Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
Memory is the personal record of past experiences. It is the brain's ability to store information to use later. The Greeks considered memory (Mnemosyne) as the mother of Muses, for without her there would be no art and no science. 

Memory is studied in sciences known as "cognitive psychology". 

There are two types of memory: short-term and long-term memory, or known as working memory and reference memory.

 Short-term memory, the ability to keep information in mind for a short time, like remembering a phone number long enough to find a piece of paper.
 Long-term memory, the ability to remember things long after they happen, like remembering a holiday you had last year.

Related pages
Commemorative plaque
Memorial
Performing music from memory
Damnatio memoriae

References

Basic English 850 words
Human skills
Murder is where one person kills another person with aforethought. If a person does something reckless that makes someone else die, without the intention of killing, it is homicide and may be manslaughter. An accident caused by carelessness may be criminally negligent homicide. Sometimes, a death caused by someone else may not be a crime, for example killing in self-defense. Though, if the killer could've stopped a violent encounter without killing the victim, it's generally not a lawful killing.
A person who commits murder is called a murderer. The legal definition of "murder" and "manslaughter" may be different between countries. A killing in war is not usually called "murder" by those who fight in the war, as it's justifiable homicide. Killing in self defense is usually not "murder". Some countries do not even have manslaughter as a legal concept, and only have murder; the countries that do not have manslaughter charge with murder instead. In fact, the United States did not have manslaughter on the books until the 20th century. England was the first country to indoctrinate manslaughter, and the United States was second.

Most common circumstances for murder in the United States (1999) 
A total of 12,658 murders were reported in 1999 in the U.S., including 1,903 without a specified reason, and 3,779 for which the reasons were unknown.
Argument (unspecified) (3,391)
 Robbery (1,010)
 Juvenile gang killing (579)
 Contravention of narcotic drug laws (564)
 Argument over money or property (211)
 Brawl due to influence of alcohol (187)
 Romantic triangle (133)
 Gangland killing (116)
 Brawl due to influence of narcotics (111)
 Burglary (79)

Worst cities for murder in the United States (1999) 
New York's status as the murder capital of the world improved during the 1990s.  What follows are the number of murders for 1999:
 New York, New York (671)
 Chicago, Illinois (642)
 Los Angeles, California (425)
 Detroit, Michigan (415)
 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (292)
 Houston, Texas (241)
 Washington, D.C. (241)
 Dallas, Texas (191)
 New Orleans, Louisiana (158)
 Atlanta, Georgia (143)
Attempted murder 
Attempted murder is a crime. Attempted murder, or "attempt murder" in common law countries, also sometimes called "murder attempt", is when someone tries to kill another person. Just planning a murder is not enough. The act must come close to, but does not actually take the life of the other person.

It was punishable by death and the execution was carried out in Ancient Egypt, Ancient Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, Ancient Greece, The Roman Empire, and of course, China, which is by far the most populated country in the world, to this day.  

The Roman Empire carried out about ten thousand executions, most if not all beheadings, during its time, and there is no doubt that many of these were those convicted of attempted murder.
Assassination
"Assassination" is a word which means murdering a prominent person for a reason.  The word is most used when the person who was killed was a celebrity or was a person involved in politics.  The people who carry out assassinations are called "assassins" or "Hit-men".  An assassin may murder someone for political reasons, for money, or for other reasons, such as favors owed and revenge.

The word "Assassin" comes from Hashishin,  a Muslim group that was active in the Middle East from the 8th to the 14th centuries. This secret society killed people for political and religious reasons. It is thought that the assassins were under the influence of hashish and opium during their killings or during their training. The word assassin comes from either hashashim, the influence of the drugs, or hassansin, after their leader, Hassan-i Sabbah.

Murdersuicide 
A murdersuicide is when a person kills someone else (murder), and then they kill themselves (suicide).
No one is tracking the number of murder–suicides in the United States. However, medical studies estimate between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths per year in the United States are murder-suicides.

Related pages 

 John Wilkes Booth
 John Lennon
 Lee Harvey Oswald
 Gavrilo Princip
 James Earl Ray
 Nathuram Godse
 Otoya Yamaguchi

References
Birds (Aves) are a group of animals with backbones. They evolved from dinosaurs. Technically, birds are dinosaurs. 

Birds are warm blooded. Their feathers help prevent loss of body heat.  Modern birds do not have teeth. They have beaked jaws. Birds lay hard-shelled eggs. They have a high metabolic rate and a strong but lightweight skeleton. Their hearts have four chambers.

