Cooke was a British-American journalist and broadcaster. To British audiences, he was famous for his lively and insightful interpretations of American life and culture. His weekly Letter from America, which aired for 58 years, was one of the longest-running programs in radio. To American television audiences, he was the epitome of the elegant English gentleman, hosting public television’s Masterpiece Theater for 20 years. After he died, his bones were stolen and used for what? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
In 1883, miners seeking to transport the mineral borax from mines in Death Valley to the nearest railroad spur, 165 miles (266 km) away in Mojave, California, came up with a novel solution: massive wagons hauled by teams of 18 mules and two horses. When fully loaded, the caravans weighed 36.6 tons (33.2 tonnes) and stretched over 100 feet (30 m). The teams hauled more than 20 million pounds (9,000 tonnes) of borax over a six-year period. Why were two horses included on each mule team? 
In the summer of 1941, a wave of German forces swept into the Soviet Union and proceeded to conquer a vast amount of territory. Stopped at Stalingrad, the Germans became mired in one of the most significant battles of WWII and were ill-prepared for the deteriorating Soviet weather. The enormous Soviet counteroffensive, code-named Operation Uranus, overwhelmed them. Within days, their entire force at Stalingrad was encircled. What nearly delayed the artillery bombardment that began the offensive? 
With an extraordinarily broad education, Lomonosov became a prominent figure of 18th-century Russia in many capacities. He was a poet, a language reformer, a chemistry professor, and founder of Moscow State University. He created the first colored-glass mosaics in Russia. He designed a telescope and hypothesized the presence of an atmosphere on Venus. He cataloged more than 3,000 minerals and explained the origin of icebergs. His experiments in physics contradicted what commonly accepted theory? 
At precisely 4 AM on the Monday after Ash Wednesday, all of the lights in the town of Basel, Switzerland, are turned off, and the city is lit only by decorative lanterns that are carried or worn on the heads of those gathered for the start of Basler Fasnacht—the Carnival of Basel. For the next 72 hours, thousands of costumed revelers, or Fasnächtlers, enjoy the parades and music of Switzerland’s biggest carnival. Why is the use of multicolored confetti frowned upon at the carnival? 
Before the adoption of time zones, clocks in the US and Canada were set according to the position of the sun overhead, meaning that time varied according to location. For the rail industry, this presented a logistical nightmare, and so many railroads kept their own time, further complicating matters. Standardization solved everything. On “The Day of Two Noons,” train stations reset their clocks according to newly adopted time standards. Which US city continued to keep local time until the 1900s?