The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even

The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, most often called The Large Glass, is an artwork by Marcel Duchamp.

Duchamp carefully created The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, working on the piece from 1915 to 1923. He executed the work on two panes of glass with materials such as lead foil, fuse wire, and dust. It combines chance procedures, plotted perspective studies, and laborious craftsmanship.

Duchamp's ideas for the Glass began in 1913, and he made numerous notes and studies, as well as preliminary works for the piece. The notes reflect the creation of unique rules of physics, and myth which describes the work. He published the notes and studies as The Green Box in 1934.

The notes describe that his "hilarious picture" is intended to depict the erotic encounter between the "Bride," in the upper panel, and her nine "Bachelors" gathered timidly below in an abundance of mysterious mechanical apparatus in the lower panel.

The Large Glass was exhibited in 1926 at the Brooklyn Museum before it was accidentally broken and carefully repaired by Duchamp. It is now part of the permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is a complex piece which dominates the space around it. It consists of two glass panels, suspended vertically and measuring 109.25" x 69.25". The entire composition is shattered, but it rests sandwiched between two pieces of glass, set in a metal frame with a wooden base. The top rectangle of glass is known as the Bride's Domain; the bottom piece is the Bachelors' Apparatus. It consists of many geometric shapes melding together to create large mechanical objects, which seem to almost pop out from the glass and ever-changing background.

All forms on the glass are outlined with lead wire and filled in with earth tone oil paint. The colors range from pale gray to gold to dark brown and black. Some figures are bumpy and cloudy, and contain the dust left on them during the time which the unfinished work lay dormant, which seems to be an attempt at capturing the dynamic passage of time in a sedate work.

Duchamp sanctioned replicas of The Large Glass, the first in 1961 for an exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and another in 1966 for the Tate Gallery in London.

The Thing with Two Heads

The Thing with Two Heads is a 1972 film, starring Rosey Grier, Ray Milland and Don Marshall directed by Lee Frost, and written by Wes Bishop. Frost and Bishop also had parts in the movie.

In the movie, Milland plays Dr. Maxwell Kirshner, a dying, wealthy racist who demands that his head be transplanted onto a healthy body. As his health rapidly deteriorates, there remains only one alternative: graft Kirshner's head onto the body of a black death row inmate, Jack Moss, played by Grier.

Sir Jeffery Hudson

Sir Jeffery Hudson was an English court dwarf at the court of Queen Henrietta Maria. He was famous as the "Queen's dwarf" and "Lord Minimus", and was considered one of the "wonders of the age" because of his extreme but well-proportioned smallness. He fought with the Royalists in the English Civil War and fled with the Queen to France but was expelled from her court when he killed a man in a duel. He was captured by Barbary pirates and spent 25 years as a slave in North Africa before being ransomed back to England.

Jeffrey was baptised in Oakham in Rutland on 14 June 1619. His parents, three brothers, and a half-sister were all of 'normal size.' Hudson's father John was keeper of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham's baiting bulls. Jeffrey's marvellous smallness and normal proportions became apparent in early childhood.

On his seventh birthday, in 1626 Jeffrey Hudson was presented to the Duchess of Buckingham as a "rarity of nature" and she invited him to join the household. A few months later the Duke and Duchess entertained King Charles and his young French wife, Queen Henrietta Maria in London. The climax of the lavish banquet was the presentation of Jeffrey to the Queen, served in a large pie. When the pie was placed in front of the Queen, Jeffrey arose from the crust, 18 inches tall and perhaps dressed in a miniature suit of armour. The Queen was delighted and the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham offered Hudson to her as an amusing gift.

Jeffrey moved into Denmark House in London in late 1626, where the Queen maintained her royal household. He was one of several natural curiosities and pets, among whom were a giant Welsh porter named William Evans, two disproportionate dwarfs, and a monkey called Pug. Jeffrey was educated in the Queen's household and learned the manners of the court. He was brought up in the Roman Catholic Church of her household. He learned to ride a horse and shoot a pistol.

