Who invented the printing press in Europe?

History of the Printing Press - Invention of the Printing Press Invention: printing   press Function: noun /   printï¿½ing press Definition: A machine   that transfers lettering or images by contact with various forms of   inked surface onto paper or similar material fed into it in various   ways The device is used for printing many copies of a text on paper. Inventor: Johannes Gutenberg  (aka Johann Gutenberg) Criteria; First practical. Modern   prototype. Entrepreneur. Birth: c1400 in   Mainz, Germany Death: February 3, 1468 in   Mainz, Germany Nationality: German Milestones:  888 The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture, was the first dated  example of block printing. 1041 Bi Sheng in China invented movable clay type 1423 Europeans use xylography (art of engraving on wood, block printing)  to produce books. 1430 Gutenberg moved from his native town of Mainz to Strasburg 1436 Gutenberg begins work on his printing press. 1437 Gutenberg was sued for "breach of promise of marriage" by a young  lady of  Strasburg 1440 Gutenberg completed his wooden press which used movable metal type. 1440 Laurens Janszoon Koster (Coster) is credited, by some, with  inventing movable metal type 1444 Gutenberg returns to Mainz and sets up a printing shop 1446 Gutenberg prints the "Poem of the Last Judgment" 1448 Gutenberg prints the "Calendar for 1448" 1450 Gutenberg' formed a partnership with the wealthy Johann Fust 1450 Gutenberg begins work on a Bible, the first is 40 lines per page. 1452 Gutenberg begins printing the 42-line Bible in two volumes. 1454 Gutenberg prints indulgences (notes sold to Christians by the Pope,  pardoning their sins) 1455 First block-printed Bible, the Biblia Pauperum, published in  Germany. 1455 Gutenberg completed work on what is estimated to be 200 copies of  the Bible 1455 Gutenberg was effectively bankrupt. Investor Johann Faust gains  control of print business 1457 First known color printing, a Psalter (a collection of Psalms for  devotional use) by Faust. 1460 Gutenberg reestablished himself in the  printing business with the aid of Conrad Humery 1461 Albrecht Pfister printed the first  illustrated book Edelstein which featured a number of woodcuts. 1465 Gutenberg is appointed to the court of Archbishop Adolf of Nassau 1476 Two hundred woodcuts were used in a edition of Aesop's Fables 1476 First use of copper engravings instead of woodcuts for  illustration 1476 William Caxton sets up his printing press in Westminster,  England. 1499 Printing had become established in more than 2500 cities around  Europe. 1499 An estimated 15 million books have been press printed, representing thirty thousand book titles CAPs:  Johannes Gutenberg, Johann Gutenberg, Bi Sheng, Laurens Janszoon Koster,  Johann Faust, Peter Schoffer, Albrecht Pfister,  Conrad Humery, Archbishop Adolf of  Nassau, William Caxton, Gutenberg Bible, 42-line Bible, Mazarin Bible,  Diamond Sutra, Poem of the Last Judgment, Calendar for 1448, Psalter,  Aesop's Fables, SIPs:  printing press, movable type, xylography, metal type, indulgences,  typography, letterpress printing, invention, history, inventor of, history of, who invented, invention of,  fascinating facts. The Story: In the mid-15th century Johannes Gutenberg invented a mechanical way of  making books. This was the first example of mass book production. Before the  invention of printing, multiple copies of a manuscript had to be made by  hand, a laborious task that could take many years. Later books were produced  by and for the Church using the process of wood engraving. This required the  craftsman to cut away the background, leaving the area to be printed raised.  This process applied to both text and illustrations and was extremely  time-consuming. When a page was complete, often comprising a number of  blocks joined together, it would be inked and a sheet of paper was then  pressed over it for an imprint. The susceptibility of wood to the elements  gave such blocks a limited lifespan . In the Far East, movable type an


What product did Gandhi march to the sea to obtain?

Gandhi's March to the Sea - Wonders & Marvels Wonders & Marvels A Community for Curious Minds who love History, its Odd Stories, and Good Reads MENU Gandhi’s March to the Sea September 18, 2013 by Pamela Toler The American Revolution had the Boston Tea Party; the Indian independence movement had Gandhi’s salt march. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British government in India had a heavily taxed monopoly on the production and sale of salt. It was illegal for anyone to make or sell salt. If a peasant who lived near the sea picked up a piece of natural salt, he could be arrested. In 1930, Gandhi used the issue of the salt tax to turn non-violent protest against British rule into a mass movement. The Indian independence movement had long focused on British laws that concerned middle and upper class Indians, such as discrimination against Indians who applied for government jobs. Gandhi argued that the salt tax was an example of British misrule that affected all Indians. Gandhi began his campaign against the salt tax on March 2 with a letter to Lord Irwin, the Viceroy of India, announcing his intention of breaking the salt laws. Ten days later he began a 240-mile march to the sea with seventy-eight followers–carefully chosen to represent a cross-section of India. Crowds gathered along the route to cheer the marchers on. The international press followed them, reporting their progress each day to a watching world. More protestors joined the march each day. By the time Gandhi reached the shore, twenty-five days later, several thousands protestors marched with him. Gandhi spent the night of April 5th in prayer with his followers. Early the next morning, he waded into the surf, then walked along the beach until he found a place where the evaporating water had left a thick crust of salt. He picked up a lump of natural salt and urged Indians to resist the tax by manufacturing their own salt. People across India responded to the Mahatma’s call for civil disobedience. Villagers all along India’s coastline went to the beach to make salt. Volunteers from the nationalist movement openly sold illegal salt in the cities and distributed pamphlets telling people how to make salt. Over the course of a month, the police arrested tens of thousands of people for salt-related crimes and protests. True to Gandhi’s principles, his followers did not resist arrest, even when the police beat them with clubs. Gandhi himself was arrested on May 4 and held without trial or sentence until January. News of the Mahatma’s arrest led to more protests–and still more arrests. With salt protests breaking out all over India, the British government was forced to negotiate with Gandhi. On March 5, 1931, Lord Irwin signed the Gandhi-Irwin pact, ending the salt protest. Indians were now allowed to collect salt for their own use. Gandhi and other political prisoners were released. More important, the British scheduled a conference in London to discuss changes in Britain’s rule of India. Gandhi’s 240 mile march had brought India one step closer to independence.


What trade did the Dutch East India Company dominate in 17th and 18th centuries?

Dutch East India Company, Trade Network, 18th Century ( Detailed PDF Map ) Dutch East India Company, Trade Network, 18th Century The Dutch East India Company (VOC; Verenigde   Oost-indische Compagnie), founded in 1602, is   often considered as the first true multinational corporation. From the   17th to the 18th century trading companies such as VOC (and its British   counterpart; the East India Trading Company) acted on behalf of European   governments in Asia. As joint stock companies they were private mercantilist   tools with a guarantied trade monopoly in exchange of rights paid to   their respective governments. They were almost states by themselves   with their own ships (military and merchant) and military forces. Their   initial goal was to develop trade links for prized commodities such   as pepper and as time progressed they became increasingly involved in   the control and development of their respective territories. In 1610, VOC gained a foothold in Batavia (Indonesia / Dutch East   Indies) and conquered most of the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) by 1640,   establishing the stronghold of Galle. The major trading hub of Malacca   was taken from the Portuguese in 1641. By the mid seventeen century   VOC has replaced most local trading networks with their own with a series   of fortified trading posts. Cape Town (South Africa) was also founded   in 1652 as a crucial stage for the long Europe-Asia voyage. Later, plantations,   which forced the introduction of new forms of cultivation such as coffee   in West Java (1723), were established. It resulted in a growing quantity   and variety of cargo being traded. The company essentially achieved   for about a century a monopoly on nutmeg (meat preserver) and cinnamon   trade and raked substantial profits. Most of it was coming from the "Spice Islands" in the Dutch East Indies. By 1750, VOC employed around   25,000 people and was doing business in 10 Asian countries. However,   mainly due to corruption and mismanagement the company faced bankruptcy   in 1799 with its holdings transferred to the Dutch Crown. When VOC first came to Asia, ships made the long distance trip back   and forth from Europe. Later, a trade network composed of two layers   was established, reminiscent of a hub-and-spoke structure. A regional   trade network was serviced by smaller ships that called along coastal   trading routes a variety of ports throughout the region. The goods where   then collected in large warehouses in protected strongholds; Batavia   (Indonesia) and Galle (Sri Lanka) were the most significant. Traded   commodities included textiles, pepper and yarn from India; cinnamon,   cardamom, and gems from Sri Lanka. Some were traded only over short   distances, while others traveled greater distances, such as between   Indonesia, China and Japan. Other commodities, such a cinnamon and nutmeg   were mainly exported back to Europe. To do so, much larger "return ships" of 500 to 1,000 tons were used for the long haul which included a stopover   in Cape Town. The route and the season these ships traveled was configured   to take maximum advantage of dominant winds. On the inbound route from   Amsterdam, ships essentially crossed the Atlantic to reach the South   American coast and then catch the fast Westerlies that would bring them   to Cape Town. From there, the Westerlies brought the ships straight   across the Indian Ocean towards Australia and then a sharp turn north   to Batavia or Galle. The return route was more direct and took advantage   of the southeast bound winter monsoon winds.


Who sailed around the world on the Golden Hind?

