0	 Batman'" (originally referred to as "'the Bat-Man'" and still referred to at times as "'the Batman'") is a fictional comic book superhero co-created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger (although only Kane receives official credit), appearing in publications by DC Comics. The character first appeared in "Detective Comics" #27 in May 1939. Batman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne'", a wealthy industrialist, playboy, and philanthropist. Witnessing the murder of his parents as a child, ...
1	 Faster-than-light'" (also "'superluminal'" or "'FTL'") communications and travel refer to the propagation of information or matter faster than the speed of light. Science-fiction-style space travel, dubbed "true" FTL, defies known physics. Under the special theory of relativity, a particle (that has mass) with subluminal velocity needs infinite energy to accelerate to the speed of light, although special relativity does not forbid the existence of particles that travel faster ...
2	 Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany'" (24 July 1878 ? 25 October 1957) was an Anglo-Irish writer and dramatist, notable for his work, mostly in fantasy, published under the name "'Lord Dunsany'". More than eighty books of his work were published, and his oeuvre includes many hundreds of published short stories, as well as successful plays, novels and essays. Born to one of the oldest titles in the Irish peerage, Dunsany lived much of h...
3	 The Roman alphabet, or Latin alphabet'", was adapted from the Old Italic alphabet, to represent the phonemes of the Latin language, which had in turn been borrowed from the Greek alphabet, adapted from the Phoenician alphabet. This article deals primarily with modern scholarship's best guess at classical "'Latin'" "'pronunciation'" (that is, how Latin was spoken among educated people in the late Republic) and "'spelling'", and then touches upon later changes and...
4	 The Open Systems Interconnection Basic Reference Model'" (OSI Reference Model or OSI Model"') is an abstract description for layered communications and computer network protocol design. It was developed as part of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) initiative. In its most basic form, it divides network architecture into seven layers which, from top to bottom, are the Application, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data-Link, and Physical Layers. It is therefore often refer...
5	 Monica Samille Lewinsky'" (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman with whom then-United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "inappropriate relationship" while Lewinsky worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. The nature of the affair and its resulting repercussions in the impeachment of Bill Clinton and the surrounding scandals of 1997-99 became known as the Lewinsky scandal, "Monicagate" and "Zippergate." Early life. Monica Lewinsky was born in San Fran...
6	 Frank Lloyd Wright'" (June 8, 1867 ? April 9, 1959) was an American (of Welsh descent) architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works. Wright promoted organic architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater), was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture (exemplified by the Robie House and the Westcott House), and developed the concept of the Usonian home (exemplified by the Ro...
7	 A hydrofoil'" is a boat with wing-like foils mounted on struts below the hull. As the craft increases its speed the hydrofoils develop enough lift for the boat to become foilborne - i.e. to raise the hull up and out of the water. This results in a great reduction in drag and a corresponding increase in speed. The term "hydrofoil" is also used to refer to the foil itself, especially when the airfoil profile has been specifically designed for use in water (such as for a propeller blade)...
8	 The Cleveland Browns'" are a professional American football team based in Cleveland, Ohio. They play in the Northern division of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The Cleveland Browns began play in 1946 as a charter member of the All-America Football Conference and joined the NFL in 1950 after the AAFC folded. The team won all four AAFC titles and had one undefeated season (1948 - 15?0), as well as four NFL Championships. 1946?1949: T...
9	 A laser'" is a device that emits light (electromagnetic radiation) through a process called "stimulated emission". The term "laser" is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". Laser light is usually spatially coherent, which means that the light either is emitted in a narrow, low-divergence beam, or can be converted into one with the help of optical components such as lenses. Typically, lasers are thought of as emitting light with a narrow wavelength spect...
10	 The "Kalevala" is a book and epic poem which the Finn Elias L?nnrot compiled from Finnish and Karelian folklore in the nineteenth century. It is held to be the national epic of Finland and is traditionally thought of as one of the most significant works of Finnish literature. Karelian citizens and other Balto-Finnic speakers also value the work. The "Kalevala" is credited with some of the inspiration for the national awakening that ultimately led to Finnish government's independence fr...
11	 A condom'" is a device most commonly used during sexual intercourse. It is put on a man's erect penis and physically blocks ejaculated semen from entering the body of a sexual partner. Condoms are used to prevent pregnancy and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs?such as gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV). Because condoms are waterproof, elastic, and durable, they are also used in a variety of secondary applications. These range from creating waterproof microphones to protectin...
12	 Mehmed II'" (Ottoman Turkish: ???? ?????? ", Turkish: "II. Mehmet"), (also known as "el-Fatih" (??????), "the Conqueror", in Ottoman Turkish, or, in modern Turkish, "Fatih Sultan Mehmet") (March 30, 1432, Edirne May 3, 1481, H?nk?rcay?r?, near Gebze) was Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for a short time from 1444 to 1446, and later from 1451 to 1481. At the age of 21, he conquered Constantinople, bringing an end to the medieval Byzantine Empire. From this point onward, he claimed the titl...
13	 The "Authorized King James Version" is an English translation of the Christian Bible begun in 1604 and first published in 1611 by the Church of England. The "Great Bible" was the first "authorized version" issued by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII. In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected...
14	 "Mario Kart" is a series of go-kart-style racing video games developed by Nintendo as a series of spin-offs from its trademark "Mario" series of platformer adventure-style video games. To date, there have been four "Mario Kart" games for home consoles, two portable games, and two arcade games. The eighth and latest installment, "Mario Kart Wii", was released in Japan on April 10, 2008, in Europe on 11 April 2008, in Australia on 24 April 2008 and in North America on April 27, 2008. G...
15	 "Dennis the Menace" (known as "Dennis the Menace and Gnasher" since 1970) is a long-running comic strip featured in "The Beano" children's comic, published by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd, Dundee, Scotland, in the United Kingdom. The strip first appeared in issue 452, released on 15 March 1951 (cover dated for the off-sale date of 17 March), and is the longest running strip in the comic, reaching an estimated 2995 strips so far.. From issue 1678 onwards (dated 14 September 197...
16	 John Quincy Adams'" (July 11, 1767 ? February 23, 1848) was an American diplomat and politician who served as the sixth President of the United States from March 4, 1825 to March 4, 1829. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of the second President John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams. He was a diplomat, involved in many international negotiations, and helped formulate the Mon...
17	 Albert Pike'" (December 29, 1809?April 2, 1891) was an attorney, soldier, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate military officer or figure to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C. (in Judiciary Square). Biography. Pike was born in Boston, son of Ben and Sarah (Andrews) Pike, and spent his childhood in Byfield and Newburyport, Massachusetts. He attended school in Newburyport and Framingham until he was fifteen. In August 1825, he passed his entrance exam...
18	 The Boston Red Sox'" are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts, and are the reigning (2007) World Series Champions. The Red Sox are a member of the Major League Baseball?s American League Eastern Division and are the defending champions of the American League itself. Since, the Red Sox have made their home at Fenway Park. The "Red Sox" name originates from the iconic uniform feature. They are sometimes nicknamed the "BoSox", a combination of "Boston" and "So...
19	 Malden Island'" (), sometimes called "'Independence Island'" in the nineteenth century, is a low, arid, uninhabited island in the central Pacific Ocean, about in area. It is one of the Line Islands belonging to the Republic of Kiribati. The island is chiefly notable for its "mysterious" prehistoric ruins, its once-extensive deposits of phosphatic guano (exploited by Australian interests from c. 1860-1927), its former use as the site of the first British H-bomb tests (Operation Gra...
20	 Media studies'" is a collection of academic programs regarding the content, history, meaning and effects of various media. Media studies scholars vary in the theoretical and methodological focus they bring to mass media topics, including the media's political, social, economic and cultural roles and impact. Media studies draw on traditions from both the social sciences and the humanities, and overlap in interests with related disciplines mass communication, communication, communic...
21	 ?amas'" (; acronym:, or "'?arakat al-Muq?wama al-Isl?miyya'" or "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni paramilitary organization and political party which currently holds a majority of seats in the elected legislative council of the Palestinian National Authority. Hamas was created in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Mohammad Taha of the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of the First Intifada. Notorious for its numerous suicide bombings and other at...
22	 The benzodiazepines'" (pronounced [?b?nz??da???z??pi?n], often abbreviated to "'"benzos") are a class of psychoactive drugs with varying hypnotic, sedative, anxiolytic, anticonvulsant, muscle relaxant and amnesic properties, which are mediated by slowing down the central nervous system. Benzodiazepines are useful in treating anxiety, insomnia, agitation, seizures, and muscle spasms, as well as alcohol withdrawal. They can also be used before certain medical procedures such as end...
23	 Electric Light Orchestra'", commonly abbreviated "'ELO'", were a symphonic rock group from Birmingham, England who released eleven studio albums between 1971 and 1986 and another album in 2001. ELO were formed to accommodate Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne's desire to create modern pop songs with heavily classical overtones, but falling under a light rock category, however the band's direction for most of their existence was set by Lynne who, after the band's debut record, wrot...
24	 Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American country music singer/songwriter, author, actress and philanthropist. She remains one of the most successful country music artists, with 26 number-one singles, a record for a female performer, and a record 42 top-10 country albums. She has the distinction of having performed on a top-40 country hit in each of the last five decades. She is known for her distinctive mountain soprano, sometimes bawdy humor, flamboyant dress se...
