White House

The U.S. Secret Service uses the breed to guard the grounds of the White House.
(Acknowledgement)

James Cameron (Titanic)

However, when the Special Collector's Edition was issued, Cameron acted on Tyson's advise and restored some scenes with an accurate night sky rendition.

Mathematics

She is the only woman to win the Fields Medal.
(Acknowledgement)

Albert Hoffman

He was the Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).
(Acknowledgement)

Panacea

She was the goddess of Universal remedy in Greek myth.

Wrecks are famous diving sites

(Acknowledgement)

FireChat

FDR's radio addresses were called the fireside chats.

Lance Armstrong

He is an American lawyer and CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA). He stated in an interview that he had received three death threats since the beginning of the Armstrong investigation and that security had been tightened around him by the FBI.
(Acknowledgement)

(Alison) Bechdel

Namesake of the test that asks if a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added. Many contemporary works fail this test of gender bias.
(Acknowledgement)

Pygmies (short height)

Other explanations include lack of food in the rainforest environment, low calcium levels in the soil, the need to move through dense jungle, adaptation to heat and humidity, and most recently, as an association with rapid reproductive maturation under conditions of early mortality.
(Acknowledgement)

Greenpeace

(Acknowledgement)

Beaches

FEE's Blue Flag criteria include standards for water quality, safety, environmental education and information, the provision of services and general environmental management criteria. The Blue Flag is sought for beaches and marinas as an indication of their high environmental and quality standards.
(Acknowledgement)

Chinese President Xi Jinping's!

(Acknowledgement)

Hitler Reacts meme

The original context is the movie Downfall.
(Acknowledgement)

Julia Child (1912-2004)

She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her subsequent television programs, the most notable of which was The French Chef, which premiered in 1963.
(Acknowledgement)

Chess

She is invoked in modern-day chess commentary by several including Kasparov.
(Acknowledgement)

Silk Road

William Ulbricht was popularly called Dread Pirate Roberts and the title is said pass from one person to another.
(Acknowledgement)

Garbage

Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000. For several generations, the Zabbaleen supported themselves by collecting trash door-to-door from the residents of Cairo for nearly no charge.
(Acknowledgement)

Colosseum in Rome

(Acknowledgement)

On the top of the World Trade Center (with a plane approaching in the background)

Guzli took the photo on November 28, 1997, and was also responsible for the initial edit. He edited the image for a few friends, not realizing it would spread so quickly across the Internet.
(Acknowledgement)

Wright brothers

He was a vital contributor of mechanical skills in the building and maintaining of early Wright engines and airplanes.
(Acknowledgement)

Summit of Mount Everest

(Acknowledgement)

World's most prolific cannibal

Fiji was once known as the 'Cannibal Isles.'
(Acknowledgement)

Holocaust Museum

(Acknowledgement)

Latin; English

(Acknowledgement)

Feral children

Defined as a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no (or little) experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and crucially, of human language.
(Acknowledgement)

Orient Express

It was here that Agatha Christie got the inspiration for her acclaimed mystery.
(Acknowledgement)

Westgate

The attack has been described as one of the worst acts of terrorism in Kenya since the bombing of the U.S. embassy in 1998.
(Acknowledgement)

Tennis (Novak Djokovic)

(Acknowledgement)

Porcupines

Hedgehogs are also used to illustrate this dilemma.

Ernest Hemingway

His classic The Old Man and the Sea contains some elements of this incident.
(Acknowledgement)

International Workers' Day (or) May Day

Five years later, President Grover Cleveland signed legislation to make Labor Day the official U.S. holiday in honor of workers.
(Acknowledgement)

Al Jazeera

It is based in Doha, Qatar.

Phantom

1. Superman comics - Phantom Zone 2. The hero Phantom 3. Phantom of the Opera

Air disasters

As of February 2014, there are 105 parties to the Convention. The hint of course refers to MH 370.
(Acknowledgement)

National Health Service

The systems are primarily funded through central taxation. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use for people legally resident in the United Kingdom.
(Acknowledgement)

Paperclip

The feature was removed altogether in Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, as it drew criticism from customers and even Microsoft employees. Smithsonian Magazine called Clippy "one of the worst software design blunders in the annals of computing." Time magazine included Clippy in a 2010 article listing fifty worst inventions.
(Acknowledgement)

Sports Illustrated

He has been called "the poet laureate of sports."
(Acknowledgement)

Lucky

Somali

It is the closest Somali term for a pirate. Piracy has impeded the delivery of shipments and increased shipping expenses, costing an estimated $6.6 to $6.9 billion a year in global trade.
(Acknowledgement)

Bounty hunter

"Ghost in the machine"

The Police named their 1981 album after this concept.
(Acknowledgement)

Amityville case

The case has been adapted into ten films. The debate about the accuracy of The Amityville Horror continues and, despite the lack of evidence to corroborate much of the story, it remains one of the most popular haunting accounts in American folklore.
(Acknowledgement)

Cookies

(Acknowledgement)

Theseus

The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late 1st century.
(Acknowledgement)

PowerPoint

He said "It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control" and "Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable."
(Acknowledgement)

Donald Trump

George Will said this while criticizing Mitt Romney for associating himself with Trump.