The Golden Hind and the dread pirate Sir Francis Drake The Golden Hind The Ship that Sailed Around the World I've always loved pirate stories and I sort of grew up reading about the derring-do exploits of Sir Francis Drake and Sir Richard Grenville, of Frobisher and Sir Walter Raleigh. So it's clear that no trip to Devon would be complete without visiting the replica of Francis Drake's ship, The Golden Hind, which is moored in Brixham harbour. The Golden Hind is more than just a pirate ship, of course. It's a ship with a history of her very own - and a mysterious history at that. Between 1577 and 1580 Sir Francis Drake's ship The Golden Hind sailed right around the world - the first time in recorded history that a ship had done so. The Golden Hind replica in Brixham Harbour can be toured throughout spring and summer each year and gives a fascinating opportunity to imagine what it might have been like to travel on an Elizabethan ship. The Golden Hind began her known life as The Pelican - even though nobody really knows when, where and by whom she was built - and in 1577 she sailed from Plymouth, just down the Devon coast, to South America and around Cape Horn. Her captain was Sir Francis Drake: sailor, adventurer, businessman and - to be honest - pirate. As well as taking his ship on a voyage of discovery to the 'New World' of the Americas, Drake objective was to capture as many Spanish ships as possible during his travels. Spain was a major European power in those days; tremendously wealthy from the gold found in the Americas.  And Catholic Spain had invaded the Protestant Netherlands, so with the balance of power leaning precariously, England's Queen Elizabeth declared war on Spain. Officially, the queen knew nothing of piracy, of course. But Elizabeth greatly approved of Drake's activities - not only did they keep the Spanish on their toes, but they brought literally tons of gold, spices and other valuable commodities to England, much of which ended up in the royal treasury. This in turn financed further expeditions and, ultimately, helped to defend England when the Spanish Armada attacked in 1588. From Cape Horn, Drake sailed up the east coast of South America and across the Pacific to the Philippines. Then The Golden Hind went on to Indonesia, gathering treasure as she went. From there she sailed across the Indian Ocean and around Africa, finally calling at Sierra Leone before arriving back at Plymouth three years after she left. Standing on the deack of the Golden Hind in Brixham Harbour, it seems a miracle that Drake and most of his crew could survive such a long and dangerous journey in such a very small, very primitive wooden ship. The Golden Hind is only about 120 feet long and 20 feet wide (36.5 x 6 metres). Four other ships had set out from Plymouth with Drake, but all four had either sunk or been damaged and cannibalised to outfit the Hind - a statistic that makes her success even more striking. On his return, Drake was knighted by the Queen on the deck of his ship (an event that has inspired many patriotic paintings and prints). Apparently, Drake then treated his Queen to a banquet on the same deck, which seems totally unlikely when you see the size of the ship. There's barely space to turn around, let alone set tables and chairs ... Later, Drake's ship was moored at Deptford as a permanent reminder of his achievement. The replica at Brixham, then, continues a four centuries old tradition of valuing and exhibiting great English ships. She has been there since 1963 and she is well worth a visit. The ship is moored beside the Quay - where there are shops, hotels, excellent fish restaurants, chippies and pubs - and she swims among the fishing boats and dinghies like a whale among minnows. Events linked to her include educational days, pirate re-enactments and sea shanty festivals. And if you go arrive early and have the place to yourself for a while, you can imagine yourself living the life of a pirate... Where to Stay in Brixham As in the rest of Devon, visitors are very well catered for in Brixham. Coup


What island chain did Charles Darwin famously visit, inspiring his theory of natural selection?

Reef Madness 11: Darwin’s First Theory of Evolution | WIRED Reef Madness 11: Darwin’s First Theory of Evolution A coral reef's evolution: fringing reef (top); barrier; atoll. This is the 11th installment of an abridged version of my book Reef Madness: Alexander Agassiz, Charles Darwin, and the Meaning of Coral .  (Earlier installments are listed at bottom.) Here Darwin hatches the theory of coral reef formation that will start a decades-long argument with Alexander Agassiz — and create a template for his species theory. © David Dobbs, 2011. All rights reserved. ____________ Even as he was composing his Chile notes, Darwin was turning his mind west, for the Beagle, having finished its laborious survey of the South American coast, was making ready to sail. Examining charts of the route ahead, Darwin contemplated the oddity that is the Pacific: a broad pan, immensely deep, with arcs and ovals and doglegs of coral isles rising, as he put it, from its “profoundest parts.” Several of these archipelagos — the Galapagos, the Tuamotus, French Polynesia, the Fijis and the Friendlys — lay along the Beagle‘s route. In the 60 years since Captain James Cook had mapped them, these islands had commanded much interest among geologists and naturalists. They were intrigued by the great depths from which they rose; by their volcanic nature; by their ordered but irregular arrangements, like pearl necklaces tossed to the floor; and by the islands’ distinctive annularity. Someone excited sleepless by geology wasn’t likely to resist such shapes. Darwin’s Andean wanderings and ruminations had fired what would prove an insatiable appetite for discovering patterns spanning space and time. These ringed islands presented precisely such a pattern. The puzzle seemed ripe for solution. Though coral islands and reefs had intrigued Europe’s scientists and public for almost a century (an interest greatly boosted by the descriptions Cook brought back of the South Pacific archipelagos in the 1770s), no one had plausibly explained how they came to be. They were initially appreciated mainly for the sheer wonder of their existence, apparently climbing from the sea’s depths to create new landscapes. In the eighteenth-century fascination with the idea of a Great Chain of Being, corals held a special place for seeming to bridge the gap between plant and animal, and after Jean-Andre Peyssonnel showed them to be animals in 1753, for creating with their calcified skeletons the huge structures that joined the organic and the inorganic worlds as well as sea and land. In the early nineteenth century, some saw in coral reefs a welcome antidote to the erosion that Huttonian geology saw as erasing humankind’s terrestrial platform. “Whatever destroying tendencies … exist on the earth,” wrote one prominent geologist in 1818, “these renovating powers compensate for them.” Such speculations rose naturally when geology was so young, the reefs so many, and scientific visits to them so few and brief. Naturalists on the Cook and other expeditions of the late 1700s, however, began to fill in the blanks. They established that the reefs were formed by the accumulating skeletons of huge colonies of tiny, tube-shaped animals known as coral polyps. These polyps, which would later be found to be tiny, hard-bodied cousins of sea anenomes, were also variously referred to as insects, “molluscus worms,” insects, or even “animalcules.” They seemed to live only in warm tropical waters, generally no further than 25 or 30 degrees of the equator. The polyps apparently built their great works extremely slowly. No one who lived in coral regions described discernible growth, and while nineteenth-century European visitors comparing the reefs to descriptions and charts made the previous century found some reef areas apparently torn up by storms, they could not find measurable expansion. At first it was thought that the reefs might build themselves up from seabottom as deep as several hundred or even several thousand feet. But by 1820 it had been established that corals grew only in water no more than


"What ""generalísimo"" ruled Spain from 1939-1975?"

Francisco Franco - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Franco: The Early Years Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was born on December 4, 1892, in El Ferrol, a small coastal town on Spain’s northwestern tip. Until age 12, Franco attended a private school run by a Catholic priest. He then entered a naval secondary school with the goal of following his father and grandfather into a sea-based military career. In 1907, however, the cash-strapped Spanish government temporarily suspended the admission of cadets into the Naval Academy. As a result, Franco enrolled at the Infantry Academy in Toledo, graduating three years later with below-average grades. Did You Know? During World War II, Spanish leader Franco wrote a semi-autobiographical novel called “Raza,” which was later turned into a film. Using the pseudonym Jaime de Andrade, Franco portrayed a family that strongly resembled his own, including a hero who valiantly fought against bloodthirsty Republicans. After a brief posting back in El Ferrol, Franco volunteered to fight an insurgency in Spanish-controlled Morocco. He arrived in early 1912 and stayed there largely without break until 1926. Along the way, he survived a gunshot wound to the abdomen, received a number of merit promotions and awards, and took time out to marry Carmen Polo y Martínez Valdés, with whom he would have one daughter. At age 33 Franco became the youngest general in all of Europe. He was then chosen to direct the newly formed General Military Academy in Zaragoza. Franco and the Second Republic A military dictatorship embraced by King Alfonso XIII governed Spain from 1923 to 1930, but municipal elections held in April 1931 deposed the king and ushered in the so-called Second Republic. In the aftermath of the elections, winning Republican candidates passed measures that reduced the power and influence of the military, the Catholic Church, property-owning elites and other entrenched interests. Franco, a known authoritarian rightist, was reprimanded for criticizing the actions of those in charge and sent to an out-of-the-way post near El Ferrol. Moreover, his General Military Academy was shut down. Nevertheless, Franco was brought back into the good graces of the government in 1933 when a center-right coalition won elections. The following year he deployed troops from Morocco to Asturias in northern Spain to suppress a leftist revolt, an action that left some 4,000 dead and tens of thousands imprisoned. Meanwhile, street violence, political killings and general disorder were ramping up on both the right and the left. In 1935 Franco became army chief of staff. When a leftist coalition won the next round of elections in February 1936, he and other military leaders began discussing a coup. Franco and the Spanish Civil War Banished to a remote post in the Canary Islands, Franco initially hesitated in his support of the military conspiracy. He became fully committed, however, following the assassination by police of radical monarchist José Calvo Sotelo. On July 18, 1936, military officers launched a multipronged uprising that put them in control of most of the western half of the country. Franco’s role was to fly to Morocco and begin transporting troops to the mainland. He also made contacts with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, securing arms and other assistance that would continue throughout the duration of what became known as the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Within a few months, Franco was named head of the rebel Nationalist government and commander-in-chief (generalísimo) of the armed forces. He unified a base of support by securing the backing of the Catholic Church, combining the fascist and monarchist political parties, and dissolving all other political parties. Meanwhile, on the way north, his men—who included fascist militia groups—machine-gunned hundreds or perhaps thousands of Republicans in the town of Badajoz. An additional tens of thousands of political prisoners would be executed by Nationalists later on in the fighting. The internally divided Republicans, who murdered their own share of political


What nation was ruled by King Nebuchadnezzar II?

