Thing (Page 2)

The State of the Union Address is an annual message presented by the President of the United States to a joint session of the United States Congress, except in the first year of a new president’s term. The message includes a budget message and an economic report of the nation,Read More →

Depleted uranium (DU; also referred to in the past as Q-metal, depletalloy or D-38) is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium. Natural uranium contains about 0.72% U-235, while the DU used by the U.S. Department of Defense contains 0.3% U-235 or less. UsesRead More →

Mestizo is a term traditionally used in Spain, Latin America, and to a lesser extent, in the Philippines which originally meant a person of combined European and American Indian descent, regardless of where the person was born. The term was used as an ethnic/racial category in the casta system thatRead More →

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was in operation during the early 20th century. The ship was a holder of the Blue Riband, and briefly the world’s largest passenger ship until the completion of her sister ship Mauretania. The Cunard Line launched Lusitania in 1906, at a timeRead More →

A “Hooverville” was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States of America. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States of America during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it. The term wasRead More →

The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the satanic verses, a groupRead More →

Marine One is the call sign of any United States Marine Corps aircraft carrying the President of the United States. It usually denotes a helicopter operated by Marine Helicopter Squadron One (HMX-1 “Nighthawks”), either the large Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King or the newer, smaller VH-60N “White Hawk”. Both Helicopters areRead More →

The term pogrom has multiple meanings, ascribed most often to the deliberate persecution of an ethnic or religious group either approved or condoned by the local authorities. The term is usually applied to anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries according to EncyclopædiaRead More →

“There are known knowns” is a phrase from a response United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave to a question at a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) news briefing on February 12, 2002 about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons ofRead More →

Campaign finance in the United States is the financing of electoral campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, campaign finance law is enacted by Congress and enforced by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent federal agency. Although most campaign spending is privately financed, publicRead More →

The presidential primary elections and caucuses held in the various states, the District of Columbia, and territories of the United States form part of the nominating process of candidates for United States presidential elections. The United States Constitution has never specified the process; political parties have developed their own proceduresRead More →

The election of President and Vice President of the United States is an indirect election in which citizens of the United States who are registered to vote in one of the 50 U.S. states or Washington, D.C. cast ballots for members of the U.S. Electoral College, known as electors. TheseRead More →

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a book by political theorist Hannah Arendt, originally published in 1963. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler‘s rise to power, reported on Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker. Arendt‘s subtitle famously introduced the phrase “theRead More →

White Terror is the violence carried out by reactionary (usually monarchist or conservative) groups as part of a counter-revolution. In particular, during the 20th century, in several countries the term White Terror was applied to acts of violence against real or suspected socialists and communists. A White Terror may beRead More →

Sputnik 1 (“Satellite-1”, or “PS-1”, Prosteyshiy Sputnik-1, “Elementary Satellite 1”) was the first artificial Earth Satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm (23 in) diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. ItsRead More →

The Lockheed U-2, nicknamed “Dragon Lady,” is an American single-jet engine, ultra-high altitude reconnaissance aircraft operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) and previously flown by the CIA. It provides day and night, high-altitude (70,000 feet; 21,000 m), all-weather intelligence gathering.The U-2 has also been used for electronic sensor research, satelliteRead More →