Fact of the Day

DarkRavie · October 12, 2019

Fact of the Day - MERMAIDS

Did you know... that in folklore, a mermaid is an aquatic creature with the head and upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish? Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Mermaids are the mythical creatures that were initially created as the personifications of the water deities of ancient civilizations. They were celebrated as the bringers of life and fertility because of the sea endless supply of food, and also as forces of great nature power and destruction.

As much as we love mermaids, there's so much most of us don't know about these mysterious and captivating beings. Some of the earliest legends of mermaids come from ancient Syria. The ancient story dates back to about 1000 B.C., a little over 3,000 years ago! In the Syrian story, a goddess named Atargatis wanted to be transformed in a fish, but when she dove into the water, only her bottom half was transformed. The resulting figure prompted our modern tales of mermaids.

Mermaids weren't always thought of as the beautiful creatures that we envision today. Many times, sailors would mistake manatees for mermaids, resulting in descriptions that labeled the aquatic creatures as ugly and fat. The existence of mermaids was never questioned during medieval times. There were hundreds of accounts of mermaid sightings and they were depicted without question in historical accounts of aquatic animals, claiming their place alongside whales and other known sea creatures. Mermaids were often considered to be a bad omen. If they were spotted by sailors at sea, it usually meant that the voyage was headed for trouble.

Mermaids are often compared to Greek sirens, who are said to possess extraordinary levels of beauty. These depictions of mermaids are more treacherous, however, as their primary goal is entrancing men with their beautiful singing voice. In addition to being the coolest characters in the ocean, mermaids also have superpowers. The four main powers that are usually attributed to mermaids are immortality, telepathy, hypnosis, and the ability to see the future. As if having superpowers wasn't cool enough, mermaids are also believed to have created the ocean gemstone, aquamarine. It has been said that aquamarine is made from mermaid tears, and it therefore has the ability to protect sailors while they are on the ocean.

There are believed to be four types of mermaids. Traditional mermaids are only able to reside in the ocean, but all other types of mermaids are able to live in the sea and on the land. Irish shedding mermaids, or selkies, are able to shed their tails in favor of human legs, shape shifting mermaids are able to change into human form and back to mermaid form at any time, and merfolk have a more human shape that allows them to live on the land and in the sea. Thankfully, this means that our chances of meeting a mermaid are much better than we thought!

A mermaid's kiss is pretty magical. It has been said that a kiss from a mermaid gives the ability to breath underwater. It's unclear if the receiver of the kiss simply inherits this magical ability or if they sprout gills somewhere on their body, so I would be careful if you're ever thinking about accepting a mermaid kiss. A mermaid's tail changes color based on her mood. The tales are unique to every mermaid, and they depict the mermaid's personality and her feelings at any given moment. That's definitely an improvement from our simplistic mood rings!

Mermaids love to accessorize. Some of their favorite jewelry pieces are shell crowns, pearl necklaces, conch hats and kelp bracelets.

DarkRavie · October 13, 2019

Fact of the Day - ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Did you know.... that The English language is kinda nuts, isn’t it? After being built up, mish-mashed, and altered over so many years, we now have this giant and wonderful hodgepodge of words to choose from when forming sentences. The vocabulary a person uses is all the words that person uses. A person who is five knows 4,000 to 5,000 words. Adults who go to college may know 20,000 words. The number of words in a language is more than of the words. One dictionary may have a list of 500,000 (half a million) words. Another dictionary may have some other words that the other dictionary does not have. When you add all the words in those dictionaries, there are about 750,000 words in English. There may be more words than that.

If there are 750,000 words, how can we talk with only 3000 words? Because, we do not need all the words. You can say most things with 3000 words. The most used words are short words. That is true in all languages. The 50 most common words in English have less than seven letters. Half of these words have less than four letters. The vocabulary of a language is always changing. New words are made or words change their meaning. Words about computers, like "download" are new to the English language. The new word "bling" came from hip hop. Words like "cool" have developed new meanings.

The word “chicken” has been used to describe cowards since the 14th century, but it didn’t become popular slang in American culture until the 1940’s. Just 10 years after that, in 1953, kids started playing the game “chicken” to test the courage of their peers.
The shortest “-ology” is oology, which is the study of birds’ eggs. Egg collecting became popular in the 1800s before the invention of binoculars made it easier to study birds. Serious collectors were notoriously obsessive about obtaining rare bird eggs. For example, in 1872, Charles Bendire, a U.S. Army soldier and noted oologist, was willing to have his teeth broken to retrieve a rare hawk’s egg that got stuck in his mouth.
“Abracadabra” has an adjective form! It’s “abracadabrant” and, according to the Learn English Network, it describes anything that seems to have happened by magic.
A “rounce-robble-hobble” was the nickname given to thunderclaps in Elizabethan English.
The name Rebecca can also be used as a verb to mean “demolish a gate.” If you have any friends named Rebecca, this is your cue to go tell her not to Rebecca.
The words “bookkeeper” and “bookkeeping” are the only words in the English language that has three consecutive double letters without needing a hyphen.
Any number with a series of repeating digits, like 7777, is called a “repdigit.” Makes total sense, actually.
“Pangram” = a sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet. Here’s one: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
There are 10 words hidden inside the word “therein” — you don’t even need to rearrange it to find them! They are: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
A 672-sided shape is called a “hexahectaheptacontakaidigon.” No thanks, not even going to try to pronounce that.
Never tell your significant other that they look “erinaceous” because it means they look like a hedgehog. Unless they think hedgehogs are cute, in which case, go for it.
Speaking of significant others, the Old English name for honeymoon is “flitterwochen,” which means “fleeting weeks.” Can we start using this one again?
The letter E makes up 11% of the entire English language.
“Uhtceare” (pronounced oot-kay-are-a) is a noun describing the act of waking up before dawn, but being so worried about something that you can’t go back to sleep. Some of our students may recognize this feeling as the one they experienced the night before the big test.
A “squib” means, technically, “a type of small explosive” or “the head of an asparagus” (big jump, I know). But if you’re like me, you’re thinking, “No, a squib is someone born into a wizarding family but doesn’t have any magic powers … like Filch.” Thanks, Harry Potter. If you’re not like me, the last two sentences never happened.
The word “eyeball” was invented by Shakespeare, along with hobnob, skim milk, and luggage.
The word “selfie” was the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2013 because the use of the term increased 17,000% from 2012 to 2013.
To “snirtle” is to try and suppress a laugh. It’s classified as any suppressed laugh that’s a just bit shorter than a snicker or a snigger.

DarkRavie · October 14, 2019

Fact of the Day - THANKSGIVING DAY (CANADA)

Did you know... that a lot of people think that the holiday is just a Canadian version of American Thanksgiving, but the Canadian celebration actually happened 40 years before the American pilgrims had their dinner? In 1578 the British explorer, and occasional pirate, Martin Frobisher held a feast of thanksgiving in Newfoundland. Frobisher was giving thanks that he and, well, most of his crew had come back from a rough trip through the Arctic looking for the Northwest Passage. After storms and cold and getting lost, Frobisher was sorry he hadn’t found the Passage but very happy to be alive. This meal likely wasn’t too tasty, coming out of ships’ storage mostly salted beef and mushy peas, but it started a tradition of being grateful for what food they had.

From 1606 onwards, Samuel de Champlain followed the custom of First Nations harvest festivals and held feasts in the colony of New France attended by French settlers and local Mi’kmaq people. Official celebrations of Thanksgiving moved around a lot – once the day was held in the spring in 1816 to celebrate the end of a war between Britain and France – before becoming an annual Canadian holiday in 1879. Even then it was usually held in the first week of November, often celebrated along with Remembrance Day from the 1920s onwards. Finally in 1957, Parliament settled on making Thanksgiving officially happen every year on the second Monday in October.

There’s no required way to celebrate Thanksgiving, but it usually involves a big meal with family and friends at some point over the long weekend. Since the meal happens in the fall, it usually features food that’s around in the autumn, like pumpkins, squash and potatoes. American Thanksgiving is known for being very serious about their Thanksgiving foods and the tradition of having turkey for dinner is one that has crossed the border. It comes out of the old English custom of eating a big goose for special meals, but since the turkey is native to North America, it stepped up and took the goose’s place on the plate with over 3 million birds getting served each year.

