From discovery.com: Italy's Medici Murder Plot Solved.
One of the most notorious crimes of the Renaissance, the attempted assassination of Florence's grandest son, Lorenzo dei Medici, has been solved more than 500 years later.
Known as the Pazzi conspiracy, the plot was led by Francesco dei Pazzi, whose banking family had resented for years the Medici climb to power.
The Pazzi plotted to kill Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano during a High Mass in the city's cathedral in April 1478. Wounded, Lorenzo managed to escape and barricade himself behind the bronze sacristy doors, but Giuliano bled to death on the cathedral floor.
New findings now reveal that the plot was more than the result of a feud between two families. Behind the Pazzis lay a larger network of powerful conspirators who aimed to destroy Lorenzo the Magnificent and his expansionist ambitions for the Florentine state.
"One of the prime movers in the plot was none less than Federico da Moltefeltro, Duke of Urbino, always portrayed as a good friend of Lorenzo," Marcello Simonetta, a historian at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, told Discovery News.
The proof lies in a secret letter to Urbino's ambassadors in Rome that lay forgotten in the private Ubaldini archive. The letter was encrypted, but Simonetta had one advantage when he tried to decipher it: a 15th-century booklet written by an ancestor of his, explaining how to decode diplomatic correspondence. [continue]
Related:
The Medici Family - Wikipedia
Exhuming the Medici family - Mirabilis.ca
The Star Online (Malaysia) has published a fascinating article: On the trail of Marco Polo.
I do not tell half of what I saw because no one would have believed me. – Marco Polo on his deathbed
When Marco Polo uttered this immortal line on his deathbed in 1324, little did he imagine that 680 years later he would be vindicated through the lens of National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita.
Polo’s medieval bestseller, The Description of the World, which was written while he served time in a Genoese prison, initially took Europe by storm. However, his incredible tales of the wealth of Cathay (China), the Mongol empire’s might and the exotic customs of India and Africa were soon dismissed as fables, earning him the moniker, Marco Milione (or Marco of a Million Lies).
Since then, generations of historians have debated the authenticity of Polo’s claims. Some questioned his omissions of common Chinese practices like the use of chopsticks, the binding of women’s feet, tea drinking and calligraphy. He even gave the Great Wall a miss.
Furthermore, Polo’s name never appeared in the Annals of the Empire (Yuan Shih) which recorded the names of foreign visitors who were far less important and illustrious than him, his father, Nicolo, and his uncle, Maffeo.
Nevertheless, Polo did identify some important Chinese features. For instance, porcelain and the use of coal and paper money – all of which were unknown to Europeans in the 13th century. The nature-loving Polo also wrote in incredible detail of the birds, animals and plants that enthralled him during his travels.
Thus piqued, Yamashita used the controversial travelogue as a guide when he began his quest to unearth the Marco Polo mystery in 1999. For the Japanese-American photographer, Polo’s 17-year epic adventure in China was a subject that was close to his heart. [continue]
Related sites:
Marco Polo - Wikipedia
Marco Polo and His Travels - silk-road.com
Related book:
The Travels of Marco Polo - Amazon.com
From The Guardian: North wants its Lindisfarne treasure returned.
Britain's internal version of the Parthenon Marbles row will be raised in the Commons today by northern MPs determined to reclaim the "stolen icon" of their region's golden age.
Members from the Scottish border to the Tees will call for the return of the 1,300-year-old Lindisfarne Gospels, which were snatched from Durham Cathedral at the Reformation by agents of Henry VIII.
An adjournment debate called by Joyce Quin, Labour member for Gateshead, will tighten the pressure on the British Library to release them from their current "nice but ordinary" display in Euston Road, London.
The campaigners contrast the mildly interested visitors in London, where the 8th century texts are one of many exhibits, with crowds who packed the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne when the gospels were there on loan three years ago. [continue]
The British Library offers information about the Lindisfarne Gospels on their website, including thumbnail images (scroll down for those) of 20 pages. Oh, and don't miss the British Library's Turning the Pages tour of the Lindisfarne Gospels.
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Lindisfarne Gospels
Turning the Pages
Monastery Cats
Durham Cathedral
From The Scotsman: Rare Coin of Mystery Roman Emperor Found in Field.
A man with a metal detector has unearthed a Roman coin so rare it bears the face of a mystery emperor who "ruled" Britain for a matter of days.
Brian Malin, a father-of-one from Oxfordshire, unearthed the bronze coin in a field in Oxfordshire bearing the face of Emperor Domitianus.
It is only the second coin in existence to bear the image of the self-proclaimed ruler of Britain and France in 271AD.
A similar coin was found in France 100 years ago but until now its uniqueness had meant both Emperor Domitianus and the coin were dismissed as a hoax.
Historians say the British discovery confirms the French find is genuine and Domitianus existed.
They believe he was an upstart from the Roman legion who was ousted for treason for daring to declare himself emperor and have the coins made.
Mr Malin found the coin in a field in April last year, 10 miles south-east of Oxford.
The coin was among a pot of 5,000 all bearing the heads of emperors and stuck together, providing the perfect "timeline" for archaeologists. [continue]
Related:
New Roman emperor revealed by a coin - The Independent
‘Museum without walls’ displays Egypt's glories. From the Globe and Mail:
Experiencing the glories of Egypt, both ancient and modern, will become a lot easier starting today thanks to a groundbreaking joint effort of the Egyptian government and a Toronto-based team of Web designers.
The result of their three-year collaboration is a new website known as "Eternal Egypt," paid for by a $2.5-million (U.S.) donation from the IBM corporation.
"This project will enable us to treat the entire country of Egypt as a single museum that can be toured by individual visitors or a global audience," is how Farouk Hosni, Egypt's Minister of Culture, describes the endeavour that is being officially launched from Cairo today.
By going to the website -- http://www.eternalegypt.org -- a person sitting at a computer will be able to do such things as visit the Temple of Luxor or watch how the seated statue of Ramses II has changed over historical periods (once it was sheltered at the front of a temple, now it sits naked to the elements).
Tutankhamen's death mask is seen in such fine detail that holes made by decay or by the creation of the mask itself are visible. Structures that have disappeared, like the Lighthouse of Alexandria, destroyed in a 14th-century earthquake, are not just digitally recreated but can be viewed at different angles from all around the city's ancient harbour. [continue]
Wow! Eternal Egypt is a lovely site.
(N.B: The site uses background music on main page; Flash and Shockwave are used throughout.)
From the BBC: Real pain dulled in virtual worlds.
Fantasy worlds created by virtual reality have been shown to provide a novel form of relief to patients suffering from intractable pain.
Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, has tested his virtual worlds on victims of burns injuries who suffer excruciating pain during their daily dressing changes which conventional drug therapy fails to control.