Copyright

It requires its signatories to recognize the copyright of works of authors from other signatory countries in the same way as it recognizes the copyright of its own nationals.
(Acknowledgement)

Stethoscope

(Acknowledgement)

Peanuts

Charlie Brown and Snoopy were the names.

Noam Chomsky

He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky-Schützenberger theorem. He is also well known as a political activist and as a leading critic of American foreign policy.

Ben Franklin

In 1918, a year after the Prizes began, the medal was designed by sculptor Daniel Chester French and his associate Henry Augustus Lukeman. Franklin's image apparently based on the bust by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon.
(Acknowledgement)

Coyote (or) raven

Many Native American stories involve these two animals.

Suicide

In his book Durkheim distinguished the forms of suicide as egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic.

'Yellow Hat'

The Dalai Lama is from the Yellow Hat sect of Buddhism while the Man with the Yellow Hat is the only recurring character in the original Curious George adventures (other than George himself).

Runes

Abilene

The Abilene paradox is a paradox in which a group of people collectively decide on a course of action that is counter to the preferences of many of the individuals in the group.
(Acknowledgement)

Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The Japanese word translates as 'explosion-affected people.'

Seven hundred

Robertson referred to these members as the '700 Club' and the name stuck. The telethon was successful and is still held annually. The 700 Club is the flagship television program of the Christian Broadcasting Network, airing in syndication throughout the US. In production since 1966, it is one of the longest-running television programs in broadcast history.

Interpol

In order to maintain as politically neutral a role as possible, Interpol's constitution forbids it to undertake any interventions or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial nature.

Harpoon

From Moby Dick by Herman Melville.

Details of Israel's nuclear program

Vanunu spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 in solitary confinement. He has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 1987.

Kirlian

Kirlian photography has been the subject of mainstream scientific research, parapsychology research and art. To a large extent, It has been co-opted by promoters of fringe science and paranormal health.

Shorthand

It is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to a normal method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography.

Platonic love

The English term dates back as far as 1636.

Whales

Veil of ignorance

For example, in the imaginary society, one might or might not be intelligent, rich, or born into a preferred class. Since one may occupy any position in the society once the veil is lifted, the device forces the parties to consider society from the perspective of all members, including the worst-off and best-off members. It is part of the long tradition of thinking in terms of a social contract.

Babylon

The original Rainbow Gathering was in 1972, and has been held annually in the United States from July 1 through 7 every year on National Forest land.

9/11/2001

The subject of the image, whose identity remains uncertain, was one of the people trapped on the upper floors of the skyscraper who either fell searching for safety or jumped to escape the fire and smoke.

Frédéric Bartholdi, best known for the Statue of Liberty

Admittance of women

Costa Concordia, the cruise ship that sank in Jan 2012

It struck a rock in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the western coast of Italy about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Rome. Of the 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew known to have been aboard, 30 bodies have been located, and two more passengers are missing and presumed dead.

"Helicopter parent"

It is a colloquial term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to their child's or children's experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions.

One in which the dreamer is aware that s/he is dreaming

In a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over their participation within the dream or be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established.
(Acknowledgement)

Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

Various methods have been proposed and implemented to reduce the number of suicides. Attempts to introduce a suicide barrier have been thwarted by engineering difficulties, high costs, and public opposition.

Gondoliers of Venice

The technique is considerably different from the style used in international sport rowing, due to the oarsman facing forward in a standing position. Competitive regattas are also held using the Venetian rowing technique, using both gondolas and other types of vessels.

Smoking

It highlighted the negative health effects of smoking. Although it was not the first such declaration, or the first declaration by an official of the United States of America, it is notable for being arguably the most famous, and certainly had lasting and widespread effects on the tobacco industry and on the worldwide perception of smoking.
(Acknowledgement)

Postmark

It was designed to show the date on which a letter was received by the post and to ensure that the dispatch of letters would not be delayed. These were the world's first handstruck postage stamps. Henry Bishop (1611-1691) was a Postmaster General of England.

