In  1973 the three-year-old colt Secretariat won each event of the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes), a feat accomplished only eleven times in the twentieth century. While many factors contributed to Secretariat's success—selective  breeding, top-notch trainers, and a skillful jockey, to name a few-—the expertise and diligent care of the horse's groom, Eddie (1) Sweat, who deserves some of the credit. [2]

Although often overlooked and underappreciated, a groom plays a significant role in the life of a racehorse. A groom's basic tasks include washing and brushing the horse, trimming its mane and tail, and (3) they clean its hooves. [A] (4) A groom also cleans stalls and takes care of riding equipment. [B] Those (5) whom witnessed Sweat with Secretariat attest that his care surpassed the usual duties of a groom. He'd talk to the horse (6) constantly, he'd soothe him in Gullah, a Creole-English language commonly spoken in the South Carolina African American community Sweat grew up in. [C] After cooking Secretariat a mash of oats and com, he'd watch him eat, taking note of any changes in appetite (7) noticeable to him while the horse was eating. He'd also examine Secretariat's teeth and take his temperature daily, (8) attention to any signs of illness or distress. [D] Sweat would spend extra time massaging the horse's legs, applying healing poultices made from herbs he had gathered. (9) However, on nights before big races, he'd even sleep next to the horse's stall. [10]

Sweat's (11) constant, companionship, and expert care kept Secretariat healthy and calm in a stressful racing environment [12]. When a bronze statue honoring Secretariat was unveiled at the Kentucky Horse Park in 2004, it featured not only the Triple Crown champion and his jockey (13) but his groom, Eddie Sweat, as well. The statue, depicting Sweat with his left hand gripping the lead rope, his right (14) rests on the horse's side, (15) is a lasting tribute to Sweat's exceptional care.

[1]

When (16) geologist, Elizabeth Catlos, began gathering garnets in the Himalayan Mountains in the late 1990s, most scientists had a fairly rigid understanding of the mountain range 's history. [A] It was commonly held that the Himalayas had formed approximately 55 million years ago when (17) India drifted north on a layer of semi molten rock, collided with Asia. 

The collision (18) forced one tectonic plate into the other, crumpling the land where the plates met. The resulting mountain range, one of the longest in the world, stretches 1,500 miles across six countries and (19) features many impressive mountains. Although the Himalayan range was thought to have remained relatively unchanged over these tens of millions of years, Catlos was surprised to discover that some of the garnets she had collected formed (20) less than that many years ago. [B]

[2]

Garnets are gemstones with a crystal structure. They are formed many miles beneath the surface of the earth, where high pressures and temperatures (21) allows them to crystallize. These gemstones (22) are really good in geologic dating. [C] (23) Resistant to chemical change after they crystallize, scientists can analyze the gemstone's to determine the temperature and pressure of the earth when the garnets formed. Such analyses are possible because garnets also contain monazite, (24) a rare mineral that is easily dated. This allows scientists to identify the garnets' approximate (25) age. And the earth's conditions when the gemstones formed.

[3]

The dating of Catlos's garnets, as well as analysis of the pressures and temperatures encoded in their structure, indicates that (26) they were not formed by a single collision, as was previously thought. Rather, it seems that India has continued to push northward into Asia. According to new estimates, the mountain range (27) as we know it today most likely underwent major changes as recently as five million years ago. Incredibly, as one of Catlos's colleagues (28) notes, "Geologically, the present Himalayan range front was formed just yesterday." [D] 

The first steam-powered ferry on the Hudson River, the Juliana, left Hoboken, New Jersey, for New York City on October 11, 1811, (31) in the nineteenth century. Ferries, mostly of the small sailboat kind called sloops, had been traveling on the Hudson for centuries, carrying cargo and passengers. What made steamboat travel so revolutionary was speed. A trip from New York City to Albany, for example, took seven (32) days in a sloop, a steamboat shortened that trip (33) to one day. Less vulnerable to the weather, steam-powered ferries were reliable, and thus their popularity grew.

Onboard these ferries, commuters crossed from homes in (34) Hoboken to jobs in Manhattan. Society's upper echelon meandered on scenic upriver excursions. "Passengers'' sometimes included horses, goats, and chickens. Many of these vessels offered rudimentary comforts at best. Others, (35) from that time period, boasted an elegance (36) that unsurpassed the river. For a while, older styles of ferries, such as those (37) powered by horses brought onboard to turn a paddle wheel, continued to operate. But the steam-powered ferries, hundreds of them, ruled the Hudson River for most of the (38) nineteenth, and part of the twentieth centuries. 