In Québec the holiday is called Action de Grâce and usually doesn’t involve a big dinner. However you celebrate the day, it’s a good time to take a moment to look around and think about what you’re thankful for. It could be your food or your house or the people around you – or just having a day off school in October!

But, did you also know, that Americans did not invent Thanksgiving? It began in Canada. Frobisher's celebration in 1578 was 43 years before the pilgrims gave thanks in 1621 for the bounty that ended a year of hardships and death. Abraham Lincoln established the date for the US as the last Thursday in November. In 1941, US Congress set the National Holiday as the fourth Thursday in November.

Frobisher and early colonists, giving thanks for safe passage, as well as pilgrim celebrations in the US that began the traditions of turkeys, pumpkin pies, and the gathering of family and friends.

DarkRavie · October 16, 2019

Fact of the Day - BLOOD FALLS

Did you know... that in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica is a big glacier named Taylor. From the Taylor oozes out a nearly frozen waterfall which is bright red in color. The color of the waterfall resembles the color of blood. This is why it has been named as Blood Falls and Taylor is known as the glacier that weeps blood or the glacier that bleeds. Just to let you know, Antarctica’s Dry Valleys are one of the most hostile environments on planet Earth and still, scientists have found out that the water from Blood Falls, which is unique for being almost devoid of oxygen, is the home for 17 different types of microbes.

The red water oozing out from the glacier flows onto Taylor Valley’s West Lake Bonney’s frozen surface. The water oozing out from the glacier’s tongue is hypersaline and is rich in iron. It was Griffith Taylor, an Australian geologist who first found the Blood Falls back in 1911 while exploring the glacial valley. That’s why, both the glacier and its valley are named after him. The question was, what caused the blood red color? Initially pioneers blamed it on red algae but later studies revealed that the color was because of iron oxides present in the water.

The Blood Falls is five-story high and sits in Earth’s one of the most inhospitable regions. Let us clarify a bit. In East Antarctica is an area known as Victor Land. In Victoria Land is what is known as McMurdo Dry Valleys or simply Dry Valleys. In the Dry Valleys is the Taylor glacier and the Taylor Dry Valley. Thus, the Blood Falls is somewhere in the middle of vast and completely inhabitable area.

In 2009, Jill Mickucki, a geomicrobiologist from University of Tennessee proposed a theory to explain the blood red waterfall. Since then, her explanation has be considered as the most viable explanation for the phenomenon. It was Jill and her team who conducted experiments on the Blood Falls’ water to find that there is barely any oxygen in it and the team found at least 17 different types of microbes thriving in the water.

Based on the test results, Mickucki proposed that somewhere deep underneath the glacial ice is a trapped body of water that is some two million years old. It is this trapped water source that provides the water for Blood Falls. There is a very interesting explanation as to how it all began. Scientists say that some 2 million years ago when the Taylor glacier was approaching during the so called Snowball Earth period, an ancient saltwater lake was sitting right on the path of the glacier.

Over years, the glacier slid and moved over the lake, trapping the waterbed massive chunk of ice. Ever since then, the saltwater lake stayed trapped in there and so did the ancient microbes community that thrived in the water body. As the glacier covered the entire lake beneath hundreds of meters of ice, the lake was completely cut off from sunlight and oxygen supply. This pushed the microbes’ community to the very edge of extinction. With no sunlight and oxygen, photosynthesis was completely out of question for them. So, they had to adapt to a completely new method of survival. To make things even worse for those microscopic organisms, the water trapped deep below gradually lost all the dissolved oxygen, making it virtually oxygen-free water.

On top of that, the water was extremely saline (twice as much as sea water) and had extremely low temperature. The extreme salinity of the water prevented it from freezing into solid ice all these years. Coming to the ancient microbe, Mickucki initially thought that they reverted to sulfate ions for survival. Many bacteria today are known to live on sulfate ions (SO42-). However, after conducting proper tests, Mickucki found that the water of the Blood Falls did not have any hydrogen sulfide! Why hydrogen sulfide? That’s because when bacteria and other microbes use sulfate as energy source, they convert the sulfate ions into sulfide ions (S2-). These sulfide ions are detected as hydrogen sulfide in water. Interesting, hydrogen sulfide was absent in waters of Blood Falls.

To rule out the possibilities of any mistakes, Mickucki conducted further tests and this time on the microbes that came out from deep below along with the water of the Blood Falls. Interestingly she did not find dsrA (a particular group of genes that help microbes to use sulfate ions as energy source) in the genome of these primordial microbes. Mickucki took another step and analyzed the different types of sulfate isotopes present in the water and made and astonishing discovery. Based on the proportions of the isotopes, she realized that the sulfate ions in the water have not really depleted over last two million years.

To read more on Blood Falls, click here.

Edited October 16, 2019 by DarkRavie

DarkRavie · October 17, 2019

Fact of the Day - LEVIATHAN

Did you know... that Leviathan, properly known as Livyatan melvillei, is a prehistoric whale which lived approximately 13 million years ago during the Miocene Period. It was first discovered in 2008 when fossils of Livyatan melvillei were collected from the coastal desert of Peru. It was then named in 2010. Livyatan means Leviathan in Hebrew and melvillei was given as an homage to Herman Melville – the man who wrote Moby Dick. When it was first discovered, it was actually given the name Leviathan, a name of a biblical sea monster. However, at the time it was found to be inappropriate. That’s because another species had already been called this name – a mastodon that is now named Mammut. Which is why Livyatan was given as this whale’s official name, although many paleontologists still refer to it as Leviathan.

If you look at Leviathan pictures, then you might come to the conclusion that this whale looked very much like a modern sperm whale. That’s because paleontologists believe that it looked very much like one. However, since they only found the head, they can’t really be sure if the whole body was shaped like a sperm whale’s body. However, scientists do now know that Leviathan was an early ancestor of the sperm whale. Leviathan had a 10-foot long skull, which is a pretty good size. Extrapolating from its skull size, paleontologists are able to estimate that this prehistoric whale was approximately 50 feet long and weighed around 50 tons – or about 100,000 pounds. That means that it was longer than a truck’s semi-trailer and weighed more than 6 times the weight of an elephant. It also had teeth that were 14 inches long. Which means that its teeth were even longer than saber-tooth tigers!

One of the most interesting facts about Leviathan, however, is that it didn’t feast on plankton like many whales do. No, it was carnivorous – which means that it ate meat. Paleontologists believe that it is likely that it would have eaten seals, dolphins and maybe even other whales. While paleontologists don’t know how long Leviathan survived as a species after the Miocene Period but they can venture a guess as to why it happened. Scientists believe that changing ocean temperatures led to a widespread decrease in the number of seals, dolphins and smaller whales. This loss of prey eventually led to its extinction.

Leviathan is a creature with the form of a sea monster from Jewish belief, referenced in the Hebrew Bible in the Book of Job, Psalms, the Book of Isaiah, and the Book of Amos. The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite Lotan, a primeval monster defeated by the god Baal Hadad.

DarkRavie · October 18, 2019

Fact of the Day - AURORA BOREALIS

Did you know... that In Roman mythology, Aurora was the 'goddess of the dawn?' The word 'borealis' is Greek for 'wind,' thus 'Aurora borealis' means 'dawn wind.' In English, though, we know them as the Northern Lights!

Seeing the astronomical phenomenon known as the northern lights is a bucket-list item for many people. These dramatic curtains of colored light, which appear high in the night sky in the northern hemisphere, are most visible in the middle of the night and the dead of winter, and in remote, dark areas. Humans have seen and made stories about the lights since prehistoric times and, more recently, conducted scientific studies on them.

The ethereal glow comes from collisions between fast moving electrons from the magnetosphere (the region of space controlled by Earth’s magnetic field) and oxygen and nitrogen molecules in our upper atmosphere. Electrons transfer some of their energy to these molecules when they collide; this transfer of energy is said to “excite” them. An excited molecule eventually returns to its non-excited state by releasing photons, or light particles. Large numbers of these collisions create enough light for us to see.

