title: Colony

text: Colonial means having to do with a colony. Colonial land is land that belongs to the colony. A colonist is sometimes called a colonial. The philosophy of having colonies is called colonialism. There must be many people to start a colony. There are many colonies, or countries that were once colonies, in the world. Most countries that were once colonies of Britain are part of the British Commonwealth.


title: Indiana

text: Indiana is a U.S. state in the midwestern and Great Lakes regions of North America. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Other famous cities and towns include Bloomington, Gary, Fort Wayne, South Bend, Evansville, Muncie, Lafayette, and Marion. People who live in Indiana are sometimes called Hoosiers. Indiana's state bird is a Cardinal. Indiana's state flower is a Peony. Indiana's state tree is a Tulip Tree. Indiana has borders with four other states: Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio. It also touches Lake Michigan; which is the only one of the Great Lakes that is completely inside the United States.


title: Indiana

text: Before it was called Indiana, most people who lived there were indigenous. France colonized the area, renaming it New France. They enslaved the indigenous peoples, and introduced black slaves too. In the 18th century, the new United States took the area from France, and many slave owners from Kentucky and Virginia moved into the area. By 1820, it had become a state called Indiana and the government ordered all slaves to be freed, but black people were still enslaved there into at least the 1830s.


title: Indiana

text: One famous attraction of Indiana is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which is where the Indy 500 is held every year. The Indy 500 is one of the most famous car races in the United States. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is not actually in Indianapolis. It is in a town called Speedway, which is completely surrounded by Indianapolis.


title: Indiana

text: As well as being home to the Indy 500, there are several well known sports teams in Indiana. Professional sports teams include the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League (NFL) and the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Colleges and universities in Indiana with well known sports teams include Purdue University, the University of Notre Dame, and Indiana University.


title: Writing

text: Writing is the act of recording language on a visual medium using a set of symbols. The symbols must be known to others, so that the text may be read.


title: Writing

text: A text may also use other visual systems, such as illustrations and decorations. These are not called writing, but may help the message work. Usually, all educated people in a country use the same writing system to record the same language. To be able to read and write is to be literate.


title: Writing

text: Writing differs from speech because "the readers need not be present at the time". We can read writing from long ago, and from different parts of the world. Text stores and communicates knowledge. Writing is one of the greatest inventions of the human species. It was invented after people settled in towns, and after agriculture started. Writing dates from about 3,300, which is over 5000 years ago, in the Middle East.


title: Writing

text: Writing today is usually on paper, though there are ways to print on almost any surface. Television and movie screens can also display writing, and so can computer screens. Many writing materials were invented, long before paper. Clay, papyrus, wood, slate and parchment (prepared animal skins) have all been used. The Romans wrote on waxed tablets with a pointed stylus; this was popular for temporary notes and messages. The later invention of paper by the Chinese was a big step forward.


title: Writing

text: Writing is traditionally done using a hand tool such as a pencil, a pen, or a brush. More and more, however, text is created by input on a computer keyboard.


title: Writing

text: Therefore, depending on an author's definition of writing, the term may be used in different ways. With many early systems we do not know what they do convey. The central idea is that "a full writing system must be able to represent anything that might be said in spoken language". From this point of view the invention of the rebus is an essential step.


title: Writing

text: We can only be sure a sign system is full writing if we can translate the symbols into a modern language. In the case of some ancient scripts we cannot do this.


title: Writing

text: Writing was invented independently a number of times. The Sumerian, the ancient Egyptian, the Chinese and the Mayan writings are separate in their invention. All these writing systems started with "pictographs", symbols that stood for things. Then they developed a mixture of methods. Our own alphabetic system is different. It is based on the sounds of spoken language. All alphabets are modified versions of the first one, which originated with the Phoenicians and the Ancient Greeks.


title: Writing

text: The Sumerians lived in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 5000 years ago this was a fertile region and is now mostly in Iraq. The Sumerians developed a form of writing called cuneiform. Triangular marks were pressed into soft clay tablets. After the clay had dried in the sun the tablets were baked. Then they were carried somewhere else for others to read. We know that its first uses were for trade, accounting and administration.


title: Writing

text: The earliest signs were mostly pictorial, but soon they stood as symbols for objects, ideas and sounds. This writing system was extremely successful, and outlasted the Sumerian empire. It was then used by other civilisations in the Middle East, such as the Old


title: Writing

text: Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite, Old Persian and Ugaritic empires. The last cuneiform inscription was dated as 75. Thus the system had lasted for more than 3000 years. Each version of cuneiform had to be deciphered separately, because all the languages were different. Documents (including stone objects) written in more than one language provided the clues.


title: Writing

text: This is the most famous of the old forms of writing, or "scripts". It was invented at roughly the same time as cuneiform, yet was quite different in style, and used different materials. Egyptians ended up with three writing systems for the same language. They were:


title: Writing

text: The writing tools used varied according to the material which was written on. The two cursive scripts were written with reed pens and carbon inks onto papyrus. If the material was cloth, then the writing was done by a brush. Many examples survive. The hieroglyphs were inscribed (carved) into stone (hammer & chisel) or painted onto stone surfaces. Many survive, some with the original colours intact. The key event in the decipherment of hieroglyphic writing was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This is a granite slab with the same message written in hieroglyphic, demotic and in Greek. Ancient Greek is well understood, and made possible the interpretation of the other two scripts.


title: Writing

text: Chinese is the language with the largest number of native speakers. Its history dates back to about 1400. The Chinese writing system is idio-syllabic, a mixed method using characters which may have one or more of these elements:


title: Writing

text: Chinese has a huge number of characters: in the region of 50,000. Because of this, printing methods were never really successful in China, despite their early invention. In the 14th century Wang Tzhen had sixty thousand wood block characters cut, a huge investment in time and money. He printed 100 copies of a local gazette, and was author of a treatise on agriculture and other technical works. Even with printing machines from Europe in the 19th century, the process was hampered by the huge number of characters, which slowed the "composition" to a snail's pace.


title: Writing

text: China has eight regional languages that are mutually unintelligible, and many true dialects. The system appears to work mainly because as many as 70% speak Mandarin. Fluency in Chinese reading and writing is undoubtedly difficult to achieve, and this must act as a brake on the drive for literacy. There have been a number of attempts to reform or simplify the system. The most radical in Pinyin, which is a program to replace Chinese characters with an alphabetic system. This was supported by Mao, but faltered after his death.


title: Writing

text: It seems that the idea of an alphabet–a script based entirely upon sound–arose only once, and has been copied and adapted to suit many different languages. Although no alphabet fits its language perfectly, it is flexible enough to fit any language approximately. It was a unique invention.


title: Writing

text: Our alphabet is called the Roman alphabet, as compared with the Cyrillic and other alphabets. All of these come from the ancient Greek alphabet, which dates back to about 1100 to 800. The Greek alphabet was probably developed from the Phoenician script, which appeared somewhat earlier, and had some similar letter-shapes.


title: Writing

text: The Phoenician language was a Semitic language, often called Canaanite. The Semitic group of languages includes Arabic, Maltese, Hebrew and also Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus. We do not know much about how the alphabetic idea arose, but the Phoenicians, a trading people, came up with letters which were adapted by the early Greeks to produce their alphabet. The one big difference is that the Phoenician script had no pure vowels. Arabic script has vowels which may be shown by diacritics (small marks above or below the line). The oldest Qu'ran manuscripts had no diacritics. Israeli children today use texts with vowel 'dots' added, to about the third grade.


title: Writing

text: No ancient script, alphabetic or not, had pure vowels before the Greeks. The Greek alphabet even has two vowels for 'e' and two for 'o', to distinguish between the long and short sounds. It is fairly clear from this that careful thought went into both the Phoenician invention and the Greek adaptation. However, no details survive of either process.


title: Writing

text: Semitic scripts apparently derive from "Proto-Sinaitic", a script of which only 31 inscriptions (plus 17 doubtful) are known. It is thought by some researchers that the original source of this script was the Egyptian hieratic script. By the late Middle Kingdom (about 1900) hieratic had added some alphabetic signs for representing the consonants of foreign names. Egyptian activity in Sinai was at its height at that time. A similar idea had been suggested many years before.


title: Writing

text: There are a number of scripts which have never been deciphered, despite much effort. Perhaps the most famous are the script of the Indus Valley civilization, and Etruscan. The Indus River civilisation predates other literate civilisations on the Indian subcontinent, going back to about 2500. Their cities of Mohenjo-Daru and Harappa were well-planned, with good drainage. The script is found on seal stones, terracotta, bronze, bone and ivory. All are brief, and the language is unknown.


title: Writing

text: The Etruscan language used Greek letter-forms, and is found mainly on Etruscan tombs, from Tuscany through to Venice. They were an empire before the Romans, who defeated them, and absorbed their ideas. All knowledge of their language was lost, except that some of the names on tomb memorials can be read from the Greek letters.


title: Writing

text: The Tărtăria tablets are three tablets discovered in 1961 in the village of Tărtăria (Hungarian: Alsótatárlaka). This is about from Alba Iulia in Romania. The tablets, dated to around 5300 BC, have symbols in clay: the "Vinča symbols". Some claim they are a yet undeciphered language. If this is so, they would be the earliest known form of writing. In 1908 similar symbols were found during excavations, by Miloje Vasić (1869–1956) in Vinča. This is a suburb of Belgrade (Serbia), some 300 km from Turdaș. Later, more were found in another part of Belgrade. Since 1875 over one hundred and fifty Vinča sites have been found in Serbia alone. Many, including Vinča itself, have not been fully excavated. The culture of the whole area is called the Vinča culture. Although some of these symbols look exactly the same as some letters in Etruscan, Greek, and Aramaic, they are generally regarded as an original, independent development.


