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Arvind Mahankali
The 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee was held from May 28 to May 30, 2013 at the Gaylord National in Oxon Hill, Maryland and was broadcast live on ESPN3, ESPN2, and ESPN. For the first time, the competition included a vocabulary quiz in addition to the usual spelling challenge. Arvind Mahankali of Bayside, New York won the competition and received the $30,000 grand prize. Including local feeder tournaments, an estimated 11 million children participated. Rule changes In April 2013, shortly before the Bee, organizers announced that the preliminary test would now include multiple-choice vocabulary questions. While met with criticism by past contestants for deviating from the concept of a spelling bee, organizers indicated that the change was made to help avert perceptions that the competition was based solely on memorization skills (as had been showcased by television broadcasts), and to help further the Bee's goal of expanding the vocabulary and language skills of children. The c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center
The Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center is a hotel and convention center located at National Harbor, Prince George's County, in the U.S. state of Maryland. The hotel is situated along the shores of the Potomac, downriver from Washington, D.C., and across the river from Alexandria, Virginia. It is owned by Gaylord Hotels, a division of Ryman Hospitality Properties (formerly known as Gaylord Entertainment Company), and operated by Marriott International. The hotel opened April 1, 2008, as part of a new mixed-use (office, residential, and retail) development in National Harbor. It is one of the largest non-gaming hotel and convention centers on the East Coast of the United States. It cost $870 million to build. The center was originally named the "Gaylord Potomac Resort & Convention Center"; the name was changed in the planning stage. The hotel contains 2,000 guest rooms, 95 event rooms, of meeting space, seven restaurants, and a spa. It employs 2,000 people. It features ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspapers and broadcasters. The AP has earned 56 Pulitzer Prizes, including 34 for photography, since the award was established in 1917. It is also known for publishing the widely used '' AP Stylebook''. By 2016, news collected by the AP was published and republished by more than 1,300 newspapers and broadcasters, English, Spanish, and Arabic. The AP operates 248 news bureaus in 99 countries. It also operates the AP Radio Network, which provides newscasts twice hourly for broadcast and satellite radio and television stations. Many newspapers and broadcasters outside the United States are AP subscribers, paying a fee to use AP material without being contributing members of the cooperative. As part of their cooperative agreement with the AP, most ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matzo Meal
Matzah or matzo ( he, מַצָּה, translit=maṣṣā'','' pl. matzot or Ashk. matzos) is an unleavened flatbread that is part of Jewish cuisine and forms an integral element of the Passover festival, during which ''chametz'' (leaven and five grains that, per Jewish Law, are self-leavening) is forbidden. As the Torah recounts, God commanded the Israelites (modernly, Jews and Samaritans) to eat only unleavened bread during the seven day Passover festival. Matzah can be either soft like a pita loaf or crispy. Only the crispy variety is produced commercially because soft matzah has a very short shelf life. Matzah meal is crispy matzah that has been ground to a flour-like consistency. Matzah meal is used to make matzah balls, the principal ingredient of matzah ball soup. Sephardic Jews typically cook with matzah itself rather than matzah meal. Matzah that is kosher for Passover is limited in Ashkenazi tradition to plain matzah made from flour and water. The flour may be who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dumpling
Dumpling is a broad class of dishes that consist of pieces of dough (made from a variety of starch sources), oftentimes wrapped around a filling. The dough can be based on bread, flour, buckwheat or potatoes, and may be filled with meat, fish, tofu, cheese, vegetables, fruits or sweets. Dumplings may be prepared using a variety of methods, including baking, boiling, frying, simmering or steaming and are found in many world cuisines. In the United States in May 2015 National Day Calendar listed National Dumpling Day as held on September 26, annually. African Banku and kenkey are defined as dumplings in that they are starchy balls of dough that are steamed. They are formed from fermented cornmeal. Banku is boiled and requires continuous kneading, while kenkey is partly boiled then finished by steaming in corn or banana leaves. Tihlo—prepared from roasted barley flour—originated in the Tigray region of Ethiopia and is now very popular in Amhara as well and spreading ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.Aram Yardumian"A Tale of Two Hypotheses: Genetics and the Ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jewry".University of Pennsylvania. 2013. Yiddish is primarily written in the Hebrew alphabet. Prior to World War II, its worldwide peak was 11 million, with the number of speakers in the United States and Canada then totaling 150,000. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,Solomon Birnbaum, ''Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache'' (4., erg. Aufl., Hambu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knaidel