The colors of the polar lights depend on whether electrons collide with oxygen or nitrogen, and how energetically. The change in energy between “excited” and original states has a specific value and the resulting photon has a specific color, or wavelength, Don Hampton, a research assistant professor at the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska, tells mental_floss. Oxygen emits greenish-yellow or red light, while nitrogen generally gives off blue light; the blending of these produces purple, pink, and white. Oxygen and nitrogen also emit ultraviolet light, which can be detected by special cameras on satellites but not by the human eye. Researchers can use the different colors to figure out such things as the energy level of the electrons bombarding our atmosphere and creating the aurora.

Auroras occur mostly in high latitudes, near the poles, because electrons travel along magnetic field lines and the Earth's magnetic field lines come out and go into the Earth near its poles. But auroras have been seen as far south as Mexico. In some areas, such as Alaska or Greenland, they may be visible most nights of the year. The lights also occur during the day, but we can only see them with the naked eye after dark. In fact, according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, there's always an aurora somewhere on Earth.

In January 2015, NASA-funded scientists launched a rocket, the Auroral Spatial Structures Probe, into the northern lights from the Poker Flat Research Range about 30 miles north of Fairbanks. The probe carried seven instruments to study the electromagnetic energy that can heat the thermosphere—the second highest layer of the atmosphere—during auroral events. On a related note, astronauts aboard the International Space Station often see, and photograph, the aurora.

To read more on the Aurora Borealis, click here.

Edited October 18, 2019 by DarkRavie

DarkRavie · October 19, 2019

Fact of the Day - YOUR BRAIN

Did you know... that you have a finite amount of willpower each day because to exercise willpower you need energy in the form of oxygen and glucose? That’s why it’s harder to say ‘no’ when you are tired or not feeling yourself. A thought is a physical pathway in the brain. The more you have that thought the more you groove that path and the easier it is to have it again. That’s why having the thought “Why do I suck?” is never a great idea. Speaking of which, you have approximately 70,000 thoughts per day, although many will be the same ones looping round and round on your grooved cranial highway.

So make sure you don’t think, “Why do I suck?” 50,000 times a day, or suck ye shall. Even if you consider yourself a left-brained person, your brain will still switch over to the right side every 90 to 120 minutes and then back again. That’s why even left-brained people can have times of the day when they are more creative and right-brained people can sometimes get their taxes in order.

Note: If you want to know how you can tell which side is dominant at any one time, check out Creativity – Guaranteed and you can then plan your time accordingly.

Reading out loud to kids accelerates their brain development. Reframing negative events in a positive light literally rewires your brain and can make you a happier person, as can regular meditation.

The brain is approximately 75% water, but you should never drink it. Your brain only weighs about 3lbs yet the greedy bastard uses between 20% and 25% of your energy supplies each day. There are approximately 10 to the power of 60 atoms in the universe. Your brain laughs in the face of that figure however, as it has 10 to the power of 1,000,000 different ways it can wire itself up. That’s the number 10 followed up with 1 million zeros, which is to all intents and purposes (for anybody not called Stephen Hawking or Rob Collins), an infinite amount of ways. Speaking of large numbers, there are approximately 1.1 trillion cells and 100 billion neurons in the average human brain. The slowest speed information passes around your brain is approximately 260 mph.

And here's a bit of Brain Trivia

Your brain was disproportionately large compared to other organs when you were born. That’s why babies look a bit like aliens. Not yours of course, yours are cute, just other people's babies.

If you lose blood flow to your brain you will last about 10 second before you pass out.

Your brain has no pain receptors which is why if I managed to remove the top of your skull without you noticing I could poke around all day without you feeling a thing. The skull removal may hurt a bit though.

Even though we say the amygdala regulates danger, the cerebellum motor control, and the limbic system emotions etc, this is somewhat misleading as no part operates independently and all need other parts of the brain to get their job done.

Your peripheral vision improves at night which is why pilots are taught to use their peripheral vision when looking for traffic.

To read more on this topic, click here.

DarkRavie · October 20, 2019

Fact of the Day - DUST BUNNIES

Did you know... that there's a passage in the Bible that says we're all dust and to dust we will return? What you might not realize is that a little bit of us returns to dust every day. When you find dust around your home, a lot of it came straight from you in the form of skin cells that are constantly flaking off and falling to the ground. So as long as you and your family choose to live indoors, there's going to be at least some dust to clean up.

Wright State University professor and researcher Larry Arlian is an internationally recognized expert on dust mites, the tiny, allergy-producing creatures that live and breed in household dust. And Arlian knows quite a bit about dust. Arlian says dust is a complex mixture of a lot of different materials, and a lot of it is unavoidable. The dust on mattresses, bedding and fabric furniture contains a large percentage of skin scales. Carpeted floors hold fewer skin scales, but they still hold a significant amount. Another major dust component is fabric fibers from your clothes, carpets, upholstery and any other fabric that is regularly moved or touched.

Got dust bunnies? They are basically dirty balls of fabric fibers. Typically, when we think of dust, we think of dirt, and household dust indeed contains hard particles of minute sand and soil. Plant and insect parts come into the house with soil and sand. Dust is full of finely ground leaf parts, seed pod remnants, mold spores and other plant material. Arlian said that when you examine household dust under a microscope, it is not at all unusual to spot ant heads or other insect body parts.

Pets can also add to dust. Like humans, pets shed skin scales, and they also shed fur, cast off feathers, track in dirt and release dander into the air. Pet dander and feathers are both major allergens, Arlian said. One of the best ways to reduce household dust, according to Arlian, is to get rid of carpets. Carpets hold onto dust making it harder to get the dust out of your house. They also produce dust of their own in the form of carpet fibers. Vinyl and leather furniture or wooden furniture produces and harbors less dust than upholstered furniture.

Making your house less dusty takes a two-pronged approach: You must get existing dust out of the environment and you must reduce the amount of dust coming in. Using high-quality furnace filters and changing them regularly is one way of reducing the amount of dust that circulates in the air around your house. In cases where family members have serious allergies, it might pay to invest in air cleaning equipment attached to the heating and air conditioning system.

The benefits of having your heating system's ductwork professionally cleaned are debatable. A spokesman for the National Air Duct Cleaning Association said recently that air-duct cleaning "could be extremely beneficial" for people with allergies. However, a spokesman for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America said, "There is not a lot of evidence that duct cleaning provides a measurable improvement in indoor air quality."

Vacuuming regularly helps keep dust down, and many vacuum cleaners available today have high-efficiency filtering systems that keep dust from escaping into the air after it is picked up. Arlian said dusting horizontal surfaces where dust accumulates is also important. "People used to dust with things like cloth diapers, and they just kind of moved dust around," he said. "There are a lot of dusting products available now that do a very good job of trapping dust as they are used."

Unseen in the dust where we rest are colonies of eight-legged relatives to spiders and lobsters, mating, defecating and gorging themselves on our cast-off skin. Arlian, who has studied dust mites for more than 30 years, says that by the end of summer our beds and easy chairs are often teeming with microscopic dust mites. He said past studies in homes have found as many as 18,000 mites per gram of dust. Dust mites are more than just creepy; they're harmful. Researchers believe the critters and their waste can cause asthma, coughing, itchy eyes and running noses and may account for about 30 percent of all allergic discomfort.

But Arlian said there are some fairly simple ways to drastically reduce the dust mite populations in the homes of people who are sensitive to their presence. First, allergy sufferers should get rid of the carpets in their bedrooms. Next they should purchase dust mite barrier covers for their mattresses and pillows. To kill the mites that live in sheets and pillowcases, bedclothes should be washed weekly in hot water. Arlian said the dust mite's major weakness is that it requires humidity to survive and remain active.

He said mite populations crash during winter months when heating systems are active and indoor humidity is low. But their populations rebound in the humid summer. The best way to keep dust mite populations down, Arlian said, is to use a dehumidifier during warm months to keep the humidity in your house below 50 percent.

DarkRavie · October 21, 2019

Fact of the Day - MAPS

Did you know.... that maps can be beautiful and good ones can be great investments? But what collectors often find most entrancing about maps are how they provide portals into history. The rise and fall of cities, the charting of war and adventure, the promise of riches through trade ... history continues to be rewritten according to scholars' reinterpretations of ancient cartography. John Selden's 17th-century map of China made a huge splash recently as the stimulus for two new books analyzing London's rise as an economic hub (the city's success is inextricably linked to trade with China, as the Selden map illustrates).

