Where is the tomb of Tutankhamen?


Tutankhamen’s tomb is in Egypt, in a place called the Valley of the Kings. Tutankhamen was a pharaoh, who died in 1352 B.C. his name was familiar only to scholars until his tomb was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter. The tomb was filled with precious jewels, ornaments, vases, furniture, cloths, ornamented coffins, chariots, and the mummified body of the young king himself, wearing a gold mask.



      When the Egyptians buried a pharaoh, they took trouble to surround him with beautiful and useful things. They did not believe he was really dead. They thought he would go on living if he were provided with enough things to protect him in his journey through the underworlds, and afterwards.



       Most of the kings’ tombs were robbed, frequently by local people of their jewels and gold.



      There are several chambers in the tomb-the Antechamber, the Burial Chamber, the Treasury, and the store room. In the Antechamber were a beautiful alabaster wishing-cup and a painted wooden casket with brilliant designs. At the doorway of the Treasury was a figure of God called Anubis, a sort of jacket like dog, who was supposed to keep watch over the dead. Round his neck he wore a scarf decorated with lotus and cornflowers.



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Why were slaves taken to the West Indies?


Negro slaves were taken to the West Indies because the original population had almost become extinct.



         While Christopher Columbus explored all parts of the West Indies, his successors colonized only those islands which were peopled by the Ciboney and Arawak Indians. They avoided the Carib Islands of the Lesser Antilles because they had no gold and the Carib Indians were fierce and difficult to subdue. As the Spaniards conquered each island, they rounded up its Indians and put them to work in mines or on plantations.



         Many were worked to death, some starved, others died from diseases introduced from Europe and still others were killed when they tried to rebel. By 1550, the Ciboney were extinct and only a few Arawak remained.



       In the 16th century, the Spaniards introduced Negro slaves to replace the dwindling supply of labor. They did not bring in many, for their mines were exhausted, and they owned cattle ranches which did not require much labour. The main shipments off Negro slaves came in the 18th century, when sugar plantations were developed by the French in Haiti and the Lesser Antilles.



     After the French Revolution, the slaves in Haiti revolted and set up an independent Negro REPUBLIC. THE French went to neighboring British and Spanish islands, established new plantations and imported more slaves.



    When slavery was abolished in the first half of the 19th century the British imported Chinese and Indians from Asia who rapidly increased in numbers until, by the middle of the 20th century, they comprised more than one third of the population of Trinidad. Throughout the Antilles the Negroes and Asians have assumed more and more prominence, so that they now dominate the area except in countries like Cuba and Puerto Rico.



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How did Hitler come to power?


Adolf Hitler was able to seize power in Germany because the economic slump of 1929 gave him the opportunity to gain the support of the magnates of business and industry, and also of the lower middle class and of the unemployed. To the business men he promised a strong right-wing government; to the lower classes he gave faith and hope, proclaiming that Germany would triumph over her suffering and reassert her natural greatness.



      Hitler was born at Braunau Austria in 1889, but he resented the Austro-Hungarian government and fought for Germany in the First World War. In 1920 he joined and soon became leader of a new party, the National socialist German Workingmen’s party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) later to be abbreviated to “Nazi”. In 1923 he was sent to prison as a revolutionary and wrote Mein Kampf (my fight). He believed that inequality between races was inevitable and that the Aryan race must dominate. He determined that Germany should rule the world and expressed his fanatical hatred of all Jews.



            On leaving prison in 1924 Hitler skillfully built up the Nazi strength. At the 1930 election it became the second largest party in the country with more than 6,000,000 votes. By 1933 so many Nazis had been elected to parliament that the president of the German Republic, field Marshal Hindenburg, was persuaded that the country could no longer be governed without their leader’s help. Hitler was invited to join the government and soon became Chancellor. Once in power he proceeded to establish an absolute dictatorship. In March 1933 a bill giving him full powers was passed in the Reichstag by the combined votes of Nazi, Nationalist and centre Party deputies.



        Hitler took control of the police and established special Nazi forces, the SA and the SS. When Hindenburg died on August 2, 1934, the offices of Chancellor and President were merged, and Hitler became an undisputed dictator.



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Who was Benedict Arnold?


Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) was an American officer in the Revolutionary War who betrayed military secrets to the British and plotted to surrender an army base to the enemy. He changed sides partly for money, partly in revenge for being reprimanded and partly, perhaps, because of the influence of his second wife, who had no sympathy for the rebellion.



