ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
San Marino (officially called the Most Serene Republic of San Marino) is a country in Europe. It is one of the smallest countries in the world. It is in Southern Europe and is fully surrounded by Italy (this is called an "enclave", and only the Vatican City, Lesotho and San Marino are like this). Fewer than 30,000 people live there. Its total area is 61 km2. Its capital is the City of San Marino. San Marino is claimed to be the world's oldest republic that still exists. It was started on September 3, 301 A.D. by a skilled builder called Saint Marinus. Its written constitution was adopted on October 8, 1600. The very small nation was recognized by Napoleon's France in 1797, and by the other European nations at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Even though it is an independent country, it depends very much on Italy. Since the 19th century, when Italy was unified, San Marino has been fully surrounded by Italy. The biggest industry in San Marino is tourism. Selling postage stamps is an important source of income, too. San Marino is not a member of the European Union, but the euro is used in San Marino. People in San Marino speak the Italian language. Most people in San Marino believe in Roman Catholicism. History. Saint Marinus left the island of Rab (today Croatia) with his lifelong friend Leo, and went to the city of Rimini to work as a stonemason. After the Persecution of Diocletianus following his Christian sermons, he escaped to the nearby Monte Titano. There he built a small church and founded what is now the city and state of San Marino. The official founding date is 3 September 301 AD. In 1320 the community of Chiesanuova chose to join the country. In 1463 San Marino extended with the communities of Faetano, Fiorentino, Montegiardino, and Serravalle. Since then there have been no changes in the country's borders. In 1503, Cesare Borgia occupied the Republic for six months. It
"Orbit is also a word for an eye socket." An orbit is the path that an object takes in space when it goes around a star, a planet, or a moon. It can also be used as a verb. For instance: “The earth "orbits" around the Sun.” The word ‘revolves’ has the same meaning, but 'rotates' is the spin of the object. Many years ago, people thought that the Sun orbits in a circle around the Earth. Every morning the Sun came up in the East and went down in the West. It just seemed to make sense that it was going around the Earth. But now, thanks to people like Copernicus and Galileo Galilei, we know that the Sun is the center of the Solar System, and the Earth orbits around it. Isaac Newton discovered that gravity controls the orbit of the planets and moons. Since a satellite is an object in space that revolves around another object, the Earth is a satellite of the Sun, just like the moon is a satellite of the Earth. The Sun has lots of satellites orbiting around it, like the planets, and asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. The Earth just has one natural satellite (the Moon), but there are many artificial satellites orbiting the earth. When people first began to think about orbits, they thought that all orbits had to be perfect circles, and they thought that the circle was a "perfect" shape. Copernicus and Galileo, for example, thought so. But when people began to study the motions of planets carefully, they saw that the planets were not moving in perfect circles.  In a planetary system, planets, dwarf planets, asteroids and other minor planets, comets, and space debris orbit the system's barycenter in elliptical orbits. Orbital period. An "orbital period" is the time that it takes for one object - that is, satellite - to orbit around another object. For instance, the Earth's orbital period is one year: 365.25 days. (The extra ".25" is why we have a leap day once every four years). The Moon takes 27 days (29.53 days as seen from
A funeral is a ceremony that is held because someone has died. A funeral is a gathering of friends and family of the dead person. They will mourn the dead person, meaning that they will feel and show sadness that the person has died, and also say thanks for the life the person had. A funeral is usually held with the dead body present but hidden in a coffin, but there are also open casket funerals. During the funeral, or soon after it, the dead body will be buried, cremated (burned) or made to disappear in some other way. A memorial service or celebration of life is a funeral in which the dead body is not present. Purpose. Funerals are held in all human cultures. Religion is an important part of funeral customs in most countries. At many funerals, they say a prayer for the dead so that his or her soul may rest in peace and have a good time in the afterlife. There are other reasons why funerals are held. Many of them are to do with helping the dead person's friends and family (the mourners): Modern funerals have greatly changed over time. Present day funeral or memorial services may often be more like a thanksgiving for the life of the dead person, rather than just thinking about the sadness of death. Funeral traditions. A funeral ceremony can be held at a church, a temple, a public building for holding funerals or in many other places. In North America, it is common for there to be a "visitation" (also called a "viewing" or a "wake") a few days before the funeral. This is where people are invited to see the dead body. In Madagascar, people have a ritual called famadihana or “the turning of the bones” in English. Once every five or seven years, family members exhume the remains of their ancestors. They clean the bones and spray them with perfume or wine. They take the skeleton back home to dance with it and introduce it to the younger generation. According to Balinese Hindu tradition, the soul of the deceased restarts the rebirth cycle once it is free through cremation. Balinese cremation, or Ngaben, uses an open pyre to