Nebuchadnezzar II - Ancient History Encyclopedia Nebuchadnezzar II by Joshua J. Mark published on 20 July 2010 King Nebuchadnezzar II (634-562 BCE) was the greatest king of ancient Babylon , succeeding his father, Nabopolassar. King Nabopolassar had defeated the Assyrians with the help of the Medes and liberated Babylonia from Assyrian rule. In this way he provided for his son (as Philip II would do for his son Alexander later) a stable base and ample wealth on which to build; an opportunity for greatness which Nebuchadnezzar took full advantage of. He married Amytis of Media (630-565 BCE) and so secured an alliance between the Medes and the Babylonians (Amytis being the daughter or granddaughter of Cyaxerxes, the king of the Medes) and, according to some sources, had the Hanging Gardens of Babylon built for her to remind her of her homeland in Persia . Upon ascending to the throne, Nebuchadnezzar spoke to the gods, in his inaugural address, saying, “O merciful Marduk , may the house that I have built endure forever, may I be satiated with its splendor, attain old age therein, with abundant offspring, and receive therein tribute of the kings of all regions, from all mankind” and it would seem the gods heard his prayer in that, under his reign, Babylon became the most powerful city-state in the region and Nebuchadnezzar II himself the greatest warrior-king and ruler in the known world. He is portrayed in unflattering light in the Bible , most notably in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Jeremiah (where he is seen as an 'enemy of God’ and one whom the deity of the Israelites intends to make an example of or, conversely, the agent of God used as a scourge against the faithless followers of Yahweh ). Those portraits notwithstanding, Nebuchadnezzar II was most certainly responsible for the so-called Babylonian Exile of the Jews and, so, for the formation of modern-day Judaism (in that, the temple destroyed, the Priestly class of the Levites of the Jews had to re-create their religion “in a foreign land” as recounted famously in Psalm 137 from the Bible, and elsewhere). Nebuchadnezzar II defeated the Egyptians and the Assyrians at Carchemish, subdued Palestine and Syria and controlled all the trade routes across Mesopotamia .  Nebuchadnezzar II defeated the Egyptians and their allies the Assyrians at Carchemish, subdued Palestine and the region of Syria and, consolidating his power, controlled all the trade routes across Mesopotamia from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Remaining true to the vision of his inaugural address, the great king spent the tolls he collected and the taxes he gathered in creating a city which, he hoped, would be recognized as a wonder of the world (and, indeed, his hopes were realized in later writers adding the walls of Babylon and, in particular, the Ishtar gate to the list of the Seven Wonders of the World). In the forty-three years of his reign, Nebuchadnezzar II made the most of the time employing a vast army of slave labor to surround his city with walls so thick that chariot races were conducted around the tops and which stretched fifty-six miles in length, encircling an area of two hundred square miles. The bricks of the walls were faced with a bright blue and bore the inscription, “I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.”


"Who said ""honey, I forgot to duck"" after being shot in 1981?"

'HONEY, I FORGOT TO DUCK,' INJURED REAGAN TELLS WIFE - NYTimes.com 'HONEY, I FORGOT TO DUCK,' INJURED REAGAN TELLS WIFE By LYNN ROSELLINI, Special to the New York Times Published: March 31, 1981 WASHINGTON, March 30— Shortly before he was wheeled into the operating room, President Reagan looked up at his wife, Nancy, and told her: ''Honey, I forgot to duck.'' Nancy Reagan kissed her husband and then, as he was wheeled into surgery, she turned and went into a nearby room to wait out the long afternoon. She was pale but appeared calm. Mrs. Reagan had just returned to the White House from a luncheon when she was told by the Secret Service at 2:35 P.M. that there had been a shooting at the Capital Hilton Hotel. But it was not until she reached George Washington University Hospital a few minutes later that she learned her husband had been shot. Joins President in Room As her limousine pulled up to the emergency entrance of the gray, cinderblock hospital on Washington Circle, she jumped out and sprinted through the doorway. Inside, Mrs. Reagan joined the President in his room while doctors prepared him for surgery. When it was time for Mr. Reagan to be wheeled down the hall, his wife held on to the handrail of his bed while doctors and Secret Service men accompanied them. But when the group reached the automatic doors that lead to a suite of 10 operating rooms, Mrs. Reagan was told that she could not accompany her husband inside. She went for a time to the hospital chapel and also met with the wives of James S. Brady, the President's press secretary, and Tim McCarthy, a Secret Service agent. Both men were also wounded in the attack on the President. Mrs. Reagan saw her husband after the operation and then went back to the White House. Sheila Patton, the First Lady's press secretary, said tonight that she was grateful for the outpouring of support and prayers for her husband. The President's younger son, 23-year-old Ronald Prescott Reagan, a dancer with the Joffrey II ballet, was in Lincoln, Neb., preparing to perform with the troupe this evening at Lincoln's Kimball Recital Hall when he received word of the assassination attempt. He and his wife, Doria Palmieri, went from their hotel under heavy security to Lincoln Municipal Airport and flew to the capital to join his mother. Maureen Reagan, 39, and Michael Reagan, 35, President Reagan's daughter and son by the actress Jane Wyman, were in California when they learned of the shooting. Mr. Reagan said he, his wife and Miss Maureen and another sister, Patti Davis, 28, would fly to Washington so that when their father ''opens his eyes and comes out of sedation, we will be there.'' ''This mission,'' he said with tears streaming down his face, ''is really is a mission of love - love for Ronald Reagan'' ''A lot of things have been written about our family and our family's independence. One thing about us, we love Ronald Reagan and we love Nancy Reagan.'' His sister Maureen urged the ''the American people to get angry and propose laws'' to prevent such incidents. ''I've often said perhaps it's not guns we should outlaw, but ammunition,'' she said. ''But something has to be done.'' Son Is Optimistic Her brother, speaking to reporters on the lawn of his home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, was optimistic about the President's recovery. ''My father is a strong person and is in good shape,'' he said. ''He'll probably come out here at the end of April, go to my sister's wedding and go to the ranch and cut some wood and put this thing behind him.''


What Native American confederacy is composed of six tribes including the Mohawk and Seneca?

Iroquois Confederacy | Native American Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia The Iroquois fought many wars, these are some notable ones and how they were involved: The Beaver Wars Edit The Iroquois fought many battles starting in 1609 against the French, thier Huron allies and other tribes such as the Petun, Erie and Susquehannock. The Iroquois wanted control of large areas with game to use for the fur trade. They put pressure on Algonquian peoples of the Atlantic Coast and Anishinaabe peoples of the Canadian Shield, and often even fought British colonists. Some believe the war started after the Iroquois launched full scale attacks on other tribes to avenge and replace the deaths of their people from the smallpox epidemic. In 1628, the Iroquois defeated the Mahican to gain monopoly in the fur trade with the Dutch in New Netherland. In 1645, a tentative peace was made between the Iroquois and the Huron, Algonquin, and French. But, In 1646, two Jesuit missionaries went to the Mohawk to protect the fragile peace. The Iroquois attitude, however, soured as the missionaries traveled and the two were captured by Mohawks and killed in the village of Ossernenon on October 18, 1646. The priests names were Jean de Lalande and Isaac Jogues. In 1649, the Iroquois used recently purchased Dutch guns to attack the Huron in present day Michigan. These were the final battles of the Huron Confederacy. From 1651-1652, the Iroquois tried to attack the Susquehannock to thier southern borders without success. In 1653 the Onondaga offered peace to New France and the French sent more Jesuit missionaries. The missionaries thad to call off the mission after the Iroquois resumed hostilities due to the sudden death of 500 by European smallpox.From 16 From 1658-1663, the Iroquois went to war with the Susquehannock again but this time with the Susquehannock's allies of the Lenape and Province of Maryland. In 1663, a large Iroquois invasion force was defeated at the Susquehannock main fort. In 1663, the Iroquois were at war with the Sokoki tribe of the upper Connecticut River. Smallpox struck again; and through the effects of disease, famine and war, the Iroquois were threatened by extermination. In 1664, an Oneida party struck at allies of the Susquehannock on Chesapeake Bay. In 1665, three of the Five Nations made peace with the French. The following year, the Canadian Governor sent a regiment under Marquis de Tracy to confront the Mohawk and the Oneida. The Mohawk avoided battle, but the French burned their villages and crops. In 1667, the remaining two Iroquois Nations signed a peace treaty with the French and agreed to allow their missionaries to visit their villages. This treaty lasted for 17 years. Around 1670, the Iroquois drove the Mannahoac tribe out of the northern  V irginia Piedmont region. They began to claim ownership of the territory by right of conquest. In 1672, the Iroquois were defeated by a war party of Susquehannock. The Iroquois appealed to the French for support and asked Governor Frontenac to assist them against the Susquehannock. Some old histories state that the Iroquois defeated the Susquehannock during this time period. As no record of a defeat has been found, historians have concluded that no defeat occurred. In 1677, the Iroquois adopted the majority of the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock into their nation. See More Here: The Beaver Wars. French and Indian Wars Edit After a new peace treaty in 1701 with the French, the Iroquois stayed mostly neutral. During Queen Anne's War (North American part of the War of the Spanish Succession), they were involved in planned attacks against the French. The mayor of Albany arranged for three Mohawk chiefs and a Mahican chief to travel to London in 1710 to meet with Queen Anne in an effort to seal an alliance with the British. Queen Anne was so impressed by her visitors that she commissioned their portraits by a court painter. The portraits are believed to be the earliest surviving oil portraits of Aboriginal peoples taken from life. The incorrectly called 'Mohawk Chiefs' who met Queen Anne T


What Christian city was sacked during the Fourth Crusade?

The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople | History Today The Fourth Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople Crusades , Byzantine Empire Middle East , Turkey Military Jonathan Phillips sees one of the most notorious events in European history as a typical ‘clash of cultures’. The capture of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade was one of the most remarkable episodes in medieval history. One of their number wrote, ‘No history could ever relate marvels greater than those as far as the fortunes of war are concerned’. On April 12th, 1204, an army of perhaps 20,000 men and a fleet of about 200 ships crewed by Venetian sailors and warriors, broke in and began to loot the greatest metropolis in the Christian world. Constantinople’s mighty walls had resisted numerous onslaughts as the Avars, Persians and Arabs had tried to assail its defences over the centuries. Yet always ‘the queen of cities’, as the Byzantines described their capital, had survived. What had brought the crusaders to attack their fellow Christians and how did they manage to succeed? The crusaders understood their success as a manifestation of God’s will. One commented, ‘There can be no doubt that the hand of the Lord guided all of these events’.  Want the full article and website archive access? Already a member? Log in now


Who commissioned the Domesday Book to survey his conquests?

