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DarkRavie

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Fact of the Day - LYRICS

 

Did you know... that lyrics are words that make up a song usually consisting of verses and choruses? The writer of lyrics is a lyricist. The words to an extended musical composition such as an opera are, however, usually known as a "libretto" and their writer, as a "librettist". The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit.

 

Lyrics aren't always meant to be taken literally. Nobody should have to endure some obnoxious guy at a bar pedantically explaining that the sun never goes around the moon. But some artists just get it plain wrong. Whether it's due to lack of research, laziness or simply a strident desire to stick to the rhyme scheme, there are occasions where creative license turns to pure fiction.

 

Lyric, a verse or poem that is, or supposedly is, susceptible of being sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument (in ancient times, usually a lyre) or that expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song. Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the form of a story. Elegies, odes, and sonnets are all important kinds of lyric poetry.

 

In ancient Greece an early distinction was made between the poetry chanted by a choir of singers (choral lyrics) and the song that expressed the sentiments of a single poet. The latter, the melos, or song proper, had reached a height of technical perfection in “the Isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” as early as the 7th century BC. That poetess, together with her contemporary Alcaeus, were the chief Doric poets of the pure Greek song. By their side, and later, flourished the great poets who set words to music for choirs, Alcman, Arion, Stesichorus, Simonides, and Ibycus, who were followed at the close of the 5th century by Bacchylides and Pindar, in whom the tradition of the dithyrambic odes reached its highest development.

 

Latin lyrics were written by Catullus and Horace in the 1st century BC; and in medieval Europe the lyric form can be found in the songs of the troubadours, in Christian hymns, and in various ballads. In the Renaissance the most finished form of lyric, the sonnet, was brilliantly developed by Petrarch, Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Milton. Especially identified with the lyrical forms of poetry in the late 18th and 19th centuries were the Romantic poets, including such diverse figures as Robert Burns, William Blake, William Wordsworth, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Goethe, and Heinrich Heine. With the exception of some dramatic verse, most Western poetry in the late 19th and the 20th century may be classified as lyrical.

 

"Lyric" derives via Latin lyricus from the Greek λυρικός (lyrikós), the adjectival form of lyre. It first appeared in English in the mid-16th century in reference, to the Earl of Surrey's translations of Petrarch and to his own sonnets. Greek lyric poetry had been defined by the manner in which it was sung accompanied by the lyre or cithara, as opposed to the chanted formal epics or the more passionate elegies accompanied by the flute. The personal nature of many of the verses of the Nine Lyric Poets led to the present sense of "lyric poetry" but the original Greek sense—words set to music—eventually led to its use as "lyrics", first attested in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Stainer and Barrett used the word as a singular substantive: "Lyric, poetry or blank verse intended to be set to music and sung". By the 1930s, the present use of the plurale tantum "lyrics" had begun; it has been standard since the 1950s for many writers. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song by authorities such as Alec Wilder, Robert Gottlieb, and Stephen Sondheim. However, the singular form is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics.

 

The differences between poem and song may become less meaningful where verse is set to music, to the point that any distinction becomes untenable. This is perhaps recognised in the way popular songs have lyrics.  However, the verse may pre-date its tune (in the way that "Rule Britannia" was set to music, and "And did those feet in ancient time" has become the hymn "Jerusalem"), or the tune may be lost over time but the words survive, matched by a number of different tunes (this is particularly common with hymns and ballads).

 

Possible classifications proliferate (under anthem, ballad, blues, carol, folk song, hymn, libretto, lied, lullaby, march, praise song, round, spiritual). Nursery rhymes may be songs, or doggerel: the term doesn't imply a distinction. The ghazal is a sung form that is considered primarily poetic. See also rapping, roots of hip hop music.  Analogously, verse drama might normally be judged (at its best) as poetry, but not consisting of poems (see dramatic verse).

 

In Baroque music, melodies and their lyrics were prose. Rather than paired lines they consist of rhetorical sentences or paragraphs consisting of an opening gesture, an amplification (often featuring sequence), and a close (featuring a cadence); in German Vordersatz-Fortspinnung-Epilog. For example:

 

When I was a child, [opening gesture]

I spoke as a child, [amplification...]

I understood as a child, [...]

I thought as a child; [...]

But when I became a man, I put away childish things. [close] -

1 Corinthians 13:11

 

In the lyrics of popular music a "shifter" is a word, often a pronoun, "where reference varies according to who is speaking, when and where", such as "I", "you", "my", "our". For example, who is the "my" of "My Generation"?

 

Currently, there are many websites featuring song lyrics. This offering, however, is controversial, since some sites include copyrighted lyrics offered without the holder's permission. The U.S. Music Publishers' Association (MPA), which represents sheet music companies, launched a legal campaign against such websites in December 2005. The MPA's president, Lauren Keiser, said the free lyrics web sites are "completely illegal" and wanted some website operators jailed.

 

Lyrics licenses could be obtained worldwide through one of the two aggregators: LyricFind and Musixmatch. The first company to provide licensed lyrics was Yahoo!, quickly followed by MetroLyrics. More and more lyric websites are beginning to provide licensed lyrics, such as SongMeanings and LyricWiki.

 

Many competing lyrics web sites are still offering unlicensed content, causing challenges around the legality and accuracy of lyrics. In the latest attempt to crack down unlicensed lyrics web sites a federal court has ordered LiveUniverse, a network of websites run by MySpace co-founder Brad Greenspan, to cease operating four sites offering unlicensed song lyrics.

 

Lyrics can be studied from an academic perspective. For example, some lyrics can be considered a form of social commentary. Lyrics often contain political, social, and economic themes—as well as aesthetic elements—and so can communicate culturally significant messages. These messages can be explicit, or implied through metaphor or symbolism. Lyrics can also be analyzed with respect to the sense of unity (or lack of unity) it has with its supporting music. Analysis based on tonality and contrast are particular examples. Former Oxford Professor of Poetry Christopher Ricks famously published Dylan's Visions of Sin, an in-depth and characteristically Ricksian analysis of the lyrics of Bob Dylan; Ricks gives the caveat that to have studied the poetry of the lyrics in tandem with the music would have made for a much more complicated critical feat.

 

 

 

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - PENTATONIX

 

Did you know... that Pentatonix is an American acapella group from Arlington, Texas, consisting of vocalists Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstin Maldonado, Kevin Olusola, and Matt Sallee?

 

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Pentatonix is one of the most well-known acapella groups that is still active today. They came to fame after winning an NBC reality show in 2011, and they have been going strong ever since. Though the quintet has lived most of their career in the spotlight, there are still some things about Pentatonix that most people do not know.

 

They Have Personal Ties to Pitch Perfect‘s Bellas
Scott Hoying of Pentatonix actually went to college with one of the Bellas in Pitch Perfect. The band members are also part of Pitch Perfect 2.

 

Choir Nerds Were the Cool Kids at Their School
Kirstin Maldonado has said that she really enjoyed high school, even though she was “such a loser.” According to the guys in Pentatonix, “We went to a great high school. It was huge. There were like 4,000 people at our high school and our choir program and theater was like 500 people and so we might have been nerdy, but we were in a pool of 500, so it was a great community.”

 

They Are Math and Science Nerds
Maldonado said that she really enjoyed the subject of chemistry in high school. Hoying also admitted that he found “something comforting” in math and chemistry. Whatever that means.

 

They Refuse to Cover Taylor Swift
Because the group has to sing perfectly live (they perform acapella, after all), finding and choosing songs that fit all of their vocal ranges can be tough. They were planning on covering Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble,” but it just wasn’t working for them, so they dropped it.

 

They Love Energy Drinks
To wake themselves up when they are tired, the group uses champagne and red bull to get amped up before a show. They also eat pita chips, hummus, salsa, and beef jerky when they are on tour.

 

Maldonado Gets Special Treatment
Since she is the only girl in the group, Maldonado gets special treatment from the rest of the members. She gets her own dressing room, and the guys will come and visit her in her separate space as well.

 

They Are Happy Not to Be Perfect
It’s true! The group has no problem discussing each other’s flaws, which is important to maintain an honest dynamic.

 

They Look Up to Queen Bee
Just like everyone else in their 20s, the members of Pentatonix look up to Beyonce. Hoying even had a vision board that included himself holding a Grammy with Beyonce!

 

No, Scott and Mitch Are Not Married
In an interview the group did with Entertainment Weekly, they said that many people believe that the two are married. In reality they definitely are not.

 

Their Friendship Has Truly Grown Over Time
When asked if they could pinpoint the moment in their career when they transitioned from best friends to band mates, Olusola said, “That’s just grown over time…Coming into this, we didn’t know each other very well…Now that we understand each other so well, we understand how to make things work because we know each person’s dynamic and character.”

 

Olusola Is Friends With Lupita Nyong’o
Olusola went to Yale, and Lupita went to Yale Drama School. When one of Pentatonix’s videos came out, Nyong’o emailed Olusola to congratulate him.

 

They Are Not Interested in Hard Rock
In an interview, Olusola said that it would be difficult for them to cover hard rock songs, especially because they are an a cappella group. However, they have said that they have their own sound, so maybe they will one day!

 

They Watch Puppy Videos
The members have admitted in an interview that even they are not immune to the suctioning power of the YouTube k-hole. Hoying said, “I watch all sorts of weird sh*t on YouTube. And then I always end up with, like, ‘Guy puts 14 tennis balls in his mouth.'”

 

Their Advice for People Looking to Form Their Own Acapella Group Is…
Grassi has said that his advice for people who want to form their own groups is, “Be passionate.”

 

Pentatonix Might do Secret Santa
When asked if they would ever do a Secret Santa-like arrangement with each other, the members said that they “totally” would! Who knows – maybe they will this year!

 

 

 

 

Who are the current members of Pentatonix?

The current members of Pentatonix are Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstin Maldonado, Kevin Olusola and Matt Sallee.

 

Who are the original members of Pentatonix?
The founding members of Pentatonix are Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi and Kirstin Maldonado.

 

Did you know that acapella music was still a thing? Of Course, you did. You have seen all three Perfect Pitch movies, haven’t you? That means that you are very familiar with the group Pentatonix, or maybe not. Pentatonix has experienced extreme success in the world of music, selling out concerts, achieving platinum status with their album sales and more. The group has used some unique marketing and branding models to increase their popularity and exposure, and it has paid off tremendously. But, there is so much more to learn about the group. We decided to share five facts that you didn’t know about the group to help familiarize you with them. Who knows, if you are not already a fan, you may just become one.

 

One of the reasons the group has experienced such immense success in sales and soldout concert arenas is the fact that they have been very diligent and consistent in promoting their work on multiple social media channels, and especially on YouTube. The internet and social media have completely changed the game, turning average people into international celebrities overnight, and in this case, turning celebrities intomegastars.

 

Although Pentatonix has experienced a great deal of success, it has not come without its share of hiccups and setbacks. Yes, everyone knows the success stories from reality sing-off shows life American Idol and the voice, or in this case, The Sing-Off, but what you may not know is that that for every Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, there are hundreds that disappear into the abyss of entertainment, never to be heard from again. This did not happen to Pentatonix, but getting dropped from their label in 2011 could have caused it.

