Category: D

Spirits beneath the status of gods and subject to them. Belief in such spirits has existed in all religions throughout history, but not all imagined them to be evil. In ancient Greece, for example, the word daimon meant a divine power, usually an individual protector who intervened between the gods and mortals. During the Hellenistic…

A number of bones uncovered in the summer of 1856 by quarry workers removing limestone from a pit in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. The bones were discovered in a small cave about 18 meters (about 60 feet) above the river, and some of them were saved for a local scientist named J. K.…

A fictitious, large, New World ape. The discovery of the previously unknown mountain gorilla in 1903 set the stage for the acceptance of reports by oil geologist Franqois de Loys in 1920 that he had discovered an ape in the hinterlands of Venezuela. The importance of the discovery was underscored by the fact that no…

Out-of-body experience that are associated with near-death events. People who have been resuscitated from cardiac arrest or have had life- threatening accidents have later made graphic claims that they have floated upward into a second body and were able to observe what was happening to their physical body on the bed below. Because of recent…

Emissions, visible or invisible, that cause death and destruction. In H. G. Wells’s groundbreaking science-fiction novel The War of the Worlds (1898), the invading Martians repel an attack by British forces with an invisible ray that causes whatever it touches to catch fire. In the early 20th-century science-fiction comic strip Buck Rogers in the 25th…

One of a number of antigravity machines. This device was invented by Norman L. Dean, a mortgage appraiser for the Federal Housing Association in Washington, D.C., in the late 1950s. It produced a lift by spinning weights. Its name comes from the belief that such a device could provide the motive power for a spacecraft…

A state of reverie indulged in while awake. Often called fantasizing, it is definable as a comparatively well-organized, but often illogical, process of sensory thinking where the daydreamer is to all intents and purposes awake, but nevertheless loses partial con¬ tact with his or her surroundings. It is often characterized by a free-flowing internal debate…

Dried yeast cells from strains of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It is used as a source of proteins and vitamins, especially B complex.  

A yellow fatty skin deposit associated with uncontrolled diabetes mellitus.  

In dentistry, a wheel that contains diamond powder or chips.