title: Ted Cassidy

paragraphs: Ted Cassidy (July 31, 1932 - January 16, 1979) was an American actor. He was best known for his roles as Lurch and Thing on "The Addams Family".


title: Aileen Wuornos

paragraphs: Aileen Carol Wuornos Pralle (born Aileen Carol Pittman; February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer. She was born in Rochester, Michigan. She confessed to killing six men in Florida and was executed in Florida State Prison by lethal injection for the murders. Wuornos said that the men she killed had raped her or tried to rape her while she was working as a prostitute.

paragraphs: Wuornos was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.

paragraphs: The movie, "Monster" is about her life. Two documentaries were made about her.

paragraphs: Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan. She never met her father. Wuornos was adopted by her grandparents. When she was 13 she became pregnant. She started working as a prostitute when she was 14.


title: Crater

paragraphs: A crater is a round dent on a planet. They are usually shaped like a circle or an oval. They are usually made by something like a meteor hitting the surface of a planet. Underground activity such as volcanoes or explosions can also cause them but it's not as likely.


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title: Chinese New Year

paragraphs: Chinese New Year, known in China as the SpringFestival and in Singapore as the LunarNewYear, is a holiday on and around the new moon on the first day of the year in the traditional Chinese calendar. This calendar is based on the changes in the moon and is only sometimes changed to fit the seasons of the year based on how the Earth moves around the sun. Because of this, Chinese New Year is never on January1. It moves around between January21 and February20.

paragraphs: The Chinese New Year is of the most important holidays for Chinese people all over the world. Its 7th day used to be used instead of birthdays to count people's ages in China. The holiday is still used to tell people which "animal" of the Chinese zodiac they are part of. The holiday is a time for gifts to children and for family gatherings with large meals, just like Christmas in Europe and in other Christian areas. Unlike Christmas, the children usually get gifts of cash in red envelopes ("hongbao") and not toys or clothes.

paragraphs: Chinese New Year used to last 15 days until the Lantern Festival on the year's first full moon. Now, it is a national holiday in the Republic and People's Republic of China, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. It is also celebrated in some parts of Thailand. In some places, only the first day or three days are celebrated. In the PRC, nearby weekends are changed to create a 7-day-long "Golden Week".

paragraphs: The traditional new years in Vietnam (Tet) and in Korea (Korean New Year) are almost always on the same day as Chinese New Year but are sometimes different. The Japanese New Year used to work the same way but has been very different since some changes in the 19th century. Losar and Tsagaan Sar, the traditional Tibetan and Mongolian new years, are very close to the Chinese New Year but different ways of thinking about the moon's changes and adding months can make them happen weeks apart from the Chinese festival.

paragraphs: The Mandarin Chinese name of the holiday is "Chūn Jié", which means "Spring Festival". This is why it is often called the "Spring Festival" by Chinese speakers of English, even though the holiday always occurs in the winter months of January or February. Its name is written in traditional Chinese writing and in the easier writing now used by mainland China and Singapore. The Republic of China began to use this name in the 1910s, after it began to use the European calendar for most things.

paragraphs: Before that, the holiday was usually just called the "NewYear". Because the traditional Chinese calendar is mostly based on the changes in the moon, the Chinese New Year is also known in English as the "Lunar New Year" or "Chinese Lunar New Year". This name comes from "Luna", an old Latin name for the moon. The Indonesian name for the holiday is Imlek, which comes from the Hokkien word for the old Chinese calendar and is therefore also like saying "Lunar New Year".

paragraphs: Another old name for the holiday was "Lìchūn", meaning "Early Spring". In Chinese, this is also a special name for the sun's place from about February4 to 19 each year, when the sun is 45 to 30° ahead of its place on the 1stday of spring. The name is not often used to talk about the Chinese New Year any more. On Taiwan, the real "Lichun" has been called "Farmer's Day" since 1941. A year between two Chinese New Years without it is thought to be unlucky for marriages.

paragraphs: Chinese New Year always starts on a new moon, when the Moon is between the Earth and Sun and it looks all dark in the night sky. Because new moons happen about every 29.53 days but the year set by Pope GregoryXIII is 365.2425 days long, the Chinese holiday moves to different days each year. The Chinese calendar adds a 13th month every so often to keep the seasons in the right place, so the first day of the new year always happens between January21 and February20 on the 2nd or 3rd new moon after the 1st day of winter. The chart on the right gives the day of each Chinese New Year from 1996 to 2031.

paragraphs: In the past, the Chinese emperors did not number their years from one place. Instead, they gave names to eras (groups of years) any time they wanted. Since they still changed its number at every new year festival, the first year of a new era might only be a few days long. One example of this is the "1st year of Kaiyuan" during the Tang, which lasted a week or so in 713. In the same way, people in China and around East Asia did not count their ages from zero or add one year at every birthday. They counted birth as the start of their 1st year and added another year upon the 7th day of the New Year, which they called People's Day ("Rénrì"). This came from an old story about how a goddess named Nüwa made all the animals. The day she made people was used as the common birthday for everyone. In this way, people sometimes called a baby who born on the 6th day of the New Year a 2-year-old only a few hours after its birth. (Today, it is much more common in China to count age starting at zero and add years at birthdays, like in English-speaking countries.)

paragraphs: The Chinese used to keep time using 2 different lists of characters, known in English as the 10Heavenly Stems and the 12Earthly Branches. The stems were the 10 days of the week under the Shang dynasty, each with its own sun and a special gift to different dead family members of the king. The branches were parts of the almost 12-year path that Jupiter takes around the sun. Each is said to be yin (dark or female) or yang (bright or male), so that when they are put together they make a list of 60 pairs. (The current list began in 1984 and will end in 2043.) Later, each of the stems was also said to match one of the 5 Chinese elements—wood, fire, dirt, metal, or water—and each of the branches was said to be a different animal: Rat, Ox & Cow, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster & Chicken, Dog, and Pig. The Han Chinese list begins with the Year of the "Wood Rat"; the Tibetan list is much the same but begins with the Year of the "Fire Rabbit".

paragraphs: Today, Chinese people don't use these lists to count hours, days, or years but many still pay attention to the animal of the year when someone was born. Just like with the European zodiac, some people think the year's animal can change how someone thinks and acts. They even think it can change whether a marriage will be a happy one or not. Newspapers pay writers to give them ideas for how lucky different animals will be during the coming week. Many parents even time their children's birth within a year or two to give them the best animal sign: a Chinese primary school might have full classrooms of "golden Dragon" students but noticeably fewer "dirt Rats". For those who do believe such things, it is important to notice that the traditional Chinese calendar's year starts at a different time from the usual year. People may say that 2017 is the "Year of the Rooster and Chicken" but the people born in January or early February 2018 will still be "Roosters" and "Chickens" and those born in the first few weeks of 2017 were still "Monkeys".

paragraphs: Chinese tradition said that the Chinese calendar began during the 60th year of the reign of the Yellow Emperor in 2637, with New Year celebrations beginning in that year. As far as we now know, it's much less old than that. Parts of the old ways of counting time given above are at least as early as 1250, during the Shang times. Most of it was known by the Zhou (11th–3rd centuries). The 5 elements and small points were set by the Han (2nd century–2nd century). From eastern China, the calendar and its new year spread to nearby places like Vietnam (111), Korea (before 270), Japan (604), and Tibet (around 641). It also followed the overseas Chinese to their new homes in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and other places.

paragraphs: The Shang kings (16th–11th centuries) gave special gifts to their gods and dead family members during the winter of each year. Under the Zhou, people were having harvest festivals like today's Mid-Autumn Festival by about 1000. Over time, common people started to give gifts to their gods and their dead family members, just like the king. Parts of the harvest festival stopped being thanks and celebration of the last year. They moved to before the planting of the seeds and became wishes and celebration of good luck in the next year.

paragraphs: By the early Han, people were counting their birthdays from People's Day on the 7th day of the New Year. The order of animals' birthdays was said to be Roosters and Chickens on the New Year, Dogs on the next day, Pigs on the day after that, Goats on the 4th, Oxen and Cows on the 5th, Horses on the 6th, and then people. About the same time, people started burning bamboo to make loud noises to welcome the New Year and scare away bad things.

paragraphs: People started carefully cleaning their homes, having large family dinners, and staying up late on the day before Chinese New Year by the end of the Three Kingdoms (3rd century). By the end of the Jin in the 5th century, these things had become a common part of Chinese life. Some Taoist magicians may have made gunpowder as early as the Han or Jin, but they certainly had it by the 9th century at the end of the Tang. Over the next few centuries, fireworks and firecrackers replaced burning bamboo as a way to chase away anything bad and to welcome in the New Year.

paragraphs: Dragon dances had appeared by the time of the Han. People thought that Chinese dragons like Yinglong and Shenlong were kinds of gods who had power over where the water in rivers and canals went and when the water in clouds would fall as rain. Because this was very important for farming, dragon dances could happen all through the year when rain was needed. Different parts of today's dragon dances began at different times, with some at least as old as the Song (about 1150) and others very new, like using special paint that glows under black light.

paragraphs: Lion dances were probably newer. China has not had its own lions since the spread of people out of Africa into the rest of the world. The earliest lions in Chinese books were gifts to the Han emperor from Parthia and other people who lived along the Silk Road connecting Chinese and Roman businesses. There was lion dancing under the Tang and in Japan by the 8th century, but people still thought of it as a foreign dance used by Buddhists. Today, people talk about "Northern" and "Southern" kinds of lion dances. The special northern kind began under the Southern Song (12th–13th century). The special southern kind began in Guangdong later, maybe under the Ming (14th–17th century).

paragraphs: As part of other changes, the Meiji Emperor of Japan ordered in 1873 that the new year celebrations of his country would be held on January1. Today, even most of the traditional Japanese celebrations now occur on that day, not at the same time as Chinese New Year. In 1928, the Nationalist Party of China tried to change the Chinese celebrations to January1, too, but this completely failed as the Chinese people protested or ignored the new laws and continued as usual.