Hoffman's virtual worlds, which he calls by names such as SnowWorld or SpiderWorld, are designed to immerse the user so deeply in the virtual experience that their attention is distracted away from the pain. [continue]
I thought I had British slang pretty much sussed, but obviously not. Here's the Britspeak I learned today from Darren Barefoot's blog and his link to this definition on the BBC site:
pile of pants, noun, slang, official term of rejection. Relatively new non-swearing slang term, meaning a load of rubbish or, indeed, knickers. Pants in this sense (NB not trousers as in the US; in the UK pants means underwear) only became slang in the 1990s (according to slang lexicographer Jonathon Green). Became official term of rejection even more recently (see below). Popular with students and DJs.
USAGE: Letter rejecting asylum seeker's case, from a Home Office official, December 2000: "With regard to your claim to be a national of Afghanistan, the Secretary of State thinks that this is a pile of pants." [continue]
How Catapults Married Sciences With Politics. From the New York Times:
In wars of antiquity, no weapon struck greater terror than the catapult. It was the heavy artillery of that day, the sturdy springboard that shot menacing payloads over fortress walls and into enemy camps — flaming missiles, diseased corpses, lethal arrows and stony projectiles.
For centuries on end, at least until the proliferation of gunpowder in the 15th-century West, catapults saw action as the early weapons of mass destruction. They were prized assets in an arms race and had profound effects on affairs of state. Sound familiar?
Perhaps that is why a small but growing number of historians and classics scholars are taking a closer look at the role of catapults not only in warfare, but also the politics of antiquity. Out of their careful re-reading of old texts, combined with archaeological finds, has emerged a revised view of the convergence of science and political power in earlier times. [continue]
Due to the release of a certain movie tomorrow, I think we'll be seeing a lot of articles like this one in the next while: Savagery of crucifixion a message from Rome.
Crucifixion was a painful, ignoble way to die. Its agony marred the body, and its image and memory still have the power to mar and madden the mind. Mel Gibson's movie about the Passion of Jesus Christ is only the latest echo.
Crucifixion, as a form of execution, was invented by the Persians, the ancestors of modern-day Iranians. It was picked up by the Greeks under Alexander the Great when they reached Asia. Alexander himself ordered 2,000 men of military age crucified after he captured Tyre in 332 B.C. The Romans adopted it and used it most spectacularly in 71 B.C., when 6,000 slaves who had rebelled under Spartacus were crucified along the Via Appia.
The punishment of crucifixion was meant to be shameful, lingering and exemplary: a public warning not to break the law. It was a horrible punishment, and by law Roman citizens were exempted from crucifixion. [continue]
From the Washington Times: Patent law seen as threat to ancient secrets.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (Agence France-Presse) — Indigenous people are trapped in a Catch-22 situation over the protection of their traditional knowledge about medicinal and other uses of plants, the United Nations University (UNU) said in a report last week.
The report urges changes to international law to eliminate what it calls "a modern absurdity" of forcing the holders of ancient secrets to disclose them publicly if they want to protect them. [continue]
From The Independent: 600-year-old ‘suburb’ is found on building site.
Scotland's first, purpose-built "suburb", constructed more than 600 years ago, may have been discovered on the site of a 21st-century development.
The new luxury housing estate in Dreghorn, Ayrshire, has been suspended while archaeologists uncover the remains of the medieval settlement as well as a stone age, or neolithic, hamlet.
The find sheds new light on rural life in medieval Scotland. Dreghorn, between the river Irvine and Annick Water, rose to prominence in the 19th century as a coal-mining and brick-making centre. But it had been a thriving medieval village hundreds of years earlier and had supported rural life in the area in neolithic times, before 2000BC.
A team of up to 30 experts have been excavating two acres of a five-acre site adjacent to Station Brae in Dreghorn since December, after the discovery of aerial photographs taken in the 1940s revealed the possible location of ancient remains. [continue]
Matthew Richardson deserves some kind of prize for faking it as a conference speaker, even though he knew next to nothing about the subject. From The Telegraph:
An Oxford engineering student was surprised but undaunted when he was approached to deliver a series of lectures in Beijing on global economics.
Matthew Richardson knew "next to nothing" about the subject but, believing he would be addressing a sixth-form audience, he felt he could "carry it off".
Mr Richardson, 23, borrowed an A-level textbook entitled An Introduction to Global Financial Markets from a library and swotted up on its contents on the flight from London to China.
From it he prepared a two-hour presentation, believing he had to deliver the same lecture several times over to different groups of students over three days.
Mr Richardson, who has the same name as a New York University professor who is a leading authority on international financial markets, was met at the airport and taken straight to a conference centre where, over lunch, "the horrible truth became apparent". [continue]
You've heard of the Enigma cipher machine, yes? The Germans used it during WW2 for encoding and decoding messages.
If you've always wanted to play with an Enigma, the Enigma-E building kit might appeal.
The Enigma-E is a DIY Building Kit that enables you to build your own electronic variant of the famous Enigma coding machine that was used by the German army during WWII. It works just like a real Enigma and is compatible with an M3 and M4 Enigma as well as the standard Service Machines. A message encrypted on, say, a real Enigma M4 can be read on the Enigma-E and vice versa. [continue]
Link found at Slashdot.
Related:
The Enigma coding machine
The Enigma and the Bobme
Code-breaking the German Enigma machine
Here's a bit of trivia from an article at Catholicnews.com:
In mid-March, Pope John Paul II's pontificate will become the third-longest in history, a milestone that attests to the drive and determination of the ailing pontiff.
The calculation of pontificate length is a somewhat tricky business, but on or about March 17 the pope will surpass Pope Leo XIII, who ruled for 25 years and five months a century ago.
In modern papacies, that will leave only the 31-year pontificate of Pope Pius IX ahead of Pope John Paul. By tradition, St. Peter's papacy is counted as the longest, though historians have no certain dates for his reign. [continue]
Yesterday I blogged about the sale of the incredible Macclesfield library. Now a Norfolk news site has an article about the psalter found in that library.
A beautiful medieval book of psalms originally from Norfolk is expected to fetch more than £1m at auction.
The tiny psalter, whose 252 brightly coloured pages depict animals, birds and scenes from daily life, was first owned by someone connected with St Andrew's Church in Gorleston.
The unknown person who created it in about 1325 has been described as "one of the very great medieval East Anglian artists". [continue]
The article includes a photo of the psalter.
From the Globe and Mail: Excursionizing and verbifying.
"Bagel me, please."
My daughter wasn't asking someone to perform an extreme chiropractic procedure with those words. She was simply asking me to pass her a bagel, in emulation of Homer Simpson's, "Beer me."