25	 Charlemagne'" (;, meaning "'Charles the Great'") (747 ? 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800 as a rival of the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the m...
26	 In probability theory and statistics, kurtosis'" (from the Greek word ??????, "kyrtos" or "kurtos", meaning bulging) is a measure of the "peakedness" of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. Higher kurtosis means more of the variance is due to infrequent extreme deviations, as opposed to frequent modestly-sized deviations. Definition of kurtosis. The fourth standardized moment is defined as where ?4 is the fourth moment about the mean and ? is the standard devi...
27	 Organized crime'" or "'criminal organizations'" are groups or operations run by criminals, most commonly for the purpose of generating a monetary profit. The "Organized Crime Control Act" (U.S., 1970) defines organized crime as "The unlawful activities of... a highly organized, disciplined association...". Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are politically motivated. Gangs sometimes become "disciplined" enough to be considered "organized". An organized...
28	 A goitre'" (BrE), or "'goiter'" (AmE) (Latin "struma"), also called a bronchocele'", is a swelling in the neck (just below the Adam's apple or larynx) due to an enlarged thyroid gland. Classification. They are classified in different ways: Causes. The most common cause for goitre is iodine deficiency. Other causes are: Occurence. Iodine is necessary for the synthesis of the thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). In endemic goitre, iodine deficiency leaves the thyroid ...
29	 Herbert Marshall McLuhan'", C.C. (July 21, 1911 ? December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar ? a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communications theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory. McLuhan is known for coining the expressions "the medium is the message" and the "global village." McLuhan was a fixture in media discourse from the late 1960s to his death and he...
30	 Major depressive disorder'", also known as "'major depression'", "'unipolar depression'", "'unipolar disorder'", "'clinical depression'", or simply "'depression'", is a mental disorder characterized by a pervasive low mood and loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities. The diagnosis is made if a person has suffered one or more major depressive episodes, and is based on the patient's self-reported experiences and observed behavior. There is no laboratory test for...
31	 Aspirin'", or "'acetylsalicylic acid (A.S.A.) (), is a salicylate drug, often used as an analgesic to relieve minor aches and pains, as an antipyretic to reduce fever, and as an anti-inflammatory medication. In countries where Aspirin is a registered trademark owned by Bayer, the generic term is "A.S.A." Aspirin also has an antiplatelet or "anti-clotting" effect and is used in long-term, low doses to prevent heart attacks, strokes and blood clot formation in people at high risk for deve...
32	 A book'" is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book. Books may also refer to a literature work, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from se...
33	 The Liberian Civil War in 1989-96 destroyed much of Liberia's economy'", especially the infrastructure in and around Monrovia. Many businessmen fled the country, taking capital and expertise with them. Some returned during 1997. Many will not return. Richly endowed with water, mineral resources, forests, and a climate favorable to agriculture, Liberia had been a producer and exporter of basic products, while local manufacturing, mainly foreign owned, had been small in scope. ...
34	 A linear equation'" is an algebraic equation in which each term is either a constant or the product of a constant and (the first power of) a single variable. Linear equations can have one, two, three or more variables. Linear equations occur with great regularity in applied mathematics. While they arise quite naturally when modeling many phenomena, they are particularly useful since many non-linear equations may be reduced to linear equations by assuming that quantities of inter...
35	 The euphonium'" is a conical-bore, baritone-voiced brass instrument. It derives its name from the Greek word "euphonos", meaning "beautiful-sounding" or "sweet-voiced" ("eu" means "well" or "good" and "phonium" means "voice"). The euphonium is a valved instrument; nearly all current models are piston valved, though rotary valved models do exist. A person who plays euphonium is sometimes called a "euphoniumist" or a "euphonist", while British players often colloquially refer to themsel...
36	 The City of Lincoln'" (Um??ho?: "N?skithe T???wo?gtho?", meaning "Salt Village", for Salt Creek, which was the historical center of the city) is the capital and the second most populous city of the U.S. state of Nebraska. Lincoln is also the county seat of Lancaster County and the home of the University of Nebraska. The population was 225,581 at the 2000 census. Lincoln started out as the village of Lancaster, which was founded in 1856, and became the county seat of the newly ...
37	 "Earthdawn" is a fantasy role-playing game, originally produced by FASA in 1993. In 1999 it was licensed to Living Room Games, which produced the "Second Edition" line. It is currently licensed to RedBrick Limited, a company that is producing the "Classic" or "RedBrick's Earthdawn" line (which is essentially an alternative second edition; see History'" below for more information). The game is similar to fantasy games like "Dungeons & Dragons", but draws more inspiration from games lik...
38	 Jean-Maurice-?mile Baudot, (September 11 1845?March 28 1903), French telegraph engineer and inventor of the Baudot code, was one of the pioneers of telecommunications. He invented a multiplexed printing telegraph system which used his code and allowed multiple transmissions over a single line. Early life. Baudot was born in Magneux, Haute-Marne, France, the son of farmer Pierre Emile Baudot, who later became the mayor of Magneux. His only formal education was at his local primary s...
39	 ?atalh?y?k'" (in Turkish; also "?atal H?y?k" and "?atal H?y?k", or any of the three without diacritics; "?atal" is Turkish for "fork", "h?y?k" for "mound") was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, dating from around 7500?B.C. for the lowest layers. It is the largest and best preserved Neolithic site found to date. ?atalh?y?k is located overlooking wheat fields in the Konya Plain, southeast of the present-day city of Konya (ancient Iconium) in Turke...
40	 The ionosphere'" is the uppermost part of the atmosphere, distinguished because it is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important part in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere. It has practical importance because, among other functions, it influences radio propagation to distant places on the Earth. It is located in the Thermosphere. Geophysics. The lowest part of the Earth's atmosphere is called the troposphere and it extends from the surface up...
41	 Microsoft Word'" is Microsoft's flagship word processing software. It was first released in 1983 under the name "'Multi-Tool Word'" for Xenix systems. Versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS (1983), the Apple Macintosh (1984), SCO UNIX, 2 and Microsoft Windows(1989). It is a component of the Microsoft Office system; however, it is also sold as a standalone product and included in Microsoft Works Suite. Beginning with the 2003 version,...
42	 The Normans'" were the people who gave their names to Normandy, a region in northern France. They descended from the original Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of mostly Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock. Their identity first emerged in the first half of the tenth century, and gradually evolved over succeeding centuries until they disappeared as an ethnic group in the early thirteenth century. The name "Normans" derives from "Northmen" or "Norsemen", after the Vi...
43	 The Kepler-Poinsot'" polyhedra is a popular name for the "'regular star polyhedra'". Each has faces which are congruent regular convex polygons or star polygons and has the same number of faces meeting at each vertex (compare to Platonic solids). These polyhedra are often referred to as the "'Kepler-Poinsot solids'", though they are perhaps more easily understood as "surfaces". Relationships between regular polyhedra. These figures are deceptive for including pentagram...
44	 Military history'" is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships. A conflict may range from a melee between two tribal groups to conflicts between national militaries, and a world war of coalitions affecting the majority of the global human population. Military historians record and analyse the ...
45	 In baseball, the Cy Young Award'" is an honor given annually to the best pitcher in Major League Baseball (one each for American and National leagues). The award was first introduced in by Commissioner Ford Frick in honor of Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young, who died in. The award was originally given to the single best pitcher in the major leagues. In, the year after Frick retired as Commissioner, the practice began of honoring one pitcher in each league. Each league's award is vot...
46	 Ethylene'" (or IUPAC name "'ethene'") is the chemical compound with the formula C2H4. It is the simplest alkene. Because it contains a double bond, ethylene is called an "unsaturated hydrocarbon" or an "olefin". It is extremely important in industry and even has a role in biology as a hormone. Ethylene is the most produced organic compound in the world; global production of ethylene exceeded 75 million metric tonnes per year in 2005. To meet the ever increasing demand for ethylene, sha...
47	 Gumby'" is a dark green clay humanoid figure who was the subject of a 233-episode series of American television which spanned over a 35-year period. He was animated using stop motion clay animation. The show also featured Pokey, a red clay pony, and Gumby's nemeses, the Blockheads. The characters first appearance was in The Gumby Pilot, November 28, 1954. Origins of Gumby. Dreamed up by Art Clokey (from a small town called Millington, MI.), Gumby had its genesis in a 1953 theatrical 3-min...
48	 The exponential function'" is a function in mathematics. The application of this function to a value "x" is written as exp("x"). Equivalently, this can be written in the form "ex", where "e" is a mathematical constant, the base of the natural logarithm, which equals approximately 2.718281828, and is also known as Euler's number. As a function of the "real" variable "x", the graph of "y"="e'x" is always positive (above the "x" axis) and increasing (viewed left-to-right). It ...
49	 Economics'" is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term "economics" comes from the Ancient Greek ' ("," "management of a household, administration") from ' ("," "house") + ' ("," "custom" or "law"), hence "rules of the house(hold)". Current economic models developed out of the broader field of political economy in the late 19th century, owing to a desire to use an empirical approach more akin to the physical sciences...
