the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
A comedy is a very popular type of movie.
Some comedy movies have "slapstick comedy," in which people just do silly things such as tripping, falling over or embarrassing themselves just to make people laugh.
Other comedy movies show funny stories or situations in which people are behaving in a silly manner.
Some comedies make the audience laugh by showing strange or unusual images or situations that do not make sense.
Parody/Spoof
Different types of comedy movies
There is a type of movie called a dramedy, which is a mix of a drama movie and a comedy movie.
There is also a type of movie called a romantic comedy (sometimes called a "rom-com").
In romantic comedies, there is a love story about a couple who fall in love, along with silly or funny comedy parts.
Comedy television shows
Comedy shows are very popular on television.
Comedy shows on television are often called "sitcoms."
The word "sitcom" is a shortened way of saying "situational comedy."
Television situational comedies usually show characters who do silly or funny things which make the audience laugh.
A comet is a ball of mostly ice that moves around in outer space.
Comets are often described as "dirty snowballs".
They are very different from asteroids.
The orbital inclinations of comets are usually high and not near the ecliptic where most solar system objects are found.
Most of them are long-period comets and come from the Kuiper belt.
That is very far away from the Sun, but some of them also come near enough to Earth for us to see at night.
They have long "tails", because the Sun melts the ice.
A comet's tail  does not trail behind it, but points directly away from the Sun, because it is blown by the solar wind.
The hard centre of the comet is the nucleus.
It is one of the blackest things (lowest albedo) in the solar system.
When light shone on the nucleus of Halley's Comet, the comet reflected only 4% of the light back to us.
Periodic comets visit again and again.
Non-periodic or single-apparition comets visit only once.
Comets sometimes break up, as Comet Biela  did in the 19th century.
Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 broke up, and the pieces hit Jupiter in 1994.
Some comets orbit (go around) together in groups.
Astronomers think these comets are broken pieces that used to be one object.
Famous comets
Halley's
Ikeya seki
History of comets
For thousands of years, people feared comets.
They did not know what they were, or where they came from.
Some thought that they were fireballs sent from demons or gods to destroy the earth.
They said that each time a comet appeared, it would bring bad luck with it.
Whenever a comet appeared, a king would die.
For example, the Bayeux Tapestry shows the return of Halley's Comet and the death of a king.
Comets were also known to end wars and thought to bring famine.
During the Renaissance, astronomers started to look at comets with less superstition and to base their science on observations.
Tycho Brahe reasoned that comets did not come from the earth, and his measurements and calculations showed that comets must be six times farther than the earth is from the moon.
Edmond Halley reasoned that some comets are periodic, that is, they appear again after a certain number of years, and again and again.
This led to the first prediction of a comet's return, Halley's Comet, named after him.
Isaac Newton also studied comets.
He realised that comets make U-turns around the sun.
He asked his friend Edmond Halley to publish this in his book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.
Before Newton said this, people believed that comets go in to the sun, then another comes out from behind the sun.
In later years, some astronomers thought comets were spit out by planets, especially Jupiter.
All this new information and research gave people confidence, but some still thought that comets were messengers from the gods.
One 18th century vision said that comets were the places that hell was, where souls would ride, being burned up by the heat of the sun and frozen by the cold of space.
In modern times, space probes have visited comets to learn more about them.
Are Comets Made of Antimatter?
Cytology is the study of the cells, especially their appearance and structure.
Cells are the small parts that make up all living things, and their effects on each other and their environment.
There are two types of cells.
Prokaryotic cells do not have a clear and easy-to-see nucleus, and do not have a membrane, or wall, around them.
Eukaryotic cells have an easy-to-see nucleus where all of the cell's functions take place, and a membrane around them.
The main organelles of a cell and their uses are:
Mitochondria: produces energy for the cell
Endoplasmic reticulum: makes proteins and carbohydrates for the cell to use
Golgi bodies: store and package products that the cell uses
Plastid (present in plant cells only): contains chemicals needed to photosynthesize (create energy from sunlight); in plants only.
Nucleus: directs the actions of the cell
Centrosomes: guides the cell in mitosis and meiosis, the processes for cell division.
Cell biology is mostly about how cells work, and about cell division and molecular biology.
Histology deals with techniques for looking at tissues under a microscope.
Cytopathology is a medical discipline that deals with techniques for looking at cells under a microscope.
A Christian () is a person who believes in Christianity, a monotheistic religion.
Christianity is mostly about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, in the New Testament and interpreted of prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
Christianity is the world's largest religion, with 2.1 billion followers around the world.
Christians consider the Holy Bible to be a sacred book, inspired by God.
The Holy Bible is a combination of the Hebrew Bible, or Torah, and a collection of writings called the New Testament.
Views on the importance of these writings vary.
Some Christian groups prefer to favor the New Testament, while others believe the entire Bible is equally important.
Also, while many Christians prefer to consider the Bible as fully true, not all Christian groups believe that it is completely accurate.
The question of "Who is a Christian?"
can be very difficult.
Christians often disagree over this due to their differences in opinion on spiritual matters.
