Lists and Stories

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  The Effects of China’s One-Child Policy The one-child policy was a program that was implemented nationwide by the Chinese government in 1980 in order to limit most Chinese families to one child each. The policy was enacted to address the growth rate of China’s population, which the government viewed as being too high. In late 2015 the...
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  How the 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora Produced the “Year Without a Summer” Mount Tambora is a stratovolcano and forms the entire 37.3-mile- (60-km-) wide Sanggar peninsula on Sumbawa island, Indonesia. Its eruption in April of 1815 is the largest observed eruption in recorded history. It measured a 7 on the volcanic explosivity index (VEI). Plumes from the eruption of...
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  The Eternal Legacy of Treasure Island When we think about pirates, there is a nearly universal image that comes to mind, which has been perpetuated throughout pop culture. Pirates have developed quite the reputation for saying things such as “Shiver me timbers!” and “Arrr!” and for having a peg leg—maybe even sporting a parrot on their...
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  The Evergreen Benefits of Rooftop Gardening Also known as a “green roof” or “landscaped rooftop,” a rooftop garden is a cultivated garden on top of a building. From humble container gardens on flat-top houses to impressive spreads on city skyscrapers, rooftop gardens have an illustrious history and offer topside tranquility with a myriad of...
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  The Fastest Animals on Earth In the animal kingdom, speed can mean the difference between life and death. Predators use their speed to overtake and overpower their prey, while animals with few other defenses rely on speed to avoid becoming dinner. Here are some of the fastest animals in the world. list, animals, fastest...
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  The Fermi Paradox: Where Are All the Aliens? On a clear night, staring up at the stars induces a sense of simultaneous wonder and insignificance. Humanity time and time again finds itself lost amid the vastness of a universe that we are still struggling to understand. There are many questions we ask ourselves when looking toward the heavens,...
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  The Festival of Lights Diwali (also spelled Divali), the festival of lights, is one of the major holidays of Hinduism and is also celebrated in Jainism and Sikhism. The five-day festival marks the beginning of the Hindu New Year and occurs during the final three days of the “dark half” of the lunar month Ashvina and the...
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  The First Indy 500: A Spectacular Start in 1911 On May 30, 1911, “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” was born with the inaugural running of the Indianapolis 500. Upward of 90,000 spectators packed the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to see 40 cars speed around a 2.5-mile track 200 times. Bands played, and people bought ham sandwiches and lemonade...
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  The First Space Walk On March 18, 1965, cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov rocketed into Earth orbit and exited his spacecraft, becoming the first man to walk in space. He floated for an exhilarating 10 minutes. spotlight, science, history, technology, space, astronomy, cosmonaut, space walk, firsts, russia, space...
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  The Future of Information and Education For centuries, education has consisted primarily of students sitting before an instructor in a classroom setting, learning via lecture and rote memorization from textbooks. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it served its purpose as a generally effective way to educate the masses. In recent years,...
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  The Great Moon Hoax of 1835 Was Sci-Fi Passed Off as News On August 25, 1835, the New York Sun published the first of six articles that would become known as the Great Moon Hoax. This first installment—which would fool readers nationwide—began as follows: “We will state at once, that by means of a telescope of vast dimensions and an entirely new...
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  The Great War Infographic of Deaths and Milestones The infographic presents an overview of World War I, also called the Great War, which lasted from 1914 to 1918. As the main map shows, this international conflict embroiled most of Europe along with the Middle East and other regions around the world. It pitted the Central Powers—mainly Germany,...
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  The Group of Seven Remembered Say “Group of Seven,” and most folks will assume you are referring to the organization of the world’s leading industrialized countries, whose annual summit provides the mother of all photo opportunities for the leaders of the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and, until its...
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  The Haggis! Burns Night in Scotland Scottish food, drink, and verse are celebrated on January 25, the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns. Burns is regarded as Scotland’s national bard. He composed hundreds of songs and poems in both Scottish and English. Burns Night celebrations run the gamut from simple gatherings of friends...
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  The Hindenburg, Before and After Disaster On the evening of May 6, 1937, spectators and reporters gathered at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey to catch a glimpse of the cutting edge of air travel. The German airship LZ-129—better known as the Hindenburg—was landing. At 804 feet long (more than three times the length of a Boeing...
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  The “Howl” Heard Round the World Sixty years after its publication in 1956, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” still echoes loudly. Not only did it alter the landscape of mid-20th-century poetry, but it also sounded a clarion call for the counterculture that followed and raised consciousness for generations to come. Arguably, however, its...
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  The International Criminal Court (ICC) The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a court of last resort that was created to investigate and prosecute individuals accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The ICC was established by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998, and it began sittings on...
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  The Largest Islands in the World Quite a few islands around the world are very large, and many of them are countries. Australia is technically an island because it is unconnected to any other body of land, but it is more commonly considered a continental landmass. Of the seven continents, Australia is the smallest, at 2,969,976...
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  The Last Book of the Harlem Renaissance God Sends Sunday was the last book of the Harlem Renaissance. It was published in 1931 by one of New York’s major publishers. It appeared in bookstores more than a decade after the start of the concentrated upsurge in artistic creation by African Americans, centered in Harlem, that came to be known...
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  The Legacy of Order 9066 and Japanese American Internment On Feb. 19, 1942, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, granting Secretary of War Henry Lewis Stimson and his commanders the power “to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all...