1) Just before Halloween 1938 Orson Welles the American filmmaker who was to produce and act in the film Citizen Kane (1940) broadcast a radio version of War of the Worlds the science fiction masterpiece written by H. G. Wells in 1898 2) This radio drama involved Orson Welles's Mercury Theater players and it purported to report an actual invasion of Martian spacecraft landing at Grovers Mills New Jersey a small town near Princeton 3) The broadcast proved to be extremely realistic convincing and alarming for it fooled thousands of listeners into believing that the Earth was actually being attacked by warships from outer space 4) Indeed many local residents picked up their rifles and took to Grovers Mills farmlands ready to defend their homes against the invaders.

1) How old is the oldest human fossil 2) If you had said about 700000 years you would probably have been right until just recently that is 3) The September 1998 issue of Discover magazine reports that Ernesto Abbate a geology professor from Florence Italy has discovered the fossilized skull and teeth of a humanlike creature who might have lived as far back as one million years ago 4) Calling this creature Buia Man after the city in northeastern Africa where the remains were found Prof. Abbate thinks he has discovered the earliest fossil that displays physical features associated with Homo sapiens the species to which modern humans belong. 5) Moreover Buia Man says Prof. Abbate also shows physical characteristics of an extinct human species homo erectus which is the immediate ancestor of Homo sapiens 6) The discovery of Buia Man therefore might provide important new information about the way in which human beings developed in the last major stage of evolution for according to Prof. Abbate it shows that humans began to evolve about one million years ago "which is 300000 years earlier than previously estimated"

1) Trying to classify American Indian languages is a daunting task because these many tongues do not belong to a single group or family of languages in the same way that Romance, Semitic, and Germanic languages belong to an Indo-European family of languages 2) In fact no place in the world contains more unique native language groups than the Americas 3) Consequently the classification of the native languages of North and South America is based on geography rather than linguistic similarities 4) Ten major classifications are recognized. 5) In North America the Alogonquian–Wakashan group includes the languages of the Arapaho Chippewa Cree Delaware Mohican and Shawnee 6) The Andean-equatorial languages of South America include Quechua which is spoken in Equador and Taino an extinct language once spoken in areas of the Caribbean 7) Peoples who speak Paiute Hopi and Comanche are members of the Shoshonean language subgroup classified within the larger Aztec-Tanoan language 8) The Hokan–Siouan is perhaps the most varied of all the indigenous American language classifications 9) It includes the Cherokee Mohawk Oneida and Seneca tongues which are members of the Iroquoian subgroup as well as the Omaha and Sioux languages and the Maricopa Mohave and Yuma languages which are classified under the Siouan and Yuman subgroups respectively 10) Indigenous peoples living in places as distant from each other as Siberia Alaska and Greenland speak Inuit–Aleut languages

1) The word Halloween derives from the phrase "All Hallow Even" the eve of All Saints' Day which falls on November 1 an important date in the Christian calendar 2) Nonetheless some Halloween traditions are not original with the Christian church 3) Many of them in fact can be found in Druidism the Celtic religion practiced in ancient Gaul and Britain 4) For the Celts Halloween fell on the last night of the year when Saman their god of the dead held sway 5) Saman believed the Druids unleashed hosts of evil spirits as well as the spirits of dead ancestors among the living 6) To protect themselves from the evil abroad this night the Celts lit great fires perhaps the precursors of the bonfires modern folks enjoy at football rallies and other fall celebrations. 7) Certainly the goblins ghosts and witches that haunt our modern Halloween celebrations also derive directly from Celtic tradition 8) Other Halloween traditions might have their origins in the ancient Roman festival honouring Pomona a goddess of agriculture which took place interestingly enough on November 1 9) That theory might explain why we dunk for apples decorate our front porches with corn stalks and carve pumpkins with frightening faces at this time of year