On this date in 1776, rebellious colonials launched the first modern democracy, an experiment in government controlled by the people themselves. America succeeded so well that virtually the entire world later adopted democracy with its guarantee of personal rights.

The Urnero (Leptodactylus latinasus) is a species of frog in the Leptodactylidae family. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist shrub land, subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland, subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland, freshwater marshes, intermittent freshwater marshes, pastureland, rural gardens, and ponds.

Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and gas). Heating a gas may ionize its molecules or atoms (reducing or increasing the number of electrons in them), thus turning it into a plasma, which contains charged particles: positive ions and negative electrons or ions.

The title Grandmaster is awarded to chess players by the world chess organization FIDE. Apart from World Champion, Grandmaster is the highest title a chess player can attain. Once achieved, the title is held for life.

In linguistics, the comparative method is a technique for studying the development of languages by performing a feature-by-feature comparison of two or more languages with common descent from a shared ancestor, as opposed to the method of internal reconstruction, which analyzes the internal development of a single language over time.