ejaasaari/simplewiki-2025-04-01 huggingface dataset:
Alfred Russel Wallace OM, FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, biologist and social activist. He is best known for proposing a theory of natural selection. This was published in 1858 together with Charles Darwin's idea. Wallace did extensive natural history exploring. He went first to the Amazon River basin with Henry Walter Bates, and later to Malaya and Indonesia. He wrote books on both these adventures. While in Indonesia he drew the "Wallace Line" which divides Indonesia into two parts. On one side are animals of Australasia. On the other side are species mostly of Asian origin. He wrote a book on biogeography (the distribution of animals). The great adventure. After a few years of working as a railway surveyor with his brother, Wallace's life was changed by meeting Henry Walter Bates in Leicester in 1847.  The Amazon. Wallace and Bates discussed the idea of an expedition to the Amazon. The plan was funded by sending specimens back to London, where an agent would sell them for a commission. Also, the travellers planned to to "gather facts towards solving the problem of the origin of species", as Wallace put it in a letter to Bates. The two friends, who were both by now experienced amateur entomologists, met in London to prepare themselves. They looked at South American plants and animals in the main collections. Bates and Wallace sailed from Liverpool in April 1848, arriving in Pará (now Belém) at the end of May. For the first year they settled in a villa near the city, collecting birds and insects. After that they agreed to collect independently. Wallace continued charting the Amazon for four years, collecting specimens and making notes on the peoples, the languages, the geography, flora, and fauna. On 12 July 1852, Wallace embarked for England on the brig "Helen". After twenty-eight days at sea, balsam in the ship's cargo caught fire and the crew was forced to abandon ship. All of the specimens Wallace had on the ship, most of his collection, were lost. He could only save part of his diary and a few sketches.
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (25 November 1887 – 26 January 1943) was a Russian botanist and geneticist. He is best known for showing how and where crop plants evolved. He devoted his life to agriculture: the study and improvement of wheat, corn, and other cereal crops. By 1940, Vavilov had accumulated a collection of 200,000 plant seeds from the Soviet Union and from abroad. He was widely admired, but his life came to a terrible end. Vavilov repeatedly criticised a powerful but poor scientist, Trofim Lysenko. As a result, Vavilov was arrested, and died of starvation in a prison in 1943. Today Vavilov's name stands high. The "Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry" in St. Petersburg is named after him. It maintains one of the world's largest collections of plant genetic material. Vavilovian mimicry. This is mimicry in plants where a weed comes to look like a crop plant. Before herbicides, weeds were plucked by hand. This has been done for thousands of years. The weeds come to look like the crop because the weeders pick those weeds which look most different. Vavilovian mimicry is caused by unintentional selection by humans. The weeds that survive pass on their genes. Gradually, all the weeds look more like the crop plant. An example is rye, a common Mediterranean species. Rye was originally just a weed growing with wheat and barley. Weeding made it like the crop. Like wheat, it came to have larger seeds and more rigid spindles to which the seeds are attached. Rye is a tougher plant than wheat: it survives in harsher conditions. Having become a crop like the wheat, rye was able to become a crop plant in harsh areas, such as hills and mountains.
Gilbert White (18 July 1720 – 26 June 1793) was a pioneering English naturalist and ornithologist. Early life and education. White was born in his grandfather's vicarage at Selborne in Hampshire. He was educated by a private tutor in Basingstoke before going to Oriel College, Oxford University. He obtained his deacon's orders in 1746, being fully ordained in 1749.  Then he held several curacies in Hampshire and Wiltshire, including Selbourne. White also held the office of Junior Proctor at Oxford and was Dean of Oriel College. In 1784 he became curate of Selborne for the last time, remaining so until his death.  Publications. White is best known for "The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne" (1789). This was a collection of his letters to Thomas Pennant, the leading British zoologist of the day, and the Hon. Daines Barrington, an English barrister and Fellow of the Royal Society. These letters contained White's discoveries on local birds, animals and plants. White believed in observing birds rather than collecting specimens. He was one of the first people to separate the similar-looking Chiffchaff, Willow Warbler and Wood Warbler by means of their song. White is regarded by many as England's first ecologist and one of the founders of modern respect for nature.