 

It appears that everyone from Chris Brown to Mariah Carey has felt the need to make at least one Christmas album during their career. Unfortunately, not everyone experiences success with the sales of their Christmas projects. That is definitely not the case of Pentatonix. The groups Christmas Album has been their top selling album to date, and every Christmas it flies off of the shelves like candy during Halloween.

 

With a group that produces the kind of vocal harmony that Pentatonix creates on a regular basis, you would have to postulate that they spend a great deal of time together, and that assumption would be absolutely correct. The group even decided to take a French class together. Pentatonix is known for their remarkable covers of popular songs, and when they decided to cover French rapper, AS Stromae’s, Papaoutai, they wanted to make sure they got it exactly right, so they took a French class to make sure they knew what they were singing.

 

One of the greatest forms of validation is to have others on your level admire your work, and as it turns out, Pentatonix has their own celebrity fans. While it is clear that the group is not a household name, there are some notable individuals who are very familiar with their work, people who would consider themselves to be fans of the group. Both Channing Tatum and Kelly Clarkson are huge fans of the group, but when international mega-star, Beyonce, posted one of their videos on her social media profile, the group knew they were reaching new heights.

 

Below are a few of my favorite songs sung by Pentatonix.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fact of the Day - CINNAMON SPICE

 

cinnamon-2.jpg

 

Did you know... that Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus Cinnamomum? Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfast cereals, snackfoods, tea and traditional foods.

 

Cinnamon is a spice we all take for granted. From food and drink to medicine, cinnamon is a very versatile and ancient product – with some claiming civilizations using it over 4,000 years ago. It can be used for an array of illnesses and is by far one of my favorite sweet flavorings in the world.

 

  1. The average cinnamon tree grows to a whopping 60 feet in height.
  2. The cinnamon stick is also known as a quill due to its thin straight appearance.
  3. Cinnamon may actually be one of the oldest spices in the world. In the Bible it is mentioned in Exodus 30:23, Proverbs 7:17 and revelation 18:13 to name just a few.
  4. In Ancient Egypt, cinnamon was a highly prized ingredient that was at one point valued more than gold, much in the way saffron is today. It was used in an array of different processes, from food and drink to even an embalming agent.
  5. The bark of cinnamon is one of the few spices that can be consumed in its raw state.
  6. Cinnamon, according to Chinese medicine can be used as a way of treating a wide range of ailments including nausea and colds.
  7. ‘The Cinnamon Challenge’ was a social media trend hitting the world in 2016, it involved consuming (or attempting to consume) a spoonful of cinnamon. It ended in tears, sickness and pain.
  8. Cinnamon is actually a natural anti-inflammatory acting as this by blocking the release of arachidonic acid a fatty acid that causes inflammation. This arachidonic acid can also cause blood clotting.
  9. Cinnamon can potentially be deadly, with consumption of the spice having to be monitored or potentially risking an overdose of a toxin Coumarin. This toxin only exists in Cassia cinnamon.
  10. Annually, the production of cinnamon is a staggering 27,500 to 35,000 tons!
  11. Sri Lanka produce around 90% of the cinnamomum verum (cinnamon variety) used across the world.
  12. Cinnamomum Verum grown in Sri-Lanka comes in 4 different varieties or scales, ranging from Alba through to Continental and Mexican, and finally Hamburg.
  13. The cinnamon bun is a Swedish invention that swept the U.S. ever since the 1950’s. The product is actually dated back to the 1920’s.
  14. The biggest cinnamon bun ever was a whopping 118.8kg (almost 19 stone) and was created in Washington, US on the 10th February 2006.
  15. Cinnamon is supposedly helpful in the fight against degenerative brain disorders like Alzheimer’s as it activates protective proteins that help stop mutation and damage to cells.
  16. A year’s supply of cinnamon was actually burned at the funeral of Roman Emperor Nero’s wife after he killed her as a way of showing his remorse.
  17. Ceylon produces that much cinnamon that in the 17th Century the Portuguese and the Dutch started a war over the island.
  18. Cinnamons flavor strength actually comes from the chemicals cinnamaldehyde and cinnamic aldehyde.
  19. An oil extracted from cinnamon, eugenol, has been used as a local anesthetic and antiseptic by dentists.
  20. Spanish researchers have managed to develop a paper that keeps bread fresher for longer, possibly even up to 10 days, with cinnamon oil.
  21. Use of cinnamon sticks can actually lead to mouth ulcers and gum swelling, which makes me question its antiseptic properties for dentists.
  22. Cinnamon contains 100 times more TE or Trolox equivalents than Apples; this is the measurement of Oxygen radical absorbance.
  23. October 4th is actually the National Cinnamon Roll day in Sweden.
  24. Coli 0157 is an awful bacterium that can actually be defeated almost 100% by cinnamon. An American study found 99.5% of the bug was killed when added to a teaspoon of cinnamon at room temperature in 3 days.
  25. Pepsi-Fire is a new fireball-whiskey-like creation from the soft drink giant. The cinnamon flavored beverage is supposedly horrendous with some describing it as “unexpected and not in a good way”.
  26. In 2017 a cat took the internet by storm when it was recorded attempting to steal a full sized cinnamon bun.

Cinnamon is the aromatic, inner bark of certain bushy, tropical, evergreen trees of the Cinnamomum genus.  It is native to Sri Lanka, the neighbouring Malabar Coast of India, and Myanmar (Burma).

 

Cinnamon has been in use by humans for thousands of years—as early as 2,000 B.C. Egyptians employed it, as well as the related spice cassia, as a perfuming agent during the embalming process.  Evidence suggests it was used throughout the ancient world, and that Arab traders brought it to Europe, where it proved equally popular.

 

Legend holds that the Roman emperor Nero burned as much as he could find of the precious spice on the funeral pyre of his second wife Poppaea Sabina in A.D. 65 to atone for his role in her death.  In the first century A.D., Pliny the Elder wrote off 350 grams of cinnamon as being equal in value to over five kilograms of silver, about fifteen times the value of silver per weight.  Through the Middle Ages, the source of cinnamon remained a mystery to the Western world.

 

Cinnamon is a small evergreen tree 10-15 meters (32.8-49.2 feet) tall.  The leaves are ovate-oblong in shape, 7-18 centimeters (2.75-7.1 inches) long.  The flowers, which are arranged in panicles, have a greenish color, and have a rather disagreeable odor.  The fruit is a purple one-centimeter berry containing a single seed.  

 

When harvesting the spice, the bark and leaves are the primary parts of the plant used.  It is principally employed in cookery as a condiment and flavouring material.  Cinnamon is often used in savoury dishes of chicken and lamb.  In the United States, cinnamon and sugar are often used to flavour cereals, bread-based dishes, such as toast, and fruits, especially apples; a cinnamon-sugar mixture is sold separately for such purposes.  Ground cinnamon is composed of around 11% water, 81% carbohydrates, 4% protein, and 1% fat.

 

Cinnamon has a long history of use in traditional medicine.  The health benefits of cinnamon include its ability to help manage diabetes, protect against fungal and bacterial infections, increase brain function, prevent certain cognitive disorders, improve digestion, boost the strength of the immune system.  Cinnamon is a rich source of vitamin K, calcium, and iron, while providing moderate amounts of vitamin B6, vitamin E, magnesium, and zinc.  Cinnamon constituents include some 80 aromatic compounds, including eugenol found in the oil from leaves or bark of cinnamon trees.

 

 

Cinnamon is a popular flavouring in numerous alcoholic beverages and cocktails.  Indonesia and China are world largest producers of cinnamon with 75% of the world’s supply.  The term “cinnamon” also is used to describe its mid-brown colour.

 

In Exodus 30:23-4, Moses is ordered to use both sweet cinnamon (Kinnamon) and cassia (qəṣî`â) together with myrrh, sweet calamus (qənê-bosem, literally cane of fragrance), and olive oil to produce a holy oil to anoint the Ark of the Covenant.

 

Cinnamon also is mentioned in Proverbs 7:17-18, where the lover’s bed is perfumed with myrrh, aloe, and cinnamon. Psalm 45:8 mentions the garments of Torah scholars that smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia.

 

Cinnamon also is alluded to by Herodotus and other classical writers. According to Herodotus, both cinnamon and cassia grow in Arabia, together with incense, myrrh, and ladanum, and are guarded by winged serpents. The phoenix builds its nest from cinnamon and cassia.

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Fact of the Day - CONSTRUCTION

 

Did you know... that construction is the process of constructing a building or infrastructure? Construction differs from manufacturing in that manufacturing typically involves mass production of similar items without a designated purchaser, while construction typically takes place on location for a known client.

 

The construction industry is a vast and sprawling field that evolves alongside society. The more society grows and innovates, the more the construction industry will follow.  Ever since the time of the pyramids, the construction industry has been growing to reach where it is today, accounting for 7 percent of the US GDP in 2017. We have come a long way from the steam engine, now utilizing advanced technology like drones for better project efficiency. We’ve also come a long way in seeing the field evolve from being dominated mainly by males as more and more women are joining the trade.

 

There are still a lot of facts about construction that many, even those in the industry, don’t know.  Here are some of them.

 

1. The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest structure in the world for over 3,800 years.
It is said to have been constructed from over 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, although no one can agree on whether the workers dragged, lifted, or rolled them into place. Adjusted for modern costs, at $496 per block plus labor and modern materials, the pyramid would cost $1.2 billion to build.  At 455 feet tall, it was the tallest building in the world from the time of its completion around 2560 BC to 1311 AD. Currently, the Burj Khalifa is the tallest structure in the world, but no building has held the title for as long as the Pyramid once did.

 

2. Concrete has been the most popular building material throughout history.
Concrete has been used for some of the most famous structures like the Roman Pantheon. In fact, the Ancient Romans created their own special concrete that we’re barely learning the ingredients to (the secret ingredients are lime, seawater, and volcanic ash!). At the time of its creation, the Hoover Dam was the largest concrete structure ever built, using more than 3.25 cubic yards of concrete. Currently, the Grand Coulee Dam is the largest, using more than 11,975,521 cubic yards of concrete (for comparison, modern housing uses an average of 66.5 cubic yards). Today, with the recovery of the housing market, the need for concrete specialists and equipment has risen.

 

3. The steam engine revolutionized construction transportation.
The world was already modernizing by the time of the Industrial Revolution, but the steam engine helped quicken the pace. Construction materials were able to be transported quickly over land using locomotives powered by the steam engine. As time progressed, diesel replaced steam engines due to diesel engines’ reliability, low maintenance, and speed. Currently, there’s only one steam locomotive operating on a Class 1 railroad that has never been retired, and it’s mainly used for special appearances. Nevertheless, the efficiency and adaptation of construction transportation is built on the steam engine’s revolutionary production.

 

4. The average age of a construction worker today is 42 years old.
This is one year older than the average age of a worker in the general labor force. The ongoing shortage of construction workers and an aging workforce have contributed to the increase in the median age of construction workers.

