A mummy is a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness, very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs. Presently, the oldest discovered (naturally) mummified human corpse was a decapitated head dated as 6,000 years old and was found in 1936.[1] The most famous Egyptian mummies are those of Seti I and Rameses II (13th century BC), though the earliest known Egyptian mummy, nicknamed 'Ginger' for its hair colour, dates back to approximately 3300 BC.
Mummies of humans and other animals have been found throughout the world, both as a result of natural preservation through unusual conditions, and as cultural artifacts to preserve the dead. Over one million animal mummies have been found in Egypt, many of which are cats. It takes 70 days to bury them and finish doing all of their work.

Etymology

The English word mummy is derived from medieval Latin mumia, a borrowing of the Persian word mūm (موم), which means "bitumen". Because of the blackened skin bitumen was once thought to be used extensively in ancient Egyptian embalming procedures. (See also: Mummia.)

The Egyptian mummification process

The earliest known Egyptian mummy, nicknamed 'Ginger' for its hair colour, dates back to approximately 3300 BC. Currently on display in the British Museum, Ginger was discovered buried in hot desert sand. Desert conditions can naturally preserve bodies so it is uncertain whether the mummification was intentional or not. However, since Ginger was buried with some pottery vessels it is likely that the mummification was a result of preservation techniques of those burying him. Stones might have been piled on top to prevent the corpse from being eaten by jackals and other scavengers and the pottery might have held food and drink which was later believed to sustain the deceased during the journey to the other world.
From the Middle Kingdom onwards, embalmers used salts to remove moisture from the body. The salt-like substance natron dried out and preserved more flesh than bone. Once dried, mummies were ritualistically anointed with oils and perfumes. The emptied body was then covered in natron, to speed up the process of dehydration and prevent decomposition. Natron dries the body up faster than desert sand, preserving the body better. Often finger and toe protectors were placed over the mummy's fingers and toes to prevent breakage. They were wrapped with strips of white linen that protected the body from being damaged. After that, they were wrapped in a sheet of canvas to further protect them. Many sacred charms and amulets were placed in and around the mummy and the wrappings. This was meant to protect the mummy from harm and to give good luck to the Ka of the mummy. Once preserved, they were laid to rest in a sarcophagus inside a tomb, where it was believed that the mummy would rest eternally. In some cases the mummy's mouth would later be opened in a ritual designed to symbolize breathing, giving rise to legends about revivified mummies.

Scientific study of Egyptian mummies

Mummies were much sought-after by museums worldwide in the 19th and early 20th centuries and many exhibit mummies today. Notably fine examples are exhibited at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, at the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin, and at the British Museum in London. The Egyptian city of Luxor is also home to a specialized Mummification Museum. The mummified remains of what turned out to be Rameses I ended up in a Daredevil Museum near Niagara Falls on the United States–Canada border; records indicate that it had been sold to a Canadian in 1860 and exhibited alongside displays such as a two-headed calf for nearly 140 years, until a museum in Atlanta, Georgia, which had acquired the mummy along with other artifacts, determined it to be royal and returned it to Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities. It is currently on display in the Luxor Museum.
More recently, science has also taken interest in mummies. Dr. Bob Brier, an Egyptologist, has been the first modern scientist attempted to recreate a mummy using the ancient Egyptian method. Mummies have been used in medicine to calibrate CAT scan machines at levels of radiation that would be too dangerous for use on living people. In fact, mummies can be studied without unwrapping them using CAT scan and X-ray machines to form a digital image of what's inside. They have been very useful to biologists and anthropologists, as they have provided a wealth of information about the health and life expectancy of ancient people. In 2008, the latest generation CT scanners (64- and 256-slice Philips at the University of Chicago) were used to study Meresamun, a temple singer and priestess at the Temple of Amun whose mummy now resides at the Oriental Institute of Chicago.
Scientists interested in molecular cloning the DNA of mummies have reported findings of analysable DNA in an Egyptian mummy dating to circa 400 BC.[4] Although analysis of the hair of Ancient Egyptian mummies from the Late Middle Kingdom has revealed evidence of a stable diet,[5] Ancient Egyptian mummies from circa 3200 BC show signs of severe anaemia and hemolytic disorders.

