History

The Bone Wars was a period of intense and ruthlessly competitive fossil hunting and discovery during the Gilded Age of American history, marked by a heated rivalry between Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Each of the two paleontologists used underhanded methods to try to outdo the other in the field, resorting to bribery, theft, and the destruction of bones. Each scientist also sought to ruin his rival's reputation and cut off his funding, using attacks in scientific publications.

The Tongan castaways were a group of six Tongan teenage boys who shipwrecked on the uninhabited island of ʻAta in 1965 and lived there for 15 months until their rescue. The boys ran away from their boarding school on the island of Tongatapu, stealing a boat in their escape. After a storm wrecked the boat, they drifted to the abandoned, remote island of ʻAta and managed to keep themselves in good order during the duration under the circumstances. Long thought dead, they were discovered and rescued in September 1966 by Australian lobster fisher Peter Warner.

Manicouagan Reservoir is an annular lake in central Quebec, Canada, covering an area of 1,942 km2 (750 sq mi). The lake island in its centre is known as René-Levasseur Island, and its highest point is Mount Babel. The structure was created 214 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, by the impact of a meteorite 5 km (3 mi) in diameter. The lake and island are clearly seen from space and are sometimes called the "eye of Quebec".

Jerzy Urban was a Polish journalist, commentator, writer and politician. A staunch anticlerical and pro-communist throughout his life, he frequently was the centre of numerous controversies due to his unfiltered comments and entrenched political views resulting in support of the communist regime; on the other hand, he was a sharp-witted, intelligent and uncompromising satirist, writer and journalist.

Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges was an American woman known for being the first documented individual not only to be struck by a meteorite, but also to live through the encounter. At 12:46 PM (CST) on November 30, 1954, a meteorite fell through the skies of Sylacauga, Alabama. It split into at least three fragments, with one of the fragments falling through a roof and then landing on Hodges, who was napping on her couch. She recalled the meteorite came through her roof around 2:00 PM local time, although the official time the meteorite fell was 12:46 PM. The meteorite left a 3-foot (91 cm) wide hole in the roof of her house, bounced off a radio, and hit her on her upper thigh and hand, giving her a large bruise.

One of the leading printer-publishers of his time, Aldus Manutius the Elder was the founder of a veritable dynasty of great printer-publishers and organizer of the famous Aldine Press. He produced the first printed editions of authors old and new, from Plato to Desiderius Erasmus.