Cheddar Man

Cheddar Man lived around 10,000 years ago and is the oldest almost complete skeleton of our species, Homo sapiens, ever found in Britain. It was found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England.  He lived in the 9th century BCE, the Mesolithic period.

Mount Thor

Mount Thor, or Thor Peak, is a 5,495-foot-tall mountain located on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada. It features Earth's greatest vertical drop of 4,100 feet, with the cliff overhanging at an average angle of 105 degrees.  Despite its remoteness, this feature makes the mountain a popular rock climbing site.

paper bricks

Paper bricks are made with recycled newspapers. To make the bricks, newspapers are turned into pulp and combined with wood glue, before being pressed into the right shape. The paper bricks are as sturdy as real bricks, with a marbled look. The texture is warm and soft like textile.

Trango Towers

The Trango Towers are a family of rock towers situated in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, in the northern part of Pakistan. The Towers have some of the world's largest cliffs and offer some of the most challenging big wall climbing opportunities.  The highest point within the group is the summit of Great Trango Tower at 20,623 feet, the east face of which features the world's greatest nearly vertical drop.

Seba Smith

Seba Smith was an American humorist and writer who used vernacular in print.  His series of satirical letters by "Major Jack Downing" lampooned both sides of American politics in the early 1800s.  He also wrote "A Corpse Going To a Ball" in 1843, a ballad in which a young woman freezes to death because she refuses put a blanket over her party dress.  Her name was Charlotte, and this inspired the FRozen Charlotte dolls' name.

Frozen Charlotte

A Frozen Charlotte is a specific form of china or bisque doll made in one solid piece without joints from 1850 to about 1920. They were typically inexpensive, and the name Penny doll is also used, in particular for smallest, most affordable versions. The dolls had substantial popularity during the Victorian era.  The name of the doll originates from the American folk ballad Fair Charlotte, which tells of a young girl called Charlotte who refused to wrap up warmly to go on a sleigh ride because she did not want to cover up her pretty dress and thus froze to death.

bulge bracket

"Bulge bracket" is a term that describes the company or companies in an underwriting syndicate that issued the largest number of securities on a new issue. The bulge bracket is usually the first group listed on the tombstone—a print advertisement of a new issue.

shawm

A shawm is a loud double-reed instrument which is the ancestor of the oboe.

Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Pinchot Meyer was a D.C. artist and socialite who became John Kennedy's mistress.  She was shot execution-style in broad daylight on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath in Washington, D.C., on October 12, 1964. A suspect, Ray Crump, Jr., was arrested and charged with her murder, but he was ultimately acquitted.

first woman in space

The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, blazed a trail for the many female space-goers who would follow. Tereshkova, a Soviet cosmonaut, was selected from more than 400 applicants to launch on the Vostok 6 mission on June 16, 1963.  She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, is the only woman to have been on a solo space mission and is the last surviving Vostok program cosmonaut. Twenty-six years old at the time of her spaceflight, she remains the youngest woman to have flown in space under the international definition of 100 km altitude, and the youngest woman to fly in Earth orbit.

Guru Granth Sahib

The Guru Granth Sahib is the central holy religious scripture of Sikhism, regarded by Sikhs as the final, sovereign and eternal Guru following the lineage of the ten human gurus of the religion.  The text consists of 1,430 angs (pages) and 5,894 shabads (line compositions), which are poetically rendered and set to a rhythmic ancient north Indian classical form of music. The bulk of the scripture is divided into 31 main rāgas, with each Granth rāga subdivided according to length and author.

Patriots' Day

Patriots' Day is a civic holiday (traditionally April 19, celebrated the third Monday of April) observed in Massachusetts to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord. The Boston Marathon is held every year on Patriots' Day.

Maurice Garin

Maurice Garin, a chimney sweep, won the first Tour de France in 1903.