Natural mummies

Mummies that are formed as a result of naturally-occurring environmental conditions, such as extreme coldness (Ötzi the Iceman, the Ice Maiden, the Llullaillaco child mummies), acid (Tollund Man), salinity (Salt Man), or desiccating dryness (Tarim mummies), have been found all over the world. More than a thousand Iron Age corpses, so called bog bodies, have been found in bogs in northern Europe, such as the Yde Girl and the Lindow Man.[7] Natural mummification of other animal species also occurs; this is most common in species from shallow saline water environments, especially those with a body structure which is particularly favourable to this process, such as seahorses and starfish. Old mummies such as the dinosaurs Leonardo, Dakota, and the Trachodon mummy in America were very valuable discoveries.

Mummies in fiction

Mummies are commonly featured in horror genres as undead creatures. During the 20th century, horror films and other mass media popularized the notion of a curse associated with mummies. One of the earliest appearances was The Jewel of Seven Stars, a horror novel by Bram Stoker first published in 1903 that concerned an archaeologist's plot to revive an ancient Egyptian mummy. This book later served as the basis for the 1971 film Blood from the Mummy's Tomb.
Films representing such a belief include the 1932 movie The Mummy starring Boris Karloff as Imhotep; four subsequent 1940s' Universal Studios mummy films which featured a mummy named Kharis, who also was the title mummy in The Mummy, a 1959 Hammer remake of The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Tomb; and a remake of the original film that was released in 1999 (and later spawned two direct sequels and a spinoff movie). The belief in cursed mummies probably stems in part from the supposed curse on the tomb of Tutankhamun. In 1979, the American Broadcasting Company aired a TV holiday show, The Halloween That Almost Wasn't, in which a mummy from Egypt (Robert Fitch) arrived at Count Dracula's castle without speaking.
The 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by archaeologist Howard Carter brought mummies into the mainstream. Slapstick comedy trio the Three Stooges humorously exploited the discovery in the short film We Want Our Mummy, in which they explored the tomb of the midget King Rutentuten (and his Queen, Hotsy Totsy). A decade later, they played crooked used chariot salesmen in Mummy's Dummies, in which they ultimately assisted a different King Rootentootin (Vernon Dent) with a toothache.

Walt Disney adalah sebuah legenda di bidang hiburan abad ke-20. Popularitasnya dilengkapi dengan imajinasi, optimisme, serta kreativitas. Walt Disney telah menyentuh hati, pikiran, dan emosi jutaan orang. melalui karya2nya, ia turut mendatangkan kegembiraan dan kesenangan pada semua orang di seluruh dunia. Ia membawa kita dekat kepada masa depan, dengan menceritakan masa lalu.


Bernama lengkap Walter Elias Disney, dan dilahirkan pada 5 Desember 1901 di Chicago, Illinois.


Sejak kecil, Walt sangat tertarik pada menggambar dan seni. Saat berumur 7 tahun Walt sering menjual sketsa dan gambar2nya ke tetangga terdekat.


Walt suka menggambar binatang dan alam daripada mengerjakan tugas2 yang diberikan dari sekolah. Pernah juga ia membuat miniatur kereta api lengkap dengan rel dan jalurnya.

Walt bersekolah di Mckinley High School, di Chicago. Selain menggambar ia juga belajar fotografi. tiap malam hari, Walt bersekolah di Academy of Fine Arts untuk menyempurnakan tekhnik menggambarnya.


Kemudian keluarga Walt berpindah ke Kansas, disana ia juga belajar akting. Walt adalah penggemar berat Charlie Chaplin.


Pada tahun 1925, Walt menikahi Lilian Bounds. Tiga tahun setelah menikah Walt menciptakan tokoh animasi Mickey Mouse yang sekarang menjadi maskot dari dunia hiburan Walt Disney. Terobosan2 Walt untuk menyempurnakan dunia animasi terus dilakukan. Banyak film2 kartun yang sudah dihasilkan oleh Walt, dan masyarakat Amerika tersentuh oleh karya2 Walt.