50	 Crete'" (Greek: ?????, transliteration: "Kr?t?", modern transliteration "Kriti") is the largest of the Greek islands and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea at 8,336 km? (3,219 square miles). Crete was the center of the Minoan civilization (ca. 2600?1400 BC), the oldest Greek and European civilization. Today Crete is one of the thirteen peripheries of Greece and a significant part of the economy and cultural heritage of Greece. While it keeps its own local cultural traits (e...
51	 Alexandre Gustave Eiffel'" (December 15, 1832 ? December 27, 1923; in French, in English usually) was a French structural engineer and architect and a specialist of metallic structures. He is famous for designing the Eiffel Tower, built 1887?1889 for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France, the Basilica Minore de San Sebastian, the only all-steel basilica in Asia, found in the Philippines, and the armature for the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, U.S.. Gustave Eiffel bu...
52	 The Lockheed AC-130'" gunship is a heavily-armed ground attack airplane. The basic airframe is manufactured by Lockheed, and Boeing is responsible for the conversion into a gunship and for aircraft support. It is a variant of the C-130 Hercules transport plane. The AC-130A Gunship II superseded the AC-47 Gunship I in Vietnam. The gunship's sole user is the United States Air Force, which uses "'AC-130H Spectre'" and "'AC-130U Spooky'" variants. The AC-130 is powered by four turbo...
53	 Lindy Hop'" is an African American dance that evolved in New York City in 1927. It is a fusion of many dances that preceded it or were popular during its development but is mainly based on jazz, tap, breakaway and Charleston. Lindy Hop co-evolved with jazz music and is a member of the swing dance family. It is frequently described as a jazz or street dance. In its development, Lindy Hop combined elements of both solo and partner dancing by using the movements and improvisation of blac...
54	 Biological warfare'" (BW) ? known as a "'germ warfare'", "'biological weapons'" and "'bioweaponry'" ? is the use of any pathogen (bacterium, virus or other disease-causing organism) as a weapon of war. Using nonliving toxic products, even if produced by living organisms (e.g., toxins), is considered chemical warfare under the provisions of the Chemical Weapons Convention. A BW weapon may be intended to kill, incapacitate or seriously impede on an individual as well as entire ...
55	 The nervous system'" is a network of specialized cells that communicate information about an animal's surroundings and itself. It processes this information and causes reactions in other parts of the body. It is composed of neurons and other specialized cells called glia, that aid in the function of the neurons. The nervous system is divided broadly into two categories; the peripheral nervous system and the central nervous system. Neurons generate and conduct impulses between and...
56	 Heavy metal'" (often referred to simply as "'metal'") is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in England and the United States. With roots in blues-rock and psychedelic rock, the bands that created heavy metal developed a thick, massive sound, characterized by highly amplified distortion, extended guitar solos, and emphatic beats. Allmusic states that "of all rock & roll's myriad forms, heavy metal is the most extreme in terms of volu...
57	 Carbon dioxide'" (chemical formula: "') is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth's atmosphere in this state. It is currently at a globally averaged concentration of approximately 387 ppm by volume in the Earth's atmosphere. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide fluctuate slightly with the change of the seasons, driven primarily by seasonal plant growth...
58	 Politics of Guam'" takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic system, whereby the Governor is head of government, and of a multi-party system. Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States with policy relations between Guam and the US under the jurisdiction of the Office of Insular Affairs. Background. The population of Guam is largely proud to be a part of America, and its economy is greatly dependent on the U.S. military bases...
59	 If and only if'", in logic and fields that rely on it such as mathematics and philosophy, is a logical connective between statements which means that the truth of either one of the statements requires the truth of the other. Thus, either both statements are true, or both are false. To put it another way, the first statement will always be true when the second statement is, and will "only" be true under those conditions. In writing, common alternative phrases to "if and only if" i...
60	 The gambler's fallacy'", also known as the "'Monte Carlo fallacy'" or the "'fallacy of the maturity of chances'", is the false belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process then these deviations are likely to be evened out by opposite deviations in the future. For example, if a fair coin is tossed repeatedly and tails comes up a larger number of times than is expected, a gambler may incorrectly believe that...
61	 (also called Ezo'" in historical texts) are an ethnic group indigenous to Hokkaid?, the Kuril Islands, and much of Sakhalin. There are most likely over 150,000 Ainu today; however the exact figure is not known as many Ainu hide their origin due to racial issues in Japan. In many cases, surviving Ainu may not be even aware of their ancestry, as their parents and grandparents kept their descent private in order to protect their children from social problems. Their most widely known et...
62	 Greek fire'" was a burning-liquid weapon used by the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines typically used it in naval battles to great effect as it could continue burning even on water. It was largely responsible for many Byzantine military victories, and partly the reason for the Byzantine Empire surviving as long as it did. Medieval sources mention weapons sometimes referred to as "Greek fire" as being also used by Arabs, Chinese, and Mongols; however, these were most likely another inc...
63	 Cattle'", colloquially referred to as "'cows'", are domesticated ungulates, a member of the subfamily Bovinae of the family Bovidae. They are raised as livestock for meat (called beef and veal), dairy products (milk), leather and as draft animals (pulling carts, plows and the like). In some countries, such as India, they are honored in religious ceremonies and revered. It is estimated that there are 1.3 billion cattle in the world today. Species of cattle. Cattle were originally identifi...
64	 The Digital Private Network Signalling System'" ("'DPNSS) is a network protocol used on digital trunk lines for connecting two PABX. It supports a defined set of inter-networking facilities. DPNSS was originally defined by British Telecom. The specification for the protocol is defined in BTNR188. The specification currently comes under the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee. History. DPNSS was developed in the early 1980s by BT, or its fore...
65	 Auto racing'" (also known as "'automobile racing'", "'motor racing'" or "'car racing'") is a motorsport involving racing cars. It is one of the world's most watched television sports. The beginning of racing. Racing began soon after the construction of the first successful petrol-fueled autos; before that time people raced in other vehicles such as horse-drawn buggies. The first race ever organized, by the chief editor of Paris publication Le V?locip?de, Monsieur Fossier, was on Apr...
66	 A brick'" is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, laid using mortar. History. The oldest shaped bricks found date back to 7,500 B.C. They have been found in ?ay?n?, a place located in the upper Tigris area, and in south east Anatolia close to Diyarbakir. Other more recent findings, dated between 7,000 and 6,395 B.C., come from Jericho and Catal H?y?k. From archaeological evidence, the inven?tion of the fired brick (as opposed to the consid?erably earlier sun-dried mud...
67	 Cheddar'" is a large village and civil parish in the district of Sedgemoor in the English county of Somerset. It is situated on the southern edge of the Mendip Hills north west of Wells. Village status. Cheddar is a village. The adjacent settlement of Axbridge, although only about a third the population of Cheddar, is a town. This apparently illogical situation is explained by the relative importance of the two places in historic times. While Axbridge grew in importance as a centre for ...
68	 Liberia'" was set up by citizens of the United States as a colony for former African-American slaves from the U.S.A.. There is only one other state in the world that is started by citizens of a political power as a settlement for former slaves from the same political power: Sierra Leone, begun for that same purpose by Britain. Indigenous peoples. It is believed that many of the indigenous peoples of Liberia migrated there from the north and east between the 12th and 16th cent...
69	 Dziga Vertov'" (,) January 15, 1896?February 12, 1954) was a Soviet pioneer documentary film and newsreel director. His brothers Boris Kaufman and Mikhail Kaufman were also notable filmmakers. Early years. Born "'David Abelevich Kaufman'" () into a family of Jewish intellectuals in Bia?ystok, Congress Poland, then a part of the Russian Empire, he Russified his Jewish patronymic to "Arkadievich" at some point after 1918. Kaufman studied music at Bia?ystok Conservatory until his fami...
70	 Microelectromechanical systems'" ("'MEMS'") is the technology of the very small, and merges at the nano-scale into nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) and nanotechnology. MEMS are also referred to as micromachines (in Japan), or "Micro Systems Technology" - "MST" (in Europe). MEMS are separate and distinct from the hypothetical vision of Molecular nanotechnology or Molecular Electronics. MEMS are made up of components between 1 to 100 micrometers in size (i.e. 0....
71	 Sir David Brewster'", FRS (11 December 1781 ? 10 February 1868) was a Scottish scientist, inventor and writer. He was born at Jedburgh, where his father, a teacher of high reputation, was rector of the grammar school. At the age of twelve, he was sent to the University of Edinburgh, being intended for the clergy. However, he had already shown a strong inclination for natural science, and this had been fostered by his intimacy with a "self-taught philosopher, astronomer and mathem...
72	 Gdynia'" ((until 1939), "Gotenhafen" (1939-1945);) is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport at Gda?sk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea. Located in Kashubia in Eastern Pomerania, Gdynia is part of a conurbation with the spa town of Sopot, the city of Gda?sk and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the Tricity ("Tr?jmiasto"), with a population of over a million people. History. The first known mention of the name "Gd...
73	 Michael Edward Palin'", CBE (born 5 May 1943) is an English comedian, actor, writer and television presenter best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for his travel documentaries. Palin wrote most of his material with Terry Jones. Before Monty Python, they had worked on other shows such as "The Ken Dodd Show", "The Frost Report" and "Do Not Adjust Your Set". Palin appeared in some of the most famous Python sketches, including "The Dead Parrot", ...