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson

Necks

Women of the Kayan Lahwi tribe are well known for wearing neck rings, brass coils that are placed around the neck, appearing to lengthen it. The women wearing these coils are known as giraffe women to tourists.

The number of fledglings was reduced from three to two.

(Acknowledgement)

Air-traffic controllers

Pairs of aircraft to which these rules have been successfully applied are said to be separated: the risk of these aircraft colliding is therefore remote. If separation is lost between two aircraft, they are said to be in a conflict.

No first use

It is a pledge not to use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless first attacked by an adversary using nuclear weapons.

"It's morning again in America"

The ad was written and narrated by ad man Hal Riney, who also wrote and narrated Reagan's resonant "Bear in the woods" ad (titled "Bear") as well as his "America's Back" ad. It featured a montage of images of Americans going to work and a calm, optimistic narration that suggested the improvements to the U.S. economy since his 1980 election were due to Reagan's policies and asked voters why they would want to return to the pre-Reagan policies of Democrats like his opponent Walter Mondale, who had served as the Vice President under Reagan's immediate predecessor Jimmy Carter.

Burj Khalifa in Dubai

Viewed from above or from the base, the form also evokes the onion domes of Islamic architecture.

Batman's Gotham City

It had long been a well-known nickname for New York City prior to Batman's 1939 introduction. The nickname was popularized in the nineteenth century, having been first attached to New York by Washington Irving who took it from the village of Gotham in England, a place that, according to folklore, was inhabited by fools. The village's name derives from Old English gat 'goat' and ham 'home', literally "homestead where goats are kept." In Detective Comics #880, the Joker mentions to Batman that Gotham means "heaven for goats."

Bullfighters

The term originates from the sequins and reflective threads of gold or silver.

North Korea

The North Korean government grants the Korean People's Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority, and positions it as the model for society to emulate. Songun is also the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the people's military over all other aspects of state and society.

Death of a spouse

Marital separation is at 65 points and imprisonment at 63 points.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who called South Africa the 'Rainbow Nation'

The phrase was elaborated upon by President Nelson Mandela in his first month of office, when he proclaimed: "Each of us is as intimately attached to the soil of this beautiful country as are the famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria and the mimosa trees of the bushveld - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world."
(Acknowledgement)

Laugh track

Great Man theory

It was countered in 1860 by Herbert Spencer who said that great men are the products of their societies, and that their actions would be impossible without the social conditions built before their lifetimes.

Look for the Titanic (he was successful)

Ballard also discovered the wrecks of the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998 and John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2002.

Silk

It is akin to the use of thread count to measure the quality of cotton fabrics, but is calculated in a very different manner. Instead of counting threads, the weight in mommes is a number that equals the weight in pounds of a piece of silk if it were sized 45 inches by 100 yards. This is because the standard width of silk is 45 inches wide, though silk is regularly produced in 55-inch widths, and, uncommonly, in even larger widths.

Nostradamus (1503-66)

(Acknowledgement)

Peripatetic school

The school dates from around 335 BC when Aristotle began teaching in the Lyceum. The Greek word peripatetikos refers to the act of walking, and as an adjective, 'peripatetic' is often used to mean itinerant.

David Copperfield, the illusionist

He has been described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history. He currently performs over 500 shows a year.

Henry Dunant (1828-1910)

Horrified by what he saw on the battlefield, Dunant set about a process that led to the Geneva Conventions and the establishment of the International Red Cross.

Josephine Baker (1906-75)

Knots

Due to its scope and wide availability The Ashley Book of Knots has become a significant reference work in the field of knotting.

Genealogy

The word means 'ancestor table' in German. The subject of the ahnentafel is listed as #1, the subject's father as #2 and the mother as #3, the paternal grandparents as #4 and #5 and the maternal grandparents as #6 and #7, and so on, back through the generations. Apart from #1, who can be male or female, all even-numbered persons are male, and all odd-numbered persons are female. In this schema, the number of any person's father is double the person's number, and a person's mother is double the person's number plus one.
(Acknowledgement)

Thistle (Scotland)

Encyclopædia Britannica originated in Edinburgh and CMU honors the Scottish heritage of its founder, Andrew Carnegie.

Rubik's Cube

It is widely considered to be the world's best-selling toy.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The original developers of the personality inventory were Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers.

Bermuda

The book's title is Into the Bermuda Triangle.