Birds live all over the world. They range in size from the 5 cm (2 in) bee hummingbird to the 2.70 m (9 ft) ostrich. There are about ten thousand species of birds. More than half of these are passerines, or perching birds.
In general, birds inherit their behaviour almost entirely. The key elements of their lives are inherited. It was a great discovery that birds never learn to fly. It is wrong to say when a chick waves its wings in the nest that "it is learning to fly". What the chick is doing is exercising its muscles. If they are a species that flies, they develop the ability automatically. If they are species that migrates, that behaviour is also inherited. Many species migrate over great distances each year. Other main features of their life may be inherited, though they can, and do, learn. Birds have good memories, An example of this is when they search for food.
Many species of birds are eaten by humans. Domesticated and undomesticated birds are sources of eggs, meat and feathers.  In English, domesticated birds are often called poultry and undomesticated birds are called game birds. Songbirds, parrots and other types of birds are popular as pets. Guano is bird manure. It  is harvested for use as a fertiliser. Birds figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species of birds have become extinct because of human activity since the 17th century.  Many more species had become extinct before then. Human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, Things are being done to protect them. Recreational bird-watching is an important part of the ecotourism industry.

Bird colours
Bird colours 

Birds come in many different colours. These colours can be useful to a bird in two ways. Camouflage help to hide birds from predators. Brighter colours can also be useful to birds. They can be used to identify the bird to others of the same species. Male bird are often brightly coloured while the female is camouflaged. The logic is as follows: the female carries the "precious package" of developing eggs. The male has to defend a territory. His colour and song are used to let others know that "this place is occupied".

Bird camouflage
Bird camouflage 

Many birds are brown, green or grey. These colours make a bird harder to be seen: they camouflage the bird. Brown is the most common colour. Brown birds include: sparrows, emus, thrushes, larks, eagles and falcons and the female birds of many species such as: wrens, ducks, blackbirds and peafowls. When a brown bird is in long grass or among tree trunks or rocks, it is camouflaged. Birds that live in long grass often have brown feathers streaked with black which looks like shadows. A bittern is almost invisible in long reeds because its camouflage is helped by its posture (beak and head pointed upwards). Other birds, including starlings and mynas, are quite dark in colour, but are flecked with little spots that look like raindrops on leaves. Bird may also camouflage their nests.
Grey birds include most pigeons and doves, cranes, storks and herons. Grey birds are often rock-living birds like pigeons or birds that sit on dead tree trunks looking like a broken branch. Water birds like herons often have a pale grey colour which makes it harder for a fish to notice that the bird is standing, looking down for something to catch. Water birds, no matter what colour they are on top, are often white underneath, so that when a fish looks up, the bird looks like part of the sky.

Black birds include crows, ravens and male blackbirds. Some birds that are dark colours spend quite a lot of time on the ground, hopping around in the shadows under bushes. Among these birds are the male blackbird and the satin bowerbird which is not black but very dark blue. Crows and ravens often perch high on bare trees in the winter, where their black shape against the sky looks like the dark bare branches.

Noticeable colours
Many birds are not camouflaged, but stand out with vivid colours. They are usually male birds whose females are dull and camouflaged. The function of the colours is two-fold. First, the colours help them get mates, and second, the colours identify them to other males of the same species. Many birds are territorial, especially in the nesting season. They give out territory sounds and are easily seen. This lets other males know they will defend their territory. It sends out a "look elsewhere" signal to their competitors.

Some birds are famous for their colour and some are named for it, such as the bluebird, the azure kingfisher, the golden pheasant, the scarlet macaw. The European robin is known popularly as the red robin.
Many other birds are very brightly coloured, in countless combinations. Some of the most colourful birds are quite common, like pheasants, peacocks, domestic fowl and parrots. Colourful small birds include blue tits, the goldfinches, hummingbirds, fairy wrens and bee eaters (which are also called rainbow birds). Some birds, like those of the bird of paradise in Papua New Guinea have such beautiful feathers that they have been hunted for them.

The peafowl is the best example of a display of colour to attract a mate. Also the male domestic fowl and junglefowl have long shiny feathers above his tail and also long neck feathers that may be a different colour to his wings and body. There are only a few species of birds (such as the eclectus parrot) where the female is more colourful than the male.
''Pied birds'' are black and white. Black and white birds include magpies, pied geese, pelicans and Australian magpies (which are not really magpies at all). Pied birds often have brightly coloured beaks and legs of yellow or red. The silver pheasant, with its long white tail striped with fine bars of black, has a brightly coloured face.

Flight 
Most birds can fly, and if they do, then the ability is inherited, not learnt. They fly by pushing through the air with their wings. The curved surfaces of the wings cause air currents (wind) which lift the bird. Flapping keeps the air current moving to create lift and also moves the bird forward.
Types of flight 
Different types of birds have different needs. Their wings have evolved to suit their lifestyle. Large birds of prey, such as eagles, spend a lot of time soaring on the wind. They have wings that are large and broad. The main flight feathers are long and wide. They help the eagle to stay on rising air currents without using much energy, while the eagle looks at the ground below, to find the next meal. When the eagle sees some small creature move, it can close its wings and fall from the sky like a missile, opening its great wings again to slow down as it comes to land. The world's largest eagle, the Philippine eagle has a wingspan of about 2 m (6.7 ft) wide.