74	 Albrecht D?rer'" () (May 21, 1471 ? April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His still-famous works include the "Apocalypse" woodcuts, "Knight, Death, and the Devil" (1513), "Saint Jerome in his Study" (1514) and "Melencolia I" (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that med...
75	 Johnny Weissmuller'" (June 2, 1904 ? January 20, 1984) was an American swimmer and actor who was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. After his swimming career, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve motion pictures. Dozens of other actors have also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller is by far the ...
76	 The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto'" was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. The number of speakers has grown gradually over time, although it has not had much support from governments and international bodies, and has sometimes been outlawed or otherwise suppressed. Development of the language before publication. Zamenhof would later say that he had dreamed of a world language since he was a child. At first...
77	 Clive Barker'" (born 5 October 1952) is an English author, film director and visual artist. Personal life. Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (n?e Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at the same schools as John Lennon: Dovedale County Primary and Quarrybank. He studied English and philosophy at Liverpool University. Barker lives in Los Angeles, California with hi...
78	 In computing, local e-mail clients use the Post Office Protocol version 3'" ("'POP3'"), an application-layer Internet standard protocol, to retrieve e-mail from a remote server over a IP connection. POP3 and IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both. Overview. POP3 has made earlier versions of the protocol, informally called POP1 and POP2,...
79	 A planned economy'" or "'directed economy'" is an economic system in which the government or workers' councils manages the economy. Its most extensive form is referred to as a "'command economy'", "'centrally planned economy'", or "'command and control economy'". In such economies, the state or government controls all major sectors of the economy and formulates all decisions about their use and about the distribution of income, much like a communist state. The planners decide wh...
80	 Near-Earth objects'" ("'NEOs'") are asteroids, comets and large meteoroids whose orbits bring them close (perihelion distance < 1.3 AU) to Earth's orbit, and which may therefore pose a collision danger. Due to their size and proximity, NEOs are also more easily accessible for spacecraft from Earth and are important for future scientific investigation and commercial development. Some near-Earth asteroids can be reached with a much smaller change in velocity (?V) than the Moon. ...
81	 Inoculation'" is the placement of something to where it will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease; but also can be used to refer to the communication of a disease to a living organism by transferring its causative agent into the organism, to implant microorganisms or infectious material into a culture med...
82	 In mathematics, a metric space'" is a set where a notion of distance (called a metric) between elements of the set is defined. The metric space which most closely corresponds to our intuitive understanding of space is the 3-dimensional Euclidean space. In fact, the notion of "metric" is a generalization of the Euclidean metric arising from the four long known properties of the Euclidean distance. The Euclidean metric defines the distance between two points as the length of the stra...
83	 A bat'" is a mammal in the order "'Chiroptera'". The forelimbs of all bats are developed as wings, making them the only mammals naturally capable of flight (though other mammals, such as flying squirrels, flying possums and colugos, can glide for limited distances). The word "Chiroptera" comes from the Greek words "cheir" (????) "hand" and "pteron" (??????) "wing," as the structure of the open wing is very similar to an outspread human hand with a membrane (patagium) between the fingers tha...
84	 Non-standard analysis'" is a branch of mathematics that formulates analysis using a rigorous notion of an infinitesimal number. Non-standard analysis was introduced in the early 1960s by the mathematician Abraham Robinson. He wrote: A non-zero element of an ordered field "F" is infinitesimal if and only if its absolute value is smaller than any element of "F" of the form 1/"n", for "n" a natural number. Ordered fields that have infinitesimal elements are also called non-Ar...
85	 Douglas Richard Hofstadter'" (born February 15, 1945 in New York, New York) is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, thinking and creativity. He is best known for ", first published in 1979, for which he was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. Early life and education. Hofstadter is the son of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Hofstadter. He grew up on the campus of Stanford University, where his father was a professor. The youn...
86	 Ellis Island'", at the mouth of the Hudson River in New York Harbor, is the location of what was at one time the main entry facility for immigrants entering the United States; the facility operated from January 1, 1892, until November 12, 1954. It is owned by the Federal government and is now part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, under the jurisdiction of the US National Park Service. It is situated in Jersey City, New Jersey and New York City. Ellis Island was the subje...
87	 An abacus'", also called a "'counting frame'", is a calculating tool used primarily by Asians for performing arithmetic processes. Today, abaci are often constructed as a wooden frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves in sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal. The abacus was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in China, Japan, Africa, I...
88	 Canadian culture'" is a term that encompasses the artistic, musical, literary, culinary, political and social elements that are representative of Canada, not only to its own population, but to people all over the world. Canada's culture has historically been influenced by European culture and traditions, especially British and French. Over time, elements of the cultures of Canada's Aboriginal peoples and immigrant populations have become incorporated into mainstream Canadian c...
89	 Balmoral Castle'" is a large estate house situated in the area of Aberdeenshire, Scotland known as Royal Deeside. The estate was purchased by Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, and remains a favourite summer royal residence. The Balmoral estate has been passed down the generations and has gradually expanded to more than 260 square kilometres (65,000 acres). Today it is a working estate, employing 50 full time staff and 50 to 100 part time. Early history. The Balmoral Estate...
90	 A lighthouse'" is a tower, building, or framework designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses or, in older times, from a fire and used as an aid to navigation and to pilots at sea. Lighthouses are used to mark dangerous coastlines, hazardous shoals and reefs, safe entries to harbors and can also assist in aerial navigation. Once widely used, the number of operational lighthouses has declined due to the expense of maintenance and replacement by modern electronic navigatio...
91	 Neon'" () is the chemical element that has the symbol "'Ne'" and atomic number 10. Although a very common element in the universe, it is rare on Earth. A colorless, inert noble gas under standard conditions, neon gives a distinct reddish glow when used in vacuum discharge tubes and neon lamps. It is commercially extracted from air, in which it is found in trace amounts. History. Neon (Greek "????"("neon") meaning "new one") was discovered in 1898 by Scottish chemist William Ramsay (1852 - ...
92	 Critical psychology'" is a branch of psychology that is aimed at critiquing mainstream psychology and attempts to apply psychology in more progressive ways, often looking towards social change as a means of preventing and treating psychopathology. One of Critical Psychology's main criticisms of conventional psychology is how it fails to consider or deliberately ignores the way power differences between social classes and groups can impact the mental and physical well-being o...
93	 The Brisbane Broncos'" are an Australian professional rugby league club based in the city of Brisbane, Queensland. The Broncos play in Australasia's elite competition, the National Rugby League (NRL) premiership. They have won six premierships during their twenty years in competition, making them the league's most successful club over the past two decades. The Broncos have one of the largest fan bases in Australia and also records the highest annual revenue of all NRL clubs and...
94	 The Haber process'", also called the "'Haber?Bosch process'", is the nitrogen fixation reaction of nitrogen and hydrogen, over an iron substrate, to produce ammonia. The Haber process is important because ammonia is difficult to produce on an industrial scale and the fertilizer generated from the ammonia is responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population. Even though 78.1% of the air we breathe is nitrogen, the gas is relatively unreactive because nitrogen molecules...
95	 Benjamin Franklin'" (April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage od...
96	 The History of Comoros'" is perhaps 1500 years old. It has been inhabited by various groups throughout this time. France colonised the islands in the 19th century. Comoros finally became independent in 1971 Early inhabitants. It is thought that the Comoros islands were first visited by Phoenician sailors. The earliest inhabitants of the islands may have been 5th or 6th Century Melanesian or Polynesian sailors; a 6th Century settlement on Nzwani was found by archaeologists. Tr...
97	 The Melbourne Cup'" is Australia's major annual thoroughbred horse race. Billed as "The race that stops a nation", it is for three-year-olds and over, and covers a distance of 3,200 metres. It is generally regarded as the most prestigious "two-mile" handicap in the world. The event is held on the first Tuesday in November by the Victoria Racing Club, on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. This day was traditionally only a public holiday within metropolitan Melbourne, but is no...
98	 Poultry'" is the category of domesticated birds which some humans keep for the purpose of collecting their eggs, or kill for their meat and/or feathers. These most typically are members of the superorder Galloanserae (fowl), especially the order Galliformes (which includes chickens and turkeys) and the family Anatidae (in order Anseriformes), commonly known as "waterfowl" (e.g. domestic ducks and domestic geese). Poultry also include other birds which humans kill for their meat, such as...
99	 Geometry'" (Greek "?????????"; geo = earth, metria = measure) arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers. Classic geometry was focused in compass and straightedge constructions. As they are the composition of five elemental constructions over a set of elements, as an algebra over an axiomatic system, the barrier between algebra and geometry began to fad...
100	 The Politics of North Korea'" take place within a nominally democratic multi-party framework; in practice, North Korea functions as a dominant-party state. It is widely considered to be a totalitarian dictatorship and the Economist Intelligence Unit, while admitting that "there is no consensus on how to measure democracy" and that "definitions of democracy are contested", lists North Korea in last place as the most authoritarian regime in its index of democracy assessing...
