Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859), engineer, creator of Great Western Railway and other significant works

Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard was founded along with the Metropolitan Police by Sir Robert Peel, with the help of Francois-Eugene Vidocq. It opened for business as administrative headquarters of the Service on 29 September 1829, housing the two commissioners and their administrative staffs in a complex of about 50 rooms. It was not (and has never been) a police station in the usual sense, with each division of the police instead operating their own local stations.

Edition of a morning newspaper that is sold the night before the date it bears.

The actual origin of the name is uncertain, although some say it originated in New York City at a time when there were three morning newspapers-the World, the Herald, and the Journal-who "fought like bulldogs" to be the first to get their edition on the street. (Loosely, the term has come to mean the earliest edition of any daily paper, including afternoon papers.)

Union Jack

The issue of whether it is acceptable to use the term "Union Jack" instead of "Union Flag" is one that causes considerable controversy. Although it is often asserted that "Union Jack" should only be used for the flag when it is flown as a jack (a small flag flown at the bow of a ship), it is not universally accepted that the "Jack" of "Union Jack" is a reference to such a jack flag.

Break a leg

The expression is a theatrical superstition that replaces the phrase "good luck" which is considered bad luck. The expression is sometimes used outside the theatre as superstitions and customs travel through other professions and then into common use.

The Institute for Advanced Study

The Institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein and John von Neumann after their immigration to the United States. There are other Institutes of Advanced Study in the U.S. and elsewhere which are based on the Princeton model.

John Reed (1887 - 1920), author of 'Ten Days that Shook the World'.

He and his wife Louise Bryant were the subjects of the film 'Reds' (1981), directed by Warren Beatty.

Leonardo Da Vinci's

Gates renamed it the Codex Leicester. It is a collection of largely scientific writings by Leonardo da Vinci and out of his 30 scientific journals, this one might be the most famous of all. The movement of water is the main topic of the Codex. Among other things, Leonardo wrote about the flow of water in rivers, and how it is affected by different obstacles put in its way. From his observations he made recommendations about bridge construction and erosion.

The Duck

Richard Wiseman said "If you're going to tell a joke involving an animal, make it a duck." The word "duck" may have become an inherently funny word in many languages because ducks are seen as a silly animal, and their odd appearance compared to other birds. Of the many ducks in fiction, many are silly cartoon characters like Daffy Duck.

Lourdes

Today Lourdes has a population of around 1,000 inhabitants but is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season.

Six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each.

A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four combinations (including the combination in which no dots are raised). For reference purposes, a particular combination may be described by naming the positions where dots are raised, the positions being universally numbered 1 to 3, from top to bottom, on the left, and 4 to 6, from top to bottom, on the right. For example, dots 1-3-4 would describe a cell with three dots raised, at the top and bottom in the left column and on top of the right column (ie the letter 'm').

John Bardeen (1908-1991)

He is the only person to have won two Nobel prizes in physics: in 1956 for the transistor, along with William Bradford Shockley and Walter Brattain, and in 1972 for a fundamental theory of conventional superconductivity together with Leon Neil Cooper and John Robert Schrieffer, now called BCS theory.

Eton College

It is often described as the most famous public school in the world and has a very long list of distinguished former pupils, including 19 former British Prime Ministers.

Call for the resignation of Nixon

Only 2 men to have reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest point on the earth's surface.

They were aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste when it made a record-breaking descent into the Challenger Deep in 1960. The depth was measured at 35,813 ft (10,916 m), but later and more accurate measurements have put it at 35,798 ft (10,911 m). The dive has never been repeated, and presently no manned or unmanned craft exists capable of reaching such depth.

Chang Bunker and Eng Bunker

In 1829, they were discovered in Siam by British merchant Robert Hunter and exhibited as a curiosity during a world tour. Upon termination of their contract with their discoverer, they successfully went into business for themselves. In 1839, while visiting Wilkesboro, North Carolina with P.T. Barnum, the twins were attracted to the town and settled there, becoming naturalized United States citizens.

Mensa

Graceland, the estate of Elvis

Koizumi, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006, is an avid Elvis Presley fan and even shares Presley's January 8 birthday.

The Playboy Mansion

The original Playboy Mansion was a 70-room residence in Chicago at 1340 North State Street. For a period in the 1970s, Hugh Hefner divided his time between the Chicago mansion and the Mansion West, moving full time to the California mansion in 1974.