Birds that live in grassland areas or open forests and feed on fruit, insects and reptiles often spend a lot of time flying short journeys looking for food and water. They have wings that are shaped in a similar way to eagles, but rounder and not as good for soaring. These include many Australian birds like cockatoos.
Birds such as geese that migrate from one country to another fly very long distances. Their wings are big and strong, because the birds are large. They stock up on food for the long flight. Migrating water birds usually form family groups of 1230 birds. They fly very high, making use of long streams of air that blow from north to south in different seasons. They are well organised, often flying in a V pattern. The geese at the back do not have to flap so hard; they are pulled on by the wind of the ones at the front. Every so often, they change the leader so that the front bird, who does most work and sets the pace, can have a rest. Geese and swans are the highest-flying birds, reaching 8,000 metres or more when on migration. Geese often honk loudly while they are flying. It is thought that they do this to support the leader and help the young ones.
Birds that fly very quickly, such as swifts and swallows, have long narrow pointed wings. These birds need great speed because they eat insects, catching most of them while they are flying. These birds also migrate. They often collect in huge flocks of thousands of birds that move together like a whirling cloud.

Birds that live in bushes and branches have triangular wings that help the bird change direction. Many forest birds are expert at getting up speed by flapping and then gliding steadily among the trees, tilting to avoid things as they go. 

Birds such as owls that hunt at night have wings with soft rounded feathers so that they do not flap loudly. Birds that are awake at night are called nocturnal birds. Birds that are awake during the day are diurnal.

Wandering albatross might spend several years without coming to land. They can sleep while gliding. Arctic terns nest every one to three years.
Flocks 
Flocks of birds can be very highly organised in a way that takes care of all the flock members. Studies of small flocking birds like tree sparrows show that they clearly communicate with each other, as sometimes thousands of birds may fly in close formation and spiral patterns without colliding (or flying into each other).

Two common behaviours in flocking birds are guarding and reconnaissance. When a flock of birds is feeding it is common for one bird to perch on a high place to keep guard over the flock. In the same way, when a flock is asleep, often, one bird will remain awake. It is also common for large flocks to send one or two birds ahead of them when they are flying to a new area. The look-out birds can spy the lie of the land to find food, water and good places to perch. Mixed feeding flocks occur, and can help to spot predators.
Flightless birds 
Some birds do not fly. Flightlessness in birds has evolved many times.
These include running birds like ostriches and emus and ocean-living birds, the large penguin family. Birds on islands have usually lost the power of flight. This is to their advantage because birds with the power of flight can be blown off their island during a storm. The same ability which got them to the island may later take them away in a storm.
Penguins are a very successful group of birds. They are a clade. They spend half their time on land. Their wings are adapted to life in the sea and have become flippers which let them in swim fast. They catch fish at sea, where they are in danger from seals.

Preening 
Preening is how birds keeps their feathers in order. They use their beak to position feathers, interlock feather barbules that have become separated, clean plumage, and keep ectoparasites in check. 

Feathers in good shape help the bird's insulation, waterproofing and flight. Their condition is vital to the bid's survival.

Digestion 
Modern birds do not have teeth, and many swallow their prey whole. Nevertheless, they must break up food before it is digested. First of all, along their throat (oesophagus) they have a crop. This stores food items before digestion. That way a bird can eat several items, and then fly off to a quiet spot to digest them.
Their stomach comes next, with two very different parts. One part is like a straight hollow rod (the proventriculus) which secretes mild hydrochloric acid and an enzyme to break down protein. The other part of the stomach is the gizzard. This is muscular, and grinds up the contents. In herbivorous birds the gizzard contains some gastroliths (small stones or pieces of grit). Bones of fish will mostly be dissolved by the stomach acid. The partly digested and ground-up food now goes to the intestine, where digestion is completed, and most contents are absorbed. Anything indigestible, for example remains of feathers, is regurgitated via the mouth, not the cloaca.

The system is effective, and carnivorous birds can swallow quite large prey. A blue heron can swallow a fish as large as a carp successfully. Raptors eat by holding the prey down with a foot, and tearing it apart with their beak.

Reproduction
Reproduction

Mating 
Although birds are warm-blooded creatures like mammals, they do not give birth to live young. They lay eggs as reptiles do, but the shell of a bird's egg is hard. The baby bird grows inside the egg, and after a few weeks hatches (breaks out of the egg).

Birds in cold climates usually have a breeding season once a year in the spring. Migratory birds can have two springs and two mating seasons in a year. 

Ninety-five per cent of bird species are socially monogamous. These birds pair for at least the length of the breeding season. In some cases this arrangement lasts until the death of one of the pair. Monogamy clearly helps if females need males' help to raise a brood successfully. It has other practical advantages: the nest is never left without defence. Birds are generally small, and they have many potential enemies.
Some birds mate for life, like married couples. These birds include pigeons, geese, and cranes. Other birds look for new partners each year. For birds that choose new mates, part of the breeding season is display. The male bird will do all sorts of things to attract females. These include singing, dancing, showing off the feathers and building a beautiful nest. Some male birds have splendid feathers for attracting females. The most famous is the peacock who can spread the feathers above his tail into a huge fan. 

