The choking game – also known as airplaning, America dream game, black out game, breath play, breathing the zoo – is not technically a game but a schoolyard activity which involves deliberately inducing unconsciousness or near-unconsciousness by restricting the supply of oxygenated blood to the brain. Mostly teenagers and adults indulge in this game. The activity has been responsible for …

A tour programme managed by the Kentucky Distillers Association (KDA), the Bourbon Trail or Kentucky Bourbon Trail meant to promote the bourbon industry in Kentucky which is over 200 years old. People who mail in a promotional passport which has been stamped by all the participating distilleries get free T-shirts courtesy the Association. The trail was launched in 1999 by …

The Bossa Nova is a type of Brazilian music system, innovated in 1958. The system merges the samba rhythms, typical to traditional Brazilian dance music, with the melodies of jazz. Catching the fancy of college students, this system of fusion reached the peak of popularity between 1958 and 1963. The system contributed a lot of popular songs to the standard …

The Bolshoi Theatre, also called the grand or great theatre, is a historic theatre in Moscow, Russia, designed by the architect Joseph Bovi, which holds ballet and opera performances. The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera are amongst the oldest and greatest ballet and opera companies of the world, respectively. The theatre is the parent company of The Bolshoi Ballet Academy.

It is an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts of America designed to encourage book reading among citizens. The literature in focus is on American popular culture. The National Endowment has partnered the Institute of Museum and Library Services and Arts Midwest. Support for the Big Read is given by the W K Kellogg Foundation and a grant …

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United …

Practically everyone has owned a teddy bear as a child, but not everyone realizes that the animal it is modelled on is not a bear at all. Bears are placental mammals whereas the Koala, which is often called the Australian teddy bear, is another marsupial mammal grouped with the phalanger family. It is interesting that a number of the marsupials …

Charged particles ejected at great speeds from the sun ionise the air molecules resulting in spectacular colour display. These are seen from polar regions and are called aurora or polar lights. It is the luminous phenomenon of earth’s upper atmosphere that occurs primarily in high latitudes of both hemispheres; aurorae in the northern hemisphere are called aurora borealis, or northern …

An aurora is a natural light display in the sky, particularly in the polar regions, caused by the collision of charged particles directed by the Earth’s magnetic field. An aurora is usually observed at night and typically occurs in the ionosphere. It is also referred to as a polar aurora or, collectively, as polar lights. These phenomena are commonly visible …

The Armenian genocide was carried out by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1916 and from 1922 to 1923. About 1.5 million Armenians out of the 2.5 million in the empire were killed. Armenians all over the world commemorate the tragedy on April 24 every year as it was on this day in 1915 when …