the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
Wood is a used in thousands of ways, e.g. buildings, furniture, boats, airplanes, wagons, car parts, musical instruments, sports equipment, railroad ties, utility poles, fence posts, pilings, toothpicks, matches, plywood, coffins, shingles, barrel staves, toys, tool handles, picture frames, veneer, charcoal and firewood.
Wood pulp is widely used to make paper, cardboard, cellulose sponges, cellophane and some important plastics and textiles, such as cellulose acetate and rayon.
Bamboo stems also have hundreds of uses, including paper, buildings, furniture, boats, musical instruments, fishing poles, water pipes, plant stakes, and scaffolding.
Trunks of palm trees and tree ferns are often used for building.
Reed stems are also important building materials in some areas.
Tannins used for tanning leather are obtained from the wood of certain trees, such as quebracho.
Cork is obtained from the bark of the cork oak.
Rubber is obtained from the trunks of Hevea brasiliensis.
Rattan, used for furniture and baskets, is made from the stems of tropical vining palms.
Bast fibers for textiles and rope are obtained from stems include flax, hemp, jute and ramie.
The earliest paper was obtained from the stems of papyrus by the ancient Egyptians.
Amber is fossilized sap from tree trunks; it is used for jewelry and may contain ancient animals.
Resins from conifer wood are used to produce turpentine and rosin.
Tree bark is often used as a mulch and in growing media for container plants.
White bark of paper birch
Twisted branches of corkscrew willow and Harry Lauder's walking stick (Corylus avellana 'Contorta')
Red, peeling bark of paperbark maple
NNDB, standing for Notable Names Database, produced by Soylent Communications, is an online database of biographical information of notable people.
As of March 2007, NNDB contains more than 60,000 articles for over 22,000 important people.
Readers may suggest additions or corrections which are later checked by a NNDB staff member.
NNDB - Notable Names Database
Village Voice article, October 7th, 2005
The vascular plants, or tracheophytes, are plants that have specialized tissues for conducting water, minerals, and photosynthetic products through the plant.
They include the ferns, clubmosses, horsetails, flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms.
They are often called the higher plants.
Vascular plants have vascular tissues, which circulate resources through the plant.
This feature allows vascular plants to grow to a larger size than non-vascular plants, which lack these specialized conducting tissues and are therefore restricted to relatively small sizes.
In vascular plants, the principal generation phase is the sporophyte, which is diploid with two sets of chromosomes per cell.
Spore-bearing vascular plants
Equisetophyta ~ horsetails
Lycopodiophyta ~ clubmosses, spikemosses, quillworts
Pteridophyta ~ ferns
Seed-bearing vascular plants - Superdivision Spermatophyta
Pinophyta ~ conifers
Cycadophyta ~ cycads
Ginkgophyta ~ ginkgoes
Gnetophyta ~ gnetophytes
Magnoliophyta ~ flowering plants
The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (  ) is sometimes called the 2 + 4 Treaty.
The treaty formally ended the Second World War.
The Allies of World War II gave up the powers and duties they had had in the two Germanys and in Berlin since the Nazi Surrender in 1945 stopped the fighting in World War II.
Six countries signed the treaty but only five ratified (confirmed) it.
This is because Germany united under one government on 3 October 1990, three weeks after the treaty was signed.
The treaty allowed East and West German reunification into one country.
It said that Germany will be peaceful, and not start wars.
Germany promised to limit the size of its Army, Navy, and Air force, and not to make nuclear bombs.
The treaty also set guidelines about moving the foreign troops that were in Germany.
The USSR was to move all of its troops out of Eastern Germany and Eastern Berlin by 1994.
The three Western allies were asked to keep their troops in Berlin until the Soviets had left.
Germany also promised not to allow NATO troops to move into Eastern Germany, and not to allow certain types of weapons in the East either.
20th century in Berlin
20th century in Moscow
Politics of the Soviet Union
Non-vascular plants is a general term for those plants without a vascular system (xylem and phloem).
Although non-vascular plants do not have these tissues, some of them have other tissues for internal transport of water.
Nonvascular plants have no roots, stems, or leaves.
These structures always have some vascular tissue.
Non-vascular groups
The term "non-vascular plant" is no longer used in biological classification.
Non-vascular plants include two quite different groups:
The Bryophyta (mosses), the Marchantiophyta (liverworts), and the Anthocerotophyta (hornworts).
Because these plants have no water-conducting tissues, they do not have the structural complexity and size of most vascular plants.
Algae - especially the green algae.
Recent studies have demonstrated that the algae actually consist of several unrelated groups.
It turns out that common features of living in water and photosynthesis were misleading as indicators of close relationship.
Only the green algae are still considered relatives of the plants.
In the past, the term non-vascular plant included all the algae, but also the fungi as well.
Today, it is recognized that these groups are not closely related to plants, and have a very different biology.
This is an article about vascular tissue in plants.
For transport in animals, see Circulatory system.
Vascular tissue is a complex tissue found in vascular plants.
Complex means that it is composed of more than one cell type.
There is a meristem associated with vascular tissue: the vascular cambium.
All the vascular tissues within a particular plant together constitute the vascular tissue system of that plant.
Vascular plants
In vascular plants, phloem is the living tissue made up of small tubes which carry watery sap containing sugar and other organic nutrients to all parts of the plant where the nutrients are used for growth, or stored until needed.
The sugar is made by photosynthesis.
In trees, the phloem is the innermost layer of the bark, therefore the name, that comes from the Greek word φλοιος (phloios) for "bark".