101	 Palestinian people'" or "'Palestinians'" (, "ash-sha`b al-filasT?ni";, "al-filasT?n?yy?n"), also commonly rendered as Palestinian Arabs'" (, "al-`Arab al-filasT?n?yy?n") are terms commonly used to refer to an Arabic-speaking people with family origins in Palestine. Today Palestinians are predominantly Sunni Muslims, though there is a significant Christian minority as well as smaller religious communities. The total Palestinian population worldwide is estimated between 10 and ...
102	 Latency'" is a time delay between the moment something is initiated, and the moment one of its effects begins or becomes detectable. The word derives from the fact that during the period of latency the effects of an action are latent, meaning "potential" or "not yet observed". Even within an engineering context, latency has several meanings depending on the engineering area concerned (i.e. communication, operational, simulation, mechanical, or biomedical fiber stimulation ...
103	 GNOME'" (in RP or in the US/Canada) is a desktop environment?the graphical user interface which runs on top of a computer operating system?composed entirely of free software. It is an international project that includes creating software development frameworks, selecting application software for the desktop, and working on the programs which manage application launching, file handling, and window and task management. GNOME is part of the GNU Project and can be used with various Unix-like ...
104	 Nicholas II of Russia'" born "'Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov'" () () was the last Tsar of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland. His official title was "'Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias'" and he is currently regarded as "'Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer'" by the Russian Orthodox Church. Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until his abdication in 1917. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917 in which he and his family were imprisoned fi...
105	 The term acquis communautaire'", or "'(EU) acquis'" (), is used in European Union law to refer to the total body of EU law accumulated thus far. The term is French: "acquis" means "that which has been acquired", and "communautaire" means "of the community". Chapters of the acquis. During the process of the enlargement of the European Union, the acquis was divided into 31 chapters for the purpose of negotiation between the EU and the candidate member states for the fifth enl...
106	 Hong Kong'" has a highly developed and sophisticated transportation network, encompassing both public and private transport. Over 90% of the daily journeys are on public transport, making it the highest in the world. Since 1997, an electronic money system, namely the Octopus card, has been introduced to provide a fast, efficient and convenient fares payment alternative to the traditional banknotes and coins. Available for purchase in every Mass Transit Railway stations, t...
107	 Kiribati'" or ("kirr-i-bas," or KEE-ree-buhss, in Gilbertese), officially the Republic of Kiribati'", is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. It is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island dispersed over 3,500,000 square kilometres (1,351,000?square?miles) straddling the equator and bordering the International Date Line to the east. The name "'Kiribati'" is the local pronunciation of "Gilberts", derived from the main island chain, the "'Gilbert Islan...
108	 Lymphedema'", also spelled "'lymphoedema'", also known as "'lymphatic obstruction'", is a condition of localized fluid retention caused by a compromised lymphatic system. The lymphatic system (often referred to as the body's "second" circulatory system) collects and filters the interstitial fluid of the body. Lymphedema has been barely recognized as being a serious health problem; however, this is slowly changing due to education and awareness. The danger with lymphedema comes from t...
109	 The Battle of the Nile'" or "'Aboukir Bay'" (August 1-2, 1798) saw a British fleet under Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson defeat a French fleet, stranding Napoleon's army in Egypt. French losses have been estimated to have been as high as 1,700 dead (including Vice-Admiral Brueys) and 3,000 captured. British losses were 218 dead. Background. Still on the rise but not yet the primary enemy of Britain, commanding General Napoleon Bonaparte intended to threaten the British position i...
110	 Politics of the Cayman Islands'" takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic overseas territory, whereby the Leader of Government Business is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Legislative Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature. The Cayman Islands' physical isolation under earl...
111	 Gallifrey'" is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series "Doctor Who" and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords. It is supposed to be located in the constellation of Kasterborous, at "galactic coordinates ten-zero-eleven-zero-zero by zero-two from galactic zero centre" ("Pyramids of Mars", 1975), some 250 million light years away from Earth (as stated in the 1996 "Doctor Who" television movie; this would put it outside our Milky Way g...
112	 The Khazars'" were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who dominated the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus from the 7th to the 10th century CE. The name 'Khazar' seems to be tied to a Turkic verb form meaning "wandering". In the 7th century CE, the Khazars founded an independent Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea. Although the Khazars were initially Tengri shamanists, many of them converted to Christianity, Islam, and other religions. During the eighth or ninth century...
113	 Nuruddin Salim Jahangir'" (full title: "Al-Sultan al-'Azam wal Khaqan al-Mukarram, Khushru-i-Giti Panah, Abu'l-Fath Nur ud-din Muhammad Jahangir Padshah Ghazi [Jannat-Maksani]"(September 20, 1569-November 8, 1627) (OS August 31, 1569 NS November 8, 1627) was the ruler of the Mughal Empire from 1605 until his death. The name Jahangir is from Persian ???????, meaning "Conqueror of the World," "World-Conqueror." Alternative spellings of the name include "Ghehangir", and "Cihangir" (in Tur...
114	 MIDI'" ("'Musical Instrument Digital Interface'",) is an industry-standard protocol that enables electronic musical instruments, computers, and other equipment to communicate, control, and synchronize with each other. MIDI allows computers, synthesizers, MIDI controllers, sound cards, samplers and drum machines to control one another, and to exchange system data (acting as a raw data encapsulation method for sysex commands). MIDI does not transmit an audio s...
115	 The word "mythology" (from the Greek "mytholog?a", meaning "a story-telling, a legendary lore") refers to a body of folklore/myths/legends that a particular culture believes to be true and that often use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. Mythology'" also refers to the branch of knowledge dealing with the collection, study and interpretation of myths, also known as mythography. The study of myths from multiple cultures ...
116	 Hunter College of the City University of New York'" is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Originally known as the Normal College, Hunter was founded in 1870 by Irish immigrant and social reformer Thomas Hunter as a teacher-training school for young women. Today, Hunter is a coeducational liberal arts and sciences college that offers undergraduate and graduate programs in more than 100 fields. The college is organize...
117	 The 'General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade' (typically abbreviated 'GATT') was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization (ITO). The Bretton Woods Conference had introduced the idea for an organization to regulate trade as part of a larger plan for economic recovery after World War II. As governments negotiated the ITO, 15 negotiating states began parallel negotiations for the GATT as a way to atta...
118	 In economics and finance, arbitrage'" is the practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, a risk-free profit. A person who...
119	 The Empire State Building'" is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building again bec...
120	 The New Testament'" (Greek: ????? ???????, "Kain? Diath?k?") is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Hebrew Bible (also called by Jews Tanakh), known to Christians as the Old Testament. The New Testament is sometimes called the Greek Testament'" or "'Greek Scriptures'", or the New Covenant ? which is the literal translation of the original Greek. The original texts were written in Koine Greek by various a...
121	 The history of Lebanon'" is almost as old as the earliest evidence of humankind. Its geographic position as a crossroads linking the Mediterranean Basin with the great Asian hinterland has conferred on it a cosmopolitan character and a multicultural legacy. At different periods of its history, Lebanon has come under the domination of foreign rulers, including Assyrians, Babylonians, Armenians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans, and French. Although often conquered, th...
122	 Caius Cilnius Maecenas'" (70 ? 8 BC) was a confidant and political advisor to Octavian (who was to become the first Emperor of Rome as Caesar Augustus) as well as an important patron for the new generation of 'Augustan' poets. His name has become a byword for a wealthy patron of the arts. Biography. Expressions in Propertius seem to imply that Maecenas had taken some part in the campaigns of Mutina, Philippi and Perusia. He prided himself on his ancient Etruscan lineage, and clai...
123	 The City University of New York'" (CUNY; acronym), is the public university system of New York City. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, a doctorate-granting graduate school, a journalism school, a law school and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education. More than 450,000 degree-credit, adult, continuing and professional education students are enrolled at campuses located in all fiv...
124	 James Robert (Bob) Wills'" (March 6, 1905 ? May 13, 1975) was an American Western swing musician, songwriter, and bandleader, considered by many music authorities one of the fathers of Western swing and called by his fans the "King of Western Swing." New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. He was born near Kosse, Texas to Emma Lee Foley and John Tompkins Wills. His father was a fiddle player who along with his grandfather, taught the young Wills to play the fiddle and the mandolin. Wills spe...
125	 Crystallography'" is the experimental science of determining the arrangement of atoms in solids. In older usage, it is the scientific study of crystals. The word "crystallography" is derived from the Greek words "crystallon" = cold drop / frozen drop, with its meaning extending to all solids with some degree of transparency, and "graphein" = write. Before the development of X-ray diffraction crystallography (see below), the study of crystals was based on the geometry of the crys...
126	 David Keith Lynch'" (born January 20, 1946) is an American director, screenwriter, producer, painter, cartoonist, composer, video and performance artist. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for "The Elephant Man" (1980), "Blue Velvet" (1986), and "Mulholland Drive" (2001). Lynch has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed a distinctive and unorthodox approach to narrative film making...
127	 Head of state'" is the generic term for the individual or collective office that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchic or republican nation-state, federation, commonwealth or any other political state. His or her role generally includes personifying the continuity and legitimacy of the state and exercising the political powers, functions and duties granted to the head of state in the country's constitution and further legislation. The head of state is often thou...
