1.
Horror fiction
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Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten, scare, disgust, or startle their readers or viewers by inducing feelings of horror and terror. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon has defined the horror story as a piece of fiction in prose of variable length, which shocks or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing. It creates an eerie and frightening atmosphere, Horror is frequently supernatural, though it can be non-supernatural. Often the central menace of a work of fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for the larger fears of a society. The genre of horror has ancient origins with roots in folklore and religious traditions, focusing on death, the afterlife, evil, the demonic and these were manifested in stories of beings such as witches, vampires, werewolves and ghosts. 18th century Gothic horror drew on these sources with the seminal and controversial The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole and this marked the first incorporated elements of the supernatural instead of pure realism. In fact, the first edition was published disguised as a medieval romance from Italy discovered and republished by a fictitious translator. Once revealed as contemporary, many found it anachronistic, reactionary, or simply in poor taste — but it proved to be immediately popular. That first novel of Gothic horror inspired such works as Vathek by William Beckford, A Sicilian Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian by Ann Radcliffe and The Monk by Matthew Lewis. A significant amount of fiction of this era was written by women and marketed at a female audience. The Gothic tradition blossomed into the modern readers call horror literature in the 19th century. Each of these novels and novellas created an icon of horror seen in modern re-imaginings on the stage. The proliferation of periodicals, as early as the turn of the century. One writer who specialized in fiction for mainstream pulps such as All-Story Magazine was Tod Robbins, whose fiction dealt with themes of madness. Later, specialist publications emerged to give horror writers an outlet, including Weird Tales, influential horror writers of the early 20th century made inroads in these mediums. Early cinema was inspired by aspects of horror literature, and early horror cinema started a strong tradition of horror films. This imagery made these comics controversial, and as a consequence they were frequently censored, many modern novels claim an early description of the living dead in a precursor to the modern zombie tale, including Dennis Wheatleys Strange Conflict, H. P. Lovecraft stories such as Cool Air, In The Vault, richard Mathesons novel I Am Legend would also influence an entire genre of apocalyptic zombie fiction emblematic of the films of George A. Romero
2.
Television program
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It may be a single production, or more commonly, a series of related productions. A limited number of episodes of a show may be called a miniseries or a serial or limited series. Television series are without a fixed length and are divided into seasons or series. While there is no defined length, U. S. industry practice has traditionally favored longer television seasons than those of other countries, a one-time broadcast may be called a special, or particularly in the UK a special episode. A television film is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video, a program can be either recorded, as on video tape, other various electronic media forms, played with an on-demand player or viewed on live television. Television programs may be fictional, or non-fictional and it may be topical, or historical. They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy, a drama program usually features a set of actors playing characters in a historical or contemporary setting. The program follows their lives and adventures, except for soap opera-type serials, many shows especially before the 1980s, remained static without story arcs, and the main characters and premise changed little. If some change happened to the characters lives during the episode, because of this, the episodes could be broadcast in any order. Since the 1980s, there are series that feature progressive change to the plot. For instance, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere were two of the first American prime time television series to have this kind of dramatic structure. While the later series, Babylon 5 is an example of such production that had a predetermined story running over its intended five-season run. In 2012, it was reported that television was growing into a component of major media companies revenues than film. Some also noted the increase in quality of television programs. When a person or company decides to create a new series, they develop the elements, consisting of the concept, the characters, the crew. Then they offer it to the networks in an attempt to find one interested enough to order a prototype first episode of the series. They want very much to get the word out on what types of shows they’re looking for, to create the pilot, the structure and team of the whole series must be put together. If the network likes the pilot, they pick up the show to air it the next season, sometimes they save it for mid-season, or request rewrites and further review
3.
Strike action
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Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances, Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when mass labor became important in factories and mines. In most countries, strike actions were made illegal, as factory owners had far more power than workers. Most Western countries partially legalized striking in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Notable examples are the 1980 Gdańsk Shipyard or 1981 Warning Strike, official publications have typically used the more neutral words work stoppage or industrial dispute. The first historically certain account of action was towards the end of the 20th dynasty. The artisans of the Royal Necropolis at Deir el-Medina walked off their jobs because they had not been paid, the Egyptian authorities raised the wages. An early predecessor of the strike may have been the secessio plebis in ancient Rome. In the Outline Of History, H. G. Wells characterized this event as the strike of the plebeians, the plebeians seem to have invented the strike. The strike action became a feature of the political landscape with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, large numbers of people were members of the working class, they lived in cities. By the 1830s, when the Chartist movement was at its peak, in 1842 the demands for fairer wages and conditions across many different industries finally exploded into the first modern general strike. Instead of being a spontaneous uprising of the masses, the strike was politically motivated and was driven by an agenda to win concessions. Probably as much as half of the industrial work force were on strike at its peak – over 500,000 men. The local leadership marshalled a growing working class tradition to organize their followers to mount an articulate challenge to the capitalist. Friedrich Engels, an observer in London at the time, wrote, by its numbers, this class has become the most powerful in England, the English proletarian is only just becoming aware of his power, and the fruits of this awareness were the disturbances of last summer. Karl Marx has condemned the theory of Proudhon criminalizing strike action in his work The Poverty of Philosophy, in 1937 there were 4,740 strikes in the United States. This was the greatest strike wave in American labor history, the number of major strikes and lockouts in the U. S. fell by 97% from 381 in 1970 to 187 in 1980 to only 11 in 2010
4.
