When did Juliet get married?

Juliet marries only once during the play.  Friar Lawrence marries Romeo and Juliet in Act 2, Scene 5, in the hopes of uniting the Montague and Capulet families.  Timing wise, the marriage takes place in the afternoon, the day after Romeo and Juliet meet at the Capulet party.  Of course, the marriage is initially kept a secret from most of the characters.

While Juliet is ultimately engaged to Paris, she does not go through with that marriage.  In fact, it is the "threat" of her impending marriage to Paris, coupled with Romeo's banishment to Mantua, that brings about the plan that will lead Juliet to initially fake her own death and, ultimately, to take her life.  It is only after she is dead that the majority of the characters (those that are still alive!) learn of her marriage to Romeo.

How has Bottom's absence affected his friends in A Midsummer Night's Dream?

In Act IV scene ii of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bottom’s friends gather at Peter Quince’s house. They are worried about Bottom. They are afraid the mysterious donkey monster has harmed him. Starveling says, “He cannot be heard of. Out a doubt he is transported.” Flute wants to know if they will still enact the play if Bottom doesn’t return from the woods. Quince says it would be impossible because Bottom was the only man in all of Athens who could play Pyramus. The small band of sad actors declares that Bottom was the smartest and funniest man in the city.

Snug bursts in and announces that Theseus has gotten married. Flute gets even sadder about Bottom’s disappearance, since Bottom would have earned a great deal of money from the Duke for his excellent portrayal of Pyramus: “an the duke had not given him sixpence a day for playing Pyramus, I'll be hanged.”

But all the sadness turns to joy when Bottom arrives a moment later, and the troupe gets ready to perform for the Duke and his guests.

Why is this quote important in the book To Kill a Mockingbird?: "Now don't you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain't ever seen any Jury decide in favor...

These words of Reverend Sykes underpin the lesson that Jem and Scout learn about social and racial inequality from witnessing the trial of Tom Robinson.

Thematically based upon the trial of the Scottsboro boys in Alabama falsely accused of rape by two transient white women in the 1930s--the same era as the setting of Harper Lee's novel--Tom's trial finds a black man falsely accused by a white girl of rape. And, even though Atticus has irrefutably discredited the testimony of  Mayella's father, Bob Ewell, and certainly challenged the truth of Mayella's assertions, Reverend Sykes expresses his doubts about Tom's acquittal. For, the old preacher knows that it has been customary that any black accused by a white is automatically guilty if there is no substantive proof.

As Atticus makes closing remarks in Chapter 20, he points out that the case is really reduced to the words of the Ewells against the word of Tom Robinson, and the strength of the Ewell's case depends upon the jury's assumption that no matter what

...all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, that all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women....

While such a false assumption points to the blind prejudice of a jury if the verdict is guilty, Reverend Sykes knows that it is, nevertheless, probable that the jury will vote guilty upon just such an assumption.

Having witnessed the trial and heard the verdict, Jem and Scout then learn a significant lesson about life's unfairness and racial inequalities.

In A Separate Peace by John Knowles, what is Finny trying to say in the passage where he tells Gene he is his "best pal"?

In 1942, Gene and Phineas are good friends attending summer school at a private school called Devon. Gene excels academically and Phineas is the athlete. It is curious that these two would become close, but they are also roommates which encourages them to bond. Due to Finny's social and athletic prowess, though, Gene becomes competitive, jealous, and resentful. Phineas, on the other hand, has no clue that Gene feels this way. In fact, Finny thinks the two of them are the best friends in the world and he seems to force Gene to do whatever he feels like doing. For example, Finny wanted to go to the beach for the day, but he didn't want to go alone, so he drags Gene along. Finny expresses his feelings as follows:

"I know I kind of dragged you away at the point of a gun, but after all you can't come to the shore with just anybody and you can't come by yourself, and at this teen-age period in life the proper person is your best pal. . . which you are" (48).

