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Anarchism | Q6199 | Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. A historically left-wing movement, anarchism is usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement (libertarian socialism).
Although traces of anarchist ideas are found all throughout history, modern anarchism emerged from the Enlightenment. During the latter half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation. Various anarchist schools of thought formed during this period. Anarchists have taken part in several revolutions, most notably in the Paris Commune, the Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War, whose end marked the end of the classical era of anarchism. In the last decades of the 20th and into the 21st century, the anarchist movement has been resurgent once more, growing in popularity and influence within anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-globalisation movements.
Anarchists employ diverse approaches, which may be generally divided into revolutionary and evolutionary strategies; there is significant overlap between the two. Evolutionary methods try to simulate what an anarchist society might be like, but revolutionary tactics, which have historically taken a violent turn, aim to overthrow authority and the state. Many facets of human civilization have been influenced by anarchist theory, critique, and praxis. |
A | Q9659 | A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is a (pronounced AY), plural aes.
It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey |a| and single-storey |ɑ|. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type.
In English, a is the indefinite article, with the
alternative form an. |
Abraham Lincoln | Q91 | Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States, serving from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. He led the United States through the American Civil War, defeating the Confederate States of America and playing a major role in the abolition of slavery.
Lincoln was born into poverty in Kentucky and raised on the frontier. He was self-educated and became a lawyer, Illinois state legislator, and U.S. representative. Angered by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which opened the territories to slavery, he became a leader of the new Republican Party. He reached a national audience in the 1858 Senate campaign debates against Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election, but the South viewed his election as a threat to slavery, and Southern states began seceding to form the Confederate States of America. A month after Lincoln assumed the presidency, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, starting the Civil War.
Lincoln, a moderate Republican, had to navigate a contentious array of factions in managing the war effort. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus in April 1861, leading to Chief Justice Roger Taney's opinion in Ex parte Merryman, and he averted war with Britain by defusing the Trent Affair. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the slaves in the states "in rebellion" to be free. On November 19, 1863, he delivered the Gettysburg Address, which became one of the most famous speeches in American history. Lincoln closely supervised the strategy and tactics in the war effort, including the selection of generals, and implemented a naval blockade of Southern ports. He promoted the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which, in 1865, abolished slavery, except as punishment for a crime. Re-elected in 1864, he sought to heal the war-torn nation through reconciliation, calling for "malice toward none; with charity for all" in his second inaugural address.
On April 14, 1865, five days after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, he was attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., when he was fatally shot by Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln is remembered as a martyr and a national hero for his wartime leadership and for his efforts to preserve the Union and abolish slavery. He is often ranked in both popular and scholarly polls as the greatest president in American history. |
Aristotle | Q868 | Aristotle (Attic Greek: Ἀριστοτέλης, romanized: Aristotélēs; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science.
Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". He has been referred to as the first scientist. His works contain the earliest known systematic study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. His influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, has gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. |
Academy Awards | Q19020 | The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The Oscars are widely considered to be the most prestigious awards in the film industry.
The major award categories, known as the Academy Awards of Merit, are presented during a live-televised Hollywood ceremony in February or March. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929. The second ceremony, in 1930, was the first one broadcast by radio. The 1953 ceremony was the first one televised. It is the oldest of the four major annual American entertainment awards. Its counterparts—the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music—are modeled after the Academy Awards.
The Oscar statuette depicts a knight, rendered in the Art Deco style.
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Algeria | Q262 | Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast.
Inhabited since prehistory, Algeria has been at the crossroads of numerous cultures and civilisations, including the Phoenicians, Numidians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantine Greeks. Its modern identity is rooted in centuries of Arab Muslim migration waves since the seventh century and the subsequent Arabisation of the indigenous populations. Following a succession of Islamic Arab and Berber dynasties between the eighth and 15th centuries, the Regency of Algiers was established in 1516 as a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. After nearly three centuries as a major power in the Mediterranean, the country was invaded by France in 1830 and formally annexed in 1848, though it was not fully conquered and pacified until 1903. French rule brought mass European settlement that displaced the local population, which was reduced by up to one-third due to warfare, disease, and starvation. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 catalysed local resistance that culminated in the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Algeria gained its independence in 1962. The country descended into a bloody civil war from 1992 to 2002.
Spanning 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), Algeria is the world's tenth-largest nation by area, and the largest nation in Africa. It has a semi-arid climate, with the Sahara desert dominating most of the territory except for its fertile and mountainous north, where most of the population is concentrated. With a population of 44 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa, and the 33rd-most populous country in the world. Algeria's official languages are Arabic and Tamazight; French is used in media, education, and certain administrative matters, but it has no official status. The vast majority of the population speak the Algerian dialect of Arabic. Most Algerians are Arabs, with Berbers forming a sizeable minority. Sunni Islam is the official religion and practised by 99 percent of the population.
Algeria is a semi-presidential republic composed of 58 provinces (wilayas) and 1,541 communes. It is a regional power in North Africa and a middle power in global affairs. As of 2025, the country has the highest Human Development Index in continental Africa, and one of the largest economies in Africa, due mostly to its large petroleum and natural gas reserves, which are the sixteenth and ninth-largest in the world, respectively. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa and a major supplier of natural gas to Europe. The Algerian military is one of the largest in Africa, with the highest defence budget on the continent and among the highest in the world (ranks 22nd globally). Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC, OPEC, the United Nations, and the Arab Maghreb Union, of which it is a founding member. |
Anthropology | Q23404 | Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. The term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological (or physical) anthropology studies the biology and evolution of humans and their close primate relatives.
Archaeology, often termed as "anthropology of the past," studies human activity through investigation of physical evidence. It is considered a branch of anthropology in North America and Asia, while in Europe, archaeology is viewed as a discipline in its own right or grouped under other related disciplines, such as history and palaeontology. |
Astronomer | Q11063 | An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. Astronomers observe astronomical objects, such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either observational (by analyzing the data) or theoretical astronomy. Examples of topics or fields astronomers study include planetary science, solar astronomy, the origin or evolution of stars, or the formation of galaxies. A related but distinct subject is physical cosmology, which studies the Universe as a whole.
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ASCII | Q8815 | ASCII ( ASS-kee),: 6 an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard for representing a particular set of 95 (English language focused) printable and 33 control characters – a total of 128 code points. The set of available punctuation had significant impact on the syntax of computer languages and text markup. ASCII hugely influenced the design of character sets used by modern computers; for example, the first 128 code points of Unicode are the same as ASCII.
ASCII encodes each code-point as a value from 0 to 127 – storable as a seven-bit integer. Ninety-five code-points are printable, including digits 0 to 9, lowercase letters a to z, uppercase letters A to Z, and commonly used punctuation symbols. For example, the letter i is represented as 105 (decimal). Also, ASCII specifies 33 non-printing control codes which originated with Teletype devices; most of which are now obsolete. The control characters that are still commonly used include carriage return, line feed, and tab.
ASCII lacks code-points for characters with diacritical marks and therefore does not directly support terms or names such as résumé, jalapeño, or Beyoncé. But, depending on hardware and software support, some diacritical marks can be rendered by overwriting a letter with a backtick (`) or tilde (~).
Despite being an American standard, ASCII does not have a code point for the cent (¢).
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) prefers the name US-ASCII for this character encoding.
ASCII is one of the IEEE milestones.
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Animation | Q11425 | Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are either traditional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms.
Animation is contrasted with live action, although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of the two. As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery, filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX).
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Amphibian | Q10908 | Amphibians are ectothermic, anamniotic, four-limbed vertebrate animals that constitute the class Amphibia. In its broadest sense, it is a paraphyletic group encompassing all tetrapods, but excluding the amniotes (tetrapods with an amniotic membrane, such as modern reptiles, birds and mammals). All extant (living) amphibians belong to the monophyletic subclass Lissamphibia, with three living orders: Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders), and Gymnophiona (caecilians). Evolved to be mostly semiaquatic, amphibians have adapted to inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living in freshwater, wetland or terrestrial ecosystems (such as riparian woodland, fossorial and even arboreal habitats). Their life cycle typically starts out as aquatic larvae with gills known as tadpoles, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
Young amphibians generally undergo metamorphosis from an aquatic larval form with gills to an air-breathing adult form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory interface, and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs even lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to reptiles like lizards, but unlike reptiles and other amniotes, require access to water bodies to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators to habitat conditions; in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations for many species around the globe.
The earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian period from tetrapodomorph sarcopterygians (lobe-finned fish with articulated limb-like fins) that evolved primitive lungs, which were helpful in adapting to dry land. They diversified and became ecologically dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, but were later displaced in terrestrial environments by early reptiles and basal synapsids (predecessors of mammals). The origin of modern lissamphibians, which first appeared during the Early Triassic, around 250 million years ago, has long been contentious. The most popular hypothesis is that they likely originated from temnospondyls, the most diverse group of prehistoric amphibians, during the Permian period. Another hypothesis is that they emerged from lepospondyls. A fourth group of lissamphibians, the Albanerpetontidae, became extinct around 2 million years ago.
The number of known amphibian species is approximately 8,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. The smallest amphibian (and vertebrate) in the world is a frog from New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis) with a length of just 7.7 mm (0.30 in). The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi), but this is dwarfed by prehistoric temnospondyls such as Mastodonsaurus which could reach up to 6 m (20 ft) in length. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology. |
Alaska | Q797 | Alaska ( ə-LASS-kə) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the northernmost, westernmost, and easternmost (the Aleutian Islands cross the 180th meridian into the eastern hemisphere) state in the United States. It borders the Canadian territory of Yukon and the province of British Columbia to the east. It shares a western maritime border, in the Bering Strait, with Russia's Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas of the Arctic Ocean lie to the north, and the Pacific Ocean lies to the south. Technically, it is a semi-exclave of the U.S., and is the largest exclave in the world.
Alaska is the largest U.S. state by area, comprising more total area than the following three largest states of Texas, California, and Montana combined, and is the seventh-largest subnational division in the world. It is the third-least populous and most sparsely populated U.S. state; however, with a population of 740,133 as of 2024, it is the most populous territory in North America located mostly north of the 60th parallel, with more than quadruple the combined populations of Northern Canada and Greenland. The state contains the four largest cities in the United States by area, including the state capital of Juneau. The state's most populous city is Anchorage, and approximately half of Alaska's residents live within its metropolitan area.
Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state and promoted and maintained a native Alaskan Creole population. The expense and logistical difficulty of maintaining this distant possession prompted its sale to the U.S. in 1867 for US$7.2 million (equivalent to $162 million in 2024). The area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11, 1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959.
Abundant natural resources have enabled Alaska— with one of the smallest state economies—to have one of the highest per capita incomes, with commercial fishing, and the extraction of natural gas and oil, dominating Alaska's economy. U.S. Armed Forces bases and tourism also contribute to the economy; more than half of the state is federally-owned land containing national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges. It is among the most irreligious states and one of the first to legalize recreational marijuana. The Indigenous population of Alaska is proportionally the second highest of any U.S. state, at over 15 percent, after only Hawaii. |
Agriculture | Q11451 | Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.
As of 2021, small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than 50 hectares (120 acres) and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres). However, five of every six farms in the world consist of fewer than 2 hectares (4.9 acres), and take up only around 12% of all agricultural land. Farms and farming greatly influence rural economics and greatly shape rural society, affecting both the direct agricultural workforce and broader businesses that support the farms and farming populations.
The major agricultural products can be broadly grouped into foods, fibers, fuels, and raw materials (such as rubber). Food classes include cereals (grains), vegetables, fruits, cooking oils, meat, milk, eggs, and fungi. Global agricultural production amounts to approximately 11 billion tonnes of food, 32 million tonnes of natural fibers and 4 billion m3 of wood. However, around 14% of the world's food is lost from production before reaching the retail level.
Modern agronomy, plant breeding, agrochemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers, and technological developments have sharply increased crop yields, but also contributed to ecological and environmental damage. Selective breeding and modern practices in animal husbandry have similarly increased the output of meat, but have raised concerns about animal welfare and environmental damage. Environmental issues include contributions to climate change, depletion of aquifers, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and other agricultural pollution. Agriculture is both a cause of and sensitive to environmental degradation, such as biodiversity loss, desertification, soil degradation, and climate change, all of which can cause decreases in crop yield. Genetically modified organisms are widely used, although some countries ban them. |
Asphalt | Q736959 | Asphalt most often refers to:
Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete
Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, used as a road surface
Asphalt may also refer to:
Asphalt (1929 film), a German silent film by Joe May
Asphalt (1964 film), a South Korean film by Kim Ki-young
Asphalt (novel), an American novel by Carl Hancock Rux
Asphalt (series), a racing game series produced by Gameloft
Asphalt, Kentucky
USS Asphalt (IX-153), a Trefoil-class concrete barge
Asphalt modified racing, a variant of modified stock car racing using cars designed for asphalt surfaces
"Asphalt", a song by Hot Country Knights from The K Is Silent |
Astronaut | Q11631 | An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek ἄστρον (astron), meaning 'star', and ναύτης (nautes), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member of a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the term is sometimes applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists, and space tourists.
"Astronaut" technically applies to all human space travelers regardless of nationality. However, astronauts fielded by Russia or the Soviet Union are typically known instead as cosmonauts (from the Russian "kosmos" (космос), meaning "space", also borrowed from Greek κόσμος). Comparatively recent developments in crewed spaceflight made by China have led to the rise of the term taikonaut (from the Mandarin "tàikōng" (太空), meaning "space"), although its use is somewhat informal and its origin is unclear. In China, the People's Liberation Army Astronaut Corps astronauts and their foreign counterparts are all officially called hángtiānyuán (航天员, meaning "celestial navigator" or literally "heaven-sailing staff").
Since 1961 and as of 2021, 600 astronauts have flown in space. Until 2002, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, either by the military or by civilian space agencies. With the suborbital flight of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created: the commercial astronaut.
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Anatomy | Q514 | Anatomy (from Ancient Greek ἀνατομή (anatomḗ) 'dissection') is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old science, having its beginnings in prehistoric times. Anatomy is inherently tied to developmental biology, embryology, comparative anatomy, evolutionary biology, and phylogeny, as these are the processes by which anatomy is generated, both over immediate and long-term timescales. Anatomy and physiology, which study the structure and function of organisms and their parts respectively, make a natural pair of related disciplines, and are often studied together. Human anatomy is one of the essential basic sciences that are applied in medicine, and is often studied alongside physiology.
Anatomy is a complex and dynamic field that is constantly evolving as discoveries are made. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the use of advanced imaging techniques, such as MRI and CT scans, which allow for more detailed and accurate visualizations of the body's structures.
The discipline of anatomy is divided into macroscopic and microscopic parts. Macroscopic anatomy, or gross anatomy, is the examination of an animal's body parts using unaided eyesight. Gross anatomy also includes the branch of superficial anatomy. Microscopic anatomy involves the use of optical instruments in the study of the tissues of various structures, known as histology, and also in the study of cells.
The history of anatomy is characterized by a progressive understanding of the functions of the organs and structures of the human body. Methods have also improved dramatically, advancing from the examination of animals by dissection of carcasses and cadavers (corpses) to 20th-century medical imaging techniques, including X-ray, ultrasound, and magnetic resonance imaging.
