lakes to the St. Lawrence River and ultimately the Atlantic Ocean.
Lake Tanganyika (Wikipedia) Lake Tanganyika (/ˌtæŋɡənˈjiːkə, -ɡæn-/ TANG-gən-YEE-kə, -⁠gan-; Kirundi: Ikiyaga ca Tanganyika) is an African Great Lake. It is the second-oldest freshwater lake in the world, the second-largest by volume, and the second deepest, in all cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is the world’s longest freshwater lake. The lake is shared among four countries—Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the DRC), Burundi, and [Zambia](/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zambia/—with Tanzania (46%) and the DRC (40%) possessing the majority of the lake. It drains into the Congo River system and ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean.
Lake Titicaca (Wikipedia) Lake Titicaca (/tɪtɪˈkɑːkə/; Spanish: Lago Titicaca [ˈlaɣo titiˈkaka]; Quechua: Titiqaqa Qucha) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America both in terms of the volume of water and surface area. It has a surface elevation of 3,812 m (12,507 ft).
Lake Union (Wikipedia) Lake Union (Lushootseed: x̌ax̌čuʔ) is a freshwater lake located entirely within the city limits of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is a major part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which carries fresh water from the much larger Lake Washington on the east to Puget Sound on the west. The easternmost point of the lake is the Ship Canal Bridge, which carries Interstate 5 over the eastern arm of the lake and separates Lake Union from Portage Bay. Lake Union is the namesake of the neighborhoods located on three of its shores: Eastlake, Westlake and South Lake Union. Notable destinations on the lake include Lake Union Park, the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI), and the Center for Wooden Boats on the southern shore and Gas Works Park on the northern shore.
Lake Victoria (Wikipedia) Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately 59,947 km2 (23,146 sq mi), Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake by area, the world’s largest tropical lake, and the world’s second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after Lake Superior in North America. In terms of volume, Lake Victoria is the world’s ninth-largest continental lake, containing about 2,424 km3 (1.965×109 acre⋅ft) of water. Lake Victoria occupies a shallow depression in Africa. The lake has an average depth of 40 m (130 ft) and a maximum depth of 80–81 m (262–266 ft). Its catchment area covers 169,858 km2 (65,583 sq mi). The lake has a shoreline of 7,142 km (4,438 mi) when digitized at the 1:25,000 level, with islands constituting 3.7% of this length.
Lake Washington (Wikipedia) Lake Washington is a large freshwater lake adjacent to the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the largest lake in King County and the second largest natural lake in the state of Washington, after Lake Chelan. It borders the cities of Seattle on the west, Bellevue and Kirkland on the east, Renton on the south, and Kenmore on the north, and encloses Mercer Island. The lake is fed by the Sammamish River at its north end and the Cedar River at its south.
Lake Washington Ship Canal (Wikipedia) The Lake Washington Ship Canal, which runs through the city of Seattle, connects the fresh water body of Lake Washington with the salt water inland sea of Puget Sound. The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks accommodate the approximately 20-foot (6.1 m) difference in water level between Lake Washington and the sound. The canal runs east–west and connects Union Bay, the Montlake Cut, Portage Bay, Lake Union, the Fremont Cut, Salmon Bay, and Shilshole Bay, which is part of the sound.
Lake Wenatchee (Wikipedia) Lake Wenatchee is a glacier- and snowmelt-fed lake situated in the Wenatchee National Forest on the eastern slopes of the Cascades Mountain Range in the state of Washington. Lake Wenatchee covers 2,480 acres (1,000 ha) and reaches a depth of 244 feet (74 m). Lake Wenatchee is the source of the Wenatchee River. Its main tributaries are the White River and the Little Wenatchee River. At its eastern end, the lake is breasted by Lake Wenatchee State Park. Lake Wenatchee State Airport, an unimproved grass and dirt landing strip, is adjacent to the north side of the state park.
Lake Whatcom (Wikipedia) Lake Whatcom (from the Lummi word for “loud water”) is located in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. It is the drinking water source for approximately 85,000 residents in the city of Bellingham as well as Whatcom County. It is approximately 10 miles (16 km) in length and 1 mile (1.6 km) in width at its widest. Lake Whatcom is located and managed within three political jurisdictions: the city of Bellingham, Whatcom County, and the Lake Whatcom Water and Sewer District. The lake is a popular area for motor boating, swimming, fishing, and other recreational activities.
Lakeland North, Washington (Wikipedia) Lakeland North is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 13,663 at the 2020 census. Part of the community was annexed into neighboring Auburn in 2008.
Lakeland South, Washington (Wikipedia) Lakeland South is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 13,169 at the 2020 census.
Lakeland, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Lakeland is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 1,796 at the 2010 census.
Lambda Draconis (Wikipedia) Lambda Draconis (λ Draconis, abbreviated Lam Dra, λ Dra), also named Giausar (/ˈdʒɔːzɑːr/ JAW-zar), is a solitary, orange-red star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Draco. It is visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of +3.85. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 9.79 mas as seen from the Earth, the star is located around 333 light years from the Sun.
Landfall, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Landfall is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 686 at the 2010 census and is the smallest community in Washington County in terms of area. It lies on the eastern shore of Tanner’s Lake on Interstate 94.
Landlocked (Wikipedia) A landlocked country is a country that does not have territory connected to an ocean or whose coastlines lie solely on endorheic basins. Currently, there are 44 landlocked countries, two of them doubly landlocked (Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan), and three landlocked de facto states in the world. Kazakhstan is the world’s largest landlocked country, while Ethiopia is the world’s most populous landlocked country.
Langrenus (crater) (Wikipedia) Langrenus is an impact crater located near the eastern lunar limb. The feature is circular in shape, but appears oblong due to foreshortening. It lies on the eastern shore of the Mare Fecunditatis. To the south is the overlapping crater pair Vendelinus and the smaller Lamé.
Laniakea Supercluster (Wikipedia) The Laniakea Supercluster (/ˌlæni.əˈkeɪ.ə/; Hawaiian for “open skies” or “immense heaven”) is the galaxy supercluster that is home to the Milky Way and approximately 100,000 other nearby galaxies.
Laos (Wikipedia) Laos, officially the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country and one of the two Marxist-Leninist states in Southeast Asia. At the heart of the Indochinese Peninsula, Laos is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and southwest. Its capital and largest city is Vientiane.
Larch Way, Washington (Wikipedia) Larch Way is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Snohomish County, Washington.
Late Cretaceous (Wikipedia) The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after creta, the Latin word for the white limestone known as chalk. The chalk of northern France and the white cliffs of south-eastern England date from the Cretaceous Period.
Late Jurassic (Wikipedia) The Late Jurassic is the third epoch of the Jurassic Period, and it spans the geologic time from 161.5 ± 1.0 to 145.0 ± 0.8 million years ago (Ma), which is preserved in Upper Jurassic strata.
Late Triassic (Wikipedia) The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch of the Triassic Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between 237 Ma and 201.4 Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch and followed by the Early Jurassic Epoch. The corresponding series of rock beds is known as the Upper Triassic. The Late Triassic is divided into the Carnian, Norian and Rhaetian ages.
Latin (Wikipedia) Latin (lingua Latīna, [ˈlɪŋɡʷa laˈtiːna] or Latīnum, [laˈtiːnʊ̃]) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition.
Latvia (Wikipedia) Latvia (/ˈlætviə/ LAT-vee-ə, sometimes /ˈlɑːtviə/ LAHT-vee-ə; Latvian: Latvija Latvian pronunciation: [ˈlatvija]; Latgalian: Latveja; Livonian: Lețmō), officially the Republic of Latvia (Latvian: Latvijas Republika, Latgalian: Latvejas Republika, Livonian: Lețmō Vabāmō), is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is one of the three Baltic states, along with Estonia to the north and Lithuania to the south. It borders Russia to the east, Belarus to the southeast, and shares a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Latvia covers an area of 64,589 km2 (24,938 sq mi), with a population of 1.9 million. The country has a temperate seasonal climate. Its capital and largest city is Riga. Latvians belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Latvian, one of the only two surviving Baltic languages. Russians are the most prominent minority in the country, at almost a quarter of the population.
Lauderdale, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Lauderdale is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,379 at the 2010 census. Lauderdale is part of the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area and is surrounded by Minneapolis, St. Paul, Roseville, and Falcon Heights. Along with Roseville, it is one of two cities to touch both Minneapolis and St Paul.
Laurel and Hardy (Wikipedia) Laurel and Hardy were a British-American comedy duo act during the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema, consisting of Englishman Stan Laurel (1890–1965) and American Oliver Hardy (1892–1957). Starting their career as a duo in the silent film era, they later successfully transitioned to “talkies”. From the late 1920s to the mid-1950s, they were internationally famous for their slapstick comedy, with Laurel playing the clumsy, childlike friend to Hardy’s pompous bully. Their signature theme song, known as “The Cuckoo Song”, “Ku-Ku”, or “The Dance of the Cuckoos” (by Hollywood composer T. Marvin Hatley) was heard over their films’ opening credits, and became as emblematic of them as their bowler hats.
Laurelhurst, Seattle (Wikipedia) Laurelhurst is a residential neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, US. It is bounded on the northeast by Ivanhoe Place N.E., beyond which is Windermere; on the northwest by Sand Point Way N.E. and N.E. 45th Street, beyond which are Hawthorne Hills, Ravenna, and University Village; on the west by Mary Gates Memorial Drive N.E., beyond which is the East Campus of the University of Washington; on the southwest by Union Bay; and on the east by Lake Washington. Seattle Children’s Hospital is located in its northwest corner. Once a seasonal campground of the Duwamish people, the neighborhood has been a part of Seattle since its annexation in 1910.
Laurentide Ice Sheet (Wikipedia) The Laurentide Ice Sheet was a massive sheet of ice that covered millions of square miles, including most of Canada and a large portion of the Northern United States, multiple times during the Quaternary glacial epochs, from 2.58 million years ago to the present.
Laurieton, New South Wales (Wikipedia) Laurieton is a coastal town on the Mid North Coast of the Australian state of New South Wales. Laurieton is the largest town in the Camden Haven district. Laurieton is 365 km north of Sydney and 42 km south of Port Macquarie. It lies between the base of North Brother Mountain and the Camden Haven River. At the 2016 census, it had a population of 1,986.
Lava balloon (Wikipedia) A lava balloon is a gas-filled bubble of lava that floats on the sea surface. It can be up to several metres in size. When it emerges from the sea, it is usually hot and often steaming. After floating for some time it fills with water and sinks again.
Law of attraction (New Thought) (Wikipedia) The law of attraction is the New Thought spiritual belief that positive or negative thoughts bring positive or negative experiences into a person’s life. The belief is based on the idea that people and their thoughts are made from “pure energy” and that like energy can attract like energy, thereby allowing people to improve their health, wealth, or personal relationships. There is no empirical scientific evidence supporting the law of attraction, and it is widely considered to be pseudoscience.
Lawrence of Arabia (film) (Wikipedia) Lawrence of Arabia is a 1962 epic biographical adventure drama film based on the life of T. E. Lawrence and his 1926 book Seven Pillars of Wisdom (also known as Revolt in the Desert). It was directed by David Lean and produced by Sam Spiegel through his British company Horizon Pictures and distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film stars Peter O’Toole as Lawrence with Alec Guinness playing Prince Faisal. The film also stars Jack Hawkins, Anthony Quinn, Omar Sharif, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains and Arthur Kennedy. The screenplay was written by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson.
Leavenworth, Washington (Wikipedia) Leavenworth is a city in Chelan County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Wenatchee−East Wenatchee Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 2,263 at the 2020 census. The entire town center is modeled on a German Bavarian village as part of a civic initiative that began in the 1960s. The area is a major, four-season tourist destination with festivals nearly every month and a multitude of events year round.
Lebanon (Wikipedia) Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, by Israel to the south, and by the Mediterranean Sea to the west; Cyprus lies a short distance away from the country’s coastline. Lebanon’s location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterlands has contributed to the country’s rich history and shaped a unique cultural identity denoted by religious diversity. Located in the Levant region of the Eastern Mediterranean, the country has a population of more than five million people and covers an area of 10,452 square kilometres (4,036 sq mi). Lebanon’s capital and largest city is Beirut, followed by Tripoli and Jounieh. While Arabic is the official language, French is also recognized in a formal capacity; Lebanese Arabic is the country’s vernacular, though French and English play a relatively significant role in everyday life, with Modern Standard Arabic being limited to news and government matters.
Legend of a Mind (Wikipedia) “Legend of a Mind” is a song by the British progressive rock band the Moody Blues, and was written by the band’s flautist Ray Thomas, who provides the lead vocals. “Legend of a Mind” was recorded in January 1968 and was first released on the Moody Blues’ album In Search of the Lost Chord. Prominently featuring the Mellotron, it was the first song recorded for the album.
Leipzig (Wikipedia) Leipzig (/ˈlaɪpsɪɡ, -sɪx/ LYPE-sig, -⁠sikh, German: [ˈlaɪptsɪç]; Upper Saxon: Leibz’sch), with a population of 624,689 inhabitants as of 2022, is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony, the second most populous city in the area of the former East Germany after (East) Berlin, and Germany’s eighth most populous. Leipzig/Halle Airport is situated in Schkeuditz, between Leipzig and Halle (Saale). The name of the city and those of many of its districts are of Slavic origin.
Leo (constellation) (Wikipedia) Leo /ˈliːoʊ/ is one of the constellations of the zodiac, between Cancer the crab to the west and Virgo the maiden to the east. It is located in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for lion, and to the ancient Greeks represented the Nemean Lion killed by the mythical Greek hero Heracles meaning ‘Glory of Hera’ (known to the ancient Romans as Hercules) as one of his twelve labors. Its old astronomical symbol is (♌︎). One of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, Leo remains one of the 88 modern constellations today, and one of the most easily recognizable due to its many bright stars and a distinctive shape that is reminiscent of the crouching lion it depicts. The lion’s mane and shoulders also form an asterism known as “The Sickle,” which to modern observers may resemble a backwards “question mark.”
Leo Minor (Wikipedia) Leo Minor is a small and faint constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for “the smaller lion”, in contrast to Leo, the larger lion. It lies between the larger and more recognizable Ursa Major to the north and Leo to the south. Leo Minor was not regarded as a separate constellation by classical astronomers; it was designated by Johannes Hevelius in 1687.
Leo Tolstoy (Wikipedia) Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (/ˈtoʊlstɔɪ, ˈtɒl-/; Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой, IPA: [ˈlʲef nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj]; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909; the fact that he never won is a major controversy.
Leonhard Euler (Wikipedia) Leonhard Euler (/ˈɔɪlər/ OY-lər, German: [ˈleːɔnhaʁt ˈʔɔʏlɐ], Swiss Standard German: [ˈleːɔnhart ˈɔʏlər]; 15 April 1707 – 18 September 1783) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, astronomer, geographer, logician, and engineer who founded the studies of graph theory and topology and made pioneering and influential discoveries in many other branches of mathematics such as analytic number theory, complex analysis, and infinitesimal calculus. He introduced much of modern mathematical terminology and notation, including the notion of a mathematical function. He is also known for his work in mechanics, fluid dynamics, optics, astronomy, and music theory.
Lepus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Lepus (/ˈliːpəs/, colloquially /ˈlɛpəs/) is a constellation lying just south of the celestial equator. Its name is Latin for hare. It is located below—immediately south—of Orion (the hunter), and is sometimes represented as a hare being chased by Orion or by Orion’s hunting dogs.
Leschi, Seattle (Wikipedia) Leschi is a neighborhood in the city of Seattle, Washington, United States. Located on the western shore of Lake Washington, the residential neighborhood was named by its 19th-century developer for Chief Leschi of the Nisqually tribe, who was executed by territorial authorities in 1858 in Pierce County, Washington.
Lesotho (Wikipedia) Lesotho (/lɪˈsuːtuː/ lih-SOO-too, Sotho pronunciation: [lɪˈsʊːtʰʊ]), formally the Kingdom of Lesotho, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. As an enclave of South Africa, with which it shares a 1,106 km (687 mi) border, it is the only sovereign enclave in the world outside of the Italian Peninsula. It is situated in the Maloti Mountains and contains the highest peak in Southern Africa. It has an area of over 30,000 km2 (11,600 sq mi) and has a population of about two million. It is the largest enclaved country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Maseru. The country is also known by the nickname The Mountain Kingdom.
Lewis Carroll (Wikipedia) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (/ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/ LUT-wij DOJ-sən; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician and photographer. His most notable works are Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass (1871). He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. His poems Jabberwocky (1871) and The Hunting of the Snark (1876) are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.
Lewis County, Washington (Wikipedia) Lewis County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the county’s population was 82,149. The county seat is Chehalis, and its largest city is Centralia. Lewis County comprises the Centralia, WA Micropolitan Statistical Area, which is also included in the Seattle-Tacoma, WA Combined Statistical Area.
Libera Chat (Wikipedia) Libera Chat, stylized as Libera.Chat, is an IRC network for free and open-source software projects. It was founded on 19 May 2021 by former Freenode staff members, after Freenode was taken over by Andrew Lee, founder of Private Internet Access.
Libra (constellation) (Wikipedia) Libra /ˈliːbrə/ is a constellation of the zodiac and is located in the Southern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for weighing scales. Its old astronomical symbol is Libra symbol (♎︎). It is fairly faint, with no first magnitude stars, and lies between Virgo to the west and Scorpius to the east. Beta Librae, also known as Zubeneschamali, is the brightest star in the constellation. Three star systems are known to have planets.
Libya (Wikipedia) Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Libya borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest, as well as maritime borders with Greece, Italy and Malta to the north. Libya comprises three historical regions: Tripolitania, Fezzan, and Cyrenaica. With an area of almost 1.8 million km2 (700,000 sq mi), it is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. Libya claims 32,000 square kilometers of southeastern Algeria, south of the Libyan town of Ghat. The country’s official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims. The official language of Libya is Arabic, with vernacular Libyan Arabic being spoken most widely. The majority of Libya’s population is Arab. The largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in northwestern Libya and contains over a million of Libya’s seven million people.
Lichen (Wikipedia) A lichen (/ˈlaɪkən/ LY-kən, UK also /ˈlɪtʃən/ LITCH-ən) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship. Lichens are important actors in nutrient cycling and act as producers which many higher trophic feeders feed on, such as reindeer, gastropods, nematodes, mites, and springtails. Lichens have properties different from those of their component organisms. They come in many colors, sizes, and forms and are sometimes plant-like, but are not plants. They may have tiny, leafless branches (fruticose); flat leaf-like structures (foliose); grow crust-like, adhering tightly to a surface (substrate) like a thick coat of paint (crustose); have a powder-like appearance (leprose); or other growth forms.
Licton Springs, Seattle (Wikipedia) Licton Springs or North College Park is a neighborhood in the informal Northgate district of North Seattle. It is bounded by Interstate 5 to the east, beyond which is Maple Leaf neighborhood and the Northgate Mall; Aurora Avenue N (SR 99) to the west, beyond which is Greenwood; N 85th Street to the south, beyond which is Green Lake, and N Northgate Way to the north, beyond which is Haller Lake.
Liechtenstein (Wikipedia) Liechtenstein (/ˈlɪktənstaɪn/ LIK-tən-styne; German: [ˈlɪçtn̩ʃtaɪn]), officially the Principality of Liechtenstein (German: Fürstentum Liechtenstein, pronounced [ˈfʏʁstn̩tuːm ˈlɪçtn̩ˌʃtaɪ̯n]), is a landlocked German-speaking microstate located in the Alps between Austria and Switzerland. It is the sixth smallest country in the world. Liechtenstein is a semi-constitutional monarchy headed by the prince of Liechtenstein.
Liessa Dragonlady (Wikipedia) Liessa Dragonlady, is the daughter of the lord of the Wyrmberg, and leader of the dragon-riders appearing in the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic. An archetypal fantasy barbarian woman, she has curves and chestnut-red hair, and wears almost nothing but a chainmail harness.
Life (Wikipedia) Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction. Various forms of life exist, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists, archaea, and bacteria. Biology is the science that studies life.
Light (Wikipedia) Light, visible light, or visible radiation is electromagnetic radiation that can be perceived by the human eye. Visible light spans the visible spectrum and is usually defined as having wavelengths in the range of 400–700 nanometres (nm), corresponding to frequencies of 750–420 terahertz. The visible band sits adjacent to the infrared (with longer wavelengths and lower frequencies) and the ultraviolet (with shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies), called collectively optical radiation.
Light-year (Wikipedia) A light-year, alternatively spelled light year (ly), is a unit of length used to express astronomical distances and is equal to exactly 9,460,730,472,580.8 km (Scientific notation: 9.4607304725808 × 1012 km), which is approximately 5.88 trillion mi. As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Because it includes the word “year”, the term is sometimes misinterpreted as a unit of time.
Lilydale, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Lilydale is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 623 at the 2010 census.
Lincoln County, Washington (Wikipedia) Lincoln County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,876, making it the fifth-least populous county in the state. The county seat and largest city is Davenport.
Linked list (Wikipedia) In computer science, a linked list is a linear collection of data elements whose order is not given by their physical placement in memory. Instead, each element points to the next. It is a data structure consisting of a collection of nodes which together represent a sequence. In its most basic form, each node contains data, and a reference (in other words, a link) to the next node in the sequence. This structure allows for efficient insertion or removal of elements from any position in the sequence during iteration. More complex variants add additional links, allowing more efficient insertion or removal of nodes at arbitrary positions. A drawback of linked lists is that data access time is linear in respect to the number of nodes in the list. Because nodes are serially linked, accessing any node requires that the prior node be accessed beforehand (which introduces difficulties in pipelining). Faster access, such as random access, is not feasible. Arrays have better cache locality compared to linked lists.
Lino Lakes, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Lino Lakes (/ˈlaɪnoʊ ˈleɪks/ LY-noh LAYKS) is a city in Anoka County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 21,399 at the 2020 census. Interstates 35W and 35E are two of Lino Lakes’s main routes. It is an outer suburb north of the Twin Cities.
Lithium (Wikipedia) Lithium (from Ancient Greek λίθος (líthos) ‘stone’) is a chemical element; it has symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactive and flammable, and must be stored in vacuum, inert atmosphere, or inert liquid such as purified kerosene or mineral oil. It exhibits a metallic luster. It corrodes quickly in air to a dull silvery gray, then black tarnish. It does not occur freely in nature, but occurs mainly as pegmatitic minerals, which were once the main source of lithium. Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines. Lithium metal is isolated electrolytically from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride.
Lithosphere (Wikipedia) A lithosphere (from Ancient Greek λίθος (líthos) ‘rocky’, and σφαίρα (sphaíra) ‘sphere’) is the rigid, outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth, it is composed of the crust and the lithospheric mantle, the topmost portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of up to thousands of years or more. The crust and upper mantle are distinguished on the basis of chemistry and mineralogy.
Lithuania (Wikipedia) Lithuania (/ˌlɪθjuˈeɪniə/ LITH-yoo-AYN-ee-ə; Lithuanian: Lietuva [lʲɪɛtʊˈvɐ]), officially the Republic of Lithuania (Lithuanian: Lietuvos Respublika [lʲɪɛtʊˈvoːs rʲɛsˈpʊblʲɪkɐ]), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. It borders Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Russia to the southwest, with a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Lithuania covers an area of 65,300 km2 (25,200 sq mi), with a population of 2.86 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities are Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys. Lithuanians belong to the ethnolinguistic group of the Balts and speak Lithuanian, one of only a few living Baltic languages, and the most widely spoken.
Little Canada, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Little Canada is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. It is a second-ring suburb of Minneapolis-Saint Paul. The population was 10,819 at the 2020 census.
Little Diomede Island (Wikipedia) Little Diomede Island or Yesterday Island (Inupiaq: Iŋaliq, formerly known as Krusenstern Island, Russian: остров Крузенштерна, romanized: ostrov Kruzenshterna) is an island of Alaska, United States. It is the smaller of the two Diomede Islands located in the middle of the Bering Strait between the Alaska mainland and Siberia.
Lizard (Wikipedia) Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia, although some lizards are more closely related to these two excluded groups than they are to other lizards. Lizards range in size from chameleons and geckos a few centimeters long to the 3-meter-long Komodo dragon.
Local Bubble (Wikipedia) The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium (ISM) of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way. It contains the closest of celestial neighbours and among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud (which contains the Solar System), the neighbouring G-Cloud, the Ursa Major moving group (the closest stellar moving group) and the Hyades (the nearest open cluster).
Local Group (Wikipedia) The Local Group is the galaxy group that includes the Milky Way. It has a total diameter of roughly 3 megaparsecs (10 million light-years; 9×1022 metres), and a total mass of the order of 2×1012 solar masses (4×1042 kg). It consists of two collections of galaxies in a “dumbbell” shape: the Milky Way and its satellites form one lobe, and the Andromeda Galaxy and its satellites constitute the other. The two collections are separated by about 800 kpc (3×106 ly; 2×1022 m) and are moving toward one another with a velocity of 123 km/s. The group itself is a part of the larger Virgo Supercluster, which may be a part of the Laniakea Supercluster. The exact number of galaxies in the Local Group is unknown as some are occluded by the Milky Way; however, at least 80 members are known, most of which are dwarf galaxies.
Local Interstellar Cloud (Wikipedia) The Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), also known as the Local Fluff, is an interstellar cloud roughly 30 light-years (9.2 pc) across, through which the Solar System is moving. This feature overlaps a region around the Sun referred to as the solar neighborhood. It is unknown whether the Sun is embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud, or is in the region where the Local Interstellar Cloud is interacting with the neighboring G-Cloud. Like the G-Cloud and others, the LIC is part of the Very Local Interstellar Medium which begins where the heliosphere and interplanetary medium end, the furthest that probes have traveled.
Lock and Dam No. 7 (Wikipedia) Lock and Dam No. 7 is a lock and dam located on the Upper Mississippi River at river mile 702.5 near the cities of La Crescent, Minnesota and Onalaska, Wisconsin. It forms pool 7 and Lake Onalaska. The facility was constructed in the mid-1930s and placed in operation on April, 1937. It underwent major rehabilitation from 1989 through 2002. The lock and dam are owned and operated by the St. Paul District of the United States Army Corps of Engineers-Mississippi Valley Division.
Logarithm (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the logarithm is the inverse function to exponentiation. That means that the logarithm of a number x to the base b is the exponent to which b must be raised to produce x. For example, since 1000 = 10^3, the logarithm base 10 of 1000 is 3, or log10 (1000) = 3. The logarithm of x to base b is denoted as logb (x), or without parentheses, logb x, or even without the explicit base, log x, when no confusion is possible, or when the base does not matter such as in big O notation.
Logic (Wikipedia) Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It studies how conclusions follow from premises due to the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. It examines arguments expressed in natural language while formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term “a logic” refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.
London (Wikipedia) London (/ˈlʌndən/) is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a 50-mile (80 km) estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and retains its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name “London” has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised Greater London, which is governed by 33 local authorities and the Greater London Authority.
Long division (Wikipedia) In arithmetic, long division is a standard division algorithm suitable for dividing multi-digit Hindu-Arabic numerals (Positional notation) that is simple enough to perform by hand. It breaks down a division problem into a series of easier steps.
Lopingian (Wikipedia) The Lopingian is the uppermost series/last epoch of the Permian. It is the last epoch of the Paleozoic. The Lopingian was preceded by the Guadalupian and followed by the Early Triassic. The Lopingian is often synonymous with the informal terms late Permian or upper Permian.
Lord Hill Regional Park (Wikipedia) Lord Hill Regional Park is a regional country park located in Snohomish County, Washington. The park features miles of wilderness trails for equestrians and mountain bikers, as well as hikers. The park grounds cover 1,300 acres (5.3 km2) of wilderness forest. Small ponds and wetlands are located within the park site. A large population of animals, birds, and fish inhabit the park.
Lord of Light (Wikipedia) Lord of Light (1967) is a science fantasy novel by American author Roger Zelazny. It was awarded the 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and nominated for a Nebula Award in the same category. Two chapters from the novel were published as novelettes in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction – “Dawn” in April 1967, and “Death and the Executioner” in June 1967.
Lord–bondsman dialectic (Wikipedia) The lord–bondsman dialectic (sometimes translated master–slave dialectic) is a famous passage in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel’s philosophical system, and it has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers.
Lords and Ladies (novel) (Wikipedia) Lords and Ladies is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fourteenth Discworld book. It was originally published in 1992. Some parts of the storyline spoof elements of Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Loring Park, Minneapolis (Wikipedia) Loring Park is a neighborhood in the Central Community of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Located on the southwest corner of downtown Minneapolis, it also lends its name to Loring Park, the largest park in the neighborhood. The official boundaries of the neighborhood are Lyndale Avenue to the west, Interstate 394 to the north, 12th Street to the northeast, Highway 65 to the east, and Interstate 94 to the south.
Los Angeles (Wikipedia) Los Angeles (US: /lɔːs ˈændʒələs/ lawss AN-jəl-əs; Spanish: Los Ángeles [los ˈaŋxeles], lit. ‘The Angels’), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the most populous city in California, the most populous U.S. state. It is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. Los Angeles is the second-most populous city in the United States after New York City, with a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits as of 2020. Los Angeles has a Mediterranean climate, an ethnically and culturally diverse population, and a sprawling metropolitan area. It is perhaps best known as the home of the Hollywood film industry.
Lost Generation (Wikipedia) The Lost Generation is the demographic cohort that reached early adulthood during World War I, and preceded the Greatest Generation. The social generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900, coming of age in either the 1900s or the 1910s. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: “You are all a lost generation.” “Lost” in this context refers to the “disoriented, wandering, directionless” spirit of many of the war’s survivors in the early postwar period.
Lotus corniculatus (Wikipedia) Lotus corniculatus is a flowering plant in the pea family Fabaceae, native to grasslands in temperate Eurasia and North Africa. Common names include common bird’s-foot trefoil, eggs and bacon, birdsfoot deervetch, and just bird’s-foot trefoil, though the latter name is often also applied to other members of the genus.
Louis Vuitton (Wikipedia) Louis Vuitton Malletier, commonly known as Louis Vuitton (/luːˈiː vɪˈtɒn/, French: [lwi vɥitɔ̃]), is a French luxury fashion house and company founded in 1854 by Louis Vuitton. The label’s LV monogram appears on most of its products, ranging from luxury bags and leather goods to ready-to-wear, shoes, perfumes, watches, jewellery, accessories, sunglasses and books. Louis Vuitton is one of the world’s leading international fashion houses. It sells its products through standalone boutiques, lease departments in high-end departmental stores, and through the e-commerce section of its website.
Louis XVI (Wikipedia) Louis XVI (Louis Auguste; French: [lwi sɛːz]; 23 August 1754 – 21 January 1793) was the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.
Louisiana (Wikipedia) Louisiana (French: La Louisiane [la lwizjan]; Spanish: La Luisiana) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is bordered by the state of Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, Mississippi to the east, and the Gulf of Mexico to the south; a large part of its eastern boundary is demarcated by the Mississippi River. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 20th in land area and the 25th in population, with roughly 4.6 million residents. Reflecting its French heritage, Louisiana is the only U.S. state with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are equivalent to counties, making it one of only two U.S. states not subdivided into counties (the other being Alaska and its boroughs). The state’s capital is Baton Rouge, and its largest city is New Orleans, with a population of roughly 383,000 people.
Loyal Heights, Seattle (Wikipedia) Loyal Heights is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. It is considered part of greater Ballard.
Lucid dream (Wikipedia) A lucid dream is a type of dream in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming while dreaming. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment. Lucid dreaming has been studied and reported for many years. Prominent figures from ancient to modern times have been fascinated by lucid dreams and have sought ways to better understand their causes and purpose.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Wikipedia) Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (/ˈvɪtɡənʃtaɪn, -staɪn/ VIT-gən-s(h)tyne; German: [ˈluːtvɪç ˈjoːzɛf ‘joːhan ˈvɪtɡn̩ʃtaɪn]; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered by some to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.
Lunar mare (Wikipedia) The lunar maria (/ˈmæri.ə/ MARR-ee-ə; sg. mare /ˈmɑːreɪ, -i/ MAR-ay, MAR-ee) are large, dark, basaltic plains on Earth’s Moon, formed by lava flowing into ancient impact basins. They were dubbed maria (Latin for ‘seas’) by early astronomers who mistook them for actual seas.[citation needed] They are less reflective than the “highlands” as a result of their iron-rich composition, and hence appear dark to the naked eye. The maria cover about 16% of the lunar surface, mostly on the side visible from Earth. The few maria on the far side are much smaller, residing mostly in very large craters. The traditional nomenclature for the Moon also includes one oceanus (ocean), as well as features with the names lacus (’lake’), palus (‘marsh’), and sinus (‘bay’). The last three are smaller than maria, but have the same nature and characteristics.
Lunar phase (Wikipedia) A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon’s directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth (because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth). In common usage, the four major phases are the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon and the last quarter; the four minor phases are waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous, and waning crescent. A lunar month is the time between successive recurrences of the same phase: due to the eccentricity of the Moon’s orbit, this duration is not perfectly constant but averages about 29.5 days.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Wikipedia) The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is a NASA robotic spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon in an eccentric polar mapping orbit. Data collected by LRO have been described as essential for planning NASA’s future human and robotic missions to the Moon. Its detailed mapping program is identifying safe landing sites, locating potential resources on the Moon, characterizing the radiation environment, and demonstrating new technologies.
Lupus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Lupus is a constellation of the mid-Southern Sky. Its name is Latin for wolf. Lupus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations but was long an asterism associated with the just westerly, larger constellation Centaurus.
Lutetian (Wikipedia) The Lutetian is, in the geologic timescale, a stage or age in the Eocene. It spans the time between 47.8 and 41.2 Ma. The Lutetian is preceded by the Ypresian and is followed by the Bartonian. Together with the Bartonian it is sometimes referred to as the Middle Eocene Subepoch.
Luther Burbank (Wikipedia) Luther Burbank (March 7, 1849 – April 11, 1926) was an American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science. He developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants over his 55-year career. Burbank’s developments included those of fruits, flowers, grains, grasses, and vegetables. He developed (but did not create) a spineless cactus (useful for cattle-feed) and the plumcot.
Luxembourg (Wikipedia) Luxembourg (/ˈlʌksəmbɜːrɡ/ LUK-səm-burg; Luxembourgish: Lëtzebuerg [ˈlətsəbuəɕ]; French: Luxembourg [lyksɑ̃buʁ]; German: Luxemburg [ˈlʊksm̩bʊʁk], officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is a small landlocked country in Western Europe. It is bordered by Belgium to the west and north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Its capital and most populous city, Luxembourg, is one of the four institutional seats of the European Union (together with Brussels, Frankfurt, and Strasbourg) and the seat of several EU institutions, notably the Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest judicial authority. Luxembourg’s culture, people, and languages are highly intertwined with its French and German neighbors; while Luxembourgish is the only national language of the Luxembourgish people and of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, French is the only language for legislation, and all three – Luxembourgish, French and German – are used for administrative matters in the country.
Luxottica (Wikipedia) Luxottica Group S.p.A. is an Italian eyewear conglomerate based in Milan. As a vertically integrated company, Luxottica designs, manufactures, distributes, and retails its eyewear brands all through its own subsidiaries. The company, presently organized as a subsidiary of EssilorLuxottica which formed when the Italian conglomerate merged with the French optical firm Essilor, is the world’s largest company in its industry, both prior to and after its merger with Essilor.
Lyndon B. Johnson (Wikipedia) Lyndon Baines Johnson (/ˈlɪndən ˈbeɪnz/; August 27, 1908 – January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, under whom he had served as the 37th vice president from 1961 to 1963. A Democrat from Texas, Johnson also served as a U.S. representative and U.S. senator.
Lynnwood, Washington (Wikipedia) Lynnwood is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located 16 miles (26 km) north of Seattle and 13 miles (21 km) south of Everett, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 405. It is the fourth-largest city in Snohomish County, with a population of 38,568 in the 2020 U.S. census.
Lynx (constellation) (Wikipedia) Lynx is a constellation named after the animal, usually observed in the Northern Celestial Hemisphere. The constellation was introduced in the late 17th century by Johannes Hevelius. It is a faint constellation, with its brightest stars forming a zigzag line. The orange giant Alpha Lyncis is the brightest star in the constellation, and the semiregular variable star Y Lyncis is a target for amateur astronomers. Six star systems have been found to contain planets. Those of 6 Lyncis and HD 75898 were discovered by the Doppler method; those of XO-2, XO-4, XO-5 and WASP-13 were observed as they passed in front of the host star.
Lyra (Wikipedia) Lyra (Latin for ’lyre’, from Ancient Greek: λύρα; pronounced: /ˈlaɪrə/ LY-rə) is a small constellation. It is one of the 48 listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy, and is one of the modern 88 constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union. Lyra was often represented on star maps as a vulture or an eagle carrying a lyre, and hence is sometimes referred to as Vultur Cadens or Aquila Cadens (“Falling Vulture” or “Falling Eagle”), respectively. Beginning at the north, Lyra is bordered by Draco, Hercules, Vulpecula, and Cygnus. Lyra is nearly overhead in temperate northern latitudes shortly after midnight at the start of summer. From the equator to about the 40th parallel south it is visible low in the northern sky during the same (thus winter) months.
Lysergic acid diethylamide (Wikipedia) Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD (from German Lysergsäure-diethylamid), and known colloquially as acid or lucy is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, visual, and auditory hallucinations. Dilated pupils, increased blood pressure, and increased body temperature are typical. Effects typically begin within half an hour and can last for up to 20 hours (although on average, experiences last 8–12 hours). LSD is also capable of causing mystical experiences and ego dissolution. It is used mainly as a recreational drug or for spiritual reasons. LSD is both the prototypical psychedelic and one of the “classical” psychedelics, being the psychedelic with the greatest scientific and cultural significance. LSD is synthesized as a solid compound, typically in the form of a powder or a crystalline material. This solid LSD is then dissolved in a liquid solvent, such as ethanol or distilled water, to create a solution. The liquid serves as a carrier for the LSD, allowing for accurate dosage and administration onto small pieces of blotter paper called tabs. LSD is typically either swallowed or held under the tongue.
M. C. Escher (Wikipedia) Maurits Cornelis Escher (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmʌurɪt͡s kɔrˈneːlɪs ˈɛʃər]; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular interest, for most of his life Escher was neglected in the art world, even in his native Netherlands. He was 70 before a retrospective exhibition was held. In the late twentieth century, he became more widely appreciated, and in the twenty-first century he has been celebrated in exhibitions around the world.
Machine code (Wikipedia) In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). Although decimal computers were once common, the contemporary marketplace is dominated by binary computers; for those computers, machine code is “the binary representation of a computer program which is actually read and interpreted by the computer. A program in machine code consists of a sequence of machine instructions (possibly interspersed with data).
Mad Max (film) (Wikipedia) Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film directed by George Miller, who co-wrote the screenplay with James McCausland, based on a story by Miller and Byron Kennedy. Mel Gibson stars as “Mad” Max Rockatansky, a police officer turned vigilante in a dystopian near-future Australia in the midst of societal collapse. Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Steve Bisley, Tim Burns and Roger Ward also appear in supporting roles.
Madison Park, Seattle (Wikipedia) Madison Park is a neighborhood in east central Seattle, Washington, USA, named after the city park at the foot of E. Madison Street on the Lake Washington shore. It is bounded on the east by Lake Washington; on the south by the intersection of Lake Washington Boulevard E. and 39th Avenue E., beyond which is Denny-Blaine; on the west by Lake Washington Boulevard E.; and on the north by Union Bay. Washington Park and the private Broadmoor community and golf course are subunits within Madison Park. The neighborhood’s main thoroughfares are E. Madison Street (northeast- and southwest-bound) and McGilvra Boulevard E. (north- and southbound).
Madison Valley, Seattle (Wikipedia) Madison Valley is a neighborhood in Seattle located east of Capitol Hill; west of Washington Park; south of Montlake; and north of Madrona.
Madrona, Seattle (Wikipedia) Madrona is a mostly residential neighborhood in east Seattle, Washington. It is bounded on the east by Lake Washington; on the south by E. Cherry Street, beyond which is Leschi; on the west by Martin Luther King Jr. Way, beyond which is the Central District; and on the north by E. Howell Street, beyond which is Denny-Blaine.
Magdalena Abakanowicz (Wikipedia) Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish pronunciation: [maɡdaˈlɛna abakaˈnɔvit͡ʂ]; 20 June 1930 – 20 April 2017) was a Polish sculptor and fiber artist. Known for her use of textiles as a sculptural medium and for outdoor installations, Abakanowicz has been considered among the most influential Polish artists of the postwar era. She worked as a professor of studio art at the University of Fine Arts in Poznań, Poland, from 1965 to 1990, and as a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles in 1984.
Magnesium (Wikipedia) Magnesium is a chemical element; it has symbol Mg and atomic number 12. It is a shiny gray metal having a low density, low melting point and high chemical reactivity. Like the other alkaline earth metals (group 2 of the periodic table) it occurs naturally only in combination with other elements and it almost always has an oxidation state of +2. It reacts readily with air to form a thin passivation coating of magnesium oxide that inhibits further corrosion of the metal. The free metal burns with a brilliant-white light. The metal is obtained mainly by electrolysis of magnesium salts obtained from brine. It is less dense than aluminium and is used primarily as a component in strong and lightweight alloys that contain aluminium.
Magnolia, Seattle (Wikipedia) Magnolia is the second largest neighborhood of Seattle, Washington by area. It occupies a hilly peninsula northwest of downtown. Magnolia has been a part of the city since 1891. A good portion of the peninsula is taken up by Discovery Park, formerly the U.S. Army’s Fort Lawton.
Magnuson Park (Wikipedia) Magnuson Park is a park in the Sand Point neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. At 350 acres (140 ha) it is the second-largest park in Seattle, after Discovery Park in Magnolia (which covers 534 acres (2.16 km2)). Magnuson Park is located at the site of the former Naval Station Puget Sound, on the Sand Point peninsula with Pontiac and Wolf bays that juts into Lake Washington in northeast Seattle.
Mahatma Gandhi (Wikipedia) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (/ˈɡɑːndi, ˈɡændi/; GAHN-dee; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist. He is widely acknowledged as one of the 20th century’s most influential people, who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: “great-souled”, “venerable”), first applied to him in 1914 in South Africa, is now used throughout the world.
Mahtomedi, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Mahtomedi (/ˌmɑːtoʊˈmiːdaɪ/ MAH-toh-MEE-dy) is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 7,676 at the 2010 census. Mahtomedi is a suburb of St. Paul and is located between St. Paul and Stillwater.
Maine (Wikipedia) Maine (/meɪn/) is the easternmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and northwest, respectively. Although Maine is the largest state in New England by total area, of the 50 U.S. states it is the 12th-smallest by area, the 9th-least populous, the 13th-least densely populated, and the most rural. Maine’s capital is Augusta, and its most populous city is Portland, with a total population of 68,408, as of the April 2020 census.
Malawi (Wikipedia) Malawi (/məˈlɑːwi/; lit. ‘flames’ in Chichewa and Chitumbuka), officially the Republic of Malawi and formerly known as Nyasaland, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south and southwest. Malawi spans over 118,484 km2 (45,747 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 19,431,566 (as of January 2021). Malawi’s capital and largest city is Lilongwe. Its second-largest is Blantyre, its third-largest is Mzuzu and its fourth-largest is its former capital, Zomba. It was the first capital city of Malawi before being changed to Lilongwe.
Malaysia (Wikipedia) Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. The federal constitutional monarchy consists of 13 states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two regions: Peninsular Malaysia and Borneo’s East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia shares a land and maritime border with Thailand and maritime borders with Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. East Malaysia shares land and maritime borders with Brunei and Indonesia, as well as a maritime border with the Philippines and Vietnam. Kuala Lumpur is the national capital, the country’s largest city, and the seat of the legislative branch of the federal government. Putrajaya is the administrative centre, which represents the seat of both the executive branch (the Cabinet, federal ministries, and federal agencies) and the judicial branch of the federal government. With a population of over 34 million, the country is the world’s 43rd-most populous country. Malaysia is tropical and is one of 17 megadiverse countries; it is home to numerous endemic species. Tanjung Piai in the Malaysian state of Johor is the southernmost point of continental Eurasia.
Malcolm X (Wikipedia) Malcolm X (born Malcolm Little, later el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz; May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965) was an American Muslim minister and human rights activist who was a prominent figure during the civil rights movement. A spokesman for the Nation of Islam until 1964, he was a vocal advocate for Black empowerment and the promotion of Islam within the Black community. A posthumous autobiography, on which he collaborated with Alex Haley, was published in 1965.
Maldives (Wikipedia) The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is a country and archipelagic state in South Asia in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is southwest of Sri Lanka and India, about 750 kilometres (470 miles; 400 nautical miles) from the Asian continent’s mainland. The Maldives’ chain of 26 atolls stretches across the equator from Ihavandhippolhu Atoll in the north to Addu Atoll in the south.
Mali (Wikipedia) Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over 1,241,238 square kilometres (479,245 sq mi). The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east by Niger, to the northwest by Mauritania, to the south by Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, and to the west by Guinea and Senegal. The population of Mali is 21.9 million, 67% of which was estimated to be under the age of 25 in 2017. Its capital and largest city is Bamako. The country has 13 official languages, of which Bambara is the most commonly spoken.
Malta (Wikipedia) Malta (⫽ˈmɒltə⫽ MOL-tə, ⫽ˈmɔːltə⫽ MAWL-tə, Maltese: [ˈmɐːltɐ]), officially the Republic of Malta, is an island country in Southern Europe, located in the Mediterranean Sea. It consists of an archipelago between Italy, Tunisia and Libya. It lies 80 km (50 mi) south of Sicily and Italy, 284 km (176 mi) east of Tunisia, and 333 km (207 mi) north of Libya. The two official languages are Maltese, the only Semitic language with official status in a European country and the European Union, and English. The country’s capital is Valletta.
Mammal (Wikipedia) A mammal (from Latin mamma ‘breast’) is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia (/məˈmeɪli.ə/). Mammals are characterized by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three middle ear bones. These characteristics distinguish them from reptiles and birds, from which their ancestors diverged in the Carboniferous Period over 300 million years ago. Around 6,400 extant species of mammals have been described and divided into 29 orders.
Man a Machine (Wikipedia) Man a Machine (French: L’homme machine) is a work of materialist philosophy by the 18th-century French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie, first published in 1747. In this work, de La Mettrie extends Descartes’ argument that animals are mere automatons, or machines, to human beings. He denies dualism and the existence of the soul as a substance separate from matter.
Manhattan Project (Wikipedia) The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project was directed by Major General Leslie Groves of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory that designed the bombs. The Army program was designated the Manhattan District, as its first headquarters were in Manhattan; the name gradually superseded the official codename, Development of Substitute Materials, for the entire project. The project absorbed its earlier British counterpart, Tube Alloys, and subsumed the program from the American civilian Office of Scientific Research and Development. The Manhattan Project employed nearly 130,000 people at its peak and cost nearly US$2 billion (equivalent to about $27 billion in 2023), over 80 percent of which was for building and operating the plants that produced the fissile material. Research and production took place at more than 30 sites across the US, the UK, and Canada.
Manitoba (Wikipedia) Manitoba (/ˌmænɪˈtoʊbə/ MAN-ih-TOH-bə) is a province of Canada at the longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada’s fifth-most populous province, with a population of 1,342,153 as of 2021. Manitoba has a widely varied landscape, from arctic tundra and the Hudson Bay coastline in the north to dense boreal forest, large freshwater lakes, and prairie grassland in the central and southern regions.
Manus Plate (Wikipedia) The Manus Plate is a 100-km microplate located northeast of New Guinea. The Manus Plate was formed in between the North Bismark Plate and the South Bismark Plate. The Manus Plate currently rotates counter-clockwise in the Melanesia area.
Maoke Plate (Wikipedia) The Maoke Plate is a small tectonic plate located in western New Guinea underlying the Sudirman Range from which the highest mountain on the island- Puncak Jaya rises. To its east was proposed a convergent boundary with the Woodlark Plate, although this is now best modelled after further studies as a boundary with an enlarged Solomon Sea Plate or a new microplate called the Trobriand Plate. To the south lies a transform boundary with the Australian Plate and the Bird’s Head Plate lies to the west.
Maple Falls, Washington (Wikipedia) Maple Falls is a census-designated place (CDP) in Whatcom County, Washington, United States. The population was 291 at the 2020 census.
Maple Leaf, Seattle (Wikipedia) The area that is now the Maple Leaf neighborhood appeared on maps in 1894 as a plat by real estate promoters and was called the Maple Leaf Addition to the Green Lake Tract. The name may have come from the Maple Saw Mill that operated to the east on Lake Washington or from some maple trees that once grew in the area. There is also an apocryphal story that Maple Leaf was so far north of downtown Seattle that it got its name for being near Canada.
Maplewood, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Maplewood is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 42,088 at the 2020 census. Maplewood is ten minutes’ drive from downtown Saint Paul. It stretches along the northern and eastern borders of Saint Paul.
Mar-a-Lago (Wikipedia) Mar-a-Lago (/ˌmɑːrəˈlɑːɡoʊ/; Spanish for ‘Sea-to-Lake’) is a resort and National Historic Landmark in Palm Beach, Florida. Since 1985, it has been owned by Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, who resides on the premises.
Marcel Duchamp (Wikipedia) Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (UK: /ˈdjuːʃɒ̃/, US: /djuːˈʃɒ̃, djuːˈʃɑːmp/, French: [maʁsɛl dyʃɑ̃]; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. He is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. He has had an immense impact on 20th- and 21st-century art, and a seminal influence on the development of conceptual art. By the time of World War I, he had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists (such as Henri Matisse) as “retinal”, intended only to please the eye. Instead, he wanted to use art to serve the mind.
Mare Crisium (Wikipedia) Mare Crisium /ˈkrɪsiəm/ (Latin crisium, the “Sea of Crises”) is a lunar mare located in the Moon’s Crisium basin, just northeast of Mare Tranquillitatis. Mare Crisium is a basin of Nectarian age.
Mariana Plate (Wikipedia) The Mariana Plate is a micro tectonic plate located west of the Mariana Trench which forms the basement of the Mariana Islands which form part of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc. It is separated from the Philippine Sea Plate to the west by a divergent boundary with numerous transform fault offsets. The boundary between the Mariana and the Pacific Plate to the east is a subduction zone with the Pacific Plate subducting beneath the Mariana. This eastern subduction is divided into the Mariana Trench, which forms the southeastern boundary, and the Izu–Ogasawara Trench the northeastern boundary. The subduction plate motion is responsible for the shape of the Mariana plate and back arc.
Marie Antoinette (Wikipedia) Marie Antoinette (/ˌæntwəˈnɛt, ˌɒ̃t-/; French: [maʁi ɑ̃twanɛt]; Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France prior to the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir apparent to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Marine on St. Croix or Marine on Saint Croix (/məˈriːn ɒn ˈseɪnt ˈkrɔɪ/ mə-REEN on SAYNT KROY) is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 689 at the 2010 census. It was founded in 1839 as Marine Mills. The city was the site of the first commercial sawmill on the St. Croix River. A substantial portion of the city is listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places and by the state of Minnesota.
Mark Twain (Wikipedia) Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), best known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the “greatest humorist the United States has produced”, and William Faulkner called him “the father of American literature”. His novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), the latter of which has often been called the “Great American Novel”. Twain also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894), and co-wrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner.
Mars (Wikipedia) Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname “the Red Planet”. Mars’s radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi). It has a surface gravity of 3.72 m/s2 (12.2 ft/s2), which is 38% of Earth’s gravity. The Martian dichotomy is visible on the surface: on average, the terrain on Mars’s northern hemisphere is flatter and lower than its southern hemisphere. Mars has a thin atmosphere made primarily of carbon dioxide and two irregularly shaped natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos.
Marseille (Wikipedia) Marseille (/mɑːrˈseɪ/ mar-SAY, French: [maʁsɛj], locally [maχˈsɛjə]; also spelled in English as Marseilles; Occitan: Marselha [maʀˈsejɔ, -ˈsijɔ]) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern France, it is located on the coast of the Gulf of Lion, part of the Mediterranean Sea, near the mouth of the Rhône river. Its inhabitants are called Marseillais.
Martha Lake Airport Park (Wikipedia) Martha Lake Airport Park is a county park located in Martha Lake, Snohomish County, Washington. It was originally a private-use airport known as the Martha Lake Airport that was closed in the late 1990s and sold to the county in 2000. The 28.76-acre (11.64 ha) park was opened in 2010 and features athletic fields for soccer and softball and a skate park. A large glacial erratic on the property, one of several in the county, is used for bouldering (rock climbing).
Martha Lake, Washington (Wikipedia) Martha Lake is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 21,129 at the 2020 census. It lies west of Mill Creek and northeast of Lynnwood, near the lake of the same name.
Martial law (Wikipedia) Martial law is the replacement of civilian government by military rule and the suspension of civilian legal processes for military powers. Martial law can continue for a specified amount of time, or indefinitely, and standard civil liberties may be suspended for as long as martial law continues. Most often, martial law is declared in times of war and/or emergencies such as civil unrest and natural disasters. Alternatively, martial law may be declared in instances of military coup d’états.
Martin Luther (Wikipedia) Martin Luther OSA (/ˈluːθər/; German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈlʊtɐ]; 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546) was a German priest, theologian, author, hymnwriter, professor, and Augustinian friar. Luther was the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation, and his theological beliefs form the basis of Lutheranism. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western and Christian history.
Martin Luther King Jr. (Wikipedia) Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A Black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of discrimination in the United States.
Maryland (Wikipedia) Maryland (US: /ˈmɛrɪlənd/ MERR-il-ənd) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. Baltimore is the largest city in the state, and the capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, and the Chesapeake Bay State. It is named after Henrietta Maria, the French-born queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who was known then in England as Mary.
Marymoor Park (Wikipedia) Marymoor Park, located on the north end of Lake Sammamish in Redmond, Washington, is King County’s largest, oldest, and most popular park, with more than 3 million annual visitors coming to roam its 640 acres (2.6 km2). Among recreational activities available are various sports facilities, rock climbing, a 40-acre off-leash dog park and a velodrome. It is also one end of the Sammamish River Trail, a biking and walking trail. In addition, a radio control aircraft flying field and a pet memorial garden are within the park’s boundaries.
Marysville, Washington (Wikipedia) Marysville is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States, part of the Seattle metropolitan area. The city is located 35 miles (56 km) north of Seattle, adjacent to Everett on the north side of the Snohomish River delta. It is the second-largest city in Snohomish County after Everett, with a population of 70,714 at the time of the 2020 U.S. census. As of 2015, Marysville was also the fastest-growing city in Washington state, growing at an annual rate of 2.5 percent.
Maskerade (Wikipedia) Maskerade is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the eighteenth book in the Discworld series. The witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg visit the Ankh-Morpork Opera House to find Agnes Nitt, a girl from Lancre, and get caught up in a story similar to The Phantom of the Opera.
Mason County, Washington (Wikipedia) Mason County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 65,726. The county seat and only incorporated city is Shelton. The county was formed out of Thurston County on March 13, 1854. Originally named Sawamish County, it took its present name in 1864 in honor of Charles H. Mason, the first Secretary of Washington Territory.
Mass (Wikipedia) Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body’s inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object’s mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies.
Massachusetts (Wikipedia) Massachusetts (/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsɪts/ MASS-ə-CHOO-sits, /-zɪts/ -⁠zits; Massachusett: Muhsachuweesut [məhswatʃəwiːsət]), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to its south, New Hampshire and Vermont to its north, and New York to its west. Massachusetts is the sixth smallest state by land area, but with over 7 million residents, it is the most populous state in New England, the 15th most populous in the country, and the third most densely populated, after New Jersey and Rhode Island. The state’s capital and most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also home to the urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England and a region profoundly influential upon American history, academia, and the research economy. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade, Massachusetts was transformed into a manufacturing center during the Industrial Revolution. During the 20th century, the state’s economy shifted from manufacturing to services, and in the 21st century it is a global leader in biotechnology, engineering, higher education, finance, and maritime trade.
Materialism (Wikipedia) Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions of material things. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. Materialism directly contrasts with idealism, according to which consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature.
Mathematical induction (Wikipedia) Mathematical induction is a method for proving that a statement P(n) is true for every natural number n, that is, that the infinitely many cases P(0), P(1), P(2), P(3),… all hold. This is done by first proving a simple case, then also showing that if we assume the claim is true for a given case, then the next case is also true.
Mathematical universe hypothesis (Wikipedia) In physics and cosmology, the mathematical universe hypothesis (MUH), also known as the ultimate ensemble theory and struogony (from mathematical structure, Latin: struō), is a speculative “theory of everything” (TOE) proposed by cosmologist Max Tegmark.
Mathematics (Wikipedia) Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline.
Matthew Perry (Wikipedia)
Matthew Shepard (Wikipedia) Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998) was a gay American student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, and left to die near Laramie on the night of October 6, 1998. He was taken by rescuers to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he died six days later from severe head injuries received during the attack.
Matthews Beach, Seattle (Wikipedia) Matthews Beach is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington; it and Meadowbrook are the southern neighborhoods of the annexed township of Lake City (1954). Matthews Beach lies about 2 miles (3.2 km) northeast of the University of Washington, about 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Downtown.
Mauritania (Wikipedia) Mauritania, officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania (Arabic: الجمهورية الإسلامية الموريتانية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-Islāmīyah al-Mūrītānīyah), is a sovereign country in Northwest Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Western Sahara to the north and northwest, Algeria to the northeast, Mali to the east and southeast, and Senegal to the southwest. By land area Mauritania is the 11th-largest country in Africa and 28th-largest in the world; 90% of its territory is in the Sahara. Most of its population of some 4.3 million lives in the temperate south of the country, with roughly a third concentrated in the capital and largest city, Nouakchott, on the Atlantic coast.
Max Headroom signal hijacking (Wikipedia) On the night of November 22, 1987, the television signals of two stations in Chicago, Illinois, were hijacked, briefly sending a pirate broadcast of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and costume to thousands of home viewers.