paragraphs: In 1965, some people tried to change Indonesia's government, making its army less powerful. They failed and Suharto said they were working for Indonesia's Communists, who were working with Mao Zedong's Communist China. In 1967, Suharto helped make laws against using Chinese language or culture, including any celebration of Chinese New Year. These laws were not changed until after the fall of Suharto in 1998. Indonesia made Chinese New Year a national holiday for everyone a few years later in 2003.

paragraphs: In 1967, as part of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, the PRC's government did not celebrate or allow special time off work for the traditional new year. The State Council said that the people of China should "change customs" and have a "revolutionized and fighting Spring Festival". Public celebrations returned by the time of Deng Xiaoping's Opening Up Policy in the 1980s. In particular, the government helped with dragon and lion dancing, thinking that it was part of the special culture of Chinese people. Since the year 2000, Chinese New Year has been one of the PRC's Golden Weeks: there are three days of paid time away from work during the first few days and two weekends around it are moved to make a 7-day-long holiday. These Golden Weeks copied a similar Japanese idea.

paragraphs: In 2015, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah set out tough new laws about the celebration of Chinese New Year in Brunei. This followed earlier laws like it about Christmas and is part of introducing traditional Islamic law to the country.

paragraphs: People in China usually try to be together with their family for at least the first few days of the holiday. Because of the large number of Chinese people and the many people who work away from their hometowns, all this "spring traveling" ("chunyun") is the biggest movement of people in the world every year.

paragraphs: Houses are cleaned completely. In former times, sacrifices were made to the gods and dead family members in the days before the holiday. A "reunion dinner" happens in the evening of the last day of the traditional year ("New Year's Eve"). Older and married people give younger ones cash in red envelopes known as "hongbao" in Mandarin Chinese or "laisee" in Cantonese. China Central Television puts on a long show with many star actors, singers, and dancers. It is usually the most-watched TV show in the world each year. Lately, its ads have also become some of the world's most expensive, although they are still behind those during the US Super Bowl.

paragraphs: Children don't need to go to bed early and stay up to midnight. Around 12 o'clock, the new year is welcomed with public fireworks and private firecrackers. Children are told that these remember a monster called "Nian" ("Year") who was scared away by a town's loud noises and bright lights on a Chinese New Year long in the past. Some people call or send text messages and e-mails to say "Happy New Year!"

paragraphs: During the first few days of the new year, many people visit the homes of their grandparents, parents, and other relatives, as well as their closest friends. More "hongbao" may be given. Temples also have special fairs with lots of street food. There are Peking opera and martial arts shows and lion and dragon dances in major cities. Lion dancers usually have two people inside each lion. People feed the lions green plants and "hongbao", and the lions keep the money and spit out the plants. The dragon dancers usually hold the Dragon up on poles and chase a pearl held by another dancer. The dragons can be very long. So far, the longest was in Hong Kong in 2012. That one was a little over long. Hong Kong also has special horse races at its racetrack. A 100,000 people sometimes come to the big race on the 3rd day of the New Year, which has a lion dance and other shows. Guangzhou has several special flower festivals.

paragraphs: The day of the new year's first full moon is called the Lantern Festival. Many streets and homes are decorated with old paper lanterns. In the past, this was one of the few days of the year when the women of families with lots of money could go outside their homes. They walked the streets nearby with their maids and could say hello to people outside their family. This still causes the festival to make people think of young adults meeting their future husband or wife.

paragraphs: In Taiwan, most events and traditions are the same as those in China. The most important special event is the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, where fireworks are shot straight into the people watching the show. Being hit is supposed to bring good luck, but this used to be very unsafe. Today, people wear special hard hats (helmets) and thick clothes to protect them from the fire and fireworks. Another special event is the "Bombing of Master Handan" in Taitung, where people throw firecrackers straight at the members of a parade who are wearing only red underwear and towels. Taiwan's Hakka people have a tradition like this, where firecrackers are thrown at dragon dancers as they parade through towns. The dragon is then burnt up at the end of the dance. Taipei's City Lantern Festival also goes on for most of the holiday, not just during the 1-day Lantern Festival at the end.

paragraphs: Chinese New Year is a national holiday in the Philippines. People do not get money without working, but anyone who "does" have to work on the "special non-working day" gets 130% of the usual pay. Binondo—sometimes considered the world's oldest Chinatown—sees a lot of traditional celebrations, such as lion and dragon dances. Its people also try to pay back any money that they owe before the New Year.

paragraphs: In 2001, Davao City stopped letting people use fireworks because its people were hurting themselves too much. Their leader Rodrigo Duterte became president of the country and said that he wanted to stop fireworks everywhere. As president, however, he has so far continued to let people use them.

paragraphs: Chinese New Year () is a 1-day national holiday in Indonesia. Chinese people have lived there since at least the 15th century, when Zheng He's ships visited its islands for the Yongle Emperor of the Ming, and many more came when the Netherlands held the islands as a colony. Suharto stopped Chinese Indonesians from celebrating Chinese New Year in 1967. Some people had tried to change the government in 1965 and Suharto said Indonesian Communists and their friends in the PRC had done it. Things changed after the fall of Suharto in 1998, and Indonesia made Chinese New Year a national holiday for everyone in 2003.

paragraphs: Now that it is OK again, Chinese Indonesians celebrate the holiday much as people in China do. Dragon and lion dances are common at shopping centers, which sometimes have special sales to let Chinese people buy new (often red) clothes to wear for the holiday. People cannot use fireworks in most of Indonesia, but some cities like Jakarta let people use firecrackers.

paragraphs: Some older Chinese traditions still survive in Indonesia. Like in the Philippines, people try to pay back any money they owe before the New Year. People also try not to lend any money during the holiday, because they think it will make them have to keep lending money for the whole year. Doors and windows are opened on the day before the New Year to "let the old year out", and people wake up early the next morning so they don't stay lazy the whole year. The red envelopes of money (Hokkien:"âng-pau") are given on the morning of New Year's Day, not at dinner on the night before it. Many make special trips to one of Indonesia's Chinese temples at some time during the holiday.

paragraphs: It is also still common to leave some food at the table for dead family members and to give them gifts as the New Year begins. Chicken is usually eaten with the head, tail, and feet still on, showing "completeness". White rice is eaten but fresh white tofu is not, because in Chinese culture its color makes some people think of death and bad luck.

paragraphs: Most of Malaysia gets two days off work for Chinese New Year: the New Year itself and the day after it. The largest celebrations happen around Petaling Street in Kuala Lumpur, at the Kek Lok Si Temple in George Town, in Ipoh, and on Jonker Street in Malacca. Some people still follow the tradition that the second day is used for married women to visit their parents, after visiting her husband's family on Chinese New Year's Day. Most Chinese Malaysians take the entire week off of work, despite the shorter length of the national holiday. Traditional Chinese use the 3rd day of the New Year to visit the resting places of family members who died in the last 3 years; people without a death in their family stay home.

paragraphs: An unusual tradition in Malaysia is the idea of "open house" dinners, especially on the 2nd and 3rd night of the holiday. Guests, friends, and even strangers from different races and religions can be let in to enjoy large dinners together. The Malaysian government even has its own "open houses" at community halls.

paragraphs: In addition to fireworks at the beginning of the New Year, many people light them on the 9th day of the holiday to celebrate the birthday of the Jade Emperor, the boss of the Chinese gods. The day was used for a special Hokkien New Year, the story going that, one time in the past, the Hokkien people had to hide from robbers for 8 days in a sugarcane field. Because of this story, lots of sugarcane is used for Malaysian decorations for Chinese New Year.

paragraphs: Teochew-style Yusheng, a fish-and-noodle dish, is extra common in Malaysia, where it is called "yeesang" or "prosperity toss". A restaurant in Seremban started getting people to eat it by throwing it high in the air for good luck in the 1940s, and people had so much fun that they have done it ever since. Properly, it should have 7 parts and be eaten on the 7th day of the holiday, but people now eat it in different ways, too. Another common dish is "steam boat", a kind of seafood hot pot. As in other Chinese places, eating and giving away oranges and tangerines is common in Malaysia. A special tradition is for women with no boyfriend or husband to throw an orange into the sea to find a man. Some now write their telephone numbers on the oranges they throw, and men will use boats to go out and get the fruit.

paragraphs: Many people in Malaysia who believe in Islam and Hinduism have also started giving red envelopes full of money—which Malaysians call "ang pow" from its Hokkien name "âng-pau"—during their own holidays, like Eid ("Syawal") and Divali ("Deepavali"). The Islamic ang pow usually have Arabic designs, and the Hindu ones are often purple.

paragraphs: Singapore, like Malaysia, has a national holiday for Chinese New Year and the day after it. It also sees lot of "steam boat" hot pot dinners. In 1972, the government stopped people from using their own fireworks during the holiday. Worried that people would find the next celebration less fun, they began the Chingay Parade the next year in 1973. In 1977, Indians and Malays joined the parade, which happens on the 8th day of the New Year. The parade is now the biggest in Asia, with more than 10,000 people in it and floats that showing every animal of the circle of Chinese years and the money god Cai Shen. More than 100,000 come to see it in person, and millions of people see it on TV. There are still government firework shows, and the people of Singapore now make noise during the holiday by hitting bamboo sticks together.

paragraphs: Holiday shopping and street shows are centered on Chinatown. Its Wishing Tree is filled with cards that tell people's hopes and dreams. The money from selling the cards is used for the area's activity center for the old.

paragraphs: Downtown, the holiday is used as a showcase for Chinese arts and customs. The Chinese Festival of Arts starts on the 5th day and runs for the rest of the holiday until the Lantern Festival. The National Gallery, Stamp Museum, and Asian Civilizations Museum let people in for free on some of the days of the holiday. For more than 10 years, Singapore has held a big lion dancing contest with teams coming from other countries across Southeast Asia. During the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the New Year, there is the River Hongbao show on the Marina Bay Floating Platform and along the waterfront.