Scientists "undiscover" South Pacific island According to some experts, the current unprecedented volume of global travel is also contributing to a burgeoning interest in map collecting. "I believe that as people travel more, migrate more and speak more languages, and as business becomes more globalized, the appeal of two types of attachment to the idea of 'place' increases," says Daniel Crouch, a London based specialist of antique maps and atlases. "One, as an identification with, or memory of, a place or homeland left behind, and the other as a statement of a new 'home' or adopted country, or fondness for a land visited." Crouch reveals some fascinating map facts gathered from a lifetime of collecting and selling antique maps, and shares favorites from his most recent exhibition in Hong Kong featuring maps of China.

Even the wealthiest collectors of old master or impressionist paintings, Chinese ceramics or modern art can never hope to have collections of a quality to match the likes of the Louvre, the British Museum or the Met. However, that's not true of maps. The savvy collector can still buy maps or atlases as good as, and sometimes better than, those found in the world's major libraries and museums. "We have several items in our gallery that are at least as good, if not better, than the equivalent examples in, say, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Library or Library of Congress," says Crouch, whose gallery keeps approximately 250 maps and 50 atlases in stock at any one time.

Antique maps featuring the world's biggest developing countries have seen a recent spike in prices. According to Crouch this heightened interest can be linked to the recently increased inbound and outbound travel from these countries. "Maps of B.R.I.C. nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) have seen the fastest growing markets (and prices) in recent years," says Crouch. "I have also noticed an increased interest in 'thematic' and 19th and even early 20th century mapping," he says.

While the earliest maps were rudimentary diagrams drawn in caves in pre-historic times, the first proper manuscript maps appeared in the 12th century. The map of the Holy Land printed in the "Rudimentum Novitiorum," an encyclopedia of world history published in 1475, is considered the first modern printed map. A sample of the Rudimentum Novitiorum was sold for £500,000 ($829,000) in 2013.

Ever been to the town of Agloe in New York State? Whitewall in California? Or Relescent in Florida? While these towns are clearly marked on a number of antique maps of the United States, they don't actually exist. "Paper towns" were fake places added to maps by early mapmakers in order to dupe forgers into copying them, thereby exposing themselves to charges of copyright infringement.

"The best collection in the world, in my opinion, is that of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, followed by the Library of Congress in the United States and the British Library," says Crouch. "Many of what we now regard as the major institutional collections of cartography were actually put together by individuals in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the United Kingdom, the best collection of such material was made by King George III." The latter collection is known as the "K.Top," and can be found in the British Library.

The U.S. Library of Congress paid a record $10 million for German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller's Universalis Cosmographia, a wall map of the world printed in 1507.

It's the only surviving copy of the map, which was the first to use the name "America." In 2007, Crouch brokered the sale of the most expensive atlas ever sold -- the 1477 Bologna Ptolemy, the first printed atlas -- for £1.9 million ($3.12 million).

The annual European Fine Art and Antiques Fair in Masstricht, Netherlands is often considered the world's best place to shop for antique maps, classic and modern art and jewelry. More than 70,000 people visited the TEFAF Maastricht in 2013 to browse the 260 booths from 20 countries. "It's simply the biggest and best fine art fair in the world," says Crouch.

DarkRavie · October 22, 2019

Fact of the Day - THE CIRCUS

Did you know... that the history of the circus is a long one filled with pleasant childhood memories, but despite Hemingway’s glowing endorsement, beneath all that joy and adventure hides a world of sacrifice, hard work, abuse, and even death?

Like many words in the English language, the word “circus” comes from Greek, by way of Latin—circus is a Latin word which comes from the Greek kirkos. The word originally meant “ring” or “circle,” and it referred to a place where Romans would hold all kinds of entertainment, whether it was gladiator battles, chariot racing, or feeding Rome’s enemies to the lions. These stadiums would also be used to re-enact legendary battles to allow Romans a chance to pat themselves on the back. In the case of naval battles, some arenas could actually be flooded with water so that ships could sail convincingly. That just might give Cirque du Soleil’s “O” a run for it’s money!

While the roman circuses might not have been quite the same as what we call the circus today, their massive popularity is nothing to scoff at. The largest circus in Roman history was the Circus Maximus, in Rome, which was built and re-built several times until it could allegedly hold up to 250,000 spectators. With the fall of the Roman Empire, huge buildings and arenas fell out of fashion, and entertainment shifted to small traveling shows and festivals. The modern circus wasn’t born until until the 18th century (or re-born depending on if you count the Roman circuses as the real start).

Ever wonder why the modern circus is shaped like a big ring? Well, the answer lies in a man named Philip Astley. Astley was a cavalry officer who had a talent for performing tricks while on horseback. While he wasn’t the first to do this kind of thing, unlike his rivals or contemporaries, Astley would ride his horse in circles rather than straight lines. He eventually set up an amphitheatre in 1768 where people could pay to see him perform his annular spectacle a big ring (the measurements of which are used in modern-day circuses to this day). He would later hire other performers such as acrobats and jugglers to provide halftime entertainment while he took breaks. For this, Astley has been called the father of the modern circus.

Philip Astley’s act became so popular that, in 1773, he built an amphitheatre in London and named it after himself. While it needed to be rebuilt several times due to fire, the building endured until 1893. By then, it had become famous, and was referenced in several famous novels, including works by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.

Contrary to what you might guess, Astley didn’t come up with the term “circus” to describe the ring shaped venue he created—his rivals did. Another equestrian, Charles Hughes, teamed up with writer and actor Charles Dibdin to form the Royal Circus to compete with Astley.

All across the world, people are taking action to end the practice of using animals in circuses. Sweden, Costa Rica, India, Finland, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Israel, Taiwan, Malta, Netherlands, and Denmark all currently have nationwide bans on using certain—if not all—animals in circuses.

The phrase “to jump on the bandwagon” has its beginnings in the circus. Before the American Civil War, Dan Rice was the most famous circus clown in the country. His shows sold out and he was a known figure in a time without the internet to help make him famous. So, it made sense for Zachary Taylor to ask Rice to endorse his presidential campaign. Rice accepted the offer, and even invited Taylor to campaign on the circus bandwagon, using it to drum up support. This was so successful that other candidates began seeking out their own place on the bandwagon, and the rest is history.

Want to know more about the history of the circus? Click here.

DarkRavie · October 23, 2019

Fact of the Day - NFL FOOTBALL

Did you know... that the NFL has its beginnings in a league formed in 1920 called the American Professional Football Association? There were 10 teams in the original league, none of which are still part of the NFL. The Green Bay Packers joined in 1921 and would be the oldest and longest running franchise in NFL history. In 1922 the league changed its name to the National Football League. Over the next several years or so many teams would come and go as the sport tried to catch on. The last team to fold was in 1952.

In 1959 a rival league was formed, the American Football League (AFL). The AFL was very successful and soon was competing with the NFL for players. In 1970 the two leagues merged together. The new league was called the NFL, but they incorporated a lot of innovations from the AFL.

ere are currently 32 teams in the NFL. They are split into two conferences, the NFC and the AFC. Within each conference are 4 divisions of 4 teams each. To see more on the teams go to NFL teams. In the current NFL season (2010), each team plays sixteen games and has one week off called a bye week. The top 6 teams from each conference get into the playoffs with the top two teams getting a bye the first week. The playoffs are single-elimination and the final two teams meet up in the Super Bowl.

NFL players weren't required to wear helmets until 1943.
The Chicago Bears had 6 tie games in 1932.
A 30 second commercial in the 2011 Super Bowl cost around $3 million.
More than 100 million people watch the Super Bowl every year. They eat around 14,500 tons of chips!
The Dallas Cowboys is worth over $1.5B and is one of the most valuable franchises in all of sports.
Eli and Peyton Manning are the only brothers to both win the Super Bowl MVP.

DarkRavie · October 24, 2019

Fact of the Day - SPARTA

Did you know... that Sparta was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece? In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon, while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It is famous for its powerful army as well as its battles with the city-state of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Unlike their counterparts in the city of Athens, the Spartans didn't study philosophy, art, or theatre, they studied war. The Spartans were widely considered to have the strongest army and the best soldiers of any city-state in Ancient Greece. All Spartan men trained to become warriors from the day they were born.