In countries where most persons were baptized in the state church or the majority Christian church, the term "Christian" is a default label for citizenship or for "people like us".
Persons who are more devoted the their Christian faith prefer not to use the word so broadly, but only use it to refer to those who are active in their Christian religion and really believe the teachings of Jesus and their church.
In some Christian movements (especially Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism), to be a born-again Christian is to undergo a  "spiritual rebirth" by believing in the Bible's teachings about Jesus and choosing to follow him.
Many Christians choose to go to church.
Most Christians believe this to be a sign of their religious devotion to God and an act of worship.
However, some Christian groups think that one can be a Christian without ever going to a church.
Though there are many different viewpoints on the issue, most Protestants believe all Christians are part of the spiritual church of Christ, whether or not those Christians go to an actual church each week.
On the other hand, Catholics in the past have believed that the Holy Catholic Church is the only true church.
Cheese is a dairy product that is made from milk.
There are many types of cheese, such as cheddar, Swiss, and provolone.
Many things affect the form, texture, colour and flavour of a cheese.
These include the milk (cow or goat), if the milk has been pasteurized, the amount of butterfat, bacteria and mold in the cheese, how the cheese is made, how much fat is in the cheese, and how old the cheese is.
People have been making cheese since before history was written down.
It is not known when cheese was first made.
It is known that cheese was eaten by the Sumerians in about 4000 BC.
Cheese is made using milk.
The milk of cows, goats, and sheep are most popular.
Buffalo, camel, donkey and even hippopotamus milk can also be used.
Cheese makers usually cook the milk in large pots.
Most cheeses are acidified by bacteria.
This bacteria turns milk sugars (such as lactose) into lactic acid.
Salt is added, and a substance from the stomach of young cows called rennet.
This curdles the cheese and makes it solid.
Some makers do not add rennet, but curdle the cheese in other ways.
Vegetarian alternatives to rennet are made by fermentation of a fungus called Mucor miehei.
Other alternatives use species of the Cynara thistle family.
There are many different ways to classify cheeses.
How long the cheese was aged
The texture of the cheese.
These include Hard, Soft and Softer.
How the cheese was made
What type of milk was used to make the cheese.
This is mainly what animal the milk comes from, such as cows, sheep, and goats.
The diet of the animal can also affect the type of cheese made from its milk.
How much fat is in the cheese
What color the cheese is (common colors are yellow, and white)
There are also man-made foods that some people use instead of cheese.
These are called Cheese analogues.
The constitution of a country (or a state) is a special type of law document that tells how its government is supposed to work.
It tells how the country's leaders are to be chosen and how long they get to stay in office, how new laws are made and old laws are to be changed or removed based on law, what kind of people are allowed to vote and what other rights they are guaranteed, and how the constitution can be changed.
Limits are put on the Government in how much power they have within the Constitution (see Rule of Law ).
On the other hand, countries with repressive or corrupt governments frequently do not stick to their constitutions, or have bad constitutions without giving freedom to citizens and others.
This can be known as dictatorship or simply "bending the rules".
A Constitution is often a way of uniting within a Federation.
The UK's constitution is not written in one single document like many other countries' are.
In fact, the UK's constitution is not completely written down at all.
Some of it can be found in writing, starting with the Magna Carta of 1215 and the Bill of Rights Act 1689 and including more modern Acts of Parliament.
Other parts of it are considered common law and are made up of the decisions of judges over many hundreds of years in a system called legal or judicial precedence.
Because of this, some people say that the United Kingdom has a de facto or "unwritten" constitution.
The United States in 1787 began a trend in the writing of constitutions.
The United States Constitution is also the shortest that people are still using, and it has been changed (amended) many times over the years.
It was made after the colonists won their independence from Britain.
At first they had the Articles of Confederation but the Articles were replaced with today's Constitution.
The Indian constitution of 1950 is the longest ever written constitution in the world.
It  has 448 Articles and 12 Schedules in it, with 5 appendices and 98 amendments.
A circle is a round, two-dimensional shape.
All points on the edge of the circle are at the same distance from the center.
The radius of a circle is a line from the center of the circle to a point on the side.
Mathematicians use the letter  for the length of a circle's radius.
The center of a circle is the point in the very middle.
It is often written as .
The diameter (meaning "all the way across") of a circle is a straight line that goes from one side to the opposite and right through the center of the circle.
Mathematicians use the letter  for the length of this line.
The diameter of a circle is equal to twice its radius ( equals 2 times ):
The circumference (meaning "all the way around") of a circle is the line that goes around the center of the circle.
The number π (written as the Greek letter pi) is a very useful number.
It is the length of the circumference divided by the length of the diameter ( equals  divided by ).
As a fraction the number  is equal to about  or  (which is closer) and as a number it is about 3.1415926535.
The area, , inside a circle is equal to the radius multiplied by itself, then multiplied by  ( equals  times  times ).
Calculating π
can be measured by drawing a circle, then measuring its diameter () and circumference ().
This is because the circumference of a circle is always equal to  times its diameter.
can also be calculated by only using mathematical methods.
Most methods used for calculating the value of  have desirable mathematical properties.
