Intellect PlusCards starting with A
11,854 cards. Page 157 of 198.
Amaranth's name means unfading, and its h is a spelling mistakeAmaranth plants can tower 2.5 metres, glow maroon to crimson and yield thousands of tiny seeds per gram. The Greek name meant unfading. The h in the Latin spelling crept in throug…
Amateur astronomers can now discover cosmic gems hidden within professional telescope archivesThe European Southern Observatory maintains a massive archive of telescope data typically reserved for professional researchers. This video highlights how an amateur astrophotogra…
Amateur footage reveals the fatal error that doomed the Hindenburg airship in 1937For over 80 years, the Hindenburg disaster remained a mystery, with theories ranging from sabotage to static sparks. Now, newly analyzed amateur film captured by Howard Schenck of…
Amazon Air is building a massive logistics network to bypass traditional shipping giantsAmazon transformed from a retail giant into a logistics powerhouse by launching its own cargo airline. Originally a way to move packages from distant warehouses, the fleet now riv…
Amazon forest degradation releases as much carbon as total deforestationResearchers found that degraded areas of the Amazon rainforest are contributing significantly to global climate change. While large-scale clearing of trees often receives the most…
Amazon giant fish must gulp air or drownArapaima—also pirarucu or paiche—are among Earth's largest freshwater fishes, bonytongues of Amazon and Essequibo waters that can top three metres. They surface to breathe, so tra…
Amazon parrots possess complex vocal dialects that function much like human languages or regional accents.Beyond their famous ability to mimic human speech, wild Amazon parrots communicate through stable, geographically distinct vocal dialects. These birds are not just repeating sound…
Amazon's streaming service began in 2006 under the forgotten name Amazon UnboxLong before Prime Video bought a Hollywood studio, it launched on September 7, 2006, as Amazon Unbox, a US store for video downloads. It went through a string of names, including …
Amazon's tablet strategy was never about selling hardwareWhen Amazon launched the Kindle Fire in 2011, they weren't looking to build a hardware empire. They were engineering a gateway. By intentionally designing a device with specific l…
Amazonia was a major center of crop domestication before European arrivalResearchers reviewing historical evidence found that Amazonia was not a pristine wilderness, but rather a highly managed landscape. Their review of the region's history shows that…
Amazonian soils follow a predictable continuum of chemical weathering and evolutionResearchers reviewing the diverse landscapes of the Amazon Basin found that despite a wide variety of geologic origins, the region's soils follow a consistent evolutionary path. B…
Amber Fort: A Rajput Masterpiece Built on Secret Passages and Ancient EngineeringPerched high above Maota Lake, this sprawling complex of red sandstone and marble served as the opulent residence of Rajput Maharajas. Beyond its glittering mirror-inlaid halls an…
Ambergris, prized by perfumers for centuries, starts life as sperm whale wasteFresh from a sperm whale's gut, ambergris is soft, pale and smells like faeces. After months or years drifting in sunlight and salt water it hardens into a dark, waxy lump with a …
Ambient music is designed to be as ignorable as it is interesting to hear.Ambient music prioritizes atmosphere over traditional structure, using textural soundscapes to induce calm or contemplation. Coined by Brian Eno in the 1970s, the genre evolved fr…
Ambigrams are visual puns where a single design reveals two distinct, hidden meanings.An ambigram is a calligraphic composition of glyphs that shifts meaning based on your perspective. By rotating a word or viewing it in a mirror, you unlock a secondary interpretat…
Ambon: The Indonesian City Where Mist-Covered Peaks Meet a UNESCO Musical LegacyKnown as Ambon Manise, or beautiful Ambon, this capital of the Maluku province is a unique cultural crossroads. Beyond its stunning geography of steep hills and coastal mist, the …
Ambrose Bierce: The Civil War veteran who vanished into the Mexican RevolutionA master of satire and psychological horror, Ambrose Bierce was a feared literary critic and a veteran of the American Civil War. After a lifetime of biting social commentary, he …
Ambulances evolved from Napoleon's flying carts to paramedicsEmergency medical services deliver urgent field care and transport to hospitals, usually after a public emergency call reaches a dispatch center. Dominique Jean Larrey, Napoleon's…
AMC's Javelin adverts showed a Ford Mustang being smashed with sledgehammersCar advertising in the 1960s politely ignored the competition. American Motors did the opposite. Its campaign for the new Javelin put the car side by side with the Ford Mustang, a…
AMD began by copying Intel's chips and ended up worth more than IntelWhen IBM built its personal computer in 1981, it demanded that Intel line up a second manufacturer for its processors. That clause handed a small Sunnyvale rival licensed access t…