Gothic

In English 17th-century usage, 'Goth' was an equivalent of 'vandal', a savage despoiler with a Germanic heritage, and so came to be applied to the architectural styles of northern Europe from before the revival of classical types of architecture.

Vitruvius

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, an illustration of the human body inscribed in the circle and the square is derived from a passage about geometry and human proportions in Vitruvius's writings.

Kidnapping

It was done after the kidnapping of Lindbergh's baby. The theory behind the Lindbergh Law was that federal law enforcement intervention was necessary because state and local law enforcement officers could not effectively pursue kidnappers across state lines. Since federal law enforcement, such as FBI agents, have national law enforcement authority, Congress believed they could do a much more effective job of dealing with kidnappings than could state, county, and local authorities.

Innocent passage

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea defines innocent passage as: Passage is innocent so long as it is not prejudicial to the peace, good order or security of the coastal State. Such passage shall take place in conformity with this Convention and with other rules of international law.

Death of Osama bin Laden

The raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was launched from Afghanistan.

Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

He received the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.

Concrete

As of 2006, about 7.5 billion cubic meters of concrete are made each year-more than one cubic meter for every person on Earth.

Foxtrot and tango

'Noble Savage'

Benazir Bhutto

Confucius

Despite an announcement in September 2011 from the Chinese Ministry of Culture that the prize would no longer be awarded, the China International Peace Research Center awarded the prize to Vladimir Putin in November 2011.

Belgium

Hamas

It was founded in 1987 (during the First Intifada) as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia

The unsolved puzzle continues to attract would-be solvers.

Diving

It was invented in 1969 by Mike Humphrey and Mike Borrow and was named after Jim Jarrett, Peress' chief diver. Because there is no danger of bends, the occupant does not need to decompress when returning to the surface.

Michael Jackson

On August 28, 2009, the Los Angeles County Coroner announced Jackson's death a homicide. Before his death, Jackson reportedly had been administered propofol, along with two anti-anxiety benzodiazepines: lorazepam and midazolam.

Voynich manuscript

Generally presumed to be some kind of ciphertext, the Voynich manuscript has been studied by many professional and amateur cryptographers but has defied all decipherment attempts. The book is named after the Polish-Lithuanian-American book dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich, who acquired it in 1912 and is owned by Yale University.

Loch Ness monster

It is the most iconic images of Nessie as it was the first photo and only photographic evidence of a 'head and neck' - all the other purported evidences are humps or disturbances.

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

It is an international organization that brings together scholars and public figures to work toward reducing the danger of armed conflict and to seek solutions to global security threats. It was founded in 1957 by Joseph Rotblat and Bertrand Russell in Pugwash, Nova Scotia, Canada, following the release of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955. Rotblat and the Pugwash Conference won jointly the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for their efforts on nuclear disarmament.

Gulag

The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners and are recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature, introduced the term with the 1973 publication of his The Gulag Archipelago.

Lima syndrome

Members of a militant movement took hostage hundreds of people attending a party in the official residence of Japan's ambassador. Within a few hours, the abductors had set free most of the hostages, including the most valuable ones, due to sympathy.

Archie

The characters were created by John L. Goldwater, written by Vic Bloom and drawn by Bob Montana.

Alphonse Bertillon (1853-1914)

The system is called Anthropometry and it was the first scientific system used by police to identify criminals. The method was eventually supplanted by fingerprinting, but Bertillon's other contributions like the mug shot and the systematization of crime-scene photography remain in use.

Isaac Newton

Time Person of the Year

The idea was also an attempt to remedy the editorial embarrassment earlier that year for not having aviator Charles Lindbergh on its cover following his historic trans-Atlantic flight. By the end of the year, it was decided that a cover story featuring Lindbergh as the Man of the Year would serve both purposes.

Plowing of a field

Rather than going left-to-right as in modern English, or right-to-left as in Hebrew and Arabic, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the individual characters are reversed, or mirrored.

White House

The remarks were that of Thomas Jefferson.

Mossad

Bram Stoker's Dracula

There is no evidence that Stoker knew anything about this castle, which has only tangential associations with Vlad III, the inspiration for Dracula.

Workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Pale Blue Dot

By request of Carl Sagan, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission and now leaving the Solar System, to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space. Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Sagan.

Tabloid

Prior to compressed tablets, medicine was usually taken in bulkier powder form. While Burroughs Wellcome & Co. were not the first to derive the technology to make compressed tablets, they were the most successful at marketing them, hence the popularity of the term 'tabloid' in popular culture. The connotation of tabloid was soon applied to other small items and to the "compressed" journalism that condensed stories into a simplified, easily-absorbed format.