Pemikiran Walt brilian dan perhatiannya yang besar pada dunia pendidikan, membuatnya dia mendapatkan anugerah penghargaan True-Life Adventure Series. Lewat film2 yang dihasilkan oleh Walt. Selain melalui film, Disney juga mempesona kita dengan mimpi dan idenya untuk membangun suatu taman hiburan.


Pada tahun 1955 Dibangun Disneyland Park yang menelan biaya sebesar 17 juta dollar. Disney juga menjadi pionir di bidang pertelevisian tahun 1954 dengan presentasi "full-collor programming". Hal ini membuat The Mickey Mouse Club menjadi favorit dan populer.

Sebagai Pioner dan juga inovator, Walt Disney telah mendapatkan lebih dari 950 penghargaan di dunia, termasuk 48 penghargaan dari Academy Awards dan 7 penghargaan dari Emmys Award. Secara Pribadi Waldt Disney telah mendapatkan gelar honoris kausa dari Universitas Harvard, Universitas Yale, Universitas Southern California, dan UCLA. Mendapatkan medali penghargaan dari : France's Legion of Honor and Officer d'Academie decorations; Thailand's Order of the Crown; Brazil's Order of the Southern Cross; Mexico's Order of the Aztec Eagle; and the Showman of the World Award from the National Association of Theatre Owners

Philosophy

Opinions on what constitute liberty can vary widely, but can be generally classified as positive liberty and negative liberty. Positive liberty asserts that freedom is the ability of society to achieve an end. For example, Puritans such as Cotton Mather often referred to liberty in their writings, but focused on the liberty from sin (e.g. covetous urges) even at the expense of liberty from the government. In the negative sense, one is considered free to the extent to which no person interferes with his or her activity. According to Thomas Hobbes, for example, "a free man is he that... is not hindered to do what he hath the will to do."
John Stuart Mill.

John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, was the first to recognize the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion.[1] In his book, Two Concepts of Liberty, Isaiah Berlin formally framed the differences between these two perspectives as the distinction between two opposite concepts of liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. The latter designates a negative condition in which an individual is protected from tyranny and the arbitrary exercise of authority, while the former refers to having the means or opportunity, rather than the lack of restraint, to do things.

Mill offered insight into the notions of soft tyranny and mutual liberty with his harm principle.[2] It can be seen as important to understand these concepts when discussing liberty since they all represent little pieces of the greater puzzle known as freedom. In a philosophical sense, it can be said that morality must supersede tyranny in any legitimate form of government. Otherwise, people are left with a societal system rooted in backwardness, disorder, and regression.
The Statue of Liberty, donated to the US by France, an artistic personification of the concept.

The concept of negative liberty has several noteworthy aspects. First, negative liberty defines a realm or "zone" of freedom (in the "silence of law"). In Berlin's words, "liberty in the negative sense involves an answer to the question 'What is the area within which the subject -- a person or group of persons -- is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons." Some philosophers have disagreed on the extent of this realm while accepting the main point that liberty defines that realm in which one may act unobstructed by others. Second, the restriction (on the freedom to act) implicit in negative liberty is imposed by a person or persons and not due to causes such as nature, lack, or incapacity. Helvetius expresses this point clearly: "The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol (jail), nor terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment... it is not lack of freedom not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale."

The dichotomy of positive and negative liberty is considered specious by political philosophers in traditions such as socialism, social democracy, libertarian socialism, and Marxism. Some of them argue that positive and negative liberty are indistinguishable in practice, while others claim that one kind of liberty cannot exist independently of the other. A common argument is that the preservation of negative liberty requires positive action on the part of the government or society to prevent some individuals from taking away the liberty of others.

A socialist, liberal and progressive defines liberty as being connected to the reasonably equitable distribution of wealth, arguing that the unrestrained concentration of wealth (the means of production) into only a few hands negates liberty. In other words, without relatively equal ownership, the subsequent concentration of power and influence into a small portion of the population inevitably results in the domination of the wealthy and the subjugation of the poor. Thus, freedom and material equality are seen as intrinsically connected. On the other hand, the classical liberal argues that wealth cannot be evenly distributed without force being used against individuals which reduces individual liberty.