Aphids (greenfly) and other insects feed on the phloem by inserting a fine tube into the plant, penetrating the tiny phloem cells deep within the plant.
The high pressure in the phloem tubes forces the phloem sap into the insect.
Most of the sugar passes right through the insect, so that nearby surfaces get sticky and often become black due to the growth of fungus.
Water, which is absorbed by the plant's roots, travels up the stem to the leaf through the xylem.
This means that the xylem helps during photosynthesis by bringing water up the plant.
It does the same job that blood vessels do in animals.
Plant tissues
Walter Matthau (October 1, 1920–July 1, 2000) was an American actor.
He starred with Jack Lemmon in The Odd Couple and its sequel The Odd Couple II.
He won the Academy Award for The Fortune Cookie.
Atomic Attack (1950) (short subject)
The Kentuckian (1955)
The Indian Fighter (1955)
Bigger Than Life (1956)
A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1957)
King Creole (1958)
Voice in the Mirror (1958)
Ride a Crooked Trail (1958)
Onionhead (1958)
Gangster Story (1960) (also director)
Strangers When We Meet (1960)
Lonely are the Brave (1962)
Who's Got the Action? (
Island of Love (1963)
Charade (1963)
Ensign Pulver (1964)
Fail-Safe (1964)
Goodbye Charlie (1964)
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
A Guide for the Married Man (1967)
The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968)
Candy (1968)
Hello, Dolly! (
Cactus Flower (1969)
A New Leaf (1971)
Plaza Suite (1971)
Kotch (1971)
Pete 'n' Tillie (1972)
The Laughing Policeman (1973)
Charley Varrick (1973)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Earthquake (1974) (credited as "Walter Matuschanskayasky")
The Front Page (1974)
The Lion Roars Again (1975) (short subject)
The Gentleman Tramp (1975) (documentary)
Bad News Bears (1976)
Casey's Shadow (1978)
House Calls (1978)
California Suite (1978)
Portrait of a 60% Perfect Man (1980) (documentary)
Little Miss Marker (1980)
Hopscotch (1980)
First Monday in October (1981)
Buddy Buddy (1981)
I Ought to Be in Pictures (1982)
The Survivors (1983)
Movers & Shakers (1985)
Pirates (1986)
The Little Devil (1988)
The Couch Trip (1988)
JFK (1991) as Senator Russell B. Long
Beyond 'JFK': The Question of Conspiracy (1992) (documentary)
Dennis the Menace (1993)
Grumpy Old Men (1993)
I.Q. (1994)
The Grass Harp (1995)
Grumpier Old Men (1995)
I'm Not Rappaport (1996)
Out to Sea (1997)
The Odd Couple II (1998)
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1998) (documentary)
Hanging Up (2000)
Humorous Quotes
Walter Matthau & Jack Lemmon (In German)
Susan Sarandon (born October 4, 1946) is an American actress.
She was born in New York City and grew up in Edison, New Jersey.
She has received many awards in her career for her work, including the Academy Award in 1995 for her role at the movie Dead Man Walking, written and directed by her partner, actor and director Tim Robbins.
Timothy Francis Robbins (born October 16, 1958) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, producer, activist, and amateur musician.
He has won many awards in his career, including the Academy Award in 2004 for his work in Mystic River.
He was born in West Covina, Los Angeles County and raised in New York City.
He was the partner of actress Susan Sarandon from 1988-2009.
Video Interview with Tim Robbins on AMC's Sunday Morning Shootout
Embedded Live, the play  and Embedded /Live, the DVD
See also, Embedded Live, the interview, from CBC News: The Hour
Interview from On The Media, February 20, 2004
Interview from Media Matters, June 5, 2005
Tim Robbins' federal campaign contribution report
TheAge.com Article: "Tim Robbins: Hall of Fame Violates Freedom"
Robbins' blog at The Huffington Post
Audio interview of Tim Robbins  by Stephanie Miller on The Stephanie Miller Show about Robbins' play, 1984
Tigran Chukhajian was a famous Armenian composer and the founder of the first opera institution in the Ottoman Empire.
He composed the first Armenian opera, Arshak II, about the life of Armenian king Arshak II.
Armenian composers
Jamie Lee Curtis, Lady Haden-Guest (born November 22, 1958) is an American actress and author.
Although at the beginning of her career she was known as “The one girl” because of her roles in many horror movies beginning in her first ever movie Halloween (1978) as Laurie Strode, Curtis has since worked in a lot of different movie genres.
She has received an  Grammy Award nomination and two Golden Globe Awards.
Her 1998 book, Today I Feel Gross, and Other Grammy That Make My Day, made the best-seller list in The New York Times.
In late the 2010s, Curtis returned as Strode in the horror movie Halloween (2018) and in the upcoming sequels Halloween Kills (2020) and Halloween Ends (2021).
She also played Linda Drysdale in the mystery comedy movie Knives Out (2019).
Curtis was born in Santa Monica, California.
She is the daughter of actor Tony Curtis and actress Janet Leigh.
Her paternal grandparents were Hungarian Jewish immigrants and two of her maternal great-grandparents were Danish.
Curtis's parents divorced in 1962, after which her mother married Robert Brandt.
Curtis has an older sister, Kelly Curtis, who is also an actress, and several half-siblings (all from her father's remarriages), Alexandra, Allegra, Ben, and Nicholas Curtis (who died in 1994 of a drug overdose).