Max Planck (Wikipedia) Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck ForMemRS (English: /ˈplæŋk/, German: [maks ˈplaŋk];23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.
Max Tegmark (Wikipedia) Max Erik Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American physicist, machine learning researcher and author. He is best known for his book Life 3.0 about what the world might look like as artificial intelligence continues to improve. Tegmark is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute.
Meadowbrook, Seattle (Wikipedia) Meadowbrook is a neighborhood in the Lake City district (township annexed in 1954) of Seattle, Washington. Meadowbrook is centered on open fields adjacent to the Community Center, Meadowbrook swimming pool, and Nathan Hale High School. It is bounded on the south by NE 95th Street and the Wedgwood neighborhood, on the north by NE 120th Street and Cedar Park, on the west by Lake City Way NE (State Route 522) and Victory Heights, and on the east by 35th Avenue NE and Matthews Beach.
Meadowdale, Washington (Wikipedia) Meadowdale is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Snohomish County, Washington. As of the 2020 U.S. census, it had a population of 3,148. It was the first incorporated city in Snohomish County.
Mecca (Wikipedia) Mecca (/ˈmɛkə/; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah) is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and the holiest city according to Islam. It is 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its last recorded population was 2,385,509 in 2022. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4 million, making it the third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are foreigners from other Muslim countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Ḥajj pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah. With over 10.8 million international visitors in 2023, Mecca was one of the ten most visited cities in the world.
Mechanics (Wikipedia) Mechanics (from Ancient Greek: μηχανική, mēkhanikḗ, lit. “of machines”) is the area of mathematics and physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among physical objects. Forces applied to objects result in displacements or changes of an object’s position relative to its environment.
Medina, Washington (Wikipedia) Medina (/məˈdaɪnə/) is a mostly residential city in Eastside, King County, Washington, United States. The city is on a peninsula in Lake Washington, on the opposite shore from Seattle, bordered by Clyde Hill and Hunts Point to the east and water on all other sides. The city’s population was 2,969 at the 2010 census. Billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, along with a number of Microsoft executives, have homes in Medina.
Mediterranean Basin (Wikipedia) In biogeography, the Mediterranean Basin (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən), also known as the Mediterranean Region or sometimes Mediterranea, is the region of lands around the Mediterranean Sea that have mostly a Mediterranean climate, with mild to cool, rainy winters and warm to hot, dry summers, which supports characteristic Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub vegetation. It was a very important part of Mediterranean civilizations.
Mediterranean Sea (Wikipedia) The Mediterranean Sea (/ˌmɛdɪtəˈreɪniən/ MED-ih-tə-RAY-nee-ən) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant in West Asia. The Mediterranean has played a central role in the history of Western civilization. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years during the Messinian salinity crisis before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.
Meissa (Wikipedia) Meissa /ˈmaɪsə/, designated Lambda Orionis (λ Orionis, abbreviated Lambda Ori, λ Ori) is a star in the constellation of Orion. It is a multiple star approximately 1,300 ly away with a combined apparent magnitude of 3.33. The main components are an O8 giant star and a B-class main sequence star, separated by about 4″. Despite Meissa being more luminous and only slightly further away than Rigel, it appears 3 magnitudes dimmer at visual wavelengths, with much of its radiation emitted in the ultraviolet due to its high temperature.
Mel Brooks (Wikipedia) Melvin James Brooks (né Kaminsky; born June 28, 1926) is an American actor, comedian, filmmaker, songwriter, and playwright. With a career spanning over seven decades, Brooks is known as a writer and director of a variety of successful broad farces and parodies. A recipient of numerous accolades, he is one of 19 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, a Grammy Award, an Academy Award, and a Tony Award. He received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2009, a Hollywood Walk of Fame star in 2010, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2013, a British Film Institute Fellowship in 2015, a National Medal of Arts in 2016, a BAFTA Fellowship in 2017, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2024.
Memex (Wikipedia) Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush’s 1945 article “As We May Think”. Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, “mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility”. The individual was supposed to use the memex as an automatic personal filing system, making the memex “an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory”. The name memex is a portmanteau of memory and expansion.
Men at Arms (Wikipedia) Men at Arms is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the 15th book in the Discworld series, first published in 1993. It is the second novel about the Ankh-Morpork City Watch on the Discworld. Lance-constable Angua von Überwald, later in the series promoted to the rank of Sergeant, is introduced in this book. Lance-constable (in the course of the novel promoted to Acting-constable) Detritus is introduced as a new member of the watch as well, though he had already appeared in other Discworld novels, most notably in Moving Pictures. Also notable is the only appearance of Lance-constable Cuddy (also promoted to Acting-constable).
Mendota Heights, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Mendota Heights (/mɛnˈdoʊtə/ men-DOH-tə) is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States. It is a first-ring southern suburb of the Twin Cities. The population was 11,744 at the 2020 census.
Mendota, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Mendota (/mɛnˈdoʊtə/ men-DOH-tə) is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States. The name is a mispronunciation of the Dakota word for the location, bdóte, which in Dakota tradition is the center of the world. The word in this use means “the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers,” and generally “mouth or junction of one river with another.” The population was 198 at the 2010 census.
Mensa (constellation) (Wikipedia) Mensa is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere near the south celestial pole, one of fourteen constellations drawn up in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille. Its name is Latin for table, though it originally commemorated Table Mountain and was known as “Mons Mensae”. One of the eighty-eight constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), it covers a keystone-shaped wedge of sky 153.5 square degrees in area. Other than the south polar constellation of Octans, it is the most southerly of constellations and is observable only south of the 5th parallel of the Northern Hemisphere.
Merak (star) (Wikipedia) Merak /ˈmɪəræk/, also called Beta Ursae Majoris (β Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Beta UMa, β UMa), is a star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major.
Mercer Island, Washington (Wikipedia) Mercer Island is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located on an island of the same name in the southern portion of Lake Washington. Mercer Island is in the Seattle metropolitan area, with Seattle to its west and Bellevue to its east.
Mercury (planet) (Wikipedia) Mercury is the smallest planet in the Solar System and the closest to the Sun. Its orbit around the Sun takes 87.97 Earth days, the shortest of all the Sun’s planets. It is named after the Roman god Mercurius (Mercury), god of commerce, messenger of the gods, and mediator between gods and mortals, corresponding to the Greek god Hermes (Ἑρμῆς). Like Venus, Mercury orbits the Sun within Earth’s orbit as an inferior planet, and its apparent distance from the Sun as viewed from Earth never exceeds 28°. This proximity to the Sun means the planet can only be seen near the western horizon after sunset or the eastern horizon before sunrise, usually in twilight. At this time, it may appear as a bright star-like object, but is more difficult to observe than Venus. From Earth, the planet telescopically displays the complete range of phases, similar to Venus and the Moon, which recurs over its synodic period of approximately 116 days. The synodic proximity of Mercury to Earth makes Mercury most of the time Earth’s closest planet, despite Venus at times approaching Earth closer than any other planet can.
Mescaline (Wikipedia) Mescaline or mescalin (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine) is a naturally occurring psychedelic protoalkaloid of the substituted phenethylamine class, known for its hallucinogenic effects comparable to those of LSD and psilocybin.
Mesoarchean (Wikipedia) The Mesoarchean (/ˌmiːzoʊ.ɑːrˈkiːən, ˌmɛzoʊ-/ MEE-zoh-ar-KEE-ən, MEZ-oh-, also spelled Mesoarchaean) is a geologic era in the Archean Eon, spanning 3,200 to 2,800 million years ago, which contains the first evidence of modern-style plate subduction and expansion of microbial life. The era is defined chronometrically and is not referenced to a specific level in a rock section on Earth.
Mesopotamia (Wikipedia) Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia occupies modern Iraq. In the broader sense, the historical region included present-day Iraq and parts of present-day Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Turkey.
Mesoproterozoic (Wikipedia) The Mesoproterozoic Era is a geologic era that occurred from 1,600 to 1,000 million years ago. The Mesoproterozoic was the first era of Earth’s history for which a fairly definitive geological record survives. Continents existed during the preceding era (the Paleoproterozoic), but little is known about them. The continental masses of the Mesoproterozoic were more or less the same ones that exist today, although their arrangement on the Earth’s surface was different.
Mesozoic (Wikipedia) The Mesozoic Era is the second-to-last era of Earth’s geological history, lasting from about 252 to 66 million years ago, comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. It is characterized by the dominance of archosaurian reptiles, such as the dinosaurs; a hot greenhouse climate; and the tectonic break-up of Pangaea. The Mesozoic is the middle of the three eras since complex life evolved: the Paleozoic, the Mesozoic, and the Cenozoic.
Messier 103 (Wikipedia) Messier 103 (also known as M103, or NGC 581) is a small open cluster of many faint stars in Cassiopeia. It was discovered on 27 March 1781 by Pierre Méchain, but later added as Charles Messier’s last deep-sky object in his catalogue.
Messier 35 (Wikipedia) Messier 35 or M35, also known as NGC 2168 or the Shoe-Buckle Cluster, is a relatively close open cluster of stars in the west of Gemini, at about the declination of the Sun when the latter is at June solstice. It was discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux around 1745 and independently discovered by John Bevis before 1750. It is scattered over part of the sky almost the size of the full moon and is 2,970 light-years (912 parsecs) away. The compact open cluster NGC 2158 lies directly southwest of it.
Messier 39 (Wikipedia) Messier 39 or M39, also known as NGC 7092, is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Cygnus, positioned two degrees to the south of the star Pi Cygni and around 9° east-northeast of Deneb. The cluster was discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749, then Charles Messier added it to his catalogue in 1764. When observed in a small telescope at low power the cluster shows around two dozen members but is best observed with binoculars. It has a total integrated magnitude (brightness) of 5.5 and spans an angular diameter of 29 arcminutes – about the size of the full Moon. It is centered about 1,010 light-years (311 parsecs) away.
Messier 4 (Wikipedia) Messier 4 or M4 (also known as NGC 6121 or the Spider Globular Cluster) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Scorpius. It was discovered by Philippe Loys de Chéseaux in 1745 and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1764. It was the first globular cluster in which individual stars were resolved.
Messier 41 (Wikipedia) Messier 41 (also known as M41 or NGC 2287) is an open cluster in the constellation Canis Major. It is sometimes referred to as the Little Beehive Cluster. It was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna before 1654 and was perhaps known to Aristotle about 325 BC. It lies about four degrees almost exactly south of Sirius, with which it forms a roughly equilateral triangle with Nu^2 Canis Majoris to the west—all three figure in the same field in binoculars.
Messier 52 (Wikipedia) Messier 52 or M52, also known as NGC 7654 or the Scorpion Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the highly northern constellation of Cassiopeia. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1774. It can be seen from Earth under a good night sky with binoculars. The brightness of the cluster is influenced by extinction, which is stronger in the southern half. Its metallicity is somewhat below that of the Sun, and is estimated to be [Fe/H] = −0.05 ± 0.01.
Messier 53 (Wikipedia) Messier 53 (also known as M53 or NGC 5024) is a globular cluster in the Coma Berenices constellation. It was discovered by Johann Elert Bode in 1775. M53 is one of the more outlying globular clusters, being about 60,000 light-years (18.4 kpc) light-years away from the Galactic Center, and almost the same distance (about 58,000 light-years (17.9 kpc)) from the Solar System. The cluster has a core radius (rc) of 2.18 pc, a half-light radius (rh) of 5.84 pc, and a tidal radius (rtr) of 239.9 pc.
Messier 56 (Wikipedia) Messier 56 (also known as M56 or NGC 6779) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lyra. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1779. It is angularly found about midway between Albireo (Beta (β) Cygni) and Sulafat (Gamma (γ) Lyrae). In a good night sky it is tricky to find with large (50–80 mm) binoculars, appearing as a slightly fuzzy star. The cluster can be resolved using a telescope with an aperture of 8 in (20 cm) or larger.
Messier 7 (Wikipedia) Messier 7 or M7, also designated NGC 6475 and sometimes known as the Ptolemy Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Scorpius. The cluster is easily detectable with the naked eye, close to the “stinger” of Scorpius. With a declination of −34.8°, it is the southernmost Messier object.
Messier 74 (Wikipedia) Messier 74 (also known as NGC 628 and Phantom Galaxy) is a large spiral galaxy in the equatorial constellation Pisces. It is about 32 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy contains two clearly defined spiral arms and is therefore used as an archetypal example of a grand design spiral galaxy. The galaxy’s low surface brightness makes it the most difficult Messier object for amateur astronomers to observe. Its relatively large angular (that is, apparent) size and the galaxy’s face-on orientation make it an ideal object for professional astronomers who want to study spiral arm structure and spiral density waves. It is estimated that M74 hosts about 100 billion stars.
Messier 78 (Wikipedia) Messier 78 or M78, also known as NGC 2068, is a reflection nebula in the constellation Orion. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and included by Charles Messier in his catalog of comet-like objects that same year.
Messier 79 (Wikipedia) Messier 79 (also known as M79 or NGC 1904) is a globular cluster in the southern constellation Lepus. It was discovered by Pierre Méchain in 1780 and is about 42,000 light-years away from Earth and 60,000 light years from the Galactic Center.
Messier 80 (Wikipedia) Messier 80 (also known as M80 or NGC 6093) is a globular cluster in the constellation Scorpius. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781, being one of his first discoveries.
Metal Ages (Wikipedia) The Metal Ages is a term for the period of human civilization beginning around 6,000 years ago in which metallurgy rapidly advanced and human populations started using metals such as copper, tin, bronze and finally iron, to make tools and weapons. By heating and shaping metals in hot furnaces, people also learned to use precious metals such as gold and silver to make intricate jewellery.
Metaphysics (Wikipedia) Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality. This includes the first principles of: being or existence, identity, change, space and time, cause and effect, necessity, actuality, and possibility.
Meteor shower (Wikipedia) A meteor shower is a celestial event in which a number of meteors are observed to radiate, or originate, from one point in the night sky. These meteors are caused by streams of cosmic debris called meteoroids entering Earth’s atmosphere at extremely high speeds on parallel trajectories. Most meteors are smaller than a grain of sand, so almost all of them disintegrate and never hit the Earth’s surface. Very intense or unusual meteor showers are known as meteor outbursts and meteor storms, which produce at least 1,000 meteors an hour, most notably from the Leonids. The Meteor Data Centre lists over 900 suspected meteor showers of which about 100 are well established. Several organizations point to viewing opportunities on the Internet. NASA maintains a daily map of active meteor showers.
Methamphetamine (Wikipedia) Methamphetamine (contracted from N-methylamphetamine) is a potent central nervous system (CNS) stimulant that is mainly used as a recreational drug and less commonly as a second-line treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obesity. Methamphetamine was discovered in 1893 and exists as two enantiomers: levo-methamphetamine and dextro-methamphetamine. Methamphetamine properly refers to a specific chemical substance, the racemic free base, which is an equal mixture of levomethamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine in their pure amine forms, but the hydrochloride salt, commonly called crystal meth, is widely used. Methamphetamine is rarely prescribed over concerns involving human neurotoxicity and potential for recreational use as an aphrodisiac and euphoriant, among other concerns, as well as the availability of safer substitute drugs with comparable treatment efficacy such as Adderall and Vyvanse. Dextromethamphetamine is a stronger CNS stimulant than levomethamphetamine.
Methow River (Wikipedia) The Methow River (/ˈmɛthaʊ/ MET-how) is a tributary of the Columbia River in northern Washington in the United States. The river’s 1,890-square-mile (4,900 km2) watershed drains the eastern North Cascades, with a population of about 5,000 people. The Methow’s watershed is characterized by relatively pristine habitats, as much of the river basin is located in national forests and wildernesses. Many tributaries drain the large Pasayten Wilderness. An earlier economy based on agriculture is giving way to one based on recreation and tourism.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (Wikipedia) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. It is the largest art museum in the Americas and the fourth-largest in the world. With 5.36 million visitors in 2023, it is the most-visited museum in the United States and the fourth-most visited art museum in the world.
Mexico (Wikipedia) Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and to the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico covers 1,972,550 km2 (761,610 sq mi), making it the world’s 13th-largest country by area; with a population of over 126 million, it is the 10th-most-populous country and has the most Spanish speakers. Mexico is organized as a federal republic comprising 31 states and Mexico City, its capital. Other major urban areas include Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Toluca, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and León.
Michigan (Wikipedia) Michigan (/ˈmɪʃɪɡən/) is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. It has land borders with Wisconsin to the southwest, and Indiana and Ohio to the south, and Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie also connect it to the states of Minnesota and Illinois, and the Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly 97,000 sq mi (250,000 km2), Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the largest by area east of the Mississippi River. Its capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit. Metro Detroit is among the nation’s most populous and largest metropolitan economies. Its name derives from a gallicized variant of the original Ojibwe word ᒥᓯᑲᒥ (mishigami), meaning “large water” or “large lake”.
Microprocessor (Wikipedia) A microprocessor is a computer processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circuitry required to perform the functions of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU). The IC is capable of interpreting and executing program instructions and performing arithmetic operations. The microprocessor is a multipurpose, clock-driven, register-based, digital integrated circuit that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results (also in binary form) as output. Microprocessors contain both combinational logic and sequential digital logic, and operate on numbers and symbols represented in the binary number system.
Microscopium (Wikipedia) Microscopium /ˌmaɪkrəˈskɒpiəm/ (“the Microscope”) is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. The name is a Latinised form of the Greek word for microscope. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere.
Microsoft (Wikipedia) Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft’s best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue as of 2022. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta (parent company of Facebook).
Microsoft Build (Wikipedia) Microsoft Build (often stylised as //build/) is an annual conference event held by Microsoft, aimed at software engineers and web developers using Windows, Microsoft Azure and other Microsoft technologies. First held in 2011, it serves as a successor for Microsoft’s previous developer events, the Professional Developers Conference (an infrequent event which covered development of software for the Windows operating system) and MIX (which covered web development centering on Microsoft technology such as Silverlight and ASP.net). The attendee price was (US)$2,195 in 2016, up from $2,095 in 2015. It sold out quickly, within one minute of the registration site opening in 2016.
Microsoft campus (Wikipedia) The Microsoft campus is the corporate headquarters of Microsoft Corporation, located in Redmond, Washington, United States, a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Microsoft initially moved onto the grounds of the campus on February 26, 1986, shortly before going public on March 13. The headquarters has undergone multiple expansions since its establishment and is presently estimated to encompass over 8 million square feet (740,000 m2) of office space and have over 50,000 employees.
Microsoft Windows (Wikipedia) Microsoft Windows is a product line of proprietary graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and sub-families that cater to particular sectors of the computing industry – Windows (unqualified) for a consumer or corporate workstation, Windows Server for a server and Windows IoT for an embedded system. Defunct families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, and Windows Embedded Compact.
Mid-Atlantic (United States) (Wikipedia) The Mid-Atlantic is a region of the United States located in the overlap between the Northeastern and Southeastern states of the United States. The region typically includes five states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, and the national capital of Washington, D.C.. Virginia and West Virginia are sometimes included in definitions of the region’s geography. The region has its origin in 18th century, and its states were each among the Thirteen Colonies of pre-revolutionary British America.
Middle East (Wikipedia) The Middle East (term originally coined in English) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage as a replacement of the term Near East (as opposed to the Far East) beginning in the early 20th century. The term “Middle East” has led to some confusion over its changing definitions, and being seen as too Eurocentric. The region includes the vast majority of the territories included in the closely associated definition of West Asia, but without the South Caucasus, and additionally includes all of Egypt (not just the Sinai) and all of Turkey (not just the part barring East Thrace).
Middle Jurassic (Wikipedia) The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 163.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations containing land animal fossils include the Forest Marble Formation in England, the Kilmaluag Formation in Scotland, the Calcaire de Caen of France, the Daohugou Beds in China, the Itat Formation in Russia, the Tiouraren Formation of Niger, and the Isalo III Formation of western Madagascar.
Middle Triassic (Wikipedia) In the geologic timescale, the Middle Triassic is the second of three epochs of the Triassic period or the middle of three series in which the Triassic system is divided in chronostratigraphy. The Middle Triassic spans the time between 247.2 Ma and 237 Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Early Triassic Epoch and followed by the Late Triassic Epoch. The Middle Triassic is divided into the Anisian and Ladinian ages or stages.
Midwestern United States (Wikipedia) The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as “Region 2”). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It was officially named the North Central Region by the U.S. Census Bureau until 1984. It is between the Northeastern United States and the Western United States, with Canada to the north and the Southern United States to the south.
Milky Way (Wikipedia) The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy’s appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye. The term Milky Way is a translation of the Latin via lactea, from the Greek γαλαξίας κύκλος (galaxías kýklos), meaning “milky circle”. From Earth, the Milky Way appears as a band because its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within. Galileo Galilei first resolved the band of light into individual stars with his telescope in 1610. Until the early 1920s, most astronomers thought that the Milky Way contained all the stars in the Universe. Following the 1920 Great Debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Doust Curtis, observations by Edwin Hubble showed that the Milky Way is just one of many galaxies.
Mill Creek, Washington (Wikipedia) Mill Creek is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located between the cities of Everett and Lynnwood, approximately 20 miles (32 km) northeast of Seattle. The city has a population of 20,926 as of the 2020 census. The city lies along State Route 527 and North Creek, a tributary of the Sammamish River, on the east side of Interstate 5.
Millennials (Wikipedia) Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000s as ending birth years, with the generation typically being defined as people born from 1981 to 1996. Most Millennials are the children of Baby Boomers and older Generation X. In turn Millennials are often the parents of Generation Alpha.
Milton, Washington (Wikipedia) Milton is a city in King County and Pierce County counties in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 8,697 at the time of the 2020 census. Milton borders the larger but newer town of Edgewood.
Mimosa (star) (Wikipedia) Mimosa is the second-brightest object in the southern constellation of Crux (after Acrux), and the 20th-brightest star in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation β Crucis, which is Latinised to Beta Crucis and abbreviated Beta Cru or β Cru. Mimosa forms part of the prominent asterism called the Southern Cross. It is a binary star or a possible triple star system.
Mind at Large (Wikipedia) Mind at Large is a concept proposed by Aldous Huxley to help interpret psychedelic experience. He maintained that the human mind filters reality under normal circumstances and that psychedelic drugs remove the filter, exposing the user to a Mind at Large.
Mind–body dualism (Wikipedia) In the philosophy of mind, mind–body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical, or that the mind and body are distinct and separable. Thus, it encompasses a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter, as well as between subject and object, and is contrasted with other positions, such as physicalism and enactivism, in the mind–body problem.
Mineral (Wikipedia) In geology and mineralogy, a mineral or mineral species is, broadly speaking, a solid substance with a fairly well-defined chemical composition and a specific crystal structure that occurs naturally in pure form.
Minneapolis (Wikipedia) Minneapolis (/ˌmɪniˈæpəlɪs/ (listen) MIN-ee-AP-əl-iss), officially the City of Minneapolis, is a city in the state of Minnesota and the county seat of Hennepin County. As of the 2020 census the population was 429,954, making it the largest city in Minnesota and the 46th-most-populous in the United States. Nicknamed the “City of Lakes”, Minneapolis is abundant in water, with thirteen lakes, wetlands, the Mississippi River, creeks, and waterfalls. Minneapolis has its origins as the 19th century lumber and flour milling capitals of the world, and, to the present day, preserved its financial clout. It occupies both banks of the Mississippi River and adjoins Saint Paul, the state capital of Minnesota.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul (Wikipedia) Minneapolis–Saint Paul is a metropolitan area in the Upper Midwestern United States centered around the confluence of the Mississippi, Minnesota and St. Croix rivers in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is commonly known as the Twin Cities after the area’s two largest cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Minnesotans often refer to the two together (or the seven-county metro area collectively) simply as “the cities”. The area is Minnesota’s economic, cultural, and political center.
Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (Wikipedia) Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport (IATA: MSP, ICAO: KMSP, FAA LID: MSP), also less commonly known as Wold–Chamberlain Field, is a joint civil-military public international airport serving the Twin Cities in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It is located in Fort Snelling Unorganized Territory. Although situated within the unorganized territory, the airport is centrally located within 10 miles (16 kilometers; 9 nautical miles) of both downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. In addition to primarily hosting commercial flights from major American and some international airlines, the airport is also home to several United States Air Force and Minnesota Air National Guard operations. The airport is also used by a variety of air cargo operators. MSP is the busiest airport in the Upper Midwest.
Minnesota (Wikipedia) Minnesota (/ˌmɪnɪˈsoʊtə/ (listen)) is a state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to intensive agriculture; deciduous forests in the southeast, now partially cleared, farmed, and settled; and the less populated North Woods, used for mining, forestry, and recreation. Roughly a third of the state is covered in forests, and it is known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” for having over 14,000 bodies of fresh water covering at least ten acres each. More than 60% of Minnesotans live in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, known as the “Twin Cities”, the state’s main political, economic, and cultural hub. With a population of about 3.7 million, the Twin Cities is the 16th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Other minor metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas in the state include Duluth, Mankato, Moorhead, Rochester, and St. Cloud.
Minnesota Commercial Railway (Wikipedia)
Minnesota River (Wikipedia) The Minnesota River (Dakota: Mnísota Wakpá) is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 332 miles (534 km) long, in the U.S. state of Minnesota. It drains a watershed of 14,751 square miles (38,200 km2) in Minnesota and about 2,000 sq mi (5,200 km2) in South Dakota and Iowa.
Minnesota State Fair (Wikipedia)
Minnesota State Highway 95 (Wikipedia) Minnesota State Highway 95 (MN 95) is a 126.892-mile-long (204.213 km) highway in east-central Minnesota, which runs from its intersection with State Highway 23 near St. Cloud and continues east and south to its southern terminus at its intersection with U.S. Highways 61 / 10 (co-signed) at Cottage Grove.
Minnesota Transfer Railway (Wikipedia)
Mintaka (Wikipedia) Mintaka /ˈmɪntəkə/, designation Delta Orionis (δ Orionis, abbreviated Delta Ori, δ Ori) and 34 Orionis (34 Ori), is a multiple star system some 1,200 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Orion. Together with Alnitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alnilam (Epsilon Orionis), the three stars form Orion’s Belt, known by many names among ancient cultures. The star is located very close to the celestial equator. When Orion is near the meridian, Mintaka is the rightmost of the Belt’s stars when viewed from the Northern Hemisphere facing south.
Miocene (Wikipedia) The Miocene (/ˈmaɪ.əsiːn, -oʊ-/ MY-ə-seen, -⁠oh-) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about 23.03 to 5.333 million years ago (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words μείων (meíōn, “less”) and καινός (kainós, “new”) and means “less recent” because it has 18% fewer modern marine invertebrates than the Pliocene has. The Miocene is preceded by the Oligocene and is followed by the Pliocene.
Mississippi (Wikipedia) Mississippi (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi/) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Mississippi’s western boundary is largely defined by the Mississippi River. Mississippi is the 32nd largest by area and 35th-most populous of the 50 U.S. states and has the lowest per-capita income in the United States. Jackson is both the state’s capital and largest city. Greater Jackson is the state’s most populous metropolitan area, with a population of 591,978 in 2020.
Mississippi River (Wikipedia) The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it flows generally south for 2,340 miles (3,766 km) to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi’s watershed drains all or parts of 32 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces between the Rocky and Appalachian mountains. The main stem is entirely within the United States; the total drainage basin is 1,151,000 sq mi (2,980,000 km2), of which only about one percent is in Canada. The Mississippi ranks as the thirteenth-largest river by discharge in the world. The river either borders or passes through the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
Mississippian (geology) (Wikipedia) The Mississippian (/ˌmɪsɪˈsɪpi.ən/ miss-ə-SIP-ee-ən, also known as Lower Carboniferous or Early Carboniferous) is a subperiod in the geologic timescale or a subsystem of the geologic record. It is the earlier of two subperiods of the Carboniferous period lasting from roughly 358.9 to 323.2 million years ago. As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Mississippian are well identified, but the exact start and end dates are uncertain by a few million years. The Mississippian is so named because rocks with this age are exposed in the Mississippi Valley.
Missouri (Wikipedia) Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska to the west. In the south are the Ozarks, a forested highland, providing timber, minerals, and recreation. The Missouri River, after which the state is named, flows through the center into the Mississippi River, which makes up the eastern border. With more than six million residents, it is the 19th-most populous state of the country. The largest urban areas are St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and Columbia; the capital is Jefferson City.
Mitragyna speciosa (Wikipedia) Mitragyna speciosa (commonly known as kratom, an herbal leaf from a tree of the Rubiaceae family) is a tropical evergreen tree in the coffee family native to Southeast Asia. It is indigenous to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea, where it has been used in herbal medicine since at least the 19th century. It has also historically been used for chewing, smoking, and tea. Kratom has opioid properties and some stimulant-like effects.
Mizar (Wikipedia) Mizar /ˈmaɪzɑːr/ is a second-magnitude star in the handle of the Big Dipper asterism in the constellation of Ursa Major. It has the Bayer designation ζ Ursae Majoris (Latinised as Zeta Ursae Majoris). It forms a well-known naked eye double star with the fainter star Alcor, and is itself a quadruple star system. The Mizar and Alcor system lies about 83 light-years away from the Sun, as measured by the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, and is part of the Ursa Major Moving Group.
Moganite (Wikipedia) Moganite is an oxide mineral with the chemical formula SiO2 (silicon dioxide) that was discovered in 1976. It was initially described as a new form of silica from specimens found in the Barranco de Medio Almud, in the municipality of Mogán on the island of Gran Canaria, in the Canary Islands (Spain), receiving in a later work the name derived from this locality. In 1994 the International Mineralogical Association decided to disapprove it as a valid mineral, since it was considered indistinguishable from quartz. Subsequent studies allowed the IMA to rectify it in 1999, accepting it as a mineral species. It has the same chemical composition as quartz, but a different crystal structure.
Moldova (Wikipedia) Moldova (/mɒlˈdoʊvə/ mol-DOH-və, sometimes UK: /ˈmɒldəvə/ MOL-də-və; Romanian pronunciation: [molˈdova]), officially the Republic of Moldova (Romanian: Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, on the northeastern corner of the Balkans. The country spans a total of 33,483 km2 (13,067 sq mi) and has a population of approximately 2.5 million as of January 2023. Moldova is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised breakaway state of Transnistria lies across the Dniester river on the country’s eastern border with Ukraine. Moldova is a unitary parliamentary representative democratic republic with its capital in Chișinău, the country’s largest city and main cultural and commercial centre.
Mollusca (Wikipedia) Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals, after Arthropoda; members are known as molluscs or mollusks (/ˈmɒləsk/). Around 76,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is estimated between 60,000 and 100,000 additional species. The proportion of undescribed species is very high. Many taxa remain poorly studied.
Molucca Sea Collision Zone (Wikipedia) The Molucca Sea Collision Zone is postulated by paleogeologists to explain the tectonics of the area based on the Molucca Sea in Indonesia, and adjacent involved areas.
Monaco (Wikipedia) Monaco, officially the Principality of Monaco, is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Liguria, in Western Europe, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by France to the north, east and west. The principality is home to 38,682 residents, of whom 9,486 are Monégasque nationals; it is widely recognised as one of the most expensive and wealthiest places in the world. The official language of the principality is French. In addition, Monégasque (a variety of Ligurian), English and Italian are spoken and understood by many residents.
Mongolia (Wikipedia) Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of 1,564,116 square kilometres (603,909 square miles), with a population of just 3.3 million, making it the world’s most sparsely populated sovereign state. Mongolia is the world’s largest landlocked country that does not border a closed sea, and much of its area is covered by grassy steppe, with mountains to the north and west and the Gobi Desert to the south. Ulaanbaatar, the capital and largest city, is home to roughly half of the country’s population.
Monoamine oxidase inhibitor (Wikipedia) Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) are a class of drugs that inhibit the activity of one or both monoamine oxidase enzymes: monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A) and monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B). They are best known as effective antidepressants, especially for treatment-resistant depression and atypical depression. They are also used to treat panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, Parkinson’s disease, and several other disorders.
Monoceros (Wikipedia) Monoceros (Greek: Μονόκερως, “unicorn”) is a faint constellation on the celestial equator. Its definition is attributed to the 17th-century Dutch cartographer Petrus Plancius. It is bordered by Orion to the west, Gemini to the north, Canis Major to the south, and Hydra to the east. Other bordering constellations include Canis Minor, Lepus, and Puppis.
Monogon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a monogon, also known as a henagon, is a polygon with one edge and one vertex. It has Schläfli symbol {1}.
Monroe, Washington (Wikipedia) Monroe is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Skykomish, Snohomish, and Snoqualmie rivers near the Cascade foothills, about 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Seattle. Monroe’s population was 19,699 as of the 2020 census and was estimated to be 20,209 in 2021.
Montana (Wikipedia) Montana (/mɒnˈtænə/) is a state in the Mountain division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west; North Dakota and South Dakota to the east; Wyoming to the south; and by the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan to the north. It is the fourth-largest state by area, the eighth-least populous state, and the third-least densely populated state. Its state capital is Helena. The western half of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges, while the eastern half is characterized by western prairie terrain and badlands, with smaller mountain ranges found throughout the state. In all, 77 named ranges are part of the Rocky Mountains.
Montenegro (Wikipedia) Montenegro (/ˌmɒntɪˈniːɡroʊ, -ˈneɪɡroʊ, -ˈnɛɡroʊ/ MON-tin-E(E)G-roh, -⁠AY-groh; Montenegrin: Crna Gora / Црна Гора; Albanian: Mali i Zi; lit. ‘Black Mountain’) is a country in Southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. It is bordered by Bosnia and Herzegovina to the north, Serbia to the northeast, Kosovo to the east, Albania to the southeast, and Croatia and the Adriatic Sea to the northwest with a coastline of 293.5 km. Podgorica (Cyrillic: Подгорица) is the country’s capital and its largest city; it covers 10.4% of Montenegro’s territory of 13,812 square kilometres (5,333 sq mi), and is home to roughly 31% of its total population of 621,000. Cetinje (Cyrillic: Цетиње) is the former royal capital and cultural centre of Montenegro and is the location of several national institutions, including the official residence of the President of Montenegro.
Montesano, Washington (Wikipedia) Montesano is a city in, and the county seat of, Grays Harbor County, Washington, United States. The population was 4,138 at the 2020 Census.
Montlake Bridge (Wikipedia) The Montlake Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that carries State Route 513 (Montlake Boulevard) over Seattle’s Montlake Cut—part of the [Lake Washington Ship Canal](/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Washington_Ship_Canal/—connecting Montlake and the University District.
Montlake Cut (Wikipedia) The Montlake Cut is the easternmost section of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound. It opened in 1916 after 56 years of conversation and construction to create the manmade canal.
Montlake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Montlake is a wealthy residential neighborhood in central Seattle, Washington. It is located along the Montlake Cut of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, bounded to the north by Portage Bay, to the east by the Washington Park Arboretum, and to the south and west by Interlaken Park. Capitol Hill is on its south and west sides, and the University of Washington campus lies across the Montlake Cut to the north. State Route 520 runs through the northern tip of Montlake, isolating four blocks from the rest of the neighborhood. The (unofficial) City Clerk’s map of Montlake considers it to extend further west, past Interlake Park, extending to Broadway Avenue E. and, between Lynn Street and State Route 520, all the way to Interstate 5.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Wikipedia) Monty Python’s Life of Brian (also known as Life of Brian) is a 1979 British comedy film starring and written by the comedy group Monty Python (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin). It was directed by Jones. The film tells the story of Brian Cohen (played by Chapman), a young Jewish-Roman man who is born on the same day as—and next door to—Jesus, and is subsequently mistaken for the Messiah.
Moon (Wikipedia) The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. Its diameter is about one-quarter of Earth’s (comparable to the width of Australia), making it the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet. It is larger than all known dwarf planets in the Solar System. The Moon is a planetary-mass object with a differentiated rocky body, making it a satellite planet under the geophysical definitions of the term. It lacks any significant atmosphere, hydrosphere, or magnetic field. Its surface gravity is about one-sixth of Earth’s at 0.1654 g—Jupiter’s moon Io is the only satellite in the Solar System known to have a higher surface gravity and density.
Morocco (Wikipedia) Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to the east, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara to the south. Morocco also claims the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta, Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, and several small Spanish-controlled islands off its coast. It has a population of roughly 37 million, the official and predominant religion is Islam, and the official languages are Arabic and Berber; French and the Moroccan dialect of Arabic are also widely spoken. Moroccan identity and culture is a mix of Arab, Berber, African and European cultures. Its capital is Rabat, while its largest city is Casablanca.
Mort (Wikipedia) Mort is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett. Published in 1987, it is the fourth Discworld novel and the first to focus on the character Death, who only appeared as a side character in the previous novels. The title is the name of its main character, and is also a play on words: in French and Catalan, mort means “death”. The French language edition is titled Mortimer, and the Catalan language edition is titled Morth.
Morton Gneiss (Wikipedia) Morton gneiss, also known as rainbow gneiss, is an [Archean](/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archean/-age gneiss found in the Minnesota River Valley of southwestern Minnesota, United States. It is one of the oldest stones on Earth, at about 3.5 billion years old. Along with the nearby Montevideo Gneiss, it is the oldest intact continental crust rock in the United States. Its type locality is in Morton, Minnesota.
Moscone Center (Wikipedia) The George R. Moscone Convention Center (pronounced /mɒsˈkoʊni/), popularly known as the Moscone Center, is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California. The complex consists of three main halls spread out across three blocks and 87 acres (35 ha) in the South of Market neighborhood. The convention center originally opened in 1981. It is named after San Francisco former mayor George Moscone, who was assassinated in November 1978.
Moscow (Wikipedia) Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 18.8 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world’s largest cities, being the most populous city in its entirety in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.
Mosquito (Wikipedia) Mosquitoes, the Culicidae, are a family of small flies consisting of 3,600 species. The word mosquito (formed by mosca and diminutive -ito) is Spanish and Portuguese for little fly. Mosquitoes have a slender segmented body, one pair of wings, three pairs of long hair-like legs, and specialized, highly elongated, piercing-sucking mouthparts. All mosquitoes drink nectar from flowers; females of some species have in addition adapted to drink blood. The group diversified during the Cretaceous period. Evolutionary biologists view mosquitoes as micropredators, small animals that parasitise larger ones by drinking their blood without immediately killing them. Medical parasitologists view mosquitoes instead as vectors of disease, carrying protozoan parasites or bacterial or viral pathogens from one host to another.
Moss (Wikipedia) Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (/braɪˈɒfətə/, /ˌbraɪ.əˈfaɪtə/) sensu stricto. Bryophyta (sensu lato, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hornworts. Mosses typically form dense green clumps or mats, often in damp or shady locations. The individual plants are usually composed of simple leaves that are generally only one cell thick, attached to a stem that may be branched or unbranched and has only a limited role in conducting water and nutrients. Although some species have conducting tissues, these are generally poorly developed and structurally different from similar tissue found in vascular plants. Mosses do not have seeds and after fertilisation develop sporophytes with unbranched stalks topped with single capsules containing spores. They are typically 0.2–10 cm (0.1–3.9 in) tall, though some species are much larger. Dawsonia, the tallest moss in the world, can grow to 50 cm (20 in) in height. There are approximately 12,000 species.
Mounds View, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Mounds View is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 13,249 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area.
Mount Baker (Wikipedia) Mount Baker (Lummi: Qwú’mə Kwəlshéːn; Nooksack: Kw’eq Smaenit or Kwelshán), also known as Koma Kulshan or simply Kulshan, is a 10,781 ft (3,286 m) active glacier-covered andesitic stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc and the North Cascades of Washington in the United States. Mount Baker has the second-most thermally active crater in the Cascade Range after Mount St. Helens. About 30 miles (48 km) due east of the city of Bellingham, Whatcom County, Mount Baker is the youngest volcano in the Mount Baker volcanic field. While volcanism has persisted here for some 1.5 million years, the current volcanic cone is likely no more than 140,000 years old, and possibly no older than 80–90,000 years. Older volcanic edifices have mostly eroded away due to glaciation.
Mount Baker Wilderness (Wikipedia) Mount Baker Wilderness is a 119,989-acre (48,558 ha) wilderness area within the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in the western Cascade Range of northern Washington state. Its eastern border is shared with the boundary of the Stephen Mather Wilderness and North Cascades National Park for a distance of 40 miles (65 kilometers). The wilderness extends from State Route 20 north to the Canada–US border. On the west, it is bounded by the foothills of the Puget Sound lowlands.
Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest (Wikipedia) The Mount Baker–Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington is a National Forest extending more than 140 miles (230 km) along the western slopes of the Cascade Range from the Canada–US border to the northern boundary of Mount Rainier National Park. Administered by the United States Forest Service, the forest is headquartered in Everett. There are local ranger district offices in North Bend and Skykomish.
Mount Baker, Seattle (Wikipedia) Mount Baker is a neighborhood in southeast Seattle. The neighborhood’s name comes from the view of Mount Baker in Whatcom County, that is seen by looking north over Lake Washington. It is bounded by Lake Washington to the east, Interstate 90 and then Leschi to the north, Rainier Valley to the west, and Columbia City to the south. The neighborhood has a community club and a rowing team. It hosts Seattle’s annual Seafair, which includes an airshow featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, hydroplane races, a fireworks show, and other festivities. Franklin High School and Garfield High School serve this area. It is part of Seattle’s South End.
Mount Daniel (Wikipedia) Mount Daniel is the highest summit on the Cascade Range crest of Alpine Lakes Wilderness of the central Washington, United States. It is the highest point in King and Kittitas counties. Streams on its eastern slopes form the headwaters of the Cle Elum River.
Mount Persis (Wikipedia) Mount Persis is a 5,464 ft summit located in Snohomish County, of Washington state. The mountain is part of the Cascade Range and is situated in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. The mountain was named for Persis Gunn, the wife of homesteader/miner Amos Gunn who started the nearby town of Index, Washington, and also named nearby Mount Index. Precipitation runoff from the mountain drains into tributaries of the Skykomish River. The rocks of Mount Persis are volcanic in origin and are considered amongst some of the earliest expressions of volcanism in the Cascade Mountain range in Washington.
Mount Rainier (Wikipedia) Mount Rainier (/reɪˈnɪər/ ray-NEER), also known as Tahoma, is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest in the United States. The mountain is located in Mount Rainier National Park about 59 miles (95 km) south-southeast of Seattle. With a summit elevation of 14,417 ft (4,394 m), it is the highest mountain in the U.S. state of Washington and the Cascade Range, the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous United States, and the tallest in the Cascade Volcanic Arc.
Mount Rushmore (Wikipedia) The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a national memorial centered on a colossal sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore (Lakota: Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, or Six Grandfathers) in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum designed the sculpture, called Shrine of Democracy, and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. The sculpture features the 60-foot-tall (18 m) heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, chosen to represent the nation’s birth, growth, development, and preservation, respectively. Mount Rushmore attracts more than two million visitors annually to the memorial park which covers 1,278 acres (2.00 sq mi; 5.17 km2). The mountain’s elevation is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.
Mount Shuksan (Wikipedia) Mount Shuksan is a glaciated massif in the North Cascades National Park. Shuksan rises in Whatcom County, Washington immediately to the east of Mount Baker, and 11.6 miles (18.7 km) south of the Canada–US border. The mountain’s name Shuksan is derived from the Lummi word [šéqsən], said to mean “high peak”. The highest point on the mountain is a three-sided peak known as Summit Pyramid.
Mount Vernon, Washington (Wikipedia) Mount Vernon is the county seat of Skagit County, Washington, United States. The population was 35,219 at the 2020 census. It is one of two principal cities of and included in the Mount Vernon-Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area. Downtown Mount Vernon is known for its annual Tulip Festival Street Fair, which is part of the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The climate of Skagit County is similar to that of Northern France, with millions of tulips grown in the Skagit Valley. In 1998, Mount Vernon was rated the #1 “Best City in America” by the New Rating Guide to Life in America’s Small Cities.
Mount Whitney (Wikipedia) Mount Whitney (Paiute: Tumanguya; Too-man-i-goo-yah) is the highest mountain in the contiguous United States and the Sierra Nevada, with an elevation of 14,505 feet (4,421 m). It is in East–Central California, on the boundary between California’s Inyo and Tulare counties, and 84.6 miles (136.2 km) west-northwest of North America’s lowest point, Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, at 282 ft (86 m) below sea level. The mountain’s west slope is in Sequoia National Park and the summit is the southern terminus of the John Muir Trail, which runs 211.9 mi (341.0 km) from Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley. The eastern slopes are in Inyo National Forest in Inyo County. Mount Whitney is ranked 18th by topographic isolation.
Mountain Loop Highway (Wikipedia) The Mountain Loop Highway is a scenic byway in the U.S. state of Washington. It traverses the western section of the Cascade Range within Snohomish County. The name suggests it forms a full loop, but it only is a small portion of a loop, which is completed using State Routes 92, 9, and 530. Part of the highway is also a designated and signed Forest Highway, and is known as Forest Route 20.
Mountain states (Wikipedia) The Mountain states (also known as the Mountain West or the Interior West) form one of the nine geographic divisions of the United States that are officially recognized by the United States Census Bureau. It is a subregion of the Western United States.
Mountlake Terrace, Washington (Wikipedia) Mountlake Terrace is a suburban city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It lies on the southern border of the county, adjacent to Shoreline and Lynnwood, and is 13 miles (21 km) north of Seattle. The city had a population of 19,909 people counted in the 2010 census.
Moving Pictures (novel) (Wikipedia) Moving Pictures is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, published in 1990, the tenth book in his Discworld series. The book takes place in Discworld’s most famous city, Ankh-Morpork and a hill called “Holy Wood”.
Mozambique (Wikipedia) Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the southwest. The sovereign state is separated from the Comoros, Mayotte and Madagascar by the Mozambique Channel to the east. The capital and largest city is Maputo.
MS-DOS (Wikipedia) MS-DOS (/ˌɛmˌɛsˈdɒs/ em-es-DOSS; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few operating systems attempting to be compatible with MS-DOS, are sometimes referred to as “DOS” (which is also the generic acronym for disk operating system). MS-DOS was the main operating system for IBM PC compatibles during the 1980s, from which point it was gradually superseded by operating systems offering a graphical user interface (GUI), in various generations of the graphical Microsoft Windows operating system.
Mu Ursae Majoris (Wikipedia) Mu Ursae Majoris (μ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Mu UMa, μ UMa), formally named Tania Australis /ˈteɪniə ɔːˈstreɪlɪs/, is a binary star in the constellation of Ursa Major. An apparent visual magnitude of +3.06 places it among the brighter members of the constellation.
Muhammad (Wikipedia) Muhammad (Arabic: مُحَمَّد, romanized: Muḥammad; English: /moʊˈhɑːməd/; Arabic: [mʊˈħæm.mæd]; c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet divinely inspired to preach and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He is believed to be the Seal of the Prophets within Islam, with the Quran as well as his teachings and practices forming the basis for Islamic religious belief.
Mukilteo, Washington (Wikipedia) Mukilteo (/ˌmʌkəlˈtiːoʊ/ MUK-əl-TEE-oh; Lushootseed: bək̓ʷəɬtiwʔ) is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located on Puget Sound between Edmonds and Everett, approximately 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle. The city had a population of 20,254 at the 2010 census and an estimated 2019 population of 21,441.
Multicellular organism (Wikipedia) A multicellular organism is an organism that consists of more than one cell, in contrast to unicellular organism. All species of animals, land plants and most fungi are multicellular, as are many algae, whereas a few organisms are partially uni- and partially multicellular, like slime molds and social amoebae such as the genus Dictyostelium.
Multiverse (Wikipedia) The multiverse is a hypothetical group of multiple universes. Together, these universes are presumed to comprise everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The different universes within the multiverse are called “parallel universes”, “other universes”, “alternate universes”, or “many worlds”. One common assumption is that the multiverse is a “patchwork quilt of separate universes all bound by the same laws of physics.”
Mumford & Sons (Wikipedia) Mumford & Sons are a British folk rock band formed in London in 2007. The band consists of Marcus Mumford (lead vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, drums), Ted Dwane (vocals, bass guitar, double bass), and Ben Lovett (vocals, keyboards, piano).
Mural (Wikipedia) A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage.
Murder of Laken Riley (Wikipedia) On February 22, 2024, Laken Riley, an American 22-year-old nursing student at Augusta University, was kidnapped and murdered while she was jogging at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia. Her body was found near a lake of a wooded area at UGA; her death was caused by blunt force trauma. The police described Riley’s killing as a “crime of opportunity”.
Musca (Wikipedia) Musca (Latin for ‘“the fly”’) is a small constellation in the deep southern sky. It was one of 12 constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, and it first appeared on a celestial globe 35 cm (14 in) in diameter published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603. It was also known as Apis (Latin for ‘“the bee”’) for 200 years. Musca remains below the horizon for most Northern Hemisphere observers.
Mushroom (Wikipedia) A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Toadstool generally denotes one poisonous to humans.
Music venue (Wikipedia) A music venue is any location used for a concert or musical performance. Music venues range in size and location, from a small coffeehouse for folk music shows, an outdoor bandshell or bandstand or a concert hall to an indoor sports stadium. Typically, different types of venues host different genres of music. Opera houses, bandshells, and concert halls host classical music performances, whereas public houses (“pubs”), nightclubs, and discothèques offer music in contemporary genres, such as rock, dance, country, and pop.
Myanmar (Wikipedia) Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and also known as Burma (the official name until 1989), is a country in Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has a population of about 55 million. It is bordered by Bangladesh and India to its northwest, China to its northeast, Laos and Thailand to its east and southeast, and the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal to its south and southwest. The country’s capital city is Naypyidaw, and its largest city is Yangon (formerly Rangoon).
Myanmar civil war (2021–present) (Wikipedia) The Myanmar civil war, also called the Myanmar Spring Revolution and the People’s Defensive War, is an ongoing civil war following Myanmar’s long-running insurgencies, which escalated significantly in response to the 2021 military coup d’état and the subsequent violent crackdown on anti-coup protests.
Mycelium (Wikipedia) Mycelium (plural mycelia) is a root-like structure of a fungus consisting of a mass of branching, thread-like hyphae. Fungal colonies composed of mycelium are found in and on soil and many other substrates. A typical single spore germinates into a monokaryotic mycelium, which cannot reproduce sexually; when two compatible monokaryotic mycelia join and form a dikaryotic mycelium, that mycelium may form fruiting bodies such as mushrooms. A mycelium may be minute, forming a colony that is too small to see, or may grow to span thousands of acres as in Armillaria.
n-body problem (Wikipedia) In physics, the n-body problem is the problem of predicting the individual motions of a group of celestial objects interacting with each other gravitationally. Solving this problem has been motivated by the desire to understand the motions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and visible stars. In the 20th century, understanding the dynamics of globular cluster star systems became an important n-body problem. The n-body problem in general relativity is considerably more difficult to solve due to additional factors like time and space distortions.
N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (Wikipedia) N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT or N,N-DMT, SPL026) is a substituted tryptamine that occurs in many plants and animals, including humans, and which is both a derivative and a structural analog of tryptamine. DMT is used as a psychedelic drug and prepared by various cultures for ritual purposes as an entheogen.
Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (Wikipedia) The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (Azerbaijani: Naxçıvan Muxtar Respublikası, pronounced [nɑxtʃɯˈvɑn muxˈtɑɾ ɾesˈpublikɑsɯ]) is a landlocked exclave of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The region covers 5,502.75 km2 (2,124.62 sq mi) with a population of 459,600. It is bordered by Armenia to the east and north, Iran to the southwest, and Turkey to the west. It is the sole autonomous republic of Azerbaijan, governed by its own elected legislature.
Naloxone (Wikipedia) Naloxone is a medication used to reverse or reduce the effects of opioids. It is used to counter decreased breathing in opioid overdose. Effects begin within two minutes when given intravenously, five minutes when injected into a muscle, and ten minutes as a nasal spray. Naloxone blocks the effects of opioids for 30 to 90 minutes.
Namibia (Wikipedia) Namibia (/nəˈmɪbiə/, /næˈ-/), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the east and south. Although it does not border Zimbabwe, less than 200 metres (660 feet) of the Botswanan right bank of the Zambezi River separates the two countries. Its capital and largest city is Windhoek.
Nashville, Tennessee (Wikipedia) Nashville is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. Located in Middle Tennessee, it had a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census. Nashville is the 21st most populous city in the United States, and the fourth most populous city in the southeastern U.S. Located on the Cumberland River, the city is the center of the Nashville metropolitan area, and is one of the fastest growing in the nation.
National Nordic Museum (Wikipedia) The National Nordic Museum (previously Nordic Heritage Museum and then Nordic Museum) is a museum in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States, dedicated to the Nordic history, art, culture, and the heritage of the area’s Nordic immigrants. It was founded in 1980 as the Nordic Heritage Museum, moved into a permanent, purpose-built facility in 2018 named the Nordic Museum, and was designated as the National Nordic Museum in 2019. The museum serves as a community gathering place and shares Nordic culture by exhibiting art and objects, preserving collections, and providing educational and cultural experiences from Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish Americans. The geographical region covered by the Museum includes the entire Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, the regions of the Faroe Islands, Greenland, and Åland, and the cultural region of Sápmi).
National People’s Congress (Wikipedia) The National People’s Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People’s Republic of China. The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the State Council to the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) are subservient to it. With 2,977 members in 2023, it is the largest legislative body in the world. The NPC is elected for a term of five years. It holds annual sessions every spring, usually lasting from 10 to 14 days, in the Great Hall of the People on the west side of Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
Natural number (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the natural numbers are the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., possibly including 0 as well. Some definitions, including the standard ISO 80000-2, begin the natural numbers with 0, corresponding to the non-negative integers 0, 1, 2, 3, …, whereas others start with 1, corresponding to the positive integers 1, 2, 3, … Texts that exclude zero from the natural numbers sometimes refer to the natural numbers together with zero as the whole numbers, while in other writings, that term is used instead for the integers (including negative integers). In common language, particularly in primary school education, natural numbers may be called counting numbers to intuitively exclude the negative integers and zero, and also to contrast the discreteness of counting to the continuity of measurement—a hallmark characteristic of real numbers.
Nazareth (Wikipedia) Nazareth (/ˈnæzərəθ/ NAZ-ər-əth; Arabic: النَّاصِرَة‎, romanized: an-Nāṣira; Hebrew: נָצְרַת‎, romanized: Nāṣəraṯ; Syriac: ܢܨܪܬ, romanized: Naṣrath) is the largest city in the Northern District of Israel. In 2022 its population was 78,007. Known as “the Arab capital of Israel”, Nazareth serves as a cultural, political, religious, economic and commercial center for the Arab citizens of Israel, as well as a center of Arab and Palestinian nationalism. The inhabitants are predominantly Arab citizens of Israel, of whom 69% are Muslim and 30.9% Christian. The city also commands immense religious significance, deriving from its status as the hometown of Jesus, the central figure of Christianity and a prophet in Islam.
Nazca Plate (Wikipedia) The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny. The Nazca Plate is bounded on the west by the Pacific Plate and to the south by the Antarctic Plate through the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise respectively. The movement of the Nazca Plate over several hotspots has created some volcanic islands as well as east–west running seamount chains that subduct under South America. Nazca is a relatively young plate both in terms of the age of its rocks and its existence as an independent plate having been formed from the break-up of the Farallon Plate about 23 million years ago. The oldest rocks of the plate are about 50 million years old.
Nazi Germany (Wikipedia) Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, is a term used to describe the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning “Third Realm” or “Third Empire”, referred to the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the earlier Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and German Empire (1871–1918). The Third Reich, which the Nazis referred to as the Thousand-Year Reich, ended in May 1945, after only 12 years, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered the capital, Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.
Nduga massacre (Wikipedia) The Nduga massacre (Indonesian: Pembantaian Nduga) was a shooting of construction workers that occurred on 1 December 2018, in Nduga Regency, Papua (now in Highland Papua), Indonesia. The shooting is considered to be part of the Papuan conflict. The West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) acknowledged responsibility and the Indonesian government labeled the attack a massacre.
Nebraska (Wikipedia) Nebraska (/nəˈbræskə/) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwest; and Wyoming to the west. It is the only triply landlocked U.S. state.
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Wikipedia) The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art is an art museum in Kansas City, Missouri, known for its encyclopedic collection of art from nearly every continent and culture, and especially for its extensive collection of Asian art.
Neoarchean (Wikipedia) The Neoarchean (/ˌniːoʊ.ɑːrˈkiːən/ NEE-oh-ar-KEE-ən; also spelled Neoarchaean) is the last geologic era in the Archean Eon that spans from 2800 to 2500 million years ago—the period being defined chronometrically and not referencing a specific level in a rock section on Earth. The era is marked by major developments in complex life and continental formation.
Neogene (Wikipedia) The Neogene (/ˈniː.ədʒiːn/ NEE-ə-jeen, informally Upper Tertiary or Late Tertiary) is a geologic period and system that spans 20.45 million years from the end of the Paleogene Period 23.03 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the present Quaternary Period 2.58 Mya. The Neogene is sub-divided into two epochs, the earlier Miocene and the later Pliocene. Some geologists assert that the Neogene cannot be clearly delineated from the modern geological period, the Quaternary. The term “Neogene” was coined in 1853 by the Austrian palaeontologist Moritz Hörnes (1815–1868).
Neolithic (Wikipedia) The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos ’new’ and λίθος líthos ‘stone’) is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia and Africa. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This “Neolithic package” included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term ‘Neolithic’ was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.
Neon (Wikipedia) Neon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is the second noble gas in the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with approximately two-thirds the density of air.
Neoproterozoic (Wikipedia) The Neoproterozoic Era is the unit of geologic time from 1 billion to 538.8 million years ago. It is the last era of the Precambrian Supereon and the Proterozoic Eon; it is subdivided into the Tonian, Cryogenian, and Ediacaran periods. It is preceded by the Mesoproterozoic Era and succeeded by the Paleozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon.
Nepal (Wikipedia) Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China to the north, and India to the south, east, and west, while it is narrowly separated from Bangladesh by the Siliguri Corridor, and from Bhutan by the Indian state of Sikkim. Nepal has a diverse geography, including fertile plains, subalpine forested hills, and eight of the world’s ten tallest mountains, including Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. Kathmandu is the nation’s capital and the largest city. Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious and multi-cultural state, with Nepali as the official language.