Jeffrey learned to amuse and entertain with his wit and courtly behaviour as well as his appearance. Dwarfs were not rare in the courts of Europe but Jeffrey's fine proportions and tiny size made him uniquely famous. His size was repeatedly described as 18 or 19 inches and he is reported to have grown little between 7 and 30 years of age. He was often cast in picturesque roles in the elaborate costumed masques which were staged by Inigo Jones for the amusement of the court.

By 1640 the relationship between King Charles and the Parliament had deteriorated to the point of plots and attempted arrests. Armed conflict broke out between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians in 1642. As Charles led the Royalist army, the Queen took a small number of her retinue, including Hudson, to the Netherlands to raise money and support for him. By selling articles from her palace she raised enough to buy some supplies for the Royalist army but was unsuccessful in obtaining official support from the Protestant Dutch government. She returned to England with her courtiers and they found themselves in the middle of a civil war.

They were able to join Royalist forces at Oxford. The Queen appointed Hudson a "Captain of Horse." It is not known whether he commanded troops or saw combat in one of Prince Rupert's cavalry raids, but he considered the appointment an honour rather than a joke and later in life continued to style himself Captain Jeffrey Hudson.

As it became apparent that the war was broadening rather than concluding, the Queen fled to France in 1643 with a small group of courtiers and household staff, again including Hudson. Although they were warmly received in France and provided with space in the Louvre palace, the Queen was ailing after a difficult delivery and she soon moved her court in exile to the spa at Nevers.

Royalist courtiers collected around the Queen but Hudson apparently had no interest in resuming his role of pet or clown and let it be known he would suffer no more jokes or insults. There is no record of the precise offence offered, but in October, 1644, Hudson challenged the brother of William Crofts to a duel. Hudson chose pistols on horseback, and shot Crofts through the head. Crofts' death was a disaster for Hudson. Duelling had been outlawed in France and this could be considered a transgression against hospitality. Besides, Will Crofts was the Queen's Master of Horse and head of her lifeguard. She asked permission of the French to administer justice and expelled Hudson from her court.

Hudson's movements after leaving the Queen's court in late 1644 are unknown. Within months he was unlucky enough to be on a ship captured by the Barbary pirates. The Muslim corsairs raided the coasts and shipping of western Europe for plunder and slaves well into the 18th century. As was common with European captives, Hudson was taken to North Africa as a slave, where he spent perhaps his next 25 years labouring. The date and circumstances of his rescue or redemption are not known but it was in the 1660s that several missions were sent from England to Algeria and Tunis to ransom English captives, and his first documented presence back in England was in 1669.

The few contemporary records of Hudson's years between 1669 and his death in 1682 consist of a few receipts for grants of money from the Duke of Buckingham and the new King. He did not return to the Queen's court, even after the royal Restoration in 1660 and her return at the invitation of her son, Charles II.

Jeffrey Hudson lived in Oakham for several years, where he was interviewed and a short record of his life made, by an antiquarian named James Wright. In 1676 Hudson returned to London, perhaps to seek a pension from the royal court. He had the misfortune of arriving at a time of turbulent anti-Catholic activity and was imprisoned "for a considerable time" at the Gatehouse prison. Being a "Roman Catholick" was his only recorded offence, but he was not released until 1680. He died about two years later on an unknown date, in unknown circumstances, and was buried in an unknown grave.

Paranoid

Paranoid is the second studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released in September 1970, the album was the only one by the band to top the UK Albums Chart, and as a result is commonly identified as the band's magnum opus. Paranoid has been certified four times platinum by the RIAA and contains some of the band's best-known signature songs, including the title track, "Iron Man" and "War Pigs".

After the release of their debut album in February 1970, Black Sabbath returned to the studio in June that year, again with producer Rodger Bain, to record their second album. The album was recorded at Regent Sound Studios and Island Studios in London, England. The album's eponymous single "Paranoid" was written in the studio at the last minute to fulfill the record label's request for a single.

As drummer Bill Ward explains: "We didn't have enough songs for the album, and Tony just played the "Paranoid" guitar lick and that was it. It took twenty, twenty-five minutes from top to bottom."

The song "Iron Man" was originally entitled "Iron Bloke". Upon hearing the main guitar riff for the first time, Ozzy Osbourne remarked that it sounded "like a big iron bloke walking around". The title was later changed to "Iron Man".

