ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
Cargo cult is a name given to several religions. There are many cargo cults in Melanesia and New Guinea. These religions started when tribal societies saw Western things like radios. These things are called "cargo". The tribespeople did not know how the things they saw worked, or how they were made.  The tribespeople copied the things they saw the Westerners do. They did this because they hoped gods would send them more cargo. Also sometimes, for example on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, cult members worshipped Americans who brought the cargo. During the age of colonialism, the people came in contact with many societies who had less technology than they did. The first cargo cults were seen in New Guinea, and other countries of Micronesia, Melanesia and the West Pacific Ocean.  The people who are part of the cargo cults think that the cargo was created by their deities and ancestors. They think that the cargo was made for the members of the cargo cult, but the foreigners have it instead. For this reason, the efforts and rituals of cargo cults are so that the foreigners get less of these goods and the cult members more of them.
Walloon is a Romance language. It belongs to the family of the "oïl languages" along with French, Picard and Norman. Walloon is spoken in Wallonia in Belgium and in some villages in Wisconsin in the United States. It has about 3,400,000 speakers.
Gallo is one of the two regional languages of Brittany. It is an Oïl language of the Romance language family, with Latin at the base. Gallo is spoken in the eastern part of Brittany. The other regional language of Brittany is Breton, a Celtic language.
Diethyl ether is a clear liquid chemical. It is often just called ether. Ether burns very easily and boils at about 35°C. It has a sweet smell and does not mix with water. Ether was discovered in 1275. It was used in the past as a general anesthetic to make people unconscious during surgery. Now other chemicals are used because ether has side effects and can catch fire. Ether is used as a solvent by scientists for chemical reactions. People used to take ether as a recreational drug (drugs used for fun, such as alcohol) in the 1800s. People would either drink a drink with small amounts of ether in it, just like people drink alcoholic drinks, or inhale the fumes given off by pure or nearly pure ether. This could have addicted these people to the ether if they did that often enough. It was a big problem in some places, like Ireland and Poland. It first became popular because Europeans thought it was unladylike to drink alcohol. Women would drink ether instead, as would teetotalers, people who had decided not to drink alcohol.  It became illegal to sell ether in Poland in 1923. Ether is made as a byproduct when ethanol is made, so it is not very expensive.
Lozi, also called Silozi and Rozi, is a Bantu language of the Niger-Congo language family. It is spoken by the Lozi people in southwestern Zambia. It is also spoken in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and the Zambezi Region of Namibia. History. The Lozi language comes from a mix of two languages: Luyana and Kololo. Example. This is Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Lozi:
Ruhleben P.O.W. Camp was a camp near Berlin, Germany, where British prisoners of war were detained (kept) during World War I. Ruhleben itself was then a village 10 kilometres to the west of Berlin, but now it is part of the city of Berlin, in a district called Ruhleben in the borough of Spandau. The camp was originally a horse racecourse. Detainees. The detainees (people who were kept there) came from countries that were fighting against Germany in the war. Most of them were British. They were in Germany when the war broke out, which is why they were taken prisoner (detained). Some of them were in Germany because they lived there, others were on holiday at the time. Some of them were crew members of civilian ships that happened to be in German harbours at the time or who were captured at sea. There were about 5,500 prisoners in the camp. Most of them spent all four years of World War I there. Books have been written about what it was like living in the camp. These include "To Ruhleben - And Back" by Geoffrey Pyke, who successfully escaped from the camp in 1915. The detainees were mostly treated quite well. The guards had to obey the Geneva Conventions. Although there were some people who found it very difficult being kept there, many others found lots of things to do to keep themselves occupied. Letters, books, sports equipment and a printing press were all allowed into the camp and the detainees organised their own police force, magazine, library and postal service. Some of the detainees were young people who later became famous. They included the Canadian musician Ernest MacMillan who later became the conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. MacMillan had been on holiday in Germany to visit the Bayreuth Festival when war broke out. Charles Ellis and James Chadwick later became famous scientists. They used their time in Ruhleben to study. They were able to build a laboratory and do some experiments. There were famous footballers and athletes as well. The Arts in Ruhleben. A lot of musical activities were organized in the camp. There was a
The M249 light machine gun is a machine gun which is the U.S. version of the Belgian FN Minimi light machine gun, used by the United States and Lebanon. The main use of this weapon is to provide cover fire for other soldiers in a squad (or group of soldiers). The gun uses 5.56 NATO caliber ammunition. Overview. The M249 was made because a lot of the squadrons of the U.S. Army did not have fully automatic weapons. It has seen action in every war that the United States has been in since 1989.  Replacement. In the U.S. Marines, the M249 is due to be replaced by the German M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is a Canadian orchestra. 400,000 people go to its concerts each year and it is often broadcast over CBC Radio 2. It was formed in 1922. The concerts used to be given in the Massey Hall but since 1982 they have been in the Roy Thomson Hall. The Orchestra often goes on tour and has had some famous conductors. List of conductors of the TSO: The TSO's concertmaster now is Jacques Israelievitch.