 

5. Younger generations are less interested in the construction industry.
According to U.S. Census data, the number of workers aged 24 years or younger entering the construction industry decreased by 30% between 2005 and 2016.  Young Americans have many misconceptions about the construction industry, like that the industry is somehow unstable or how you can’t earn a lot of money when compared to college-educated careers.

 

6. Although the industry is growing, there is currently a shortage of construction workers.
The construction industry has recovered and grown since the 2008 housing crisis, but there is still such a shortage of workers that the construction industry can’t fill the demand. There are plenty of reasons why this is happening, but many companies are tackling the issue by offering competitive benefits and battling misconceptions.

 

7. World War II encouraged women to enter the construction industry.

During WWII, thousands of women worked construction jobs; between 1940 and 1945, the female labor force grew by 50 percent. After the war ended, up to 85 percent of women wanted to keep their jobs, effectively paving the way for women in the labor force.

 

8. Women comprise only 9.9 percent of construction workers in the field today.

Although women in construction make up 9.9 percent of the workforce, there are even fewer women on job sites, since the majority of women in construction work in an office-like setting. Since women make up about 47 percent of the entire workforce, that means the construction industry utilizes less than 2 percent of all working women.

 

9. By 2020, women will account for 25 percent of the construction workforce.

Many companies are looking to hire more women in construction, and that means tackling some of the barriers in the industry. Luckily, many are making strides in the industry and are encouraged by their superiors.

In 2018 alone, almost 1 in 3 construction companies promoted a woman in a senior position. Likewise, from 2007-2018 there was nearly a 94 percent growth of women who owned a construction site. By 2020, it’s expected that women will account for 25 percent of the entire construction workforce.

 

10. There are currently 1712.1 million tons of steel being used in the world today.

During the Technological Revolution and the Second Industrial Revolution, Henry Bessemer invented a method to mass-produce steel called the Bessemer process. Before, it used to take a full day to convert three to five tons of iron to steel, but with the invention of the Bessemer process, it only took under 20 minutes. In 2018, 1712.1 million tons of steel is used, with 2.6 million tons used for railways and tracks and 18.8 million used solely for concrete reinforcing bars.

 

11. There has been a 239 percent growth of drone use in the construction industry in the past year.

As technology has improved over time, construction methods have improved as well. For instance, drone use on construction sites has grown over 239 percent in the past year, the most of any industry. The mining and agriculture industries are right behind the construction industry, with a growth of 198 percent, and 172 percent respectively in the past year. The aerial maneuverability of drones and the ability to record videos and take photos have streamlined and improved the construction project.

 

12. The construction industry labor shortage has created a technological boom.

The construction industry has always responded with innovation when confronted with change. The labor shortage, sustainability awareness and software advancements have progressed construction technology into a science-fiction-like state. Things like exoskeletons have already sprung up in the field to help with some of the more difficult and menial jobs.

 

13. Construction rentals make up 47 percent of industry revenue.
Currently, construction rentals make up approximately 47 percent of the industry. It’s estimated that construction rental sales are expected to reach $59 billion by 2021, making them a crucial part of the field.

 

14. Construction equipment rentals encourage private projects.
Not every company needs a carry deck crane, let alone anybody who is doing some private work on their yard. With rentals, many people can work on their own home improvement projects. In fact, 15 percent of all rental equipment is used for personal projects.

 

15. The average time of construction rentals is six days.
Each construction project will have different stages of production that will require specialized tools. Every type of construction equipment has its own needs and specialties that are only used for specific stages of production. As such, equipment rentals are economical and efficient.

 

The construction field is a vast and sprawling industry with a lot of moving parts. Some aspects of the industry can go unnoticed for some time and make it appear as though it’s slowing down. Becoming knowledgeable about the industry can help break barriers and encourage others to view the field as a growing and adaptive market that helps create and build the societies we have today.

 

The construction field is a vast and sprawling industry with a lot of moving parts. Some aspects of the industry can go unnoticed for some time and make it appear as though it’s slowing down. Becoming knowledgeable about the industry can help break barriers and encourage others to view the field as a growing and adaptive market that helps create and build the societies we have today.

 

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Fact of the Day - PERIODIC TABLE

 

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Did you know... that the periodic table, also known as the periodic table of elements, is a tabular display of the chemical elements, which are arranged by atomic number, electron configuration, and recurring chemical properties? The structure of the table shows periodic trends.

 

You may remember the Periodic Table of the Elements as a dreary chart on your classroom wall. If so, you never guessed its real purpose: It’s a giant cheat sheet.  The table has served chemistry students since 1869, when it was created by Dmitry Mendeleyev, a cranky professor at the University of St. Petersburg.

 

With a publisher’s deadline looming, Mendeleyev didn’t have time to describe all 63 then-known elements. So he turned to a data set of atomic weights meticulously gathered by others.  To determine those weights, scientists had passed currents through various solutions to break them up into their constituent atoms. Responding to a battery’s polarity, the atoms of one element would go thisaway, the atoms of another thataway. The atoms were collected in separate containers and then weighed.

 

From this process, chemists determined relative weights—which were all Mendeleyev needed to establish a useful ranking.  Fond of card games, he wrote the weight for each element on a separate index card and sorted them as in solitaire. Elements with similar properties formed a “suit” that he placed in columns ordered by ascending atomic weight. Now he had a new Periodic Law (“Elements arranged according to the value of their atomic weights present a clear periodicity of properties”) that described one pattern for all 63 elements.

 

Where Mendeleyev’s table had blank spaces, he correctly predicted the weights and chemical behaviors of some missing elements—gallium, scandium, and germanium. But when argon was discovered in 1894, it didn’t fit into any of Mendeleyev’s columns, so he denied its existence—as he did for helium, neon, krypton, xenon, and radon.

 

In 1902 he acknowledged he had not anticipated the existence of these overlooked, incredibly unreactive elements—the noble gases—which now constitute the entire eighth group of the table.

 

Now we sort elements by their number of protons, or “atomic number,” which determines an atom’s configuration of oppositely charged electrons and hence its chemical properties.

 

Noble gases (far right on the periodic table) have closed shells of electrons, which is why they are nearly inert.  Atomic love: Take a modern periodic table, cut out the complicated middle columns, and fold it once along the middle of the Group 4 elements. The groups that kiss have complementary electron structures and will combine with each other.

 

Sodium touches chlorine—table salt! You can predict other common compounds like potassium chloride, used in very large doses as part of a lethal injection.

 

The Group 4 elements (shown as IVA above) in the middle bond readily with each other and with themselves. Silicon + silicon + silicon ad infinitum links up into crystalline lattices, used to make semiconductors for computers.  Carbon atoms—also Group 4—bond in long chains, and voilà: sugars. The chemical flexibility of carbon is what makes it the key molecule of life.

 

Mendeleyev wrongly assumed that all elements are unchanging. But radioactive atoms have unstable nuclei, meaning they can move around the chart. For example, uranium (element 92) gradually decays into a whole series of lighter elements, ending with lead (element 82).

 

Beyond the edge: Atoms with atomic numbers higher than 92 do not exist naturally, but they can be created by bombarding elements with other elements or pieces of them.

 

The two newest members of the periodic table, still-unnamed elements 114 and 116, were officially recognized last June. Number 116 decays and disappears in milliseconds. (Three elements, 110 to 112, were also officially named earlier this month.)

 

Physicist Richard Feynman once predicted that number 137 defines the table’s outer limit; adding any more protons would produce an energy that could be quantified only by an imaginary number, rendering element 138 and higher impossible. Maybe.

 

The periodic table is a chart that arranges the chemical elements in a useful, logical manner. Elements are listed in order of increasing atomic number, lined up so elements that exhibit similar properties are arranged in the same row or column as others.

 

The periodic table is one of the most useful tools of chemistry and the other sciences. Here are 10 fun facts to boost your knowledge:

Although Dmitri Mendeleev is most often cited as the inventor of the modern periodic table, his table was just the first to gain scientific credibility. It wasn't the first table that organized the elements according to periodic properties.

 

There are about 94 elements on the periodic table that occur in nature. All of the other elements are strictly human-made. Some sources state more elements occur naturally because heavy elements may transition between elements as they undergo radioactive decay.

 

Technetium was the first element to be made artificially. It is the lightest element that has only radioactive isotopes (none are stable).

 

The International Union of Pure Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, revises the periodic table as new data becomes available. At the time of this writing, the most recent version of the periodic table was approved in December 2018.

 

The rows of the periodic table are called periods. An element's period number is the highest unexcited energy level for an electron of that element.

 

Columns of elements help to distinguish groups in the periodic table. Elements within a group share several common properties and often have the same outer electron arrangement.

 

Most of the elements on the periodic table are metals. The alkali metals, alkaline earths, basic metals, transition metals, lanthanides, and actinides all are groups of metals.

 

The present periodic table has room for 118 elements. Elements aren't discovered or created in order of atomic number. Scientists are working on creating and verifying elements 119 and 120, which will change the appearance of the table, though they were working on element 120 before element 119. Most likely, element 119 will be positioned directly below francium and element 120 directly below radium. Chemists may create much heavier elements that may be more stable because of the special properties of certain combinations of proton and neutron numbers.

 

Although you might expect atoms of an element to get larger as their atomic number increases, this does not always occur because the size of an atom is determined by the diameter of its electron shell. In fact, element atoms usually decrease in size as you move from left to right across a row.

 

The main difference between the modern periodic table and Mendeleev's periodic table is that Mendeleev's table arranged the elements in order of increasing atomic weight, while the modern table orders the elements by increasing atomic number. For the most part, the order of the elements is the same between both tables, though there are exceptions.

 

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Fact of the Day - BLOOD SUGAR LEVELS

 

Did you know... that the blood sugar level, blood sugar concentration, or blood glucose level is the concentration of glucose present in the blood of humans and other animals? Glucose is a simple sugar and approximately 4 grams of glucose are present in the blood of a 70-kilogram human at all times.

 

Glucose is one of the most well-known molecules due to its nature as an essential nutrient for human health. You ingest glucose in your food, and then your body uses blood to carry the glucose to the cells of every organ for the purpose of energy production. Although worries about obesity and diabetes have given glucose a bad name in recent years, all human life depends on maintaining adequate levels of this sugar.

 

Identification
Glucose is the most common of carbohydrates and an essential nutrient in the human body. This sugar is classified as a monosaccharide, as well as an aldose, a hexose and a reducing sugar. An alternative name for glucose is dextrose, a name which derives from the term dextrorotatory. This means that glucose is an optical isomer that shifts plane-polarized light to the right. Glucose's dextrorotatory status also classifies the carbohydrate as a D-isomer. A common name for glucose is blood sugar, although it can exist outside of the body as well.

 

Features
Chemically, glucose is an organic molecule that consists of a carbon, hydrogen and oxygen chain. Each molecule has 6 carbon atoms, connected to 7 hydrogen ions, 1 oxygen ion and 5 hydroxide ions. While the chain form of this molecule is the simplest, glucose molecules more commonly form a ring structure called a cyclic chair form. Only 0.02 percent of glucose molecules in a water solution retain the simple chain molecular structure.

