Mummia, mumia, or originally mummy referred to several different preparations in the history of medicine, from "mineral pitch" to "powdered human mummies". It originated from Arabic mūmiyā "a type of resinous bitumen found in Western Asia and used curatively" in traditional Islamic medicine, which was translated as pissasphaltus (from "pitch" and "asphalt") in ancient Greek medicine. In medieval European medicine, mūmiyā "bitumen" was transliterated into Latin as mumia meaning both "a bituminous medicine from Persia" and "mummy". Merchants in apothecaries dispensed expensive mummia bitumen, which was thought to be an effective cure-all for many ailments. It was also used as an aphrodisiac.

Vasa (previously Wasa) (Swedish pronunciation: [²vɑːsa] ⓘ) is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor. The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. Between her recovery in 1961 and the beginning of 2025, Vasa has been seen by over 45 million visitors.[2]

The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a major environmental disaster that occurred in Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. The spill occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil supertanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, 6 mi (9.7 km) west of Tatitlek, Alaska at 12:04 a.m. The tanker spilled more than 10 million US gallons (240,000 bbl) (or 37,000 tonnes)[1] of crude oil over the next few days.[2]

https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/essays/jungle-wedding/

Olestra (also known by its brand name Olean) is a fat substitute food additive that adds no metabolizable calories to products. It has been used in the preparation of otherwise high-fat foods, thereby lowering or eliminating their fat content.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved olestra for use in the US as a replacement for fats and oils in prepackaged ready-to-eat snacks in 1996,[2] concluding that such use "meets the safety standard for food additives, reasonable certainty of no harm".[3]: 46399  In the early 2000s, olestra lost popularity due to supposed side effects and is largely phased out, but products containing the ingredient are available in some countries.

Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris. Like other Kuiper belt objects, Pluto is made primarily of ice and rock and is much smaller than the inner planets. Pluto has roughly one-sixth the mass of the Moon and one-third its volume. Originally considered a planet, its classification was changed when astronomers adopted a new definition of planet.

This is a teaser episode of our Patreon Bonus Episode. This is the first few minutes of that particular episode to let non-patrons sample that content.

You can become a patron here: http://patreon.com/citationpod

Defenestration (from Neo-Latin de fenestrā[1]) is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window.[2] The term was coined around the time of an incident in Prague Castle in the year 1618 which became the spark that started the Thirty Years' War. This was done in "good Bohemian style", referring to the defenestration which had occurred in Prague's New Town Hall almost 200 years earlier (July 1419), and on that occasion led to the Hussite war.[3] The word comes from the Neo-Latin[4] de- (down from) and fenestra (window or opening).[5]

By extension, the term is also used to describe the forcible or summary removal of an adversary.[6]

Moving Day was a tradition in New York City dating back to colonial times and lasting until after World War II. On February 1, sometimes known as "Rent Day", landlords would give notice to their tenants what the new rent would be after the end of the quarter,[1] and the tenants would spend good-weather days in the early spring searching for new houses and the best deals.[2] On May 1,[3] all leases in the city expired simultaneously at 9:00 am, causing thousands of people to change their residences, all at the same time.[4][5]

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced",[1] with William Faulkner calling him "the father of American literature".[2] Twain's novels include The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),[3] with the latter often called the "Great American Novel". He also wrote A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) and Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) and cowrote The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) with Charles Dudley Warner. The novelist Ernest Hemingway claimed that "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn."[4]