The Vattenfall Cyclassics is a cycling race held every year in Hamburg, Germany. It started as an unimportant race in 1996, but because cycling became very popular in Germany it was made a part of the UCI Road World Cup in 1998. Since 2005, it is a part of the UCI ProTour. The route of the race changes, but is about 250 km long. During a number of laps through Hamburg, the Waseberg hill is climbed a several times. The cyclists also race over Hamburg's highest bridge Köhlbrandbrücke. Unlike many races the Cyclassic race almost never ends in a "mass sprint", that is, with a lot of riders close together racing to the finish line. There is an amateur part of the Cyclassics. Earlier on the day of the race there are three "Jedermann-Rennen". Anybody ("jedermann") with a ticket can take part in these races ("rennen") over 55 km, 100 km and 155 km. Tickets must be reserved months in advance. In 2005 there were 20000 amateurs on the course. The sponsor of the Cyclassics, was the "Hamburg Electrizität Werke", Hamburg electricity plant or "HEW", after it became part of the big "Vattenfall" company the Cyclassic changed its name too, and from 2006 this cycling race has been known as the Vattenfall Cyclassics.
The Gothic language is an extinct Germanic language that was spoken by the Goths. It is the East Germanic language with the most texts surviving today. It had died out by the 8th century or perhaps the early 9th century. Probably, one of the best known works of the language is Wulfila's translation of the Bible, known as the Wulfila Bible or "Gothic Bible" or "Codex Argenteus". The translation was done in the 3rd century.
Sir Ernest MacMillan (born Mimico, Ontario, 18 August 1893; died 6 May 1973) was a famous Canadian conductor and composer. MacMillan's father was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and musician. He was a child prodigy. He gave his first organ recital in Massey Hall at the age of ten. After studying in Britain and gaining the ARCO and FRCO diplomas at the Royal College of Organists, he studied modern history at the University of Toronto from 1911 to 1914.  Prisoner in Germany. In 1914 he went to Europe. He wanted to study at the Paris Conservatoire but this was closed because of the political situation. He went on to Germany to attend the Bayreuth Festival, but World War I started and he was taken prisoner and kept at the Ruhleben civilian detention camp near Berlin. He helped the other people who were prisoners in the camp to put on concerts. He gave talks about classical music and conducted a performance of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera "Mikado" as well as a pantomime version of "Cinderella". This helped him to get experience in conducting. He also took part in the drama productions. He studied hard and was given a BA degree from the University of Toronto (1915) and a D Mus from the University of Oxford (1918), although he was locked up in the camp all this time. After the war. After the war he returned to Canada where he gave organ recitals and lectured about his experiences in Ruhleben. From 1926 to 1942 he was principal of the "Toronto Conservatory of Music", later to become the Royal Conservatory of Music. He was the conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra between 1931 and 1956. He did a lot for music in Canada,and he was knighted in 1935 by King George V. In 1969 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. He died in Toronto in 1973. When he conducted he often took the music very slowly. This gave him the nickname "Lord Largo" ("Largo" means "slow and broad" in music). He had an amazing musical memory and he could improvise very well. MacMillan helped to record and preserve the traditional songs and music of Canada's aboriginal or First Nations people. He had an important influence on almost every part of Canadian musical life.
Benjamin Dale (born London 17 July 1885; died London 30 July 1943) was a British composer. Dale won many prizes at the Royal Academy of Music for composition when he was still very young. He wrote a " Piano sonata in D minor" which shows the influence of Romantic composers such as Liszt and Schumann. It was played by pianists such as York Bowen and Dame Myra Hess who were becoming famous. He wrote music for viola for Lionel Tertis to play. He was in Germany when World War I broke out and was a prisoner in the camp at Ruhleben. There were other musicians there, including the Canadian Ernest MacMillan who later became a famous conductor. They organized a lot of musical events at the camp. Ernest MacMillan gave lectures about each of the nine symphonies by Beethoven, after which he and Dale would play the whole symphony in a piano duet arrangement. After the war he worked as an Associated Board examiner. He became professor of harmony at the Royal Academy of Music. He continued to compose music. His ballade for violin was especially popular. Dale’s music is not played much today, but there have been some attempts to make his music known again through CD recordings.