Nephrite (Wikipedia) Nephrite is a variety of the calcium, magnesium, and iron-rich amphibole minerals tremolite or actinolite (aggregates of which also make up one form of asbestos). The chemical formula for nephrite is Ca2(Mg, Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2. It is one of two different mineral species called jade. The other mineral species known as jade is jadeite, which is a variety of pyroxene. While nephrite jade possesses mainly grays and greens (and occasionally yellows, browns, black or whites), jadeite jade, which is rarer, can also contain blacks, reds, pinks and violets. Nephrite jade is an ornamental stone used in carvings, beads, or cabochon cut gemstones. Nephrite is also the official state mineral of Wyoming.
Neptune (Wikipedia) Neptune is the eighth planet from the Sun and the farthest known planet in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet in the Solar System by diameter, the third-most-massive planet, and the densest giant planet. It is 17 times the mass of Earth, and slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus. Neptune is denser and physically smaller than Uranus because its greater mass causes more gravitational compression of its atmosphere. Being composed primarily of gases and liquids, it has no well-defined solid surface. The planet orbits the Sun once every 164.8 years at an average distance of 30.1 astronomical units (4.5 billion kilometres; 2.8 billion miles). It is named after the Roman god of the sea and has the astronomical symbol ♆, representing Neptune’s trident.
Nero (Wikipedia) Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (/ˈnɪəroʊ/ NEER-oh; born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was a Roman emperor and the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, reigning from AD 54 until his death in AD 68.
Nervous system (Wikipedia) In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body, then works in tandem with the endocrine system to respond to such events. Nervous tissue first arose in wormlike organisms about 550 to 600 million years ago. In vertebrates it consists of two main parts, the central nervous system (CNS) and the peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS consists of the brain and spinal cord. The PNS consists mainly of nerves, which are enclosed bundles of the long fibers or axons, that connect the CNS to every other part of the body. Nerves that transmit signals from the brain are called motor nerves or efferent nerves, while those nerves that transmit information from the body to the CNS are called sensory nerves or afferent. Spinal nerves are mixed nerves that serve both functions. The PNS is divided into three separate subsystems, the somatic, autonomic, and enteric nervous systems. Somatic nerves mediate voluntary movement. The autonomic nervous system is further subdivided into the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is activated in cases of emergencies to mobilize energy, while the parasympathetic nervous system is activated when organisms are in a relaxed state. The enteric nervous system functions to control the gastrointestinal system. Both autonomic and enteric nervous systems function involuntarily. Nerves that exit from the cranium are called cranial nerves while those exiting from the spinal cord are called spinal nerves.
Netherlands (Wikipedia) The Netherlands (Dutch: Nederland [ˈneːdərlɑnt]), informally Holland, is a country located in Northwestern Europe with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany and Belgium in the North Sea. The country’s official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch Low Saxon and Limburgish are recognised regional languages, while Dutch Sign Language, Sinte Romani and Yiddish are recognised non-territorial languages. Dutch, English and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories.
Neuralink (Wikipedia) Neuralink Corp. is an American neurotechnology company that is developing implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), based in Fremont, California, as of 2022. Founded by Elon Musk and a team of seven scientists and engineers, Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.
Neuron (Wikipedia) Within a nervous system, a neuron, neurone, or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network. Neurons communicate with other cells via synapses, which are specialized connections that commonly use minute amounts of chemical neurotransmitters to pass the electric signal from the presynaptic neuron to the target cell through the synaptic gap.
Nevada (Wikipedia) Nevada (/nɪˈvædə/ nih-VAD-ə; Spanish: [neˈβaða]) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, the 32nd-most populous, and the 9th-least densely populated of the U.S. states. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada’s people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area, including three of the state’s four largest incorporated cities. Nevada’s capital is Carson City. Las Vegas is the largest city in the state.
Neville Lancelot Goddard (Wikipedia) Neville Lancelot Goddard (February 19, 1905 – October 1, 1972), generally known as Neville Goddard, was a Barbadian New Thought author and mystic who wrote on the Bible, esotericism and is considered to be one of the pioneers of the “law of assumption”.
New Brighton, Minnesota (Wikipedia) New Brighton (/njuː ˈbraɪtən/ NEW BRY-tən) is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. It is a suburb of the Twin Cities. The population was 23,454 at the 2020 census.
New Brunswick (Wikipedia) New Brunswick (French: Nouveau-Brunswick, pronounced [nuvo bʁœ̃swik], locally [nuvo bʁɔnzwɪk]) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces.
New Century Book of Facts (Wikipedia) The New Century Book of Facts was a single volume general reference work published in the United States from 1909 to 1964. \ The publication began as the Century Book of Facts in 1902 by the King-Richardson Company of Springfield and Chicago and edited by Henry Walmar Ruoff. Further editions were published in 1905, 1906 and 1908. The Universal Manual of Ready Reference, published in 1904 was basically the same work. The moniker New Century Book of Facts was adopted in 1909 and the book continued to be published by King-Richardson until 1926 when it was bought out by Continental Publishing Company of Wheeling, West Virginia. It 1964 the publication was bought out by a New York firm with the intention of publishing a new completely revised edition. However, this did not materialized by the scheduled date of 1972 and the publication became defunct.
New England (Wikipedia) New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick to the northeast and Quebec to the north. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east and southeast, and Long Island Sound is to the southwest. Boston is New England’s largest city, as well as the capital of Massachusetts. Greater Boston is the largest metropolitan area, with nearly a third of New England’s population; this area includes Worcester, Massachusetts (the second-largest city in New England), Manchester, New Hampshire (the largest city in New Hampshire), and Providence, Rhode Island (the capital of and largest city in Rhode Island).
New General Catalogue (Wikipedia) The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated NGC) is an astronomical catalogue of deep-sky objects compiled by John Louis Emil Dreyer in 1888. The NGC contains 7,840 objects, including galaxies, star clusters and emission nebulae. Dreyer published two supplements to the NGC in 1895 and 1908, known as the Index Catalogues (abbreviated IC), describing a further 5,386 astronomical objects. Thousands of these objects are best known by their NGC or IC numbers, which remain in widespread use.
New Hampshire (Wikipedia) New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Gulf of Maine to the east, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Of the 50 U.S. states, New Hampshire is the fifth smallest by area and the tenth least populous, with a population of 1,377,529 residents as of the 2020 census. Concord is the state capital, while Manchester is the most populous city. New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die”, reflects its role in the American Revolutionary War; its nickname, “The Granite State”, refers to its extensive granite formations and quarries. It is well known nationwide for holding the first primary (after the Iowa caucus) in the U.S. presidential election cycle, and for its resulting influence on American electoral politics.
New Hebrides Plate (Wikipedia) The New Hebrides Plate, sometimes called the Neo-Hebridean Plate, is a minor tectonic plate (just larger than a microplate) located in the Pacific Ocean. While most of it is submerged as the sea bottom of the North Fiji Basin, the island country of Vanuatu, with multiple arc volcanoes, is on the western edge of the plate. It is bounded on the south-west by the Australian Plate, which is subducting below it at the New Hebrides Trench. The Vanuatu subduction zone is seismically active, producing many earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher. To its north is the Pacific Plate, north-east the Balmoral Reef Plate and to its east the Conway Reef Plate.
New International Version (Wikipedia) The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible into contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released in 1978 with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies on recently-published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
New Jersey (Wikipedia) New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware River and Pennsylvania; and on the southwest by Delaware Bay and the state of Delaware. At 7,354 square miles (19,050 km2), New Jersey is the fifth-smallest state in land area; but with close to 9.3 million residents, it ranks 11th in population and first in population density. The state capital is Trenton, and the most populous city is Newark. With the exception of Warren County, all of the state’s 21 counties lie within the combined statistical areas of New York City or Philadelphia.
New Mexico (Wikipedia) New Mexico (Spanish: Nuevo México [ˈnweβo ˈmexiko]; Navajo: Yootó Hahoodzo Navajo pronunciation: [jòːtʰó hɑ̀hòːtsò]) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region of the western U.S. with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona, and bordering Texas to the east and southeast, Oklahoma to the northeast, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to the south. New Mexico’s largest city is Albuquerque, and its state capital is Santa Fe, the oldest state capital in the U.S., founded in 1610 as the government seat of Nuevo México in New Spain.
New Orleans (Wikipedia) New Orleans (/ˈɔːrl(i)ənz/ OR-l(ee)ənz, /ɔːrˈliːnz/ or-LEENZ, locally /ˈɔːrlənz/ OR-lənz; French: La Nouvelle-Orléans [la nuvɛlɔʁleɑ̃], Spanish: Nueva Orleans) is a consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, it is the most populous city in Louisiana, third most populous city in the Deep South, and the twelfth-most populous city in the southeastern United States. Serving as a major port, New Orleans is considered an economic and commercial hub for the broader Gulf Coast region of the United States.
New South Wales (Wikipedia) New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory are enclaves within the state. New South Wales’ state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia’s most populous city. In December 2021, the population of New South Wales was over 8 million, making it Australia’s most populous state. Just under two-thirds of the state’s population, 5.3 million, live in the Greater Sydney area.
New Testament (Wikipedia) The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. The New Testament’s background, the first division of the Christian Bible, is called the Old Testament, which is based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible; together they are regarded as sacred scripture by Christians.
New Thought (Wikipedia) The New Thought movement (also Higher Thought) is a spiritual movement that coalesced in the United States in the early 19th century. New Thought was seen by its adherents as succeeding “ancient thought”, accumulated wisdom and philosophy from a variety of origins, such as Ancient Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Taoist, Vedic, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures[citation needed] and their related belief systems, primarily regarding the interaction among thought, belief, consciousness in the human mind, and the effects of these within and beyond the human mind. Though no direct line of transmission is traceable, many adherents to New Thought in the 19th and 20th centuries claimed to be direct descendants of those systems.
New York (state) (Wikipedia) New York, often called New York State, is a state in the Northeastern United States. With 20.2 million residents, it is the fourth-most populous state in the United States as of the 2020 census. New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area, with a total area of 54,556 square miles (141,300 km2). The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to its south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to its east; it shares a maritime border with Rhode Island, and an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to its north and Ontario to its northwest.
New Zealand (Wikipedia) New Zealand (Māori: Aotearoa [aɔˈtɛaɾɔa]) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island (Te Ika-a-Māui) and the South Island (Te Waipounamu)—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area and lies east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country’s varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand’s capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.
Newcastle, Washington (Wikipedia) Newcastle is an Eastside city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 13,017 at the 2020 census.
Newfoundland and Labrador (Wikipedia) Newfoundland and Labrador (/ˈnjuːfən(d)lənd … ˈlæbrədɔːr, -lænd … / NEW-fən(d)-lənd … LAB-rə-dor, -⁠land…, locally /ˌnjuːfənˈlænd … / NEW-fən-LAND …; French: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country’s Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region of Labrador, having a total size of 405,212 square kilometres (156,500 sq mi). In 2023, the population of Newfoundland and Labrador was estimated to be 533,710. The island of Newfoundland (and its smaller neighbouring islands) is home to around 94 per cent of the province’s population, with more than half residing in the Avalon Peninsula. Labrador borders the province of Quebec, and the French overseas collectivity of Saint Pierre and Miquelon lies about 20 km (12 mi) west of the Burin Peninsula.
Newport, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Newport is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,797 at the 2020 census. According to 2021 census estimates, the city is estimated to have a population of 4,328.
NGC 147 (Wikipedia) NGC 147 (also known as DDO3 or Caldwell 17) is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy about 2.58 Mly away in the constellation Cassiopeia. NGC 147 is a member of the Local group of galaxies and a satellite galaxy of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). It forms a physical pair with the nearby galaxy NGC 185, another remote satellite of M31. It was discovered by John Herschel in September 1829. Visually it is both fainter and slightly larger than NGC 185 (and therefore has a considerably lower surface brightness). This means that NGC 147 is more difficult to see than NGC 185, which is visible in small telescopes.
NGC 185 (Wikipedia) NGC 185 (also known as Caldwell 18) is a dwarf spheroidal galaxy located 2.08 million light-years from Earth, appearing in the constellation Cassiopeia. It is a member of the Local group, and is a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).
NGC 2362 (Wikipedia) NGC 2362, also known as Caldwell 64, is an open cluster of stars in the southern constellation of Canis Major. It was discovered by the Italian court astronomer Giovanni Batista Hodierna, who published his finding in 1654. William Herschel called it a “beautiful cluster”, while William Henry Smyth said it “has a beautiful appearance, the bright white star being surrounded by a rich gathering of minute companions, in a slightly elongated form, and nearly vertical position”. In the past it has also been listed as a nebula, but in 1930 Robert J. Trumpler found no evidence of nebulosity. The brightest member star system is Tau Canis Majoris, and therefore it is sometimes called the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster.
NGC 3132 (Wikipedia) NGC 3132 (also known as the Eight-Burst Nebula, the Southern Ring Nebula, or Caldwell 74) is a bright and extensively studied planetary nebula in the constellation Vela. Its distance from Earth is estimated at 613 pc or 2,000 light-years.
NGC 3766 (Wikipedia) NGC 3766 (also known as Caldwell 97) is an open star cluster in the southern constellation Centaurus. It is located in the vast star-forming region known as the Carina molecular cloud, and was discovered by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille during his astrometric survey in 1751–1752. At a distance of about 1745 pc, the cluster subtends a diameter of about 12 minutes of arc.
NGC 4372 (Wikipedia) NGC 4372 (also known as Caldwell 108) is a globular cluster in the southern constellation of Musca. It is southwest of γ Muscae (Gamma Muscae) and west of the southern end of the Dark Doodad Nebula (Sandqvist 149), a 3° thin streak of black across a southern section of the great plane of the Milky Way.
NGC 4833 (Wikipedia) NGC 4833 (also known as Caldwell 105) is a globular cluster discovered by Abbe Lacaille during his 1751-1752 journey to South Africa, and catalogued in 1755. It was subsequently observed and catalogued by James Dunlop and Sir John Herschel whose instruments could resolve it into individual stars.
NGC 6025 (Wikipedia) NGC 6025 (also known as Caldwell 95) is an open cluster located 2,700 light years away in the Triangulum Australe constellation. It was discovered by Abbe Lacaille in 1751 during his expedition to the Cape of Good Hope.
NGC 6087 (Wikipedia) NGC 6087 (also known as Caldwell 89 or the S Normae Cluster) is an open cluster of 40 or more stars centered on the Cepheid variable S Normae in the constellation Norma. At a distance of about 3500 ly and covering a field of almost one quarter of a degree, the stars range from seventh- to eleventh-magnitude, the brightest being 6.5 magnitude S Normae. The aggregate visual magnitude of the cluster is about 5.4.
NGC 6231 (Wikipedia) NGC 6231 (also known as Caldwell 76 or the Baby Scorpion Cluster) is an open cluster in the southern sky located half a degrees north of Zeta Scorpii. NGC 6231 is part of a swath of young, bluish stars in the constellation Scorpius known as the Scorpius OB1 association. The star Zeta1 (HR 6262) is a member of this association, while its brighter apparent partner, Zeta2 (HR 6271), is only 150 ly from Earth and so is not a member.
NGC 6822 (Wikipedia) NGC 6822 (also known as Barnard’s Galaxy, IC 4895, or Caldwell 57) is a barred irregular galaxy approximately 1.6 million light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. Part of the Local Group of galaxies, it was discovered by E. E. Barnard in 1884, with a six-inch refractor telescope. It is the closest non-satellite galaxy to the Milky Way, but lies just outside its virial radius. It is similar in structure and composition to the Small Magellanic Cloud. It is about 7,000 light-years in diameter.
NGC 7243 (Wikipedia) NGC 7243 (also known as Caldwell 16) is an open cluster and Caldwell object in the constellation Lacerta. It shines at magnitude +6.4. Its celestial coordinates are RA 22h 15.3m , dec +49° 53′. It is located near the naked-eye stars Alpha Lacertae, 4 Lacertae, an A-class double star, and planetary nebula IC 5217. It lies approximately 2,800 light-years away, and is thought to be just over 100 million years old, consisting mainly of white and blue stars.
Nicaragua (Wikipedia) Nicaragua, officially the Republic of Nicaragua, is the geographically largest country in Central America, comprising 130,370 km2 (50,340 sq mi). With a population of 6,850,540 as of 2021, it is the third-most populous country in Central America after Guatemala and Honduras. Nicaragua is bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean and shared maritime borders with El Salvador to the west and Colombia to the east. The country’s largest city and national capital is Managua, the fourth-largest city in Central America with a population of 1,055,247 as of 2020. Nicaragua’s multiethnic population includes people of mestizo, indigenous, European, and African heritage. The country’s most spoken language is Spanish, though indigenous tribes on the Mosquito Coast speak their own languages and English.
Nicollet Island (Wikipedia) Nicollet Island (/ˈnɪkəlɪt/ NIH-kə-lit) is an island in the Mississippi River just north of Saint Anthony Falls in central Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to the United States Census Bureau the island has a land area of 194,407 square metres (0.075 sq mi) and a 2000 census population of 144 persons. The island makes up a large part of the city-designated Nicollet Island/East Bank neighborhood. The island is named for cartographer Joseph Nicollet, who mapped the Upper Mississippi in the 1830s.
Niels Bohr (Wikipedia) Niels Henrik David Bohr (Danish: [ˈne̝ls ˈpoɐ̯ˀ]; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.
Niger (Wikipedia) Niger or the Niger, officially the Republic of the Niger, is a country in West Africa. It is a unitary state bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria to the south, Benin and Burkina Faso to the southwest, Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. It covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km2 (490,000 sq mi), making it the largest landlocked country in West Africa and the second largest landlocked nation in Africa behind Chad. Over 80% of its land area lies in the Sahara. Its predominantly Muslim population of about 25 million lives mostly in clusters in the south and west of the country. The capital Niamey is located in Niger’s southwest corner.
Nigeria (Wikipedia) Nigeria, officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf of Guinea to the south in the Atlantic Ocean. It covers an area of 923,769 square kilometres (356,669 sq mi). With a population of more than 230 million, it is the most populous country in Africa, and the world’s sixth-most populous country. Nigeria borders Niger in the north, Chad in the northeast, Cameroon in the east, and Benin in the west. Nigeria is a federal republic comprising 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Abuja, is located. The largest city in Nigeria is Lagos, one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world and the largest in Africa.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984 film) (Wikipedia) Nineteen Eighty-Four, also known as 1984, is a 1984 dystopian drama film written and directed by Michael Radford, based upon George Orwell’s 1949 novel of the same name. Starring John Hurt, Richard Burton, Suzanna Hamilton, and Cyril Cusack, the film follows the life of Winston Smith (Hurt), a low-ranking civil servant in a war-torn London ruled by Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. Smith struggles to maintain his sanity and his grip on reality as the regime’s overwhelming power and influence persecutes individualism and individual thinking on both a political and personal level.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (Wikipedia) Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian social science fiction novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell’s ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism, and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Nitrogen (Wikipedia) Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a nonmetal and the lightest member of group 15 of the periodic table, often called the pnictogens. It is a common element in the universe, estimated at seventh in total abundance in the Milky Way and the Solar System. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bond to form N2, a colorless and odorless diatomic gas. N2 forms about 78% of Earth’s atmosphere, making it the most abundant uncombined element in air. Because of the volatility of nitrogen compounds, nitrogen is relatively rare in the solid parts of the Earth.
Niuafo’ou Plate (Wikipedia) The Niuafo’ou Plate is a small tectonic plate located west of the islands of Tonga. This plate is sandwiched between the Pacific Plate to the north, the very unstable Tonga Plate to the east and the Australian Plate to the west. It is primarily surrounded by divergent boundaries. This plate is riddled with active faults thus making the area extremely earthquake prone.
Nonagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a nonagon (/ˈnɒnəɡɒn/) or enneagon (/ˈɛniəɡɒn/) is a nine-sided polygon or 9-gon.
Nooksack River (Wikipedia) The Nooksack River is a river in western Whatcom County of the northwestern U.S. state of Washington, draining extensive valley systems within the North Cascades around Mount Shuksan, Mount Baker and the Twin Sisters, and a portion of Fraser Lowland south of the Canada–United States border.
Nora En Pure (Wikipedia) Daniela Di Lillo (formerly Niederer, born 20 July 1990), better known by her stage name Nora En Pure, is a Swiss-South African DJ and deep house producer. She first received recognition for her 2013 single “Come With Me”. Further popular releases are “Morning Dew”, “Lake Arrowhead”, and “Tears In Your Eyes.” In July 2016, she was invited to put together a two-hour long mix for Pete Tong’s radio show: “BBC’s Essential Mix”.
Norma (constellation) (Wikipedia) Norma is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere between Ara and Lupus, one of twelve drawn up in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its name is Latin for normal, referring to a right angle, and is variously considered to represent a rule, a carpenter’s square, a set square or a level. It remains one of the 88 modern constellations.
Norman D. Vaughan (Wikipedia) Colonel Norman Dane Vaughan (December 18, 1905 – December 23, 2005) was an American dogsled driver and explorer whose first claim to fame was participating in Admiral Byrd’s first expedition to the South Pole. He also ran dog teams in a professional capacity as part of a search and rescue unit in World War II, in sporting events like the Olympics and the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and in three Presidential Inauguration ceremonies.
Norman McLaren (Wikipedia) William Norman McLaren, CC CQ LL. D. (11 April 1914 – 27 January 1987) was a Scottish Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). He was a pioneer in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. McLaren was also an artist and printmaker, and explored his interest in dance in his films.
Normandy Park, Washington (Wikipedia) Normandy Park is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 6,771 at the 2020 census.
North America (Wikipedia) North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea, and to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean. Because it is on the North American Tectonic Plate, Greenland is included as a part of North America geographically.
North American Plate (Wikipedia) The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of 76 million km2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth’s second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific Plate (which borders the plate to the west).
North Andes Plate (Wikipedia) The North Andes Plate or North Andes Block is a small tectonic plate (microplate) located in the northern Andes. It is squeezed between the faster moving South American Plate and the Nazca Plate to the southwest. Due to the subduction of the Coiba and Malpelo plates, this area is very prone to volcanic and seismic activity, with many historical earthquakes.
North Bend, Washington (Wikipedia) North Bend is a city in King County, Washington, United States, on the outskirts of the Seattle metropolitan area. The population was 7,461 at the 2020 census.
North Bismarck Plate (Wikipedia) The North Bismarck Plate is a small tectonic plate located in the Bismarck Sea off the northeast coast of New Guinea. It is currently regarded as a relic or inactive plate by most. At one time it was called the Manus Plate, but this term was later used for a modelled microplate at the south east boundary of the North Bismarck Plate.
North Carolina (Wikipedia) North Carolina (/ˌkærəˈlaɪnə/) is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and South Carolina to the south, and Tennessee to the west. In the 2020 census, the state had a population of 10,439,388. Raleigh is the state’s capital and Charlotte is its largest city. The Charlotte metropolitan area, with a population of 2,595,027 in 2020, is the most-populous metropolitan area in North Carolina, the 21st-most populous in the United States, and the largest banking center in the nation after New York City. The Raleigh-Durham-Cary combined statistical area is the second-largest metropolitan area in the state and 32nd-most populous in the United States, with a population of 2,043,867 in 2020, and is home to the largest research park in the United States, Research Triangle Park.
North Creek Forest (Wikipedia) The North Creek Forest is located in Bothell, Washington and surrounds a section of the 12.6-mile (20.3 km) North Creek and encompasses 64 acres of mature second growth mixed coniferous/hardwood forest with 7 streams and 9 wetlands. The forest forms a one mile long and up to 1/3- mile wide habitat corridor extending from Canyon Park Junior High School in the north almost to the North Creek wetlands near the University of Washington Bothell Campus, and eventually links to the Sammamish River in the south. The North Creek Forest is one of the last remaining mature coniferous forests in the Bothell area. The forest here filters and cools water in streams, wetlands and countless small springs and seeps, along an entire mile of watershed. The cooling of this water is crucial for 5 species of anadromous fish that spawn in North Creek including chum, coho, sockeye, chinook and steelhead. Many other ecosystem services are provided by this forest including carbon sequestration, reduction of surface runoff and cooling of ambient temperatures in surrounding neighborhood.
North Creek School (Wikipedia) North Creek School is a school building located in Bothell, Washington listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Built in 1902, it served as a school for 18 years. The first teacher was Edgar Turner, who homesteaded at the present Turner’s Corner (Highway 9 and Maltby Road intersection). Another of the school’s teachers was Charles V. Beardslee, who came to the Bothell area in the late 1880s. After closing in 1920, it served as a meeting location for the Canyon Park Community Club until about 1950. It was then used for storage for many years, deteriorating from lack of use and nonattendance.
North Dakota (Wikipedia) North Dakota ( /- dəˈkoʊtə/) is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, South Dakota to the south, and Montana to the west. North Dakota is part of the Great Plains region, characterized by broad prairies, steppe, temperate savanna, badlands, and farmland. It is believed to host the geographic center of North America, Rugby, and is home to the tallest artificial structure in the Western Hemisphere, the KVLY-TV mast.
North High School (North St. Paul, Minnesota) (Wikipedia) North High School is a public 9-12 high school located in North Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is one of two high schools in the ISD 622 District. The other high school in ISD 622 is Tartan Senior High School in Oakdale, Minnesota.
North Korea (Wikipedia) North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu (Amnok) and Tumen rivers, and South Korea to the south at the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The country’s western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. North Korea, like its southern counterpart, claims to be the legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. Pyongyang is the capital and largest city.
North Lynnwood, Washington (Wikipedia) North Lynnwood is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Snohomish County, Washington. In 2010, it had a population of 16,574 inhabitants. It was originally part of Picnic Point-North Lynnwood. For the 2010 census, the CDP was separated into Picnic Point and North Lynnwood, with a small part going to the new Meadowdale CDP.
North Macedonia (Wikipedia) North Macedonia (/ˌmæsɪˈdoʊniə/ MASS-ih-DOH-nee-ə), officially the Republic of North Macedonia, is a landlocked country in Southeast Europe. It shares land borders with Greece to the south, Albania to the west, Bulgaria to the east, Kosovo to the northwest and Serbia to the north. It constitutes approximately the northern third of the larger geographical region of Macedonia. Skopje, the capital and largest city, is home to a quarter of the country’s 1.83 million people. The majority of the residents are ethnic Macedonians, a South Slavic people. Albanians form a significant minority at around 25%, followed by Turks, Roma, Serbs, Bosniaks, Aromanians and a few other minorities.
North Oaks, Minnesota (Wikipedia) North Oaks is an exurban city 10 miles (16 km) north of Saint Paul in Ramsey County in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The population was 4,469 at the 2010 census.
North Sea (Wikipedia) The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Sea in the north. It is more than 970 kilometres (600 mi) long and 580 kilometres (360 mi) wide, covering 570,000 square kilometres (220,000 sq mi).
North Seattle College (Wikipedia) North Seattle College (NSC or North Seattle) is a public college in Seattle, Washington. It is one of three colleges comprising the Seattle Colleges District and part of the Washington Community and Technical Colleges system.
North St. Paul, Minnesota (Wikipedia) North Saint Paul (abbreviated North St. Paul) is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States, located east-northeast of the city of Saint Paul. The population was 12,364 at the 2020 census.
Northeastern United States (Wikipedia) The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States located on the Atlantic coast of North America. It borders Canada to its north, the Southern United States to its south, the Midwestern United States to its west, and the Atlantic Ocean to its east.
Northern celestial hemisphere (Wikipedia) The northern celestial hemisphere, also called the Northern Sky, is the northern half of the celestial sphere; that is, it lies north of the celestial equator. This arbitrary sphere appears to rotate westward around a polar axis due to Earth’s rotation.
Northern Europe (Wikipedia) The northern region of Europe has several definitions. A restrictive definition may describe Northern Europe as being roughly north of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, which is about 54°N, or may be based on other geographical factors such as climate and ecology.
Northern Hemisphere (Wikipedia) The Northern Hemisphere is the half of Earth that is north of the Equator. For other planets in the Solar System, north is defined as being in the same celestial hemisphere relative to the invariable plane of the Solar System as Earth’s North Pole.
Northgate, Seattle (Wikipedia) Northgate is a neighborhood in north Seattle, Washington, named for and surrounding Northgate Mall, the first covered mall in the United States. Its north-south principal arterials are Roosevelt Way NE and Aurora Avenue N (SR 99), and its east-west principal arterials are NE Northgate Way and 130th Street. Minor arterials are College Way-Meridian Avenue N, 1st, 5th, and 15th avenues NE. Interstate 5 runs through the district. Besides the eponymous mall, the most characteristic distinctions of the area are North Seattle College (NSC) and the south fork of the Thornton Creek watershed and Seattle Kraken Iceplex center.
Northlake, Seattle (Wikipedia) Northlake is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, that consists of the southern part of Wallingford, below N 40th Street. It is so named for being on the northern shore of Lake Union. Landmarks include the Northlake Shipyard, Gas Works Park, the Wallingford Steps art installation, and Ivar’s Salmon House. Circa 1900, the eastern part of Northlake was known as Latona, and the John Stanford International School building was formerly the Latona School. Nowadays, the name Latona is likely to refer to anywhere along Latona Ave. NE from Northlake north to NE 65th St. near Green Lake.
Northwest Territories (Wikipedia) The Northwest Territories (abbreviated NT or NWT; French: Territoires du Nord-Ouest; formerly North-West Territories) is a federal territory of Canada. At a land area of approximately 1,144,000 km2 (442,000 sq mi) and a 2016 census population of 41,790, it is the second-largest and the most populous of the three territories in Northern Canada. Its estimated population as of 2023 is 45,668. Yellowknife is the capital, most populous community, and only city in the territory; its population was 19,569 as of the 2016 census. It became the territorial capital in 1967, following recommendations by the Carrothers Commission.
Northwestern Europe (Wikipedia) Northwestern Europe, or Northwest Europe, is a loosely defined subregion of Europe, overlapping Northern and Western Europe. The term is used in geographic, history, and military contexts.
Norway (Wikipedia) Norway (Bokmål: Norge, Nynorsk: Noreg), formally the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of Norway. Bouvet Island, located in the Subantarctic, is a dependency; Norway also claims the Antarctic territories of Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. The capital and largest city in Norway is Oslo.
Notes from the Gallows (Wikipedia) Notes from the Gallows (also published as Report from the Gallows) is a collection of notes written by the anti-Nazi, communist journalist, Julius Fučík, originally on pieces of cigarette paper, while imprisoned by the Gestapo in the Pankrac district of Prague in 1942. The book’s Czech title is Reportáž, psaná na oprátce, literally Report Written on the Noose.
Nova Scotia (Wikipedia) Nova Scotia (/ˌnoʊvə ˈskoʊʃə/ NOH-və SKOH-shə; French: Nouvelle-Écosse; Scottish Gaelic: Alba Nuadh, lit. ‘New Scotland’) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for “New Scotland”.
Novaya Gazeta (Wikipedia) Novaya Gazeta (Russian: Новая газета, IPA: [ˈnovəjə ɡɐˈzʲetə], lit. ‘New[-style] Newspaper’), now Novaya Gazeta Europe, is a Latvia-based independent Russian newspaper. It relocated to Riga, Latvia, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is known for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs, the horrors of the Chechen wars, corruption among the ruling elite, and increasing authoritarianism in Russia. It was formerly published in Moscow until shortly after the war began, in regions within Russia, and in some foreign countries. The print edition is published on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; English-language articles on the website are published on a weekly basis in the form of the Russia, Explained newsletter. As of 2023, the newspaper had a daily print circulation of 108,000, and online visits of 613,000.
Nuclear warfare (Wikipedia) Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological result. A major nuclear exchange would likely have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to secondary effects, such as “nuclear winter”, nuclear famine, and societal collapse. A global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to various scenarios including the extinction of the human species.
Nunavut (Wikipedia) Nunavut (/ˈnʊnəvʊt/ NUU-nə-vuut, /ˈnuːnəvuːt/ NOO-nə-voot; French: [nunavut], [nunavʊt], [nynavʏt]; Inuktitut: ᓄᓇᕗᑦ, [nunaˈvut], lit. ‘our land’) is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada. It was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, which provided this territory to the Inuit for independent government. The boundaries had been drawn in 1993. The creation of Nunavut resulted in the first major change to Canada’s political map in half a century since the province of Newfoundland (now Newfoundland and Labrador) was admitted in 1949.
Oak Park Heights, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Oak Park Heights is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 4,849 at the 2020 census.
Oakdale, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Oakdale is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. It is a suburb of Saint Paul and is on the eastern side of the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. The population was 28,303 at the 2020 census. Oakdale is the 36th largest city in Minnesota by population.
Obbligato (Wikipedia) In Western classical music, obbligato (Italian pronunciation: [obbliˈɡaːto], also spelled obligato) usually describes a musical line that is in some way indispensable in performance. Its opposite is the marking ad libitum. It can also be used, more specifically, to indicate that a passage of music was to be played exactly as written, or only by the specified instrument, without changes or omissions. The word is borrowed from Italian (an adjective meaning mandatory; from Latin obligatus p.p. of obligare, to oblige); the spelling obligato is not acceptable in British English, but it is often used as an alternative spelling in the US. The word can stand on its own, in English, as a noun, or appear as a modifier in a noun phrase (e.g. organ obbligato).
Observable universe (Wikipedia) The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time; the electromagnetic radiation from these objects has had time to reach the Solar System and Earth since the beginning of the cosmological expansion. Initially, it was estimated that there may be 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. That number was reduced in 2021 to only several hundred billion based on data from New Horizons. Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction. That is, the observable universe is a spherical region centered on the observer. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe, which may or may not overlap with the one centered on Earth.
Obtuse triangle (Wikipedia) An obtuse triangle (or obtuse-angled triangle) is a triangle with one obtuse angle (greater than 90°) and two acute angles. Since a triangle’s angles must sum to 180° in Euclidean geometry, no Euclidean triangle can have more than one obtuse angle.
Ocean Beach, San Francisco (Wikipedia) Ocean Beach is a beach on the west coast of San Francisco, California, United States, bordering the Pacific Ocean. It is adjacent to Golden Gate Park, the Richmond District, and the Sunset District. The Great Highway runs alongside the beach, and the Cliff House and the site of the former Sutro Baths sit at the northern end. The beach is a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is administered by the National Park Service.
Oceania (Wikipedia) Oceania (UK: /ˌoʊsiˈɑːniə, ˌoʊʃi-, -ˈeɪn-/ OH-s(h)ee-AH-nee-ə, -⁠AY-, US: /ˌoʊʃiˈæniə, -ˈɑːn-/ OH-shee-A(H)N-ee-ə) is a geographical region including Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Australia is regarded as an island or a continental landmass contained inside of the larger continent of Oceania. Spanning the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, at the centre of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. When compared to the continents (which it is often compared to, not including Australia), Oceania is the smallest in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica.
Octadecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, an octadecagon (or octakaidecagon) or 18-gon is an eighteen-sided polygon.
Octagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον oktágōnon, “eight angles”) is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon.
Octans (Wikipedia) Octans (/ˈɒktænz/) is a faint constellation located in the deep Southern Sky. Its name is Latin for the eighth part of a circle, but it is named after the octant, a navigational instrument. Devised by French astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1752, Octans remains one of the 88 modern constellations. The southern celestial pole is located within the boundaries of Octans.
Odyssey (children’s magazine) (Wikipedia) Odyssey was a monthly science magazine for children ages 9–14, created by Richard Berry, editor of Astronomy. The magazine was published between 1979 and 2015. It was based in Peterborough, New Hampshire. The magazine was also headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Odyssey (Wikipedia) The Odyssey (/ˈɒdɪsi/; Ancient Greek: Ὀδύσσεια, romanized: Odýsseia) is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the Iliad, the poem is divided into 24 books. It follows the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the Trojan War. After the war, which lasted ten years, his journey from Troy to Ithaca, via Africa and southern Europe, lasted for ten additional years during which time he encountered many perils and all of his crewmates were killed. In his absence, Odysseus was assumed dead, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus had to contend with a group of unruly suitors who were competing for Penelope’s hand in marriage.
Ohio (Wikipedia) Ohio (/oʊˈhaɪoʊ/) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The state’s capital and largest city is Columbus, with the Columbus metro area, Greater Cincinnati, and Greater Cleveland being the largest metropolitan areas. Ohio is bordered by Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the west, and Michigan to the northwest. Ohio is historically known as the “Buckeye State” after its Ohio buckeye trees, and Ohioans are also known as “Buckeyes”. Its state flag is the only non-rectangular flag of all the U.S. states.
OK gesture (Wikipedia) The OK gesture or OK sign or ring gesture (symbol/emoji: “👌”) is performed by joining the thumb and index finger in a circle, and holding the other fingers straight or relaxed away from the palm. Commonly used by scuba divers, it signifies “I am OK” or “Are you OK?” when underwater. In most English-speaking countries it denotes approval, agreement, and that all is well or “okay”. In other contexts or cultures, similar gestures may have different meanings including those that are negative, offensive, financial, numerical, devotional, political, or purely linguistic.
Okanogan County, Washington (Wikipedia) Okanogan County (/ˌoʊkəˈnɑːɡən/) is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington along the Canada–U.S. border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 42,104. The county seat is Okanogan, while the largest city is Omak. Its area is the largest in the state.
Okanogan–Wenatchee National Forest (Wikipedia) The Okanogan–Wenatchee National Forest is a U.S. National Forest located in Okanogan County in north-central Washington, United States.
Okhotsk microplate (Wikipedia) The Okhotsk microplate is a proposed minor tectonic plate covering the Kamchatka Peninsula, Magadan Oblast, and Sakhalin Island of Russia; Hokkaido, Kantō and Tōhoku regions of Japan; the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the disputed Kuril Islands.
Okinawa Plate (Wikipedia) The Okinawa Plate, or Okinawa Platelet, is a minor continental tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres stretching from the northern end of Taiwan to the southern tip of the island of Kyūshū. The Okinawa Plate hosts typical earthquakes, like the 1911 Kikai Island earthquake, and various types of slow earthquakes, including low frequency earthquakes, very low frequency earthquakes, tremor, and slow slip events.
Oklahoma (Wikipedia) Oklahoma (/ˌoʊkləˈhoʊmə/; Choctaw: Oklahumma, pronounced [oklahómma]; Cherokee: ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, Okalahoma, pronounced [ògàlàhǒːmã́]) is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New Mexico on the west, and Colorado on the northwest. Partially in the western extreme of the Upland South, it is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States. Its residents are known as Oklahomans and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma City.
Old Testament (Wikipedia) The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites. The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament, written in the Koine Greek language.
Oligocene (Wikipedia) The Oligocene (IPA: /ˈɒlɪɡəsiːn, -ɡoʊ-/ OL-ə-gə-seen, -⁠goh-) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present (33.9±0.1 to 23.03±0.05 Ma). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but the exact dates of the start and end of the epoch are slightly uncertain. The name Oligocene was coined in 1854 by the German paleontologist Heinrich Ernst Beyrich from his studies of marine beds in Belgium and Germany. The name comes from the Ancient Greek ὀλίγος (olígos, “few”) and καινός (kainós, “new”), and refers to the sparsity of extant forms of molluscs. The Oligocene is preceded by the Eocene Epoch and is followed by the Miocene Epoch. The Oligocene is the third and final epoch of the Paleogene Period.
Olive oil (Wikipedia) Olive oil is a liquid fat obtained by pressing whole olives, the fruit of Olea europaea, a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin, and extracting the oil.
Olympia, Washington (Wikipedia) Olympia is the capital of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat and largest city of Thurston County. It is 60 miles (100 km) southwest of the state’s most populous city, Seattle, and is a cultural center of the southern Puget Sound region.
Olympic Hills, Seattle (Wikipedia) Olympic Hills is a neighborhood in the Lake City district of Seattle, Washington.
Olympic Mountains (Wikipedia) The Olympic Mountains are a mountain range on the Olympic Peninsula of the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The mountains, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges, are not especially high – Mount Olympus is the highest summit at 7,980 ft (2,432 m); however, the eastern slopes rise precipitously out of Puget Sound from sea level, and the western slopes are separated from the Pacific Ocean by the low-lying 20 to 35 km (12 to 22 mi) wide Pacific Ocean coastal plain. These densely forested western slopes are the wettest place in the 48 contiguous states. Most of the mountains are protected within the bounds of Olympic National Park and adjoining segments of the Olympic National Forest.
Olympic National Park (Wikipedia) Olympic National Park is a United States national park located in the State of Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula. The park has four regions: the Pacific coastline, alpine areas, the west-side temperate rainforest, and the forests of the drier east side. Within the park there are three distinct ecosystems, including subalpine forest and wildflower meadow, temperate forest, and the rugged Pacific coast.
Olympic Peninsula (Wikipedia) The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and the east by Hood Canal. Cape Alava, the westernmost point in the contiguous United States, and Cape Flattery, the northwesternmost point, are on the peninsula. Comprising about 3,600 square miles (9,300 km2), the Olympic Peninsula contained many of the last unexplored places in the contiguous United States. It remained largely unmapped until Arthur Dodwell and Theodore Rixon mapped most of its topography and timber resources between 1898 and 1900.
Oman (Wikipedia) Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country in West Asia. It is located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and overlooks the mouth of the Persian Gulf. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, while sharing maritime borders with Iran and Pakistan. The capital and largest city is Muscat. Oman has a population of nearly 4.7 million and is the 124th most-populous country. The coast faces the Arabian Sea on the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman on the northeast. The Madha and Musandam exclaves are surrounded by United Arab Emirates on their land borders, with the Strait of Hormuz (which it shares with Iran) and the Gulf of Oman forming Musandam’s coastal boundaries.
Omicron Ursae Majoris (Wikipedia) Omicron Ursae Majoris (ο Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Omicron UMa, ο UMa), formally named Muscida /ˈmjuːsɪdə/, is a star system in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Major. It has an apparent visual magnitude of +3.35 and is located at a distance of around 179 light-years (55 parsecs) from the Sun. In 2012, an exoplanet designated Omicron Ursae Majoris Ab was found to be orbiting the primary.
Ontario (Wikipedia) Ontario (/ɒnˈtɛərioʊ/ on-TAIR-ee-oh; French: [ɔ̃taʁjo]) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the country’s most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it is home to 38.5 percent of the country’s population, and is the second-largest province by total area (after Quebec). Ontario is Canada’s fourth-largest jurisdiction in total area of all the Canadian provinces and territories. It is home to the nation’s capital, Ottawa, and its most populous city, Toronto, which is Ontario’s provincial capital.
Ontological argument (Wikipedia) An ontological argument is a philosophical argument, made from an ontological basis, that is advanced in support of the existence of God. Such arguments tend to refer to the state of being or existing. More specifically, ontological arguments are commonly conceived a priori in regard to the organization of the universe, whereby, if such organizational structure is true, God must exist.
Open cluster (Wikipedia)
Ophiuchus (Wikipedia) Ophiuchus (/ˌɒfiˈjuːkəs/) is a large constellation straddling the celestial equator. Its name comes from the Ancient Greek ὀφιοῦχος (ophioûkhos), meaning “serpent-bearer”, and it is commonly represented as a man grasping a snake. The serpent is represented by the constellation Serpens. Ophiuchus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. An old alternative name for the constellation was Serpentarius (/ˌsɜːrpənˈtɛəriəs/).
Orangutan (Wikipedia) Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus Pongo, orangutans were originally considered to be one species. From 1996, they were divided into two species: the Bornean orangutan (P. pygmaeus, with three subspecies) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). A third species, the Tapanuli orangutan (P. tapanuliensis), was identified definitively in 2017. The orangutans are the only surviving species of the subfamily Ponginae, which diverged genetically from the other hominids (gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans) between 19.3 and 15.7 million years ago.
Order (biology) (Wikipedia) Order (Latin: ordo) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between family and class. In biological classification, the order is a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized by the nomenclature codes. An immediately higher rank, superorder, is sometimes added directly above order, with suborder directly beneath order. An order can also be defined as a group of related families.
Ordovician (Wikipedia) The Ordovician (/ɔːrdəˈvɪʃi.ən, -doʊ-, -ˈvɪʃən/ or-də-VISH-ee-ən, -⁠doh-, -⁠VISH-ən) is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.6 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period 485.4 million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period 443.8 Mya.
Oregon (Wikipedia) Oregon (/ˈɒrɪɡən/) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Oregon is a part of the Western United States, with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon’s northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. The 42° north parallel delineates the southern boundary with California and Nevada. The western boundary is formed by the Pacific Ocean.
Orion (constellation) (Wikipedia) Orion is a prominent set of stars visible during winter in the northern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 88 modern constellations; it was among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy. It is named for a hunter in Greek mythology.
Orion Arm (Wikipedia) The Orion Arm is a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy that is 3,500 light-years (1,100 parsecs) across and approximately 10,000 light-years (3,100 parsecs) in length, containing the Solar System, including Earth. It is also referred to by its full name, the Orion–Cygnus Arm (not to be confused with the outer end of the Norma Arm the Cygnus Arm), as well as Local Arm, Orion Bridge, and formerly, the Local Spur and Orion Spur.
Orion’s Belt (Wikipedia) Orion’s Belt or the Belt of Orion, also known as the Three Kings or Three Sisters, is an asterism in the constellation Orion. It consists of three bright stars – Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka – which are blue supergiant stars with fainter companions.
Orlando, Florida (Wikipedia) Orlando (/ɔːrˈlændoʊ/ or-LAN-doh) is a city in, and the county seat of Orange County, Florida, United States. Part of Central Florida, it is the center of the Orlando metropolitan area, which had a population of 2,509,831 in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. It is the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the Southern United States and the third-largest metropolitan area in Florida behind Miami and Tampa Bay. Orlando had a city population of 307,573 in the 2020 census, making it the fourth-largest city in Florida behind Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa. It is the state’s largest inland city.
Orosirian (Wikipedia) The Orosirian Period ( /ˌɒroʊˈsɪəriən/; Ancient Greek: ὀροσειρά, romanized: oroseirá, meaning “mountain range”) is the third geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era and lasted from 2050 Mya to 1800 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Orpheum Theatre (Minneapolis) (Wikipedia) Orpheum Theatre is a theater located in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is one of four restored theaters on Hennepin Avenue, along with the Pantages Theatre, the State Theatre and the Shubert Theatre (now The Cowles Center).
Orson Welles (Wikipedia) George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985) was an American director, actor, writer, and producer who is remembered for his innovative work in film, radio, and theatre. He is considered to be among the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.
Osama bin Laden (Wikipedia) Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (Arabic: أسامة بن محمد بن عوض بن لادن, romanized: Usāma bin Muḥammad bin ʿAwaḍ bin Lādin; 10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi Arabian-born Islamist dissident and militant leader who was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, he participated in the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union and supported the activities of the Bosnian mujahideen during the Yugoslav Wars. Bin Laden is most widely known as the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks in the United States.
Oscar Wilde (Wikipedia) Oscar Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Oskar Morgenstern (Wikipedia) Oskar Morgenstern (January 24, 1902 – July 26, 1977) was a German-born economist. In collaboration with mathematician John von Neumann, he founded the mathematical field of game theory as applied to the social sciences and strategic decision-making (see von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem).
Oso, Washington (Wikipedia) Oso is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located to the west of Darrington, south of the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River and approximately 50 air miles (80 km) from Seattle. The population of Oso was 172 at the 2020 census. The area was the site of a large landslide in March 2014 that killed 43 people, the deadliest incident of its kind in U.S. history.
Osteichthyes (Wikipedia) Osteichthyes (/ˌɒstiːˈɪkθi.iːz/), also known as osteichthyans or commonly referred to as the bony fish, is a diverse superclass of vertebrate animals that have endoskeletons primarily composed of bone tissue. They can be contrasted with the Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) and the extinct placoderms and acanthodians, which have endoskeletons primarily composed of cartilage. The vast majority of extant fish are members of Osteichthyes, being an extremely diverse and abundant group consisting of 45 orders, over 435 families and 28,000 species. It is the largest class of vertebrates in existence today, encompassing most aquatic vertebrates, as well as all semi-aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates.
Outsider art (Wikipedia) Outsider art is art made by self-taught or supposedly naïve artists with typically little or no contact with the conventions of the art worlds. In many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Often, outsider art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds.
Oxford (Wikipedia) Oxford (/ˈɒksfərd/) is a city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. Founded in the 8th century, it was granted city status in 1542. The city is located at the confluence of the rivers Thames (locally known as the Isis) and Cherwell. It had a population of 163,257 in 2022. It is 56 miles (90 km) north-west of London, 64 miles (103 km) south-east of Birmingham and 61 miles (98 km) north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world; it has buildings in every style of English architecture since late Anglo-Saxon. Oxford’s industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing, science, and information technologies.
Oxygen (Wikipedia) Oxygen is a chemical element; it has symbol O and atomic number 8. It is a member of the chalcogen group in the periodic table, a highly reactive nonmetal, and an oxidizing agent that readily forms oxides with most elements as well as with other compounds. Oxygen is Earth’s most abundant element, and after hydrogen and helium, it is the third-most abundant element in the universe. At standard temperature and pressure, two atoms of the element bind to form dioxygen, a colorless and odorless diatomic gas with the formula O2. Diatomic oxygen gas currently constitutes 20.95% of the Earth’s atmosphere, though this has changed considerably over long periods of time. Oxygen makes up almost half of the Earth’s crust in the form of oxides.
Pablo Picasso (Wikipedia) Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Pac-Man (Atari 2600 video game) (Wikipedia) Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 hit arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.
Pac-Man (Wikipedia) Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called “Power Pellets” causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
Pacific County, Washington (Wikipedia) Pacific County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 23,365. Its county seat is South Bend, and its largest city is Raymond. The county was formed by the government of Oregon Territory in February 1851 and is named for the Pacific Ocean.
Pacific Northwest (Wikipedia) The Pacific Northwest (PNW), sometimes referred to as Cascadia, is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common conception includes the U.S. states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and the Canadian province of British Columbia. Some broader conceptions reach north into Alaska and Yukon, south into northern California, and east into western Montana. Other conceptions may be limited to the coastal areas west of the Cascade and Coast mountains. The variety of definitions can be attributed to partially overlapping commonalities of the region’s history, culture, geography, society, ecosystems, and other factors.
Pacific Ocean (Wikipedia) The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth’s five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continents of Asia and Oceania in the west and the Americas in the east.
Pacific Plate (Wikipedia) The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At 103 million km2 (40 million sq mi), it is the largest tectonic plate.
Paine Field (Wikipedia) Seattle Paine Field International Airport (IATA: PAE, ICAO: KPAE, FAA LID: PAE) — also known as Paine Field and Snohomish County Airport — is a commercial and general aviation airport serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is located in unincorporated Snohomish County, Washington, between the cities of Mukilteo and Everett, about 25 miles (40 km) north of Seattle. PAE covers 1,315 acres (2.05 sq mi; 5.32 km2) of land.
Pakistan (Wikipedia) Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023. Islamabad is the nation’s capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area and the ninth-largest in Asia. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan’s narrow Wakhan Corridor.
Pál Szalai (Wikipedia) Pál Szalai (September 3, 1915 – January 16, 1994) also spelled Pál Szalay and later anglicized as Paul Sterling was a high-ranking Hungarian police officer and reinstated member of the Arrow Cross Party after 1944. In 1945, together with Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Szalai helped save hundreds of Hungarian Jews in the Budapest ghetto. In 2009, he was honored by Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
Pale Blue Dot (Wikipedia) Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from an unprecedented distance of approximately 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day’s Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.
Paleoarchean (Wikipedia) The Paleoarchean (/ˌpeɪlioʊ.ɑːrˈkiːən, ˌpæl-/ PAY-lee-oh-ar-KEE-ən, PAL-), also spelled Palaeoarchaean (formerly known as the early Archean), is a geologic era within the Archean Eon. The name derives from Greek “Palaios” ancient. It spans the period of time 3,600 to 3,200 million years ago. The era is defined chronometrically and is not referenced to a specific level of a rock section on Earth. The earliest confirmed evidence of life comes from this era, and Vaalbara, one of Earth’s earliest supercontinents, may have formed during this era.
Paleocene (Wikipedia) The Paleocene, (IPA: /ˈpæli.əsiːn, -i.oʊ-, ˈpeɪli-/ PAL-ee-ə-seen, -⁠ee-oh-, PAY-lee-) or Palaeocene, is a geological epoch that lasted from about 66 to 56 million years ago (mya). It is the first epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name is a combination of the Ancient Greek παλαιός palaiós meaning “old” and the Eocene Epoch (which succeeds the Paleocene), translating to “the old part of the Eocene”.
Paleogene (Wikipedia) The Paleogene (IPA: /ˈpeɪli.ədʒiːn, -li.oʊ-, ˈpæli-/ PAY-lee-ə-jeen, -⁠lee-oh-, PAL-ee-; also spelled Palaeogene or Palæogene; informally Lower Tertiary or Early Tertiary) is a geologic period and system that spans 43 million years from the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Neogene Period 23.03 Mya. It is the beginning of the Cenozoic Era of the present Phanerozoic Eon. The earlier term Tertiary Period was used to define the span of time now covered by the Paleogene Period and subsequent Neogene Period; despite no longer being recognized as a formal stratigraphic term, “Tertiary” still sometimes remains in informal use. Paleogene is often abbreviated “Pg” (but the United States Geological Survey uses the abbreviation Pe for the Paleogene on the Survey’s geologic maps).
Paleolithic (Wikipedia) The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (/ˌpeɪ-, ˌpælioʊˈlɪθɪk/ PAY-, PAL-ee-oh-LITH-ik), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός palaios, “old” and λίθος lithos, “stone”), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP.
Paleontology (Wikipedia) Paleontology (/ˌpeɪliɒnˈtɒlədʒi, ˌpæli-, -ən-/), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossils to classify organisms and study their interactions with each other and their environments (their paleoecology). Paleontological observations have been documented as far back as the 5th century BC. The science became established in the 18th century as a result of Georges Cuvier’s work on comparative anatomy, and developed rapidly in the 19th century. The term has been used since 1822 formed from Greek παλαιός (‘palaios’, “old, ancient”), ὄν (‘on’, (gen. ‘ontos’), “being, creature”), and λόγος (’logos’, “speech, thought, study”).
Paleoproterozoic (Wikipedia) The Paleoproterozoic Era (also spelled Palaeoproterozoic) is the first of the three sub-divisions (eras) of the Proterozoic eon, and also the longest era of the Earth’s geological history, spanning from 2,500 to 1,600 million years ago (2.5–1.6 Ga). It is further subdivided into four geologic periods, namely the Siderian, Rhyacian, Orosirian and Statherian.
Paleozoic (Wikipedia) The Paleozoic (IPA: /ˌpæli.əˈzoʊ.ɪk,-i.oʊ-, ˌpeɪ-/ PAL-ee-ə-ZOH-ik, -⁠ee-oh-, PAY-; or Palaeozoic) Era is the first of three geological eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. Beginning 538.8 million years ago (Ma), it succeeds the Neoproterozoic (the last era of the Proterozoic Eon) and ends 251.9 Ma at the start of the Mesozoic Era.
Palestinian territories (Wikipedia) The Palestinian territories are the two regions of the former British Mandate for Palestine that have been occupied by Israel since the Six-Day War of 1967, namely the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has referred to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as “the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, and this term was used as the legal definition by the ICJ in its advisory opinion of July 2004. The term occupied Palestinian territory was used by the United Nations and other international organizations between October 1999 and December 2012 to refer to areas controlled by the Palestinian National Authority, but from 2012, when Palestine was admitted as one of its non-member observer states, the United Nations started using exclusively the name State of Palestine. The European Union (EU) also uses the term “occupied Palestinian territory”. The government of Israel and its supporters use the label “disputed territories” instead.
Palm Beach, Florida (Wikipedia) Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. Located on a barrier island in east-central Palm Beach County, the town is separated from West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach by the Intracoastal Waterway to its west and a small section of the Intracoastal Waterway and South Palm Beach to its south. It is part of the South Florida metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, Palm Beach had a year-round population of 9,245.
Palo Alto, California (Wikipedia) Palo Alto (/ˌpæloʊ ˈæltoʊ/; Spanish for ’tall stick’) is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto.
Palouse (Wikipedia) The Palouse (/pəˈluːs/ pə-LOOSS) is a distinct geographic region of the northwestern United States, encompassing parts of north central Idaho, southeastern Washington, and, by some definitions, parts of northeast Oregon. It is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat and legumes. Situated about 160 miles (260 km) north of the Oregon Trail, the region experienced rapid growth in the late 19th century.
Panama (Wikipedia) Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the south. Its capital and largest city is Panama City, whose metropolitan area is home to nearly half the country’s over 4 million inhabitants.
Panama Plate (Wikipedia) The Panama Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) that exists between two actively spreading ridges and moves relatively independently of its surrounding plates. The Panama Plate is located between the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate to the south and the Caribbean Plate to the north. Most of its borders are convergent boundaries, including a subduction zone to the west. It consists, for the most part, of the countries of Costa Rica and Panama.
Pangaea (Wikipedia) Pangaea or Pangea (/pænˈdʒiː.ə/) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million years ago, and began to break apart about 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic and beginning of the Jurassic. In contrast to the present Earth and its distribution of continental mass, Pangaea was centred on the equator and surrounded by the superocean Panthalassa and the Paleo-Tethys and subsequent Tethys Oceans. Pangaea is the most recent supercontinent to have existed and the first to be reconstructed by geologists.
Panthalassa (Wikipedia) Panthalassa, also known as the Panthalassic Ocean or Panthalassan Ocean (from Greek πᾶν “all” and θάλασσα “sea”), was the superocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea, the latest in a series of supercontinents in the history of Earth. During the Paleozoic–Mesozoic transition c. 250 Ma it occupied almost 70% of Earth’s surface. Its ocean floor has completely disappeared because of the continuous subduction along the continental margins on its circumference. Panthalassa is also referred to as the Paleo-Pacific (“old Pacific”) or Proto-Pacific because the Pacific Ocean is a direct continuation of Panthalassa.