Other mating systems do occur in some species. Polygyny, polyandry, polygamy, polygynandry, and promiscuity do happen. Polygamous breeding systems arise when females are able to raise broods without the help of males. Some species may use more than one system depending on the circumstances.
Nesting 
Once the birds have found partners, they find a suitable place to lay eggs. The idea of what is a suitable place differs between species, but most build bird nests. The bird is driven by a hormone (estradiol E2) to prepare a place for the eggs to hatch. Birds' nests may be up a tree, in a cliff or on the ground according to species. When filled with eggs they are almost always guarded by one of the pair. In fact it is virtually impossible for the eggs to survive if one of the parents dies.
When the nest has been prepared, the birds mate so that the eggs are fertilised and the chicks will start growing. Unlike mammals, birds (and reptiles) only have one opening as the exit hole for body fluids, and for reproduction. The opening is called the cloaca. A female bird, called a hen, has two ovaries, of which the left one usually produces eggs.

Most male birds have no sex organs that can be seen. But inside the male are two testes which produce sperm which is stored in the cloaca. Birds mate by rubbing their cloacas together, although with some birds, particularly large water birds, the male has a sort of a penis inside the cloaca.
Hatching 
Once the hen has mated, she produces fertile eggs which have chicks growing inside them. She lays the eggs in the nest. There might be just one egg or a number of them, called a clutch. Emus might lay as many as fifteen huge dark green eggs in a clutch. After the eggs are laid, they are incubated, or kept warm so the chicks form inside. Most birds stay together for the whole nesting season, and one advantage is that the work is shared. Many birds take turns sitting on the eggs, so that each adult can feed.

This is not always the case. With emus, the male does all the sitting and all the baby-minding. With emperor penguins it is also the male that cares for the egg. There is only one egg, which he keeps on his feet and under his feathers, standing in a big group of males without feeding until the chick is hatched. While the eggs are hatching, the females are at sea, catching fish, so that they can feed the chicks when they return.
Some birds put the eggs inside or on top of the mound of leaves and twigs. The mound acts like a compost heap. The decomposition of the rotting leaves causes the temperature to rise. This is heat released by the chemical action of bacterial and fungal respiration. It is the same reaction as that which keeps mammals and birds at a high temperature. The parents leave the mound. When the chicks hatch, they are able to feed themselves.

Many small birds take 2–4 weeks to hatch eggs. Albatrosses take 80 days. During this time the female loses a lot of her body weight.
The quickest hatching time is for the cuckoo. Some types of cuckoos take only 10 days. This means that when they hatch in the nest of their ''foster parents'', the eggs that the parents have laid are not yet ready. Newborn cuckoos are naked, blind and ugly, but they are strong. They get under any eggs that are in the nest and throw them out before they hatch. That means that the cuckoo has the whole care of both parents. Baby cuckoos grow fast and often get bigger than the parents who feed them.

When baby birds hatch, in most types of birds, they are fed by both parents, and sometimes by older aunts as well. Their mouths are open all the time and are often very brightly coloured, which acts as a releaser, a trigger which stimulates the parent to feed them. For birds that eat grain and fruit, the parents eat and partly digest the food for the babies. It is then vomited carefully into the baby's mouth.
Families 
Many birds, particularly those that mate for life, are very sociable and keep together in a family group which might be anything from 4 or 6 adult birds and their young to a very large flock.

As chicks grow they change the fluffy down that covers them as babies for real feathers. At this stage they are called fledglings. Other family members may help care for fledgling chicks, feeding them and protecting them from attack while parents are feeding. When the fledglings have their new feathers, they come out of the nest to learn to fly. In some types of birds, like pigeons, the parents watch over this and as the young ones get stronger, will give them flying lessons, teaching them how to glide, how to fly in spirals and how to land like an expert.

Communication 
Most birds are social animals, at least part of the time. They communicate to each other using sounds and displays.
Almost all birds make sounds to communicate. The types of noises that vary greatly. Some birds can sing, and  they are called songbirds or passerines. Examples are robins, larks, canaries, thrushes, nightingales. Corvids are passerines, but they do not sing. Birds that are not songbirds include: pigeons, seagulls, eagles, owls and ducks. Parrots are not songbirds, even though they can be taught to sing human songs.

Songbirds 
All birds make noises (''bird vocalisation''), but not all sing. Songbirds are passerines, many of which have beautiful melodic songs. Songs have different functions. Danger cries are different from territorial songs and mating calls are a third type. Fledgling may also have different calls from adults. Recognition calls for partners are quite common.
As to where the song comes from, there are three kinds of species:
Those where the song is mainly inherited, and the bird always sings the same song in the same situations. The capacity is inherited, and only details are learnt from its neighbours.
Those where the song is partly inherited, but the bird tunes it in by copying others. In this case the slight differences between the calls of different birds may be used by partners for identification.
Those where the song is entirely learnt, and the bird often copies sounds from its environment. Only the capacity to sing is inherited. Some birds can mimic a sound almost perfectly.

