Libel and slander Two torts that involve the communication of false information about a person, a group, or an entity such as a corporation. Libel is any Defamation that can be seen, such as a writing, printing, effigy, movie, or statue. Slander is any defamation that is spoken and heard. Collectively known as defamation, libel and slander are civil wrongs that harm a reputation; decrease respect, regard, or confidence; or induce disparaging, hostile, or disagreeable opinions or feelings against an individual or entity. The injury to one's good name or reputation is affected through written or spoken words or visual images. The laws governing these torts are identical.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Libel+and+Slander

Tort French for wrong, a civil wrong, or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another. Torts include all negligence cases as well as intentional wrongs which result in harm. Therefore tort law is one of the major areas of law (along with contract, real property and criminal law), and results in more civil litigation than any other category. Some intentional torts may also be crimes such as assault, battery, wrongful death, fraud, conversion (a euphemism for theft), and trespass on property and form the basis for a lawsuit for damages by the injured party. Defamation, including intentionally telling harmful untruths about another, either by print or broadcast (libel) or orally (slander), is a tort and used to be a crime as well.
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/tort

Groats are the hulled grains of various cereals, such as oats, wheat, barley or buckwheat (which is actually a pseudocereal). Groats are whole grains that include the cereal germ and fiber-rich bran portion of the grain as well as the endosperm (which is the usual product of milling). Groats are nutritious but hard to chew, so they are often soaked and cooked. They can be the basis of kasha, a porridge-like staple meal of Eastern Europe and Eurasia. Roasted buckwheat groats are also known as kasha or kashi, especially in the United States. Wheat groats, also known as bulgur, are an essential ingredient of the Middle Eastern dishes mansaf and tabbouleh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groat_(grain)

The most valuable coin in the world sits in the lobby of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan. It’s Exhibit 18E, secured in a bulletproof glass case with an alarm system and an armed guard nearby. The 1933 Double Eagle, considered one of the rarest and most beautiful coins in America, has a face value of $20—and a market value of $7.6 million. It was among the last batch of gold coins ever minted by the U.S. government. The coins were never issued; most of the nearly 500,000 cast were melted down to bullion in 1937. Most, but not all. Some of the coins slipped out of the Philadelphia Mint before then. No one knows for sure exactly how they got out or even how many got out. The U.S. Secret Service, responsible for protecting the nation’s currency, has been pursuing them for nearly 70 years, through 13 Administrations and 12 different directors. The investigation has spanned three continents and involved some of the most famous coin collectors in the world, a confidential informant, a playboy king, and a sting operation at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. It has inspired two novels, two nonfiction books, and a television documentary. And much of it has centered around a coin dealer, dead since 1990, whose shop is still open in South Philadelphia, run by his 82-year-old daughter. Read the 5-page article by Susan Berfield and see pictures at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/gold-coins-the-mystery-of-the-double-eagle-08252011.html

Many people around the world tell of water creatures that are half-fish and half-human. These creatures are all different. But sometimes, they have odd details in common. Why do mermaids in Europe, Africa and the Americas all carry combs and mirrors? These details were passed from Europe to Africa to the Americas as merchants and slaves spread mermaid stories and art around the world. And in many cases, water spirits that weren't originally mermaids took on that form only after images of mermaids were introduced by outsiders.
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/mythiccreatures/water/mermaids.php

Idioms dictionary: http://www.idiomdictionary.com/

One hallmark of Homo erectus, a forerunner of modern humans, was his stone tools, an advanced technology reflecting a good deal of forethought and dexterity. A new geological study, being reported August 31 in the journal Nature, showed that tools from a site near Lake Turkana in Kenya were made about 1.76 million years ago, the earliest of their ilk found so far. Previous dates were estimates ranging from 1.4 million to 1.6 million years ago. American researchers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, established the age of the Turkana tools by dating the surrounding mudstone with a paleomagnetic technique. When layers of silt and clay hardened into stone, this preserved the orientation of Earth’s magnetic field at the time, and an analysis of the periodic polarity reversals and other records yielded the age of the site known as Kokiselei. “I was taken aback when I realized that the geological data indicated it was the oldest Acheulean site in the world,” said the lead author of the report, Christopher J. Lepre, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty who also teaches geology at Rutgers University. The assemblage of hand axes, picks and other cutting tools was collected, mostly in the 1990s, by French archaeologists led by Hélène Roche of the National Center for Scientific Research in France. Dr. Roche, a co-author of the paper, was steered to the site by Richard Leakey, the Kenyan fossil hunter who had discovered, just six miles away, the Turkana Boy, a young Homo erectus who lived about 1.5 million years ago and is the most complete early hominid skeleton found so far. In the journal article, Dr. Lepre’s group said that artifacts from an earlier and simpler technology, Oldowan, were found alongside the more advanced Acheulean tools. The Oldowan tools were mainly sharp stone flakes and roughly worked rock cores, while the more sophisticated tools displayed signs of symmetry, uniformity and planning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/01/science/01tools.html

Quotes
I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
There’s no substitute for hard work.
Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's worthless. Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931) American inventor, entrepreneur