The album was originally titled War Pigs, but allegedly the record company changed it to Paranoid, fearing backlash from supporters of the ongoing Vietnam War. At the time, the band felt that the song was lighter, with the potential to become a single. Additionaly the band's label felt the title track was more marketable as a single. However, the band's visual interpretation of a "war pig" was still featured on the cover; a distorted, eerie photograph of a bearded man with a sword and shield jumping out from behind a tree.

The original UK vinyl release was in a gatefold sleeve. The inner of the gatefold had a black and white photo of the band, posed outdoors on a grassy hill, and was their first appearance on album artwork. To spread the original picture over the gatefold, Ozzy Osbourne was separated from the other members of the band and a section of the grass was copied and dropped into the gap. This is only readily apparent if one compares it with the original photograph.

In the decades succeeding its initial distribution, Paranoid has been regarded by many as Black Sabbath's best album, and by some the best heavy metal album of all time^[1]. The "Paranoid" single, released before the album, reached number four in the UK. Pushed by its success, the album hit number one in the UK, and is the only Black Sabbath album to have done so.

The US release was held until January 1971, as the Black Sabbath album was still on the charts at the time of Paranoid's UK release. The album broke into the top twenty in the US in March 1971, and would go on to sell four million copies in the US alone. Paranoid's chart success in the US allowed the band to tour there for the first time in December 1970. This spawned the release of the album's second single "Iron Man", and although it failed to reach the top 40, "Iron Man" remains one of Black Sabbath's most popular songs. In addition, it is considered to be Vertigo's breakthrough release.

Niobe

Niobe was a daughter of Tantalus and Dione or Euryanassa and the sister of Pelops and Broteas, all of whom figure in Greek mythology.

Her father was the ruler of a city called either under his name, as "Tantalis" or "the city of Tantalus", or as "Sipylus", in reference to Mount Sipylus at the foot of which his city was located and whose ruins were reported to be still visible in the beginning of the 1st century AD, although few traces remain today. Her father is referred to as "Phrygian" and sometimes even as "King of Phrygia", although his city was located in the western extremity of Anatolia where Lydia was to emerge as a state before the beginning of the first millennium BC, and not in the traditional heartland of Phrygia, situated more inland. References to his son and Niobe's brother as "Pelops the Lydian" led some scholars to the conclusion that there would be good grounds for believing that she belonged to a primordial house of Lydia.

She was already mentioned in Homer's Iliad which relates her prideful hubris, for which she was punished by Apollo and Artemis with the loss of all her children, and her nine days of abstention from food during which time her children lay unburied. Once the gods interred them, she retreated to her native Sipylus, "where Nymphs dance around the River Acheloos, and although being a stone, she broods over the sorrows sent from the Gods". Later writers asserted that Niobe was wedded to Amphion, one of the twin founders of Thebes, where there was a single sanctuary where the twin founders were venerated, but in fact no shrine to Niobe.

Nopales

Nopales (from the Nahuatl word nōpalli for the pads) are a vegetable made from the young cladophyll (pad) segments of prickly pear, carefully peeled to remove the spines. These fleshy pads are flat and about hand-sized. They can be purple or green. They are particularly common in their native Mexico, where the plant is eaten commonly and regularly forms part of a variety of Mexican cuisine dishes. Farmed nopales are most often of the species Opuntia ficus-indica, although the pads of almost all Opuntia species are edible.

Nopales are generally sold fresh in Mexico. In more recent years bottled, or canned versions are available mostly for export. Less often dried versions are available. Used to prepare nopalitos, they have a light, slightly tart flavor, like green beans, and a crisp, mucilaginous texture. In most recipes the mucilaginous liquid they contain is included in the cooking. They are at their most tender and juicy in the spring.

Nopales are very rich in insoluble and especially soluble dietary fiber. They are also rich in vitamins (especially vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin K, but also riboflavin and vitamin B6) and minerals (especially magnesium, potassium, and manganese, but also iron and copper). Nopales have a high calcium content, but the nutrient is not biologically available because it is present as calcium oxalate, which is neither highly soluble nor easily absorbed through the intestinal wall. Addition of nopales also reduces the glycemic effect of a mixed meal. Nopales are low carbohydrate and may help in the treatment of diabetes.