The Spartan Army fought in a Phalanx formation. They would line up side by side and several men deep. Then they would lock their shields together and advance on the enemy stabbing them with their spears. The Spartans spent their lives drilling and practicing their formations and it showed in battle. They rarely broke formation and could defeat much larger armies. The basic equipment used by the Spartans included their shield (called an aspis), a spear (called a dory), and a short sword (called a xiphos). They also wore a crimson tunic so their bloody wounds wouldn't show. The most important piece of equipment to a Spartan was their shield. The biggest disgrace a soldier could suffer was to lose his shield in battle.

Spartan society was divided into specific social classes.

Spartan - At the top of Spartan society was the Spartan citizen. There were relatively few Spartan citizens. Spartan citizens were those people who could trace their ancestry to the original people who formed the city of Sparta. There were a few exceptions where adopted sons who performed well in battle could be given citizenship.
Perioikoi - The perioikoi were free people who lived in Spartan lands, but were not Spartan citizens. They could travel to other cities, could own land, and were allowed to trade. Many of the perioikoi were Laconians who were defeated by the Spartans.
Helot - The helots were the largest portion of the population. They were basically slaves or serfs to the Spartans. They farmed their own land, but had to give half of their crops to the Spartans as payment. Helots were beaten once a year and were forced to wear clothing made from animal skins. Helots caught trying to escape were generally killed.

Spartan boys were trained to be soldiers from their youth. They were raised by their mothers until the age of seven and then they would enter a military school called the Agoge. At the Agoge the boys were trained how to fight, but also learned how to read and write. The Agoge was a tough school. The boys lived in barracks and were often beaten to make them tough. They were given little to eat in order to get used to what life would be like when they went to war. The boys were encouraged to fight one another. When the boys turned 20 they entered into the Spartan army.

Spartan girls also went to school at the age of seven. Their school wasn't as tough as the boys, but they did train in athletics and exercise. It was important that the women stay fit so they would have strong sons who could fight for Sparta. The women of Sparta had more freedom and education than most Greek city-states at the time. Girls usually were married at the age of 18.

The city of Sparta rose to power around 650 BC. From 492 BC to 449 BC, the Spartans led the Greek city-states in a war against the Persians. It was during the Persian Wars that the Spartans fought the famous battle of Thermopylae where 300 Spartans held off hundreds of thousands of Persians allowing the Greek army to escape. After the Persian Wars, Sparta went to war against Athens in the Peloponnesian War. The two city-states fought from 431 BC to 404 BC with Sparta eventually triumphing over Athens. Sparta began to decline in the coming years and lost the Battle of Leuctra to Thebes in 371 BC. However, it remained an independent city-state until Greece was conquered by the Roman Empire in 146 BC.

Interesting Facts about Sparta

Boys were encouraged to steal food. If they were caught, they were punished, not for stealing, but for getting caught.
Spartan men were required to stay fit and ready to fight until the age of 60.
The term "spartan" is often used to describe something simple or without comfort.
The Spartans considered themselves to be direct descendents of the Greek hero Hercules.
Sparta was ruled by two kings who had equal power. There was also a council of five men called the ephors who watched over the kings.
Laws were made by a council of 30 elders which included the two kings.

DarkRavie · October 25, 2019

Fact of the Day - HALLOWEEN

Did you know... that Halloween or Hallowe'en, also known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in several countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day? Halloween is a celebration of all things spooky, and in the United States it's surrounded by a few odd traditions like trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving.

“Jack o'lantern” comes from the Irish legend of Stingy Jack

Legend has it that Stingy Jack invited the devil to have a drink with him, but Jack didn't want to pay for the drink so he convinced the devil to turn himself into a coin. Instead of buying the drink, he pocked the coin and kept it close to a silver cross in his house, so the devil couldn't take shape again. He promised to let the devil go as long as he would leave him alone for a year – and if Jack died that the devil wouldn't claim his soul. After a year, Jack tricked the devil again to leave him alone and not claim his soul. Basically, the devil is really gullible in this story. When Jack died, God didn't want such a conniving person in heaven, and the devil true to his word (what a good guy) would not allow him into hell. Jack was sent off into the night with only a burning coal to light his path. He placed the coal inside a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the earth ever since. People in Ireland and Scotland began creating their own creations of Jack's lanterns out of turnips, beets and potatoes. The tradition came to the United States along with the immigrants and people began to use pumpkins, native to North America, for the lanterns instead.

Candy corn was originally called Chicken Feed

Though many would argue that candy corn tastes like chicken feed, that's not how it got its original name. Created in 1880 by George Renninger, it was sold to the masses by Goelitz Confectionery Company (now Jelly Belly Co.) at the turn of the century. Because corn is what was used to feed chickens, the creation was called Chicken Feed and the box was marked with a colorful rooster.

Trick-or-treating comes from“souling”

Having children dress up in costume and go door-to-door like little beggars demanding treats is kind of weird. Like several other Halloween activities, the tradition can be traced back to the Middle Ages and the rituals of Samhain. It was believed that ghosts and spirits walked the Earth on the night of Samhain, so people would dress up as spirits themselves in an effort to fool the real deal into thinking they were one and the same. This act was called "guising." As the Catholic Church started supplanting pagan festivals with their own holidays (like All Saints' Day), the act of guising became popular and poor children and adults would go door to door dressed as angels or spirits on Hallowmas begging for food or money in exchange for songs and prayers. This was called "souling." The earliest known reference to the phrase "trick-or-treat" in North America is from 1927 in Alberta, Canada.

The most lit jack o'lanterns on display is 30,581

According to Guinness World Records, the highest number of lit jack o'lanterns on display is 30,581 by the City of Keene, N.H. in 2013. The City of Keenne, represented by Let it Shine, has broken the record 8 times over since the original attempt. That's a whole lot of pumpkins!

Halloween folklore is full of fortune-telling and magic

Old English folklore about Halloween is full of superstition and fortune-telling that still lingers today, like bobbing for apples or avoiding black cats. One piece of folklore says that if a young unmarried person walks down the stairs backwards at midnight while holding a mirror, the face that appears in the mirror will be their next lover. Those people are all dead now.

Day of the Dead should really be called Days of the Dead

The Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, takes place on November 1 and November 2 in Mexico and a few other Hispanic countries. The first day, Dia de los Inocentes honors children that died and family members decorate graves with baby's breath and white orchids. On November 2, Dia de los Muertos, families honor adults who have died and place orange marigolds on grave sites. The original Aztec celebration actually lasted a month long, but when Spanish conquistadors came over to Mexico in the 16th century, they merged the festival with the Catholic All Saints' Day. Today's celebration is a mix of both Aztec rituals of skulls, altars to the dead and food with Catholic masses and prayers.

Michael Myers' mask is actually a William Shatner mask

The 1978 horror classic Halloween can be easily recognized in just one image: the psychotic Michael Myers in his iconic pale-faced mask. Without a doubt, it's one chilling look that has struck terror in the hearts of pot-smoking, partying teens in slasher flicks. The film was actually on such a tight budget that the crew used the cheapest mask they could find: a $2 Star Trek William Shatner mask. They did spray-paint it white and reshape the eye holes, making Captain James Kirk look incredibly creepy. Gives a whole new meaning to the word "warp."

Halloween originated from an ancient Celtic festival

According to History.com, the Halloween we know today can trace its roots back to the ancient Celtic end-of-harvest festival of Samhain. During Samhain, people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off evil spirits. In the eighth century, in an effort to spread Christianity, Pope Gregory III decreed November 1 as All Saints' Day and incorporated some of the rituals of Samhain. All Saints' Day was also called All Hallows and the night before, when the traditional Samhain festival used to take place in Celtic regions, was called All Hallows' Eve.

Des Moines has a hilarious tradition called Beggars' Night

The night before Halloween, young children in Des Moines hit the streets for Beggars' Night. According to an article in the Des Moines Register, the event began around 1938 as a way to prevent vandalism and give younger children a safer way to enjoy Halloween. Beggars' Night is very similar to regular trick-or-treating, except kids are required to tell a joke, poem, or perform a "trick" for a treat. The best part? The jokes are notoriously groan-worthy like, "If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?" "Pilgrims." Get your best dad jokes ready!