title: Writing

text: It is only in the last 150 years that most people have been able to read and write in Europe and North America. In many other parts of the world this did not happen until the 20th century. Until then, literacy was mainly for clerics, that is, people who had training as priests. Even wealthy people were often illiterate, and used scribes to write for them. The invention of printing came before mass literacy. Before 1500, each book had to be created by hand, so there were few books available compared to the billions in the world today. Mass literacy needed cheap books.


title: Writing

text: The ordinary use of writing by means of a pen and paper. Can refer to writing for oneself, as in a diary, but mostly it refers to sending letters. Once it was almost the only means of communication between people who were separated. Now, the telephone and e-mail are the most common means of distance communication.


title: Percival

text: Percival is the Grail knight or one of the Grail knights in numerous medieval and modern stories of the Grail quest. Percival first appears in Chrétien de Troyes's unfinished "Percivale or Conte del Graal" (c. 1190). The incomplete story prompted a series of "continuations," in the third of which (c. 1230), by an author named Manessier, Percival achieves the Grail. (An analogue to Chrétien's tale is found in the thirteenth-century Welsh romance Peredur.)


title: Percival

text: The main character in the book "Ready Player One" has a virtual avatar named after Percival, but with a different spelling (Parzival).


title: Microprocessor

text: A microprocessor is an electronic component that is used by a computer to do its work. It is a central processing unit on a single integrated circuit chip containing millions of very small components including transistors, resistors, and diodes that work together. Some microprocessors in the 20th century required several chips. Microprocessors help to do everything from controlling elevators to searching the Web. Everything a computer does is described by instructions of computer programs, and microprocessors carry out these instructions many millions of times a second.


title: Microprocessor

text: Microprocessors were invented in the 1970s for use in embedded systems. The majority are still used that way, in such things as mobile phones, cars, military weapons, and home appliances. Some microprocessors are microcontrollers, so small and inexpensive that they are used to control very simple products like flashlights and greeting cards that play music when opened. A few especially powerful microprocessors are used in personal computers.


title: Microprocessor

text: Like other central processing units, microprocessors use three steps commonly called Fetch, Decode, and Execute. In the Fetch step, an instruction is copied from the computer memory into the microprocessor. In the Decode step, the microprocessor figures out what operation the instruction is meant to do. In the Execute step, this operation is performed. Different computers can have different instruction sets.


title: Guinea (coin)

text: A guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England between 1663 and 1813. It is not used any more. The gold used to mint the first guineas was mined in the region of the same name in Africa.


title: Guinea (coin)

text: Although guinea coins had not been made for a long time, prices often continued to be shown in guineas until British prices became decimal in 1971. A guinea was worth £1,1s (one pound and one shilling). This is the same as £1.05 in modern money.


title: Guinea (coin)

text: Because a guinea was close to a pound, putting prices in guineas made the price seem less. A price of 39 guineas might look like "about £39". In fact it is nearly £41. Prices in guineas were traditionally used for luxury goods before decimalisation. Savile Row tailors, bespoke boot makers, fine jewelers, and expensive motorcars were always priced in guineas.


title: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

text: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (Henry Charles Albert David; born 15 September 1984) is a member of the British royal family. He is the younger son of Charles III, and Diana, Princess of Wales and is the younger brother of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and is sixth in the line of succession to the British throne. Harry was a pupil at Eton College.


title: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

text: Harry launched the Invictus Games in 2014, and remains patron of its Foundation. He also gives patronage to several other organisations, including the HALO Trust, the London Marathon Charitable Trust, and Walking with the Wounded.


title: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

text: Harry was born in the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London, on 15 September 1984 at 4:20 pm as the second child of Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to Queen Elizabeth II, and Diana, Princess of Wales.


title: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

text: Like his father and brother, Harry was educated at independent schools. He started at Jane Mynors' nursery school and the pre-preparatory Wetherby School, both in London.


title: Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

text: Prince Harry began dating Meghan Markle in June 2016. They became engaged in November 2017. The couple married at Windsor Castle on 19 May 2018. The couple's first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, was born on May 6, 2019. In November 2020, Markle revealed in an opinion piece for "The New York Times" that she suffered a miscarriage in July of that year. On 4 June 2021, the couple's daughter Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor was born in Santa Barbara, California.


title: Bruce Forsyth

text: Sir Bruce Joseph Forsyth-Johnson (22 February 1928 – 18 August 2017) was an English television personality, actor and dancer. He has presented "Sunday Night at the London Palladium", "Play Your Cards Right", "The Generation Game", "You Bet?" and "The Price Is Right". He presented "Strictly Come Dancing" from 2004 to 2013.


title: Bruce Forsyth

text: In 2008 he was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, a lifetime achievement award. He received a Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award on 17 March 2009. On 26 January 2011 he received the National Television Awards special recognition award.


title: Bruce Forsyth

text: From 1953 to 1973, Forsyth was married to Penny Calvert. They had three daughters: Debbie, Julie and Laura. According to his autobiography, he dated Miss World 1964 Ann Sidney during her reign. In a 2009 interview, Kathy Kirby said she was Forsyth's lover and that he proposed marriage. From 1973 to 1979, he was married to Anthea Redfern, who was the hostess on "The Generation Game". They had two daughters: Charlotte and Louisa. He fell in love with his fellow judge, Wilnelia Merced, at the 1980 Miss World competition. They married in 1983, and had one son together, Jonathan Joseph Forsyth Johnson (born 1987). By his six children, he had eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.


title: Bruce Forsyth

text: On 18 August 2017, Forsyth died at his home in Surrey, England of complications of bronchopneumonia, aged 89.


title: Somalia

text: Somalia (; ), officially called the Federal Republic of Somalia (; ), is a country located on the Horn of Africa. It used to be known as the Somali Republic.


title: Somalia

text: It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya with Yemen to the north, the Guardafui Channel and Somali Sea to the east, and Ethiopia to the west. A person from Somalia is called a "Somali".


title: Somalia

text: Somalia is a republic governed by a federal administration with various regional administrations governing on a micro level.


title: Somalia

text: Somalia is an independent country. Since the Somali Civil War in the 1980s, there has been no working government that covers all of Somalia; instead, different pirates have been destabilizing the region to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden. Somalia is now trying to gain control of their people and get back up on its feet with very little resources.


title: Somalia

text: There are four big tribes in Somalia, the Hawiye, the Dirweyn, the Koofur Orsi inhabitants and the Darood. Somalis are a nation of related families, which are called clans. Groups of clans sometimes band together based on a common ancestor or other blood relationship. Sometimes these family relationships date back hundreds or even thousands of years in the past.


title: Somalia

text: Somalis are mostly camel or goat herders, and depend on their livestock to live. In Somalia there are limited sources of drinking water and grazing land, and disputes over grazing rights, water rights, or land in general can lead to fighting between families. Because of the clan system, the families involved will call on their clan for help, leading to a clan war.


title: Somalia

text: The discovery of oil and minerals in Somalia, as well as the power and money associated with politics and business, has created more opportunities for families to get ahead, and has also created more reasons for families to have disputes.


title: Somalia

text: Because Somalia does not have a working legal system, the only help a family in Somalia has to solve a dispute with another family is to get their clan involved. The only solution to the clan wars in Somalia is a working legal system, but the only group who has succeeded in creating one is the Islamic Courts Union. Unfortunately the Islamic Courts Union was accused of being terrorists and Ethiopia invaded Somalia to topple their government and put the government they created in power instead.


title: Somalia

text: In ancient times, Somalia was a place where people from Egypt and Arabia went to buy Gum Arabic, Myrrh and Ebony Wood. The Ancient Egyptians used to call it Punt, which meant "God's Land". Somalis started herding camel and goats about 4,000 years ago, and they remain mostly herders today.


title: Somalia

text: 400 more years later, the king of Ethiopia told his subjects that God hated Ifat, and he invaded Ifat with his army, destroying everything he came across and driving the king of Ifat to an island off the coast of Zeila, where he died. The king of Ethiopia then took part of Ifat and added it to his kingdom, and made Ifat pay him lots of money once a year. The remains of Ifat put their kingdom back together again and renamed it Adal.


title: Somalia

text: About a hundred years later, the King of Adal was deposed by an influential warlord by the name of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, who had lots of influence with Somali clans across the north. He declared a Jihad against Ethiopia, brought together a huge army that included Turkish musketeers and Somali cavalry. The Somali cavalry were especially deadly because they could shoot arrows while riding their horses, something that the Mongol hordes and Japanese Samurai are also famous for.


title: Somalia

text: Ahmad chose a bad time, however, because the Portuguese Empire was muscling into East Africa. They had taken over the whole east African coast up to Baraawe, and were trying to take over Mogadishu. The Portuguese decided to help out the Ethiopians because the Ethiopians were Christians and the Portuguese did not like Muslims. Ahmad had taken over more than half of Ethiopia when a troop of Portuguese musketeers showed up to help the Ethiopians out. One Portuguese musketeer managed to shoot Ahmad himself, killing him.


title: Somalia

text: A lot of the Somali cavalry was only there because of Ahmad, so the Jihad ended and Ethiopia wound up invading Adal. The Turks had to send an army to stop them from taking over Zeila, and Adal ended up becoming part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. On those days we do not find the exact people dwell in zeila, but the history ascribed the black people, without tracing their origin and their tribes.


title: Somalia

text: However, some historians attributed Zeila inhabitant were called semaale without farther lucid explanation.