 

Types
Although glucose is best known for its role in animal energy production, the sugar also exists in plant life. The chlorophyll in plants synthesizes glucose using carbon dioxide from the air and energy from the Sun's light. This synthesis creates starch which the plant can then store for future energy use.

 

Size
All humans need a certain amount of glucose in their blood to maintain energy and proper organ function. For a healthy adult, the typical concentration of glucose in the blood is between 65 and 110 mg/mL, or milligrams per milliliter of blood. People with diabetes often have higher levels of blood glucose, due to decreased insulin to remove the sugar. In such cases, levels between 70 and 130 mg/mL are common prior to eating, while glucose levels may rise above 180 mg/mL after a meal.

 

Effects
In health, one of the most important aspects of glucose is its influence on such diseases as diabetes. If you have diabetes, the best method for controlling the disease is by monitoring your blood glucose level. This level will show, over time, the amount of sugar in your blood. To test a blood glucose level, use a lancet to obtain a drop of blood from your fingertip. Press the blood drop to a glucose testing meter and wait for the strip to show your result. Record this level for future reference. It is also possible to check urine for glucose levels, but this test is much less accurate.

 

Blood glucose monitoring alone does not improve your diabetes. It is how you use the information from your glucose testing that makes the difference to your diabetes control.

 

It is very important that blood sugar levels are kept as close to normal as possible.

  • Normal Blood Glucose Range: 4.0 to 5.9 mmol/l(72.0 to 106.2 mg/dl)
  • Hypoglycemia Range(low blood sugar level) :Below 4.0 mmol/l(72.0mg/dl)
  • Hyperglycemia Range(high blood sugar level): Above 7.0mmol/l(126.0mg/dl)

It is helpful to keep a record of blood sugar readings several times during the day.

 

Most of the symptoms of hypoglycemia are manageable. They often resolve after taking fast acting carbohydrate.

 

Hyperglycemia(high blood sugar levels) indicates that the body does not produce any insulin because the pancreas is not functioning . As a consequence, one will experience the symptoms of dry skin, blurred vision, extreme thirst, frequent urination, hunger, wounds that slowly heal and drowsiness. Blood sugar rises because no insulin is produced the glucose level falls if insulin is produced. The only way a diabetic can get insulin is injecting themselves with insulin either by using a syringe or an insulin pen.

 

People get a high blood sugar level when they dont give themselves enough insulin,are physically inactive,under stress and sometimes when they consume alcohol.

 

Hyperglycemia can result in a more serious condition called ketoacidosis, which is a life threatening condition that can make a person vomit, feel nauseated, dry mouth and shortness of breath. Regular monitoring of your blood sugar level is vital.

 

Sweet tooth? Here are a few things you didn't know about sugar:

  • Glucose is the most widely distributed sugar in nature, although we rarely eat it in its purified form.
  •  Fructose, found in fruits and honey, is the sweetest of all the monosaccharides (sugar incapable of being hydrolysed to a simpler form). When tasted in crystalline form, fructose is twice as sweet as sucrose (table sugar).
  •  Sugar cane and sugar beets are known to have the highest concentration of sugar. Sugar is simply separated from the beet or cane plant, and the result is pure sucrose.
  •  Fruits don't only contain fructose – they also contain sucrose and glucose.
  •  Pure fruit juice contains 12g of sugar per 100ml; a can of Coke contains 8g of sugar per 100ml.
  •  When you consider the health of your teeth, it's better to eat 10 jelly beans all at once than it is to eat two jelly beans every hour.
  •  Moderate amounts of most sugary foods do not produce dramatic rises in blood sugar as was always thought. Many starchy foods (bread, potatoes and many kinds of rice) are digested and absorbed at a faster rate than sugar.
  •  During World War II, only 120g sugar was allowed to be bought per person per week as part of their rations.
  •  When a spoonful of sugar is added to a vase, it prolongs the life of freshly cut flowers.
  •  Sugar is used as a preservative in jams and jellies. In these foods, it inhibits the growth of microorganisms.

 

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Fact of the Day - CHARLIE CHAPLIN

 

Did you know... that Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin KBE was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film? He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, "The Tramp", and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry.

 

Born in London in 1889, Charlie Chaplin first visited the United States at the age of 21. It was here that he broke into the cinema industry thanks to his lively personality and endless talent.  With Chaplin’s much-beloved character ‘Little Tramp’, he is considered to have been one of the best actors and directors of the silent-film era. Behind the art, however, there are many curious things you didn’t know about Chaplin himself.

 

Both Chaplin’s parents were in the entertainment industry. It is reported that, at age five, Chaplin replaced his mother (who was suffering from laryngitis) at a music-hall show, singing his first song Jack Jones in front of a crowd of soldiers. At age 12, he appeared as ‘Billy the page boy’ in a rendition of Sherlock Holmes.

 

In 1915, Chaplin took part in the Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. Unbelievably, the judges and audience didn’t realise that he was the real one! It is reported that, instead of winning, he took home third place.

 

Chaplin was the first actor ever to appear in Time Magazine in the 6th July 1925 issue. The magazine is famous for its influential and controversial covers and this was a big step for the actor.

 

Chaplin composed the music for many of his own movies, despite never having had proper music training. In 1972, Chaplin actually won an Oscar for the music in Limelight (1952), which he helped compose.

 

During this time, the president of the United States was paid $75,000 per year. In 1916, after Chaplin signed a contract with the Mutual Film Corporation of New York, his salary increased to $670,000.

 

Becoming one of the most iconic representatives of silent cinema, Chaplin refused to adopt audio and dialogue for a long time, even though sound technology in the film industry was becoming increasingly popular. He continued with his own idea of cinema, convinced that sound would ruin the Little Tramp. However, he gradually introduced music and other sounds as a device in his later movies, including City Light (1931), Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940).

 

Chaplin never became an American citizen, despite having lived in the United States for almost 40 years. After the movie Modern Times, he gained a reputation as a communist sympathiser. In 1952, the U.S. government revoked his permit, meaning Chaplin was not allowed to return to the United States after a holiday to England. As a result, Chaplin moved to Switzerland, where he spent the rest of his life. He only returned to the United States in 1972, to accept his honorary Oscar.

 

Chaplin’s first marriage was with Mildred Harris in 1918. After their divorce, he married the actress Lita Grey in 1924. When the actor was 47, he married his third wife, Paulette Goddard. His fourth and final marriage was with Oona O’Neill in 1943, when Chaplin was 54. She gave birth to 8 of the 11 Chaplin children, and they lived together until Chaplin’s death.

 

In 1937, Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, its first feature-length animated movie. Walt Disney was unsure about how well the movie would do, but Chaplin reportedly encouraged the filmmaker to complete and distribute Snow White. The two became business associates and Chaplin played an important role in the spread of Disney’s name.

 

The audience had always believed that Chaplin had brown eyes. This is due to the black and white cinema era; most people were not able to recognise that Chaplin had fabulous blue eyes!

 

Albert Einstein was a guest of honor during the premiere of Chaplin’s movie City Lights in Los Angeles on the 2nd February 1931.

 

When Lyudmila Karachkina discovered a main-belt asteroid on the 4th October 1981, four years after the death of the actor, she decided to call it 3623 Chaplin. Not many actors can say they have had the same honour!

 

In 1992, Geraldine Chaplin portrayed the role of her grandmother Hannah Chaplin in the movie Chaplin, the adaption of the actor’s life.

 

On the 22nd September 1931, Chaplin met the pacifist leader in Canning Town, East End Dock — one of the poorest London boroughs — before Gandhi attended a conference.

 

The only time Chaplin returned to the United States after his exile was in 1972, when he finally received his first Oscar and a star on the Walk of Fame. The project to give him a star had begun 20 years prior to release, but was initially refused due to his political views.

 

Here are 10 quotes by Chaplin:

  • A day without laughter is a day wasted. (this one is my favorite)
  • Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
  • We think too much and feel too little.
  • Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles.
  • You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down
  • Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is 'elephant'.
  • I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying.
  • Imagination means nothing without doing.
  • In the end, everything is a gag.
  • All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

Now here are a few things you may not know about Charlie Chaplin.

 

Both of Chaplin’s parents were music hall entertainers in London. In his autobiography, he described how, at age 5, his mother’s voice suddenly failed in front of a crowd of rowdy soldiers. The stage manager—or possibly his father or one of his mother’s lovers—then ushered him onstage as a replacement. Chaplin first sang a popular song called “Jack Jones,” prompting the audience to shower him with coins. He purportedly drew big laughs by announcing that he would pick up the money before continuing. More laughter ensued when he began imitating his laryngitis-addled mother. A few years later, Chaplin made his professional debut as a member of a juvenile clog-dance troupe. He followed that up with a couple of theater roles, toured with vaudeville acts and did one disastrous night of stand-up comedy in which he was booed off the stage.

 

Both of Chaplin’s parents were music hall entertainers in London. In his autobiography, he described how, at age 5, his mother’s voice suddenly failed in front of a crowd of rowdy soldiers. The stage manager—or possibly his father or one of his mother’s lovers—then ushered him onstage as a replacement. Chaplin first sang a popular song called “Jack Jones,” prompting the audience to shower him with coins. He purportedly drew big laughs by announcing that he would pick up the money before continuing. More laughter ensued when he began imitating his laryngitis-addled mother. A few years later, Chaplin made his professional debut as a member of a juvenile clog-dance troupe. He followed that up with a couple of theater roles, toured with vaudeville acts and did one disastrous night of stand-up comedy in which he was booed off the stage.

 

During Chaplin’s second vaudeville tour of the United States in 1913, Keystone Studios hired him away for $150 a week. He made his first film appearance early the following year, playing an out-of-work swindler in “Making a Living.” Wearing a handlebar moustache, top hat and monocle, he got in a few funny gags, particularly while fighting the story’s hero, a journalist who at one point interviews a man trapped under a car instead of helping him. Overall, though, Chaplin was appalled by his performance. “I was stiff,” he later said. “I took all the surprise out of the scenes by anticipating the next motion.” He also accused the director of cutting his best material out of jealousy.

 

Prior to his second film, Chaplin dressed up one day in baggy pants, a tight coat, big shoes, a small bowler hat and a bamboo cane. He added a small fake moustache and is said to have strutted around while his co-actors were playing pinochle. Having witnessed the scene, the head of Keystone allegedly “giggled until his body began to shake.” “Chaplin,” he exclaimed, “you do exactly what you’re doing now in your next picture. Remember to do it in that get-up.” This so-called Little Tramp character immediately took off in popularity, spawning so many imitators and marketing schemes that the press labeled it “Chaplinitis,” and would become Chaplin’s onscreen persona for the next two-and-a-half decades. In 1914 alone, he appeared in dozens of short films as the Little Tramp, most of which he directed himself.

 

For $1,250 a week, plus a $10,000 bonus, Chaplin moved in December 1914 to Essanay Studios, which touted him as “the greatest comedian in the world.” He then signed with the Mutual Film Corporation for $670,000 a year, after which he agreed to make eight comedies for First National for over $1 million. Finally, in 1919, he founded his own studio with fellow Hollywood icons Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith. “I went into the business for money, and the art grew out of it,” Chaplin once said. “If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can’t help it. It’s the truth.”

