A Russian-born British international chess master, Menchik won seven consecutive Women’s World Chess Championships, beginning with the first one ever held and ending in 1939, when World War II halted the tournament. She and her family were killed in an air raid on London in 1944. When Menchik entered a men’s tournament in 1929, Viennese master Albert Becker ridiculed her by saying that anyone who lost to her should become a part of the “Vera Menchik Club.” Who was the first of its many members? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
People can and do die of laughter. The 3rd century BCE philosopher Chrysippus, for example, is said to have laughed himself to death while watching the antics of a drunken donkey. In 1410, Martin I of Aragon succumbed to a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughter. More recently, a UK man died of heart failure after laughing for 25 minutes at a TV show featuring a Scotsman in a kilt battling a vicious black pudding. What other historical figures have died from laughter? 
By the 1960s, Canada had been an organized dominion for a century and an equal, autonomous partner of Britain for decades. Consequently, its British-derived flag had become the subject of intense controversy. Following the Great Flag Debate of 1964, Canada’s Parliament considered several possible designs before choosing the red-and-white maple leaf flag. In what foreign conflict had the previous flag’s design, which incorporated the Union Jack, caused trouble for Canadian peacekeeping forces? 
The American battleship 
Working with Polish resistance groups and a network of helpers, Sendler saved 2,500 Jewish children during WWII by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, sometimes hidden in suitcases. After changing the children’s names and arranging for their care, she buried records of their identities in jars, hoping to someday reunite them with their parents. Though she was arrested, tortured, and reportedly executed in 1943, she actually survived the war and lived to be 98. How did she survive the Nazis? 
Baudelaire was a 19th-century French poet and critic. The only volume of his poems published in his lifetime, Les Fleurs du mal, translated as The Flowers of Evil, was initially condemned as obscene. Later accepted as a masterpiece, the book is recognized for the brilliant phrasing, rhythm, and expressiveness of its lyrics. Baudelaire also translated many of Poe’s works, bringing them to the attention of the French public. What literary movement is he credited with helping develop?