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Asia | Q48 | Asia ( AY-zhə, UK also AY-shə) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which has long been home to the majority of the human population, was the site of many of the first civilisations. Its 4.7 billion people constitute roughly 60% of the world's population.
Asia shares the landmass of Eurasia with Europe, and of Afro-Eurasia with both Europe and Africa. In general terms, it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by the Indian Ocean, and on the north by the Arctic Ocean. The border of Asia with Europe is a historical and cultural construct, as there is no clear physical and geographical separation between them. A commonly accepted division places Asia to the east of the Suez Canal separating it from Africa; and to the east of the Turkish straits, the Ural Mountains and Ural River, and to the south of the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian and Black seas, separating it from Europe.
Since the concept of Asia derives from the term for the eastern region from a European perspective, Asia is the remaining vast area of Eurasia minus Europe. Therefore, Asia is a region where various independent cultures coexist rather than sharing a single culture, and the boundary between Europe is somewhat arbitrary and has moved since its first conception in classical antiquity. The division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East–West cultural differences, some of which vary on a spectrum.
China and India traded places as the largest economies in the world from 1 to 1800 CE. China was a major economic power for much of recorded history, with the highest GDP per capita until 1500. The Silk Road became the main east–west trading route in the Asian hinterlands while the Straits of Malacca stood as a major sea route. Asia has exhibited economic dynamism as well as robust population growth during the 20th century, but overall population growth has since fallen. Asia was the birthplace of most of the world's mainstream religions including Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and many other religions.
Asia varies greatly across and within its regions with regard to ethnic groups, cultures, environments, economics, historical ties, and government systems. It also has a mix of many different climates ranging from the equatorial south via the hot deserts in parts of West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia, temperate areas in the east and the continental centre to vast subarctic and polar areas in North Asia.
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Atlantic Ocean | Q97 | The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about 85,133,000 km2 (32,870,000 sq mi). It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for separating the New World of the Americas (North America and South America) from the Old World of Afro-Eurasia (Africa, Asia, and Europe).
Through its separation of Afro-Eurasia from the Americas, the Atlantic Ocean has played a central role in the development of human society, globalization, and the histories of many nations. While the Norse were the first known humans to cross the Atlantic, it was the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492 that proved to be the most consequential. Columbus's expedition ushered in an age of exploration and colonization of the Americas by European powers, most notably Portugal, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom. From the 16th to 19th centuries, the Atlantic Ocean was the center of both an eponymous slave trade and the Columbian exchange while occasionally hosting naval battles. Such naval battles, as well as growing trade from regional American powers like the United States and Brazil, both increased in degree during the early 20th century, and while no major military conflicts have taken place in the Atlantic recently, the ocean remains a core component of trade around the world.
The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south. Other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica. The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, the northern and southern Atlantic, by the Equator.
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Angola | Q916 | Angola, officially the Republic of Angola, is a country on the west-central coast of Southern Africa. It is the second-largest Portuguese-speaking (Lusophone) country in both total area and population and is the seventh-largest country in Africa. It is bordered by Namibia to the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, Zambia to the east, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Angola has an exclave province, the province of Cabinda, that borders the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The capital and most populous city is Luanda.
Angola has been inhabited since the Paleolithic Age. After the Bantu expansion reached the region, states were formed by the 13th century and organised into confederations. The Kingdom of Kongo ascended to achieve hegemony among the other kingdoms from the 14th century. Portuguese explorers established relations with Kongo in 1483. To the south were the kingdoms of Ndongo and Matamba, with the Ovimbundu kingdoms further south, and the Mbunda Kingdom in the east.
The Portuguese began colonising the coast in the 16th century. Kongo fought three wars against the Portuguese, ending in the Portuguese conquest of Ndongo. The banning of the slave trade in the 19th century severely disrupted Kongo's undiversified economic system and European settlers gradually began to establish their presence in the interior of the region. The Portuguese colony that became Angola did not achieve its present borders until the early 20th century and experienced strong resistance from native groups such as the Cuamato, the Kwanyama, and the Mbunda.
After a protracted anti-colonial struggle (1961–1974), Angola achieved independence in 1975 as a one-party Republic, but the country descended into a devastating civil war the same year, between the ruling People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba; the insurgent National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, an originally Maoist and later anti-communist group supported by the United States and South Africa; the militant organization National Liberation Front of Angola, backed by Zaire; and the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda seeking the independence of the Cabinda exclave, also backed by Zaire.
Since the end of the civil war in 2002, Angola has emerged as a relatively stable constitutional republic, and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world, with China, the European Union, and the United States being the country's largest investment and trade partners. However, the economic growth is highly uneven, with most of the nation's wealth concentrated in a disproportionately small part of the population as most Angolans have a low standard of living; life expectancy is among the lowest in the world, while infant mortality is among the highest.
Angola is a member of the United Nations, African Union, the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, and the Southern African Development Community. As of 2023, the Angolan population is estimated at 37.2 million. Angolan culture reflects centuries of Portuguese influence, namely the predominance of the Portuguese language and of the Catholic Church, intermingled with a variety of indigenous customs and traditions.
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Alberta | Q1951 | Alberta is a province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, the Northwest Territories to its north, and the U.S. state of Montana to its south. Alberta and Saskatchewan are the only two landlocked Canadian provinces. The eastern part of the province is occupied by the Great Plains, while the western part borders the Rocky Mountains. The province has a predominantly continental climate, but seasonal temperatures tend to swing rapidly because it is so arid. Those swings are less pronounced in western Alberta because of its occasional Chinook winds.
Alberta is the fourth largest province by area, at 661,848 square kilometres (255,541 square miles), and the fourth most populous, with 4,262,635 residents. Alberta's capital is Edmonton; its largest city is Calgary. The two cities are Alberta's largest census metropolitan areas. More than half of Albertans live in Edmonton or Calgary, which encourages a continuing rivalry between the two cities. English is the province's official language. In 2016, 76.0% of Albertans were anglophone, 1.8% were francophone and 22.2% were allophone.
Alberta's economy is advanced, open, market-based, and characterized by a highly educated workforce, strong institutions and property rights, and sophisticated financial markets. The service sector employs 80% of Albertans, in fields like healthcare, education, professional services, retail, tourism and financial services. The industrial base includes manufacturing, construction, and agriculture (10%, 5%, and 2% of employment respectively), while the knowledge economy includes about 3000 tech companies employing an estimated 60,000 people, mainly in Calgary and Edmonton. The energy sector employs 5% of Albertans but significantly impacts exports and GDP. Alberta's exports, primarily US-bound, consist of 70% oil and gas, 13% food products, and 12% industrial products. Oil and gas are culturally influential, having shaped politics, generated "striking it rich" narratives, and created boom-and-bust cycles. In 2023, Alberta's output was $350 billion, 15% of Canada's GDP.
Until the 1930s, Alberta's political landscape consisted of two major parties: the centre-left Liberals and the agrarian United Farmers of Alberta. Today, Alberta is generally perceived as a conservative province. The right-wing Social Credit Party held office continually from 1935 to 1971 before the centre-right Progressive Conservatives held office continually from 1971 to 2015, the latter being the longest unbroken run in government at the provincial or federal level in Canadian history.
Since before it became part of Canada, Alberta has been home to several First Nations, such as Plains Indians and Woodland Cree. It was historically also a territory used by fur traders of the rival companies Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company. The Dominion of Canada bought the lands that would become Alberta as part of the NWT in 1870. From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, many immigrants arrived in an effort to prevent the prairies from being annexed by the United States. Growing wheat and cattle ranching became very profitable during this period. In 1905, the Alberta Act was passed, creating the province of Alberta. Massive oil reserves were discovered in 1947. The exploitation of oil sands began in 1967.
Alberta is renowned for its natural beauty and is home to important nature reserves. It is also well known as a rich source of fossils. It is home to six UNESCO-designated World Heritage Sites: the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, Dinosaur Provincial Park, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Wood Buffalo National Park and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. Other popular sites include Banff National Park, Elk Island National Park, Jasper National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park, and Drumheller. |
Albert Einstein | Q937 | Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who is best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum mechanics. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.
Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zurich, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later, which he kept for the rest of his life, and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917; he also became a German citizen again, this time as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews, he decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research.
In 1905, sometimes described as his annus mirabilis (miracle year), he published four groundbreaking papers. In them, he outlined a theory of the photoelectric effect, explained Brownian motion, introduced his special theory of relativity, and demonstrated that if the special theory is correct, mass and energy are equivalent to each other. In 1915, he proposed a general theory of relativity that extended his system of mechanics to incorporate gravitation. A cosmological paper that he published the following year laid out the implications of general relativity for the modeling of the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole. In 1917, Einstein wrote a paper which introduced the concepts of spontaneous emission and stimulated emission, the latter of which is the core mechanism behind the laser and maser, and which contained a trove of information that would be beneficial to developments in physics later on, such as quantum electrodynamics and quantum optics.
In the middle part of his career, Einstein made important contributions to statistical mechanics and quantum theory. Especially notable was his work on the quantum physics of radiation, in which light consists of particles, subsequently called photons. With physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, he laid the groundwork for Bose–Einstein statistics. For much of the last phase of his academic life, Einstein worked on two endeavors that ultimately proved unsuccessful. First, he advocated against quantum theory's introduction of fundamental randomness into science's picture of the world, objecting that God does not play dice. Second, he attempted to devise a unified field theory by generalizing his geometric theory of gravitation to include electromagnetism. As a result, he became increasingly isolated from mainstream modern physics. |
Afghanistan | Q889 | Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's capital and largest city. Afghanistan's population is estimated to be between 36 and 50 million.
Human habitation in Afghanistan dates to the Middle Paleolithic era. Popularly referred to as the graveyard of empires, the land has witnessed numerous military campaigns, including those by the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Maurya Empire, Arab Muslims, the Mongols, the British, the Soviet Union, and a US-led coalition. Afghanistan also served as the source from which the Greco-Bactrians and the Mughals, among others, rose to form major empires. Because of the various conquests and periods in both the Iranian and Indian cultural spheres, the area was a center for Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and later Islam. The modern state of Afghanistan began with the Durrani Afghan Empire in the 18th century, although Dost Mohammad Khan is sometimes considered to be the founder of the first modern Afghan state. Afghanistan became a buffer state in the Great Game between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. From India, the British attempted to subjugate Afghanistan but were repelled in the First Anglo-Afghan War; the Second Anglo-Afghan War saw a British victory. Following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919, Afghanistan became free of foreign political hegemony, and emerged as the independent Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1926. This monarchy lasted almost half a century, until Zahir Shah was overthrown in 1973, following which the Republic of Afghanistan was established.
Since the late 1970s, Afghanistan's history has been dominated by extensive warfare, including coups, invasions, insurgencies, and civil wars. The conflict began in 1978 when a communist revolution established a socialist state (itself a response to the dictatorship established following a coup d'état in 1973), and subsequent infighting prompted the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan in 1979. Mujahideen fought against the Soviets in the Soviet–Afghan War and continued fighting among themselves following the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989. The Taliban controlled most of the country by 1996, but their Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan received little international recognition before its overthrow in the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. The Taliban returned to power in 2021 after capturing Kabul, ending the 2001–2021 war. As of March 2025, the Taliban government remains internationally unrecognized due to reported violations of human rights in Afghanistan, particularly regarding the rights of women in Afghanistan and the treatment of women by the Taliban.
Afghanistan is rich in natural resources, including lithium, iron, zinc, and copper. It is the second-largest producer of cannabis resin, and third largest of both saffron and cashmere. The country is a member of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and a founding member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. Due to the effects of war in recent decades, the country has dealt with high levels of terrorism, poverty, and child malnutrition. Afghanistan remains among the world's least developed countries, ranking 182nd on the Human Development Index. Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP) is $81 billion by purchasing power parity and $20.1 billion by nominal values. Per capita, its GDP is among the lowest of any country as of 2020.
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Azerbaijan | Q227 | Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia's republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.
The territory of what is now Azerbaijan was ruled first by Caucasian Albania and later by various Persian empires. Until the 19th century, it remained part of Qajar Iran, but the Russo-Persian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828 forced the Qajar Empire to cede its Caucasian territories to the Russian Empire; the treaties of Gulistan in 1813 and Turkmenchay in 1828 defined the border between Russia and Iran. The region north of the Aras was part of Iran until it was conquered by Russia in the 19th century, where it was administered as part of the Caucasus Viceroyalty.
By the late 19th century, an Azerbaijani national identity emerged when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic proclaimed its independence from the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic in 1918, a year after the Russian Empire collapsed, and became the first secular democratic Muslim-majority state. In 1920, the country was conquered and incorporated into the Soviet Union as the Azerbaijan SSR. The modern Republic of Azerbaijan proclaimed its independence on 30 August 1991, shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In September 1991, the ethnic Armenian majority of the Nagorno-Karabakh region formed the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, which became de facto independent with the end of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War in 1994, although the region and seven surrounding districts remained internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Following the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020, the seven districts and parts of Nagorno-Karabakh were returned to Azerbaijani control. An Azerbaijani offensive in 2023 ended the Republic of Artsakh and resulted in the flight of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.
Azerbaijan is a unitary semi-presidential republic. It is one of six independent Turkic states and an active member of the Organization of Turkic States and the TÜRKSOY community. Azerbaijan has diplomatic relations with 182 countries and holds membership in 38 international organizations, including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Non-Aligned Movement, the OSCE, and the NATO PfP program. It is one of the founding members of GUAM, the Commonwealth of Independent States, and the OPCW. Azerbaijan is an observer state of the World Trade Organization.
The vast majority of the country's population (97%) is nominally Muslim. The Constitution of Azerbaijan does not declare an official religion, and all major political forces in the country are secular. Azerbaijan is a developing country and ranks 89th on the Human Development Index. The ruling New Azerbaijan Party, in power since 1993, has been accused of authoritarianism under presidents Heydar Aliyev and his son Ilham Aliyev, and worsening the country's human rights record, including increasing restrictions on civil liberties, particularly on press freedom, and political repression. |
Art | Q735 | Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around works utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, technical proficiency, and/or beauty.
There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures. In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of "the arts". Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts.
The nature of art and related concepts, such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics. The resulting artworks are studied in the professional fields of art criticism and the history of art.
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Abortion | Q8452 | Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. An abortion that occurs without intervention is known as a miscarriage or "spontaneous abortion"; these occur in approximately 30% to 40% of all pregnancies. When deliberate steps are taken to end a pregnancy, it is called an induced abortion, or less frequently "induced miscarriage". The unmodified word abortion generally refers to an induced abortion. The most common reasons given for having an abortion are for birth-timing and limiting family size. Other reasons reported include maternal health, an inability to afford a child, domestic violence, lack of support, feeling they are too young, wishing to complete education or advance a career, and not being able or willing to raise a child conceived as a result of rape or incest.
When done legally in industrialized societies, induced abortion is one of the safest procedures in medicine.: 1 Unsafe abortions—those performed by people lacking the necessary skills, or in inadequately resourced settings—are responsible for between 5% and 13% of maternal deaths, especially in the developing world. However, medication abortions that are self-managed are highly effective and safe throughout the first trimester. Public health data show that making safe abortion legal and accessible reduces maternal deaths.
