Philip Glass is a prolific American composer who writes in the minimalist style. This opera is the third in his trilogy which comprises the lives of Einstein, Gandhi, and Akhnaten. Whilst the music is incredibly repetitive, the more you concentrate the more you hear subtle changes which, in a sense is an aural illusion, leads you to hear other melodies floating out. Glass has written an immense amount of music for films, including the score for Kundun and The Hours....

10 Prostitution Was Considered a Necessary Evil Prostitution was rife throughout the Middle Ages, and while the clergy weren’t happy about it, they made little effort to stop it. Clerics realized that many men needed this outlet and that a lack of prostitution could do more harm than good. They feared that otherwise, men would corrupt respectable women or, even worse, turn to homosexuality. Despite being tolerated, some ordinances reflected the prostitutes’ lowly standing in society....

10 Inspirational Stories Of People Who Escaped A Life Of Homelessness 10 Boca Raton Mansion Takeover In December of 2013, a man moved into a $2.5 million mansion. That’s a pretty cool thing to happen in most cases and definitely comes with bragging rights. But in this case, the mansion was foreclosed and that man who moved in, Andre “Loki Boy” Barbosa, never really owned it in the first place....

Activate your sentences By avoiding the use of passives in your sentences, you can give strength to your words. Passive verbs include “is”, “were”, “was”, “could have”, “would have”, and so on. Take this sentences for example: The mouse was eaten by the cat (“was eaten” is in the passive voice). A better sentenced would be: The cat ate the mouse (“ate” is in the active voice). You can remember this difference easily by recognizing the subject and object of the sentence: the cat is the subject, the mouse is the object....

Top 10 Things Hollywood Does To Kowtow To The Chinese 10 Charlie’s Angels While “Charlie’s Angels” started as a popular TV series back in 1976, Hollywood only realized the potential behind the franchise in the year 2000, when it was successfully rebooted into an over-the-top action flick starring Drew Barrymore, Lucy Liu and Cameron Diaz. Unfortunately, that potential was very short-lived — after a failed sequel in 2003 (and a cancelled third film), the franchise went dead, and Hollywood has miserably been trying to revive it for the last 17 years....

10Greyhound Racing This does not involve buses being driven quickly, but instead, concerns itself with the tall, slim, and graceful breed of dog. The greyhound, which normally weighs in at between 50 to 80 pounds (22-36 kg), is the fastest dog on the planet and can achieve an eye-watering maximum speed of 45 miles per hour (70 km/h). The organized act of greyhound racing has its origins in the coursing (hunting) of deer, hare, and foxes in the UK and Europe....

10 Diary of Anne Frank Anne Frank and her family were sent to a concentration camp after they were arrested by the Gestapo in 1944. Anne’s father Otto Frank was the only family member who survived. When he was given his daughters’ diary he decided to have it published.[1] This true story reveals the threats that Jews had to cope with in the time of Nazism. Although she was killed at the age of 15 this book remains an optimistic story despite the terrible ordeals she went through....

Almost everyone has at least one dating horror story. But they probably can’t top the following 10 experiences. 10 Next Time, Use A Plunger Liam Smith was having a great night in Bristol. He had met a girl on Tinder, and they went out for a nice dinner. They decided to continue the date back at his apartment with a bottle of wine and Netflix. The woman told Smith that she just needed a minute in the bathroom—and took a dump....

In any case, pack a couple of Vicodin and a bottle of whiskey, because we’re off to Best Korea! You’ll need all the booze and drugs you can carry for this one. Here’s why: 10 Propaganda Village If the North Koreans know about the village of Kijong-dong, then they probably won’t be making the obvious penis joke inherent in the name. And neither will we. Dangling Kijong-dong in the faces of the North Koreans would be a cruel gesture....

Some books are large, complex treatises that are almost indecipherable, hinting at the mysterious worlds that once lived inside of the minds of their authors. What were their real intentions? What were they trying to tell us or express? Some works of literature are far outside of the realm of what is considered accessible, yet all of our modern-day analyses point to them being legitimate works with intention. Some have mysterious origins, while others are contemporary with an unusual message....