(39) Bear Mountain Bridge was built by the Harriman family.Until bridges spanned the Hudson River—more than a mile wide in (40) places, car owners relied on ferries to transport their vehicles from one shore to the other. Bearing names like Elmira, Lackawanna, Tuxedo, and Skillypot, (41) ferry travel helped transform the region into one of the biggest economic and cultural centers of the world. At (42) it’s peak in 1927, ferry service between New Jersey (43) to New York reached twenty-seven million passengers annually. In a few years that number plummeted. The Hudson River Vehicular Tunnel, later renamed the Holland Tunnel, opened in 1927, (44) followed by the George Washington Bridge in 1931. By the time the first cars traveled 1.5 miles through the Lincoln Tunnel in 1937, the golden age of ferries on the Hudson had ended.

[1] Crowdsourcing, "recruiting" volunteers from the general public to help perform a task, is often an efficient means of (46) rummaging around massive amounts of data. [2] But for the Whale Song Project, which focuses on deciphering the songs of killer and pilot whales, crowdsourcing also alleviates the problem of subjective interpretation. [3] It has been instrumental in classifying galaxies and decoding ancient papyri. [47]

 The key to learning more about the meaning of whale (48) songs, scientists believe, is to study the songs in context.  Their aim is to establish what type of situation elicits a particular song. Two pieces of sophisticated recording Equipment (49) is essential in this endeavor: D-tags and hydrophone arrays. (50) For example, D-tags are noninvasive devices temporarily attached to the whales with suction cups. Hydrophone arrays are webs of underwater recording devices [51] Using this equipment, (52) scientists have amassed roughly 15,000 songs, along with other background noises and data about the whales' locations and movements. 

Now scientists are turning to crowdsourcing to meet the next (53) challenge: tagging similar-sounding songs as matches. These matches are vital for the (54) project, they allow scientists to identify and compare multiple situations in which the same song was recorded. (55) The process, which effectively narrows the range of (56) potential factors that possibly could have evoked a particular song, thereby offering better clues to the song's meaning.

The variability (57) in human capacity to distinguish high and low tones makes the matching process highly subjective. Crowdsourcing, however, allows scientists to (58) nab significant trends in matchmaking rather than to work from a few listeners' interpretations. (59) Nevertheless, songs can be sorted more reliably. Where so much depends on identifying similarities in (60) sounds that crowdsourcing could provide a crucial step toward understanding what the whales are saying.

[1] When silent comedy (61) films, which debuted in the early 1900s, the public was delighted by slapstick's over-the-top brawls, falls, and pantomimes.[2] Exaggerated gestures and expressions, long used by actors to hammer home the hilarity of their acts in vaudeville theaters, began to fall flat with filmgoers. [3] By 1910, however, (62) audiences' tastes were more refined. [4] (63) Craving comedies, but they lamented the overacting, audiences began to call for (64) funnier—and more natural—silent actors. [65]

An illustrator's model, Mabel Normand, proved perfect for the part. Skilled at calling up realistic emotions for magazine art and ads, Normand was invited to take part in a film as an extra. (66) After impressing them with her natural wit and nuanced expressions, directors at the Biography film company offered her a costar's contract. Within a year, she was accepting starring roles with major studios. [67]

Normand livened up their usual comedy fare, radiating charisma (68) in case she was waltzing at a garden party or tumbling into a mud puddle. Audiences, starstruck, wrote into newspapers asking who this new talent was. Actors, too, were inspired by Normand's lively but subtle comedy style. One of her costars, the young Charlie Chaplin, later attributed part of his immense success to Normand's mentoring.

 Normand set an example not only for her costars, but (69) also for women entering film. Early comedies cast women in only a handful of stereotypical (70) parts, such as, the dutiful daughter or the damsel in distress. As Normand's fame increased and she began to write and direct her own films, she created new heroines to better (71) suit her daring spirit. [72] What's more, they have the last laugh. After getting hit with a pie in the film The Ragtime Band, (73) however, Normand's character,outrage, d vipes the pie off her face and flings it right back. Her initiative sets off a massive food (74) fight, throughout which nobody laughs harder than Normand.