- Christmas is an annual religious and cultural holiday commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, celebrated on December 25. While the exact date is unknown, it was chosen by the early Christian church to correspond with pagan winter solstice festivals. - The winter solstice occurs in December in the Northern Hemisphere and June in the Southern Hemisphere, marking the shortest day and longest night of the year. It signifies the point where the days begin to gradually lengthen again after the winter season. - Animal slaughter is the killing of livestock, usually for food but sometimes due to disease. Common animals slaughtered include cattle, pigs, poultry and fish. Stunning methods were later adopted in many countries to reduce pain and

1. CHRISTMAS
&MORE

2. CHR
IST
MAS
Christmas is an annual religious and cul-
tural holiday commemorating the birth
of Jesus Christ, celebrated generally on
December 25 by billions of people around
the world. A feast central to the Christian
liturgical year, it closes the Advent season
and initiates the twelve days of Christ-
mastide, which ends after the twelfth
night. Christmas is a civil holiday in many
of the world’s nations, is celebrated cul-
turally by an increasing number of non-
Christians, and is an integral part of the
Christmas and holiday season.
While the birth year of Jesus is estimated
among modern historians to have been
between 7 and 2 BC, the exact month
and day of his birth are unknown. His birth
is mentioned in two of the four canonical
gospels. By the early-to-mid 4th century,
the Western Christian Church had placed
Christmas on December 25, a date later
adopted in the East, although some chur-
ches celebrate on the December 25 of the
older Julian calendar, which currently
corresponds to January 7 in the modern-
day Gregorian calendar. The date of the
Christmas may have initially been chosen
to correspond with the day exactly nine
months after early Christians believed
Jesus to have been conceived, or with
one or more ancient polytheistic festi-
vals that occurred near southern solstice.

3. Winter solstice is an astronomical phen-
omenon, which marks the shortest day
and the longest night of the year.
Winter solstice occurs for the North-
ern Hemisphere in December and for
the Southern Hemisphere in June.
The axial tilt of Earth and gyroscopic
effects of the planet’s daily rotation
keep the axis of rotation pointed at the
same point in the sky. As the Earth fol-
lows its orbit around the Sun, the same
hemisphere that faced away from the
Sun, experiencing winter, will, in half a
year, face towards the Sun and experi-
ence summer. Since the two hemisph-
eres face opposite directions along the
planetary pole, one polar hemisphere
experiences winter, the other experienc-
es summer.
More evident from high latitudes, a
hemisphere’s winter solstice occurs on
the shortest day and longest night of
the year, when the sun’s daily maximum
elevation in the sky is the lowest. The win-
ter solstice itself lasts only a moment in
time, so other terms are used for the day
on which it occurs, such as “midwinter”,
or “the shortest day”. For the same rea-
son, it should not be confused with “the
first day of winter” or “the start of win-
ter”. The seasonal significance of the
winter solstice is in the reversal of the
gradual lengthening of nights and shor-
tening of days.
WINTER
SOLTICE

4. Animal slaughter is the killing of non-
human animals, usually referring to kill-
ing domestic livestock. In general, the
animals would be killed for food; how-
ever, they might also be slaughtered for
other reasons such as being diseased
and unsuitable for consumption.
The animals most commonly slaugh-
tered for food are cattle and water buf-
falo for beef and veal, sheep and lambs
for lamb and mutton, goats for goat meat,
pigs for pork and ham, deer for venison,
horses for horse meat, poultry (mainly
chickens, turkeys and ducks), and increa-
singly, fish in the aquaculture industry
(fish farming). The use of a sharpened
blade for the slaughtering of livestock
has been practiced throughout history.
Prior to the development of electric stun-
ning equipment, simply striking them with
a blunt instrument, sometimes followed
by exsanguination with a knife, has killed
some species.
ANIMAL SLAUGHTER
The belief that this was unnecessarily
cruel and painful to the animal eventually
led to the adoption of specific stunning
and slaughter methods in many countries.
One of the first campaigners on the mat-
ter was the eminent physician, Benja-
min Ward Richardson, who spent many
years of his later working life develop-
ing more humane methods of slaughter
as a result of attempting to discover and
adapt substances capable of producing
general or local anesthesia to relieve pain
in people. As early as 1853, he designed
a chamber that could kill animals by gas-
sing them. He also founded the Model
Abattoir Society in 1882 to investigate
and campaign for humane methods of
slaughter, and experimented with the use
of electric current at the Royal Polytech-
nic Institution. The development of stun-
ning technologies and such were extr-
emely popular within the first half of the
twentieth century.

5. STUN
NING
Stunning is the process of rendering
animals immobile or unconscious, with-
out killing the animal, prior to their be-
ing slaughtered for food.
A primitive form of stunning was used
in pre-modern times in the case of cat-
tle, which were poleaxed prior to being
bled out. However, prior to humane sla-
ughter pistols and electric stunners, pigs,
sheep and other animals (including cattle)
were simply struck while fully conscious.
The belief that this was unnecessarily
cruel and painful to the animal being sla-
ughtered eventually led to the compul-
sory adoption of stunning methods in
many countries. One of the first camp-
aigners on the matter was the eminent
physician, Benjamin Ward Richardson,
who spent many years of his later work-
ing life developing more humane meth-
ods of slaughter. As early as 1853, he de-
signed a lethal chamber that would gas
animals to death relatively painlessly, and
he founded the Model Abattoir Society
in 1882 to investigate and campaign for
humane methods of slaughter. He even
experimented with the use of electric cur-
rent at the Royal Polytechnic Institution.