The Domesday Book By  Ben Johnson   |   Comments Hampstead is a pigsty… Residents of Hampstead might not be too pleased to learn that their exclusive London village once housed more pigs than people but this is just one of the fascinating insights to be gained from reading the Domesday Book. After the Norman invasion and conquest of England in 1066, the Domesday Book was commissioned in December 1085 by order of William The Conqueror. William needed to raise taxes to pay for his army and so a survey was set in motion to assess the wealth and and assets of his subjects throughout the land. This survey was also needed to asses the state of the country's economy in the aftermath of the Conquest and the unrest that followed it. First published in 1086, it contains records for 13,418 settlements in the English counties south of the rivers Ribble and Tees (the border with Scotland at the time). The information in the survey was collected by Royal commissioners who were sent out around England. The country was split up into 7 regions, or 'circuits', with 3 or 4 commissioners being assigned to each. They carried with them a set of questions and put these to a jury of representatives - made up of barons and villagers alike - from each county. Once they returned to London the information was combined with earlier records, from both before and after the Conquest, and was then entered, in Latin, into the final Domesday Book. As well as valuing assets, this fascinating document gives a valuable insight into land use at the time, the life of local landowners, and even disputes between neighbours. By studying individual entries it is possible to discover that upmarket Hampstead in London had woodland containing 100 pigs and was assessed as being worth 50 shillings. Brighton residents may enjoy fishing but how many catch enough to pay their taxes? The Domesday Book reveals that one Brighton landowner did exactly that - with 4,000 herrings to be precise! It acquired the name 'Domesday Book' because of the huge amount of information that was contained in it. Indeed, it was noted by an observer of the survey that "there was no single hide nor a yard of land, nor indeed one ox nor one cow nor one pig which was left out". This led the book to be compared to the Last Judgement, or 'Doomsday', described in the Bible, when the deeds of Christians written in the Book of Life were to be placed before God for judgement. The name 'Domesday Book' was not adopted until the late 12th Century. The Domesday Book is actually not one book but two. The first volume (Great Domesday) contains the final summarized record of all the counties surveyed except Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk. For these three counties the full, unabbreviated return sent in to Winchester by the commissioners is preserved in the second volume (Little Domesday), which, for some reason, was never summarized and added to the larger volume. Containing 413 pages, it is currently housed in a specially made chest at London's Public Record Office in Kew, London.


What island chain did Captain Cook discover before being killed by the people who already lived there?

COOK, James – Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1728–79). Pacific explorer. A new biography of Cook, James appears in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on this site. James Cook was born on 27 October 1728 at the Yorkshire    village of Marton, a few miles south of Middlesbrough, in the    valley of the Tees. His father, James Cook, a native of    Ednam, Roxburghshire, Scotland, was a farm labourer in the    employ of one Scottowe; his mother Grace, née Pace,    was a Yorkshirewoman. Cook was the second child and there    were other children. When Cook was about two years old    Scottowe appointed his father manager of Airy Holme Farm,    Great Ayton, a Yorkshire village a few miles south-east of    Marton. Here the son grew up as a farm boy. He was taught to    read by a Miss Mary Walker, and Scottowe paid for some    schooling for him at the village school. At the age of 17 Cook was apprenticed to William    Sanderson, a general storekeeper of Staithes, a small    Yorkshire seaport about a dozen miles from Great Ayton. After    18 months Sanderson released Cook from his apprenticeship so    that he might be apprenticed to Walker Brothers, shipowners    of the Yorkshire port of Whitby, at the mouth of the Esk.    Cook's apprenticeship for three years commenced in July 1746.    Walker Brothers were engaged mainly in the coastal coal trade    from Newcastle and other northern ports as far south as    London, and it was in the Freelove, a coal ship of    450 tons, that Cook's first seagoing experience, when he was    aged 17–19, was gained. During the winter off-season he lived    with his master, John Walker, who taught him navigation and    became his lifelong friend. In 1748 Cook was transferred to a    new Walker ship, the Three Brothers. In 1749 he had    served his time with the Walkers and for two years sailed    before the mast in the Baltic trade in the Mary and    in a ship of Stockton. In 1752 he returned to the employ of    the Walkers as mate of a new ship, the Friendship.    Three years later the Walkers offered him the command of the Friendship, but he declined the offer in order to    join the Navy, there being some possibility that he    anticipated being pressed into naval service. He enrolled as    an able seaman at Wapping on 17 June 1755. At that time    England was engaged in hostilities with France, although war    was not formally declared until 1756 (Seven Years' War). Cook's seagoing naval service commenced in the Eagle, of 60 guns, which he boarded at Portsmouth on    25 June 1755, under command of Captain Hamer. A month later    Cook was given the substantive position of master's mate. The Eagle was assigned with other ships to blockade the    French shipping, but suffered damage in a storm and returned    to refit. Hamer was replaced by Captain Hugh Palliser, who    was destined for a distinguished naval career and proved a    benefactor and friend of Cook. Early in 1756 Cook was    appointed boatswain and, for a short time, was in command of    a cutter off the French coast. After rejoining the Eagle Cook took a captured French ship to London. In    May 1757 he saw brisk action when the Eagle engaged    an armed French ship, capturing it. Cook received warrant    rank as master, was transferred to the Solebay, and,    a month later, to the Pembroke, of 64 guns. Early in 1758 Cook sailed in the Pembroke to    Halifax with Boscawen's fleet, and in July was present at the    capture of the French fortress of Louisburg, at the mouth of    the St. Lawrence. In 1759 Cook was engaged in surveying the    tortuous channels of the St. Lawrence in preparation for the    traverse of the British naval vessels as a prelude to Wolfe's    attack on Quebec. At one stage Wolfe consulted Cook    concerning the possibility of putting vessels close to the    French batteries at the mouth of the Montmorenci River, a    tribute to Cook's author


Who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel?

7 Facts About Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling 7 Facts About Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel Ceiling Everything You Wanted to Know About Michelangelo's Famous Frescoes Paintings Javier Sánchez / Getty Images Share By Shelley Esaak Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most influential artworks of all time and a foundational work of Renaissance Art. Painted directly on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, the masterpiece depicts key scenes from the Book of Genesis. The complex narratives and skillfully painted human figures stunned viewers when the painting was first unveiled to the public in 1512 and continues to impress the thousands of pilgrims and tourists from around the world who visit the Chapel every day. Below are seven essential facts about the Sistine Chapel ceiling and its creation.  1. The Paintings Were Commissioned by Pope Julius II  In 1508, Pope Julius II (also known as Giulio II and "Il papa terribile"), asked  Michelangelo to paint Sistine Chapel's ceiling. Julius was determined that Rome should be rebuilt to its former glory, and had embarked on a vigorous campaign achieve the ambitious task. He felt that such artistic splendor would not only add luster to his own name, but also serve to supersede anything that Pope Alexander VI (a Borgia, and Julius' rival) had accomplished. continue reading below our video 4 Tips for Improving Test Performance   2. Michelangelo Painted Over 5,000 Square Feet of Frescoes  The ceiling measures about 40 meters (131 feet) long by 13 meters (43 feet) wide. Although these numbers are rounded, they demonstrate the enormous scale of this nontraditional canvas. In fact, Michelangelo painted well over 5,000 square feet of frescoes.  3. The Panels Depict More Than Just Scenes From the Book of Genesis  The ceilings well-known central panels depict scenes from the Book of Genesis , from the Creation to the Fall to shortly after Noah's deluge. Adjacent to each of these scenes on either side, however, are immense portraits of prophets and sibyls who foretold the coming of the Messiah. Along the bottoms of these run spandrels and lunettes containing the ancestors of Jesus and stories of tragedy in ancient Israel. Scattered throughout are smaller figures, cherubs and ignudi (nudes). All told, there are more than 300 painted figures on the ceiling.  4. Michelangelo Was A Sculptor, Not A Painter Michelangelo thought of himself as a sculptor and preferred working with marble to almost any other material. Prior to the ceiling frescoes , the only painting he'd done was during his brief stint as a student in Ghirlandaio's workshop. Julius, however, was adamant that Michelangelo — and no other — should paint the Chapel's ceiling. To convince him, Julius offered as a reward to Michelangelo the wildly lucrative commission of sculpting 40 massive figures for his tomb, a project that appealed much more to Michelangelo given his artistic style.  5. The Paintings Took Four Years to Finish  It took Michelangelo a little over four years, from July of 1508 to October of 1512, to finish the paintings. Michelangelo had never painted frescoes before and was learning the craft as he worked. What's more, he chose to work in buon fresco, the most difficult method, and one normally reserved for true masters. He also had to learn some wickedly hard techniques in perspective, namely painting figures on curved surfaces that appear "correct" when viewed from nearly 60 feet below.  The work suffered numerous other setbacks, including mold and miserable, damp weather that disallowed plaster curing. The project was further stalled when Julius left to wage war and again when he fell ill. The ceiling project, and any hope Michelangelo had of being paid, were frequently in jeopardy while Julius was absent or near death.  6. Michelangelo Didn't Really Paint Lying Down  Although the classic film The Agony and the Ecstacy, depicts Michelangelo (played by Charlton Heston) painting the frescoes on his back, the real Michelangelo didn't work in this position. Instead, he conceived and had con


"What ""plot"" was Guy Fawkes involved in?"