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, (14 November 1797 – 22 February 1875) was a British geologist. He was the foremost geologist of his day, and an influence on the young Charles Darwin. His work was rewarded with a knighthood, and later he was created a hereditary baronet. The house of his birth is in the Scottish Lowlands. it is in the valley of the Highland Boundary Fault, one of the great features of Scottish geology. Round the house is farmland, but within a short distance to the north-west are the Grampian Mountains in the Scottish Highlands.  Charles would have seen this view from his house as a child. He was also fortunate that his family's second home was in a completely different area: at Bartley Lodge in the New Forest, England. Both these places lit his interest in the natural world. Lyell was a rich man, and earned more money as an author. He came from a prosperous family, and worked briefly as a lawyer in the 1820s. He held was a Professor of Geology at King's College London in the 1830s. From 1830 onward his books gave him both income and fame. Lyell's "Principles of Geology" was his most famous and most important book. It was first published in three volumes, in 1830–33. The book was about the ideas of James Hutton, but with many additions, improvements and examples. The book made Lyell to be known as an important geological theorist. It was a work of synthesis, backed by his own personal observations on his travels. The central argument in "Principles" was that "the present is the key to the past". This was called by William Whewell 'uniformitarianism'. Geological remains from the distant past are explained by processes we can see operating now. Lyell's interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time was a big influence on his young friend, Charles Darwin.
John Ray (29 November 1627 – 17 January 1705) was an English naturalist, sometimes referred to as the father of English natural history. Ray was the son of a village blacksmith who got to Cambridge University on a scholarship. This was in 1644, when the Puritans were making war against Charles I. When he got his bachelor's degree in 1648, he continued as a Fellow of Trinity College. Ray was a Protestant dissenter who had accepted the return of Charles II. He was ordained as a priest of the Church of England, in London in 1660. By then, Charles II insisted that all priests sign an affadavit against the Puritan party. The Act of Uniformity of 1662 made the Book of Common Prayer compulsory in religious services, which was opposed by those of Puritan beliefs. Ray would not sign the affidavit, so he was forced to resign his Fellowship, and could not work as a priest. Ray returned to his native village of Black Notley, near Braintree in Essex. After Ray joined up with a former student, Francis Willughby, the pair spent three years in continental Europe, discovering what the latest scientific ideas were. When he returned to England in spring 1666, he joined the new Royal Society, and devoted himself to the study of natural history. His most important scientific works were supported financially by the Royal Society, whose President at a critical time in the 1680s was Samuel Pepys. Ray published important works on plants, animals, and natural theology. His classification of plants in his "Historia Plantarum", was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the system by which species were classified according to an either/or type system. Instead he classified plants by observation according to similarities and differences. Thus he advanced scientific empiricism against the deductive rationalism of the scholastics. He was the first person to give a biological definition of the term "species". "Ray sweeps away the litter of mythology and fable... and always insists upon accuracy of observation and description and the testing of every new discovery".p10 Ray's works. Ray published about 23 works, depending on how one
The WWE Diva Search (also known as the RAW Diva Search) was a competition held by the professional wrestling company World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) from 2003 to 2007 and again in 2013. The goal of the contest was to find a new female wrestler, called Diva by WWE at the time. From the 2004 contest onwards the winner of the contest was offered a WWE Contract which was worth $250,000. The competition took place on WWE's weekly television show "Monday Night Raw". Despite only one winner of the competition each year (except 2003), WWE has signed multiple Diva Search contestants. Some competitors like Candice Michelle, Eve Torres, Maryse, The Bella Twins, Layla, Michelle McCool, and Alexa Bliss went on to win championships in the company. Contests. 2003. In 2003 the first Diva Search was held, however, the winner, Jaime Koeppe did not get a contract. She got a photoshoot for an issue of WWE RAW Magazine. 2004. Finalists. Despite Hemme winning, WWE hired many other Divas also featured in the contest, including Michelle McCool, Amy Weber, Candice Michelle, Maria Kanellis, and Joy Giovanni. In 2025, McCool became the first Diva Search finalist to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. 2005. Contestants. Like the previous year's Diva Search, Ashley Massaro was not the only Diva WWE hired. Others included Kristal Marshall, Trenesha Biggers and Elisabeth Rouffaer. Massaro became the first Diva Search winner to pass away, she died in 2019. 2006. Contestants. Like the past two years this also featured the WWE hiring many losing Divas, this included, Milena Roucka (later known as Rosa Mendes), the Garcia Twins, Rebecca DiPietro, Amy Zidian and Maryse Ouellet. The Garcia Twins would later become famous as the Bella Twins and become the first Diva Search competitors to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2021. 2007.