Modern methods use medication or surgery for abortions. The drug mifepristone (aka RU-486) in combination with prostaglandin appears to be as safe and effective as surgery during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy. The most common surgical technique involves dilating the cervix and using a suction device. Birth control, such as the pill or intrauterine devices, can be used immediately following abortion. When performed legally and safely on a woman who desires it, an induced abortion does not increase the risk of long-term mental or physical problems. In contrast, unsafe abortions performed by unskilled individuals, with hazardous equipment, or in unsanitary facilities cause between 22,000 and 44,000 deaths and 6.9 million hospital admissions each year. The World Health Organization states that "access to legal, safe and comprehensive abortion care, including post-abortion care, is essential for the attainment of the highest possible level of sexual and reproductive health". Historically, abortions have been attempted using herbal medicines, sharp tools, forceful massage, or other traditional methods.
Around 73 million abortions are performed each year in the world, with about 45% done unsafely. Abortion rates changed little between 2003 and 2008, before which they decreased for at least two decades as access to family planning and birth control increased. As of 2018, 37% of the world's women had access to legal abortions without limits as to reason. Countries that permit abortions have different limits on how late in pregnancy abortion is allowed. Abortion rates are similar between countries that restrict abortion and countries that broadly allow it, though this is partly because countries which restrict abortion tend to have higher unintended pregnancy rates.
Globally, there has been a widespread trend towards greater legal access to abortion since 1973, but there remains debate with regard to moral, religious, ethical, and legal issues. Those who oppose abortion often argue that an embryo or fetus is a person with a right to life, and thus equate abortion with murder. Those who support abortion's legality often argue that it is a woman's reproductive right. Others favor legal and accessible abortion as a public health measure. Abortion laws and views of the procedure are different around the world. In some countries abortion is legal and women have the right to make the choice about abortion. In some areas, abortion is legal only in specific cases such as rape, incest, fetal defects, poverty, and risk to a woman's health. |
American Revolutionary War | Q40949 | The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war. But Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war in the Treaty of Paris two years later, in 1783, in which the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.
In 1763, after the British Empire gained dominance in North America following its victory over the French in the Seven Years' War, tensions and disputes began escalating between the British and the Thirteen Colonies, especially following passage of Stamp and Townshend Acts. The British Army responded by seeking to occupy Boston militarily, leading to the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. In mid-1774, with tensions escalating even further between the British Army and the colonies, the British Parliament imposed the Intolerable Acts, an attempt to disarm Americans, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the first battles of the Revolutionary War. In June 1775, the Second Continental Congress voted to incorporate colonial-based Patriot militias into a central military, the Continental Army, and unanimously appointed Washington its commander-in-chief. Two months later, in August 1775, the British Parliament declared the colonies to be in a state of rebellion. In July 1776, the Second Continental Congress formalized the war, passing the Lee Resolution on July 2, and, two days later, unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, on July 4.
In March 1776, in an early win for the newly-formed Continental Army under Washington's command, following a successful siege of Boston, the Continental Army successfully drove the British Army out of Boston. British commander-in-chief William Howe responded by launching the New York and New Jersey campaign, which resulted in Howe's capture of New York City in November. Washington responded by clandestinely crossing the Delaware River and winning small but significant victories at Trenton and Princeton.
In the summer of 1777, as Howe was poised to capture Philadelphia, the Continental Congress fled to Baltimore. In October 1777, a separate northern British force under the command of John Burgoyne was forced to surrender at Saratoga in an American victory that proved crucial in convincing France and Spain that an independent United States was a viable possibility. France signed a commercial agreement with the rebels, followed by a Treaty of Alliance in February 1778. In 1779, the Sullivan Expedition undertook a scorched earth campaign against the Iroquois who were largely allied with the British. Indian raids on the American frontier, however, continued to be a problem. Also, in 1779, Spain allied with France against Great Britain in the Treaty of Aranjuez, though Spain did not formally ally with the Americans.
Howe's replacement Henry Clinton intended to take the war against the Americans into the Southern Colonies. Despite some initial success, British General Cornwallis was besieged by a Franco-American force in Yorktown in September and October 1781. Cornwallis was forced to surrender in October. The British wars with France and Spain continued for another two years, but fighting largely ceased in North America. In the Treaty of Paris, ratified on September 3, 1783, Great Britain acknowledged the sovereignty and independence of the United States, bringing the American Revolutionary War to an end. The Treaties of Versailles resolved Great Britain's conflicts with France and Spain and forced Great Britain to cede Tobago, Senegal, and small territories in India to France, and Menorca, West Florida, and East Florida to Spain.
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Algorithm | Q8366 | In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm ( ) is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing. More advanced algorithms can use conditionals to divert the code execution through various routes (referred to as automated decision-making) and deduce valid inferences (referred to as automated reasoning).
In contrast, a heuristic is an approach to solving problems without well-defined correct or optimal results. For example, although social media recommender systems are commonly called "algorithms", they actually rely on heuristics as there is no truly "correct" recommendation.
As an effective method, an algorithm can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time and in a well-defined formal language for calculating a function. Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty), the instructions describe a computation that, when executed, proceeds through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output" and terminating at a final ending state. The transition from one state to the next is not necessarily deterministic; some algorithms, known as randomized algorithms, incorporate random input. |
Asteroid | Q3863 | An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). Asteroids are rocky, metallic, or icy bodies with no atmosphere, and are broadly classified into C-type (carbonaceous), M-type (metallic), or S-type (silicaceous). The size and shape of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from small rubble piles under a kilometer across to Ceres, a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter. A body is classified as a comet, not an asteroid, if it shows a coma (tail) when warmed by solar radiation, although recent observations suggest a continuum between these types of bodies.
Of the roughly one million known asteroids, the greatest number are located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, approximately 2 to 4 AU from the Sun, in a region known as the main asteroid belt. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is only 3% that of Earth's Moon. The majority of main belt asteroids follow slightly elliptical, stable orbits, revolving in the same direction as the Earth and taking from three to six years to complete a full circuit of the Sun.
Asteroids have historically been observed from Earth. The first close-up observation of an asteroid was made by the Galileo spacecraft. Several dedicated missions to asteroids were subsequently launched by NASA and JAXA, with plans for other missions in progress. NASA's NEAR Shoemaker studied Eros, and Dawn observed Vesta and Ceres. JAXA's missions Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 studied and returned samples of Itokawa and Ryugu, respectively. OSIRIS-REx studied Bennu, collecting a sample in 2020 which was delivered back to Earth in 2023. NASA's Lucy, launched in 2021, is tasked with studying ten different asteroids, two from the main belt and eight Jupiter trojans. Psyche, launched October 2023, aims to study the metallic asteroid Psyche.
Near-Earth asteroids have the potential for catastrophic consequences if they strike Earth, with a notable example being the Chicxulub impact, widely thought to have induced the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction. As an experiment to meet this danger, in September 2022 the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft successfully altered the orbit of the non-threatening asteroid Dimorphos by crashing into it. |
Anime | Q1107 | Anime (Japanese: アニメ, IPA: [aꜜɲime] ; derived from a shortening of English animation) is a hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, anime refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, anime, in Japan and in Japanese, describes all animated works, regardless of style or origin. Many works of animation with a similar style to Japanese animation are also produced outside Japan. Video games sometimes also feature themes and art styles that are sometimes labelled as anime.
The earliest commercial Japanese animation dates to 1917. A characteristic art style emerged in the 1960s with the works of cartoonist Osamu Tezuka and spread in the following decades, developing a large domestic audience. Anime is distributed theatrically, through television broadcasts, directly to home media, and over the Internet. In addition to original works, anime are often adaptations of Japanese comics (manga), light novels, or video games. It is classified into numerous genres targeting various broad and niche audiences.
Anime is a diverse medium with distinctive production methods that have adapted in response to emergent technologies. It combines graphic art, characterization, cinematography, and other forms of imaginative and individualistic techniques. Compared to Western animation, anime production generally focuses less on movement, and more on the detail of settings and use of "camera effects", such as panning, zooming, and angle shots. Diverse art styles are used, and character proportions and features can be quite varied, with a common characteristic feature being large and emotive eyes.
The anime industry consists of over 430 production companies, including major studios such as Studio Ghibli, Kyoto Animation, Sunrise, Bones, Ufotable, MAPPA, Wit Studio, CoMix Wave Films, Madhouse, Inc., TMS Entertainment, Pierrot, Production I.G, Nippon Animation and Toei Animation. Since the 1980s, the medium has also seen widespread international success with the rise of foreign dubbed, subtitled programming, and since the 2010s due to the rise of streaming services and a widening demographic embrace of anime culture, both within Japan and worldwide. As of 2016, Japanese animation accounted for 60% of the world's animated television shows. |
Ankara | Q3640 | Ankara is the capital city of Turkey, and the largest capital by area in the world. Located in the central part of Anatolia, the city has a population of 5,290,822 in its urban center (Etimesgut, Yenimahalle, Çankaya, Keçiören, Altındağ, Pursaklar, Mamak, Gölbaşı, Sincan) and 5,864,049 in Ankara Province (total of 25 districts). Ankara is Turkey's second-largest city by population after Istanbul, first by urban land area, and third by metro land area after Konya and Sivas.
Ankara was historically known as Ancyra and Angora. Serving as the capital of the ancient Celtic state of Galatia (280–64 BC), and later of the Roman province with the same name (25 BC–7th century), Ankara has various Hattian, Hittite, Lydian, Phrygian, Galatian, Greek, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archeological sites. The Ottomans made the city the capital first of the Anatolia Eyalet (1393 – late 15th century) and then the Angora Eyalet (1827–1864) and the Angora Vilayet (1867–1922). On 23 April 1920, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was established in Ankara, which became the headquarters of the Turkish National Movement during the Turkish War of Independence. Ankara became the new Turkish capital upon the establishment of the Republic on 29 October 1923, succeeding in this role as the former Turkish capital Istanbul following the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
The historical center of Ankara is a rocky hill rising 150 m (500 ft) over the left bank of the Ankara River, a tributary of the Sakarya River. The hill remains crowned by the ruins of Ankara Castle. Although few of its outworks have survived, there are well-preserved examples of Roman and Ottoman architecture throughout the city.
The government is a prominent employer, but Ankara is also an important commercial and industrial city located at the center of Turkey's road and railway networks. The city gave its name to the Angora wool shorn from Angora rabbits, the long-haired Angora goat (the source of mohair), and the Angora cat. The area is also known for its pears, honey and Muscat grapes. Although situated in one of the driest regions of Turkey and surrounded mostly by steppe vegetation (except for the forested areas on the southern periphery), Ankara can be considered a green city in terms of green areas per inhabitant, at 72 square meters (775 square feet) per head. Ankara is among the top 100 science and technology clusters in the world. |
Alfred Hitchcock | Q7374 | Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the "Master of Suspense", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won the award for Best Director, despite five nominations.
Hitchcock initially trained as a technical clerk and copywriter before entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. His directorial debut was the British–German silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925). His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller genre, and Blackmail (1929) was the first British "talkie". His thrillers The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, he had international recognition and producer David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films followed, including Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Notorious (1946). Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Hitchcock nominated as Best Director. He also received Oscar nominations for Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960).
Hitchcock's other notable films include Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964) and Frenzy (1972), all of which were also financially successful and are highly regarded by film historians. Hitchcock made a number of films with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including four with Cary Grant, four with James Stewart, three with Ingrid Bergman and three consecutively with Grace Kelly. Hitchcock became an American citizen in 1955.
In 2012, Hitchcock's psychological thriller Vertigo, starring Stewart, displaced Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) as the British Film Institute's greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics. As of 2021, nine of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, including his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, and was knighted in December of that year, four months before his death on 29 April 1980. |
Aegean Sea | Q34575 | The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some 215,000 km2 (83,000 sq mi). In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn connects to the Black Sea, by the straits of the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, respectively. The Aegean Islands are located within the sea and some bound it on its southern periphery, including Crete and Rhodes. The sea reaches a maximum depth of 2,639 m (8,658 ft) to the west of Karpathos. The Thracian Sea and the Sea of Crete are main subdivisions of the Aegean Sea.
The Aegean Islands can be divided into several island groups, including the Dodecanese, the Cyclades, the Sporades, the Saronic islands and the North Aegean Islands, as well as Crete and its surrounding islands. The Dodecanese, located to the southeast, includes the islands of Rhodes, Kos, and Patmos; the islands of Delos and Naxos are within the Cyclades to the south of the sea. Lesbos is part of the North Aegean Islands. Euboea, the second-largest island in Greece, is located in the Aegean, despite being administered as part of Central Greece. Nine out of twelve of the Administrative regions of Greece border the sea, along with the Turkish provinces of Edirne, Çanakkale, Balıkesir, İzmir, Aydın and Muğla to the east of the sea. Various Turkish islands in the sea are Imbros, Tenedos, Cunda Island, and the Foça Islands.
The Aegean Sea has been historically important, especially regarding the civilization of Ancient Greece, which inhabited the area around the coast of the Aegean and the Aegean islands. The Aegean islands facilitated contact between the people of the area and between Europe and Asia. Along with the Greeks, Thracians lived along the northern coasts. The Romans conquered the area under the Roman Empire, and later the Byzantine Empire held it against advances by the First Bulgarian Empire. The Fourth Crusade weakened Byzantine control of the area, and it was eventually conquered by the Ottoman Empire, with the exception of Crete, which was a Venetian colony until 1669. The Greek War of Independence allowed a Greek state on the coast of the Aegean from 1829 onwards. The Ottoman Empire held a presence over the sea for over 500 years until it was replaced by modern Turkey.
The rocks making up the floor of the Aegean are mainly limestone, though often greatly altered by volcanic activity that has convulsed the region in relatively recent geologic times. Of particular interest are the richly colored sediments in the region of the islands of Santorini and Milos, in the south Aegean. Notable cities on the Aegean coastline include Athens, Thessaloniki, Volos, Kavala, and Heraklion in Greece, and İzmir and Bodrum in Turkey.
Several issues concerning sovereignty within the Aegean Sea are disputed between Greece and Turkey. The Aegean dispute has had a large effect on Greece-Turkey relations since the 1970s. Issues include the delimitation of territorial waters, national airspace, exclusive economic zones, and flight information regions. |
Amsterdam | Q727 | Amsterdam ( AM-stər-dam, UK also AM-stər-DAM; Dutch: [ˌɑmstərˈdɑm] ; lit. 'Dam in the Amstel') is the capital and most populated city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area. Located in the Dutch province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the "Venice of the North", for its large number of canals, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Amsterdam was founded at the mouth of the Amstel River, which was dammed to control flooding. Originally a small fishing village in the 12th century, Amsterdam became a major world port during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, when the Netherlands was an economic powerhouse. Amsterdam was the leading centre for finance and trade, as well as a hub of secular art production. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and new neighborhoods and suburbs were built. The city has a long tradition of openness, liberalism, and tolerance. Cycling is key to the city's modern character, and there are numerous biking paths and lanes spread throughout.