Freedom as a triadic relation

In 1967, Gerald MacCallum argued that proponents of positive and negative liberty converge on a single definition of liberty, but simply have different approaches in establishing it. According to McCallum, freedom is a triadic relationship: "x is/is not free from y to do/not to do or become/not become z". In this way, rather than defining liberty in terms of two separate paradigms, positive and negative liberty, he defined liberty as a single, complete formula.

The question is whether this formula fully captures what positive liberty means. Positive liberty, understood as "internal forces which determine how a person shall act" [3] is saying more than 'x is free to do z.' One is free when one becomes the ideal of oneself, which includes MacCallum's triadic relation; but the latter alone is insufficient to fully capture what positive liberty means

Liberty and political thought

The first known use of the word freedom in a political context dates back to the 24th century BC, in a text describing the restoration of social and economic liberty in Lagash, a Sumerian city-state. Urukagina, the king of Lagash, established the first known legal code to protect citizens from the rich and powerful. Known as a great reformer, Urukagina established laws that forbade compelling the sale of property and required the charges against the accused to be stated before any man accused of a crime could be punished. This is the first known example of any form of due process in the history of humanity.

Like Urukagina, most ancient freedoms focused on negative liberty, protecting the less fortunate from harassment or imposition. Other ancient legal codes, such as the Code of Hammurabi, similarly forbade compulsion in economic matters, like the sale of land, and made it clear that when a rich man murders a poor one, it is still murder. Still, these codes relied on a certain virtuousness of kings and ministers, which was far from reliable.

In the Persian Empire, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups were given the same rights and had the same freedom of religion, women had the same rights as men, and slavery was abolished. All the palaces of the kings of Persia were built by paid workers in an era where slaves typically did such work.[4]

In the Maurya Empire of ancient India, citizens of all religions and ethnic groups had rights to freedom, tolerance, and equality. The need for tolerance on an egalitarian basis can be found in the Edicts of Ashoka the Great, which emphasize the importance of tolerance in public policy by the government. The slaughter or capture of prisoners of war was also condemned by Ashoka.[5] Slavery was also non-existent in ancient India.[6]

Roman law also embraced certain limited forms of liberty, even under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, these liberties were accorded only to Roman citizens. Still, the Roman citizen enjoyed a combination of positive liberty (the right to a trial, a right of appeal, law and contract enforcement) and negative liberty (unhindered right to contract and the right to not be tortured). Many of the liberties enjoyed under Roman law endured through the Middle Ages, but were enjoyed solely by the nobility, never by the common man. The idea of unalienable and universal liberties had to wait until the Age of Enlightenment.

In Chinese, freedom is written 自由(ziyou). 自(zi) is the character for self, and 由(you) is the character to follow, with an additional connotation of reason. Liberty thus implies a necessary connection between individualism and a rational duty.

Social contract

The social contract theory, invented by Hobbes, John Locke and Rousseau, were among the first to provide a political classification of rights, in particular through the notion of sovereignty and of natural rights. The thinkers of the Enlightenment reasoned the assertion that law governed both heavenly and human affairs, and that law gave the king his power, rather than the king's power giving force to law. The divine right of kings was thus opposed to the sovereign's unchecked auctoritas. This conception of law would find its culmination in Montesquieu's thought. The conception of law as a relationship between individuals, rather than families, came to the fore, and with it the increasing focus on individual liberty as a fundamental reality, given by "Nature and Nature's God," which, in the ideal state, would be as expansive as possible. The Enlightenment created then, among other ideas, liberty: that is, of a free individual being most free within the context of a state which provides stability of the laws. Later, more radical philosophies such as socialism articulated themselves in the course of the French Revolution and in the 19th century.