The White House is haunted

The United States' most famous address has had several reports of ghostly appearances and eerie sounds – and that's not even including election years! The most common ghost sighting is of Abraham Lincoln who has been spotted by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Sir Winston Churchill. Other paranormal guests include Andrew Jackson, David Burns and Abigail Adams.

DarkRavie · October 26, 2019

Fact of the Day - COURT FOOLS AND JESTERS

Did you know.... that the Kings and Queens of history have been a confusing bunch, haven’t they? They’ve been respectable, knowledgeable, worthy leaders, and they’ve been shockingly unfit-to-rule disasters. They’ve been as dignified and restrained as Queen Elizabeth II, and they’ve gorged themselves until they were horribly rotund like King Henry VIII. Heck, Henry VIII was both, if you compare the way he composed himself as a Prince with his later behavior as King. There are a lot of misconceptions around monarchs, and around a particular member of their entourage: the court jester. This much-maligned figure of fun is often portrayed as somebody we laughed at, rather than laughed with; the clowns of the past in their silly, bell-adorned costumes. In fact, they were often highly intelligent, savvy entertainers. Before we take a look at what they really were, though, let’s take a closer look at how the court jester tends to be portrayed.

Today, the concept of the court jester often evokes images of somebody who would humiliate themselves for the enjoyment of others. Somebody whose foolishness we could take advantage of, have cruel laughs at. A lot of sitcoms have a ‘comic relief’ character, where the source of the humor comes from the fact that they misunderstand what the group at large is talking about or doing. Think Homer Simpson, Joey Tribbiani of Friends or Woody from Cheers, for instance. Barely a brain cell to rub together between them, but some of the funniest characters in their respective shows. Again, though, we’re often laughing at them, not with them. If this how jesters were seen? As people to point and laugh at, like cruel schoolchildren when somebody accidentally calls the teacher ‘mommy’ in first grade? That’s a sweeping generalization, and far from the truth. In reality, the words fool and foolish tend to be misused. To Shakespeare, these people were geniuses!

As Chris Wiley writes in his ‘Fooling Around: The Court Jesters of Shakespeare’, “Shakespeare wrote many “fools” into his plays, most of whom were treated respectfully… Distinctions must be made within the category of fools, however: clowns, who turn farce into a precise science (think “pie in the face); dunces, who turn their lack of intelligence into a medium for humor; and finally the princes of fooling, the court jesters, who turn fooling into a respectable profession.” That’s the key thing, here: the court jester, ridiculous as they may look and act, was a crucial and respected member of the court. In fact, they were sometimes given the role of advisor to their King or Queen, relaying information that others dare not. In one famous case in 1340, King Philippe VI’s French fleet has been soundly smashed in a battle with the British navy. His jester was tasked with bringing the King the news, and, carefully considering his delivery, told him, “they don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French.” Here’s one example of the true role of a court jester: combining their silly antics with wit and a vital role at their monarch’s side.

It’s no surprise that we’ve got such a confused idea of what the life of a court jester was all about. After all, they did so many things! It wasn’t all making off-color jokes and jingling your bells. That was just an occasional part of their duties. Even the richest nobles and monarchs weren’t constantly throwing banquets for them to perform at, and they wouldn’t want the same person performing the same routine all the time anyway. As a result, History Extra reports, “medieval jesters only performed occasionally. The rest of the year, they were expected to carry out other duties in the household, such as being keeper of the hounds, or traveling to markets to buy the livestock to feed the family, their servants and their men-at-arms.”

There you are, then. As we can see, being a “Fool” sometimes required you to be very, very un-foolish. When all is said and done, though, things aren’t as cut and dried as they may seem. Court jesters often were highly intelligent, contrary to popular belief, but the classic image of the poor soul who’s the butt of all the jokes (as well as the source of them) isn’t necessarily 100% wrong either. History Extra sums the whole thing up best, explaining that distinct kinds of fool emerged during the Middle Ages. “The professional fool employed by a nobleman was usually very astute, educated and generally wore normal clothes, like their masters, rather than the classic fool’s costume,” they explain. At the same time, though, “wealthy or noble families also adopted men and women who had mental illnesses or physical deformities, keeping them almost as pets for their amusement… Often referred to as ‘innocent fools’ and also given titles such as ‘the Queen’s fool’ or ‘Lord X’s fool’, they were not paid, just provided with food, clothes and a place to sleep on the floor.” The stark contrast here just goes to prove: you can’t judge a book by its cover, or a fool by their foolishness.

DarkRavie · October 27, 2019

Fact of the Day - ARM WRESTLING

Did you know... that arm wrestling can be traced all the way back to ancient Egypt where a painting depicting a type of arm wrestling was found in an Egyptian tomb dating to about 2,000 B.C.?

The modern sport is based on a Native American game. In fact, it was usually called "Indian wrestling" when practiced by frontiersman during the 19th century and by children in the 20th century. In addition to what has become known as arm wrestling, there are several other forms of "Indian wrestling." In one, the opponents stand facing one another, with the outer sides of their right feet set together and their right hands interlocked. The object is to throw the opponent off balance. In another, the opponents lie down with their near arms and near legs locked and each tries to force the other's leg down.

In arm wrestling, which has now become a genuinely international sport, the opponents are seated at a table, facing one another. They lock their hands (usually the right hands, but there is now also left-handed competition), with their elbows firmly planted on the flat surface, and each attempts to force the others arm down to the table.

In addition to being a semi-popular sport among high school and college students, arm wrestling was a tavern sport and the first organized competition was staged by a journalist, Bill Soberanes, in 1952 at Gilardi's Saloon in Petaluma, California. Over the next ten years, it became bigger and bigger. In 1962, the tournament moved to a large auditorium in Petaluma and renamed it the World Wristwrestling Championship.

The sport got a major boost from "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles Schulz in 1968. Schulz did a series of comic strips in which Snoopy was headed to Petaluma to try to win the championship. However, in the last strip, he was barred from competition because the rules require that you lock thumbs with your opponent and Snoopy had no thumb. Largely because of that publicity, the championship was televised on ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1969 and became an annual event on the program for 16 years.

The World Armsport Federation (WAF), was founded with the United States, Canada, Brazil, and India as the first members. In 1992, the World Armsport Federation (WAF), held its first world championships in Switzerland. Incidentally, although arm wrestling and wrist wrestling are generally considered the same sport, there's one slight technical difference between them. In arm wrestling, opponents grip a peg with the free hand. In wrist wrestling, they grip their free hands across the table.

In 2010 Robert Drenk in conjunction with Bill Collins formed the Ultimate Armwrestling League with the Vision of bringing Armwrestling to the Masses, getting the public excited and involved in this sport again is in the makings... Armwrestling is Back!

DarkRavie · October 28, 2019

Fact of the Day - BEAVERS

Did you know... that beavers are famous for their buckteeth and large, flat tails? These two well-known features aid beavers in their lives from day to day. The beaver's teeth never stop growing. Chewing on tree trunks and branches helps keep the teeth from getting too long. A beaver’s front teeth stick out in front of their lips. That way, beavers can cut and chew underwater wood without getting water in their mouths. Beavers have a coating on their teeth that contains iron, which helps prevent tooth decay.

A beaver’s paddle-shaped tail is black and scaly. In water, it functions like a boat rudder, helping steer the beaver as it moves logs to its dam. Beavers are builders! They spend much of their time building and maintaining their houses: dams and lodges—large dome-shaped piles of branches in lakes, rivers and larger streams. Beavers access their lodges through underwater entrances, which lead into dry living areas.

As the colder months approach, they spread a thin layer of mud on top of the lodge to keep out any predators, such as lynx and wolves. If a beaver feels threatened, it will slap its tail on the surface of the water to warn other beavers in the area, then it will dive deep underwater to stay safe. Beavers can be found around lakes and streams all over Canada. In the past, beavers were over-hunted for their fur and meat, threatening the population. They have come back, however, thanks to wetland rehabilitation and other conservation efforts.

Scientific name: Castor canadensis

Average size: 74 to 90 centimetres

Average weight: Can weigh up to 32 kilograms

Beavers have clear membranes over their eyes that help them to see underwater, like goggles. The world’s longest beaver dam is found in Alberta’s Wood Buffalo National Park and measures 850 metres. Dams usually average about 100 metres in length. The beaver was made an official emblem of Canada in 1975 in recognition of the importance of the fur trade.