However, they are hard to understand without knowing trigonometry and calculus.
However, some methods are quite simple, such as this form of the Gregory-Leibniz series:
While that series is easy to write and calculate, it is not easy to see why it equals .
A much easier way to approach is to draw an imaginary circle of radius  centered at the origin.
Then any point (,) whose distance  from the origin is less than , calculated by the Pythagorean theorem, will be inside the circle:
Finding a set of points inside the circle allows the circle's area  to be estimated, for example, by using integer coordinates for a big .
Since the area  of a circle is  times the radius squared,  can be approximated by using the following formula:
Calculating the area, circumference, diameter and radius of a circle
Using its radius:
Using its diameter:
Using its circumference:
Using its area:
Calculate the measures of a circle online
Conic sections
Capitalise (British spelling) or capitalize (North American spelling) means to make one or more letters upper case.
The first letter of a sentence is capitalised in many languages, as are the first letters of proper nouns such as names of people and places.
In German, however, all nouns are capitalized.
It is the only language to do that.
Cuba is an island country in the Caribbean Sea.
The country is made up of the big island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud island (Isle of Youth), and many smaller islands.
It is the largest city.
The second largest city is Santiago de Cuba.
In Spanish, the capital is called "La Habana".
Cuba is near the United States, Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica and the Bahamas.
People from Cuba are called Cubans (cubanos in Spanish).
The official language is Spanish.
Cuba is warm all year.
In 1492, Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Cuba.
He claimed it for the Kingdom of Spain.
Cuba became a Spanish colony until the Spanish–American War of 1898.
After the war, it was part of the United States.
It gained independence in 1902.
In 1959, guerrilla fighters led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara overthrew Cuba's dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in what became the Cuban Revolution.
Castro began making relations with the Soviet Union and tried to close a lot of American businesses in Cuba; the United States did not like this.
In 1961 Castro officially announced that his government was socialist.
The US attempted to invade Cuba to regain control of it and overthrow its communist-led government but failed.
The Communist Party of Cuba was created in 1965 and has ruled the island ever since.
Today, Cuba is the only socialist state outside of Asia, in the Caribbean, and in the western hemisphere.
Cuba is famous for many types of music, especially dance music such as the Salsa and Mambo.
Because Cubans have ancestors from Spain, Africa, South America and North America, Cuban music is special and different.
Reading is very popular in Cuba.
Many people especially enjoy reading books or things that come from outside the country, even though the government does not approve of this.
They also love music and sports.
Cuban music is very lively.
This is because a lot of it comes from African and Spanish rhythms.
Baseball, basketball, and athletics events are loved by many Cuban people.
The Cheifs football-team took at one Football-World-Cup part.
In 1938, they reached the quarter-final and lost against Sweden 0:8.
Early history
Before Cuba was conquered by the Spaniards, three tribes lived on the island.
They were the Taínos, the Ciboneys, and the Guanajatabeyes.
The Taínos were the largest and most common of the three tribes.
They farmed crops such as beans, corn, squash, and yams.
The Taínos also slept in hammocks, which the Spaniards would introduce to the rest of the world.
Then, in 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba on his first trip to the Americas.
Three years later, he claimed the islands for the Spanish.
The Spanish began to rule Cuba afterwards.
The Spanish brought thousands of slaves from Africa to Cuba to work for them.
Most of the native Cubans died because of the new diseases brought by the Spanish and Africans.
The Spanish also treated the native Cubans very cruelly and massacred many of them.
The Spanish ruled for many years.
Cuba became the most important producer of sugar.
In the early 1800s, Cubans rebelled against the Spanish rulers, but failed until 1898, when the United States went to war with the Spanish and defeated them.
Cuba became American for four years afterwards, before it became an independent republic in 1902.
Even though Cuba was independent, the Americans still controlled the island by a law called the Platt Amendment.
In 1933 the Cubans stopped the Platt Amendment, but the Americans still had a big say in Cuban politics.
Americans owned most of Cuba’s businesses.
The Americans supported the leader Fulgencio Batista, who was seen by many Cubans as corrupt.
In addition to political control, the United States also exercised significant control over the Cuban economy.
At the time, Cuba was a monoculture economy.
While they produced coffee, tobacco, and rice, they relied primarily on sugar.
Thus, they were known by other countries as the "sugar bowl of the world."
The United States bought sugar from the Republic of Cuba at a price higher than the global standard.
In exchange, Cuba was to give preference to the United States, and its industries.
Cuba depended on the United States and their investments.
Cuba was not industrialized and needed the revenue for goods and oil.
They also needed the US investment for gas, electricity, communications, railways, and banks.
While Cuban workers had better conditions than other countries in the continent, they still faced inequality, lack of infrastructure, high illiteracy rates, and a lack of full-time work (the sugar industry was seasonal).
In 1959, Fidel Castro led a revolution against Fulgencio Batista.
Castro took power in Cuba with Che Guevara from Argentina, his brother Raul, and others who fought against Batista.
Castro made many changes to Cuba.
He ended American ownership of Cuban businesses.
This made Castro unpopular in America and the United States banned all contact with Cuba.
