April is EVERYTHINGMONTH-aroo

Jazz it up!

100

Jazz music was born in this vibrant, multicultural southern U.S. city in the early 20th century — a place still celebrated for its French Quarter, Mardi Gras, and live music on every corner.

New Orleans

200

This vocal improvisation technique — a hallmark of jazz — involves singing melodic lines using nonsense syllables like "doo-wah," "shoo-bee-doo," or "da-da-da" to mimic the sound and feel of a musical instrument.

Scat singing

300

This jazz trumpeter and vocalist, nicknamed "Satchmo," was one of the most influential figures in jazz history. His gravelly voice, virtuosic playing, and joyful personality made him a beloved global icon.

Louis Armstrong

400

This jazz vocalist, nicknamed "Lady Day," was known for her deeply emotional delivery and in 1939 courageously recorded "Strange Fruit" — a haunting protest song about lynching in the American South.

Billie Holiday

500

Recorded in December 1964 and released in 1965, John Coltrane's deeply spiritual masterpiece — considered by many critics the greatest jazz album ever recorded — is structured in four movements: "Acknowledgement," "Resolution," "Pursuance," and "Psalm."

A Love Supreme

All the history

100

This Egyptian boy-pharaoh became world-famous when his intact, treasure-filled tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter.

Tutankhamun

200

Napoleon Bonaparte was decisively defeated at this 1815 battle in present-day Belgium, ending his rule as Emperor of the French once and for all and leading to his final exile on the remote island of Saint Helena.

Battle of Waterloo

300

This massive stone wall, stretching 73 miles across northern Britain, was built on the orders of a Roman emperor around 122 AD to mark — and defend — the empire's northernmost frontier.

Hadrian's Wall

400

This ancient network of trade routes — active for over 1,500 years — linked China to the Mediterranean world, facilitating the exchange of silk, spices, glassware, paper, gunpowder, and even the bubonic plague.

The Silk Road

500

This West African empire, which reached its peak under the fabulously wealthy ruler Mansa Musa in the 14th century, controlled critical gold and salt trade routes and is considered one of the wealthiest empires in all of history.

The Mali Empire

Lights, camera, ACTION!

100

This actor originated the role of Tony Stark/Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008, playing the genius, billionaire, playboy philanthropist across more than ten films before retiring the role in 2019.

Robert Downey Jr.

200

Heath Ledger posthumously won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his terrifying, unforgettable portrayal of this anarchic Batman villain in Christopher Nolan's 2008 blockbuster The Dark Knight.

The Joker

300

This 1922 German Expressionist silent horror film — directed by F.W. Murnau and widely considered the earliest vampire film in cinema history. Made without official rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula, it was recently remade in 2023.

Nosferatu

400

In this classic Alfred Hitchcock thriller, a photographer named L.B. Jefferies — confined to a wheelchair — peers out his apartment window and becomes increasingly convinced he has witnessed a murder in the building across the courtyard.

Rear Window

500

This Italian filmmaker, whose surrealist and autobiographical style gave rise to the adjective "Felliniesque," won four Academy Awards and created such classics as La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8½ (1963).

Federico Fellini

Poetry in Motion

100

Edgar Allan Poe wrote this famous 1845 poem in which a grieving man is visited by a mysterious black bird that perches above his chamber door and ominously repeats the single word "Nevermore."

The Raven

200

This poetic form — originating in 17th-century Japan and associated with masters like Matsuo Bashō — consists of exactly three lines with 5, 7, and 5 syllables, traditionally capturing a single fleeting moment in nature or daily life.

haiku

300

Robert Frost wrote this iconic 1916 poem about a traveler facing a fork in a woodland path who chooses "the one less traveled by" — and claims that has "made all the difference."

The Road Not Taken

400

This ancient Greek epic poem — attributed to Homer — describes the decade-long, adventure-filled journey of the hero Odysseus as he struggles to return home to Ithaca following the Trojan War.

The Odyssey

500

The "Epic of Gilgamesh" — widely cited as the world's oldest surviving written poem, dating to around 2100 BC — originated in this ancient civilization located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now modern-day Iraq.

Mesopotamia (ancient Sumer)

Gettin' all science n'nature n'stuff

100

Known as the "Red Planet," this is the fourth planet from the Sun — home to the solar system's largest volcano, Olympus Mons — and has two small moons named Phobos and Deimos.

Mars

200

This biological process allows green plants to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into glucose and oxygen, making it the fundamental energy source for nearly all life on Earth.

photosynthesis

300

This 17th-century English physicist and mathematician formulated the three laws of motion, the universal law of gravitation, and co-developed calculus — all reportedly inspired, in part, by a falling apple.

Isaac Newton

400

The Coriolis effect — caused by Earth's rotation — makes large weather systems like hurricanes rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in this other hemisphere.

the Southern Hemisphere

500

This quantum mechanical phenomenon — famously called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein — describes the way two particles can become correlated so that measuring the state of one instantly determines the state of the other, no matter how far apart they are.

quantum entanglement