Information grenades: spoilers (giving away surprise endings), disinformation and misinformation spreading like wildfire through social media

U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China was an important step in formally normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. It marked the first time a U.S. president had visited the PRC, who at that time considered the U.S. one of its staunchest foes. The visit has become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician. One of the main reasons Richard Nixon became the 1952 Vice-president candidate on the Eisenhower ticket was his strong anti-communism stance. Despite this, in 1972 Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit mainland China while in office. Ulysses S. Grant visited China on a world tour after leaving office. Herbert Hoover lived in China briefly in 1899 before becoming President and could speak fluent Mandarin. Dwight Eisenhower made a state visit to Taiwan in 1960, during the period when the United States recognized the government there as the sole government of China. Max Frankel of The New York Times received the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the event. The visit inspired John Adams' 1987 opera Nixon in China. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_Nixon_visit_to_China

Turquoise is an opaque, blue-to-green mineral that is a hydrous phosphate of copper and aluminium, with the chemical formula CuAl6(PO4)4(OH)8•4H2O. It is rare and valuable in finer grades and has been prized as a gem and ornamental stone for thousands of years owing to its unique hue. In recent times, turquoise, like most other opaque gems, has been devalued by the introduction of treatments, imitations, and synthetics onto the market. The substance has been known by many names, but the word turquoise, which dates to the 16th century, is derived from an Old French word for "Turkish", because the mineral was first brought to Europe from Turkey, from the mines in historical Khorasan Province of Persia. Pliny referred to the mineral as callais, the Iranians named it "pirouzeh" and the Aztecs knew it as chalchihuitl. Turquoise was among the first gems to be mined, and while many historic sites have been depleted, some are still worked to this day. These are all small-scale, often seasonal operations, owing to the limited scope and remoteness of the deposits. Most are worked by hand with little or no mechanization. However, turquoise is often recovered as a byproduct of large-scale copper mining operations, especially in the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turquoise

Amber is fossilized tree resin (not sap), which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents. Because it originates as a soft, sticky tree resin, amber sometimes contains animal and plant material as inclusions. Amber occurring in coal seams is also called resinite, and the term ambrite is applied to that found specifically within New Zealand coal seams. See pictures at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber

Follow-up to Christmas truce in World War I During the Civil War, musical duels between the two sides were common, as they heard each other as the music traveled across the countryside. The night before the Battle of Stones River, bands from both sides dueled with separate songs, until both sides started playing Home! Sweet Home!, at which time soldiers on both sides started singing together as one. A similar situation occurred in Fredericksburg, Virginia in the winter of 1862–3. On a cold afternoon a Union band started playing Northern patriotic tunes; a Southern band responded by playing Southern patriotic tunes. This back and forth continued into the night, until at the end both sides played Home! Sweet Home! simultaneously, to the cheers of both sides' forces. In a third instance, in the spring of 1863, the opposing armies were on the opposite sides of the Rappahannock River in Virginia, when the different sides played their patriotic tunes, and at taps one side played Home! Sweet Home!, and the other joined in, creating "cheers" from both sides that echoed throughout the hilly countryside. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_American_Civil_War
Read about music during the Civil War in Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels, winner of the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Joshua Lionel Cowen/Cohen (1877-1965) was an inventive guy and had always been very interested in trains. In 1901, he fitted a small motor under a model of a railroad flatcar, powered by a battery on 30 inches of track and the Lionel electric train was born. The first Lionel train was designed to attract window-shopping New Yorkers using the power of animated display. Since its humble beginning Lionel has sold more than 50 million train sets and today produces more than 300 miles of track each year. Youthful inventor Joshua Lionel Cowen wasn't the first to manufacture toy trains and he did not lack for competition. Carlisle & Finch Co., of Cincinnati, OH, first made electric trains in 1896 and German toy manufacturers such as Bing and Marklin were producing electric and steam-powered toy trains. The first electric train was exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The Ives Co., of Bridgeport, CT, had manufactured wind-up trains as early as 1874. Cowen beat them because he produced a reliable product, with an expanding line of accessories, while being an audacious promoter, selling his toys as educational because he knew parents needed a rationalization for their purchase. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/lionel.htm

The Task: A Poem, in Six Books (1785) is a poem in 6000 lines of blank verse by William Cowper, usually seen as his supreme achievement. Its six books are called "The Sofa", "The Timepiece", "The Garden", "The Winter Evening", "The Winter Morning Walk" and "The Winter Walk at Noon". Beginning with a mock-Miltonic passage on the origins of the sofa, it develops into a discursive meditation on the blessings of nature, the retired life and religious faith, with attacks on slavery, blood sports, fashionable frivolity, lukewarm clergy and French despotism among other things. Cowper's subjects are those that occur to him naturally in the course of his reflections rather than being suggested by poetic convention, and the diction throughout is, for an 18th century poem, unusually conversational and unartificial. Quotes:
Variety's the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour. Book 2, line 606
The cups, That cheer but not inebriate. Book 4, line 37
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Task_(poem)
Note that the temperance movement used cups that cheer in slogans such as: "Tea--the Drink That Cheers and Not Inebriates."
Read all about tea at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

The modern-day ampersand is believed to be a descendant of an earlier Latin logogram—a combination of the cursive letters e and t (et meaning and)—that was part of a shorthand system invented by Marcus Tullius Tiro, secretary and former slave of the Roman writer Cicero. The heyday of the ampersand was in the United Kingdom in the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, when it was commonly used in business documents and, perhaps most notably, in the titles of companies—partnerships in particular, such as Fortnum & Mason and Marks & Spencer. It’s still used in many names of firms and publications, including that of this magazine, Poets & Writers, now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary under the banner of a pair of nouns festively joined by an ampersand on every cover. In the twentieth century, the ampersand was rediscovered and exploited, variously, by several generations of American poets, especially those eager to declare their position outside the academic mainstream. Kevin Nance
See images of ampersands by Leo Reynolds at: http://www.pw.org/content/poets_ampersands