Curtis attended Westlake School (now Harvard-Westlake School) in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills High School, and graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall.
Returning to California in 1976, she attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.
She considered majoring in social work, but quit after one semester to pursue an acting career.
Jamie Lee Curtis interview
Jamie Lee Curtis Fansite
People's Republic (sometimes called Popular Republic) is a name for a communist, usually Marxist-Leninist country.
Currently, the People's Republic of China (PRC) is the only Marxist-Leninist state in the world that uses the title "People's Republic".
Because of this, "People's Republic" is sometimes used to refer to China.
The term is also found in the official name of North Korea - Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Michael Andrew Fox  (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a retired Canadian-American actor, author, film producer and activist with a film and television career spanning from the 1970s to 2020.
He played Marty McFly in Back to the Future trilogy.
On television, he played Alex P. Keaton in the NBC sitcom Family Ties and Mike Flaherty on the ABC sitcom Spin City.
He has won five Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, and told the public about it in 1998.
He semi-retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of the disease worsened.
He has since become an advocate for research toward finding a cure, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Sweden's Karolinska Institute gave him an honorary doctorate on March 5, 2010 for his work advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Fox has also worked as a voice-over actor on films, such as Stuart Little and  Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
On the CBS television show The Good Wife, he earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years for his recurring role as crafty attorney Louis Canning.
He has also taken recurring guest roles and cameo appearances in Boston Legal, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rescue Me, and Designated Survivor.
He has written four books.
Fox was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010 and was also inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2000.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research
The Michael J. Fox Database
Entertainers from Edmonton
"Hurt" is a song sung by Christina Aguilera, from her 2006 album Back to Basics.
The song was written by Aguilera, Linda Perry and Mark Ronson.
It is a slow, emotional ballad.
It was released as the second single from her Back to Basics album, after "Ain't No Other Man".
It charted in many countries in the world.
A movie producer creates the conditions for making movies.
The producer checks and controls things such as getting the money to make the movie, employing personnel, and arranging for distributors.
The producer is involved in all parts of the process of making a movie from the beginning to completion of a project.
Usually, the producer is considered the chief of staff and  is in control of the non-artistic side of movie making, while the director is in charge of the filming and the artistic part.
Producers Guild of America Frequently Asked Questions
Gastroenteritis is a medical term for inflammation of the stomach and intestines.
It causes diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain.
It usually happens because of infection by a virus or bacteria.
Other common terms for gastroenteritis include infectious diarrhea, stomach bug, and stomach virus.
It is sometimes called stomach flu or gastric flu, but it is not related to the influenza virus (which is often shortened to 'flu').
Infectious_diseases
Television pilot, usually called just a pilot, is a test episode made to sell a television series.
It may be broadcast as the first episode if the series is sold to a network or cable channel, and sometimes has different actors or other differences to the real series.
There are also many series whose pilot episodes are titled "Pilot".
While many pilots are made, few make it to the screen, and even fewer go on to become full television series because of big competition between networks and producers.
There are many types of television pilots.
Some pilots are put on other shows first to start the show.
These are called "backdoor pilots".
An example of a backdoor pilot is "Gloria: The First Day" is an episode in Archie Bunker's Place but is used to start Gloria.
A "put pilot" is a pilot that a network agrees to put on television and if they do no they have to pay a lot of money to the television studio.
An "unsold pilot" is a pilot episode that are made by a studio but are not put on television.
James Montgomery Doohan (March 3, 1920 – July 20, 2005) LVO was a Canadian actor and voice actor.
He is best known for his role as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the movie and television series Star Trek.
Doohan's character was one of the most typical elements in the Star Trek franchise.
Doohan was also a veteran of World War II.
After his success with Star Trek, he showed a lot of support through the years for his fans by making many public appearances.
Doohan in Slashdot thread
Washington Post obituary "The Actor, Boldly Going With the Flow"
Javanese (); ; Aksara Jawa: ; Pegon: ; ) is the native language of Javanese people which originated from the island of Java.
Being the most populous island in the world, a lot of community in Java island could understand the Javanese language naturally despite not having a Javanese-ethnic identity.
The Javanese language is recognized as one of the regional languages ( the native or indigenous languages) in Indonesia with the largest speakers concentrated in the provinces of Yogyakarta, Central Java, and  East Java.
The Javanese language also recognized as one of the minority languages in some countries worldwide, mainly in Suriname, Netherlands, New Caledonia, Hong Kong, Australia, Carribean, Sri Lanka, and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries.
Demographic distribution of Javanese speakers
Javanese is spoken throughout Indonesia, neighboring Southeast Asian countries, the Netherlands, Suriname, New Caledonia and other countries.
However, the greatest concentration of speakers is in the six provinces of Java itself, and in the neighboring Sumatran province of Lampung.
Javanese Writing System
Ethnologue report on Javanese
Javanese in Suriname strive to preserve origins Jakarta Post article
Anything related to Java, an island of Indonesia
Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and producer and activist.
He has acted in movies and on television, who came to fame as Insp.
Steve Keller in the popular 1970s television series The Streets of San Francisco.
He later became a successful movie star, and won the Academy Award in 1987 for his work in Wall Street.
Douglas has acted in many other successful movies, including Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct.
He is the eldest son of actor Kirk Douglas, but also Krirk Douglas and Mrirk Douglas.
He is the husband of actress Catherine Zeta-Jones.
In 2010, he was diagnosed with throat cancer; in 2011 he said he had recovered.