Most singing birds that are kept as pets, like canaries, have several tunes and some variations.
Lorenz's studies 
The Austrian naturalist Konrad Lorenz studied the way in which birds communicate, or talk to each other. He found that each type of bird had a number of sounds which they made automatically, when ever they felt a certain way. Every sound had an action that went with it. So, if the bird was frightened, it acted frightened and made a frightened sound. This told the other birds around it that something frightening was happening.

If a flock of birds were flying over a field, they would be calling "Fly! Fly!" But a hungry bird, seeing something good to eat down below might start calling "Food! Food!" If other birds were also hungry, they would make the same call until more birds were calling "Food! Food!" than "Fly! Fly!". At this point, the mind of the flock would be changed. Some of the birds would start to yell "Fly downwards! Fly downwards!" as they sank from the sky, until the whole flock was all noisily calling the same thing.
The Jackdaw of Altenberg 
Konrad Lorenz noticed that when birds sing, they often use a lot of their regular calls as part of the song. Lorenz had a flock of jackdaws which were scattered during World War II. One day, an old bird returned. For many months she sat on the chimney singing her song, but in the song she kept making the call which Lorenz knew meant "Come home! Come home!" One day, to the great surprise of Lorenz, a male bird flew from a passing flock and joined her on the chimney. Lorenz was sure that it was her long-lost "husband" who had found his way home at last.

Evolution and taxonomy
Palaeontologists have found some exceptional places (lagerstätten) where fossils of early birds are found. The preservation is so good that on the best examples impressions of their feathers can be seen, and sometimes even the remains of meals they have eaten. From these remains we know that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs (theropods) in the Jurassic period. They radiated into a huge variety in the Lower Cretaceous. At the same time, their direct competitors, the pterosaurs, dwindled in numbers and variety, and became extinct at the end of the Mesozoic.

Birds are classified by taxonomists as 'Aves' (Avialae). Birds are the only living descendants of dinosaurs (strictly speaking, they are dinosaurs). Birds and Crocodilia are the only living members of the once-dominant Archosaur reptiles.
Definition 
The class Aves is was defined (1990) as all the descendants of the most recent common ancestor of modern birds and Archaeopteryx lithographica. But Archaeopteryx is almost certainly not the ancestor of modern birds. The transition to flight happened a number of times. The researchers offered four definitions. Birds can be: 
All archosaurs closer to birds than crocodiles (Avemetatarsalia).
Advanced archosaurs with feathers (Avofilopluma).
Those feathered dinosaurs that fly (or Avialae)
Aves can mean the last common ancestor of all living birds and all of its descendants (a "crown group", in this sense synonymous with Neornithes).
The first bird-like creatures 
Archaeopteryx, from the Upper Jurassic some 150–145 million years ago (mya), was for a long time the earliest known bird which could fly. It is famous, because it was one of the first important fossils found after Charles Darwin published his ideas about evolution in the 19th century. By modern standards, Archaeopteryx could not fly very well. Other early fossil birds are, for example, Confuciusornis, Anchiornis huxlei and other Paraves.

Many fossils of early birds and small dinosaurs have been discovered in the Liaoning Province of Northeast China. These include Anchiornis huxlei, from about 160 mya. The fossils show that most small theropod dinosaurs had feathers. These deposits have preserved them so well that the impressions of their feathers can be clearly seen. This leads us to think that feathers evolved first as heat insulation and only later for flight. The origin of birds lies in these small feathered dinosaurs.
Palaeontologists now agree that birds are included in Maniraptora group of dinosaurs. This explains why we say that birds are living dinosaurs.

Evolution of modern birds 
Birds are the closest living relatives of the Crocodilia. This is because they are the two main survivors of a once huge group called the Archosaurs. 

Modern birds are not descended from Archaeopteryx specifically. According to DNA evidence, modern birds (Neornithes) evolved in the long Cretaceous period. More recent estimates showed that modern birds originated early in the Upper Cretaceous.

Primitive bird-like dinosaurs are in the broader group Avialae. They have been found back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Many of these early "stem-birds", such as Anchiornis, were not yet capable of fully powered flight. Many had primitive characteristics like teeth in their jaws and long bony tails.p274
The Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event 66 million years ago killed off all the non-avian dinosaur lines. Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world. Diversification occurred around the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event. 

A leading authority says "Most living birds have fossil representatives in the Cenozoic"... "Key problems remain in understanding bird phylogeny... we seem to understand as little about the relationships among living birds as among Cretaceous birds". A useful source for modern birds is Clements J. 2007. The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. Cornel University Press (6th ed).