paragraphs: Chinese New Year, the day before it, the day after it, and the Lantern Festival are national holidays in Brunei. The country has had a large number of Chinese people since the 1930s and 40s, and the sultan sometimes comes to their New Year celebrations. Since 2015, however, Brunei has set out tough Islamic laws that try to stop Muslims from joining or even seeing the Chinese celebrations. Lion dances are allowed only at the last Chinese temple in Brunei, at Chinese schools, and at the homes of the Chinese. Only Chinese people can join the dance. People cannot use fireworks or firecrackers, and dances must stop during the hours of Islamic prayers. Breaking these rules risks as much as B$20,000 and 5 years of jail.

paragraphs: The Chinese New Year celebrations in North and South Korea are known as Korean New Year. The time in Beijing is 1 hour different from the time in the Korean capital cities of Pyongyang and Seoul. About one time every 24 years, this makes the Korean New Year start on the day after the Chinese New Year.

paragraphs: The Korean holiday is very close to the Chinese one, with families gathering, children being very nice to their parents and grandparents, and older people giving gifts of money to the young. The Korean holiday has different traditional foods and games, though.

paragraphs: The Chinese New Year celebrations in Vietnam are known as Tet. Like the Korean New Year, it sometimes happens on a different day. In 1967, North Vietnam changed its time so that its capital Hanoi is now 1 hour different from Beijing. This means that the new moon happens a day earlier in Vietnam about one time every 24 years. Vietnamese people also add a 13th month to their calendar at a different time from the Chinese, who always try to put the 1st day of winter in their 11th month. In some years, this makes Tet happen in the month after the Chinese New Year.

paragraphs: Like in Korea, the Vietnamese New Year is mostly the same as China's, with families gathering, children saying nice things to their parents and grandparents, and older people giving gifts of money to the young. There are some different foods and traditions, like their New Year tree or special games. Some of the differences come from changes in China: Tet sees more people do nice things for their dead family members. In China, most of the traditions like that were moved to Tomb Sweeping Day at the beginning of April.

paragraphs: The largest US and Canadian celebrations happen in Chinatowns. People eat Chinese food, give gifts, and have dragon parades that sometimes include marching bands. There is no national holiday with time off work, but different events go on for the full traditional 2 weeks up to the Lantern Festival.

paragraphs: In the United Kingdom, the celebration in London's Chinatown and Trafalgar Square drew 500,000 people in 2015.

paragraphs: The holiday is also so important to China that many world leaders will take time to send their good wishes to China and the Chinese people.

paragraphs: Most traditional customs have to do with getting more good luck for the new year and staying away from anything unhappy.

paragraphs: People hang up decorations, especially pairs of Chinese poems (couplets) on either side of their doors. Some put pictures of Taoist gods on the doors to scare away bad things. Live plants suggest growth, and flowers suggest coming fruits. Pussy willow is common in some places because its Chinese name sounds like "money coming in". It is very common for big decorations to look like the animal for the new year, so that 2017 had Rooster and Chicken pictures and statues and 2018 will have Dogs.

paragraphs: People used to welcome the New Year with "anything" that made loud noises, including drums, cymbals, or even woks and pots. The exact traditions were different in different parts of China. Fireworks and firecrackers became more and more common everywhere, but lately many places have stopped letting most people use them because of the danger of people hurting themselves, of fire, and of dirt in the air that can make people sick. There are still big firework shows in most big cities with many Chinese people, but the city government will do everything and other people just watch.

paragraphs: Visits to people's houses are done in new or well-kept clothes. People wear more red than usual, which makes them think of happy times like weddings, and wear less black and white, which makes some think of sad times like funerals. Red underwear is very common and is most commonly worn during New Years which have the same animal as the wearer's birth year (so, at ages 12, 24, 36, and so on). In Malaysia, it has even become common to give people such red underwear as gifts and for non-Chinese to wear all-red clothes during the season of the Chinese New Year.

paragraphs: There are some common things people say to wish good luck to each other, the most important being "gōngxǐ fācái" ("congratulations that you are now rich"). People try not to say bad words, tell ghost stories, or talk about death. Some even stay away from the number four, which sounds like "death" in Chinese. Crying babies are also thought to be bad luck, and family members will try to keep children happy during visits.

paragraphs: There are some old customs that only a few people or even no one does any more. People still do their "spring cleaning" before the holiday but, in old China, they didn't sweep or wash clothes on New Year's Day itself. They were afraid of cleaning away good luck together with the dirt. For the same reason, some people did not wash their hair and were very careful not to break any tools. The 5th or 6th day after New Year, when they cleaned and threw away or burned all the trash, was a day for "sending off" the God of Being Poor, one of the sons of Zhuanxu. Today, it's more common to clean things as they get dirty, like on other days. Few do anything special about the God of the Poor. In the same way, people near Beijing thought that it was unlucky to cook or steam food for the first 5 days of the New Year. They would cook all of their next week of food 2 days before it, so it was ready for the reunion meal. They'd add yeast to their dumpling skins the day before that, on the 28th day of the 12th month. The skins would have enough time to be ready but not enough time to go bad. Today, people cook or eat out all through the week. It is easy to buy ready-made skins at supermarkets, keep their homemade skins fresh in fridges, or just buy all their dumplings from nearby shops and there is nothing special about the 28th day. On People's Day, the 7th day of the holiday, people used to wear special headbands and thought good weather meant good luck for everyone in the coming year. Everyone used it to count their age, even when it was not their birthday. None of that is common any more.

paragraphs: Some traditions have been ended by the Chinese government. People used to run to be the first to set off fireworks and firecrackers at the beginning of the New Year at midnight, wherever they were. The dirty air this caused in big Chinese cities made children and old people sick. Now, the police stop people from doing this in many cities.

paragraphs: Taoist traditions that are less common now are giving gifts to the home's kitchen god on the 23rd or 24th day of the 12th month of the old calendar. People said the kitchen god watched the house for the Jade Emperor, the boss of the Chinese gods. The special decorations and gifts were given to him so that he would say nice things. The gods would then be nicer to the house for the next year. The kitchen god was thought to return to the house on the 4th day of the New Year. During the time he was "away", people used to feel they could get away from some hard rules about family life without anything bad happening. In the past, love matches would marry during those days with less rules and expense than a full wedding. Today, the days after the Chinese New Year are a common time for weddings but this is because everyone has time off work and not because of any ideas about luck or worry about the gods. In the same way, people used to give animals to Cai Shen, the god of money, on the 2nd or 5th day of the holiday. People used to take a break from visits on "Red Dog Day" ("Chìgǒu Rì"), the 3rd day of the holiday, when an angry god was said to bring bad luck to anyone walking around outside. Now, fewer and fewer people worry about those things.

paragraphs: The reunion dinners on the day before Chinese New Year are often the largest and most expensive of the year. Some families use special and expensive foods to gain face; others use meaningful foods to bring luck. Jiaozi (a kind of dumpling) are common in northern China. People think they look like the old Chinese silver bars and hold luck inside. Egg rolls and spring rolls like lumpia can also be made to look like golden bars, and oranges and tangerines are thought to look like gold coins. Noodles like "yīmiàn" or Filipino pansit are eaten uncut to wish for long life. Some dishes are eaten because their Chinese names sound like lucky words, such as "fish" and "well-off". In Cantonese, "vegetable" sounds the same as "having money" ("choy") and "leek" sounds the same as "counting-and-planning" ("suan"). Because of this Cantonese people in China and in other countries try to have some during the New Year holidays. Niangao, called "tikoy" in the Philippines, is a kind of cake made from fried sticky rice and sugar. It is very common in southern China. In Chinese, its name sounds like "nián gāo" ("the year gets better") or "niánnián gāoshēng" ("getting better year after year"). Some people also think its stickiness is like a glue and use it as a wish for holding their family together. Indonesians call their niangao "basket cakes" because they mold theirs in bamboo baskets. They also have some special flavors in addition to vanilla and chocolate like pandan, a tree with good-smelling leaves. Some people fry tikoy with eggs; basket cakes are often steamed with pieces of coconut meat. Because most Chinese people in the Philippines speak Hokkien and not Mandarin Chinese, they also like to eat pineapples. In Hokkien, the word for "pineapple" sounds like the word for "having a lot of money".

paragraphs: Some Chinese also put out "Trays of Togetherness", dishes with eight different parts and eight different kinds of snack foods. Some common things to put in these trays are kumquats, longans, pieces of coconut meat, peanuts, candies, and melon and lotus seeds. Eight is a lucky number to many Chinese people, like seven in Europe and other places. These dishes are very common among Malaysian and Indonesian Chinese.

paragraphs: For the Lantern Festival, the special food is yuanxiao, small balls of sticky rice in a sweet soup. Lichun always happens near the Chinese New Year as well. It is celebrated by eating spring pancakes ("chūnbǐng").


title: Suite (music)

paragraphs: In music, a suite (pronounce "sweet") is a collection of short musical pieces which can be played one after another. The pieces are usually dance movements. The French word “suite” means “a sequence” of things, i.e. one thing following another.

paragraphs: In the 17th century many composers such as Bach and Handel wrote suites. They were collections of dances: usually an allemande, a courante, a sarabande and a gigue. Sometimes other dances were included as well, e.g. a minuet, gavotte, passepied or bourree. Sometimes the first movement was not a dance movement but an introduction. It may have been called a prelude or even overture. Some of Bach’s suites were called "Partitas". The French composer François Couperin called his suites "Ordres".

paragraphs: Bach wrote suites for orchestra which he called "overtures". Handel wrote two very famous collections of dance movements for orchestra: "Water Music" and "Music for the Royal Fireworks". These are also suites although they are not given that title. He also wrote 22 suites for keyboard, and Bach wrote "French Suites", "English Suites" and "Partitas" for keyboard as well as partitas for unaccompanied violin and suites for unaccompanied cello.

paragraphs: Earlier composers, e.g. Renaissance composers, had also written suites, but the word “suite” was not used until around the middle of the 17th century.