Amsterdam's main attractions include its historic canals; the Rijksmuseum, the state museum with Dutch Golden Age art; the Van Gogh Museum; the Dam Square, where the Royal Palace of Amsterdam and former city hall are located; the Amsterdam Museum; Stedelijk Museum, with modern art; the Concertgebouw concert hall; the Anne Frank House; the Scheepvaartmuseum, the Natura Artis Magistra; Hortus Botanicus, NEMO, the red-light district and cannabis coffee shops. The city is known for its nightlife and festival activity, with several nightclubs among the world's most famous. Its artistic heritage, canals, and narrow canal houses with gabled façades, well-preserved legacies of the city's 17th-century Golden Age, have attracted millions of visitors annually.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, founded in 1602, is considered the oldest "modern" securities market stock exchange in the world. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered an alpha-world city. The city is the cultural capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters in the city. Many of the world's largest companies are based here or have established their European headquarters in the city, such as technology companies Uber, Netflix, and Tesla. In 2022, Amsterdam was ranked the ninth-best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th on quality of living for environment and infrastructure by Mercer. The city was ranked 4th place globally as a top tech hub in 2019. The Port of Amsterdam is the fifth largest in Europe. The KLM hub and Amsterdam's main airport, Schiphol, is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, third in Europe. The Dutch capital is one of the most multicultural cities in the world, with about 180 nationalities represented. Immigration and ethnic segregation in Amsterdam is a current issue.
Amsterdam's notable residents throughout its history include painters Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh, 17th-century philosophers Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, René Descartes, and the Holocaust victim and diarist Anne Frank. |
Audi | Q23317 | Audi AG (German: [ˈaʊ̯di ʔaːˈɡeː] ) is a German automotive manufacturer of luxury vehicles headquartered in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany. A subsidiary of the Volkswagen Group, Audi produces vehicles in nine production facilities worldwide.
The origins of the company are complex, dating back to the early 20th century and the initial enterprises (Horch and the Audiwerke) founded by engineer August Horch. Two other manufacturers (DKW and Wanderer) also contributed to the foundation of Auto Union in 1932. The modern Audi era began in the 1960s, when Auto Union was acquired by Volkswagen from Daimler-Benz. After relaunching the Audi brand with the 1965 introduction of the Audi F103 series, Volkswagen merged Auto Union with NSU Motorenwerke in 1969, thus creating the present-day form of the company.
The company name is based on the Latin translation of the surname of the founder, August Horch. Horch, meaning 'listen', becomes audi in Latin. The four rings of the Audi logo each represent one of four car companies that banded together to create Audi's predecessor company, Auto Union. Audi's slogan is Vorsprung durch Technik, which is translated as 'Progress through Technology'. Audi, along with German brands BMW and Mercedes-Benz, is among the best-selling luxury automobile brands in the world. |
Aircraft | Q11436 | An aircraft (pl. aircraft) is a vehicle that is able to fly by gaining support from the air. It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or the dynamic lift of an airfoil, or, in a few cases, direct downward thrust from its engines. Common examples of aircraft include airplanes, rotorcraft (including helicopters), airships (including blimps), gliders, paramotors, and hot air balloons. Part 1 (Definitions and Abbreviations) of Subchapter A of Chapter I of Title 14 of the U. S. Code of Federal Regulations states that aircraft "means a device that is used or intended to be used for flight in the air."
The human activity that surrounds aircraft is called aviation. The science of aviation, including designing and building aircraft, is called aeronautics. Crewed aircraft are flown by an onboard pilot, whereas unmanned aerial vehicles may be remotely controlled or self-controlled by onboard computers. Aircraft may be classified by different criteria, such as lift type, aircraft propulsion (if any), usage and others. |
Apple Inc. | Q312 | Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Computer Company by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, the company was incorporated by Jobs and Wozniak as Apple Computer, Inc. the following year. It was renamed Apple Inc. in 2007 as the company had expanded its focus from computers to consumer electronics. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue, with US$391.04 billion in the 2024 fiscal year.
The company was founded to produce and market Wozniak's Apple I personal computer. Its second computer, the Apple II, became a best seller as one of the first mass-produced microcomputers. Apple introduced the Lisa in 1983 and the Macintosh in 1984, as some of the first computers to use a graphical user interface and a mouse. By 1985, internal company problems led to Jobs leaving to form NeXT, Inc., and Wozniak withdrawing to other ventures; John Sculley served as long-time CEO for over a decade. In the 1990s, Apple lost considerable market share in the personal computer industry to the lower-priced Wintel duopoly of the Microsoft Windows operating system on Intel-powered PC clones. In 1997, Apple was weeks away from bankruptcy. To resolve its failed operating system strategy, it bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the company, who guided Apple back to profitability over the next decade with the introductions of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad devices to critical acclaim as well as the iTunes Store, launching the "Think different" advertising campaign, and opening the Apple Store retail chain. These moves elevated Apple to consistently be one of the world's most valuable brands since about 2010. Jobs resigned in 2011 for health reasons, and died two months later; he was succeeded as CEO by Tim Cook.
Apple's product lineup includes portable and home hardware such as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV; operating systems such as iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; and various software and services including Apple Pay, iCloud, and multimedia streaming services like Apple Music and Apple TV+. Apple is one of the Big Five American information technology companies; for the most part since 2011, Apple has been the world's largest company by market capitalization, and, as of 2023, is the largest manufacturing company by revenue, the fourth-largest personal computer vendor by unit sales, the largest vendor of tablet computers, and the largest vendor of mobile phones in the world. Apple became the first publicly traded U.S. company to be valued at over $1 trillion in 2018, and, as of December 2024, is valued at just over $3.74 trillion. Apple is the largest company on the Nasdaq, where it trades under the ticker symbol "AAPL".
Apple has received criticism regarding its contractors' labor practices, its relationship with trade unions, its environmental practices, and its business ethics, including anti-competitive practices and materials sourcing. Nevertheless, the company has a large following and enjoys a high level of brand loyalty. |
Aberdeenshire | Q189912 | Aberdeenshire (Scots: Aiberdeenshire; Scottish Gaelic: Siorrachd Obar Dheathain) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the historic county of Aberdeenshire, which had substantially different boundaries. The Aberdeenshire Council area includes all of the areas of the historic counties of Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire except the area making up Aberdeen City Council area, as well as part of Banffshire. The historic county boundaries are still officially used for a few purposes, namely land registration and lieutenancy.
Aberdeenshire Council is headquartered at Woodhill House in Aberdeen, making it the only Scottish council whose headquarters are located outside its jurisdiction. Aberdeen itself forms a different council area (Aberdeen City). Aberdeenshire borders onto Angus and Perth and Kinross to the south, Highland and Moray to the west and Aberdeen City to the east.
Traditionally, it has depended economically on the primary sector (agriculture, fishing, and forestry) and related processing industries. Over the last 40 years, the development of the oil and gas industry and associated service sector has broadened Aberdeenshire's economic base, and contributed to a rapid population growth of some 50% since 1975. Its land represents 8% of Scotland's overall territory. It covers an area of 6,313 square kilometres (2,437 sq mi). |
American Civil War | Q8676 | The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union. The central conflict leading to war was a dispute over whether slavery should be permitted to expand into the western territories, leading to more slave states, or be prohibited from doing so, which many believed would place slavery on a course of ultimate extinction.
Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven Southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over a third of the U.S. population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued.
During 1861–1862 in the Western theater, the Union made permanent gains—though in the Eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. Western successes led to General Ulysses S. Grant's command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month Siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day.
By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure was destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, slavery was abolished, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 698,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian casualties, making the Civil War the deadliest military conflict in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars. |
Andy Warhol | Q5603 | Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental film Chelsea Girls (1966), the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67), and the erotic film Blue Movie (1969) that started the "Golden Age of Porn".
Born and raised in Pittsburgh in a family of Rusyn immigrants, Warhol initially pursued a successful career as a commercial illustrator in the 1950s. After exhibiting his work in art galleries, he began to receive recognition as an influential and controversial artist in the 1960s. His New York studio, The Factory, became a well-known gathering place that brought together distinguished intellectuals, drag queens, playwrights, bohemian street people, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons. He directed and produced several underground films starring a collection of personalities known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with inspiring the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." Warhol managed and produced the experimental rock band the Velvet Underground. Warhol expressed his queer identity through many of his works at a time when homosexuality was actively suppressed in the United States.
After surviving an assassination attempt by radical feminist Valerie Solanas in June 1968, Warhol focused on transforming The Factory into a business enterprise. He founded Interview magazine and authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975) and Popism (1980). He also hosted the television series Fashion (1979–80), Andy Warhol's TV (1980–83), and Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes (1985–87). Warhol died of cardiac arrhythmia, aged 58, after gallbladder surgery in February 1987.
Warhol has been described as the "bellwether of the art market", with several of his works ranking among the most expensive paintings ever sold. In 2013, Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (1963) sold for $105 million, setting a record for the artist. In 2022, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn (1964) sold for $195 million, which is the highest price paid at auction for a work by an American artist. Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and documentary films. The Andy Warhol Museum in his native city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art and archives, is the largest museum in the United States dedicated to a single artist.
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American Film Institute | Q207460 | The American Film Institute (AFI) is an American nonprofit film organization that educates filmmakers and honors the heritage of the motion picture arts in the United States. AFI is supported by private funding and public membership fees.
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Ancient Egypt | Q11768 | Ancient Egypt (Egyptian: km.t) was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower Egypt were amalgamated by Menes, who is believed by the majority of Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
The pinnacle of ancient Egyptian power was achieved during the New Kingdom, which extended its rule to much of Nubia and a considerable portion of the Levant. After this period, Egypt entered an era of slow decline. Over the course of its history, it was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign civilizations, including the Hyksos, the Kushites, the Assyrians, the Persians, and, most notably, the Greeks and then the Romans. The end of ancient Egypt is variously defined as occurring with the end of the Late Period during the Wars of Alexander the Great in 332 BC or with the end of the Greek-ruled Ptolemaic Kingdom during the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. In AD 642, the Arab conquest of Egypt brought an end to the region's millennium-long Greco-Roman period.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the Nile's conditions for agriculture. The predictable flooding of the Nile and controlled irrigation of its fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and thereby substantial social and cultural development. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored the mineral exploitation of the valley and its surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with other civilizations, and a military to assert Egyptian dominance throughout the Near East. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of the reigning pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.
Among the many achievements of ancient Egypt are: the quarrying, surveying, and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics; a practical and effective system of medicine; irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques; the first known planked boats; Egyptian faience and glass technology; new forms of literature; and the earliest known peace treaty, which was ratified with the Anatolia-based Hittite Empire. Its art and architecture were widely copied and its antiquities were carried off to be studied, admired, or coveted in the far corners of the world. Likewise, its monumental ruins inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for millennia. A newfound European and Egyptian respect for antiquities and excavations that began in earnest in the early modern period has led to much scientific investigation of ancient Egypt and its society, as well as a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy. |
Arsenic | Q871 | Arsenic is a chemical element; it has symbol As and atomic number 33. It is a metalloid and one of the pnictogens, and therefore shares many properties with its group 15 neighbors phosphorus and antimony. Arsenic is notoriously toxic. It occurs naturally in many minerals, usually in combination with sulfur and metals, but also as a pure elemental crystal. It has various allotropes, but only the grey form, which has a metallic appearance, is important to industry.
The primary use of arsenic is in alloys of lead (for example, in car batteries and ammunition). Arsenic is also a common n-type dopant in semiconductor electronic devices, and a component of the III–V compound semiconductor gallium arsenide. Arsenic and its compounds, especially the trioxide, are used in the production of pesticides, treated wood products, herbicides, and insecticides. These applications are declining with the increasing recognition of the persistent toxicity of arsenic and its compounds.
Arsenic has been known since ancient times to be poisonous to humans. However, a few species of bacteria are able to use arsenic compounds as respiratory metabolites. Trace quantities of arsenic have been proposed to be an essential dietary element in rats, hamsters, goats, and chickens. Research has not been conducted to determine whether small amounts of arsenic may play a role in human metabolism. However, arsenic poisoning occurs in multicellular life if quantities are larger than needed. Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a problem that affects millions of people across the world.
The United States' Environmental Protection Agency states that all forms of arsenic are a serious risk to human health. The United States Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ranked arsenic number 1 in its 2001 prioritized list of hazardous substances at Superfund sites. Arsenic is classified as a group-A carcinogen. |
Aluminium | Q663 | Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has a great affinity towards oxygen, forming a protective layer of oxide on the surface when exposed to air. It visually resembles silver, both in its color and in its great ability to reflect light. It is soft, nonmagnetic, and ductile. It has one stable isotope, 27Al, which is highly abundant, making aluminium the 12th-most abundant element in the universe. The radioactivity of 26Al leads to it being used in radiometric dating.
Chemically, aluminium is a post-transition metal in the boron group; as is common for the group, aluminium forms compounds primarily in the +3 oxidation state. The aluminium cation Al3+ is small and highly charged; as such, it has more polarizing power, and bonds formed by aluminium have a more covalent character. The strong affinity of aluminium for oxygen leads to the common occurrence of its oxides in nature. Aluminium is found on Earth primarily in rocks in the crust, where it is the third-most abundant element, after oxygen and silicon, rather than in the mantle, and virtually never as the free metal. It is obtained industrially by mining bauxite, a sedimentary rock rich in aluminium minerals.
The discovery of aluminium was announced in 1825 by Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted. The first industrial production of aluminium was initiated by French chemist Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville in 1856. Aluminium became much more available to the public with the Hall–Héroult process developed independently by French engineer Paul Héroult and American engineer Charles Martin Hall in 1886, and the mass production of aluminium led to its extensive use in industry and everyday life. In the First and Second World Wars, aluminium was a crucial strategic resource for aviation. In 1954, aluminium became the most produced non-ferrous metal, surpassing copper. In the 21st century, most aluminium was consumed in transportation, engineering, construction, and packaging in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.
Despite its prevalence in the environment, no living organism is known to metabolize aluminium salts, but this aluminium is well tolerated by plants and animals. Because of the abundance of these salts, the potential for a biological role for them is of interest, and studies are ongoing. |
Archipelago | Q33837 | An archipelago ( AR-kə-PEL-ə-goh), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the origin of the term), the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Stockholm Archipelago, the Malay Archipelago (which includes the Indonesian and Philippine Archipelagos), the Lucayan (Bahamian) Archipelago, the Japanese archipelago, and the Hawaiian Archipelago. |
Anxiety | Q154430 | Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response to a present threat, whereas anxiety is the anticipation of a future one. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.
Anxiety is a feeling of uneasiness and worry, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing. It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue, inability to catch one's breath, tightness in the abdominal region, nausea, and problems in concentration. Anxiety is closely related to fear, which is a response to a real or perceived immediate threat (fight-or-flight response); anxiety involves the expectation of a future threat including dread. People facing anxiety may withdraw from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past.
The emotion of anxiety can persist beyond the developmentally appropriate time-periods in response to specific events, and thus turning into one of the multiple anxiety disorders (e.g. generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder). The difference between anxiety disorder (as mental disorder) and anxiety (as normal emotion), is that people with an anxiety disorder experience anxiety excessively or persistently during approximately 6 months, or even during shorter time-periods in children. Anxiety disorders are among the most persistent mental problems and often last decades. Anxiety can also be experienced within other mental disorders, e.g., obsessive–compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder. |
Antigua and Barbuda | Q781 | Antigua and Barbuda is a sovereign archipelagic country composed of Antigua, Barbuda, and numerous other small islands. Antigua and Barbuda has a total area of 440 km2 (170 sq mi), making it one of the smallest countries in the Caribbean. The country is mostly flat, with the highest points on Antigua being in the Shekerley Mountains and on Barbuda the Highlands. The country has a tropical savanna climate, with pockets of tropical monsoon in Antigua's southwest. Its most populated city is St. John's, followed by All Saints and Bolans. Most of the country resides in the corridor between St. John's and English Harbour.
Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east and the Caribbean Sea on the west, Antigua and Barbuda is located within the Leeward Islands moist forest and Leeward Islands xeric scrub ecoregions. The country shares maritime borders with Anguilla, Saint Barthélemy, and Saint Kitts and Nevis to the west, Montserrat to the southwest, and Guadeloupe to the south. Antigua and Barbuda has numerous natural parks, including Codrington Lagoon, one of the largest internal bodies of water in the Lesser Antilles. Despite its dense population, the country has large swaths of undeveloped land, however, Antigua and Barbuda has experienced many environmental issues due to climate change.
Hunter-gatherers settled the islands starting around 3000 BC, likely arriving on canoes from Central and South America. They were followed by the Arawaks of Venezuela during the Ceramic Period. In 1493, Christopher Columbus surveyed the island of Antigua, which resulted in an attempt at Spanish settlement in 1520. Antigua remained uncolonised until 1632 when Edward Warner and his small party created the first successful British colony. Barbuda was under the control of the Codrington family until the 1860s. Antiguan independence was first proposed by Prince Klaas in 1728, who attempted to make the island an independent kingdom. After emancipation in 1834, Antigua's autonomy slowly increased, while Barbuda was slowly integrated into Antigua. The first democratic elections were held in 1951, and by 1981, Antigua and Barbuda was independent. From 1960 until 2004, the Bird family dominated the archipelago's politics with only one interruption, which ended with the election of Baldwin Spencer to the premiership.
Since 2014, the Labour Party has dominated national politics. Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Commonwealth and a Commonwealth realm, being a constitutional monarchy with Charles III as its head of state. The country is a unitary state, with Barbuda being administered by the Barbuda Council since 1976. Antigua is divided into six parishes. The central government is composed of three main branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. It has a bicameral national legislature comprising the directly elected House of Representatives and the Senate appointed by the Governor-General, the representative of the monarch. The Labour Party and the United Progressive Party have dominated the country's politics since 1994. Antigua and Barbuda is the most developed country in the Caribbean by Human Development Index, in addition to having a proportionally high foreign-born population. Most people are of African descent, with significant populations of Europeans, Hispanics, and Indians. The country is also majority Christian, with most being Protestant. The most spoken home language in the country is Antiguan and Barbudan Creole. Compared to neighboring countries, Antigua and Barbuda ranks highly in most economic indicators, and ranks about average in political freedoms.
Antigua and Barbuda is a high-income country. It is a member of the United Nations, the OECS, the Regional Security System, CARICOM, and the World Trade Organisation. Antigua and Barbuda is one of the only countries in the Caribbean to maintain an air force, and has a mostly service-based economy. Antigua and Barbuda maintains significant influence in the former British Leeward Islands and the eastern Caribbean, having the largest economy and population in the former colony. However, the country continues to struggle with human rights and political polarisation, with a significant Barbudan independence movement re-emerging and declining freedom of the press.
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Alps | Q1286 | The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately 1,200 km (750 mi) across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.
The Alpine arch extends from Nice on the western Mediterranean to Trieste on the Adriatic and Vienna at the beginning of the Pannonian Basin. The mountains were formed over tens of millions of years as the African and Eurasian tectonic plates collided. Extreme shortening caused by the event resulted in marine sedimentary rocks rising by thrusting and folding into high mountain peaks such as Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn.
Mont Blanc spans the French–Italian border, and at 4,809 m (15,778 ft) is the highest mountain in the Alps. The Alpine region area contains 82 peaks higher than 4,000 m (13,000 ft).
The altitude and size of the range affect the climate in Europe; in the mountains, precipitation levels vary greatly and climatic conditions consist of distinct zones. Wildlife such as ibex live in the higher peaks to elevations of 3,400 m (11,155 ft), and plants such as edelweiss grow in rocky areas in lower elevations as well as in higher elevations.
Evidence of human habitation in the Alps goes back to the Palaeolithic era. A mummified man ("Ötzi"), determined to be 5,000 years old, was discovered on a glacier at the Austrian–Italian border in 1991.
By the 6th century BC, the Celtic La Tène culture was well established. Hannibal notably crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants, and the Romans had settlements in the region. In 1800, Napoleon crossed one of the mountain passes with an army of 40,000. The 18th and 19th centuries saw an influx of naturalists, writers, and artists, in particular, the Romanticists, followed by the golden age of alpinism as mountaineers began to ascend the peaks of the Alps.
The Alpine region has a strong cultural identity. Traditional practices such as farming, cheesemaking, and woodworking still thrive in Alpine villages. However, the tourist industry began to grow early in the 20th century and expanded significantly after World War II, eventually becoming the dominant industry by the end of the century.
The Winter Olympic Games have been hosted in the Swiss, French, Italian, Austrian and German Alps. As of 2010, the region is home to 14 million people and has 120 million annual visitors. |
Agatha Christie | Q35064 | Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (née Miller; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. She also wrote the world's longest-running play, the murder mystery The Mousetrap, which has been performed in the West End of London since 1952. A writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Christie has been called the "Queen of Crime"—a nickname now trademarked by her estate—or the "Queen of Mystery". She also wrote six novels under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. In 1971, she was made a Dame (DBE) by Queen Elizabeth II for her contributions to literature. She is the best-selling fiction writer of all time, her novels having sold more than two billion copies.
Christie was born into a wealthy upper-middle-class family in Torquay, Devon, and was largely home-schooled. She was initially an unsuccessful writer with six consecutive rejections, but this changed in 1920 when The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring detective Hercule Poirot, was published. Her first husband was Archibald Christie; they married in 1914 and had one child before divorcing in 1928. Following the breakdown of her marriage and the death of her mother in 1926, she made international headlines by going missing for eleven days. During both World Wars, she served in hospital dispensaries, acquiring a thorough knowledge of the poisons that featured in many of her novels, short stories, and plays. Following her marriage to archaeologist Max Mallowan in 1930, she spent several months each year on digs in the Middle East and used her first-hand knowledge of this profession in her fiction.
According to UNESCO's Index Translationum, she remains the most-translated individual author. Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the top-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold. Christie's stage play The Mousetrap holds the world record for the longest initial run. It opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End on 25 November 1952, and by 2018 there had been more than 27,500 performances. The play was temporarily closed in 2020 because of COVID-19 lockdowns in London before it reopened in 2021.
In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award. Later that year, Witness for the Prosecution received an Edgar Award for best play. In 2013, she was voted the best crime writer and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the best crime novel ever by 600 professional novelists of the Crime Writers' Association. In 2015, And Then There Were None was named the "World's Favourite Christie" in a vote sponsored by the author's estate. Many of Christie's books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, and graphic novels. More than 30 feature films are based on her work. |
Auto racing | Q5386 | Auto racing (also known as car racing, motor racing, or automobile racing) is a motorsport involving the racing of automobiles for competition. In North America, the term is commonly used to describe all forms of automobile sport including non-racing disciplines.
Auto racing has existed since the invention of the automobile. Races of various types were organized, with the first recorded as early as 1867. Many of the earliest events were effectively reliability trials, aimed at proving these new machines were a practical mode of transport, but soon became an important way for automobile makers to demonstrate their machines. By the 1930s, specialist racing cars had developed.
There are now numerous different categories, each with different rules and regulations.
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Amateur | Q455595 | An amateur (from French 'one who loves') is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, self-taught, user-generated, DIY, and hobbyist.
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Antisemitism | Q22649 | Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemitic tendencies may be motivated primarily by negative sentiment towards Jews as a people or negative sentiment towards Jews with regard to Judaism. In the former case, usually known as racial antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by the belief that Jews constitute a distinct race with inherent traits or characteristics that are repulsive or inferior to the preferred traits or characteristics within that person's society. In the latter case, known as religious antisemitism, a person's hostility is driven by their religion's perception of Jews and Judaism, typically encompassing doctrines of supersession that expect or demand Jews to turn away from Judaism and submit to the religion presenting itself as Judaism's successor faith—this is a common theme within the other Abrahamic religions. The development of racial and religious antisemitism has historically been encouraged by anti-Judaism, which is distinct from antisemitism itself.
There are various ways in which antisemitism is manifested, ranging in the level of severity of Jewish persecution. On the more subtle end, it consists of expressions of hatred or discrimination against individual Jews and may or may not be accompanied by violence. On the most extreme end, it consists of pogroms or genocide, which may or may not be state-sponsored. Although the term "antisemitism" did not come into common usage until the 19th century, it is also applied to previous and later anti-Jewish incidents. Historically, most of the world's violent antisemitic events have taken place in Europe, where modern antisemitism began to emerge from antisemitism in Christian communities during the Middle Ages. Since the early 20th century, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents across the Arab world, largely due to the advent of Arab antisemitic conspiracy theories, which were influenced by European antisemitic conspiracy theories.
In recent times, the idea that there is a variation of antisemitism known as "new antisemitism" has emerged on several occasions. According to this view, since Israel is a Jewish state, expressions of anti-Zionist positions could harbour antisemitic sentiments, and criticism of Israel can serve as a vehicle for attacks against Jews in general.
The compound word antisemitismus was first used in print in Germany in 1879 as a "scientific-sounding term" for Judenhass (lit. 'Jew-hatred'), and it has since been used to refer to anti-Jewish sentiment alone. Due to the root word Semite, the term is sometimes subject to an etymological fallacy whereby it is incorrectly assumed to apply to racist hatred directed at "Semitic people", in spite of this being an obsolete racial concept. |
The Ashes | Q725151 | The Ashes is a Test cricket series played biennially between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, The Sporting Times, immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first Test win on English soil. The obituary stated that English cricket had died, and that "the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia". The mythical ashes immediately became associated with the 1882–83 series played in Australia, before which the English captain Ivo Bligh had vowed to "regain those ashes". The English media therefore dubbed the tour the quest to regain the Ashes.
After England won two of the three Tests on the tour, a small urn was presented to Bligh in Melbourne. The contents of the urn are reputed to be the ashes of a wooden bail, and were humorously described as "the ashes of Australian cricket". It is not clear whether that "tiny silver urn" is the same as the small terracotta urn given to Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) by Bligh's widow after his death in 1927.
The Ashes urn has never been the official trophy of the series, having been a personal gift to Bligh, but replicas of the urn have often been held aloft by the winning team as a symbol of their victory. Since the 1998–99 Ashes series, the Ashes Trophy, a Waterford Crystal trophy modelled on the Ashes urn, has been presented to the winners of the series. Irrespective of which side holds the trophy, the original urn remains in the MCC Museum at Lord's. It has been taken to Australia twice to be put on touring display, as part of the Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988 and to accompany the Ashes series in 2006–07.
Ashes series have usually consisted of five Tests, hosted in turn by England and Australia approximately every two years. The Ashes are regarded as being held by the team that most recently won the series. If the series is drawn, the team that currently holds the Ashes "retains" the trophy.
There have been 73 Ashes series. Australia have won 34 and retained six times from draws (40); England have won 32 and retained once (33). |
Accordion | Q79838 | Accordions (from 19th-century German Akkordeon, from Akkord—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed in a frame). The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the diskant, usually on the right-hand keyboard, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side (referred to as the keyboard or sometimes the manual), and the accompaniment on bass or pre-set chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.
The accordion belongs to the free-reed aerophone family. Other instruments in this family include the concertina, harmonica, and bandoneon. The concertina and bandoneon do not have the melody–accompaniment duality. The harmoneon is also related and, while having the descant vs. melody dualism, tries to make it less pronounced. The harmonium and American reed organ are in the same family, but are typically larger than an accordion and sit on a surface or the floor.
The accordion is played by compressing or expanding the bellows while pressing buttons or keys, causing pallets to open, which allow air to flow across strips of brass or steel, called reeds. These vibrate to produce sound inside the body. Valves on opposing reeds of each note are used to make the instrument's reeds sound louder without air leaking from each reed block.
The accordion is widely spread across the world because of the waves of migration from Europe to the Americas and other regions. In some countries (for example: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Panama) it is used in popular music (for example: Chamamé in Argentina; gaucho, forró, and sertanejo in Brazil; vallenato in Colombia; merengue in the Dominican Republic; and norteño in Mexico), whereas in other regions (such as Europe, North America, and other countries in South America) it tends to be more used for dance-pop and folk music.
In Europe and North America, some popular music acts also make use of the instrument. Additionally, the accordion is used in cajun, zydeco, jazz, and klezmer music, and in both solo and orchestral performances of classical music. Many conservatories in Europe have classical accordion departments. The oldest name for this group of instruments is harmonika, from the Greek harmonikos, meaning "harmonic, musical". Today, native versions of the name accordion are more common. These names refer to the type of accordion patented by Cyrill Demian, which concerned "automatically coupled chords on the bass side".
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Artificial intelligence | Q11660 | Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the capability of computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. Such machines may be called AIs.
High-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search); recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix); virtual assistants (e.g., Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo); generative and creative tools (e.g., ChatGPT and AI art); and superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., chess and Go). However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore."
Various subfields of AI research are centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include learning, reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, natural language processing, perception, and support for robotics. To reach these goals, AI researchers have adapted and integrated a wide range of techniques, including search and mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks, and methods based on statistics, operations research, and economics. AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and other fields. Some AI companies, such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, aim to create artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI that can complete virtually any cognitive task at least as well as humans.
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and the field went through multiple cycles of optimism throughout its history, followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding, known as AI winters. Funding and interest vastly increased after 2012 when graphics processing units started being used to accelerate neural networks, and deep learning outperformed previous AI techniques. This growth accelerated further after 2017 with the transformer architecture. In the 2020s, the period of rapid progress marked by advanced generative AI became known as the AI boom. Generative AI and its ability to create and modify content exposed several unintended consequences and harms in the present and raised ethical concerns about AI's long-term effects and potential existential risks, prompting discussions about regulatory policies to ensure the safety and benefits of the technology. |
Amino acid | Q8066 | Amino acids are organic compounds that contain both amino and carboxylic acid functional groups. Although over 500 amino acids exist in nature, by far the most important are the 22 α-amino acids incorporated into proteins. Only these 22 appear in the genetic code of life.
Amino acids can be classified according to the locations of the core structural functional groups (alpha- (α-), beta- (β-), gamma- (γ-) amino acids, etc.); other categories relate to polarity, ionization, and side-chain group type (aliphatic, acyclic, aromatic, polar, etc.). In the form of proteins, amino-acid residues form the second-largest component (water being the largest) of human muscles and other tissues. Beyond their role as residues in proteins, amino acids participate in a number of processes such as neurotransmitter transport and biosynthesis. It is thought that they played a key role in enabling life on Earth and its emergence.
Amino acids are formally named by the IUPAC-IUBMB Joint Commission on Biochemical Nomenclature in terms of the fictitious "neutral" structure shown in the illustration. For example, the systematic name of alanine is 2-aminopropanoic acid, based on the formula CH3−CH(NH2)−COOH. The Commission justified this approach as follows:
The systematic names and formulas given refer to hypothetical forms in which amino groups are unprotonated and carboxyl groups are undissociated. This convention is useful to avoid various nomenclatural problems but should not be taken to imply that these structures represent an appreciable fraction of the amino-acid molecules.