128	 Ion implantation'" is a materials engineering process by which ions of a material can be implanted into another solid, thereby changing the physical properties of the solid. Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as various applications in materials science research. The ions introduce both a chemical change in the target, in that they can be a different element than the target, and a structural change, in that the crystal s...
129	 Cannibalism'" (from Spanish, in connection with cannibalism among the Antillean Caribs), also called "'anthropophagy'" (from Greek: ????????, "anthropos", "human being"; and ??????, "phagein", "to eat") is the act or practice of humans eating flesh of other humans. In zoology, the term "cannibalism" is extended to refer to any species consuming members of its own kind (see cannibalism (zoology)). Neanderthals are believed to have practiced cannibalism. Among modern humans it has bee...
130	 Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges'" (24 August 1899 ? 14 June 1986) was an Argentine writer whose work included short stories, essays, poetry, literary criticism, and translations. Parents and early life. Jorge Luis Borges was born on 24 August 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to an educated family descended from famous military figures in Argentina's history; in accordance with Argentine custom, he never used his entire name. Borges' mother, Leonor Acevedo Su?rez, came from...
131	 The electric bass guitar'" (also called "'electric bass'", or simply "'bass'";, as in "base") is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb (either by plucking, slapping, popping, tapping, or thumping), or by using a pick. The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a larger body, a longer neck and scale length, and usually four strings tuned to the same pitches as those of the double bass, which also corresponds to...
132	 The Cornish language'" (in Cornish: "Kernewek/Kernowek" in Standard Written Form; also written "Kernewek" in UC and KK, "Kernowek" in UCR and Kernowek Standard, "Curnoack" in RLC) is one of the Brythonic group of Celtic languages. The language continued to function as a community language in parts of Cornwall until the late 18th century, and there have been attempts to revive the language since the early 20th century. A revived language. In the 20th century a conscious effort w...
133	 , was a fan-shaped artificial island in the bay of Nagasaki that was a Dutch trading port during Japan's self-imposed isolation ("sakoku") of the Edo period, from 1641 until 1853. History. The artificial island, constructed in 1634 on orders of shogun Iemitsu, originally accommodated Portuguese merchants. The Shimabara uprising of 1637, in which Christian Japanese took an active part, was crushed with the help of the Dutch. After the Portuguese and other Catholic nations were expelled fr...
134	 Hezekiah'" (or "'Ezekias'") (Hebrew:, Khizkiyahu; or, Y'khizkiyahu; "the has strengthened"; compare Ezekiel) was the 13th king of independent Judah and the son of King Ahaz and Abijah (2 Chronicles 29:1), who was a daughter of a man (who was not the prophet) named Zechariah. (Abijah was also known as Abi (2 Kings 18:1-2).) He took the throne at the age of twenty-five (2 Chronicles 29:1) and reigned twenty-nine years (2 Kings 18:2). He is also one of the kings mentioned in the genealogy...
135	 The term medieval music'" encompasses European music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends in approximately the middle of the fifteenth century. Establishing the end of the medieval era and the beginning of the Renaissance is admittedly arbitrary; 1400 is used here. Styles and trends. The only medieval music which can be studied is that which was written down, and survived. Since creating musical manuscripts was very expensive,...
136	 Kevin Warwick'" (born 9 February 1954 Coventry, UK) is a British scientist and professor of cybernetics at the University of Reading, UK. He is probably best known for his studies on direct interfaces between computer systems and the human nervous system, although he has done much research in the field of robotics. Biography. Kevin Warwick was born in 1954 in Coventry in the United Kingdom. He attended Lawrence Sheriff School in Rugby, Warwickshire. He left school in 1970 to join ...
137	 The mythology of pre-Christian Ireland'" did not entirely survive the conversion to Christianity, but much of it was preserved, shorn of its religious meanings, in medieval Irish literature, which represents the most extensive and best preserved of all the branches of Celtic mythology. Although many of the manuscripts have failed to survive, and much more material was probably never committed to writing, there is enough remaining to enable the identification of four distinct, if...
138	 Emma Goldman'" (June 27, 1869 ? May 14, 1940) was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and derided by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution. Born in Kaunas, Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire), to an Orthodox Jewish family, Goldman suffered from a violent relationship with her father. Although she attended schools in K?nigsberg, her father r...
139	 "Giulio Cesare" was an Italian "Conte di Cavour"-class battleship that served in the Regia Marina in both World Wars before joining the Soviet Navy as the "Novorossiysk". Her keel was laid down on 24 June 1910 at Cantieri Ansaldo, Genoa. She was launched 15 October 1911, and construction was completed 14 May 1914. "Giulio Cesare" (Italian for Julius Caesar, motto "Caesar Adest") had no active missions during World War I. In 1926 she attacked the Greek island of ...
140	 The National Cartoonists Society'" is the world's largest organization of professional cartoonists. It presents the "'Reuben Awards'". The NCS was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They found that they enjoyed each other's company and decided to get together on a regular basis. Today, the NCS membership roster includes over 500 of the world's major cartoonists, working in many branches of the profession, including newspape...
141	 Chiapas'" is the southernmost state of Mexico, located towards the southeast of the country. Chiapas is bordered by the states of Tabasco to the north, Veracruz to the northwest, and Oaxaca to the west. To the east Chiapas borders Guatemala, and to the south the Pacific Ocean. Chiapas has an area of. The 2005 census population was 4,293,459 people. In general Chiapas has a humid, tropical climate. In the north, in the area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa, rainfall can average more than pe...
142	 Proportional representation'" (sometimes referred to as full representation, or PR), is a category of electoral formula aiming at a close match between the percentage of votes that groups of candidates (grouped by a certain measure) obtain in elections and the percentage of seats they receive (usually in legislative assemblies). PR is a democratic principle rather than an electoral system in itself. It is often contrasted to plurality voting systems, where disproport...
143	 In the Battle of Waterloo'" (Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo, Belgium) forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Bl?cher and an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington. It was the decisive battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Bonaparte's last. The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French, ...
144	 Bali'" is an Indonesian island located at, the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east. It is one of the country's 33 provinces with the provincial capital at Denpasar towards the south of the island. With a population recorded as 3,151,000 in 2005, the island is home to the vast majority of Indonesia's small Hindu minority. 93.18% of Bali's population adheres to Balinese Hinduism, while most of the remainder follow Islam. It is also t...
145	 Afrikaans'" is an Indo-European language, derived from 17th century Dutch and classified as Low Franconian Germanic, mainly spoken in South Africa and Namibia, with smaller numbers of speakers in Botswana, Angola, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Zambia and Argentina. Due to emigration and migrant labour, there are possibly over 100,000 Afrikaans speakers in the United Kingdom, with other substantial communities found in Brussels, Amsterdam, Perth, Mount Isa, Toronto and Auckland. It is ...
146	 The North Sea'" is a marginal, epeiric sea of the Atlantic Ocean on the European continental shelf. It is more than long and wide, with an area of around. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea. The North Sea connects with the rest of the Atlantic through the Dover Strait and the English Channel in the south and through the Norwegian Sea in the north. The North Sea averages about 100?m (325?ft) deep, with a maximum de...
147	 The Christian countercult movement'" is a collective description for many, mostly unrelated, ministries and individual Christians who oppose religious groups whose doctrines or practices do not fit within their definition of mainstream Christianity, which they consider to be cults. They are also known as "'discernment ministries'". Overview. Protagonists generally come from an Evangelical or fundamentalist background, although many have Roman Catholic, Eastern Ort...
148	 In mathematics, a countable set'" is a set with the same cardinality (i.e., number of elements) as some subset of the set of natural numbers. The term was originated by Georg Cantor; it stems from the fact that the natural numbers are often called "counting numbers". A set that is not countable is called "uncountable". Some authors use "countable set" to mean a set with exactly as many elements as the set of natural numbers. The difference between the two definitions is that under...
149	 A guild'" is an association of craftsmen in a particular trade. The earliest guilds were formed as confraternities of workers. Early guilds 300 - 600 AD. In pre-industrial cities, craftsmen tended to form associations based on their trades, confraternities of textile workers, masons, carpenters, carvers, glassworkers, each of whom controlled secrets of traditionally imparted technology, the "arts" or "mysteries" of their crafts. Usually the founders were free independent master craftsmen....
150	 Claude Elwood Shannon'" (April 30, 1916 ? February 24, 2001), an American electronic engineer and mathematician, is "the father of information theory". Shannon is famous for having founded information theory with one landmark paper published in 1948. But he is also credited with founding both digital computer and digital circuit design theory in 1937, when, as a 21-year-old master's student at MIT, he wrote a thesis demonstrating that electrical application of Boolean algebra cou...
151	 Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower'" (October 14, 1890 ? March 28, 1969) was President of the United States from 1953 until 1961 and a five-star general in the United States Army. During the Second World War, he served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe, with responsibility for planning and supervising the successful invasion of France and Germany in 1944?45. In 1951, he became the first supreme commander of NATO. As President, he oversaw the cease-fire of the K...