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz (, "Vladimir Samojlovich Horovitz") (October 1, 1903 – November 5, 1989) was a Russian-American classical pianist. He is often said to be one of the best pianists of the 20 century. Biography. Early life. Horowitz was born in Kiev, which was a part of the Russian Empire at the time, to a Jewish family in 1903. He was the youngest of four children. His father was an engineer and his mother was a pianist. He first started piano lessons from his mother at an early age. In 1912 he joined Kiev University where he was taught by Vladimir Puchalsky, Sergei Tarnowsky, and Felix Blumenfeld. He performed Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor on his graduation. He then performed his first solo concert in Kharkiv in 1920. Horowitz got more and more famous but was often paid in food rather than money because Russia wasn't very rich. Although performing in many concerts, he secretly wanted to be a composer. In 1925, he moved to the West, intending not to return. Career in the West. On January 2, 1926, Horowitz played his first concert outside of Russia. He then played in many other places, such as Berlin, Paris, and London. He gave his first concerts in the United States in 1928.  When World War II started in 1939, Horowitz decided to live in the U. S. He became an American citizen in 1944. Horowitz was very proud of being an American, and decided to make a piano version of Sousa's The Stars and Stripes Forever. He played many concerts to raise money for the war effort, and he asked people to call him "the American pianist." Horowitz began playing music written by an American composer, Samuel Barber, and gave the world’s first performances of the Barber's Piano Sonata and Excursions. During World War II, Horowitz also played a lot of Russian music, giving the first performances in America of
Thomas Henry Huxley PC PRS (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist who specialised in comparative anatomy. He was born in Ealing, Middlesex. He was a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin, and had a public career. He was a member of ten Royal Commissions. Today he is sometimes called "Darwin's Bulldog" for his support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. However, this term was not used during his lifetime. Huxley was slow to accept some of Darwin's ideas, but he was wholehearted in his public support of Darwin. Huxley's 1860 debate with the English Bishop Samuel Wilberforce was a famous public event. The debate was about evolution, and it was widely reported in the press. Many thought Huxley won that debate, which helped Huxley's career, and the theory of evolution.  Huxley also developed scientific education in Britain, and fought against the more extreme forms of religion. These activities had a big effect on the way people in Britain and elsewhere thought about the world. Huxley used the term "agnostic" to say that he did not know if there is a god or not. We continue to use the term "agnostic" today. Huxley was for many years a close friend of the Irish physicist John Tyndall.  Huxley had little schooling, and taught himself almost everything he knew. Remarkably, he became a great anatomist and zoologist. Later, he discussed the evolution of man and the apes. Another of his ideas was that birds evolved from small carnivorous dinosaurs, which is now known to be true. Huxley died in Eastbourne, Sussex. Three of his grandsons became famous in the 20th century. Voyage round the world. As a young man, Huxley went on a long voyage of discovery to the southern continents. He was Assistant to the Surgeon on the Royal Navy ship HMS "Rattlesnake". What he did was to collect sea animals, and study them. He went ashore in New Guinea and the eastern coast of Australia, to study the animals, and the
Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky (; ; January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a noted geneticist and an evolutionary biologist.  Dobzhansky was born in Ukraine (then part of Imperial Russia) and emigrated to the United States in 1927. He was a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work on the fruit-fly "Drosophila". He did research on these flies in California, mostly on populations of "Drosophila pseudoobscura".  Dobzhansky was important in the modern evolutionary synthesis, which was the synthesis of evolutionary biology with genetics. Ukraine and Russia. At school Dobzhansky collected butterflies and beetles, and studied biology at Kiev University. After graduation he moved to St Petersburg (then called Leningrad), and studied under Yuri Filipchenko, who had a "Drosophila" lab. Dobzhansky collected Coccinellidae (ladybird beetles) in the wild, and explored their genetics. America. Dobzhansky emigrated to the United States in 1927. He worked with Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University, who had pioneered the use of fruit flies ("Drosophila melanogaster") in genetics experiments. He followed Morgan to the California Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1940. Dobzhansky took fruit fly research out of the laboratory and into the field. He discovered that regional varieties of flies were more similar to each other genetically than to flies from other regions. In 1937 Dobzhansky published one of the major works of the modern evolutionary synthesis, entitled "Genetics and the Origin of Species". He defined evolution as "a change in the allele frequency within a gene pool". It is through changes in the proportion of alleles in a population that evolution takes place. Also in 1937, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. During this time he had a falling out with one of his "Drosophila" collaborators, Alfred Sturtevant, based perhaps on professional competition.  Dobzhansky returned to Columbia University from 1940 to 1962. He was one of the signatories of the 1950 UNESCO statement "The Race Question". He then moved to the Rockefeller University) until his retirement in 1971.
