Desert grassland whiptail lizard is an all-female species. These reptiles reproduce by parthenogenesis; eggs undergo a chromosome doubling after meiosis and develop into lizards without being fertilized. However, ovulation is enhanced by female-female courtship and "mating" (pseudocopulation) rituals that resemble the behavior of closely related species that reproduce sexually.
Boris Artzybasheff was notable for his strongly worked and often surreal designs. He illustrated the major American magazines Life, Fortune, and Time. He painted 219 Time covers from 1942 to 1966, including portraits of Louis Armstrong and Dave Brubeck.
Set in post-war France, A Sport and a Pastime is a piece of erotica involving an American student and a young French girl, told as flashbacks in the present tense by an unnamed narrator who barely knows the student and who himself yearns for the girl, and who freely admits that most of his narration is fantasy.
In the spring of 1970, Holdt set off to Canada where he had been invited to work on a farm. From here he planned to hitchhike to Chile where he intended to support Salvador Allende’s democratic struggle for social justice. But on his way through the United States, he was held up at gunpoint by young blacks and instead quickly got involved in the black struggle for the next four years. Arriving with only $40 in his pocket, Holdt was shocked and fascinated by the social differences he encountered. He ended up staying in the USA more than five years, criss-crossing the country by hitchhiking more than 100,000 miles and making photographs. He sold blood plasma twice a week to buy film. He stayed in more than 400 homes – from the poorest migrant workers to America's wealthiest families (for instance, the Rockefellers) - recording these encounters on over 15,000 photographs taken with a cheap pocket camera. He would live with people who were so hungry they ate cat food and dirt, often in rat-infested shacks. His work captured the daily struggle of the American underclass and contrasts it with images of the life of America's elite. Upon returning to Denmark in 1976, Holdt began lecturing on social differences in the United States and published a book: American Pictures. He later presented his slideshow at over 300 college campuses across the United States.
The Great Brinks Robbery was the biggest armed robbery in U.S. history at the time. Thieves vanished after stealing $2.7 million, leaving few clues.
Joan Burstein has owned and run London’s most influential boutique Browns since she founded it in 1970.
Kuru is a very rare, incurable neurodegenerative disorder that was formerly common among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea. Kuru is also known as the "laughing sickness" due to the pathologic bursts of laughter which are a symptom of the disease. It is now widely accepted that kuru was transmitted among members of the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea via funerary cannibalism. Deceased family members were traditionally cooked and eaten, which was thought to help free the spirit of the dead. Women and children usually consumed the brain, the organ in which infectious prions were most concentrated, thus allowing for transmission of kuru. The disease was therefore more prevalent among women and children.
The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them. The Voyager spacecraft are not heading towards any particular star, but Voyager 1 will be within 1.6 light years of the star AC+79 3888 in the Ophiuchus constellation in about 40,000 years.
Camel wrestling is a sport in which two male Tülu camels wrestle in response to a female camel in heat being led before them. It is most common in the Aegean region of Turkey, but is also found in the Marmara and Mediterranean regions of that country. There are an estimated 1,200 camel wrestlers in Turkey, bred specially for the competitions.
Saul Steinberg is best known for his work for The New Yorker. He described himself as a writer who draws.