 

Starting with “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, films with sound rapidly replaced their silent counterparts. Yet Chaplin hesitated to adopt the new technology, fearing it would ruin the Little Tramp. In his two 1930s movies, “City Lights” and “Modern Times,” Chaplin included music but not dialogue, except for one scene in which he sings in nonsensical fake Italian. Finally, in 1940, he released a full sound film, “The Great Dictator,” an anti-Hitler satire featuring him as a character other than the Little Tramp for the first time in almost 20 years.

 

In 1918 Chaplin hastily tied the knot with 17-year-old actress Mildred Harris, a decision he would soon come to regret, saying they were “irreconcilably mismated.” Following the divorce, he married 16-year-old Lita Grey, another actress with whom he had a bitter breakup. And in 1943, while in the middle of a high-profile paternity suit, 54-year-old Chaplin married 18-year-old Oona O’Neill, to whom he had been introduced by a Hollywood agent. O’Neill’s father, playwright Eugene O’Neill, was so upset by the match that he disinherited her. But unlike Chaplin’s other relationships, this one would last. The two stayed together until Chaplin’s death at age 88 and had eight children.

 

Despite living in the United States for almost 40 years, Chaplin never became an American citizen. Meanwhile, due in part to “Modern Times,” a satire of the machine age, he gained a reputation as a communist sympathizer. During the McCarthy era, the FBI put him under surveillance, and a Mississippi congressman called for his deportation. The U.S. government then revoked his re-entry permit in 1952 as he traveled to England on vacation. Rather than returning to answer charges before a board of immigration officials, Chaplin decided to uproot his family to Switzerland. He would visit the United States only one more time, in 1972, to accept an honorary Academy Award.

 

Just a few months after Chaplin’s death, two robbers stole his coffin from a Swiss cemetery and sent his wife a $600,000 ransom demand. When she refused to pay, they allegedly threatened her kids. The bungling robbers were soon caught, however, and the coffin was recovered. It was then reburied in a theft-proof concrete vault.

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Fact of the Day - DESERTS

 

Did you know.... that a desert is a barren area of landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions are hostile for plant and animal life? The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to the processes of denudation.

 

  • There are a number of different definitions to describe a desert but they are typically areas that receive extremely low amounts of rain.
  • Deserts generally receive less than 40cm (16in) of rain a year.
  • Around one third of the Earth's surface is covered in deserts.
  • The original meaning of the word desert is 'an abandoned place'.
  • Many of the ice free regions of the Arctic and Antarctic are known as polar deserts.
  • Only around 20% of the deserts on Earth are covered in sand.
  • Areas covered in ice or snow can sometimes be called 'cold deserts', compared to 'hot deserts' in warmer areas.
  • The largest cold desert on Earth is Antarctica.
  • The largest hot desert on Earth is the Sahara.
  • The Sahara Desert is located in northern Africa, spanning 12 different countries.
  • The Arabian Desert in the Middle East is the second largest hot desert on Earth but is substantially smaller than the Sahara.
  • Other large deserts include the Gobi Desert in Asia, the Kalahari Desert in Africa, the Patagonian Desert in South America, the Great Victoria Desert in Australia, the Syrian Desert in the Middle East and the Great Basin Desert in North America.
  • The Gobi Desert is located in the north of China and the south of Mongolia. It is growing at a fast rate due to desertification, a process that turns fertile lands into desert areas. It is caused by humans cutting down forests, droughts, climate change and other environmental factors.
  • Located in South America, the Atacama Desert is the driest place in the world.
  • Hot deserts usually feature high temperatures in the daytime and cold temperatures at night.
  • Deserts have very low humidity.
  • Despite the extreme conditions, deserts are home to a range of well suited plant life including various shrubs and cacti. They are also home to animals such as lizards and coyote.
  • With lack of water, high daytime temperatures and sometimes freezing conditions at night, deserts can be extremely dangerous places for humans.
  • Shallow, salty lakes can form temporarily from time to time in deserts.
  • Deserts often contain large mineral deposits.
  • Deserts can be good locations to farm solar energy.
  • The video game Mario Kart 64 features a track called 'Kalimari Desert', a reference to the Kalahari Desert found in Southern Africa.

Deserts are renowned for being dry, extremely hot and often remote. As such, most people imagine them to be dull, boring and dangerous places. Granted, deserts can be extremely dangerous. However, they aren’t dull and boring at all. In fact, deserts can be extremely fascinating. Here is a selection of the 40 most interesting facts about the desert.

 

1. A desert is defined as any place on earth which receives extremely low precipitation (i.e. rain or snowfall). A desert typically receives less than 40cm (16 inches) of precipitation per year.

2. There are two types of desert i.e. hot deserts and cold deserts. The cold deserts are found in the polar regions of the earth. They are the Arctic and Antarctic deserts. The cold deserts are also referred to as polar deserts.

3. Around one-third of the earth’s surface is covered in deserts.

4. The overall size of deserts is increasing. Around 46,000 square miles of land are turned into desert every year. This is as a result of climate change and human activities like clearing forests.

5. The largest desert in the world is the Antarctic Desert. It covers an area of 13.8 square kilometers around the North Pole. The second-largest is the Arctic Desertwhich covers an area of 12.7 square kilometers around the North Pole.

6. The largest hot desert in the world is the Sahara. It covers an area of 9.4 square kilometers and spans 12 North African countries.

7. The smallest desert in the world is the Carcross Desert. Located in Yukon, Canada, this desert is just 1 square mile (640km) in size.

8. The Sahara is considered the hottest place on earth. Average temperatures range between 40 and 47°C. The highest temperature ever recorded in the Sahara was 58°C in 1913. It is the highest atmospheric temperature ever recorded on earth.

9. The driest desert in the world is the Atacama Desert in Chile. Parts of this desert have received no rainfall since records began. Scientists believe that parts of the Atacama have been in extreme desertification for over 40 million years.

10. The coldest desert in the world is the Antarctic desert. The average winter temperature is -49°C. However, in 2010, a temperature of -94.7°C was recorded, and in 2013, a temperature of -92.9°C. These are the two lowest atmospheric temperatures ever recorded anywhere on earth.

11. Although it is one of the driest places on earth (with less than 20mm of rain per year), the Antarctic Desert contains about 90% of the earth’s fresh water. This water is found in Antarctica’s permanently frozen ice sheet.

12. Despite seeming deserted, deserts often have an incredibly diverse ecosystem. In fact, the only other places on earth with more diverse ecosystems than deserts are rain forests. Deserts are often home to a variety of plants, mammals, reptiles and insects.

13. The first dinosaur eggs were discovered in Gobi Desert in 1923. Gobi Desert is located in parts of northwestern China and southern Mongolia. It is the fifth-largest desert in the world. It was created in the shadow of the Himalayas as the tall mountains prevented rain from reaching Gobi.

14. The Gobi Desert is the fastest growing desert in the world. It is expanding by more than 1,300 square miles. Its expansion is attributed to extreme cultivation practices and climate change.

15. Despite being the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert supports around 1 million inhabitants. These inhabitants mostly survive by tapping water from aquifers (underground streams) for growing crops. They also raise animals like llamas and alpacas.

16. The Namib Desert, located in Namibia – Southern Africa is considered the oldest desert in the world. It is considered to be between 55 and 80 million years old.Comparatively, the Sahara – which is between 2 and 3 million years old – is much younger.

17. The Namib Desert has the tallest sand dunes in the world. Some of these sand dunes are up to 300 meters high. Besides being high, the sand dunes are also extremely spectacular and are a popular attraction for nature lovers.

18. The Aralkum Desert in Uzbekistan is currently the world’s youngest desert. Created entirely due to man-made disturbances, this desert (which is about 45,000 square kilometers in size) is less than 50 years old.

19. Scientific evidence shows that the Sahara is actually shrinking. Experts who have studied the desert for over 30 years have discovered that the edges of the desert are becoming greener. This shrinking is attributed to climate change.

20. The Mojave Desert is the driest desert in the United States. It has an annual rainfall of around 5 inches. It is also home to the Death Valley – considered the hottest, driest and lowest place in North America.

 

 

Want to read more on Deserts?  Click here.

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Fact of the Day - ROBOTS

 

Did you know... that a robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer— capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically? Robots can be guided by an external control device or the control may be embedded within.

 

 

A robot is a machine designed to carry out one or more tasks quickly and precisely. A robot can be controlled remotely by a human operator, but there are many different kinds of robots for different tasks. Robots are used in factories to build things like cars, in military tactics, to find objects underwater, and for going into buildings where there might be bombs.

 

That’s the dictionary definition.

 

But we all know that when it comes to robots, their ability to carry out tasks quickly isn’t exactly what fascinates us. Movies, books, and popular culture, in general, don’t tend to focus on the speed and precision of robots. What we’re interested in, more than anything, is the ways that they’re almost like us… while still being entirely different. We’re interested in their mechanical approximations of human behavior.

 

So as we all continue to wait and watch while more human-like robots are invented everyday…

 

 

Origins

The word “robot” comes from the Czech word robota, which means “forced labor.” It originally referred to peasants, who were obligated to work for their lords under the Fuedal system.  Today, the term is used to describe any man-made machine that can perform work and other human tasks.

 

R.U.R.
The first use of the word robot was in the 1920 play R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots by Czech writer Karel Čapek. In the play, the robots overthrow their human creators.  Almost 100 years later, and not much as changed. Apparently, we’ve been telling stories about our future robot-overlords since we first understood what robots were.

 

 

da Vinci’s Car
One of the earliest examples of robotic design dates back to 1478 and Leonardo da Vinci.  Da Vinci’s car was a spring-driven autonomous system that was probably created, more than anything, to cause a sensation at court.  Which we have to assume it would have. At a time when most people would have been impressed by a particularly big horse, imagine showing up to a meeting by driving what would have looked like a gigantic clock.

 

Leonardo_Amboise_Automobile.jpg

 

 

Human Resemblance
The terms “android” and “robot” tend to be used somewhat interchangeably, but they actually have very distinct meanings.  A robot that resembles a human is called an android.

 

World’s First Robot Company
The world’s first robot company was founded in 1956 by George Devol and Joseph Engelberger. The company was called Unimation, and they introduced the first industrial robot.

 

Mechanical Knight
Around the year 1495, Leonardo da Vinci sketched detailed plans for a mechanical knight. The knight showed how a machine based on the human structure could be built, and it was designed to move with fluidity. It was capable of standing, sitting, raising its visor, and independently moving its jaw, arms, and neck.

 

Vaucanson’s Duck
In the late 1730s, Jacques de Vaucanson created a series of notable automata in Grenoble, France. His first automaton was a flute player that could play twelve songs. Shortly after, he created a mechanical duck with over 400 parts in the wings alone and carefully weighted parts to make it move like a real duck. The duck could even eat, digest, and excrete food.