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 - History Learning Site Home   »   Stuart England   »  The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 The Gunpowder Plot of 1605 Citation: C N Trueman "The Gunpowder Plot of 1605" historylearningsite.co.uk. The History Learning Site, 17 Mar 2015. 16 Aug 2016. In November 1605, the infamous Gunpowder Plot took place in which some Catholics, most famously Guy Fawkes,  plotted to blow up James I, the first of the Stuart kings of England. The story is remembered each November 5th when ‘Guys’ are burned in a celebration known as “Bonfire Night”. The story appears to be very simple. Catholics in England had expected James to be more tolerant of them. In fact, he had proved to be the opposite and had ordered all Catholic priests to leave England. This so angered some Catholics that they decided to kill James and put his daughter Elizabeth on the throne ensuring that she was a Catholic. This led to a plot to kill not only the king of England, James, but also everyone sitting in the Houses of Parliament at the same time as James was there when he opened Parliament on November 5th, 1605. Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, having rented out a house right by the Houses of Parliament,  managed to get 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar of the House of Lords. The other conspirators were: John Grant and the man who is said to have organised the whole plot Robert Catesby. The most famous picture of some the conspirators The explosive expert, Guy Fawkes, had been left in the cellars to set off the fuse. He was only caught when a group of guards decided to check the cellars at the last moment. Fawkes was arrested and sent to the Tower of London where he was tortured and eventually gave away the names of the fellow conspirators.  Sir William Wade, Lieutenant of the Tower, had orders to use whatever means of torture was required to get information from Fawkes. The order came from James.  Of those involved, some were shot as they were chased by the law such as Percy and Catesby. Others were captured, sent to the Tower and, after a brief trial, eventually hung, drawn and quartered, with Fawkes, in January 1606.    The signature of Guy Fawkes on his confession In celebration of his survival, James ordered that the people of England should have a great bonfire in the night on November 5th. This fire was traditionally topped off with an effigy of the pope rather than Guy Fawkes. His place at the top of the fire came in later as did fireworks. The East Sussex county town of Lewes still has the pope alongside Guy Fawkes when it comes to the effigies being burned. But is there more to this plot than just a small number of angry Catholics wanting to make a statement against the king, James? Some believe that the whole plot was a government conspiracy to convince James that Catholics could not be trusted. At the very least, some curious things happened when the story is looked at in detail. What is odd? We do know that James’ chief minister, Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, hated Catholics and saw them as a constant source of trouble. Cecil also feared that there was a chance that James would be lenient  with them during his reign and this he could not tolerate. That James only expelled priests was not good enough for Cecil. He wanted to remove Catholicism from England as he saw it as a threat. We know that James was terrified of a violent death; his childhood in Scotland had been fraught with danger including being kidnapped as a boy. What better way to get James to severely persecute the Catholics in England than to get him to believe that they had tried to kill him in this very violent manner? The government had a monopoly on gunpowder in this country and it was stored in places like the Tower of London. How did the conspirators get hold of 36 barrels of gunpowder without drawing attention to themselves? Did they get help from the government? How was the gunpowder moved across London from the Tower of London to Westminster (at least two miles distant) without anyone seeing it? The River Thames would not have been used as it could


What was the first name of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first lady?

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt | whitehouse.gov Air Force One Anna Eleanor Roosevelt Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady throughout her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt's four terms in office (1933-1945). She was an American politician, diplomat, and activist who later served as a United Nations spokeswoman. A shy, awkward child, starved for recognition and love, Eleanor Roosevelt grew into a woman with great sensitivity to the underprivileged of all creeds, races, and nations. Her constant work to improve their lot made her one of the most loved--and for some years one of the most revered--women of her generation. She was born in New York City on October 11, 1884, daughter of lovely Anna Hall and Elliott Roosevelt, younger brother of Theodore. When her mother died in 1892, the children went to live with Grandmother Hall; her adored father died only two years later. Attending a distinguished school in England gave her, at 15, her first chance to develop self-confidence among other girls. Tall, slender, graceful of figure but apprehensive at the thought of being a wallflower, she returned for a debut that she dreaded. In her circle of friends was a distant cousin, handsome young Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They became engaged in 1903 and were married in 1905, with her uncle the President giving the bride away. Within eleven years Eleanor bore six children; one son died in infancy. "I suppose I was fitting pretty well into the pattern of a fairly conventional, quiet, young society matron," she wrote later in her autobiography. In Albany, where Franklin served in the state Senate from 1910 to 1913, Eleanor started her long career as political helpmate. She gained a knowledge of Washington and its ways while he served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. When he was stricken with poliomyelitis in 1921, she tended him devotedly. She became active in the women's division of the State Democratic Committee to keep his interest in politics alive. From his successful campaign for governor in 1928 to the day of his death, she dedicated her life to his purposes. She became eyes and ears for him, a trusted and tireless reporter. When Mrs. Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, she understood social conditions better than any of her predecessors and she transformed the role of First Lady accordingly. She never shirked official entertaining; she greeted thousands with charming friendliness. She also broke precedent to hold press conferences, travel to all parts of the country, give lectures and radio broadcasts, and express her opinions candidly in a daily syndicated newspaper column, "My Day." This made her a tempting target for political enemies but her integrity, her graciousness, and her sincerity of purpose endeared her personally to many--from heads of state to servicemen she visited abroad during World War II. As she had written wistfully at 14: "...no matter how plain a woman may be if truth & loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her...." After the President's death in 1945 she returned to a cottage at his Hyde Park estate; she told reporters: "the story is over." Within a year, however, she began her service as American spokesman in the United Nations. She continued a vigorous career until her strength began to wane in 1962. She died in New York City that November, and was buried at Hyde Park beside her husband. The biographies of the First Ladies on WhiteHouse.gov are from “The First Ladies of the United States of America,” by Allida Black. Copyright 2009 by the White House Historical Association.


What is the name for a Viking warrior who fought in a trance-like, nearly uncontrollable fury?

The Viking Berserkers – fierce warriors or drug-fuelled madmen? | Ancient Origins 23 March, 2014 - 00:24 aprilholloway The Viking Berserkers – fierce warriors or drug-fuelled madmen? (Read the article on one page) Today, the word ‘berserk’ is used to describe anyone in an irrational, agitated state of mind who cannot or does not control his or her actions. The meaning of the word originates with the Viking berserkers, the fierce warriors who were known for battling in an uncontrollable, trance-like fury, and were alleged to be able to perform seemingly impossible super-human feats of strength. In medieval Norse and Germanic history and folklore, the berserkers were described as members of an unruly warrior gang that worshipped Odin, the supreme Norse deity, and were commissioned to royal and noble courts as bodyguards and ‘shock troops’, who would strike fear into all who encountered them. Adding to their ferocity, and in order to intimidate the enemy, they would wear bear and wolf pelts when they fought, giving them the name Berserker, meaning “bear coat” in Old Norse. The berserkers wore wolf and bear pelts. Image source . The fury of the berserkers would start with chills and teeth chattering and give way to a purpling of the face, as they literally became ‘hot-headed’, and culminating in a great, uncontrollable rage accompanied by grunts and howls. They would bite into their shields and gnaw at their skin before launching into battle, indiscriminately injuring, maiming and killing anything in their path. Dating back as far as the ninth century, the berserker Norse Warriors were said to be able to do things that normal humans could not. According to ancient legend, the berserkers were indestructible, and no weapon could break them from their trance.  They were described as being immune to fire and to the strike of a sword, continuing on their rampage despite injury. The Icelandic historian and poet Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241 AD) wrote the following description of berserkers in his Ynglinga saga: His (Odin's) men rushed forwards without armour, were as mad as dogs or wolves, bit their shields, and were strong as bears or wild oxen, and killed people at a blow, but neither fire nor iron told upon them. It is believed that this account is partially true and that their trance-like state actually prevented them from feeling pain until after the battle. While some researchers believe the Berserkers simply worked themselves up into a self-induced hysteria before fighting, others maintain that it was sorcery, the consumption of drugs or alcohol, or even mental illness, that accounted for their behaviour. Some botanists have claimed that berserker behaviour could have been caused by the ingestion of the plant known as bog myrtle, one of the main spices in Scandinavian alcoholic beverages. Other more esoteric theories surround supernatural beliefs. For instance, some scholars have claimed that the Vikings believed in spirit possession and that berserkers were possessed by the animal spirits of wolves or bears. According to some theorists, berserkers learned to cultivate the ability to allow animal spirits to take over their body during a fight (an example of animal totemism) that also involved drinking the blood of the animal that they wished to be possessed by. In 1015, Jarl Eiríkr Hákonarson of Norway outlawed berserkers, and Grágás, the medieval Icelandic law code, sentenced berserker warriors to outlawry. By the 12th century, organised berserker war-gangs had been completely disbanded. Featured image: The Viking Berserkers. Image source: wiki.totalwar.com


"What crop was ""king"" in the antebellum U.S. South?"

Agricultural Economy of Antebellum Life | NCpedia Agricultural Economy of Antebellum Life Copyright notice This article is from Tar Heel Junior Historian , published    for the Tar Heel Junior Historian Association by the North Carolina Museum     of History. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and     not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other     uses directly to the museum     editorial staff . Average: 3.9 (15 votes) Agricultural Economy of Antebellum Life by Charles LeCount Reprinted with permission from the Tar Heel Junior Historian. Fall 1996. Tar Heel Junior Historian Association, NC Museum of History One hundred fifty years ago, nearly all North Carolinians made their living by farming. And even the majority of those who did not actually farm were still tied to the state’s agricultural economy: merchants who bought and sold farm produce, craftsmen who made and repaired tools and equipment, and mill workers who processed crops into goods that could be sold or traded, among others. Some of these people also farmed part of the time. During the antebellum period , basically two types of landed, or landowning, people were found in North Carolina. A minority of them were wealthy planters. The larger group was often called yeoman farmers , or sometimes common whites. Planters Planters specialized in raising cash crops like tobacco and cotton. In order to make money from these crops, planters had to raise them in large amounts with cheap labor and then transport them inexpensively to market. Planters generally owned enslaved Africans and later African Americans, on whom they relied to provide cheap labor. They ideally situated their plantations near the coast and along navigable rivers or, later, close to railroads to ensure inexpensive, reliable transportation.   An example of one small planter, who kept a journal, was William Wallace White . White owned a 614-acre plantation called Holly Hill in Warren County , and in 1860 he owned approximately fifteen slaves. On his plantation, these enslaved persons produced tobacco, wheat, oats, corn, and potatoes; raised hogs; and kept a dairy herd of eleven cows. White’s plantation also had an extensive garden for his family, as well as gardens for his slaves. His slaves usually worked all day and often into the evenings, six days a week. But, according to his journal, in August 1857, as his crops were laying in, he gave his enslaved workers a daylong “holiday”—he decided to throw them a barbecue. White also lightened their workloads around Christmas, and, judging from his journal, little work of consequence was done in January.   Yeoman Farmers Most white North Carolinians, however, were not planters. They owned their own small farms and frequently did not own any slaves. These farmers practiced a “safety first” form of subsistence agriculture by growing a wide range of crops in small amounts so that the needs of their families were met first.   Emsley Burgess of Randolph County was an example of a yeoman farmer. Burgess, who kept a journal, lived in a log cabin with his wife and eight children. A Quaker who owned no slaves, he relied on the labor of his children and relatives, a few neighbors, and some hired help—often poor whites looking for work—to maintain his small farm. He was often busy. The forty-three-year-old Burgess recounted a day’s accomplishments one October:  “... put up husks at the barn sowed some wheat gathered corn over the creek sowed wheat hauled a load of corn.” Still, he could take days off and often enjoyed summer evenings visiting neighbors and relatives and eating watermelon.   Burgess grew corn, wheat, rice, potatoes, and oats, and kept a large garden where he grew peas, onions, beets, lettuce, radishes, watermelons, beans, and cucumbers, among other vegetables. Burgess also had patches of cotton and flax to satisfy some of his family’s textile needs. To make money for buying household items he could not raise or produce himself, Burgess made barrels and metal cans to sell and repair