Science
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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations, disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences. However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws, over the course of the 19th century, the word science became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, Science in a broad sense existed before the modern era and in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge. In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to each other, for example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought. This is shown by the construction of calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible. For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense and they were mainly speculators or theorists, particularly interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans. A clear-cut distinction between formal and empirical science was made by the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, although his work Peri Physeos is a poem, it may be viewed as an epistemological essay on method in natural science. Parmenides ἐὸν may refer to a system or calculus which can describe nature more precisely than natural languages. Physis may be identical to ἐὸν and he criticized the older type of study of physics as too purely speculative and lacking in self-criticism. He was particularly concerned that some of the early physicists treated nature as if it could be assumed that it had no intelligent order, explaining things merely in terms of motion and matter. The study of things had been the realm of mythology and tradition, however. Aristotle later created a less controversial systematic programme of Socratic philosophy which was teleological and he rejected many of the conclusions of earlier scientists. For example, in his physics, the sun goes around the earth, each thing has a formal cause and final cause and a role in the rational cosmic order. Motion and change is described as the actualization of potentials already in things, while the Socratics insisted that philosophy should be used to consider the practical question of the best way to live for a human being, they did not argue for any other types of applied science
5.
Harry Houdini
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Harry Houdini was a Hungarian-American illusionist and stunt performer, noted for his sensational escape acts. He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the US and then as Harry Handcuff Houdini on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, in 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by Londons Daily Mirror, keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, while many suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini presented himself as the scourge of fake spiritualists. As President of the Society of American Magicians, he was keen to uphold professional standards and he was also quick to sue anyone who imitated his escape stunts. Houdini made several movies, but quit acting when it failed to bring in money and he was also a keen aviator, and aimed to become the first man to fly a plane in Australia. Erik Weisz was born in Budapest to a Jewish family and his parents were Rabbi Mayer Sámuel Weisz and Cecília Steiner. Weisz arrived in the United States on July 3,1878, on the SS Fresia with his mother, the family changed their name to the German spelling Weiss, and Erik became Ehrich. The family lived in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as Rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation, according to the 1880 census, the family lived on Appleton Street. On June 6,1882, Rabbi Weiss became an American citizen, losing his tenure at Zion in 1887, Rabbi Weiss moved with Ehrich to New York City, where they lived in a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing, as a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself Ehrich, the Prince of the Air. He was also a cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a magician he began calling himself Harry Houdini, after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin. Weiss incorrectly believed that an i at the end of a name meant like in French, in later life, Houdini claimed that the first part of his new name, Harry, was an homage to Harry Kellar, whom he also admired. When he was a teenager, Houdini was coached by the magician Joseph Rinn at the Pastime Athletic Club, Houdini became an active Freemason and was a member of St. Cecile Lodge #568 in New York City. In 1918, he registered for service as Harry Handcuff Houdini. Houdini began his career in 1891, but had little success. He appeared in a tent act with strongman Emil Jarrow and he performed in dime museums and sideshows, and even doubled as The Wild Man at a circus
6.
Demon core
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The demon core was a 6. 2-kilogram, 89-millimetre-diameter subcritical mass of plutonium that was involved in two criticality accidents. After these incidents the spherical plutonium core was referred to as the demon core, the demon core was a solid 6. 2-kilogram 3. 5-inch-diameter sphere. It consisted of three parts, two plutonium-gallium hemispheres and a ring, designed to keep neutron flux from jetting out of the surface between the hemispheres during implosion. The core of the used in the Trinity nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing. Material for HS-7, R-3 was in the Los Alamos metallurgy section, the metallurgists used a plutonium-gallium alloy, which stabilized the δ phase allotrope of plutonium so it could be hot pressed into the desired spherical shape. As plutonium was found to corrode readily, the sphere was coated with nickel. On August 10, Major General Leslie R. Groves, Jr. wrote to General of the Army George C and we have gained 4 days in manufacture and expect to ship the final components from New Mexico on August 12th or 13th. Marshall added an annotation, It is not to be released on Japan without express authority from the President, on August 13, the third bomb was scheduled. It was anticipated that it would be ready by August 16 to be dropped on August 19 and this was pre-empted by Japans surrender on August 15,1945, while preparations were still being made for it to be couriered to Kirtland Field. The third core remained at Los Alamos, the core, assembled, was designed to be at -5 cents, or 5 percent below critical mass. On August 21,1945, the core produced a burst of neutron radiation that led to Harry Daghlians death. Daghlian, a physicist, made a mistake while performing neutron reflector experiments on the core and he was working alone, a security guard, Private Robert J. Hemmerly, was seated at a desk 10 to 12 feet away. The core was placed within a stack of neutron-reflective tungsten carbide bricks, despite quick action in moving the brick off the assembly, Daghlian received a fatal dose of radiation. He died 25 days later from radiation poisoning. Slotin, who was leaving Los Alamos, was showing the technique to Alvin C, Graves, who would use it in a final test before the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests scheduled a month later at Bikini Atoll. It required the operator to place two half-spheres of beryllium around the core to be tested and manually lower the top reflector over the core via a hole on the top. As the reflectors were manually moved closer and farther away from each other, allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. Under Slotins unapproved protocol, the only thing preventing this was the blade of a straight screwdriver