Beyond that, her request signalled the movement of verbing from boardrooms and cartoons into the public domain.
And my kitchen.
Before we finished breakfasting, she had been toastered, plated, knifed and cream-cheesed.
Her verbifying didn't red flag me at the time. It was largely funning around, gaming the language. But then it hit me. Here she was, havocing the Queen's English, right in the presence of a professional writer.
For 30 some years, I have earned my living by togethering words into sentences, and verbifying is nothing new to me.
But was this mere verbification, or a signal that the language is systematically being verbicided? [continue].
This reminds me of a certain Calvin and Hobbes comic strip.
Brits OK maggots as medicine. From Wired:
British doctors will be able to prescribe maggots to NHS patients with infected wounds from now on, a hospital official said.
He said the National Health Service had realized maggots were a cheaper and more beneficial way of treating wounds than using conventional medicine. Patients would be able to treat themselves at home and avoid the possibility of picking up a hospital infection.
Maggots have been used for centuries to rid wounds of decaying flesh, but after the discovery of antibiotics their use went into decline.
Related:
Maggot medicine gains popularity - BBC
Medical maggots treat as they eat - National Geographic
From the BBC: Plans to restore ancient Rome spur dissent.
Controversial plans are afoot to revamp Rome's historic centre - to give visitors a better insight into how the ancient city looked.
A 78-year-old Italian professor of architecture, Carlo Aymonino, has been entrusted by the city's mayor with redesigning the area around the Roman forum - once dominated by a soaring, white marble temple.
His plan is to do away with the modern road leading to the Coliseum, the ancient Roman amphitheatre where gladiators once fought wild animals - and each other - to entertain the crowds.
The modern road, built by Mussolini, covers many important ruins.
Professor Aymonino also proposes to fill in the missing part of the outer wall of the Coliseum with red brick.
He wants to clean out the weeds and the rubble nearby and to reconstruct part of the temple of Jupiter - which formed the heart of ancient Rome - adding a transparent dome amid the ruins.
Many classical scholars say they are aghast at the idea of turning Rome's centre into what they fear would become an archaeological theme park. [continue].
From abc.net.au: Cats stand guard over Russia's artistic treasures.
Saint Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum is well known as home to some of the world's greatest artistic treasures.
A lesser-known collection at the museum is an army of cats, its praetorian guard against rats.
For more than 250 years, the Hermitage's resident felines have waged incessant war against the rodents that infest Russia's most prestigious museum, set on the bank of the Neva River.
In summer they stroll the institution's grounds and yard, picking out their sinuous way between the statues and other priceless exhibits, but in the winter the 50 strong army spends much of its time in the better-heated basement.
"We consider them to be museum employees," said Tatyana Danilina, one of the Hermitage's human employees. (...)
The presence of cats in the Winter Palace, the historic residence which houses the Hermitage Museum and was once the heart of the Russian empire, owes nothing to chance.
The feline invasion began in 1745 when Emperess Elizaveta Petrovna, Peter the Great's daughter, signed a decree ordering to "find in Kazan (a city located in the Volga region, some 800 kilometres east of Moscow), better cats, the largest ones, able to catch mice, and to send them to Her Majesty's court, accompanied by a person who will look after their health."
Within a few decades, during the reign of Emperess Catherine the Great, there was already a substantial population of "Winter Palace cats" living in the building. [continue]
Link found at Cronaca.
Related:
Hermitage Museum - Mirabilis.ca
From Reuters: Harry Potter becomes Warrior Cup in Ancient Greek.
LONDON (Reuters) - Harry Potter becomes "Warrior Cup" and his enemy Voldemort "Scaly Death" in a translation of the schoolboy wizard's adventures into Ancient Greek due for publication this summer.
Retired classics teacher Andrew Wilson told Reuters he had to stretch his linguistic ingenuity to turn J.K. Rowling's magic boarding school fantasy into a language not used for 1,500 years.
Wilson, 64, was commissioned in January 2002 by publisher Bloomsbury to translate "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" into the Greek spoken in ancient Athens.
The book, the first in Rowling's multi-million-selling series, has already been translated into 60 languages and is available in 200 countries. [continue]
Transfixed by Tales From the Crypt. From the Washington Post:
VERONA, Italy -- Workmen in yellow construction helmets lifted the shrunken cadaver from its stone tomb. Camera strobes from a clutch of paparazzi lit up the browned, gnarled face.
Gino Fornaciari, medical sleuth, gazed down at the remains of Cangrande della Scala, the most powerful man in the history of Verona. Was it possible that, as records say, a few drinks of foul water ended his life? Or was he poisoned, as the rumor went? It was high time to solve the mystery. The man has been dead for 675 years.
It was a scene from a scientific mania in Italy: the unearthing of the dead and famous. Advances in forensics have unlocked new ways to explore the past through the inspection of skeletal remains. The opening of the crypt belonging to the warrior-prince eight days ago was a glimpse of things to come.
The exhumation was part of a dizzying round of investigations of royalty, saints, popes and other ancient notables. A researcher in northern Italy exhumed the body of the medieval poet Petrarch last year in order to study his physique, the cause of death and to make a model of his facial features. This summer, Fornaciari will begin exhuming 49 sets of remains belonging to the mighty Medici family in Florence. [continue]
The Washington Post will make you register before you can read the rest of this article. Hmph. To get around this registration nonsense, follow the link to the article from this Google page, or see MSN's reprint of the article.
Today's diversion: barcode yourself. I won't ask where you'll put the sticker.
Found at Blogdex.
Now this is a library I'd love to see. From The Telegraph:
One of Britain's greatest privately-owned libraries is to be sold for more than £10 million because a bitter family dispute has forced its owner, the Earl of Macclesfield, to leave his ancestral home in a medieval castle.
Thousands of books and manuscripts are to be sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby's beginning next month because the earl was ordered to leave Shirburn Castle in Oxfordshire after a court case which pitted him against his brother and other relatives.
Mr Justice Lewison ordered the earl and countess to leave the moated castle, where the family has lived since 1716 and which is a much sought-after film location, by August next year.
Because they have bought a smaller house, the earl and countess cannot take most of the 12,000 books and manuscripts with them and have asked Sotheby's to sell everything that will not fit into their new home.
When auction house experts arrived to catalogue the contents of the library, one of the finest but least known in Britain, they discovered what one of them, Paul Quarrie, called "an intellectual treasure house".
"The library really exists as it was left in about 1750, an extraordinary intellectual time capsule in a house that is itself a time capsule," said Mr Quarrie.
