Month: July 2024

The "Gimli Glider": Air Canada Flight Runs Out of Fuel Mid-Flight (1983)

The “Gimli Glider” is the nickname given to Air Canada Flight 143, which ran out of fuel on a routine flight from Montreal to Edmonton in 1983. The crew was able to glide the aircraft safely to an emergency landing at a retired airstrip in Gimli, Manitoba, even through part of the runway had been converted into a racetrack and a large event was being held there at the time. Amazingly, no passengers or bystanders suffered any serious injuries. Why did the plane run out of fuel? Discuss

Judit Polgár (1976)

Polgár is a Hungarian chess grandmaster and by far the strongest female chess player in history. A prodigy from an early age, she won many youth tournaments competing against boys. In 1991, at the age of 15, Polgár became the youngest grandmaster in history at the time, earning the distinction faster than Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. She later became the first woman to be ranked in the top ten in the world, ranking as high as eighth. What world champions has Polgár defeated? Discuss

Korean Wines

In Korea, the tradition of brewing alcoholic beverages, known as ju, is a long and proud one. These beverages are generally made from rice, a major Korean crop. The many varieties of ju include liquors and fruit, flower, and medicinal wines. One variety, called ihwaju, or “pear blossom wine,” is brewed with rice malt fermented during the pear blossom season, a process that often produces a liquid so thick that it must be consumed in what way? Discuss

Emma Lazarus (1849)

Lazarus was an American Jewish poet. She became an impassioned spokeswoman for Judaism after the Russian pogroms of the 1880s, writing many essays and a book of poems, Songs of a Semite, which contains her best work. Her writings caught the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with whom she shared a lifetime correspondence. She also worked for the relief of new immigrants to the US, and the famous closing lines of her sonnet “The New Colossus” were engraved on what monument? Discuss

Kefir

Kefir is a fermented milk drink that originated in the Caucasus region of Eurasia and is prepared by inoculating cow, goat, or sheep’s milk with kefir grains, a combination of bacteria and yeasts in a matrix of proteins, lipids, and sugars. Traditional kefir was made in skin bags that were hung near a doorway and knocked by everyone passing through to help keep the milk and kefir grains mixed. Today, kefir is popular due to research into its health benefits. What are these benefits? Discuss

Neil Armstrong Becomes the First Man to Walk on the Moon (1969)

As commander of Apollo 11, Armstrong was the first person to set foot on the Moon. With hundreds of millions watching a broadcast of his history-making moonwalk, he uttered the now famous line, “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.” Buzz Aldrin followed, and the two astronauts proceeded to set up scientific equipment, conduct experiments, and collect samples from the lunar surface. What other spacecraft landed on the moon while Apollo 11 was still there? Discuss

Paul Julius Freiherr von Reuter (1816)

Reuter, founder of the Reuters news agency, was a pioneer of telegraphy and news reporting. In 1849, he started a post service to bridge the gap in a telegraph line between Germany and Belgium. He soon moved to England and opened a telegraph office serving banks, brokerages, and businesses. He steadily extended his commercial news service, acquiring his first subscribing newspaper client in 1858. Undersea cables enabled him to expand the service. What animal was used to deliver messages in 1849? Discuss