         Before war broke out between the Americans and the British, Arnold had served in the French and Indian wars and become a druggist and bookseller as well as being active in the West Indian trade. He was an early hero of the revolution, taking part as a captain in the Connecticut militia in Ethan Allen’s successful attack on Fort Ticonderoga, New York State, in 1775. The following year he was wounded at Quebec and promoted to brigadier-general in recognition of his brave leadership. After other acts of valour, which resulted in his being crippled, he was appointed military commander of Philadelphia in 1778.



      He enjoyed the city’s social life but his extravagance and association with loyalist members of the community disgusted the patriots and aroused their suspicions. He was accused of misusing public property and authority of personal profit and was awaiting court martial when he married Margaret Shippen, 18-year-old daughter of a Loyalist. Even before the court martial was held Arnold offered his services to the British forces as an Informer? When in December, 1779, he was found guilty of two minor offences and reprimanded gently by George Washington; he again entered with his wife into treasonable correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander-in-chief. He sent news of the proposed invasion of Canada and later offered £20,000-to surrender the strategic military base at West Point on the Hudson River where he expected to be appointed commander.



       Clinton agreed and sent his aide, Major John Andre, to meet him under a flag of truce on the night of September 21, 1780. Returning overland in disguise, Andre was captured and incriminating papers were found in his boot. Arnold escaped along the Hudson to the British Army, but Andre was hanged as a spy.



       Arnold received £6,315 for his treason and was made a brigadier-general of provincial troops on the side of the British. After carrying out raids in Virginia and Connecticut, he sailed in 1781 for England where he was treated with scorn and distrust, and ostracized by society. He died an embittered man in London in 1801. His wife survived him by only three years.



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When did Akbar build his empire?


Jalal-Ud-Din Mohammed Akbar (1542-1605), the greatest of the Mogul emperors of India, was a ruler only in name when he came to the throne in 1556. His Mongolian grandfather, Baber, had established a Mohammedan empire in northern India through a combination of daring, luck and military skill. But his father had been driven from the capital, Delhi, by a usurper.



        With able generalship, Akbar overthrew all his rivals and embarked upon a career of conquest which, by 1562, gave him domain over the Punjab and Multan, the basin of the Ganges and Jumna Rivers, Gwalior to the south and Kabul in Afghanistan in the north-west. Subsequently he crossed the Narbada River into the Deccan and extended his dominion southward. By 1605, his empire contained 15 provinces or subahs and stretched from the Hindu Kush Mountains to the Godocari River and from Bengal to Gujarat.



     He was not only a great general, but also a great statesman. He established an excellent administrative system and came to be on friendly terms with the former Hindu rulers, respecting their religion and marrying two of their princesses. Under his rule, art and literature flourished, while scholars from all over the world were invited to court and encouraged to discuss with Akbar all aspects of philosophy and religion.



      After 1582 he formed a religious sect with himself as spiritual leader, but did not force his subjects to become members. He died at Agra on October 16, 1605, and is remembered as a wise, sincere and generous leader.



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Where is Pompeii?


For nearly 1,700 years Pompeii in southern Italy was a dead and buried city, forgotten by all except historians. But for more than 600 years before disaster overtook it, Pompeii was a proud city and port of the Roman Empire in the SHADOW OF Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples.



       On the morning of August 24, in the year A.D. 79 an event occurred that was to preserve for us the story of Roman everyday life. Sixteen years previously an earthquake had damaged Pompeii, a city where wealthy Romans had their country villas, and the damage had been repaired. Now, Vesuvius once again erupted violently. For three days the sky was darkened, and a deadly hail of volcanic ash and pumice rained down upon the doomed city.



      By the time the eruption settled down, Pompeii lay under a blanket of pumice eight to ten feet thick. The outlines of the land had been so altered that the sea was now nearly two miles away. Two thousand of the city’s 20,000 inhabitants died in the disaster, suffocated by the sulphurous fumes or crushed by falling roofs. Pompeii, it seemed, had been wiped off the face of the earth.



     So it was until, in 1748, a peasant digging in his vineyard unearthed some statues. This led to a remarkable record of a Roman city in its heyday being brought to light.



       Excavation has revealed rows of shops and houses, the forum or market-place, with temples adjoining business houses, an open air theatre, and public baths. In the museum at Naples are many thousands of objects recovered from Pompeii-statues and paintings, pens and ink-bottles, coins, looking-glasses and even charred food served on the day of the eruption nearly 1,900 years ago.



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Why is Paul Revere famous?


Paul Revere (1735-1818) is famous for his ride on horseback during the American Revolution to warn Massachusetts colonists of the approach of British troops.



    Paul Revere’s father, a Hugue not refugee, who had settled in Boston, Massachusetts, taught his son the art of silversmithing. Revere became a great artist in silver but, in his need to support his family he also sold spectacles, replaced missing teeth and made surgical instruments.



