In 1917 the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia forced the Tsar, Nicholas II, to abdicate, and then imprisoned him and his family, his wife, his son and four daughters, in various places in Russia. Then in 1918 an announcement came that all the royal family, as well as four of their servants, had been killed. No bodies were ever found, and …

An exceptor is a person who chooses to eat meat on special occasions. A vegetarian by habit, the exceptor makes exceptions for days like weddings, festivals and celebrations. After the vegan, eggetarian and flexitarian, it is the exceptor who is basically vegetarian, but makes changes in diet to suit the occasion.

Many people show a great aversion to snakes. Is this a natural fear, or do we become frightened of snakes because we are taught to fear them? It seems as though we are taught to be afraid of them, for a tiny child shows no fear of snakes at all. A baby chimpanzee, on the other hand, even if it …

Adolf Loos was an Austrian architect and theoretician, one of the most important representatives of modern architecture. In his theoretical and practical works, he developed a concept of functionalist architecture, free of decoration, which he regarded as superficial and subjective (in his essay Ornament and Crime). Among Loos’ most significant works were the Steiner House and the Goldman & Salatsch …

A whistleblower is a person who raises a concern about alleged wrongdoing occurring in a government or governmental entity or a private or public corporation or an organization or agency that is expected, by the public at large, to be operating within the bounds of the law. The alleged misconduct may be classified in many ways; for example, a violation …

Originally, troglodyte referred to a prehistoric cave dweller. The name was also used to denote an anthropoid ape such as a gorilla. Now, it often refers to an old-fashioned person or to one who is a wilfully brutal obscurantist.

A stealth shopper is a person who shops secretly to avoid flaunting wealth or to hide expenses from a spouse. It could mean shopping on the net or from catalogues through a friend to avoid being spotted.

A sexer is a professional in a hatchery who can tell a male chick from a female. Also known as chick sexers, they are employed to separate the genders as hatcheries have different feeding programmes for them: females are reared to lay eggs and males are bred for their meat. Big hatcheries sex chickens as they have no use for …

The scrum-half in rugby, also known as inside-half and half-back, is an all rounder, an excellent passer of both hands, an effective kicker with both feet, a good defender around the fringes and in the cover, and a nimble runner who can sniff a gap and ‘snipe’ from both set and broken play. He is the lynchpin of a rugby …

A musher is a person who competes in cross-country races with a dog team and sled. The word mush probably originated from the French term marchons meaning ‘let us march’. Mush is a command word to sled dogs.