In 1920, Gage County was the third most populous county in Nebraska, but now it has only 21,000 inhabitants, ranking 13th in the state. The prominent city in Gage County is Beatrice, pronounced as a 3-syllable name, accented on AT.
The election of 1920 was the first U.S. presidential election in which women could vote, thanks to the ratification of the 19th Amendment less than three months before Election Day. Only an estimated 36% of all eligible women actually voted that year. Some pundits speculated that Republican Warren G. Harding won, in part, because he was the more handsome candidate and thus appealing to women.
Nine Presidents left their office prematurely. Four Presidents died in office of natural causes: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Four Presidents were assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. One President resigned: Richard Nixon.
On Sept. 12, 2013, Alaska lieutenant governor Mead Treadwell announced that North America’s highest peak, Mount McKinley, was 20,237 feet tall, 83 feet shorter than previously thought. The U.S. Geological Survey and Alaska’s Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative used new radar technology to correct the earlier height of 20,320 feet, which had been recorded in 1952 using photogrammetry.
Mount McKinley, also known as Denali, is one of the Seven Summits: the tallest mountain on each continent. Climbing the Seven Summits is an international mountain challenge, similar to bagging a Munro in Scotland.
In 1985 Richard Bass, a businessman and amateur mountaineer, was the first man to climb all the Seven Summits. In only one year, 1983, he climbed six peaks: Aconcagua, Denali, Kilimanjaro, Mt. Elbrus, Mt. Vinson and Mt. Kosciuszko. All of these climbs he did together with his companion Frank Wells and different mountain guides. From 1983 Bass and Wells made various guided attempts to climb Mt. Everest, the highest and most difficult peak in the list. Bass reached the summit of Mt. Everest in a party without Wells, guided by the American professional mountaineer David Breashears, on April 30, 1985. He then co-authored the book Seven Summits, which covered the undertaking.
The definition of continent is a matter of some dispute among mountaineers seeking to complete the Seven Summits. This is especially true for Australia versus Australasia. The Australian continent is defined as comprising the mainland of Australia and proximate islands on the same continental shelf, including Tasmania and New Guinea. In the convention of the seven continents, one of the continents is the region of Australasia, which includes for example the mountainous islands of New Zealand. For both the geological and conventional continent, New Guinea’s Carstensz Pyramid (4,884 m (16,024 ft)) is the highest summit. When considering a continent as a continuous landmass surrounded by oceans, mainland Australia would be its own continent, with Mount Kosciuszko (2,228 m (7,310 ft)) as its highest summit.
Cancer is not normally a contagious disease, but one major exceptions is in Tasmanian devils. A majority of the current population is infected with Devil facial tumor disease, which has wiped out 80% of wild devils in the past 20 years. Essentially a single tumor that jumps between hosts, it is transferred when the aggressive beasts bite each other’s snouts.
However, a recent genetic study of Tasmanian devils has uncovered signs that the animals are rapidly evolving to defend themselves against this infectious cancer. Researchers looked at samples from 294 animals, in three different areas, before and after the disease arrived.
Two small sections of the devil genome appear to be changing very fast - and contain likely cancer-fighting genes.
Kitty Hawk is usually credited as the site of the first powered flights because it was the nearest named settlement at the time—the town of Kill** Devil** Hills did not exist until 50 years later.
One of North Carolina’s major claims to fame - “First in Flight” - was due largely to the wind conditions on the Outer Banks, and the observers who recorded the wind speeds.
When Orville and Wilbur Wright were looking for a site for their first field experiments in 1900 they needed a place with winds regularly over 15 m.p.h. to provide enough lift for their aircraft’s wings, some gentle hills to allow glider launching, a sandy or similar surface to ensure soft landings, and a remote location to ensure that they could concentrate on their work without the distraction of public or media attention.
To identify a location they wrote in 1899 to the Instrument Division, US Weather Bureau, specifically about wind conditions near the “windy City”, Chicago. Over the next year they narrowed down the search. Octave Chanute, doyen of flight experimentalists, suggested the area near San Diego CA or St. James City (Pine Island) FL as having “steady sea breeze but no sand hills”
In August 1900, Wilbur wrote to the Weather Bureau Office at Kitty Hawk asking about conditions. A quick reply from the sole employee, Joseph J. Dosher said they had a beach a mile wide, without trees or other obstructions. Winds in September and October blew from the north or northeast. Boarding was available in the village, but they would have to bring tents for lodging. Dosher also passed the letter to William J. Tate, postmaster, notary and Currituck County Commissioner. He sent a more detailed description of the area, and offered a warm welcome.
Humanity made it from the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, N.C. to Tranquility Base on the Moon in just 66 years, 1903 to 1969, easily within the lifespan of a single individual.
In 2006, a Maryland state circuit court determined that mooning is a form of artistic expression protected by the First Amendment as a form of speech. The court ruled that indecent exposure relates only to exposure of the genitals, adding that even though mooning was a “disgusting” and “demeaning” act to engage in, and had taken place in the presence of a minor, “If exposure of half of the buttocks constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty.”
Hull House was co-founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr with a view to housing recently-arrived European immigrants. By 1911, Hull House had grown to 13 buildings. In 1912 the Hull House complex was completed with the addition of a summer camp, the Bowen Country Club. With its innovative social, educational, and **artistic **programs, it became the standard bearer for a movement that grew, by 1920, to almost 500 settlement houses nationally.
The Addams Family was a single panel cartoon created by cartoonist Charles Addams. It was an satirical look at rich society and featured a bizarre cast of characters that included Gomez, Morticia, Lurch, Grandmama, Wednesday, Pugsley, and Thing. It later became a TV series that ran for two seasons.
Cartoons have found their place in the world of science, mathematics and technology. Cartoons related to chemistry are, for example, xkcd, which varies its subject matter, and the Wonderlab, which looks at daily life in the lab. In the U.S., one well-known cartoonist for these fields is Sidney Harris. Not all, but many of Gary Larson’s cartoons have a scientific flavor.
A Thing, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, was an assembly of people who regulated the avenging of offenses between clans. Things expanded to come to mean a deed of an event, and finally found their place in the world by including, well, everything. (Neatly avoiding ninja)
The Alþingi (anglicised as Althing or Althingi) is the national parliament of Iceland. It is one of the oldest extant parliamentary institutions in the world. The Althing was founded in the year 930 at Þingvellir, the “assembly fields” or “Parliament Plains”, 28 miles east of Reykjavík. This event marked the beginning of the Icelandic Commonwealth.
The letter þ in Alþingi, also known as thorn (in IPA, θ ) is a letter in the Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and modern Icelandic alphabets. In English it has been replaced by the digraph th.
On January 20, 1265, the first English parliament convened in the Palace of Westminster, having been summoned by Simon de Montfort.
West Homestead Borough, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, has a population of 1,937. That ranks number 1265 among the state’s 2,561 municipalities. Those latter two numbers are numerical anagrams.
The number 1,937 has only two divisors/factors besides itself and 1—13 and 149 (where no fractions are involved in the result).