And did you know that the beaver has long been an animal of importance to First Nations in North America, and beaver pelts formed the basis of trade with European settlers starting in the 1530s. When settlers first arrived in Canada (before it was actually called Canada) there were so many beavers that they hunted them and traded their fur. Beaver-fur hats became very fashionable in Europe so traders were able to get a lot of goods in return for beaver pelts. This is one of the reasons that the beaver started to appear on The Hudson Bay company’ coat of arms in the 1600s. The North American beaver is still considered the national animal of Canada to this day.

Beavers use their giant, sharp and strong front teeth to bite and chop down trees and other plants to build dams in rivers and streams. Inside the dam is where they build their homes, also called lodges. Beavers only eat plants, which makes them herbivores. They spend a lot of time in the water but also a lot of time on land gathering materials to build with. When carrying large logs becomes too difficult over land, beavers will create canals in the water to make it easier to float the logs to their dams... smart!

Beavers are the second largest rodents in the world, second to the capybara of South America. But just because they are large doesn’t mean they don’t have predators hunting them in the wild. When a beaver senses danger it will dive into the water and slap its tail very hard and loudly on the water. It makes such a loud sound that many beavers can hear it both on land and in the water very far away. When other beavers hear this alarm sound they will usually stay under the water for a while to wait until the danger is gone.

Beavers have sacs in their rear end that are filled with something called castoreum. Beavers use these scent sacs to mark the areas around their dams to let other beavers know that this is their home. Perfume makers use the scent from these sacs to create perfume smells. If you ever smell perfume that has a slight smell of leather, then maybe it was made with castoreum from a beaver!

DarkRavie · October 29, 2019

Fact of the Day - 1929 HISTORY

Did you know... that Vatican City was founded in 1929? There were many famous people born that year. Among them were; Anne Frank, Martin Luther King, Audrey Hepburn, Joe Gallo and Arnold Palmer.

In Sports of that Year

April 16th, NY Yankees become the 1st team to wear uniform numbers.

August 7th, NY Yankees slugger Babe Ruth ties MLB record by hitting grand slams in consecutive games for the second time in 13-1 win vs Philadelphia A's. And on

August 11th, Babe Ruth becomes the 1st professional baseball player to hit 500 homers (off Willis Hudlin of Cleveland Indians).

In Important Events

February 14th, St Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago, 7 gangsters killed, allegedly on Al Capone's orders.

June 25th, US President Herbert Hoover authorizes building of Boulder Dam (Hoover Dam).

June 27th, 1st color TV demo, performed by Bell Laboratories in NYC

October 24th, "Black Thursday", start of stock market crash, Dow Jones down 12.8%.

October 28th "Black Tuesday" Wall Street Stock Market crashes triggering the "Great Depression".

In Film

February 1st, "The Broadway Melody", also known as "The Broadway Melody of 1929", is a 1929 American pre-Code musical film and the first sound film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was one of the first musicals to feature a Technicolor sequence, which sparked the trend of color being used in a flurry of musicals that would hit the screens in 1929–1930.

April (1920), "Auld Lang Syne" is a British musical film directed by George Pearson and starring Harry Lauder, Dorothy Boyd, and Patrick Aherne. It was originally made as a silent film, but in September 1929 sound was added.[1][2] It was shot at Cricklewood Studios in Cricklewood, London.

November 15th, "Acquitted" is a 1929 American melodrama directed by Frank R. Strayer, from a screenplay by Keene Thompson.

December 14th, "The Aviator" is a 1929 American Pre-Code Vitaphone comedy film produced and released by Warner Bros. Directed by Roy Del Ruth, the film was based on the play of the same name by James Montgomery and starred Edward Everett Horton and Patsy Ruth Miller.

In Music

January 1, Pianist and composer Abram Chasins makes his professional debut playing his own piano concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

February 4, First recording of George Gershwin's An American in Paris, by Nathaniel Shilkret and the Victor Symphony Orchestra.

September 11, Louis Armstrong records his hit song "When You're Smiling".

December 31, Guy Lombardo plays "Auld Lang Syne" for the first time.

DarkRavie · October 30, 2019

Fact of the Day - THE DEMI-MONDE

Did you know... that Demi-monde refers to a group of people who live hedonistic lifestyles, usually in a flagrant and conspicuous manner? The term was commonly used in Europe from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and contemporary use has an anachronistic character. The term 'demi-monde' is French for "half-world". It derives from a comedy called Le Demi-Monde, by Alexandre Dumas, fils, published in 1855.

The term was often used as one of disapprobation, the behavior of a person in the demimonde being contrary to more traditional or bourgeois values. Such behaviors often included drinking or drug use, gambling, high spending (particularly in pursuit of fashion, as through clothing as well as servants and houses), and sexual promiscuity.

The term demimondaine referred to a woman who embodied these qualities; later it became a euphemism for a courtesan or prostitute. As the twentieth century dawned, changing social mores resulted in the demarginalization of the demimonde. Women's suffrage and the flapper movements resulted in the label demimondaine becoming obsolete. The term commonly used to refer to the class that became 'starving artists'.

Externally, the defining aspects of the demimonde were an extravagant lifestyle of fine food and clothes, often surpassing that of other wealthy women of their day with a steady income of cash and gifts from their various lovers. Internally, their lifestyle was an eclectic mixture of sharp business acumen, social skills, and hedonism. Intelligent demimondaines, like the fictional Gigi's grandmother, would invest their wealth for the day when their beauty faded. Others ended up penniless and starving when age took its toll on their beauty, unless they managed to marry.

A famous beauty was Virginia Oldoini, Countess di Castiglione, who came to Paris in the 1850s with very little money of her own and soon became mistress of Napoleon III; after that relationship ended she moved on to other wealthy men in government, finance and European royalty. She was one of the most aristocratic and exclusive of the demimondaines—reputed to have charged a member of the British aristocracy one million francs for 12 hours in her company.

Another woman who doubtless influenced later images of the demimondaine was the dancer and adventuress Lola Montez, though she died before the term came into general use. The actress Sarah Bernhardt was the illegitimate child of a courtesan; in her day all actresses were generally considered demimondaines. Her many lovers and extravagant lifestyle fit the type, though her genuine successes as an artist and innovator eventually gained her a kind of public esteem most demimondaines never achieved.

The Parisian Belle Époque (‘beautiful era’) is arguably one of the most recognisable and lauded periods in the recent history of western civilisation. Its cultural achievements and allure have been canonised in film and literature, and works produced in the period from the late 1800s through to the outbreak of World War One claim prominence in prestigious art collections and auction houses the world over.

Considered a golden age, this period was characterised by extraordinary vitality and optimism, with an unprecedented number of masterpieces in the fields of literature, music, theatre, and visual art produced by a vortex of creative talent. Disseminated through the centrifugal force of Parisian society, it stamped modernity’s imprimatur and was to remain an enduring influence on western society’s cultural landscape and imagination.

Central to this output was the energy and excitement generated through immersion and engagement with society at street level. The sphere of private salons, in which tight and privileged networks of aristocrats, academics, artists and intellectuals mingled throughout the 1800s, became more liberal as the century wore on, and lost pre-eminence in the Belle Époque.

To read more about the Demi-Monde, click here.

Edited October 30, 2019 by DarkRavie

DarkRavie · October 31, 2019

Fact of the Day - TIME CAPSULE HISTORY

1. The 1876 Century Safe

The world’s first planned time capsule debuted in 1876, when New York magazine publisher Anna Deihm assembled a “Century Safe” at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The iron box was stuffed with 19th century relics including a gold pen and inkstand, a book on temperance, a collection of Americans’ signatures, and snapshots of President Ulysses S. Grant and other politicians taken by photographer Mathew Brady. After being sealed in 1879, the purple velvet-lined safe was taken to the U.S. Capitol and eventually left to languish under the East Portico. Though nearly forgotten, it was later rediscovered, restored and unlocked on schedule in July 1976 during the nation’s bicentennial festivities. At a ceremony attended by President Gerald Ford, Senator Mike Mansfield said the opening had honored “the wish of a lady who sought to speak to us from the other side of a 100-year gulf.”

