Coordinated with South Vietnam’s security network during the Vietnam War, the Phoenix Program was a military and intelligence program designed by the US Central Intelligence Agency to “neutralize”—via capture or assassination—the insurgency’s civilian support infrastructure, which included between 70,000 and 100,000 civilians in 1967. Although some saw it as a success, the program is widely criticized as an “assassination campaign.” How many people were “neutralized” during the program? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century, H.L. Mencken was a journalist, satirist, social critic, and cynic known as the “Sage of Baltimore,” for the city where he lived his entire life. Perhaps best remembered for his satirical reporting on the Scopes evolution trial, which he dubbed the “Monkey trial,” Mencken was frequently critical of myriad groups. Why did the Arkansas legislature pass a motion in 1931 to pray for Mencken’s soul? 
Producing images of specimens magnified to about 2 million times their natural size—compared to just 2,000 for common light microscopes—electron microscopes use electron beams to resolve the minute structural details present in samples. An integral part of many laboratories, electron microscopes are used by researchers to examine biological materials, such as microorganisms, cells, and medical biopsy samples. Why are samples sometimes coated with gold before they are magnified? 
Considered by some art historians to be the beginning of the Renaissance, the Trecento was a 14th-century period in Italy that saw renewed focus on the arts, including painting, architecture, literature, and, especially, music. Influenced by troubadours and a type of polyphonic sacred music called the conductus, composers throughout the period pioneered new forms of expression, especially in secular songs written in the Italian vernacular. Who was the period’s most famous composer? 
Mayakovsky, a Russian poet and playwright, was one of the foremost representatives of early 20th century Russian Futurism. A leader of the Futurist school in 1912, he went on to become the poetic voice of the Russian Revolution. His poetry is unique in its rhythm, rhyme, and imagery. Written almost entirely in metaphors, his 1915 poem The Cloud in Trousers describes the agony of unrequited love. Mayakovsky was one of the few Soviet writers allowed by the state to do what? 
A head transplant is a surgical operation involving the replacement of one organism’s head with another’s. The first successful head transplant took place in the 1970s, when the head of a monkey was transplanted onto another’s body. The animal retained most of its senses but was paralyzed below the attachment site. Though still hypothetical for humans, proponents believe the procedure can help people facing widespread organ failure. What has prevented human head transplants from taking place? 
Among the best primary sources on Aztec culture, Aztec codices contain firsthand accounts of the civilization’s history and religion. While the pre-Colombian codices are largely pictorial, later colonial era codices contain Aztec pictograms, as well as Aztec, Spanish, and occasionally Latin writings. Though there are few surviving pre-conquest codices, the tradition endured the transition to colonial culture, and about 500 such works survive today. What massacre is described in the Aubin Codex? 
Revered as the primary means by which the Qur’an has been preserved, Islamic calligraphy is the art of decorative writing that often employs Arabic script, which consists of a 28-letter alphabet and 18 different forms of writing. These calligraphic scripts are often woven into intricate pictographic calligrams depicting animals, mosques, and various other figures. Which Christian saint’s relics are wrapped in a shroud decorated with Islamic calligraphy? 
A number of years before he was placed on the US Secret Service’s Most Wanted List, bold con man Matthew Cox wrote a novel detailing the exploits of a man who travels across America committing many of the crimes for which Cox himself is currently incarcerated. Cox used approximately 30 aliases in his real life criminal pursuits, including the name of cartoon millionaire C. Montgomery Burns, and acquired between $5 million and $25 million in fraudulent property mortgaging deals. How did he do it? 
The composition of vacuum energy, an underlying background energy that exists in space even when that space is devoid of matter, remains one of physics’ great unsolved mysteries. The phenomenon results in the existence of most, if not all, of the fundamental forces, such as gravity and electromagnetism, and many experts suspect that it affects the behavior of the universe on a cosmological scale. What 1948 experiment provided the first experimental verification of the existence of vacuum energy?