Word: 19th
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Until the end of the 19th century, all jockeys assumed a pose on the horse much like that of dressage riders: back straight, head up, seat planted firmly in place. The posture provided plenty of speed and plenty of control and, significantly, did not require the riders to support their own body weight - a real consideration over the course of a long race...
...extent, a global role for the yuan appears inevitable. How widely a currency is used around the world is usually a function of how important its home country is to the global economy. During the 19th century, when the British Empire reigned supreme, the pound was the top international currency. Since World War II, that role has been played by the dollar, with the U.S. having by far the world's biggest economy. Now that China is rapidly charging up the list - it currently ranks third and could overtake Japan as No. 2 as soon as next year - there...
...haunts the country, which today has one of the highest homicide rates in the western hemisphere. Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war, which ended in 1996, killed 200,000 people. Its cloak-and-dagger murders have made locals so paranoid that "even the drunks are discreet," as one 19th century visitor wrote...
...drizzling London rain. The foreign flora - provided by the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew - makes up the "India Landscape," part of the British Museum's "Indian Summer," a five-month celebration of Indian culture. The exhibition's centerpiece is "Garden and Cosmos," a collection of 54 bold 17th and 19th century paintings from the courts of Jodhpur, in the modern-day state of Rajasthan. Never before seen in Europe, the pictures draw on Rajasthani artists' varied approaches to color and form as well as the miniature techniques of the Mughals. While some subjects are classic - scenes from the Ramayana...
...thrived amid the war, autocracy and corruption of postindependence Africa were of a depressing sort: emergency aid, arms-dealing, disaster journalism and security-ringed extractive industries for whom development was too often someone else's problem. There were exceptions, countries like Botswana and Mauritius and businessmen like Bsaibes, whose 19th century Lebanese forebears were tricked into disembarking in Liberia after buying passage to America, but who thrived anyway. But the exceptions only highlighted how far the rest of Africa was falling short. (Read an interview with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf...