The day known as St. Elmo’s Day is actually St. Erasmus‘s Day, in honor of a third-century Italian bishop who is thought to have suffered martyrdom around the year 304. Erasmus was a patron saint of sailors and was especially popular in the 13th century. Sometimes at sea on stormy nights, sailors will see a pale, brushlike spray of electricity at the top of the mast. In the Middle Ages, they believed that these fires were the souls of the departed, rising to glory through the intercession of St. Elmo. Such an electrical display is still referred to as “St. Elmo’s Fire.” Discuss
Source: The Free Dictionary
Martha Washington was the wife of first US president George Washington. They married in 1759, nearly two years after the death of her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. During the American Revolution, she spent winters in army camps with her husband and organized a women’s sewing circle to mend clothes for the troops. Although the title was not coined until after her death, she is considered the first “First Lady” of the US. She is also the only woman whose portrait has appeared on what? 
Life Savers is an American brand of ring-shaped mints and fruit-flavored hard candy known for its colorful packaging. It was created in 1912 by the father of the poet Hart Crane, Clarence Crane, who was in search of a new summer candy. The pill manufacturer he contracted to press his new line of hard mints found that production improved when the mints were stamped with a hole in the middle. What flavor of the candy exhibits “triboluminescence?” 
Dyer was an English Quaker who was hanged in Boston after repeatedly defying a law banning Quakers from the colony. Her death and those of the three other “Boston Martyrs” led to the easing of anti-Quaker laws in Massachusetts. Years earlier, in 1637, after Dyer had given birth to a stillborn fetus and buried it privately, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had the “monstrous birth” publicly exhumed to serve as evidence of the heresies of what religious doctrine? 
Monroe was an American actress, world-famous sex symbol, and cultural icon. The onetime model made her screen debut in 1948 and was at first patronized by critics, but she studied acting and eventually won more challenging roles. Her private life, including her marriages to baseball star Joe DiMaggio and playwright Arthur Miller, has been subject to intense scrutiny, and her death from a barbiturate overdose at age 36 only increased her mystique. Why was her childhood particularly tumultuous? %2c_Tanglewood%2c_Lenox%2c_Massachusetts.JPG)
Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival. It has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s summer home since 1937. Its summer school is one of the world’s preeminent training grounds for composers, conductors, instrumentalists, and vocalists. The name “Tanglewood” pays homage to what American author who spent time in the region? 
When the South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, collapsed after several days of heavy rains, it sent 20 million tons (18.1 million cubic meters) of water cascading downriver at speeds of 20–40 mph (30–60 km/h). Less than an hour after the breach, a 30-foot (9-m) wall of water smashed into Johnstown, killing more than 2,200 people. The American Red Cross’s response was one of its first major disaster relief efforts. Why did some blame the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club for the tragedy?