title: Somalia

text: The Turks and Portuguese fought over East Africa for the next 200 years, but the Turks eventually won about 270 years ago. Northern Somalia stayed under Turkish protection after Ahmad died, and the east coast including Mogadishu ended up under the protection of the King of Oman. When Egypt declared independence from the Turks a hundred years later, Northern Somalia became part of Egypt. Egypt came under British protection shortly after that, and northern Somalia basically became a British protectorate as well. This became official about 130 years ago, and northern Somalia officially became British Somaliland.


title: Somalia

text: The Kingdom of Italy had just come together as one country around this time, and wanted the same things that the other big countries had, like colonies. Italy offered to buy the rights to the east Africa coast from Oman, who was in charge of protecting the cities and small kingdoms there, and Oman agreed. Italy made deals with some of the larger kingdoms/sultanates (like the Sultanate of Nugaal) for them to be under Italian protection, but the smaller ones Italy just invaded. This became Italian Somalia in 1905, with capital Mogadishu.


title: Somalia

text: Ethiopia, which had fallen apart again after Ahmad's Jihad, had recently put itself back together again as well, and started invading small Somali kingdoms as well, and by 1890 there were not many left. The French got in on this too, but they just took over a small area which today is Djibouti.


title: Somalia

text: Lots of Somalis did not like what was going on, so a Muslim religious leader named Mohammed Abdullah Hassan started a group called the Darwiish to fight the British, Italians and Ethiopians. The British called him the "Mad Mullah" and spent about 30 years fighting him, eventually using fighter planes against his cavalry. At their height the Darwiish controlled almost a third of Somalia.


title: Somalia

text: Italy created a colony around Mogadishu and enlarged the territory of Italian Somalia after WW1 with the areas south of the Juba river. In the next 20 years the Italian colony grew in importance, having at Hafun the biggest salt production in the world and in the Scebeli river a huge production of bananas exported to Europe. In 1928 was created the first airport in Somalia's capital and later in 1939 was started the longest air route in Africa with the Linea dell'impero, a flight between Rome and Mogadishu.


title: Somalia

text: When Benito Mussolini took power in Italy, he ended the deals he made with the bigger Somali sultanates and invaded them conquering all the area that was to be the colony of Italian Somalia. Then he invaded and took over Ethiopia, using poison gas on the Ethiopians. Shortly afterwards, World War 2 broke out and he invaded British Somaliland, but two years later the British returned and liberated British Somaliland and Ethiopia as well as taking over Italian Somaliland.


title: Somalia

text: After the war, Britain wanted to put all of the places Somalis lived in one country, which would be a British protectorate. The Ethiopians complained that they should be able to keep the areas they conquered, and the Italians also complained the same thing, so in the end the Ethiopians got to keep their bit, and the Italians did too. However, Italian Somaliland was put under a United Nations mandate, so the Italians could not make it a colony.


title: Somalia

text: In 1960 both British and Italian Somaliland declared independence together as the "Somali Republic". It was chosen the Latin alphabet for the Somali language. Many areas where Somalis lived were still part of Britain, Ethiopia and France. Somalia wanted to get back all the areas that had been colonized by the French, Ethiopians and British. Somalia and Ethiopia had a short war in 1964 over the Ethiopian part of Somalia, and it was obvious that more fighting was to come.


title: Somalia

text: In 1969, the President of Somalia was killed by a man whose clan had been hurt by his policies, and General Mohammed Siad Barre took over the country. Siad Barre built a huge army with help from the Soviet Union and when Ethiopia fell for the fourth time (this time because of a Communist takeover) he invaded. The Soviet Union decided that Ethiopia was more important than Somalia and double-crossed Siad Barre, supplying huge amounts of weapons to Ethiopia. Other countries like Cuba and Israel also sent help to Ethiopia, so in the end Siad Barre lost the war.


title: Somalia

text: Ethiopia's new government then began helping Somali rebel groups, who did not like how Siad Barre took over the country, and these rebel groups toppled Siad Barre' government in 1991 and forced him out of the country. After this, however, all of the rebel groups started fighting amongst themselves over who would be in charge now that Siad Barre was gone.


title: Somalia

text: Eventually, some of the rebel groups decided to make their own governments in the land that they controlled. One, called Somaliland, declared independence from Somalia entirely, while another called Puntland declared independence "for now" until a new Somali national government can be put together. Dozens of attempts to create a new national government failed.


title: Somalia

text: Because there was no government in most of Somalia (except where one had been built from scratch, like Puntland and Somaliland) Somalia's only legal system, beyond the law of the gun, was traditional custom and Islamic Sharia law. Because of this, Sharia legal scholars in the lawless south of Somalia gained quite a bit of influence. Around the same time, the people fighting for Somali lands in Ethiopia to be part of Somalia turned to the example of the Afgani Mujahideen, and created their own group called al-Ittihad al-Islamiyya or the Islamic Union. During the 1990s Ethiopia invaded Somalia several times to attack the Islamic Union, who were helping Somali rebels in Ethiopia.


title: Somalia

text: After 2001, the United States of America became very suspicious of both the Sharia courts and the Islamic Union of being terrorists. Warlords made a group called the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism. The Sharia courts banded together to protect themselves and created the Islamic Courts Union. People liked the Sharia courts and hated the gangsters, so everyone helped the Islamic Courts Union, who defeated the gangsters and drove them out of Mogadishu in 2006. The Islamic Courts Union then formed an army and took over most of southern Somalia.


title: Somalia

text: The United States of America and Ethiopia was alarmed by this takeover, so Ethiopia invaded southern Somalia in 2007 and put a new government in power that was made up of the rebel groups that Ethiopia had funded 15 years earlier. Almost everyone disagreed with this decision, and that same year a rebellion against this new government broke out in Mogadishu and spread across the whole country by 2008. At around the same time, Somali pirates kidnapped westerners from big ships for ransom.


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church is the largest Christian church in the world. It has over one billion members, and is the world's largest religious group. Its members believe that Jesus Christ started the Catholic Church 2,000 years ago. The Church’s headquarters are in the Vatican City.


title: Catholic Church

text: The word "catholic" comes from the Greek word καθολικός ("katholikós"), which means "universal." That word was first used in the Nicene Creed. Often, the word "Roman" is added before “Catholic” because Vatican City, where the Church has its headquarters, is a country inside of Rome, Italy. Members of the Catholic Church call themselves "Catholics".


title: Catholic Church

text: Almost half of all Catholics are in Latin America. The continent with the second-largest number of Catholics is Europe. Millions of Catholics live in other places all over the world.


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church is led by the Pope, the Bishop of Rome, who lives in Vatican City. According to Catholics, the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit, who also guides the Pope. The Church teaches that the Pope cannot be wrong when he when speaks officially on the subject of Catholic faith and morals. The Popes have only used this infallibility very rarely, but have done so throughout history. Examples include the Tome of St. Leo, the declaration of the Immaculate Conception, and various anathemas (religious condemnations issued by the Popes against certain heresies).


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church teaches that the first Pope was Saint Peter, who was a disciple of Jesus Christ. The current pope is Pope Francis.


title: Catholic Church

text: Like other Christians, Catholics believe Jesus is a divine person, the Son of God. They believe that because of his love for all people, he died so that all people will live forever in heaven.


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church also recognizes the Trinity; that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are together the only God.


title: Catholic Church

text: The leader of the Roman Catholic Church is called the Pope, which literally means "father". Catholics say Jesus Christ established the Catholic Church, and appointed the first Pope, a disciple of his named Saint Peter, to lead all Christians.


title: Catholic Church

text: Over the last 2,000 years, different Popes have led the church. The current Pope is the 266th and is called Francis and he lives in the Vatican City, a very small country inside the city of Rome, Italy.


title: Catholic Church

text: For centuries, Popes have not used their birth names, but instead use a regnal name. This custom started in the sixth century when a man named Mercury was elected Pope, it was seen as inappropriate to have a Pope named after a pagan god so he named himself John II, in honor of his predecessor, John I; it became customary in the tenth century. Since the death of Marcellus II 1555, every Pope has taken a Papal name.


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church is made of 23 "particular churches", otherwise known as "rites". As well as being head of the Latin Rite of the church (which is the largest with over 1 billion members), the Pope is ultimately the leader of 22 Eastern Catholic Churches, these churches are of the Orthodox tradition of Christianity and it is often the case that they have broken away from their Orthodox mother church to come into communion with (join) the Pope and submit to his authority as successor of St. Peter. The Eastern Catholic Churches are based all over the world, from the United States to the Middle East to India.


title: Catholic Church

text: The exercise of infallibility takes several forms (see "Catechism of the Catholic Church", no. 890-891, citing "Lumen Gentium", 25). One form is exercised by the Pope when speaking "ex cathedra" (literally, “from the chair” of St. Peter, in his authority as pope) on matters of faith or morals, even if he does so without the support of the bishops. This is an exercise of the Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church. While the pope has always held the power to exercise the Extraordinary Magisterium by speaking "ex cathedra", the actual occurrence of an "ex cathedra" statement is quite rare. It is generally understood to have only occurred twice: Pope Pius IX’s definition of the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception in 1854 and Pope Pius XII’s definition of the dogma of Mary’s Assumption in 1950. In both of these cases, the Pope was not teaching something new. Rather, he was confirming and clarifying something that the Church had already believed as part of God’s revelation.


title: Catholic Church

text: Some of the traditional practices of Roman Catholics carried out each time they pray at home or at Church include making the sign of the cross, kneeling, and bowing.