Michael Douglas Unofficial Fan website
Michael Douglas  Personal Documents Archive at the Wisconsin Historical Society
Douglas family
Kirk Douglas (born Issur Danielovitch; December 9, 1916 – February 5, 2020) was an American actor and movie producer.
His parents were Jews from the Russian Empire.
Douglas has acted in many of Hollywood's most well-known of all time, including Spartacus.
He also starred as Vincent van Gogh in Lust for Life.
He is also father to actor and producer Michael Douglas.
He came in at #17 on AFI's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time and was one of two living actors on the list (Sidney Poitier is the other).
In 1995, he was given an Honorary Academy Award.
In 1956, he won a Golden Globe Award.
Kirk Douglas died on February 5, 2020 in Beverly Hills, California at the age of 103.
Personal papers of Kirk Douglas at the Wisconsin Historical Society - Roughly 180,000 documents on Douglas's personal and professional life
Newcritics.com: Meeting Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas, le champion de Hollywood (in French)
People from Amsterdam, New York
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was one of the most famous American movie and stage actors of all times.
In his career, he starred in many movies considered classics and was nominated for five Oscars, winning one in competition and one life achievement.
He also had an important military career, and made it to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Air Force.
Stewart became so familiar to the American public that he was most usually referred to by them as "Jimmy" Stewart.
Obituary, NY Times, July 3, 1997, James Stewart, the Hesitant Hero, Dies at 89
The Jimmy Stewart Museum
Presidential Medal of Freedom: Jimmy Stewart
Deaths from pulmonary thrombosis
James Francis Cagney, Jr. (July 17, 1899 – March 30, 1986) was an American movie actor who had many roles in his long career, and won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1942 for his role in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Like James Stewart, Cagney became so familiar to the public that they usually referred to him as "Jimmy" Cagney.
In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Cagney eighth among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time.
James Cagney's Thug Life Fan site with hundreds of photos
The New York Times (March 31, 1986): "James Cagney Is Dead at 86; Master of Pugnacious Grace", by Peter B. Flint
Spencer Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American movie and stage actor who appeared in movies for thirty years.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Tracy among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking 9th on the list of 100.
He was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor, and won it two times, in 1937 and 1938.
Along with Tom Hanks, he is one of the only two actors to ever be given two Oscars in two consecutive years.
He was a long-time live-in partner of famous actress Katharine Hepburn whilst remaining legally married to another woman until his death.
He was diabetic and died of a heart attack.
He was a devout Catholic.
The Strong Arm (1930)
Taxi Talks (1930)
The Hard Guy (1930)
Up the River (1930)
Quick Millions (1931)
Six Cylinder Love (1931)
Goldie (1931)
She Wanted a Millionaire (1932)
Sky Devils (1932)
Disorderly Conduct (1932)
Young America (1932)
Society Girl (1932)
The Painted Woman (1932)
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932)
The Face in the Sky (1933)
Shanghai Madness (1933)
The Power and the Glory (1933)
Man's Castle (1933)
The Mad Game (1933)
The Show-Off (1934)
Looking for Trouble (1934)
Now I'll Tell (1934)
Marie Galante (1934)
It's a Small World (1935)
The Murder Man (1935)
Whipsaw (1935)
Riffraff (1936)
Fury (1936)
They Gave Him a Gun (1937)
Big City (1937)
Mannequin (1938)
Hollywood Goes to Town (1938)
For Auld Lang Syne: No.
4 (1939)
Hollywood Hobbies (1939)
Stanley and Livingstone (1939)
I Take This Woman (1940)
Young Tom Edison (1940) (cameo)
Northward, Ho! (
Northwest Passage (1940)
Edison, the Man (1940)
Men of Boys Town (1941)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Ring of Steel (1942) (narrator)
Tortilla Flat (1942)
Keeper of the Flame (1942)
His New World (1943) (documentary) (narrator)
The Seventh Cross (1944)
Without Love (1945)
The Sea of Grass (1947)
Cass Timberlane (1947)
State of the Union (1948)
Edward, My Son (1949)
Malaya (1949)
For Defense for Freedom for Humanity (1951)
Father's Little Dividend (1951)
The People Against O'Hara (1951)
Pat and Mike (1952)
Plymouth Adventure (1952)
The Actress (1953)
Broken Lance (1954)
Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
The Mountain (1956)
Pedobear z Krainy Gumisiów (1957)
The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
The Last Hurrah (1958)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961)
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
How the West Was Won (1962) (narrator)
Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901 – May 13, 1961) was an American movie actor whose career lasted 36 years.
Cooper received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, and won it two times, in 1941 and 1952.
He also received an Honorary Award from the Academy in 1961.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Cooper among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, ranking at No.
The Gary Cooper Pages
Find-A-Grave profile for Gary Cooper
Photographs of Gary Cooper
People from Helena, Montana
He worked at Lick Observatory beginning in 1888 but was appointed director of the University of Pittsburgh's  Allegheny Observatory in 1891.
He returned to Lick Observatory as its director in 1898, but died not long after in 1900.
He had married in 1891 and left a widow and two children.
The mission was made by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and Italian Space Agency (ASI).
The spacecraft had two main parts: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe.
It was launched on October 15, 1997 and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004.
It was the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn and the fourth one to visit Saturn (the others were fly-by's and did not enter orbit).
The mission ended September 2017.
Cassini orbiter
The orbiter was named after the Italian-French astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who discovered some moons of Saturn.
Most of the orbiter was designed and built by NASA, although ASI built and programmed some parts that talked to the Huygens probe.
