The Rhodes Scholarship

The scholarships were initiated after the death of Cecil John Rhodes and have been awarded by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford on the basis of academic qualities, as well as those of character. They provide the successful candidate with two years of study at the University of Oxford in England, possibly extended for a third year.

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard was founded along with the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel, with the help of Francois-Eugene Vidocq. It opened for business as administrative headquarters of the Service on 29 September 1829, housing the two commissioners and their administrative staffs in a complex of about 50 rooms. It was not (and has never been) a police station in the usual sense, with each division of the police instead operating their own local stations.

Toothbrush

Peanuts

At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

Iridium

The Iridium satellite constellation is a system of 66 active communication satellites and spares around the Earth. It allows worldwide voice and data communications using handheld devices. The Iridium network is unique in that it covers the whole earth, including poles, oceans and airways, however the service is interdicted due to American embargoes in North Korea, Iran, Libya and Sudan. The name was taken from the element Iridium, with the atomic number of 77 -- the size of the satellite constellation projected in the early stages of planning.

Amnesty International

Founded in the UK in 1961 by Peter Benenson, AI compares actual practices of human rights with internationally accepted standards and demands compliance where these have not been respected.

Shuttle Diplomacy

It is often used when the two primary parties do not formally recognize each other but still want to negotiate. The term shuttle diplomacy became widespread following Henry Kissinger's term as United States Secretary of State. Kissinger participated in shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and in the People's Republic of China.

Whose words?

Jesse Owens

The Library of Congress

It is the de facto national library of the US, the research arm of the United States Congress and is the largest by shelf space and one of the most important libraries in the world. Its collections include more than 30 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages and more than 58 million manuscripts.

The Penny Black

Although the Penny Black is readily available on the collectors' market today, because of its significance, it is in great demand by collectors and therefore not cheap; in 2000 a used stamp cost about US$200 (around £110), and an unused stamp about US$3,000 (around £1,600). (By contrast, a used penny red was $3 (£1.50).)

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

He was the third President of the United States (1801–09), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of Republicanism in the United States. A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as an horticulturist, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor, and the founder of the University of Virginia, among other roles.

The Encyclopædia Britannica

The Britannica is the oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print. It was first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh and is currently published from Chicago.

Methuselah

He reached the age of 969 years.

The Duck

Richard Wiseman said "If you're going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck." The word "duck" may have become an inherently funny word in many languages because ducks are seen as a silly animal, and their odd appearance compared to other birds. Of the many ducks in fiction, many are silly cartoon characters like Daffy Duck.

John Bardeen (1908-1991)

He is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in physics: in 1956 for the transistor, along with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Brattain, and in 1972 for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity together with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, now called BCS theory.

Call for the resignation of Nixon

Jean Robert-Houdin (1805 - 1871)

Before him, magicians performed in marketplaces and fairs, but Robert-Houdin performed magic in theatres and private parties. He also chose to wear formal clothes, like those of his audiences. The stage name of Harry Houdini was taken in tribute to him, though Houdini later denounced him.

Bellevue Hospital Center

Founded in 1736, it is the oldest public hospital in the United States.

Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. He is considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and, by virtue of his magnum opus 'Ethics', one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view (Weltanschauung). Spinoza equated God (infinite substance) with Nature, consistent with Einstein's belief in an impersonal deity.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law...

It is a product of the 'Miranda v. Arizona' case, that resulted in a landmark 5-4 decision of the United States Supreme Court in 1966. The Court held that criminal suspects must be informed of their right to consult with an attorney and of their right against self-incrimination prior to questioning by police.

Smokey Bear

The fictional character Smokey Bear is administered by three entities: the United States Forest Service, the National Association of State Foresters, and the Ad Council.

In Doha, Qatar

Meaning 'The Island', the station gained worldwide attention following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when it broadcast video statements by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. The original Al Jazeera channel was started in 1996 with a US$150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar.

Longitude

It was a long-sought and critically-needed key piece in the problem of accurately establishing the East-West position, or longitude, of a ship at sea. The problem was so intractable that the English Parliament offered a huge fortune for the day (£20,000, roughly £6 million in 2007 terms), for a solution.

It is a law designed to keep criminals from profiting from their crimes often by selling their stories to publishers.

Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from such a deal and use it to compensate the criminal's victims. The first such law was created in New York after the Son of Sam killings. It was enacted after rampant speculation about publishers offering large amounts of money for the serial killer's story. The law was invoked in New York eleven times between 1977 and 1990, including once against Mark David Chapman.

