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1 Apr, 2008
1st Quarter 2008 - Panic
Butte is a gritty city on the continental divide in western Montana. Amidst the beauty of the Rockies, rn the town is surrounded by strip mines, and while not exactly impoverished, there is nothing about Butte that hints at the enormous wealth...
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1 Jan, 2008
4th Quarter 2007 - Despair
Northwest of Philadelphia runs the Schuykill (pronounced Scoo-kul) River. Before the Midwest was settled, before the San Joaquin Valley was irrigated, these rolling hills around this valley were among the most fertile ground in the world...
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1 Oct, 2007
3rd Quarter 2007 - Commedia
Easter Day in Florence, the year 1215: a woman flirted with a man, not her husband. He flirted rn back. The brothers of the offended husband declared a vendetta, thus beginning a nearly century-long feud. The Guelphs wore a red rose on the right...
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1 Jul, 2007
2nd Quarter 2007 - Capitalism
Joszi (pronounced yo-shee, a boys nickname) was born in Triesch, about 75 miles south of Prague in 1883 to a family that had lived in that valley for 400 years. His father, who ran a textile mill,rndied in a hunting accident when Joszi was four...
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1 Apr, 2007
1st Quarter 2007 - Precession
In a fashionable arrondissement of Paris lived a well known publisher who had made his reputation with an excellent multi-volume collection of the history of France. He was in poor health, and died when his son, LeÃn...
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1 Oct, 2006
3rd Quarter 2006 - Dance!
Jerry Rabinowitz was born in 1918 to Polish immigrants who ran a deli on the East side of rn Manhattan. A few years later, his dad, Harry, and Harrys brother opened the Comfort Corset Company (a bit of an oxymoron), and the family moved...
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1 Jul, 2006
2nd Quarter 2006 - Breaking Wave
On the outskirts of the ancient capital of Edo (Tokyo) in 1760, a boy was born to the Kawamura family. His father worked as a mirror polisher for the Tokugawa Shogunate. The boys given name was Tokitaro, but it was changed to Tetsuzo at the...
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1 Apr, 2006
1st Quarter 2006 - Duke
Teenage boys have been hanging out at beaches since, well, probably since there have been rn teenage girls and beaches. A hundred years ago, one such group of boys had dropped out of highrnschool to spend their days on the beaches of Waikiki...
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1 Jan, 2006
4th Quarter 2005 - Balance of Power
Consider the map of Europe in 1812. From the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Baltic to the rn Mediterranean, Europe was French. Consider, too, the amazing events that led to this. In July 1789, the Bastile was stormed and the French Revolution began.
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1 Jan, 2006
4th Quarter 2006 - Lion's Gate
Thomas Raffles was one of those extraordinary individuals who made the British Empire the BritishrnEmpire. He joined the British East India Company in 1805 as a clerk, but one with high ambitions for adventure.
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1 Oct, 2005
3rd Quarter 2005 - Conversion
William Fisher, recently promoted to the rank of captain in the British Army, set out in 1840 with his new bride for Ceylon, where he was to take up the assignment as aide-de-camp to the governor. The following year, the first of their eleven...
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1 Jul, 2005
2nd Quarter 2005 - Treasure Ships
Khubilai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, conquered China in 1279, thus creating the largest unified empire history has ever seen, stretching from eastern Europe to southeast Asia. It lasted barely a hundred years.
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1 Apr, 2005
1st Quarter 2005 - Smoke and Mirrors
Rabbi Mayer Weisz was the son of a respected rabbi, but his family was mired in poverty when a rn son, Erich, was born in Bucharest, 1874. Four years later, the family emigrated to Wisconsin, where Mayer was to lead a small congregation.
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1 Jan, 2005
4th Quarter 2004 - Crossroads
For millions of years, the Mississippi River, the longest river in the world as measured from the source of its tributary, the Missouri, has flooded its delta region with the detritus drained from 31 states, creating an alluvial plain with the...
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1 Oct, 2004
3rd Quarter 2004 - Sea Change
Joseph Rochefort had a perfectly uninspiring career. He enlisted in the navy in 1918, earned an rn ensigns commission, and was known principally as a lover of crossword puzzles. Stationed on the USS Arizona in 1925, he shared this love of crosswords.
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1 Jul, 2004
2nd Quarter 2004 - Fractals
Euclid was undoubtedly the greatest mathematician in history. His mathematical formulae and proofs define all the familiar shapes in one-, two- and three-dimensions: point, line and plane. Elements, rn written 2,300 years ago, remains...
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1 Apr, 2004
1st Quarter 2004 - Trust Me
Versailles is certainly a splendid monument to the glory of the Sun King, Louis XIV. Pictures cannot rn capture the magnitude of its magnificence, the overwhelming adornment of gold, silver and precious jewels on every wall, ceiling and piece...
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1 Jan, 2004
4th Quarter 2002 - Tack or Jibe
Prince Albert, Queen Victorias consort, thought it a splendid idea to organize a Great Exhibition as a showcase of Englands power and glory. The nations of the world all sent emissaries and tributes to London that summer of 1851...
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1 Jan, 2004
4th Quarter 2003 - Liftoff
In the spring of 1929, in the ancient Prussian city of Posen, a 17-year old boy stepped into the towns only movie theater to see the latest film by the acclaimed director Fritz Lang. Langs 1927 classic Metropolis was perhaps the most influential...
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1 Oct, 2003
3rd Quarter 2003 - Balance or Power
Dear Sirs: I have been interested in the problem of mechanical and human flight ever since as a boy I constructed a number of bats of various sizes.[I am] not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of...
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1 Jul, 2003
2nd Quarter 2003 - Cubism
In a small town near MÃlaga, Spain in 1884, a three-year old boy began scribbling. These werernlines and shapes and spirals, and no one, even his proud father, a respected artist himself, believedrnthe boy had much talent. As he entered his teenage...rn
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1 Apr, 2003
1st Quarter 2003 - Butterflies and Bees
Sonny Liston was not just the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world in 1964; he was the most feared fighter, possibly of all time, with an incredible 84-inch reach and a menacing glare that hinted at his violent, criminal past.
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1 Oct, 2002
3rd Quarter 2002 - Siren Song
Homer gave Odysseus all the qualities of a classic hero: guile, coolness, strength, determination, and a healthy dose of bad luck. We meet Odysseus briefly in The Iliad as a reluctant warrior, faking dementia to avoid being drafted into war.
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1 Jul, 2002
2nd Quarter 2002 - The Fifth Sun
During renovation work in 1790 at El ZÃcalo, Mexico Citys central plaza, this amazing artifact, the Aztec Calendar Stone - three feet thick, 12 feet wide and weighing 24 metric tons - was discovered. At the center is the sun...
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