Josef Hoop

Franz Josef Hoop was a diplomat and political figure from Liechtenstein who served as Prime Minister of Liechtenstein from 1928 to 1945. Hoop is best known for his efforts to retain Liechtenstein's neutrality and independence during World War II. Serving for seventeen years, he is the longest-serving prime minister in the country's history.

lavvu

A lavvu, also called a kavvas, is a temporary dwelling used by the Sami people of northern extremes of Northern Europe. It has a design similar to a Native American tipi but is less vertical and more stable in high winds.

bauta mask

A bauta mask is a Venetian carnival mask that covers about 3/4 or more of the face, with a strong line down the middle, and no mouth.

fermata

A fermata (also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be prolonged beyond the normal duration its note value would indicate.

Hurkle-durkle

To hurkle-durkle is a Scots phrase dating from the 1800s meaning "to lie in bed or lounge about when one should be up and about."  Update: It took over social media!

Fugue For Tinhorns

"Fugue For Tinhorns" is the name of the song that goes "I got the horse right here" from Guys and Dolls.  It was written in 1950 by Frank Loesser.  Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Dean Martin recorded the song in 1963.

Ohi Day

Ohi Day or Ochi Day is celebrated throughout Greece, Cyprus and the Greek communities around the world on 28 October each year. Ohi Day commemorates the rejection by the Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1940. It also commemorates the subsequent Hellenic counterattack against the invading Italian forces at the mountains of Pindus during the Greco-Italian War and Greek resistance during the Axis occupation.  Ohi (Οχι) means "no" in Greek.

Treaty of Cordoba

The Treaty of Córdoba established Mexican independence from Spain at the conclusion of the Mexican War of Independence. It was signed on August 24, 1821 in Córdoba, Veracruz, Mexico.

First PG-13 rated movie

The first film released with the rating PG-13 was the 1984 war fantasy Red Dawn.  Technically, the first film to be rated PG-13 was The Flamingo Kid, but Red Dawn came out first.

Snell's window

Snell's window is a phenomenon by which an underwater viewer sees everything above the surface through a cone of light of width of about 96 degrees.

Yamato

On April 7, 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, one of the greatest battleships of its time, was sunk south of Kushu by American torpedoes in Japan’s first major counteroffensive in the struggle for Okinawa.

Antoinette Perry

Antoinette Perry was an American actress, producer, director and administrator, known for her work in theater, and is the namesake of the Tony Awards, presented by that organization for excellence in Broadway theater.

First presidential veto

George Washington exercised the first presidential veto of a Congressional bill on April 5, 1792. The bill introduced a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives that would have increased the amount of seats for northern states. After consulting with his politically divided and contentious cabinet, Washington, who came from the southern state of Virginia, ultimately decided that the plan was unconstitutional because, in providing for additional representatives for some states, it would have introduced a number of representatives higher than that prescribed by the Constitution.

Craftsman houses

A Craftsman house is a popular American home style that emerged from the American Craftsman movement of the turn of the 20th century, often including a central fireplace, a wide porch with columns, a low-pitched roof, wood siding, and large bay windows.

Steak Diane

Steak Diane is a dish of pan-fried beefsteak with a sauce made from the seasoned pan juices. It was originally cooked tableside and sometimes flambéed. It was most likely invented in London in the 1930s. The name most likely comes from Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt.

White-shoe law firm

In the United States, "white-shoe firm" is a term used to describe prestigious professional services firms that have been traditionally associated with the upper-class elite who graduated from Ivy League colleges. (The term comes from white buckskin derby shoes (bucks), once the style among the men from the upper-class.)   The Oxford English Dictionary cites the phrase "white-shoe college boys" in the J.D. Salinger novel Franny and Zooey (1957) as the first use of the term: "Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day."

Left-Handed Whopper

On April 1, 1998, Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.). However, the left-handed whopper had "all condiments rotated 180 degrees, thereby redistributing the weight of the sandwich so that the bulk of the condiments will skew to the left, thereby reducing the amount of lettuce and other toppings from spilling out the right side of the burger."