Quarantine station

Until 1908, lazarets were also used for disinfecting postal items, usually by fumigation. A leper colony administered by a Christian religious order was often called a lazar house, after the parable of Lazarus the Beggar.

Kevin Bacon

Cirque du Soleil (Circus of the Sun)

Cirque expanded rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s, going from one show to 19 shows in over 271 cities on every continent except Antarctica. The shows employ approximately 4,000 people from over 40 countries and generate an estimated annual revenue exceeding US$810 million.

Sea

Alain Bombard (1924-2005) was a Frenchman was famous for sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in a small boat. He theorized that a human being could very well survive the trip across the ocean without provisions and decided to test his theory himself in order to save thousands of lives of people lost at sea. His claim was later contested.

Cuba (from Guantanamo Bay Naval Base)

After the Cuban Revolution, some Cubans sought refuge on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. In the fall of 1961, Cuba had its troops plant an 8-mile barrier of cactus along the northeastern section of the 17-mile (27 km) fence surrounding the base to stop Cubans from escaping Cuba to take refuge in the United States.

Scrooge McDuck

Scrooge McDuck is named after the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character from Charles Dickens' 1843 novel A Christmas Carol.

Vatican (the Swiss Guard)

Kindergarten

Dead reckoning

While traditional methods of dead reckoning are no longer considered primary means of navigation, modern inertial navigation systems, which also depend upon dead reckoning, are very widely used. A disadvantage of dead reckoning is that since new positions are calculated solely from previous positions, the errors of the process are cumulative, so the error in the position fix grows with time.

Greenpeace (the missing words are Rainbow Warrior)

Reader's Digest

For many years, it was the best-selling consumer magazine in the U.S., losing the distinction in 2009 to Better Homes and Gardens. According to Mediamark Research, it reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Inc. combined.

Cyprus

In legend, Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) emerged from the sea on a crest of foam just off Cyprus.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what we recognize in ourselves as our will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, he eloquently described a lifestyle of negating desires, similar to the ascetic teachings of Vedanta, Buddhism, Taoism and the Church Fathers of early Christianity.

Comic Sans

The font's widespread use, often in situations for which it was not intended, has been criticized.

Chad

The word refers to paper fragments created when holes are made in a paper, card or similar synthetic materials, typically computer punched tape or punched cards.

Travelling salesman problem

The problem was first formulated as a mathematical problem in 1930 and is one of the most intensively studied problems in optimization. It has several applications even in its purest formulation, such as planning, logistics, and the manufacture of microchips.

Babel Fish

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

Maintaining that society is ultimately the product of the interactions of individuals, he held that fundamental societal change can emerge only through freely undertaken radical change in the individual. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

Stringer

The term is typically confined to news industry jargon, and in print or in broadcast terms, stringers are sometimes referred to as correspondents or contributors. At other times, they may not receive any public recognition for the work they have contributed.

René Descartes

John Dillinger

Saint (these are the stages of Canonization in the Catholic Church)

Receiving the title Servant of God is the first of the four steps in the canonization process. The next step is being declared Venerable, upon a decree of heroicity or martyrdom by the honored. This is followed by beatification, with the title of Blessed, after the confirmation of miracles attributed to the honored. The final step is canonization, where the honored would receive the title of Saint.

Louis Braille

Cecil Rhodes

From 1910 to 1984, it was the official Cape residence of the Prime Ministers of South Africa and continued as a presidential residence of P. W. Botha and F. W. de Klerk.

The Mary Celeste

It was in seaworthy condition and still under sail heading towards the Strait of Gibraltar. She had been at sea for a month and had over six months' worth of food and water on board. Her cargo was virtually untouched and the personal belongings of passengers and crew were still in place, including valuables. The crew was never seen or heard from again.

Police force

They were founded in 1749 and originally numbered just eight.

Filibuster

Filibusters were irregular soldiers who acted without authority from their own government, and were usually motivated by financial gain, political ideology, or the thrill of adventure. The freewheeling actions of the filibusters led to the name being applied figuratively to the political act of filibustering in the U.S. Senate. "Freebooter" is the more familiar term in British English, whereas "filibuster" normally refers to the legislative tactic.

Cinderella stamp

The term also excludes imprinted stamps on postal stationery.

Instant runoff voting (IRV)

If no candidate is the first preference of a majority of voters, the candidate with the fewest number of first preference rankings is eliminated and that candidate's ballots are redistributed at full value to the remaining candidates according to the next ranking on each ballot. This process is repeated until one candidate obtains a majority of votes among candidates not eliminated. The term "instant runoff" is used because the method is said to simulate a series of runoff elections tallied in rounds, as in an exhaustive ballot election.