Amedeo Modigliani: The Artist Whose Birth Once Saved His Family From Financial RuinBorn into a collapsing business empire, Amedeo Modigliani’s arrival into the world provided a legal shield against creditors. This Italian painter, later famous for his haunting, …
Amelia Bence: The Argentine Diva Who Conquered Cinema and Theater Across Eight DecadesKnown for her mesmerizing eyes, Amelia Bence was a titan of Argentina's Golden Age of cinema. From a childhood debut in a poet's play to international acclaim in New York and beyo…
Amelia Edwards: Was her Nile journey a quest for discovery or personal escape?Amelia Edwards is remembered for her famous travelogue A Thousand Miles up the Nile. This discussion explores the personal motivations behind her expedition, including periods of …
Amelia Opie was a Romantic novelist who led the fight against British slavery.Before she became a celebrated abolitionist, Amelia Opie was a vivacious socialite and prolific author in the Romantic period. She navigated the intellectual circles of London and…
Amelia Shepherd: A neurosurgeon defined by trauma, addiction, and a quest for redemptionAmelia Shepherd, the brilliant yet troubled neurosurgeon from Private Practice and Grey's Anatomy, navigates a life marked by profound loss and addiction. Portrayed by Caterina Sc…
Amenhotep III: The Magnificent Pharaoh Who Ruled at the Height of Egyptian GrandeurAs the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Amenhotep III presided over an era of unparalleled artistic and international influence. Known as the Magnificent, he was one of th…
America avoided field marshals partly to spare George Marshall an awkward titleWhen the US Army needed a rank to match Britain's field marshals in World War II, planners balked at the name. Marshal already meant a civilian law officer, and George Marshall wo…
America banned the blackcurrant for decades to protect its pine forestsBlackcurrants are a European staple for juice, jam and cassis, yet for much of the 20th century the United States outlawed growing them. The shrub hosts a rust fungus that barely …
America is currently rebuilding the world's first bridge-tunnel system in Virginia.This video examines the massive infrastructure effort to reconstruct the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. It provides an overview of the engineering challenges involved in updating t…
America is reviving the site of its most infamous nuclear power plant disasterThe location of the worst nuclear accident in United States history is being brought back into operation. This video examines the unexpected return of the Three Mile Island facili…
America once boasted over 6,000 unique varieties of applesThe modern supermarket shelf offers a fraction of the diversity that once defined American orchards. During a period of intense botanical expansion, thousands of distinct cultivar…
America seized Merck in World War I, and the family bought it backMerck & Co. began in 1891 as the American outpost of a German drug firm founded in 1668. When the United States entered World War I, the government seized the German-held shares a…
America was once a cod-fishing realm before it got its nameNorth America spans about 24.7 million square kilometres, third-largest continent by area. Waldseemüller put America on South America in 1507; the north was Parias, later Baccalea…
America's 'mainline' churches may be named after Philadelphia's railway suburbsIn 1970 mainline Protestant churches claimed most American Protestants and over 30 percent of the whole population. By 2009 they had fallen to about 15 percent of adults. Even the…
America's big cat that kills through the skullThe jaguar (Panthera onca) is the Americas' only living Panthera and the hemisphere's largest cat—third worldwide after tiger and lion. Body length reaches about 1.85 metres and m…
America's biggest bank started as Aaron Burr's water company loopholeIn 1799 Aaron Burr slipped an innocent-sounding clause into the charter of a company meant to bring clean water to New York, letting it invest spare capital in any lawful business…
America's biggest private company started as an Iowa grain shed in 1865Cargill trades grain, raises livestock, makes starch and syrups, and supplies about 22 percent of the US domestic meat market, yet it keeps a low profile. Founded in Iowa in 1865 …
America's bishops built one university, and Yeats came to admire itThe Catholic University of America is the only college founded by the US Catholic bishops, chartered by a papal encyclical in 1889 and started with a heiress's $300,000 pledge. It…
America's Communist Party fell to about 1,000 members, then grew againIn the late 1930s the Communist Party USA counted roughly 70,000 members and real clout in the labour movement. By 2000 one reference book reckoned it had about 1,000 and had all …
America's Department of Energy spends much of its time on nuclear weaponsThe name suggests power plants and petrol prices, but the US Department of Energy also runs the military's nuclear weapons programme and builds reactors for the Navy. It funds mor…