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Astronomical unit | Q1811 | The astronomical unit (symbol: au or AU) is a unit of length defined to be exactly equal to 149597870700 m. Historically, the astronomical unit was conceived as the average Earth-Sun distance (the average of Earth's aphelion and perihelion), before its modern redefinition in 2012.
The astronomical unit is used primarily for measuring distances within the Solar System or around other stars. It is also a fundamental component in the definition of another unit of astronomical length, the parsec. One au is approximately equivalent to 499 light-seconds.
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Anglicanism | Q6423963 | Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of the largest branches of Christianity, with around 110 million adherents worldwide as of 2001. Most are members of national or regional ecclesiastical provinces of the international Anglican Communion, one of the largest Christian bodies in the world, and the world's third-largest Christian communion. When united churches in the Anglican Communion and the breakaway Continuing Anglican movement were not counted, there were an estimated 97.4 million Anglicans worldwide in 2020.
Adherents of Anglicanism are called Anglicans; they are also called Episcopalians in some countries. The provinces within the Anglican Communion are in full communion with the See of Canterbury and thus with the archbishop of Canterbury, whom the communion refers to as its primus inter pares (Latin, 'first among equals'). The archbishop calls the decennial Lambeth Conference, chairs the meeting of primates, and is the president of the Anglican Consultative Council. Some churches that are not part of the Anglican Communion or recognised by it also call themselves Anglican, including those that are within the Continuing Anglican movement and Anglican realignment.
Anglicans base their Christian faith on the Bible, traditions of the apostolic church, apostolic succession ("historic episcopate"), and the writings of the Church Fathers, as well as historically, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and The Books of Homilies. Anglicanism forms a branch of Western Christianity, having definitively declared its independence from the Holy See at the time of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. Many of the Anglican formularies of the mid-16th century correspond closely to those of historical Protestantism. These reforms were understood by one of those most responsible for them, Thomas Cranmer, the archbishop of Canterbury, and others as navigating a middle way between Catholicism and two of the emerging Protestant traditions, namely Lutheranism and Calvinism.
In the first half of the 17th century, the Church of England and the associated Church of Ireland were presented by some Anglican divines as comprising a distinct Christian tradition, with theologies, structures, and forms of worship representing a different kind of middle way, or via media, originally between Lutheranism and Calvinism, and later between Protestantism and Catholicism – a perspective that came to be highly influential in later theories of Anglican identity and expressed in the description of Anglicanism as "catholic and reformed". The degree of distinction between Protestant and Catholic tendencies within Anglicanism is routinely a matter of debate both within specific Anglican churches and the Anglican Communion. The Book of Common Prayer is unique to Anglicanism, the collection of services in one prayer book used for centuries. The book is acknowledged as a principal tie that binds the Anglican Communion as a liturgical tradition.
After the American Revolution, Anglican congregations in the United States and British North America (which would later form the basis for the modern country of Canada) were each reconstituted into autonomous churches with their own bishops and self-governing structures; these were known as the American Episcopal Church and the Church of England in the Dominion of Canada. Through the expansion of the British Empire and the activity of Christian missions, this model was adopted as the model for many newly formed churches, especially in Africa, Australasia, and the Asia-Pacific. In the 19th century, the term Anglicanism was coined to describe the common religious tradition of these churches and also that of the Scottish Episcopal Church, which, though originating earlier within the Church of Scotland, had come to be recognised as sharing this common identity.
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Ames, Iowa | Q470273 | Ames () is a city in Story County, Iowa, United States, located approximately 30 miles (48 km) north of Des Moines in central Iowa. It is the home of Iowa State University (ISU). According to the 2020 census, Ames had a population of 66,427, making it the state's ninth-most populous city. Iowa State University was home to 30,177 students as of fall 2023, which make up approximately one half of the city's population.
A United States Department of Energy national laboratory, Ames Laboratory, is located on the ISU campus. Ames also hosts United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sites: the largest federal animal disease center in the United States, the USDA Agricultural Research Service's National Animal Disease Center (NADC), as well as one of two national USDA sites for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which comprises the National Veterinary Services Laboratory and the Center for Veterinary Biologics. Ames also hosts the headquarters of the Iowa Department of Transportation. |
Abbey | Q160742 | An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns.
The concept of the abbey has developed over many centuries from the early monastic ways of religious men and women where they would live isolated from the lay community about them. Religious life in an abbey may be monastic. An abbey may be the home of an enclosed religious order or may be open to visitors. The layout of the church and associated buildings of an abbey often follows a set plan determined by the founding religious order.
Abbeys are often self-sufficient while using any abundance of produce or skill to provide care to the poor and needy, refuge to the persecuted, or education to the young. Some abbeys offer accommodation to people who are seeking spiritual retreat. There are many famous abbeys across the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. |
Andes | Q5456 | The Andes ( AN-deez), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (Spanish: Cordillera de los Andes; Quechua: Anti) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is 8,900 km (5,500 mi) long and 200 to 700 km (120 to 430 mi) wide (widest between 18°S and 20°S latitude) and has an average height of about 4,000 m (13,000 ft). The Andes extend from south to north through seven South American countries: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.
Along their length, the Andes are split into several ranges, separated by intermediate depressions. The Andes are the location of several high plateaus—some of which host major cities such as Quito, Bogotá, Cali, Arequipa, Medellín, Bucaramanga, Sucre, Mérida, El Alto, and La Paz. The Altiplano Plateau is the world's second highest after the Tibetan Plateau. These ranges are in turn grouped into three major divisions based on climate: the Tropical Andes, the Dry Andes, and the Wet Andes.
The Andes are the highest mountain range outside of Asia. The range's highest peak, Argentina's Aconcagua, rises to an elevation of about 6,961 m (22,838 ft) above sea level. The peak of Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes is farther from the Earth's center than any other location on the Earth's surface, due to the equatorial bulge resulting from the Earth's rotation. The world's highest volcanoes are in the Andes, including Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, which rises to 6,893 m (22,615 ft).
The Andes are also part of the American Cordillera, a chain of mountain ranges (cordillera) that consists of an almost continuous sequence of mountain ranges that form the western "backbone" of the Americas and Antarctica.
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Ammonia | Q4087 | Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula NH3. A stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous waste, and it contributes significantly to the nutritional needs of terrestrial organisms by serving as a precursor to fertilisers. Around 70% of ammonia produced industrially is used to make fertilisers in various forms and composition, such as urea and diammonium phosphate. Ammonia in pure form is also applied directly into the soil.
Ammonia, either directly or indirectly, is also a building block for the synthesis of many chemicals.
Ammonia occurs in nature and has been detected in the interstellar medium. In many countries, it is classified as an extremely hazardous substance.
Ammonia is toxic, causing damage to cells and tissues. For this reason it is excreted by most animals in the urine, in the form of dissolved urea.
Ammonia is produced biologically in a process called nitrogen fixation, but even more is generated industrially by the Haber process. The process helped revolutionize agriculture by providing cheap fertilizers. The global industrial production of ammonia in 2021 was 235 million tonnes. Industrial ammonia is transported by road in tankers, by rail in tank wagons, by sea in gas carriers, or in cylinders.
Ammonia boils at −33.34 °C (−28.012 °F) at a pressure of one atmosphere, but the liquid can often be handled in the laboratory without external cooling. Household ammonia or ammonium hydroxide is a solution of ammonia in water.
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AOL | Q27585 | AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc.
The service traces its history to an online service known as PlayNET. PlayNET licensed its software to Quantum Link (Q-Link), which went online in November 1985. A new IBM PC client was launched in 1988, and eventually renamed as America Online in 1989. AOL grew to become the largest online service, displacing established players like CompuServe and The Source. By 1995, AOL had about three million active users.
AOL was at one point the most recognized brand on the Web in the United States. AOL once provided a dial-up Internet service to millions of Americans and pioneered instant messaging and chat rooms with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM). In 1998, AOL purchased Netscape for US$4.2 billion. By 2000, AOL was providing internet service to over 20 million consumers, dominating the market of Internet service providers (ISPs). In 2001, at the height of its popularity, it purchased the media conglomerate Time Warner in the largest merger in US history. AOL shrank rapidly thereafter, partly due to the decline of dial-up and rise of broadband. AOL was eventually spun off from Time Warner in 2009, with Tim Armstrong appointed the new CEO. Under his leadership, the company invested in media brands and advertising technologies.
On June 23, 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications for $4.4 billion. On May 3, 2021, Verizon announced it would sell Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $5 billion. On September 1, 2021, AOL became part of the new Yahoo! Inc. |
Australian Labor Party | Q216082 | The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also known as the Labor Party or simply Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia and one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party has been in government since the 2022 federal election, and with political branches active in all the Australian states and territories, they currently hold government in New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory. As of 2025, Queensland, Tasmania and Northern Territory are the only states or territories where Labor currently forms the opposition. It is the oldest continuously operating political party in Australian history, having been established on 8 May 1901 at Parliament House, Melbourne, the meeting place of the first Federal Parliament.
The ALP is descended from the labour parties founded in the various Australian colonies by the emerging labour movement. Colonial Labour parties contested seats from 1891, and began contesting federal seats following Federation at the 1901 federal election. In 1904, the ALP briefly formed what is considered the world's first labour party government and the world's first democratic socialist or social democratic government at a national level. At the 1910 federal election, Labor became the first party in Australia to win a majority in either house of the Australian parliament. In every election since 1910 Labor has either served as the governing party or the opposition. There have been 13 Labor prime ministers and 10 periods of federal Labor governments, including under Billy Hughes from 1915 to 1916, James Scullin from 1929 to 1932, John Curtin from 1941 to 1945, Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949, Gough Whitlam from 1972 to 1975, Bob Hawke from 1983 to 1991, Paul Keating from 1991 to 1996, Kevin Rudd from 2007 to 2010 and 2013, Julia Gillard from 2010 to 2013, and Anthony Albanese since 2022.
The Labor Party is often called the party of unions due to its close ties to the labour movement in Australia and historical founding by trade unions, with the majority of Australian trade unions being affiliated with the Labor Party. The party's structure allocates 50% of delegate representation at state and national conferences to affiliated unions, with the remaining 50% to rank-and-file party members. At the federal and state/colony level, the Australian Labor Party predates both the British Labour Party and the New Zealand Labour Party in party formation, government, and policy implementation. Internationally, the ALP is a member of the Progressive Alliance, a network of progressive, democratic socialist and social democratic parties, having previously been a member of the Socialist International. |
Aspirin | Q18216 | Aspirin () is the genericized trademark for acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to reduce pain, fever, and inflammation, and as an antithrombotic. Specific inflammatory conditions that aspirin is used to treat include Kawasaki disease, pericarditis, and rheumatic fever.
Aspirin is also used long-term to help prevent further heart attacks, ischaemic strokes, and blood clots in people at high risk. For pain or fever, effects typically begin within 30 minutes. Aspirin works similarly to other NSAIDs but also suppresses the normal functioning of platelets.
One common adverse effect is an upset stomach. More significant side effects include stomach ulcers, stomach bleeding, and worsening asthma. Bleeding risk is greater among those who are older, drink alcohol, take other NSAIDs, or are on other blood thinners. Aspirin is not recommended in the last part of pregnancy. It is not generally recommended in children with infections because of the risk of Reye syndrome. High doses may result in ringing in the ears.
A precursor to aspirin found in the bark of the willow tree (genus Salix) has been used for its health effects for at least 2,400 years. In 1853, chemist Charles Frédéric Gerhardt treated the medicine sodium salicylate with acetyl chloride to produce acetylsalicylic acid for the first time. Over the next 50 years, other chemists, mostly of the German company Bayer, established the chemical structure and devised more efficient production methods.: 69–75 Felix Hoffmann (or Arthur Eichengrün) of Bayer was the first to produce acetylsalicylic acid in a pure, stable form in 1897. By 1899, Bayer had dubbed this drug Aspirin and was selling it globally.: 27
Aspirin is available without medical prescription as a proprietary or generic medication in most jurisdictions. It is one of the most widely used medications globally, with an estimated 40,000 tonnes (44,000 tons) (50 to 120 billion pills) consumed each year, and is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2022, it was the 36th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 16 million prescriptions. |
Alexander III of Russia | Q120180 | Alexander III (Russian: Александр III Александрович Романов, romanized: Aleksandr III Aleksandrovich Romanov; 10 March 1845 – 1 November 1894) was Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Poland and Grand Duke of Finland from 13 March 1881 until his death in 1894. He was highly reactionary in domestic affairs and reversed some of the liberal reforms of his father, Alexander II, a policy of "counter-reforms" (Russian: контрреформы). Under the influence of Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827–1907), he acted to maximize his autocratic powers.
During his reign, Russia fought no major wars, and he came to be known as The Peacemaker (Russian: Миротворец, romanized: Mirotvorets
Russian pronunciation: [mʲɪrɐˈtvorʲɪt͡s]), with the laudatory title of Tsar’-Mirotvorets enduring into 21st century historiography. His major foreign policy achievement was the Franco-Russian Alliance, a major shift in international relations that eventually embroiled Russia in World War I. His political legacy represented a direct challenge to the European cultural order set forth by German statesman Otto von Bismarck, intermingling Russian influences with the shifting balances of power. |
Alexander Jannaeus | Q319107 | Alexander Jannaeus (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξανδρος Ἰανναῖος Aléxandros Iannaîos, English: "Alexander Jannaios", usually Latinised to "Alexander Jannaeus"; Hebrew: יַנַּאי Yannaʾy; born Jonathan יהונתן) was the second king of the Hasmonean dynasty, who ruled over an expanding kingdom of Judaea from 103 to 76 BCE. A son of John Hyrcanus, he inherited the throne from his brother Aristobulus I, and married his brother's widow, Queen Salome Alexandra. From his conquests to expand the kingdom to a bloody civil war, Alexander's reign has been described as cruel and oppressive with never-ending conflict. The major historical sources of Alexander's life are Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War.
The kingdom reached its greatest territorial extent under Alexander Jannaeus, incorporating most of Palestine's Mediterranean coastline and regions surrounding the Jordan River. Alexander also had many of his subjects killed for their disapproval of his handling of state affairs. Due to his territorial expansion and adverse interactions with his subjects, he was continuously embroiled with foreign wars and domestic turmoil.
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Alexios I Komnenos | Q41600 | Alexios I Komnenos (Ancient Greek: Ἀλέξιος Κομνηνός, romanized: Aléxios Komnēnós, c. 1057 – 15 August 1118), Latinized as Alexius I Comnenus, was Byzantine emperor from 1081 to 1118. After usurping the throne, he was faced with a collapsing empire and constant warfare throughout his reign, Alexios was able to curb the Byzantine decline and begin the military, financial, and territorial recovery known as the Komnenian restoration. His appeals to Western Europe for help against the Seljuk Turks were the catalyst that sparked the First Crusade. Although he was not the first emperor of the Komnenian dynasty, it was during his reign that the Komnenos family came to full power and initiated a hereditary succession to the throne.