 Origin of birds
 Paraves
 Asteriornis

Birds and people
Birds and people 

Some birds are eaten as food. Most usually it is the chicken and its eggs, but people often also eat geese, pheasants, turkeys and ducks. Other birds are sometimes eaten are: emus, ostriches, pigeons, grouse, quails, doves, woodcocks and even songbirds. Some species have died out because they have been hunted for food, for example the dodo and the passenger pigeon.

Many species have learned how to get food from people. The number of birds of these species has grown because of it. Seagulls and crows find food from garbage dumps. The feral pigeon (Columba livia), sparrows (Passer domesticus and starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) live in large numbers in towns and cities all over the world.

Sometimes people also use working birds. For example, homing pigeons carry messages. Nowadays people sometimes race them for sport. People also use falcons for hunting, and cormorants for fishing. In the past, people in mines often used a canary to see if there were bad gas methane in the air.
People often have colorful birds such as parrots and mynahs as pets. These intelligent birds are popular because they can copy human talking. Because of this, some people trap birds and take them to other countries to sell. This is not usually allowed these days. Most pet birds are specially bred and are sold in pet shops.

People can catch some bird diseases, for example: psittacosis, salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, Newcastle's disease, mycobacteriosis, influenza, giardiasis and cryptosporiadiosis. In 2005, there was an epidemic of bird influenza spreading through some parts of the world, often called avian flu.

Some people have birdboxes in their gardens to give birds a place to nest and bird tables where birds can get food and water in very cold or very dry weather. This lets people see some small birds close up which are normally hidden away in bushes and trees.
Bird orders 
The following is a listing of all bird orders:
 Infraclass Palaeognathae
 Superorder Struthionimorphae
 Struthioniformes
 Superorder Notopalaeognathae
 Rheiformes
 Tinamiformes
 Casuariiformes
 Apterygiformes
 Infraclass Neognathae
 Superorder Galloanserae
 Galliformes
 Anseriformes
 Superorder Neoaves
 Phoenicopteriformes
 Podicipediformes
 Columbiformes
 Mesitornithiformes
 Pteroclidiformes
 Apodiformes
 Caprimulgiformes
 Cuculiformes
 Otidiformes
 Musophagiformes
 Opisthocomiformes
 Gruiformes
 Charadriiformes
 Gaviiformes
 Procellariiformes
 Sphenisciformes
 Ciconiiformes
 Suliformes
 Pelecaniformes
 Eurypygiformes
 Phaethontiformes
 Cathartiformes
 Accipitriformes
 Strigiformes
 Coliiformes
 Leptosomiformes
 Trogoniformes
 Bucerotiformes
 Coraciiformes
 Piciformes
 Cariamiformes
 Falconiformes
 Psittaciformes
 Passeriformes
Bird population decreasing 
A report produced by BirdLife International every five years measures the population of birds worldwide. One in every eight types of birds is now "in decline".

Related pages 
 Origin of birds
 Bird migration

References

Other websites 

 Avibase - The World Bird Database 
 Bird Hybrids Database - Search by bird name, use Sibley classification
 International Ornithological Committee 

Basic English 850 words
 
Dinosaurs
Feathered dinosaurs
Freedom of speech is the right to state one's opinions and ideas without being stopped or punished. Sometimes this is also called Freedom of expression. Freedom of speech is thought to also include freedom of the press and Freedom of information. However, new laws are usually needed to allow information to be used easily.
Most people think freedom of speech is necessary for a democratic government. In countries without free speech, people might be afraid to say what they think. Then, the government does not know what the people want. If the government does not know what they want, it cannot respond to their wants. Without free speech, the government does not have to worry as much about doing what the people want. Some people say this is why some governments do not allow free speech: they do not want to be criticised, or they fear there would be revolution if everyone knew everything that was happening in the country.
A well-known liberal thinker, John Stuart Mill, believed that freedom of speech is important because the society that people live in has a right to hear people's ideas. It's not just important because everyone should have a right to express him or herself.

Few countries with "free speech" let everything be said. For example, the United States Supreme Court said that it was against the law to shout "fire" in a crowded theater if there is no fire, because this might cause people to panic. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also says that it is not okay to cause national, racial or religious hatred. Also, some countries have laws against hate speech.
As Tocqueville pointed out, people may be hesitant to speak freely not because of fear of government punishment but because of social pressures.  When an individual announces an unpopular opinion, he or she may face the disdain of their community or even be subjected to violent reactions.  While this type of suppression of speech is even more difficult to prevent than government suppression is, there are questions about whether it truly falls within the ambit of freedom of speech, which is typically regarded as a legal right to be exercised against the government, or immunity from governmental action.

Related pages
 Free Speech Flag
 Civil and political rights

References

Human rights
Freedom
Libertarianism
A banana is the common name for a type of fruit and also the name for the herbaceous plants that grow it. These plants belong to the genus Musa. They are native to the tropical region of southeast Asia.