paragraphs: By the 1750s composers had stopped writing suites. They were more interested in the symphony and concerto,

paragraphs: In the late 19th century, the word "suite" started to be used again. Composers who had written opera's or ballets with lots of popular dance movements often made an arrangement of these movements for orchestra so that it could be played at concerts. Tchaikovsky wrote the "Nutcracker Suite" which includes the most popular dances from his ballet "The Nutcracker". Some composers used the word "suite" for pieces with movements which had a common theme: Gustav Holst called "The Planets" a suite, as each movement is about one of the planets. French composers of the Impressionist period such as Ravel and Debussy wrote suites for piano.


title: Michael Chang

paragraphs: Michael Te-Pei Chang (; born February 22, 1972) is an American retired tennis player. He was the youngest-ever male winner of a Grand Slam singles title. Michael Chang did this when he won the French Open in 1989 at the age of 17.

paragraphs: Chang was often in the Top 10 in the Association of Tennis Professionals world rankings for several years in the 1990s. His highest ranking (that is, the order in which it is shown how good he is in the sport at a certain time) was World No. 2.

paragraphs: When he won the French Open in 1989, Chang had a well known semi-final match with Ivan Lendl. Before the match, most people thought Chang would lose because he was unseeded, and Lendl was ranked No. 1. At first Chang was losing, but he won the important third set. Starting then, Chang began to have leg cramps, but won the match through determination. Today, many people remember this game as one of his best matches when the name Michael Chang is mentioned.

paragraphs: Chang was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, United States. His parents are Taiwanese. Chang is a Christian. With his family he started the Chang Family Foundation in 1999 "to introduce the Good News of Jesus Christ to the world".


title: Catalão

paragraphs: Catalão is a Brazilian city in the state of Goiás. It has 75.623 inhabitants. It covers . It was founded in 1833 and is today an important industrial center of state of Goiás.


title: Equus (genus)

paragraphs: Equus is a genus of mammals in the family Equidae. It includes horses, asses, and zebras. "Equus" is the only living (extant) genus of horses, and there are seven living species. They are the one-toed horses, and are adapted for living in various types of grasslands.

paragraphs: The term equine refers to any member of this genus. "Equus" has many extinct species known only from fossils. The genus most likely originated in North America and spread quickly to the Old World. Equines are odd-toed ungulates with slender legs, long heads, relatively long necks, manes (erect in most subspecies) and long tails. All species are herbivorous, and mostly grazers with simpler digestive systems than ruminants. They can live on low-quality vegetation.

paragraphs: Feral equine populations are widespread, but wild equines are found only in Africa and Asia. Wild populations may have a harem system. In this case one adult male or "stallion", several females or "mares" and their young or "foals". Otherwise they live in a territory where males control territories with resources that attract females. In both systems, females take care of the foals, though males may play a role as well. Equines communicate with each other visually and vocally. Human activities have threatened wild equine populations and out of the seven living species, only the plains zebra is still widespread and abundant.

paragraphs: The one-toed horses of the grasslands developed from smaller three-toed horses which lived more in forests and wooded savannahs. Before the coming of humans, horses were much more varied and widespread, though the number of species is not known.

paragraphs: There are seven species of living horses in the wild. They are:

paragraphs: This is not counting the many types of horse which mankind has modified by breeding. "Equus ferus" has been the species used by man as the basis of the various breeds of horse.


title: 216 Kleopatra

paragraphs: 216 Kleopatra is a Main belt asteroid found by Johann Palisa on April 10, 1880 in Pola. It is named after Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt.

paragraphs: Kleopatra is an unusual object. Its odd shape was revealed by adaptive optics on the ESO 3.6m telescope at La Silla. By bouncing radar signals off the asteroid, a team of astronomers at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico were able to develop a more detailed computer model of its shape, which confirmed the dog-bone like shape. A favored explanation is that Kleopatra is a contact binary: two similarly-sized asteroids that have hit and stuck together instead of breaking apart.

paragraphs: Kleopatra is a fairly big asteroid, measuring 217 × 94 × 81 km. It is believed to be a loosely packed metallic object, based on its radar albedo.


title: Ministry of Defence of Germany

paragraphs: The Federal Ministry of Defence (BMVg) is a Ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany. At present the headquarters of the ministry are still in Bonn with 3230 working in the Hardthöhe. The second office employs about 500 people in the Bendlerblock in Berlin.

paragraphs: The BMVg is at the highest Federal authority and the highest command authority of the defence forces. The BMVg has civilian and military departments:

paragraphs: Operatively the General Staff of the Defence Forces (or "FÜ S", which is short for ) is the most important, it has seven sections divided into 42 smaller sections

paragraphs: The press and information staff and the planning staff work directly under the minister

paragraphs: In peace time the Federal Minister of Defence is commander in chief of the Armed Forces, not the Federal President.

paragraphs: If Germany is attacked, or about to be attacked, command passes to the Chancellor.

paragraphs: In 1950 Chancellor Konrad Adenauer gave Theodor Blank the job of preparing for the time when Germany could have an army. In December 20 people where working in the "Blank Office". On 7 June 1955 it had 1300 employees, and it became the Federal Ministry for Defence.

paragraphs: It was renamed in Federal Ministry of defence on December 1961 and was seen as one of the "classic departments" . At German reunification the National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee) of East Germany was made part of the Federal Armed Forces. Not long after this, Germany's army took part in the war in Kosovo. This was the first time that Germany's army had been sent to fight outside Germany since the end of World War II


title: Angstrom

paragraphs: An angstrom or ångström (symbol Å) is a non-SI unit of length that is internationally recognized. It equals 0.1 nanometer (nm). It can be written in scientific notations as 1×10 m (normalized notation) or (exponential notation) — both mean . It is sometimes used to express the sizes of atoms, lengths of chemical bonds and visible-light spectra, and dimensions of parts of integrated circuits.

paragraphs: The ångström is named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–1874), one of the founders of spectroscopy who is known also for studies of astrophysics, heat transfer, terrestrial magnetism, and the aurora borealis.

paragraphs: In 1868, Ångström created a spectrum chart of solar radiation that expresses the wavelength of electromagnetic radiation in the electromagnetic spectrum in multiples of one ten-millionth of a millimetre, or 1 metres. This unit of length later became known as the ångström, Å.

paragraphs: The visual sensitivity of a human being is from about 4,000 ångströms (violet) to 7,000 ångströms (deep red) so the use of the ångström as a unit provided a fair amount of discrimination without resort to fractional units. Because of its closeness to the scale of atomic and molecular structures it also became popular in chemistry and crystallography.

paragraphs: Today, the use of the ångström as a unit is less popular than it used to be and the nanometre (nm) is often used instead (with the ångström being officially discouraged by both the International Committee for Weights and Measures and the American National Standard for Metric Practice).


title: Oberrüti

paragraphs: Oberrüti is a municipality of the district of Muri in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Obersiggenthal

paragraphs: Obersiggenthal is a municipality of the district of Baden, in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Oberwil-Lieli

paragraphs: Oberwil-Lieli is a municipality of the district of Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Oeschgen

paragraphs: Oeschgen is a municipality of the district of Laufenburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Oftringen

paragraphs: Oftringen is a city and municipality of the district of Zofingen in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


paragraphs: The Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica ("Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy") is a trilogy, written by Isaac Newton and published on 5 July 1687. The three-book work describes physics and mathematics. It states Newton's laws of motion and the derivation of Kepler's Laws, and observations on gravity.


title: Prato

paragraphs: Prato is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Prato.

paragraphs: Prato's economy has been based upon the textile industry, since 1400.

paragraphs: Prato is also a centre of the slow food movement, with many other local specialities, including cantucci, a type of biscotti.

paragraphs: Since the late 1950s, the city has had a big amount of immigration, first from southern Italy, then other countries. Since the late 1980s a large Han community has settled in the city. With a population of more than 180,000 people, Prato is Tuscany's second largest city. It is the third largest in Central Italy, after Rome and Florence.

paragraphs: In 1512, the city was attacked by the Spanish troops sent by Pope Julius II to capture the nearby city of Florence for the Medici family. The attack caused much damage to Prato. It led to the surrender of the Florentine Republic and control by the Medici family. The army killed 50,600 citizens of Prato in the streets.

paragraphs: Prato is home to many museums and other cultural monuments. These include the Filippo Lippi frescoes in the Cathedral of Santo Stefano which has been restored in 2006. The Cathedral has an external pulpit by Donatello.

paragraphs: "Palazzo Pretorio", the old town hall, was built at the end of the 13th century in red bricks. Sections in white brick were added later. In the 16th century an outside staircase and a clock were added. Also notable is the "Palazzo Datini", the home of the merchant Francesco Datini built from 1383. It has decorations by Florentine artists like Agnolo Gaddi and Niccolò Gerini. In 1409, it housed Pope Alexander V and Louis of Anjou. The "Palazzo degli Alberti" (12th century) is home to an artgallery with works by Filippo Lippi ("Prato Madonna"), Giovanni Bellini ("Crucifix with Jew Cemetery") and Caravaggio ("The Crowning with Thorns").

paragraphs: Another major attraction of the city is the Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, a museum and education centre concerned with contemporary arts.

paragraphs: Prato is also the home of the Monash University a very nice centre for learning English.


title: Olsberg, Switzerland

paragraphs: Olsberg is a municipality of the district of Rheinfelden in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Livorno

paragraphs: Livorno is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy.

paragraphs: Today, Livorno is known for the fortified town walls and for the small streets. Many foreigners moved to Livorno such as Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Dutch, and English. Some Moriscos (Muslim Spaniards forced to turn Catholic), much later, also moved to Livorno (from Spain and during the 18th century).

paragraphs: Bridges, houses and streets, mostly from the neo-classical era are in the district of Livorno.

paragraphs: The "Monumento dei quattro mori" ("Monument of the Four Turks"), dedicated to Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici of Tuscany, is one of the most important monuments of Livorno.

paragraphs: Another important monument is the old fortress which has 3 bastions called “Capitana”, “Ampolletta” and “Canaviglia”. It was made before the Renaissance.