In the above passage, Phineas is apologizing for making Gene break the school rules by leaving campus. Not only did they go to the beach, but they went to a bar, used fake IDs and drank alcohol. They slept that night on the beach, too. They both could have been kicked out of school had they been caught. It's interesting, though, that Gene isn't concerned so much about the rules that he breaks with Finny as he is with the fact that he's declared a "best pal." Gene explains as follows:

"It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion nakedly like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him then that he was my best friend also. . . But something held me back" (48).

Sadly, Gene doesn't take Finny's friendship to heart as he should have because of his own personal flaws. Finny was just trying to tell Gene that he was grateful to have a close friend who could accompany him to the beach. Finny feels comfortable with Gene enough to be himself around him and that's a gift; but again, Gene doesn't really catch onto that gift until later because he was insecure within himself.

Explain these lines of the poem "I Stood tip-toe upon a little hill": I stood tip-toe upon a little hill The air was cooling, and so very still,...

Keats often looked to nature for poetic inspiration. These first lines of this poem illustrate his fascination with natural imagery and how it inspires and energizes his poetic mind. In the first line, he is standing on a hill on his toes so that he can look at the landscape from the highest point possible. Nature was a calming, meditative, and transcendent place for Keats. In the second line, the still air suggests a calm atmosphere. The buds are "modest" because they almost appear shy, still in the process of opening. They droop away from the plant and since they are still opening, they have the crown (diadem) shape. They still have dew on them ("sobbing of the morn") and therefore, it must be close to morning. This image of buds opening, still with dew, early in the morning, creates images of freshness, newness, and purity. 

The clouds are as white as freshly shorn sheep. They "sleep" and/or drift gracefully in the sky ("blue fields of heaven"). The "noiseless noise" is the wind drifting through the leaves. The wind is noiseless on its own; it needs the leaves to rustle in order to make noise. The wind is born of (comes from) the sky (heaven). These associations with heaven give a spiritual notion to these movements, sights, and sounds in nature. Later in the poem, Keats will invoke mythological characters, continuing with this conflation of the natural with the spiritual. Although he hears the wind through the trees, the leaves move imperceptibly. He hears the "noiseless noise" but can not see the "faintest motion" that causes the sound. 

How does a paleontologist used geological principles for the relative dating of fossils?

Relative dating tries to determine the relative order of past events without determining absolute age. Therefore, relative dating does not use radioactive decay or half-life in order to determine the exact numerical age of a fossil. Instead, scientists that use relative dating try to put the rocks that are left behind by geological events in chronological order.  This method is known as stratigraphy ("strata" = layer). 

Most fossils are found in sedimentary rocks. During this process, the remains of the organism are buried by sediments and the bones become mineralized. Relative dating is based on the geological principle that sedimentary rocks are formed from bottom to top. Therefore, fossils found in the bottom layers, or strata, represent the oldest forms of life in that rock formation. 

The link below describes additional geological methods that are used to date fossils and rocks. 

What remarkable difference does Mr. Utterson notice about Dr. Lanyon?

On January 8, Mr. Utterson eats dinner with Dr. Lanyon and notices nothing out of the ordinary.  Six nights later, however, he returns to the doctor's house and meets a very changed man.  At this point, Dr. Lanyon

had his death-warrant written legibly upon his face.  The rosy man had grown pale; his flesh had fallen away; he was visibly balder and older; and yet it was not so much these tokens of a swift physical decay that arrested the lawyer's notice, as a look in the eye and quality of manner that seemed to testify to some deep-seated terror of the mind.

The formerly healthy doctor now looks to be on the edge of death.  He has deteriorated in almost every physical way in less than one week, and when Utterson asked about his altered appearance, the doctor resolutely states that he is "a doomed man." 

When pressed to explain, he only says that he's had a terrible shock and that he no longer wants to see or hear news of Dr. Jekyll, a man he now regards as "dead."  Utterson receives a letter from Dr. Lanyon with instructions not to open it unless or until Henry Jekyll has disappeared, and Dr. Lanyon himself perishes.  When Mr. Utterson eventually does open this letter, he learns that Dr. Lanyon actually witnessed the transformation of Edward Hyde into Henry Jekyll, and this was the shock that eventually lead to his dramatic physical change and premature demise.