Many Cubans went to America because of this.
In 1961, the Americans helped some of these Cubans to attack Cuba and try to remove Castro, but they failed.
Castro then asked the Soviet Union to help defend them from the Americans, which they did.
The Soviet Union put nuclear weapons in Cuba and aimed them at the United States.
American President Kennedy demanded that they be removed or a new war would begin.
This was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Soviet Union removed the missiles when the United States agreed to not continue attacking Cuba and to remove missiles from Turkey.
Cuba became a communist-led country like the Soviet Union after this.
The Soviet Union bought most of Cuba’s sugar for expensive prices.
Cuba spent this money on health, education and the army.
This made Cuba’s schools and hospitals some of the best in the world.
The army fought in Africa to support black Africans against the white South African army.
Cuba also supported groups in South America fighting against the dictators of those countries.
However, the Cuban government began to control most of life in Cuba under the communist system.
Disagreeing with the Cuban government and Fidel Castro in public was not allowed.
Some Cubans did not like this and tried to leave Cuba.
Most Cubans who left went to the United States.
Some Cubans who did not like the government and stayed were put in jail.
Many groups from around the world protested against Cuba because of this, and demanded that Fidel Castro give up power.
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.
This meant that Cuba, which had sold most of its products to the Soviet Union, had no money coming into the country.
The Americans made the restrictions against contact with Cuba tighter.
America said the restrictions on contact would continue unless Fidel Castro gave up power.
Cuba became very poor in the 1990s.
This became known in Cuba as “The Special Period”.
Because of the disaster, Cuba changed to allow less control by the government, more discussion amongst the people, and private shops and businesses.
Cuba also tried to get tourists to visit the island.
In the 2000s, tourism to Cuba began to make money for the island again.
Though Fidel Castro had remained in power, he had passed all duties to his brother Raul after an illness.
Fidel Castro was one of the longest-serving heads of state.
In 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel became the official President of Cuba.
The trade embargo issued by President Kennedy in the 1960s has been considerably loosened under Obama's administration.
US citizens can now travel directly to Cuba at certain times of the year.
Before, Americans had to go via Mexico if they wanted to go to Cuba.
Americans are still not allowed to purchase or smoke Cuban cigars.
The cigars are smuggled over the US-Canadian border since they are legal in Canada.
For military service, men from the age of 17 to 28 years old must go into the army for two years.
It is optional for women.
In July 2021, there were demonstrations against the government.
See the English Wikipedia article, 2021 Cuban protests, for details.
The country is divided into 15 provinces and one special municipality (Isla de la Juventud).
The provinces are divided into municipalities.
The population of Cuba is close to 13 million.
The people of Cuba come from three different groups.
The largest group is the descendants of the Spanish settlers who came to Cuba.
The smallest group is the descendants of the black African slaves who were brought in to do the work and birth children (in the barracoon) as New World slaves who could be legally sold into life time bondage in the United States.
The middle-sized group is a mix of African and Spanish.
The government succeeded in seeing that the three different groups were treated the same.
According to a DNA Caribbean Studies Institute, the racial-makeup of the population of Cuba is:
European Cubans descend from settlers that came during the very late 15th century and onward.
Most white Cubans came from many different parts of Spain, but the most numerous were the Canary Islanders, Andalusians, and Catalans.
There was as well some French, Italian and English peoples.
Whites makeup approximately 30% of Cuba's population as of 2012, and they mostly populate the western part of Cuba, specially cities like Havana and Pinar del Rio.
These brought with them their language, religions, music and others.
Africans and Mulatto Cubans descend from the arrival of African slaves that came from various parts of Africa but the most numerous were West Africans.
There were also more than 500,000 Haitians that came to Cuba during the Haitian Revolution days.
Most Cuban slaves tended to come from the Kongo and Yoruba tribes, there were also the Igbos, Ewes, Fons, Fulas, Mandinkas and some others.
Afro-Cubans range enormously from 33.9 percent to 70 percent of the population, and they are mostly concentrated in the east parts of Cuba.
These brought with them their instruments, reigion (Santeria), and customs to the Cuban culture.
Mediterranean Cubans are about 3% of the population, however; one must know that a lot of the Southern Spaniard Cuban descendants have good portion of Moor blood in their family lines; due to the close proximate Spain is to North Africa.
Many Mediterranean Cubans came during the 1820s-1880s and sometimes onward.
These are most concentrated in the East specially cities like Guantanamo Bay.
They brought much of their foods and cuisines to Cuba and a few vocabularies.
Health and education
Cuba is a developing country, and is often depicted as a very poor country.
In some aspects, however, like education, health care and life expectancy it ranks much better than most countries in Latin America.
Its infant death rate is lower than some developed countries.
The average life expectancy is 78 years.
All the children are required to go to school from six to twelve years old, and nearly everybody is able to read and write at least.
There is free education at every level.
Because of this, Cuba has a 99.8% literacy rate.
In 2006, the World Food Programme certified Cuba to be the only country in this region without undernourished children.
In the same year, the United Nations said that Cuba was the only nation in the world that met the World Wide Fund for Nature's definition of sustainable development.
