April 28, 2007
Dennis Tito Becomes World’s First Space Tourist.
Tito is a multimillionaire who became the first person to pay for a ticket to space. A former scientist of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Tito is the founder of Wilshire Associates, a leading provider of investment management, consulting, and technology services. Despite his career change from aerospace engineering to investment management, he never lost interest in space exploration. In 2001, he paid $20 million to accompany the crew of Soyuz TM-32 into space. How long did he spend there?Louis Comfort Tiffany
Tiffany was an American artist and designer who is best known for his work in stained glass. He studied painting with Inness and later established the interior-decorating firm in New York City that came to be known as Tiffany Studios. The firm specialized in favrile glass work, characterized by iridescent colors and natural forms in the Art Nouveau style. Tiffany's lamps became enormously popular in the 1960s and were widely imitated. Who was his father?April 27, 2007
cataplasm
DEFINITION: (noun) A medical dressing consisting of a soft heated mass of meal or clay that is spread on a cloth and applied to the skin to treat inflamed areas or improve circulation etc.
SYNONYMS: poultice, plaster.
USAGE: In an effort to reduce the inflammation, they wrapped the horse's leg in a cataplasm made of leaves.
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King was the widow of the slain civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. and a noted community leader in her own right. She was vocal in her opposition to apartheid, capital punishment, and the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, and was also an advocate for women's rights, lesbian and gay rights, and AIDS/HIV prevention. In 1968, Mrs. King established the King Center; what is the agency's mission?Grant’s Tomb Dedicated
Grant's Tomb is a mausoleum containing the bodies of Ulysses S. Grant, an American Civil War general and the 18th President of the US, and his wife, Julia Dent Grant. It is located in New York City's Riverside Park, and it was designed by architect John Duncan. The granite and marble structure was completed in 1897 and was at that time the largest mausoleum in North America. What did Duncan use as a general model for his design?The Everglades
This marshy, low-lying subtropical savanna area in S. Florida extends from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay. Characterized by water, sawgrass, palms, pine, and mangrove forests, the Everglades receives an annual average rainfall of more than 60 in. (152 cm), mainly in the summer. The wildlife-rich area is home to endangered species like the Florida panther, American crocodile, and manatee. In the late 1830s the Everglades was the scene of military operations against what Native American people?Hunters Kill One of Last Amur Leopards
According to the WWF, hunters in Russia's Far East have shot and killed one of the last 7 surviving female Amur leopards living in the wild. Last week environmentalists said there were only between 25 and 34 Amur leopards still living in the wild. A least 100 are needed to guarantee the species' survival.April 26, 2007
engram
DEFINITION: (noun) A physical alteration thought to occur in living neural tissue in response to stimuli, posited as an explanation for memory.
SYNONYMS: memory trace.
USAGE: The neuroscientist likened engrams in neural tissue to data on the hard drive of a computer.
Charles Richter
Charles Francis Richter was an American seismologist most famous for creating the Richter magnitude scale, which quantifies the size of earthquakes by assigning each quake a single number. The scale is logarithmic, so the amplitude of the waves increases by powers of 10 in relation to the Richter magnitude numbers. Numbers for the Richter scale range from 0 to 9, though no real upper limit exists. What was the magnitude of the largest earthquake ever recorded?Nuclear Reactor at Chernobyl Plant Explodes
The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is regarded as the worst nuclear accident in history, producing radioactive debris that drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the UK, and the eastern US. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the resettlement of roughly 200,000 people and a disputed number of deaths. What caused the accident?- » About
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