152	 Henry VII'" (28 January 1457 ? 21 April 1509), King of England, Lord of Ireland (22 August 1485 ? 21 April 1509), born "'Henry Tudor'" (Welsh "'Harri Tudur'"), was the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Early life. Henry was born at Pembroke Castle, Wales in 1457, the only son of Edmund Tudor and Lady Margaret Beaufort. His father died two months before he was born, which meant that the young Henry spent much of his life with his uncle, Jasper Tudor, 2nd Duke of Bedford. W...
153	 M?tley Cr?e'" (IPA pronunciation:) is an American heavy metal band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The band was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx (who was, at the time, in a band called London) and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by guitarist Mick Mars and singer Vince Neil. M?tley Cr?e has sold over 80 million album copies worldwide The band has often been noted for their hard-living lifestyles; all members have had numerous brushes with the law, spent time i...
154	 Wessel Johannes "Hansie" Cronje'" (September 25, 1969 - June 1, 2002) was a South African cricketer and captain of the South African national cricket team in the 1990s. He was voted the 11th greatest South African in 2004 despite having been banned for life from professional cricket for his role in a match-fixing scandal. Early life. Born in Bloemfontein, Cronje matriculated in 1987 from the prestigious Grey College school in Bloemfontein. An excellent all round sportsman, he repr...
155	 The Office of Strategic Services'" ("'OSS'") was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War?II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. Origins and Activities. Prior to the formation of the OSS (the counterpart of the British Secret Intelligence Service), American intelligence had been conducted on an ad-hoc basis by the various departments of the executive branch, including State, Treasury,...
156	 The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Vikings compete in the National Football Conference of the National Football League. They have been a member of the North Division since the NFL realigned in 2002. Prior to the realignment, they had been a member of the Central Division, also known as the Black & Blue Division. The Vikings have won one NFL championship (Pre-1970 AFL-NFL Merger) losing 23-7 to the Kansas Cit...
157	 Judge Joe Dredd'" is a comics character whose strip in the British science fiction anthology "2000 AD" is the magazine's longest running (having been featured there since its second issue in 1977). Dredd is a law enforcement officer in a violent city of the future where uniformed Judges combine the powers of police, judge, jury and executioner. Dredd and his fellow Judges are empowered to arrest, sentence and even execute criminals on the spot. He was created by writer John Wagner a...
158	 The Economy of Croatia'" is a service-based economy, with the service sector accounting for 67% of the total GDP. The preliminary GDP data for 2007 put Croatian GDP at 275,5 billion Croatian Kuna, or just over USD 12.400 per capita, putting Croatia ahead of the EU member states Bulgaria,Romania, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The estimated Gross Domestic Product per capita in purchasing power parity in 2007 was around USD 16.540 or 54.2% of the EU average for the same year. Sh...
159	 Boxing'" (sometimes also known as "'English boxing'" or "'pugilism'") is a combat sport in which two participants, generally of similar weight, fight each other with their fists. Boxing is supervised by a referee and is typically engaged in during a series of one to three-minute intervals called rounds. Victory is achieved if the opponent is knocked down and unable to get up before the referee counts to ten seconds (a Knockout, or KO) or if the opponent is deemed too injured to continue ...
160	 Mass'" is a fundamental concept in physics, roughly corresponding to the intuitive idea of how much matter there is in an object. Mass is a central concept of classical mechanics and related subjects, and there are several definitions of mass within the framework of relativistic kinematics (see mass in special relativity and mass in General Relativity). In the theory of relativity, the quantity invariant mass, which in concept is close to the classical idea of mass, does not vary between s...
161	 With an area of 1,760,000 square kilometers and a Mediterranean coastline of nearly 1,800 kilometers, Libya is fourth in size among the countries of Africa and seventeenth among the countries of the world. Its coastline lies between Egypt and Tunisia. Although the oil discoveries of the 1960s have brought it immense petroleum wealth, at the time of its independence it was an extremely poor desert state whose only important physical asset appeared to be its strategic location ...
162	 Cardiff'" (,) is the capital and the largest city and county in Wales. As well as being the political capital, it is Wales's centre for business, education, sport, tourism, culture, media and government. According to recent local government estimates, the population of the unitary authority area is 317,500. The city of Cardiff is the county town of the historic county of Glamorgan (later South Glamorgan). Cardiff is part of the Eurocities network of the largest European cities. Cardiff ...
163	 Continuum mechanics'" is a branch of mechanics that deals with the analysis of the kinematics and mechanical behavior of materials modeled as a continuum, e.g., solids and fluids (i.e., liquids and gases). A continuum concept assumes that the substance of the body is distributed throughout ? and completely fills ? the space it occupies. The continuum concept ignores the fact that matter is made of atoms, is not continuous, and that it commonly has some sort of heterogeneous ...
164	 Iron'" () is a chemical element with the symbol "'Fe'" () and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 element. Iron is a lustrous, silvery soft metal. It is one of the few ferromagnetic elements. Iron is notable for being the final elements produced by stellar nucleosynthesis, and are therefore the heaviest elements which do not require a red giant or supernova for formation. Iron and nickel are therefore the most abundant metals in metallic meteorites and in the dense-metal cores...
165	 In chemistry, the law of multiple proportions'" is one of the basic laws and a major tool of chemical measurement (stoichiometry). It states that when elements combine they do so in a ratio of small whole numbers. For example, carbon and oxygen react to form CO or CO2, but not CO1.3 for instance. Furthermore, it states that if two elements form more than one compound between them then the ratios of the masses of the second element combined with a fixed mass of the fi...
166	 Lundy'" is the largest island in the Bristol Channel, lying off the coast of Devon, England, approximately one third of the distance across the channel between England and Wales. Lundy gives its name to one of the British Sea Areas and is one of the islands of England. As of 2007, there was a resident population of 28 people, including volunteers. These include a warden, island manager, and farmer, as well as bar and house-keeping staff. Most live in and around the village at the south of...
167	 Deng Xiaoping'" (; 22 August 1904 19 February 1997) was a prominent Chinese revolutionary, politician, pragmatist and reformer, as well as the late leader of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Deng never held office as the head of state or the head of government, but served as the "de facto" leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to the early 1990s. Inheriting a China wrought with social and institutional woes left over from the devastating Cultural Revolution and oth...
168	 Fortaleza'" (Portuguese for fortress,) is the state capital of Cear?, located in Northeastern Brazil. With a population of over 3.4 million (metropolitan region), Fortaleza has an area of. To the north of the city lies the Atlantic Ocean; to the south are the cities of Pacatuba, Eus?bio, Maracana? and Itaitinga; to the east is the county of Aquiraz and the Atlantic Ocean; and to the west is the city of Caucaia. Residents of the city are known as Fortalezenses. The current mayor is Lui...
169	 The Apollo program'" was a human spaceflight program undertaken by NASA during the years 1961?1975 with the goal of conducting manned moon landing missions. US President John F. Kennedy announced this goal in 1961, and it was accomplished on July 20, 1969 by Neil Armstrong, and Buzz Aldrin, with Michael Collins in Moon orbit during the "Apollo 11" mission. Five other Apollo missions also landed astronauts on the Moon, the last one in 1972. These six Apollo spaceflights are the on...
170	 The line'" is a line of battery-powered handheld game consoles sold by Nintendo. It is one of the world's best-selling game system lines, with nearly 200 million units sold worldwide, as of November 17 2006. The original Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined sold 118.69 million units worldwide. As of June 30 2008, all versions of the Game Boy Advance combined have sold 81.24 million units. History. Nintendo's Game Boy handheld was first released in 1989. The gaming device was the b...
171	 Artificial intelligence'" ("'AI'") is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it. Major AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents," where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." Among the traits...
172	 Jeffrey Lynne'" (born 30 December 1947 in Shard End, Birmingham) is a Grammy Award-winning English rock songwriter, singer, guitarist and record producer who gained fame as the leader of ELO and was a co-founder and member of The Traveling Wilburys. Lynne has produced recordings for artists such as The Beatles and Tom Petty. He has co-written songs with Petty and also with George Harrison whose 1987 album Cloud Nine was co produced by Lynne and Harrison. His compositions include Evil...
173	 Columbus'" is the capital and the largest city of the U.S. state of Ohio. Located near the geographic center of the state, Columbus is the county seat of Franklin County, although parts of the city also extend into Delaware and Fairfield counties. Named for explorer Christopher Columbus, the city was founded in 1812 at the confluence of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers, and assumed the functions of state capital in 1816. The city has a diverse economy based on education, insurance...
174	 Most countries have anthems, defined as "a song, as of praise, devotion, or patriotism"; most anthems are either marches or hymns in style. A hymn can become a country's national anthem by a provision in the country's constitution, by a law enacted by its legislature, or simply by tradition. A royal anthem is a patriotic song similar to a national anthem, but it specifically praises or prays for a monarch or royal dynasty. Such anthems are usually performed at public ...
175	 S/MIME'" ("'Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions'") is a standard for public key encryption and signing of e-mail encapsulated in MIME. History. S/MIME was originally developed by RSA Data Security Inc. The original specification used the recently developed IETF MIME specification with the de facto industry standard 7 secure message format. Change control to S/MIME has since been vested in the IETF and the specification is now layered on Cryptographic Message Syntax, an IETF sp...