Project Tiger

The project aims at tiger conservation in specially constituted 'tiger reserves' which are representative of various bio-geographical regions falling within India. It strives to maintain a viable tiger population in their natural environment. Today, there are 27 Project Tiger wildlife reserves in India covering an area of 37,761 square kms. In recent times, however, critics have complained that officials have inflated India's wild tiger census so as to save their jobs.

Toothbrush

Dead Water

Much of the energy from the ships propeller only result in waves and turbulence between the two layers of water, leaving a ship capable of traveling at perhaps as little as 20% of her normal speed.

The Tenerife disaster that killed 583 people.

The accident still has the highest number of fatalities (excluding ground fatalities) of any single accident in aviation history. The aircraft involved were Pan Am Flight 1736, named Clipper Victor, and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Flight 4805, named Rijn. KLM 4805, taking off on the only runway of the airport, crashed into the Pan Am aircraft which was taxiing on the same runway.

The Piltdown Man

The significance of the specimen remained the subject of controversy until it was exposed in 1953 as a forgery, consisting of the lower jawbone of an orangutan combined with the skull of a fully developed, modern man. The hoax has been prominent for two reasons: the attention paid to the issue of human evolution, and the length of time (more than 40 years) that elapsed from its discovery to its exposure as a forgery.

Shuttle Diplomacy

It is often used when the two primary parties do not formally recognize each other but still want to negotiate. The term shuttle diplomacy became widespread following Henry Kissinger's term as United States Secretary of State. Kissinger participated in shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East and in the People's Republic of China.

Yellow Peril (sometimes Yellow Terror)

The term refers to the skin color of East Asians, and the belief that the mass immigration of Asians threatened white wages and standards of living. Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (in German, "gelbe Gefahr") in September 1895.

Peter Sellers

An artificial or natural island, used for a settlement.

The name can also be used to refer to wooden platforms erected on shallow loch floors, although understandably few remains of this sort have been found. The choice of an island as a home is thought to have been for defence as well as the availability of food in the form of fish nearby.

LexisNexis

LexisNexis is divided into two sites: Lexis.com, intended for legal research, while Nexis.com is intended for investigations into business dealings.

Pope Benedict XVI quoted from a dialogue involving the emperor and the Islamic world was not pleased.

There are several interpretations as to why the Pope did what he did.

Whose words?

Jesse Owens

The Amish

Every Amish church is its own governing authority and has its own set of rules; therefore, it follows its own Ordnung. Their lives are ordered by this code. These rules are largely unwritten. Because the Amish have no central church government, each community administers its own guidelines.

Tax imposed on able bodied non-Muslim men of military age.

The tax is not supposed to be levied on slaves, women, children, monks, the old, the sick, hermits and the poor, though these provisions were abandoned in later periods of Muslim history. Non-Muslim citizens who pay the tax are permitted to practice their faith and to enjoy a measure of communal autonomy as well as being entitled to Muslim protection from outside aggression and being exempted from military service amongst numerous other exemptions to levies upon Muslim citizens.

A tint is the mixture of a color with white, and a shade is the mixture of a color with black.

Mixing with white increases value or lightness, while mixing with black reduces chroma. Mixing with any neutral color, including black and white, reduces chroma or colorfulness. The intensity does not change.

Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt built around 2500 B.C.

Safari

It usually refers to a trip by tourists to Africa, traditionally for a big-game hunt and in more modern times to watch and photograph big game and other wildlife as a safari holiday. It is an overland journey.

The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine

It is perhaps the most famous lost mine in American history: Byrd Granger notes that, as of 1977, the Lost Dutchman story was printed or cited at least six times more often than two other fairly well-known tales. The land is a designated Wilderness Area, and mining is now prohibited there.

Serial killer

It is widely believed that the term serial killer has been coined either by FBI agent Robert Ressler or by Dr. Robert D. Keppel in the 1970s.

Germany

It was the idea of 20-year-old Crown Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1807, at a time when the German states were defeated and occupied by Napoleon.

The Swiss Army Knife

A Swiss Army knife has a blade as well as various tools, such as screwdrivers and can openers. These attachments are stowed inside the handle of the knife through a pivot point mechanism. The handle is usually red, and features a white cross, the emblem of Switzerland. It was originated in Ibach, Schwyz, Switzerland in 1897.

National Geographic

Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in 2002. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyes staring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named as "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the magazine.

Until the early 1980's, visitors to Disneyland would purchase books of coupons that were in different denominations, from A through E, with E tickets being the most expensive and reserved for the newest, most expensive or popular rides and attractions.

The Lion, the African elephant, the African buffalo, the leopard and the black rhinoceros.

