Alfred Stieglitz believed in photography as fine art and he worked to promote that idea. The creator of two periodicals, Camera Notes and Camera Work, Stieglitz co-founded the group Photo-Secession along with Edward Steichen and others. He was introduced to the work of a young female artist, Georgia O'Keeffe, in 1916. Immediately impressed with her ( Read more... )

If you are a sci-fi comedy fan and a product of the '80s you can rejoice; ALF is back. Today, Warner Home Video celebrates the global release of the ALF Season One DVD! This fuzzy, brown alien from Melmac first arrived on the scene in 1986 when he crash-landed into the Tanner family garage. Although his real name on the show is Gordon Shumway, he ( Read more... )

The origin of the word Poker is also well debated. Most of the dictionaries and game historians say that it comes from an eighteenth-century French game, poque. However, there are other references to pochspiel, which is a German game. In pochspiel, there is an element of bluffing, where players would indicate whether they wanted to pass or open by ( Read more... )

What bird first spotted by Jacques Cartier in Prince Edward Island was once the most numerous bird on earth? The passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is legendary as a symbol of unbelievable abundance and of human-caused extinction. It was an essential living resource to 18th and 19th century America that was over exploited to extinction out ( Read more... )

The hobby of bird watching only began to become popular in the early 1900s, with the development of improved binoculars that could be easily carried. Prior to that, most information about birds could only be gathered by shooting them, to study them up close. The first extensive effort to portray birds in their natural habitat was made by John J. ( Read more... )

What happened to Paul Revere and the others who warned the Colonists about the British invasion? during 1775, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott set out from Boston on their famous midnight ride warning American colonists that "the British are coming!" Only Prescott was able to get through to Concord to warn the militia of the ( Read more... )

Rock 'n' roll originated from the evolution of rhythm and blues. The term rock and roll was coined by Alan Freed, a Cleveland, Ohio USA disc jockey ( Read more... )

What is the Lima Syndrome? In 1996, hundreds of people at a party at the Japanese embassy in Lima, Peru, were taken hostage by a militant group. Within hours, the abductors, feeling sympathy for their victims, set most of them free. This feeling of sympathy by abductors for their victims is called the Lima syndrome. The inverse is the Stockholm ( Read more... )

How factually close was the movie 'Apollo 13' to the actual event? Ron Howard never meant the movie Apollo 13 to be a documentary, so there are several intentional discrepancies. For instance, Ken Mattingly - the command module pilot scrubbed because of his exposure to German measles - was already at mission control when the Apollo 13 accident ( Read more... )

What's Bob Newhart's philosophy of life? "All I can say about life is, 'Oh God, enjoy it!'" The comedian who made the one-sided telephone conversation into a comedic art form turned 80. His deadpan delivery was popular enough to win him his own TV shows, The Bob Newhart Show (1972-78) and Newhart (1982-90). In the final episode of the latter show, ( Read more... )