6. SHELL
FISH
Shellfish is a culinary and fisheries term
for exoskeleton-bearing aquatic inverte-
brates used as food, including various
species of mollusks, crustaceans, and
echinoderms. Although most kinds of
shellfish are harvested from saltwater
environments, some kinds are found
in freshwater. In addition a few species
of land crabs are eaten, for example
Cardisoma guanhumi in the Caribbean.
Despite the name, shellfish are not a
kind of fish, but are simply water-dwell-
ing animals. Many varieties of shellfish
(crustaceans in particular) are actually
closely related to insects and arachnids,
making up one of the main classes of the
phylum Arthropod. Cephalopods (squid,
octopus, cuttlefish) and bivalves (clams,
oysters) are mollusks, as are snails and
slugs for that matter.
Familiar marine mollusks enjoyed as
a food source by humans include many
species of clams, mussels, oysters, win-
kles, and scallops. Some crustaceans
commonly eaten are shrimp, lobster, cray-
fish, and crabs. Echinoderms are not as
frequently harvested for food as mollusks
and crustaceans, however sea urchin roe
is quite popular in parts of the world.
Most shellfish eat a diet composed pr
marily of phytoplankton, zooplankton
and few others.
Shellfish are among the most common
food allergens.

7. THE
CARO
LINAS
The culture of the Carolinas is a distinct
subset of larger Southern culture. Not-
ably, the coastal Carolina region was set-
tled by Europeans over a century before
the inland regions of the South, and was
influenced by the culture of the Carib-
bean, especially Barbados; many of the
early governors during the unified per-
iod were Barbadians. Though the two
states both form part of the South, there
are historically a number of significant
differences in the settlement patterns,
political development, and economic gro-
wth of the two states. For example, dur-
ing the Civil War, SC was the first Sou-
thern state to secede from the Union,
while NC was the last state to secede.
During the war, SC was generally one
of the strongest supporters of the Con-
federacy. Many North Carolinians (esp-
ecially in the western part of the state),
however, refused to support the Confed-
eracy at all; they either remained neutral
or covertly supported the Union.

8. Tobacco is a plant inside of the genus
Nicotiana within the Solanaceae family.
While there are more than 70 species of
tobacco, the chief commercial crop is N.
tabacum. The more potent species N. rus-
tica is also widely used around the world.
Dried tobacco leaves are mainly smo-
ked in cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco
and flavored shisha tobacco. They are
also consumed as snuff, chewing tobac-
co and dipping tobacco.
Tobacco contains the alkaloid nicotine,
a stimulant. Tobacco use is a risk factor
for many diseases, especially those aff-
ecting the heart, liver and lungs, and sev-
eral cancers. In 2008, the World Health
Organization (WHO) named tobacco as
the world’sgreatest cause of death.
TOBACCO The English word tobacco originates
from the Spanish and Portuguese word
tabaco. The precise origin of the Span-
ish/Portuguese word is disputed but it
generally thought to have originated, at
least in part, from Taino, the Arawakan
language of the Caribbean. In Taino, it
was said to refer either to a roll of tobac-
co leaves, or to the tabago, a kind of Y-
shaped pipe for sniffing tobacco smoke
also known as snuff.However, similar
words in Spanish, Portuguese and Italian
were commonly used from 1410 to de-
fine medicinal herbs which are believ-
ed to have originated from the Arabic
word tabbaq, a word reportedly dating
to the 9th century, as the name of vari-
ous herbs.

9. The heart is a muscular organ in hu-
mans and other animals, which pumps
blood through the blood vessels of the
circulatory system. The blood provides
the body with oxygen and nutrients, as
well as removing metabolic wastes.
The heart is located in the middle com-
partment of the mediastinum in the chest.
In humans, other mammals and birds
the heart is divided into four chambers:
upper left and right atria; and lower left
and right ventricles. Commonly the right
atrium and ventricle are referred toget-
her as the right heart and their left cou-
nterparts as the left heart. Fish in con-
trast have two chambers, an atrium and
a ventricle, while reptiles have three cha-
mbers. In a healthy heart, blood flows
one way through the heart due to heart
valves, which prevent backflow. The heart
is enclosed in a protective sac, the peri-
cardium, which also contains a small am-
ount of fluid. The wall of the heart is made
up of three layers: epicardium; myocar-
dium; and endocardium.
The heart pumps blood through both
circulatory systems. Blood low in oxygen
from the systemic circulation enters the
right atrium from the superior and in-
ferior vena cavae and passes to the right
ventricle. From here it is pumped into
the pulmonary circulation, through the
lungs where it receives oxygen and gives
off carbon dioxide. Oxygenated blood
then returns to the left atrium, passes
through the left ventricle and is pumped
out through the aorta to the systemic
circulation−where the oxygen is used
and metabolized to carbon dioxide.
In addition the blood carries nutrients
from the liver and gastrointestinal tract
to various organs of the body, while tra-
nsporting waste to the liver and kidneys.
HEART