The spacecraft spent 13 years in orbit, sending back data.
It visited many parts of the Saturn system until it was short of fuel.
The Cassini–Huygens ended with a controlled crash into Saturn's atmosphere on September 15, 2017.
Huygens probe
ESA (European Space Agency) made the Huygens probe, named after the Dutch astronomer, mathematician, and physicist Christiaan Huygens who discovered Titan.
On December 25 2004, the Huygens probe left the orbiter.
A couple weeks later, the probe parachuted onto Saturn's largest moon Titan.
Astronomers have wondered what the surface of Titan was like, since it was hidden under thick clouds.
It is the only moon in our solar system with a thick atmosphere.
The probe descended and sent pictures and other data back for scientists to study.
After 90 minutes on the moon, the spacecraft stopped working, as expected.
It is the farthest place we have ever landed a spacecraft.
The pictures sent while parachuting showed rivers, probably of liquid methane.
The surface is much too cold for water.
Spacecraft Cassini is Visiting Saturn! —
children's stories explaining the Cassini mission
Cassini-Huygens Main Page at NASA
Cassini Mission Homepage  by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Cassini-Huygens Mission Profile  by NASA's Solar System Exploration
Cassini Imaging Homepage
Cassini information by the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC).
Photo Gallery - full coverage
Cassini's Tour de Saturn part A, B, C, D, E, F – descriptions of the 4-year tour of Saturn by Bruce Moomaw
SpaceflightNow news coverage of the mission
Countdown to Cancel the Cassini Space Probe by the Baltimore Peace Network in 1997 due to concerns over the use of plutonium
NASA spacecraft
Ferns are a group of about 20,000 species of plants (of which about 10,000 are living) in the division Pteridophyta.
Unlike bryophytes, ferns have xylem and phloem, which makes them vascular plants.
Most ferns belong to the Class Leptosporangiata (or Pteridopsida).
This includes most of those you see in gardens and woods.
The horsetails belong to another class, the Equisetopsida, which was extremely important in the Carboniferous period.<ref>Taylor, Thomas N. & Edith L. Taylor.
The biology and evolution of fossil plants.
303–305.
.</ref> Only one genus survives.
The other classes of fern are also quite small today.
Ferns do not have waxes or special cells on their surface that keep water from evaporating.
This means that they best live in a place where there is a lot of fog or has a lot of rainfall and is in a shade that protects them from direct sunlight.
They have roots, stems, leaves.
Their stems may form runners, called stolons above the ground, or rhizomes below ground.
The leaves are green and large, and may bear spores on the underside.
Some ferns can grow large in moist places.
They can survive in more places than moss, but not so many as flowering plants.
During the Carboniferous period – from 350 million years ago – ferns lived everywhere on land.
Horsetails grew up to 30 metres.
There were huge forests of ferns and mosses, full of giant insects.
Today, there are not so many large ferns.
Ferns do not have seeds.
Instead, they reproduce through spores.
Pryer, Kathleen M., Harald Schneider, Alan R. Smith, Raymond Cranfill, Paul G. Wolf, Jeffrey S. Hunt and Sedonia D. Sipes.
Horsetails and ferns are a monophyletic group and the closest living relatives to seed plants.
Nature 409: 618-622 (abstract here).
Pryer, Kathleen M., Eric Schuettpelz, Paul G. Wolf, Harald Schneider, Alan R. Smith and Raymond Cranfill.
Phylogeny and evolution of ferns (monilophytes) with a focus on the early leptosporangiate divergences.
American Journal of Botany 91:1582-1598 (online abstract here ).
Moran, Robbin C. 2004.
A natural history of ferns.
Portland, OR: Timber Press. .
Lord, Thomas R. 2006.
Ferns and fern allies of Pennsylvania.
Indiana, PA: Pinelands Press.
Smith A.R., K.M. Pryer, E. Schuettpelz, P. Korall, H. Schneider & P.G. Wolf.
A classification for extant ferns.
Taxon'' 55(3):705–731.online available
Tree of Life Web Project: Filicopsida
A classification of the ferns and their allies
A fern book bibliography
Register of fossil Pteridophyta
L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz (2004 onwards).
The Ferns (Filicopsida) of the British Isles.
Non-seed plant images at bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
A horror movie is a movie made to scare the viewer.
The main stories of horror movies often involve supernatural forces or characters of evil origin.
Horror movies are often confused with thrillers, which are similar.
Popular horror movie characters usually include monsters.
Early horror movies often took ideas from classic literature, such as The Mummy, Dracula and The Wolf Man.
Slasher movies
Slasher movies are a subgenre of horror movies.
They are often also a type of thriller movie.
Slasher movies normally have a psychopathic killer killing a sequence of people.
This is usually in a very violent way.
The genre may have been inspired by giallo, a similar movie genre originating in Italy.
While movies made as early as 1932 had aspects of slasher movies in them, the genre was not really defined until the late 1970s.
The 1974 movie Black Christmas is considered the first slasher movie.. Halloween (1978),  Friday the 13th (1980) and Scream (1996) did very well at the box office and showed that slasher movies could make lots of money.
Psychological horror movies
Psychological horror movies are a subgenre of traditional horror movies which focuses more on the mental instability of its characters than on graphic violence, serial killers or monsters, for example.
Most of the time this genre deal with the character's phobias, psychological traumas, paranoia, and etc.
The genre often overlaps with psychological thriller as well.