    He was a fervent patriot, cut many copper plates for anti British propaganda and was a leader of the Boston Tea Party in 1773, when a group of citizens disguised as Indians threw a cargo of tea into the sea as a protest against the British tax on it.



      In 1775, when the American Revolution broke out, Revere constructed a powder mill to supply the colonial troops. He enlisted in the army and in 1776 was a lieutenant-colonel, in command of Castle William, at Boston.



    But his most famous exploit took place the year before when, as principal express rider for Boston’s committee of Safety, he warned Middlesex County, on April 18, that British troops were leaving Boston to seize military stores at Lexington and Concord. His exploit has been immortalized in the poem Paul Revere’s ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).



     After the colonists’ victory, Revere set up a rolling mill for the manufacture of sheet copper in Massachusetts, and became rich.



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When was the United Kingdom formed?


The United Kingdom was formed in 1801 when an act of union brought Ireland under the same parliament with England, Scotland and Wales. The official name of the country was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But 26 Irish countries left the union in 1922 and formed the Irish Free State, now the republic of Ireland. Five years later the Royal and Parliamentary Titles act named the union as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.



         Wales was the first to unite with England, having been subdued by King Edward I in 1282. The heir to the English throne has been known as the Prince of Wales ever since Edward gave the title to his baby son in 1301. But it was not until 1536 when Henry VIII, a Tudor monarch of Welsh descent, was on the throne, that an act of Union peacefully incorporated the Principality into the kingdom.



     The name Great Britain came into use after James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne in 1603 as James I and united the two crowns, though not the nations. Another act of Union brought England and Scotland under one government in 1707.



       The union flag of the present kingdom is composed of the flag of England (white with an upright red cross), the flag of Scotland (blue with a diagonal white cross) and the red diagonal cross of Ireland.



     On May 29, 1953, under the Royal Titles Act, a proclamation was issued which gave the Queen the title: Elizabeth the second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of her other Realms and Territories Queen, head of the commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.



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When does coal become a precious stone?


Coal is basically a compound consisting largely of carbon. When a piece of carbon deep under-ground is subjected to great heat and pressure, it may gradually be transformed into a diamond. The heat turns the carbon into a liquid and the pressure causes it to crystallize.



       Thus the carbon loses its black unattractive appearance and becomes the most precious of stones.



     It has been calculated that this extraordinary process takes place at least 75 miles beneath the earth’s surface, the diamonds being afterwards transporated upwards by natural forces.



      Some iron meteorites full of carbon have been found to contain diamonds deep inside. Here the heat and pressure conditions would once have been much the same as those formed underground.



    Much the same conditions are created in the laboratory to make synthetic diamonds for industrial purposes, such as cutting hard materials. Only industrial diamonds are man-made. The diamonds that are considered the most precious stones in the world took thousands of years to form.



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Why would you go to Death Valley?


You would go to Death Valley, as do half a million visitors each year, to look at its magnificently varied scenery and to recapture the flavor of those days of privation and hardship which gave the Valley its name.



     Death Valley National Monument is in the state of California in the U.S.A. In its 3,000 square miles can be found sheer-walled canyons, desert springs and sands, an extinct volcano, snow-topped mountain ranges, desolate wastes of salt crystals and gardens of fragile wild flowers.



     There is a 200 square mile salt pan that contains the Western Hemisphere’s lowest point-282 feet below sea level-and is the driest spot in the U.S.A.



      Death Valley also contains long abandoned mines, silent witnesses to the gold seekers of 1849 who lived and died in its inhospitable terrain. Coffin Canyon, Deadman pass, Hells Gate, starvation Canyon and suicide pass are names which perpetuate the despair and suffering of these pioneers.



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Where was Horatio Nelson born?


The great British naval hero Horatio Nelson, who defeated the French at Trafalgar in 1805 in one of the most memorable of all sea battles, was born at Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, England. His father was rector of that parish. Horatio’s mother (nee Suckling) was related to Sir Robert Walpole the British statesman and prime Minister



       Nelson’s uncle, Captain Maurice Suckling, who later became Comptroller of the Navy, gave Horatio his first taste of the sea. Horatio, who was educated in his home country of Norfolk by the North Sea, was entered in the ship reasonable by Captain Suckling in 1770 when there was an alarm of war with Spain. But the dispute with Spain was quickly settled, and Nelson was packed off in a merchant vessel to the West Indies to gain experience.



        This was the beginning of a hard apprenticeship during which time Nelson visited such remote areas as the Arctic and the East Indies.



        Five years after his first appointment at sea Nelson fell ill and was invalided home. It was not until two years later, having just passed his examination as lieutenant that his remarkable career began in earnest.



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Who became known as Clive of India?