2. The Massachusetts State House Time Capsule

The United States’ oldest known time capsule was the work of none other than Samuel Adams and Paul Revere. In late 2014, repairmen fixing a water leak at the Massachusetts State House uncovered a brass box that the two former Sons of Liberty had placed in a cornerstone to mark the building’s construction back in 1795. It had already been opened once in 1855 for cleaning and the addition of new artifacts, and historians were initially unsure if its contents had survived intact. When it was finally unsealed in 2015, however, it was found to contain a trove of preserved artifacts including newspapers, coins dating back to the 1600s, a page from the Massachusetts Colony Records and a copper medal with an image of “General of the American Army” George Washington. Most exciting of all was a silver plaque—most likely the work of Revere—that read, “This cornerstone of a building intended for the use of the legislative and executive branches of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was laid by his Excellency Samuel Adams, Esquire, governor of the said Commonwealth.”

3. The Crypt of Civilization

Most time capsules contain only a few trinkets or letters, but Oglethorpe University’s “Crypt of Civilization” represents an audacious attempt to preserve all of human knowledge for posterity. The project was the brainchild of the university’s president, Thornwell Jacobs, who believed it might serve as a valuable record for archaeologists in the distant future. Beginning in 1937, he converted an underground 20-by-10 chamber in the administration building into a museum of civilization filled with everything from 640,000 pages of microfilmed books and religious texts to an early television, a container of beer and a set of toy Lincoln Logs. The vault even features a special “language integrator” to help teach English to whoever might find it. The entire haul was welded off behind an airtight stainless steel door during a ceremony in May 1940. Jacobs decreed that it should remain closed for 6,177 years—the same amount of time that was then thought to have passed since the beginning of recorded history. The Crypt remains at Oglethorpe University to this day, and is now more than 75 years into its long journey to the year 8113 A.D.

4. The Westinghouse Time Capsules

During the future-themed 1939 New York World’s Fair, the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company entombed a torpedo-shaped cylinder inside a 50-foot-deep “Immortal Well” on the fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows. The cylinder was originally called a “time bomb,” but the name was changed after a Westinghouse publicist coined the now-famous term “time capsule.” Another capsule was placed nearby in 1965, and both are now scheduled for opening in the year 6939 A.D.— 5,000 years after the first one was buried. The items inside the two capsules include a collection of seeds, metals and textiles; microfilm and newsreels; and everyday items such as a Beatles record, a bikini, a pack of Camel cigarettes and a plastic child’s cup featuring Mickey Mouse. The 1939 capsule also featured a letter from physicist Albert Einstein, who praised the scientific progress of his age but also added that, “People living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror.”

5. The Detroit Century Box

Shortly after the clocks struck midnight on January 1, 1901, Mayor William C. Maybury sealed a copper time capsule at Detroit’s Old City Hall and proclaimed that it was not to be touched for 100 years. When Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer finally opened the “Century Box” in December 2000, it was found to contain several dozen letters to the future written by the city’s business and political leaders. Most of the missives included descriptions of the wonders of 1900 Detroit along with musings on what life in 21st century might be like. “How much faster are you traveling?” Maybury asked his future successor. “We talk by long distance telephone to the remotest cities in our own country…Are you talking with foreign lands and to the islands of the sea by the same method?” Other prognosticators were not so accurate. A few speculated that Canada would be annexed or that Ontario would become a U.S. state, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioners wrote that, “prisoners instead of being conveyed to the several police stations in Automobile patrol wagons will be sent through pneumatic tubes, flying machines, or some similar process.”

6. The Expo ’70 Time Capsule

1939 wasn’t the only year that a world’s fair included an ambitious time capsule project. For the 1970 Expo in Osaka, Japan, the electronics giant Panasonic constructed a kettle-shaped capsule designed to remain unopened for 5,000 years. The main container was filled with a protective layer of inert argon gas to protect its contents, but the project leaders also built a second “control” capsule that will be periodically opened, inspected and cleaned to ensure its survival and help keep the project’s memory alive. The first opening already took place in 2000, and the rest will occur at intervals of 100 years. In total, each capsule contains a cargo of 2,098 culturally significant objects, many of them suggested by the public. If the two capsules endure until the planned opening date of 6970 A.D., their future owners will find an extensive collection of films, seeds and microorganisms as well as a ceremonial kimono, a Slinky and even the blackened fingernail of a survivor of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing.

7. The Juneau Time Capsule

Juneau, Alaska’s Federal Building includes an unusual attraction in the form a room-sized time capsule fitted with a plate glass observation window. First closed off in 1994, the 9-by-6 foot chamber is packed with thousands of pieces of memorabilia scrounged by locals as part of a citywide project. Many of the objects are everyday relics of the 90s—a Wonderbra, a Sony Walkman, a Barbie doll—but there are also old drivers licenses, family mementos and a box containing menus from all of Juneau’s restaurants. The vault also includes hundreds of letters written by schoolchildren to the students of the future. Copies of the notes were put on display several years later, but the originals will remain sealed off until New Years Eve 2094—the date when the capsule is scheduled to be opened after 100 years. “If you want to include me in your history book as the best fifth grader in the year 1994-1995,” one student wrote, “go ahead and do it.”

8. The Future Library

Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s Future Library is a literary time capsule that will be a century in the making. Starting in 2014, a new author will be invited to submit a novel, poem or other written text to the project each year for 100 years. In 2114, the entire collection will be published all at once—no doubt posthumously for many of its contributors. A forest of 1,000 trees has already been planted outside Oslo, Norway to supply the paper for the printing. None of the entries will be available to read until the project is complete, however, and the writers are forbidden to reveal anything about their works other than the title. Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood submitted the first manuscript, called “Scribbler Moon,” in 2014, and British author David Mitchell provided the second the following year. Their manuscripts, along with 98 forthcoming titles from other writers, will be held in a public library in Oslo until their official unveiling in the 22nd century.

DarkRavie · November 1, 2019

Fact of the Day - ASTRONAUTS

Did you know... that the word "astronaut" comes from the Greek words "astron nautes", which means "star sailor?" An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft.

In 2017, more than 18,000 people applied to join Nasa’s astronaut class. That’s almost three times the number of applications that were received in 2012, and far surpasses the record of 8000 applications set in 1978. The selection process for NASA takes 18 months, and of the thousands of applications received, only 8-14 individuals will get the opportunity to become an astronaut. Once selected, applicants are still not considered full astronauts. They face two years of basic training where they are considered “astronaut candidates”.

Astronauts spend hours learning to read and speak Russian. Spoken fluency is necessary for safety reasons, and passing a competency test is a requirement for NASA. Astronaut recruits get training in a specially fitted aircraft that uses a flight method called parabolic flight which creates a weightless environment for 20-25 second intervals. The exercise puts strain on the body, making 1 out of every 3 astronauts feel sick, thus earning the nickname “the vomit comet”.

The Apollo 15 mission placed an astronaut figure on the moon with a memorial plaque listing the 14 people who had died on space missions. The sculpture was named “The Fallen Astronaut”. Apollo 16 Astronaut Charles Duke left not only his footprints, but a photograph of his wife and their two sons sitting on a bench. Duke signed the back of the photograph and wrote the following message: “’This is the family of Astronaut Duke from Planet Earth. Landed on the Moon, April 1972.’” The photograph remains to this day.

Astronauts can be quite clumsy when they return from a long stay on the International Space Station (ISS) . The have reported dropping objects like pens and keys because they are used to not having to hold things in zero gravity. Believe it or not, farts were a major safety concern early on in the space program. Scientists were afraid that flammable methane gas could be explosive, and NASA spent a lot of time and money on studies to find a way to prevent this from happening. Both the ISS and the space suit is outfitted with filters that remove these gasses.

Sneezing in a space suit is a delicate matter. Astronauts have to lean their heads forward and sneeze into their chests to prevent it from splattering all over their visor. Astronauts in space can’t tell when their bladders are full, because urine does not collect at the bottom of the bladder in a low-gravity environment. Normally, the bladder would signal the need to go at 1/3 full, but in space, it’s only triggered at almost full, which can cause problems. As a precautionary measure, Astronauts are trained to relieve themselves every two hours.

To learn more about Astronauts, click here.

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