The Georgian Uprising of Texel (5 April 1945 – 20 May 1945) was an insurrection (a rebellion, or mutiny, when soldiers disobey their orders) by Soviet Georgian soldiers on the island of Texel. The uprising was against the Germans army who had taken over the Dutch island during the Second World War. The event is sometimes described as "Europe's last battlefield". The island was very important in the German Atlantic Wall – the line of defences along the Atlantic coast. It was strong and had many defences. The Georgians were soldiers from the Soviet Republic of Georgia who had been captured (taken prisoner) on the Eastern front. They were now fighting for the Germans so that they did not have to stay in camps for prisoners. Their job was to help the German troops. On the night of 5–6 April 1945 they thought that the Allies would land soon. They took over the island and killed 400 German soldiers. Some parts of the island stayed under German control and the Georgian soldiers could not capture them. More Germans were able to come to the island to help defeat the Georgians. After a few weeks of very tough fighting the Germans took control of the island again. Unfortunately the British and Canadians, who were warned of the events on Texel by escapees who fled by boat to England, did not believe them, and did not take any action in order to stop the fighting.  On Texel this is called the "Russian war". Approximately 800 Germans, 500 Georgians, and 120 Tesselans (people from the island) were killed. Lots of farms were burned. Even after the Germans surrendered (gave up) in the Netherlands and Denmark on 5 May 1945, and after the full German surrender on 8 May, the fighting continued. Canadian soldiers stopped the fighting on 20 May. The Georgian survivors did not have a happy ending. They were sent back to the Soviet Union. Stalin said that because the soldiers had been captured by the Germans, they had not fought until they died, so they were traitors. Some of the two million Soviet prisoners who were sent back to the Soviet Union by the Allied forces after the end of the war were executed (killed) when they got there.  A museum at the airport on the island tells the story of this event.
Neutrinos are a type of elementary particle that exist all across the universe. The word "neutrino" means a small neutral particle. Physicists study these particles, but they are hard to find because they have a very small chance of interacting with regular matter. (For example, they usually pass through the whole earth without touching any other particles). Neutrinos travel near the speed of light. Neutrinos are very difficult to detect. They are very unlikely to collide (interact) with other particles as they travel through space or through matter. Electrons have an electric charge, but neutrinos do not. This means that neutrinos are unaffected by the electromagnetic force. The first detectors built to find neutrinos observed only 10 or 15 each year. Recent detectors use tanks that contain about a thousand tons of water or other liquid, which lets them detect about 10 to 100 neutrinos per day. Neutrinos are generated in particle accelerators, in the sun, in other stars, and in nuclear reactions such as in nuclear reactors. They are generated whenever there is a nuclear reaction in the form of beta decay. This process starts off with one neutron, and ends with one electron, one proton, and one neutrino. We used to think that neutrinos have no mass, but a few years ago physicists found that they have a very small mass, much lighter than electrons. By finding neutrinos, we can learn about the structure and the history of the universe. Since most of them pass easily through sun, physicists have learned about the reactions in the center of the sun that make the sun's heat, by detecting the neutrinos that come out from the sun's center. The three types of neutrinos are named after the three leptons that have electric charge. There is the electron neutrino (ve), the muon neutrino (vµ), and the tau neutrino (vτ). Each neutrino has an antiparticle, called an antineutrino. Therefore, there is an electron antineutrino, a muon antineutrino, and tau antineutrino. The three types of neutrinos change into each other over time, so an electron neutr
A play is a piece of writing (literature) which can be seen at a theatre or on television, or heard on the radio. Plays often show conversations between people. A play is usually watched, rather than being read. The people who appear in a play are actors; in a theatre they stand on a stage so the people watching (the audience) can see them better. A director helps the actors to work better, or tells them how he wants the play to be. Plays can be very interesting because they can be understood in many different ways. When the writer - the playwright - makes the play, he can not say how the actors or director will use it. Sometimes the playwright is also the director or an actor: Molière, for example, was often an actor in his plays. But the director can change the play in different ways: the actors' costume, the music, how people say things, how they move or what they hold. Modern directors can direct plays by Shakespeare, and these old plays seem modern now, too. There are many sorts of plays, but there are six important sorts: Symbolic can also be called expressionistic. Its all about how the writer or director presents ideas in a very different point of view.