176	 Newfoundland English'" is a name for several dialects of English found in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, often regarded as the most distinctive dialect of English in Canada. Some specific Newfoundland dialects are similar to the accent heard in the southeast of Ireland (See Wexford and Waterford), while others are similar to those of West Country England, or a combination of both, mainly due to mass immigration from a limited number of ports in those specific re...
177	 Canadian English'" ("'CanE'", "'en-CA'") is the variety of English used in Canada. More than 26 million Canadians (85% of the population) have some knowledge of English (2006 census). Approximately 17 million speak English as their native language. Outside of Quebec, 76% of Canadians speak English natively. The phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon for most of Canada are very similar to that of the Western and Midland regions of the United States. Given the simi...
178	 Keno'" is a lottery-like or bingo-like gambling game played at modern casinos. A traditional live casino keno game uses a circular glass enclosure called a "bubble" containing 80 ping pong-like balls which determine the balldraw result. Each ball is imprinted with a number 1 through 80. During the balldraw, a blower pushes air into the bubble and mixes the balls. A "caller" presses a lever opening a tube, where the balls lift one at a time into a "V" shaped tube called the "rabbit ears". T...
179	 Marco Polo'" (September 15 1254 ? January 9 1324 at earliest but no later than June 1325) was a Venetian trader and explorer who gained fame for his worldwide travels, recorded in the book "Il Milione" ("The Million" or "The Travels of Marco Polo") also known as "Oriente Poliano" (the Orient of the Polos) and the "Description of the World". Polo, together with his father Niccol? and his uncle Maffeo, was one of the first Westerners to travel the Silk Road to China (which he called "C...
180	 The Society of Jesus'" (Latin: "Societas Iesu", "S.J." and "S.I." or "SJ", "SI") is a Catholic religious order of clerks regular whose members are called Jesuits'", "Soldiers of Christ", and "Foot soldiers of the Pope", because the founder, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, was a knight before becoming a priest. Jesuits are the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church, with 18,815 members ? 13,305 priests, 2,295 scholastic students, 1,758 brothers and 827 novices ? as of Jan...
181	 In cosmology, the cosmic microwave background radiation'" "'CMB'" (also "'CMBR'", "'CBR'", "'MBR'", and "'relic radiation'") is a form of electromagnetic radiation filling the universe. It has a thermal black body spectrum at a temperature of 2.725 K, thus the spectrum peaks in the microwave range frequency of 160.2 GHz, corresponding to a 1.9mm wavelength. The CMB's discovery in 1964 by astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work...
182	 "To see information about the M25 motorway under construction in Ireland, see N25 road." The M25 motorway'" is a 117?mile (188?km) orbital motorway which encircles Greater London, United Kingdom. It is one of the busiest stretches of the British motorway network, and almost completely encircles London; the gap is formed in the east, with the Dartford Crossing or the A282, linking two sides of the River Thames. It is said to be one of the longest city bypasses in the world. In Europ...
183	 The House of Commons'" is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords (the upper house). Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 646 members, who are known as "Members of Parliament" or MPs. Members are elected, through the first-past-the-post system, by electoral districts known as constituencies, and hold th...
184	 Denis Colin Leary'" (born August 18, 1957) is a Golden Globe- and Emmy Award-nominated American actor, comedian, writer and director. He is known for his often angry comedic style, and his frequent chain smoking. Leary displays an overt affinity for libertarianism. Leary is currently the star and co-creator of the television show "Rescue Me". Early life. Leary was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, the son of Irish Catholic immigrants. His mother, Nora, was a maid, and his father, Jo...
185	 The Mennonites'" are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (1496?1561), though his teachings were a relatively minor influence on the group. As one of the historic "peace churches", Mennonites are committed to nonviolence, nonviolent resistance/reconciliation, and pacifism. There are about 1.5 million Mennonites worldwide as of 2006. Mennonite congregations worldwide embody the full scope of Mennonite practice from old fashioned 'plain' people to those...
186	 The Green Party'" (; lit. "Green Alliance") is a green political party in Ireland. It was founded as the Ecology Party of Ireland'" in 1981 by Dublin teacher Christopher Fettes. The party became the"' Green Alliance'" in 1983 and in 1987 was renamed to its current title. Green Party candidates have been elected to all levels of government; local, D?il and European Parliament, and in 2007 gained its first representation in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Northern Ireland...
187	 Clyde William Tombaugh'" (February 4,1906 ? January 17, 1997) was an American astronomer. Tombaugh is best known for discovering the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930, but also discovered many asteroids, and called for serious scientific research of unidentified flying objects. Biography. Tombaugh was born in Streator, LaSalle County, Illinois. After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas, Tombaugh built his first telescope and sent drawings of his observations of Jupiter and Mars to the L...
188	 The Admiralty'" was formerly the authority in the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy. Originally exercised by a single person, the office of Lord High Admiral was from the 18th century onward almost invariably put "in commission", and was exercised by a Board of Admiralty. In 1964 the functions of the Admiralty were transferred to a new Admiralty Board, which is a committee of the tri-service Defence Council of the United Kingdom and part of the Ministry of D...
189	 The MOS Technology 6502'" is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by Chuck Peddle for MOS Technology in 1975. When it was introduced, it was the least expensive full-featured CPU on the market by a considerable margin, costing less than one-sixth the price of competing designs from larger companies such as Motorola and Intel. It was nevertheless faster than most of them, and, along with the Zilog Z80, sparked a series of computer projects that would eventually result in...
190	 Borneo'" is the third largest island in the world and is located at the centre of Maritime Southeast Asia. Administratively, this island is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Indonesians refer to the island as "Kalimantan." However, for people outside of Indonesia, "Kalimantan" refers to the area that Indonesia occupies on the island of Borneo. Malaysia's region of Borneo is called East Malaysia or Malaysian Borneo. The independent nation of Brunei occupies the remainder of ...
191	 Melilla'" is an autonomous city of Spain located on the Mediterranean, on the North African coast. It was regarded as a part of M?laga province prior to March 14, 1995, when the city's Statute of Autonomy was passed. Melilla was a free port before Spain joined the European Union. As of 1994 it had a population of 63,670. Its population consists of Christians, Muslims (chiefly Berber), Jews and a small minority of Hindus. Both Spanish and Tamazight are spoken. Spanish is the official lan...
192	 The Dorians'" or "'Dorian Greeks'" (Greek: ", D?rieis, singular ', D?rieus) were one of three major tribes into which the ancient Greeks divided themselves. Herodotus gave the earliest historical expression of a three-fold division: "... those who dwell in our land are called Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians." General names inherited from earlier times were considered to be in one of these three groups, from the earliest literature; for example, the Achaeans (also known as Danaans, ??????,...
193	 Eritrea is an ancient name, associated in the past with its Greek form Erythra?a'" (Greek alphabet "'????????), and its derived Latin form Erythr?a'". In the past, Eritrea had given its name to the Red Sea, then called the "Erythr?an Sea". The Italians created the colony of Eritrea in the XIX century around Asmara, and named it with the actual name. After World War II Eritrea was annexed to Ethiopia.In 1991 the People's Liberation Front defeated the Ethiopian government. Erit...
194	 Assistive technology'" (AT) is a generic term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for people with disabilities and includes the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. AT promotes greater independence by enabling people to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to or changed methods of interacting with the technology needed to accomplish such tasks. H...
195	 "'Latin America'" (Spanish: "Am?rica Latina" or "Latinoam?rica"; Portuguese: "Am?rica Latina"; French: "Am?rique latine") is the region of the Americas where Romance languages (i.e., those derived from Latin), particularly Spanish, Portuguese and French, are primarily spoken. Definition. The distinction between "Latin America" and "Anglo-America", and more generally the stress on European heritage (or Eurocentrism), is simply a convention by which Romance-language and English-spea...
196	 Amr Abdel Basset Abdel Azeez Diab'" () (born October 11, 1961) is an Egyptian singer and composer of jeel music. Diab has become one of the highest selling Middle Eastern artists of all time, as he was awarded "The World Music Award" 3 times; 1998, 2002 and 2007, as being the best selling Middle Eastern singer. In 1983, Diab released his first studio album "Ya Tareeq". Diab released three more albums between 1984 and 1987. In 1988, Diab released "Mayaal" which garnered huge success all...
197	 Neutrinos'" are elementary particles that travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect. Neutrinos have a minuscule, but nonzero mass. They are usually denoted by the Greek letter [Formula 1] (nu). Neutrinos are created as a result of certain types of radioactive decay or nuclear reactions such as those that take place in the Sun, in nuclear reactors, or when cosmic ray...
198	 Bletchley Park'", also known as "'Station X'", is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, and (since 1967) part of Milton Keynes, England. During World War II, Bletchley Park was the location of the United Kingdom's main codebreaking establishment. Codes and ciphers of several Axis countries were deciphered there, most importantly those of the German Enigma and Lorenz machines. The high-level intelligence produced by Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, is fre...
199	 Bavaria'" (German: ", with an area of 70,553 km? (27,241 square miles) and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest "state (Bundesland)" of Germany by area. Its capital is Munich in Upper Bavaria. About 6.4 million of its population are Bavarian, 4.1 million Franconian and 1.8 million Swabian. History. The Bavarians emerged in a region north of the Alps, originally inhabited by the Celts, which had been part of the Roman provinces of Rae...