Cuba is the largest island in the West Indies.
It has many resources.
Only about one-fourth of the land is mountains or hills.
Much of the land is gentle hills or plains which are good for farming or raising cattle.
Cuba has fertile soil and a mostly warm and humid climate that makes it a great place for growing crops.
Sugar is the most important crop of Cuba, and they may get it from the sugar cane.
Sugar cane is the largest cash crop grown in Cuba, and it brings in most of the money.
After that, the second is tobacco.
Tobacco is made into cigars by hand.
A hand-made cigar is considered by many people to be the finest in the world.
Other important crops are rice, coffee, and fruit.
Cuba also has many minerals.
Cobalt, nickel, iron, copper, and manganese are all on the island.
Salt, petroleum, and natural gas are there too.
The coast of Cuba has many bays and a few good harbors.
Havana, which is the capital, is also a port.
Other harbors have port cities.
Nuevitas is a port city on the north coast.
Cienfuegos, Guantánamo, and Santiago de Cuba are some of the port cities on the south coast.
Cuba has a semi-tropical climate.
That means that the cool ocean winds keep it becoming hot, despite its being in the tropical zone.
Cuba has a wet season and a dry season.
The dry season is from November to April, and the wet season is from May to October.
August to October is also the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean.
Because of this, most of Cuba's port cities can be flooded along the coast.
:Category:Cuban people
A cube is a type of polyhedron with all right angles and whose height, width and depth are all the  same.
It is a type of rectangular prism, which is itself a type of hexahedron.
A cube is one of the simplest mathematical shapes in space.
Something that is shaped like a cube is sometimes referred to as cubic.
Relative 2-dimensional shape
The 2-dimensional (2D) shape (like a circle, square, triangle, etc.)
that a cube is made of is squares.
The sides (faces) of a cube are squares.
The edges are straight lines.
The corners (vertices) are at right angles.
A cube has 8 corners, 12 edges and 6 faces, as in the most usual kind of dice.
A tesseract carries this idea into the fourth dimension (4D) and is made of 8 cubes.
The volume of a cube is the length of any one of the edges (they are all the same length so it does not matter which edge is used) cubed.
This means you multiply the number by itself, and then by itself again.
If the edge is named 'd' (See Diagram), the equation would be this: Volume=d×d×d (or Volume=d3).
Cube shaped figures
Platonic solids
Cost of living is the amount of money it costs just to live in a certain place.
It includes food, housing, etc.
December (Dec.) is the twelfth and last month of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 31 days, coming between November and January.
With the name of the month coming from the Latin decem for "ten", it was the tenth month of the year before January and February were added to the Roman calendar.
December's flower is the Narcissus.
Its birthstone is the turquoise.
December is the 12th and last month of every calendar year in the Gregorian calendar, and is one of seven months of the year to have 31 days.
December 31 is followed by January 1 of the following year.
December begins on the same day of the week as September every year, as each other's first days are exactly 13 weeks (91 days) apart.
December ends on the same day of the week as April every year, as each other's last days are exactly 35 weeks (245 days) apart.
In common years, December starts on the same day of the week as April and July of the previous year, and in leap years, October of the previous year.
In common years, December finishes on the same day of the week as July of the previous year, and in leap years, February and October of the previous year.
In leap years and years immediately after that, December both starts and finishes on the same day of the week as January of the previous year.
In years immediately before common years, December starts on the same day of the week as June of the following year, and in years immediately before leap years, March and November of the following year.
In years immediately before common years, December finishes on the same day of the week as September of the following year, and in years immediately before leap years, March and June of the following year.
December is one of two months to have a solstice (the other is June, its seasonal equivalent in both hemispheres), and in this month the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere is turned towards the Sun, meaning that December 21 or December 22 is the Northern Winter Solstice and the Southern Summer Solstice.
This means that this date would have the least daylight of any day in the Northern Hemisphere, and the most in the Southern Hemisphere.
There are 24 hours of darkness at the North Pole and 24 hours of daylight at the South Pole.
In mainly Christian countries, December is dominated by Christmas, which is celebrated on December 25 in most of those countries, though Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate it on January 7.
It marks the birth of Jesus Christ.
Epiphany, January 6, is also important in relation to Christmas.
Advent starts on the Sunday on, or closest to, November 30, and some countries have their own related celebration before the 25th.
Sinterklaas is celebrated on December 5 in the Netherlands and Belgium, and St. Nicholas Day on December 6 is also celebrated in some countries.
The Scandinavian countries, mainly Sweden, celebrate St. Lucia Day on December 13, while Iceland celebrates Thorlaksmessa on December 23.
The week after Christmas is spent preparing for New Year.
