The human race’s progress on the Earth has been due in part to the animals that people have been able to utilize throughout history. Such domesticated animals carry people and their burdens. They pull machinery and help cultivate fields. They provide food and clothing. As pets they may amuse or console their owners. Domesticated animals […]
Penguin ancestors could fly as well as any other sea bird. Now its wings are short, paddle-like flippers that are entirely useless for flight. The bird has lived for ages in or near the Antarctic regions, where it has few enemies. Thus it came to spend all of its time on land or in the […]
Dolphins and porpoises, often called simply “small whales,” are mammals, not fish, and are thus warm-blooded, keeping their body temperature nearly constant even when they are exposed to different environmental temperatures. The mothers provide milk for the young for a year or more. Like other whales, dolphins have lungs and breathe through a single nostril, […]
Because of his imperturbable manner, both on and off the tennis court, and his relentless ground strokes, Bjom Borg was dubbed Ice-Borg by his opponents on the professional tennis circuit. Borg won his first tournament when he was 11. In four years, he won all the world’s junior titles, and became the first of the […]
Exactly what is a plant and how is it different from other life forms? This may initially seem like a simple question. Everyone knows that an elm tree is a plant, whereas a dog is not. Nevertheless, the precise definition of plants is still a matter of debate among some scientists. All living things are […]
The novels and plays of Alexandre Dumas are filled with action and clever talk. Some critics, however, have said that Dumas’s work is not good literature because it is sometimes carelessly written and historically inaccurate. After several failures as a playwright, Dumas wrote a play about the king called Henri III. It was produced in […]
Spices were known to Eastern peoples thousands of years ago. Arab traders artfully withheld the true source of these spices, however, and they became valuable items of commerce early in the evolution of the spice trade. The most notable uses of spices in very early times were in medicine and in the making of holy […]
Ours is the great generation of the short story. The growth of the newspaper, the development of the magazine, the universality of popular education with its increase in human curiosity – most of all, the increasing pace of modern life, its speed of living and competitive pressure – gave this literary type its greatest encouragement. […]
Several old jokes common amongst the scientific disciplines illustrate the difference between the mathematical mind and that of other disciplines. One goes as follows: An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician are all staying at a hotel one night when a fire breaks out. The engineer wakes up and smells the smoke; he quickly grabs […]
Interested in neither money, fame, nor power, Socrates wandered through the streets of Athens in the 5th century BC. He wore a single rough woollen garment in all seasons and went barefoot. Talking to whoever would listen, he asked questions, criticized answers, and poked holes in faulty arguments. His style of conversation has been given […]