Matzah balls ( yi, קניידלעך pl., singular ; with numerous other transliterations) or matzo balls are Ashkenazi Jewish soup dumplings made from a mixture of matzah meal, beaten eggs, water, and a fat, such as oil, margarine, or chicken fat. Matzah balls are traditionally served in chicken soup and are a staple food on the Jewish holiday of Passover, though they are not eaten during Passover by those who observe a prohibition on soaking matzah products. The texture of matzah balls may be light or dense, depending on the recipe. Matzah balls made from some recipes float in soup; others sink. Transliterations of knaidel Although there are official transliterations of Yiddish words into English by the YIVO Institute, there are many non-standard transliterations. Alternate transliterations of the Yiddish term for ''matzah'' ball, in the singular, include: knaidl, knaidel, kneidl, and kneidel. Transliterations in the plural include: knaidels, knaidlach, knaidelach, kneidels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pranav Sivakumar
Pranav Sivakumar is an American speller and amateur researcher. In 2013, he finished second in the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee, finished second in the Illinois State Geography Bee, and was named a Siemens Competition National Semifinalist. His National Spelling Bee achievements earned him recognition by Pat Quinn, who declared June 8, 2014 "Pranav Sivakumar Day." In 2014 he was admitted as a student at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, where he graduated in 2017. He currently attends UC Berkeley. He was the first person to be a Google Science Fair Global Finalist twice and won the Virgin Galactic Pioneer Award in 2015. Pranav was mentioned in President Barack Obama's speech at the White House Astronomy Night. Sivakumar was named the $20,000 individual winner of the 2016 Siemens Competition National Finals. Childhood Sivakumar's aspirations to learn more about astronomy started when he found an encyclopedia on famous scientists lying around the house when he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its west by Nevada. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin. Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut [Massachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət],'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders on the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Maine to the east, Connecticut and Rhode Island to the south, New Hampshire and Vermont to the north, and New York (state), New York to the west. The state's capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city, as well as its cultural and financial center, is Boston. Massachusetts is also home to the urban area, urban core of Greater Boston, the largest metropolitan area in New England and a region profoundly influential upon American History of the United States, history, academia, and the Economy of the United States, research economy. Originally dependent on agriculture, fishing, and trade. Massachusetts was transformed into a manuf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kansas
Kansas () is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its capital is Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named after the Kansas River, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native Americans who lived along its banks. The tribe's name (natively ') is often said to mean "people of the (south) wind" although this was probably not the term's original meaning. For thousands of years, what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. The first Euro-American settlement in Kansas occurred in 1827 at Fort Leavenworth. The pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery debate. Wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria metropolitan area, Illinois, Peoria and Rockford metropolitan area, Illinois, Rockford, as well Springfield, Illinois, Springfield, its capital. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the List of U.S. states and territories by GDP, fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the List of U.S. states and territories by population, sixth-largest population, and the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 25th-largest land area. Illinois has a highly diverse Economy of Illinois, economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural productivity, agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its centr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by both List of U.S. states and territories by area, area (after Alaska) and List of U.S. states and territories by population, population (after California). Texas shares borders with the states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, and the Mexico, Mexican States of Mexico, states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas to the south and southwest; and has a coastline with the Gulf of Mexico to the southeast. Houston is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas and the List of United States cities by population, fourth-largest in the U.S., while San Antonio is the second most pop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