Paprika (Wikipedia) Paprika (US /pəˈprikə/, /pæˈprikə/; UK /ˈpæprɪkə/, /pəˈpriːkə/) is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers. It is traditionally made from Capsicum annuum varietals in the Longum group, including chili peppers. Paprika can have varying levels of heat, but the chili peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce chili powder. In some languages, but not English, the word paprika also refers to the plant and the fruit from which the spice is made, as well as to peppers in the Grossum group (e.g., bell peppers).
Paraguay (Wikipedia) Paraguay (/ˈpærəɡwaɪ/; Spanish pronunciation: [paɾaˈɣwaj]), officially the Republic of Paraguay (Spanish: República del Paraguay; Guarani: Paraguái Tavakuairetã), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of around 6.1 million, nearly 2.3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro area.
Parallel universes in fiction (Wikipedia) A parallel universe, also known as an alternate universe, parallel world, parallel dimension, alternate reality, or alternative dimension, is a hypothetical self-contained layer or plane of existence, co-existing with one’s own. While the six terms are generally synonymous and can be used interchangeably in most cases, there is sometimes an additional connotation implied with the term “alternate universe/reality” that implies that the reality is a variant of our own, with some overlap with the similarly named alternate history.
Parallelism (rhetoric) (Wikipedia) Parallelism is a rhetorical device that compounds words or phrases that have equivalent meanings so as to create a definite pattern. This structure is particularly effective when “specifying or enumerating pairs or series of like things”. A scheme of balance, parallelism represents “one of the basic principles of grammar and rhetoric”.
Paramount leader (Wikipedia) Paramount leader (Chinese: 最高领导人; pinyin: Zuìgāo Lǐngdǎorén; lit. ‘highest leader’) is an informal term for the most important political figure in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), often holding the titles of CCP General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). The state representative (president) or head of government (premier) are not necessarily paramount leader—under China’s party-state system, CCP roles are politically more important than state titles.
Pareidolia (Wikipedia) Pareidolia (/ˌpærɪˈdoʊliə, ˌpɛər-/; also US: /ˌpɛəraɪ-/) is the tendency for perception to impose a meaningful interpretation on a nebulous stimulus, usually visual, so that one sees an object, pattern, or meaning where there is none. It is a type of apophenia.
Paris (Wikipedia) Paris (English: /ˈpærɪs/ PARR-iss; French pronunciation: [paʁi]) is the capital and most populous city of France. With an official estimated population of 2,102,650 residents as of 1 January 2023 in an area of more than 105 km2 (41 sq mi), Paris is the fifth-most populated city in the European Union and the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2022. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world’s major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, culture, fashion, gastronomy and many areas. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its early and extensive system of street lighting, in the 19th century, it became known as the City of Light.
Park City, Utah (Wikipedia) Park City is a city in Summit County, Utah, United States. It is considered to be part of the Wasatch Back. The city is 32 miles (51 km) southeast of downtown Salt Lake City and 20 miles (32 km) from Salt Lake City’s east edge of Sugar House along Interstate 80. The population was 8,396 at the 2020 census. On average, the tourist population greatly exceeds the number of permanent residents.
Parthenocissus inserta (Wikipedia) Parthenocissus inserta (syn. Parthenocissus vitacea), also known as thicket creeper, false Virginia creeper, woodbine, or grape woodbine, is a woody vine native to North America, in southeastern Canada (west to southern Manitoba) and a large area of the United States, from Maine west to Montana and south to New Jersey and Missouri in the east, and Texas to Arizona in the west. It is present in California, but it may be an introduced species that far west. It is introduced in Europe.
Pascal (programming language) (Wikipedia) Pascal is an imperative and procedural programming language, designed by Niklaus Wirth as a small, efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring. It is named after French mathematician, philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal.
Patty Murray (Wikipedia) Patricia Lynn Murray (née Johns; born October 11, 1950) is an American politician who has served as president pro tempore of the United States Senate since 2023 and the senior United States Senator from Washington since 1993. A member of the Democratic Party, Murray served in the Washington State Senate from 1989 to 1993. She was Washington’s first female U.S. senator and is the first woman in American history to hold the position of president pro tempore. Murray is also the youngest senator to occupy the office of president pro tempore in more than five decades. As president pro tempore, Murray is third in the line of succession to the U.S. presidency.
Paul Stamets (Wikipedia) Paul Edward Stamets (born July 17, 1955) is an American mycologist and entrepreneur who sells various mushroom products through his company. He is an author and advocate of medicinal fungi and mycoremediation.
Paul the Apostle (Wikipedia) Paul (also named Saul of Tarsus; c. 5 – c. 64/65 AD), commonly known as Paul the Apostle and Saint Paul, was a Christian apostle who spread the teachings of Jesus in the first-century world. Generally regarded as one of the most important figures of the Apostolic Age, he founded several Christian communities in Asia Minor and Europe from the mid-40s to the mid-50s AD.
Paul Verhoeven (Wikipedia) Paul Verhoeven (Dutch: [ˈpʌu̯l vərˈɦuvə(n)]; born 18 July 1938) is a Dutch director and screenwriter, active in the Netherlands, France and the United States. His blending of graphic violence and sexual content with social satire is a trademark of both his drama and science fiction films.
Pauli exclusion principle (Wikipedia)
Pauline epistles (Wikipedia) The Pauline epistles, also known as Epistles of Paul or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen books of the New Testament attributed to Paul the Apostle, although the authorship of some is in dispute. Among these epistles are some of the earliest extant Christian documents. They provide an insight into the beliefs and controversies of early Christianity. As part of the canon of the New Testament, they are foundational texts for both Christian theology and ethics.
Paulo Coelho (Wikipedia) Paulo Coelho de Souza (/ˈkwɛl.juː, kuˈɛl.juː, -joʊ/ KWEL-yoo, koo-EL-yoo, -⁠yoh, Portuguese: [ˈpawlu kuˈeʎu]; born 24 August 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters since 2002. His novel The Alchemist became an international best-seller and he has published 30 more books since then.
Pavo (constellation) (Wikipedia) Pavo is a constellation in the southern sky whose name is Latin for “peacock”. Pavo first appeared on a 35-cm (14 in) diameter celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius and was depicted in Johann Bayer’s star atlas Uranometria of 1603, and was likely conceived by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. French explorer and astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille gave its stars Bayer designations in 1756. The constellations Pavo, Grus, Phoenix and Tucana are collectively known as the “Southern Birds”.
Peafowl (Wikipedia) Peafowl is a common name for three bird species in the genera Pavo and Afropavo within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are referred to as peahens, although peafowl of either sex are often referred to colloquially as “peacocks.”
Pegasus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the winged horse Pegasus in Greek mythology. It was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and is one of the 88 constellations recognised today.
Pend Oreille County, Washington (Wikipedia) Pend Oreille County (/ˌpɒndəˈreɪ/ POND-ə-RAY) is a county located in the northeast corner of the U.S. state of Washington, along the Canada–US border. As of the 2020 census, the population was 13,401. The county seat and largest city is Newport.
Pennsylvania (Wikipedia) Pennsylvania (/ˌpɛnsɪlˈveɪniə/; Pennsylvania German: Pennsilfaani), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. Pennsylvania borders Delaware to its southeast, Maryland to its south, West Virginia to its southwest, Ohio to its west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to its northwest, the State of New York to its north, and the Delaware River and New Jersey to its east.
Pennsylvanian (geology) (Wikipedia) The Pennsylvanian (/ˌpɛnsəlˈveɪni.ən/ pen-səl-VAYN-i-ən, also known as Upper Carboniferous or Late Carboniferous) is, on the ICS geologic timescale, the younger of two subperiods (or upper of two subsystems) of the Carboniferous Period. It lasted from roughly 323.2 million years ago to 298.9 million years ago. As with most other geochronologic units, the rock beds that define the Pennsylvanian are well identified, but the exact date of the start and end are uncertain by a few hundred thousand years. The Pennsylvanian is named after the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, where the coal-producing beds of this age are widespread.
Pentadecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a pentadecagon or pentakaidecagon or 15-gon is a fifteen-sided polygon.
Pentagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a pentagon (from the Greek πέντε pente meaning five and γωνία gonia meaning angle) is any five-sided polygon or 5-gon. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°.
Peripatetic school (Wikipedia) The Peripatetic school (Ancient Greek: Περίπατος lit. ‘walkway’) was a philosophical school founded in 335 BC by Aristotle in the Lyceum in Ancient Athens. It was an informal institution whose members conducted philosophical and scientific inquiries. After the middle of the 3rd century BC, the school fell into decline, and it was not until the Roman Empire that there was a revival.
Permian (Wikipedia) The Permian (/ˈpɜːrmi.ən/ PUR-mee-ən) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period 298.9 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleozoic Era; the following Triassic Period belongs to the Mesozoic Era. The concept of the Permian was introduced in 1841 by geologist Sir Roderick Murchison, who named it after the region of Perm in Russia.
Perseids (Wikipedia) The Perseids are a prolific meteor shower associated with the comet Swift–Tuttle that are usually visible from mid-July to late-August. The meteors are called the Perseids because they appear from the general direction of the constellation Perseus and in more modern times have a radiant bordering on Cassiopeia and Camelopardalis.
Perseus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Perseus is a constellation in the northern sky, being named after the Greek mythological hero Perseus. It is one of the 48 ancient constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and among the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It is located near several other constellations named after ancient Greek legends surrounding Perseus, including Andromeda to the west and Cassiopeia to the north. Perseus is also bordered by Aries and Taurus to the south, Auriga to the east, Camelopardalis to the north, and Triangulum to the west. Some star atlases during the early 19th century also depicted Perseus holding the disembodied head of Medusa, whose asterism was named together as Perseus et Caput Medusae; however, this never came into popular usage.
Persian Gulf (Wikipedia) The Persian Gulf (Persian: خلیج فارس, romanized: xalij-e fârs, lit. ‘Gulf of Fars’, pronounced [xæliːdʒe fɒːɾs]), sometimes called the Arabian Gulf (Arabic: اَلْخَلِيْجُ ٱلْعَرَبِيُّ, romanized: Al-Khalīj al-ˁArabī), is a mediterranean sea in West Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula. It is connected to the Gulf of Oman in the east by the Strait of Hormuz. The Arvand or Shatt al-Arab river delta forms the northwest shoreline.
Peru (Wikipedia) Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pacific Ocean. Peru is a megadiverse country with habitats ranging from the arid plains of the Pacific coastal region in the west to the peaks of the Andes mountains extending from the north to the southeast of the country to the tropical Amazon basin rainforest in the east with the Amazon River. Peru has a population of over 32 million, and its capital and largest city is Lima. At 1,285,216 km2 (496,225 sq mi), Peru is the 19th largest country in the world, and the third largest in South America.
Peshastin, Washington (Wikipedia) Peshastin is a small unincorporated community in Chelan County, Washington, United States. The community’s roots are found in the “Peshastin Ditch” dug by pioneers beginning in 1889. This ditch was an important part of the overall irrigation system in the area, delivering water to the orchards on the slopes above Cashmere. The town was first platted in the early 1890s by two brothers, J. Q. Gilbert and A. C. Gilbert. It is also noted on an 1895 map of the area, indicating it was in existence by then.
Phalaris arundinacea (Wikipedia) Phalaris arundinacea, or reed canary grass, is a tall, perennial bunchgrass that commonly forms extensive single-species stands along the margins of lakes and streams and in wet open areas, with a wide distribution in Europe, Asia, northern Africa and North America.
Phanerite (Wikipedia) A phanerite is an igneous rock whose microstructure is made up of crystals large enough to be distinguished with the unaided human eye. In contrast, the crystals in an aphanitic rock are too fine-grained to be identifiable. Phaneritic texture forms when magma deep underground in the plutonic environment cools slowly, giving the crystals time to grow.
Phanerozoic (Wikipedia) The Phanerozoic is the current and the latest of the four geologic eons in the Earth’s geologic time scale, covering the time period from 538.8 million years ago to the present. It is the eon during which abundant animal and plant life has proliferated, diversified and colonized various niches on the Earth’s surface, beginning with the Cambrian period when animals first developed hard shells that can be clearly preserved in the fossil record. The time before the Phanerozoic, collectively called the Precambrian, is now divided into the Hadean, Archaean and Proterozoic eons.
Phecda (Wikipedia) Phecda /ˈfɛkdə/, also called Gamma Ursae Majoris (γ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Gamma UMa, γ UMa), is a star in the constellation of Ursa Major. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified. Based upon parallax measurements with the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, it is located at distance of around 83.2 light-years (25.5 parsecs) from the Sun.
Philip José Farmer (Wikipedia) Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.
Philip K. Dick (Wikipedia) Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982), often referred to by his initials PKD, was an American science fiction writer. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. His fiction explored varied philosophical and social questions such as the nature of reality, perception, human nature, and identity, and commonly featured characters struggling against elements such as alternate realities, illusory environments, monopolistic corporations, drug abuse, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.
Philippine Sea Plate (Wikipedia) The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of the Philippine Mobile Belt, which is geologically and tectonically separate from the Philippine Sea Plate.
Philosophy (Wikipedia) Philosophy (love of wisdom in ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its own methods and assumptions.
Phinney Ridge, Seattle (Wikipedia) Phinney Ridge is a neighborhood in north central Seattle, Washington, United States. It is named after the ridge which runs north and south, separating Ballard from Green Lake, from approximately N. 45th to N. 80th Street. The ridge, in turn, is named after Guy C. Phinney, lumber mill owner and real estate developer, whose estate was bought by the city and turned into Woodland Park in 1899. Phinney’s estate had included a private menagerie, and the western half of the park became what is now the Woodland Park Zoo.
Phoenix (constellation) (Wikipedia) Phoenix is a minor constellation in the southern sky. Named after the mythical phoenix, it was first depicted on a celestial atlas by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted the brighter stars and gave their Bayer designations in 1756. The constellation stretches from roughly −39° to −57° declination, and from 23.5h to 2.5h of right ascension. The constellations Phoenix, Grus, Pavo and Tucana, are known as the Southern Birds.
Phoenix (spacecraft) (Wikipedia) Phoenix was an uncrewed space probe that landed on the surface of Mars on May 25, 2008, and operated until November 2, 2008. Phoenix was operational on Mars for 157 sols (161 days). Its instruments were used to assess the local habitability and to research the history of water on Mars. The mission was part of the Mars Scout Program; its total cost was $420 million, including the cost of launch.
Phoenix Plate (Wikipedia) The Phoenix Plate (also known as the Aluk Plate or Drake Plate) was a tectonic plate that existed during the early Paleozoic through late Cenozoic time. It formed a triple junction with the Izanagi and Farallon plates in the Panthalassa Ocean as early as 410 million years ago, during which time the Phoenix Plate was subducting under eastern Gondwana.
Phosphorus (Wikipedia) Phosphorus is a chemical element; it has symbol P and atomic number 15. Elemental phosphorus exists in two major forms, white phosphorus and red phosphorus, but because it is highly reactive, phosphorus is never found as a free element on Earth. It has a concentration in the Earth’s crust of about one gram per kilogram (compare copper at about 0.06 grams). In minerals, phosphorus generally occurs as phosphate.
Photon (Wikipedia) A photon (from Ancient Greek φῶς, φωτός (phôs, phōtós) ’light’) is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that always move at the speed of light when in vacuum. The photon belongs to the class of boson particles.
Phylum (Wikipedia) In biology, a phylum (/ˈfaɪləm/; pl.: phyla) is a level of classification or taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class. Traditionally, in botany the term division has been used instead of phylum, although the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants accepts the terms as equivalent. Depending on definitions, the animal kingdom Animalia contains about 31 phyla, the plant kingdom Plantae contains about 14 phyla, and the fungus kingdom Fungi contains about 8 phyla. Current research in phylogenetics is uncovering the relationships among phyla within larger clades like Ecdysozoa and Embryophyta.
Physicist (Wikipedia) A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. They work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of natural phenomena and the development and analysis of experiments, and theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena.
Physics (Wikipedia) Physics is the natural science of matter, involving the study of matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. Physics is one of the most fundamental scientific disciplines, with its main goal being to understand how the universe behaves. A scientist who specializes in the field of physics is called a physicist.
Physocarpus capitatus (Wikipedia) Physocarpus capitatus, commonly called Pacific ninebark or tall ninebark, is a species of Physocarpus in the rose family native to western North America.
Piano (Wikipedia) The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when pressed on the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, and B) and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches (or “notes”), spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the “accidentals” (F♯/G♭, G♯/A♭, A♯/B♭, C♯/D♭, and D♯/E♭), which are needed to play in all twelve keys.
Picnic Point, Washington (Wikipedia) Picnic Point is a census-designated place (CDP) located in Snohomish County, Washington. The population was 8,809 at the 2010 census. It was formerly part of the Picnic Point-North Lynnwood CDP.
Pictor (Wikipedia) Pictor is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, located between the star Canopus and the Large Magellanic Cloud. Its name is Latin for painter, and is an abbreviation of the older name Equuleus Pictoris (the “painter’s easel”). Normally represented as an easel, Pictor was named by Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. The constellation’s brightest star is Alpha Pictoris, a white main-sequence star around 97 light-years away from Earth. Pictor also hosts RR Pictoris, a cataclysmic variable star system that flared up as a nova, reaching apparent (visual) magnitude 1.2 in 1925 before fading into obscurity.
Pierce County, Washington (Wikipedia) Pierce County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 921,130, up from 795,225 in 2010, making it the second-most populous county in Washington, behind King County, and the 60th-most populous in the United States. The county seat and largest city is Tacoma. Formed out of Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the legislature of Oregon Territory, it was named for U.S. President Franklin Pierce. Pierce County is in the Seattle metropolitan area (formally the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA, metropolitan statistical area).
Pieris japonica (Wikipedia) Pieris japonica, the Japanese andromeda or Japanese pieris, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae. It is native to eastern China, Taiwan, and Japan, where it grows in mountain thickets. This medium-sized evergreen shrub or tree is widely cultivated in gardens.
Pilchuck River (Wikipedia) The Pilchuck River (Lushootseed: dxʷkʷiƛ̕əb) is a river in Snohomish County in the U.S. state of [Washington](Washington. It is a tributary of the Snohomish River. The name is derived from the Chinook Jargon pilpil (“blood”, “red”) and chuck (“water”), or “red water”. The Lushootseed name means “flowing red,” kʷiƛ̕ being an archaic term for “red” in Northern Lushootseed.
Pilcrow (Wikipedia) The pilcrow, ¶, is a typographical character that marks the start of a paragraph. It is also called the paragraph mark (or sign or symbol), paraph, or blind P.
Pine Springs, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Pine Springs is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 408 at the 2010 census.
Pine Street (Wikipedia) Pine Street is a major east–west street in Seattle, Washington, United States. It travels parallel to Pike Street between Downtown Seattle and the retail core to Capitol Hill, the Central District, and Madrona.
Pinehurst, Seattle (Wikipedia) Pinehurst is a neighborhood in the Northgate area of Seattle, Washington, United States. It is bounded by NE 145th Street to the north, NE Northgate Way to the south, I-5 to the west, and Lake City Way to the east. These boundaries were determined by the Pinehurst Community Council. Pinehurst’s northern boundary of NE 145th Street makes Pinehurst one of the northernmost neighborhoods in the city of Seattle.
Pink Floyd (Wikipedia) Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics and elaborate live shows. They became a leading band of the progressive rock genre, cited by some as the greatest progressive rock band of all time.
Pioneer Square, Seattle (Wikipedia) Pioneer Square is a neighborhood in the southwest corner of Downtown Seattle, Washington, US. It was once the heart of the city: Seattle’s founders settled there in 1852, following a brief six-month settlement at Alki Point on the far side of Elliott Bay. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all burned in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889. By the end of 1890, dozens of brick and stone buildings had been erected in their stead; to this day, the architectural character of the neighborhood derives from these late 19th century buildings, mostly examples of Richardsonian Romanesque.
Pisces (constellation) (Wikipedia) Pisces is a constellation of the zodiac. Its vast bulk – and main asterism viewed in most European cultures per Greco-Roman antiquity as a distant pair of fishes connected by one cord each that join at an apex – are in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Its old astronomical symbol is Pisces symbol (♓︎). Its name is Latin for “fishes”. It is between Aquarius, of similar size, to the southwest and Aries, which is smaller, to the east. The ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect within this constellation and in Virgo. This means the sun passes directly overhead of the equator, on average, at approximately this point in the sky, at the March equinox.
Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex (Wikipedia) The Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex is a galaxy filament. It includes the Laniakea Supercluster which contains the Virgo Supercluster lobe which in turn contains the Local Group, the galaxy cluster that includes the Milky Way. This filament is adjacent to the Perseus–Pegasus Filament.
Piscis Austrinus (Wikipedia) Piscis Austrinus is a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. The name is Latin for “the southern fish”, in contrast with the larger constellation Pisces, which represents a pair of fish. Before the 20th century, it was also known as Piscis Notius. Piscis Austrinus was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations. The stars of the modern constellation Grus once formed the “tail” of Piscis Austrinus. In 1597 (or 1598), Petrus Plancius carved out a separate constellation and named it after the crane.
Planetary nebula (Wikipedia) A planetary nebula is a type of emission nebula consisting of an expanding, glowing shell of ionized gas ejected from red giant stars late in their lives.
Plant (Wikipedia) Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes forming the kingdom Plantae. Many are multicellular. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi. All current definitions exclude the fungi and some of the algae. By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin for “green plants”) which consists of the green algae and the embryophytes or land plants. The latter include hornworts, liverworts, mosses, lycophytes, ferns, conifers and other gymnosperms, and flowering plants. A definition based on genomes includes the Viridiplantae, along with the red algae and the glaucophytes, in the clade Archaeplastida.
Plato (Wikipedia) Plato (/ˈpleɪtoʊ/ PLAY-toe; Greek: Πλάτων Plátōn; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period.
Platonic solid (Wikipedia) In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex.
Pleiades (Wikipedia) The Pleiades (/ˈpliː.ədiːz, ˈpleɪ-, ˈplaɪ-/), also known as , The Seven Sisters, Messier 45, Matariki and other names by different cultures, is an asterism and an open star cluster containing middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. At a distance of about 444 light years, it is among the nearest star clusters to Earth. It is the nearest Messier object to Earth, and is the most obvious cluster to the naked eye in the night sky. It is also observed to house the reflection nebula NGC 1432, an HII region.
Pleistocene (Wikipedia) The Pleistocene (/ˈplaɪstəˌsiːn, -stoʊ-/ PLY-stə-seen, -⁠stoh-; often referred to colloquially as the Ice Age) is the geological epoch that lasted from c. 2.58 million to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth’s most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in 2009 by the International Union of Geological Sciences, the cutoff of the Pleistocene and the preceding Pliocene was regarded as being 1.806 million years Before Present (BP). Publications from earlier years may use either definition of the period. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology. The name is a combination of Ancient Greek πλεῖστος (pleîstos), meaning “most”, and καινός (kainós; latinized as cænus), meaning “new”.
Pliocene (Wikipedia) The Pliocene ( /ˈplaɪ.əsiːn, ˈplaɪ.oʊ-/ PLY-ə-seen, PLY-oh-; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 million years ago. It is the second and most recent epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch. Prior to the 2009 revision of the geologic time scale, which placed the four most recent major glaciations entirely within the Pleistocene, the Pliocene also included the Gelasian Stage, which lasted from 2.588 to 1.806 million years ago, and is now included in the Pleistocene.
Plucking (Wikipedia) Plucking, also referred to as quarrying, is a glacial phenomenon that is responsible for the weathering and erosion of pieces of bedrock, especially large “joint blocks”. This occurs in a type of glacier called a “valley glacier”. As a glacier moves down a valley, friction causes the basal ice of the glacier to melt and infiltrate joints (cracks) in the bedrock. The freezing and thawing action of the ice enlarges, widens, or causes further cracks in the bedrock as it changes volume across the ice/water phase transition (a form of hydraulic wedging), gradually loosening the rock between the joints. This produces large pieces of rock called joint blocks. Eventually these joint blocks come loose and become trapped in the glacier.
Plum pudding model (Wikipedia) The now obsolete plum pudding model was the first scientific model of the atom with internal structure. It was first proposed by J. J. Thomson in 1904 following his discovery of the electron in 1897 and subsequently rendered obsolete by Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the atomic nucleus in 1911. The model tried to account for two properties of atoms then known: that there are electrons and that atoms have no net electric charge. Logically there had to be a commensurate quantity of positive charge to balance out the negative charge of the electrons, but having no clue as to the source of this positive charge, Thomson tentatively proposed it was everywhere in the atom, the atom being in the shape of a sphere for the sake of mathematical simplicity. Following from this, Thomson imagined that the balance of electrostatic forces in the atom would distribute the electrons in a more or less even manner throughout this hypothetical sphere.
Plutarch (Wikipedia) Plutarch (/ˈpluːtɑːrk/; Greek: Πλούταρχος, Ploútarchos; Koinē Greek: [ˈplúːtarkʰos]; c. AD 46 – after AD 119) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, and Moralia, a collection of essays and speeches. Upon becoming a Roman citizen, he was possibly named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus (Λούκιος Μέστριος Πλούταρχος).
Plymouth Pillars Park (Wikipedia) Plymouth Pillars Park is a public park in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. The .6-acre (0.24 ha) park is located at the intersection of Boren Avenue and Pike Street, on the southwestern edge of Capitol Hill.
Poland (Wikipedia) Poland (Polish: Polska [ˈpɔlska]), officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, while its longest river is the Vistula. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union, with its sixteen voivodeships having a total population of over 38 million and covering a combined area of 312,696 km2 (120,733 sq mi). It is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. The nation’s capital and largest metropolis is Warsaw. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, and Gdańsk.
Polaris (Wikipedia) Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris (Latinized to Alpha Ursae Minoris) and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that fluctuates around 1.98, it is the brightest star in the constellation and is readily visible to the naked eye at night. The position of the star lies less than 1° away from the north celestial pole, making it the current northern pole star. The stable position of the star in the Northern Sky makes it useful for navigation.
Polygon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a polygon (/ˈpɒlɪɡɒn/) is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain.
Polygonal patterned ground (Wikipedia) Polygonal, patterned ground is quite common in some regions of Mars. It is commonly believed to be caused by the sublimation of ice from the ground. Sublimation is the direct change of solid ice to a gas. This is similar to what happens to dry ice on the Earth. Places on Mars that display polygonal ground may indicate where future colonists can find water ice. Low center polygons have been proposed as a marker for ground ice. Polygonal terrain is also found on earth’s permafrost.
Polyhedron (Wikipedia) In geometry, a polyhedron (pl.: polyhedra or polyhedrons; from Greek πολύ (poly-) ‘many’, and ἕδρον (-hedron) ‘base, seat’) is a three-dimensional shape with flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners or vertices.
Polystichum munitum (Wikipedia) Polystichum munitum, the western swordfern, is an evergreen perennial fern native to western North America, where it is one of the most abundant ferns in forested areas. It occurs along the Pacific coast from southeastern Alaska to southern California, and also inland east to southeastern British Columbia, northern Idaho and western Montana, with disjunctive populations in northern British Columbia, Canada; the Black Hills in South Dakota, United States; and Guadalupe Island off of Baja California, Mexico. Western swordfern is known to have locally naturalized in parts of Great Britain and Ireland.
Pontoon bridge (Wikipedia) A pontoon bridge (or ponton bridge), also known as a floating bridge, uses floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for pedestrian and vehicle travel. The buoyancy of the supports limits the maximum load that they can carry.
Pope Francis (Wikipedia) Pope Francis (Latin: Franciscus; Italian: Francesco; Spanish: Francisco; born Jorge Mario Bergoglio; 17 December 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church, the bishop of Rome and sovereign of the Vatican City State. He is the only pope to be a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), the only one from the Americas, the only one from the Southern Hemisphere, and the only one born or raised outside Europe since the 8th-century papacy of the Syrian Pope Gregory III.
Populism (Wikipedia) Populism is a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of “the people” and often juxtapose this group with “the elite”. It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. The term developed in the late 19th century and has been applied to various politicians, parties and movements since that time, often as a pejorative. Within political science and other social sciences, several different definitions of populism have been employed, with some scholars proposing that the term be rejected altogether.
Port Angeles, Washington (Wikipedia) Port Angeles (/ˈændʒələs/ AN-jəl-əs) is a city and county seat of [Clallam County](Clallam County, Washington (Wikipedia)), Washington, United States. With a population of 19,960 as of the 2020 census, it is the largest city in the county. The population was estimated at 20,134 in 2021.
Port Gardner (Wikipedia) Port Gardner, also known as Port Gardner Bay, is an inlet of Possession Sound on which the city of Everett, Washington is located. The Snohomish River flows into the north end of the bay.
Port Macquarie (Wikipedia) Port Macquarie, locally nicknamed Port, is a coastal city the local government area of Port Macquarie-Hastings. It is located on the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, Australia, about 390 km (242 mi) north of Sydney, and 570 km (354 mi) south of Brisbane. The city is located on the Tasman Sea coast, at the mouth of the Hastings River, and at the eastern end of the Oxley Highway (B56). The city with its suburbs had a population of 47,973 in June 2018 and an estimated population of 50,307 in June 2023.
Port Orchard, Washington (Wikipedia) Port Orchard is a city in and the county seat of Kitsap County, Washington, United States. It is located 13 miles (21 km) due west of West Seattle and is connected to Seattle and Vashon Island via the Washington State Ferries run to Southworth. It is named after Port Orchard, the strait that separates Bainbridge Island from the Kitsap Peninsula.
Port Townsend, Washington (Wikipedia) Port Townsend /ˈtaʊnzənd/ is a city on the Quimper Peninsula in Jefferson County, Washington, United States. The population was 10,148 at the 2020 United States Census. It is the county seat and only incorporated city of Jefferson County.
Port-au-Prince (Wikipedia) Port-au-Prince (/ˌpɔːrt oʊ ˈprɪns/ PORT oh PRINSS; French: [pɔʁ o pʁɛ̃s]; Haitian Creole: Pòtoprens, [pɔtopɣɛ̃s]) is the capital and most populous city of Haiti. The city’s population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The metropolitan area is defined by the IHSI as including the communes of Port-au-Prince, Delmas, Cite Soleil, Tabarre, Carrefour and Pétion-Ville.
Portage Bay (Wikipedia) Portage Bay is a body of water, often thought of as the eastern arm of Lake Union, that forms a part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle, Washington.
Portugal (Wikipedia) Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country located on the Iberian Peninsula, in Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Macaronesian archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe, its mainland west and south border with the North Atlantic Ocean and in the north and east, the Portugal-Spain border constitutes the longest uninterrupted border-line in the European Union. Its archipelagos form two autonomous regions with their own regional governments. In the mainland, Alentejo region occupies the biggest area but is one of the regions in Europe with a lower population density. Lisbon is the capital and largest city by population, being also the main spot for tourists alongside Porto and Algarve.
Possession Sound (Wikipedia) Possession Sound is part of Puget Sound, located in the U.S. state of Washington between Whidbey Island and the shoreline of Snohomish County approximately between the cities of Everett and Mukilteo. Possession Sound connects the main Puget Sound basin to the south with Saratoga Passage and Port Susan to the north. The Snohomish River flows into Possession Sound at Port Gardner Bay. Gedney Island, also called Hat Island, is located in Possession Sound.
Potassium (Wikipedia) Potassium is a chemical element; it has symbol K (from Neo-Latin kalium) and atomic number 19. It is a silvery white metal that is soft enough to easily cut with a knife. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmospheric oxygen to form flaky white potassium peroxide in only seconds of exposure. It was first isolated from potash, the ashes of plants, from which its name derives. In the periodic table, potassium is one of the alkali metals, all of which have a single valence electron in the outer electron shell, which is easily removed to create an ion with a positive charge (which combines with anions to form salts). In nature, potassium occurs only in ionic salts. Elemental potassium reacts vigorously with water, generating sufficient heat to ignite hydrogen emitted in the reaction, and burning with a lilac-colored flame. It is found dissolved in seawater (which is 0.04% potassium by weight), and occurs in many minerals such as orthoclase, a common constituent of granites and other igneous rocks.
Potassium iodide (Wikipedia) Potassium iodide is a chemical compound, medication, and dietary supplement. It is a medication used for treating hyperthyroidism, in radiation emergencies, and for protecting the thyroid gland when certain types of radiopharmaceuticals are used. In the third world it is also used for treating skin sporotrichosis and phycomycosis. It is a supplement used by people with low dietary intake of iodine. It is administered orally.
Potsdam (Wikipedia) Potsdam (German pronunciation: [ˈpɔtsdam]) is the capital and, with around 183,000 inhabitants, largest city of the German state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of Berlin, and lies embedded in a hilly morainic landscape dotted with many lakes, around 20 of which are located within Potsdam’s city limits. It lies some 25 kilometres (16 miles) southwest of Berlin’s city centre. The name of the city and of many of its boroughs are of Slavic origin.
Precipitation (Wikipedia) In meteorology, precipitation is any product of the condensation of atmospheric water vapor that falls from clouds due to gravitational pull. The main forms of precipitation include drizzle, rain, sleet, snow, ice pellets, graupel and hail. Precipitation occurs when a portion of the atmosphere becomes saturated with water vapor (reaching 100% relative humidity), so that the water condenses and “precipitates” or falls. Thus, fog and mist are not precipitation but colloids, because the water vapor does not condense sufficiently to precipitate. Two processes, possibly acting together, can lead to air becoming saturated: cooling the air or adding water vapor to the air. Precipitation forms as smaller droplets coalesce via collision with other rain drops or ice crystals within a cloud. Short, intense periods of rain in scattered locations are called showers.
Prescott, Wisconsin (Wikipedia) Prescott is a city in Pierce County, Wisconsin at the confluence of the St. Croix River and Mississippi River. The population was 4,258 at the 2010 census, making it the second-largest city in the county after River Falls, and the largest entirely within Pierce County.
President of Russia (Wikipedia) The president of the Russian Federation (Russian: Президент Российской Федерации, tr. Prezident Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the executive head of state of Russia. The president is the chair of the Federal State Council and the supreme commander-in-chief of the Russian Armed Forces. It is the highest office in Russia.
President of the United States (Wikipedia) The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.
Priabonian (Wikipedia) The Priabonian is, in the ICS’s geologic timescale, the latest age or the upper stage of the Eocene Epoch or Series. It spans the time between 37.71 and 33.9 Ma. The Priabonian is preceded by the Bartonian and is followed by the Rupelian, the lowest stage of the Oligocene.
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Wikipedia) The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, they sit as members of Parliament.
Prince Edward Island (Wikipedia) Prince Edward Island (PEI; French: Île-du-Prince-Édouard; Scottish Gaelic: Eilean a’ Phrionnsa; colloquially known as The Island) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. While it is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, it is the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: “Garden of the Gulf”, “Birthplace of Confederation” and “Cradle of Confederation”. Its capital and largest city is Charlottetown. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces.
Processed meat (Wikipedia) Processed meat is considered to be any meat that has been modified in order to either improve its taste or to extend its shelf life. Methods of meat processing include salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, boiling, frying, and/or the addition of chemical preservatives. Processed meat is usually composed of pork or beef or, less frequently, poultry. It can also contain offal or meat by-products such as blood. Processed meat products include bacon, ham, sausages, salami, corned beef, jerky, hot dogs, lunch meat, canned meat, chicken nuggets, and meat-based sauces. Meat processing includes all the processes that change fresh meat with the exception of simple mechanical processes such as cutting, grinding or mixing.
Progressive rock (Wikipedia) Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Initially termed “progressive pop”, the style was an emergence of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and compositional techniques more frequently associated with jazz, folk, or classical music. Additional elements contributed to its “progressive” label: lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of “art”, and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing.
Proslogion (Wikipedia) The Proslogion (Latin: Proslogium, lit. ‘Discourse’) is a prayer (or meditation), written by the medieval cleric Saint Anselm of Canterbury in 1077–1078, serving to reflect on the attributes of God in order to explain how God can possess seemingly contradictory qualities. This meditation is considered to be the first-known philosophical formulation that sets out the ontological argument for the existence of God.
Proterozoic (Wikipedia) The Proterozoic (IPA: /ˌproʊtərəˈzoʊɪk, ˌprɒt-, -əroʊ-, -trə-, -troʊ-/ PROH-tər-ə-ZOH-ik, PROT-, -⁠ər-oh-, -⁠trə-, -⁠troh-) is the third of the four geologic eons of Earth’s history, spanning the time interval from 2500 to 538.8 Mya, the longest eon of the Earth’s geologic time scale. It is preceded by the Archean and followed by the Phanerozoic, and is the most recent part of the Precambrian “supereon”.
Proxima Centauri (Wikipedia) Proxima Centauri is a small, low-mass star located 4.2465 light-years (1.3020 pc) away from the Sun in the southern constellation of Centaurus. Its Latin name means the ’nearest [star] of Centaurus’. It was discovered in 1915 by Robert Innes and is the nearest-known star to the Sun. With a quiescent apparent magnitude of 11.13, it is too faint to be seen with the unaided eye. Proxima Centauri is a member of the Alpha Centauri star system, being identified as component Alpha Centauri C, and is 2.18° to the southwest of the Alpha Centauri AB pair. It is currently 12,950 AU (0.2 ly) from AB, which it orbits with a period of about 550,000 years.
Psilocin (Wikipedia) Psilocin (also known as 4-HO-DMT, 4-hydroxy DMT, psilocine, psilocyn, or psilotsin) is a substituted tryptamine alkaloid and a serotonergic psychedelic substance. It is present in most psychedelic mushrooms together with its phosphorylated counterpart psilocybin. Psilocin is a Schedule I drug under the Convention on Psychotropic Substances. Acting on the 5-HT2A receptors, psilocin modulates the production and reuptake of serotonin. The mind-altering effects of psilocin are highly variable and subjective and resemble those of LSD and DMT.
Psilocybe cubensis (Wikipedia) Psilocybe cubensis is a species of psilocybin mushroom of moderate potency whose principal active compounds are psilocybin and psilocin. Commonly called shrooms, magic mushrooms, golden halos, cubes, or gold caps, it belongs to the fungus family Hymenogastraceae and was previously known as Stropharia cubensis. It is the best-known psilocybin mushroom due to its wide distribution and ease of cultivation. This mushroom being optimal for home cultivation specifically, as was suggested in the 1970s, is primarily what led to cubensis being the psilocybin mushroom species most common on the black market as a street drug.
Psilocybe semilanceata (Wikipedia) Psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known as the liberty cap, is a species of fungus which produces the psychoactive compounds psilocybin, psilocin and baeocystin. It is both one of the most widely distributed psilocybin mushrooms in nature, and one of the most potent. The mushrooms have a distinctive conical to bell-shaped cap, up to 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, with a small nipple-like protrusion on the top. They are yellow to brown, covered with radial grooves when moist, and fade to a lighter color as they mature. Their stipes tend to be slender and long, and the same color or slightly lighter than the cap. The gill attachment to the stipe is adnexed (narrowly attached), and they are initially cream-colored before tinting purple to black as the spores mature. The spores are dark purplish-brown in mass, ellipsoid in shape, and measure 10.5–15 by 6.5–8.5 micrometres.
Psilocybin (Wikipedia) Psilocybin (/ˌsaɪləˈsaɪbɪn/ sy-lə-SY-bin, /ˌsɪl-/) is a naturally occurring psychedelic prodrug compound produced by more than 200 species of fungi. The most potent are members of genus Psilocybe, such as P. azurescens, P. semilanceata, and P. cyanescens, but psilocybin has also been isolated from about a dozen other genera. Psilocybin is itself biologically inactive but is quickly converted by the body to psilocin, which has mind-altering effects similar, in some aspects, to those of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT). In general, the effects include euphoria, visual and mental hallucinations, changes in perception, distorted sense of time, and perceived spiritual experiences. It can also cause adverse reactions such as nausea and panic attacks.
Psychedelic drug (Wikipedia) Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or psychedelic “trips”) and/or an apparent expansion of consciousness. Sometimes, they are called classic hallucinogens, serotonergic hallucinogens, or serotonergic psychedelics, and the term psychedelic is sometimes used more broadly to include various types of hallucinogens or those which are atypical or adjacent to psychedelia such as MDMA or cannabis; this article uses the narrower definition of psychedelics. True psychedelics cause specific psychological, visual, and auditory changes, and oftentimes a substantially altered state of consciousness. Psychedelic states are often compared to meditative, psychodynamic or transcendental types of alterations of the mind. The “classical” psychedelics, the psychedelics with the largest scientific and cultural influence, are mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and DMT. In particular, LSD has long been considered the paradigmatic psychedelic compound to which all other psychedelics are often or usually compared.
Psychoactive drug (Wikipedia) A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, cognition, and behavior.
Psychonautics (Wikipedia) Psychonautics (from the Ancient Greek ψυχή psychē ‘soul, spirit, mind’ and ναύτης naútēs ‘sailor, navigator’) refers both to a methodology for describing and explaining the subjective effects of altered states of consciousness, including those induced by meditation or mind-altering substances, and to a research cabal in which the researcher voluntarily immerses themselves into an altered mental state in order to explore the accompanying experiences.
Ptolemy (Wikipedia) Claudius Ptolemy (/ˈtɒləmi/; Greek: Πτολεμαῖος, Ptolemaios; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. 100 – c. 170 AD) was a Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist, who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic, and Western European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was originally entitled the Mathēmatikē Syntaxis or Mathematical Treatise, and later known as The Greatest Treatise. The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion on maps and the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika (lit. “On the Effects”) but more commonly known as the Tetrábiblos, from the Koine Greek meaning “Four Books”, or by its Latin equivalent Quadripartite.
Publilius Syrus (Wikipedia) Publilius Syrus (fl. 85–43 BC), was a Latin writer, best known for his sententiae. He was a Syrian from Antioch who was brought as a slave to Roman Italy. Syrus was brought to Rome on the same ship that brought a certain Manilius, astronomer - not the famous Manilius of the 1st century AD (see Pliny, NH X, 4-5), and Staberius Eros the grammarian. By his wit and talent, Syrus won the favour of his master, who granted him manumission and educated him. He became a member of the Publilia gens. Publilius’ name, due to the palatalization of ’l’ between two ‘i’s in the Early Middle Ages, is often presented by manuscripts (and some printed editions) in corrupt form as ‘Publius’, Publius being a very common Roman praenomen.
Puget Group (Wikipedia) The Puget Group is a geologic group in Washington (state). It preserves fossils dating back to the Paleogene period. ¶ Two key formations include the Renton Formation and the Tukwila Formation.
Puget Sound (Wikipedia) Puget Sound (/ˈpjuːdʒɪt/ PEW-jit) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and two minor connections to the open Pacific Ocean via the Strait of Juan de Fuca—Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and Deception Pass and Swinomish Channel being the minor.
Puntarenas (Wikipedia) Puntarenas (Spanish pronunciation: [puntaˈɾenas]) is a city in the Puntarenas canton of Puntarenas Province, on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. As the seat of the Municipality of Puntarenas canton, it is awarded the title of city, which is made from the Puntarenas, Chacarita and El Roble districts. And as the city of the first canton of the province, it is the capital city of the Puntarenas Province as well, according to the Administrative divisions of Costa Rica.
Puppis (Wikipedia) Puppis /ˈpʌpɪs/ is a constellation in the southern sky. Puppis, the Poop Deck, was originally part of an over-large constellation Argo Navis (the ship of Jason and the Argonauts), which centuries after its initial description, was divided into three parts, the other two being Carina (the keel and hull), and Vela (the sails of the ship). Puppis is the largest of the three constellations in square degrees. It is one of the 88 modern constellations recognized by the International Astronomical Union.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Wikipedia) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (/tʃaɪˈkɒfski/ chy-KOF-skee; 7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period. He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.
Pyramids (novel) (Wikipedia) Pyramids is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, published in 1989, the seventh book in his Discworld series. It won the BSFA Award for Best Novel in 1989.
Pyxis (Wikipedia) Pyxis is a small and faint constellation in the southern sky. Abbreviated from Pyxis Nautica, its name is Latin for a mariner’s compass (contrasting with Circinus, which represents a draftsman’s compasses). Pyxis was introduced by Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century, and is counted among the 88 modern constellations.
Qatar (Wikipedia) Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares its sole land border with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its territory surrounded by the Persian Gulf. The Gulf of Bahrain, an inlet of the Persian Gulf, separates Qatar from nearby Bahrain. The capital is Doha, home to over 80% of the country’s inhabitants, and the land area is mostly made up of flat, low-lying desert.
QBasic (Wikipedia) QBasic is an integrated development environment (IDE) and interpreter for a variety of dialects of BASIC which are based on QuickBASIC. Code entered into the IDE is compiled to an intermediate representation (IR), and this IR is immediately executed on demand within the IDE.
Quadrilateral (Wikipedia) In geometry a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, having four edges (sides) and four corners (vertices). The word is derived from the Latin words quadri, a variant of four, and latus, meaning “side”. It is also called a tetragon, derived from greek “tetra” meaning “four” and “gon” meaning “corner” or “angle”, in analogy to other polygons (e.g. pentagon). Since “gon” means “angle”, it is analogously called a quadrangle, or 4-angle. A quadrilateral with vertices A, B, C and D is sometimes denoted as ABCD.
Quantum mechanics (Wikipedia) Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the behavior of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science.
Quartz (Wikipedia) Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO2. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth’s continental crust, behind feldspar.
Quaternary (Wikipedia) The Quaternary (/kwəˈtɜːrnəri, ˈkwɒtərnɛri/ kwə-TUR-nə-ree, KWOT-ər-nerr-ee) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ago to the present. As of 2023, the Quaternary Period is divided into two epochs: the Pleistocene (2.58 million years ago to 11.7 thousand years ago) and the Holocene (11.7 thousand years ago to today); a third epoch, the Anthropocene, has recently been proposed, but it is not officially recognised by the ICS.
Quebec (Wikipedia) Quebec (English: Quebec; French: Québec [kebɛk] is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the largest province by area and the second-largest by population. Much of the population lives in urban areas along the St. Lawrence River, between its most populous city, Montreal, and the provincial capital, Quebec City. Located in Central Canada, the province shares land borders with Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast, and a coastal border with Nunavut; in the south it borders the United States.
Queen Anne, Seattle (Wikipedia) Queen Anne is a neighborhood and geographic feature in Seattle, Washington, United States, located northwest of downtown. Queen Anne covers an area of 7.3 square kilometers (2.8 sq mi), and has a population of about 28,000. It is bordered by Belltown to the south, Lake Union to the east, the Lake Washington Ship Canal to the north and Interbay to the west.
Quincy, Washington (Wikipedia) Quincy is a city in Grant County, Washington, United States. It is situated east of the Columbia River on State Route 28 and north of Interstate 90. The population was 7,543 at the 2020 census. Quincy is one of the closest cities to The Gorge Amphitheatre.
Quran (Wikipedia) The Quran, also romanized Qur’an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (surah) which consist of individual verses (ayat). Besides its religious significance, it is widely regarded as the finest work in Arabic literature, and has significantly influenced the Arabic language. It is also the object of a modern field of academic research known as Quranic studies.
Raccoon (Wikipedia) The raccoon (/rəˈkuːn/ or US: /ræˈkuːn/, Procyon lotor), also spelled racoon and sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm (16 to 28 in), and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg (11 to 57 lb). Its grayish coat mostly consists of dense underfur, which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon’s most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas relating to the animal. The raccoon is noted for its intelligence, as studies show that it is able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years. It is usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates.
Radius (Wikipedia) In classical geometry, a radius (pl.: radii or radiuses) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the Latin radius, meaning ray but also the spoke of a chariot wheel. The typical abbreviation and mathematical variable name for radius is R or r. By extension, the diameter D is defined as twice the radius
Rainier Beach, Seattle (Wikipedia) Rainier Beach (/reɪˈnɪər/ ray-NEER) is a set of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington that are mostly residential. Also called Atlantic City, Rainier Beach can include Dunlap, Pritchard Island, and Rainier View neighborhoods.
Rainier Valley, Seattle (Wikipedia) The Rainier Valley (/reɪˈnɪər/ ray-NEER) is a district in southeast Seattle. It is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and north of Rainier Beach. It is part of Seattle’s South End.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Wikipedia) Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and critical thinking, as well as a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society and conformity. Friedrich Nietzsche considered him “the most gifted of the Americans”, and Walt Whitman referred to him as his “master”.
Ramsey County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Ramsey County is a county located in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 552,352, making it the second-most populous county in Minnesota. Its county seat and largest city is Saint Paul, the state capital and the twin city of Minneapolis. The county was founded in 1849 and is named for Alexander Ramsey, the first governor of the Minnesota Territory.
Ramzan Kadyrov (Wikipedia) Ramzan Akhmatovich Kadyrov (born 5 October 1976) is a Russian politician and current Head of the Chechen Republic. He was formerly affiliated to the Chechen independence movement, through his father who was the separatist-appointed mufti of Chechnya. He is a colonel general in the Russian military.
Raoul Wallenberg (Wikipedia) Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945) was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings he declared as Swedish territory.
Rational emotive behavior therapy (Wikipedia) Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), previously called rational therapy and rational emotive therapy, is an active-directive, philosophically and empirically based psychotherapy, the aim of which is to resolve emotional and behavioral problems and disturbances and to help people to lead happier and more fulfilling lives.
Rattlesnake Lake (Wikipedia) Rattlesnake Lake is a lake in the northwest United States, located in Rattlesnake Mountain Scenic Area in King County, Washington, approximately thirty miles (50 km) east of Seattle, south of Interstate 90.
Rattlesnake Ridge (Wikipedia) Rattlesnake Ridge, known as daʔšədabš to the Snoqualmie people, is the ridge of Rattlesnake Mountain located south of North Bend, Washington, United States. The western end is near the intersection of State Route 18 and I-90 in Snoqualmie, Washington, and runs southeast about 7 miles (11 km) or 11 miles (18 km) by trail. It is the highest and easternmost of the Issaquah Alps (although Cedar Butte in the gap between Rattlesnake Mountain and the Cascade front at Mount Washington is considered by Harvey Manning to be a quasi-Alp). A maze of abandoned logging roads and constructed trails have been strung together to provide a 10.5-mile (16.9 km) footpath from the Snoqualmie Point trailhead at Exit 27 on I-90 all the way to the Rattlesnake Lake trailhead near Exit 32.
Ravenna, Seattle (Wikipedia) Ravenna is a neighborhood in northeastern Seattle, Washington named after Ravenna, Italy. Though Ravenna is considered a residential neighborhood, it also is home to several businesses, many of which are located in the University Village, a shopping mall.
Ray Thomas (Wikipedia) Raymond Thomas (29 December 1941 – 4 January 2018) was an English musician, singer and songwriter. He was best known as a founding member of the English progressive rock band the Moody Blues. His flute solo on the band’s 1967 hit single “Nights in White Satin” is regarded as one of progressive rock’s defining moments. In 2018, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues.
Raymond, Washington (Wikipedia) Raymond is a city in Pacific County, Washington, United States. The population was 2,882 at the 2010 census. The 2020 census showed the population of 3,081, an increase of 6.4%. The town’s economy has traditionally been based on logging and fishing, together with a limited amount of tourism.
RCA connector (Wikipedia) The RCA connector is a type of electrical connector commonly used to carry audio and video signals. The name RCA derives from the company Radio Corporation of America, which introduced the design in the 1930s. The connector’s male plug and female jack are called RCA plug and RCA jack.
Read-only memory (Wikipedia) Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing software that is rarely changed during the life of the system, also known as firmware. Software applications (like video games) for programmable devices can be distributed as plug-in cartridges containing ROM.
Real number (Wikipedia) In mathematics, a real number is a number that can be used to measure a continuous one-dimensional quantity such as a distance, duration or temperature. Here, continuous means that pairs of values can have arbitrarily small differences. Every real number can be almost uniquely represented by an infinite decimal expansion.
Reality (Wikipedia) Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary, nonexistent or nonactual. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, reality is the totality of a system, known and unknown.
Reaper Man (Wikipedia) Reaper Man is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett. Published in 1991, it is the 11th Discworld novel and the second to focus on Death. The title is a reference to Alex Cox’s movie Repo Man.
Recursive descent parser (Wikipedia) In computer science, a recursive descent parser is a kind of top-down parser built from a set of mutually recursive procedures (or a non-recursive equivalent) where each such procedure implements one of the nonterminals of the grammar. Thus the structure of the resulting program closely mirrors that of the grammar it recognizes.
Red dwarf (Wikipedia) A red dwarf is the smallest kind of star on the main sequence. Red dwarfs are by far the most common type of fusing star in the Milky Way, at least in the neighborhood of the Sun. However, due to their low luminosity, individual red dwarfs cannot be easily observed. From Earth, not one star that fits the stricter definitions of a red dwarf is visible to the naked eye. Proxima Centauri, the star nearest to the Sun, is a red dwarf, as are fifty of the sixty nearest stars. According to some estimates, red dwarfs make up three-quarters of the fusing stars in the Milky Way.
Red giant (Wikipedia) A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses (M☉)) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface temperature around 5,000 K (4,700 °C; 8,500 °F) or lower. The appearance of the red giant is from yellow-white to reddish-orange, including the spectral types K and M, sometimes G, but also class S stars and most carbon stars.
Red Sea (Wikipedia) The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez (leading to the Suez Canal). It is underlain by the Red Sea Rift, which is part of the Great Rift Valley.
Red Sea crisis (Wikipedia) The Red Sea crisis began on 19 October 2023, when the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen launched missiles and armed drones at Israel, demanding an end to the invasion of the Gaza Strip. The Houthis have since seized and launched aerial attacks against dozens of merchant and naval vessels in the Red Sea, drawing hundreds of air strikes on missile sites and other targets by US and allied forces. The crisis is linked to the Israel–Hamas war, the Iran–Israel proxy conflict, the Iran–United States proxy conflict, and the Yemeni crisis.
Red supergiant (Wikipedia) Red supergiants (RSGs) are stars with a supergiant luminosity class (Yerkes class I) and a stellar classification K or M. They are the largest stars in the universe in terms of volume, although they are not the most massive or luminous. Betelgeuse and Antares A are the brightest and best known red supergiants (RSGs), indeed the only first magnitude red supergiant stars.
Redmond, Washington (Wikipedia) Redmond is a city in King County, Washington, United States, located 15 miles (24 km) east of Seattle. The population was 73,256 at the 2020 census, up from 54,144 in 2010.
Regular polygon (Wikipedia) In Euclidean geometry, a regular polygon is a polygon that is direct equiangular (all angles are equal in measure) and equilateral (all sides have the same length). Regular polygons may be either convex, star or skew. In the limit, a sequence of regular polygons with an increasing number of sides approximates a circle, if the perimeter or area is fixed, or a regular apeirogon (effectively a straight line), if the edge length is fixed.
Regulus (Wikipedia) Regulus is the brightest object in the constellation Leo and one of the brightest stars in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation designated α Leonis, which is Latinized to Alpha Leonis, and abbreviated Alpha Leo or α Leo. Regulus appears singular, but is actually a quadruple star system composed of four stars that are organized into two pairs. The spectroscopic binary Regulus A consists of a blue-white main-sequence star and its companion, which has not yet been directly observed, but is probably a white dwarf. The system lies approximately 79 light years from the Sun.
René Descartes (Wikipedia) René Descartes (/deɪˈkɑːrt/ or UK: /ˈdeɪkɑːrt/; French: [ʁəne dekaʁt]; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Mathematics was central to his method of inquiry, and he connected the previously separate fields of geometry and algebra into analytic geometry. Descartes spent much of his working life in the Dutch Republic, initially serving the Dutch States Army, later becoming a central intellectual of the Dutch Golden Age. Although he served a Protestant state and was later counted as a deist by critics, Descartes considered himself a devout Catholic.
Renton Formation (Wikipedia) The Renton Formation is a geologic formation in Washington (state) within the Puget Group. It preserves fossils dating back to the Paleogene period.
Renton, Washington (Wikipedia) Renton is a city in King County, Washington, and an inner-ring suburb of Seattle. Situated 11 miles (18 km) southeast of downtown Seattle, Renton straddles the southeast shore of Lake Washington, at the mouth of the Cedar River. As of the 2020 census, the population of Renton was 106,785, up from 90,927 at the 2010 census. The city is currently the sixth-largest municipality in greater Seattle and the ninth-largest in Washington state.
Reproduction (Wikipedia) Reproduction (or procreation or breeding) is the biological process by which new individual organisms – “offspring” – are produced from their “parent” or parents. Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction. There are two forms of reproduction: asexual and sexual.
Reptile (Wikipedia) Reptiles, in common parlance, are a group of tetrapods with an ectothermic (‘cold-blooded’) metabolism and amniotic development. Living reptiles comprise four orders: Testudines (turtles), Crocodilia (crocodilians), Squamata (lizards and snakes), and Rhynchocephalia (the tuatara). As of May 2023, about 12,000 living species of reptiles are listed in the Reptile Database. The study of the traditional reptile orders, customarily in combination with the study of modern amphibians, is called herpetology.
Republic of Ireland (Wikipedia) Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə]), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern side of the island. Around 2.1 million of the country’s population of 5.13 million people resides in the Greater Dublin Area. The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George’s Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic. The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann; an upper house, Seanad Éireann; and an elected President (Uachtarán) who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister, literally ‘Chief’, a title not used in English), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the Taoiseach in turn appoints other government ministers.
Republic of the Congo (Wikipedia) The Republic of the Congo, also known as Congo-Brazzaville, West Congo, Congo Republic, ROC, or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located on the western coast of Central Africa to the west of the Congo River. It is bordered to the west by Gabon, to the northwest by Cameroon, to the northeast by the Central African Republic, to the southeast by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south by the Angolan exclave of Cabinda, and to the southwest by the Atlantic Ocean.
Republican Party (United States) (Wikipedia) The Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s.
Restorationism (Wikipedia) Restorationism, also known as Restitutionism or Christian primitivism, is a religious perspective according to which the early beliefs and practices of the followers of Jesus were either lost or adulterated after his death and required a “restoration”. It is a view that often “seeks to correct faults or deficiencies (in other branches of Christianity) by appealing to the primitive church as normative model”.