The most dramatic moment came when Mr Quarrie reached on to a shelf and pulled down a brightly illustrated medieval book which had been hidden away for centuries and was unknown to scholars. [continue]
HardForum.com has the story of an unusual marriage proposal. A geek built a computer for his beloved, modifying the case in a rather dramatic way:
I envisioned making an all white PC with "bridal" accents for her, and using that as a visual aid for the proposal. I planned out all the stuff I was thinking on the train and got to work."
Read the rest here; we know you can't resist clicking a link like that, then scrolling down to see the photos.
Link found at Linkfilter.
From Reuters: Guatemala's Ancient ‘Survivor’ Kingdom Explored.
Archeologists are exploring a ruined kingdom in Guatemala to work out how it survived centuries of conflict in the ancient Mayan Indian world before being abandoned to the jungle more than 1,200 years ago.
Known as Naachtun, the city-state played a strategic and possibly unique diplomatic role in the turbulent politics of the Mayan civilization.
In early February, a 32-person expedition team led by Canadian archeologist Kathryn Reese-Taylor left Guatemala City for the remote Peten jungle area near the border with Mexico to excavate at Naachtun, a Mayan name meaning "distant stone."
The team will try to explain how Naachtun survived the collapse of the great pre-classic Mirador civilization and then went on to blossom during centuries of conflict that followed.
It appears to have flourished between around 500 and 800 A.D., believed to be a time of almost constant warfare in the Mayan area, with Tikal and Calakmul, the two regional superpowers locked in a frequently vicious internecine fight for supremacy. [continue]
See also: Naachtun: A Lost City of the Maya. (9 pages of details from BBC History.)
Related:
Investigating Naachtun, lost Mayan city -Mirabilis.ca
If you have even the slightest interest in polar bears, take a look at this page at National Geographic, where "A polar bear paparazzo brings back close-up images of these Hudson Bay celebrities." There are thumbnail photos on the left side, leading to full size photos like this, which I defy you to resist. The site includes videos, a flash presentation, and still more content besides.
I keep coming across things about The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's movie. It seems that people who haven't seen the movie have all manner of strong opinions about it. Is there anybody who has seen the whole film - the final version - and then written about it? As of today, yes. From Zenit, here is Vittorio Messori's article: "‘The Passion’... for Its Author, Is a Mass".
Related:
Passion Movie - passion-movie.com
From the Sydney Morning Herald: Henry VIII's other blood sport - soccer.
He was famous for drinking, hunting, jousting and having six wives. But historians now think King Henry VIII may have had a secret passion - soccer.
Researchers have found the much-married king ordered a pair of soccer boots from the Great Wardrobe, the office responsible for supplying his attire, in 1526.
The boots were made of leather, hand-stitched by the royal cordwainer, Cornelius Johnson, and cost King Henry the royal sum of four shillings.
Maria Hayward, a clothes historian who discovered the order among records of Henry's wardrobe, said she found it difficult to believe he played soccer, but could not see why else he would have ordered the boots.
"Football in Tudor times was a very vicious game with no teams and no rules . . . It was not a game for gentlemen," she said. [continue]
More details at The BBC, The Guardian, and The Independent.
Related:
Henry VIII of England - Wikipedia
The BBC reports that a part of a 2,000 year old Roman road has been uncovered in Hereford.
The cobbled roadway, which runs underneath the existing road, linked the former Roman town of Kenchester to the settlement at Stretton Grandison.
Fragments of glass from Roman bottles, and iron working by-products such as furnace slags and waste have also been found at the site. [continue]
Dr Livingstone, I presume ... the naughty one. From The Guardian:
The eminent explorer David Livingstone had three boyish habits, two of them naughty, it was disclosed yesterday. He slagged off his rivals, carved his initials on trees and sealed messages in bottles.
Livingstone's letter-in-a-bottle goes for auction at Christie's, London, in April in a collection expected to fetch about £3m. He left it at the Zambesi river 145 years ago after a week's fruitless wait for British vessels. "Several members of the expedition have suffered from Fever," he wrote. "We assume that our [previous] letters ... have suffered detention." [continue]
Related:
David Livingstone - Wikipedia
David Livingstone (1813 - 1873) - BBC History
From National Geographic: Vikings' Barbaric Bad Rap Beginning to Fade.
"Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race. … Behold, the church of St. Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples."
So wrote religious scholar Alcuin of York in the late eighth century in a letter to Ethelred, king of Northumbria in England. He was describing a violent raid by Vikings on a monastery in present-day Scotland.
It is no wonder that the Vikings have a reputation for mindless savagery. Since the Vikings were unable to write, much of their history was recorded by British and French clergy—the very people who fell victim to the Viking raids.
But were the Vikings merely primitive plunderers?
Far from it, say scholars. Using archaeological and other evidence, researchers have in recent years been piecing together a more complex picture of the Vikings that sharply contradicts the stereotype of the Vikings as mere barbarians. [continue]
From the Sainte-Marie Among the Hurons site:
Sainte-Marie was the 17th century fortress and headquarters for the French Jesuit mission to the Huron nation and was Ontario's first European community. In 1639 the Jesuits, along with lay workers, began construction of this palisaded community that would include barracks, a church, workshops, residences, and a sheltered area for Native visitors. By 1648, Sainte-Marie was a wilderness home to 66 Frenchmen, representing one-fifth of the entire population of New France. Sainte-Marie's history culminated in 1649 when a dramatic turn of events forced the community to abandon and burn their home of 10 years.
After extensive archaeological and historical research, Sainte-Marie among the Hurons now stands recreated on the original site where its compelling story is brought to life once again.
Now that sounds interesting, doesn't it? Here's more about the history of Sainte-Marie.
Related:
Father Jean de Brébeuf's Instructions for missionaries, 1637.
Well, now. Say you have a poem lurking about in your head - a fine and famous poem, written by some talented dead guy - and you wonder if it's ever been set to music. Probably yes, but by whom, and when? The thing to do is to wander over to Texts of Art Songs and other Classical Vocal Pieces. Search by poet, by title or first line. And poof! Up pops the answer! (Incomplete, of course, but what would you expect? Contribute whatever you can add to the database.) Oh, and there's a Biblical, Liturgical and other Sacred Texts section, too.
Last fall we learned that the Russian Orthodox Church was sending a church and a priest to Antarctica. Well, what do you know? Both have arrived, and the church has now been consecrated. From Pravda: First Orthodox church in Antarctica.
Bishop Feognost of Sergiyev Posad, the head of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra (one of the main Orthodox shrines in the Moscow region) consecrated in the name of the St. Trinity the first Orthodox church in Antarctica built at Russian polar station Bellinsgauzen.
Patriarch's representation (Podvorye) of the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra was established by the polar church, the Orthodox Encyclopedia research center of the Moscow Patriarchy told RIA Novosti on Monday.
The consecration ceremony of the unique church gathered a lot of Russian and foreign polar explorers and pilgrims, who were delivered to Bellinsgausen station by a special flight.