 

When Machines Replace Slaves
In Politics, written in 350 BCE, Aristotle predicted that automatons could someday replace slaves in performing household tasks. He wrote “There is only one condition in which we can imagine managers not needing subordinates, and masters not needing slaves. This condition would be that each (inanimate) instrument could do its own work, at the word of command or by intelligent anticipation.” Thousands of years later, Roombas are the perfect example of his prediction.

 

Accidental Death
The first known case of anyone being killed by a robot occurred in 1981 when a robotic arm crushed a Japanese Kawasaki factory worker. The worker’s death was ruled an accident. 

 

Steam Powered Pigeon
Archytas was an ancient Greek philosopher who was known for inventing what is believed to be the first ever self-propelled flying device, known as the “flying pigeon.” The body of the pigeon was hollow with a cylindrical shape and had wings on either side. The rear of the pigeon had an opening that was connected to a heated, airtight boiler, which created more and more steam as it heated, eventually causing the machine to take flight.

 

Inspiration for NASA
In 2002, roboticist Mark Roshiem built a prototype of da Vinci’s robotic knight that could talk and wave. He later used da Vinci’s designs as inspiration for robots he developed for NASA.

 

Practical Robots
The company iRobot was founded in 1990 by MIT roboticists with the goal of making practical robots a reality. Since its creation, they have sold more than 20 million robots worldwide, and aside from their home cleaning, they have deployed robots used by the US Forces in conflict, and brought the first FDA approved remote presence robots to hospitals.

 

Future War
In 2014, US Marines brought a robot deep into the Hawaiian jungle. The LS3 (Legged Support System) robot walks on four legs, carries 400 pounds, and moves across terrain like a mechanical mule. Future maneuvers may come with robotic horses, who can replace real horses in battle.

 

Legged_Squad_Support_System_robot_protot

 

Spot
Horses aren’t the only robotic animal under development for military use. In 2016, the Marine Corps tested a four-legged robotic dog that was designed to travel alongside dismounted units and explore dangerous combat situations. The prototype, named Spot, was made by Google X’s Boston Dynamics.

 

Autonomous Warfighter
While various military groups have been using drones for several years now, the Russian military is testing various UGVs (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) to see which offers the most utility. The Nerekhta has tank tread for navigation of challenging conditions, and can be equipped with large-caliber machine guns, a grenade launcher, and antitank guided missiles. The goal is to eventually control the vehicles with artificial intelligence, allowing them to operate without human assistance.

 

Care Robots
One quarter of Japan’s population is over 65, and by 2065, that number is expected to rise to 40%. This has led to the rapid growth of the nursing-care robot market, and the government is spending 1/3 of its budget on the development of care robots that will make life easier for Japan’s elderly.

 

Strong Robot with the Gentle Touch
Robear is a nursing robot touted as a gentle bear that is nonetheless strong enough to lift an elderly person. Labeled the “strong robot with the gentle touch,” it provides support as elders sit down and stand up.

 

 A Perfect Harvest Every Time
Scientists are developing robot farmers that wait until a crop is perfectly ripe before harvesting it. These robots will also be able to plant seeds, weed, water, and spray without a farmer needing to do go into the field. Experts predict that the robots could be in use as early as 2020.

 

Campaign to Stop Killer Robots
According to Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley University, California, the technology to create killer robots already exists and needs to be banned. In November 2017, campaigners took their case to the United Nations, asking for a global prohibition on lethal autonomous weapons systems.

 

Nanobots
A Nano-robot is a microscopic robot designed to fit into extremely small spaces to perform a function. The hope is that nanobots can eventually be placed in the bloodstream to perform delicate surgical procedures that are too difficult for standard surgery.

 

shutterstock_272111411.jpg

 

Elektro
At the 1939 World’s Fair, audiences were wowed by a walking, talking robot named Elektro. The robot described himself as a “smart fellow” with a “fine brain,” and it consisted of 48 electrical relays that worked like a telephone switchboard. He took voice commands via a telephone handset. The robot was recently pieced back together, and is now on display at the Mansfield Memorial Museum; it is billed as “the oldest surviving American robot in the world.”

 

They’re Coming!
The founder of Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute, Hans Moravec, predicts that robots will emerge as their own species by 2040, and that they will replace humans in every essential task.

 

Want to read more facts on Robots?  Click here.

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Fact of the Day - THE TWIST (DANCE)

 

Did you know... that in 1960, a collision of factors catapulted a song and a dance to the top of the charts and turned The Twist into a national sensation. It was radical, it was lively, and it was easy -- and pretty soon every teenager in the country was twisting away and the voice of Chubby Checker rang out across the land?

 

The Twist was a phenomenon waiting to happen and in 1960, it caught fire. The post-WWII Baby Boom generation was putting its own spin on swing dance. Rock 'n' roll was driving their parents crazy and playing nonstop on the radio. A swivel-hipped singer named Elvis had them shrieking and swooning with his scandalous moves. Urban kids borrowed steps and swagger from the West Indies-influenced dances of African-American teenagers. And 67 million U.S. households had TV.

 

To fill the hours between the afternoon soaps and the evening news, local television stations programmed for teens who were home from school and glued to the tube. Park a camera and a DJ in a TV studio, fill it with grooving and shaking kids, and add markets like Philly that had popular shows hitting a target audience for negligible production costs. One Philly dance program, Bandstand with Dick Clark, picked up a national audience when ABC started to broadcast the show, renaming it American Bandstand. And one song written in 1955, covered by a singer named Chubby Checker and performed as a solo gyration by a studio of zigzagging teens, became an overnight coast-to-coast dance craze. Even the parents of those teens could do it. C'mon, baby, let's do the Twist!

 

 

 

The Trick to Twisting

  1. If you've just arrived from Mars, or awakened from the prolonged slumbers of a Rip Van Winkle, you might not know how to Twist. That's a sad situation, remedied in about two minutes flat. The Twist is so simple you can just start doing it. But here's the breakdown so you can hit the dance floor twisting like a champ.
  2. Stand with your feet about hip-width apart. Face your partner, if you have one. (A partner is optional.)
  3. Find your balance, bend your elbows, and relax your knees.
  4. Shift your weight to the balls of your feet and start to "rub out" a pretend lit cigarette with your shoes. You twist your feet from side to side, in the same direction at the same time.
  5. As your feet move, so moveth the pelvis. Twist your hips from side to side, just like your feet. Your hands and arms will naturally follow. Don't turn your entire body as one unit. Twist at the waist. This leaves your upper torso facing more-or-less forward as your legs and hips swivel.
  6. Get fancy. Take your weight to one foot, lean into that side, and raise the bent knee of your other leg into the air. Keep twisting both right and left legs, feet, hips, and arms. Lower the leg, still twisting.
  7. Get around. Twist yourself all the way around in a circle, ending up facing your partner (or your original direction) again. Twisting happens in place -- no need to travel across the floor.
  8. Get risky and get down. If your quads are powerful, this move is cake for you. If not, mind your balance. As you twist away, keep your back vertical and start to sink into a squat. Just twist yourself into the ground, side-to-side or like a corkscrew. Go only as far as you can manage without losing your balance. Epic twisters can get almost to the floor.
  9. Once you've got it locked and don't need to focus on keeping everything moving in the same direction at all times, experiment and put your own spin on it. Twirl one hand at the wrist. Shake one raised foot. Really jerk those hips back and forth or work a pelvic isolation into the twisting moves without breaking rhythm. Impressive.
  10. Keep smiling. You're supposed to be having fun, not frowning in concentration. Now you're cool.

The Twist unleashed a rash of hopping, bopping and pretzel-making dances that turned sock hops into cardio classes.

 

There was the Mashed Potato:

 

 

The Monkey:

 

 

And there were more Twist records from Chubby Checker -- Let's Twist Again kept everyone swiveling and kept Checker and his twist songs at the top of the charts. Other artists chimed in with Peppermint Twist (Joey Dee and the Starliters) and Twist and Shout (The Beatles), and more -- all of them danceable. Films featured the dance, among them Twist Around the Clock (1961) and Hairspray (1988).

 

Want to know more about twisting?

  • Chubby Checker's real name is Ernest Evans. He was a chubby kid, so he earned his nickname. Dick Clark's wife suggested he use the name Chubby Checker to capitalize on the popularity of singer-songwriter Fats Domino.
  • The original recording of The Twist topped the Billboard charts twice, in 1960 and in 1962.
  • The dance was not universally beloved at first. Today, it seems quaint and tame, but its pelvic thrusting caused more than a few raised eyebrows and the disconnected dancing of couples, who were no longer joined in a sedate clutch on the dance floor, was considered a scandal.
  • The Beatles didn't write Twist and Shout, which appeared on their first recorded album. A songwriter named Bert Berns wrote it as an homage, not to The Twist, but to the Mexican tune La Bamba.
  •  

Vintage Moves
Today, the Twist is more of a period dance style - not very popular in mainstream performance and social dancing. However, vintage dance nights hosted by clubs and dance halls, as well as stage plays and movies set in the 1960s, often include the Twist in their choreography. The Twist is an emblem of a time in America when young people revolutionized the dance world and replaced stuffiness with sexy, fun moves.

 

A Few Famous Dances in the Sixties

The Freddie

Lift your right arm and leg Lift your left arm and leg. It sounds simple, but at high speeds, it can result in a crazy dance.

 

The Frug

Stand with your feet together and bend your knees slightly. Move your hips to the right, and then move them to the left. The movement should come from the hips rather than your knees. The frug is danced at a fast pace, and a right-left pair of hip movements should take a single count.

 

The Hitch-Hike

While doing the hip motions of the frug, hold you right hand in a fist with thumb extended, as if you are hitch-hiking. Move your thumb to the right for three counts. Clap your hands to the right on the fourth count. Switch hands and move your thumb to the left for three counts. Clap your hands, this time to the left, on the fourth count.

 

The Loco-motion

This dance is unique among famous dances in the sixties in being a line dance. Dancers take instruction from the song, performing hip swings and jumps, among other steps.

 

The Mashed Potato

Stand with your heels together and your toes turned out, much like in ballet first position. Shift your weight to your toes and swing your heels out and back in. From there, you can start lifting your feet with the outward swings.

 

The Shimmy

Shake your shoulders back and forth while holding the rest of your body still. Your arms should be held to the side with elbows slightly bent.

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Fact of the Day - WOOLLY MAMMOTH

 

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Did you know... that the woolly mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the early Holocene epoch? It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. (Wikipedia)

 

Woolly mammoth is one of the best known prehistoric animals that lived during the Pleistocene. It is not the largest species of mammoth, but it is the most popular one due to numerous fossils, carcasses and pictures that have facilitated reconstruction of the morphology and lifestyle of this large animal. Fossils of woolly mammoth were found on all continents except in the Australia and South America. Most woolly mammoths died 10.000 years ago, but smaller group of 500 to 1.000 animals managed to survive until 1.650 years BC on the remote Wrangel Island in the Arctic. Woolly mammoth went extinct due to climate changes and uncontrolled hunting.

