Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian polymath, naturalist and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt. Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt's advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas and describing them for the first time from a modern scientific point of view, his description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined. Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture.

This important work motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity. He was the first person to describe the phenomenon and cause of human-induced climate change, in 1800 and again in 1831, based on observations generated during his travels. Alexander von Humboldt was born in Berlin in Prussia on 14 September 1769, he was baptized with the Duke of Brunswick serving as godfather. Humboldt's father, Alexander Georg von Humboldt, belonged to a prominent Pomeranian family. Although not one of the titled gentry, he was a major in the Prussian Army, who had served with the Duke of Brunswick. At age 42, Alexander Georg was rewarded for his services in the Seven Years' War with the post of royal chamberlain, he profited from the contract to lease state lotteries and tobacco sales. He first married the daughter of Prussian General Adjutant Schweder. In 1766, Alexander Georg married Maria Elisabeth Colomb, a well-educated woman and widow of Baron Hollwede, with whom she had a son.

Alexander Georg and Maria Elisabeth had three children, a daughter, who died young, two sons and Alexander. Her first-born son and Alexander's half-brother, was something of a ne'er do well, not mentioned in the family history. Alexander Georg died in 1779, leaving the brothers Humboldt in the care of their distant mother, she had high ambitions for Alexander and his older brother Wilhelm, hiring excellent tutors, who were Enlightenment thinkers, including Kantian physician Marcus Herz and botanist Karl Ludwig Willdenow, who became one of the most important botanists in Germany. Humboldt's mother expected them to become civil servants of the Prussian state; the money Baron Holwede left to Alexander's mother became, after her death, instrumental in funding Alexander's explorations, contributing more than 70% of his private income. Due to his youthful penchant for collecting and labeling plants and insects, Alexander received the playful title of "the little apothecary". Marked for a political career, Alexander studied finance for six months in 1787 at the University of Frankfurt, which his mother might have chosen less for its academic excellence than its closeness to their home in Berlin.

On 25 April 1789, he matriculated at the University of Göttingen known for the lectures of C. G. Heyne and anatomist J. F. Blumenbach, his brother Wilhelm was a student at Göttingen, but they did not interact much, since their intellectual interests were quite different. His vast and varied interests were by this time developed. At Gottingen, he met Georg Forster, a naturalist, with Captain James Cook on his second voyage. Humboldt traveled with Forster in Europe; the two traveled to England, Humboldt's first sea voyage, the Netherlands, France. In England, he met Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, who had traveled with Captain Cook; the scientific friendship between Banks and Humboldt lasted until Banks's death in 1820, the two shared botanical specimens for study. Banks mobilized his scientific contacts in years to aid Humboldt's work. Humboldt's scientific excursion up the Rhine resulted in his 1790 treatise Mineralogische Beobachtungen über einige Basalte am Rhein. Humboldt's passion for travel was of long standing.

Humboldt's talents were devoted to the purpose of preparing himself as a scientific explorer. With this emphasis, he studied commerce and foreign languages at Hamburg, geology at Freiberg School of Mines in 1791 under A. G. Werner, leader of the Neptunist school of geology. C. Loder. X. von Zach and J. G. Köhler. At Freiberg, he met a number of men who were to prove important to him in his career, including Spaniard Manuel del Rio, who became director of the School of Mines the crown established in Mexico. During this period, his brother Wilhelm married. Humboldt graduated from the Freiberg School of Mines in 1792 and was appointed to a Prussian government position in the Department of Mines as an inspector in Bayreuth and the Fichtel mountains. Humboldt was excellent at his job, with production of gold ore in his first year outstripping the previous eight years. During his period as a mine inspector, Humboldt demonstrated his deep concern for the

Kenneth R. "Kenny" Shadrick was a United States Army soldier, killed at the onset of the Korean War. He was but incorrectly reported as the first American soldier killed in action in the war. Shadrick was born in Harlan County, one of 10 children. After dropping out of high school in 1948, he joined the U. S. Army, spent a year of service in Japan before being dispatched to South Korea at the onset of the Korean War in 1950 along with his unit, the 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division. During a patrol, Shadrick was killed by the machine gun of a North Korean T-34 tank, his body was taken to an outpost where journalist Marguerite Higgins was covering the war. Higgins reported that he was the first soldier killed in the war, a claim, repeated in media across the United States, his life was profiled, his funeral drew hundreds of people. His death is now believed to have occurred after the first American combat fatalities in the Battle of Osan. Since the identities of other soldiers killed before Shadrick remain unknown, he is still incorrectly cited as the first U.