The Piltdown Man

The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. The hoax has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its exposure as a forgery.

Paddle steamers

Steamships powered by the steam turbine may be prefixed "TS" (Turbine Ship).

The Andrea Doria

Improvements in communications and rapid responses by other ships averted a disaster similar in scale to the Titanic disaster of 1912. Most passengers and crew survived. On the Andrea Doria, 1660 people were rescued and 46 died. The Andrea Doria was the last major transatlantic passenger vessel to sink before aircraft became the preferred method of travel.

Edition of a morning newspaper that is sold the night before the date it bears.

The actual origin of the name is uncertain, although some say it originated in New York City at a time when there were three morning newspapers-the World, the Herald, and the Journal-who "fought like bulldogs" to be the first to get their edition on the street. (Loosely, the term has come to mean the earliest edition of any daily paper, including afternoon papers.)

Chang Bunker and Eng Bunker

In 1829, they were discovered in Siam by British merchant Robert Hunter and exhibited as a curiosity during a world tour. Upon termination of their contract with their discoverer, they successfully went into business for themselves. In 1839, while visiting Wilkesboro, North Carolina with P.T. Barnum, the twins were attracted to the town and settled there, becoming naturalized United States citizens.

Graceland, the estate of Elvis

Koizumi, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006, is an avid Elvis Presley fan and even shares Presley's January 8 birthday.

Buridan's ass (X is ass)

The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan. It is first found in Aristotle's De Caelo where Aristotle mentions an example of a man who remains unmoved because he is as hungry as he is thirsty and is positioned exactly between food and drink.

An Ouija board

Paranormal advocates believe that the planchette is moved by some extra-normal force. Skeptics attribute the motion to the ideomotor effect. Used since the beginning of the Spiritualism movement of the mid-nineteenth century, planchettes predate the invention of spirit boards. Although speculation exists that the planchette was named after its inventor, the French word "planchette" translates to English as "little plank."

Lubyanka

A prison at the ground floor of the building figures prominently in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's classic study of the Soviet police state, The Gulag Archipelago. Famous inmates held, tortured and interrogated there include Sidney Reilly and Raoul Wallenberg.

Mad

The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it in an the office of Ballantine Books. Since his debut in Mad, Neuman's likeness, distinguished by jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye disquietingly lower than the other, has graced the cover of all but a handful of the magazine's 450+ issues.

John Walker Lindh

Doonesbury

Frequently political in nature, Doonesbury features characters professing a range of affiliations, but the cartoon's editorial slant is primarily noted for a liberal outlook. The name "Doonesbury" is a combination of the word doone — 1960s prep school slang for "someone unafraid to appear foolish" — with the surname of the roommate who was given that nickname, Charles Pillsbury. The strip marked its official thirty-fifth anniversary on October 26, 2005.

Architecture

Created in 1979 by Jay A. Pritzker and run by the Pritzker family, it is considered the world's premier architecture prize. The Pritzker is sometimes referred to as "the Nobel Prize of Architecture".

Crop circles

Christopher Wren (1632–1723)

Wren designed 53 London churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings of note.

The Blue Peter

It indicates that "All persons should report on board as the vessel is about to proceed to sea". At sea, it may be used by fishing vessels to mean: "My nets have come fast upon an obstruction".

Alphonse

Although never successfully convicted of racketeering charges, Capone's criminal career ended in 1931 when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion.

USA Today

Among English-language broadsheets, it comes second world-wide, behind the 2.6 million daily paid copies of The Times of India.

Proletariat

Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons; the term was initially used in a derogatory sense, until Karl Marx used it. In Marxist theory, the proletariat is that class of society which does not have ownership of the means of production.

Secret Service

The Secret Service was commissioned on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C. as the "Secret Service Division," to suppress counterfeit currency, which is why it was established under the United States Department of the Treasury.

Atheism!

Under Hoxha, whose rule was characterized by isolation from the rest of Europe and by his proclaimed firm adherence to Marxism-Leninism, Albania's government of the time projected the image that it had emerged from semi-feudalism to become an industrialized state. Albania became the only country to officially ban religion.

A state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea.

The term can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses of the word "supremacy." The word thalassocracy itself, deriving from the Greek thalassokratiâ—thalassa meaning "sea," and kratiâ meaning "rule" or "government"—first occurred amongst the ancient Greeks describing the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy. Herodotus spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea."

