A sphinx is a legendary monster with a human head and a lion’s body. In ancient Egypt, where the idea originated, the head was usually a portrait of the reigning pharaoh. It also represented the sky god Horus. The Egyptians always pictured their kings as calm and stately, with wide-open, staring eyes. The lion’s body […]
Perhaps the best-known of all national nicknames is Yankee. Yet the origin of this famous name for Americans is a mystery. Scholars once thought it came from Yengees, which was supposed to be the way the American Indians pronounced the word English, or its French equivalent, Anglais. Another theory is that a Dutch nickname Yankey […]
People living long ago on the hot coastal strip of Peru created some of the world’s most beautiful textiles. Archaeologists have found an amazing quantity of these in “mummy bundles” tucked away in tombs. These ancient people of the Andean region, like those of Egypt, believed the dead needed articles from this life to use […]
Was he a hero or a villain? Did he really exist at all? In the early 1850s, Mexican immigrant Joaquin Murieta was real to Californians; he was wanted, dead or alive, for robbery. He was a hero to Mexicans who resented the prejudice they faced in the United States. Some scholars today believe his story to […]
Apollo 13 was an American space mission in 1970, part of the Apollo program. It was intended to be the third mission to land on the Moon. An oxygen tank in the Service Module exploded while the spacecraft was on its way to the Moon, requiring the mission to be aborted: the Moon landing was […]
Human biology is a detailed and complicated study. Thus, for the purposes of health education in schools, it is best approached from the point of view of function rather than structure. The detailed anatomy and physiology of the heart and circulation, for instance, are not needed, but students should know that the heart’s function improves […]
English serves as a functional alternative language in several areas of public activity for the many nations of the world which use it as an international second language. Because of its widespread use geographically, and because of the large number of people who speak it, it has been adopted as the language of aviation and […]
A ginseng root, with its stocky middle and arm and leg-like appendages, is said to resemble the human form. According to the lore of traditional Chinese medicine, the greater the likeness, the more formidable its medicinal qualities. And for thousands of years Chinese from all walks of life have coveted the fleshy root. Emperors ruling […]
Psychology comprises a number of different kinds of enterprises, so different that they may seem to have nothing in common. One psychologist is engaged in vocational guidance and spends his day talking to high school students, studying their academic records and their test scores and, from these, showing the student how to clarify his own […]
Your long expectation has finally been realized: you are going to a university abroad. This new challenge and opportunity might soon collide with the reality of being in a new culture, something known as culture shock. Culture shock has been viewed as a psychological reaction or a generalized disorientation and trauma experienced by a person […]