The church can seat up to 30 believers. It was built of cedar and larch, the most cold and wind-resistant wood, in the Altai territory (South Siberia). After that, the church was dismantled and transported to Antarctica. Here it was assembled again.
Palekh's painters created icons for the new church and bells were ordered by offsprings of well-known Russian Decembrist Muravyov-Apostol. [continue]
Related:
Orthodox Church on Its Way to Antarctica - St Petersburg Times
Russians to build first Antarctic Orthodox church - 70south.com
Orthodox begin work on their first church in Antarctica - beliefnet.com
From The Guardian: Suspected Viking burial fills a hole in English history.
One of the great missing pieces of Britain's archaeological jigsaw may finally have fallen into place with the discovery of swords, ship nails and a silver Baghdad coin in a Yorkshire field.
Tight security has been put on the site since metal detecting enthusiasts came upon what is thought to be the first known Viking ship burial south of Hadrian's Wall.
An exploratory dig is being organised for traces of rotted timber and other fragments.
"I am 95% certain it is a boat burial," said Simon Holmes, archaeologist at the Yorkshire Museum in York where the initial finds went on show yesterday.
"If this is indeed the case, it will be the first discovered in England and therefore one of the most important Viking discoveries ever made in the British Isles."
The trove was found in a ploughed riverside field, whose location is not being made public, by detectors who followed the regulations designed to protect archaeological sites. (...)
The hoard dates to the 9th century, when burying leading figures in their longships was a high caste ritual. [continue]
Related:
‘Awesome’ treasure could be England's first Viking boat burial - 24 Hour Museum
Viking burial boat found - The Australian
Israel might use pig fat to ward off suicide attacks. From Ananova:
Israeli police are said to be considering putting bags of pig fat on buses and in shopping centres to try to deter Muslim suicide bombers.
The suggestion is based on the fact that strict Muslim tradition says any Muslim who comes in contact with a pig before dying will be denied access to paradise. (...)
Rabbi Eliezer Moshe Fisher, of the Jerusalem Rabbinical Court, said: "There is no ban on using bags of lard when saving lives is concerned. They may be used in any place that might be a target for suicide bombings, such as schools, shopping malls and railway stations."
The Maariv also quotes the rabbi saying if pig fat isn't used on buses, tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews will arm themselves with toy water pistols filled with liquid lard to be used against terrorists. [full article]
Oh my.
From The Guardian: Amazon reviewers brought to book.
The five-star review on Amazon, one of the world's biggest online booksellers, was attributed only to ‘a reader from Chicago’. Those who felt this spoke for the man in the street may have been tempted to share their credit card details and order a copy of The Life and Adventures of Lyle Clemens by John Rechy. They might have been hesitated, however, had they known the reviewer's true identity: John Rechy.
The art of self-reviewing - and coming up with a false identity to fool cyber-police - was last week exposed as one of the literary world's best-kept secrets. Amazon's Canadian site suddenly revealed the identities of thousands of people who had posted anonymous reviews on the American site under signatures such as ‘a reader from Alabama’. There were some prominent authors among them.
The gremlins that bedevilled Amazon all week laid bare how writers can exploit the web to praise their friends, rubbish their rivals and even champion themselves in the hope of shifting extra copies. The humiliation ended only after outed reviewers ordered Amazon to fix it. [continue]
Related:
Amazon Glitch Unmasks War of Reviewers - New York Times (requires free registration)
Amazon glitch unmasks war of reviewers - CNET (Reprint of New York Times article, listed above. No registration needed to view this copy.)
Up north, anonymous reviewers revealed - Globe and Mail
From Ananova: Lost world mapped by scientists.
A prehistoric lost world deep under the North Sea where man once hunted animals has been mapped by scientists with the help of earthquake data.
A team of archaeologists, geologists and engineers from the University of Birmingham have combined the latest computer techniques to devise a 3D reconstruction of the 10,000-year-old plain.
The virtual features they have developed include a 600m-wide river the length of the Thames which disappeared when its valley flooded due to glaciers melting.
The plain, part of a land mass that once joined Britain to northern Europe, disappeared about 8,000 years ago and was previously unknown to scientists.
Professor Bob Stone, head of the Department of Engineering's Human Interface Technology Team, said: "This is the most exciting and challenging virtual reality project since Virtual Stonehenge in 1996." [continue]
Related:
Scientists plot underwater plain - The Age
Scientists discover lost world - BBC
Scientists Reveal a Lost World Discovered Under the North Sea - University of Birmingham press release
A year and a half ago, I blogged about London's plan to reduce traffic congestion, which includes a £5 per day fee for those who drive into London's city centre. You can imagine the fuss and controversy this congestion charge caused when it was implemented last year, but ... it worked. From The Guardian: Charge has helped break love affair with car.
More than 400,000 Londoners have abandoned their cars in favour of travelling each day by public transport, thanks to a combination of better buses, traffic restraints and mayor Ken Livingstone's controversial congestion charge.
The mayor's Transport for London authority said the drop in daily car travel had taken place over four years and was in stark contrast to cities elsewhere in Europe, where public transport use is typically either static or falling.(...)
The charge is part of a package of measures introduced by Mr Livingstone in an attempt to revolutionise travel in London, alongside bus lanes, slower traffic lights and electronic ticketing.
According to TfL, an extra 1.1 million people are taking the bus each day, taking the total number of journeys to 4.7m. During the morning peak, bus journeys into the centre of the capital have rocketed by 47% to 103,000 a day.
The capital's notoriously overcrowded trains and tubes have also accommodated an increase, with passenger numbers up by between 5% and 10% since 1999.
Professor David Begg, chairman of the Commission for Integrated Transport, said the findings proved that it was possible to break the British love affair with the car: "A lot of sceptics say that you can't get people out of their cars and on to the buses. This proves them wrong.
"No other city in the world is achieving anything like the shift that London has got." [continue]
Every once in a while I re-read Terry Bisson's They're Made Out of Meat, just because it's hilarious and it always makes me chuckle. Here's the first bit:
"They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"Meat. They're made out of meat."
"Meat?"
"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."
"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"
"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."
"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."
"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."
"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."
"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat." [continue]
Related book:
Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories, by Terry Bisson.
From Innovations Report: Sweet science: Common candies yield physics discovery.
For most people, a regular lunch of M&M’s and coffee would lead to no good. For Princeton physicist Paul Chaikin and collaborators, it spurred fundamental insights into an age-old problem in mathematics and physics.
Chaikin and Princeton chemist Salvatore Torquato used the candies to investigate the physical and mathematical principles that come into play when particles are poured randomly into a vessel. While seemingly simple, the question of how particles pack together has been a persistent scientific problem for hundreds of years and has implications for fields such as the design of high-density ceramic materials for use in aerospace or other applications.