S. soldier killed in the war. Shadrick was born on August 1931, in Harlan County, Kentucky, he was the third of 10 children born to Theodore Shadrick, a coal miner. Growing up during the Great Depression, Kenneth Shadrick moved with his family to Wyoming, West Virginia to an outlying town called Skin Fork, 20 miles away, as his father was looking for coal mining jobs. Shadrick was described by his family as "an avid reader" throughout his childhood, who had a variety of interests, including Westerns and magazines, he enjoyed riding his bicycle and hunting. Shadrick received top marks in his classes. During his sophomore year in 1948, he developed an interest in football and made the school's team, though he was small for his age; the team could not afford uniforms, Shadrick's father gave him five dollars to buy one, but it was stolen from his locker in October 1948. The incident upset Shadrick so much he dropped out of school refusing to return from that day forward. One month he and a friend enlisted in the U.

S. Army. Shadrick's father would refer to the stolen school uniform as the reason Shadrick enlisted in the military, said he felt it indirectly caused his son's death. On November 10, 1948, Shadrick left for basic combat training at Kentucky; as he was 17 years old, Shadrick had to convince his parents to sign papers allowing him to enlist. Shadrick completed this training in February 1949, sailed for Japan to join the 34th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division, for post–World War II occupation duties. Shadrick spent a year on Kyushu island with the division. According to his family, Shadrick enjoyed his tour in Japan at first, but by June 1950 he was growing tired of the country, indicated in letters he was feeling depressed. On the night of June 25, 1950, 10 divisions of the North Korean army launched a full-scale invasion of South Korea. Advancing with 89,000 men in six columns, the North Koreans caught the disorganized, ill-equipped, unprepared South Korean army by surprise and routed them.

North Korean forces destroyed isolated resistance, pushing down the peninsula against the opposing 38,000 front-line South Korean men. The majority of the South Korean forces retreated in the face of the invasion, by June 28 the North Koreans had captured the southern capital and forced the government and its shattered forces to withdraw southward. Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council voted to send assistance to the collapsing country and U. S. President Harry S. Truman ordered ground troops to the country. U. S. forces in the Far East had been decreasing since the end of World War II, five years earlier, Shadrick's division was the closest to the warzone. Under the command of Major General William F. Dean, the division was understrength and most of its equipment was antiquated due to reductions in military spending. In spite of these deficiencies the division was ordered into South Korea, tasked with taking the initial shock of the North Korean advances until the rest of the Eighth United States Army could arrive and establish a defense.

Dean's plan was to airlift one battalion of the 24th Infantry Division into South Korea via C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft and to block advancing North Korean forces while the remainder of the division was transported on ships. The 21st Infantry Regiment was identified as the most combat-ready of the 24th Infantry Division's three regiments, the 21st Infantry's 1st Battalion was selected because its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Smith, was the most experienced, having commanded a battalion at the Battle of Guadalcanal during World War II. On July 5, Task Force Smith engaged North Korean forces at the Battle of Osan, delaying 5,000 North Korean infantry for seven hours before being defeated; the 540-man force suffered 60 killed, 21 wounded and 82 captured, a heavy casualty rate. In the chaos of the retreat, most of the bodies were left behind, the fates of many of the missing were unknown for several weeks. During that time, the 34th Infantry Regiment set up a line between the villages of Pyongtaek and Ansong, 10 miles south of Osan, to fight the next delaying action against the advancing North Korean forces.

The 34th Infantry Regiment was unprepared for a fight, with few soldiers experienced in combat. At this time, Shadrick was part of an M9A1 Bazooka team with 1st Battalion, 34th Infantry. About 90 minutes after Task Force Smith began its withdrawal from the Battle of Osan, the 34th Infantry sent Shadrick as part of a small scouting force northward to the

Halloween is a live album by Frank Zappa, released in DVD-Audio format by Vaulternative Records in 2003. It features recordings compiled from various shows at The Palladium, New York City in late October 1978—including a Halloween show on October 31—along with some video content from the same period; the set includes a performance of "Ancient Armaments", which appears on the album for the first time in digital form, having been included as the B-side to "I Don't Wanna Get Drafted" in 1980. The album cover art resembles the cover art of 1969's Hot Rats. All tracks except where noted. "NYC Audience" – 1:17 "Ancient Armaments" – 8:23 "Dancin' Fool" – 4:35 "Easy Meat" – 6:03 "Magic Fingers" – 2:33 "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" – 2:24 "Conehead" – 4:02 "Zeets" – 2:58 "Stink-Foot" – 8:51 "Dinah-Moe Humm" – 5:27 "Camarillo Brillo" – 3:14 "Muffin Man" – 3:32 "Black Napkins" – 16:56Track 5, "Magic Fingers", is edited together from versions from the Halloween show on October 31, 1978 and from the two shows which took place on October 27.

The other tracks were taken from the following shows: October 27, first show — tracks 10–12 October 27, second show — track 4 October 28, first show — track 7 October 31 — tracks 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9 and 13 "Suicide Chump" – 9:31 Video in Black and White, recorded at Capitol Theatre, New Jersey October 13, 1978 "Dancin' Fool" – 3:48 Color video taken from Zappa's appearance on Saturday Night Live, in New York City October 21, 1978 Radio interview – 9:41 Audio only.