Modern perspectives

The modern conceptions of democracy, whether representative democracies or other types of democracies, are all found on the Rousseauist idea of popular sovereignty.[original research?] However, liberalism distinguishes itsef from socialism and communism in that it advocates for a form of representative democracy, while socialism works to a direct democracy.

Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. Two main strands are apparent, although both are founded on an individualist ideology. Economic liberalism is the right of the individual to contract, trade and operate in a market free of constraint. Social liberalism is the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. Both are core political issues, and highly contentious.

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., it was designed by Irish-born James Hoban,[1] and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the late Georgian style. It has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the home in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.[2]

In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed house in October 1817. Construction continued with the addition of the South Portico in 1824 and the North in 1829. Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had nearly all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office which was eventually moved as the section was expanded. The third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the house's load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed inside the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt.

Today, the White House Complex includes the Executive Residence, West Wing, Cabinet Room, Roosevelt Room, East Wing, and the Old Executive Office Building, which houses the executive offices of the President and Vice President.

The White House is made up of six stories—the Ground Floor, State Floor, Second Floor, and Third Floor, as well as a two-story basement. The term White House is regularly used as a metonym for the Executive Office of the President of the United States and for the president's administration and advisers in general. The property is owned by the National Park Service and is part of the President's Park. In 2007, it was ranked second on the American Institute of Architects list of "America's Favorite Architecture."

A sphinx (Ancient Greek: Σφίγξ /sphinx, sometimes Φίξ /Phix) is a mythological creature that is depicted as a recumbent feline with a human head. It has its origins in sculpted figures of lionesses with female human heads (unless the pharaoh was depicted as the son of the deity) of Old Kingdom Egypt in association with their solar deities, Bast or Sekhmet.

The ancient Greeks adapted this image and applied their own name for a male monster, the "strangler", an archaic figure of Greek mythology. Similar creatures of either gender appear throughout South and South-East Asia. In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance.

Later, the sphinx image, something very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals and the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.

Generally the role of sphinxes is associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples. The oldest known sphinx was found in Gobekli Tepe, Turkey and was dated to 9,500 B.C.[1]

Perhaps the first sphinx in Egypt was one depicting Queen Hetepheres II, of the fourth dynasty that lasted from 2723 to 2563 BC. She was one of the longest-lived members of the royal family of that dynasty.

The largest and most famous is the Great Sphinx of Giza, Arabic: أبو الهول, sited at the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River and facing due east, is also from the same dynasty (29°58′31″N 31°08′15″E / 29.97528°N 31.1375°E / 29.97528; 31.1375). Although the date of its construction is uncertain, the head of the Great Sphinx now is believed to be that of the pharaoh Khafra.

What names their builders gave to these statues is not known. At the Great Sphinx site, the inscription on a stele erected a thousand years later, by Thutmose IV in 1400 BCE, lists the names of three aspects of the local sun deity of that period, Khepera - Rê - Atum. The inclusion of these figures in tomb and temple complexes quickly became traditional and many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful solar deity, Sekhmet, a lioness.

Other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, with her likeness carved in granite, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster sphinx of Memphis, currently located within the open-air museum at that site. The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred with ram heads, representing Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest.

Greek traditions

From the Bronze Age, the Hellenes had trade and cultural contacts with Egypt. Before the time that Alexander the Great occupied Egypt, the Greek name, sphinx, was already applied to these statues. The historians and geographers of Greece wrote extensively about Egyptian culture. They sometimes called the ram-headed sphinxes, criosphinxes, and the bird-headed ones, hierocosphinxes.[citation needed]

The word sphinx comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, apparently from the verb σφίγγω (sphíngō), meaning "to strangle".[2] This name may be derived from the fact that the hunters for a pride of lions are the lionesses, and kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. The word sphincter derives from the same root. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead, a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh," which meant "living image," and referred rather to the statue of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" (rock that was present at the construction site, not harvested and brought from another location), than to the beast itself.[3]

There was a single sphinx in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck. According to Hesiod, she was a daughter of Echidna and Orthrus; according to others, she was a daughter of Echidna and Typhon. All of these are chthonic figures from the earliest of Greek myths, before the Olympians ruled the Greek pantheon. Pierre Grimal's The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology states that Sphinx's proper name was Phix (Φίξ), though it does not identify a source for this information. The Sphinx, though, is called by this name (Phix (Φίξ)) by Hesiod in line 326 of the Theogony.