In what modern-day country were the oldest human remains found?

Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found Oldest Skeleton of Human Ancestor Found Jamie Shreeve October 1, 2009 Move over, Lucy. And kiss the missing link goodbye. Scientists today announced the discovery of the oldest fossil skeleton of a human ancestor. The find reveals that our forebears underwent a previously unknown stage of evolution more than a million years before Lucy , the iconic early human ancestor specimen that walked the Earth 3.2 million years ago. Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds The centerpiece of a treasure trove of new fossils, the skeleton—assigned to a species called Ardipithecus ramidus—belonged to a small-brained, 110-pound (50-kilogram) female nicknamed "Ardi." (See pictures of Ardipithecus ramidus .) The fossil puts to rest the notion, popular since Darwin's time, that a chimpanzee -like missing link—resembling something between humans and today's apes—would eventually be found at the root of the human family tree. Indeed, the new evidence suggests that the study of chimpanzee anatomy and behavior—long used to infer the nature of the earliest human ancestors—is largely irrelevant to understanding our beginnings. Ardi instead shows an unexpected mix of advanced characteristics and of primitive traits seen in much older apes that were unlike chimps or gorillas ( interactive: Ardi's key features ). As such, the skeleton offers a window on what the last common ancestor of humans and living apes might have been like. Announced at joint press conferences in Washington, D.C. , and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia , the analysis of the Ardipithecus ramidus bones will be published in a collection of papers tomorrow in a special edition of the journal Science, along with an avalanche of supporting materials published online. "This find is far more important than Lucy," said Alan Walker, a paleontologist from Pennsylvania State University who was not part of the research. "It shows that the last common ancestor with chimps didn't look like a chimp, or a human, or some funny thing in between." (Related: "Oldest Homo Sapiens Fossils Found, Experts Say" [June 11, 2003].) Ardi Surrounded by Family The Ardipithecus ramidus fossils were discovered in Ethiopia's harsh Afar desert at a site called Aramis in the Middle Awash region, just 46 miles (74 kilometers) from where Lucy's species, Australopithecus afarensis, was found in 1974. Radiometric dating of two layers of volcanic ash that tightly sandwiched the fossil deposits revealed that Ardi lived 4.4 million years ago. Older hominid fossils have been uncovered, including a skull from Chad at least six million years old and some more fragmentary, slightly younger remains from Kenya and nearby in the Middle Awash. While important, however, none of those earlier fossils are nearly as revealing as the newly announced remains, which in addition to Ardi's partial skeleton include bones representing at least 36 other individuals. "All of a sudden you've got fingers and toes and arms and legs and heads and teeth," said Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley, who co-directed the work with Berhane Asfaw, a paleoanthropologist and former director of the National Museum of Ethiopia, and Giday WoldeGabriel, a geologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "That allows you to do something you can't do with isolated specimens," White said. "It allows you to do biology." Ardi's Weird Way of Moving The biggest surprise about Ardipithecus's biology is its bizarre means of moving about. All previously known hominids—members of our ancestral lineage—walked upright on two legs, like us. But Ardi's feet, pelvis, legs, and hands suggest she was a biped on the ground but a quadruped when moving about in the trees. Her big toe, for instance, splays out from her foot like an ape's, the better to grasp tree limbs. Unlike a chimpanzee foot, however, Ardipithecus's contains a special small bone inside a tendon, passed down from more primitive ancestors, that keeps the divergent toe more rigid. Combined with modifications to the other toes, the bone woul


"What city had a liberal ""spring"" in 1968 that was crushed by Soviet tanks?"

NATO Update - 1968 1968   Summary If NATO        and the Warsaw Pact states are learning to live together, with some        semblance of normality, the Soviet Union's determination to exercise        rigid control over Eastern Europe remains as strong as ever. In        1953, the Soviet Union had suppressed protests by East German workers;        in 1956, Soviet tanks crushed the anti-regime rebellion in Hungary.        Now it is the turn of Czechoslovakia. While remaining loyal to Communism,        the Czech leader, Alexander Dubcek, had begun to introduce liberal        reforms but his Prague Spring is terminated in August 1968 when        Soviet tanks enter the city.   19       Jan The United States and the Soviet Union table a draft nuclear non-proliferation        treaty at the Geneva Disarmament Conference. 24-25       June The Ministerial meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Reykjavik,        Iceland reviews current measures affecting access routes to Berlin        and issues a Declaration on Mutual and Balanced Force Reductions. Additional        information:


In the 1700's what did men commonly wear that was powdered and white?

Why Did People Wear Powdered Wigs? | Mental Floss Why Did People Wear Powdered Wigs? filed under: Big Questions Like us on Facebook For nearly two centuries, powdered wigs—called perukes—were all the rage. The chic hairpiece would have never become popular, however, if it hadn't been for a venereal disease, a pair of self-conscious kings, and poor hair hygiene.   The peruke’s story begins like many others—with syphilis. By 1580, the STD had become the worst epidemic to strike Europe since the Black Death. According to William Clowes, an “infinite multitude” of syphilis patients clogged London’s hospitals, and more filtered in each day. Without antibiotics, victims faced the full brunt of the disease: open sores, nasty rashes, blindness, dementia, and patchy hair loss. Baldness swept the land. At the time, hair loss was a one-way ticket to public embarrassment. Long hair was a trendy status symbol, and a bald dome could stain any reputation. When Samuel Pepys’s brother acquired syphilis, the diarist wrote, “If [my brother] lives, he will not be able to show his head—which will be a very great shame to me.” Hair was that big of a deal. Cover-Up And so, the syphilis outbreak sparked a surge in wigmaking. Victims hid their baldness, as well as the bloody sores that scoured their faces, with wigs made of horse, goat, or human hair. Perukes were also coated with powder—scented with lavender or orange—to hide any funky aromas. Although common, wigs were not exactly stylish. They were just a shameful necessity. That changed in 1655, when the King of France started losing his hair. Louis XIV was only 17 when his mop started thinning. Worried that baldness would hurt his reputation, Louis hired 48 wigmakers to save his image. Five years later, the King of England—Louis’s cousin, Charles II—did the same thing when his hair started to gray (both men likely had syphilis). Courtiers and other aristocrats immediately copied the two kings. They sported wigs, and the style trickled down to the upper-middle class. Europe’s newest fad was born. The cost of wigs increased, and perukes became a scheme for flaunting wealth. An everyday wig cost about 25 shillings—a week’s pay for a common Londoner. The bill for large, elaborate perukes ballooned to as high as 800 shillings. The word “bigwig” was coined to describe snobs who could afford big, poufy perukes. When Louis and Charles died, wigs stayed around. Perukes remained popular because they were so practical. At the time, head lice were everywhere, and nitpicking was painful and time-consuming. Wigs, however, curbed the problem. Lice stopped infesting people’s hair—which had to be shaved for the peruke to fit—and camped out on wigs instead. Delousing a wig was much easier than delousing a head of hair: you’d send the dirty headpiece to a wigmaker, who would boil the wig and remove the nits. Wig Out By the late 18th century, the trend was dying out. French citizens ousted the peruke during the Revolution, and Brits stopped wearing wigs after William Pitt levied a tax on hair powder in 1795. Short, natural hair became the new craze, and it would stay that way for another two centuries or so.


Who Was The President During World War One Who Was The President During World War One   Who Was The President During World War One ?   When World War One was going on, the US president was Woodrow Wilson, who wanted the US to stay neutral. Wilson tried everything possible for 2 years to prevent the US from entering the war. Even when the German U-boat sunk the liner, Lusitania, and caused the death of 124 Americans, the US stayed out of the war. Then, in the year 1916, Wilson was re-elected as the US president by a narrow margin. It is believed that Woodrow Wilson won the re-election because he promised to keep the US out of the war and had succeeded for 2 years. After being re-elected as the president, Wilson tried to mediate between the Allies and the Central Powers to no effect. And, then the Germans returned to submarine warfare that sunk many American merchant ships. This was the last straw for Wilson, who requested the US Congress on 2nd April 1917 to declare war against Germany. On 6th April 1917, the Congress passed a resolution to declare war. After this, the US started conscription and this allowed the US to increase its army strength to 4 million in 18 months. Out of these, 2 million soldiers were sent to Europe. Wilson claimed that the US entry into the First World War was a war to end the war. He did not want revenge, but was looking for peace. On 8th January 1918, Woodrow Wilson announced his famous 14 Points for a peace settlement. On 11 November 1918, the war came to an end with surrender of the German forces. At the same time, the Germans put forth their proposal for peace. This occurred during the US Congressional elections and Woodrow Wilson asked the people to support his policies by electing the Democrats. However, the Democrats lost and the Republicans gained control of the Congress. This did not stop Wilson from attending the peace conference held at Paris and he tried to defend his 14 Points program. The peace conference went on for a week and the English, Italians and French were determined to have their way. The peace agreement did have many of the points suggested by Woodrow Wilson and he was also instrumental in getting the nations to agree to form the League of Nations. On return to the US, Wilson tried to get the US Congress to approve the US joining the League of Nations. However, the Congress did not support it. Wilson then toured the country to get support from the people. This exhausted him and in late September 1919, Wilson suffered a stroke that paralyzed him. It was just strong will that kept him going. Wilson continued to fulfill his duties as the president of the US, but his illness did not allow him to take part in the 1920 presidential elections which was won by the Democrat James M Cox. More Articles :


Who is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov better know as?