The members of the big five were chosen by big-game hunters for the difficulty in hunting them and not their size, which is why the leopard is on the list and the enormous hippopotamus is not.

Shaolin

The Shaolin Monastery was originally founded in AD 495 by the Buddhist monk Batuo, an Indian dhyana master. The introduction of fighting skills at the Shaolin Monastery has been attributed in legend to the Indian monk Bodhidharma, who went to the monastery in 527. On arrival at the temple he found that most of the monks were suffering from poor health and so he taught them a series of exercises based on the movements of five animals (tiger, snake, crane, eagle and monkey) to improve their levels of fitness. These exercises (wuqinxi, literally "five pure rivers") were later adapted into a combat discipline when, as the temple grew, it became subject to attacks from brigands against whom the monks needed to protect themselves.

Secret Service

The Secret Service was commissioned on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C. as the "Secret Service Division," to suppress counterfeit currency, which is why it was established under the United States Department of the Treasury.

Longitude

It was a long-sought and critically-needed key piece in the problem of accurately establishing the East-West position, or longitude, of a ship at sea. The problem was so intractable that the English Parliament offered a huge fortune for the day (£20,000, roughly £6 million in 2007 terms), for a solution.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney shot him while participating in a quail hunt.

Whittington was shot in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets from a 28-gauge Perazzi shotgun. He suffered a non-fatal "silent" heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to at least one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart.

Doonesbury

Frequently political in nature, Doonesbury features characters professing a range of affiliations, but the cartoon's editorial slant is primarily noted for a liberal outlook. The name "Doonesbury" is a combination of the word doone — 1960s prep school slang for "someone unafraid to appear foolish" — with the surname of the roommate who was given that nickname, Charles Pillsbury. The strip marked its official thirty-fifth anniversary on October 26, 2005.

Desmond Tutu

The expression has since entered mainstream consciousness to describe South Africa's ethnic diversity.

Mad

The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it in an the office of Ballantine Books. Since his debut in Mad, Neuman's likeness, distinguished by jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye disquietingly lower than the other, has graced the cover of all but a handful of the magazine's 450+ issues.

Nelson Mandela

Yasukuni Shrine

Visits to the shrine by cabinet members have been a cause of protest at home and abroad. China, North Korea, South Korea and Taiwan have protested against various visits since 1985. Despite the controversy, the former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made annual visits from 2001 to 2006.

Amnesty International

Founded in the UK in 1961 by Peter Benenson, AI compares actual practices of human rights with internationally accepted standards and demands compliance where these have not been respected.

George Berkeley (1685 - 1753)

His theory contends that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not abstractions such as "matter." His most widely-read works are 'A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge' (1710) and 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)'. In 1734 he published 'The Analyst', a critique of the foundations of calculus, which was influential in the development of mathematics.

An Xbox

The Library of Congress

It is the de facto national library of the US, the research arm of the United States Congress and is the largest by shelf space and one of the most important libraries in the world. Its collections include more than 30 million catalogued books and other print materials in 470 languages and more than 58 million manuscripts.

Fallingwater

It is a famous house designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Despite its structural problems, Fallingwater is widely considered a master's masterpiece.

Alaskan king crab

The fishing is carried out during the winter months in the waters off the coast of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The commercial harvest is performed during a very short season, and the catch is shipped worldwide. Fishermen spend days at a time on very rough seas working long hours with little rest time.

The Maltese cross

The cross is eight-pointed and has the shape of four "V" shaped arms joined together at their bases, so that each arm has two points. The Maltese cross remains the symbol of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and other Orders of St John. In recent centuries it has come to be adopted as the insignia of numerous orders of chivalry, and appears on the coat-of-arms of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz district. In Australia the Maltese Cross is part of the state emblem of Queensland.

Falun Gong (or) Falun Dafa

The Chinese government banned the group for allegedly engaging in "illegal activities, advocating superstition and spreading fallacies, hoodwinking people, inciting and creating disturbances, and jeopardizing social stability." Several governments, international human rights organizations and scholars consider the ban a human rights violation.

Bellevue Hospital Center

Founded in 1736, it is the oldest public hospital in the United States.

Photography

'jetsam' has been voluntarily cast into the sea by the crew of a ship, usually in order to lighten it in an emergency; while 'flotsam' describes goods that are floating on the water without having been thrown in deliberately, often after a shipwreck.

Ligan (or lagan), describes goods that have been marked by being tied to a buoy so that its owner can find and retrieve it later. Derelict is property which has been abandoned and deserted at sea by those who were in charge

Electra Complex

It was named the "Electra complex" by his contemporary Carl Jung, although Freud himself rejected the use of the term because it "seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes."