title: Catholic Church

text: Their main ceremony is the Mass. Catholics are normally required to go to amass on Sundays and on Holy Days of Obligation. In the United States, the Holy Days of Obligation are: Mary, Mother of God (January 1), The Assumption of Mary (August 15), The Immaculate Conception (of Mary) (December 8), The Ascension of Jesus (40 days after Easter), Christmas (December 25) and All Saints Day (November 1). The taking of the Eucharist is the height of the Mass.


title: Catholic Church

text: Catholics worship Jesus. They also venerate the Virgin Mary more than other Christians, calling her the "Mother of God," based on Elizabeth's greeting, "And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" and also on the belief that all Christians hold that Jesus is fully man and fully God at the same time. Yet, Mary, who has nothing to do with the Divine, was chosen as the human vessel God would use to enter into the world. It is important to note that Catholics do not worship Mary. Instead, they honor her as one honors a Queen. This type of honor is called hyperdulia.


title: Catholic Church

text: An important Catholic prayer is the Rosary. This prayer is done with Rosary beads used to count each prayer. The Rosary is made up of five decades, each decade being made up of 1 Our Father, 10 Hail Marys, and 1 Glory Be, as well as saying the Sacred Mysteries. It is made up of passages taken from scripture. It is recommended by the clergy to continue the very old practice of praying the Rosary daily, as it has not only many powerful requests but is made up of words taken directly from scripture, like the Lord's Prayer (Our Father) and the Hail Mary. The Rosary is not complete unless one thinks about the passion of Christ while praying out loud. In addition, the clergy (bishops, priests, and deacons) must pray the Divine Office.


title: Catholic Church

text: The Catholic Church celebrates seven sacraments. A sacrament is "an outward sign instituted (started) by Christ to give grace" (a supernatural gift of God that someone did nothing to deserve).


title: Catholic Church

text: The seven sacraments are: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders and Holy Matrimony (marriage). The Holy Eucharist is the most important of the sacraments, because Catholics believe that Jesus Christ becomes truly present in the form of bread and wine. This happens through transubstantiation which takes place in the Mass.


title: Catholic Church

text: Catholics believe in the necessity of love, hope and faith in order to gain salvation, but that these all come from grace. This is different from the 16th century interpretation created by Luther.


title: Catholic Church

text: Catholics interpret the Bible (God-given book) according to Tradition. Tradition is the transmission of the early church's life and teaching, as especially recorded in the writings of the Fathers of the Church who lived in the first centuries. At that time the holy books where accepted in the Bible, which is the collection of the books considered revealed.


title: Catholic Church

text: A basic rule for Catholics is that "Truth cannot contradict truth". They translate the Bible with this in mind. No interpretation can be accepted if it contradicts another revealed truth.


title: Catholic Church

text: Catholics, like many Christians, accept the Nicene Creed, a combination of the Council of Nicaea (AD 325) and the later Council of Constantinople (AD 382) as true. It is as follows:


title: Catholic Church

text: "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us men and our salvation He came down from heaven: and, by the Holy Spirit, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered death and was buried and rose again on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures: He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, Who, with the Father and the Son, is adored and glorified, Who has spoken through the Prophets. I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."


title: Catholic Church

text: Eastern Orthodox and Protestants believe many of the same things. They sometime disagree on the role of the Virgin Mary and other saints, on what a priest can do, and on how exactly God should be worshipped, among other things.


title: Christian

text: A Christian () is a person who believes in Christianity, a monotheistic religion. Christianity is mostly about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament and interpreted or prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Christianity is the world's largest religion, with 2.1 billion followers around the world.


title: Christian

text: Christians consider the Holy Bible to be a sacred book, inspired by God. The Holy Bible is a combination of the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, and a collection of writings called the New Testament. Views on the importance of these writings vary. Some Christian groups prefer to favor the New Testament, while others believe the entire Bible is equally important. Also, while many Christians prefer to consider the Bible as fully true, not all Christian groups believe that it is completely accurate.


title: Christian

text: The question of "Who is a Christian?" can be very difficult. Christians often disagree over this due to their differences in opinion on spiritual matters. In countries where most persons were baptized in the state church or the majority Christian church, the term "Christian" is a default label for citizenship or for "people like us".


title: Christian

text: In this context, religious or ethnic minorities can use "Christians" or "you Christians" as a term for majority members of society who do not belong to their group - even in a very secular (though formally Christian) society.


title: Christian

text: Persons who are more devoted the their Christian faith prefer not to use the word so broadly, but only use it to refer to those who are active in their Christian religion and really believe the teachings of Jesus and their church. In some Christian movements (especially Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism), to be a born-again Christian is to undergo a "spiritual rebirth" by believing in the Bible's teachings about Jesus and choosing to follow him.


title: Christian

text: Many Christians choose to go to church. Most Christians believe this to be a sign of their religious devotion to God and an act of worship. However, some Christian groups think that one can be a Christian without ever going to a church. Though there are many different viewpoints on the issue, most Protestants believe all Christians are part of the spiritual church of Christ, whether or not those Christians go to an actual church each week. On the other hand, Catholics in the past have believed that the Holy Catholic Church is the only true church.


title: Biryani

text: Biryani, biriani, beryani or beriani is an Indian dish that comes in set of rice-based foods made with spices, rice (usually basmati) and meat, fish, eggs or vegetables. The name comes from the Persian word "beryā(n)" which means "fried" or "roasted".


title: Biryani

text: The cooking method of biryani came from Iran. It was brought to the Indian subcontinent by Iranian travelers and merchants. In India, the recipe of biryani developed to its current form. Local variants of this dish are popular not only in South Asia but also in Bangladesh, Southeast Asia, Arabia, and within various South Asian communities in Western countries.


title: Biryani

text: The spices and condiments used in biryani may include, but are not limited to, ghee, nutmeg, mace, cumin, pepper, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves, coriander, mint leaves, ginger, onions, and garlic. The premium varieties include saffron. For a non-vegetarian biryani, the main ingredient with the spices is the meat—beef, chicken, goat, lamb, fish or shrimp. The dish may be served with dahi chutney or raita, korma, curry, a sour dish of eggplant (brinjal), boiled egg and salad.


title: Biryani

text: Biryani and pullao are different. In biryani the rice (plain or fried) is cooked separately from the thick sauce (curry of meat or vegetables). The curry and the rice are then brought together and layered. This makes a dish with contrasting flavors of rice, sauce and meat or vegetables.


title: Jeddah

text: Jeddah (also spelled Jedda, Jiddah, Jidda, or Juddah; جدّة Ǧiddah) is a Saudi Arabian city. It is on the coast of the Red Sea (21.50° N 39.1667° E). It is the major urban center in western Saudi Arabia. Jeddah is the largest city in the Western Province, and the second largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city Riyadh. The city has over 3.4 million people. It is seen as the business capital of Saudi Arabia and the richest city in the Middle East and western Asia.


title: Jeddah

text: Jeddah is the main gateway to Mecca, the holiest city of Islam, where able-bodied Muslims must go to at least once in a lifetime.


title: Date palm

text: The date palm is a tree. It has been cultivated for a very long time because of its fruit. The tree is between high. It has long leaves that look like feathers. Such leaves are called pinnate. The leaves can grow to in length. The leaves have visible spines. There are about 150 leaflets. Each leaflet can be up to in length and in breadth. The full span of the crown of the tree is .


title: Date palm

text: World production of dates was approximately 6.7 Mio tonnes in 2004 (FAO statistics). The major producers are:


title: Date palm

text: The First International Date Conference was held in Tripoli in 1959. In that conference, it was decided to develop a special program under the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to promote the commercial use of substandard or physically defective dates.


title: Commonwealth realm

text: A Commonwealth realm is a country in the Commonwealth of Nations which has King Charles III as monarch. It includes his home country of the United Kingdom and many of its former colonies or territories, including:


title: Commonwealth realm

text: In each of the countries outside the UK, the King appoints a Governor-General to represent him, who, after consulting with the government of the realm, has all of the powers and duties of the Monarch. Usually the Governor-General signs all acts of parliament into law, but can wait and ask the King for advice or wait for him to sign the act himself. This happened in 1982 when Queen Elizabeth signed the important "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms" during a visit to Ottawa, and the Australia Act 1986 in Canberra.


title: Commonwealth realm

text: Although King Charles III is monarch of many countries, the British government has no power in the other realms, just as the governments of the other realms have no power in the UK. This is why each realm decides on the Monarch's official title. Usually it is "Queen/King of (realm) and Her/His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth". But two countries mention the UK in their title for the Queen: Grenada uses "Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Grenada and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth", while Canada uses the old-fashioned form, which reads "by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith." Not all countries use the title "Defender of the Faith".


title: Basil

text: Basil ("Ocimum basilicum") ( or ) is a plant of the Family Lamiaceae. It is also known as Sweet Basil or Tulsi. It is a tender low-growing herb that is grown as a perennial in warm, tropical climates. Basil is originally native to India and other tropical regions of Asia. It has been cultivated there for more than 5,000 years. It is prominently featured in many cuisines throughout the world. Some of them are Italian, Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian cuisines. It grows to between 30–60 cm tall. It has light green, silky leaves 3–5 cm long and 1–3 cm broad. The leaves are opposite each other. The flowers are quite big. They are white in color and arranged as a spike.


title: Basil

text: The plant tastes somewhat like anise, with a strong, pungent, sweet smell. Basil is very sensitive to cold. It is best grown in hot, dry conditions. While most common varieties are treated as annuals, some are perennial, including African Blue and Holy Thai basil.