Reticle (Wikipedia) A reticle, or reticule also known as a graticule, is a pattern of fine lines or markings built into the eyepiece of an optical device such as a telescopic sight, spotting scope, theodolite, optical microscope or the screen of an oscilloscope, to provide measurement references during visual inspections. Today, engraved lines or embedded fibers may be replaced by a digital image superimposed on a screen or eyepiece. Both terms may be used to describe any set of patterns used for aiding visual measurements and calibrations, but in modern use reticle is most commonly used for weapon sights, while graticule is more widely used for non-weapon measuring instruments such as oscilloscope display, astronomic telescopes, microscopes and slides, surveying instruments and other similar devices.
Reticulum (Wikipedia) Reticulum is a small, faint constellation in the southern sky. Its name is Latin for a small net, or reticle—a net of crosshairs at the focus of a telescope eyepiece that is used to measure star positions. The constellation is best viewed between October and December, and save for one main star visible in ideal conditions, cannot be seen from north of the 30th parallel north.
Reynoutria japonica (wikipedia.org) Reynoutria japonica, synonyms Fallopia japonica and Polygonum cuspidatum, is a species of herbaceous perennial plant in the knotweed and buckwheat family Polygonaceae. Common names include Japanese knotweed and Asian knotweed. It is native to East Asia in Japan, China and Korea. In North America and Europe, the species has successfully established itself in numerous habitats, and is classified as a pest and invasive species in several countries.
Rhizome (Wikipedia) In botany and dendrology, a rhizome (/ˈraɪzoʊm/; from Ancient Greek ῥίζωμα (rhízōma) ‘mass of roots’, from ῥιζόω (rhizóō) ‘cause to strike root’) is a modified subterranean plant stem that sends out roots and shoots from its nodes. Rhizomes are also called creeping rootstalks or just rootstalks. Rhizomes develop from axillary buds and grow horizontally. The rhizome also retains the ability to allow new shoots to grow upwards.
Rhode Island (Wikipedia) Rhode Island (/ˌroʊd-/, like road) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the smallest U.S. state by area and the seventh-least populous, with slightly less than 1.1 million residents as of 2020; but Rhode Island has grown at every decennial count since 1790 and is the second-most densely populated state, after New Jersey. The state takes its name from the eponymous island, though nearly all of its land area is on the mainland. Rhode Island borders Connecticut to its west; Massachusetts to its north and east; and the Atlantic Ocean to its south via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound; and shares a small maritime border with New York, east of Long Island. Providence is its capital and most populous city.
Rhododendron maximum (Wikipedia) Rhododendron maximum is a species of Rhododendron native to the Appalachians of eastern North America, from Alabama north to coastal Nova Scotia. Its common names include great laurel, great rhododendron, rosebay rhododendron, American rhododendron and big rhododendron.
Rhodonite (Wikipedia) Rhodonite is a manganese inosilicate, with the formula (Mn, Fe, Mg, Ca)SiO3, and member of the pyroxenoid group of minerals, crystallizing in the triclinic system. It commonly occurs as cleavable to compact masses with a rose-red color (its name comes from Ancient Greek ῥόδον (rhódon) ‘rose’), often tending to brown due to surface oxidation. The rose-red hue is caused by the manganese cation (Mn2+).
Rhombicuboctahedron (Wikipedia) In geometry, rhombicuboctahedron is an Archimedean solid with 26 faces, consisting of 8 equilateral triangles and 18 squares. It is named by Johannes Kepler in his 1618 Harmonices Mundi, being short for truncated cuboctahedral rhombus, with cuboctahedral rhombus being his name for a rhombic dodecahedron.
Rhombus (Wikipedia) In plane Euclidean geometry, a rhombus (plural rhombi or rhombuses) is a quadrilateral whose four sides all have the same length. Another name is equilateral quadrilateral, since equilateral means that all of its sides are equal in length. The rhombus is often called a “diamond”, after the diamonds suit in playing cards which resembles the projection of an octahedral diamond, or a lozenge, though the former sometimes refers specifically to a rhombus with a 60° angle (which some authors call a calisson after the French sweet – also see Polyiamond), and the latter sometimes refers specifically to a rhombus with a 45° angle.
Rhus typhina (Wikipedia) Rhus typhina, the staghorn sumac, is a species of flowering plant in the family Anacardiaceae, native to eastern North America. It is primarily found in southeastern Canada, the northeastern and midwestern United States, and the Appalachian Mountains, but it is widely cultivated as an ornamental throughout the temperate world. It is an invasive species in some parts of the world.
Rhyacian (Wikipedia) The Rhyacian Period ( /raɪˈeɪsi.ən/; Ancient Greek: ῥύαξ, romanized: rhýax, meaning “stream of lava”) is the second geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era and lasted from 2300 Mya to 2050 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Richard Feynman (Wikipedia) Richard Phillips Feynman (/ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as his work in particle physics for which he proposed the parton model. For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965 jointly with Julian Schwinger and Shin’ichirō Tomonaga.
Richard Francis Burton (Wikipedia) Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (/ˈbɜːrtən/; 19 March 1821 – 20 October 1890) was a British explorer, writer, scholar, and soldier. He was famed for his travels and explorations in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke twenty-nine European, Asian, and African languages.
Richard Nixon (Wikipedia) Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913 – April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and as the 36th vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, détente with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon’s second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal.
Ridley Scott (Wikipedia) Sir Ridley Scott GBE (born 30 November 1937) is an English filmmaker. He is best known for directing films in the science fiction, crime and historical drama genres. His work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. He ranks among the highest-grossing directors and has received many accolades, including the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement in 2018, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2003, and appointed a Knight Grand Cross by King Charles III in 2024.
Riemann hypothesis (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part 1/2. Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics. It is of great interest in number theory because it implies results about the distribution of prime numbers. It was proposed by Bernhard Riemann (1859), after whom it is named.
Rigel (Wikipedia) Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion. It has the Bayer designation β Orionis, which is Latinized to Beta Orionis and abbreviated Beta Ori or β Ori. Rigel is the brightest and most massive component – and the eponym – of a star system of at least four stars that appear as a single blue-white point of light to the naked eye. This system is located at a distance of approximately 860 light-years (260 pc) from the Sun.
Right angle (Wikipedia) In geometry and trigonometry, a right angle is an angle of exactly 90 degrees or 𝜋/2 radians corresponding to a quarter turn. If a ray is placed so that its endpoint is on a line and the adjacent angles are equal, then they are right angles. The term is a calque of Latin angulus rectus; here rectus means “upright”, referring to the vertical perpendicular to a horizontal base line.
Right triangle (Wikipedia) A right triangle or right-angled triangle, sometimes called an orthogonal triangle or rectangular triangle, is a triangle in which two sides are perpendicular forming a right angle (1⁄4 turn or 90 degrees).
Rights of Man (Wikipedia) Rights of Man (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke’s attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Rincewind (Wikipedia) Rincewind is a fictional character appearing in several of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He is a failed student at the Unseen University for wizards in Ankh-Morpork, and is often described by scholars as “the magical equivalent to the number zero”. He spends most of his time running away from bands of people who want to kill him for various reasons. The fact that he’s still alive and running is explained in that, although he was born with a wizard’s spirit, he has the body of a long-distance sprinter. Rincewind is also renowned for being able to solve minor problems by turning them into major disasters. His unique “skill” is implied to be due to being the chosen one of “The Lady”, the anthropomorphic personification of luck (both good and bad).
Ring Nebula (Wikipedia) The Ring Nebula (also catalogued as Messier 57, M57 and NGC 6720) is a planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Lyra. Such a nebula is formed when a star, during the last stages of its evolution before becoming a white dwarf, expels a vast luminous envelope of ionized gas into the surrounding interstellar space.
Río de la Plata (Wikipedia) The Río de la Plata (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈri.o ðe la ˈplata]; lit. ‘River of Silver’), also called the River Plate or La Plata River in English, is the estuary formed by the confluence of the Uruguay River and the Paraná River at Punta Gorda. It empties into the Atlantic Ocean and forms a funnel-shaped indentation on the southeastern coastline of South America. Depending on the geographer, the Río de la Plata may be considered a river, an estuary, a gulf, or a marginal sea. If considered a river, it is the widest in the world, with a maximum width of 220 kilometres (140 mi).
Rishi Sunak (Wikipedia) Rishi Sunak (/ˈrɪʃi ˈsuːnæk/ ; born 12 May 1980) is a British politician who has served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since 2022. The first British Asian prime minister, he previously held two cabinet positions under Boris Johnson, latterly as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2020 to 2022. Sunak has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Richmond (Yorks) since 2015.
Rita Hayworth (Wikipedia) Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino; October 17, 1918 – May 14, 1987) was an American actress. She achieved fame in the 1940s as one of the top stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and appeared in 61 films in total over 37 years. The press coined the term “The Love Goddess” to describe Hayworth after she had become the most glamorous screen idol of the 1940s. She was the top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II.
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Wikipedia) Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is a realist novella by Stephen King. It was first published in 1982 by Viking Press in his collection Different Seasons. It was later included in the 2009 collection Stephen King Goes to the Movies. The plot follows former bank vice president Andy Dufresne, who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and ends up in Shawshank State Penitentiary, where corruption and violence are rampant.
Rivera Plate (Wikipedia) The Rivera Plate is a small tectonic plate (a microplate) located off the west coast of Mexico, just south of the Baja California Peninsula. It is bounded on the northwest by the East Pacific Rise, on the southwest by the Rivera Transform Fault, on the southeast by a deformation zone, and on the northeast by the Middle America Trench and another deformation zone.
Riverworld (Wikipedia) The Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of five science fiction novels (1971–1983) by American author Philip José Farmer (1918–2009). The Riverworld is an artificial, or heavily terraformed, planet where all humans (and pre-humans) who ever lived throughout history have been restored to life. The novels (and a few shorter works) explore interactions of resurrected individuals from many different cultures and time periods. The underlying theme is quasi-religious. The motivations and ethics of the unknown intelligences that created the Riverworld and its inhabitants are explored.
Rob Reiner (Wikipedia) Robert Reiner (born March 6, 1947) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence with the role of Mike “Meathead” Stivic on the CBS sitcom All in the Family (1971–1979), a performance that earned him two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Robert Falcon Scott (Wikipedia) Captain Robert Falcon Scott CVO (6 June 1868 – c. 29 March 1912) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer who led two expeditions to the Antarctic regions: the Discovery expedition of 1901–04 and the Terra Nova expedition of 1910–13.
Robert Johnson (Wikipedia) Robert Leroy Johnson (May 8, 1911 – August 16, 1938) was an American blues musician and songwriter. His landmark recordings in 1936 and 1937 display a combination of singing, guitar skills, and songwriting talent that has influenced later generations of musicians. Although his recording career spanned only seven months, he is recognized as a master of the blues, particularly the Delta blues style, and one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame describes him as perhaps “the first ever rock star”.
Robert Monroe (Wikipedia) Robert Allan Monroe (October 30, 1915 – March 17, 1995) was an American radio broadcasting executive who became known for his research into altered consciousness and for founding The Monroe Institute. His 1971 book Journeys Out of the Body is credited with popularizing the term “out-of-body experience”.
Robin Hood: Men in Tights (Wikipedia) Robin Hood: Men in Tights is a 1993 adventure comedy film and a parody of the Robin Hood story. The film was produced and directed by Mel Brooks, co-written by Brooks, Evan Chandler, and J. David Shapiro based on a story by Chandler and Shapiro, and stars Cary Elwes, Richard Lewis, and Dave Chappelle in his film debut. It includes frequent comedic references to previous Robin Hood films, particularly Prince of Thieves (upon which the plot is loosely structured), and the 1938 Errol Flynn adaptation The Adventures of Robin Hood. Brooks himself had previously created the short-lived sitcom When Things Were Rotten in the mid-1970s, which also spoofed the Robin Hood legend.
RoboCop (Wikipedia) RoboCop is a 1987 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven, with a screenplay by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Daniel O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox, Kurtwood Smith, and Miguel Ferrer. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the megacorporation Omni Consumer Products as the cyborg law enforcer RoboCop. Unaware of his former life, RoboCop executes a brutal campaign against crime while coming to terms with the lingering fragments of his humanity.
Rock (geology) (Wikipedia) In geology, rock (or stone) is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth’s outer solid layer, the crust, and most of its interior, except for the liquid outer core and pockets of magma in the asthenosphere. The study of rocks involves multiple subdisciplines of geology, including petrology and mineralogy. It may be limited to rocks found on Earth, or it may include planetary geology that studies the rocks of other celestial objects.
Romania (Wikipedia) Romania is a country at the crossroads of Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to the east, and the Black Sea to the southeast. It has a predominantly continental climate, and an area of 238,397 km2 (92,046 sq mi) with a population of 19 million people (2023). Romania is the twelfth-largest country in Europe and the sixth-most populous member state of the European Union. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, followed by Cluj-Napoca, Iași, Timișoara, Constanța, Craiova, Brașov, and Galați.
Rome (Wikipedia) Rome (Italian and Latin: Roma, Italian: [ˈroːma]) is the capital city of Italy. It is also the capital of the Lazio region, the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, and a special comune (municipality) named Comune di Roma Capitale. With 2,860,009 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi), Rome is the country’s most populated comune and the third most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. The Metropolitan City of Rome, with a population of 4,355,725 residents, is the most populous metropolitan city in Italy. Its metropolitan area is the third-most populous within Italy. Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. Vatican City (the smallest country in the world) is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city. Rome is often referred to as the City of Seven Hills due to its geographic location, and also as the “Eternal City”. Rome is generally considered to be the cradle of Western civilization and Western Christian culture, and the centre of the Catholic Church.
Ronald Reagan (Wikipedia) Ronald Wilson Reagan (/ˈreɪɡən/ RAY-gən; February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party; his presidency constituted the Reagan era, and he is considered one of the most prominent conservative figures in American history.
Roosevelt, Seattle (Wikipedia) Roosevelt is a neighborhood in north Seattle, Washington. Its main thoroughfare, originally 10th Avenue, was renamed Roosevelt Way upon Theodore Roosevelt’s death in 1919. The neighborhood received the name as the result of a Community Club contest held eight years later, in 1927.
Rosa nutkana (Wikipedia) Rosa nutkana, the Nootka rose, bristly rose, or wild rose is a 0.6–3.0-metre-tall (2–10-foot) perennial shrub in the rose family (Rosaceae).
Rosario Strait (Wikipedia) Rosario Strait is a strait in northern Washington state, separating San Juan County and Skagit and Whatcom Counties. It extends from the Strait of Juan de Fuca about 23 kilometres (14 mi) north to the Strait of Georgia. The USGS defines its southern boundary as a line extending from Point Colville on Lopez Island to Rosario Head on Fidalgo Island, and its northern boundary as a line from Point Migley on Lummi Island to the east tip of Puffin Island (just east of Matia Island) and then to Point Thompson on Orcas Island. Rosario Strait runs north-south between Lopez, Decatur, Blakely, and Orcas Islands on the west, and Fidalgo, Cypress, Sinclair, and Lummi Islands on the east.
Rosette Nebula (Wikipedia) The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is an H II region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way Galaxy. The open cluster NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) is closely associated with the nebulosity, the stars of the cluster having been formed from the nebula’s matter.
Roseville, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Roseville is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. It is one of two Twin Cities suburbs that are adjacent to both Saint Paul and Minneapolis (the other is Lauderdale). The land comprising Falcon Heights, Lauderdale, and southern Roseville was unincorporated until Roseville incorporated in 1948 and Falcon Heights and Lauderdale incorporated in 1949.
Rostov Oblast (Wikipedia) Rostov Oblast (Russian: Росто́вская о́бласть, romanized: Rostovskaya oblast’, IPA: [rɐˈstofskəjə ˈobləsʲtʲ]) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in the Southern Federal District. The oblast has an area of 100,967 square kilometers (38,984 sq mi) and a population of 4,200,729 (2021 Census), making it the sixth most populous federal subject in Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Rostov-on-Don, which also became the administrative center of the Southern Federal District in 2002.
Rubus armeniacus (Wikipedia) Rubus armeniacus, the Himalayan blackberry or Armenian blackberry, is a species of Rubus in the blackberry group Rubus subgenus Rubus series Discolores (P.J. Müll.) Focke. It is native to Armenia and Northern Iran, and widely naturalised elsewhere. Both its scientific name and origin have been the subject of much confusion, with much of the literature referring to it as either Rubus procerus or Rubus discolor, and often mistakenly citing its origin as western European. Flora of North America, published in 2014, considers the taxonomy unsettled, and tentatively uses the older name Rubus bifrons.
Ruhollah Khomeini (Wikipedia) Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini (17 May 1900 or 24 September 1902 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.
Russell’s paradox (Wikipedia) In mathematical logic, Russell’s paradox (also known as Russell’s antinomy) is a set-theoretic paradox published by the British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell in 1901. Russell’s paradox shows that every set theory that contains an unrestricted comprehension principle leads to contradictions. The paradox had already been discovered independently in 1899 by the German mathematician Ernst Zermelo. However, Zermelo did not publish the idea, which remained known only to David Hilbert, Edmund Husserl, and other academics at the University of Göttingen. At the end of the 1890s, Georg Cantor – considered the founder of modern set theory – had already realized that his theory would lead to a contradiction, as he told Hilbert and Richard Dedekind by letter.
Russia (Wikipedia) Russia (Russian: Россия, Rossiya, [rɐˈsʲijə]), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, covering over 17,098,246 square kilometres (6,601,670 sq mi), and encompassing one-eighth of Earth’s inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries, more than any other country but China. It is the world’s ninth-most populous country and Europe’s most populous country, with a population of 146 million people. The country’s capital and largest city is Moscow, the largest city entirely within Europe. Saint Petersburg is Russia’s cultural centre and second-largest city. Other major urban areas include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Kazan.
Russo-Ukrainian War (Wikipedia) The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country.
Rutherford B. Hayes (Wikipedia) Rutherford Birchard Hayes (/ˈrʌðərfərd/; October 4, 1822 – January 17, 1893) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881.
Rutherford model (Wikipedia) The Rutherford model was devised by Ernest Rutherford to describe an atom. Rutherford directed the Geiger–Marsden experiment in 1909, which suggested, upon Rutherford’s 1911 analysis, that J. J. Thomson’s plum pudding model of the atom was incorrect. Rutherford’s new model for the atom, based on the experimental results, contained new features of a relatively high central charge concentrated into a very small volume in comparison to the rest of the atom and with this central volume containing most of the atom’s mass; this region would be known as the atomic nucleus. The Rutherford model was subsequently superseded by the Bohr model.
Rwanda (Wikipedia) Rwanda, officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator, Rwanda is bordered by Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is highly elevated, giving it the soubriquet “land of a thousand hills” (French: pays des mille collines), with its geography dominated by mountains in the west and savanna to the southeast, with numerous lakes throughout the country. The climate is temperate to subtropical, with two rainy seasons and two dry seasons each year. It is the most densely populated mainland African country; among countries larger than 10,000 km2, it is the fifth-most densely populated country in the world. Its capital and largest city is Kigali.
S-100 bus (Wikipedia) The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 (withdrawn), is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The S-100 bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. S-100 computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The S-100 bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders (e.g., the Homebrew Computer Club) implemented drivers for CP/M and MP/M. These S-100 microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in early home computers until the advent of the IBM PC.
Sacred space (Wikipedia) A sacred space, sacred ground, sacred place, sacred temple, holy ground, holy place or holy site is a location which is deemed to be sacred or hallowed. The sacredness of a natural feature may accrue through tradition or be granted through a blessing. One or more religions may consider sacred locations to be of special significance. Often, such locations either are or become the home of sanctuaries, shrines, places of worship, or locations conducive to meditation. Regardless of construction or use, these areas may have a variety of ritual or taboo associations – including limitations on visitors or on allowed actions within the space. Such places may become the focus of pilgrimage, drawing pilgrims from great distances, or simply locations of significance for the local populace.
Saddle Mountains (Wikipedia) The Saddle Mountains consists of an upfolded anticline ridge of basalt in Grant County of central Washington state. The ridge, reaching to 2,700 feet, terminates in the east south of Othello, Washington near the foot of the Drumheller Channels. It continues to the west where it is broken at Sentinel Gap (a water gap through which the Columbia River passes) before ending in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
Sagitta (Wikipedia) Sagitta is a dim but distinctive constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for ‘arrow’, not to be confused with the significantly larger constellation Sagittarius ’the archer’. It was included among the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and it remains one of the 88 modern constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union. Although it dates to antiquity, Sagitta has no star brighter than 3rd magnitude and has the third-smallest area of any constellation.
Sagittarius (constellation) (Wikipedia) Sagittarius is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the Southern celestial hemisphere. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Its old astronomical symbol is (♐︎). Its name is Latin for “archer”. Sagittarius is commonly represented as a centaur drawing a bow. It lies between Scorpius and Ophiuchus to the west and Capricornus and Microscopium to the east.
Sagittarius A (Wikipedia) Sagittarius A (Sgr A) is a complex radio source at the center of the Milky Way, which contains a supermassive black hole. It is located in the constellation Sagittarius, and is hidden from view at optical wavelengths by large clouds of cosmic dust in the spiral arms of the Milky Way. The dust lane that obscures the Galactic Center from a vantage point around the Sun causes the Great Rift through the bright bulge of the galaxy.
Saint Anthony Falls (Wikipedia) Saint Anthony Falls, or the Falls of Saint Anthony (Dakota: Owámniyomni, lit. ‘whirlpool’), located at the northeastern edge of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, is the only natural major waterfall on the Mississippi River. Throughout the mid-to-late 1800s, various dams were built atop the east and west faces of the falls to support the milling industry that spurred the growth of the city of Minneapolis. In 1880, the central face of the falls was reinforced with a sloping timber apron to stop the upstream erosion of the falls. In the 1950s, the apron was rebuilt with concrete, which makes up the most visible portion of the falls today. A series of locks were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s to extend navigation to points upstream.
Saint Paul, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center of Minnesota’s government. The Minnesota State Capitol and the state government offices all sit on a hill close to the city’s downtown district. One of the oldest cities in Minnesota, Saint Paul has several historic neighborhoods and landmarks, such as the Summit Avenue Neighborhood, the James J. Hill House, and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. Like the adjacent city of Minneapolis, Saint Paul is known for its cold, snowy winters and humid summers.
Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Wikipedia) Saint Pierre and Miquelon (/ˈmɪkəlɒn/), officially the Territorial Collectivity of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (French: Collectivité territoriale de Saint-Pierre et Miquelon [sɛ̃ pjɛʁ e miklɔ̃]), is a self-governing territorial overseas collectivity of France in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, located near the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. An archipelago of eight islands, St. Pierre and Miquelon is a vestige of the once-vast territory of New France. Its residents are French citizens; the collectivity elects its own deputy to the National Assembly and participates in senatorial and presidential elections. It covers 242 km2 (93 sq mi) of land and had a population of 6,008 as of the March 2016 census.
Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands (Wikipedia) Saint Thomas (Danish: Sankt Thomas, Spanish: Santo Tomás, French: Saint-Thomas) is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Along with surrounding minor islands, it is one of three county-equivalents in the USVI. Together with Saint John, it forms one of the districts of the USVI. The territorial capital and port of Charlotte Amalie is located on the island.
Saint Timothy (Wikipedia) Timothy or Timothy of Ephesus (Greek: Τιμόθεος; Timótheos, meaning “honouring God” or “honoured by God”) was an early Christian evangelist and the first Christian bishop of Ephesus, who tradition relates died around the year AD 97.
Saiph (Wikipedia) Saiph /ˈseɪf/, designation Kappa Orionis (κ Orionis, abbreviated Kappa Ori, κ Ori) and 53 Orionis (53 Ori), is the sixth-brightest star in the constellation of Orion. Of the four bright stars that compose Orion’s main quadrangle, it is the star at the south-eastern corner. A northern-hemisphere observer facing south would see it at the lower left of Orion, and a southern-hemisphere observer facing north would see it at the upper right. Parallax measurements yield an estimated distance of 650 light-years (200 parsecs) from the Sun, which is about the same as Betelgeuse. It is smaller, less luminous but hotter at its surface than Rigel with an apparent visual magnitude of 2.1. The luminosity of this star changes slightly, varying by 0.04 magnitudes.
Salish Sea (Wikipedia) The Salish Sea (/ˈseɪlɪʃ/ SAY-lish) is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean located in the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington. It includes the Strait of Georgia, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Puget Sound, and an intricate network of connecting channels and adjoining waterways.
Salix sitchensis (Wikipedia) Salix sitchensis is a species of willow known by the common name Sitka willow. It is native to northwestern North America from Alaska to northern California to Montana. It is a common to abundant plant in many types of coastal and inland wetland habitat, such as marshes, riverbanks, swamps, coastal sand dunes, and mountain springs.
Salmon (Wikipedia) Salmon (/ˈsæmən/; pl.: salmon) is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the genera Salmo and Oncorhynchus of the family Salmonidae, native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (Salmo) and North Pacific (Oncorhynchus) basins. Other closely related fish in the same family include trout, char, grayling, whitefish, lenok and taimen, all coldwater fish of the subarctic and cooler temperate regions with some sporadic endorheic populations in Central Asia.
Salmon Bay (Wikipedia) Salmon Bay (Lushootseed: šilšul) is a portion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound, lying west of the Fremont Cut. It is the westernmost section of the canal and empties into Puget Sound’s Shilshole Bay. Because of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, the smaller, western half of the bay is salt water, and the eastern half is fresh water (though not without saline contamination: see Lake Union).
Salt (chemistry) (Wikipedia) In chemistry, a salt is a chemical compound consisting of an ionic assembly of positively charged cations and negatively charged anions, which results in a compound with no net electric charge. A common example is table salt, with positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chloride ions.
Salt Creek Recreation Area (Wikipedia) Salt Creek Recreation Area is a 196-acre park located about 15 miles west of Port Angeles, Washington on U.S. Route 101 near the city of Joyce, Washington. The park was previously Camp Hayden, a World War II military camp built 1942–1945. The site was established as the Striped Peak Military Reservation in 1941, renamed as Camp Hayden on 22 October 1942, and renamed again as Fort Hayden on 17 April 1944. It was named for Brigadier General John Louis Hayden, a former commander of the Harbor Defenses of Puget Sound. It was purchased by the Federal General Services Administration after the war. There are still several structures left from the fort, including two large casemates which sheltered 16" guns and several other structures. The 16-inch battery was Battery 131, with two ex-Navy 16-inch Mark 2 guns capable of firing a one-ton projectile around 28 miles connected by a large magazine bunker. The camp also had Battery 249, which had two 6-inch guns with a bunker housing magazines and fire control equipment.
Salt Lake City (Wikipedia) Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake, and colloquially called SLC, is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which had a population of 1,257,936 at the 2020 census. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along a 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,746,164 (as of 2021 estimates), making it the 22nd largest in the nation. It is also the central core of the larger of only two major urban areas located within the Great Basin (the other being Reno, Nevada).
Salvador Dalí (Wikipedia) Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol gcYC (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí (/ˈdɑːli, dɑːˈliː/ DAH-lee, dah-LEE, Catalan: [səlβəˈðo ðəˈli], Spanish: [salβaˈðoɾ ðaˈli]), was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in his work.
Sammamish people (Wikipedia)
Sammamish River (Wikipedia) The Sammamish River (also known as Sammamish Slough) flows through north King County, Washington for about 14 miles (23 km), draining Lake Sammamish into Lake Washington. Along its course, the Sammamish River flows through Redmond, Woodinville, Bothell, and Kenmore.
Sammamish River Trail (Wikipedia) The Sammamish River Trail is a 10.1-mile (16.3 km) bike path and recreational rail trail in King County, Washington that runs along the Sammamish River from Blyth Park in Bothell to Marymoor Park in Redmond as part of the “Locks to Lakes Corridor.” It connects to the Burke-Gilman Trail at its northwestern end, and to the Redmond Central Connector at its southeastern end.
Sammamish, Washington (Wikipedia) Sammamish (/səˈmæmɪʃ/ sə-MAM-ish) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 67,455 at the 2020 census. Located on a plateau, the city is bordered by Lake Sammamish to the west and the Snoqualmie Valley to the east. Sammamish is a residential and very wealthy suburb of Seattle, located 20 miles away, with many residents commuting to nearby businesses.
Samuel Beckett (Wikipedia) Samuel Barclay Beckett (/ˈbɛkɪt/; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish novelist, dramatist, short story writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator. His literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and tragicomic experiences of life, often coupled with black comedy and nonsense. His work became increasingly minimalist as his career progressed, involving more aesthetic and linguistic experimentation, with techniques of stream of consciousness repetition and self-reference. He is considered one of the last modernist writers, and one of the key figures in what Martin Esslin called the Theatre of the Absurd.
Samurai (Wikipedia) Samurai (侍) were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in the 1870s during the Meiji era. They were the well-paid retainers of the daimyo, the great feudal landholders. They had high prestige and special privileges.
San Diego (Wikipedia) San Diego (Spanish for ‘Saint Didacus’; /ˌsæn diˈeɪɡoʊ/ SAN dee-AY-goh, Spanish: [san ˈdjeɣo]) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth-most populous city in the United States, the second-most populous city in California and the seat of San Diego County, the fifth-most populous county in the United States, with 3,286,069 estimated residents as of 2021. The city is known for its mild year-round Mediterranean climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches and parks, long association with the United States Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology development center. San Diego is the second-largest city in California after Los Angeles.
San Francisco (Wikipedia) San Francisco (/ˌsæn frənˈsɪskoʊ/; Spanish for “Saint Francis”), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers), at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 331 U.S. cities proper with more than 100,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $133,856) and fifth by aggregate income as of 2019. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include SF, San Fran, The City, Frisco, and Baghdad by the Bay.
San José, Costa Rica (Wikipedia) San José (Spanish: [saŋ xoˈse]; meaning “Saint Joseph”) is the capital and largest city of Costa Rica, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is in the center of the country, in the mid-west of the Central Valley, within San José Canton. San José is Costa Rica’s seat of national government, focal point of political and economic activity, and major transportation hub. San José Canton’s population was 288,054 in 2011, and San José’s municipal land area is 44.2 square kilometers (17.2 square miles), with an estimated 333,980 residents in 2015. Together with several other cantons of the central valley, including Alajuela, Heredia and Cartago, it forms the country’s Greater Metropolitan Area, with an estimated population of over 2 million in 2017. The city is named in honor of Joseph of Nazareth.
San Juan County, Washington (Wikipedia) San Juan County (Spanish: Condado de San Juan) is a county located in the Salish Sea in the far northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 17,788. The county seat and only incorporated city is Friday Harbor, located on San Juan Island. The county was formed on October 31, 1873, from Whatcom County and is named for the San Juan Islands, which are in turn named for Juan Vicente de Güemes, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo, the Viceroy of New Spain.
San Juan Islands (Wikipedia) The San Juan Islands is an archipelago in the Pacific Northwest of the United States between the U.S. state of Washington and Vancouver Island, [British Columbia](British Columbia), Canada. The San Juan Islands are part of Washington state, and form the core of San Juan County.
San Marino (Wikipedia) San Marino (/ˌsæn məˈriːnoʊ/ SAN mə-REE-noh, Italian: [sam maˈriːno]; Romagnol: San Maréin or San Maroin), officially the Republic of San Marino (Italian: Repubblica di San Marino) and also known as the Most Serene Republic of San Marino (Italian: Serenissima Repubblica di San Marino), is a European microstate surrounded by Italy. Located on the northeastern side of the Apennine Mountains, it is the fifth-smallest country in the world, with a land area of just over 61 km2 (23+1⁄2 sq mi) and a population of 33,660 as of 2022.
Sand Point, Seattle (Wikipedia) Sand Point is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States, named after and consisting mostly of the Sand Point peninsula that juts into Lake Washington, which is itself largely given over to Magnuson Park. Its southern boundary can be said to be N.E. 65th Street, beyond which are Windermere and Hawthorne Hills; its northern boundary, N.E. 95th Street, beyond which is Lake City. The western limit of the neighborhood, beyond which are View Ridge and Wedgwood, is not fixed and can be said to be anywhere up the hill that extends west from Sand Point Way N.E. as far as 35th Avenue N.E. It is also the former home of Seattle Naval Air Station.
Sandstone (Wikipedia) Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks.
Santa Barbara County Courthouse (Wikipedia) The Santa Barbara County Courthouse (Courthouse) is a well-known example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture and is located in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara County, California. Started in 1926 and completed in 1929, the Courthouse originally served as Santa Barbara County’s (County) superior courthouse, jail, and administrative office. The Courthouse was included on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, was made a City of Santa Barbara Historic Landmark in 1982, a California Historical Landmark in 2004, and a National Historic Landmark in 2005. Over the years, most County administrative offices were relocated to other County buildings. The current Courthouse houses six County Superior Court rooms, the Mural Room (formerly the Supervisors Assembly Room), the County Hall of Records, the County Public Defender’s Office, offices of the County General Services Department, and the McMahon Law Library. The Courthouse is open to the public and is a popular site for community gatherings and weddings. Architect Charles Willard Moore called it the “grandest Spanish Colonial Revival structure ever built,” and the prime example of Santa Barbara’s adoption of Spanish Colonial as its civic style.
Santa Barbara, California (Wikipedia) Santa Barbara (Spanish: Santa Bárbara, meaning ‘Saint Barbara’) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Santa Barbara’s climate is often described as Mediterranean, and the city has been dubbed “The American Riviera”. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the city’s population was 88,665.
Santa Ynez Mountains (Wikipedia) The Santa Ynez Mountains are a portion of the Transverse Ranges, part of the Pacific Coast Ranges of the west coast of North America. It is the westernmost range in the Transverse Ranges.
Sápmi (Wikipedia) Sápmi (Northern Sami: [ˈsapmi], Lule Sami: Sábme / Sámeednam, Southern Sami: Saepmie, Pite Sami: Sämijednam, Ume Sami: Sábmie, Inari Sami: Säämi, Skolt Sami: Sääʹmjânnam, Kildin Sami: Са̄мь е̄ммьне, romanized: Saam’ jiemm’n’e) is the cultural region traditionally inhabited by the Sámi people. Sápmi is in Northern Europe and includes the northern parts of Fennoscandia, also known as the “Cap of the North”.
Sargon of Akkad (Wikipedia) Sargon of Akkad (/ˈsɑːrɡɒn/; Akkadian: 𒊬𒊒𒄀, romanized: Šarrugi), also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire.
Saskatchewan (Wikipedia) Saskatchewan (/səˈskætʃ(ə)wən/ sə-SKATCH-(ə)-wən; Canadian French: [saskatʃəwan]) is a province in Western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the United States (Montana and North Dakota). Saskatchewan and Alberta are the only landlocked provinces of Canada. In 2023, Saskatchewan’s population was estimated at 1,225,493. Nearly 10% of Saskatchewan’s total area of 651,900 km2 (251,700 sq mi) is fresh water, mostly rivers, reservoirs, and lakes.
Sasquatch! Music Festival (Wikipedia) Sasquatch! Music Festival was an annual music festival held at The Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Washington, United States. It took place on Memorial Day weekend, running for three to four days. In 2018, it was announced that the festival was canceled indefinitely and would not return in 2019.
Saturn (Wikipedia) Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; however, with its larger volume, Saturn is over 95 times more massive.
Saudi Arabia (Wikipedia) Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2150000 km2 (830000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia and the largest in the Middle East. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. Bahrain is an island country off its east coast. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. Saudi Arabia’s capital and largest city is Riyadh; the kingdom is also the location of Islam’s two holiest cities of Mecca and Medina.
Sauk River (Washington) (Wikipedia) The Sauk River is a tributary of the Skagit River, approximately 45 miles (72 km) long, in northwestern Washington in the United States. It drains an area of the high Cascade Range in the watershed of Puget Sound north of Seattle. The river is a popular destination for fly fishing. It is a National Wild and Scenic River
Scandia, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Scandia is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,984 at the 2020 census. Scandia is 25 miles northeast of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Scandium (Wikipedia) Scandium is a chemical element with the symbol Sc and atomic number 21. It is a silvery-white metallic d-block element. Historically, it has been classified as a rare-earth element, together with yttrium and the lanthanides. It was discovered in 1879 by spectral analysis of the minerals euxenite and gadolinite from Scandinavia.
Schrödinger equation (Wikipedia) The Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system. Its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of quantum mechanics. It is named after Erwin Schrödinger, who postulated the equation in 1925 and published it in 1926, forming the basis for the work that resulted in his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933.
Schrödinger’s cat (Wikipedia) In quantum mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment concerning quantum superposition. In the thought experiment, a hypothetical cat may be considered simultaneously both alive and dead, while it is unobserved in a closed box, as a result of its fate being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur. This experiment viewed this way is described as a paradox. This thought experiment was devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935 in a discussion with Albert Einstein to illustrate what Schrödinger saw as the problems of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Science fiction (Wikipedia) Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sf or sci-fi) is a genre of speculative fiction, which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.
Scorpius (Wikipedia) Scorpius is a zodiac constellation located in the Southern celestial hemisphere, where it sits near the center of the Milky Way, between Libra to the west and Sagittarius to the east. Scorpius is an ancient constellation that pre-dates the Greeks; it is one of the 48 constellations identified by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century. Its old astronomical symbol is ♏︎.
Scotia Plate (Wikipedia) The Scotia Plate (Spanish: Placa Scotia) is a minor tectonic plate on the edge of the South Atlantic and Southern oceans. Thought to have formed during the early Eocene with the opening of the Drake Passage that separates Antarctica and South America, it is a minor plate whose movement is largely controlled by the two major plates that surround it: the Antarctic Plate and the South American Plate. The Scotia Plate takes its name from the steam yacht Scotia of the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902–04), the expedition that made the first bathymetric study of the region.
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Sculptor (constellation) (Wikipedia) Sculptor is a small and faint constellation in the southern sky. It represents a sculptor. It was introduced by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in the 18th century. He originally named it Apparatus Sculptoris (the sculptor’s studio), but the name was later shortened.
SCUM Manifesto (Wikipedia) SCUM Manifesto is a radical feminist manifesto by Valerie Solanas, published in 1967. It argues that men have ruined the world, and that it is up to women to fix it. To achieve this goal, it suggests the formation of SCUM, an organization dedicated to overthrowing society and eliminating the male sex. The SCUM Manifesto has been described as a satire or parody, especially due to its parallels with Freud’s theory of femininity, though this has been disputed, even by Solanas herself.
Scutum (constellation) (Wikipedia) Scutum is a small constellation. Its name is Latin for shield, and it was originally named Scutum Sobiescianum by Johannes Hevelius in 1684. Located just south of the celestial equator, its four brightest stars form a narrow diamond shape. It is one of the 88 IAU designated constellations defined in 1922.
Sea of Azov (Wikipedia) The Sea of Azov (Crimean Tatar: Azaq deñizi; Russian: Азовское море, romanized: Azovskoye more; Ukrainian: Азовське море, romanized: Azovs’ke more; Adyghe: Хы мыутӏэ, romanized: Xı mıut’ə) is an inland shelf sea in Eastern Europe connected to the Black Sea by the narrow (about 4 km (2.5 mi)) Strait of Kerch, and is sometimes regarded as a northern extension of the Black Sea. The sea is bounded by Russia on the east, and by Ukraine on the northwest and southwest, currently under Russian occupation. It is an important access route for Central Asia, from the Caspian Sea via the Volga–Don Canal.
Seal Rocks (San Francisco, California) (Wikipedia) Seal Rock (or Seal Rocks) is a group of small rock formation islands in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco, California. They are located just offshore in the Pacific Ocean, at the north end of the Ocean Beach, near the Cliff House and Sutro Baths ruins.
Seasoning (cookware) (Wikipedia) Seasoning or curing is the process of coating the surface of cookware with a bioplastic formed from heated fat or oil in order to produce a heat, corrosion, and stick resistant hard coating. It is required for cast-iron cookware and carbon steel, which otherwise rust rapidly in use, but is also used for many other types of cookware, as it helps prevent food sticking.
SeaTac, Washington (Wikipedia) SeaTac /ˈsiːtæk/ is a city in southern King County, Washington, United States. The city is an inner-ring suburb of Seattle and part of the Seattle metropolitan area. The name “SeaTac” is derived from the Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, itself a portmanteau of Seattle and Tacoma.
Seattle (Wikipedia) Seattle (/siˈætəl/ see-AT-əl) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2022 population of 749,256 it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The Seattle metropolitan area’s population is 4.02 million, making it the 15th-largest in the United States. Its growth rate of 21.1% between 2010 and 2020 made it one of country’s fastest-growing large cities.
Seattle Center (Wikipedia) Seattle Center is an arts, educational, tourism and entertainment center in Seattle, Washington, United States. Spanning an area of 74 acres (30 ha), it was originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair. Its landmark feature is the 605 ft (184 m) tall Space Needle, which at the time of its completion was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Seattle Center is located just north of Belltown in the Uptown neighborhood.
Seattle Convention Center (Wikipedia) The Seattle Convention Center (SCC), formerly the Washington State Convention Center (WSCC), is a convention center in Seattle, Washington, United States. It consists of two buildings in Downtown Seattle with exhibition halls and meeting rooms: Arch along Pike Street and Summit on the north side of Pine Street. The former straddles Interstate 5 and connects with Freeway Park. The convention center was planned in the late 1970s and funded through $90 million in bonds issued by the state legislature.
Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (Wikipedia) Seattle–Tacoma International Airport (IATA: SEA, ICAO: KSEA, FAA LID: SEA), branded as SEA Airport and also referred to as Sea–Tac (/ˈsiːtæk/), is the primary commercial airport serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is in the city of SeaTac, which was named after the airport’s nickname “Sea-Tac”, approximately 14 miles (23 km) south of Downtown Seattle and 18 miles (29 km) north-northeast of Downtown Tacoma. The airport is the busiest in the Pacific Northwest region of North America and is owned by Port of Seattle.
Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Wikipedia) The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is a Pauline epistle of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The epistle is attributed to Paul the Apostle and a co-author named Timothy, and is addressed to the church in Corinth and Christians in the surrounding province of Achaea, in modern-day Greece. According to Jerome, Titus was the amanuensis of this epistle.
Sedimentary rock (Wikipedia) Sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic particles at Earth’s surface, followed by cementation. Sedimentation is the collective name for processes that cause these particles to settle in place. The particles that form a sedimentary rock are called sediment, and may be composed of geological detritus (minerals) or biological detritus (organic matter). The geological detritus originated from weathering and erosion of existing rocks, or from the solidification of molten lava blobs erupted by volcanoes. The geological detritus is transported to the place of deposition by water, wind, ice or mass movement, which are called agents of denudation. Biological detritus was formed by bodies and parts (mainly shells) of dead aquatic organisms, as well as their fecal mass, suspended in water and slowly piling up on the floor of water bodies (marine snow). Sedimentation may also occur as dissolved minerals precipitate from water solution.
Sedro-Woolley, Washington (Wikipedia) Sedro-Woolley is a city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. It is part of the Mount Vernon–Anacortes, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area and had a population of 12,421 at the 2020 census. The city is home to North Cascades National Park.
Self-modifying code (Wikipedia) In computer science, self-modifying code (SMC or SMoC) is code that alters its own instructions while it is executing – usually to reduce the instruction path length and improve performance or simply to reduce otherwise repetitively similar code, thus simplifying maintenance. The term is usually only applied to code where the self-modification is intentional, not in situations where code accidentally modifies itself due to an error such as a buffer overflow.
Self-reference (Wikipedia) Self-reference is a concept that involves referring to oneself or one’s own attributes, characteristics, or actions. It can occur in language, logic, mathematics, philosophy, and other fields.
Sententia (Wikipedia) Sententiae, the nominative plural of the Latin word sententia, are brief moral sayings, such as proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, or apophthegms taken from ancient or popular or other sources, often quoted without context. Sententia, the nominative singular, also called a “sentence”, is a kind of rhetorical proof. Through the invocation of a proverb, quotation, or witty turn of phrase during a presentation or conversation one may be able to gain the assent of the listener, who will hear a kind of non-logical, but agreed-upon truth in what one is saying. An example of this is the phrase “age is better with wine” playing off of the adage “wine is better with age”. The same saying is present in Luke 5,39.
Senyera (Wikipedia) The Senyera (Eastern Calatan: [səˈɲeɾə]; meaning “pennon”, “standard”, “banner”, “ensign”, or, more generically, “flag” in Catalan) is a vexillological symbol based on the coat of arms of the Crown of Aragon, which consists of four red stripes on a yellow field. This coat of arms, often called bars of Aragon, or simply “the four bars”, historically represented the King of the Crown of Aragon.
Sequence (Wikipedia) In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called elements, or terms). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called the length of the sequence. Unlike a set, the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in a sequence, and unlike a set, the order does matter. Formally, a sequence can be defined as a function from natural numbers (the positions of elements in the sequence) to the elements at each position. The notion of a sequence can be generalized to an indexed family, defined as a function from an arbitrary index set.
Sequim, Washington (Wikipedia) Sequim (/ˈskwɪm/ SKWIM) is a city in Clallam County, Washington, United States. It is located along the Dungeness River near the base of the Olympic Mountains. The 2020 census counted a population of 8,018, with an estimated population in 2021 of 8,241.
Serbia (Wikipedia) Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Southeast and Central Europe, located in the Balkans and the Pannonian Plain. It shares land borders with Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. Serbia claims a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia has about 6.6 million inhabitants, excluding Kosovo. Its capital Belgrade is also the largest city.
Serpens (Wikipedia) Serpens (Ancient Greek: Ὄφις, romanized: Óphis, lit. ’the Serpent’) is a constellation in the northern celestial hemisphere. One of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, it remains one of the 88 modern constellations designated by the International Astronomical Union. It is unique among the modern constellations in being split into two non-contiguous parts, Serpens Caput (Serpent Head) to the west and Serpens Cauda (Serpent Tail) to the east. Between these two halves lies the constellation of Ophiuchus, the “Serpent-Bearer”. In figurative representations, the body of the serpent is represented as passing behind Ophiuchus between Mu Serpentis in Serpens Caput and Nu Serpentis in Serpens Cauda.
Serpent seed (Wikipedia) The doctrine of the serpent seed, also known as the dual-seed or the two-seedline doctrine, is a controversial and fringe Christian religious belief which explains the biblical account of the fall of man by stating that the Serpent mated with Eve in the Garden of Eden, and the offspring of their union was Cain. This event resulted in the creation of two races of people: the wicked descendants of the Serpent who were destined for damnation, and the righteous descendants of Adam who were destined to have eternal life. The doctrine frames human history as a conflict between these two races in which the descendants of Adam will eventually triumph over the descendants of the Serpent.
Set-builder notation (Wikipedia) In set theory and its applications to logic, mathematics, and computer science, set-builder notation is a mathematical notation for describing a set by enumerating its elements, or stating the properties that its members must satisfy.
Seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Wikipedia) The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are an enumeration of seven spiritual gifts first found in the book of Isaiah, and much commented upon by patristic authors. They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (Wikipedia) Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British Army Colonel T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) while serving as a military advisor to Bedouin forces during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire of 1916 to 1918.
Seven Samurai (Wikipedia) Seven Samurai (Japanese: 七人の侍, Hepburn: Shichinin no Samurai) is a 1954 Japanese epic samurai action film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Taking place in 1586 in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, it follows the story of a village of desperate farmers who seek to hire samurai to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.
Seward Park, Seattle (Wikipedia) Seward Park is a neighborhood in southeast Seattle, Washington just west of the park of the same name. It is part of Seattle’s South End. The park occupies all of Bailey Peninsula.
Sextans (Wikipedia) Sextans is a minor equatorial constellation which was introduced in 1687 by Johannes Hevelius. Its name is Latin for the astronomical sextant, an instrument that Hevelius made frequent use of in his observations.
Shale (Wikipedia) Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2Si2O5(OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. Shale is characterized by its tendency to split into thin layers (laminae) less than one centimeter in thickness. This property is called fissility. Shale is the most common sedimentary rock.
Shape (Wikipedia) A shape is a graphical representation of an object’s form or its external boundary, outline, or external surface. It is distinct from other object properties, such as color, texture, or material type. In geometry, shape excludes information about the object’s location, scale, orientation and reflection. A figure is a representation including both shape and size (as in, e.g., figure of the Earth).
Sheep (Wikipedia) Sheep or domestic sheep (Ovis aries) are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term sheep can apply to other species in the genus Ovis, in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated sheep. Like all ruminants, sheep are members of the order Artiodactyla, the even-toed ungulates. Numbering a little over one billion, domestic sheep are also the most numerous species of sheep. An adult female is referred to as a ewe (/juː/), an intact male as a ram, occasionally a tup, a castrated male as a wether, and a young sheep as a lamb.
Shetland Plate (Wikipedia) The Shetland Plate, or South Shetland Plate, is a tectonic microplate located off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that contains the South Shetland Islands. The plate is bordered on three sides by the Antarctic Plate, while the fourth side is bordered by the Scotia Plate. The northwestern border is defined by the South Shetland Trench, separating the Shetland Plate to the south from the Antarctic Plate to the north. This trench is the remnant of a subduction zone where the defunct Phoenix Plate, now part of the Antarctic Plate, subducted under the Antarctic Peninsula and the Shetland Islands. The southeastern border is a rift zone, with the Antarctic Plate creating the Bransfield Basin. The southwestern and northeastern boundaries are each part of larger fracture zones. The southwestern border is the Hero Fracture Zone and separates the Antarctic Plate to the southwest from the Shetland Plate to the northeast. The northeastern boundary is the Shackleton Fracture Zone and separates the Shetland Plate to the southwest from the Scotia Plate.
Shilshole Bay (Wikipedia) Shilshole Bay is the part of Puget Sound east of a line drawn northeasterly from Seattle’s West Point in the southwest to its Golden Gardens Park in the northeast. On its shores lie Discovery Park, the Lawton Wood section of the Magnolia neighborhood, the neighborhood of Ballard, and Golden Gardens Park. It is home to the Shilshole Bay Marina on Ballard’s Seaview Avenue N.W. and communicates with the Lake Washington Ship Canal via the Ballard Locks.
Shine Tidelands State Park (Wikipedia) Shine Tidelands State Park is a 249-acre (101 ha) Washington state park located in Jefferson County, seven miles (11 km) south of Port Ludlow. The park has 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of shoreline on Bywater Bay adjacent to the west end of the Hood Canal Bridge and offers activities including picnicking, fishing, shellfish harvesting, beachcombing, birdwatching, windsurfing, and wildlife viewing. In 2014, the park was expanded to include the former Wolfe and Point Hannon properties.
Ship (Wikipedia) A ship is a large vessel that travels the world’s oceans and other navigable waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research and fishing. Ships are generally distinguished from boats, based on size, shape, load capacity and purpose. Ships have supported exploration, trade, warfare, migration, colonization, and science. Ship transport is responsible for the largest portion of world commerce.
Ship Canal Bridge (Wikipedia) The Ship Canal Bridge is a double-deck steel truss bridge that carries Interstate 5 (I-5) over Seattle’s Portage Bay (part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, after which it is named) between Capitol Hill and the University District. The canal below connects Lake Union with Lake Washington. Construction was completed in 1961 and the bridge opened to traffic on December 18, 1962. It is 4,429 ft (1,350 meters) long, stands 182 feet above the canal and is 119 feet wide at the upper deck. It was the largest bridge of its kind in the Northwest when it first opened. The bridge is double-decked, with the upper deck carrying traffic in both directions and the lower deck (the express lanes) carrying traffic southbound in the morning and northbound in the afternoon.
Shoreline, Washington (Wikipedia) Shoreline is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is located between the city limits of Seattle and the Snohomish County border, approximately 9 miles (14 km) north of Downtown Seattle. As of the 2020 census, the population of Shoreline was 58,608, making it the 22nd largest city in the state. Based on per capita income, one of the more reliable measures of affluence, Shoreline ranks 91st of 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked.
Shoreview, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Shoreview is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota. The population was 25,043 at the time of the 2010 census. In 2008, Shoreview ranked fourth in a Family Circle list of best family towns.
Sic semper tyrannis (Wikipedia) Sic semper tyrannis is a Latin phrase meaning “thus always to tyrants”. In contemporary parlance, it means tyrannical leaders will inevitably be overthrown. The phrase also suggests that bad but justified outcomes should, or eventually will, befall tyrants.
Siderian (Wikipedia) The Siderian Period ( /saɪˈdɪəri.ən, sɪ-/; Ancient Greek: σίδηρος, romanized: sídēros, meaning “iron”) is the first geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era and lasted from 2500 Ma to 2300 Ma. Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Siege of Tyre (332 BC) (Wikipedia) The siege of Tyre was orchestrated by Alexander the Great in 332 BC during his campaigns against the Persians. The Macedonian army was unable to capture the city, which was a strategic coastal base on the Mediterranean Sea, through conventional means because it was on an island and had walls right up to the sea. Alexander responded to this problem by first blockading and besieging Tyre for seven months, and then by building a causeway and placing siege towers with catapults built on top at the end after his soldiers discovered that they could not extend it any further due to a steep drop under the surface of the water. This allowed him to breach the fortifications.
Silent Generation (Wikipedia) The Silent Generation, also known as the Traditionalist Generation, is the Western demographic cohort following the Greatest Generation and preceding the baby boomers. The generation is generally defined as people born from 1928 to 1945. By this definition and U.S. Census data, there were 23 million Silents in the United States as of 2019.
Silicate mineral (Wikipedia) Silicate minerals are rock-forming minerals made up of silicate groups. They are the largest and most important class of minerals and make up approximately 90 percent of Earth’s crust.
Silicon (Wikipedia) Silicon is a chemical element; it has symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic table: carbon is above it; and germanium, tin, lead, and flerovium are below it. It is relatively unreactive. Silicon is a significant element that is essential for several physiological and metabolic processes in plants. Silicon is widely regarded as the predominant semiconductor material due to its versatile applications in various electrical devices such as transistors, solar cells, integrated circuits, and others. These may be due to its significant band gap, expansive optical transmission range, extensive absorption spectrum, surface roughening, and effective anti-reflection coating.
Silicon dioxide (Wikipedia) Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula SiO2, commonly found in nature as quartz. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is one of the most complex and abundant families of materials, existing as a compound of several minerals and as a synthetic product. Examples include fused quartz, fumed silica, opal, and aerogels. It is used in structural materials, microelectronics, and as components in the food and pharmaceutical industries. All forms are white or colorless, although impure samples can be colored.
Silk Road (Wikipedia) The Silk Road (Chinese: 絲綢之路) was a network of Eurasian trade routes active from the second century BCE until the mid-15th century. Spanning over 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles), it played a central role in facilitating economic, cultural, political, and religious interactions between the East and West. The name “Silk Road”, first coined in the late 19th century, has fallen into disuse among some modern historians in favor of Silk Routes, on the grounds that it more accurately describes the intricate web of land and sea routes connecting East and Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Europe.
Silurian (Wikipedia) The Silurian (/sɪˈljʊəriːən, saɪ-/ sih-LURE-ee-ən, sy-) is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at 443.8 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, 419.2 Mya. The Silurian is the shortest period of the Paleozoic Era. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period’s start and end are well identified, but the exact dates are uncertain by a few million years. The base of the Silurian is set at a series of major Ordovician–Silurian extinction events when up to 60% of marine genera were wiped out.
Simulation hypothesis (Wikipedia) The simulation hypothesis proposes that all of existence is a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation. This simulation could contain conscious minds that may or may not know that they live inside a simulation. This is quite different from the current, technologically achievable concept of virtual reality, which is easily distinguished from the experience of actuality. Simulated reality, by contrast, would be hard or impossible to separate from “true” reality. There has been much debate over this topic, ranging from philosophical discourse to practical applications in computing.
Sinai Peninsula (Wikipedia) The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai (/ˈsaɪnaɪ/ SY-ny; Arabic: سِينَاء; Egyptian Arabic: سينا; Coptic: Ⲥⲓⲛⲁ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a land bridge between Asia and Africa. Sinai has a land area of about 60,000 km2 (23,000 sq mi) (6 percent of Egypt’s total area) and a population of approximately 600,000 people. Administratively, the vast majority of the area of the Sinai Peninsula is divided into two governorates: the South Sinai Governorate and the North Sinai Governorate. Three other governorates span the Suez Canal, crossing into African Egypt: Suez Governorate on the southern end of the Suez Canal, Ismailia Governorate in the center, and Port Said Governorate in the north.
Sinister Barrier (Wikipedia) Sinister Barrier is an English-language science fiction novel by British writer Eric Frank Russell. The novel originally appeared in the magazine Unknown in 1939, the first novel to appear in its pages. It was first published in book form in 1943 by The World’s Work, Ltd. Russell revised and expanded the book for its first US publication by Fantasy Press in 1948. Most subsequent editions were based on the Fantasy Press version.
Sirius (Wikipedia) Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky. Its name is derived from the Greek word Σείριος (Latin script: Seirios), meaning lit. ‘glowing’ or ‘scorching’. The star is designated α Canis Majoris, Latinized to Alpha Canis Majoris, and abbreviated α CMa or Alpha CMa. With a visual apparent magnitude of −1.46, Sirius is almost twice as bright as Canopus, the next brightest star. Sirius is a binary star consisting of a main-sequence star of spectral type A0 or A1, termed Sirius A, and a faint white dwarf companion of spectral type DA2, termed Sirius B. The distance between the two varies between 8.2 and 31.5 astronomical units as they orbit every 50 years.
Skagit Bay (Wikipedia) Skagit Bay is a bay and strait located in the U.S. state of Washington. It is part of the Whidbey Island Basin of Puget Sound. The Skagit River empties into Skagit Bay. To the south, Skagit Bay connects with the rest of Puget Sound via Saratoga Passage and Possession Sound. The boundary between Saratoga Passage and Skagit Bay is between Polnell Point on Whidbey Island and Rocky Point on Camano Island. To the northwest, Skagit Bay connects to the Strait of Juan de Fuca via the narrow strait of Deception Pass. A third waterway, the Swinomish Channel, connects Skagit Bay with Padilla Bay to the north.
Skagit County, Washington (Wikipedia) Skagit County /ˈskædʒɪt/ is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 129,523. The county seat and largest city is Mount Vernon. The county was formed in 1883 from Whatcom County and is named for the Skagit Indian tribe, which has been indigenous to the area prior to European-American settlement.