paragraphs: Politically, Livorno is one of the most left-leaning cities of Italy. The Communist Party of Italy was founded in Livorno on 21 January 1921.

paragraphs: Tuaca liqueur is produced in Livorno. The city also has a petrochemical industry.

paragraphs: Livorno has a football team in Serie A, A.S. Livorno Calcio.

paragraphs: Livorno inhabitants speak a Tuscan dialect of Italian, called "vernacolo".

paragraphs: Livorno has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate ("Csa" in the Koeppen climate classification).


title: Arezzo

paragraphs: Arezzo is an old city in central Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Arezzo, in the region of Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 km (50 mi) south-east of Florence. It is at an elevation of 296 m above sea level. In 2001 the population was about 91,600 people.

paragraphs: Arezzo is placed on the floodplain of the Arno. In the upper part of the town are the cathedral and the squares.

paragraphs: Arezzo may have been one of the twelve most important Etruscan cities, that was also called Dodecapolis.

paragraphs: Conquered by the Romans in 311 BC, Arretium became a military station on the via Cassia, the road to expansion by republican Rome into the basin of the Po. In the 3rd to 4th century, Arezzo became an episcopal place: it is one of the few cities whose succession of bishops are known by name without interruption to the present day, in part because they were the feudal lords of the city in the Middle Ages.

paragraphs: Until 1384, Arezzo was an independent city-state, generally Ghibelline in tendency, thus opposing Guelph Florence. In 1252 the city founded its university, the "Studium". Arezzo in 1384 was under Florentine domination. During this period Piero della Francesca worked in the church of San Francesco di Arezzo producing the splendid frescoes.

paragraphs: In the 18th century the neighbouring marshes of the Val di Chiana, south of Arezzo, were drained and the region became less malarial. At the end of the century French troops led by Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Arezzo, but the city soon turned into the hands of the resistance against the invaders with the movement of "Viva Maria": this gained the city the role of provincial capital. In 1860 Arezzo became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

paragraphs: The Piazza Grande is the most noteworthy medieval square in the city, it is currently the site of the "Giostra del Saracino" ("Joust of the Saracin").


title: Police, Poland

paragraphs: Police is a town in Poland in West Pomeranian Voivodeship. As of 2007, 34,220 people live there. The town is located on the river Oder, near the border with Germany. It is one of the largest sea ports in Poland. Police borders with Szczecin. In the Police area, there is another town called Nowe Warpno.


title: Nowe Warpno

paragraphs: Nowe Warpno is a town in Poland in West Pomeranian Voivodeship. As of 2004, 1,214 people live there. The town is located on the Szczecin Lagoon, at the border with Germany. In the area of Nowe Warpno there are Police, Poland, Świnoujście, Szczecin, Eggesin and Ueckermünde.


title: Thomas de Maizière

paragraphs: Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière (born 21 January 1954 in Bonn) was the Minister for Special Affairs in the German government and Head of the Federal Chancellery. On 3 March 2011, because of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's resignation, de Maizière became Federal Minister for Defence.

paragraphs: His father was Ulrich de Maizière, who was Inspector General of the Bundeswehr. The senior officer in all German Armed Forces. In the UK, he would be Chief of the Defence Staff and in the US, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,

paragraphs: Karl's cousin Lothar de Maizière was the only democratically elected Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic.


title: Szczecin Lagoon

paragraphs: The Szczecin Lagoon (Polish name) or Stettin Lagoon (German name) or Lagoon of the Oder River is an inland water basin found in the southwestern part of the Baltic Sea. It is shared by Germany and Poland. These are the towns that can be found at the Szczecin Lagoon: Świnoujście, Ueckermünde, Wolin (town) and Nowe Warpno.


title: Othmarsingen

paragraphs: Othmarsingen is a municipality in Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Reinach, Aargau

paragraphs: Reinach is a municipality in Kulm in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Reitnau

paragraphs: Reitnau is a municipality of the district of Zofingen in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. On 1 January 2019 the former municipality of Attelwil merged into the municipality of Reitnau.


title: Lava dome

paragraphs: In volcanology, a lava dome or plug dome is a round-shaped mound created by the eruption of viscous lava by a volcano.

paragraphs: Lava domes are formed when erupting lava is too thick to flow and makes a steep-sided mound as the lava piles up near the volcanic vent. Lava domes have formed in Mount St. Helens and experts say a lava dome is growing inside the Shinmoedake volcano in Japan.


title: Rekingen

paragraphs: Rekingen is a municipality of the district of Zurzach in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Volcanic eruption

paragraphs: A volcanic eruption occurs when hot materials from the Earth's interior are thrown out of a volcano. Lava, rocks, dust, and gas compounds are some of these "ejecta".

paragraphs: Eruptions can come from side branches or from the top of the volcano. Some eruptions are terrible explosions that throw out huge amounts of rock and volcanic ash and can kill many people. Some are quiet outflows of hot lava. Several more complex types of volcanic eruptions have been described by volcanologists. These are often named after famous volcanoes where that type of eruption has been seen. Some volcanoes may show only one type of eruption during a period of activity, while others may show a range of types in a series.

paragraphs: The volcanic explosivity index (commonly shortened VEI) is a scale, from 0 to 8, for measuring the strength of eruptions. It is used by the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program in assessing the impact of historic and prehistoric lava flows. It operates in a way similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, in that each interval in value represents a tenfold increasing in magnitude (it is logarithmic). Most volcanic eruptions are of VEIs between 0 and 2.


title: Remetschwil

paragraphs: Remetschwil is a municipality of the district of Baden in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Remigen

paragraphs: Remigen is a municipality of the district of Brugg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Gifford Pinchot National Forest

paragraphs: The Gifford Pinchot National Forest is a United States National Forest in Washington, USA. It has of land. The forest includes the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, which takes up of the property.


title: Rietheim, Switzerland

paragraphs: Rietheim is a municipality of the district of Zurzach in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Cascade Range

paragraphs: The Cascade Range is a mountain range in western North America. It goes from Northern California, through Oregon and Washington, and ends in British Columbia, Canada. The range includes the Western Cascades in northern California and the North and Canadian Cascades in Washington State and Canada.

paragraphs: The highest mountain in the cascades is Mount Rainier at 14,411 feet or 4,392 metres.

paragraphs: The Cascade range was formed by thousands of small, short-lived volcanoes that built a platform of lava and volcanic debris. Rising above this volcanic platform are a few strikingly large volcanoes, like Mount St. Helens, that dominate the landscape.

paragraphs: The fundamental reason for all these mountains on the western side of the Americas is the steady movement of the great landmasses away from Eurasia and Africa. The process of continental drift is fuelled by the production of sea-floor material at the mid-Atlantic trench. The landmasses of the Americas have buckled the edges of the Pacific plates, resulting in the continual volcanic build-up of mountains on the western side of the continents. The Cascade Volcanic Arc made its first appearance 36 million years ago. The major volcanic peaks today were born in the last 1.6 million years. More than 3,000 vents erupted during the most recent volcanic episode that began 5 million years ago. As long as subduction continues, new Cascade volcanoes will continue to rise.

paragraphs: As the oceanic slab sinks deep into the Earth's interior beneath the continental plate, high temperatures and pressures allow water molecules locked in the minerals of solid rock to escape. The water vapor rises into the pliable mantle above the subducting plate, causing some of the mantle to melt. This newly formed magma rises toward the Earth's surface to erupt, forming a chain of volcanoes.


title: Riniken

paragraphs: Riniken is a municipality of the district of Brugg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


Rohr


title: Rohr, Aargau

paragraphs: Rohr is a former municipality of the district of Aarau in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland. Since 2009 Rohr is a part of the municipality and city of Aarau.


title: Rothrist

paragraphs: Rothrist is a municipality of the district of Zofingen in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Rottenschwil

paragraphs: Rottenschwil is a municipality of the district of Muri in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Rudolfstetten-Friedlisberg

paragraphs: Rudolfstetten-Friedlisberg is a municipality of the district of Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Rüfenach

paragraphs: Rüfenach is a municipality of the district of Brugg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


paragraphs: Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, best known as just Coachella, is an annual three-day music festival held in Indio, California. It has taken place every year since the first year in 1999, except in the year 2000. It has had artists ranging from Rage Against the Machine to Nickel Creek. The 2014 festival will have 184 artists.


title: Rümikon

paragraphs: Rümikon is a municipality of the district of Zurzach in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Welwel

paragraphs: Welwel is an oasis in Ethiopia, near Somalia. It used to be called Walwal. Walwal was where a border dispute happened with Italy. Mussolini used the dispute as an excuse to start a war against Ethiopia.


title: Arctic Cordillera

paragraphs: The Arctic Cordillera is a mountain range running along the northeastern coast of North America from Ellesmere Island to the northernmost tip of Labrador. It is the only major mountain range in Canada east of the Rocky Mountains. The range has a surface area of . Its highest point is at Barbeau Peak.


title: Fort Banks

paragraphs: Fort Banks (also known as the Eastern Command Fixed Defences), is an old World War II fort that was used to protect the entrance to Botany Bay. The fort is located north of Cape Banks in La Perouse, New South Wales Australia.

paragraphs: Just before WWII, a small section of land on the Cape Banks Headland that was owned by the New South Wales Golf Club was used by the Australian Army to build a fort. The fort was made so that it could protect Sydney from an attack by a foreign navy ship. The fort had two BL 9.2 inch Mark 10 cannons that were put into concrete gun emplacements (pictured) and barracks that were finished just before the start of WWII. During WWII the Henry Head Battery was also reopened and had two BL 6 inch cannons.


title: Rupperswil

paragraphs: Rupperswil is a municipality of the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Safenwil

paragraphs: Safenwil is a municipality of the district of Zofingen in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Sarmenstorf

paragraphs: Sarmenstorf is a municipality of the district of Bremgarten in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Schafisheim

paragraphs: Schafisheim is a municipality of the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Scherz

paragraphs: Scherz is a former municipality of the district of Brugg in canton of Aargau in Switzerland.

