This festival pays tribute to the Swedish heritage of Kingsburg, California. The event began in 1924 as a luncheon to commemorate the midsummer celebration of the harvest in Sweden. Today it’s a full-fledged festival running from Thursday through Sunday of the third weekend in May and attracts about 25,000 visitors. Traditional Swedish costumes are worn, and Swedish food is eaten—Swedish pancakes, Swedish pea soup, a smorgasbord. Events include a Parade of Trolls, raising of the May Pole, folk dancing, arts and crafts displays, a horse trot, and live entertainment. Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Rousseau was an entirely self-taught French painter. He held a minor post as a tax collector in Paris for more than 20 years before retiring to paint at the age of 49. His work remained consistently naive and imaginative and was often ridiculed. It was only after his death that Rousseau gained recognition as an artistic genius. Though he never left France or saw a jungle, he is best known for his paintings of lush, tropical scenes and wild animals. What was his inspiration for the exotic scenes? 
A Rube Goldberg machine is an exceedingly complex apparatus that performs a very simple task in an incredibly indirect and convoluted way. Named for cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who was known for illustrating such contraptions, the machines are now the subject several competitions in which teams are judged on their machine’s ability to complete a certain task using as many steps as possible. What is an example of a simple task performed by one of Goldberg’s illustrated mechanisms? 
Prior to 1570, maps were often unreliable, illegible, and unwieldy. When Ortelius published his Theatrum orbis terrarium, it was the first comprehensive, easy-to-use, and fairly up-to-date collection of world maps. It drew from the works of 87 cartographers, all of whom were credited. Demand was immediate and persisted for decades, during which time dozens of editions were published in several languages. In addition to practical contemporary maps, Ortelius published what? 
Before President 
Stewart was an American actor known for his self-effacing screen persona. His slow, halting line delivery initially made him difficult to cast, but his idealistic characters in films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) soon endeared him to audiences, and he won an Oscar in 1940. His role as the quintessential small-town man helped make It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) a Christmas classic. During World War II, Stewart served as a bomber pilot and attained what military rank? 
Often used for card tricks or to cheat when gambling, card marking is the process of altering playing cards so that the suit, rank, or both are surreptitiously revealed to the card marker or a conspirator. The practice has evolved over the years from adding bends or bumps to cards to using various inks and scratches, and today’s card markers use sophisticated “shade” technology to add marks that can only be read with special sunglasses, contact lenses, or what other high-tech system?