Holidays and Festivals
December 1 - World AIDS Day
December 1 - National Day of Romania
December 1 - Self-government Day (Iceland)
December 1 - Day of Restoration of Independence (Portugal)
December 1 - First Day of Summer (Australia)
December 2 - National Day of Laos
December 2 - National Day of the United Arab Emirates
December 2 - International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
December 4 - Navy Day in India and Italy
December 4 - Miners' Day (Poland)
December 4 - Tupou I Day (Tonga)
December 5 - Sinterklaas (Netherlands, Belgium)
December 5 - Birthday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand
December 6 - Saint Nicholas Day
December 6 - Independence Day (Finland)
December 6 - Constitution Day (Spain)
December 7 - Pearl Harbor Day (United States)
December 8 - Constitution Day in Romania and Uzbekistan
December 8 - Day of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Catholicism)
December 9 - National Day of Tanzania
December 10 - Nobel Prize Day
December 10 - Constitution Day (Thailand)
December 10 - Human Rights Day
December 11 - Republic Day (Burkina Faso)
December 11 - Indiana Day
December 11 - International Mountain Day
December 12 - Independence Day (Kenya)
December 12 - Our Lady of Guadalupe (Roman Catholicism)
December 13 - St. Lucia Day
December 14 - Alabama Day
December 15 - Homecoming Day (Alderney)
December 15 - Kingdom Day (Netherlands)
December 15 - Zamenhof Day (Esperanto supporters)
December 16 - Independence Day (Kazakhstan)
December 16 - Day of Reconciliation (South Africa)
December 16 - Victory Day in India and Bangladesh
December 17 - National Day of Bhutan
December 18 - National Day of Qatar
December 18 - New Jersey Day
December 18 - Republic Day (Niger)
December 18 - International Migrants Day
December 18 - United Nations Day of the Arabic language
December 21/22 - Northern Winter Solstice and Southern Summer Solstice
December 22 - Dongzhi Festival (East Asia)
December 22 - Mother's Day (Indonesia)
December 23 - Birthday of Emperor Akihito (Japan)
December 23 - Thorlaksmessa/St. Thorlak's Day (Iceland)
December 23 - HumanLight (Secular Humanism)
December 24 - Independence Day (Libya)
December 24 - Christmas Eve in Western Christianity
December 25 - Christmas Day in Western Christianity
December 25 - Birthday of Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Pakistan)
December 26 - Boxing Day (UK)
December 26 - St. Stephen's Day (Republic of Ireland)
December 26 - First Day of Kwanzaa
December 27 - Constitution Day (North Korea)
December 27 - St. Stephen's Day (Eastern Orthodox Church)
December 28 - Proclamation Day (South Australia)
December 28 - Day of the Holy Innocents, celebrated in Spanish-speaking countries in a similar way to April Fools' Day
December 29 - Independence Day (Mongolia)
December 31 - New Year's Eve/ St. Silvester's Day - known as Hogmanay in Scotland and Calennig in Wales
Moveable and Non-Single Day Events
Hanukkah (Judaism) - celebrated over a period of eight days
Advent in Western Christianity
First Sunday in Advent occurs between November 27 and December 3
Second Sunday in Advent occurs between December 4 and December 10
Third Sunday in Advent occurs between December 11 and December 17
Fourth and final Sunday in Advent occurs between December 18 and December 24
Kwanzaa is from December 26 to January 1
Marathon races held in December
Honolulu, Hawaii, United States
Historical Events
December 1, 1918 - The Kingdom of Yugoslavia is proclaimed.
On the same day, Transylvania unites with Romania.
December 1, 1918 - Iceland becomes independent, but remains under the Danish crown.
December 1, 1955 - A protest by Rosa Parks on an Alabama bus starts the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
December 2, 1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France.
December 2, 1942 - A team led by Enrico Fermi initiates the first nuclear chain reaction.
December 3, 1984 - A deadly chemical leak in Bhopal, India, kills 8,000 people instantly.
December 5, 2013 - Former South African President and Anti-Apartheid icon Nelson Mandela dies aged 95.
December 6, 1917 - Finland declares independence from Russia.
December 7, 1941 - During World War II, The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, US.
December 8, 1980 - John Lennon is shot dead by Mark David Chapman.
December 9, 1961 - Tanganyika becomes independent.
It later merges with Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
December 10, 1901 - The first Nobel Prizes are awarded.
December 11, 1936 - King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom abdicates from the throne.
December 12, 1911 - Delhi becomes the capital city of India.
December 12, 1963 - Kenya becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
December 14, 1861 - Albert, Prince Consort of Great Britain and Ireland dies aged 42, placing Queen Victoria in a state of mourning his loss for the rest of her life.
December 14, 1911 - A Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen reaches the South Pole, where previously no human had ever been.
December 15, 1891 - James Naismith introduces basketball.
December 16, 1920 - An earthquake in Gansu province, China, kills around 200,000 people.
December 16, 1991 - Kazakhstan declares independence from the Soviet Union.
December 17, 1903 - The Wright brothers make their first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
December 17, 1907 - Ugyen Wangchuck becomes King of Bhutan.
December 17, 2010 - Start of the Arab Spring, a series of uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East.
December 19, 1783 - William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest Prime Minister of Great Britain.
December 20, 1999 - Portugal gives control of Macau to the People's Republic of China.
December 21, 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce their discovery of radium.
December 21, 1913 - The first crossword puzzle is published.
December 21, 1988 - A terrorist bomb explodes on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, southern Scotland, killing 270 people.