The researchers discovered that oblate spheroids, the shape of M&M’s Chocolate Candies®, pack surprisingly more densely than regular spheres when poured randomly and shaken. Extending the work with further experiments and sophisticated computer simulations, they found that a related shape, the ellipsoid, packs at random even more densely than the tightest possible, perfectly ordered arrangement of spheres. Previously, scientists did not know that randomly assembled particles could pack so densely. [continue].
You see? There are important things to be learned from little chocolates.
Related:
Chocolate Obsession Leads to Physics Discovery - Reuters
Maths secrets of M&Ms revealed - BBC
Candy Science: M&Ms pack more tightly than spheres - Science News
Paul M. Chaikin: Research Description - princeton.edu
Salvatore Torquato -princeton.edu
Arnaud Frich Photographies has some amazing images for you to view. Start with Les Eglises et Cathédrales de France; that's the best bit, at least for me. (Click on the medium-sized images to get to much larger ones.) Also of note: Paris Panoramique and Villes & Paysages.
From CBC Nova Scotia: Old print a score for Nova Scotia hockey historians.
HALIFAX — A 137-year-old lithograph is being heralded as definitive proof that Dartmouth is the birthplace of hockey.
On Thursday, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia unveiled an original lithograph print from 1870 of people playing hockey. The print is based on a sketch by the British artist Henry Buckton Laurence, who was in Dartmouth in the winter of 1867.
"This the earliest image of hockey being played," says Jeffrey Spalding, the gallery's chief curator.
Montreal is generally credited with hosting the first hockey game in 1875. Several other communities also claim to be the birthplace of hockey, including Halifax and Windsor, N.S. The Hockey Heritage Centre in Windsor cites a written reference in 1844 to "hurley on the long pond."
"We're just saying, all of you guys are arguing about something, at least move the argument to here. The game of hockey was played in winter 1867 in Halifax⁄Dartmouth. End of story," Spalding says. [continue].
Do you join those social networking websites, like Friendster, Linked In, a zillion others, and now the new one, Orkut? Not me; I could never see the point. I was amused by A Dork's View of Orkut at Dervala.net, though. Dervala writes:
Orkut is the private bootstrap project of a Google engineer, which was enough to start buzz when it launched last month. Cunningly, at launch it was invitation-only, creating further ripples of vanity. I don't know how the original Orkut Mayflower community was chosen, but here’s how it works now:
Someone lists you as their friend on Orkut. You get an email asking you to visit the site and acknowledge that person. "Is Chris Locke your friend?" Orkut asks, like MacCarthy's Senate committee. Shyly, I admit that he might be. "Are you sure Chris Locke is your friend?" it demands. Oh God. When I was seven, the wrong answer to that kind of question meant social death. It still gives me the playground heebie-jeebies. I press on, hoping the world won't shun me.
Invitation in hand, I now create my own Orkut profile. I puzzle out the Brand Called Me with the help of leading questions. Which religion are you? What ethnicity are you? List your favourite books, movies, and music. Have kids? Do they live with you? Check boxes to describe your sense of humour. (There is no box for ‘None’.) What lesson did you learn from previous relationships? Orkut, it seems, is the hectoring date I'd send straight to voicemail the next day. [continue]
From The Telegraph: Northern dialects saved from Estuary English.
For those who fear that the great Northern dialects are about to be overwhelmed by a tide of Estuary English - that words such as mebbies, bleb and gan will soon be as rare as proper mushy peas - comes comforting news.
Yesterday, the British Library unveiled a new website intended to preserve for all time the language and accents of the North, saving them for the day when its inhabitants will know it only as the Norf.
The site contains more than 11 hours of recordings made during two surveys carried out in 1950 and 1999, and provides an insight into the changes that have overtaken dialects in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland in the past half century.
The listener has only to click on his or her mouse to be regaled with tales of pig slaughtering in Twenties' Northumberland or what it was like to support Burnley Football Club in the Fifties.
The recordings are dripping with dripping, taters (potatoes), tanners (sixpences), teddies (potatoes again) and dolly tubs (washtubs). One can almost smell the Hovis. [continue]
Here's the British Library English Accents and Dialects site the article is talking about.
"... stunning images from key manuscripts of the 8th to 15th centuries cast light on regional art and culture across Britain and Ireland." This is how the British Library describes its online collection of Illuminated Manuscripts.
A bit of browsing through the site leads to things like this Historiated Initial with Nathan the prophet rebuking King David in ‘The De Brailes Hours’.
c. 1240
Written in Latin
Shelfmark: Additional MS. 49999, f.66rWilliam de Brailes is the only 13th-century English non-monastic illuminator known to have signed his work. His surname means ‘from Brailes’, a town in Warwickshire, about 30 miles north of Oxford. Documentary sources reveal that he lived and worked in Oxford, with his wife Celena, in a bookmaking community based around the present site of the chapel of All Souls College. His distinctive painting style has been recognised in several manuscripts, of which this is perhaps the most important. It is the earliest extant English Book of Hours (books in which prayers are co-ordinated as per hours of the day, seasons, festivals, etc), and includes two self-portraits.
The initial "D" depicts Nathan rebuking David for killing Uriah the Hittite in order to marry Uriah's wife, Bathsheba. The dragon and the block of foliate decoration in the lower margin are typical of William de Brailes' work.
Do follow the site's links to large versions of the images. They're incredible.
Paging Through Medieval Lives is just the place for those who like medieval manuscripts. This University of Utah site includes thumbnail images of the rare book chant collection, thumbnail images of the Arab, Latin, Persian collection, and other stuff besides. If you follow the links to recto and verso images, you get to beautful images like this and this and this.
Father Jean de Brébeuf was an incredibly impressive guy. He was a Jesuit missionary to the Huron, and served in what is now Quebec (but was then New France).
Canada Info notes that "In 1637, Father Jean de Brébeuf drew up a list of instructions for Jesuit missionaries destined to work among the Huron." The list is very lovely, I think. Here it is:
In 1649 Fr Brébeuf was captured and tortured to death by the Iroquois. He was canonized in 1930, and is the patron saint of Canada.
Related:
Fr Jean de Brébeuf - Catholic Encyclopedia
Jean de Brébeuf - Wikipedia
The Huron Carol (Canada's first Christmas Carol, written by Jean de Brébeuf in 1643.) - Mirabilis.ca
Patron Saints Index: St Jean de Brébeuf - Catholic-forum.com
Short sketches of the Jesuit Martyr-Saints (Jean de Brébeuf was one of the 8 Canadian martyrs killed by the Iroquois.) - Jesuits.ca
Jean de Brébeuf - Canadian Encyclopedia
Canadian Martyrs - wikipedia.org
Canadian Martyrs And Huronia - athabascau.ca
Quebec City too cold in February? Fredericton frosty in December? Nunavut November not for you? Fear not, there may be help: at least one member of Parliament and a handful of interest groups are asking the Canadian government to annex a little slice of sun-splashed heaven: the Turks and Caicos, a Caribbean gem with an average wintertime temperature hovering between 28 and 29 C.
