Lists and Stories
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Weapons of World War I World War I is known for the savagery of its trench warfare, but the weapons available to the warâs combatants were wide-ranging. list, World War I, machine gun, chemical weapon, tank, battleship, fighter plane Depth charges were first developed by the Royal Navy during World War I to combat German... -
Were All Egyptian Pharaohs Buried in Pyramids? In ancient Egypt, pyramids were the most characteristic tomb for kings of the Old Kingdom. The mummies of such pharaohs as Djoser, Khafre, and Menkaure were placed in a subterranean burial chamber underneath a pyramid. Khufuâs mummy, however, was placed inside the Great Pyramid, in the Kingâs... -
Were the Nazis Socialists? Were the Nazis socialists? No, not in any meaningful way, and certainly not after 1934. But to address this canard fully, one must begin with the birth of the party. In 1919 a Munich locksmith named Anton Drexler founded the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workersâ Party). Political parties... -
What Are Matrices Used For? A matrix is a set of numbers arranged in rows and columns so as to form a compact rectangular array. It contains a set of specific elements, often numbers or equations. The values of each element depend on the nature of the application (such as population data, the price of a purchased good, power... -
What Are Some Notable Examples of Film Adaptations of Romeo and Juliet? Regardless of whether youâve committed to a close reading of the actual text of William Shakespeareâs play, you very likely think of Romeo and Juliet as the representative story of star-crossed love. A common fixation on the passion between Romeo and Julietâalmost separate from their tragic,... -
What Are the Biological Effects of Marijuana Use? The biological effects of marijuana vary, depending on the strength and amount consumed and depending on how and why it is used. Psychological effects, such as mild euphoria and alterations in vision and judgment, are common, regardless of whether marijuana is taken for recreational or medical... -
What Are the Differences Between First-, Second-, and Third-Degree Murder? Murder is the act of causing the death of another person without legal justification or excuse. The U.S. federal code and most state codes distinguish between different degrees of murder, though state codes differ in how many degrees are recognized (one, two, or three) and how the degrees are... -
What Are the Symptoms of a Stroke? The onset of stroke can manifest in different ways. In many instances, the affected person may experience sudden weakness and numbness of an arm or a leg on one side of the body, or a side of the face. There may be temporary difficulty in speech, confusion, severe headache, or visual disturbances,... -
What Causes a Volcano to Erupt? Volcanic eruptions are among the most stunning phenomena in the natural world. Volcanoes erupt because of the way heat moves beneath Earthâs surface. Heat is conveyed from the planetâs interior to its surface largely by convectionâthe transfer of heat by movement of a heated fluid. In this case,... -
What Causes Lunar and Solar Eclipses? An eclipse happens when one astronomical body blocks light from or to another. In a lunar eclipse, the Moon moves into the shadow of Earth cast by the Sun. When the Moon passes through the outer part of Earthâs shadowâthe penumbra, where the light of the Sun is only partly extinguishedâthe Moon... -
What Causes the Northern and Southern Lights? The aurorasâthe aurora borealis (or northern lights) in the Northern Hemisphere, and the aurora australis (the southern lights) in the Southern Hemisphereâare brilliant natural spectacles that can be seen in the evening sky especially at higher latitudes. Unlike other phenomena of the night sky,... -
What Causes Tsunamis? As natural disasters go, tsunamis are among the worst in terms of overall destruction and loss of life. They rival earthquakes in their ability to suddenly devastate a wide area. In recent years massive tsunamis have caused extensive damage in northern Sumatra and Thailand, parts of Japanâs Honshu... -
What Comes After Terabyte? Most people donât spend time thinking about the smallest units of data, bits and bytes. But when it comes to data transfer or storage, most of us are concerned with the megabytes, gigabytes, or even terabytes. As data capacity increases, what size hard drive should you be looking for next? Data... -
What Darwin Got Right (and Wrong) About Evolution British naturalist Charles Darwin is one of the most celebrated people in the biological sciences. One of his principal accomplishments was voyaging around the world in the HMS Beagle. During the journey, he collected and described many strange and unusual forms of life. For most scientists of the... -
What Did Cleopatra Look Like? More than 2,000 years after her death in 30 BCE, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra still looms large in the popular imagination. Despite what is known of her brilliance and charm, in mass media depictions what often comes to the forefront is Cleopatra as a ravishingly seductive proto-femme fatale. Are... -
What Did It Look Like for a U.S. President to Condemn Racism in 1921? Warren G. Harding was hardly a peopleâs president. Handpicked by the Republican Party as an inoffensive alternative to the erratic tenure of Woodrow Wilson (and as a likely candidate to win Ohio, his home state), Harding was the first to admit his own shortcomings: he once called himself âa man of... -
What did Jan Ingenhousz discover about photosynthesis? Dutch-born British physician and scientist Jan Ingenhousz discovered that light is necessary for photosynthesis. This observation built upon work begun by English scientist Joseph Priestley, who had burned a candle in a closed container until the air within the container could no longer support... -
What Did Shakespeare Sound Like? Of course, since there was no recording technology in Shakespeareâs time, we can never really know what the bard and his contemporaries sounded like. But using linguistic principles, we can guess. Shakespeare almost certainly didnât sound like John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, or any of the other... -
What did Sir Walter Scott write? Sir Walter Scottâs early work consisted of poetic romances such as The Lady of the Lake (1810). He later wrote The Waverley Novels, a series of historical novels published anonymously between 1814 and 1832 that were popular in his day. The earlier books are set in Scotland and demonstrate Scottâs... -
What Did We Call Americaâs Elite Before the â1 Percentâ? Astor. Rockefeller. Kennedy. Bezos. In 2011 the Occupy Wall Street protest movement spread the term 1 percent in reference to Americaâs richest people. At the time, 1 percent of the population controlled about 30 percent of the countryâs wealth. But Occupy was no more the origin of American class...