Lenin Biography -Biography Online Biography Online About Lenin Biography Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin (April 22, 1870 – January 21, 1924) was a Russian revolutionary, and the leader of the Bolshevik party. He was the first leader of the USSR and the Communist government that took over Russia in 1917. Lenin is also known as the creator of Leninism a version of Communism that Lenin adapted for the Soviet Union. “We want to achieve a new and better order of society: in this new and better society there must be neither rich nor poor; all will have to work. Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people. This new and better society is called socialist society.” Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol 6, p.366 Early Life – Lenin Lenin was born in the town of Simbirsk in the Russian Empire. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father was an education official. Lenin was an able student, learning Latin and Greek. In 1887, he was thrown out of Kazan State University because he protested against the Tsar who was the king of the Russian Empire. He continued to read books and study ideas by himself, and in 1891 he got a license to become a lawyer. In the same year that Lenin was expelled from University, his brother Alexander was hanged for his part in a bomb plot to kill Tsar Alexander III, and their sister Anna was sent to Tatarstan. This made Lenin furious, and he promised to get revenge for his brother’s death. Lenin before the Revolution Whilst studying law in St. Petersburg he learned about the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, both radical Marxist philosophers from Germany. Lenin developed a lifelong philosophy of seeking to overthrow Capitalist society and replace it with a fairer Communist society. He saw existing Capitalist society as inherently unjust. “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. “ – Lenin For becoming involved and writing about Marxism, Lenin was arrested sent to prison in Siberia. In July 1898, when he was still in Siberia, Lenin married Nadezhda Krupskaya. In 1899 he wrote a book he called The Development of Capitalism in Russia”. In 1900, Lenin was set free from prison and allowed to go back home. He then travelled around Europe. He began to publish a Marxist newspaper called Iskra, the Russian word for “spark” or “lightning”. He also became an important member of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, or RSDLP. In 1903, Lenin had a major argument with another leader of the party, Julius Martov, which divided the party in two. Lenin wanted a strict system where power would only be given to the government. Martov disagreed, and wanted the government to give power to ordinary people. People who agreed with Martov were called Mensheviks (meaning “the minority”). The people who agreed with Lenin were called Bolsheviks (“the majority”). In 1907 he travelled around Europe again, and visited many socialist meetings and events. During World War I, he lived in big European cities like London, Paris and Geneva. At the beginning of the war, a big left-wing meeting called the Second International included the Bolsheviks. The meeting was shut down when a lot of the groups argued whether or not to support the war. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were one of only a few groups who were against the war because of their Marxist ideas. 1917 Revolution In 1917, people started rumours that Lenin had received money from the Germans. That made him look bad because a lot of Russians had died fighting Germany in the war. The rumours were so bad he was afraid he could get arrested or even killed. He left Russia and went to Finland, a country right next to Russia, where he could hide and carry on with his work on Communism. After Tsar Nicholas II gave up his throne during the February Revolution, Germany hoped


In what theater was Abraham Lincoln shot?

Ford's Theatre (U.S. National Park Service) Contact Us Abraham Lincoln's Legacy Lives Explore Ford's Theatre NHS, discover Abraham Lincoln's life in Washington, D.C., the struggle for a united country, and the motivation behind Lincoln's assassination. The National Park Service and the Ford's Theatre Society present a variety of programs year round.


What country still denies its slaughter of over a million Armenians that happened in 1915?

Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide What is the Armenian Genocide? [top of list] The atrocities committed against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during W.W.I are called the Armenian Genocide. Genocide is the organized killing of a people for the express purpose of putting an end to their collective existence. Because of its scope, genocide requires central planning and a machinery to implement it. This makes genocide the quintessential state crime as only a government has the resources to carry out such a scheme of destruction. The Armenian Genocide was centrally planned and administered by the Turkish government against the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. It was carried out during W.W.I between the years 1915 and 1918. The Armenian people were subjected to deportation, expropriation, abduction, torture, massacre, and starvation. The great bulk of the Armenian population was forcibly removed from Armenia and Anatolia to Syria, where the vast majority was sent into the desert to die of thirst and hunger. Large numbers of Armenians were methodically massacred throughout the Ottoman Empire. Women and children were abducted and horribly abused. The entire wealth of the Armenian people was expropriated. After only a little more than a year of calm at the end of W.W.I, the atrocities were renewed between 1920 and 1923, and the remaining Armenians were subjected to further massacres and expulsions. In 1915, thirty-three years before UN Genocide Convention was adopted, the Armenian Genocide was condemned by the international community as a crime against humanity. Who was responsible for the Armenian Genocide? [top of list] The decision to carry out a genocide against the Armenian people was made by the political party in power in the Ottoman Empire. This was the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) (or Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti), popularly known as the Young Turks. Three figures from the CUP controlled the government; Mehmet Talaat, Minister of the Interior in 1915 and Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) in 1917; Ismail Enver, Minister of War; Ahmed Jemal, Minister of the Marine and Military Governor of Syria. This Young Turk triumvirate relied on other members of the CUP appointed to high government posts and assigned to military commands to carry out the Armenian Genocide. In addition to the Ministry of War and the Ministry of the Interior, the Young Turks also relied on a newly-created secret outfit which they manned with convicts and irregular troops, called the Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa). Its primary function was the carrying out of the mass slaughter of the deported Armenians. In charge of the Special Organization was Behaeddin Shakir, a medical doctor. Moreover, ideologists such as Zia Gokalp propagandized through the media on behalf of the CUP by promoting Pan-Turanism, the creation of a new empire stretching from Anatolia into Central Asia whose population would be exclusively Turkic. These concepts justified and popularized the secret CUP plans to liquidate the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turk conspirators, other leading figures of the wartime Ottoman government, members of the CUP Central Committee, and many provincial administrators responsible for atrocities against the Armenians were indicted for their crimes at the end of the war. The main culprits evaded justice by fleeing the country. Even so, they were tried in absentia and found guilty of capital crimes. The massacres, expulsions, and further mistreatment of the Armenians between 1920 and 1923 were carried by the Turkish Nationalists, who represented a new political movement opposed to the Young Turks, but who shared a common ideology of ethnic exclusivity. How many people died in the Armenian Genocide? [top of list] It is estimated that one and a half million Armenians perished between 1915 and 1923. There were an estimated two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire on the eve of W.W.I. Well over a million were deported in


Thebes and Memphis were once capitals of what empire?

Memphis and Thebes: The Rise and Fall of Mighty Empires | NewsOutsideMyWindow Memphis and Thebes: The Rise and Fall of Mighty Empires By Keya Majoomdar Where do I begin to tell the story of a land which dates back to 6000 BC ? I suppose I should start with the great river an-nīl or  النيل in Arabic, or The Nile in English. As I’ve mentioned in a previous blog, the Nile is really two rivers – the White Nile that rises in the African Great Lakes , and the Blue Nile that rises in Lake Tana in Ethopia. They join together at Khartoum in Sudan to form the mighty and storied river that flows north through the vast Sahara desert . Great civilizations are founded along mighty rivers and so the Nile encouraged early hunter-gatherers to settle down and cultivate the fertile land on either sides of her banks. The earliest known pharaoh who unified Egypt and controlled the whole navigable length of the Nile was King Menes – The Founder – and dates back to around  3150 BC . He was the first of the 30 Egyptian dynasties that ruled for three millennia, making Egypt one of the best examples of social continuity in history. The capital of ancient Egypt during the The Old Kingdom was Memphis, near modern day Cairo. Its earliest name was possibly Inebou-Hedjou. Under several dynastic revisions it changed to  Menfe and was finally, corrupted in Greek to Memphis. The earliest historian of Egypt, Manetho, called it Hut-ka-Ptah (meaning “Enclosure of the god, Ptah”) which he approximated in Greek as Ai-gy-ptos and thus the origin of the name of the ancient land, Egypt. The three great pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx were built during the Old Kingdom between c.2575-c.2465 BC. The kings of the fifth and sixth dynasties continued to rule from Memphis, but after that, between the seventh and tenth dynasties, came a century of anarchy. When stability returned around 2000 BC, Mentuhotep II of the eleventh dynasty reunified Egypt and moved his principal city to Thebes, several hundred kilometers upstream from Memphis. He attempted to colonize Nubia , its most important trading post lying further upstream – now a part of northern Sudan – to possess its precious gold from Nubia’s mines and other rare luxuries such as ivory, ebony, leopard skin, ostrich plumes and slaves. The eleventh and twelfth dynasties of Egypt form the Middle Kingdom and the great temples of Thebes – modern day Luxor, display the extravagant wealth of Ancient Egypt at the peak of its power. After the twelfth dynasty, Egypt plunged into chaos for a century when it was overrun with foreigners. Little is known of them except that they came from Asia – possibly Palestine or Phoenicia – worshipped the god Seth, and are identified by Manetho the historian as the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties of Egypt. But a powerful family from Thebes finally gathered enough strength to drive out the intruders and set up the seventeenth indigenous dynasty in Egypt. The eighteenth dynasty is called the most glorious dynasty of all and their rule marks the beginning of the New Kingdom . The New Kingdom is ruled by three dynasties over half a millennia and provide the bulk of the art and artefacts that ancient Egypt is famous for. The most powerful king was Thutmose I who conquered Nubia and lands further upstream in the south, and Syria and and lands around the Euphrates in the north. Thutmose and his descendants, including Tutankhamen, ruled over Egypt for over a century and a half. The nineteenth dynasty started when Ramses I ascended the throne. His grandson Ramses II is the most famous pharaoh of them all, known for the gigantic seated statues he commissioned to be built at Luxor. He is also considered the most ideal pharaoh for his long and peaceful reign, the size of his family and his flair for publicizing through numerous inscriptions and monuments his many achievements! The twentieth dynasty of pharaohs were not descendants of Ramses but took his name anyway, in an unbroken line from Ramses III to XI, but they were unable to control the vast empire that extended from Nubia in the south to Libya


"Who ""invented"" the hang glider, parachute, and diving suit?"

