What is a Filibuster?

A filibuster is a parliamentary procedure involving extending a debate in order to delay or prevent a vote. It was a device utilised by the Roman statesman, Cato the Younger.

What is an Embargo?

An embargo is the partial or complete prohibition of commerce with a country of group of countries. A famous embargo from history is the Continental System, the foreign policy of Napoleon I against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, brought about in 1806.

Pale Rider (1985)

Pale Rider is a 1985 Western starring Clint Eastwood, and also produced and directed by him. It was filmed partly in Sun Valley, Idaho (to the West of Montana and Wyoming). It was the highest grossing Western of the 1980s.

The Legendary Bosphorus

The Bosphorus forms part of the boundary between Europe and Asia and runs through the City of Istanbul. (Geographically speaking, it is a strait - a narrow, navigable waterway connecting two large bodies of water). It is part of the sovereign sea territory of Turkey and forms part of the Turkish Straits. Greek mythology is filled with references to the Straits. The Symplegades, or "Clashing Rocks" were meant to be rocks that crashed randomly together in the Bosphorus, defeated by Jason and the Argonauts. The Argonauts got their name from being sailors on the Argo, the ship whose name translated means "swift". The ship in turn got its name from its builder, Argus.

Photon Scattering

When photons are scattered from an atom or molecule (pit stop - what do mean by scattering - informally, the collision of a wave with a material object results in "scattering" of the wave) most photons are scattered such that they retain their "energy" (frequency and wavelength) which is known as Rayleigh or elastic scattering.  Raman scattering is inelastic scattering (whereby the photon is re-emitted from the medium with lower energy). It is the science behind the technique known as Raman spectroscopy and enabled Raman to win the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics.

Seasons and The Tropics

The area between the northern and southern Tropics is know simply as "The Tropics". It has no seasons as the sun is always high in the sky.

Great Shack!

Sir Ernest Shackleton was a British Antarctic explorer.

Antarctica is the area that surrounds the South Pole. The Antarctic, or Colossal Squid, is native to Antarctica. Seals and penguins also live in Antarctica.

The first part of Antarctica to be discovered was the island of South Georgia which is now a British Overseas Territory.