Animals

Traditionally, the medal is presented by the Lord Mayor of the City of London. It has become recognized as "the animals' Victoria Cross." As of February 2008, it has been awarded 62 times.

Columbarium

Chatham House

The rule originated in June, 1927, at what is now best known as Chatham House in London with the aim of guaranteeing anonymity to those speaking within its walls in order that better international relations could be achieved. It is now used throughout the world as an aid to free discussion. The original rule was refined in October 1992 and again in 2002.

Majordomo

A majordomo often acts on behalf of the (often absent) owner.

"Freshman fifteen"

The term refers to the often-reported, yet unsubstantiated claim that freshman typically gain fifteen pounds during their first year. The purported causes of this weight gain are increased alcohol intake and the consumption of fat and carbohydrate-rich cafeteria-style food and fast food in university dormitories.

Beating of Rodney King that led to the subsequent trial and riots

Tendency to overestimate one's achievements and capabilities

Gleaning

Some ancient cultures promoted gleaning as an early form of a welfare system. For example, ancient Jewish communities required that farmers not reap all the way to the edges of a field so as to leave some for the poor and for strangers.

American mafia

It was attended by roughly 100 mafia crime bosses from the United States, Canada and Italy. Expensive cars with license plates from around the country aroused the curiosity of the local and state law enforcement, who raided the meeting, causing mafiosi to flee into the woods and the surrounding area of the Apalachin estate. Over 60 underworld bosses were detained and indicted due to the disastrous meeting. The direct and most significant outcome of the Apalachin meeting was that it helped to confirm the existence of a National Crime Syndicate, which some - including J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations - had long refused to acknowledge.

Prayer on behalf of another person

Blair House

During much of the presidency of Harry Truman, it served as the residence of the president of the United States, while the interior of the White House, which had been found to have serious structural faults, was completely gutted and rebuilt. The Chief of Protocol of the United States is responsible for the operation of Blair House.

University of Oxford

Dowager

In loose popular usage, dowager as a stand-alone noun may refer to any elderly woman, especially one who is wealthy or behaves with dignity.

Rod of Asclepius (or) Staff of Asclepius

A 1992 survey of American health organisations found that 62% of professional associations used the rod of Asclepius, whereas in commercial organisations, 76% used the caduceus.

Good Girl Art

The term Good Girl Art describes the work of illustrators skilled at creating sexy female figure art; it is the art which is "good," not the girl. The term was first coined in the early 1970s by veteran comic book dealer and The Comic Book Price Guide advisor David T. Alexander, formerly co-owner of the American Comic Book Company, who inserted it his company's sale lists to highlight specific panels and covers with sexy women in comic books from Fiction House and other publishers.

Maria Montessori (1870-1952)

Ombudsman

An ombudsman need not be appointed by government; they may work for a corporation, a newspaper, an NGO, or even for the general public. In some countries, an Inspector General may be the same as or have overlapping duties with a government-appointed ombudsman.

Hogan's Alley

According to the FBI, they "borrowed it from the Hogan's Alley comic strip of the 1800s. The alley was located in a rough neighborhood, so we thought the name fit our crime-ridden town." While the comic strip was almost certainly the original source of the name, Camp Perry facility in Ohio was probably the more immediate source of the name.

Sex change surgery

Death from overwork

It is occupational sudden death. The major medical causes of karôshi deaths are heart attack and stroke due to stress.
(Acknowledgement)

Pyongyang, North Korea

The hotel's name comes from one of the historic names for Pyongyang: Ryugyong, or "capital of willows." Its 105 stories rise to a height of 330 m, making it the most prominent feature of the city's skyline and by far the largest structure in the country. Construction started in 1987 and ceased in 1992 due to a combination of poor-quality construction and financial difficulties. The hotel is so massive that it is clearly visible from nearly everywhere in the city, but it is nearly impossible to get anyone to talk about it. It is often seen as a metaphor of the highly secretive nature of North Korea.
(Acknowledgement)

Chartreuse

Chartreuse sits right in the middle of the frequencies of visible light. Eyes have receptors for blue, green and red. Being in the middle, yellow-green triggers the most of these receptors to fire, making it easy to spot. In some cities, firetrucks have been changed from red to a yellow-green color to make them more visible.