Canadian Alliance MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton Centre-East) thinks it's a wonderful idea. He's drafted a motion to ask the government to look into the issue, and plans to introduce it in the fall. "I think around 100 per cent of people (in Canada, and Turks and Caicos) like the idea," he told CBC News Online in July 2003. [continue]
That excerpt is from a CBC background page about the Turks and Caicos. (The topic is in a couple of newspapers again, although not in their web versions.)
Considering the odd story of the igloos that were on the Turks and Caicos' flag and crest for so many years, perhaps it would be fitting for the Turks and Caicos to have an alliance with a northern nation like Canada. You know we'd share our igloos.
Related:
A Place in the Sun - aplaceinthesun.ca
Turks & Caicos: Canada's Caribbean paradise? - carribbeannetnews.com
Home and native sand - canoe.ca
From the BBC: Roman water still on tap.
Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year-old water main built by the Romans - which is still working.
The find has amazed experts at the Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland.
During ongoing excavations at the site, workers discovered a 100ft stretch of wooden mains, which at one time fed the fort with water from nearby springs.
The pipes were constructed by drilling large lengths of alder, which were joined together by oak pegs.
They were found under the floor of what is thought to have been an area used as a hospital in about 100AD.
Experts believe the network of pipes fed spring water to individual buildings within the fort.
A spokesman for the Vindolanda site said: "The fact that they were still working is quite incredible, but it was also a nuisance because they flooded the excavation trenches which had to be pumped out every day. [continue].
From the BBC: MPs battle over Robin Hood.
A centuries-old debate over the birthplace of one of England's most famous heroes is being aired in parliament.
The argument over the birthplace of Robin Hood has moved to the House of Commons - where Yorkshire MPs have pitted themselves against their opponents in Nottinghamshire.
The Yorkshire delegation has a numerical advantage in the battle - as 19 MPs are backing a motion affirming Yorkshire as the outlaw's birthplace against only four for Nottinghamshire.
The motion will be raised in the House of Commons. [continue]
Pigeons reveal map-reading secret. From the BBC:
Homing pigeons are finding their way around Britain by following roads and railways, zoologists claim.
They say the birds' natural magnetic and solar compasses are often less important than their knowledge of human transport routes.
A 10 year Oxford University study discovered some pigeons turn off at certain motorway junctions and use landmarks to remember where they are.
The scientists behind the study were "knocked sideways" by their findings.
The researchers worked with a team from the BBC's natural history unit, which placed a tiny camera on one pigeon to capture what it could see for a new programme. [continue].
Related:
The homing pigeon's ploy: follow that road - Guardian
From The Scotsman: Fabulous Finds as Saxon King's Tomb Is Unearthed.
The tomb of an East Saxon king containing a fabulous collection of artefacts has been unearthed, it was announced today.
The burial chamber, believed to date from the early 7th century, has been described by experts as the richest Anglo-Saxon find since the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk – one of Britain’s most important archaeological locations.
The site in Prittlewell, Southend, Essex was filled with everything a King might need in the afterlife, from his sword and shield to copper bowls, glass vessels and treasures imported from the farthest corners of the then known world.
The remains of the nobleman’s body have dissolved in the acidic soil, but two gold foil crosses were found which suggest he was a newly-converted Christian.
Ian Blair, the senior archaeologist on the site who carried out the work for the Museum of London Archaeology Service, said: "To find an intact chamber grave and a moment genuinely frozen in time is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.
"The fact that copper-alloy bowls were still hanging from hooks in the walls of the chamber, where they had been placed nearly 1,400 years ago, is a memory that I’m sure will remain with all of us forever."
He added: "Two foil crosses, probably originally laid on the body or sewn to a shroud, suggest that the King had converted from paganism to Christianity." [continue]
Eurekalert tells of the search for ancient Persian warships. The whole article is interesting, but the part about the octopus is the best bit.
An international research team including a University of Colorado at Boulder professor has mounted a deep-water search off the northern coast of Greece in search of a fleet of Persian warships presumed lost in a massive ocean storm in 492 B.C.
The armada of warships is believed to have been sent by Persian King Darius to invade Greece, according to ancient historical accounts. The research team included more than a dozen Greek, Canadian, American and Finnish scholars.
The project is being conducted in the seas off the Mt. Athos peninsula. "This survey is the first one where scholars have searched for fleets of ancient ships using an historical source--in this case the writings of Herodotus," said CU-Boulder History Professor Hohlfelder, a senior maritime archaeologist on the project.
Herodotus, a Greek historian who lived from 485 to 430 B.C., is often called "The Father of History." His extensive writings include a report that in 492 B.C., nearly 300 ships and more than 20,000 men perished in a severe storm off Mt. Athos.
The event was said to cause Persian King Xerxes to cut a canal through the narrowest part of Mt. Athos prior to his 480 B.C. invasion of Greece to avoid the need to round the peninsula in the Aegean Sea, said Hohlfelder.
The team used sonar from the R/V Aegaeo ship of the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, the manned Thetis submersible submarine and a remotely operated vehicle known as the Achilles for two weeks last October, said Hohlfelder. But ironically, it was an octopus that proved perhaps the most useful detector.
"We were a high-tech operation, but our most useful research tool turned out to be the octopuses that lived in these waters," said Hohlfelder. One octopus living in a ceramic pot 300 feet down had dragged broken pieces of pottery, stones and a bronze spear point with part of the wooden shaft still intact into the entrance of its home.
"Happily for marine archaeologists, these animals love to collect antiquities and pull them into their homes. "Very often the first clue that a shipwreck is nearby is a pile of artifacts collected by these wonderful creatures with an antiquarian's passion for old things." [continue].
How have I missed knowing about Underpants Gnomes? From Wikipedia:
In the South Park episode entitled Gnomes (Underpants Gnomes), The Underpants Gnomes are a community of underground gnomes who collect underpants.
The Underpants Gnomes have a three-step business plan, consisting of:
- Collect underpants
- ???
- Profit!
Where none of the gnomes actually knows what the second step is, and all of them assume someone else within the organization does.
A similar business model is also found in one episode of Arthur, where an organization of pets form the Sock exchange.
The gnomes specifically satirise dotcom businesses with poorly devised business models, although the satire lends itself to any ill-conceived business plan.