Dead Silence (2007), The Shining and Babadook (2014), are some examples of psychological horror movies.
Comedy horror movies
Those are movies which blends horror and comic elements in its plot.
Unlike common, traditional horror movies, in this movie genre, the viewer may be scared and laugh at the same time.
Most of time, the type of humour used in these movies is black comedy.
Some examples includes Zombieland (2009), The Raven (1963) and Shaun of The Dead (2004).
Movie genres
Laurence Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961) is an American actor of movies and theater, playwright, director, and producer.
He was nominated for the Oscar, and won the Emmy and Tony Awards.
He is famous for his roles in successful movies like Apocalypse Now and The Matrix.
Fishburne was the first African-American actor to play Perry White in Man of Steel.
Laurence Fishburne  at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
African-American stage actors
Martin Sheen (born August 3, 1940) is a Spanish-Irish-American actor.
He is best known for his role as Captain Willard in the film Apocalypse Now and, most recently, as President Josiah Bartlet on the acclaimed and long-running television drama series The West Wing.
He won both the Emmy and Golden Globe Awards for his works.
His mother was an Irish immigrant; his father was a Spanish immigrant.
The Progressive magazine interview
Martin Sheen: Catholic President on Prime Time  article at AmericanCatholic.org
PBS interview with audio clips: Martin Sheen on Poverty, Faith and Social Activism
2001 NPR Interview about his experiences filming Apocalypse Now
Actors from Dayton, Ohio
Marlene Dietrich ; (27 December 1901 – 6 May 1992) was a German-American actress, singer, and entertainer.
She is considered to have been the first German actress to become successful in Hollywood.
In her long career, starting as a cabaret singer, chorus girl and movie actress in Berlin in the 1920s, Hollywood movie star in the 1930s, World War II entertainer at the front of war during the 1940s, and finally as an international theatre show performer from the 1950s to the 1970s, Dietrich became one of the most important movie icons of the 20th century.
The American Film Institute ranked Dietrich No.
9 amongst the Greatest Female Stars of All Time.
Dietrich was bisexual.
She became an American citizen in 1937.
Im Schatten des Glücks (1919)
Love Tragedy (1923)
The Little Napoleon (1923)
Man by the Wayside (1923)
Leap Into Life (1924)
Dance Mad (1925)
The Bogus Baron (1926)
Manon Lescaut (1926)
Madame Doesn't Want Children (1926)
A Modern DuBarry (1927)
Chin Up, Charley! (
His Greatest Bluff (1927)
Cafe Electric (1927)
Princess Olala (1928)
Dangers of the Engagement Period (1929)
I Kiss Your Hand Madame (1929)
The Woman One Longs For (1929)
The Ship of Lost Men (1929)
The Blue Angel (1930)
Morocco (1930)
Dishonored (1931)
Shanghai Express (1932)
Blonde Venus (1932)
The Song of Songs (1933)
The Scarlet Empress (1934)
The Fashion Side of Hollywood (1935) (short subject)
The Devil is a Woman (1935)
I Loved a Soldier (1936) (unfinished)
Desire (1936)
The Garden of Allah (1936)
Knight Without Armour (1937)
Angel (1937)
Seven Sinners (1940)
The Flame of New Orleans (1941)
Manpower (1941)
The Lady in Willing (1942)
The Spoilers (1942)
Pittsburgh (1942)
Show Business at War (1943) (short subject)
Follow the Boys (1944)
Kismet (1944)
Martin Roumagnac (1946)
Golden Earrings (1947)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
Jigsaw (1949) (cameo)
Stage Fright (1950)
Rancho Notorious (1952)
The Monte Carlo Story (1956)
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) (cameo)
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Black Fox: The True Story of Adolf Hitler (1962) (documentary) (narrator)
Paris, When It Sizzles (1964) (cameo)
An Evening With Marlene Dietrich (I Wish You Love) (1972) London concert film
Just a Gigolo (1979)
Marlene (1984) (documentary)
Marlene Dietrich UK Website The Legendary, Lovely Marlene
LEGEND : Marlene Dietrich's concert career.
The Hitmaker Archive of Dietrich's recordings associated with Burt Bacharach's musical direction
"Lost Marlene Dietrich Love Poem to Ronald Reagan Found"
Gay Great - Marlene Dietrich
ABC Nightline (03/28/07): 'I Want to Kiss You Forever': Romance and Friendship Mix in Rare Dietrich, Hemingway Letters Set for First Public Viewing
Marlene Dietrich's mascot dolls
Marlene Dietrich Collection, Berlin (MDCB)
German stage actors
German singers
Northern Kurdistan, or Turkish Kurdistan, is the part of Kurdistan which is in Turkey, in the Middle East.
To the south-west is Syrian Kurdistan, and to the south-east is Iraqi Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan.
tr:Kürdistan#Türkiye Kürdistanı
Mount Etna is a volcano on the east coast of Sicily, part of southern Italy.
It is the largest active volcano in Europe.
Mount Etna erupts every few years.
Etna's most destructive eruption in historic times started on 11 March 1669.
It produced lava flows that destroyed 10 villages and reached the town of Catania five weeks later, on 15 April.
Many buildings were destroyed and few people were killed.
Major twentieth century eruptions occurred in 1928, 1949, 1971, 1983 and 1992, as well as the 2001 eruption.
In 1971, it buried the Etna Observatory (built in the late 19th century) under lava.
The 1992 eruption saw the town of Zafferana threatened by a lava flow, but successful diversion efforts saved the town with the loss of only one building a few hundred metres outside it.