Balmoral Castle

The estate was purchased by Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, and remains a favorite summer royal residence. The Balmoral estate has been passed down the generations and has gradually expanded to more than 26,000 hectares (65,000 acres). The Queen was in residence at Balmoral at the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Her initial decision not to return to London or to mourn more publicly was much criticised at the time. Her private discussions with Prime Minister Tony Blair are dramatised in Stephen Frears' The Queen (2006).

K-141 Kursk

Though a rescue attempt was made by British and Norwegian teams, all sailors and officers aboard the Kursk perished. The first investigations suggested that most of the crew had died within minutes of the explosion. However journal entries show that many survived in the rear of the ship for hours after the blasts. Kursk was eventually raised from her grave by a Dutch team using the barge Giant 4, and 115 of the 118 dead were recovered and laid to rest in Russia.

Serial killer

It is widely believed that the term serial killer has been coined either by FBI agent Robert Ressler or by Dr. Robert D. Keppel in the 1970s.

White Elephant

The metaphor was popularized in the United States after New York Giants manager John McGraw told the press that Philadelphia businessman Benjamin Shibe had "bought himself a white elephant" by acquiring the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team in 1901. The Athletics manager Connie Mack subsequently selected the elephant as the team symbol and mascot. The team is occasionally referred to as the White Elephants.

The Maltese cross

The cross is eight-pointed and has the shape of four "V" shaped arms joined together at their bases, so that each arm has two points. The Maltese cross remains the symbol of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and other Orders of St John. In recent centuries it has come to be adopted as the insignia of numerous orders of chivalry, and appears on the coat-of-arms of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz district. In Australia the Maltese Cross is part of the state emblem of Queensland.

Cuban cigars

Cigars manufactured in Cuba are widely considered to be without peer, although many experts believe that the best offerings from Honduras and Nicaragua rival those from Cuba. The Cuban reputation is thought to arise from both the unique characteristics of the west of the island, where the microclimate allows high-quality tobacco to be grown as well as from the skill of the Cuban cigar rollers.

John Reed (1887 - 1920), author of 'Ten Days that Shook the World'.

He and his wife Louise Bryant were the subjects of the film 'Reds' (1981), directed by Warren Beatty.

Aum Shinrikyo, now known as Aleph

The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo's Shibuya ward in 1984, starting off as a Yoga and meditation class known as Aum-no-kai ("Aum club") and steadily grew in the following years. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989. It attracted such a considerable number of young graduates from Japan's elite universities that it was dubbed a "religion for the elite".

Break a leg

The expression is a theatrical superstition that replaces the phrase "good luck" which is considered bad luck. The expression is sometimes used outside the theatre as superstitions and customs travel through other professions and then into common use.

Peter Sellers

Barbie (the doll)

Barbie is a best-selling doll launched at the American International Toy Fair in 1959 and is produced by Mattel. The standard range of Barbie dolls and related accessories are manufactured to approximately 1/6th scale, which is also known as playscale. In Middle Eastern countries there is an alternative doll called Fulla who is similar to Barbie but is designed to be more acceptable to an Islamic market. Fulla is not made by the Mattel Corporation.

The New York Times

It is often regarded as a national newspaper of record in the US. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 94 Pulitzer Prizes as of 2006, far more than any other newspaper. The newspaper's name is often abbreviated to The Times, but should not be confused with The Times, which is published in London.

'jetsam' has been voluntarily cast into the sea by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency; while 'flotsam' describes goods that are floating on the water without having been thrown in deliberately, often after a shipwreck.

Ligan (or lagan), describes goods that have been marked by being tied to a buoy so that its owner can find and retrieve it later. Derelict is property which has been abandoned and deserted at sea by those who were in charge

Dead Water

Much of the energy from the ships propeller only result in waves and turbulence between the two layers of water, leaving a ship capable of traveling at perhaps as little as 20% of her normal speed.

Blackbeard

He was a pirate who had a short reign of terror in the Caribbean Sea between 1716 and 1718, during a period of time referred to as the 'Golden Age of Piracy'. His best known vessel was the Queen Anne's Revenge, which is believed by some to have run aground near Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina in 1718.

An Xbox

Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt built around 2500 B.C.

Daylight Savings Time

Geraldine Ferraro

Ferraro and running mate Walter Mondale were defeated in a landslide by incumbent President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush in the 1984 election.

Photography

Roulette

The first form of roulette was devised in 17th century France, by the mathematician Blaise Pascal, who was supposedly inspired by his fascination with perpetual motion devices.

The Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein and John von Neumann after their immigration to the United States. There are other Institutes of Advanced Study in the U.S. and elsewhere which are based on the Princeton model.