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was born in London, and died there. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the modern evolutionary synthesis. He was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund. Huxley came from the distinguished Huxley family. His brother was the writer Aldous Huxley, and his half-brother, a fellow biologist and Nobel laureate, Andrew Huxley; and his paternal grandfather was Thomas Henry Huxley, a friend and supporter of Charles Darwin and proponent of evolution. Huxley was well known for his presentation of science in books and articles, and on radio and television. He was awarded UNESCO's "Kalinga Prize" for the popularisation of science in 1953, the "Darwin Medal" of the Royal Society in 1956, and the "Darwin-Wallace medal" of the Linnean Society in 1958. He was also knighted in that same year, 1958, a hundred years after Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace announced the theory of evolution by natural selection. In 1959 he received a Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society. Early work. His particular interest was bird behaviour, especially the courtship of water birds. His observations on the ethology of the Great Crested Grebe, published in 1914, was a landmark in avian field research. His invention of vivid labels for the rituals (such as 'penguin dance', 'plesiosaurus race' etc.) made the ideas memorable and interesting to the general reader. Evolution. Huxley was the most important biologist after August Weismann to insist on natural selection as the primary agent in evolution. A fine communicator, he was a prominent populariser of biological science to the public. In the early
Gertrude Baines (April 6, 1894 – September 11, 2009) was an American supercentenarian who was the oldest person in the world from January 2, 2009 until her death on September 11, 2009. She was the last person known to have been born in 1894. Personal history. Gertrude Baines married Sam Conley at a very young age and had one daughter who died of typhoid fever at the age of 18. Baines was known to have been living in Hartford, Connecticut before moving to Ohio, where she worked as a maid at the Ohio State University. She later moved to California, where she lived on her own until age 105. She spent her final years at the Western Convalescent Center in Jefferson Park, Los Angeles.
Reel Big Fish is a ska punk band that started in 1992 in California. They have only ever played ska/rock music but moved more to a pop sound during the album "Cheer Up!" They have had many different members since the start of the band, including two different singers and over 10 different horn players. They mainly got successful from the album "Turn The Radio Off", which had the single "Sell Out," in 1997, their most famous song. Record Companies. A common theme throughout some of their songs (such as "Don't Start A Band" and "Sell Out") is their disapproval of big record companies. Reel Big Fish was signed onto Jive Records, but after their short-lived success, the record company neglected them and did not advertise their albums. In their 2005 album, We're Not Happy Til' You're Not Happy, Reel Big Fish directly and indirectly expresses their anger towards their record company in several of their songs. During 2006, Reel Big Fish was dropped from Jive Records. The band formed their own label and released a 3-disc live performance CD/DVD set, Our Live Album Is Better Than Your Live Album. This package became available on July 18, 2006 on the Internet and in retail stores on August 22. Jive later released a Reel Big Fish greatest hits album, Greatest Hit...And More, because they owned the rights to all previous songs. The band did not approve of, or make any money from the album, and have spoken out against it.
A hate group is a group of people that want to hurt and be mean to other people. Hate groups usually are against people who are different from members of the group. This includes differences in ethnic group, religion, sex, and/or sexual orientation. The Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis are examples of hate groups. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination prohibits participation to hate group and hate speech, as well as racial discrimination in Article 4.
Sulfur trioxide (sometimes spelled sulphur trioxide) is a chemical substance made of 1 sulfur and 3 oxygen atoms (SO3). It is very toxic and irritating. It can dissolve violently in water to make sulfuric acid. It is made by oxidation of sulfur dioxide. It contains sulfur in its +6 oxidation state. In popular culture. Sulfur trioxide is mentioned in the "Emergency!" episode "The Old Engine Cram".
Cape Tribulation () is both a headland and small town in northern Queensland, Australia north of Cairns. It is in the Daintree National Park and the Wet Tropics World Heritage area. The first people to live in the area were the Kuku Yalanji. The first European to settle in the area was John Moffat in 1880 who set up a farm to grow food for the miners in the west. There is a sealed road to the area from the south from the Daintree River Ferry. To the north there is a four wheel drive unsealed road, called the Bloomfield Track. This goes to the Bloomfield River, Wujal Wujal, Bloomfield Falls and Cooktown. It is often closed during the wet season (Feb-Apr).  Tribulation means trouble and great suffering. Cape Tribulation was named by British explorer Lt. James Cook on 10 June 1770 after his ship ran into a coral reef near the headland; "...because here began all our Troubles..." Cape Tribulation is in a rainforest and it gets a lot of rain. In 2006, the rainfall recorded was over 5.7 metres. Most people visit the area during the dry season between July and November. There are four main resorts to stay in as well as several smaller bed and breakfast places. The town has two small supermarkets, two ATMs, one takeaway food outlet and five restaurants. During the wet season marine stingers are common so people swim in the many waterholes. There are crocodiles in the creeks. The Great Barrier Reef is very close to the coast, only due east. There are two boats that take visitors to the reef. Other activities available are guided night walks, 4 wheel drive tours, horseriding, kayaking, jungle surfing, tropical fruit tasting and crocodile cruises.