Though Nopales are most commonly used in Mexican cuisine in dishes such as huevos con nopales (eggs with nopal), "carne con nopales" (meat with nopal), "tacos de nopales", or simply on their own or in salads with Panela Cheese. Nopales have also grown to be an important ingredient in New Mexican cuisine.

Bonobo

The Bonobo, Pan paniscus, previously called the Pygmy Chimpanzee and less often, the Dwarf or Gracile Chimpanzee, is a great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan. The other species in genus Pan is Pan troglodytes, or the Common Chimpanzee. Although the name "chimpanzee" is sometimes used to refer to both species together, it is usually understood as referring to the Common Chimpanzee, while Pan paniscus is usually referred to as the Bonobo.

While only one source reports a lifespan of 40 years in captivity, no data on longevity in wild-living bonobos or on gender differences are available yet.

The Bonobo is very endangered and is found in the wild only in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Along with the Common Chimpanzee, the Bonobo is the closest extant relative to humans. Since the two species are not proficient swimmers, it is possible that the formation of the Congo River 1.5 – 2 million years ago led to the speciation of the Bonobo. They live south of the river, and thereby were separated from the ancestors of the Common Chimpanzee, which live north of the river.

German anatomist Ernst Schwarz is credited with having discovered the Bonobo in 1928, based on his analysis of a skull in the Tervuren museum in Belgium that previously had been thought to have belonged to a juvenile chimpanzee. Schwarz published his findings in 1929. In 1933, American anatomist Harold Coolidge offered a more detailed description of the Bonobo, and elevated it to species status. The American psychologist and primatologist Robert Yerkes was also one of the first scientists to notice major differences between Bonobos and Chimpanzees.

The species is distinguished by relatively long legs, pink lips, dark face and tail-tuft through adulthood, and parted long hair on its head. Although Bonobos are generally understood to be a matriarchal species, there are also claims of a special role for the alpha male in group movement.

The reason Bonobos are perceived to be a matriarchal species is that females tend to collectively dominate males and commonly engage in casual sexual activity, as well as significant homosexual contact. The limited research on Bonobos in the wild was taken to indicate that these behaviors may be exaggerated by captivity, as well as by food provisioning by researchers in the field. This view has recently been challenged, however, by Duke University's Vanessa Woods; Woods noted in a recent radio interview that she had observed bonobos in a spacious forested sanctuary in the DRC exhibiting the same sort of hypersexuality under these more naturalistic conditions; additionally, while she acknowledges a hierarchy among males, including an "alpha male," these males are less dominant than the dominant female matriarch.

The name Bonobo first appeared in 1954, when Edward Tratz and Heinz Heck proposed it as a new and separate generic term for pygmy chimpanzees. The term has been reported variously as being a word for "chimpanzee" or "ancestor" in a Bantu language. Another suggestion for the derivation of the name is that the name is a misspelling of the name of the town of Bolobo on the Congo River, which has been associated with the collection of chimps in the 1920s.

Antimony

Antimony is a chemical element with the symbol Sb and an atomic number of 51. A silvery lustrous grey metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (Sb₂S₃). Antimony compounds are prominent fire retardants found in many commercial and domestic products. Certain alloys are valuable for use in solders and ball bearings. An emerging application is the use of antimony in microelectronics. The relatively high toxicity of some antimony compounds, being similar to arsenic compounds, limits the applications.

An artifact made of antimony dating to about 3000 BC was found at Tello, Chaldea (part of present-day Iraq), and a copper object plated with antimony dating between 2500 BC and 2200 BC has been found in Egypt.  The first European description of a procedure for isolating antimony is in the book De la pirotechnia of 1540 by Vannoccio Biringuccio.  A text describing the preparation of metallic antimony that was published in Germany in 1604 purported to date from the early fifteenth century, and if authentic it would predate Biringuccio. The book, written in Latin, was called "Currus Triumphalis Antimonii", and its putative author was a certain Benedictine monk, writing under the name Basilius Valentinus. An English translation of the "Currus Triumphalis" appeared in English in 1660, under the title The Triumphant Chariot of Antimony. The work remains of great interest, chiefly because it documents how followers of the renegade German physician, Philippus Theophrastus Paracelsus von Hohenheim (of whom Thölde was one), came to associate the practice of alchemy with the preparation of chemical medicines.