Skagit River (Wikipedia) The Skagit River (/ˈskædʒɪt/ SKAJ-it) is a river in southwestern British Columbia in Canada and northwestern Washington in the United States, approximately 150 mi (240 km) long. The river and its tributaries drain an area of 1.7 million acres (690,000 hectares) of the Cascade Range along the northern end of Puget Sound and flows into the sound.
Skamania County, Washington (Wikipedia) Skamania County (/skəˈmeɪniə/ skə-MAY-nee-ə) is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 12,036. The county seat and largest incorporated city is Stevenson, although the Carson River Valley CDP is more populous. Skamania County is included in the Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Skookumchuck River (Wikipedia) The Skookumchuck River is a 45-mile (72 km) long river located in southwest Washington, United States. It is a tributary of the Chehalis River, which is the largest drainage basin located entirely within the state.
Skykomish River (Wikipedia) The Skykomish River is a 29-mile (47 km) long river in the U.S. state of Washington which drains the west side of the Cascade Mountains in the southeast section of Snohomish County and the northeast corner of King County. The river starts with the confluence of the North Fork Skykomish River and South Fork Skykomish River approximately one mile west of Index, then flowing northwesterly towards Puget Sound. It is joined by the Sultan River and the Wallace River at Sultan. It then meets the Snoqualmie River to form the Snohomish River at Monroe. The Snohomish River continues along the river valley eventually dumping into Port Gardner Bay on Possession Sound (part of Puget Sound).
Skykomish, Washington (Wikipedia) Skykomish is a town in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 161 as of the 2020 census, down from an estimated peak of “several thousand” in the 1920s.
Slovakia (Wikipedia) Slovakia (/sloʊˈvækiə, -ˈvɑːk-/; Slovak: Slovensko [ˈslɔʋenskɔ]), officially the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Slovenská republika [ˈslɔʋenskaː ˈrepublika]), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia’s mostly mountainous territory spans about 49,000 square kilometres (19,000 sq mi), hosting a population exceeding 5.4 million. The capital and largest city is Bratislava, while the second largest city is Košice.
Slovenia (Wikipedia) Slovenia (/sloʊˈviːniə, slə-/ sloh-VEE-nee-ə; Slovene: Slovenija [slɔˈʋèːnija]), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: Republika Slovenija, abbr.: RS), is a country in southern Central Europe. Slovenia is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the south and southeast, and a short coastline within the Adriatic Sea to the southwest. Slovenia is mostly mountainous and forested, covers 20,271 square kilometres (7,827 sq mi), and has a population of 2.1 million (2,110,547 people). Slovenes constitute over 80% of the country’s population. Slovene, a South Slavic language, is the official language. Slovenia has a predominantly temperate continental climate, with the exception of the Slovene Littoral and the Julian Alps. A sub-mediterranean climate reaches to the northern extensions of the Dinaric Alps that traverse the country in a northwest–southeast direction. The Julian Alps in the northwest have an alpine climate. Toward the northeastern Pannonian Basin, a continental climate is more pronounced. Ljubljana, the capital and largest city of Slovenia, is geographically situated near the centre of the country.
Small Gods (Wikipedia) Small Gods is the thirteenth of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, published in 1992. It tells the origin of the god Om, and his relations with his prophet, the reformer Brutha. In the process, it satirises religious institutions, people, and practices, and the role of religion in political life.
Smokey Point, Washington (Wikipedia) Smokey Point is a community and former census-designated place in northern Snohomish County, Washington. The area, developed as a suburban bedroom community in the late 20th century, was annexed into the nearby cities of Arlington and Marysville in the 1990s and 2000s.
Snail (Wikipedia) A snail is a shelled gastropod. The name is most often applied to land snails, terrestrial pulmonate gastropod molluscs. However, the common name snail is also used for most of the members of the molluscan class Gastropoda that have a coiled shell that is large enough for the animal to retract completely into. When the word “snail” is used in this most general sense, it includes not just land snails but also numerous species of sea snails and freshwater snails. Gastropods that naturally lack a shell, or have only an internal shell, are mostly called slugs, and land snails that have only a very small shell (that they cannot retract into) are often called semi-slugs.
Snake (Wikipedia) Snakes are elongated, limbless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes (/sɜːrˈpɛntiːz/). Like all other squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads (cranial kinesis). To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes’ paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Lizards have independently evolved elongate bodies without limbs or with greatly reduced limbs at least twenty-five times via convergent evolution, leading to many lineages of legless lizards. These resemble snakes, but several common groups of legless lizards have eyelids and external ears, which snakes lack, although this rule is not universal (see Amphisbaenia, Dibamidae, and Pygopodidae).
SNDMSG (Wikipedia) SNDMSG was an early electronic mail program, chiefly notable because it was used to send what is considered the first networked email.
Snohomish County, Washington (Wikipedia) Snohomish County (/snoʊˈhoʊmɪʃ/) is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. With a population of 827,957 as of the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous county in Washington, after nearby King and Pierce counties, and the 73rd-most populous in the United States. The county seat and largest city is Everett. The county forms part of the Seattle metropolitan area, which also includes King and Pierce counties to the south.
Snohomish River (Wikipedia) The Snohomish River is a river in Snohomish County, Washington, formed by the confluence of the Skykomish and Snoqualmie rivers near Monroe. It flows northwest entering Port Gardner Bay, part of Puget Sound, between Everett and Marysville. The Pilchuck River is its main tributary and joins the river at Snohomish. The river system drains the west side of the Cascade Mountains from Snoqualmie Pass to north of Stevens Pass.
Snohomish, Washington (Wikipedia) Snohomish is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 10,126 at the 2020 census. It is located on the Snohomish River, southeast of Everett and northwest of Monroe. Snohomish lies at the intersection of U.S. Route 2 and State Route 9. The city’s airport, Harvey Airfield, is located south of downtown and used primarily for general aviation.
Snoqualmie Pass (Wikipedia) Snoqualmie Pass is a mountain pass that carries Interstate 90 (I-90) through the Cascade Range in the U.S. state of Washington. The pass summit is at an elevation of 3,015 feet (919 m), on the county line between Kittitas County and King County.
Snoqualmie River (Wikipedia) The Snoqualmie River is a 45-mile (72 km) long river in King County and Snohomish County in the U.S. state of Washington. The river’s three main tributaries are the North, Middle, and South Forks, which drain the west side of the Cascade Mountains near the town of North Bend and join near the town of Snoqualmie just above the Snoqualmie Falls. After the falls the river flows north through rich farmland and the towns of Fall City, Carnation, and Duvall before meeting the Skykomish River to form the Snohomish River near Monroe. The Snohomish River empties into Puget Sound at Everett. Other tributaries of the Snoqualmie River include the Taylor River and the Pratt River, both of which enter the Middle Fork, the Tolt River, which joins at Carnation, and the Raging River at Fall City.
Snoqualmie Tunnel (Wikipedia) The Snoqualmie Tunnel is a former railroad tunnel near Snoqualmie Pass in the U.S. state of Washington, located east of Seattle. The tunnel crosses the Cascade Range about three miles (5 km) south of the pass, which is used by Interstate 90, on the border between King County and Kittitas County. It is 11,894 feet (2.253 mi; 3.625 km) long and is at an approximate elevation of 2,600 feet (790 m) above sea level, just north of Keechelus Lake. Its east portal is at Hyak.
Snow (Wikipedia) Snow comprises individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water throughout its life cycle, starting when, under suitable conditions, the ice crystals form in the atmosphere, increase to millimeter size, precipitate and accumulate on surfaces, then metamorphose in place, and ultimately melt, slide or sublimate away.
Society Islands (Wikipedia) The Society Islands (French: Îles de la Société, officially Archipel de la Société; Tahitian: Tōtaiete mā) are an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean that includes the major islands of Tahiti, Moʻorea, Raiatea, Bora Bora and Huahine. Politically, they are part of French Polynesia, an overseas country of the French Republic. Geographically, they form part of Polynesia.
Socrates (Wikipedia) Socrates (/ˈsɒkrətiːz/; Greek: Σωκράτης; c. 470–399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape.
Sodium (Wikipedia) Sodium is the chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin natrium) and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable isotope is 23Na. The free metal does not occur in nature and must be prepared from compounds. Sodium is the sixth most abundant element in the Earth’s crust and exists in numerous minerals such as feldspars, sodalite, and halite (NaCl). Many salts of sodium are highly water-soluble: sodium ions have been leached by the action of water from the Earth’s minerals over eons, and thus sodium and chlorine are the most common dissolved elements by weight in the oceans.
Sodium hydroxide (Wikipedia) Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye and caustic soda, is an inorganic compound with the formula NaOH. It is a white solid ionic compound consisting of sodium cations Na+ and hydroxide anions OH−.
Sodium nitrite (Wikipedia) Sodium nitrite is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula NaNO2. It is a white to slightly yellowish crystalline powder that is very soluble in water and is hygroscopic. From an industrial perspective, it is the most important nitrite salt. It is a precursor to a variety of organic compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, dyes, and pesticides, but it is probably best known as a food additive used in processed meats and (in some countries) in fish products.
SoDo, Seattle (Wikipedia) SoDo, alternatively SODO, is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, that makes up part of the city’s Industrial District. It is bounded on the north by South King Street, beyond which is Pioneer Square; on the south by South Spokane Street, beyond which is more of the Industrial District; on the west by the Duwamish River, across which is West Seattle; and on the east by Metro Transit’s Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel and SoDo Busway, beyond which is the International District and the rest of the Industrial District.
Solar eclipse (Wikipedia) A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun, thereby obscuring the view of the Sun from a small part of the Earth, totally or partially. Such an alignment occurs approximately every six months, during the eclipse season in its new moon phase, when the Moon’s orbital plane is closest to the plane of the Earth’s orbit. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured. Unlike a lunar eclipse, which may be viewed from anywhere on the night side of Earth, a solar eclipse can only be viewed from a relatively small area of the world. As such, although total solar eclipses occur somewhere on Earth every 18 months on average, they recur at any given place only once every 360 to 410 years.
Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 (Wikipedia) The solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, dubbed the “Great American Eclipse” by some media, was a total solar eclipse visible within a band that spanned the contiguous United States from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts. It was also visible as a partial solar eclipse from as far north as Nunavut in northern Canada to as far south as northern South America. In northwestern Europe and Africa, it was partially visible in the late evening. In northeastern Asia, it was partially visible at sunrise.
Solar System (Wikipedia) The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. The largest of such objects are the eight planets, in order from the Sun: four terrestrial planets named Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, two gas giants named Jupiter and Saturn, and two ice giants named Uranus and Neptune. The terrestrial planets have a definite surface and are mostly made of rock and metal. The gas giants are mostly made of hydrogen and helium, while the ice giants are mostly made of ‘volatile’ substances such as water, ammonia, and methane. In some texts, these terrestrial and giant planets are called the inner Solar System and outer Solar System planets respectively.
Solaris (1972 film) (Wikipedia) Solaris (Russian: Солярис, tr. Solyaris) is a 1972 Soviet science fiction drama film based on Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel of the same title. The film was co-written and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, and stars Donatas Banionis and Natalya Bondarchuk. The electronic music score was performed by Eduard Artemyev and features a composition by J.S. Bach as its main theme. The plot centers on a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris, where a scientific mission has stalled because the skeleton crew of three scientists have fallen into emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin (Banionis) travels to the station to evaluate the situation, only to encounter the same mysterious phenomena as the others.
Solaris (video game) (Wikipedia) Solaris is a space combat video game for the Atari 2600 published in 1986 by Atari. The game involves a player seeking out the planet Solaris via their starship. To accomplish this, the player must navigate the galactic scanner to explore quadrants of a map. Doing so allows them to explore Federation planets to refuel their ship, and engage in combat with hostile aliens known as the Zylons.
Solomon Sea Plate (Wikipedia) The Solomon Sea Plate (also known as the Solomon Plate) is a minor tectonic plate to the northwest of the Solomon Islands archipelago in the south Pacific Ocean. It roughly corresponds with the Solomon Sea east of Papua New Guinea. The plate boundaries are associated with high earthquake activity as part of the New Britain subduction zone.
Somali Civil War (Wikipedia) The Somali Civil War (Somali: Dagaalkii Sokeeye ee Soomaaliya; Arabic: الحرب الأهلية الصومالية al-ḥarb al-’ahliyya aṣ-ṣūmāliyya) is an ongoing civil war that is taking place in Somalia. It grew out of resistance to the military junta which was led by Siad Barre during the 1980s. From 1988 to 1990, the Somali Armed Forces began engaging in combat against various armed rebel groups, including the Somali Salvation Democratic Front in the northeast, the Somali National Movement in the northwest, and the United Somali Congress in the south. The clan-based armed opposition groups overthrew the Barre government in 1991.
Somali Plate (Wikipedia) The Somali Plate is a minor tectonic plate which straddles the Equator in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is currently in the process of separating from the African Plate along the East African Rift Valley. It is approximately centered on the island of Madagascar and includes about half of the east coast of Africa, from the Gulf of Aden in the north through the East African Rift Valley. The southern boundary with the Nubian-African Plate is a diffuse plate boundary consisting of the Lwandle Plate.
Somalia (Wikipedia) Somalia, officially the Federal Republic of Somalia, is the easternmost country in continental Africa. The country is on the Horn of Africa and is bordered by Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Kenya to the southwest. Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa’s mainland. Somalia has an estimated population of around 17.1 million, of which over 2 million live in the capital and largest city Mogadishu. Around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis. The official languages of Somalia are Somali and Arabic, though the former is the primary language. The people of Somalia are Muslims, the majority of them Sunni.
Sonora (Wikipedia) Sonora (Spanish pronunciation: [soˈnoɾa]), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora (English: Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into 72 municipalities; the capital (and largest) city of which being Hermosillo, located in the center of the state. Other large cities include Ciudad Obregón, Nogales (on the Mexico-United States border), San Luis Río Colorado, and Navojoa.
Soo Line High Bridge (Wikipedia) The Soo Line High Bridge, also known as the Arcola High Bridge, is a steel deck arch bridge over the St. Croix River between Stillwater, Minnesota and Somerset, Wisconsin, United States. It was designed by structural engineer C.A.P. Turner and built by the American Bridge Company from 1910 to 1911. The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 for its national significance in the themes of engineering and transportation. It was nominated for its exceptional dimensions, beauty, innovative engineering techniques, and importance to transportation between Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Sophie Scholl (Wikipedia) Sophia Magdalena Scholl (9 May 1921 – 22 February 1943) was a German student and anti-Nazi political activist, active within the White Rose non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany. She was convicted of high treason after having been found distributing anti-war leaflets at the University of Munich (LMU) with her brother, Hans. For her actions, she was executed by guillotine. Since the 1970s, Scholl has been extensively commemorated for her anti-Nazi resistance work.
Søren Kierkegaard (Wikipedia) Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (/ˈsɒrən ˈkɪərkəɡɑːrd/ SORR-ən KEER-kə-gard, US also /-ɡɔːr/ -⁠gor, Danish: [ˈsɶːɐn ˈɔˀˌpyˀ ˈkʰiɐ̯kəˌkɒˀ] i; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a “single individual,” giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all “understood” far too quickly by “scholars.”
Soul Music (novel) (Wikipedia) Soul Music is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the sixteenth book in the Discworld series, first published in 1994. Like many of Pratchett’s novels it introduces an element of modern society into the magical and vaguely late medieval, early modern world of the Discworld, in this case Rock and Roll music and stardom, with near disastrous consequences. It also introduces Susan Sto Helit, daughter of Mort and Ysabell and granddaughter of Death.
Sourcery (Wikipedia) Sourcery is a fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the fifth book in his Discworld series, published in 1988.
South Africa (Wikipedia) South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA or R.S.A.), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by 2,798 kilometres (1,739 mi) of coastline that stretches along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely enclaves Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over 62 million people, the country is the world’s 23rd-most populous nation and covers an area of 1,221,037 square kilometres (471,445 square miles). Pretoria is the administrative capital, while Cape Town, as the seat of Parliament, is the legislative capital. Bloemfontein has traditionally been regarded as the judicial capital. The Constitutional Court, the country’s highest court, is located in Johannesburg.
South America (Wikipedia) South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southern subregion of a single continent called America.
South American Plate (Wikipedia) The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
South Asia (Wikipedia) South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. As commonly conceptualized, the modern states of South Asia include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.
South Bismarck Plate (Wikipedia) The South Bismarck Plate is a small tectonic plate located mainly in the southern Bismarck Sea. The eastern part of New Guinea and the island of New Britain are on this plate. It is associated with high earthquake and volcanic activity as part of the New Britain subduction zone within the Pacific Ring of Fire.
South Carolina (Wikipedia) South Carolina (/ˌkærəˈlaɪnə/) is a state in the coastal Southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered to the north by North Carolina, to the southeast by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the southwest by Georgia across the Savannah River. South Carolina is the 40th most extensive and 23rd most populous U.S. state with a recorded population of 5,124,712 according to the 2020 census. In 2019, its GDP was $213.45 billion. South Carolina is composed of 46 counties. The capital is Columbia with a population of 137,300 in 2020; while its largest city is Charleston with a 2020 population of 150,277. The Greenville–Spartanburg-Anderson metropolitan area is the most populous in the state, with a 2020 population estimate of 1,455,892.
South Dakota (Wikipedia) South Dakota (/- dəˈkoʊtə/; Sioux: Dakȟóta itókaga, pronounced [daˈkˣota iˈtokaga]) is a U.S. state in the North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota Sioux Native American tribe, which comprises a large portion of the population with nine reservations currently in the state and have historically dominated the territory. South Dakota is the seventeenth largest by area, but the 5th least populous, and the 5th least densely populated of the 50 United States. As the southern part of the former Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889, simultaneously with North Dakota. They are the 39th and 40th states admitted to the union; President Benjamin Harrison shuffled the statehood papers before signing them so that no one could tell which became a state first. Pierre is the state capital, and Sioux Falls, with a population of about 192,200, is South Dakota’s largest city.
South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (Wikipedia) South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) is a British Overseas Territory in the southern Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote and inhospitable collection of islands, consisting of South Georgia and a chain of smaller islands known as the South Sandwich Islands. South Georgia is 165 kilometres (103 mi) long and 35 kilometres (22 mi) wide and is by far the largest island in the territory. The South Sandwich Islands lie about 700 kilometres (430 mi) southeast of South Georgia. The territory’s total land area is 3,903 km2 (1,507 sq mi). The Falkland Islands are about 1,300 kilometres (810 mi) west from its nearest point.
South Korea (Wikipedia) South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone; though it also claims the land border with China and Russia. The country’s western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. South Korea claims to be the sole legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. It has a population of 51.96 million, of which roughly half live in the Seoul Capital Area, the ninth most populous metropolitan area in the world. Other major cities include Incheon, Busan, and Daegu.
South Ossetia (Wikipedia) South Ossetia (/ɒˈsɛtiə/ o-SET-ee-ə, less common: /ɒˈsiːʃə/ o-SEE-shə), officially the Republic of South Ossetia or the State of Alania, is a partially recognised landlocked state in the South Caucasus. It has an officially stated population of just over 56,500 people (2022), who live in an area of 3,900 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi), with 33,000 living in the capital city, Tskhinvali.
South Park, Seattle (Wikipedia) South Park is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. It is located just south of Georgetown across the Duwamish River, and just north of the city of Tukwila. Its main thoroughfares are West Marginal Way S. (northwest- and southeast-bound), S. Cloverdale Street (east- and westbound) and 14th Ave. S (north-and-south). South Park connects to Georgetown by two bridges at 1st Ave S. at the northmost end of the neighborhood, and the South Park Bridge at the north end of 14th Ave. South.
South Sandwich Plate (Wikipedia) The South Sandwich Plate or the Sandwich Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) bounded by the subducting South American Plate to the east, the Antarctic Plate to the south, and the Scotia Plate to the west. The plate is separated from the Scotia Plate by the East Scotia Rise, a back-arc spreading ridge formed by the subduction zone on its eastern margin. The South Sandwich Islands are located on this microplate.
South St. Paul, Minnesota (Wikipedia) South St. Paul is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States, immediately south and southeast of St. Paul and east of West St. Paul. The population was 20,759 at the 2020 census. The town was a major meat-packing location, and many residents are descended from immigrants of Southern European and Eastern European heritage, who came to work in the meat-packing plants in the early twentieth century.
South Sudan (Wikipedia) South Sudan (/suːˈdɑːn, -ˈdæn/), officially the Republic of South Sudan, is a country in East Africa which is bordered by Ethiopia, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya including the vast swamp region of the Sudd, formed by the White Nile and known locally as the Bahr al Jabal, meaning “Mountain Sea”. It is a landlocked country. The population is nearly 12.7 million people in 2024, and Juba is the capital and largest city. South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011, making it the most recent sovereign state with widespread recognition as of 2024.
Southeast Asia (Wikipedia) Southeast Asia is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and north-west of mainland Australia which is part of Oceania. Southeast Asia is bordered to the north by East Asia, to the west by South Asia and the Bay of Bengal, to the east by Oceania and the Pacific Ocean, and to the south by Australia and the Indian Ocean. Apart from the British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of Maldives in South Asia, Maritime Southeast Asia is the only other subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. Mainland Southeast Asia is entirely in the Northern Hemisphere. East Timor and the southern portion of Indonesia are the parts of Southeast Asia that lie south of the Equator.
Southeast Europe (Wikipedia) Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical sub-region of Europe, consisting primarily of the cultural region of the Balkans, as well as adjacent regions and archipelagos. There are overlapping and conflicting definitions of the region, due to political, economic, historical, cultural, and geographical considerations.
Southeastern United States (Wikipedia) The Southeastern United States, also referred to as the American Southeast, the Southeast, or simply the South, is a geographical region of the United States. It is located broadly on the eastern portion of the Southern United States and the southern portion of the Eastern United States. It comprises at least a core of states on the lower East Coast of the United States and eastern Gulf Coast. Expansively, it reaches as far north as West Virginia and Maryland, which borders the Ohio River and Mason–Dixon line, and stretches as far west as Arkansas and Louisiana. There is no official U.S. government definition of the region, though various agencies and departments use different definitions.
Southern celestial hemisphere (Wikipedia) The southern celestial hemisphere, also called the Southern Sky, is the southern half of the celestial sphere; that is, it lies south of the celestial equator. This arbitrary sphere, on which seemingly fixed stars form constellations, appears to rotate westward around a polar axis due to Earth’s rotation.
Southern Europe (Wikipedia) Southern Europe is the southern region of Europe. It is also known as Mediterranean Europe, as its geography is marked by the Mediterranean Sea. Definitions of southern Europe include some or all of these countries and regions: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Greece, Italy, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Portugal, San Marino, Serbia, Slovenia, southern France, Spain, Turkey (East Thrace), and Vatican City.
Southern Hemisphere (Wikipedia) The Southern Hemisphere is the half (hemisphere) of Earth that is south of the Equator. It contains all or parts of five continents (the whole of Antarctica, the whole of Australia, about 90% of South America, about one-third of Africa, and some islands off the continental mainland of Asia) and four oceans (the whole Southern Ocean, the majority of the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic Ocean, and the South Pacific Ocean), as well as New Zealand and most of the Pacific Islands in Oceania. Its surface is 80.9% water, compared with 60.7% water in the Northern Hemisphere, and it contains 32.7% of Earth’s land.
Southwestern United States (Wikipedia) The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that includes Arizona and New Mexico, along with adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and Utah. The largest cities by metropolitan area are Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. Before 1848, in the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo México as well as parts of Alta California and Coahuila y Tejas, settlement was almost non-existent outside of Nuevo México’s Pueblos and Spanish or Mexican municipalities. Much of the area had been a part of New Spain and Mexico until the United States acquired the area through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the smaller Gadsden Purchase in 1854.
Soviet Union (Wikipedia) The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. It was a successor state to the Russian Empire that was nominally organized as a federal union of fifteen national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the Russian SFSR; in practice both its government and economy were highly centralized until its final years. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it was a flagship communist state.
Soylent Green (Wikipedia) Soylent Green is a 1973 American dystopian thriller film directed by Richard Fleischer, and starring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and Edward G. Robinson in his final film role. It is loosely based on the 1966 science-fiction novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, with a plot that combines elements of science fiction and a police procedural. The story follows a murder investigation in a dystopian future of dying oceans and year-round humidity caused by the greenhouse effect, with the resulting pollution, depleted resources, poverty, and overpopulation.
Space Needle (Wikipedia) The Space Needle is an observation tower in Seattle, Washington, United States. Considered to be an icon of the city, it has been designated a Seattle landmark. Located in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, it was built in the Seattle Center for the 1962 World’s Fair, which drew over 2.3 million visitors.
Spaceballs (Wikipedia)
Spacetime (Wikipedia) In physics, spacetime is a mathematical model that combines the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single four-dimensional manifold. Spacetime diagrams can be used to visualize relativistic effects, such as why different observers perceive differently where and when events occur.
Spain (Wikipedia) Spain (Spanish: España, [esˈpaɲa]), or the Kingdom of Spain (Reino de España), is a country primarily located in Southwestern Europe, with parts of territory in the Atlantic Ocean and across the Mediterranean Sea. The largest part of Spain is situated on the Iberian Peninsula; its territory also includes the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea, and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla in Africa. The country’s mainland is bordered to the south by Gibraltar; to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea; to the north by France, Andorra and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the second-largest country in the European Union (EU) and the fourth-most populous EU member state. Spain’s capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Bilbao.
Spanaway, Washington (Wikipedia) Spanaway is a census-designated place (CDP) in Pierce County, Washington, United States. The population was 35,476 at the 2020 census, up from 27,227 in 2010. Spanaway is an unincorporated area near Tacoma, and is often identified together with the more urban, less wealthy Parkland.
Species (Wikipedia) In biology, a species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.
Speed of light (Wikipedia) The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant that is important in many areas of physics. The speed of light c is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 300,000 kilometres per second; 186,000 miles per second; 671 million miles per hour). According to the special theory of relativity, c is the upper limit for the speed at which conventional matter or energy (and thus any signal carrying information) can travel through space.
Sphere (Wikipedia) A sphere (from Greek σφαῖρα, sphaîra) is a geometrical object that is a three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. Formally, a sphere is the set of points that are all at the same distance r from a given point in three-dimensional space. That given point is the center of the sphere, and r is the sphere’s radius. The earliest known mentions of spheres appear in the work of the ancient Greek mathematicians.
Spica (Wikipedia) Spica is the brightest object in the constellation of Virgo and one of the 20 brightest stars in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation α Virginis, which is Latinised to Alpha Virginis and abbreviated Alpha Vir or α Vir. Analysis of its parallax shows that it is located 250±10 light-years from the Sun. It is a spectroscopic binary star and rotating ellipsoidal variable; a system whose two stars are so close together they are egg-shaped rather than spherical, and can only be separated by their spectra. The primary is a blue giant and a variable star of the Beta Cephei type.
Spokane County, Washington (Wikipedia) Spokane County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 539,339, making it the fourth-most populous county in Washington. The largest city and county seat is Spokane, the second largest city in the state after Seattle. The county is named after the Spokane tribe.
Spokane, Washington (Wikipedia) Spokane (/spoʊˈkæn/ spoh-KAN) is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, Washington, United States. It is in eastern Washington, along the Spokane River, adjacent to the Selkirk Mountains, and west of the Rocky Mountain foothills, 92 miles (148 km) south of the Canadian border, 18 miles (30 km) west of the Washington–Idaho border, and 279 miles (449 km) east of Seattle, along I-90.
Spring (season) (Wikipedia) Spring, also known as springtime, is one of the four temperate seasons, succeeding winter and preceding summer. There are various technical definitions of spring, but local usage of the term varies according to local climate, cultures and customs. When it is spring in the Northern Hemisphere, it is autumn in the Southern Hemisphere and vice versa. At the spring (or vernal) equinox, days and nights are approximately twelve hours long, with daytime length increasing and nighttime length decreasing as the season progresses until the Summer Solstice in June (Northern Hemisphere) and December (Southern Hemisphere).
Spring Lake Park, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Spring Lake Park is a city in Anoka and Ramsey counties in the state of Minnesota. The population was 6,412 at the 2010 census. The city is located mainly within Anoka County. Minnesota State Highways 47 and 65 and County Highway 10 are three of the main routes in the city.
Squak Mountain (Wikipedia) Squak Mountain is the second most westerly mountain of the Issaquah Alps mountain chain in Washington state. It is situated between Cougar Mountain to the west and Tiger Mountain to the east. Interstate 90 parallels the base of the north side of the mountain. Much of the Squak Mountain watershed drains into Lake Sammamish. Most of the mountain is protected by Squak Mountain State Park and the Cougar/Squak and Squak/Tiger Corridors of King County.
Squamata (Wikipedia) Squamata (/skwæˈmeɪtə/, Latin squamatus, ‘scaly, having scales’) is the largest order of reptiles, comprising lizards and snakes. With over 12162 Species, it is also the second-largest order of extant (living) vertebrates, after the perciform fish. Squamates are distinguished by their skins, which bear horny scales or shields, and must periodically engage in molting. They also possess movable quadrate bones, making possible movement of the upper jaw relative to the neurocranium. This is particularly visible in snakes, which are able to open their mouths very wide to accommodate comparatively large prey. Squamates are the most variably sized living reptiles, ranging from the 16 mm (0.63 in) dwarf gecko (Sphaerodactylus ariasae) to the 6.5 m (21 ft) reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus). The now-extinct mosasaurs reached lengths over 14 m (46 ft).
Square (Wikipedia) In Euclidean geometry, a square is a regular quadrilateral, which means that it has four equal sides and four equal angles (90-degree angles, π/2 radian angles, or right angles). It can also be defined as a rectangle with two equal-length adjacent sides. It is the only regular polygon whose internal angle, central angle, and external angle are all equal (90°), and whose diagonals are all equal in length. A square with vertices ABCD would be denoted ◻ ABCD.
Squire Park, Seattle (Wikipedia) Squire Park is a neighborhood in the city of Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. According to the Squire Park Community Council, it is bounded on the south by S. Jackson Street, on the west by 12th Avenue and 12th Avenue S., on the north by E. Union Street, and on the east by 23rd Avenue and 23rd Avenue S., placing it within the Central District. Its main thoroughfares are E. Jefferson and Cherry Streets and E. Yesler Way (east- and west-bound) and 14th Avenue (north- and south-bound). Swedish Medical Center’s Cherry Hill campus is located here, Seattle University, a Jesuit University has part of its campus in Squire Park, as the Admissions, some dormitories and Athletics departments are east of 12th Avenue.
Sri Lanka (Wikipedia) Sri Lanka, historically known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest.
St. Anthony, Minnesota (Wikipedia) St. Anthony, also known as Saint Anthony Village, is a city in Hennepin and Ramsey counties in the U.S. state of Minnesota. At the 2010 census the population was 8,226, of whom 5,156 lived in the larger Hennepin County part of the city and 3,070 in the Ramsey County part. The city is run by a five-member council consisting of a mayor and four council members who serve four-year terms.
St. Croix Boom Site (Wikipedia) The St. Croix Boom Site is a historic and scenic wayside on the St. Croix River in Stillwater Township, Minnesota, United States. It commemorates the location of a critical log boom where, from 1856 to 1914, timber from upriver was sorted and stored before being dispatched to sawmills downstream. The site was developed as a roadside park along Minnesota State Highway 95 in the 1930s. In 1966 it was designated a National Historic Landmark for its national significance in the theme of industry. It was nominated for being the earliest, most important, and longest serving of the log storage and handling operations that supported Minnesota’s major logging industry. Virtually no traces remain of the site’s original buildings and structures.
St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin (Wikipedia) St. Croix Falls is a city in Polk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 2,208 at the 2020 census. The city is located within the Town of St. Croix Falls.
St. Croix River (Wisconsin–Minnesota) (Wikipedia) The St. Croix River (/ˈseɪnt ˈkrɔɪ/ SAYNT KROY; literally “holy cross” in French) is a tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 169 miles (272 km) long, in the U.S. states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The lower 125 miles (201 km) of the river form the border between Wisconsin and Minnesota. The river is a National Scenic Riverway under the protection of the National Park Service. A hydroelectric plant at the Saint Croix Falls Dam supplies power to the Minneapolis–St. Paul metropolitan area.
St. Lawrence River (Wikipedia) The St. Lawrence River (French: Fleuve Saint-Laurent [flœv sɛ̃lɔʁɑ̃]) is a large international river in the middle latitudes of North America connecting the Great Lakes to the North Atlantic Ocean. Its waters flow in a northeasterly direction from Lake Ontario to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, traversing Ontario and Quebec in [Canada](Canada and New York in the United States. A section of the river demarcates the Canada–U.S. border.
St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, San Francisco (Wikipedia) St. Patrick’s Catholic Church is a Roman Catholic church in San Francisco, California, founded in 1851. It is located at 756 Mission Street, between 3rd and 4th streets, across the street from Yerba Buena Gardens in the heart of the South of Market district.
St. Peter Sandstone (Wikipedia) The St. Peter Sandstone is an Ordovician geological formation. It belongs to the Chazyan stage of the Champlainian series in North American regional stratigraphy, equivalent to the late Darriwilian global stage. This sandstone originated as a sheet of sand in clear, shallow water near the shore of a Paleozoic sea and consists of fine-to-medium-size, well-rounded quartz grains with frosted surfaces. The extent of the formation spans north–south from Minnesota to Arkansas and east–west from Illinois into Nebraska and South Dakota. The formation was named by Owen (1847) after the Minnesota River, then known as the St. Peter River. The type locality is at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers near Fort Snelling, Minnesota. In eastern Missouri, the stone consists of quartz sand that is 99.44% silica.
Stalker (1979 film) (Wikipedia) Stalker (Russian: Сталкер, IPA: [ˈstaɫkʲɪr]) is a 1979 Soviet science fantasy art film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky with a screenplay written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, loosely based on their 1972 novel Roadside Picnic. The film tells the story of an expedition led by a figure known as the “Stalker” (Alexander Kaidanovsky), who guides his two clients—a melancholic writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) seeking inspiration, and a professor (Nikolai Grinko) seeking scientific discovery—through a hazardous wasteland to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the “Zone”, where there supposedly exists a room which grants a person’s innermost desires. The film combines elements of science fiction and fantasy with dramatic philosophical, psychological and theological themes.
Star (Wikipedia) A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of light. The most prominent stars have been categorised into constellations and asterisms, and many of the brightest stars have proper names. Astronomers have assembled star catalogues that identify the known stars and provide standardized stellar designations. The observable universe contains an estimated 1022 to 1024 stars. Only about 4,000 of these stars are visible to the naked eye—all within the Milky Way galaxy.
Star Lake (Washington) (Wikipedia) Star Lake is located in southern King County, Washington in the Lakeland North census-designated place. It is one of two large lakes in Lakeland North, alongside Lake Dolloff. Interstate 5 runs just to the west of the lake.
Star system (Wikipedia) A star system or stellar system is a small number of stars that orbit each other, bound by gravitational attraction. A large group of stars bound by gravitation is generally called a star cluster or galaxy, although, broadly speaking, they are also star systems. Star systems are not to be confused with planetary systems, which include planets and similar bodies (such as comets).
Star Wars (film) (Wikipedia) Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is a 1977 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas, produced by Lucasfilm and distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox. It is the first film released in the Star Wars film series and the fourth chronological chapter of the “Skywalker Saga”. Set “a long time ago” in a fictional galaxy ruled by the tyrannical Galactic Empire, the story follows a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance, who aim to destroy the Empire’s newest weapon, the Death Star. When the Rebel leader Princess Leia is abducted by the Empire, Luke Skywalker acquires stolen architectural plans of the Death Star and sets out to rescue her while learning the ways of a metaphysical power known as “the Force” from the Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. The cast includes Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, and James Earl Jones.
Startup, Washington (Wikipedia) Startup is a census-designated place (CDP) in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 859 according to the 2020 census.
State of the Union (Wikipedia) The State of the Union Address (sometimes abbreviated to SOTU) is an annual message delivered by the president of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress near the beginning of most calendar years on the current condition of the nation. The State of the Union Address generally includes reports on the nation’s budget, economy, news, agenda, progress, achievements and the president’s priorities and legislative proposals.
Statherian (Wikipedia) The Statherian Period ( /stəˈθɪəriən/; Ancient Greek: σταθερός, romanized: statherós, meaning “stable, firm”) is the final geologic period in the Paleoproterozoic Era and lasted from 1800 Mya to 1600 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically.
Static site generator (Wikipedia) Static site generators (SSGs) are engines that use text input files (such as Markdown, reStructuredText, AsciiDoc and JSON) to generate static web pages. Static sites generated by static site generators do not require a backend after site generation, making them first-class citizens on content delivery networks (CDNs). Some of the most popular static site generators are Jekyll, Hugo, Next.js (JavaScript) and Angular (TypeScript). SSGs are typically for rarely-changing, informative content, such as product pages, news websites, (software) documentation, manuals, and blogs.
Statue of Lenin (Seattle) (Wikipedia) The Statue of Lenin is a 16 ft (5 m) bronze statue of Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. It was created by Bulgarian-born Slovak sculptor Emil Venkov and initially put on display in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in 1988, the year before the Velvet Revolution. After the revolutions of 1989 and dissolution of the Soviet Union, a wave of de-Leninization in Eastern Europe brought about the fall of many monuments in the former Soviet sphere. In 1993, the statue was bought by an American who had found it lying in a scrapyard. He brought it home with him to Washington State but died before he could carry out his plans to formally display it.
Stavropol Krai (Wikipedia) Stavropol Krai (Russian: Ставропо́льский край, romanized: Stavropolʹskiy kray), also known as Stavropolye (Russian: Ставропо́лье), is a federal subject (a krai) of Russia. It is geographically located in the North Caucasus region in Southern Russia, and is administratively part of the North Caucasian Federal District. Stavropol Krai has a population of 2,907,593, according to the 2021 Census.
Steak (Wikipedia) A steak is a thick cut of meat generally sliced across the muscle fibers, sometimes including a bone. It is normally grilled or fried. Steak can be diced, cooked in sauce, such as in steak and kidney pie, or minced and formed into patties, such as hamburgers.
Stellar classification (Wikipedia) In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics. Electromagnetic radiation from the star is analyzed by splitting it with a prism or diffraction grating into a spectrum exhibiting the rainbow of colors interspersed with spectral lines. Each line indicates a particular chemical element or molecule, with the line strength indicating the abundance of that element. The strengths of the different spectral lines vary mainly due to the temperature of the photosphere, although in some cases there are true abundance differences. The spectral class of a star is a short code primarily summarizing the ionization state, giving an objective measure of the photosphere’s temperature.
Stenian (Wikipedia) The Stenian Period (/ˈstiːni.ən/ STEE-nee-ən, from Ancient Greek: στενός, romanized: stenós, meaning “narrow”) is the final geologic period in the Mesoproterozoic Era and lasted from 1200 Mya to 1000 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined chronometrically. The name derives from narrow polymetamorphic belts formed over this period. Preceded by the Ectasian Period and followed by the Neoproterozoic Era.
Stephen King (Wikipedia) Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author. Called the “King of Horror”, he has also explored other genres, among them suspense, crime, science-fiction, fantasy and mystery. He has also written approximately 200 short stories, most of which have been published in collections. His debut, Carrie (1974), established him in horror. Different Seasons (1982), a collection of four novellas, was his first major departure from the genre. Among the films adapted from King’s fiction are Carrie, Christine, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Stand by Me, Misery, Dolores Claiborne, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and It. He has published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman and has co-written works with other authors, notably his friend Peter Straub and sons Joe Hill and Owen King. He has also written nonfiction, notably On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.
Steven M. Bellovin (Wikipedia) Steven M. Bellovin is a researcher on computer networking and security who has been a professor in the computer science department at Columbia University since 2005. Previously, Bellovin was a fellow at AT&T Labs Research in Florham Park, New Jersey.
Stevens County, Washington (Wikipedia) Stevens County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington along the Canada–US border. At the 2020 census, its population was 46,445. As of July 2021, the population was estimated to be 47,426. The county seat and largest city is Colville. The county was created in 1863 and named after Isaac Stevens, the first governor of Washington Territory.
Stillaguamish River (Wikipedia) The Stillaguamish River is a river in the northwestern region of the U.S. state of Washington. It is mainly composed of two forks, the longer North Fork Stillaguamish (45 miles (72 km)) and the South Fork Stillaguamish. The two forks join near Arlington. From there the Stillaguamish River proper flows for 22 miles (35 km) to Puget Sound. The river’s watershed drains part of the Cascade Range north of Seattle.
Stillwater Bridge (St. Croix River) (Wikipedia) The Stillwater Bridge (alternatively known as the Stillwater Lift Bridge, St. Croix River Bridge at Stillwater, Mn/DOT Bridge #4654, and Wis/DOT Bridge #M-61) is a vertical-lift bridge crossing the St. Croix River between Stillwater, Minnesota, and Houlton, Wisconsin. It formerly connected Minnesota State Highway 36 and Wisconsin Highway 64. Around 18,000 vehicles crossed the bridge daily. The new St. Croix Crossing bridge crossing the St. Croix river valley to the south of Stillwater replaced its purpose, having opened to highway traffic on August 2, 2017, leaving the Stillwater Lift Bridge to be preserved and to be converted to bicycle/pedestrian use.
Stillwater Township, Washington County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Stillwater Township is a township in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 2,553 at the 2000 census.
Stillwater, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Stillwater is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Washington County. It is in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area, on the west bank of the St. Croix River, across from Houlton, Wisconsin. Stillwater’s population was 19,394 at the 2020 census. Stillwater is often called “the birthplace of Minnesota” due to its role in the establishment of the state.
Stjepan Filipović (Wikipedia) Stjepan Filipović (27 January 1916 – 22 May 1942) was a Yugoslav communist who led the Kolubara Company of the Valjevo Partisan Detachment during the 1941 Partisan uprising. He was captured and executed in 1942 in Valjevo. A photo of him taken shortly before his execution became a symbol of resistance against fascism in the Second World War, and was, among others, exhibited in the United Nations building in New York. He was proclaimed People’s Hero of Yugoslavia in 1949.
Stochastic terrorism (Wikipedia) Stochastic terrorism refers to political or media figures publicly demonizing a person or group in such a way that it inspires supporters of the figures to commit a violent act against the target of the speech. Unlike incitement to terrorism, this is accomplished by using indirect, vague, or coded language that allows the instigator to plausibly disclaim responsibility for the resulting violence. Global trends point to increasing violent rhetoric and political violence, including more evidence of stochastic terrorism. A key element is the use of social media and other distributed forms of communications where the person who carries out the violence has no direct connection to the users of violent rhetoric.
Stockton, California (Wikipedia) Stockton is a city in and the county seat of San Joaquin County in the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquired Rancho Campo de los Franceses. The city is named after Robert F. Stockton, and it was the first community in California to have a name not of Spanish or Native American origin. The city is located on the San Joaquin River in the northern San Joaquin Valley. Stockton is the 11th largest city in California and the 58th largest city in the United States. It was named an All-America City in 1999, 2004, and 2015 and again in 2017.
Stoicism (Wikipedia) Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The Stoics believed that the practice of virtue is enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived, flourishing life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it with a life spent practicing certain virtues in everyday life such as courage or temperance and living in accordance with nature. It was founded in the ancient Agora of Athens by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC.
Story of Your Life (Wikipedia) “Story of Your Life” is a science fiction novella by American writer Ted Chiang, first published in Starlight 2 in 1998, and in 2002 in Chiang’s collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. Its major themes are language and determinism.
Strait (Wikipedia) A strait is a landform connecting two seas or two water basins. While the landform generally constricts the flow, the surface water still flows, for the most part, at the same elevation on both sides and through the strait in both directions. In some straits there may be a dominant directional current through the strait. Most commonly, it is a narrowing channel that lies between two land masses. Some straits are not navigable, for example because they are either too narrow or too shallow, or because of an unnavigable reef or archipelago. Straits are also known to be loci for sediment accumulation. Usually, sand-size deposits occur on both the two opposite strait exits, forming subaqueous fans or deltas.
Strait of Georgia (Wikipedia) The Strait of Georgia (French: Détroit de Géorgie) or the Georgia Strait is an arm of the Salish Sea between Vancouver Island and the extreme southwestern mainland coast of British Columbia, Canada, and the extreme northwestern mainland coast of Washington, United States. It is approximately 240 kilometres (150 mi) long and varies in width from 20 to 58 kilometres (12 to 36 mi). Along with the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound, it is a constituent part of the Salish Sea.
Strait of Gibraltar (Wikipedia) The Strait of Gibraltar is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and separates Europe from Africa. The two continents are separated by 13 kilometres (8.1 miles; 7.0 nautical miles) of ocean at the Strait’s narrowest point between Punta de Tarifa in Spain and Point Cires in Morocco. Ferries cross between the two continents every day in as little as 35 minutes. The Strait’s depth ranges between 300 and 900 metres (980 and 2,950 feet; 160 and 490 fathoms).
Strait of Hormuz (Wikipedia) The Strait of Hormuz (/hɔːrˈmuːz/ Persian: تنگهٔ هُرمُز Tangeh-ye Hormoz, Arabic: مَضيق هُرمُز Maḍīq Hurmuz) is a strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. It provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean and is one of the world’s most strategically important choke points. On the north coast lies Iran, and on the south coast lies the Musandam peninsula, shared by the United Arab Emirates and the Musandam Governorate, an exclave of Oman. The strait is about 90 nautical miles (167 km) long, with a width varying from about 52 nmi (96 km) to 21 nmi (39 km).
Strait of Juan de Fuca (Wikipedia) The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about 96 miles (83 nmi; 154 km) long that is the Salish Sea’s main outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre of the Strait.
Stranger in a Strange Land (Wikipedia) Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians, and explores his interaction with an eventual transformation of Terran culture.
Strato of Lampsacus (Wikipedia) Strato of Lampsacus (/ˈstreɪtoʊ/; Greek: Στράτων ὁ Λαμψακηνός, translit. Strátōn ho Lampsakēnós, c. 335 – c. 269 BCE) was a Peripatetic philosopher, and the third director (scholarch) of the Lyceum after the death of Theophrastus. He devoted himself especially to the study of natural science, and increased the naturalistic elements in Aristotle’s thought to such an extent, that he denied the need for an active god to construct the universe, preferring to place the government of the universe in the unconscious force of nature alone.
Strawberry Island (Deception Pass, Washington) (Wikipedia) Strawberry Island is a small island in Island County, Washington, United States. It is located just east of Deception Pass, which separates Fidalgo Island from Whidbey Island (S).
Styrax japonicus (Wikipedia) Styrax japonicus (野茉莉, also エゴノキ, egonoki), also known as the Japanese snowbell, is a species of flowering plant in the family Styracaceae, native to Korea, Japan, and Southern China. Growing to 12 m (39 ft) tall by 8 m (26 ft) broad, it is a graceful, spreading deciduous tree with oval, upward-facing leaves which occasionally turn yellow or orange before falling in autumn. Masses of slightly fragrant, bell-shaped white flowers hang from the branches in summer, followed by fruits (drupes) which resemble olives in both shape and colour.
Substrate (biology) (Wikipedia) In biology, a substrate is the surface on which an organism (such as a plant, fungus, or animal) lives. A substrate can include biotic or abiotic materials and animals. For example, encrusting algae that lives on a rock (its substrate) can be itself a substrate for an animal that lives on top of the algae. Inert substrates are used as growing support materials in the hydroponic cultivation of plants. In biology substrates are often activated by the nanoscopic process of substrate presentation.
Sudan (Wikipedia) Sudan, officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It borders the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Egypt to the north, Eritrea to the northeast, Ethiopia to the southeast, Libya to the northwest, South Sudan to the south, and the Red Sea to the east. It has a population of 45.7 million people as of 2022 and occupies 1,886,068 square kilometres (728,215 square miles), making it Africa’s third-largest country by area and the third-largest by area in the Arab League. It was the largest country by area in Africa and the Arab League until the secession of South Sudan in 2011; since then both titles have been held by Algeria. Its capital and most populous city is Khartoum.
Suez Canal (Wikipedia) The Suez Canal (Arabic: قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, Qanāt as-Suwais) is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest of Egypt). The 193.30-kilometre-long (120.11 mi) canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
Sufism (Wikipedia) Sufism (Arabic: الصُّوفِيَّة‎ aṣ-ṣūfiyya), also known as Tasawwuf (التَّصَوُّف‎ at-taṣawwuf), is a mystic body of religious practice found within Islam which is characterized by a focus on Islamic purification, spirituality, ritualism, asceticism, and esotericism. It has been variously defined as “Islamic mysticism”, “the mystical expression of Islamic faith”, “the inward dimension of Islam”, “the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam”, the “main manifestation and the most important and central crystallization” of mystical practice in Islam, and “the interiorization and intensification of Islamic faith and practice”.
Sulfur (Wikipedia) Sulfur (also spelled sulphur in British English) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with the chemical formula S8. Elemental sulfur is a bright yellow, crystalline solid at room temperature.
Sultan River (Wikipedia) The Sultan River is a river in Snohomish County in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a tributary of the Skykomish River, which it joins at the town of Sultan. The river is dammed in its upper third by Culmback Dam to form Spada Lake.
Sultan, Washington (Wikipedia) Sultan is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located approximately 23 miles (37 km) east of Everett at the confluence of the Skykomish River and the Sultan River, a minor tributary. The city had a population of 4,651 at the 2010 census.
Sumas River (Wikipedia) The Sumas River is a river in the Fraser Lowland and a tributary of the Fraser River system, coursing across the international border between the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington.
Sumer (Wikipedia) Sumer (/ˈsuːmər/) is the earliest known civilization in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world’s earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between c. 3350 – c. 2500 BC, following a period of proto-writing c. 4000 – c. 2500 BC.
Summation (Wikipedia) In mathematics, summation is the addition of a sequence of numbers, called addends or summands; the result is their sum or total. Beside numbers, other types of values can be summed as well: functions, vectors, matrices, polynomials and, in general, elements of any type of mathematical objects on which an operation denoted “+” is defined.
Summer (Wikipedia) Summer is the hottest of the four temperate seasons, occurring after spring and before autumn. At or centred on the summer solstice, daylight hours are longest and darkness hours are shortest, with day length decreasing as the season progresses after the solstice. The earliest sunrises and latest sunsets also occur near the date of the solstice. The date of the beginning of summer varies according to climate, tradition, and culture. When it is summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and vice versa.
Summer Triangle (Wikipedia) The Summer Triangle is an astronomical asterism in the northern celestial hemisphere. The defining vertices of this imaginary triangle are at Altair, Deneb, and Vega, each of which is the brightest star of its constellation (Aquila, Cygnus, and Lyra, respectively). The greatest declination is +45° and lowest is +9° meaning the three can be seen from all places in the Northern Hemisphere and from the home of most people resident in the Southern Hemisphere. The two stars in Aquila and Cygnus represent the head of an eagle and tail of a swan that looks east inscribed into the triangle and forming the altitude of the triangle. Two small constellations, Sagitta and Vulpecula, lie between Aquila in the south of the triangle and Cygnus and Lyra to the north.
Sun (Wikipedia) The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a massive, hot ball of plasma, inflated and heated by energy produced by nuclear fusion reactions at its core. Part of this internal energy is emitted from its surface as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radiation, providing most of the energy for life on Earth.
Sunda Plate (Wikipedia) The Sunda Plate is a minor tectonic plate straddling the Equator in the Eastern Hemisphere on which the majority of Southeast Asia is located.
Sunfish Lake, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Sunfish Lake is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 521 at the 2010 census. First incorporated as a village in 1958, the city’s goal has been to maintain a rural atmosphere, with large lot size and as little disturbance of the natural environment as possible.
Sunset Hill, Seattle (Wikipedia) Sunset Hill is an area located in the northwest corner of the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. It is home to the Sunset Hill Community Association. Founded in 1922, it was one of the first Seattle neighborhood associations. It is also home to the Sunset Hill Viewpoint Park, located at 7531 34th Ave NW. This park provides a scenic overlook onto the Shilshole and Elliott bays and provides a popular vantage point for photographs of the Olympic Range.
Supergiant (Wikipedia) Supergiants are among the most massive and most luminous stars. Supergiant stars occupy the top region of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram with absolute visual magnitudes between about −3 and −8. The temperature range of supergiant stars spans from about 3,400 K to over 20,000 K.
Supreme Court of the United States (Wikipedia) The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically “all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party.” The court holds the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law.
Surah (Wikipedia) A surah (/ˈsʊərə/; Arabic: سُورَة, romanized: sūrah; pl. سُوَر, suwar) is an Arabic word meaning ‘chapter’ in the Quran. Its plural form in Arabic is suwar.
Suriname (Wikipedia) Suriname (/ˈsʊərɪnæm, -nɑːm/ SOOR-ih-NAM, -⁠NAHM, Dutch: [syːriˈnaːmə]), officially the Republic of Suriname (Dutch: Republiek Suriname [reːpyˌblik ˌsyːriˈnaːmə]), is a country in northern South America, sometimes considered part of the Caribbean and the West Indies. Situated slightly north of the equator, over 90% of its territory is covered by rainforests, the highest proportion of forest cover in the world. Suriname is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north, French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, and Brazil to the south. It is the smallest country in South America by both population and territory, with around 612,985 inhabitants in an area of approximately 163,820 square kilometers (63,251 square miles). The capital and largest city is Paramaribo, which is home to roughly half the population.
Sutro Baths (Wikipedia) The Sutro Baths was a large, privately owned public saltwater swimming pool complex in the Lands End area of the Outer Richmond District in western San Francisco, California.
Sutro Heights Park (Wikipedia) Sutro Heights Park is an historic public park in the Outer Richmond District of western San Francisco, California. It is within the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Sutro Historic District.
SVG (Wikipedia) SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is an XML-based vector image format for defining two-dimensional graphics, having support for interactivity and animation. The SVG specification is an open standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium since 1999.
Swamp Creek (Washington) (Wikipedia) Swamp Creek is a tributary of the Sammamish River in Snohomish and King counties, in the U.S. state of Washington. It is also known as dxʷɬ(ə)q̓ab in Lushootseed, meaning “a wide place”.
Sweden (Wikipedia) Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, Finland to the east, and is connected to Denmark in the southwest by a bridge–tunnel across the Öresund.
Switzerland (Wikipedia) Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located at the confluence of Western, Central and Southern Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east.
Sydney (Wikipedia) Sydney (/ˈsɪdni/ SID-nee) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia’s east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about 70 km (43.5 mi) towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park and Macarthur to the south and south-west. Greater Sydney consists of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are colloquially known as “Sydneysiders”. The estimated population on June 2022 was 5,297,089; the city is home to approximately 66% of the state’s population. Notable nicknames of the city include the “Emerald City” and the “Harbour City”.
Synagogue of Satan (Wikipedia) In the letters to the early Christian churches of Smyrna and Philadelphia in Revelation 2:9 and 3:9, reference is made to a synagogue of Satan (Greek: συναγωγή τοῦ Σατανᾶ, synagoge tou satana), in each case referring to a group persecuting the church “who say they are Jews and are not”. ¶ The verse has often been used to justify hatred against all Jews or particular subsets of modern Jews, which academic scholars generally view as ignorant of the biblical context based on the fact that the suspected author of Revelation was likely Jewish.[
Synapse (Wikipedia) In the nervous system, a synapse is a structure that permits a neuron (or nerve cell) to pass an electrical or chemical signal to another neuron or to the target effector cell.
Syria (Wikipedia) Syria (Arabic: سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, romanized: Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic (Arabic: الجمهورية العربية السورية, romanized: al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 governorates (subdivisions), and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including the majority Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Circassians, Armenians, Albanians, Greeks, and Chechens. Religious groups include Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis. The capital and largest city of Syria is Damascus. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Sunni Muslims are the largest religious group. Syria is the only country that is governed by Ba’athists, who advocate Arab socialism and Arab nationalism. Syria is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Arab League.
Syrian civil war (Wikipedia) The Syrian civil war (Arabic: ٱلْحَرْبُ ٱلْأَهْلِيَّةُ ٱلسُّورِيَّةُ, romanized: al-ḥarb al-ʾahlīyah al-sūrīyah) is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by governments security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the crisis had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
T. E. Lawrence (Wikipedia) Thomas Edward Lawrence [T. E. Lawrence] (16 August 1888 – 19 May 1935) was a British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer who became famous for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and was commonly referred to as Lawrence of Arabia. After widespread fame, to avoid recognition he adopted the alias T. E. Shaw.
Tacoma Narrows Bridge (Wikipedia) The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a pair of twin suspension bridges that span the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound in Pierce County, Washington. The bridges connect the city of Tacoma with the Kitsap Peninsula and carry State Route 16 (known as Primary State Highway 14 until 1964) over the strait. Historically, the name “Tacoma Narrows Bridge” has applied to the original bridge nicknamed “Galloping Gertie”, which opened in July 1940, but collapsed possibly because of aeroelastic flutter four months later, as well as the replacement of the original bridge which opened in 1950 and still stands today as the westbound lanes of the present-day two-bridge complex.
Tacoma, Washington (Wikipedia) Tacoma (/təˈkoʊmə/ tə-KOH-mə) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington’s Puget Sound, 32 miles (51 km) southwest of Seattle, 36 miles (58 km) southwest of Bellevue, 31 miles (50 km) northeast of the state capital, Olympia, 58 miles (93 km) northwest of Mount Rainier National Park, and 80 miles (130 km) east of Olympic National Park. The city’s population was 219,346 at the time of the 2020 census. Tacoma is the second-largest city in the Puget Sound area and the third-most populous in the state. Tacoma also serves as the center of business activity for the South Sound region, which has a population of about 1 million.
Tahiti (Wikipedia) Tahiti (English: /təˈhiːti/; Tahitian [taˈhiti]; French pronunciation: [ta.iti]; previously also known as Otaheite) is the largest island of the Windward group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia. It is located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean and the nearest major landmass is Australia. Divided into two parts, Tahiti Nui (bigger, northwestern part) and Tahiti Iti (smaller, southeastern part), the island was formed from volcanic activity; it is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs. Its population was 189,517 in 2017, making it by far the most populous island in French Polynesia and accounting for 68.7% of its total population; the 2022 Census resulted in a population of 191,779.