In 2002–2003, the biggest series of eruptions for many years threw up a huge column of ash that could easily be seen from space and fell as far away as Libya, on the far side of the Mediterranean Sea.
Seismic activity in this eruption caused the eastern flanks of the volcano to slip by up to two metres, and many houses on the flanks of the volcano were damaged.
The eruption also destroyed the Rifugio Sapienza, a ski resort on the southern flank of the volcano.
Mount Etna Live Webcam
Italy's Volcanoes: The Cradle of Volcanology, with detailed information of Italy's volcanoes, including Etna
Stromboli Online, with info on Etna, photo galleries and video clips of Etna's past eruptions including those of the 1990s and the 2000s
Mount Vesuvius -Citizendium
Rojava, or Western Kurdistan, or Syrian Kurdistan, is a part of divided Kurdistan in the Middle East.
It consists of three areas called 'cantons' in Northern Syria but the Syrian government is not in control there.
Instead, since a revolution which happened early on in the Syrian Civil War, it has had its own independent government, although it does not claim to be a new independent country, calling itself a 'federal autonomous region' inside of Syria instead.
Many people in Rojava are Kurds, but there are also many different ethnic groups living there, such as Turkmen, Arabs, Syriacs, Assyrians, and Yezidis.
Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group in Syria.
Before the civil war, many human rights organizations such as Amnesty International said that the Syrian government treated the Kurds very poorly.
Kurds in Syria are not allowed to officially use the Kurdish language, and also  not allowed to register children with Kurdish names, start businesses that do not have Arabic names, build Kurdish private schools, or publish any books or other materials written in Kurdish.
But this is no longer enforced due to the civil war.
This gave the Kurds many reasons to support a revolution against the government.
They also needed to organize an army to defend themselves from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which almost took control of Rojava because the government could not defend it due to the civil war.
ISIL is still at war with Rojava.
As of 2017, there is a truce between Rojava and the Syrian government.
The United States have given money and weapons to Rojava to help  defeat ISIL but some say that they are supporting ISIL.
Rojava is claiming to be a democracy.
It has a constitution which says that women's rights and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities have to be respected.
In the Middle East this is very unusual.
There are two military organisations one for men, the YPG, and an army for women, the YPJ.
The Kurds are the largest ethnic group (group of people) in the world that does not have its own state.
The Kurds are traditionally nomadic (with no fixed living place) and live in a region in Asia called Kurdistan.
Most of Kurdistan is mountainous.
There are parts of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and in Syria.
There is discussion in academia about the origins (start) and migrations (movements of people) of the Kurds in history.
Many other groups have also lived in Kurdistan in the past.
The ancestors of modern Kurds probably arrived in Iran in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.
Kurdistan was part of the empire of the Medes, then the Achaemenid Empire, the Seleucid Empire, the Roman and Byzantine empire, and then the Sassanid Empire.
In the 7th century AD, the Muslim conquests of the Ancient Near East meant that Kurdistan became part of the Rashidun Empire.
The Kurdish tribes (social groups) in Upper Mesopotamia and the western Iranian plateau fought against the attacking armies for a time.
Most Kurds became part of the Shafi`ite division of Islam.
In the three centuries after this, some Kurds gained some autonomy (self-rule) for their culture and politics, in the time of the Umayyad Caliphate and the following Abbasid Caliphate.
The Kurdish Ayyubid dynasty (line of rulers) rose to power in the 10th century, as the power of the Abbasid Caliphate fell.
The first Ayyubid ruler was Saladin.
He was greatly famous for taking back Jerusalem for the Muslims in the Siege of Jerusalem in 1187.
His empire took over much of Syria and the Near East.
In 1193, Saladin died and was buried in Damascus, where some of his soldiers then chose to live.
The "Kurdish quarter" (an area in the city) where these soldiers lived was a place where Kurdish language and culture was in existence into the 20th century.
In the 11th century, Krak de Chevaliers, a castle (military building made strong against attack) in the Alawite Mountains, was named "fortress of the Kurds" or "Castle of the Kurds".
The armies of the Mongol Empire attacked Ayyubid Syria in the middle of the 13th century.
The Mamluks overcame the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260.
In the early 16th century, the Mamluks lost control of Syria when the Ottoman Empire overcame them in war.
Sharaf Khan Bidlisi wrote the Sharafnama in 1596.
The Sharafnama was an epic history of the Kurds from the 13th century to the late 16th century.
In the Saharfnama, Sharaf Khan Bidlisi wrote that Kurdistan was the country between the Persian Gulf and the vilayets (local government areas) of Malatya and Marash (modern Kahramanmaraş).
Sharaf Khan Bidlisi thought that the Lurs people were Kurds and that Kurdistan was very large.
He wrote that parts of the vilayets of Diyarbakır, Mosul, "Persian Iraq", "Arabic Iraq", Fars Province, Azerbaijan, Lesser Armenia, and Greater Armenia were part of Kurdistan.
Ahmad Khani wrote the Mem û Zîn in 1692.
He wrote that Kurdistan was about the same size.
Haji Qadir Koyi wrote poetry in the 19th century.
He wrote that northern Syria was part of Kurdistan.
He also wrote that Kurdistan contained the cities of Nusaybin (ancient Nisibis) and Alexandretta (İskenderun).
Alexandretta is a port (harbour city) on the Mediterranean Sea.
At the start of the 17th century, the Ottoman Sultans ordered Kurds from different parts of their empire to move to the area around the Euphrates river.
