The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն Hayots Tseghaspanutyun),also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, traditionally by Armenians, as Medz Yeghern (Armenian: Մեծ Եղեռն, "Great Crime")was the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects from their historic homeland in the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. It took place during and after World War I and was implemented in two phases: the wholesale killing of the able-bodied male population through massacre and forced labor, and the deportation of women, children, the elderly and infirm on death marches to the Syrian Desert.The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 1 and 1.5 million. Other indigenous and Christian ethnic groups such as the Assyrians, the Greeks and other minority groups were similarly targeted for extermination by the Ottoman government, and their treatment is considered by many historians to be part of the same genocidal policy. It is acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides, because scholars point to the organized manner in which the killings were carried out in order to eliminate the Armenians,and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.The word genocide was coined in order to describe these events.The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be 24 April 1915, the day Ottoman authorities rounded up and arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.Thereafter, the Ottoman military began expelling the Armenians from their homes throughout Turkey, forcing them onto roads that led to the Syrian desert hundreds of miles away. They were deprived of food and water and subjected to periodic robbery, rape, and massacre as they were marched along by military escorts.The majority of Armenian diaspora communities around the world came into being as a direct result of the Armenian Genocide. Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide as an accurate description of the events.In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide. To date, 23 countries have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view.

Michael Fred Phelps

Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985) is an American swimmer and the most decorated Olympian of all time, with a total of 22 medals. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (18, double the second highest record holders), Olympic gold medals in individual events , and Olympic medals in individual events for a male . In winning eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, Phelps took the record for the most first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. Five of those victories were in individual events, tying the single Games record. In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four golds and two silver medals, making him the most successful athlete of the Games for the third Olympics in a row.

Phelps is the long course world recordholder in the 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly and 400-meter individual medley as well as the former long course world recordholder in the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley. He has won a total of 71 medals in major international long-course competition, totalling 57 gold, 11 silver, and 3 bronze spanning the Olympics, the World, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps's international titles and record-breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award seven times and American Swimmer of the Year Award nine times as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012. His unprecedented Olympic success in 2008 earned Phelps Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award.

After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles. He continues to work with his foundation after the 2012 Olympics, which he has said will be his last. In April 2014, Phelps announced he would come out of retirement, and will enter an event later that month.

The Bermuda Triangle

The earliest allegation of unusual disappearances in the Bermuda area appeared in a September 17, 1950 article published in by Edward Van Winkle Jones. Two years later, magazine published "Sea Mystery at Our Back Door", a short article by George X. Sand covering the loss of several planes and ships, including the loss of a group of five bombers on a training mission. Sand's article was the first to lay out the now-familiar triangular area where the losses took place. Flight 19 alone would be covered again in the April 1962 issue of American Legion magazine. In it, author wrote that the flight leader had been heard saying, "We are entering white water, nothing seems right. We don't know where we are, the water is green, no white." He also wrote that officials at the Navy board of inquiry stated that the planes "flew off to Mars." Sand's article was the first to suggest a supernatural element to the Flight 19 incident. In the February 1964 issue of Argosy, Vincent Gaddis' article "The Deadly Bermuda Triangle" argued that Flight 19 and other disappearances were part of a pattern of strange events in the region. The next year, Gaddis expanded this article into a book, Invisible Horizons.Others would follow with their own works, elaborating on Gaddis' ideas: John Wallace Spencer (Limbo of the Lost, 1969, repr. 1973)(The Devil's Triangle, 1974), and many others, all keeping to some of the same supernatural elements outlined by Eckert.