Phrasal verb is the name given to an English verb which is composed of two or three words. One verb is combined with a preposition (like "on, in, under)" or an adverb (like "up, down, away"). Sometimes a phrasal verb can have a meaning that is very different from the meaning of at least one of those two or three words separately. Some textbooks call these verbs multi-word verbs. Phrasal verbs are used more frequently in everyday speech than in formal, official writing or speaking.  Here are some examples: "Maria didn't know the word, so she" looked it up "in the dictionary." "Oh no, we've" run out of "milk! I'll have to buy some more." "Farmers have to" get up "early in the morning." "The rocket" took off "with a loud roar." Often these phrasal verbs have a one-word equivalent in other languages.  In Spanish, to get up can be translated as "levantarse", in French as "se lever" etc. Types of phrasal verbs. There are four different types of phrasal verbs. These are: Instead of "separate" or "separable", some text books use the word "split" or "splittable". A useful piece of advice to confused students of English is this: If you do not know if a phrasal verb is separable or inseparable ALWAYS use a noun or noun phrase and do not try to separate the verb.
A season is a part of a year. Many areas of the Earth have four seasons in a year: spring, summer, autumn and winter. Overview. In some areas, there are a different number of seasons. In places which are tropical and subtropical, there are two seasons: the rainy (or wet, or monsoon) season and the dry season. This is because the rain changes more than the temperature. Examples include the tropical parts of Australia (the northern parts of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory). These are in addition to, or replace the regular season names. Summer is a warm season because the days are longer and the Sun is high in the sky, giving direct light to the ground. Winter is a cold season because the days are shorter and the Sun is low in the sky, giving indirect light to the ground. Both the changes in the length of the day and the height of the Sun at noon are caused by the tilt of the Earth's spin axis with respect to the plane of the Earth's path around the Sun. At any time, in any season, the northern and southern hemispheres (halves of the Earth) have opposite seasons. Dates. Seasons begin and end on different dates in different countries. In the United States, people say the seasons begin at the solstices and equinoxes.  The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and the winter solstice is the shortest. The equinox is the time when the day and the night are the same number of hours, assuming the sun were a point of light at its center. Since civil dawn occurs when the edge of the sun first appears over the horizon and civil dusk occurs when the edge drops over the horizon, the civil length of day is 12 hours long several days prior to the equinoxes.  United States. In the US, summer begins at summer solstice, winter at winter solstice, spring at the spring ("vernal") equinox and autumn at the autumnal equinox. United Kingdom. In Britain, people traditionally say that the seasons begin about seven weeks earlier: spring begins on Candlemas (February 2), summer on May Day (May 1), autumn
Carisbrooke Castle is the Isle of Wight's only remaining medieval castle. It was built on a Roman site. The castle earthworks were begun in 1070.  The shell keep was built on the site some 70 years later. None of the Norman domestic buildings now remain. The gatehouse with its drum towers dates from the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1377, the French landed on the island but the castle was not attacked. During Elizabethan times the threat of a Spanish invasion was avoided when the Spanish Armada was turned away at a nearby battle. However, the castle was considerably altered to resist the new artillery. Outer lines of defence were built enclosing the old castle. The curtain walls, bastions, and bulwarks remain in good condition to this day. Charles I was held as prisoner at the castle in 1647. An attempt to escape failed, when he got stuck in the bars. Later the castle was the occasional residence of the governor of the Isle of Wight and it became home to Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, when she was governor.
Atlantis is a name for a fictional, large island or small continent that was in the Atlantic Ocean many years before it sank into the depth of the sea. The name Atlantis first appears in the writings of Herodotus - he describes the western ocean as "Sea of Atlantis." Then, one generation later, Atlantis is described in detail in the stories Timaeus and Critias by the Greek philosopher Plato. He used this story to help explain his ideas about government and philosophy. Plato was the only ancient writer who wrote specific things about Atlantis. According to Plato, the Atlanteans lived 9000 years before his own time and were half human and half god. They created a very good human society. When they stopped being good people and did bad things, the gods sent earthquakes and fire to destroy Atlantis. Many scholars think that Plato could mean a real place when he was writing about Atlantis. For example, there was a Minoan kingdom on the island of Santorini. The Minoan kingdom was very powerful thousands of years before Plato, and their society was damaged when a volcano erupted on their island. According to Plato, Atlantis was very large, as big as North Africa, so it should not have been hard to find. After the discovery of the Americas, some people in Europe thought they might be Atlantis. However, after Plato, the idea of Atlantis was mostly forgotten until 1882, when a writer named Ignatius Donnelly wrote a book saying that Atlantis was real and that the culture of Atlantis had started many other ancient cultures, such as the Egyptian and Mayan. Then other people became interested in Atlantis.  Atlantis has appeared in many works of fiction. In Marvel Comics, Atlantis is at the bottom of the ocean and exists in modern times, with people who breathe water. Other works of fiction use Atlantis as background. For example, Robert E. Howard set his Conan the Barbarian stories in a fictional time called the Hyborian Age, which began with the destruction of Atlantis and ended when real written history started.