Gaddafi of Libya

The Amazonian Guard sparked an international incident in 2006 when Gaddafi landed in Nigeria with over 200 heavily armed female guards for a summit. Nigerian security officials refused to allow the Libyans entry based on their armaments, and Gaddafi angrily resolved to set off on foot 40 km to Nigeria's capital from the airport.

Magellan

He was a Portuguese born maritime explorer who, at the service of Spain, attempted to find a westward route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. He did not complete his final, westward voyage; he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines. He did, however, die farther west than the Spice Islands, which he had visited from the west on earlier voyages, making him one of the first individuals to cross all the meridians of the globe. He became the first person to lead an expedition sailing westward from Europe to Asia and to cross the Pacific Ocean.

Great Pyramid of Cholula in Puebla, Mexico

According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at 4.45 million m³, almost one third larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. (The Giza pyramid is taller, however.) The Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the Great Pyramid of Cholula.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney shot him while participating in a quail hunt.

Whittington was shot in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets from a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun. He suffered a non-fatal "silent" heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to at least one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart.

The Lion, the African elephant, the African buffalo, the leopard and the black rhinoceros.

The members of the big five were chosen by big-game hunters for the difficulty in hunting them and not their size, which is why the leopard is on the list and the enormous hippopotamus is not.

Gardening

Adam was appointed by God to dress the garden of Eden, and to keep it (Gen. ii. 15); and after the fall he was sent out of the garden “to till the ground”(Gen. iii. 23).

Project Tiger

The project aims at tiger conservation in specially constituted 'tiger reserves' which are representative of various bio-geographical regions falling within India. It strives to maintain a viable tiger population in their natural environment. Today, there are 27 Project Tiger wildlife reserves in India covering an area of 37,761 square kms. In recent times, however, critics have complained that officials have inflated India's wild tiger census so as to save their jobs.

Stockholm syndrome

The syndrome is named after the Norrmalmstorg robbery of Kreditbanken at Norrmalmstorg, Stockholm, Sweden, in which the bank robbers held bank employees hostage from August 23 to August 28 in 1973. In this case, the victims became emotionally attached to their victimizers, and even defended their captors after they were freed from their six-day ordeal. The term Stockholm Syndrome was coined by the criminologist and psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, who assisted the police during the robbery, and referred to the syndrome in a news broadcast.

Union Jack

The issue of whether it is acceptable to use the term "Union Jack" instead of "Union Flag" is one that causes considerable controversy. Although it is often asserted that "Union Jack" should only be used for the flag when it is flown as a jack (a small flag flown at the bow of a ship), it is not universally accepted that the "Jack" of "Union Jack" is a reference to such a jack flag.

Scorched earth policy

Apparently a translation of Chinese 'Jiao Tu', the term refers to the practice of burning crops to deny the enemy food sources, although it is by no means limited to food stocks, and can include shelter, transportation, communications and industrial resources, which are often of equal or greater military value in modern warfare, as modern armies generally carry their own food supplies.

Einstein

The Amish

Every Amish church is its own governing authority and has its own set of rules; therefore, it follows its own Ordnung. Their lives are ordered by this code. These rules are largely unwritten. Because the Amish have no central church government, each community administers its own guidelines.

Columbia University in New York City

Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories. In twenty of these, each winner receives a certificate and a US$10,000 cash reward. The winner in the public service category of the journalism competition is awarded a gold medal, which always goes to a newspaper, although an individual may be named in the citation. The prize was established by Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian-American journalist and newspaper publisher, who left money to Columbia University upon his death in 1911.

Clash of Civilizations

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, Huntington is increasingly regarded as having been prescient as the United States invasion of Afghanistan, 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the 2005 cartoon crisis, the ongoing Iranian nuclear crisis, the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict and the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy fueled the perception that Huntington's Clash is well underway. The Clash of Civilizations thesis may also be regarded as an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ideas of Huntington and Bernard Lewis were already influential among American neoconservative figures such as Vice President Richard Cheney prior to September 11, 2001; Middle East scholar Gilles Kepel (2003) reports that many radical Islamists in the Middle East likewise viewed Huntington's thesis approvingly. Therefore, the fact that U.S. policymakers and radical Islamists have confronted each other in a certain way may be an indication that people on both sides were interpreting events according to the thesis, rather than that the thesis itself was especially prescient.

Medellín Cartel

It existed in permanent conflict with the Cali Cartel and, from the early '80s onward, the Colombian government.