Dead Sea Scrolls

In the most commonly told story the shepherd threw a rock into a cave in an attempt to drive out a missing animal under his care. The shattering sound of pottery drew him into the cave, where he found several ancient jars containing scrolls wrapped in linen. They consist of roughly 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 AD, and preserve evidence of considerable diversity of belief and practice within late Second Temple Judaism. Many of the scrolls are now housed in the Shrine of the Book which is in Jerusalem.

Yakuza

They are members of traditional organized crime groups in Japan. Outside of Japan, the term also refers to traditional Japanese organized crime in general. Today, the Yakuza are one of the largest crime organizations in the world. In Japanese legal terminology, yakuza organizations are referred to as bôryokudan, literally "violence groups" -- and is considered an insult to Yakuza members as it can be applied to any violent criminal. Often as a misnomer in Western press, Yakuza groups are referred to as the "Japanese mafia" with reference to Italian-Sicilian organized crime.

Dragoon

The name derives probably from the dragoon's primary weapon, a carbine or short musket called the dragon. Dragon carbines are said to have been so-called because they "breathed fire" - a reference to the flames carbines emitted when fired.

First space tourist

Tito himself opposes being called "tourist" and asks to be called an "independent researcher" since he performed several scientific experiments in orbit.

Accepting the existence of other gods

Müller stated that henotheism means "monotheism in principle and a polytheism in fact." He made the term a center of his criticism of Western theological and religious exceptionalism (relative to Eastern religions), focusing on a cultural dogma which held "monotheism" to be both fundamentally well-defined and inherently superior to differing conceptions of God.

Vowel

This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel. In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form the onset.

Boat people

The term came into common use during the late 1970s with the mass departure of Vietnamese refugees from communist-controlled Vietnam, following the Vietnam War. Now it is also a widely used form of migration or escape for people migrating from Cuba, Haiti, Morocco, Vietnam or Albania.

Shaolin

The Shaolin Monastery was originally founded in AD 495 by the Buddhist monk Batuo, an Indian dhyana master. The introduction of fighting skills at the Shaolin Monastery has been attributed in legend to the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who went to the monastery in 527. On arrival at the temple he found that most of the monks were suffering from poor health and so he taught them a series of exercises based on the movements of five animals (tiger, snake, crane, eagle and monkey) to improve their levels of fitness. These exercises (wuqinxi, literally "five pure rivers") were later adapted into a combat discipline when, as the temple grew, it became subject to attacks from brigands against whom the monks needed to protect themselves.

Whistle stop

Ordinarily, a flag or other visual indicator would be placed outside the station by the station master if the station had traffic. If a stop was requested by a passenger on the train, a whistle would be sounded by train personnel to alert the locomotive engineer to the need to stop.

Yasukuni shrine

Visits to the shrine by cabinet members have been a cause of protest at home and abroad. China, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan have protested against various visits since 1985. Despite the controversy, the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made annual visits from 2001 to 2006.

A tint is the mixture of a color with white, and a shade is the mixture of a color with black.

Mixing with white increases value or lightness, while mixing with black reduces chroma. Mixing with any neutral color, including black and white, reduces chroma or colorfulness. The intensity does not change.

Falun Gong (or) Falun Dafa

The Chinese government banned the group for allegedly engaging in "illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability." Several governments, international human rights organizations and scholars consider the ban a human rights violation.

Leonardo Da Vinci's

Gates renamed it the Codex Leicester. It is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci and out of his 30 scientific journals, this one might be the most famous of all. The movement of water is the main topic of the Codex. Among other things, Leonardo wrote about the flow of water in rivers, and how it is affected by different obstacles put in its way. From his observations he made recommendations about bridge construction and erosion.

Law designed to keep criminals from profiting from their crimes

Such laws often authorize the state to seize money earned from such book deals and such 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.

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.

Great Pyramid of Giza built around 2500 BC

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.

Siberia!

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.

Pope's

The Pope's summer residence (Residenza Papale in Italian) is a 17th century building designed by Carlo Maderno for Pope Urban VIII. The papal palace, and the adjoining Villa Barberini that was added to the complex by Pius XI have enjoyed extraterritorial rights since the signature of the 1929 treaty with Italy; the little piazza directly in front was renamed Piazza della Libertà in the first flush of Italian unity after 1870. The papal palace remained unused from 1870 until 1929. Popes Pius XII (1958) and Paul VI (1978) died at Castel Gandolfo.

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.

Photograph

The work depicts an interior of a supermarket with numerous aisles depicting goods resulting in a colorful work.

Jane Goodall

She also said that when she first began to live among and study the chimpanzees she was fulfilling her childhood dream of living among the great apes just as Tarzan did.