The Chaser’s War on Everything is a comedy television series. It was shown on the ABC in Australia from 2006-2009. The series is replayed on Friday nights and again (on a different channel) on Sunday nights. The series is hosted by a group of men called The Chaser.  Overview. The series has the men doing stunts and tricks. Sometimes these tricks have been known to be dangerous (such as in one episode, cutting across lanes of traffic to stay behind a mobile advertisement), causing the television program Today Tonight to show a story on how dangerous this stunt was. At the end of each episode, there is a parody song performed, usually about the national government. Stunts. One of the most famous tricks that has been on the series was when the group tricked security at the APEC Meeting in Sydney in 2007. They drove past two checkpoints in a fake motorcade, using fake access passes. One member of The Chaser was dressed up as Osama bin Laden, causing a massive security scare just metres from where George Bush was staying. 13 crew members were arrested, charged and later released on bail. Other stunts have included:
Illyria (Ancient Greek: Ἰλλυρία, Illyría or Ἰλλυρίς, Illyrís) was an ancient region in the western part of today's Balkan Peninsula in modern-day Epirus, Greece. The people who lived there were called Illyrians and spoke the Illyrian languages. The Illyrians settled in the Balkans approximately around 2500 BC along with other Indo Europeans. The Illyrians became heavily romanised and a portion of them evolved into modern Albanians.
The Battle of Kosovo was a battle between Serbian forces and the Ottoman Empire. The result was huge losses on both sides, delaying the Turkish advance into Europe for many years. It is considered draw in military terms but it drained Serbia, more than Ottomans, politically for long time. The battle was fought on St Vitus' Day, 1389. At the time this was June 15, but is now celebrated on the June 28.
Worcester (pronounced "Wuster") is a cathedral city and district in the West Midlands of England. It is the county town of Worcestershire, a county of England. In 2015, it had 101,328 residents. It is about 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Birmingham and 29 miles (47 km) north of Gloucester.  The River Severn runs through the middle of the city. Worcester Cathedral overlooks the river.  The University of Worcester is a high ranking university located in the city. Famous composer Edward Elgar was from Worcester. It is also where Worcestershire sauce originated. King John of England's tomb is in Worcester, in Worcester Cathedral. Transport. Road. The A38, A44, A422, A449, A4103, A4440 and A4538 roads pass through Worcester. The M5 bypasses Worcester. Rail. Worcester currently has three stations: Worcester Shrub Hill, Worcester Foregate Street and Worcestershire Parkway which is just outside the city and opened in 2020.
Stoke-on-Trent is a city in Staffordshire in the West Midlands region of England. It is also a unitary authority. Stoke-on-Trent was the home of the pottery industry in the United Kingdom. It was a very important exporter in the late 18th, the 19th and up to about 1960. It is commonly known as The Potteries. The industry was killed off by cheap Chinese pottery after the Second World War, and by the even cheaper plastic homeware.  Coal was its other employment. The furnaces of the kilns needed coal. Coal was also a commodity which was exported from the area. The city is unusual in that it is made up of a cluster of six towns Longton, Fenton, Stoke (Stoke-upon-Trent), Hanley, Burslem, and Tunstall. Stoke-on-Trent is known for the Supermarine Spitfire, pottery, oatcakes, the spark plug, Sir Stanley Mathews, Robbie Williams, Slash, Arnold Bennett, Captain Smith and Stoke City F.C. (Stoke City is the second oldest professional football club: it was founded in 1863).
Triton, or Neptune I, is the largest moon of the planet Neptune. It is the seventh-largest moon in the Solar System. Triton is slightly smaller than Earth's Moon. Triton has a complicated geological history: it is thought to have a young surface compared to the age of the Solar System itself. It was discovered by the British astronomer William Lassell on 10 October 1846, just 17 days after Neptune itself was discovered by the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle and Heinrich Louis d'Arrest. Triton is believed to be a captured Kuiper Belt object, and is the coldest known body in the Solar System. The surface temperature of Triton was recorded by Voyager 2 as -235 °C (-391 °F). Triton has its own magnetic field and has a faint trace of an atmosphere. Orbit. Drag and tidal interaction cause Triton to fall slowly into lowered orbits. This process is very slow. 3.6 billion years from now, Triton will pass within Neptune's Roche limit. It will either collide with Neptune's atmosphere or break up, forming a ring system similar to that found around the planet Saturn. The reason why Triton is thought to be a captured object is its orbit, which is unique in the Solar System. It is both retrograde (see diagram) and highly tilted. Although there are other satellites with retrograde orbits, they are much smaller than Triton, and much more distant from their host planets (their "primaries"). Triton, like our Moon, shows only one face to the planet: it rotates in synchrony to Neptune. Surface. All we know about the surface of Triton comes from one fly-by of Voyager 2 in 1989. There are few impact craters. This suggests the surface is quite young in astronomical terms: estimates are six to 50 million years. Despite its very cold temperature, the surface of Triton is geologically active. There are events which look like geysers, volcanos and earthquakes. All the materials involved are quite different from those on Earth. Most of the gases are frozen most of the time. Gases like nitrogen are
Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 in Paris – 19 April 1906 in Paris) was a French physicist. He shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Curie and Henri Becquerel, for the work on 'spontaneous radioactivity' which Becquerel discovered. Work. Pierre Curie is not as well known as Marie Curie, although Pierre and his brother had done a lot of work before Pierre's marriage and work with Marie. They were the first to use the term 'radioactivity', and were pioneers in its study. Pierre and his brother, Jacques Curie, built a special meter for measuring small amounts of electricity, piezoelectricity and ferromagnetism which Pierre and Marie used in their other discoveries. Pierre died after a carriage accident in Paris on 19 April 1906. His head was crushed under the wheels. If he had lived he would probably have died by radiation poisoning, as Marie did. As they were the first to study radioactivity, they did not know how dangerous it was. After Pierre's death, a group of scientists at the Radiology Congress decided to honour him by naming the unit of radioactivity a curie. Children. Pierre and Marie Curie's daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and their son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie were also physicists involved in the study of radioactivity, and were also given the Nobel prize for their work. Their other daughter Ève wrote her mother's biography. His granddaughter Hélène Langevin-Joliot is a professor of nuclear physics at the University of Paris and his grandson, Pierre Joliot, who was named after him, is a noted biochemist.