        Robert Clive (1725-74) was the founder of Britain’s Indian Empire. Yet at school he was idle, unruly and turbulent and became the ringleader of a aging of youths who tenor zed his native town of Market Drayton, Shropshire.



        Both market Drayton and the Clive family must have been relieved when, at the age of 18, he left England to become a clerk with the British East India Company in Madras. At first he was so depressed by his new environment that he twice tried to shoot himself, but his opportunity for greatness came with the outbreak of war between the French and the British for supremacy in India. In 1751, when the tide was running against the British, Clive led a few hundred English and Indian troops to seize the great fort at Arcot the capital of one of France’s Indian allies. For 53 days his small force held the fort against repeated assaults until the besiegers were forced to retreat, leaving the district to be ruled by an Indian who favored the British. Clive followed up this success with further victories which led to a settlement in south India in Britain’s favor in 1752.



      He returned to England in 1753 with a large fortune, but soon spent it and went back to India a Governor of Fort David. He was sent north to re-establish British power and defeated the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daula at the great Battle of plassey in 1757, replacing him with Mir Jaffir, who was sympathetic to the British. Clive accepted a gift of £200,000 from the new ruler and when Mir Jaffer died was left lands with annual revenue of £30,000.



    He sailed for England in 1760 but five years later returned as Governor of Bengal and tried to curb the corruption which was rife in India and to which he himself had contributed in earlier days. In 1767 he left India for the last time.



     At home he was cross-examined about his great wealth by a strongly critical parliamentary committee which found him guilty of fraud and greed. Because of his services, he was not prosecuted. But the bitter attacks on him, together with the strain of his life in India, so affected his mind and health that he committed suicide in 1774.



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Who was Le Douanier Rousseau?


Le Douanier Rousseau (1844-1910) was a self-taught French painter who had an important influence on art at the end of the 19th century and became the acknowledged master of a style known as naïve or primitive painting. His real name was Henri Rousseau. He was patronizingly called “Le Douanier” (French for customs-house officer) because he worked for some years in a Paris toll-house, and the nick name stuck because it helped to distinguish him from Theodore Rousseau (1812-67), leader of a group of landscape painters.



        After a spell in the army, the younger Rousseau spent about a quarter of a century as a minor civil servant. About 1880 he began to paint in his spare time. In 1886 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Independents in Paris, but the naivety of his work aroused derisionand he did not decide to paint professionally until his retirement in 1893. Gradually the strength and originality of his pictures gained recognition. He was introduced to Paul Signac, a neo-impressionist painter, and through him met the artists Gauguin, Pissarro and Seurat. Among the painters who most admired his style were Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec. The young Picasso, who used to visit him in his rooms, gave a banquet in his honour in 1908.



      Le Douanier continued to exhibit at the Salon des independents until the year of his death. He longed to be able to paint in the academic way, but brought a splendid quality of directness, simplicity and sensibility to his work. Among the most remarkable of his paintings are jungle scenes.



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How is a new pope elected?


      The pope is elected by ballot, the votes being cast by the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church in conclave at the Vatican in Rome.



      After the death of a pope, nine days of mourning, the Novendialia, are observed in the Basilica of St Peter’s. Eighteen days after the Novendialia the cardinals, who have come to the Vatican from all over the world, enter a part of the palace that is closed to outsiders. The doors giving access to it are walled up and messages are passed in by rotas, or turning boxes, set in the walls.



       Each morning and afternoon the cardinals vote in the Sistine Chapel. The votes are immediately counted by three scrutneers, who are changed at each session. If no candidate received the necessary majority of two-thirds plus one, the votes are burned in a stove in the corner of the chapel with wet straw so that black smoke is produced. When a cardinal is chosen, dry straw is used and the resulting white smoke signals the election to the crowd on the piazza of St Peter’s.



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When does frost form?


            Frost comes from the atmosphere when the temperature falls below freezing, and invisible water vapour in the air turns into white ice crystals, without first becoming a liquid. It usually occurs when the skies are clear, when there is no wind and when a mass of cold air descends on  the  land.



            This often happens during the night in the spring and autumn of areas with temperate climates. In the morning the fields and roofs are white with what would be dew if the temperature had been above freezing point. It is the most common type of frost and is often called hoar frost.



            Sometimes only the leaves of plants are fringed with white rime. This is formed when very small droplets of the moisture from fog have frozen on coming into contact with a cold object.



            There is also black frost. This occurs when water vapour turns first into liquid and then freezes into a thin layer of ice instead of white crystals. As it is invisible, it is particularly dangerous when it forms on roads.



            The beautiful patterns, looking like trees, ferns or feathers, which are sometimes seen on windows, are made when the water vapour in a cold room condenses.



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