Books and Literature
This melancholy Danish prince agonizes over whether "to be or not to be."
Hamlet
This winter sport involves sliding granite stones toward a target while teammates sweep the ice.
curling
This African river, traditionally considered the world's longest, flows through Egypt.
This scientist introduced the theory of general relativity in 1915.
Albert Einstein
Created in 1876, this numerical classification system is used by most public libraries for nonfiction.
Dewey Decimal Classification
The Berlin Wall, which had divided a German city since 1961, fell in this year.
1989
This Jane Austen novel opens with "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."
Pride and Prejudice
This racket sport, invented in 1960s America, is now the fastest-growing sport in the U.S.
pickleball
This small mountain kingdom is entirely surrounded by South Africa.
Lesotho
This gas makes up roughly 78% of Earth's atmosphere.
This piece of furniture, once a cornerstone of library reference, was largely replaced by OPACs in the late 20th century.
the card catalog
During this 1969 NASA mission, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon.
Apollo 11
Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel set in the Republic of Gilead, narrated by a woman called Offred.
The Handmaid's Tale
This Basque sport uses a curved wicker glove called a cesta to hurl a ball at speeds exceeding 180 mph.
jai alai
The capital of Kazakhstan, briefly renamed Nur-Sultan from 2019 to 2022, now goes by this earlier name.
Astana
Discovered at CERN in 2012, this particle is responsible for giving other particles their mass and is nicknamed the "God particle."
the Higgs boson
Founded in the 3rd century BCE under the Ptolemies, this ancient institution was among the largest libraries of the classical world before its destruction.
the Library of Alexandria
Over roughly 100 days in 1994, this Central African nation experienced a genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people, primarily Tutsi.
Rwanda
This Russian novelist's Crime and Punishment follows the impoverished ex-student Raskolnikov after he murders a pawnbroker.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
This Irish sport, often called "the fastest game on grass," uses a wooden stick called a hurley and a small ball called a sliotar.
hurling
These two nations are the only "doubly landlocked" countries in the world. They're surrounded exclusively by other landlocked countries.
Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan
This 19th-century Russian chemist built the first widely accepted periodic table by leaving gaps for elements not yet discovered.
Dmitri Mendeleev
Preferred by most academic and research libraries in the U.S. (and Pingry's US and MS libraries), this classification system organizes knowledge into 21 letter-based classes.
Library of Congress Classification
The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Soviet Ukraine forced the permanent evacuation of this nearby city.
Pripyat
This 1967 novel follows the BuendÃa family across seven generations in the fictional town of Macondo.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
This Japanese martial art, whose name translates to "way of the sword," uses bamboo swords called shinai and protective armor called bogu.
kendo
This Pacific nation consisting of a single raised coral atoll is the world's third-smallest country by population, after Vatican City and Tuvalu.
Nauru
Developed by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier and recognized with a 2020 Nobel, this gene-editing tool repurposes a bacterial immune defense for precise DNA modification.
CRISPR-Cas9 (or CRISPR)
This Scottish-American industrialist funded the construction of more than 2,500 public libraries worldwide between 1883 and 1929.
Andrew Carnegie
Brokered by Jimmy Carter in 1978, these accords laid the groundwork for peace between Egypt and Israel.
Camp David Accords