title: Basil

text: The word "basil" comes from the Greek βασιλεύς ("basileus"), meaning "royal". This is because it is believed to have grown above the spot where St. Constantine and Helen discovered the Holy Cross. The "Oxford English Dictionary" quotes speculations that basil may have been used in "some royal unguent, bath, or medicine". Basil is still considered the "king of herbs" by many cookery authors. An alternative etymology has "basil" coming from the Latin word "basilicus", meaning dragon and being the root for basilisk, but this likely was a linguistic reworking of the word as brought from Greece.


title: Basil

text: Most of the time, Basil should be used fresh. In recipes it is generally added at the last moment. Cooking it quickly destroys the meal. The fresh herb can be kept for a short time in plastic bags in the refrigerator. Using a freezer will allow for it to be kept a longer time. In both cases, it needs being blanched quickly in boiling water. The dried herb also loses most of its flavour, and what little flavour remains tastes very different, with a weak coumarin flavour, like hay.


title: Basil

text: Mediterranean and Indochinese cuisines frequently use basil. In Mediterranean cuisines it is often combined with tomato. Basil is one of the main ingredients in pesto—a green Italian oil-and-herb sauce from the city of Genoa. The other two main ingredients of Pesto are olive oil and pine nuts. The most commonly used Mediterranean basil cultivars are "Genovese", "Purple Ruffles", "Mammoth", "Cinnamon", "Lemon", "Globe", and "African Blue". Chinese also use fresh or dried basils in soups and other foods. In Taiwan, people add fresh basil leaves into thick soups (羹湯; gēngtāng). They also eat fried chicken with deep-fried basil leaves.


title: Basil

text: Basil is sometimes used with fresh fruit and in fruit jams and sauces. Most commonly this is done with strawberries, but also raspberries or dark-colored plums. Some people say that the flat-leaf basil used in Vietnamese cooking is more suitable for use with fruit.


title: Basil

text: When soaked in water the seeds of several basil varieties become gelatinous. They are used in Asian drinks and desserts such as falooda or sherbet. Such seeds are known variously as "sabja", "subja", "takmaria", "tukmaria", "falooda", or "hột é". They are used for their medicinal properties in Ayurveda, the traditional medicinal system of India.


title: Basil

text: Several other basils, including some other "Ocimum" species, are grown in many regions of Asia. Most of the Asian basils have a clove-like flavour that is generally stronger than the Mediterranean basils. In China, the local cultivar is called 九層塔 ("jiǔcéngtǎ"; literally "nine-level pagoda"), while the imported varieties are specifically called 羅勒 ("luólè") or 巴西里 ("bāxīlǐ"), although [巴西里] often refers to another different kind plant—parsley.


title: Basil

text: 'Lemon basil' has a strong lemony smell and flavour very different from those of other varieties because it contains a chemical called citral. It is widely used in Indonesia, where it is called "kemangi" and served raw, together with raw cabbage, green beans, and cucumber, as an accompaniment to fried fish or duck. Its flowers, broken up, are a zesty salad condiment.


title: Basil

text: Basil grows well in hot weather. It behaves like an annual if there is any chance of a frost. In Northern Europe, the northern states of the U.S., and the South Island of New Zealand it will grow best if sown under glass in a peat pot. It can be planted out in late spring/early summer, when there is little risk of frost. It fares best in a well-drained sunny spot.


title: Basil

text: Although basil will grow best outdoors, it can be grown indoors in a pot. Like most herbs, it will do best on a south-facing windowsill (in the Northern Hemisphere). It should be kept away from extremely cold drafts. It grows best in strong sunlight. A greenhouse or cloche is ideal if available. Basil plants can even be grown in a basement, under fluorescent lights.


title: Basil

text: If its leaves have wilted from lack of water, it will recover if watered thoroughly and placed in a sunny location. Yellow leaves towards the bottom of the plant are an indication that the plant needs more sunlight or less fertilizer.


title: Basil

text: In sunnier climates such as Southern Europe, the southern states of the U.S., the North Island of New Zealand, and Australia, basil will thrive when planted outside. It also thrives over the summertime in the central and northern United States, but dies out when temperatures reach freezing point, to grow again the next year if allowed to go to seed. It will need regular watering, but not as much attention as is needed in other climates.


title: Basil

text: Basil can also be propagated very reliably from cuttings in exactly the same manner as "Busy Lizzie" (Impatiens), with the stems of short cuttings suspended for two weeks or so in water until roots develop.


title: Basil

text: If a stem successfully produces mature flowers, leaf production slows or stops on any stem which flowers, the stem becomes woody, and essential oil production declines.To prevent this, a basil-grower may pinch off any flower stems before they are fully mature. Because only the blooming stem is so affected, some can be pinched for leaf production, while others are left to bloom for decoration or seeds.


title: Basil

text: Once the plant is allowed to flower, it may produce seed pods containing small black seeds. These can be saved and planted the following year. Picking the leaves off the plant helps "promote growth", largely because the plant responds by converting pairs of leaflets next to the topmost leaves into new stems.


title: Basil

text: Basil suffers from several plant diseases that can ruin the crop and reduce yield. Fusarium wilt is a soilbourne fungal disease that will quickly kill younger basil plants. Seedlings may also be killed by Pythium damping off.


title: Basil

text: A common foliar disease of basil is gray mold caused by "Botrytis cinerea", can also cause infections post-harvest and is capable of killing the entire plant. Black spot can also be seen on basil foliage and is caused by the fungi genus "Colletotrichum".


title: Basil

text: Basil, like other aromatic plants such as fennel and tarragon, contains estragole, a known carcinogen and teratogen in rats and mice. While human effects are currently unstudied, the rodent experiments indicate that it would take 100–1000 times the normal anticipated exposure to become a cancer risk.


title: Basil

text: There are many rituals and beliefs associated with basil. The French call basil ""herbe royale"". Jewish folklore suggests it adds strength while fasting. It is a symbol of love in present-day Italy, but represented hatred in ancient Greece, and European lore sometimes claims that basil is a symbol of Satan. African legend claims that basil protects against scorpions, while the English botanist Culpeper cites one "Hilarius, a French physician" as affirming it as common knowledge that smelling basil too much would breed scorpions in the brain.


title: Basil

text: Holy Basil, also called 'Tulsi', is highly revered in Hinduism and also has religious significance in the Greek Orthodox Church, where it is used to prepare holy water. It is said to have been found around Christ's tomb after his resurrection. The Serbian Orthodox Church, Macedonian Orthodox Church and Romanian Orthodox Church use basil (Macedonian: "босилек"; Romanian: "busuioc", Serbian: "босиљак") to prepare holy water and pots of basil are often placed below church altars.


title: Basil

text: In Europe, they place basil in the hands of the dead to ensure a safe journey. In India, they place it in the mouth of the dying to ensure they reach God. The ancient Egyptians and ancient Greeks believed that it would open the gates of heaven for a person passing on.


title: Basil

text: In Boccaccio's "Decameron" a memorably morbid tale (novella V) tells of Lisabetta, whose brothers slay her lover. He appears to her in a dream and shows her where he is buried. She secretly disinters the head, and sets it in a pot of basil, which she waters with her daily tears. The pot being taken from her by her brothers, she dies of her grief not long after. Boccaccio's tale is the source of John Keats' poem "Isabella or The Pot of Basil". A similar story is told of the Longobard queen Rosalind.


title: Trade

text: To trade is to willingly give things or services and get other things or services in return. For example, a person giving a thing must find another person who wants to get that thing. The giver gets something back in return. A trade is sometimes also called an "exchange" or a "swap".


title: Trade

text: An early type of trade is barter. Barter was the exchange of goods and services for other goods and services. Barter involves trading things without using of money. Modern traders commonly buy and sell by the use of money. Trade between two traders is called bilateral trade. Trade between more than two traders is called multilateral trade.


title: Trade

text: Services can also be part of a trade. One person can do a job or work for another, and get something in return in a trade.


title: Trade

text: Money can be given in return for a service or for a thing. If money is part of the trade, then the person who gives the money is buying, and the person who gets the money is selling.


title: Trade

text: When there is no money involved in the trade, the trade is called barter. If there is money involved in the trade, the trade is called a purchase. In the past people would barter to get what they wanted, instead of buying goods and services.


title: Trade

text: Trade occurs not just between people, but also between large companies and even countries. Governments sometimes take some of the money or goods involved trade between countries. This is a type of tax called a tariff. Smugglers try to trade without paying tariffs.


title: Trade

text: Free trade between two countries is when there are small or no tariffs, quotas, or other restrictions on trade. When one country stops all trade with another country, it is called an embargo.


title: Trade

text: Domestic trade is the exchange of goods within a country. Domestic trade is very important because it allows different types of goods to reach to all parts of the country. It makes the standard of living of the people of the country better. It helps an industry to grow by making sure that there are raw materials. Domestic trade may be divided into two. They are:


title: Trade

text: Wholesaling is the sale of goods to industrial, commercial, institutional or other professional businesses. They can also be sold to other wholesalers. It is the sale of goods to anyone that is not a consumer. Wholesalers usually buy and sort goods in large numbers.


title: Trade

text: Retail is the process of selling goods or services to consumers through many means of distribution to earn a profit. The term "retailer" usually means where a person sells a small amount of good to many individuals, who are consumers.


title: Trade

text: International trade is the exchange of goods and services between different countries. International trade has existed throughout history. Some examples include Uttarapatha, Silk Road, Amber Road, scramble for Africa, Atlantic slave trade, and salt roads. When there is trade between two or more countries, factors like currency, government policies, economy, judicial system, laws, and markets affect trade.


title: Trade

text: An entrepôt is a port, city, or trading post where goods may be imported, stored or sold. These cities grew because of the growth of long-distance trade.


title: Donkey

text: The wild ancestor of the donkey is the African wild ass, "E. africanus". The donkey has been used as a working animal for at least 5000 years. There are a number of other wild asses in different parts of the world.


