Amazon.com is the largest and one of the most widely known e-commerce shopping sites on the Web. The company was founded as an online bookstore by Jeff Bezos in 1995. It soon diversified its product lines, adding DVDs, electronics, furniture, and more. Its initial “slow growth” business plan was effective: when the Internet “bubble” burst and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered. Why was the company sued by Barnes & Noble and Walmart in the late 1990s? Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Mentmore Towers is a large Neo-Renaissance English country house built in the 1850s for Baron Mayer de Rothschild. It was passed down to members of his family until the 1970s, when the government refused to accept the contents of the house in lieu of inheritance taxes, at which point the property was sold at public auction. The house has been featured in what recent films? 
The Little Mermaid is a fairy tale by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen about a young mermaid who is willing to give up everything to gain the love of a prince and an eternal soul. The story has been adapted into numerous films, TV series, an opera, and a ballet. Who served as the model for the famed Little Mermaid statue that sits on a rock in the Copenhagen harbor? 
In Roman religion, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom and war, as well as of handicrafts and the arts. Probably of Etruscan origin, she was worshiped in various parts of ancient Rome, most notably with Jupiter and Juno in the great Capitoline temple. Her temple on the Aventine Hill was a meeting place for skilled artisans, actors, and writers. Minerva came to be identified with what Greek goddess? 
The ginkgo is a tall and slender picturesque deciduous tree with fan-shaped leaves. A “living fossil,” the ginkgo is the only remaining species of a large order of gymnosperms that existed in the Triassic period; its form has not changed in millions of years. A combination of amazing disease resistance, insect-resistant wood, and the ability to form aerial roots and sprouts helps ginkgoes live more than 2,000 years. Where does the name “ginkgo biloba” come from? 
Tiger’s eye is a yellow-brown, semiprecious chatoyant gemstone consisting of quartz with parallel veins of silicified altered crocidolite. The gems are usually cut en cabochon, meaning with a convex, rounded surface that is polished but unfaceted, in order to best display their chatoyancy. Notable sources of tiger’s eye include the US, Canada, China, Brazil, Namibia, India and Burma. What is tiger iron? 
Wasabi is a member of the cabbage family that grows naturally along stream beds in mountain river valleys in Japan. Its root is used as a strong, mustard-hot spice that produces vapors that burn the sinus cavity rather than the tongue. Wasabi paste is often served with sushi and sashimi, but because true wasabi is so expensive, most American and Japanese sushi bars serve imitation wasabi made of what? 
Home-distillation of alcohol came to be called “moonshining” in English speaking countries because it was usually conducted at night to avoid arrest for the production of illegal liquor. Home-distillation is, however, a world-wide phenomenon and is not illegal everywhere. In New Zealand, for example, stills are legally sold openly on the market along with instruction manuals. What used to be a common, perhaps unreliable, folk test for determining the presence of lead in moonshine? 
In the US and Canada, an AMBER Alert notifies the general public through a variety of media, including radio and television, that a confirmed abduction of a child has taken place. It is named after Amber Hagerman, a 1996 kidnap victim who might have been quickly located had the means to distribute critical information been available at the time. To avoid false alarms, the criteria for issuing an alert are rather strict. What percentage of alerts meets these criteria? 
A cicada is an insect with a stout body, a wide, blunt head, protruding eyes, and two pairs of membranous wings. Male cicadas have platelike membranes on the thorax, which they vibrate like drum heads, producing a loud, shrill sound. The Magicicada species have the longest known life cycles of any insect–17 years. They live only one week as winged adults, however, spending the rest of the time in the form of larvae, burrowed underground. To what are their long life cycles an adaptation?