COOL PLACES
The United Nations Security Council is the primary international body responsible for maintaining global peace and security. There are five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—who hold the power to veto, or block, any resolution. The Security Council meets in this very cool city.
What is New York?
In the 1800s these places were rapidly being built all over Great Britain, especially in northern English cities like Manchester. They were dangerous, poorly ventilated, and the workers were underpaid.
What are factories?
John Locke argued that all people are born with natural rights—life, liberty, and property—and that the government’s job is to protect them. He lived during this time of European intellectual history.
What is the Enlightenment?
This leader of the Communist Revolution in China established the People's Republic in 1949 and launched the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the starvation of tens of millions.
Who is Mao Zedong?
In the 1800s, gum became very popular among the working classes of Europe. Therefore, it was manufactured in factories, making large profits for the emerging middle class. We can say that these developments were part of this "revolution."
What is the Industrial Revolution?
This nation held its first truly democratic, multiracial elections on April 27, 1994. Since then, it has become of the world's premier travel destinations, home to safaris, wellness spas, and beautiful beaches.
What is South Africa?
This freezing cold territory east of the Ural Mountains covers roughly 77% of the Russian landmass . Throughout imperial and Soviet history, this formidable wilderness served as a site of exile and forced labor, yet its immense mineral, oil, and natural gas wealth remains the backbone of the Russian economy in 2026.
What is Siberia?
In a 1792 book, Mary Wollstonecraft argued that this group of people are not naturally inferior, but are merely denied a proper education.
Who are women?
Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq operated under this type of system where the state has total control over all aspects of public and private life. The Ba'ath Party tracked citizens from high school to retirement—ensuring that any perceived hint of disloyalty led to brutal collective punishments.
What is totalitarianism?
Today, gum is no longer made from the sapodilla tree, but largely consists of derivatives made from petroleum (oil). Much of the petroleum-based ingredients for gum come from this oil-rich Middle Eastern nation, an Islamic republic since 1979, currently involved in a conflict with the United States.
What is Iran?
After World War II, the western part of this city resisted communist control. The British and the Americans organized an airlift to save it from Soviet takeover, preserving it as a center of swing music, jazz music, and cabaret culture.
What is Berlin?
During the growth of manufacturing in Great Britain during the 1800s, these crowded, "scary," and unsanitary apartment buildings were where the working class lived, often lacking running water or ventilation.
What are tenements (slums)?
Known as the "Father of Modern Turkey," he modernized and secularized his nation after the fall of the Ottoman Empire by adopting the Western alphabet and legal codes.
Who is Kemal Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal Atatürk)?
He led the Soviet Union through World War II and used Great Purges and forced labor camps (Gulags) to eliminate his political rivals. He was also responsible for the Ukrainian genocide and about 20 million deaths.
Who is Joseph Stalin?
During the late 1800s, gum-chewing was a fad among the working classes of Europe: it was something to do during their tedious jobs. However, gum-chewing was seen as unsophisticated by this social class: the same wealthy social classes which embraced the Enlightenment and led the French Revolution one hundred years earlier, but now did not want to seem unrefined in comparison to the nobility.
What is the bourgeoisie (middle class; entrepreneur class; merchant class; nouveau riche)?
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, asserting that we all have natural rights that need to be respected by government, was approved, by the revolutionary National Constituent Assembly in this palace, originally built so that French kings could live in luxury.
What is Versailles?
This country, which is still a totalitarian state in 2026, often sends its own people to brutal labor camps. There is a cult of personality around this country's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Un, who will not hesitate to condemn three generations of a family to forced labor, under even the smallest of suspicions.
What is North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea)?
Formerly enslaved, Toussaint L’Ouverture led a successful revolt against the French, Spanish, and British making this place the first independent Black republic in the world.
What is Haiti?
He led the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and attempted to create a peasant farming utopia, resulting in the "Killing Fields" genocide. His radical Maoist communism not only caused millions of deaths, but also forced hundreds of thousands onto collective farms, and made the first year of his rule,"Year Zero"
Who is Pol Pot?
During the early 1940s, one of the resins used to make gum came from Southeast Asia: because these lands were occupied by this imperialist nation, food scientists had to find new ways to make gum.
What is Japan?
This 101-mile-long artificial waterway in Egypt is a model of 19th century engineering. It connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea, cutting months off the trip to India. In 1956, France, Israel, and the UK tried to prevent nationalization of this waterway, but failed terribly.
What is the Suez Canal?
This site in Beijing, not so scary in 2026, was nonetheless the location of a 1989 student-led pro-democracy protest that ended in a violent military crackdown by the Chinese government. (The crackdown preserved the rule of the Communist Party)
What is Tiananmen Square?
Known as the "Sword" of Italian unification, this nationalist leader and his army of Red Shirts captured Sicily and Naples to help create a united Kingdom of Italy.
Who is Giuseppe Garibaldi?
In the late 19th century, Leopold II, king of this country, used the "Force Publique" to terrorize the people of his colony in Congo, demanding high quotas of rubber and ivory under the threat of mutilation and death.
What is Belgium?
During the 1870s, chemists in this country developed many of the ingredients and techniques that allowed gum to be produced on a mass-scale. Although it was a new nation which had only recently unified (Prussia helped bring smaller states together), it had a culture which put great emphasis on science, and on education.
What is Germany?