10China Built A Washington, D.C. Mockup In The Gobi Desert In 2011, Google Earth users noticed that China had been constructing a series of massive buildings in the Gobi Desert. These bizarre structures included a series of concentric circles with jets parked in the center, a tangle of white intersecting lines, and a grid 30 kilometers (18 mi) long. Burned-out vehicles, orange blocks the size of shipping containers, and structures resembling airports or nuclear plant cooling towers were also visible....

Acid steals our identity and reduces us to undifferentiated organic matter—reminding us that eventually we return to nothingness. Top 10 Famous People Who Got Away With Murder (Maybe) 10 Get a Job “(It was) the most horrific thing I’ve ever encountered in police work—in my life”, noted detective Jeremy McCord, about the night in November 2016 he entered the residence on Knoxville’s Goldenview Lane. Inside, McCord discovered blood-smeared walls and the stench of death mingled with chemicals....

10Barbara Payton Starting out as a small-town Minnesota girl, this gorgeous blonde ran off to Hollywood, and it wasn’t long before she became one of the biggest stars of the 1940s and 1950s, starring alongside acting greats like James Cagney, Gary Cooper, and Gregory Peck. However, Payton’s personal life was a chaotic disaster. Chock full of affairs with seemingly every man she encountered, violent relationships, shoplifting, prostitution, and numerous run-ins with the police, the only thing that seemed to offer any stability to this troubled actress was the bottle....

10 Towers Within Craters In 2016, researchers were looking to study cosmic impacts on other worlds. To do this, they chose the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Said to be the footprint of the asteroid that bumped dinosaurs off the face of the Earth, the crater had one trait that made it useful to study impacts on other planets. So-called “peak rings” are tall hills circling the center inside of major craters....

10Ava Nearly four millennia ago, a young woman died in ancient Britain, and she was unusual. Ava’s skull was strange, and so was her grave. Nicknamed “Ava” after Achavanich, where she was unearthed in 1987, and aged 18 to 22, she most likely belonged to the Beaker people, a European group with short and rounded skulls. But Ava’s head was uneven yet shapely enough to suggest deliberate binding. During the Middle Bronze Age, it was customary to bury the dead under a cairn or in a soil pit....

10He’s Been In Love With Four Women Despite what you might have heard, our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has fallen for more women than Mary Jane Watson and Gwen Stacy. In fact, Peter’s first love was a beautiful young lass named Betty Brant. Unfortunately, all of that collapsed when Betty’s brother was murdered in a fight between Spidey and Dr. Octopus. After a tumultuous breakup, Peter eventually fell for Gwen Stacy, who was the daughter of the chief of police....

This seems unbelievable, but it actually happens. Though the condition is quite rare, there are those around the world who suffer from this extreme excess of hair, known as hypertrichosis. Though living with so much hair might seem unbearable, people with hypertrichosis have been thriving and making a name for themselves for years. Although some were taken advantage of, many became famous and even had families of their own. Interesting is the life of those who are hairy....

10Building The Tomb Most people are familiar with the terra-cotta warriors, each with their own unique features and armed with a variety of weapons. But the true scale of the tomb is almost impossible to comprehend, especially considering its construction began around 246 B.C. The entire complex hasn’t even been excavated yet, but archaeologists believe it sprawls over 56 square kilometers (21 mi2) and includes around 600 individual sites. In addition to the terra-cotta soldiers, with their horses and chariots, there are sections of the tomb dedicated to less militaristic figures....

10 Cheryl Ann Tomiczek In September 1980, a police officer was patrolling Hugh Taylor Birch State Park in Florida when he saw something odd among the trees. Deciding to investigate, he found a woman caked in dirt in a shallow grave. Amazingly, she was still alive. She was taken to the hospital where they found that the woman was near starvation, had sores all over her body, and had no memory of anything....

Here are ten of the most amazing, if aborted, sculptures ever half-made. 10 Statues That People Like To Touch In Inappropriate Places 10 Apollo-David Michelangelo was a younger contemporary of Leonardo and both were rivals vying to create the most impressive works of their time. When Leonardo mocked Michelangelo he in turn called Leonardo fought back saying “horse-modeller that you are, who, unable to cast a statue in bronze, were forced to give up the attempt in shame....