Proletariat

Originally it was identified as those people who had no wealth other than their sons; the term was initially used in a derogatory sense, until Karl Marx used it. In Marxist theory, the proletariat is that class of society which does not have ownership of the means of production.

The Penny Black

Although the Penny Black is readily available on the collectors' market today, because of its significance, it is in great demand by collectors and therefore not cheap; in 2000 a used stamp cost about US$200 (around £110), and an unused stamp about US$3,000 (around £1,600). (By contrast, a used penny red was $3 (£1.50).)

Architecture

Created in 1979 by Jay A. Pritzker and run by the Pritzker family, it is considered the world's premier architecture prize. The Pritzker is sometimes referred to as "the Nobel Prize of Architecture".

In Doha, Qatar

Meaning 'The Island', the station gained worldwide attention following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when it broadcast video statements by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders. The original Al Jazeera channel was started in 1996 with a US$150 million grant from the Emir of Qatar.

Medellín Cartel

It existed in permanent conflict with the Cali Cartel and, from the early '80s onward, the Colombian government.

Jane Goodall

She also said that when she first began to live among and study the chimpanzees she was fulfilling her childhood dream of living among the great apes just as Tarzan did.

Einstein

Red, Green and Gold; Red, Green and Black

Daylight Savings Time

A state with primarily maritime realms, an empire at sea.

The term can also simply refer to naval supremacy, in either military or commercial senses of the word "supremacy." The word thalassocracy itself, deriving from the Greek thalassokratiâ—thalassa meaning "sea," and kratiâ meaning "rule" or "government"—first occurred amongst the ancient Greeks describing the government of the Minoan civilization, whose power depended on its navy. Herodotus spoke of the need to counter the Phoenician thalassocracy by developing a Greek "empire of the sea."

A whistle stop

Ordinarily, a flag or other visual indicator would be placed outside the station by the station master if the station had traffic. If a stop was requested by a passenger on the train, a whistle would be sounded by train personnel to alert the locomotive engineer to the need to stop.

Scorched earth policy

Apparently a translation of Chinese 'Jiao Tu', the term refers to the practice of burning crops to deny the enemy food sources, although it is by no means limited to food stocks, and can include shelter, transportation, communications and industrial resources, which are often of equal or greater military value in modern warfare, as modern armies generally carry their own food supplies.

Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

He was the third President of the United States (1801–09), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of Republicanism in the United States. A polymath, Jefferson achieved distinction as an horticulturist, architect, archaeologist, paleontologist, author, inventor, and the founder of the University of Virginia, among other roles.

Edmund Hillary to lifelong friend George Lowe, on returning from Everest's summit.

While stressing team work, Tenzing Norgay disclosed that Hillary was the first to put his foot on the summit and concluded: "If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame."

Balmoral Castle

The estate was purchased by Queen Victoria's consort Prince Albert, and remains a favorite summer royal residence. The Balmoral estate has been passed down the generations and has gradually expanded to more than 26,000 hectares (65,000 acres). The Queen was in residence at Balmoral at the time of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. Her initial decision not to return to London or to mourn more publicly was much criticised at the time. Her private discussions with Prime Minister Tony Blair are dramatised in Stephen Frears' The Queen (2006).

Alphonse

Although never successfully convicted of racketeering charges, Capone's criminal career ended in 1931 when he was indicted and convicted by the federal government for income tax evasion.

Magellan

He was a Portuguese born maritime explorer who, at the service of Spain, attempted to find a westward route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. He did not complete his final, westward voyage; he was killed during the Battle of Mactan in the Philippines. He did, however, die farther west than the Spice Islands, which he had visited from the west on earlier voyages, making him one of the first individuals to cross all the meridians of the globe. He became the first person to lead an expedition sailing westward from Europe to Asia and to cross the Pacific Ocean.

Peanuts

At its peak, Peanuts ran in over 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in 75 countries, and was translated into 21 languages.

Great Pyramid of Cholula in Puebla, Mexico

According to the Guinness Book of Records, it is in fact the largest pyramid as well as the largest monument ever constructed anywhere in the world, with a total volume estimated at 4.45 million m³, almost one third larger than that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. (The Giza pyramid is taller, however.) The Aztecs believed that Xelhua built the Great Pyramid of Cholula.

Buridan's ass (X is ass)

The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan. It is first found in Aristotle's De Caelo where Aristotle mentions an example of a man who remains unmoved because he is as hungry as he is thirsty and is positioned exactly between food and drink.