Taiwan (Wikipedia) Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands with a combined area of 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles). The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, has an area of 35,808 square kilometres (13,826 square miles), with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.
Tajikistan (Wikipedia) Tajikistan, officially the Republic of Tajikistan, is a landlocked country in Central Asia. Dushanbe is the capital and most populous city. Tajikistan is bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east. It is separated from Pakistan by Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.
Take Me Home, Country Roads (Wikipedia) “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, also known simply as “Country Roads”, is a song written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert and John Denver. It was released as a single performed by Denver on April 12, 1971, peaking at number two on Billboard’s US Hot 100 singles for the week ending August 28, 1971. The song was a success on its initial release and was certified Gold by the RIAA on August 18, 1971, and Platinum on April 10, 2017. The song became one of John Denver’s most popular songs. It has continued to sell, with over 1.6 million digital copies sold in the United States.
Tansy (Wikipedia) Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is a perennial, herbaceous flowering plant in the genus Tanacetum in the aster family, native to temperate Europe and Asia. It has been introduced to other parts of the world, including North America, and in some areas has become invasive. It is also known as common tansy, bitter buttons, cow bitter, or golden buttons. The Latin word vulgare means “common”.
Tanzania (Wikipedia) Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to the south; Zambia to the southwest; and Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west. Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, is in northeastern Tanzania. According to the 2022 national census, Tanzania has a population of nearly 62 million, making it the most populous country located entirely south of the equator.
Taoism (Wikipedia) Taoism or Daoism (/ˈtaʊɪzəm/ or /ˈdaʊɪzəm/) refers to a set of Chinese traditions and religions which emphasize living in harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào; Wade–Giles: Tao; lit. ‘Way’, ‘Path’). The Tao is generally defined as the source of everything and the ultimate principle underlying reality. The Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi are widely considered key Taoist texts.
Tarn (lake) (Wikipedia) A tarn (or corrie loch) is a mountain lake, pond or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier. A moraine may form a natural dam below a tarn.
Tau (Wikipedia) Tau /ˈtɔː, ˈtaʊ/ (uppercase Τ, lowercase τ, or τ; Greek: ταυ [taf]) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiceless dental or alveolar plosive IPA: [t]. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 300.
Taurus (constellation) (Wikipedia) Taurus (Latin for “the Bull”) is one of the constellations of the zodiac and is located in the northern celestial hemisphere. Taurus is a large and prominent constellation in the Northern Hemisphere’s winter sky. It is one of the oldest constellations, dating back to the Early Bronze Age at least, when it marked the location of the Sun during the spring equinox. Its importance to the agricultural calendar influenced various bull figures in the mythologies of Ancient Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Its old astronomical symbol is (♉︎), which resembles a bull’s head.
Taxonomic rank (Wikipedia) In biology, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system of biological classification (taxonomy) consists of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain. While older approaches to taxonomic classification were phenomenological, forming groups on the basis of similarities in appearance, organic structure and behaviour, methods based on genetic analysis have opened the road to cladistics.
Taylor Swift (Wikipedia) Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her songwriting, artistry, and entrepreneurship have influenced the music industry and popular culture, and her life is a subject of widespread media coverage.
Taylors Falls, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Taylors Falls is a city in Chisago County, Minnesota, United States, located at the junction of U.S. Highway 8 and Minnesota State Highway 95. The population was 1,055 at the 2020 census.
Techno Viking (Wikipedia) Techno Viking is an internet phenomenon or meme based on a video from the 2000 Fuckparade in Berlin, Germany.
Telefarm Towers (Wikipedia) The Telefarm Towers is a transmission site for FM radio and television broadcasting in Shoreview, Minnesota consisting of two guyed towers.
Telescope (Wikipedia) A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally it was an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe distant objects – an optical telescope. Nowadays, the word “telescope” is defined as a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors.
Telescopium (Wikipedia) Telescopium is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve named in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. Its name is a Latinized form of the Greek word for telescope. Telescopium was later much reduced in size by Francis Baily and Benjamin Gould.
Temple De Hirsch Sinai (Wikipedia) Temple De Hirsch Sinai is a Reform Jewish congregation with campuses in Seattle and nearby Bellevue, Washington, USA. It was formed as a 1971 merger between the earlier Temple De Hirsch (Seattle, founded 1899) and Temple Sinai (Bellevue, founded 1961) and is the largest Reform congregation in the Pacific Northwest. The old Temple De Hirsch building (or Old Sanctuary) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but was demolished in 1993. Part of the façade remains.
Temple of Hephaestus (Wikipedia) The Temple of Hephaestus or Hephaisteion (also “Hephesteum” or “Hephaesteum”; Ancient Greek: Ἡφαιστεῖον, Greek: Ναός Ηφαίστου, and formerly called in error the Theseion or “Theseum”; Ancient Greek: Θησεῖον, Greek: Θησείο), is a well-preserved Greek temple dedicated to Hephaestus; it remains standing largely intact today. It is a Doric peripteral temple, and is located at the north-west side of the Agora of Athens, on top of the Agoraios Kolonos hill. From the 7th century until 1834, it served as the Greek Orthodox church of Saint George Akamates. The building’s condition has been maintained due to its history of varied use.
Tennessee (Wikipedia) Tennessee (/ˌtɛnɪˈsiː/ TEN-ih-SEE, locally /ˈtɛnɪsi/ TEN-iss-ee), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, Arkansas to the southwest, and Missouri to the northwest. Tennessee is geographically, culturally, and legally divided into three Grand Divisions of East, Middle, and West Tennessee. Nashville is the state’s capital and largest city, and anchors its largest metropolitan area. Other major cities include Memphis, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville. Tennessee’s population as of the 2020 United States census is approximately 6.9 million.
Tennessine (Wikipedia) Tennessine is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Ts and atomic number 117. It has the second-highest atomic number and joint-highest atomic mass of all known elements, and is the penultimate element of the 7th period of the periodic table.
Terence McKenna (Wikipedia) Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was an American ethnobotanist and mystic who advocated the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the “Timothy Leary of the ’90s”, “one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism”, and the “intellectual voice of rave culture”.
Terrane (Wikipedia) In geology, a terrane (/təˈreɪn, ˈtɛreɪn/; in full, a tectonostratigraphic terrane) is a crust fragment formed on a tectonic plate (or broken off from it) and accreted or “sutured” to crust lying on another plate. The crustal block or fragment preserves its distinctive geologic history, which is different from the surrounding areas—hence the term “exotic” terrane. The suture zone between a terrane and the crust it attaches to is usually identifiable as a fault. A sedimentary deposit that buries the contact of the terrane with adjacent rock is called an overlap formation. An igneous intrusion that has intruded and obscured the contact of a terrane with adjacent rock is called a stitching pluton.
Terry Gilliam (Wikipedia) Terry Gilliam (/ˈɡɪliəm/; born 22 November 1940) is an American-born British filmmaker, comedian, animator, actor and former member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
Terry Pratchett (Wikipedia) Sir Terence David John Pratchett OBE (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his Discworld series of 41 novels.
Tertiary (Wikipedia) Tertiary (/ˈtɜːr.ʃə.ri, ˈtɜːr.ʃiˌɛr.i/ TUR-shə-ree, TUR-shee-err-ee) is an obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start of the Cenozoic Era, and extended to the beginning of the Quaternary glaciation at the end of the Pliocene Epoch. The time span covered by the Tertiary has no exact equivalent in the current geologic time system, but it is essentially the merged Paleogene and Neogene periods, which are informally called the Early Tertiary and the Late Tertiary, respectively.
Tetradecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a tetradecagon or tetrakaidecagon or 14-gon is a fourteen-sided polygon.
Tetrahedron (Wikipedia) In geometry, a tetrahedron (pl.: tetrahedra or tetrahedrons), also known as a triangular pyramid, is a polyhedron composed of four triangular faces, six straight edges, and four vertices. The tetrahedron is the simplest of all the ordinary convex polyhedra.
Tetrahydrocannabinol (Wikipedia) Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis and one of at least 113 total cannabinoids identified on the plant. Although the chemical formula for THC (C21H30O2) describes multiple isomers, the term THC usually refers to the Delta-9-THC isomer with chemical name (−)-trans-Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol. THC is a terpenoid found in cannabis and, like many pharmacologically active phytochemicals, it is assumed to be involved in the plant’s evolutionary adaptation against insect predation, ultraviolet light, and environmental stress. THC was first discovered and isolated by Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam in Israel in 1964. It was found that, when smoked, THC is absorbed into the bloodstream and travels to the brain, attaching itself to endocannabinoid receptors located in the cerebral cortex, cerebellum, and basal ganglia. These are the parts of the brain responsible for thinking, memory, pleasure, coordination and movement.
Tetraodontidae (Wikipedia) Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the order Tetraodontiformes. The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfish, puffers, balloonfish, blowfish, blowies, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, toadies, toadle, honey toads, Haaris Anwar fish, sugar toads, and sea squab. They are morphologically similar to the closely related porcupinefish, which have large external spines (unlike the thinner, hidden spines of the Tetraodontidae, which are only visible when the fish have puffed up). The scientific name refers to the four large teeth, fused into an upper and lower plate, which are used for crushing the hard shells of crustaceans and mollusks, their natural prey.
Tetraodontiformes (Wikipedia) The Tetraodontiformes (/tɛtrə.ɒˈdɒntɪfɔːrmiːz/) are an order of highly derived ray-finned fish, also called the Plectognathi. Sometimes these are classified as a suborder of the order Perciformes. The Tetraodontiformes are represented by 10 extant families and at least 349 species overall; most are marine and dwell in and around tropical coral reefs, but a few species are found in freshwater streams and estuaries. They have no close relatives, and descend from a line of coral-dwelling species that emerged around 80 million years ago.
Texas (Wikipedia) Texas (/ˈtɛksəs/, also locally /ˈtɛksɪz/; Spanish: Texas, Tejas) is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,660 km2), and with more than 30 million residents in 2023, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both area (after Alaska/) and population (after California/). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast.
Thailand (Wikipedia) Thailand (Thai: ประเทศไทย) (/ˈtaɪlænd, -lənd/, TYE-land, -⁠lənd), officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (/saɪˈæm, ˈsaɪæm/, sye-AM, SYE-am), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 70 million, it spans 513,120 square kilometres (198,120 sq mi). Thailand is bordered to the north by Myanmar and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea; it also shares maritime borders with Vietnam to the southeast, and Indonesia and India to the southwest. Bangkok is the nation’s capital and largest city.
The Blue Marble (Wikipedia) The Blue Marble is a photograph of Earth taken on December 7, 1972, from a distance of around 29,400 kilometers (18,300 miles) from the planet’s surface.
The Butterfly Dream (Wikipedia) The most famous of all Zhuangzi stories—“Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly”—appears at the end of the second chapter, “On the Equality of Things”.
The Caretaker (musician) (Wikipedia) The Caretaker was a long-running project by English ambient musician Leyland James Kirby (born 9 May 1974). His work as the Caretaker is characterized as exploring memory and its gradual deterioration, nostalgia, and melancholia. The project was inspired by the haunted ballroom scene in the 1980 film The Shining. His first several releases comprised treated and manipulated samples of 1930s ballroom pop recordings. Most of his album covers were painted by one of his friends, Ivan Seal.
The Castle (1997 Australian film) (Wikipedia) The Castle is a 1997 Australian comedy film directed by Rob Sitch, and written by Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Jane Kennedy of Working Dog Productions, all veteran writers and performers on ABC’s The Late Show and The D-Generation. The film stars Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Anthony Simcoe, Sophie Lee and Wayne Hope as the Kerrigan family, as well as Tiriel Mora, Robyn Nevin, Eric Bana, Costas Kilias and Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell.
The Colour of Magic (Wikipedia) The Colour of Magic is a 1983 fantasy comedy novel by Terry Pratchett, and is the first book of the Discworld series. The first printing of the British edition consisted of only 506 copies. Pratchett has described it as “an attempt to do for the classical fantasy universe what Blazing Saddles did for Westerns.”
The Communist Manifesto (Wikipedia) The Communist Manifesto (German: Das Kommunistische Manifest), originally the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, commissioned by the Communist League and originally published in London in 1848. The text is the first and most systematic attempt by Marx and Engels to codify for widespread consumption the core historical materialist idea that, as stated in the text’s opening words, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”, in which social classes are defined by the relationship of people to the means of production. Published against the backdrop of the Revolutions of 1848 and their subsequent repression across Europe, the Manifesto remains one of the world’s most influential political documents.
The Dark Crystal (Wikipedia) The Dark Crystal is a 1982 dark fantasy film directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz. It stars the voices of Stephen Garlick, Lisa Maxwell, Billie Whitelaw, Percy Edwards, and Barry Dennen. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company and distributed by Universal Pictures. The plot revolves around Jen and Kira, two Gelflings on a quest to restore balance to the world of Thra and overthrow the evil, ruling Skeksis by restoring a powerful broken Crystal.
The Day After (Wikipedia) The Day After is an American television film that first aired on November 20, 1983, on the ABC television network. The film postulates a fictional war between the NATO forces and the Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates into a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. The action itself focuses on the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and several family farms near American missile silos. The cast includes JoBeth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Cullum, Jason Robards, and John Lithgow. The film was written by Edward Hume, produced by Robert Papazian, and directed by Nicholas Meyer.
The Doors (Wikipedia) The Doors were an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most influential and controversial rock acts of the 1960s, partly due to Morrison’s lyrics and voice, along with his erratic stage persona. The group is widely regarded as an important figure of the era’s counterculture.
The Doors of Perception (Wikipedia) The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the “purely aesthetic” to “sacramental vision”, and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake’s 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
The Egg (Weir short story) (Wikipedia) “The Egg” is a short story by American writer Andy Weir, first published on his website Galactanet on August 15, 2009. It is Weir’s most popular short story, and has been translated into over 30 languages by readers. The story follows a nameless 48-year-old man who discovers the “meaning of life” after he dies.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Wikipedia) The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a physics textbook based on some lectures by Richard Feynman, a Nobel laureate who has sometimes been called “The Great Explainer”. The lectures were presented before undergraduate students at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), during 1961–1963. The book’s co-authors are Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands.
The Fifth Element (Wikipedia) The Fifth Element is a 1997 English-language French science fiction action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson, as well as co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It stars Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, Milla Jovovich, and Chris Tucker. Primarily set in the 23rd century, the film’s central plot involves the survival of planet Earth, which becomes the responsibility of Korben Dallas (Willis), a taxicab driver and former special forces major, after a young woman (Jovovich) falls into his cab. To accomplish this, Dallas joins forces with her to recover four mystical stones essential for the defence of Earth against the impending attack of a malevolent cosmic entity.
The Gold Rush (Wikipedia) The Gold Rush is a 1925 American silent comedy film written, produced, and directed by Charlie Chaplin. The film also stars Chaplin in his Little Tramp persona, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain, Tom Murray, Henry Bergman and Malcolm Waite.
The Gorge Amphitheatre (Wikipedia) The Gorge Amphitheatre, originally known as Champs de Brionne Music Theatre and commonly referred to as The Gorge, is an outdoor concert venue in Grant County, Washington, United States. It is situated near the Columbia River in Central Washington, nine miles (14 km) west of George. The venue is managed by Live Nation.
The Hidden Fortress (Wikipedia) The Hidden Fortress (Japanese: 隠し砦の三悪人, Hepburn: Kakushi Toride no San Akunin, lit. ‘The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress’) is a 1958 Japanese jidaigeki adventure film directed by Akira Kurosawa, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. It tells the story of two peasants who agree to escort a man and a woman across enemy lines in return for gold without knowing that he is a general and the woman is a princess. The film stars Toshiro Mifune as General Makabe Rokurōta and Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki while the peasants, Tahei and Matashichi, are portrayed by Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara respectively.
The Hobbit (Wikipedia) The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children’s fantasy novel by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book is recognized as a classic in children’s literature and is one of the best-selling books of all time, with over 100 million copies sold.
The Hunger Games (film) (Wikipedia) The Hunger Games is a 2012 American dystopian action film directed by Gary Ross, who co-wrote the screenplay with Suzanne Collins and Billy Ray, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by Collins. It is the first installment in The Hunger Games franchise . The film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz, Stanley Tucci, and Donald Sutherland. In the film, Katniss Everdeen (Lawrence) and Peeta Mellark (Hutcherson) are forced to compete in the Hunger Games, an elaborate televised fight to the death consisting of adolescent contestants from the 12 Districts of Panem.
The Hunger Games (novel) (Wikipedia) The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian young adult novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle royale to the death.
The Independent (Wikipedia) The Independent is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the Indy, it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition.
The Kid (1921 film) (Wikipedia) The Kid is a 1921 American silent comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin, and features Jackie Coogan as his foundling baby, adopted son and sidekick. This was Chaplin’s first full-length film as a director. It was a huge success and was the second-highest-grossing film in 1921. Now considered one of the greatest films of the silent era, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2011.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks (Wikipedia) “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is a line from the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. It is spoken by Queen Gertrude in response to the insincere overacting of a character in the play within a play created by Prince Hamlet to elicit evidence of his uncle’s guilt in the murder of his father, the King of Denmark.
The Last Hero (Wikipedia) The Last Hero is a short fantasy novel by British writer Terry Pratchett, the twenty-seventh book in his Discworld series. It was published in 2001 in a larger format than the other Discworld novels and illustrated on every page by Paul Kidby.
The Last Question (Wikipedia) “The Last Question” is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and in the anthologies in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). While he also considered it one of his best works, “The Last Question” was Asimov’s favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. Through successive generations, humanity questions Multivac on the subject of entropy. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy.
The Librarian (Discworld) (Wikipedia) The Librarian appeared in the second novel of the series, The Light Fantastic, where he was transformed into an orang-utan. This had certain advantages for a librarian, such as being able to use his hands and feet for re-shelving books. The other wizards have gradually become used to the situation, to the extent that, from Night Watch: “if someone ever reported that there was an orang-utan in the Library, the wizards would probably go and ask the Librarian if he’d seen it.”
The Light Fantastic (Wikipedia) The Light Fantastic is a comic fantasy novel by Terry Pratchett, the second of the Discworld series. It was published on 2 June 1986, the first printing being of 1,034 copies. The title is taken from L’Allegro, a poem by John Milton, and refers to dancing lightly with extravagance.
The Lincoln Project (Wikipedia) The Lincoln Project is a centrist American political action committee (PAC) founded in December 2019 by moderate conservatives and former Republican Party members who oppose Trumpism and 45th U.S. president Donald Trump. During the 2020 presidential election, it aimed to prevent the re-election of president Donald Trump, and to defeat incumbent Republican candidates running for re-election who had been loyalists to Trump. In April 2020, the committee endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. As of 2023, the committee is focused on preventing a non-consecutive re-election of Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
The Long Walk (Wikipedia) The Long Walk is a dystopian horror novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1979, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books, and has seen several reprints since, as both paperback and hardback. In 2023, Centipede Press released the first stand-alone hardcover edition.
The Luggage (Wikipedia) The Luggage is a large chest that follows Rincewind literally wherever he goes—even onto Roundworld, which Rincewind initially only visited virtually. It is made of sapient pearwood, a magical, intelligent plant that is nearly extinct, impervious to magic, and only grows in a few places outside the Agatean Empire, generally on sites of very old magic. As such, whilst considered oddities on the Hubland continent, such chests were commonplace in the Agatean Empire. It can produce hundreds of little legs and move very fast if the need arises. It has been described as “half suitcase, half homicidal maniac”.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Wikipedia) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake’s own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets from etched plates containing prose, poetry, and illustrations. The plates were then coloured by Blake and his wife Catherine.
The Matrix (Wikipedia) The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in the Matrix film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, and Joe Pantoliano, and depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside the Matrix, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. When computer programmer Thomas Anderson, under the hacker alias “Neo”, uncovers the truth, he joins a rebellion against the machines along with other people who have been freed from the Matrix.
The Mother of All Demos (Wikipedia) “The Mother of All Demos” is a name retroactively applied to a landmark computer demonstration, of developments by the Augmentation Research Center, given at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society’s Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, by Douglas Engelbart, on December 9, 1968.
The Musical Offering (Wikipedia) The Musical Offering (German: Musikalisches Opfer or Das Musikalische Opfer), BWV 1079, is a collection of keyboard canons and fugues and other pieces of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, all based on a single musical theme given to him by Frederick the Great (King Frederick II of Prussia), to whom they are dedicated. They were published in September 1747. The Ricercar a 6, a six-voice fugue which is regarded as the high point of the entire work, was put forward by the musicologist Charles Rosen as the most significant piano composition in history (partly because it is one of the first). This ricercar is also occasionally called the Prussian Fugue, a name used by Bach himself.
The Mysterious Stranger (Wikipedia) The Mysterious Stranger is a novel attempted by the American author Mark Twain. He worked on it intermittently from 1897 through 1908. Twain wrote multiple versions of the story; each involves a supernatural character called “Satan” or “No. 44”. All the versions remained unfinished (with the exception of the last one, No. 44, the Mysterious Stranger).
The NeverEnding Story (film) (Wikipedia) The NeverEnding Story (German: Die unendliche Geschichte) is a 1984 fantasy film, co-written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen (in his first English-language film), based on the 1979 novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. It was produced by Bernd Eichinger and Dieter Giessler, and stars Noah Hathaway, Barret Oliver, Tami Stronach, Patricia Hayes, Sydney Bromley, Gerald McRaney and Moses Gunn, with Alan Oppenheimer providing the voices of Falkor, Gmork, and others. It follows a boy who finds a magical book that tells of a young warrior who is given the task of stopping the Nothing, a dark force, from engulfing the wonderland world of Fantasia.
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Wikipedia) The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is a 1976 book by the Princeton psychologist, psychohistorian and consciousness theorist Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). The book addresses the problematic nature of consciousness – “the ability to introspect” – which in Jaynes’ view must be distinguished from sensory awareness and other processes of cognition. Jaynes presents his proposed solution: that consciousness is a learned behavior based more on language and culture than on biology; this solution, in turn, points to the origin of consciousness in ancient human history rather than in metaphysical or evolutionary processes; furthermore, archaeological and historical evidence indicates that prior to the learning of consciousness, human mentality was what Jaynes called “the bicameral mind” – a mentality based on verbal hallucination.
The Phenomenology of Spirit (Wikipedia) The Phenomenology of Spirit (German: Phänomenologie des Geistes) is the most widely-discussed philosophical work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel; its German title can be translated as either The Phenomenology of Spirit or The Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel described the work, published in 1807, as an “exposition of the coming to be of knowledge”. This is explicated through a necessary self-origination and dissolution of “the various shapes of spirit as stations on the way through which spirit becomes pure knowledge”.
The Princess Bride (film) (Wikipedia) The Princess Bride is a 1987 American fantasy adventure comedy film directed and co-produced by Rob Reiner and starring Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon, Wallace Shawn, André the Giant, and Christopher Guest. Adapted by William Goldman from his 1973 novel of the same name, it tells the story of a swashbuckling farmhand named Westley, accompanied by companions befriended along the way, who must rescue his true love Princess Buttercup from the odious Prince Humperdinck. The film preserves the novel’s metafictional narrative style by presenting the story as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson.
The Scarlet Plague (Wikipedia) The Scarlet Plague is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel by American writer Jack London, originally published in The London Magazine in 1912. The book was noted in 2020 as having been very similar to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially given London wrote it at a time when the world was not as quickly connected by travel as it is today. However unlike COVID-19, in this story, victims died within an hour and mortality was practically 100%.
The Shawshank Redemption (Wikipedia) The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American prison drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont, based on the 1982 Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film tells the story of banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murders of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, contraband smuggler Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bellows, and James Whitmore appear in supporting roles.
The Showbox (Wikipedia) The Showbox (originally known as the Showbox Theater) is a music venue in Seattle, Washington, United States. It has been owned by AEG Live since 2007.
The Snake (song) (Wikipedia) “The Snake” is a song written and first recorded by civil-rights activist Oscar Brown in 1963; it became a hit single for American singer Al Wilson in 1968. The song tells a story similar to Aesop’s fable The Farmer and the Viper and the African American folktale “Mr. Snake and the Farmer”.
The Social Contract (Wikipedia) The Social Contract, originally published as On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right (French: Du contrat social; ou, Principes du droit politique), is a 1762 French-language book by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The book theorizes about how to establish legitimate authority in a political community, that is, one compatible with individual freedom, in the face of the problems of commercial society, which Rousseau had already identified in his Discourse on Inequality (1755).
The Terminator (Wikipedia) The Terminator is a 1984 American science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, written by Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd and produced by Hurd. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, a cybernetic assassin sent back in time from 2029 to 1984 to kill Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton), whose unborn son will one day save mankind from extinction by Skynet, a hostile artificial intelligence in a post-apocalyptic future. Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is a soldier sent back in time to protect Sarah. The screenplay is credited to Cameron and Hurd, while co-writer William Wisher Jr. received an “additional dialogue” credit.
The Truth (novel) (Wikipedia) The Truth is a fantasy novel by the British writer Terry Pratchett, the 25th book in his Discworld series, published in 2000.
The Vladimir Putin Interview (Wikipedia) “The Vladimir Putin Interview” is a television interview hosted by the American journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson with Russian president Vladimir Putin. It premiered on February 8, 2024, on the Tucker Carlson Network and the social media website X (Twitter). It is the first interview with Putin to be granted to a Western journalist since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Historians have pointed out the many falsehoods in Putin’s statements.
The Voyage of Life (Wikipedia) The Voyage of Life is a series of four paintings created by Thomas Cole in 1842, representing an allegory of the four stages of human life. The paintings, Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age, depict a voyager who travels in a boat on a river through the mid-19th-century American wilderness. In each painting the voyager rides the boat on the River of Life accompanied by a guardian angel. The landscape, each reflecting one of the four seasons of the year, plays a major role in conveying the story. With each installment the boat’s direction of travel is reversed from the previous picture. In childhood, the infant glides from a dark cave into a rich, green landscape. As a youth, the boy takes control of the boat and aims for a shining castle in the sky. In manhood, the adult relies on prayer and religious faith to sustain him through rough waters and a threatening landscape. Finally, the man becomes old and the angel guides him to heaven across the waters of eternity.
The Wall (Wikipedia) The Wall is the eleventh studio album by the English progressive rock band Pink Floyd, released on 30 November 1979 by Harvest/EMI and Columbia/CBS Records. It is a rock opera that explores Pink, a jaded rock star whose eventual self-imposed isolation from society forms a figurative wall. The album was a commercial success, topping the US charts for 15 weeks and reaching number three in the UK. It initially received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom found it overblown and pretentious, but later received accolades as one of the greatest albums of all time.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Wikipedia) The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a 1900 children’s novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz after she and her pet dog Toto are swept away from their home by a cyclone. Upon her arrival in the magical world of Oz, she learns she cannot return home until she has destroyed the Wicked Witch of the West.
Thelema (Wikipedia) Thelema (/θəˈliːmə/) is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy, as well as a new religious movement that was founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. Central to Thelema is the idea of discovering and following one’s True Will, a unique purpose and calling that goes beyond ordinary desires. Crowley’s system begins with The Book of the Law, a text he said was dictated to him by an entity named Aiwass. This foundational work lays out key principles, including the central axiom “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law”. This principle emphasizes personal freedom and the pursuit of one’s true path, while being guided by love and finding one’s authentic purpose.
Theodore Roethke (Wikipedia) Theodore Huebner Roethke (/ˈrɛtki/ RET-kee; May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet. He is regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential poets of his generation, having won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book The Waking, and the annual National Book Award for Poetry on two occasions: in 1959 for Words for the Wind, and posthumously in 1965 for The Far Field. His work was characterized by a willingness to engage deeply with a multifaceted introspection, and his style was overtly rhythmic, with a skilful use of natural imagery. Indeed, Roethke’s mastery of both free verse and fixed forms was complemented by an intense lyrical quality that drew “from the natural world in all its mystery and fierce beauty.
Theodore Roosevelt (Wikipedia) Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or T. R., was an American politician, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He was previously active in New York politics and served as the state’s 33rd governor for two years. He was the vice president under President William McKinley for six months in 1901, assuming the presidency after McKinley’s assassination. As president, Roosevelt emerged as a leader of the Republican Party and became a driving force for anti-trust and Progressive policies.
Theophrastus (Wikipedia) Theophrastus (/ˌθiː.əˈfræstəs/; Ancient Greek: Θεόφραστος, romanized: Theóphrastos, lit. ‘godly phrased’; c. 371 – c. 287 BC) was a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos. His given name was Τύρταμος (Túrtamos); his nickname Θεόφραστος (Theóphrastos) was given by Aristotle, his teacher, for his “divine style of expression”.
Theosophy (Wikipedia) Theosophy is a religion established in the United States during the late 19th century. It was founded primarily by Helena Blavatsky and draws its teachings predominantly from Blavatsky’s writings. Categorized by scholars of religion as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism, it draws upon both older European philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Indian originated religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.
this (computer programming) (Wikipedia) this, self, and Me are keywords used in some computer programming languages to refer to the object, class, or other entity which the currently running code is a part of. The entity referred to thus depends on the execution context (such as which object has its method called). Different programming languages use these keywords in slightly different ways. In languages where a keyword like “this” is mandatory, the keyword is the only way to access data and methods stored in the current object. Where optional, these keywords can disambiguate variables and functions with the same name.
Thomas Cole (Wikipedia) Thomas Cole (1 February 1801 – 11 February 1848) was an English-born American artist and the founder of the Hudson River School art movement. Cole is widely regarded as the first significant American landscape painter. He was known for his romantic landscape and history paintings. Influenced by European painters, but with a strong American sensibility, he was prolific throughout his career and worked primarily with oil on canvas. His paintings are typically allegoric and often depict small figures or structures set against moody and evocative natural landscapes. They are usually escapist, framing the New World as a natural eden contrasting with the smog-filled cityscapes of Industrial Revolution-era Britain, in which he grew up. His works, often seen as conservative, criticize the contemporary trends of industrialism, urbanism, and westward expansion.
Thomas Edison (Wikipedia) Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, which include the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and early versions of the electric light bulb, have had a widespread impact on the modern industrialized world. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of organized science and teamwork to the process of invention, working with many researchers and employees. He established the first industrial research laboratory.
Thomas Fuller (Wikipedia) Thomas Fuller (baptised 19 June 1608 – 16 August 1661) was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published in 1662, after his death. He was a prolific author, and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen (and his many patrons).
Thomas Fuller (writer) (Wikipedia) Thomas Fuller, M.D. (24 June 1654 – 17 September 1734) was a British physician, preacher and intellectual. ¶ Fuller was born in Rosehill, Sussex, and educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He practised medicine at Sevenoaks. In 1723 he published Pharmacopoeia Domestica, and in 1730 Exanthematologia, Or, An Attempt to Give a Rational Account of Eruptive Fevers, Especially of the Measles and Small Pox. In 1732 he published a compilation of proverbs titled Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; wise sentences and witty saying, ancient and modern, foreign and British (321 pp., London: Barker and Bettesworth Hitch) which includes the words, “Be you never so high, the law is above you”.
Thomas Jefferson (Wikipedia) Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743[b] – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Following the American Revolutionary War and prior to becoming president in 1801, Jefferson was the nation’s first U.S. secretary of state under George Washington and then the nation’s second vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was a leading proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, and produced formative documents and decisions at the state, national, and international levels. His writings and advocacy for human rights, including freedom of thought, speech, and religion, served as substantial inspirations to the American Revolution and subsequent Revolutionary War in which the Thirteen Colonies succeeded in breaking from British America and establishing the United States as a sovereign nation.
Thomas Paine (Wikipedia) Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736] – June 8, 1809) was an English-born American Founding Father, political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of human rights.
Thought experiment (Wikipedia) A thought experiment is a hypothetical situation in which a hypothesis, theory, or principle is laid out for the purpose of thinking through its consequences.
Thuban (Wikipedia) Thuban (/ˈθjuːbæn/), with Bayer designation Alpha Draconis or α Draconis, is a binary star system in the northern constellation of Draco. A relatively inconspicuous star in the night sky of the Northern Hemisphere, it is historically significant as having been the north pole star from the 4th to 2nd millennium BC.
Thuja plicata (Wikipedia) Thuja plicata is a large evergreen coniferous tree in the family Cupressaceae, native to the Pacific Northwest of North America. Its common name is western redcedar in the U.S. or western red cedar in the UK, and it is also called pacific red cedar, giant arborvitae, western arborvitae, just cedar, giant cedar, or shinglewood. It is not a true cedar of the genus Cedrus. T. plicata is the largest species in the genus Thuja, growing up to 70 metres (230 ft) tall and 7 metres (23 ft) in diameter. It mostly grows in areas that experience a mild climate with plentiful rainfall, although it is sometimes present in drier areas on sites where water is available year-round, such as wet valley bottoms and mountain streamsides. The species is shade-tolerant and able to establish in forest understories and is thus considered a climax species. It is a very long-lived tree, with some specimens reaching ages of well over 1,000 years.
Thurston County, Washington (Wikipedia) Thurston County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 294,793. The county seat and largest city is Olympia, the state capital.
Tijeras, New Mexico (Wikipedia) Tijeras is a village in Bernalillo County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 541 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Albuquerque metropolitan area.
Till (Wikipedia) Till or glacial till is unsorted glacial sediment. Till is derived from the erosion and entrainment of material by the moving ice of a glacier. It is deposited some distance down-ice to form terminal, lateral, medial and ground moraines. Till is classified into primary deposits, laid down directly by glaciers, and secondary deposits, reworked by fluvial transport and other processes.
Time Bandits (Wikipedia) Time Bandits is a 1981 British fantasy adventure film co-written, produced, and directed by Terry Gilliam. It stars Sean Connery, John Cleese, Shelley Duvall, Ralph Richardson, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Peter Vaughan and David Warner. The film tells the story of a young boy taken on an adventure through time with a band of thieves who plunder treasure from various points in history.
Time Person of the Year (Wikipedia) Person of the Year (called Man of the Year or Woman of the Year until 1999) is an annual issue of the American news magazine and website Time featuring a person, a group, idea, or object that “for better or for worse… has done the most to influence the events of the year”. The editors select the featured subject, though the Time website or a partner organization also runs an annual reader’s poll that has no effect on the selection.
Timecrimes (Wikipedia) Timecrimes (Spanish: Los cronocrímenes) is a 2007 Spanish science-fiction thriller film written by, directed by, and featuring Nacho Vigalondo. The film stars Karra Elejalde as Héctor, a man who unwittingly becomes part of a causal loop and must stop his other selves from continuing to exist.
Timor Plate (Wikipedia) The Timor Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) in Southeast Asia carrying the island of Timor and surrounding islands. The Australian Plate is subducting under the southern edge of the plate, while a small divergent boundary is located on the eastern edge. Another convergent boundary exists with the Banda Sea Plate to the north, and to the west is a transform boundary.
Timothy Leary (Wikipedia) Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was “a hero of American consciousness”, and writer Tom Robbins called him a “brave neuronaut”. During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested 36 times; President Richard Nixon allegedly described him as “the most dangerous man in America”.
Tin (Wikipedia) Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn (from Latin stannum) and atomic number 50. A silvery-coloured metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, the so-called “tin cry” can be heard as a result of twinning in tin crystals; this trait is shared by indium, cadmium, zinc, and mercury in its solid state.
Titlow Beach (Wikipedia) Titlow Beach is in Tacoma, Washington, USA. It is located along Puget Sound near the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It has a beach, community center, park, water play area (all of which are run by Metro Parks Tacoma), one restaurant., a view of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a small boardwalk, and is a popular scuba diving area.
To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Wikipedia) To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971) is a science fiction novel by American writer Philip José Farmer, the first book in the Riverworld series. It won a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1972 at the 30th Worldcon. The title is derived from the 7th of the “Holy Sonnets” by English poet John Donne.
Togo (Wikipedia) Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It is one of the least developed countries and extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its capital, Lomé, is located. It is a small, tropical country, which covers 57,000 square kilometres (22,000 square miles) and has a population of approximately 8 million, and it has a width of less than 115 km (71 mi) between Ghana and its eastern neighbour Benin.
TokTok (Wikipedia) TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin (Chinese: 抖音; pinyin: Dǒuyīn; lit. ‘Shaking sound’), is a short-form video hosting service owned by ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from 3 seconds to 10 minutes.
Tokyo (Wikipedia) Tokyo (/ˈtoʊkioʊ/; Japanese: 東京, Tōkyō, [toːkʲoː]), officially the Tokyo Metropolis (東京都, Tōkyō-to), is the capital of Japan and the most populous city in the world with a population of over 14 million residents as of 2023. The Tokyo metropolitan area, which includes Tokyo and nearby prefectures, is the world’s most-populous metropolitan area with 40.8 million residents as of 2023.
Tom Robbins (Wikipedia) Thomas Eugene Robbins (born July 22, 1932) is a best-selling and prolific American novelist. His most notable works are “seriocomedies” (also known as “comedy drama”), such as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Tom Robbins has lived in La Conner, Washington since 1970, where he has written nine best-selling books. His latest work, published in 2014, is Tibetan Peach Pie, which is a self-declared “un-memoir”. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues has been adapted into a movie that shares the same name by Gus Van Sant in 1993.
Tonga Plate (Wikipedia) The Tonga Plate is a small southwest Pacific tectonic plate or microplate. It is centered at approximately 19° S. latitude and 173° E. longitude. The plate is an elongated plate oriented NNE - SSW and is a northward continuation of the Kermadec linear zone north of New Zealand. The plate is bounded on the east and north by the Pacific Plate, on the northwest by the Niuafo’ou Microplate, on the west and south by the Indo-Australian Plate. The Tonga plate is subducting the Pacific plate along the Tonga Trench. This subduction turns into a transform fault boundary north of Tonga. An active rift or spreading center separates the Tonga Plate from the Australian Plate and the Niuafo’ou microplate to the west. The Tonga Plate is seismically very active and is rotating clockwise.
Tonian (Wikipedia) The Tonian (from Ancient Greek: τόνος, romanized: tónos, meaning “stretch”) is the first geologic period of the Neoproterozoic Era. It lasted from 1000 to 720 Mya (million years ago). Instead of being based on stratigraphy, these dates are defined by the ICS based on radiometric chronometry. The Tonian is preceded by the Stenian Period of the Mesoproterozoic Era and followed by the Cryogenian.
Torx (Wikipedia) Torx (pronounced /tɔːrks/) is a trademark for a type of screw drive characterized by a 6-point star-shaped pattern, developed in 1967 by Camcar Textron. A popular generic name for the drive is star, as in star screwdriver or star bits. The official generic name, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO 10664, is hexalobular internal. This is sometimes abbreviated in databases and catalogs as 6lobe (starting with the numeral 6, not the capital letter G). Torx Plus, Torx Paralobe and Torx ttap are improved head profiles.
TOSLINK (Wikipedia) TOSLINK (from Toshiba Link) is a standardized optical fiber connector system. Also known generically as optical audio, its most common use is in consumer audio equipment (via a “digital optical” socket), where it carries a digital audio stream from components such as CD and DVD players, Digital Audio Tape recorders, computers, and modern video game consoles, to an AV receiver that can decode two channels of uncompressed pulse-code modulated (PCM) audio or compressed 5.1/7.1 surround sound such as Dolby Digital or DTS Surround System. Unlike HDMI, TOSLINK does not have the bandwidth to carry the uncompressed versions of Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, or more than two channels of PCM audio.
Total Recall (1990 film) (Wikipedia) Total Recall is a 1990 American science fiction action film directed by Paul Verhoeven, with a screenplay by Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon, and Gary Goldman. The film stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside. Based on the 1966 short story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick, Total Recall tells the story of Douglas Quaid (Schwarzenegger), a construction worker who receives an implanted memory of a fantastical adventure on Mars. He subsequently finds his adventure occurring in reality as agents of a shadow organization try to prevent him from recovering memories of his past as a Martian secret agent aiming to stop the tyrannical regime of Martian dictator Vilos Cohaagen (Cox).
Toucan (Wikipedia) Toucans (/ˈtuːkæn/, UK: /-kən/) are members of the Neotropical near passerine bird family Ramphastidae. The Ramphastidae are most closely related to the American barbets. They are brightly marked and have large, often colorful bills. The family includes five genera and over forty different species.
Trance music (Wikipedia) Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged from EBM in Frankfurt, Germany, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and quickly spread throughout Europe.
Transnistria (Wikipedia) Transnistria, or Pridnestrovie, officially known as the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR), is a breakaway state internationally recognized as part of Moldova. Transnistria controls most of the narrow strip of land between the Dniester river and the Moldova–Ukraine border, as well as some land on the other side of the river’s bank. Its capital and largest city is Tiraspol. Transnistria is officially designated by the Republic of Moldova as the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester (Romanian: Unitățile Administrativ-Teritoriale din stînga Nistrului) or as Stînga Nistrului (“Left (Bank) of the Dniester”).
Tree (Wikipedia) In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are usable as lumber or plants above a specified height. In wider definitions, the taller palms, tree ferns, bananas, and bamboos are also trees.
Tree of life (biblical) (Wikipedia) In Judaism and Christianity, the tree of life (Hebrew: עֵץ הַחַיִּים, romanized: ‘ēṣ haḥayyīm; Latin: Lignum vitae) is first described in chapter 2, verse 9 of the Book of Genesis as being “in the midst of the Garden of Eden” with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (עֵץ הַדַּעַת טוֹב וָרָע; Lignum scientiae boni et mali). After the fall of man, “lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever”, cherubim and a flaming sword are placed at the east end of the Garden to guard the way to the tree of life. The tree of life has become the subject of some debate as to whether or not the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the same tree.
Triangle (Wikipedia) A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices A, B, and C is denoted △ABC.
Triangulum (Wikipedia) Triangulum is a small constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for “triangle”, derived from its three brightest stars, which form a long and narrow triangle. Known to the ancient Babylonians and Greeks, Triangulum was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy. The celestial cartographers Johann Bayer and John Flamsteed catalogued the constellation’s stars, giving six of them Bayer designations.
Triangulum Australe (Wikipedia) Triangulum Australe is a small constellation in the far Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its name is Latin for “the southern triangle”, which distinguishes it from Triangulum in the northern sky and is derived from the acute, almost equilateral pattern of its three brightest stars. It was first depicted on a celestial globe as Triangulus Antarcticus by Petrus Plancius in 1589, and later with more accuracy and its current name by Johann Bayer in his 1603 Uranometria. The French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille charted and gave the brighter stars their Bayer designations in 1756.
Triangulum Galaxy (Wikipedia) The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy 2.73 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC (New General Catalogue) 598. With the D25 isophotal diameter of 18.74 kiloparsecs (61,100 light-years), the Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, behind the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way.
Triassic (Wikipedia) The Triassic (/traɪˈæsɪk/ try-ASS-ik; sometimes symbolized 🝈) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.5 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.4 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period of the Mesozoic Era. Both the start and end of the period are marked by major extinction events. The Triassic Period is subdivided into three epochs: Early Triassic, Middle Triassic and Late Triassic.
Triband (flag) (Wikipedia) A triband is a vexillological style which consists of three stripes arranged to form a flag. These stripes may be two or three colours, and may be charged with an emblem in the middle stripe. All tricolour flags are tribands, but not all tribands are tricolour flags, which requires three unique colours.
Tridecagon (Wikipedia) In geometry, a tridecagon or triskaidecagon or 13-gon is a thirteen-sided polygon.
Trinidad and Tobago (Wikipedia) Trinidad and Tobago (/ˈtrɪnɪdæd … təˈbeɪɡoʊ/, /- toʊ-/, TRIN-ih-dad … tə-BAY-goh, -⁠ toh-), officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost island country in the Caribbean. Consisting of the main islands Trinidad and Tobago and numerous much smaller islands, it is situated 11 kilometres (6.8 miles) off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and 130 kilometres (81 miles) south of Grenada. It shares maritime boundaries with Barbados to the east, Grenada to the northwest and Venezuela to the south and west. Trinidad and Tobago is generally considered to be part of the West Indies. The island country’s capital is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous municipality is Chaguanas.
Trobriand Plate (Wikipedia) The Trobriand Plate was, and likely is, an independent microplate between New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. It has some unique geology, having the presence of the youngest metamorphic core complexes on earth. If there is presently active subduction between it and the Solomon Plate, at the Trobriand Trough, it continues to be an active microplate. Otherwise in the latest tectonic models it has merged with the Solomon Sea Plate, which becomes somewhat larger than predicted by Bird’s 2003 model of Tectonic Plates. As a smaller Solomon Sea Plate is totally underwater, global positioning data can not resolve this issue. The area of the plate is associated with earthquake and volcanic activity as part of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
Tucana (Wikipedia) Tucana (The Toucan) is a constellation of stars in the southern sky, named after the toucan, a South American bird. It is one of twelve constellations conceived in the late sixteenth century by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman. Tucana first appeared on a 35-centimetre-diameter (14 in) celestial globe published in 1598 in Amsterdam by Plancius and Jodocus Hondius and was depicted in Johann Bayer’s star atlas Uranometria of 1603. French explorer and astronomer Nicolas Louis de Lacaille gave its stars Bayer designations in 1756. The constellations Tucana, Grus, Phoenix and Pavo are collectively known as the “Southern Birds”.
Tucker Carlson (Wikipedia) Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator and writer who hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on X. An advocate of the former U.S. President Donald Trump, Carlson has been described as “perhaps the highest-profile proponent of Trumpism”, and as “the most influential voice in right-wing media, without a close second.”
Tukwila Formation (en.wikipedia.og) The Tukwila Formation is a geological formation in King County, Washington within the Puget Group. It is named after Tukwila area, which is close to the formation. The formation consists of various fossils of marine origin.
Tukwila, Washington (Wikipedia) Tukwila (/tʌkˈwɪlə/ tuk-WIL-ə) is a suburban city in King County, Washington, United States, located immediately to the south of Seattle. The population was 21,798 at the 2020 census.
Tullus Hostilius (Wikipedia) Tullus Hostilius (Classical Latin: [ˈtʊlːʊs (h)ɔsˈtiːliʊs]; r. 672–640 BC) was the legendary third king of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius. Unlike his predecessor, Tullus was known as a warlike king who, according to the Roman historian Livy, believed the more peaceful nature of his predecessor had weakened Rome. It has been attested that he sought out war and was even more warlike than the first king of Rome, Romulus. Accounts of the death of Tullus Hostilius vary. In the mythological version of events Livy describes, he had angered Jupiter who then killed him with a bolt of lightning. Non-mythological sources on the other hand describe that he died of plague after a rule of 32 years.
Tunisia (Wikipedia) Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a part of the Maghreb region of North Africa, bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares maritime borders with Italy through the islands of Sicily and Sardinia to the north and Malta to the east. It features the archaeological sites of Carthage dating back to the 9th century BC, as well as the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Known for its ancient architecture, souks, and blue coasts, it covers 163,610 km2 (63,170 sq mi), and has a population of 12.1 million. It contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains and the northern reaches of the Sahara desert; much of its remaining territory is arable land. Its 1,300 km (810 mi) of coastline includes the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin. Tunisia is home to Africa’s northernmost point, Cape Angela. Located on the northeastern coast, Tunis is the capital and largest city of the country, which is itself named after Tunis. The official language of Tunisia is Modern Standard Arabic. The vast majority of Tunisia’s population is Arab and Muslim. Vernacular Tunisian Arabic is the most spoken, and French also serves as an administrative and educational language in some contexts, but it has no official status.
Turbo Pascal (Wikipedia) Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment (IDE) for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS. It was originally developed by Anders Hejlsberg at Borland, and was notable for its extremely fast compilation. Turbo Pascal, and the later but similar Turbo C, made Borland a leader in PC-based development.
Turkey (Wikipedia) Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye (Turkish: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti [ˈtyɾcije dʒumˈhuːɾijeti]), is a country in Southeast Europe and West Asia. It is mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in West Asia, with a small portion called East Thrace on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran to the east; Iraq to the southeast; Syria and the Mediterranean Sea to the south; the Aegean Sea to the west; and Greece and Bulgaria to the northwest. Cyprus is off the south coast. Most of the country’s citizens are ethnic Turks, while Kurds are the largest ethnic minority. Ankara is Turkey’s capital and second-largest city, while Istanbul is its largest city and economic and financial centre, as well as the largest city in Europe.
Turkmenistan (Wikipedia) Turkmenistan is a country in Central Asia bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, east and northeast, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city. It is one of the six independent Turkic states. With a population of 6.5 million, Turkmenistan is the 35th most-populous country in Asia and has the lowest population of the Central Asian republics while being one of the most sparsely populated nations on the Asian continent.
Twoflower (Wikipedia) Twoflower is a native of the Agatean Empire, on the Counterweight Continent, living in the major sea port of Bes Pelargic where he works as an “inn-sewer-ants” clerk where he calculates the level of insurance premiums. The first tourist ever on the Discworld, he wrote “What I did on my Holidays” after his return to the Empire.
Tyndale Bible (Wikipedia) The Tyndale Bible (TYN) generally refers to the body of biblical translations by William Tyndale into Early Modern English, made c. 1522–1535. Tyndale’s biblical text is credited with being the first Anglophone Biblical translation to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts, although it relied heavily upon the Latin Vulgate and Luther’s German New Testament. Furthermore, it was the first English biblical translation that was mass-produced as a result of new advances in the art of printing.
Tyre (Wikipedia) Tyre (/ˈtaɪər/; Arabic: صُور, romanized: Ṣūr; Phoenician: 𐤑𐤓, romanized: Ṣūr; Greek: Τύρος, translit. Týros) is a city in Lebanon, one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world, though in medieval times for some centuries by just a tiny population. It was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and the legendary birthplace of Europa, her brothers Cadmus and Phoenix, as well as Carthage’s founder Dido (Elissa). The city has many ancient sites, including the Tyre Hippodrome, and was added as a whole to UNESCO’s list of World Heritage Sites in 1984. The historian Ernest Renan noted that “One can call Tyre a city of ruins, built out of ruins”.
U.S. Bank Centre (Wikipedia) US Bank Centre is a 177 m (581 ft), 44-story skyscraper in Seattle, in the U.S. state of Washington. It opened as Pacific First Center and was constructed from 1987 to 1989. It is currently the eighth-tallest building in Seattle and was designed by Callison Architecture, who is also headquartered in the building. It contains 943,575 sq ft (87,661 m2) of office space.
U.S. Route 2 (Wikipedia) U.S. Route 2 or U.S. Highway 2 (US 2) is an east–west United States Numbered Highway spanning 2,571 miles (4,138 km) across the northern continental United States. US 2 consists of two segments connected by various roadways in southern Canada. Unlike some routes, which are disconnected into segments because of encroaching Interstate Highways, the two portions of US 2 were designed to be separate in the original 1926 highway plan.
Uganda (Wikipedia) Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southern part includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania. Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region, it lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied equatorial climate. As of 2024, it had a population of around 49 million, of which 8.5 million live in the capital and largest city, Kampala.
Ukraine (Wikipedia) Ukraine (/juːˈkreɪn/ yoo-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, romanized: Ukraina, pronounced [ʊkrɐˈjinɐ]) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. It also borders Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation’s capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa. Ukraine’s official language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south.
Ulysses S. Grant (Wikipedia) Ulysses S. Grant (born Hiram Ulysses Grant; April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885) was an American military officer and politician who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As commanding general, Grant led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and briefly served as U.S. secretary of war. An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the Justice Department and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.
Ungava Bay (Wikipedia) Ungava Bay (French: baie d’Ungava, pronounced [bɛ d‿œ̃ɡava]; Inuktitut: ᐅᖓᕙ ᑲᖏᖅᓗᒃ/ungava kangiqluk) is a bay in northeastern Canada separating Nunavik (far northern Quebec) from Baffin Island. Although not geographically apparent, it is considered to be a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean for climatic reasons. The bay is roughly oval-shaped, about 260 kilometres (160 mi) at its widest point and about 320 kilometres (200 mi) in length; it has an area of approximately 50,000 km2 (19,000 sq mi). It is generally fairly shallow, under 150 metres (490 ft), though at its border with the Atlantic Ocean depths of almost 300 metres (980 ft) are reached.
Union Bay (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Union Bay is a body of water located in Seattle, Washington. Part of Lake Washington, it is bounded by the Laurelhurst neighborhood to the north and the Montlake and Madison Park neighborhoods to the south. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, which carries State Route 520, crosses over a portion of the bay.
United Arab Emirates (Wikipedia) The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East. Located at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula, it shares borders with Oman and Saudi Arabia; as well as maritime borders in the Persian Gulf with Qatar and Iran. The United Arab Emirates is an elective monarchy formed from a federation of seven emirates. As of 2023, the UAE has an estimated population of 9.97 million. Emirati citizens are estimated to form 11.6% of the population; the remaining residents are expatriates, the majority of whom are South Asian. Islam is the official religion and Arabic is the official language. Abu Dhabi is the country’s capital, while Dubai, the most populous city, is an international hub.
United Kingdom (Wikipedia) The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 94,060 square miles (243,610 km2), with an estimated 2022 population of nearly 67 million people.
United States (Wikipedia) The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. It is the world’s third-largest country by both land and total area. The United States shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south. It has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 331 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city and financial center is New York City.
United States Declaration of Independence (Wikipedia) The Declaration of Independence, formally titled The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America (in the engrossed version but not the original printing), is the founding document of the United States. On July 4, 1776, it was adopted unanimously by the 56 delegates to the Second Continental Congress, who had convened at the Pennsylvania State House, later renamed Independence Hall, in the colonial era capital of Philadelphia. The declaration explains to the world why the Thirteen Colonies regarded themselves as independent sovereign states no longer subject to British colonial rule.
United States Electoral College (Wikipedia) In the United States, the Electoral College is the group of presidential electors that is formed every four years for the sole purpose of voting for the president and vice president. The process is described in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. Each state appoints electors under the methods described by its legislature, equal in number to its congressional delegation (representatives and senators) totaling 535 electors. A 1961 amendment granted the federal District of Columbia three electors. Of the current 538 electors, a simple majority of 270 or more electoral votes is required to elect the president and vice president. If no candidate achieves a majority there, a contingent election is held by the House of Representatives to elect the president and by the Senate to elect the vice president. Federal office holders, including senators and representatives, cannot be electors.
United States Senate (Wikipedia) The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress. The United States Senate and the lower chamber of Congress, the United States House of Representatives, comprise the federal bicameral legislature of the United States. Together, the Senate and the House maintain authority under Article One of the U.S. Constitution to pass or defeat federal legislation. The Senate has exclusive power to confirm U.S. presidential appointments, ratify treaties, exercise advice and consent powers, and try cases of impeachment brought by the House. The Senate and the House provide a check and balance on the powers of the executive and judicial branches of government.
United States Senate Committee on Appropriations (Wikipedia) The United States Senate Committee on Appropriations is a standing committee of the United States Senate. It has jurisdiction over all discretionary spending legislation in the Senate.
United we stand, divided we fall (Wikipedia) “United we stand, divided we fall” is a phrase used in many different kinds of mottos, most often to inspire unity and collaboration. Its core concept lies in the collectivist notion that if individual members of a certain group with binding ideals – such as a union, coalition, confederation or alliance – work on their own instead of as a team, they are each doomed to fail and will all be defeated. The phrase is also often referred to with only the words “United we stand”.
Universe (Wikipedia) The universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. According to this theory, space and time emerged together 13.787±0.020 billion years ago, and the universe has been expanding ever since the Big Bang. While the spatial size of the entire universe is unknown, it is possible to measure the size of the observable universe, which is approximately 93 billion light-years in diameter at the present day.
University District, Seattle (Wikipedia) The University District (commonly, the U District) is a major district in Seattle, Washington, comprising several distinct neighborhoods. The main campus of the University of Washington (UW) is located in the district, lending its name to both the district as well as University Way NE (commonly The Ave).
University of Washington station (Wikipedia) University of Washington station is a light rail station on the University of Washington campus in Seattle, Washington, United States. The station is served by the 1 Line of Sound Transit’s Link light rail system, which connects Northgate, Downtown Seattle, and Seattle–Tacoma International Airport. University of Washington station is at the intersection of Montlake Boulevard Northeast and Northeast Pacific Street, adjacent to Husky Stadium and the University of Washington Medical Center.
University Place, Washington (Wikipedia) University Place is a city in Pierce County, Washington, United States. Its population was 34,866 at the 2020 census.
Up Against the Wall Motherfucker (Wikipedia) Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, often shortened as The Motherfuckers or UAW/MF, was a Dadaist and Situationist anarchist affinity group based in New York City. This “street gang with analysis” was famous for its Lower East Side direct action.
Upper Midwest (Wikipedia) The Upper Midwest is a region in the northern portion of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Midwestern United States. It is largely a sub-region of the Midwest. Although the exact boundaries are not uniformly agreed-upon, the region is defined as referring to the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin; some definitions include Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and parts of Nebraska and Montana as well.
Ur (Wikipedia) Ur (/ʊər/; Sumerian: 𒌶𒆠, 𒋀𒀕𒆠, or 𒋀𒀊𒆠 Urim; Akkadian: 𒋀𒀕𒆠 Uru; Arabic: أُوْر, romanized: ʾūr; Hebrew: אוּר‎) was an important Sumerian city-state in ancient Mesopotamia, located at the site of modern Tell el-Muqayyar (Arabic: تل ٱلْمُقَيَّر) in south Iraq’s Dhi Qar Governorate. Although Ur was once a coastal city near the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, the coastline has shifted and the city is now well inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 km (10 mi) from Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq. The city dates from the Ubaid period circa 3800 BC, and is recorded in written history as a city-state from the 26th century BC, its first recorded king being Mesannepada.
Urania’s Mirror (Wikipedia) Urania’s Mirror; or, a view of the Heavens is a set of 32 astronomical star chart cards, first published in November 1824. They are illustrations based on Alexander Jamieson’s A Celestial Atlas, but the addition of holes punched in them allow them to be held up to a light to see a depiction of the constellation’s stars. They were engraved by Sidney Hall, and were said to be designed by “a lady”, but have since been identified as the work of the Reverend Richard Rouse Bloxam, an assistant master at Rugby School.