Historians think the first people to grow bananas for food lived in Papua New Guinea. Today, they are cultivated in tropical regions around the world. Most banana plants are grown for their fruits, which botanically are a type of berry. Some are grown as ornamental plants, or for their fibres.

There are about 110 different species of banana. In popular culture and commerce, "banana" usually refers to the soft and sweet kind, also known as dessert bananas. Other kinds, or cultivars, of banana have a firmer, starchier fruit. Those are usually called plantains. Plantains are mostly used for cooking or fibre.
Other than being used as food, beer can be made by fermenting the juice of certain cultivars in Africa, known as beer bananas. The ash of bananas can be used to make soap. In Asia, bananas are often planted to provide shade to plants that like shade, for example coffee, cocoa, nutmeg or black pepper. Because of this, banana plants can often be found in plantations of other crops.

Banana plant
The banana plant is the largest herbaceous flowering plant. Banana plants are often mistaken for trees. Bananas have a false stem (called pseudostem), which is made by the lower part of the leaves. This pseudostem can grow to be two to eight meters tall. Each pseudostem grows from a corm. A pseudostem is able to produce a single bunch of bananas. After fruiting, the pseudostem dies and is replaced. When most bananas are ripe, they turn yellow or, sometimes, red. Unripe bananas are green.
Banana leaves grow in a spiral and may grow  long and  wide. They are easily torn by the wind, which results in a familiar, frayed look.

Fruit
The banana fruits grow from a banana blossom in hanging clusters, also called a bunch or banana stem. The fruits grow in rows called tiers or hands. There can be as many as twenty fruits to a hand, and as many as twenty tiers in a bunch. A bunch usually weighs between 30 and 50 kilograms (65 to 110 pounds).

A single fruit weighs about 125 grams (4.4 ounces) on average; about three quarters of this is water.
Each banana (or finger) has a protective outer layer (called peel or skin). There is a fleshy part inside that readily spilts into three segments. It may be the only tri-segmented fruit in the world. Both the skin and inner part can be eaten. Western cultures generally eat the inside raw and throw away the skin. Some Asian cultures eat both the skin and the inside cooked. Each fruit has many strings that run between the skin and the inner part. 
 
Bananas have a lot of vitamin B6, vitamin C, and potassium.

Originally 
Before cultivation, bananas were smaller, and had seeds. What you see now is the result of artificial selection by humans. This is true of most popular fruits.

Growing and trading bananas
The countries that produce the most bananas include India, Brazil, China, Ecuador and the Philippines. The top five countries that exported bananas were Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Philippines, Colombia and Guatemala. The United States, the European Union and Japan buy the most bananas. Bananas are among the most valuable agricultural export products; They provided about sixty percent of export earnings of Saint Lucia and about twelve percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country, between 1994 and 1996.

Allergies
Some people are allergic to bananas. There are two basic forms of these allergies. The first is known as oral allergy syndrome. Within an hour of eating a banana, swelling starts inside the mouth or throat. This allergy is related to allergies caused by pollen, like that of the birch tree. The other is similar to latex allergies. It causes urticaria and potentially serious upper gastrointestinal symptoms.

Other uses of bananas
Textiles
The fibre gained from the banana plant has been used to make textiles for a long time. In Japan, bananas have been grown to be used for clothing and in the house since at least the 13th century. In the Japanese system, the leaves and shoots are cut from the plant periodically to make sure they are soft. The harvested shoots must first be boiled in lye to prepare the fibres for the making of the yarn. These banana shoots produce fibres of varying degrees of softness. They can be used for yarns and textiles of different qualities, and for specific uses. For example, the outermost fibres of the shoots are the coarsest  they are good for tablecloths. The softest innermost fibres are desirable for kimono and kamishimo. This traditional Japanese banana cloth making process has many steps, all performed by hand.
Another system is used in Nepal. There the trunk of the banana plant is harvested instead. Small pieces of this trunk are then softened. The fibres are extracted mechanically, bleached, and dried. They are then sent to the Kathmandu Valley, where high-end rugs are produced. These rugs have a texture and general qualities similar to that of silk. These banana fibre rugs are woven by traditional Nepalese hand-knotted methods.

Paper

Banana fiber is also used to make banana paper. There are two different kinds of banana paper: paper made from the bark, and paper made from the fibre and from unused fruits.

Images

Related pages
Banana bread

References

Other websites 

 
 
 

Fruits
Musaceae
Biel/Bienne (official name; Biel is German, Bienne is French) is an industrial town in Switzerland. It is in the part of Switzerland named Bern and near the city also named Bern. The town is known for many companies that make watches and machines.

Description 

The town of Biel, the capital of Swiss watch-making, lies at the end of Lake Biel, at the foot of the Jura Hills in the Lake Region. 
The wonderful old town with its  town church and its location as the gateway to the three Jura lakes (Lakes Biel, Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Murten) with vineyards on the hillsides and extensive vegetable cultivation make the town very attractive.
Biel is the only town in Switzerland in which German and French are spoken side by side We can feel the relaxed mentality here coming from the mixture of these three languages. 

