Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is better known as Lady Gaga.  She is an American singer and songwriter, born and raised in New York City.  Her first album, The Fame, debut in 2008. 

Influenced by such acts as David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Madonna and Queen, Lady Gaga is well recognized for her flamboyant, diverse and outré contributions to the music industry through fashion, performance and music videos. She has sold an estimated 23 million albums and 64 million singles worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Her achievements include four Guinness World Records, five Grammy Awards and thirteen MTV Video Music Awards. Lady Gaga has consecutively appeared on Billboard magazine's Artists of the Year (scoring the definitive title in 2010), is regularly placed on lists composed by Forbes magazine, and was named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Puzzles

The origins of jigsaw puzzles go back to the 1760s when European map makers pasted maps onto wood and cut them into small pieces.  The “dissected map” has been a successful educational toy ever since.  Puzzles for adult emerged around 1900 and by 1908 a full-blown craze was in progress in the United States.  The puzzles of those days were quite a challenge. Most had pieces cut exactly on the color lines. There were no transition pieces with two colors to signal, for example, that the brown area (roof) fit next to the blues (sky). A sneeze or a careless move could undo an evening's work because the pieces did not interlock. And, unlike children's puzzles, the adult puzzles had no guide picture on the box; if the title was vague or misleading, the true subject could remain a mystery until the last pieces were fitted into place.

Source: http://mgcpuzzle.com/mgcpuzzles/puzzle_history/

Stars

A star is a massive luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity.  At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter.  The most prominent starts on the celestial sphere were grouped together into constellations and asterisms, and the brightest starts gained proper names.  Extensive catalogues of stars have been assembled by astronomers, which provide standardized star designations.  Astronomers can determine the mass, age, chemical composition and many other properties of a star by observing its spectrum, luminosity, and motion through space.  Binary and multi-star systems consist of two or more starts that are gravitationally bound, and generally move around each other in stable orbits.  Historically, stars have been important to civilizations throughout the world.  They have been part of religious practices and used for celestial navigation and orientation.  The oldest accurately dated star chart appeared in ancient Egyptian astronomy in 1534 B.C.  

Beauty Pageants

Beauty pageants are often criticized as demoralizing young women.  We watch many shows on TV where young girls, barely able to walk, prance around in swimsuits.  However there is a side to beauty pageants that many people do not know. 

I am your 2010-2011 Monticello Princess.  At the end of my senior year of high school, I decided to run for the Monticello Ambassador Program.  This program allows young women the opportunity to grow in many areas such as: Public Speaking, Etiquette, Poise, and Self-Confidence.  This program also gives young women a scholarship to attend college.  There was no prancing around in a swimsuit like many people think.  It consisted of an interview, speech, fish bowl question, and observation at many events. From this experience I learned a lot about myself and met many new friends.   

Nail Polish

In ancient Egypt, women used nail color to signify social order with shades of red at the top.  Women of lower rank who colored their nails were permitted only pale colors.  Chinese royalty used gold and silver to enhance their nails.  Nail polish can now be found in virtually every color.  

Rainbows

A rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a spectrum of light to appear in the sky why the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere.  It takes the form of a multicolored arc.  Rainbows caused by sunlight always appear in the section of sky directly opposite the sun.  

Rainbows have their place in many legends owing to their beauty and the historical difficulty in explaining the phenomenon.  

In Greco-Roman mythology, the rainbow was considered to be a path made by a messenger (Iris) between Earth and Heaven.  

In Chinese mythology, the rainbow was a slit in the sky sealed by goddess Nuwa using stones of five different colors.  

According to Christian religion and Judaic religion, after Noah’s flood God put the rainbow in the sky as the sign of His promise that HE would never again destroy the earth with flood (Genesis 9:13-17).

“I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth.”

The Bed Intruder Song

It began with unlikely fodder for music, comedy or pop culture stardom: a local news report about an attempted rape. But then the victim’s brother stepped before the camera and delivered a lecture to the stranger who had tried to attack his sister one night last month in Huntsville, Ala., that somehow managed to be both deeply angry and oddly compelling.

Within hours a viral video franchise was born when a copy of that report, about the intruder found in Kelly Dodson’s bed, and her brother Antoine’s reaction, was posted on YouTube and quickly shot up the viral video charts. 

Soon enough Mr. Dodson’s warnings to Huntsville residents — “Well, obviously we have a rapist in Lincoln Park; he’s climbing in your windows, he’s snatching your people up, trying to rape ‘em, so you all need to hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband ’cause they’re raping everybody out here” — racked up millions of views and attracted the attention of the Gregory Brothers, who transform news clips into songs for their popular “Auto-Tune the News” series.

That led to their reworking of Mr. Dodson’s rant as “The Bed Intruder Song,” which has now been seen more than 10 million times on YouTube and reached No. 3 on the iTunes R&B chart.

That song, in turn, has now spawned dozens of covers and remixes on YouTube, including this one, performed by a North Carolina A&T marching band: 

What distinguishes this surprise hit from other viral videos is that its accidental star, Mr. Dodson, is sharing in all the profits from the auto-tuned version and hopes that his new fame could be a route out of the projects for his family.  Mr. Dodson receives half of all profits from the song.