Hindustani is a language. It is made up of the common parts of Devanagari and Nastaliq. The Devanagari variety is commonly called "Hindi" or "Hindui". The Nastaliq variety is commonly called "Urdu" or "Lashkari". Hindustani was born in Punjab during the Ghaznavid Empire (Lahore as its capital) in the early decades of the eleventh century AD.
Masala or Massala or Masalo (, , , ) is a word used in South Asia mainly in India. When Indian people talk about cooking and they say "masala", they mean a mixture of ground spices used in Indian cooking.  There are many different, popular spice mixtures that have been given their own name because they taste really good with one special ingredient. The dish will often use "masala" in its name. Some popular dishes are: The blend of spices or "masala" for these dishes is often sold in markets or packed by companies to be sold in shops. Some spice blends, like Garam Masala, are so popular it is often used in many different recipes, not just one. Also India is one of the only countries to have the highest variety in masalas. Around 70% of the world's spice business and exports are handled by India.
The Mayan languages ares a group of languages spoken in Central America and Mesoamerica.  Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million native Maya. Most of them are in Guatemala, Mexico or Belize. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, and Mexico recognises eight others. The Mayan languages are some of the best documented and most studied in the Americas. Modern Mayan languages come from Proto-Mayan, a language that was probably spoken at least 5000 years ago. It has been partly reconstructed.
Soconusco is a region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It is in the most southern part of the state. It borders the Republic of Guatemala on the southeast, the regions Costa, Sierra and Fraylesca of Chiapas on the east and north, and the shore of the Pacific Ocean on the southwest. It is a region of rich lowlands and foothills. The economic center of Soconusco is Tapachula. The name comes from the Nahuatl word "xoconostle", meaning the fruit of the prickly pear cactus. It was, under the Mexican culture, the farthest region of trade. The area provided jaguar pelts, cacao, and quetzal feathers for the ruling classes in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.  The Soconusco region is the main coffee-producing region in Chiapas. It has many plantations farther inland in the foothills of the Sierra Madre del Sur.
Chiapas is the southernmost state of Mexico. It is towards the southeast of the country. Chiapas is bordered by the states of Tabasco to the north, Veracruz to the northwest, and Oaxaca to the west. To the east Chiapas borders Guatemala, and to the south the Pacific Ocean.  Chiapas has an area of . The 2005 census population was 4,293,459 people. In general Chiapas has a humid, tropical weather. In the north, in the area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa, rainfall can be more than 3,000 mm (118 in) per year . In the past, natural vegetation at this region was lowland, tall perennial rainforest, but this vegetation has been destroyed almost completely to give way to agriculture and ranching. Rainfall decreases moving towards the Pacific Ocean, but it is still abundant enough to allow the farming of bananas and many other tropical crops near Tapachula. On the several parallel "sierras" or mountain ranges running along the center of Chiapas, climate can be quite temperate and foggy. This allows the development of cloud forests like those of the Reserva de la Biosfera el Triunfo, home to a handful of quetzals and horned guans. The state capital is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Other cities and towns in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, and Tapachula. Chiapas is also home to the ancient Maya ruins of Palenque, Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Chinkultic, and Tonina. Most people in Chiapas are poor, rural small farmers. About one quarter of the population are of full or predominant Maya descent, and in rural areas many do not speak Spanish. The state suffers from the highest rate of malnutrition in Mexico. This rate is estimated to affect over 40% of the population. Other social issues involve the increasing presence of the Central American gangs known as Maras, and illegal immigration from Central America in general. This migration is mostly directed towards the United States, but it makes local poverty even worse. Many times, there are