Pure antimony was well known to Jābir ibn Hayyān, sometimes called "the Father of Chemistry", in the 8th century. Here there is still an open controversy: Marcellin Berthelot, who translated a number of Jābir's books, stated that antimony is never mentioned in them, but other authors claim that Berthelot translated only some of the less important books, while the more interesting ones (some of which might describe antimony) are not yet translated, and their content is completely unknown.

The first natural occurrence of pure antimony ('native antimony') in the Earth's crust was described by the Swedish scientist and local mine district engineer Anton von Swab in 1783. The type-sample was collected from the Sala Silvermine in the Bergslagen mining district of Sala, Västmanland, Sweden.

Antimony and many of its compounds are toxic, and the effects of antimony poisoning are similar to arsenic poisoning. Inhalation of antimony dust is harmful and in certain cases may be fatal; in small doses, antimony causes headaches, dizziness, and depression. Larger doses such as prolonged skin contact may cause dermatitis; otherwise it can damage the kidneys and the liver, causing violent and frequent vomiting, and will lead to death in a few days.

Waistcoat

A waistcoat, sometimes called a vest or a vestee in Canada and the US, is a sleeveless upper-body garment worn over a dress shirt and necktie (if applicable) and below a coat as a part of most men's formal wear, and as the third piece of the three-piece male business suit. Once a virtually mandatory article of men's clothing, it became uncommon in contemporary dress in the English-speaking world, although it is returning to fashion as part of businesswear and formalwear (often without a jacket), especially among students and young professionals.

A waistcoat has a full vertical opening in the front which fastens with buttons or snaps. Both single-breasted and double-breasted waistcoats exist, regardless of the formality of dress, but single-breasted ones are more common. In a three piece suit, the cloth used matches the jacket and trousers.

Before wristwatches became popular, gentlemen kept their pocket watches in the front waistcoat pocket, with the watch on a watch chain threaded through a buttonhole. Sometimes an extra hole was made in line with the buttonholes for this use. A bar on the end of the chain held the chain in place to catch it if it were dropped or pulled. Now waistcoats are worn less, so the pocket watch may be more likely be stored in a trouser pocket.

Wearing a belt with a waistcoat (and indeed any suit) is not traditionally correct. The waistcoat instead covers a pair of braces (suspenders in the U.S.) underneath it, to give a more comfortable hang to the trousers.

A custom still sometimes practised is to leave the bottom button undone. This is said to have been started by King Edward VII (then the Prince of Wales), whose expanding waistline required it. Variations on this include that he forgot to fasten the lower button when dressing and this was copied. It has also been suggested that the practice originated to prevent the waistcoat riding up when on horseback. Undoing the bottom button avoids stress to the bottom button when sitting down; when it is fastened, the bottom of the waistcoat pulls sideways causing wrinkling and bulging, since modern waistcoats are cut lower than old ones.

Terra Incognita

Terra incognita (Latin "unknown land," with incognita stressed on its second syllable in Latin, but with variation in pronunciation in English) is a term used in cartography for regions that have not been mapped or documented. The expression is not found in ancient texts, and occurs first in the sixteenth century. The equivalent on French maps would be terres inconnues (plural form), and some English maps may show Parts Unknown.
Similarly, uncharted or unknown seas would be labeled mare incognitum, Latin for "unknown sea".
An urban legend claims that cartographers labelled such regions with "Here be dragons". Although cartographers did claim that fantastic beasts (including large serpents) existed in remote corners of the world and depicted such as decoration on their maps, only one known surviving map, the Lenox Globe, in the collection of the New York Public Library, actually says "Here be dragons" (using the Latin form "HIC SVNT DRACONES"). However, ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers did use the phrase HIC SVNT LEONES (literally, Here are lions) when denoting unknown territories on maps.
Alternatively, terra incognita may also refer to the imaginary continent Terra Australis.
During the 19th century terra incognita disappeared from maps, since both the coastlines and the inner parts of the continents had been fully explored.
The phrase is now also used metaphorically by various researchers to describe any unexplored subject or field of research.