paragraphs: On 1 January 2018 the former municipality of Scherz merged into the municipality of Lupfig.


title: Schinznach-Bad

paragraphs: Schinznach-Bad was a municipality in Brugg in canton of Aargau in Switzerland. On 1 January 2020 Schinznach-Bad became part of Brugg.


title: Schinznach-Dorf

paragraphs: Schinznach-Dorf is a former municipality of the district of Brugg in canton of Aargau in Switzerland.

paragraphs: On 1 January 2014 the former municipalities of Schinznach-Dorf and Oberflachs merged into the new municipality of Schinznach.


title: Schlossrued

paragraphs: Schlossrued is a municipality of the district of Kulm in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Schmiedrued

paragraphs: Schmiedrued is a municipality of the district of Kulm in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Schneisingen

paragraphs: Schneisingen is a municipality of the district of Zurzach in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Schöftland

paragraphs: Schöftland is a municipality in Kulm in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Schupfart

paragraphs: Schupfart is a municipality of the district of Rheinfelden in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Black-eyed Susan

paragraphs: Black-eyed Susan "Rudbeckia" is one of at least four genera within the flowering plant family Asteraceae whose members are commonly known as coneflowers.

paragraphs: Blackeyed Susan is a common Missouri native wildflower which typically occurs in open woods, prairies, fields, roadsides and waste areas throughout the State.

paragraphs: The name was given by Carolus Linneaus in honor of his teacher at Uppsala University, Professor Olof Rudbeck the Younger (1660-1740), and his father, Professor Olof Rudbeck the Elder (1630-1702), both of whom were botanists.


title: Schwaderloch

paragraphs: Schwaderloch is a municipality of the district of Laufenburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Seengen

paragraphs: Seengen is a municipality of the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Seon, Switzerland

paragraphs: Seon is a municipality of the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Siglistorf

paragraphs: Siglistorf is a municipality of the district of Zurzach in the canton of Aargau in Switzerland.


title: Lenzburg

paragraphs: Lenzburg is a municipality in the district of Lenzburg in the canton of Aargau, Switzerland. It is the capital city of the district. The town was founded in the Middle Ages. It is in the Seetal valley, about south of the Aare delta. Lenzburg and the municipalities of Niederlenz and Staufen have merged over time. The city name refers to the name of the castle which can be translated as "spring castle".

paragraphs: As of 31 December 2010, Lenzburg about 8,341 people lived in Lenzburg. Lenzburg is about west of Zürich. Many people living in Lenzburg go to Zürich to work.

paragraphs: The district of in area is in a valley between two ranges of minor limestone mountains which rise about above the otherwise flat valley. The two major mountains are Während der Schlossberg at above sea-level with a diameter of only , and the nearby Goffersberg at above sea-level which is only long and has a broad plateau wide. Lenzburg grew together with the nearby communities into a regional area

paragraphs: Nearby municipalities are Rupperswil in the northwest, Niederlenz and Möriken Wildegg in the north; Othmarsingen in the northeast, Hendschiken in the east, Ammerswil in the southeast, Egliswil the south, Seon in the southwest as well as Staufen in the west.

paragraphs: The area has a long history. A neolithic cemetery with 16 chambered tombs built about 3,800 years ago was found near the castle in 1959.

paragraphs: A Roman theatre was uncovered when the motorway was built in 1964. It was built about 100 AD. It could seat an audience of about 4,000 people. It was part of a small village of 400 to 600 people that existed for about 200 years. The village was built on either side of the road for a distance of about 400 metres. There were shops, taverns, and small factories making wood and leather products. Behind these building were houses and farms. It is possible that there was a small fort in the village. The first buildings were wooden but these were destroyed in a fire at the end of the first century. The new buildings were made of stone. The village was abandoned in the 3rd century.

paragraphs: In the 5th and 6th centuries, an Alamanni village existed. The oldest registered usage of the name "Lencis" (from which Lenzburg derives) is from 893. In 1036, Castle Lenzburg became the seat for the count of Lenzburg, then an important lord. The family died out in 1173, and the castle was then owned by emperor Frederick Barbarossa. After this, it was mainly used by the Kyburger house. The Habsburgs took over the castle in 1273.

paragraphs: City rights were granted in 1306. Lenzburg was conquered by Bern in 1415, along with the western part of what is now Aargau. Bern did not take away its city rights. In 1433, the city of Bern bought the castle and used it to govern the area from 1444 to 1798. A major fire ruined the town in 1491. Only fifteen houses were not destroyed. The reformation was carried out at the same time with the rest of the region in 1528. The economy started to move slowly from a farming economy to a more industrial one in the 16th century. A textile factory was founded in 1732.

paragraphs: In 1798, the Helvetian Republic was made and the lords from Bern were removed. The canton of Aargau was founded and Lenzburg became the capital of the district in 1803. The canton gained the castle in 1804. Lenzburg became the economic center of the area in the 19th century. In 1875, Lenzburg was added to the railway system. Competition for trade became too much and Lenzburg became bankrupt only one year later. The town recovered from bankruptcy during the next 10 years.

paragraphs: In 1886, the German playwright, Frank Wedekind lived in the castle which his father had bought. It was sold in 1892 to August Edward Jessup from Philadelphia who spent a lot of money restoring the castle. He sold it to a Chicago banker, James W. Ellsworth in 1911. Ellsworth's son, Lincoln Ellsworth and Roald Amundsen used the castle to plan their polar explorations in the 1920s.

paragraphs: The main place to see in the town is the Lenzburg castle. It was built in the 11th century and has been added onto several times. Lenzburg is among the oldest and most important high-castles in Switzerland. Some of the city wall has been kept and is now under protection. Some interesting buildings are in the old part of town. These include:

paragraphs: Lenzburg is an important economic centre. It contains over 800 companies. Most of the businesses are small to medium sized, but some worldwide companies are established in Lenzburg, for example the global Asea Brown Boveri (ABB). About 6,000 people work in Lenzburg.

paragraphs: Lenzburg is a good place for transportation. It is about from Zürich with access to the A1, Switzerland's most important motorway. Two main axes of traffic cross in Lenzburg, one running from Waldshut to Lucerne and the other running from Zurich to Berne.

paragraphs: Some of the trains from Zurich to Berne stop in Lenzburg. Lenzburg is part of the Suburban rail system of Zurich. Other trains connect the city to Brugg, Lucerne, Zofingen and Zug. The line to Wettingen was closed, because of low traffic. The trains were replaced by a commuter line from Zurich (which runs to Aarau).

paragraphs: Zürich International Airport is close to the town of Lenzburg. The local bus "Regionalbus Lenzburg" leads to the municipalities of Brunegg, Dintikon, Möriken-Wildegg, Schafisheim and Seengen. Lenzburg has an urban bus system as well.

paragraphs: For over 400 years, the youth celebration ("Jugendfest") is the largest event in Lenzburg. It takes place every year on the second Friday of July. In August, the "Gauklerfestival" takes place in the streets of the old part of town with food and entertainment on the streets of the city.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

paragraphs: The Aurora (supposedly called the SR-91 Aurora) is a possible surveillance aircraft. No one knows if it ever existed. Supposedly, it was meant for trying out hypersonic flight, or speeds above 5 times the speed of sound. The name "Aurora" was used for the aircraft because in 1985, it appeared on an American military funding list. It might have been to replace the SR-71 Blackbird.

paragraphs: In 1989, a man named Chris Gibson was working on an oil rig when he saw a KC-135 Stratotanker, two F-111 Aardvarks, and a triangle-shaped craft refueling. He did not know what it was. During 1991 in Southern California, there were a lot of sonic booms being heard. There was also a pulse coming out of the engine. The most recent sighting was in 2006.


title: The Oprah Winfrey Show

paragraphs: The Oprah Winfrey Show was an American talk show which had Oprah Winfrey as the host. It began on September 8, 1986, and has since become one of the most famous talk shows in the world. The show ended on May 25, 2011 after 25 seasons. It won 47 Daytime Emmy Awards.


title: Rheinfelden, Switzerland

paragraphs: Rheinfelden is a city and municipality of the canton of Aargau in Switzerland, seat of the district of Rheinfelden. It is east of Basel. The name means the fields of the Rhine, as the town is on the Hochrhein. It is home to Feldschlösschen, the most popular beer in Switzerland. The city is across the river from Rheinfelden in Baden-Württemberg; the two cities were joined until Napoleon Bonaparte fixed the German–Swiss border on the Rhine in 1802 and are still socially and economically tied.

paragraphs: The old town of Rheinfelden is on the Rhine river. The Rhine can be traveled down by ship from Rheinfelden all the way to the North Sea.

paragraphs: The area around Rheinfelden was already settled about 10,000 years ago. At that time, people lived in the "Hermitage", a small natural cave next to the current highway. In the year 45 BC, a few kilometers west, the village Augusta Raurica was made, the first Roman town in Switzerland, near modern Kaiseraugst. Towards the end of the 4th century, a fort was built at the western settlement.

paragraphs: During the 17th century, there was very little time during which the city enjoyed peace. During the Rappenkrieg (a peasant uprising that lasted from 1612 until 1614), the city was ruined. Between 1633 and 1638, the Thirty Years' War reached Fricktal, where Rheinfelden played a big role. On 15 July 1633, Swedish and French troops ruined the city. On 5 February 1638, the city was put under attack by Protestant troops sent by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar. On 28 February, the Battle of Rheinfelden began, as the city was attacked by the bigger Imperial and Bavarian troops sent by Johann von Werth and Federigo Savelli. The Protestants lost this battle and moved on. Bernhard brought them weapons, but in the second passage on 3 March they were defeated, as he and his men unexpectedly re-appeared on the battlefield, with Savelli and Werth falling into captivity.

paragraphs: By the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Austrians had built a fortress on the island to secure the southwestern border of the Breisgau. In 1678, French troops sent by François de Créquy fired at the city. In 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, the French made a fortress on the same ground and also ruined part of the city wall. On 17 July 1796, Rheinfelden was again occupied and looted by the French.