The Parachute » Leonardo Da Vinci's Inventions Leonardo Da Vinci's Inventions Leonardo da Vinci’s Parachute leonardo-da-vincis-parachute Leonardo da Vinci’s Parachute most likely came about as he was testing the feasibility of one of his flying machines. Although he himself probably did not get into any of the machines (most likely one of his apprentices – Leonardo would have been an old man at the time) he still would have realized that the designs were unstable and/or downright dangerous. As you can see from the image above it simply shows a man hanging onto the parachute by his bare hands – it is a very simplified design for Leonardo. To the left hand side of the parachute drawing are the words (in typical mirror writing) –   “If a man have a tent made of linen of which the apertures (openings) have all been stopped up, and it be twelve braccia (about 23 feet) across and twelve in depth, he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without suffering any injury.”   He clearly had confidence in his own design and had done some mathematical calculations, possibly based on some of his wind resistance and friction studies. But the question remains – Would the parachute work? The answer to that is….Yes. 500 years after it was designed in June 2000, Leonardo da Vinci’s parachute was tested by a team of enthusiasts and parachutists. The only modification made was to strengthen the harnesses holding the parachutist in place, this was a modern harness. The guinea pig (Adrian Nicholas)would also carry his own modern parachute, just in case. Thankfully it was not needed as Leonardo’s parachute worked just as the designer had imagined and stated – So essentially, combining the glider, parachute, landing gear and helicopter, Leonardo almost invented all modern forms of air transport, unfortunately as is nearly always the case, Leonardo was born several centuries before the rest of humanity and the science of the time was ready for him.


What Parisienne was the first person to win multiple Nobel Prizes?

The 10 Noblest Nobel Prize Winners of All Time The 10 Noblest Nobel Prize Winners of All Time By Live Science Staff | October 4, 2011 02:55pm ET MORE The 2011 Nobel Prizes are being handed out this week. So far, the prize for physiology or medicine has gone to a trio of researchers who uncovered various aspects of the nature of immunity, and the physics prize has gone to a trio of physicists who discovered in the late 1990s that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. These achievements are great indeed, and the winners join a list of some of humanity's finest representatives. Here's a sampling of notable Nobel Prize recipients of the past, and what they accomplished. [ Gallery of notable winners ] Albert Einstein Who better to kick off this list than perhaps the most famous scientist in the history of the world? Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for discovering the cause of the "photoelectric effect." This was a perplexing phenomenon in which atoms, when bombarded with light, emitted electrons. In 1905, Einstein argued that light was divided into discrete packets (which we now call photons). He theorized that, when these light packets struck atoms, electrons in those atoms absorbed them, and, with the extra energy, wrested free of the atoms that bound them. The fact that light is composed of particles that are absorbed and emitted by atoms was just one of Einstein's many revolutionary discoveries. He also came up with the theories of special and general relativity , and discovered that matter and energy are equivalent (as embodied in the equation E=mc² ). A true polymath — within science, at least — he even wrote a paper explaining why the average "meandering ratio" of a river — the ratio of its length to the distance between its source and mouth as the crow flies — is equal to pi. Marie Curie & Co. Marie Curie was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes, and is one of only two people in the history of the Nobels to win in two different fields. She and her husband Pierre, along with Henri Becquerel, won the Physics Prize in 1903 for their discovery of radioactivity. She then won for chemistry in 1911 for discovering the elements radium and polonium and investigating their properties. [ What Everyday Things Around Us Are Radioactive? ] The Curies are the darlings of the Nobel Prizes. On top of Marie and Pierre's wins, their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie received the chemistry prize in 1935 together with her husband, Frédéric. And Henry Labouisse, the husband of Marie Curie's second daughter, was the director of UNICEF when the international organization won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1965. Sir Alexander Fleming & Co. The 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Sir Alexander Fleming, Ernst Chain and Sir Howard Florey for their discovery of penicillin, a fungus, and its use as an antibiotic. Common wisdom has it that Sir Alexander made the discovery accidentally when he ate a piece of moldy bread and became cured of an infectious disease. The grain of truth in the story is that the discovery was indeed an accident. Fleming went away on vacation in August 1928 and returned to his laboratory in early September to discover that a fungus had developed in a stack of Petri dishes containing bacteria. The bacteria had died in the dishes immediately surrounding the fungus, while bacteria in the dishes farther away were unaffected. Fleming spent the next couple of decades investigating the antibacterial effects of what he at first called "mould juice" and later named "penicillin" after the fungus' genus (Penicillium). Chain and Florey contributed by conducting rigorous clinical trials that proved the great usefulness of penicillin and figuring out how to purify and produce it in bulk. Penicillin cures staph infections, scarlet fever, gonorrhea, pneumonia, meningitis, diphtheria, syphilis and other serious infectious diseases. Hermann Muller In 1946, an American named Hermann Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that radiation causes mutations. A biologist b


Who sent a telegram from Kitty Hawk in 1903?

Telegram from Orville Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to His Father Announcing Four Successful Flights, 1903 December 17 - World Digital Library World Digital Library Telegram from Orville Wright in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, to His Father Announcing Four Successful Flights, 1903 December 17 Description At approximately 10:35 in the morning on December 17, 1903, Orville Wright made the first powered, controlled, and sustained flight of a heavier-than-air machine. The flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet (37 meters). Orville and his brother Wilbur made three more flights that day, the longest of which covered 852 feet (260 meters) in 59 seconds. With this telegram, sent from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the late afternoon of the same day, Orville informed their father of the achievement. The text reads: “Success four flights this morning all against twenty one mile wind started from Level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas”. The Wright brothers ran a shop in Dayton, Ohio, where they rented, sold, and manufactured bicycles. Their father, the Most Reverend Milton Wright, was a bishop in the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, whose gift of a toy “helicopter” to his sons in 1878, when Orville was seven years old and Wilbur aged eleven, has been credited with helping to kindle in them their fascination with mechanical flight. The brothers chose Kitty Hawk as the location of the first flight based on information provided by the Weather Bureau in Washington, DC.


What Puritanical English ruler banned Christmas?

The Puritan War on Christmas | History Today The Puritan War on Christmas Cultural , Religion Christmas 'Trappings of popery and rags of the beast'. Mince-pies, mummers, holly and church services all fell victim to a determined Puritan attempt to stamp out the celebration of Christmas under the Commonwealth. During the seventeenth century, as now, Christmas was one of the most important dates in the calendar, both as a religious festival and as an important holiday period during which English men and women indulged in a range of traditional pastimes. During the twelve days of a seventeenth-century Christmas, churches and other buildings were decorated with rosemary and bays, holly and ivy; Christmas Day church services were widely attended, gifts were exchanged at New Year, and Christmas boxes were distributed to servants, tradesmen and the poor; great quantities of brawn, roast beef, 'plum-pottage', minced pies and special Christmas ale were consumed, and the populace indulged themselves in dancing, singing, card games and stage-plays. Such long-cherished activities necessarily often led to drunkenness, promiscuity and other forms of excess. In fact the concept of 'misrule', or a ritualised reversal of traditional social norms, was an important element of Christmas, and has been viewed by historians as a useful safety-valve for the tensions within English society. It was precisely this face of Christmas, however, that the Puritans of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England found so objectionable. In the 1580s, Philip Stubbes, the author of The Anatomie of Abuses, complained: That more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides, what masking and mumming, whereby robbery whoredom, murder and what not is committed? What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonour of God and impoverishing of the realm. In addition to this association with immorality and the concept of misrule, another of the central objections to the feast for the stricter English Protestants between 1560 and 1640 was its popularity among the papist recusant community. Within the late medieval Catholic church, Christmas had taken a subordinate position in the liturgical calendar to Easter. Its importance, however, had been growing and was further enhanced by the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century, for whereas, as John Bossy has recently pointed out, the more extreme Protestants had little time fox Christ's 'holy family', reformed Catholicism laid great stress on this area. The Tridentine emphasis on devotions to the Virgin Mary in particular elevated the status of the feast during which she was portrayed as a paragon of motherhood. Certainly, English recusants seem to have retained a deep attachment to Christmas during Elizabeth I's reign and the early part of the seventeenth century. The staunchly Catholic gentlewoman, Dorothy Lawson, celebrated Christmas 'in both kinds... corporally and spiritually', indulging in Christmas pies, dancing and gambling. In 1594 imprisoned Catholic priests at Wisbech kept a traditional Christmas which included a hobby horse and morris dancing, and throughout the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Benedictine school at Douai retained the traditional festivities, complete with an elected 'Christmas King'. The Elizabethan Jesuit, John Gerard, relates in his autobiography how their vigorous celebration of Christmas and other feasts made Catholics particularly conspicuous at those times and, writing on the eve of the Civil War Richard Carpenter, a convert from Catholicism to Protestantism, observed that the recusant gentry were noted for their 'great Christmasses'. As a result, by the 1640s many English Protestants viewed Christmas festivities as the trappings of popery, anti-Christian 'rags of the Beast'. The celebration of Christmas thus became just one facet of a deep religious cleavage within early seventeenth-century England which, by the middle of the century, was to lead to the brea