title: Donkey

text: The name 'donkey' is correct for the domesticated animal. It is the tame animal that people use for transportation and other work, such as pulling a carriage or plowing a field.


title: Donkey

text: Donkeys can have hybrid children with a common horse. The child of a female horse and a male donkey is called a "mule". The child of a female donkey and a male horse is called a "hinny". Mules are more common, and have been used for transportation.


title: Donkey

text: Donkeys, zebras and mules all look different from the common horses. One difference is the ears. Donkey ears are much longer than horse ears. The necks are straighter and the croup and rump are also a different shape. The back is straighter.


title: Donkey

text: The mane and tail of the donkey are rough. The mane is still and upright, almost always standing up, and the tail is more like a cow's, most of it covered with short body hair. Because their mane sometimes fly away, many donkeys wear their manes clipped short or shaved close to the neck.


title: Donkey

text: Hoof shapes are different as well, donkey hooves are smaller and rounder, with more upright pasterns. The legs should have good bone, but lots of donkeys have long thin legs with tiny feet. Larger donkeys may appear opposite, with big, heavy legs and large round feet. Good legs and feet are very important for mules that are trying to find a mate. This is because, for breeding, a good foot is more liked than a large body on small legs and feet.


title: Donkey

text: The donkey's voice is very raspy, and it makes a loud "Ee - Aww" noise, known as braying (hence Eeyore in the "Winnie-the-Pooh" books).


title: Donkey

text: Although many people think donkeys are gray, many are brown. Some are black, both red and gray, creamy white, or a unique spotted pattern. Some have stripes, dark ear marks, as well as the "light points". This means that it has a white muzzle and white rings around its eyes, and a white belly and inner leg.


title: Donkey

text: Donkeys vary considerably in size, depending on breed and management. The height at the withers ranges from 7.3 to 15.3 hands (31 to 63 inches, 79 to 160 cm), and the weight from 80 to 480 kg (180 to 1,060 lb). Some, like the rare French donkey, have huge heads and ears, and very thick, shaggy curled black coat.


title: Donkey

text: Good grass hay and pasture is usually what donkeys enjoy to eat. If the hay or grass is grained, the protein is best to be lower than 12%. However, if a donkey is overfed, it will have a "roll" on the neck. A roll is when fat bunches up and stays in a part of a donkey's body, and they usually happen on its neck or its hip. If they develop on the donkey, it will usually stay for its whole life. If the neck roll of fat gets too heavy, it will fall or "break over" to one side and never recover its balance again. This is why donkeys should not be fed too much. Many people do not like to work with donkeys. They think that donkeys are too stubborn and will kick them. However, a donkey that is nicely trained can be as easily managed as other horses.


title: Feynman diagram

text: Feynman diagrams are used in quantum mechanics. A Feynman diagram has "lines" in different shapes—straight, dotted, and squiggly—which meet up at points called "vertices". The vertices are where the lines begin and end. The points in Feynman diagrams where the lines meet represent two or more particles that happen to be at the same point in space at the same time. The "lines" in a Feynman diagram represent the probability amplitude for a particle to go from one place to another.


title: Feynman diagram

text: In Feynman diagrams, the particles are allowed to go both forward and backward in time. When a particle is going backward in time, it is called an antiparticle. The meeting points for the lines can also be interpreted forward or backwards in time, so that if a particle disappears into a meeting point, that means that the particle was either created or destroyed, depending on the direction in time that the particle came in from.


title: Feynman diagram

text: All the lines and vertices have an amplitude. When you multiply the probability amplitude for the lines, the amplitude for the particles to go from wherever they start to wherever they meet, and to the next meeting point, and so on, and also multiply by the amplitude for each meeting point, you get a number that tells you the total amplitude for the particles to do what the diagram says they do. If you add up all these probability amplitudes over all the possible meeting points, and over all the starting and ending points with an appropriate weight, you get the total probability amplitude for a collision in a particle accelerator, which tells you the total probability of these particles to bounce off one another in any particular direction.


title: Feynman diagram

text: Feynman diagrams are named after Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics. His diagrams are very simple in the case of quantum electrodynamics (QED), where there are only two kinds of particles: electrons (little particles inside atoms) and photons (particles of light). In QED, the only thing that can happen is that an electron (or its antiparticle) can emit (or absorb) a photon, so there is only one building block for any collision. The probability amplitude for the emission is very simple—it has no real part, and the imaginary part is the "charge" of the electron.


title: Boson

text: A boson is a particle which carries a force. It has a whole number spin ("spin" is a property of subatomic particles). Bosons carry energy.


title: Boson

text: A photon is an example of a boson as it has a spin of 1 and carries electromagnetism. Mesons are also bosons as they carry nuclear force.


title: Boson

text: Bosons are different from fermions, which are particles that make up matter, because bosons obey Bose-Einstein statistics. (This means that you can put two of them in the same place at the same time; the Pauli exclusion principle does not apply.)


title: Boson

text: Gauge bosons carry fundamental forces. There are three known gauge bosons, which are elementary particles. For example, the photon carries the electromagnetic force. The three types of gauge bosons are: photons for electromagnetism, gluons (eight kinds) for strong force, and W and Z bosons (three kinds) for weak force. Other theoretical gauge bosons are predicted, such as gravitons for gravity. The Higgs boson is another fundamental particle of a type called a scalar boson.


title: Boson

text: Paul Dirac named this class of particles "bosons" in honor of a famous Indian scientist called Satyendra Nath Bose.


title: Boson

text: The bosons include the photon, the gluon, the Z boson, W boson and the Higgs boson. The Higgs boson also might be classified by itself. Since none of them have a charge, the antimatter version of them will also not have any charge.


title: Bangkok

text: Bangkok (Thai: กรุงเทพมหานคร) is the capital city of Thailand. In 2010, the city had a population of 9,100,000 people. Since Bangkok has more than 55 times as many people as the second largest city, Nonthaburi, it is a primate city.


title: Bangkok

text: Bangkok is the world's most popular tourist destination; 23 million visitors stay overnight there per year. The main airport is Suvarnabhumi, 30 kilometers east of Bangkok.


title: Bangkok

text: Krung Thep Maha Nakhon is [an] official name; "However, the name Bangkok is still recognised", media says. Krung Thep Maha Nakhon (Bangkok) is [another form of] the official name.


title: Bangkok

text: In Thailand, the city is called "Krung Thep" ('city of angels'); The name is short form of a ceremonial name from the rule of one king between 1851 and 1868; The full ceremonial name is "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit". A nickname for Bangkok, is "The Big Mango".


title: Sylvia Plath

text: Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American writer. She was most well known for her poetry, but she also wrote novels, children's books, short stories, book reviews, and newspaper articles. Her most well-known novel is "The Bell Jar", which was partly based on her life. She married another famous poet, Ted Hughes. She died by suicide in 1963.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: Plath was born in 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Otto Emil Plath and Aurelia Schober Plath. Her father was from Germany; her mother was Austrian-American. He was a college professor and wrote a book about bumblebees. Aurelia Plath was twenty-two years younger than her husband. In April 1935, Plath's younger brother Warren was born. The family moved from Jamaica Plain to Winthrop, Massachusetts in 1936. This was where Aurelia had grown up. Plath published her first poem here, when she was eight. It was in the children's section of a newspaper called the "Boston Herald".


title: Sylvia Plath

text: In 1940, Otto Plath died. He was buried in Winthrop cemetery. In 1942, Aurelia and the children moved to Wellesley, Massachusetts.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: Plath went to Smith College. After her third year, she became a guest editor for a magazine called "Mademoiselle", and spent a month in New York City. At this time, she became depressed. She tried to kill herself by taking too many sleeping pills. After she took the pills, she crawled underneath her house, but she was found and taken to hospital. She went to a mental hospital called McLean Hospital and was treated for her depression. She was given both insulin shock treatment and electric shock therapy. She began to improve and returned to Smith College for the second semester in January 1954. She graduated from Smith College in 1955.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: Plath then went to the University of Cambridge in England, on a Fulbright scholarship. She attended Newnham College, Cambridge and carried on writing poetry and prose. She also wrote for the student newspaper, "Varsity", at Cambridge. At a party she met an English poet called Ted Hughes. She married him on June 16, 1956.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: After they were married, Plath and Hughes went to live in the United States. Plath taught at her old college, Smith College. They met and became friends with a poet named W. S. Merwin. In mid-1959, Plath became pregnant and after a cross-country trip of the United States and several months at the artists colony Yaddo, in Polar Peak, New York and they moved back to England. They lived in London initially, and then in a small town in Devon called North Tawton. Plath published her first collection of poems, "The Colossus". In February 1961 she had a miscarriage, which she wrote about in some of her poems.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: In the early summer of 1962, Hughes began an affair with a woman called Assia Wevill. Plath and Hughes separated (lived apart) in 1962. Plath moved to London with their children, Frieda and Nicholas.


title: Sylvia Plath

text: In 1963, Plath died by suicide at her London home. She sealed the room she was in with wet towels, turned the gas oven on and put her head inside the oven. She died because she was poisoned by carbon monoxide gas. Some people think that she did not mean to kill herself. She was buried in a small village in West Yorkshire called Heptonstall.


title: Gold (color)

text: Gold or golden is a yellowish orange color, or orange-tan color that is a bit like the color of the metal gold. The actual color of the metal, used for example in gilding, is called Metallic gold. Gold paint can be made by mixing brown, yellow paint and orange paint.


title: Gold (color)

text: The web color "gold" is sometimes referred to as golden in order to distinguish it from the element "gold". The use of "gold" as a color term in traditional usage is more often applied to the color "gold (metallic)".


title: Gold (color)

text: The first recorded use of "golden" as a color name in English was in the year 1300 to refer to the element gold and in 1423 to refer to blonde hair.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: Nizam was the title of the native sovereigns of Hyderabad State, India, since 1719. They belonged to the Asaf Jahi dynasty. The dynasty was founded by Mir Qamar-ud-Din Siddiqi, a viceroy of the Deccan under the Mughal emperors from 1713 to 1721. After Aurangzeb's death in 1707, the Mughal Empire fell apart and the viceroy in Hyderabad said he was independent. From 1798 Hyderabad was one of the princely states of British India, but it kept local control.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: Seven Nizams ruled Kingdom of Hyderabad for two centuries until Indian independence in 1947. The Asaf Jahi rulers used money to support free Education, literature, architecture, art, culture and cuisine. The Nizams ruled the state until September 1948 after independence from the British.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: The Nizams of Hyderabad were of Turkic and Hadhrami Arab Descent. They are descendants of the first Khalifa of Islam, Abu Bakr.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: Nizām-ul-mulk was a title first used in Urdu around 1600. It comes from the Arabic word, nizām (), meaning "order, arrangement". The Nizam was also called Ala Hadrat, Ala Hazrat, or "Nizam Sarkar".