paragraphs: Because of the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, the Fricktal became a protectorate of the French, making the front line between the French Revolutionary and the Austrian troops in the War of the Second Coalition. On 20 February 1802, Rheinfelden was made the capital city of the new Canton of Fricktal, joining the Helvetic Republic in August, the point at which the city became mostly Swiss. The seat of the cantonal government was here instead of in Laufenburg. With the beginning of the "Reichsdeputationshauptschluss" (the German Mediatisation), Napoleon Bonaparte removed the canton of Fricktal. Since 19 March 1803, Rheinfelden has been the capital of the district of the same name, in the canton of Aargau.


title: Klickitat

paragraphs: The Klickitat (also spelled Klikitat) are a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest. A Shahaptian tribe, their neighbors to the east were the Yakama, who speak a closely related language. Their neighbors to the west are the Salishan and Chinookan tribes. Their name has been used for naming places like Klickitat County, Washington, Klickitat, Washington, and the Klickitat River, a tributary of the Columbia River.


title: Arzo

paragraphs: Arzo was a municipality of the district Mendrisio in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. On 5 April 2009 the former municipalities of Arzo, Capolago, Genestrerio, Mendrisio, Rancate and Tremona merged into the municipality of Mendrisio.


title: Ascona

paragraphs: Ascona is a municipality of the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.


title: Astano

paragraphs: Astano is a municipality of the district of Lugano in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.


title: Lugano (district)

paragraphs: Lugano is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

paragraphs: The district of Lugano has 98 municipalities divided in 12 circles:


title: Locarno (district)

paragraphs: Locarno is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

paragraphs: The district of Locarno has 40 municipalities divided in 7 circles:


title: Vallemaggia (district)

paragraphs: Vallemaggia is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The capital city of the district is Cevio.


title: Bellinzona (district)

paragraphs: Bellinzona is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.


title: Riviera (district)

paragraphs: Riviera is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The capital city of the district is Biasca.


title: Blenio (district)

paragraphs: Blenio is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The capital city of the district is Acquarossa.


title: Leventina (district)

paragraphs: Leventina is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. The capital city of the district is Faido.


title: Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

paragraphs: إن فرضية سابير وورف هي فكرة لغوية تدعي أن اللغة التي يتحدث بها الناس تغير الطريقة التي يفكرون ويتصرفون بها.

paragraphs: The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is a linguistic idea which claims that the language people speak changes the way they think and act.


title: Icosahedron

paragraphs: An icosahedron is a Platonic solid that is made of triangles and has twenty sides.

paragraphs: There are many kinds of icosahedra, with some being more symmetrical than others. The best known is the Platonic, convex regular icosahedron.

paragraphs: There are two objects, one convex and one concave, that can both be called regular icosahedra. Each has 30 edges and 20 equilateral triangle faces with five meeting at each of its twelve vertices. Both have icosahedral symmetry. The term "regular icosahedron" generally refers to the convex variety, while the nonconvex form is called a "great icosahedron".

paragraphs: The convex regular icosahedron is usually referred to simply as the "regular icosahedron", one of the five regular Platonic solids, and is represented by its Schläfli symbol {3, 5}, containing 20 triangular faces, with 5 faces meeting around each vertex.

paragraphs: Its dual polyhedron is the regular dodecahedron {5, 3} having three regular pentagonal faces around each vertex.

paragraphs: The great icosahedron is one of the four regular star Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. Its Schläfli symbol is {3, }. Like the convex form, it also has 20 equilateral triangle faces, but its vertex figure is a pentagram rather than a pentagon, leading to geometrically intersecting faces. The intersections of the triangles do not represent new edges.

paragraphs: Its dual polyhedron is the great stellated dodecahedron (, 3), having three regular star pentagonal faces around each vertex.

paragraphs: Stellation is the process of extending the faces or edges of a polyhedron until they meet to form a new polyhedron. It is done symmetrically so that the resulting figure retains the overall symmetry of the parent figure.

paragraphs: In their book "The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra", Coxeter et al. enumerated 58 such stellations of the regular icosahedron.

paragraphs: Of these, many have a single face in each of the 20 face planes and so are also icosahedra. The great icosahedron is among them.

paragraphs: Other stellations have more than one face in each plane or form compounds of simpler polyhedra. These are not strictly icosahedra, although they are often referred to as such.


title: Octahedron

paragraphs: An Octahedron is a polyhedron made of eight faces. in the case of the regular octahedron, these faces are triangles. The ocahedron looks like two pyramids, which share the same base.

paragraphs: In chemistry, octahedra are common: diamonds and fluorite are examples of crystals that are octahedra.

paragraphs: If the edge length of a regular octahedron is "a", the radius of a circumscribed sphere (one that touches the octahedron at all vertices) is

paragraphs: and the radius of an inscribed sphere (tangent to each of the octahedron's faces) is

paragraphs: while the midradius, which touches the middle of each edge, is

paragraphs: The "octahedron" has four special orthogonal projections, centered, on an edge, vertex, face, and normal to a face. The second and third correspond to the B and A Coxeter planes.

paragraphs: The octahedron can also be represented as a spherical tiling, and projected onto the plane via a stereographic projection. This projection is conformal, preserving angles but not areas or lengths. Straight lines on the sphere are projected as circular arcs on the plane.

paragraphs: An octahedron with edge length can be placed with its center at the origin and its vertices on the coordinate axes; the Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are then

paragraphs: In an "x"–"y"–"z" Cartesian coordinate system, the octahedron with center coordinates ("a", "b", "c") and radius "r" is the set of all points ("x", "y", "z") such that

paragraphs: The surface area "A" and the volume "V" of a regular octahedron of edge length "a" are:

paragraphs: Thus the volume is four times that of a regular tetrahedron with the same edge length, while the surface area is twice (because we have 8 rather than 4 triangles).

paragraphs: If an octahedron has been stretched so that it obeys the equation

paragraphs: the formulas for the surface area and volume expand to become

paragraphs: Additionally the inertia tensor of the stretched octahedron is

paragraphs: These reduce to the equations for the regular octahedron when

paragraphs: The interior of the compound of two dual tetrahedra is an octahedron, and this compound, called the stella octangula, is its first and only stellation. Correspondingly, a regular octahedron is the result of cutting off from a regular tetrahedron, four regular tetrahedra of half the linear size (i.e. rectifying the tetrahedron). The vertices of the octahedron lie at the midpoints of the edges of the tetrahedron, and in this sense it relates to the tetrahedron in the same way that the cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron relate to the other Platonic solids. One can also divide the edges of an octahedron in the ratio of the golden mean to define the vertices of an icosahedron. This is done by first placing vectors along the octahedron's edges such that each face is bounded by a cycle, then similarly partitioning each edge into the golden mean along the direction of its vector. There are five octahedra that define any given icosahedron in this fashion, and together they define a "regular compound".

paragraphs: Octahedra and tetrahedra can be alternated to form a vertex, edge, and face-uniform tessellation of space, called the octet truss by Buckminster Fuller. This is the only such tiling save the regular tessellation of cubes, and is one of the 28 convex uniform honeycombs. Another is a tessellation of octahedra and cuboctahedra.

paragraphs: The octahedron is unique among the Platonic solids in having an even number of faces meeting at each vertex. Consequently, it is the only member of that group to possess mirror planes that do not pass through any of the faces.

paragraphs: Using the standard nomenclature for Johnson solids, an octahedron would be called a "square bipyramid". Truncation of two opposite vertices results in a square bifrustum.

paragraphs: The octahedron is 4-connected, meaning that it takes the removal of four vertices to disconnect the remaining vertices. It is one of only four 4-connected simplicial well-covered polyhedra, meaning that all of the maximal independent sets of its vertices have the same size. The other three polyhedra with this property are the pentagonal dipyramid, the snub disphenoid, and an irregular polyhedron with 12 vertices and 20 triangular faces.

paragraphs: There are 3 uniform colorings of the octahedron, named by the triangular face colors going around each vertex: 1212, 1112, 1111.

paragraphs: The octahedron's symmetry group is O, of order 48, the three dimensional hyperoctahedral group. This group's subgroups include D (order 12), the symmetry group of a triangular antiprism; D (order 16), the symmetry group of a square bipyramid; and T (order 24), the symmetry group of a rectified tetrahedron. These symmetries can be emphasized by different colorings of the faces.

paragraphs: The octahedron is the dual polyhedron to the cube.

paragraphs: The uniform tetrahemihexahedron is a tetrahedral symmetry faceting of the regular octahedron, sharing edge and vertex arrangement. It has four of the triangular faces, and 3 central squares.


title: Rounder Records

paragraphs: Rounder Records is an American record label that formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1970. Since then, it has moved to Burlington, Massachusetts. Over the years, some of the artists and bands that have been signed to the label include Alison Krauss, Ween, and Bela Fleck.


title: Columbia Records

paragraphs: Columbia Records is an American record label that formed in 1888. It is the oldest existing record company in the world.

paragraphs: Its parent company is now Sony BMG. Over the years, some of the artists and bands that have been signed to the label include Aretha Franklin, System of a Down, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Bela Fleck, Janis Joplin, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Prince, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, and hundreds of other artists.


title: Origin of life

paragraphs: The origin of life on Earth is a scientific problem which is not yet solved. There are many ideas, but few clear facts.

paragraphs: Most experts agree that all life today evolved by common descent from a single primitive lifeform. It is not known how this early life form evolved, but scientists think it was a natural process which happened about 3,900 million years ago. This is in accord with the philosophy of naturalism: only natural causes are admitted.

paragraphs: It is not known if metabolism came first or genetics. The main hypothesis which supports genetics first is the RNA world hypothesis, and the one which supports metabolism first is the protein world hypothesis.

paragraphs: Another big problem is how cells developed. Melvin Calvin, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, wrote a book on the subject, and so did Alexander Oparin. What links most of the early work on the origin of life is the idea that before life began there must have been a process of chemical change. Another question which has been discussed by J.D. Bernal and others is the origin of the cell membrane. By concentrating the chemicals in one place, the cell membrane performs a vital function.