These Kurds were told to live on both sides of the river.
The western side of the river and the town of Kobanî were where most of these Kurds lived afterwards.
In the 18th century, some of these Kurdish people in Greater Syria (also named Bilad al-Sham) kept their Kurdish culture and their relations with Kurds in other parts of Kurdistan.
Other Kurdish tribes were assimilated (taken in) by Arab tribes who also lived there.
French Syria (1920–1946)
The result of World War I (1914—1918) was very important for the history of the Kurds.
The Triple Entente overcame the Ottoman Empire, and the lands where Kurdish people lived before the war were separated.
The lands were cut by the borders belonging to the new countries of Iraq, Turkey, and Syria.
In 1916, the United Kingdom and French Third Republic had secretly agreed on how to share the territory in the Near East in the Sykes–Picot Agreement.
The agreement was used to decide the borders for a long time.
This was very influential and important, and stayed in the memory of Kurdish people as a betrayal by imperialism.
When the fighting was completed in World War I and the Arab Revolt, Britain and France suggested a Kurdish state could be set up.
However, neither country wanted to pull back their armies from the lands that had been Ottoman (the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration).
In late 1919, the French Armed Forces fought their first battle with the Kurds, in the Kurd Mountains.
In this campaign (military operation), the French soldiers soon won victory, but they also had to fight Kurds in al-Jazira, and there they did not succeed so easily.
The British and French governments did not want to move their armies back, and because of this they said any Kurdish state would have to be in parts of Kurdistan controlled by Turkey in August 1920, when the Ottomans, British, and French all signed the Treaty of Sèvres.
The Turks did not fully agree to (ratify) this treaty (agreement between nations), but it would have brought into existence a small independent Kurdistan under French control (suzerainty).
This state, which did not become a material fact, would have been without the Kurdish lands in Iraq, Iran, or Syria.
The Turkish National Movement led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Kemalists (supporters of Atatürk) did not agree to the Treaty of Sèvres.
After they fought the Franco-Turkish War, France and Turkey signed the Treaty of Ankara in 1921.
This treaty meant that the border between French-controlled Syria and the new Republic of Turkey was moved further south than had been agreed in the Treaty of Sèvres.
Turkey and France both tried to make good relations with tribes in the border area, hoping that they would help to get control over the land.
In 1923, Turkey and the great powers (most powerful nations) agreed the Treaty of Lausanne.
This treaty meant that no independent Kurdistan or Kurdish state would come into existence.
Instead, the Kurdish areas of the old Ottoman Empire were separated by the border between Turkey to the north, and British Iraq and French Syria to the south.
The new border between Turkey and Syria was agreed to be the railway line running through the area: the part of the Berlin–Baghdad railway line that went between the cities of Aleppo and Mosul.
The north side of the railway became Turkey, and the south side became French Syria.
This meant that Arab areas were left in Turkey and Kurdish areas in Syria.
Thomas Schmidinger, a German cultural anthropologist wrote that modern Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan, came into existence as "a waste product of the colonial division of the Middle East" south of the Berlin–Baghdad railway line.
From then until the present day, Kurdish people do not see themselves as "Syrian" or "Turkish".
For Kurds in Turkey, Syria is "below the line" () on the map, but for Kurds in Syria, Turkey is "above the line" ().
On the south side of the railway line, in French Syria, some mostly Kurdish areas came under the control of France.
These Kurdish areas were around the Kurd Mountains (Kurd-Dagh), around the town of Jarabulus, and the lands in Upper Mesopotamia (the Northern Jazira).
They had been given to France after World War I. From the start of French control in Syria, the geography of these separated areas was very important for their later history.
According to the historian Jordi Tejel, "These three Kurdish enclaves constituted … a natural extension of Kurdish territory into Turkey and Iraq".
The new borders meant that the Kurdish people in the area were divided into two groups, with two different governments.
However, they were able to come and go across the border: there was at first no material separation.
However, events in Turkey had deep effects on Syrian Kurds.
Many Kurds ran away from Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s because of repression by the Kemalist government.
The Kurds in Turkey rose up against the government in the Sheikh Said rebellion (1925) and the Ararat rebellion (1927–1930).
These uprisings failed, and after them many Kurds ran away from the Turkish government, coming to live in Syria.
The French government in Syria, led by the High Commissioner of the Levant in Beirut, tried to improve the profits from land in the Jazira by making these Kurdish refugees live there.
The government hoped to make their control over Syria more popular in France, where the population disliked French colonialism in Syria.
France's military operations were made more difficult by propaganda supporting Turkey which the Turks gave to the Kurdish and Arab tribes.
There was fighting against the French in the Jazira until 1926.
The French government's settlement of Kurdish refugees in the Jazira made Kurdishness a political subject in Syria.
By 1927, there were 47 villages in the Jazira whose population had a Kurdish majority.
The population of Kurds and the number of Kurdish villages both increased from 1918 to 1939.
The Kurds came from outside Syrian Kurdistan, which meant that the Kurdish population in the Jazira increased even more.
The brothers Celadet Bedir Khan and Kamuran Alî Bedirxan started to use the Latin alphabet, which then became normal in Syrian Kurdistan and in Turkish Kurdistan.
At the start, French Syria's Kurds mostly spoke Kurmanji, a Kurdish language spoken in the north of Kurdistan.
In French Syria, Kurds lived both in the three enclaves of Syrian Kurdistan and outside them, in the rest of Syria.