Stockholm

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.

Lion, African elephant, African buffalo, leopard and black rhino

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.

Daylight saving time

The practice is controversial. Adding daylight to afternoons benefits retailing, sports, and other activities that exploit sunlight after working hours, but causes problems for farming, evening entertainment and other occupations tied to the sun.

Opus Dei

The organization is sometimes known simply as 'the Work.' It was founded in Spain in 1928 by a Roman Catholic priest Josemaria Escriva and given final approval in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

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."

Alaskan king crab and Opilio crab

The fishing is carried out during the winter months in the waters off the coast of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The commercial harvest is performed during a very short season, and the catch is shipped worldwide. Fishermen spend days at a time on very rough seas working long hours with little rest time.

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.

Biafra secession

French doctor Bernard Kouchner witnessed many atrocities, particularly the huge number of starving children, and when he returned to France, he publicly criticised the Nigerian government and the Red Cross for their seemingly complicit behaviour. With the help of other French doctors, Kouchner put Biafra in the media spotlight and called for an international response to the situation. These doctors, led by Kouchner, concluded that a new aid organisation was needed that would ignore political/religious boundaries and prioritise the welfare of victims.

'Jetsam' has been voluntarily cast into the sea by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency; '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.

Paddle steamers

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

University of Oxford

Rhodes Scholars may study any full-time postgraduate course offered by the University.

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.

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.

Darfur conflict

Since 2003 they have been one of the main players in the Darfur conflict, which has pitted the largely nomadic Arab-identifying Muslim Sudanese against the sedentary non-Arab Muslim Sudanese population of the region in a battle over resource and land allocation.

Piltdown Man

The significance of the specimen remained controversial until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan that had been deliberately combined with the skull of a fully developed modern human. It is perhaps the most famous paleontological hoax in history. It 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 full exposure as a forgery.

Longitude

The problem was considered so intractable that the British Parliament offered a prize of £20,000 for the solution. John Harrison spent 31 years of persistent trial and error to perfect his instrument.

Xbox

US 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.

United States Postal Service (USPS)

Employing 596,000 workers and over 218,000 vehicles, it is also the second-largest civilian employer in the United States (after Wal-Mart). Since its reorganization into an independent organization, the USPS has become self-sufficient and has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s. However it is currently borrowing money from the U.S. Treasury to pay its deficits.

Magic

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.

Medellín

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

LexisNexis

LexisNexis is divided into two sites: Lexis.com, intended for legal research, while Nexis.com is intended for investigations into business dealings.

Mensa

Perpetual motion machine

The filing of a patent is a clerical task, and the patent office won't refuse filings for perpetual motion machines; the patent will be filed and then most probably rejected by the patent examiner, after he has done a formal examination. Even if the patent is granted, it doesn't mean that the invention actually works, it just means that the examiner thinks that it works, or that he couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work.

National Geographic

Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in 2002. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named as "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the magazine.

Series of high-altitude jumps

In one of these jumps Kittinger set world records for the highest parachute jump, the longest parachute drogue fall and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere, all of which still stand.

King Tut's tomb

Several months later after the excavation, Carnarvon died in Cairo in 1923. This led to the story of the "Curse of Tutankhamun", the "Mummy's Curse." His colleague and employee, Howard Carter, the man most responsible for revealing the tomb of the young king, lived safely for another sixteen years.

Gaddafi of Libya

They 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.

"Thomas Jefferson"

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.

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.

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."

Reading the entire 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.

Buridan's 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.

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.

Crop circles

Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god

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 and it is almost one third larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

Tiger (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.

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.

Fallingwater

It is a famous house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Despite its structural problems, Fallingwater is widely considered a master's masterpiece.

Black; gold

Swiss Army Knife

A Swiss Army knife has a blade as well as various tools, such as screwdrivers and can openers. These attachments are stowed inside the handle of the knife through a pivot point mechanism. The handle is usually red, and features a white cross, the emblem of Switzerland. It was originated in Ibach, Schwyz, Switzerland in 1897.

Bertrand Russell

Russell's adolescence was very lonely and he remarked in his autobiography that his keenest interests were in sex, religion and mathematics. Russell is generally recognised as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, even of its several branches.

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.

Safari

It usually refers to a trip by tourists to Africa, traditionally for a big-game hunt and in more modern times to watch and photograph big game and other wildlife as a safari holiday. It is an overland journey.

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.

Einstein

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.

Institute for Advanced Study

There are other Institutes of Advanced Study in the U.S. and elsewhere which are based on the Princeton model.