paragraphs: The earliest claimed lifeforms are fossilized microorganisms (or microfossils). They were found in iron and silica-rich rocks which were once hydrothermal vents in the Nuvvuagittuq greenstone belt of Quebec, Canada.

paragraphs: These rocks are as old as 4.28 billion years. The tubular forms they contain are shown in a report. If this is the oldest record of life on Earth, it suggests "an almost instantaneous emergence of life" after oceans formed 4.4 billion years ago. According to Stephen Blair Hedges, "If life arose relatively quickly on Earth… then it could be common in the universe".

paragraphs: A scientific study from 2002 showed that geological formations of stromatolites 3.45 billion years old contain fossilized cyanobacteria. At the time it was widely agreed that stromatolites were the oldest known lifeforms on Earth which had left a record of its existence. Therefore, if life originated on Earth, this happened sometime between 4.4 billion years ago, when water vapor first liquefied, and 3.5 billion years ago. This is the background to the latest discovery discussed above.

paragraphs: The earliest evidence of life comes from the Isua supercrustal belt in Western Greenland, and from similar formations in the nearby Akilia Islands. This is because a high level of the lighter isotope of carbon is found there. Living things take up lighter isotopes because this takes less energy. Carbon entering into rock formations has a concentration of elemental δC of about −5.5. of C, biomass has a δC of between −20 and −30. These isotopic fingerprints are preserved in the rocks. With this evidence, Mojzis suggested that life existed on the planet already by 3.85 billion years ago.

paragraphs: A few scientists think life might have been carried from planet to planet by the transport of spores. This idea, now known as panspermia, was first put forward by Arrhenius.

paragraphs: Until the early 19th century many people believed in the regular spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter. This was called spontaneous generation, and was disproved by Louis Pasteur. He showed that without spores no bacteria or viruses grew on sterile material.

paragraphs: In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker on 11 February 1871, Charles Darwin proposed a "natural process" for the origin of life.

paragraphs: He suggested that the original spark of life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. A protein compound was then chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes". He went on to explain that "at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed".

paragraphs: No real progress was made until 1924 when Alexander Oparin reasoned that atmospheric oxygen prevented the synthesis of the organic molecules. Organic molecules are the necessary building blocks for the evolution of life. In his "The Origin of Life", Oparin argued that a "primordial soup" of organic molecules could be created in an oxygen-less atmosphere through the action of sunlight. These would combine in ever-more complex fashions until they formed droplets. These droplets would "grow" by fusion with other droplets, and "reproduce" through fission into daughter droplets, and so have a primitive metabolism in which those factors which promote "cell integrity" survive, those that do not become extinct. Many modern theories of the origin of life still take Oparin's ideas as a starting point.

paragraphs: Around the same time J.B.S. Haldane also suggested that the Earth's pre-biotic oceans, which were very different from what oceans are now, would have formed a "hot dilute soup". In this soup, organic compounds, the building blocks of life, could have formed. This idea was called "biopoiesis", the process of living matter evolving from self-replicating but nonliving molecules.

paragraphs: There is almost no geological record from before 3.8 billion years ago. The environment that existed in the Hadean era was hostile to life, but how much so is not known. There was a time, between 3.8 and 4.1 billion years ago, which is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. It is so named because many lunar craters are thought to have formed then. The situation on other planets, such as Earth, Venus, Mercury and Mars must have been similar. These impacts would likely sterilize the Earth (kill all life), if it existed at that time.

paragraphs: Several people have suggested that the chemicals in the cell give clues as to what the early seas must have been like. In 1926, Macallum noted that the inorganic composition of the cell cytosol dramatically differs from that of modern sea water: "the cell… has endowments transmitted from a past almost as remote as the origin of life on earth". For example: "All cells contain much more potassium, phosphate, and transition metals than modern ... oceans, lakes, or rivers". "Under the anoxic, CO-dominated primordial atmosphere, the chemistry of inland basins at geothermal fields would [be like the chemistry inside] modern cells".

paragraphs: If life evolved in the deep ocean, near a hydrothermal vent, it could have originated as early as 4 to 4.2 billion years ago. If, on the other hand, life originated at the surface of the planet, a common opinion is it could only have done so between 3.5 and 4 billion years ago.

paragraphs: Lazcano and Miller (1994) suggest that the pace of molecular evolution was dictated by the rate of recirculating water through mid-ocean submarine vents. Complete recirculation takes 10 million years, so any organic compounds produced by then would be altered or destroyed by temperatures exceeding 300 °C. They estimate that the development of a 100 kilobase genome of a DNA/protein primitive heterotroph into a 7000 gene filamentous cyanobacterium would have required only 7 million years.

paragraphs: Originally, the Earth's atmosphere had almost no free oxygen. It gradually changed to what it is today, over a very long time (see Great Oxygenation Event). The process began with cyanobacteria. They were the first organisms to make free oxygen by photosynthesis. Most organisms today need oxygen for their metabolism; only a few can use other sources for respiration.

paragraphs: So it is expected that the first proto-organisms were chemoautotrophs, and did not use aerobic respiration. They were anaerobic.

paragraphs: There is no "standard model" on how life started. Most accepted models are built on molecular biology and cell biology:

paragraphs: The origin of the basic biomolecules, while not settled, is less controversial than the significance and order of steps 2 and 3. The basic chemicals from which life is thought to have formed are:

paragraphs: Molecular oxygen (O) and ozone (O) were either rare or absent.

paragraphs: Bernal suggested that evolution may have commenced early, some time between Stage 1 and 2.

paragraphs: There are three sources of organic molecules on the early Earth:

paragraphs: Estimates of these sources suggest that the heavy bombardment before 3.5 billion years ago made available quantities of organics comparable to those produced by other energy sources.

paragraphs: In 1953 a graduate student, Stanley Miller, and his professor, Harold Urey, performed an experiment that showed how organic molecules could have formed on early Earth from inorganic precursors.

paragraphs: The now-famous Miller–Urey experiment used a highly reduced mixture of gases – methane, ammonia and hydrogen – to form basic organic monomers, such as amino acids. We do know now that for more than the first half of the Earth's history its atmosphere had almost no oxygen.

paragraphs: In the 1950s and 1960s, Sidney W. Fox studied the spontaneous formation of peptide structures under conditions that might have existed early in Earth's history. He demonstrated that amino acids could by itself form small peptides. These amino acids and small peptides could be encouraged to form closed spherical membranes, called microspheres.

paragraphs: Some scientists have suggested special conditions which could make cell synthesis easier.

paragraphs: A clay model for the origin of life was suggested by A. Graham Cairns-Smith. Clay theory suggests complex organic molecules arose gradually on a pre-existing non-organic platform, namely, silicate crystals in solution.

paragraphs: In the 1970s, Thomas Gold proposed the theory that life first developed not on the surface of the Earth, but several kilometers below the surface. The discovery in the late 1990s of nanobes (filamental structures that are smaller than bacteria, but that may contain DNA in deep rocks) might support Gold's theory.

paragraphs: It is now reasonably well established that microbial life is plentiful at shallow depths in the Earth (up to five kilometers below the surface) in the form of extremophile archaea, rather than the better-known eubacteria (which live in more accessible conditions).

paragraphs: Gold asserted that a trickle of food from a deep, unreachable, source is needed for survival because life arising in a puddle of organic material is likely to consume all of its food and become extinct. Gold's theory was that the flow of food is due to out-gassing of primordial methane from the Earth's mantle.

paragraphs: Self-organization and self-replication are the hallmark of living systems. Non-living molecules sometimes show those features under proper conditions. For example, Martin and Russel showed that cell membranes separating contents from the environment and self-organization of self-contained redox reactions are the most conserved attributes of living things. They argue that inorganic matter like that would be life's most likely last common ancestor.

paragraphs: In this hypothesis, RNA is said to work both as an enzyme and as a container of genes. Later, DNA took over its genetic role.

paragraphs: The RNA world hypothesis proposes that life based on ribonucleic acid (RNA) pre-dates the current world of life based on deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), RNA and proteins. RNA is able both to store genetic information, like DNA, and to catalyze chemical reactions, like an enzyme. It may have supported pre-cellular life and been a major step towards cellular life.

paragraphs: There are some pieces of evidence which support this idea:

paragraphs: This idea suggests that proteins worked as enzymes first, producing metabolism. After that DNA and RNA began to work as containers of genes.

paragraphs: This idea also has some evidences which supports this.

paragraphs: In this scheme membranes made of lipid bilayers occur early on. Once organic chemicals are enclosed, more complex biochemistry is then possible.

paragraphs: This is the idea suggested by Arrhenius, and developed by Fred Hoyle, that life developed elsewhere in the universe and arrived on Earth in the form of spores. This is not a theory of how life began, but a theory of how it might have spread. It may have spread, for example, by meteorites.

paragraphs: Some propose that early Mars was a better place to start life than was the early Earth. The molecules which combined to form genetic material are more complex than the "primordial soup" of organic (carbon-based) chemicals that existed on Earth four billion years ago. If RNA was the first genetic material, then minerals containing boron and molybdenum could assist in its formation. These minerals were much more common on Mars than on Earth.


title: Timeline of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season

paragraphs: Below is a timeline of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, listing all the storm formations, strengthening, weakening, landfalls, extratropical transitions, as well as dissipation. The 2006 Atlantic hurricane season was a season in which an El Niño event stopped much tropical cyclone activity, especially later in the season. The season officially began on June 1, 2006, and lasted until November 30. For convenience and clarity, in the timeline below, all landfalls are bolded. The timeline also includes information which was not operationally released, meaning that information from post-storm reviews by the National Hurricane Center, such as information on a storm that was not operationally warned on, have been included.

paragraphs: The graphical bar above gives a brief overview of storm activity during the season, and for convenience, the storm's maximum intensity is included as a color bar. Tropical Storm Zeta from 2005 persisted into 2006, therefore a January section has been included in the text timeline.