Books and Articles by Andrew Hollandbeck

Father's Day, celebrated in the United States on the third Sunday of June, got a jump start from the formation of Mother's Day. Credit for beginning Father's Day celebrations is given to Sonora Smart Dodd (1882—1978) of Spokane, Washington. ©MarijaBazarova / Adobe StockAt the turn of the century, Mother's Day observances were growing across the United States.

Many people mistakenly believe that Cinco de Mayo is Mexican Independence Day. That simply isn't true; Cinco de Mayo celebrates an event that happened in the city of Puebla more than 50 years after Mexico won independence from Spain — and Spain doesn't even figure into Cinco de Mayo. ©Artefacti / Adobe Stock The history of Cinco de Mayo In 1861, Mexican President Benito Juárez stopped making interest payments to Mexico's creditors.

Mother's Day as a national holiday in the United States is almost a century old, but its roots go back before the Civil War to a hard-working Virginian mother and activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis. ©Akarawut / Adobe StockIn total, Anna Reeves Jarvis gave birth to 11 children, though only four of them survived to adulthood.

An earthquake is the sometimes violent shaking of the ground caused by movements of Earth's tectonic plates. Most earthquakes occur along fault lines, which is where two tectonic plates come together. ©Andrey VP / Adobe StockEarthquakes strike suddenly and violently and can occur at any time, day or night, throughout the year.

Hurricanes and typhoons are types of tropical cyclones — large, rotating, low-pressure systems that bring rain and wind — with sustained wind speeds of over 74 miles per hour. These severe storms can spawn other weather problems, such as tornadoes and water spouts, flash floods, and dangerous thunderstorms. Hurricanes and typhoons are the same weather systems; what they're called depends on where they develop.

Bastille Day, formally called La Fête Nationale ("The National Celebration"), is celebrated every July 14 in France to commemorate the storming of the Bastille, a fortress-prison. Like the July 4 Independence Day in the United States, Bastille Day memorializes the start of a political revolution aimed at replacing an absolute monarchy with a constitutional government.

Health mavens have long believed that a Mediterranean diet — one rich in olive oil, seafood, and nuts — lowers one's risk for cardiovascular disease, but that belief was based solely on small-scale studies and anecdotal data . . . until now. Early in 2013, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a nearly five-year-long study, called PREDIMED (Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea), that assessed this diet's effect on cardiovascular disease, providing scientific data to back up the old claims.

A tornado is a violent, rotating column of air that extends from a storm cloud to the ground. Tornado winds can reach speeds of over 250 miles an hour, and they are often preceded by hail. If a tornado forms over or moves to water, it's called a waterspout. What causes a tornado? Scientists haven't yet determined the exact criteria necessary for a tornado to form.

A hailstone begins life as a core of ice crystals or frozen water. Warm, moist air from underneath a storm cloud creates a strong updraft so that, instead of falling to the earth, that core is blown up through the moist storm cloud, collecting layers of ice — a process called accretion. As the warm updraft cools, it loses its energy and gravity takes hold of the hailstone, pulling it back down through the storm cloud and collecting still more layers of ice.