In Greek mythology, a sphinx is represented as a monster with a head of a woman, the body of a lioness, the wings of an eagle, and a serpent headed tail.

The sphinx was the emblem of the ancient city-state of Chios, and appeared on seals and the obverse side of coins from the sixth century BC until the third century AD.

Athena appears in the middle of the upper-half of the middle of a sarcophagus found in the middle pyramid of Giza, with two sphinxes at her side

The Riddle of the Sphinx

The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, and to have asked a riddle of travelers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the stories, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.[4]

It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Ethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asks all passersby the most famous riddle in history: “Which creature in the morning goes on four legs, at mid-day on two, and in the evening upon three, and the more legs it has, the weaker it be?” She strangled and devoured anyone unable to answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then walks with a cane in old age. By some accounts[5] (but much more rarely), there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first." The answer is "day and night" (both words are feminine in Greek).

Bested at last, the tale continues, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. Thus Oedipus can be recognized as a "liminal" or threshold figure, helping affect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new, Olympian gods.

In Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend, The Infernal Machine, the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle, to kill herself so that she did not have to kill anymore, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and Anubis, who is there to kill the victims who cannot answer the riddle, ascend back to the heavens.

Christopher Columbus (lahir 30 Oktober 1451 – meninggal 20 Mei 1506 pada umur 54 tahun) adalah seorang penjelajah dan pedagang yang menyeberangi Samudra Atlantik dan sampai ke benua Amerika pada tanggal 12 Oktober 1492 di bawah bendera Castilian Spanyol. Ia percaya bahwa Bumi berbentuk bola kecil, dan beranggap sebuah kapal dapat sampai ke Timur Jauh melalui jalur barat.

Columbus bukanlah orang pertama yang tiba di Amerika, yang ia dapati sudah diduduki. Ia juga bukan orang Eropa pertama yang sampai ke benua itu karena sekarang telah diakui secara meluas bahwa orang-orang Viking dari Eropa Utara telah berkunjung ke Amerika Utara pada abad ke 11 dan mendirikan koloni L'Anse aux Meadows untuk jangka waktu singkat. Terdapat perkiraan bahwa pelayar yang tidak dikenali pernah melawat ke Amerika sebelum Columbus dan membekalkannya dengan sumber untuk kejayaannya. Terdapat juga banyak teori mengenai ekspedisi ke Amerika oleh berbagai orang sepanjang masa itu.

Colombus mengira bahwa pulau tersebut masih perawan, belum berpenghuni sama sekali. Mereka berorintasi menjadikan pulau tersebut sebagai perluasan wilayah Spanyol. Semula Columbus disambut dengan ramah oleh suku Indian, tetapi setelah ketahuan niat buruknya datang di pulau itu, Colombus banyak mendapat resistnsi dari penduduk setempat. Beberapa armada kapal milik rombongan Colombus ditenggelamkan oleh suku Indian sebab mereka merasa terganggu dan terancam oleh kedatangan Colombus.

Titanic adalah sebuah film produksi tahun 1997 yang diedarkan oleh Paramount Pictures dan 20th Century Fox. Film ini disutradarai oleh James Cameron. Bisa dikatakan bila film ini merupakan versi pembuatan ulang dari film berjudul dan bertema serupa buatan tahun 1953

Alur cerita film ini adalah mengenai RMS Titanic yang tenggelam dalam perlayaran perdananya pada awal tahun 1912. Film ini memenangkan 11 Academy Awards yang diselenggarakan pada tanggal 23 Maret 1998. Film ini juga berhasil menjadi film box office terbesar dalam sejarah perfilman. Kata mutiara terkenal yang disebarkan oleh film ini adalah "nothing on earth could come between them" atau dalam bahasa Indonesia berarti "tiada sesuatu pun di bumi yang sanggup memisahkan mereka".