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According to the World Health Organization, a cholera outbreak in Angola has killed more than 1,500 people. The disease has affected 13 of the country's 18 provinces, with more than half of the infections occurring in the capital, Luanda. Cholera is spread through contaminated water or food and can lead to dehydration and death within 24 hours.

DEFINITION: (noun) A brass-colored mineral, FeS2, occurring widely and used as an iron ore and in producing sulfur dioxide for sulfuric acid. SYNONYMS: fool's gold, iron pyrite. USAGE: The children thought the gleaming bits of metal they had found were gold, and their nurse refrained from telling them they were simply flecks of pyrite.

Brooks was an award-winning poet whose poems, technically accomplished and written in a variety of forms, deal with the experience of being black and often of being female in America. Her 1949 book of poetry, Annie Allen, received a Pulitzer Prize, the first ever awarded to an African American. In 1994, she was named the National Endowment for the Humanities' Jefferson Lecturer, one of the highest honors in the American literary world. In what city did she spend almost all of her life?

In the 17th century, Port Royal was a popular place for pirates to bring and spend their treasure, earning it a reputation for gaudy displays of wealth and loose morals. On June 7, 1692, a devastating earthquake hit the city, causing two-thirds of it to sink into the Caribbean Sea. The earthquake and subsequent tsunami killed between 1,000 and 3,000 people—over half the city's population. What city assumed Port Royal's role as a center of commerce?

A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

Tolkien is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He began working on his history of Middle-Earth while recovering from the trench fever that he had caught while serving in WWI. He was a professor of English language at Leeds and of Anglo-Saxon language and English language and literature at Oxford. A strongly committed Catholic, Tolkien was a close friend of C.S. Lewis and a member of what famous literary discussion group?