Biel was awarded the Wakker Prize in 2004 by the Swiss Heritage Society for the way it conserved its 20th century buildings, especially the ‘new construction’ from the 1920s and 30s.
Swatch, Rolex, Omega, Tissot, Movado and Mikron all come from this town. But Biel has also become important in the field of other industries and in communication. 

It is possible to travel on various routes along the lakes on passenger boats in summer. The day trip through all three Jura lakes is especially popular. Of course there are all types of water sports on Lake Biel.

Old town 
The town of Biel was built by the Prince-Bishop of Bale between 1220 and 1230. The old town is the smallest part of Biel with only . Most buildings there still look as in the 18th century. The biggest part of the old town is without any traffic. There aren’t any big stores or industries or any big companies. Each Saturday there is a market. The castle, “the ring” and the theatre are very popular. The town church is on the “Ringplatz” and was built between 1451 and 1470.There they burned the witches in the 18th century. From the 6 medieval city gates only one and two towers survived.
Heritage sites 
The entire town of Biel is part of the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites. Several individual buildings in the old town have also been protected for their cultural heritage.

The Reformed City Church is one of the most important late-Gothic buildings in the Canton of Bern. The church has a main floor, two second floors and four small chapels. There are some wall-paintings in the church. Most windows are among the oldest ones in Switzerland. The church was first written about in an index in 1228. After a horrible fire in the old town the church was destroyed. It was rebuilt between 1367 and 1451. The town church got on a new organ on 6th November 2011. The church was closed for more than half a year to put the new organ in and to improve the inside of the church. It cost about 1,74 million Swiss francs. The old organ was sent to Poland.
Language 
About 57% of the people in Biel speak German as their mother tongue. The remaining 43% speak French as their mother tongue. That is why the city has two names.

References

Other websites 

www.biel-bienne.ch
Official website
Dickemauern
Swatch Internet Time is a way to measure time invented in 1998 by the Swatch manufacturing firm in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. Time is shown as an "@" mark with three numerals. The day starts with @000 for midnight. Noon is @500. Just before midnight is @999. The thousand parts which make up a day are called "dot beats" (.beats). Each dot beat is one minute and 26.4 seconds long. Midnight is the same as Central European Winter Time (UTC+1)and Internet Time is the same all over the world. It does not change during the Summer. People can use it to plan phone calls or Internet meetings. Most types of Linux can show Internet Time as the desktop clock.

time
A test tube is a kind of laboratory glassware, composed of a fingerlike length of glass tubing, open at the top, usually with a rounded lip at the top, and a rounded 'U' shaped bottom.

They range in size from a couple inches to several inches long, from a few millimeters to a couple centimeters in diameter. They are designed to allow easy heating of samples, to be held in a flame, and often are made of expansion-resistant glasses, such as borosilicate glass (known by brand-names such as Pyrex and Kimax).

Tests tubes are often preferred above beakers when multiple small chemical or biological samples have to be handled and/or stored.

Vacutainers are a type of test tube that can be used for both collection and storage of blood.

Laboratory equipment
A beaker is a kind of laboratory glassware. A beaker is a cylinder with a lip and a spout (a bend in the rim of the beaker which makes it easier to pour liquids without spilling any). A beaker is usually about the same width as its height. This makes beakers very stable and easy to handle. They may be made of plastic, glass, or borosilicate glass. Some beakers have marks on them to show about how much volume of liquid they hold - these can not be used for exact measurements.

Beakers are often used to make solutions and they are probably the most used piece of laboratory glassware. 

Laboratory equipment
Containers
Measuring tools
In chemistry, a crucible is a kind of laboratory equipment that is usually a small cup, about the size of a shot glass, made of porcelain or non-reactive metal. Crucibles are used to heat chemical compounds to very high temperatures using a gas burner. One of the earliest uses of platinum was as a material in crucibles. Metals such as nickel and zirconium are also used as a modern crucible material.

References
 Metal Technology - a manufacturer of crucibles 

Laboratory equipment
Lithium (from Greek lithos 'stone') is a soft, silver-white metal with symbol Li. It is the third chemical element in the periodic table. This means that it has 3 protons in its nucleus and 3 electrons around it. Its atomic number is 3. Its mass number is 6.94. It has two common isotopes, 6Li and 7Li. 7Li is more common; 92.5% of lithium is 7Li. Lithium is a soft silvery metal that is very reactive. It is used in lithium batteries and certain medicines.

Properties

Physical properties
Lithium is one of the alkali metals. Lithium is a silvery solid metal (when freshly cut). It is very soft. Thus it can be cut easily with a knife. It melts at a low temperature. It is very light, similar to wood. It is the least dense metal and the least dense element in a solid or liquid state. It can hold more heat than any other solid element. It conducts heat and electricity easily.