CULTURAL LITERACY – LIST 3 Week of September 13, 2010

A proverb meaning you can show people the way to do things, but you can’t force them to act. 1. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.

2. Carpe Diem: Latin expression meaning “seize the day” – take advantage of all present opportunities.

An idiom meaning to agree to end a quarrel Example: We have been arguing about who has the cutest dog for months, but we finally agreed to just bury the hatchet. 3. Bury the hatchet.

4. Sir Lancelot: The greatest of the Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur was his friend and lord. In some versions of the legend, he became the lover of Queen Guinevere, Arthur’s wife.

A long suspension bridge across the Golden Gate, a strait that connects San Francisco Bay with the Pacific Ocean. For decades after it was opened in the 1930s, it had the longest span of any suspension bridge in the world. 5. Golden Gate Bridge

6. Mount Everest: Mountain on the border of Tibet and Nepal in the central Himalayas. At over 29,000 feet, it is the highest peak in the world. It was first scaled in 1953 by Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal.

Raymond Albert "Ray" Kroc (October 5, 1902 – January 14, 1984) was an American businessman who took over the small-scale McDonald’s Corporation franchise in 1954 and built it into the most successful fast food operation in the world. Kroc amassed a $500 million fortune during his lifetime. He was also the owner of the San Diego Padres baseball team starting in Ray Kroc

8. Louvre: An art museum in Paris, formerly a royal palace. The Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and thousands of other works of art are exhibited there.

According to the Book of Genesis, God made a covenant with Abraham, telling him to leave his own country, and he would receive the Promised Land. After a time, God tested Abraham by telling him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham obediently placed Isaac on an alter and took a knife to kill him. Then an angel of the Lord appeared and told Abraham to spare his son because Abraham had proved his faith. God rewarded Abraham by telling him he would have lots of descendents who would all be blessed. 9. Abraham and Isaac

10. Count Dracula: The title character of Dracula, a novel from the late 19 th century by the English author Bram Stoker. Count Dracula, a vampire, is from Transylvania, a region of eastern Europe now in Romania. To lay the vampire Dracula’s spirit to rest, one must drive a wooden stake through his heart.

A system of writing with pictures that represent words or sounds. The ancient Egyptians wrote with hieroglyphics. Present-day writing that is hard to understand is sometimes jokingly called “hieroglyphics.” 11. Hieroglyphics

12. Ivy League: A group of eight, old distinguished colleges and universities in the east, known for their ivy-covered brick buildings. The members of the Ivy League are Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale Universities; Dartmouth College; and the University of Pennsylvania.