December 21, 2012 - End of the Mayan long-count calendar.
December 22, 1989 - The Brandenburg Gate is re-opened.
December 22, 1990 - Lech Walesa becomes President of Poland.
December 23, 1972 - A major earthquake strikes Nicaragua, killing thousands of people.
December 24, 1818 - The Christmas carol Silent Night is first performed at a church in Austria.
December 24, 1914 - The World War I Christmas truce takes place.
December 24, 1951 - Libya becomes independent.
December 24, 1968 - Apollo 8 orbits the Moon, and a stunning photograph of the Earth rising is taken.
December 25, 800 - Charlemagne is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
December 25, 1066 - William the Conqueror is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
December 26, 2004 - An earthquake off Sumatra, Indonesia, leads to tsunamis that kill over 300,000 people on Indian Ocean coasts, with nearby Sumatra being worst affected.
December 27, 531 - Inauguration of the Hagia Sophia as a church in what was then called Byzantium.
December 27, 1949 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands officially recognizes Indonesia's independence.
December 28, 1612 - Galileo Galilei observes the planet Neptune, though there is dispute as to whether he mistook it for a star.
December 28, 1879 - The Tay Rail Bridge disaster on the east coast of Scotland kills 75 people.
December 28, 1895 - The Lumiere brothers open their first cinema in Paris.
December 29, 1911 - Mongolia becomes independent.
December 30, 1922 - The USSR is founded.
December 30, 2011 - This date is skipped in Samoa as the International Date Line is shifted.
December 31, 1857 - Ottawa is chosen as capital city of Canada.
December 31, 1991 - The Soviet Union officially dissolves.
December 31, 1999 - The US hands control of the Panama Canal over to Panama.
The first Sunday of Advent is slightly more likely to fall in November than in December.
The star signs for December are Sagittarius (November 22 to December 21) and Capricorn (December 22 to January 20).
December 28 falls exactly half-way between the two Scottish celebrations of Saint Andrew's Day (November 30) and Burns Night (January 25).
In a leap year, December 31 is the 366th day of the year, rather than the 365th.
At the North Pole, the Sun does not rise in December; at the South Pole, it does not set.
Dublin () is the capital of the Republic of Ireland, and the biggest city on the island of Ireland.
In 2011, there were over 1.1 million people living in the Greater Dublin Area.
Dublin was built by the Vikings upon the river Liffey.
The river divides the city into two parts, North Dublin and South Dublin.
Many famous writers lived in Dublin.
Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw were born in Dublin.
James Joyce is probably Dublin's best known and most international writer.
Dublin is home to Ireland's largest stadium for all sports, Croke Park.
It can hold up to 85,000 people.
Croke Park is the usual venue for all Ireland hurling and football finals.
The Aviva Stadium hosts rugby and soccer.
"The Reflecting City"
Dublin GDP stats
WikiSatellite view of Dublin at WikiMapia
The Dublin Community Blog
Satellite map of Dublin - Including local geographic features.
Dublin - Tourist information.
County towns in Ireland
Dance is a performing art.
It is described in many ways.
It is when people move to a musical rhythm.
They may be alone, or in a group.
The dance may be an informal play, a part of a ritual, or a part of a professional performance.
There are many kinds of dances, and every human society has its own dances.
As with other performing arts, some people dance to express their feelings and emotions, or to feel better.
Dance can be used to tell a story.
In some societies, dance goes with song as well as music.
Dancing is sometimes done as sport, and has similar athletic aspects.
People who want to learn to dance can go to dance schools.
It may take years of practice to become an experienced and capable dancer.
To plan a dance is called choreography, done by a choreographer.
Often this goes with music, and fits into a certain style.
Dances may be planned in detail, or they may be whatever dancers feel like doing.
However, most dancing does follow some general style or pattern.
One style is the couple dance, where (usually) a man and a woman dance together.
Other dances need an ensemble, a group of people together to make it work.
People have always danced.
Every society has its own dances.
There are pictures, on pottery and stone, which show dances from several thousand years ago, in Egypt and Greece.
Sachs divides early dances into 'Imageless dances' and 'Image dances'.
By 'imageless dances' he meant dances which have no set form, but aim at getting the dancers into a state of ecstasy.
In this state the dancer(s) seem changed, in a trance, and are often thought of (by their society) as being 'possessed by spirits'.
These dances are done on certain occasions: marriage, war, famine, illness or death, and so on.
They are found in all early ('primitive') societies.p49; 62
The 'image dances', according to Sachs, are to do with the world outside the dancer.
By imitating an animal or object, the dancer believes he can capture a power and make it useful.
To dance in imitation of the animal which is going to be hunted is to become one with them.
To imitate the act of sex is to achieve fertility.
This is the kind of thinking behind an image dance.
Sachs points out that societies of this kind do not really understand the connection between cause and effect.
They really believe the image dances work.
The dance type which is used in image dances is mime.p49; 77
The two styles of dance may be joined together.
Fertility dances may involve both ecstatic states and mime.