The son of John Komnenos and a nephew of Isaac I Komnenos, Alexios served with distinction under three Byzantine emperors. In 1081, he led a rebellion against Emperor Nikephoros III Botaneiates and took the throne for himself. He immediately faced an invasion of the western Balkans by the Normans under Robert Guiscard and his son Bohemond. Despite initial defeats, Alexios secured an alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and drove back the Normans, recovering most of Byzantine losses by 1085. In 1091, he achieved a decisive victory over the Pechenegs at the Battle of Levounion in Thrace with the help of Cuman allies.
Later in the 1090s, Alexios directed his attention towards Asia Minor, most of which had fallen to the Seljuk Turks. Desiring western support, he took reconciliatory measures towards the Papacy, and in 1095 his envoys made a formal appeal to Pope Urban II at the Council of Piacenza. At the subsequent Council of Clermont, Pope Urban formally called the First Crusade, which began a year after and concluded with much of western Anatolia restored to Byzantine rule. On Alexios' death in 1118, he was suceeeded by his son John II Komnenos. Alexios' reign and campaigns were recorded by his daughter Anna Komnene in her Alexiad, a political and military history, which she named after her father. |
Andrew Jackson | Q11817 | Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before his presidency, he rose to fame as a general in the U.S. Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. His political philosophy became the basis for the Democratic Party. Jackson's legacy is controversial: he has been praised as an advocate for working Americans and preserving the union of states, and criticized for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans.
Jackson was born in the colonial Carolinas before the American Revolutionary War. He became a frontier lawyer and married Rachel Donelson Robards. He briefly served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, representing Tennessee. After resigning, he served as a justice on the Tennessee Superior Court from 1798 until 1804. Jackson purchased a plantation later known as the Hermitage, becoming a wealthy planter who profited off the forced labor of hundreds of enslaved African Americans during his lifetime. In 1801, he was appointed colonel of the Tennessee militia and was elected its commander. He led troops during the Creek War of 1813–1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and negotiating the Treaty of Fort Jackson that required the indigenous Creek population to surrender vast tracts of present-day Alabama and Georgia. In the concurrent war against the British, Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero. He later commanded U.S. forces in the First Seminole War, which led to the annexation of Florida from Spain. Jackson briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate. He ran for president in 1824. He won a plurality of the popular and electoral vote, but no candidate won the electoral majority. With the help of Henry Clay, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams as president. Jackson's supporters alleged that there was a "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Clay (who joined Adams' cabinet) and began creating a new political coalition that became the Democratic Party in the 1830s.
Jackson ran again in 1828, defeating Adams in a landslide despite issues such as his slave trading and his "irregular" marriage. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act. This act, which has been described as ethnic cleansing, displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi and resulted in thousands of deaths, in what has become known as the Trail of Tears. Jackson faced a challenge to the integrity of the federal union when South Carolina threatened to nullify a high protective tariff set by the federal government. He threatened the use of military force to enforce the tariff, but the crisis was defused when it was amended. In 1832, he vetoed a bill by Congress to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States, arguing that it was a corrupt institution. After a lengthy struggle, the Bank was dismantled. In 1835, Jackson became the only president to pay off the national debt. After leaving office, Jackson supported the presidencies of Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, as well as the annexation of Texas.
Contemporary opinions about Jackson are often polarized. Supporters characterize him as a defender of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, while critics point to his reputation as a demagogue who ignored the law when it suited him. Scholarly rankings of U.S. presidents historically rated Jackson's presidency as above average. Since the late 20th century, his reputation declined, and in the 21st century his placement in rankings of presidents fell.
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Algiers | Q3561 | Algiers is the capital city of Algeria as well as the capital of the Algiers Province; it extends over many communes without having its own separate governing body. With 2,988,145 residents in 2008 and an estimated 3,004,130 residents in 2025 in an area of 1,190 square kilometres (460 sq mi), Algiers is the largest city in Algeria, the third largest city on the Mediterranean, sixth in the Arab World, and 11th in Africa. Located in the north-central portion of the country, it extends along the Bay of Algiers surrounded by the Mitidja Plain and major mountain ranges. Its favorable location made it the center of Ottoman and French cultural, political, and architectural influences for the region, shaping it to be the diverse metropolis it is today.
Algiers was formally founded in 972 AD by Buluggin ibn Ziri, though its history goes back to around 1200-250 BC when it was a small settlement of Phoenicians that practiced trade. It was caught under control of many nations and empires such as Numidia, the Roman Empire and the Islamic caliphates, as it went on to become the capital of the Regency of Algiers from 1516 to 1830 AD, then under the control of France due to an invasion that ranked Algiers as capital of French Algeria from 1830 to 1942 AD which temporarily merged with Free France from 1942 to 1944 AD, then back again to French Algeria from 1944 to 1962 AD, and finally capital of Algeria from 1962 to present day after the Algerian Revolution.
Algiers is the main tourist destination in Algeria due to its many museums, art galleries and cultural centers, but most notably the historic center that is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Casbah which houses many traditional Algerian and Ottoman/Andalusian style buildings, while the French side of the city is bigger and has many distinct architectural styles that showcase trends over the decades whether they were local or international; Al bidha meaning « the white » is what the city's called because of its white washed buildings whether they originated from colonial powers or local populations. The Host city of the 1975 Mediterranean Games and other major African and international sports events, Algiers is also the seat of the Consultative Council of the Arab Maghreb Union. Numerous Algerian multinational companies are based in the city, such as Sonatrach Petroleum Corporation and Air Algérie.
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Acre | Q81292 | The acre ( AY-kər) is a unit of land area used in the British imperial and the United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, 1⁄640 of a square mile, 4,840 square yards, or 43,560 square feet, and approximately 4,047 m2, or about 40% of a hectare. Based upon the international yard and pound agreement of 1959, an acre may be declared as exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. The acre is sometimes abbreviated ac, but is usually spelled out as the word "acre".
Traditionally, in the Middle Ages, an acre was conceived of as the area of land that could be ploughed by one man using a team of eight oxen in one day. The acre is still a statutory measure in the United States. Both the international acre and the US survey acre are in use, but they differ by only four parts per million. The most common use of the acre is to measure tracts of land. The acre is used in many established and former Commonwealth of Nations countries by custom. In a few, it continues as a statute measure, although not since 2010 in the UK, and not for decades in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In many places where it is not a statute measure, it is still lawful to "use for trade" if given as supplementary information and is not used for land registration. |
Antibiotic | Q12187 | An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and prevention of such infections. They may either kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria. A limited number of antibiotics also possess antiprotozoal activity. Antibiotics are not effective against viruses such as the ones which cause the common cold or influenza. Drugs which inhibit growth of viruses are termed antiviral drugs or antivirals. Antibiotics are also not effective against fungi. Drugs which inhibit growth of fungi are called antifungal drugs.
Sometimes, the term antibiotic—literally "opposing life", from the Greek roots ἀντι anti, "against" and βίος bios, "life"—is broadly used to refer to any substance used against microbes, but in the usual medical usage, antibiotics (such as penicillin) are those produced naturally (by one microorganism fighting another), whereas non-antibiotic antibacterials (such as sulfonamides and antiseptics) are fully synthetic. However, both classes have the same effect of killing or preventing the growth of microorganisms, and both are included in antimicrobial chemotherapy. "Antibacterials" include bactericides, bacteriostatics, antibacterial soaps, and chemical disinfectants, whereas antibiotics are an important class of antibacterials used more specifically in medicine and sometimes in livestock feed.
Antibiotics have been used since ancient times. Many civilizations used topical application of moldy bread, with many references to its beneficial effects arising from ancient Egypt, Nubia, China, Serbia, Greece, and Rome. The first person to directly document the use of molds to treat infections was John Parkinson (1567–1650). Antibiotics revolutionized medicine in the 20th century. Synthetic antibiotic chemotherapy as a science and development of antibacterials began in Germany with Paul Ehrlich in the late 1880s. Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) discovered modern day penicillin in 1928, the widespread use of which proved significantly beneficial during wartime. The first sulfonamide and the first systemically active antibacterial drug, Prontosil, was developed by a research team led by Gerhard Domagk in 1932 or 1933 at the Bayer Laboratories of the IG Farben conglomerate in Germany. However, the effectiveness and easy access to antibiotics have also led to their overuse and some bacteria have evolved resistance to them. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a naturally occurring process, is driven largely by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials. Yet, at the same time, many people around the world do not have access to essential antimicrobials. The World Health Organization has classified AMR as a widespread "serious threat [that] is no longer a prediction for the future, it is happening right now in every region of the world and has the potential to affect anyone, of any age, in any country". Each year, nearly 5 million deaths are associated with AMR globally. Global deaths attributable to AMR numbered 1.27 million in 2019. |
Alternative medicine | Q188504 | Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others appeal to the supernatural or superstitious to explain their effect or lack thereof. In others, the practice has plausibility but lacks a positive risk–benefit outcome probability. Research into alternative therapies often fails to follow proper research protocols (such as placebo-controlled trials, blind experiments and calculation of prior probability), providing invalid results. History has shown that if a method is proven to work, it eventually ceases to be alternative and becomes mainstream medicine.
Much of the perceived effect of an alternative practice arises from a belief that it will be effective, the placebo effect, or from the treated condition resolving on its own (the natural course of disease). This is further exacerbated by the tendency to turn to alternative therapies upon the failure of medicine, at which point the condition will be at its worst and most likely to spontaneously improve. In the absence of this bias, especially for diseases that are not expected to get better by themselves such as cancer or HIV infection, multiple studies have shown significantly worse outcomes if patients turn to alternative therapies. While this may be because these patients avoid effective treatment, some alternative therapies are actively harmful (e.g. cyanide poisoning from amygdalin, or the intentional ingestion of hydrogen peroxide) or actively interfere with effective treatments.
The alternative medicine sector is a highly profitable industry with a strong lobby, and faces far less regulation over the use and marketing of unproven treatments. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), and holistic medicine attempt to combine alternative practices with those of mainstream medicine. Traditional medicine practices become "alternative" when used outside their original settings and without proper scientific explanation and evidence. Alternative methods are often marketed as more "natural" or "holistic" than methods offered by medical science, that is sometimes derogatorily called "Big Pharma" by supporters of alternative medicine. Billions of dollars have been spent studying alternative medicine, with few or no positive results and many methods thoroughly disproven. |
Art Deco | Q173782 | Art Deco, short for the French Arts décoratifs (lit. 'Decorative Arts'), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I, and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920s to early 1930s. Through styling and design of the exterior and interior of anything from large structures to small objects, including how people look (clothing, fashion, and jewelry), Art Deco has influenced buildings (from skyscrapers to cinemas), bridges, ships, ocean liners, trains, cars, trucks, buses, furniture, and everyday objects including radios and vacuum cleaners.
The name Art Deco came into use after the 1925 Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts) held in Paris. Art Deco has its origins in the bold geometric forms of the Vienna Secession and Cubism. From the outset, Art Deco was influenced by the bright colors of Fauvism and the Ballets Russes, and the exoticized styles of art from China, Japan, India, Persia, ancient Egypt, and Maya. In its time, Art Deco was tagged with other names, like style moderne, Moderne, modernistic or style contemporain, and was not recognized as a distinct and homogenous style.
During its heyday, Art Deco represented luxury, glamour, exuberance and faith in social and technological progress. The movement featured rare and expensive materials, such as ebony and ivory, and exquisite craftsmanship. It also introduced new materials such as chrome plating, stainless steel and plastic. In New York, the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and other buildings from the 1920s and 1930s are monuments to the style. The largest concentration of art deco architecture in the world is in Miami Beach, Florida.
In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Art Deco became more subdued. A sleeker form of the style, called Streamline Moderne, appeared in the 1930s, featuring curving forms and smooth, polished surfaces. Art Deco was an international style, but after the outbreak of World War II, it lost its dominance to the functional and unadorned styles of modern architecture and the International Style. |
Al-Qaeda | Q34490 | Al-Qaeda ( ; Arabic: القاعدة, romanized: al-Qāʿidah, lit. 'the Base', IPA: [alˈqaː.ʕi.da]) is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the U.S. and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11 attacks.
The organization was founded in a series of meetings held in Peshawar during 1988, attended by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Muhammad Atef, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War. Building upon the networks of Maktab al-Khidamat, the founding members decided to create an organization named "Al-Qaeda" to serve as a "vanguard" for jihad. When Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to support Saudi Arabia by sending his Mujahideen fighters. His offer was rebuffed by the Saudi government, which instead sought the aid of the United States. The stationing of U.S. troops in the Arabian Peninsula prompted bin Laden to declare a jihad against both the rulers of Saudi Arabia – whom he denounced as murtadd (apostates) – and against the US. From 1992, al-Qaeda established its headquarters in Sudan until it was expelled in 1996. It then shifted its base to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and later expanded to other parts of the world, primarily in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1996 and 1998, bin Laden issued two fatāwā that demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia.
In 1998, al-Qaeda conducted the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. The U.S. retaliated by launching Operation Infinite Reach, against al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In 2001, al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths, long-term health consequences of nearby residents, damage to global economic markets, the triggering of drastic geo-political changes as well as generating profound cultural influence across the world. The U.S. launched the war on Terror in response and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. In 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, overthrowing the Ba'athist regime which they falsely accused of having ties with al-Qaeda. In 2004, al-Qaeda launched its Iraqi regional branch. After pursuing him for almost a decade, the U.S. military killed bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.
Al-Qaeda members believe that a Judeo-Christian alliance (led by the United States) is waging a war against Islam and conspiring to destroy Islam. Al-Qaeda also opposes man-made laws, and seek to implement sharīʿah (Islamic law) in Muslim countries. Al-Qaeda fighters characteristically deploy tactics such as suicide attacks (Inghimasi and Istishhadi operations) involving simultaneous bombing of several targets in battle-zones. Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, which later morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq after 2006, was responsible for numerous sectarian attacks against Shias during its Iraqi insurgency. Al-Qaeda ideologues envision the violent removal of all foreign and secularist influences in Muslim countries, which it denounces as corrupt deviations. Following the death of bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda vowed to avenge his killing. The group was then led by Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri until he too was killed by the United States in 2022. As of 2021, they have reportedly suffered from a deterioration of central command over its regional operations. |
Andrew Carnegie | Q484265 | Andrew Carnegie (English: kar-NEG-ee, Scots: [kɑrˈnɛːɡi]; November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late-19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history.
He became a leading philanthropist in the United States, Great Britain, and the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away around $350 million (equivalent to $10.9 billion in 2024), almost 90 percent of his fortune, to charities, foundations and universities. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, expressed support for progressive taxation and an estate tax, and stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland. He immigrated to what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States with his parents in 1848 at the age of 12. Carnegie started work in a cotton mill and later as a telegrapher. By the 1860s he had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges, and oil derricks. He accumulated further wealth as a bond salesman, raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J. P. Morgan in 1901 for $303,450,000 (equal to $11,469,200,000 today); it formed the basis of the U.S. Steel Corporation. After selling Carnegie Steel, he surpassed John D. Rockefeller as the richest American of the time.
Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on building local libraries, working for world peace, education, and scientific research. He funded Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Peace Palace in The Hague, founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others. |
Airline | Q46970 | An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers or freight (cargo). Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which they both offer and operate the same flight. Generally, airline companies are recognized with an air operating certificate or license issued by a governmental aviation body. Airlines may be scheduled or charter operators.