The three step business plan has become a recurring joke on Slashdot, with various things substituted for item 1.
Found here at Ben Hammersley's blog.
From Discovery: Da Vinci Invented Natural Plastics.
Leonardo da Vinci not only anticipated the airplane, the life jacket, the intercom and the robot, he also created the first natural plastic, according to an Italian scholar.
Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where the artist was born the illegitimate child of a Florentine notary and a peasant girl in 1452, found Leonardo's recipe for artificial materials in several pages of drawings and notes.
Written in Da Vinci's characteristic "mirror-image" handwriting, running from right to left, the notes had been found in the Arundel Codex (housed in the British Library in London), Forster Codex (in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the Atlantic Codex (kept in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, Italy) and in manuscripts in France.
"He talks of a mixture. He combined colors with animal or vegetable glues, sometimes adding organic fibers," Vezzosi told Discovery News.
The Renaissance master obtained effects similar to plastic and unbreakable glass by "clothing with colors" the leaves of cabbage, lettuce, paper and even ox tripe.
The materials he coated ranged from "the back of the stomach of a heifer or a ox," "the leaves of wrinkle lettuce," "papers and little canes used as goose pens" and a "large Milanese wrinkled leaf of cabbage, which should be collected in December or January."
Following Leonardo's instructions, Vezzosi applied colors mixed with vegetable or animal glues. He then painted with many layers the materials described by Leonardo. As the first material dried, he removed it and obtained a material similar to bakelite, an early plastic that made a splash in the early 1900s. [continue]
From This is Ryedale: Treasures uncovered in Ryedale's lost village.
Ryedale's famous lost village has given up another treasure for archaeologists.
A long-lost water mill and farmstead at Wharram Percy, run by the "luckless" Cistercian monks of Meaux Abbey, came to light during a survey of the landscape around the wolds village, which is one of England's largest and best-preserved deserted medieval villages.
English Heritage, working with the Wharram Research Project, combed through ancient documents and used the latest scientific hardware to make the discovery.
Meaux Abbey was founded in 1150 near Beverley, in East Yorkshire but, due to Henry VIII's plundering, now survives only as a series of earthworks. However, a great deal is known about its history, land-ownings and also its seemingly endless misfortunes, thanks to the Chronicles of Meaux Abbey, a remarkable book penned by its 14th century abbot, Thomas Burton. [continue]
Related:
Cistercians in Yorkshire -Mirabilis.ca
Cistercian Abbeys: Meaux - Cistercians in Yorkshire
Meaux Abbey - Catholic Encyclopedia
From discovery.com: Study: Red Sea Parting Possible.
The parting of the Red Sea and the subsequent escape of thousands of Jewish slaves, which is described in the Bible's book of Exodus, can be explained by science, according to two Russian researchers.
The study, published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is one of the first to examine the event using oceanography, weather patterns, and mathematical calculations.
Naum Volzinger, senior researcher at the St. Petersburg Institute of Oceanology, and colleague Alexei Androsov of Hamburg, determined that a reef runs from Egypt to the north side of the Red Sea. They believe the reef used to be much closer to the surface during Biblical times at approximately 1500 B.C.
Depending on the weather and tidal movements, the reef could have been exposed for hours at a time, according to the new theory.
"If the wind blew all night at a speed of 30 meters (about 98 1/2 feet) per second, then the reef would be dry," Volzinger told The Moscow Times. "It would take the Jews — there were 600,000 of them — four hours to cross the seven-kilometer (4.4 mile) reef that runs from one coast to another. Then, in half an hour, the waters would come back." [continue]
From Ananova: Drunk Russian sparks Bond-style chase in Venice.
A drunk Russian seaman sparked a James Bond-style chase through the canals of Venice after stealing a water bus.
The water bus sped through canals at high speeds, sending gondolas crashing into moorings.
It carried out a series of spectacular turns before heading towards a petrochemical plant where police feared a terrorist suicide attack.
But, as officers drew alongside, it dramatically turned and tried to ram their boat. [continue]
I bet the bad guy had one heck of a lot of fun before he got caught.
Related:
Venice Vaporetto Routes
Water bus info for Venice, Italy
Teachers offer to ‘lend’ students marks to pass tests. From Ananova:
A school in China is allowing students who don't do well in tests to borrow a few extra marks as long as they pay them back with interest.
The scheme was recently introduced by Penglai Road No 2 Primary School in the Huangpu District of Shanghai, reports Xinhua.
Students who do poorly on a test can ask their teachers to lend them a few points to improve their grade, but twice as many points must be paid back on the next test, assuming they achieve a better mark. [continue]
Do you know about Nellie McClung? She was a Canadian suffragette, and led a remarkable life. I read her biography, Our Nell, years ago, and so my commonplace book has a number of quotations from Nellie.
The other day the Vancouver Sun published an article entitled She lives in no one's shadow. [Update: article no longer available. Sorry, the Vancouver Sun is like that.] It's about Nellie McClung's granddaughter (also named Nellie McClung) who is 74 and lives in Vancouver. The part I like best is Nellie the granddaughter's story about her famous grandma:
I was in Grade 2, and she was on stage in Edmonton giving a speech, wearing a velvet dress, and a man in the audience shouted out to her: ‘Don't you wish you were a man!’ And she shouted back: ‘Don't you wish you were!’
Nellie always had good answers for rude people.
Related:
Nellie Letitia (Mooney) McClung - CollectionsCanada.ca
Nellie McClung 1873-1951 - mta.ca
Nellie McClung - Wikipedia
Nellie McClung - Wikiquote
Nellie McClung: The Sculpting of Angels - CBC: Life and Times
From Liz Langley's LOTR Dating Manual:
LOTR may be disguised as a sexless geek-boy epic, but this trilogy is more riddled with dating tips than an issue of Seventeen magazine:
- When you're trying to catch the cute guy's eye is the exact moment the dwarf will pick to approach you;
- Eating raw fish is no longer a sign of a sophisticated date. (That said, you have to admit the Atkins plan is working for Gollum.)
- if you're the only girl among 100 guys you'll still fall for the only one who has a girlfriend;
- When overused, terms of endearment such as "precious" lose their meaning;
- All couples fight, but battles shouldn't last so long that one of you has to get up and stretch your legs or use the bathroom;
- It doesn't matter if you look like Liv Tyler; your pining and whining will still get on people's nerves;
- Don't blame your friends just because they can see right through your creepy little partner;
- If you can get along on a road trip, the relationship will probably last;
- There will come a point when it seems like the relationship should be over. Don't drag it out. Just end it there.
And finally, the mother of all dating wisdom:
- Some people will go to any lengths to get a ring; others, having had one for awhile, will go to any lengths to chuck it into a volcano.