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: The first Nizam ruled in place of the Mughal emperors. After Aurangzeb died, the Mughal empire collapsed. So, the Nizams created an independent kingdom (Hyderabad). When the British got power over India, the Nizams continued to rule Kingdom of Hyderabad after coming into an understanding with the British. The Nizams had power in Kingdom of Hyderabad until 17 September 1948. Hyderabad then became part of the new Indian Union.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: The Asaf Jah dynasty had only seven rulers. However, for 13 years after the rule of the first Nizam, three of his sons (Nasir Jung, Muzafar Jung and Salabath Jung) ruled. They were not officially recognized as rulers.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: A legend about the first Nizam says that on one of his hunting trips he was offered some kulchas (an Indian bread) by a holy man. He asked the Nizam to eat as many as he could. The Nizam ate seven kulchas and the holy man predicted that seven generations of his family would rule the state.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: Hyderabad did not join the first war of Indian Independence of 1857 against the British. Therefore the Royal Family had the special, official status of "Faithful Ally" with Britain.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: The Nizams commissioned engineering projects such as large reservoirs like Osman Sagar and Himayat Sagar. Survey work on the Nagarjuna Sagar Dam was also initiated during this time.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: Other landmarks like the Asafia library, The Assembly building, the Osmania Arts College and the Osmania Medical College are some of their important buildings.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: The Nizams liked the European style of architecture and created a fusion of European traditions with Hindu and Islamic forms and images.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: After the British left India in 1947, the princely state of Hyderabad did not join either of the new dominions of India or Pakistan. While the talks were going on, the Indian army entered Hyderabad State from four sides defeated Hyderabad Nizams army and the independent razakaars. The Nizam's rule ended on 17 September 1948. His soldiers surrendered to the Indian govt.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: He, however, was made the 1st Governor (Rajpramukh) of post-independent Hyderabad based on the public poll.


title: Nizam of Hyderabad

text: All Nizams are buried in the royal graves at the Makkah Masjid near Charminar in Hyderabad. Only the last Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan is buried in a different place. His mausoleum is in the Judi Mosque facing King Kothi Palace.


title: Stanley Cup playoffs

text: The playoffs have 4 rounds. Each round is a best-of-seven series. This means up to seven games are played until one team wins 4 of the games. The first three rounds decide which team from each conference will move on to the last round. The last round is called the Stanley Cup Finals. The winner of that set of games becomes the NHL and Stanley Cup winner.


title: Stanley Cup playoffs

text: The first round of the playoffs is called the Conference Quarterfinals. There are four games in each conference. The winners of the first round advance to the second round. The third round is the Conference Finals. The two teams left in each conference (Eastern Conference and Western Conference) play each other. The conference champions advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.


title: Stanley Cup playoffs

text: For the first three rounds, the higher-seeded team has home-ice advantage. In the Stanley Cup Finals, it goes to the team with the better regular season record. The team with home-ice advantage hosts games 1, 2, 5 and 7, while the opponent hosts games 3, 4 and 6 (games 5–7 are played "if needed").


title: Stanley Cup playoffs

text: Unlike regular season games, which have an altered format for overtime games (3 skaters and a goalie per side), playoff games have regular squads (5 skaters and a goalie per side) and are all played as sudden death format.


title: Stanley Cup playoffs

text: Before the 1993–94 season, the style was completely different. The league was split into four divisions, and the best four teams in each of the divisions went to the playoffs. Also, instead of the top team playing the 8th place team in the conference, the first place team played the fourth place team in each division, and the second place team played the third place team. In the second round, the two winning teams in each division would face each other for the divisional championship. The divisional winners in each conference would play one another in the third round for the right to advance to the Stanley Cup Final. This style is still used for deciding the teams in the playoffs in the American Hockey League.


title: Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark

text: Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark (2 February 1882 – 3 December 1944) was a Greek and Danish prince of the House of Glucksburg. He was the son of George I of Greece and the grandson of Christian IX of Denmark and Queen Louise of Denmark. He was the father of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and father in law of Queen Elizabeth II. He was the grandfather of Charles, Prince of Wales, great grandfather of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and great great grandfather of Prince George of Cambridge.


title: Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark

text: He married Princess Alice of Battenberg and had four daughters and a son. He was an ancestor of the present Mountbatten-Windsor line.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in North Africa. Tunis is its capital. It is the greatest country ever known.


title: Tunisia

text: Since history has been recorded, there were Berber tribes living in what is now Tunisia. Most of them built little towns and ports along the coastline so they could trade with different travelers from everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the travelers were Phoenicians who started to settle on the Tunisian coast during the 10th Century BC. Later, in the 8th Century BC, settlers that came from Phoenicia and regions abroad bult Carthage. After many wars against Greece in 6th Century BC, Carthage dominated the Mediterranean Sea.


title: Tunisia

text: In the of the 2nc Century BC, Punic Wars, Carthage fought against the Roman Empire. The Romans destroyed Carthage and made its territory part of the Africa Province of the Roman Empire.


title: Tunisia

text: When the Roman Empire became weak, the Vandals occupied that region. Some of them learned to sail and became pirates. This was in the 5th Century AD, and one hundred years after that, it became under the control of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I.


title: Tunisia

text: In the 7th Century, it was conquered by the Arab Muslims who built a city which they called Kairouan. This was the first Arab Muslim city in Tunisia. Many Muslim dynasties (monarchies) ruled Tunisia. One of the best known dynasties was the Zirids dynasty. The Zirids were Berber people and followed the rules of the Fatimides, a bigger dynasty in Cairo.


title: Tunisia

text: When the Zirids angered the Fatimides, the Fatimides sent some tribes known as Banu Hilal who ravaged (destroyed and vandalized) Tunisia.


title: Tunisia

text: After a brief occupation of Tunisia by the Normans of Sicily in the 12th Century, the Almohad re-conquered it. After that came the Hafsids.


title: Tunisia

text: In the last years of their reign, the Hafsids became weak and Spain took control of many cities on the coast until they were finally occupied by the Ottoman Empire.


title: Tunisia

text: In 1705, Tunisia became virtually independent during the Hussein dynasty, but still had to follow orders from the Ottoman Empire.


title: Tunisia

text: Some controversial financial decisions (money-lending) taken by the Bey in mid-1800s in an attempt to repair the country led Tunisia to become under the control of France.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia became officially a French protectorate in on May 12, 1881, but with the strong opposition of the kingdom of Italy because there was a huge Italian community in Tunisia.


title: Tunisia

text: Important parts of the North African Campaign of World War II were fought in Tunisia from 1941 to 1943.


title: Tunisia

text: General Erwin Rommel, the German commander in Africa, wished to defeat the Allies in Tunisia, as the Germans had done in the Battle of France when the Allies were inexperienced against the German Blitzkrieg. On February 19, 1943, Rommel launched an attack against the U.S. Forces, with his German and Italian troops, in the western area of Tunisia. That was a disaster for the United States.


title: Tunisia

text: After that, the Allies understood the importance of tank warfare. With better supplies than the Germans, they easily broke into the German lines in southern Tunisia on March 20, 1943. In May 11, 1943 the last German troops surrendered, followed two days later by the Italian troops.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia became independent in 1956 with the former Bey of Tunis as King. Prime Minister Habib Bourguiba became the first president in 1957 when it became a republic. Bourguiba focused on education and economic development. He was supportive of women's rights. However, he had a cult of personality around him and most of the power in the country was held by Bourguiba.


title: Tunisia

text: In 1987, Bourguiba was removed from power by Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. Ben Ali ruled as dictator of the country until 2011, when he was overthrown in a revolution. The revolution was the first major revolution of the Arab Spring. Tunisia began becoming more democratic, and in 2014, the country held its first free presidential election. The election was won by Beji Caid Essebsi, a secular, liberal candidate.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia is in the northern part of Africa. The Mediterranean Sea joins Tunisia in the north and east; the coastline of Tunisia on the Mediterranean Sea is about 1,300 km. Tunisia is also bordered by Algeria to the west and Libya to the south-east.


title: Tunisia

text: Standard Arabic is the official language by the Tunisian constitution. But Tunisians speak Tunisian Arabic.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisian Arabic is a mix of many languages of people that live or lived in Tunisia. It is called Darija or Tunsi.