The first airline was the German airship company DELAG, founded on November 16, 1909. The four oldest non-airship airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM (1919), Colombia's Avianca (1919), Australia's Qantas (1920) and the Russian Aeroflot (1923).
Airline ownership has seen a shift from mostly personal ownership until the 1930s to government-ownership of major airlines from the 1940s to 1980s and back to large-scale privatization following the mid-1980s. Since the 1980s, there has been a trend of major airline mergers and the formation of airline alliances. The largest alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld. Airline alliances coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide). |
Australian Capital Territory | Q3258 | The Australian Capital Territory (ACT), known as the Federal Capital Territory until 1938, is an internal territory of Australia. Canberra, the capital city of Australia, is situated within the territory, and is the territory's primate city. It is located in southeastern Australian mainland as an enclave surrounded by the state of New South Wales (NSW). Exclaved from NSW after federation as the seat of government for the new nation, the territory hosts parliament house, High Court of Australia and the head offices of many Australian Government agencies.
On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies of Australia was achieved. Section 125 of the new Australian Constitution provided that land, situated in New South Wales and at least 100 miles (160 km) from Sydney, would be ceded to the new federal government. Following discussion and exploration of various areas within New South Wales, the Seat of Government Act 1908 was passed in 1908 which specified a capital in the Yass-Canberra region. The territory was transferred to the federal government by New South Wales in 1911, two years prior to the capital city being founded and formally named as Canberra in 1913.
While the overwhelming majority of the territory population resides in the city of Canberra in the territory's north-east, the territory also includes some towns such as Williamsdale, Oaks Estate, Uriarra, Tharwa and Hall. The territory also includes the Namadgi National Park, which comprises the majority of land area of the territory. Despite a common misconception, the Jervis Bay Territory is not part of the ACT, although ACT laws apply in the Jervis Bay Territory. The territory has a relatively dry, continental climate, experiencing warm to hot summers and cool to cold winters.
The territory is home to many important institutions of the federal government, national monuments and museums. These include the Parliament of Australia, the High Court of Australia, the National Gallery of Australia, the Australian Defence Force Academy and the Australian War Memorial. It also hosts the majority of foreign embassies in Australia, as well as regional headquarters of many international organisations, not-for-profit groups, lobbying groups and professional associations. Several major universities also have campuses in the territory, including the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, the University of New South Wales, Charles Sturt University and the Australian Catholic University.
A locally elected legislative assembly has governed the territory since 1988. However, the Commonwealth maintains authority over the territory and may disallow or overturn local laws. The Commonwealth maintains control over the area known as the Parliamentary Triangle through the National Capital Authority. Residents of the territory, together with residents of the Jervis Bay Territory and Norfolk Island, elect three members of the House of Representatives and two senators. While senators who represent Australian states have fixed six year terms, the terms of Territory senators are not fixed but are governed by the opening and dissolution of the House of Representatives.
With 453,324 residents, the territory is the second smallest mainland state or territory by population. At the 2016 census, the median weekly income for people in the territory aged over 15 was $998, significantly higher than the national median of $662. The average level of degree qualification in the territory is also higher than the national average. Within the territory, 37.1% of the population hold a bachelor's degree level or above education compared to the national figure of 20%. In 2022, the territory recorded the equal fourth highest Human Development Index score (0.976) out of over 1,700 subnational regions, coming close to a perfect score of 1.
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American Civil Liberties Union | Q21637 | The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million.
The ACLU provides legal assistance in cases where it considers civil liberties at risk. Legal support from the ACLU can take the form of direct legal representation or preparation of amicus curiae briefs expressing legal arguments when another law firm is already providing representation. In addition to representing persons and organizations in lawsuits, the ACLU lobbies for policy positions established by its board of directors.
The ACLU's current positions include opposing the death penalty; supporting same-sex marriage and the right of LGBTQ+ people to adopt; supporting reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion rights; eliminating discrimination against women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people; decarceration in the United States; protecting housing and employment rights of veterans; reforming sex offender registries and protecting housing and employment rights of convicted first-time offenders; supporting the rights of prisoners and opposing torture; upholding the separation of church and state by opposing government preference for religion over non-religion or for particular faiths over others; and supporting the legality of gender-affirming treatments, including those that are government funded, for trans youth. |
Adobe Inc. | Q11463 | Adobe Inc. ( ə-DOH-bee), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to video/audio editing, mobile app development, print layout and animation software.
It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print. Its flagship products include Adobe Photoshop image editing software; Adobe Illustrator vector-based illustration software; Adobe Acrobat Reader and the Portable Document Format (PDF); and a host of tools primarily for audio-visual content creation, editing and publishing. Adobe offered a bundled solution of its products named Adobe Creative Suite, which evolved into a subscription-based offering named Adobe Creative Cloud. The company also expanded into digital marketing software and in 2021 was considered one of the top global leaders in Customer Experience Management (CXM).
Adobe was founded in December 1982 by John Warnock and Charles Geschke, who established the company after leaving Xerox PARC to develop and sell the PostScript page description language. In 1985, Apple Computer licensed PostScript for use in its LaserWriter printers, which helped spark the desktop publishing revolution. Adobe later developed animation and multimedia through its acquisition of Macromedia, from which it acquired Macromedia Flash; video editing and compositing software with Adobe Premiere, later known as Adobe Premiere Pro; low-code web development with Adobe Muse; and a suite of software for digital marketing management.
As of 2022, Adobe had more than 26,000 employees worldwide. Adobe also has major development operations in the United States in Newton, New York City, Arden Hills, Lehi, Seattle, Austin and San Francisco. It also has major development operations in Noida and Bangalore in India. The company has long been the dominant tech firm in design and creative software, despite attracting criticism for its policies and practices particularly around Adobe Creative Cloud's switch to subscription only pricing and its early termination fees for its most promoted Creative Cloud plan, the latter of which attracted a joint civil lawsuit from the US Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice in 2024. |
Apparent magnitude | Q124313 | Apparent magnitude (m) is a measure of the brightness of a star, astronomical object or other celestial objects like artificial satellites. Its value depends on its intrinsic luminosity, its distance, and any extinction of the object's light caused by interstellar dust along the line of sight to the observer.
Unless stated otherwise, the word magnitude in astronomy usually refers to a celestial object's apparent magnitude. The magnitude scale likely dates to before the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, whose star catalog popularized the system by listing stars from 1st magnitude (brightest) to 6th magnitude (dimmest). The modern scale was mathematically defined to closely match this historical system by Norman Pogson in 1856.
The scale is reverse logarithmic: the brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. A difference of 1.0 in magnitude corresponds to the brightness ratio of
100
5
{\displaystyle {\sqrt[{5}]{100}}}
, or about 2.512. For example, a magnitude 2.0 star is 2.512 times as bright as a magnitude 3.0 star, 6.31 times as magnitude 4.0, and 100 times magnitude 7.0.
The brightest astronomical objects have negative apparent magnitudes: for example, Venus at −4.2 or Sirius at −1.46. The faintest stars visible with the naked eye on the darkest night have apparent magnitudes of about +6.5, though this varies depending on a person's eyesight and with altitude and atmospheric conditions. The apparent magnitudes of known objects range from the Sun at −26.832 to objects in deep Hubble Space Telescope images of magnitude +31.5.
The measurement of apparent magnitude is called photometry. Photometric measurements are made in the ultraviolet, visible, or infrared wavelength bands using standard passband filters belonging to photometric systems such as the UBV system or the Strömgren uvbyβ system. Measurement in the V-band may be referred to as the apparent visual magnitude.
Absolute magnitude is a related quantity which measures the luminosity that a celestial object emits, rather than its apparent brightness when observed, and is expressed on the same reverse logarithmic scale. Absolute magnitude is defined as the apparent magnitude that a star or object would have if it were observed from a distance of 10 parsecs (33 light-years; 3.1×1014 kilometres; 1.9×1014 miles). Therefore, it is of greater use in stellar astrophysics since it refers to a property of a star regardless of how close it is to Earth. But in observational astronomy and popular stargazing, references to "magnitude" are understood to mean apparent magnitude.
Amateur astronomers commonly express the darkness of the sky in terms of limiting magnitude, i.e. the apparent magnitude of the faintest star they can see with the naked eye. This can be useful as a way of monitoring the spread of light pollution.
Apparent magnitude is technically a measure of illuminance, which can also be measured in photometric units such as lux. |
Amiga | Q100047 | Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-bit or 16/32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphics and audio compared to previous 8-bit systems. These include the Atari ST—released earlier the same year—as well as the Macintosh and Acorn Archimedes. The Amiga differs from its contemporaries through custom hardware to accelerate graphics and sound, including sprites, a blitter, and four channels of sample-based audio. It runs a pre-emptive multitasking operating system called AmigaOS, with a desktop environment called Workbench.
The Amiga 1000, based on the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, was released in July 1985. Production problems kept it from becoming widely available until early 1986. While early advertisements cast the computer as an all-purpose business machine, especially with the Sidecar IBM PC compatibility add-on, the Amiga was most commercially successful as a home computer with a range of video games and creative software. The bestselling model, the Amiga 500, was introduced in 1987 along with the more expandable Amiga 2000. The 1990 Amiga 3000 includes a minor update to the graphics hardware via the Enhanced Chip Set also used in subsequent models.
The Amiga established a niche in audio and multimedia. The first music tracker was written for the Amiga, and it became a popular platform for music creation. The 3D rendering packages LightWave 3D, Imagine, and Traces (a predecessor to Blender) originated on the system. The 1990 third-party Video Toaster made the Amiga a comparatively low cost option for video production. In later years, the Amiga started losing market share to IBM PC compatibles and video game consoles, eventually leading to Commodore's bankruptcy in 1994 and the end of Amiga. Commodore is estimated to have sold 4.85 million Amigas. Various groups have since released spiritual successors. |
Austin, Texas | Q16559 | Austin ( AW-stin) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat and most populous city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 26th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, the 13th-most populous city in the United States, the fifth-most populous city in the state after Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth, and the second-most populous state capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. It has been one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States since 2010. Downtown Austin and Downtown San Antonio are approximately 80 miles (129 km) apart, and both fall along the I-35 corridor. This combined metropolitan region of San Antonio–Austin has approximately 5 million people. Austin is the southernmost state capital in the contiguous United States and is considered a Gamma + level global city as categorized by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network.
As of the 2020 census, Austin had a population of 961,855. The city is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan statistical area, which had an estimated population of 2,473,275 as of July 1, 2023. Located in Central Texas within the greater Texas Hill Country, it is home to numerous lakes, rivers, and waterways, including Lady Bird Lake and Lake Travis on the Colorado River, Barton Springs, McKinney Falls, and Lake Walter E. Long.
Residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a diverse mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, and blue-collar workers. The city's official slogan promotes Austin as "The Live Music Capital of the World", a reference to the city's many musicians and live music venues, as well as the long-running PBS TV concert series Austin City Limits. Austin is the site of South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals. The city also adopted "Silicon Hills" as a nickname in the 1990s due to a rapid influx of technology and development companies. In recent years, some Austinites have adopted the unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird", which refers to the desire to protect small, unique, and local businesses from being overrun by large corporations. Since the late 19th century, Austin has also been known as the "City of the Violet Crown", because of the colorful glow of light across the hills just after sunset.
Emerging from a strong economic focus on government and education, since the 1990s, Austin has become a center for technology and business. The technology roots in Austin can be traced back to the 1960s, when defense electronics contractor Tracor (now BAE Systems) began operations in the city in 1962. IBM followed in 1967, opening a facility to produce its Selectric typewriters. Texas Instruments was set up in Austin two years later, and Motorola (now NXP Semiconductors) started semiconductor chip manufacturing in 1974. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including 3M, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Agilent Technologies, Amazon, Apple, Dell, Expedia, Facebook (Meta), General Motors, Google, IBM, Intel, NXP Semiconductors, Oracle, Tesla, and Texas Instruments. With regard to education, Austin is the home of the University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest universities in the U.S., with over 50,000 students. In 2021, Austin became home to Austin FC, the first (and currently only) major professional sports team in the city. |
Auschwitz concentration camp | Q7341 | Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers, Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben, and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
After Germany initiated World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted almost solely of Poles (for whom the camp was initially established). For the first two years, the majority of inmates were Polish. In May 1940, German criminals brought to the camp as functionaries established the camp's reputation for sadism. Prisoners were beaten, tortured, and executed for the most trivial of reasons. The first gassings—of Soviet and Polish prisoners—took place in block 11 of Auschwitz I around August 1941.
Construction of Auschwitz II began the following month, and from 1942 until late 1944 freight trains delivered Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to its gas chambers. Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered. The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 non-Jewish Poles, 21,000 Romani, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 others. Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings. Others were killed during medical experiments.
At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising. After the Holocaust ended, only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial. Several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss. The Allies' failure to act on early reports of mass murder by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.
As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria. Soviet troops liberated the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, Elie Wiesel, and Edith Eger wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust. In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in a single location in history. |
Archery | Q108429 | Archery is the sport, practice, or skill of using a bow to shoot arrows. The word comes from the Latin arcus, meaning bow. Historically, archery has been used for hunting and combat. In modern times, it is mainly a competitive sport and recreational activity. A person who practices archery is typically called an archer, bowman, or toxophilite. |
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in Data Studio
Wikipedia Definitions Dataset
wikipedia_definitions pairs English Wikipedia article titles (wiki_title) and their Wikidata IDs (qid) with the definition sentence(s) that open each Wikipedia article.
The corpus contains 25 449 entities.
Lead-paragraph definitions give a slightly richer, stylistically uniform overview of an entity than the short Wikidata description, making them useful as lightweight contextual signals for tasks such as entity linking, retrieval, question answering, knowledge-graph construction and many other NLP / IR applications.
Dataset Structure
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("masaki-sakata/wikipedia_definitions", split="en")
print(ds)
# Dataset({
# features: ['wiki_title', 'qid', 'definition'],
# num_rows: 25449
# })
Field description:
| column | type | description |
|---|---|---|
wiki_title |
str | Title of the corresponding English Wikipedia article |
qid |
str | Wikidata identifier, e.g. Q7156 |
definition |
str | The first sentence(s) of the English Wikipedia lead paragraph (CC-BY-SA 3.0) |
Example record
{
"wiki_title": "Michael Jordan",
"qid": "Q41421",
"definition": "Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963), also known by his initials MJ, is an American businessman and former professional basketball player, who is ..."
}
Quick Usage Example
from datasets import load_dataset
ds = load_dataset("masaki-sakata/wikipedia_definitions", split="en")
# print the first three definitions
for record in ds.select(range(3)):
print(record)
Source & Construction
Seed list
The split “en” frommasaki-sakata/entity_popularitysupplies thewiki_titleandqidpairs.Extraction
For everywiki_titlewe queried the Wikipedia REST API (page/summary) and extracted the plain-textextractfield, which corresponds to the first sentence(s) of the lead paragraph.Post-processing
• Articles without a non-empty lead extract were discarded.
Resulting size: 25 449 items.Licensing
• Each definition is taken from English Wikipedia and is therefore licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 and GFDL.
• The dataset as a compilation (metadata, indexing and scripts) is released under the MIT License.
If you redistribute or use the text in downstream applications, remember to comply with CC-BY-SA 3.0 attribution and share-alike requirements.
Happy experimenting! Feel free to open an issue or pull request if you discover errors or have feature requests.
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