America's disability insurance pays all or nothing, never partSocial Security Disability Insurance offers no partial or temporary payments. A worker either qualifies for full monthly benefits, because a condition is expected to last at least…
America's fastest train is only high-speed for a fraction of its journeyThe Acela is the fastest passenger train in the Americas, capable of hitting 160 mph. Yet, despite its high-speed credentials, it only reaches these speeds for about 40 miles of i…
America's favourite psychiatric drug works about as well as its rivalsSertraline, best known as Zoloft, was the most prescribed psychotropic medicine in the United States in 2016, and in 2023 it filled more than 42 million American prescriptions. De…
America's film archive exists partly because of a fight over colorizationIn the 1980s studios were adding colour to black-and-white classics, and directors like Frank Capra and Martin Scorsese lobbied Congress to stop the tampering. The result was the …
America's fire-and-brimstone preacher wrote a childhood essay on ballooning spidersJonathan Edwards is remembered for Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The same mind entered Yale before turning 13, devoured Locke and Newton, studied light and optics, and at …
America's first air traffic controllers worked with blackboards, maps and mental arithmeticBefore radar, keeping planes apart on US airways meant chalk, paper charts and quick sums in a controller's head. The agency that grew out of those beginnings, the Federal Aviatio…
America's first airline passenger paid 400 dollars for a wooden benchOn January 1, 1914, Tony Jannus flew a Benoist flying boat of wood and muslin from St. Petersburg to Tampa, skimming about 15 metres above the bay for 23 minutes. His passenger, a…
America's first cities rose without pottery or artOn Peru's desert coast, Caral–Supe built monumental platform mounds between the fourth and second millennia BCE—contemporary with Egyptian pyramids, a millennium after Sumer, and …- America's first farming college nearly died before Lincoln's land-grant law rescued itMichigan State began in 1855 as the country's first agricultural college, opening with five teachers and 63 students. Within a few years a fight over whether farmers needed chemis…
America's first great landscape movement got its famous name as an insultIn the autumn of 1825 an English-born painter rode a steamboat up the Hudson, hiked into the Catskills and painted the blazing colours he found. Thomas Cole's trip launched a scho…
America's first jet fighter was so underwhelming it ended up as a trainerThe Bell P-59 Airacomet was the United States' bold entry into the jet age, born from a secret British engine design. Yet, despite its revolutionary propulsion, the aircraft prove…
America's first landscaped park erased a Black village to existCentral Park's pastoral meadows were engineered, not found. Olmsted and Vaux's 1858 Greensward Plan won the contest after a 1853 land approval—then eminent domain flattened settle…
America's first newspaper was shut down immediately after its first issueIn 1690 Richard Pierce and Benjamin Harris printed a newspaper in Boston without government permission, and the authorities promptly suppressed it. It took a libel trial in 1735 a…
America's Galápagos: The ancient, sinking volcanic chain hidden northwest of HawaiiBeyond the familiar shores of the main Hawaiian islands lies a remote, mostly uninhabited archipelago. These Northwestern Hawaiian Islands are the oldest remnants of a volcanic ho…
America's giant medical research agency began as a bacteria lab on Staten IslandIn 1887 the US Marine Hospital Service set up a small laboratory to study bacteria at its hospital on Staten Island. That Hygienic Laboratory grew into the National Institutes of …
America's largest state was once mocked as Seward's FollyAlaska covers more ground than Texas, California and Montana put together, yet in 1867 the United States bought it from Russia for $7.2 million and critics sneered. It sits closer…
America's largest television network is not ABC, CBS or NBC but PBSThe commercial giants dominate talk of American television, but the largest network is the non-profit Public Broadcasting Service. Unlike its rivals, PBS has no single central sch…
America's moon launch site was carved out of Florida citrus grovesTo launch a 363-foot Saturn V, NASA needed far more room than Cape Canaveral offered. So from 1962 it bought up farmland on Merritt Island, much of it orange groves, letting growe…
America's most common landbird is a thrushThe American robin is not kin to Europe's robin; it is a true thrush, Turdus migratorius, named for a shared orange breast. Partners in Flight counted about three hundred seventy …
America's most enduring minor-league basketball franchiseWhile many professional sports franchises rise and fall, the Sioux Falls Skyforce has endured since 1989. From its origins in the Continental Basketball Association to its current…