The great dancer Nijinsky used some of these ideas in his choreography for the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), a ballet about the sacrifice of a girl during a primitive celebration of Spring.
In more recent times, the first dance school we know about was opened in 1661 in Paris.
Only men were accepted until 1681.
After 1681, women were accepted too.
Ballroom dances are forms of modern dance.
Ballroom dances such as the waltz are done by couples.
Until the 20th century, most ballroom dances were sequence dances.
The way people moved was planned in set formation.
These formations were usually lines or squares.
Everyone moved at the same time, and finished at the same time.
The music played for a set time, and then stopped.
After the invention of the waltz, around 1800, another style of dancing developed.
In the waltz, and later dances, people danced in couples, but they did so separately.
They did not dance in formation, but moved round the room as they pleased (but anti-clockwise).
Often, new dance styles arrive.
Some dance as individuals, separately, as they please.
Street dance is like that.
All these types of dance have music.
At the same time, round the world there are many traditional dances.
Some of them have been going for hundreds of years.
We call them folkloric dances.
The coming of popular music videos and DVDs led to a kind of dancer previously seen in some stage shows.
A backup dancer (or background dancer) is a performer who dances with or behind the lead performers in a live musical act or in a music video.
Classic dance
Professional dancing
Theatre dance
Belly dancing
Ballroom dancing (International style)
Other styles
Morris Dance
Country Dance
Indian Classical Dances
Bharat Natyam
Mohini Attam
Kathakali
Professional dancers
Antonio Ruiz Soler
The dissolution of the monasteries was an event that happened from 1536 to 1540, when English King Henry VIII took away the land and money that the nuns and monks of the Roman Catholic church owned.
Henry VIII then gave this land and money to people that supported him.
This was also when Henry VIII made himself the new head of the Church of England (which is a type of Christianity).
Parliament made the Act of Supremacy to give him the right to do both these things.
It was part of the Protestant Reformation in England.
History of the British Isles
Very often, it means a time limit that is set in place by an authority - for example, a teacher tells students that they must turn in their homework in by a certain time.
This is so the teacher is able to report fairly to his or her principal that every student had the same chance to do the work.
Deadlines may also be set by a time horizon that comes from something that is not a human authority, but part of nature.
For example, by sunset one must do those tasks requiring daylight.
However, a human must watch the sun and decide what light is strong enough to still be daylight, so time limits will still be involved even if one observes a horizon and sets a deadline oneself.
A way to remember this is that a time horizon is like the physical horizon where sunset happens and a time limit is a thing people set up to deal with this.
A deadline is a thing powerful people set up to ensure less powerful people comply with their way of doing things.
Dutton Speedwords is a  made-up language written by Reginald John Garfield Dutton.
The idea of Dutton Speedwords is to make frequent words short, and very frequent words very short.
Dutton Speedwords can be used as a second language for international communications.
Dutton Speedwords is also a shorthand writing system – this means you can use it to write quickly.
The method was made up by Reginald John Garfield Dutton (1886-1970) in 1922.
It was first published in 1935.
It was called International Symbolic Script.
A year later, it was called Speedwords.
It was changed in 1946 and 1951.
It has two uses; to be a language and to be used for writing quickly.
Dutton hoped that this would mean more people would learn it because they could use it for two reasons.
The books that Dutton wrote about Speedwords are not printed anymore.
But Speedwords is now being used by more people because they find it is good for working online.
For example, it makes it faster to type an email.
Another way of writing quickly is Pitman's shorthand.
This uses special symbols instead of letters.
Speedwords uses Roman letters.
This makes it easier to learn.
It also means it can be typed using a normal keyboard.
Each word means only one thing.
This means you do not need to use different forms of the same word.
The words used in Speedwords are the same as the words used in many other languages.
The words are like short versions of the writer's own language.
overview of Speedwords by Richard K Harrison 1994
Constructed languages
In some religions, the devil is a bad spirit or supernatural being that tries to create problems for people and distance them from God.
Some people also use the words "the Devil" or "Satan" for the most powerful devil.
The word "devil" comes from the Greek word "diabolos" which means "someone who tells lies to hurt you". ("
Diabolos" is translated to the English word "slanderer.")
The New Testament uses "diabolos" as a title for Satan, and so "The Devil" became another name for Satan in English.
In the Old Testament, there is the serpent and the shaitan, who may be two different characters. "
Shaitan" in Hebrew means "adversary", an enemy or opponent.
Shaitan is also the word used for the devil in the Koran, who often appears as an animal and tries to get people to do the wrong thing.
In Christianity the Devil was originally an angel in heaven called Lucifer.
But he refused to love the humans as much as his father, God, as he was instructed, and so he revolted against Heaven.
After a hard fight he was defeated and thrown out of heaven.
Some other angels who helped him were also thrown out.
According to Christianity, the Devil wanted to be a deity besides God and be independent from God.
Therefore, a war in heaven started and the angels battled.
After the Devil lose the battle and was thrown out of heaven, he started doing bad things on the earth.
He wants people to worship him instead of God.
Sometimes he tries to trick people by giving them false promises.
The other angels who were thrown out of heaven became evil spirits called demons.