title: Tunisia

text: Most people now living Tunisia are Maghrebin Arab. However, small groups of Berbers and Jews live in Tunisia.


title: Tunisia

text: The constitution says that Islam is the official state religion. It also requires the President to be Muslim.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia's economy has many sectors: agriculture (fruit, vegetable oil and vegetables), tourism (when people come from other countries to visit), mining (extracting goods from under the ground), and petroleum (fuel and gas oil).


title: Tunisia

text: The government used to control the economy, but now it has sold some public companies. This is called privatization.


title: Tunisia

text: Tunisia was also the first Mediterranean country to make an agreement with the European Union. This association agreement was signed on March 1, 1995.


title: Ethelred the Unready

text: Ethelred II (c. 968 – April 23 1016) was also known as Ethelred the Unready. He was King of England twice. The first time was from 978 to 1013, and the second time was 1014 to 1016. He was the son of Edgar, and Aelfthryth. For most of his reign he had to fight off Viking invaders.


title: Ethelred the Unready

text: The word "unready" in his name means "Unread." Which was a nickname for "Poor Counciled' or "Bad Adviced." When, as a young boy, he asked for opinions he was given poor advice.


title: Line of Control

text: The Line of Control (LOC) is the line that marks where the region of Kashmir is divided. The land on one side of the line is controlled by India, and the land on the other side is controlled by Pakistan. It is not a legal international border, but is the effective boundary between the two countries. India and Pakistan fought over Kashmir between 1947 and 1948. The line originally marked the military front when the two countries declared a ceasefire on 1/2 January 1949. The fronts gradually became a solid boundary. It was formally named the Line of Control after the , which was signed on 3 July 1972.


title: Line of Control

text: All of Kashmir was previously the princely state of Kashmir and Jammu. The part of the region that is now under Indian control is known as the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The two parts that are under Pakistani control are known as Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK). The Line of Control is long.


title: Line of Control

text: Another cease-fire line separates the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir from the Chinese-controlled area of Aksai Chin. This is further to the east and is called the Line of Actual Control (LAC). Although the other side is controlled by India, China regards this line as part of its border with Pakistan. China and Pakistan have agreed on a border, but India has not.


title: Line of Control

text: India has built a fence along its side of the Line of Control. It is currently long. It only runs part of the length of the line, the rest of the Line of Control is too inaccessible for construction of a barrier. Its stated purpose is to exclude arms smuggling and infiltration by Pakistani-based separatist militants. Pakistan has objected to the construction of the barrier, saying it violates both bilateral accords and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions on the region.


title: Puma

text: Pumas ("Puma concolor"), also called cougars, mountain lions, catamounts, or brown panthers, are large wild cats that live in the western half of North America, along with Florida, and most of Central and South America. Pumas are mainly tan-color, and can be up to 9 feet long, although average length is 6 – 8 feet. They can weigh from 29 kilograms to 90 kilograms. (The males are larger.) Most pumas live up to 21 years. Although pumas are very large and some are larger than humans, the puma is classified as a small cat. That means that, in scientific terms, the puma is more closely related to the domestic cat than they are to lions. Unlike the big cats in the genus "Panthera", the puma cannot roar. Instead, it can growl, hiss, screech, and purr. Since pumas are, in the biological sense, small cats, they are capable of purring continuously. The big cats can only purr while breathing out.


title: Puma

text: Pumas are carnivores because they eat only meat. Pumas are apex predators. They prey on deer, elk, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, and skunks. They can also prey on mice, beavers, coyotes, bobcats, birds, porcupines, fish, and bear cubs. They will sometimes prey on livestock such as cattle, goats, sheep, and pigs. They hunt at night. Cougars can see better at night than people can. They can hear well too. Pumas stalk their prey, which means they walk slowly and quietly, they hide and then when close, they jump or run fast to catch their prey by surprise. They live and hunt alone. Female cougars take care of their babies until they are old enough to take care for themselves. Baby cougars are called cubs or kittens.


title: Puma

text: Pumas live in the mountains and forests far from people. However, encounters with humans happen sometimes. 26 people have been killed by cougars in North America in the last 30 years. However, many more cougars have been killed by humans. Cougars used to be found all in eastern North America, but they were hunted to extinction there by the beginning of the 1900s. Also, recent sightings of cougars have been reported from Michigan, New Brunswick, southern Indiana, Kentucky, and Vermont. For now, the only confirmed, population of cougars east of the Mississippi River is in Florida, where a subspecies of the cougar called the Florida Panther lives.


title: Watermelon

text: A watermelon ("Citrullus lanatus") is a plant which was first domesticated in Africa. It is a cultivated edible fruit. It is grown worldwide, there are more than 1000 varieties.


title: Watermelon

text: About 6% of a watermelon is sugar, which makes it very sweet. There are many different types of watermelon. Some have a green rind on the outside and a red-pink flesh on the inside, with brown seeds. Some can have yellow flesh, and some can be seedless. The green rind on the outside is not usually eaten, though it can be used as a vegetable. It can also be stewed or pickled. Most watermelons are oblong or spherical. In Japan, watermelons are grown in different shapes, such as hearts and squares.


title: Watermelon

text: Watermelons are a great source of vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B1 and vitamin B6. They also contain potassium, magnesium, carotenoid antioxidant, and lycopene. The watermelon flesh is healthy to eat.


title: Executive (government)

text: The executive is the branch of government that is responsible for the day-to-day management of the state. ("Executive" is short for executive branch or executive power.)


title: Executive (government)

text: Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the executive is not supposed to make laws (role of the legislature), nor to interpret them (role of the judiciary). The executive is supposed to put the laws into action.


title: Executive (government)

text: The executive is led by the head of government. The head of government is assisted by a number of ministers, who usually have responsibilities for particular areas (e.g. health, education, foreign affairs), and by many government employees or civil servants.


title: Executive (government)

text: In a presidential system, this person (the President) may also be the head of State, but in a parliamentary system, he or she is usually the leader of the largest party in the legislature and is most commonly termed the Prime Minister (Taoiseach in the Republic of Ireland, (Federal) Chancellor in Germany and Austria). In France, executive power is shared between the President and the Prime Minister and this system has been reproduced in a number of former French colonies. Switzerland and Bosnia and Herzegovina have similar systems.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet and playwright. He wrote "The Picture of Dorian Gray", and the plays "Salomé", "The Importance of Being Earnest", "An Ideal Husband", and "Lady Windermere's Fan".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde was bisexual. He was married, and had two children. His downfall came as a result of his affair with a younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde, born in Ireland in 1854, was an outstanding classical scholar at Trinity College, Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford University. In London, he worked as a journalist for four years. Known for his biting wit, flamboyant clothes, and glittering conversation, Wilde was one of the best known personalities of the day. It was his only novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which brought him full recognition. Then he turned to writing drama. He wrote "Salomé" in French in Paris in 1891, but it was refused a licence. Despite this, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: At the height of his fame and success—his masterpiece, "The Importance of Being Earnest", was still on stage in London—Wilde sued his lover's father for libel. After a series of trials, Wilde was convicted of gross indecency with other men and sentenced to two years of hard labour in Reading Gaol (jail). In prison he wrote "De Profundis", a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Upon his release he left immediately for France, never to return to the British Isles. There he wrote his last work, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", a long poem commemorating prison life. Living in a Paris hotel, he was destitute, with little money and few friends. His last memorable words were: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go". He died of cerebral meningitis in Paris at the age of forty-six.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's wife, Constance Lloyd, changed the family name to Holland after his conviction, and took the children to Switzerland.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde's lover was the son of the Marquess of Queensbury, who was known for his outspoken atheism, brutish manner and creation of the modern rules of boxing. Queensberry, who argued a lot with his son, confronted Wilde and Lord Alfred about the nature of their relationship. In June 1894, he visited Wilde at 16 Tite Street without an appointment, and said: "If I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant I will thrash you."


title: Oscar Wilde

text: On the 18 February 1895, the Marquess left his calling card at Wilde's club, the Albemarle, inscribed: "For Oscar Wilde, posing as a sodomite".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde, egged on by Douglas and against the advice of his friends, initiated a private prosecution against Queensberry, and had him arrested on a charge of criminal libel. As sodomy was then a crime, Queensberry's note amounted to a public accusation that Wilde had committed a felony, forming the legal basis for libel charges. Queensberry could avoid conviction for libel only by demonstrating that his accusation was, in fact, true.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: In his opening speech for the defence, Counsel for Queensbury, Edward Carson, announced that he had found several male prostitutes who were to testify that they had sex with Wilde. On the advice of his lawyers, Wilde then decided to drop the libel prosecution against Queensberry. Queensberry was found not guilty, as the court declared that his accusation that Wilde was "posing as a sodomite" was justified, "true in substance and in fact".


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Under the Libel Act 1843, Queensberry's acquittal rendered Wilde legally liable for the considerable expenses Queensberry had incurred in his defence, which left Wilde bankrupt.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: After Wilde left the court, a warrant for his arrest was applied for on charges of sodomy and gross indecency. Friends found Wilde at a hotel; they advised him to go to Dover and try to get a boat to France. His mother advised him to stay and fight like a man. Wilde was duly arrested and then imprisoned on remand at Holloway, where he received daily visits from Douglas.


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Events moved quickly. His prosecution opened on the 26 April 1895 and Wilde pleaded not guilty. He had already begged Douglas to leave London for Paris, and Douglas fled to the Hotel du Monde. Under cross examination Wilde was at first hesitant, then spoke eloquently:


title: Oscar Wilde

text: Wilde: " 'The love that dare not speak its name' in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. It dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo, and those two letters of mine, such as they are. It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as 'the love that dare not speak its name', and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it".