Adjectives and Adverbs can be comparative in English and some other languages. When people are talking about two or more nouns, they can compare them (say the differences between them). The word which explains how they compare is called the comparative. They can also compare actions using adverbs. Examples: (The comparative is in bold). Many words can be made into a comparative by adding "er" to the end of the word.  Words that end with the letter 'Y' can still be made into a comparative, but people change the 'Y' to an 'I' and then add 'ER'. Some words cannot be made into a comparative by adding 'ER' Instead we use the word more in front. Most of these words have three or more syllables, such as "beautiful", "reliable".  If people are not sure about a word, it is always acceptable to say "more" (something), such as "more beautiful", "more expensive". Warning: The 'ER' ending and the word "more" together cannot be used.
Asbestos is a set of six silicate minerals which occur naturally. White asbestos makes up 95% of the asbestos found in buildings. It occurs in all parts of the world. It is fibrous, heat resistant and non flammable. These properties made it very attractive as a component in building materials and other products such as insulation and automobile brake pads. People have used asbestos throughout history. Ancient Egyptian people used asbestos. Asbestos is extremely dangerous for human health, as it can cause lung diseases such as asbestosis, emphysema and mesothelioma if the fibres get loose in the air and are breathed in. It can also harm animals such as livestock or pets. The word "asbestos" comes from Greek, and means "inextinguishable". This refers to its use for wicks that would not burn. Asbestos was linked to lung cancer in the early 1970s, and was replaced by other materials in most applications by 1980. Types of asbestos. There are six types of asbestos: All of these except chrysotile are part of the amphibole group of minerals. Disposal. Since asbestos is so resistant to heat, water, and chemicals, it is very difficult to destroy. It can be melted in a furnace to make a non-hazardous glass-like substance. This requires very high temperatures (1200°C or more) and consumes a lot of energy. Lawsuits. Many companies that use or used to use asbestos have been sued by current or former employees who got sick with mesothelioma or asbestosis. Asbestos, especially tremolite, is also a contaminant in many other mineral products, such as talc and vermiculite. These contaminated products have also been the subject of lawsuits and product recalls. Many lawyers specialize in asbestos-related lawsuits.
A syllable is a unit of pronunciation uttered without interruption, loosely, a single sound. All words are made from at least one syllable. "Monosyllables" are words that have only one vowel sound; "polysyllables" have more than one. If a syllable ends with a consonant, it is called a "closed syllable". If a syllable ends with a vowel, it is called an "open syllable". Patterns of syllables can be shown with C and V (C for 'consonant', V for 'vowel'). Closed syllables are often shown as "CVC" (such as "got"), and open syllables as "CV" (such as "go"). Some languages like English have many kinds of closed syllables. Other languages, like Japanese, have few kinds of closed syllables. Other languages still, like Hawaiian and Swahili, have no closed syllables.  Notice that the consonant (C) and vowel (V) notation does NOT match the letters of English spelling in a one-to-one relationship (e.g. 'th' is one sound), but rather individual sounds. There are many words in English that have only one syllable.  IPA has been added in slashes. However, in several languages, such as English, syllables can have consonant clusters (having multiple consonants next to each other), which easily allow for words to have much more complicated syllables, such as: There are many more words that have two or more syllables. Some languages do not use an alphabet with letters. Instead, each sign may stand for a syllable. For example: Japanese can be written using Kana. A writing system based on syllables is called a syllabary. Since words in languages like English can have many different complex syllables (well over 10,000 can be produced in English), writing such languages using a syllabary would be completely impractical, thus alphabets are much better suited to write languages with complex syllable structures. However, since words in Japanese can be made with just a few simple syllables (around 90), writing such languages are well suited for the type of language.