Uranus (Wikipedia) Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus (Caelus), who, according to Greek mythology, was the great-grandfather of Ares (Mars), grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter) and father of Cronus (Saturn). It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. Uranus is similar in composition to Neptune, and both have bulk chemical compositions which differ from that of the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. For this reason, scientists often classify Uranus and Neptune as “ice giants” to distinguish them from the other giant planets.
Ursa Major (Wikipedia) Ursa Major (/ˈɜːrsə ˈmeɪdʒər/; also known as the Great Bear) is a constellation in the northern sky, whose associated mythology likely dates back into prehistory. Its Latin name means “greater (or larger) bear”, referring to and contrasting it with nearby Ursa Minor, the lesser bear. In antiquity, it was one of the original 48 constellations listed by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD, drawing on earlier works by Greek, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Assyrian astronomers. Today it is the third largest of the 88 modern constellations.
Ursa Major moving group (Wikipedia) The Ursa Major Moving Group, also known as Collinder 285 and the Ursa Major association, is the closest stellar moving group – a set of stars with common velocities in space and thought to have a common origin in space and time. In the case of the Ursa Major group, all the stars formed about 300 million years ago. Its core is located roughly 80 light years away and part of the Local Bubble. It is rich in bright stars including most of the stars of the Big Dipper.
Ursa Minor (Wikipedia) Ursa Minor (Latin: ‘Lesser Bear’, contrasting with Ursa Major), also known as the Little Bear, is a constellation located in the far northern sky. As with the Great Bear, the tail of the Little Bear may also be seen as the handle of a ladle, hence the North American name, Little Dipper: seven stars with four in its bowl like its partner the Big Dipper. Ursa Minor was one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, and remains one of the 88 modern constellations. Ursa Minor has traditionally been important for navigation, particularly by mariners, because of Polaris being the north pole star.
Urubamba River (Wikipedia) The Urubamba River or Vilcamayo River (possibly from Quechua Willkamayu, for “sacred river”) is a river in Peru. Upstream it is called Vilcanota River (possibly from Aymara Willkanuta, for “house of the sun”). Within the La Convención Province, the name changes to Urubamba. A partially navigable headwater of the Amazon River, the Urubamba rises in the Andes to the southeast of Cusco. It originates on the slopes of Cunurana in the Puno Region, Melgar Province, near the La Raya pass. It flows north-north-west for 724 km (450 mi) before coalescing with the Tambo River to form the Ucayali River.
Uruguay (Wikipedia) Uruguay (/ˈjʊərəɡwaɪ/ YOOR-ə-gwy, Spanish: [uɾuˈɣwaj]), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (Spanish: República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the southeast. It is part of the Southern Cone region of South America. Uruguay covers an area of approximately 176,215 square kilometres (68,037 sq mi) and has a population of around 3.4 million, of whom nearly 2 million live in the metropolitan area of its capital and largest city, Montevideo.
Uruk (Wikipedia) Uruk, today known as Warka, was a city in the ancient Near East situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates. The site lies 93 kilometers (58 miles) northwest of ancient Ur, 108 kilometers (67 miles) southeast of ancient Nippur, and 24 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of ancient Larsa. It is 30 km (19 mi) east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.
USS Merak (AF-21) (Wikipedia) USS Merak (AF-21), the second Navy ship of the name, was the United Fruit Company cargo and passenger liner Veragua that served as a United States Navy Mizar-class stores ship in World War II.
Utah (Wikipedia) Utah (/ˈjuːtɑː/ YOO-tah, /ˈjuːtɔː/ YOO-taw) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its west by Nevada. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.
Uzbekistan (Wikipedia) Uzbekistan, officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a doubly landlocked country located in Central Asia. It is surrounded by five countries: Kazakhstan to the north, Kyrgyzstan to the northeast, Tajikistan to the southeast, Afghanistan to the south, and Turkmenistan to the southwest, making it one of only two doubly landlocked countries on Earth, the other being Liechtenstein. Uzbekistan is part of the Turkic world, as well as a member of the Organization of Turkic States. Uzbek is the majority language, while Russian is widely spoken and understood. Islam is the predominant religion, and most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims.
Vadnais Heights, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Vadnais Heights is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 12,302 at the 2010 census.
Valerie Solanas (Wikipedia) Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968.
Van Zandt, Washington (Wikipedia) Van Zandt is an unincorporated community in Whatcom County, in the U.S. state of Washington. A post office called Van Zandt was established in 1892, and remained in operation until 1955. J. M. Van Zandt, an early postmaster, gave the community his name.
Vancouver Island (Wikipedia) Vancouver Island is an island in the northeastern Pacific Ocean and part of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The island is 456 km (283 mi) in length, 100 km (62 mi) in width at its widest point, and 32,100 km2 (12,400 sq mi) in total area, while 31,285 km2 (12,079 sq mi) are of land. The island is the largest by area and the most populous along the west coasts of the Americas.
Vantage Bridge (Wikipedia) The Vantage Bridge is a bridge in the U.S. state of Washington. It carries Interstate 90 across the Columbia River, near Vantage and George, Washington. This section of the river is named Wanapum Lake; it is the reservoir formed by Wanapum Dam. The bridge separates the Ginkgo Petrified Forest and Wanapum Recreational Area State Park on the western bank of the Columbia.
Vantage, Washington (Wikipedia) Vantage is a census-designated place (CDP) in Kittitas County, Washington, United States. The population was 74 at the 2010 census.
Vashon Glaciation (Wikipedia) The Vashon Glaciation, Vashon Stadial or Vashon Stade is a local term for the most recent period of very cold climate in which during its peak, glaciers covered the entire Salish Sea as well as present day Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and other surrounding areas in the western part of present-day Washington of the United States of America. This occurred during a cold period around the world known as the last glacial period. This was the most recent cold period of the Quaternary glaciation, the time period in which the arctic ice sheets have existed. The Quaternary Glaciation is part of the Late Cenozoic Ice Age, which began 33.9 million years ago and is ongoing. It is the time period in which the Antarctic ice cap has existed.
Vashon, Washington (Wikipedia) Vashon is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. It covers an island alternately called Vashon Island or Vashon–Maury Island, the largest island in Puget Sound south of Admiralty Inlet. The population was 10,624 at the 2010 census and the size is 36.9 square miles (95.6 km2).
Vatican City (Wikipedia) Vatican City (/ˈvætɪkən/), officially the Vatican City State (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano; Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae), is a landlocked independent country, city-state, microstate, and enclave within Rome, Italy. It became independent from Italy in 1929 with the Lateran Treaty, and it is a distinct territory under “full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction” of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity under international law, which maintains the city-state’s temporal power and governance, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.
Vega (Wikipedia) Vega is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra. It has the Bayer designation α Lyrae, which is Latinised to Alpha Lyrae and abbreviated Alpha Lyr or α Lyr. This star is relatively close at only 25 light-years (7.7 parsecs) from the Sun, and one of the most luminous stars in the Sun’s neighborhood. It is the fifth-brightest star in the night sky, and the second-brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus.
Vela (constellation) (Wikipedia) Vela is a constellation in the southern sky, which contains the Vela Supercluster. Its name is Latin for the sails of a ship, and it was originally part of a larger constellation, the ship Argo Navis, which was later divided into three parts, the others being Carina and Puppis. With an apparent magnitude of 1.8, its brightest star is the hot blue multiple star Gamma Velorum, one component of which is the brightest Wolf-Rayet star in the sky. Delta and Kappa Velorum, together with Epsilon and Iota Carinae, form the asterism known as the False Cross. 1.95-magnitude Delta is actually a triple or quintuple star system.
Venezuela (Wikipedia) Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. Venezuela comprises an area of 916,445 km^2 (353,841 sq mi), and its population was estimated at 29 million in 2022. The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
Veni, vidi, vici (Wikipedia) Veni, vidi, vici (Classical Latin: [ˈu̯eːniː ˈu̯iːd̪iː ˈu̯iː.kiː], Ecclesiastical Latin: [ˈveːni ˈviːd̪i ˈviː.t͡ʃi]; “I came; I saw; I conquered”) is a Latin phrase used to refer to a swift, conclusive victory. The phrase is popularly attributed to Julius Caesar who, according to Appian, used the phrase in a letter to the Roman Senate around 47 BC after he had achieved a quick victory in his short war against Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela (modern-day Zile, Turkey).
Venus (Wikipedia) Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is a rocky planet with the densest atmosphere of all the rocky bodies in the Solar System, and the only one with a mass and size that is close to that of its orbital neighbour Earth. Orbiting inferiorly (inside of Earth’s orbit), it appears in Earth’s sky always close to the Sun, as either a “morning star” or an “evening star”. While this is also true for Mercury, Venus appears much more prominently, since it is the third brightest object in Earth’s sky after the Moon and the Sun, appearing brighter than any other star-like classical planet or any fixed star. With such a prominence in Earth’s sky, Venus has historically been a common and important object for humans, in both their cultures and astronomy.
Vermont (Wikipedia) Vermont (/vərˈmɒnt/) is a state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Admitted to the Union in 1791 as the 14th state, it is the only state in New England not bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. According to the 2020 U.S. census, the state has a population of 643,503, ranking it the second least-populated in the U.S. after Wyoming. It is also the nation’s sixth-smallest state in area. The state’s capital Montpelier is the least-populous state capital in the U.S., while its most-populous city, Burlington, is the least populous to be a state’s largest.
Vertebrate (Wikipedia) Vertebrates (/ˈvɜːrtəbrɪts, -ˌbreɪts/) are animals with spinal cords and bony or cartilaginous backbones, including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. The vertebrates consist of all the taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata (/ˌvɜːrtəˈbreɪtə/) (chordates with backbones) and represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 69,963 species described.
Victory Heights, Seattle (Wikipedia) Victory Heights is a neighborhood in the Lake City district of Seattle, Washington. It was named after the Victory Highway, which formed the eastern border of the area. The highway was originally called the Gerhart Erickson Road, the namesake of which was Gerhart Erickson, who sponsored the Good Roads legislation in 1903. The road was then renamed Bothell Road, changed to Victory Highway in 1924, before returning to Bothell Road; it is now called Lake City Way NE. The neighborhood was annexed to the city of Seattle in 1954.
View Ridge, Seattle (Wikipedia) View Ridge is a neighborhood in north Seattle, Washington. As with all Seattle neighborhoods, its boundaries are not fixed, but can be thought of as NE 65th Street in the south, 40th and 45th Avenues NE in the west, the Sand Point Country Club in the north, and Sand Point Way NE in the east. Many homes offer views of Lake Washington, Mount Rainier, and the Cascade Range. View Ridge Elementary School is located within the neighborhood, and the neighborhood also offers a large park and playfield (View Ridge Park) across the street from the elementary school. The View Ridge Swim and Tennis Club is located on the eastern edge of View Ridge, and the Sand Point Country Club is located on the northern edge.
Vincent van Gogh (Wikipedia) Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔx]; 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created approximately 2100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold, symbolic colours, and dramatic, impulsive and highly expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Only one of his paintings was known by name to have been sold during his lifetime. Van Gogh became famous after his suicide, aged 37, which followed years of poverty and mental illness.
Virginia (Wikipedia) Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state’s capital is Richmond, its most populous city is Virginia Beach, and Fairfax County is the state’s most populous political subdivision. Virginia’s population in 2022 was over 8.68 million, with 35% living within the Greater Washington metropolitan area. The Blue Ridge Mountains cross the western and southwestern parts of the state, while the state’s central region lies mostly within the Piedmont. Eastern Virginia is part of the Atlantic Plain, with the Middle Peninsula forming the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
Virgo (constellation) (Wikipedia) Virgo is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for maiden, and its old astronomical symbol is Virgo symbol (♍︎). Lying between Leo to the west and Libra to the east, it is the second-largest constellation in the sky (after Hydra) and the largest constellation in the zodiac. The ecliptic intersects the celestial equator within this constellation and Pisces. Underlying these technical two definitions, the sun passes directly overhead of the equator, within this constellation, at the September equinox. Virgo can be easily found through its brightest star, Spica.
Virgo Supercluster (Wikipedia) The Virgo Supercluster (Virgo SC) or the Local Supercluster (LSC or LS) is a mass concentration of galaxies containing the Virgo Cluster and Local Group, which itself contains the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, as well as others. At least 100 galaxy groups and clusters are located within its diameter of 33 megaparsecs (110 million light-years). The Virgo SC is one of about 10 million superclusters in the observable universe and is in the Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex, a galaxy filament.
Vladimir Lenin (Wikipedia) Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.
Vladimir Putin (Wikipedia) Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has been President of Russia since 2012. Putin has held continuous positions as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008. He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin.
Volans (Wikipedia) Volans is a constellation in the southern sky. It represents a flying fish; its name is a shortened form of its original name, Piscis Volans. Volans was one of twelve constellations created by Petrus Plancius from the observations of Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser and Frederick de Houtman and it first appeared on a 35-cm diameter celestial globe published in 1597 (or 1598) in Amsterdam by Plancius with Jodocus Hondius. The first depiction of this constellation in a celestial atlas was in Johann Bayer’s Uranometria of 1603.
Volgograd Oblast (Wikipedia) Volgograd Oblast (Russian: Волгогра́дская о́бласть, romanized: Volgogradskaya oblastʹ) is a federal subject (an oblast) of Russia, located in the lower Volga region of Southern Russia. Its administrative center is Volgograd. The population of the oblast was 2,500,781 in the 2021 Census.
Voltaire (Wikipedia) François-Marie Arouet (French: [fʁɑ̃swa maʁi aʁwɛ]; 21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), known by his nom de plume M. de Voltaire (/vɒlˈtɛər, voʊl-/; also US: /vɔːl-/; French: [vɔltɛːʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian. Famous for his wit and his criticism of Christianity (especially of the Roman Catholic Church) and of slavery, Voltaire was an advocate of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and separation of church and state.
von Neumann architecture (Wikipedia) The von Neumann architecture—also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture—is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by John von Neumann, and by others, in the First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC.
Von Neumann paradox (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the von Neumann paradox, named after John von Neumann, is the idea that one can break a planar figure such as the unit square into sets of points and subject each set to an area-preserving affine transformation such that the result is two planar figures of the same size as the original. This was proved in 1929 by John von Neumann, assuming the axiom of choice. It is based on the earlier Banach–Tarski paradox, which is in turn based on the Hausdorff paradox.
Voyager 1 (Wikipedia) Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar space beyond the Sun’s heliosphere. It was launched 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. It communicates through the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) to receive routine commands and to transmit data to Earth. Real-time distance and velocity data are provided by NASA and JPL. At a distance of 163.1 AU (24.4 billion km; 15.2 billion mi) from Earth as of June 2024, it is the most distant human-made object from Earth. The probe made flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. NASA had a choice of either doing a Pluto or Titan flyby; exploration of the moon took priority because it was known to have a substantial atmosphere. Voyager 1 studied the weather, magnetic fields, and rings of the two gas giants and was the first probe to provide detailed images of their moons.
Voyager Golden Record (Wikipedia) The Voyager Golden Records are two identical phonograph records one of each which were included aboard the two Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a time capsule.
Vulpecula (Wikipedia) Vulpecula /vʌlˈpɛkjʊlə/ is a faint constellation in the northern sky. Its name is Latin for “little fox”, although it is commonly known simply as the fox. It was identified in the seventeenth century, and is located in the middle of the Summer Triangle (an asterism consisting of the bright stars Deneb, Vega, and Altair).
Wahkiakum County, Washington (Wikipedia) Wahkiakum County (/wəˈkaɪ.əkʌm/) is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 4,422, making it one of the least populous counties in Washington. The county seat and only incorporated town is Cathlamet. The county was formed out of Cowlitz County in April 1854 and is named for Chief Wahkiakum (“Tall Timber”) of the Chinook, who is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery in Cathlamet.
Waiting for Godot (Wikipedia) Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoʊ/ GOD-oh) is a play by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett in which two characters, Vladimir (Didi) and Estragon (Gogo), engage in a variety of discussions and encounters while awaiting the titular Godot, who never arrives. Waiting for Godot is Beckett’s reworking of his own original French-language play, En attendant Godot, and is subtitled (in English only) “a tragicomedy in two acts”.
Waiting for the Interurban (Wikipedia) Waiting for the Interurban, also known as People Waiting for the Interurban, is a 1978 cast aluminum sculpture collection in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle. It is located on the southeast corner of N. 34th Street and Fremont Avenue N., just east of the northern end of the Fremont Bridge. It consists of six people and a dog waiting for public transportation — specifically, the Seattle-Everett Interurban. While the interurban railway ran through Fremont from 1910 until 1939, it stopped on Fremont Avenue rather than N. 34th Street, which the statue faces.
Walla Walla County, Washington (Wikipedia) Walla Walla County (/ˌwɑːlə ˈwɑːlə/ WAH-lə WAH-lə) is a county located in the southeast of the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 62,584. The county seat and largest city is Walla Walla. The county was formed on April 25, 1854 and is named after the Walla Walla tribe of Native Americans.
Walla Walla, Washington (Wikipedia) Walla Walla is a city in Walla Walla County, Washington, where it is the largest city and county seat. It had a population of 34,060 at the 2020 census, estimated to have decreased to 33,927 as of 2021. The population of the city and its two suburbs, the town of College Place and unincorporated Walla Walla East, is about 45,000.
Wallace River (Wikipedia) The Wallace River is a medium-sized river in Washington, United States. It is a tributary of the Skykomish River and joins near Sultan, just upstream from the mouth of the Sultan River. The Wallace River is 15 miles (24 km) long. Its drainage basin is 30 square miles (78 km2) in area.
Wallingford, Seattle (Wikipedia) Wallingford is a neighborhood in north central Seattle, lying on a hill above the north shore of Lake Union about four miles from the downtown core. The neighborhood developed quickly during the early 20th century after the establishment of the University of Washington to the east. With trolley tracks laid through the neighborhood as early as 1907, Wallingford is a classic streetcar suburb, typified by its many 1920s era box houses and bungalows. Commercial development is primarily concentrated along North 45th Street where a number of iconic structures stand including the neon “WALLINGFORD” sign, the Wallingford Center, and the original Dick’s Drive-In.
Walt Disney (Wikipedia) Walter Elias Disney (/ˈdɪzni/; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards earned and nominations by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.
War in Sudan (2023) (Wikipedia) A war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Hemedti, rival factions of the military government of Sudan, began on 15 April 2023 during Ramadan. Fighting has been concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region. As of October 2023, between 9,000 and 10,000 people had been killed and 6,000 to 12,000 others injured. As of 23 December 2023, over 5 million were internally displaced and more than 1.5 million others had fled the country as refugees, and many civilians in Darfur have been reported dead as part of the 2023 Masalit massacres.
Warren G. Harding (Wikipedia) Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was an American politician who served as the 29th president of the United States from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party, he was one of the most popular sitting U.S. presidents. After his death, a number of scandals were exposed, including Teapot Dome, as well as an extramarital affair with Nan Britton, which tarnished his reputation.
Warroad, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Warroad is a city in Roseau County, Minnesota, United States, at the southwest corner of Lake of the Woods, 7.5 miles (12.1 km) south of Canada. The population was 1,781 at the 2010 census. Warroad had its own newspaper before it was incorporated in 1901.
Washington (state) (Wikipedia) Washington (/ˈwɒʃɪŋtən/), officially the State of Washington and often referred to as Washington state to distinguish it from the national capital, Washington, D.C., is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. Named for George Washington—the first U.S. president—the state was formed from the western part of the Washington Territory, which was ceded by the British Empire in 1846, by the Oregon Treaty in the settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. The state is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, Oregon to the south, Idaho to the east, and the Canadian province of British Columbia to the north. It was admitted to the Union as the 42nd state in 1889. Olympia is the state capital; the state’s largest city is Seattle.
Washington County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Washington County is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. As of the 2020 census, the population was 267,568, making it the fifth-most populous county in Minnesota. Its county seat is Stillwater. The largest city in the county is Woodbury, the eighth-largest city in Minnesota and the fourth-largest Twin Cities suburb.
Washington Park Arboretum (Wikipedia) Washington Park is a public park in Seattle, Washington, United States, most of which is taken up by the Washington Park Arboretum, a joint project of the University of Washington, the Seattle Parks and Recreation, and the nonprofit Arboretum Foundation. Washington Park also includes a playfield and the Seattle Japanese Garden in its southwest corner. To the north is Union Bay; to the west are Montlake and Madison Valley; to the south is the Washington Park neighborhood; and to the east is the Broadmoor Golf Club.
Washington Pass (Wikipedia) Washington Pass (el. 5477 ft./1669 m.) and Rainy Pass (el. 4875 ft./1486 m.) are two mountain passes on State Route 20 (North Cascades Highway) in the North Cascades mountains of Washington state. Rainy Pass is about 4 miles to the west of Washington Pass. The passes are typically closed between November and April due to heavy snowfall.
Washington State Capitol (Wikipedia) The Washington State Capitol (or “Legislative Building”) in Olympia is the home of the government of the State of Washington. It contains the chambers of the Washington State Legislature, offices for the governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and state treasurer. It is part of a larger administrative campus including buildings for the Washington Supreme Court, the Washington Governor’s Mansion, and many other state agencies.
Washington State Route 20 (Wikipedia) State Route 20 (SR 20), also known as the North Cascades Highway, is a state highway that traverses the U.S. state of Washington. It is the state’s longest highway, traveling 436 miles (702 km) across the northern areas of Washington, from U.S. Route 101 (US 101) at Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula to US 2 near the Idaho state border in Newport. The highway travels across Whidbey Island, North Cascades National Park, the Okanagan Highland, the Kettle River Range, and the Selkirk Mountains. SR 20 connects several major north–south state highways, including Interstate 5 (I-5) in Burlington, US 97 through the Okanogan–Omak area, SR 21 in Republic, and US 395 from Kettle Falls to Colville.
Washington State Route 520 (Wikipedia) State Route 520 (SR 520) is a state highway and freeway in the Seattle metropolitan area, part of the U.S. state of Washington. It runs 13 miles (21 km) from Seattle in the west to Redmond in the east. The freeway connects Seattle to the Eastside region of King County via the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge on Lake Washington. SR 520 intersects several state highways, including Interstate 5 (I-5) in Seattle, I-405 in Bellevue, and SR 202 in Redmond.
Washington State Route 522 (Wikipedia) State Route 522 (SR 522) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Washington that serves the Seattle metropolitan area. Approximately 25 miles (40 km) long, it connects the city of Seattle to the northeastern suburbs of Kenmore, Bothell, Woodinville, and Monroe. Its western half is primarily an arterial street, named Lake City Way and Bothell Way, that follows the northern shore of Lake Washington; the eastern half is a grade-separated freeway that runs between Woodinville and Monroe. SR 522 connects several of the metropolitan area’s major highways, including Interstate 5 (I-5), I-405, SR 9, and U.S. Route 2 (US 2).
Washington State Route 542 (Wikipedia) State Route 542 (SR 542) is a 57.24-mile-long (92.12 km) state highway in the U.S. state of Washington, serving Mount Baker in Whatcom County. SR 542 travels east as the Mount Baker Highway from an interchange with Interstate 5 (I-5) in Bellingham through the Nooksack River valley to the Mt. Baker Ski Area at Austin Pass. It serves as the main highway to Mount Baker and the communities of Deming, Kendall, and Maple Falls along the Nooksack River. The highway was constructed in 1893 by Whatcom County as a wagon road between Bellingham and Maple Falls and was added to the state highway system as a branch of State Road 1 in 1925. The branch was transferred to Primary State Highway 1 (PSH 1) during its creation in 1937 and became SR 542 during the 1964 highway renumbering.
Washington State Route 9 (Wikipedia) State Route 9 (SR 9) is a 98.17-mile (157.99 km) long state highway traversing three counties, Snohomish, Skagit, and Whatcom, in the U.S. state of Washington. The highway extends north from an interchange with SR 522 in the vicinity of Woodinville north through Snohomish, Lake Stevens, Arlington, Sedro-Woolley, and Nooksack to become British Columbia Highway 11 (BC 11) at the Canada–US border in Sumas. Three other roadways are briefly concurrent with the route: SR 530 in Arlington, SR 20 in Sedro-Woolley, and SR 542 near Deming. A spur route in Sumas serves trucks traveling into British Columbia.
Washington State Route 99 (Wikipedia) State Route 99 (SR 99), also known as the Pacific Highway, is a state highway in the Seattle metropolitan area, part of the U.S. state of Washington. It runs 49 miles (79 km) from Fife to Everett, passing through the cities of Federal Way, SeaTac, Seattle, Shoreline, and Lynnwood. The route primarily follows arterial streets, including Aurora Avenue, and has several freeway segments, including the tolled SR 99 Tunnel in Downtown Seattle. SR 99 was officially named the William P. Stewart Memorial Highway by the state legislature in 2016, after a campaign to replace an unofficial moniker honoring Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
Washington, D.C. (Wikipedia) Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia, also known as just Washington or simply D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. It is located on the east bank of the Potomac River, which forms its southwestern and southern border with the U.S. state of Virginia, and it shares a land border with the U.S. state of Maryland on its remaining sides. The city was named for George Washington, a Founding Father and the first president of the United States, and the federal district is named after Columbia, a female personification of the nation. As the seat of the U.S. federal government and several international organizations, the city is an important world political capital. It is one of the most visited cities in the U.S. with over 20 million visitors as of 2016.
Water (Wikipedia) Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula H2O. It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, and it is the main constituent of Earth’s hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as a solvent). It is vital for all known forms of life, despite not providing food energy, or organic micronutrients. Its chemical formula, H2O, indicates that each of its molecules contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds. The hydrogen atoms are attached to the oxygen atom at an angle of 104.45°. “Water” is also the name of the liquid state of H2O at standard temperature and pressure.
Watercraft (Wikipedia) A watercraft or waterborne vessel is any vehicle designed for travel across or through water bodies, such as a boat, ship, hovercraft, submersible or submarine.
Wave–particle duality (Wikipedia) Wave–particle duality is the concept in quantum mechanics that quantum entities exhibit particle or wave properties according to the experimental circumstances. It expresses the inability of the classical concepts such as particle or wave to fully describe the behavior of quantum objects. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, light was found to behave as a wave, and then later discovered to have a particulate character, whereas electrons were found to act as particles, and then later discovered to have wavelike aspects. The concept of duality arose to name these contradictions.
Web tracking (Wikipedia) Web tracking is the practice by which operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors’ activities on the World Wide Web. Analysis of a user’s behaviour may be used to provide content that enables the operator to infer their preferences and may be of interest to various parties, such as advertisers. Web tracking can be part of visitor management.
Wedgwood Rock (Wikipedia) Wedgwood Rock is a glacial erratic (known to geologists as the Wedgwood Erratic) near the neighborhood of Wedgwood in Seattle, Washington. Its mineral composition matches that of Mount Erie, on Fidalgo Island in Skagit County, Washington, 55 mi (89 km) north. Prior to the establishment of the Wedgwood neighborhood, the erratic was known first as Lone Rock and later simply as Big Rock. Transported to its site by the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet during the Vashon Glaciation more than 14,000 years ago, it was a landmark for Native Americans in what was once a dense forest.
Wedgwood, Seattle (Wikipedia) Wedgwood is a middle class residential neighborhood of northeast Seattle, Washington with a modest commercial strip. Wedgwood is located about two miles (3.2 km) north, and slightly east, of the University of Washington; it is about six miles (9.7 km) northeast of Downtown. The neighborhood is further typical of Seattle neighborhoods in having more than one name and having different, overlapping, but well-documented definitions of the neighborhood.
Welcome, Washington (Wikipedia) Welcome is an unincorporated community in Whatcom County, in the U.S. state of Washington.
Well-ordering theorem (Wikipedia) In mathematics, the well-ordering theorem, also known as Zermelo’s theorem, states that every set can be well-ordered. A set X is well-ordered by a strict total order if every non-empty subset of X has a least element under the ordering. The well-ordering theorem together with Zorn’s lemma are the most important mathematical statements that are equivalent to the axiom of choice (often called AC, see also Axiom of choice § Equivalents). Ernst Zermelo introduced the axiom of choice as an “unobjectionable logical principle” to prove the well-ordering theorem. One can conclude from the well-ordering theorem that every set is susceptible to transfinite induction, which is considered by mathematicians to be a powerful technique. One famous consequence of the theorem is the Banach–Tarski paradox.
Wenatchee, Washington (Wikipedia) Wenatchee (/wɛˈnætʃiː/ weh-NA-tchee) is the county seat and most populous city of Chelan County, Washington, United States. The population within the city limits in 2010 was 31,925, and has increased to 35,508 as of 2020. Located in the north-central part of the state, at the confluence of the Columbia and Wenatchee rivers near the eastern foothills of the Cascade Range, Wenatchee lies on the western side of the Columbia River, across from the city of East Wenatchee. The Columbia River forms the boundary between Chelan and Douglas County. Wenatchee is the principal city of the Wenatchee–East Wenatchee, Washington Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Chelan and Douglas counties (total population around 110,884). However, the “Wenatchee Valley Area” generally refers to the land between Rocky Reach and Rock Island Dam on both banks of the Columbia, which includes East Wenatchee, Rock Island, and Malaga, as well as the surrounding towns of Monitor and Cashmere to the west of Wenatchee.
Werner Heisenberg (Wikipedia) Werner Karl Heisenberg (pronounced [ˈvɛʁnɐ kaʁl ˈhaɪzn̩bɛʁk]; 5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist, one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics, and a principal scientist in the Nazi nuclear weapons program during World War II. He published his Umdeutung paper in 1925, a major reinterpretation of old quantum theory. In the subsequent series of papers with Max Born and Pascual Jordan, during the same year, his matrix formulation of quantum mechanics was substantially elaborated. He is known for the uncertainty principle, which he published in 1927. Heisenberg was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics “for the creation of quantum mechanics”
Wesley Britt (Wikipedia) Wesley Britt (born November 21, 1981) is an American former football tackle who played in the National Football League (NFL) for four seasons with the New England Patriots. He played college football for the Alabama Crimson Tide and received third-team All-American and a first-team All-SEC honors as a senior. Selected by the San Diego Chargers in the fifth round of the 2005 NFL Draft, Britt was released before making the final roster and signed with the Patriots, where he played from 2005 to 2008. He is the husband of Alabama Senator Katie Britt.
West Asia (Wikipedia) West Asia, also called Western Asia or Southwest Asia, is the westernmost region of Asia. As defined by most academics, UN bodies and other institutions, the subregion consists of Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Mesopotamia, the Armenian highlands, the Levant, the island of Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, and the southern part of the Caucasus Region (Transcaucasia). The region is separated from Africa by the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt, and separated from Europe by the waterways of the Turkish Straits and the watershed of the Greater Caucasus. Central Asia lies to its northeast, while South Asia lies to its east. Twelve seas surround the region (clockwise): the Aegean Sea, the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Gulf of Suez, and the Mediterranean Sea. The area contains the vast majority of the similarly defined Middle East, but excluding most of Egypt and the northwestern part of Turkey, and including the southern part of the Caucasus.
West Bank (Wikipedia) The West Bank (Arabic: الضفة الغربية, romanized: aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; Hebrew: הַגָּדָה הַמַּעֲרָבִית, romanized: HaGadáh HaMaʽarávit), so called due to its relation to the Jordan River, is the larger of the two Palestinian territories (the other being the Gaza Strip). A landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the Levant region of West Asia, it is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel (via the Green Line) to the south, west, and north. The territory has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.
West Coast of the United States (Wikipedia) The West Coast of the United States – also known as the Pacific Coast, the Pacific Seaboard, and the Western Seaboard – is the coastline along which the Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. The term typically refers to the contiguous U.S. states of California, Oregon, and Washington, but sometimes includes Alaska and Hawaii, especially by the United States Census Bureau as a U.S. geographic division.
West Seattle (Wikipedia) West Seattle is a conglomeration of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington, United States. It comprises two of the thirteen districts, Delridge and Southwest, and encompasses all of Seattle west of the Duwamish River. It was incorporated as an independent town in 1902 before being annexed by Seattle five years later. Among the area’s attractions are its saltwater beach parks along Elliott Bay and Puget Sound, including Alki Beach Park and Lincoln Park. The area is also known for its views of the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascade Range to the east. One-third of Seattle’s green space and urban forest is located in West Seattle, much of it in the West Duwamish Greenbelt.
West St. Paul, Minnesota (Wikipedia) West St. Paul is a city in Dakota County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 20,615 at the 2020 census. It is immediately south of Saint Paul and immediately west of South St. Paul.
West Virginia (Wikipedia) West Virginia is a state in the Southern or Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered by Pennsylvania to the north and east, Maryland to the east and northeast, Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, and Ohio to the northwest. West Virginia is the 10th-smallest state by area and ranks as the 12th-least populous state, with a population of 1,793,716 residents. The capital and most populous city is Charleston which has a population of 49,055.
West Woodland, Seattle (Wikipedia) West Woodland is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. The city’s Department of Neighborhoods places West Woodland in the south east corner of Ballard.
Western Europe (Wikipedia) Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region’s extent varies depending on context.
Western Sahara (Wikipedia) Western Sahara is a disputed territory in North-western Africa. It has a surface area of 272,000 square kilometres (105,000 sq mi). Approximately 30% of the territory (82,500 km2 (31,900 sq mi)) is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR); the remaining 70% is occupied and administered by neighboring Morocco. It is the most sparsely-populated country in Africa and the second most sparsely-populated country in the world, mainly consisting of desert flatlands. The population is estimated at 618,600, of which nearly 40% live in Morocco-controlled Laayoune, the largest city in Western Sahara.
Western United States (Wikipedia) The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost U.S. states. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term the West changed. Before around 1800, the crest of the Appalachian Mountains was seen as the western frontier. The frontier moved westward and eventually the lands west of the Mississippi River were considered the West.
Whale (Wikipedia) Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and porpoises. Dolphins and porpoises may be considered whales from a formal, cladistic perspective. Whales, dolphins and porpoises belong to the order Cetartiodactyla, which consists of even-toed ungulates. Their closest non-cetacean living relatives are the hippopotamuses, from which they and other cetaceans diverged about 54 million years ago. The two parvorders of whales, baleen whales (Mysticeti) and toothed whales (Odontoceti), are thought to have had their last common ancestor around 34 million years ago. Mysticetes include four extant (living) families: Balaenopteridae (the rorquals), Balaenidae (right whales), Cetotheriidae (the pygmy right whale), and Eschrichtiidae (the grey whale). Odontocetes include the Monodontidae (belugas and narwhals), Physeteridae (the sperm whale), Kogiidae (the dwarf and pygmy sperm whale), and Ziphiidae (the beaked whales), as well as the six families of dolphins and porpoises which are not considered whales in the informal sense.
What Could Explain the Gallium Anomaly? (quantamagazine.org) Physicists have ruled out a mundane explanation for the strange findings of an old Soviet experiment, leaving open the possibility that the results point to a new fundamental particle.
Whatcom County, Washington (Wikipedia) Whatcom County (/ˈwɒtkəm/, /ˈhwɒtkəm/) is a county located in the northwestern corner of the U.S. state of Washington, bordered by the Lower Mainland (the Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley Regional Districts) of British Columbia to the north, Okanogan County to the east, Skagit County to the south, San Juan County across Rosario Strait to the southwest, and the Strait of Georgia to the west. Its county seat and largest population center is the coastal city of Bellingham, comprising the Bellingham, WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, and as of the 2020 census, the county’s population was 226,847.
Wheatland, Wyoming (Wikipedia) Wheatland is a town in and the county seat of Platte County in southeastern Wyoming, United States. The population was 3,627 at the 2010 census.
Whetstone River (Wikipedia) The Whetstone River is a 12.7-mile-long (20.4 km) tributary of the Minnesota River, in northeastern South Dakota and a very small portion of western Minnesota in the United States. Via the Minnesota River, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River.
Whidbey Island (Wikipedia) Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington State. (The other large island is Camano Island, east of Whidbey.) Whidbey is about 30 miles (48 km) north of Seattle, and lies between the Olympic Peninsula and the I-5 corridor of western Washington. The island forms the northern boundary of Puget Sound. It is home to Naval Air Station Whidbey Island. The state parks and natural forests are home to numerous old growth trees.
White Bear Lake (Minnesota) (Wikipedia) White Bear Lake (Dakota: Bde Maṭo Ská ) is a lake in northeastern Ramsey County and western Washington County in the U.S. state of Minnesota, in the northeast part of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. The city of White Bear Lake takes its name from the lake.
White Bear Lake, Minnesota (Wikipedia) White Bear Lake is a city in Ramsey County in the state of Minnesota, United States. A small portion of the city also extends into Washington County. The population was 23,769 at the 2010 census. The city is located on White Bear Lake, one of the largest lakes in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area.
White Bear Township, Ramsey County, Minnesota (Wikipedia) White Bear Township is an urban township in Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 11,049 at the 2020 census, up from 10,949 in 2010. White Bear Township was organized in 1858, and named after its White Bear Lake. Over the years, the cities of White Bear Lake, Vadnais Heights, Gem Lake, and North Oaks were carved out of the township’s original 36 square miles (93 km2). It now comprises four discontiguous parcels over an area of 9.3 square miles (24 km2). It is the only remaining township in Ramsey County. The unincorporated communities of Bald Eagle and Bellaire are located in the township.
White Center, Washington (Wikipedia) White Center is a census-designated place (CDP) in King County, Washington, United States. It lies between West Seattle and Burien. The population was 16,631 at the 2020 census.
White Rose (Wikipedia) The White Rose (German: Weiße Rose, pronounced [ˈvaɪ̯sə ˈʁoːzə]) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students and one professor at the University of Munich: Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, Christoph Probst, Alexander Schmorell, Hans Scholl and Sophie Scholl. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi regime. Their activities started in Munich on 27 June 1942; they ended with the arrest of the core group by the Gestapo on 18 February 1943. They, as well as other members and supporters of the group who carried on distributing the pamphlets, faced show trials by the Nazi People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof); many of them were imprisoned and executed.
Whitman County, Washington (Wikipedia) Whitman County is a county located in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, the population was 47,973. The county seat is Colfax, and its largest city is Pullman.
Whittier Heights, Seattle (Wikipedia) Whittier Heights is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. It is considered part of greater Ballard.
Wicked (musical) (Wikipedia) Wicked is a 2003 musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman. It is based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, in turn based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and its 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film adaptation.
Wild Horse Wind Farm (Wikipedia) The Wild Horse Wind Farm is a 273-megawatt wind farm that generates energy for Puget Sound Energy that consists of one hundred twenty seven 1.8-megawatt Vestas V80 turbines and twenty two 2.0-megawatt Vestas V80 turbines on a 10,800-acre (4,400 ha) site in Kittitas County, Washington, 17 miles (27 km) east of Ellensburg, Washington. The turbines are placed on the high open Shrub-steppe ridge tops of Whiskey Dick Mountain, which was chosen for its energetic wind resource, remote location, and access to nearby power transmission lines. The towers are 221 feet (67 m) tall, and each blade is 129 feet (39 m) long, with a total rotor diameter of 264 feet (80 m), larger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747. The turbines can begin producing electricity with wind speeds as low as 9 mph (14 km/h) and reach full production at 31 mph (50 km/h). They shut down at sustained wind speeds of 56 mph (90 km/h). The site is also home to one of the largest solar array (500 kW) in Washington.
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (Wikipedia) Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (22 November 1710 – 1 July 1784) was a German composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was the second child and eldest son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. Despite his acknowledged genius as an improviser and composer, his income and employment were unstable, and he died in poverty.
Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest? (Wikipedia) “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” (also expressed as “troublesome priest” or “meddlesome priest”) is a quote attributed to Henry II of England preceding the death of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170. While the quote was not expressed as an order, it prompted four knights to travel from Normandy to Canterbury, where they killed Becket. The phrase is commonly used in modern-day contexts to express that a ruler’s wish may be interpreted as a command by his or her subordinates. It is also commonly understood as shorthand for any rhetorical device allowing leaders to covertly order or exhort violence among their followers, while still being able to claim plausible deniability for political, legal, or other reasons.
Willapa Bay (Wikipedia) Willapa Bay (/ˈwɪləpɑː/) is a bay located on the southwest Pacific coast of Washington state in the United States. The Long Beach Peninsula separates Willapa Bay from the greater expanse of the Pacific Ocean. With over 120 square miles (310 km2) of surface area Willapa Bay is the second-largest riverine estuary on the Pacific coast of the continental United States. Early settlers called the bay Shoalwater Bay and this name is found on old maps and charts of the region.
Willapa River (Wikipedia) The Willapa River is a river on the Pacific coast of southwestern Washington in the United States, approximately 20 miles (32 km) long. It drains an area of low hills and a coastal plain into Willapa Bay, a large estuary north of the mouth of the Columbia River.
Willernie, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Willernie is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States. It is bordered on all sides by the city of Mahtomedi. The population was 507 at the 2010 census.
William Blake (Wikipedia) William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his “prophetic works” were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form “what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language”. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him “far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced”. In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC’s poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as “the body of God” or “human existence itself”.
William Howard Taft (Wikipedia) William Howard Taft (September 15, 1857 – March 8, 1930) was the 27th president of the United States, serving from 1909 to 1913, and the tenth chief justice of the United States, serving from 1921 to 1930, the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for reelection in 1912 by Woodrow Wilson after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft to be chief justice, a position he held until a month before his death.
William M. Branham (Wikipedia) William Marrion Branham (April 6, 1909 – December 24, 1965) was an American Christian minister and faith healer who initiated the post-World War II healing revival, and claimed to be a prophet with the anointing of Elijah, who had come to prelude Christ’s second coming; some of his followers have been labeled a “doomsday cult”. He is credited as “a principal architect of restorationist thought” for charismatics by some Christian historians, and has been called the “leading individual in the Second Wave of Pentecostalism.” He made a lasting influence on televangelism and the modern charismatic movement, and his “stage presence remains a legend unparalleled in the history of the Charismatic movement”.
William Makepeace Thackeray (Wikipedia) William Makepeace Thackeray (/ˈθækəri/ THAK-ər-ee; 18 July 1811 – 24 December 1863) was a British novelist, author and illustrator. He is known for his satirical works, particularly his 1848 novel Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of British society, and the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, which was adapted for a 1975 film by Stanley Kubrick.
William McKinley (Wikipedia) William McKinley (January 29, 1843 – September 14, 1901) was an American politician who served as the 25th president of the United States from 1897 until his assassination in 1901. A member of the Republican Party, he led a realignment that made Republicans largely dominant in the industrial states and nationwide for decades. He presided over victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898; gained control of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; restored prosperity after a deep depression; rejected the inflationary monetary policy of free silver, keeping the nation on the gold standard; and raised protective tariffs.
William O’Brien State Park (Wikipedia) William O’Brien State Park is a 1,520-acre (6.2 km2) state park of Minnesota, USA, along the St. Croix River. Its hiking trails traverse rolling glacial moraine, riparian zones, restored oak savanna, wooded areas and bogs. It is a popular place for birdwatching, picnics, camping, cross-country skiing, canoeing, fishing, and other typical outdoor recreational activities.
William S. Burroughs (Wikipedia) William Seward Burroughs II (/ˈbʌroʊz/; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated “Shotgun Art”.
William Shakespeare (Wikipedia) William Shakespeare (c. 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “the Bard”). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Willie D (Wikipedia) William James Dennis (born November 1, 1966) is an American rapper and songwriter best known as a member of the Houston rap group the Geto Boys, alongside Bushwick Bill and Scarface. He maintains and regularly uploads to his YouTube channel, posting social commentary videos. As of July 2021, his channel WillieDLive has accumulated over 200 million video views.
Willis Tower (Wikipedia) The Willis Tower (originally the Sears Tower) is a 110-story, 1,451-foot (442.3 m) skyscraper in the Loop community area of Chicago in Illinois, United States. Designed by architect Bruce Graham and engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), it opened in 1973 as the world’s tallest building, a title that it held for nearly 25 years. It is the third-tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the 23rd-tallest in the world. Each year, more than 1.7 million people visit the Skydeck observation deck, the highest in the United States, making it one of Chicago’s most popular tourist destinations.
Windermere, Seattle (Wikipedia) Windermere is a residential neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, named after Windermere in England’s Lake District. It is bounded on the north by Magnuson Park, part of Sand Point; on the northwest by Sand Point Way N.E., beyond which is Hawthorne Hills; on the southwest by Ivanhoe Place N.E., beyond which is Laurelhurst; and on the southeast by Lake Washington. The area has been a part of Seattle since 1910.
Windward Islands (Society Islands) (Wikipedia) The Windward Islands (French: Îles du Vent) are the eastern group of the Society Islands in French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of France in the southern Pacific Ocean. These islands were also previously named the Georgian Islands in honour of King George III of the United Kingdom.
Winston Churchill (Wikipedia) Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from 1951 to 1955. Apart from two years between 1922 and 1924, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1964 and represented a total of five constituencies. Ideologically an economic liberal and imperialist, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.
Winter (Wikipedia) Winter is the coldest season of the year in polar and temperate climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring. The tilt of Earth’s axis causes seasons; winter occurs when a hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun. Different cultures define different dates as the start of winter, and some use a definition based on weather.
Wisconsin (Wikipedia) Wisconsin (/wɪˈskɒnsɪn/) is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, and Lake Superior to the north.
Wishkah River (Wikipedia) The Wishkah River is a tributary of the Chehalis River in the U.S. state of Washington. Approximately 40 miles (64 km) long, the river drains a remote rural area of approximately 102 square miles (260 km2) in Grays Harbor County along the Washington coast north of Aberdeen. It flows south through the county and empties into the Chehalis at Aberdeen.
Witches Abroad (Wikipedia) Witches Abroad is the twelfth Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett, originally published in 1991.
Wojak (Wikipedia) Wojak (from Polish wojak [ˈvɔjak], loosely ‘soldier’ or ‘fighter’), also known as Feels Guy, is an Internet meme that is, in its original form, a simple, black-outlined cartoon drawing of a bald man with a wistful expression.
Woodbury, Minnesota (Wikipedia) Woodbury is a city in Washington County, Minnesota, United States, eight miles (13 km) east of Saint Paul along Interstate 94. It is part of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. The population was 75,102 at the 2020 census, making it Minnesota’s eighth most populous city.
Woodinville, Washington (Wikipedia) Woodinville is a city in King County, Washington, United States. It is a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. There is also a much larger population with Woodinville mailing addresses in adjacent unincorporated areas of King (Cottage Lake) and Snohomish (Maltby) counties. Woodinville has waterfront parks on the Sammamish River, sweeping winery and brewery grounds, and densely wooded areas.
Woodland Park (Seattle) (Wikipedia) Woodland Park is a 90.9-acre (36.8 ha) public park in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge and Green Lake neighborhoods that originated as the estate of Guy C. Phinney, lumber mill owner and real estate developer. Phinney died in 1893, and in 1902, the Olmsted Brothers firm of Boston was hired to design the city’s parks, including Woodland Park.
Woodland Park Zoo (Wikipedia) Woodland Park Zoo is a wildlife conservation organization and zoological garden located in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. The zoo is the recipient of over 65 awards across multiple categories. The zoo has around 900 animals from 250 species and the zoo has over 1 million visitors a year.
Woodlark Plate (Wikipedia) The Woodlark Plate is a small almost triangular shaped tectonic plate located east of the island of New Guinea and situated mainly within the northern half of the Woodlark Basin. It is located in a very complex tectonic environment, that because of associated features, has been extensively studied since it was first proposed to exist. It is now known to be much smaller than originally proposed, mainly because of information from GPS stations on islands and sea floor studies that have fully defined its margins.
Woodrow Wilson (Wikipedia) Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924) was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. A member of the Democratic Party, Wilson served as the president of Princeton University and as the governor of New Jersey before winning the 1912 presidential election. As president, Wilson changed the nation’s economic policies and led the United States into World War I in 1917. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
Woodway, Washington (Wikipedia) Woodway is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,318 at the 2020 census.
Wyoming (Wikipedia) Wyoming (/waɪˈoʊmɪŋ/) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the south. With a population of 576,851 in the 2020 United States census, Wyoming is the least populous state despite being the 10th largest by area, with the second-lowest population density after Alaska. The state capital and most populous city is Cheyenne, which had an estimated population of 63,957 in 2018.
Wyrd Sisters (Wikipedia) Wyrd Sisters is Terry Pratchett’s sixth Discworld novel, published in 1988. It re-introduces Granny Weatherwax of Equal Rites.
Xi Jinping (Wikipedia) Xi Jinping (Chinese: 习近平; pinyin: Xí Jìnpíng, pronounced [ɕǐ tɕîn.pʰǐŋ]; born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, since 2012. Xi has also been the president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 2013. He belongs to the fifth generation of Chinese leadership.
Yakima County, Washington (Wikipedia) Yakima County is a county in the U.S. state of Washington. As of the 2020 census, its population was 256,728. The county seat and largest city is Yakima. The county was formed out of Ferguson County in January 1865 and is named for the Yakama tribe of Native Americans.
Yakima River (Wikipedia) The Yakima River is a tributary of the Columbia River in south central and eastern Washington state, named for the indigenous Yakama people. Lewis and Clark mention in their journals that the Chin-nâm pam (or the Lower Snake River Chamnapam Nation) called the river Tâpe têtt (also rendered Tapteete), possibly from the French tape-tête, meaning “head hit”. The length of the river from headwaters to mouth is 214 miles (344 km), with an average drop of 9.85 feet per mile (1.866 m/km). It is the longest river entirely in Washington state.
Yangtze Plate (Wikipedia) The Yangtze Plate, also called the South China Block or the South China Subplate, comprises the bulk of southern China. It is separated on the east from the Okinawa Plate by a rift that forms the Okinawa Trough which is a back-arc basin, on the south by the Sunda Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate, and on the north and west by the Eurasian Plate. The Longmenshan Fault on the latter border was the site of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.
Yarrow Point, Washington (Wikipedia) Yarrow Point is a town in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 1,001 at the 2010 census. Based on per capita income, one of the more reliable measures of affluence, Yarrow Point ranks fifth of 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked.
Year (Wikipedia) A year is the time taken for astronomical objects to complete one orbit. For example, a year on Earth is the time taken for Earth to revolve around the Sun. Generally, a year is taken to mean a calendar year, but the word is also used for periods loosely associated with the calendar or astronomical year, such as the seasonal year, the fiscal year, the academic year, etc. The term can also be used in reference to any long period or cycle, such as the Great Year.
Yellowknife (Wikipedia) Yellowknife (/ˈjɛloʊnaɪf/; Dogrib: Sǫǫ̀mbak’è) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about 400 km (250 mi) south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the outlet of the Yellowknife River.
Yemen (Wikipedia) Yemen (/ˈjɛmən/; Arabic: ٱلْيَمَنْ, romanized: al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen, is a sovereign state in West Asia. Located in the southern Arabian Peninsula, it borders Saudi Arabia to the north, Oman to the northeast, and the Indian Ocean to the south, sharing maritime borders with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia across the Horn of Africa. Covering roughly 528,000 square kilometres (203,861 square miles), with a coastline of approximately 2,000 kilometres (1,200 miles), Yemen is the second largest country on the Arabian Peninsula. Sanaa is its constitutional capital and largest city. Yemen’s estimated population is 34.7 million, mostly Arab Muslims. It is a member of the Arab League, the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.
Yemeni civil war (2014–present) (Wikipedia) The Yemeni civil war (Arabic: الحرب الأهلية اليمنية, romanized: al-ḥarb al-ʾahlīyah al-yamanīyah) is an ongoing multilateral civil war that began in late 2014 mainly between the Rashad al-Alimi-led Presidential Leadership Council and the Mahdi al-Mashat-led Supreme Political Council, along with their supporters and allies. Both claim to constitute the official government of Yemen.
Yerba Buena Gardens (Wikipedia) Yerba Buena Gardens is the name for two blocks of public parks located between Third and Fourth, Mission and Folsom Streets in downtown San Francisco, California. The first block bordered by Mission and Howard Streets was opened on October 11, 1993. The second block, between Howard and Folsom Streets, was opened in 1998, with a dedication to Martin Luther King Jr. by Mayor Willie Brown. A pedestrian bridge over Howard Street connects the two blocks, sitting on top of part of the Moscone Center convention center. The Yerba Buena Gardens were planned and built as the final centerpiece of the Yerba Buena Redevelopment Area which includes the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy operates, manages, programs, and elevates the property on behalf of the City and County of San Francisco.
Yesler Terrace, Seattle (Wikipedia) Yesler Terrace is a 22-acre (8.9 ha) mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It was originally completed in 1941 as the state’s first public housing development and the first racially integrated public housing development in the United States. It occupies much of the area formerly known as Yesler Hill, Yesler’s Hill, or Profanity Hill. The development is administered by the Seattle Housing Authority, who have been redeveloping the neighborhood into a mixed-income area with multi-story buildings and community amenities since 2013.
Ypresian (Wikipedia) In the geologic timescale the Ypresian is the oldest age or lowest stratigraphic stage of the Eocene. It spans the time between 56 and 47.8 Ma, is preceded by the Thanetian Age (part of the Paleocene) and is followed by the Eocene Lutetian Age. The Ypresian is consistent with the lower Eocene.
Ysabell, Duchess of Sto Helit (Wikipedia) Lady Ysabell is the adopted daughter of Death. He saved her life after her parents died in the Great Nef desert when she was a baby. Why he did so is uncertain. “He didn’t feel sorry for me, he never feels anything … He probably thought sorry for me” Ysabell says. A sixteen-year-old girl with silver hair and silver eyes, she has been sixteen for thirty-five years; no time passes in Death’s Domain. Her encounter with Rincewind is flamboyant enough to make him believe she is ‘bonkers’.
Yukon (Wikipedia) Yukon (/ˈjuːkɒn/ YOO-kon; Canadian French: [jukõ]; formerly called the Yukon Territory and referred to as the Yukon) is the smallest and westernmost of Canada’s three territories. It is the third-least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 45,148 as of 2023. However, Whitehorse, the territorial capital, is the largest settlement in any of the three territories.
Zambia (Wikipedia) Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bordered to the north by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania to the north-east, Malawi to the east, Mozambique to the southeast, Zimbabwe and Botswana to the south, Namibia to the southwest, and Angola to the west. The capital city of Zambia is Lusaka, located in the south-central part of Zambia. The population is concentrated mainly around Lusaka in the south and the Copperbelt Province to the north, the core economic hubs of the country.
Zeno of Citium (Wikipedia) Zeno of Citium (/ˈziːnoʊ/; Koinē Greek: Ζήνων ὁ Κιτιεύς, Zēnōn ho Kitieus; c. 334 – c. 262 BC) was a Hellenistic philosopher from Citium (Κίτιον, Kition), Cyprus. He was the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, which he taught in Athens from about 300 BC. Based on the moral ideas of the Cynics, Stoicism laid great emphasis on goodness and peace of mind gained from living a life of virtue in accordance with nature. It proved very popular, and flourished as one of the major schools of philosophy from the Hellenistic period through to the Roman era, and enjoyed revivals in the Renaissance as Neostoicism and in the current era as Modern Stoicism.
Zeta Ceti (Wikipedia) Zeta Ceti (ζ Ceti, abbreviated Zeta Cet, ζ Cet) is a binary star in the equatorial constellation of Cetus. It has a combined apparent visual magnitude of 3.74, which is bright enough to be seen with the naked eye. Based upon parallax measurements taken during the Hipparcos mission, it is approximately 235 light-years from the Sun.
Zeta Leonis (Wikipedia) Zeta Leonis (ζ Leonis, abbreviated Zeta Leo, ζ Leo), also named Adhafera /ædəˈfɪərə/, is a third-magnitude star in the constellation of Leo, the lion. It forms the second star (after Gamma Leonis) in the blade of the sickle, which is an asterism formed from the head of Leo.
Zhuang Zhou (Wikipedia) Zhuang Zhou (/dʒuˈɑːŋ ˈdʒoʊ/), commonly known as Zhuangzi (/ˈdʒwɑːŋˈdzʌ/; Chinese: 莊子; literally “Master Zhuang”; also rendered in the Wade–Giles romanization as Chuang Tzu), was an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States period, a period of great development in Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought. He is credited with writing—in part or in whole—a work known by his name, the Zhuangzi, which is one of two foundational texts of Taoism, alongside the Tao Te Ching.
Zhuangzi (book) (Wikipedia) The Zhuangzi (Chinese: 莊子, historically romanized Chuang Tzŭ) is an ancient Chinese text from the late Warring States period (476–221 BC) containing stories and anecdotes that exemplify the carefree nature of the ideal Taoist sage. Named for its traditional author, “Master Zhuang” (Zhuangzi), the Zhuangzi is one of the two foundational texts of Taoism, along with the Tao Te Ching.
Zimbabwe (Wikipedia) Zimbabwe (/zɪmˈbɑːbweɪ, -wi/; Shona pronunciation: [zi.ᵐba.ɓwe]), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo.
Zimbabwe Bird (Wikipedia) The stone-carved Zimbabwe Bird is the national emblem of Zimbabwe, appearing on the national flags and coats of arms of both Zimbabwe and former Rhodesia, as well as on banknotes and coins (first on the Rhodesian pound and then on the Rhodesian dollar). It probably represents the bateleur eagle (Terathopius ecaudatus) or the African fish eagle (Haliaeetus vocifer). The bird’s design is derived from a number of soapstone sculptures found in the ruins of the medieval city of Great Zimbabwe.
Zinc (Wikipedia) Zinc is a chemical element with the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is a slightly brittle metal at room temperature and has a shiny-greyish appearance when oxidation is removed. It is the first element in group 12 (IIB) of the periodic table. In some respects, zinc is chemically similar to magnesium: both elements exhibit only one normal oxidation state (+2), and the Zn2+ and Mg2+ ions are of similar size. Zinc is the 24th most abundant element in Earth’s crust and has five stable isotopes. The most common zinc ore is sphalerite (zinc blende), a zinc sulfide mineral. The largest workable lodes are in Australia, Asia, and the United States. Zinc is refined by froth flotation of the ore, roasting, and final extraction using electricity (electrowinning).
Zodiac (Wikipedia) The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are within the belt of the zodiac.

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