Word: mid-19th
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Alexis de Tocqueville is famously taught in American middle schools and high schools as the Frenchman who loved America and who wrote the treatise “Democracy in America” in the mid-19th century. There is usually no further discussion of the man or his famous book before moving on to material deemed more important by state-standardized testing boards. The motives behind Tocqueville’s mission are therefore overlooked and any meaninful insight into his character is completely lost...
...Nordic combined, the sport with the terribly unsexy name, started in mid-19th century Norway. It is an anomaly in the Winter Olympics because it mixes two wildly different disciplines. Yes, both ski jumpers and cross-country racers wear skis. But other than that, you might as well mix ice dancing with speedskating and call it a day. Cross-country racing requires extreme endurance, while ski jumping requires insanity. "It is kind of stupid," says Finland's Janne Ryynaenen of the odd combination. Ryynaenen nailed the longest leap of the day, 138.5 m from the takeoff, during the ski-jumping...
...hard to resist the thought that it might have belonged to Goliath, or to imagine, while excavating the cellars of a Byzantine church, that the discovery of a few wooden splinters might be part of the cross on which Christ died. This milder malady is nothing new. In the mid-19th century, British explorers who came to Jerusalem with a shovel in one hand and a Bible in the other used the holy book as a sort of treasure map in the search for proof of Christianity's origins. (See a video of archaeology digging up controversy in Jerusalem...
...villager had a point. In the mid-19th century, British explorer Charles Warren, while searching for the legendary treasures of King Solomon, uncovered a shaft leading down to an underground stream. He hypothesized that this was the water source for the city founded in 1000 B.C. by the Jewish King David. This underground stream, which surfaces in the Pool of Siloam about 500 ft. (150 m) below the ancient city walls, was Jerusalem's only source of water, so it made sense to Be'eri, and to many archaeologists, that David would have built his citadel over the stream...
...first U.S. extradition agreement appeared as a clause within the 1794 Jay Treaty with Britain, and applied only to murder and forgery. Formal extradition didn't become commonplace in Western countries until the mid-19th century when increased travel made it easier for criminals to escape. Today, the U.S. has extradition treaties with 108 countries. Colombia extradites an average of four suspects to the U.S. each week - the most of any country - usually on charges related to drug trafficking...