 

  • Woolly mammoth was 9 to 11 feet tall and it weighed 5 to 7 tons.
  • Asian elephant is the closest living relative of woolly mammoth.
  • Woolly mammoth had long, shaggy, light to dark brown or black coat and thick layer of fat (of 4 inches) under the skin to prevent freezing in the extremely cold environment.
  • Woolly mammoth had large head, massive body with sloping backs and large humps on the shoulders. It had smaller ears and shorter tail than elephants to prevent heat loss and frostbites.
  • Woolly mammoth had large, curved and asymmetrical tusks that were 10 to 15 feet long. Tusks were used for fight with other males and for the protection against predators such as wolves, wild cats and cave hyenas.
  • Tusks of woolly mammoth can be used to determine the age (number of rings on the cross section), health condition (thinness or thickness of the ring), and time of the year when animal died (dark rings were characteristic for the summer).
  • Diet of woolly mammoth was based on the leaves, fruits, berries, nuts, and twigs.
  • Woolly mammoth had lived and traveled in large family groups led by the oldest female.
  • An average lifespan of woolly mammoth was 60 years.
  • First complete skeleton of woolly mammoth was found in 1799. German naturalist Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau successfully assembled all the bones except the tusks (tips of the tusks were positioned outwards).
  • Woolly mammoths trapped in the large pieces of ice managed to "survive" till modern days with intact muscles and blood tissue.
  • Tusks of woolly mammoth are the only type of ivory that can be legally sold today (unlike elephant ivory). Thanks to the price of 400 dollars per pound, tusks of woolly mammoth are very popular among tusks-hunters.
  • French adventurers have used well-preserved carcasses of mammoth as a source of food during the expeditions to the North Pole in the 19th century.
  • Woolly mammoths were very popular among neolithic artists. Only Rouffignac cave in France is home of 158 pictures of woolly mammoth.
  • Woolly mammoths were very important for the people. They served as a source of meat, bones and tusks that were used for the manufacture of art objects, music instruments, tools, furniture and shelters. (SoftSchools.com)

Woolly mammoths were closely related to today's Asian elephants. They looked a lot like their modern cousins, except for one major difference. They were covered in a thick coat of brown hair to keep them warm in their home on the frigid Arctic plains. They even had fur-lined ears.   Their large, curved tusks may have been used for fighting. They also may have been used as a digging tool for foraging meals of shrubs, grasses, roots and other small plants from under the snow.

 

Though woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago, humans know quite a bit about them because of where they lived. The permafrost of the Arctic preserved many woolly mammoth bodies almost intact. When the ground around riverbanks and streams erodes, it often reveals the corpse of a long-dead mammoth that looks much like it did when it died.

 

For example, in 2007 in Siberia, a pair of mummified baby mammoths were found. The bodies were so well preserved that CT scans found the mammoths died from choking on mud 40,000 years ago. The mud was like a "really thick batter that they got clogged in their trachea and they were unable to dislodge by coughing," said study co-author Daniel Fisher, the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. "It basically prevented them from taking them another breath."  

 

Botanist Mikhail Ivanovich Adams recovered the first Siberian woolly mammoth fossils in 1806. Over a dozen soft-tissue specimens have been found since then.

 

Size
Woolly mammoths were around 13 feet (4 meters) tall and weighed around 6 tons (5.44 metric tons), according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN). Some of the hairs on woolly mammoths could reach up to 3 feet (1 m) long, according to National Geographic.

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The mummified carcass of the 39,000-year-old woolly mammoth nicknamed Yuka. (Image credit: Courtesy of Anastasia Kharlamova)

 

Habitat
Though woolly mammoths are known for living in the frigid planes of the Arctic, mammoths actually arrived there from a much warmer home. Research by a team from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, found that the ancestors of both the mammoth and Asian elephant originated in Africa 6.7 million to 7 million years ago. They seemed to have stayed there for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe. 

 

Then, about a million years later, they spread out even further to the area that is now called Siberia and the northern plains of Canada. During this time, "a cataclysmic event occurred on Earth — the Ice Ages," said Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba research team.  The woolly mammoth’s survival in much colder climates is credited by the research team to small genetic mutations that may have changed the way oxygen was delivered by its blood that could have kept them warmer.

 

Can the woolly mammoth be brought back?
Because many mammoth corpses are so well preserved, scientist have been able to extract DNA from the animals. One particularly good specimen was a female mammoth in her 50s, nicknamed Buttercup, that lived about 40,000 years ago.

In theory, this DNA could be used to clone woolly mammoths, bringing them back from extinction. In fact, there is a project called The Woolly Mammoth Revival that is working toward making this idea a reality.

 

This concept is highly contested in the scientific world. Some objections are that the mammoth’s habitat isn’t what it was when the creature roamed the Earth, so where would it live? Others contest that a habitat could be created for the creatures if they were brought back.

 

Another concern is how microbes have changed in the 10,000 years since woolly mammoths have roamed the Earth. Animals rely on microbes to help digest food. If the mammoth’s microbes went extinct, the animal may suffer if brought back. "In many cases, the overall phenotypes [physical appearance] of organisms and their ability to digest food is directly tied to the microorganisms in them," said Susan Perkins, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. 

 

So far, Harvard geneticist George Church and colleagues have used a gene-editing technique to insert mammoth genes into the DNA of elephant skin cells. This is far from cloning mammoths, but it is a first step to manipulating the DNA found in mammoth corpses. (Livescience.com)

 

Edited by DarkRavie
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I've been posting these facts for a while now and was wondering what everyone thinks of my posting, not just reactions.  Do you truly find them interesting?  Is there a fact not posted you'd like me to post?  Or maybe you want to post it yourself? You can you know!  I won't stop you!  You can even add to what I've already posted if the information isn't there.  I don't mind.  I like learning something new as well.

 

Fact of the Day - JUMPING THE BROOM

 

Did you know... that Jumping the broom is a phrase and custom relating to a wedding ceremony where the couple jumps over a broom? [Wikipedia]

 

Thu, 07.15.1700

“Jumping The Broom,” a short history

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not a 'Leap of Faith'

 

"Jumping the Broom," is celebrated on this date.  This is an African American phrase and custom for marriage.

 

The significance of the broom to African American heritage and history originates in the West African country of Ghana. During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, most of Ghana in the 18th century was ruled by the Asante of Ashanti Confederacy. The Asante’s urban areas and roads were kept conspicuously clean according to visiting British and Dutch traders with the use of locally made brooms. These same brooms were used by wives or servants to clean the courtyards of palaces or homes. The broom in Asante and other Akan cultures also held spiritual value and symbolized sweeping away past wrongs or removing evil spirits.

 

This is where the broom comes into play regarding marriage. Brooms were waved over the heads of marrying couples to ward off spirits. The couple would often but not always jump over the broom at the end of the ceremony. Jumping over the broom symbolized the wife's commitment or willingness to clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined. Furthermore, it expressed her overall commitment to the house. It also represented the determination of who ran the household. Whoever jumped highest over the broom was the decision maker of the household (usually the man). The jumping of the broom does not add up to taking a "leap of faith."

 

The irony is that practice of jumping the broom was largely discarded after Emancipation in America which was consistent with the eventual fall of the Ashanti Confederacy in Ghana in 1897 and the coming of British customs. Jumping the Broom did survive in the Americas, especially in the United States, among slaves brought from the Asante area. This particular Akan practice of jumping the broom was picked up by other African ethnic groups in the Americas and used to strengthen marriages during slavery among their communities.

 

Jumping the broom was not a custom of slavery, but is a part of African culture that survived American slavery like the Voodoo religion of the Fon and Ewe ethnic groups or the ring shout ceremony of the BaKongo and Mbundu ethnic groups. With slavery over and superficial hints of racial integration allowed, African Americans could now have European-style marriages. Jumping the broom had nothing to do with Whites. Once Blacks could have weddings with rings that were recognizable by anyone as a symbol of marriage, the broom ceremony wasn't required. During this time, jumping the broom fell out of practice from the stigma it carried, and in some cases still carries, among African Americans who wanted nothing to do with anything associated with that era. The practice survived, and made a resurgence after publication of Alex Haley's book "Roots."

 

Currently, many African and African American couples include jumping the broom at the end of their wedding ceremonies as a tribute to tradition. And even couples who do not actually jump a broom when they get married, often refer to, or at least recognize, the phrase to be synonymous with getting married in the same way most Americans associate "tying the knot" with getting married.

Broom jumping is also practiced by non-Black groups and in different religions around the world with some variation. Wiccans and Gypsies are among some of the groups who developed their own broom-jumping tradition.  AAREG

 

Reference:
Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall

 

The fall of the Asante Empire:
The Hundred-Year War for Africa's Gold Coast
Robert B. Edgerton

 

Origins Highly Debated 

The origins of broom jumping are highly debated.  References to “broomstick marriages” emerged in England in the mid-to-late 18th century, always to describe a wedding ceremony of doubtful validity. The earliest use of the phrase is in the 1764 English edition of a French work: the French text described an elopement by a runaway couple hastily making un mariage sur la croix de l’épée (literally ‘marriage on the cross of the sword’), an expression the English translator freely renders as ‘performed the marriage ceremony by leaping over a broomstick.’

 

Was It an African Custom?

Some scholars speculate that cultural significance of the broom dates back to a region in West Africa that is now called Ghana. The areas occupied by the Asante ethnic group were reportedly well kept, due to the extreme use of local customized brooms. Brooms were also used in marriage ceremonies where they waved over marrying couples, serving as a way to remove evil spirits and/or sweep off past wrongs in order to start anew. Most times, at the end of the marriage ceremony, couples would jump the broom, representing a new beginning.

 

Did Jumping the Broom Really Come from Europe?

Because various European cultures still practice broom jumping today — but no African cultures on the continent presently do — some folklorists argue that the practice originated in Europe and was adopted by or imposed on enslaved Africans.  According to a paper by Alan Dundes (1996), the custom originated among Romani people in England and Wales. Others have argued that British colonization led to the Asante discarding the practice of jumping the broom as they adopted other practices from European culture.  An author on African-American wedding planning and traditions, Dania Green Roundtree argues that broom jumping is “an African tradition that has been Americanized” and was brought to Romani in the British Isles by “Moors during the Crusades.”

 

An Act of Rebellion

Despite its origins, the practice is well attested as a marriage ceremony in the 1840s and 1850s for enslaved Blacks in the Southern United States who were often not permitted to wed legally. In the absence of any legal recognition, Blacks defiantly developed their own methods of distinguishing between committed and casual unions. The ceremonial jumping of the broom served as an open declaration of settling down in a marriage relationship. It was usually done before witnesses as a public ceremonial announcement that a couple decided to be married despite what slave masters said.

 

Roots Brought It Back

Once Black marriages became legally recognized and sanctioned through the use of wedding rings, the broom ceremony was no longer required.  Its revival in 20th-century African-American culture is attributed to the novel and miniseries Roots (1976, 1977)

 

It Meant More Than Just Being Married

In many instances, whoever jumped the highest would be the decision maker over the household. Jumping the broom for the wife was symbolic of her commitment to the family as well as her willingness to maintain the cleanliness of the couple’s new home.

 

Jumping the Broom Today

Today “jumping the broom” is fully entrenched in African-American culture. For most Blacks in America, the phrase is synonymous with American sayings such as “tying the knot,”  “getting hitched” or even “wedding” itself.  The phrase has often found its way into African American pop culture, such as in the 2011 film Jumping the Broom, directed by Salim Akil.

 

Expression of Identity

By jumping the broom, modern African-Americans are making a powerful statement about their identity, and by popularly associating the ritual as an “Africanism,” their value of cultural continuity between Africans in the Diaspora and the continent. 

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14 hours ago, DarkRavie said:

I've been posting these facts for a while now and was wondering what everyone thinks of my posting, not just reactions.  Do you truly find them interesting?  Is there a fact not posted you'd like me to post?  Or maybe you want to post it yourself? You can you know!  I won't stop you!  You can even add to what I've already posted if the information isn't there.  I don't mind.  I like learning something new as well.

All I can say is I love what you do. Some are very interesting while other are not what interest me, but that's how facts are.

Would love for you to continue posting like this if you can.

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Thank you for the responses.  I'm glad you all are reading my postings.  Now on to the next fact.

 

Fact of the Day - CATNIP

 

Did you know... that Nepeta cataria, commonly known as catnip, catswort, catwort, and catmint, is a species of the genus Nepeta in the family Lamiaceae, native to southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of China? It is widely naturalized in northern Europe, New Zealand, and North America. 

 

Chances are, you’ve seen a cat respond to catnip by rubbing all over it, kicking at it, going crazy, writhing around on the floor…basically going nuts just by sniffing it! Here are a few fact about catnip that makes our kitties go crazy.

  • A chemical in catnip, nepetalactone, is what’s responsible for giving your cat the familiar “buzz”.
  • The catnip buzz only lasts for about 10 minutes. Then your kitty gets used it you’ll have to wait about two hours before your cat is susceptible to its powers again!
  • Male cats tend to like catnip more because the same chemical can be found in a female cat’s urine. Ew!
  • Some cats like to eat catnip, but the most intense experience is had when your cat smells it. When eaten, catnip seems to make cats mellow, but when they smell it, they typically react with excitement.
  • Sensitivity to catnip is genetic. About half of cats won’t respond to it at all.
  • Approximately 30% of domestic house cats who do not react to catnip will react in a similar way to Tatarian honeysuckle sawdust.
  • Young kittens and senior cats typically don’t react to catnip. In fact, the trait doesn’t develop until between 3 and 6 months of age.
  • If made into a tea, catnip can be used by humans as a calming aid, similar to chamomile.
  • Nepetalactone is an excellent mosquito repellent. It’s said to be ten times more powerful than DEET, a common chemical repellant. Unfortunately, it only lasts for a few hours before it becomes ineffective. It’s also effective against cockroaches and termites.
  • Store your catnip in an airtight container or in the freezer to keep it fresh. It will lose its potency over time.

Catnip is like magic. Toss a sachet of the good stuff kitty’s way, and he’s in for a wild afternoon. But what is it about catnip that elicits such high-decibel purrs? How safe is this feline euphoria?

 

While many cats can’t get enough of catnip, others ignore it completely. Whether or not your kitty likes to indulge all comes down to genetics. “The catnip response is actually inherited as an autosomal dominant trait,” says Dr. Lauren Demos, veterinarian and president of the American Association of Feline Practitioners. “Therefore, it’s inherited from a cat’s parents—if both parents don’t respond, neither will their offspring.”

 

Just as humans don’t all respond the same way to recreational substances, different cats have different reactions to catnip. Common behaviors include rubbing, sniffing, licking, chewing, rolling, and vocalizations—to widely varying degrees. “In the clinic setting, we routinely give cats a catnip pillow when they arrive as a new patient,” says Demos. “Most cats seem to enjoy it, but one or two get a little too aroused and are cut off for future visits.”

 

Nepetalactone, an organic compound, and its metabolic byproduct, nepetalic acid, are catnip’s secret ingredients—and they’re plenty powerful. Ingesting it does the trick, but simply getting a whiff can spark kitty’s interest, says Demos.

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While cats go wild for nepetalactone, mosquitos have the opposite reaction. After discovering that catnip was better at repelling the dreaded suckers than DEET, researchers at Rutgers University created a highly concentrated super-breed for the insect repellent industry. Other pests that turn their noses up at catnip include cockroaches, flies, dust mites, termites, and deer ticks.

 

Sorry, kittens, but catnip is an adult-only substance. While it’s perfectly safe, it rarely has any effect on the little ones. “Like many responses in kittens, [the catnip response] takes time to fully develop—some suggest three months or longer,” says Demos. “Most kittens won’t react to catnip until they are older.”

 

Fear not—this is one herb that doctors agree is perfectly fine to indulge in from time to time. The only time a pet parent should stay away from catnip is when their kitty has feline asthma, since the small particles can exacerbate coughing and wheezing if inhaled.

 

“There are certainly benefits to occasionally giving your cat catnip, including the environmental stimulation that the catnip provides,” says Demos. “There are no known negatives—other than the cleanup that can result from some cats who are very exuberant with their catnip play!”

 

Helpful facts about catnip and cats

Appearance

  • Catnip is a perennial belonging to the mint family.
  • It’s a plant native to Europe that was imported to the United States and other countries.
  • In appearance, the plant can grow to about 2-3 feet tall and has heart-shaped leaves.
  • The blooms can be lavender, white or pink.
  • If grown outdoors, it can quickly take over your garden, not to mention the fact that it’ll attract the neighborhood cats to your yard.
  • Catnip products come in many forms – fresh, dried, sprays, catnip-filled toys, chew products, scratching posts, etc.
  • Since the quality of catnip can vary, it’s best to buy good quality, organic catnip free from pesticides and fillers.

The Catnip Response

  • Nepetalactone is the chemical in catnip that causes the response.
  • It creates a feeling of euphoria, similar to the effect of a hallucinogenic drug but without any addictive or harmful effects.
  • The catnip response is inherited.
  • It’s estimated that about 30% of cats lack this gene.
  • Kittens and elderly cats don’t typically respond to catnip, and in fact, young kittens may actually be repelled by it.
  • Even big cats, such as tigers, respond to catnip.
  • The catnip response lasts about 10-15 minutes.
  • It takes about 1-2 hours for the behavior to reset before a cat is capable of reacting to the herb again.
  • Cats react to catnip through inhalation.
  • Cats also use their vomeronasal organ (Jacobson’s organ) to analyze the scent.
  • Inhaled catnip has a stimulating and euphoric effect whereas ingested catnip has a calming effect.
  • When exposed to catnip, cats tend to sniff, roll, lick and even eat the herb. All of this is totally normal and harmless.

 

Unexpected Reactions
There are some cats who become aggressive when exposed to catnip. In a multicat household, it’s best to first test a cat’s response by offering the herb to each one individually so you can gauge reactions. If you find out one cat gets a bit aggressive, offer that kitty catnip in a separate location and then wait until the effect has totally worn off before reuniting him with his feline companions.

 

Behavior Modification

  • Catnip can be used to help entice a sedentary or depressed cat to engage in playtime.
  • Rub catnip on the scratching post to encourage your cat to rediscover the benefits of scratching in appropriate places.
  • Catnip can be used in veterinary clinics, shelters and foster homes in addition to the cat’s own home to help lower stress levels.

How to Offer Catnip to Your Cat

  • Catnip should only be offered a maximum of two or three times a week. If cats are constantly exposed to it they can lose their ability to respond.
  • The volatile oil, nepetalactone, needs to be released in the dried form of the herb before offering it to your cat. Rub the dried leaves between your fingers to release it.
  • You can find cat toys in your local pet supply store that have resealable pouches for filling with catnip. This is a better option than buying pre-filled toys that may be filled with poor quality catnip.
  • Catnip can be offered in toys, rubbed on toys, loose, rubbed on scratching posts or you can even just place some in a knotted sock.

Buying and Storage

  • Keep catnip in a container with a tight-fitting lid kept totally out of a cat’s reach to avoid unplanned self-serve catnip parties.
  • If you grow your own catnip you can offer the fresh leaves to your cat. You can also dry it by hanging the harvested plant upside down to dry and then store in an airtight container.
  • When purchasing loose catnip, look for organic brands that don’t include many stems. The more leaves and blossoms, the more potent the catnip.
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Fact of the Day - STONEHENGE

 

Did you know... that Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England, two miles west of Amesbury? It consists of a ring of standing stones, each around 13 feet high, seven feet wide, and weighing around 25 tons. (Wikipedia)

 

Stonehenge is one of the world’s most famous monuments. Located in Wiltshire and managed by English Heritage, the prehistoric site attracts more than one million tourists each year. But when was Stonehenge actually constructed? What was it used for? And why did Charles Darwin pay a visit in the 1880s?

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Built in several stages, Stonehenge began about 5,000 years ago as a simple earthwork enclosure where prehistoric people buried their cremated dead. The stone circle was erected in the centre of the monument in the late Neolithic period, around 2500 BC.

 

Two types of stone are used at Stonehenge: the larger sarsens, and the smaller bluestones. Most archaeologists believe that the sarsens were brought from Marlborough Downs (20 miles away), while the bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in south-west Wales (140 miles). The exact method is not known, but the stones were probably hauled across the land or carried to the site using water networks.

 

There were originally only two entrances to the enclosure, English Heritage explains – a wide one to the north east, and a smaller one on the southern side. Today there are many more gaps – this is mainly the result of later tracks that once crossed the monument.

 

A circle of 56 pits, known as the Aubrey Holes (named after John Aubrey, who identified them in 1666), sits inside the enclosure. Its purpose remains unknown, but some believe the pits once held stones or posts.

 

The stone settings at Stonehenge were built at a time of “great change in prehistory,” says English Heritage, “just as new styles of ‘Beaker’ pottery and the knowledge of metalworking, together with a transition to the burial of individuals with grave goods, were arriving from Europe. From about 2400 BC, well furnished Beaker graves such as that of the Amesbury Arche are found nearby”.

 

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Roman pottery, stone, metal items and coins have been found during various excavations at Stonehenge. An English Heritage report in 2010 said that considerably fewer medieval artefacts have been discovered, which suggests the site was used more sporadically during the period.

 

Stonehenge has a long relationship with astronomers, the 2010 English Heritage report explains. In 1720, Dr Halley used magnetic deviation and the position of the rising sun to estimate the age of Stonehenge. He concluded the date was 460 BC. And, in 1771, John Smith mused that the estimated total of 30 sarsen stones multiplied by 12 astrological signs equalled 360 days of the year, while the inner circle represented the lunar month.

 

The first mention of Stonehenge – or ‘Stanenges’ – appears in the archaeological study of Henry of Huntingdon in about AD 1130, and that of Geoffrey of Monmouth six years later. In 1200 and 1250 it appeared as ‘Stanhenge’ and ‘Stonhenge’; as ‘Stonheng’ in 1297, and ‘the stone hengles’ in 1470. It became known as ‘Stonehenge’ in 1610, says English Heritage.

 

In the 1880s, after carrying out some of the first scientifically recorded excavations at the site, Charles Darwin concluded that earthworms were largely to blame for the Stonehenge stones sinking through the soil.

 

By the beginning of the 20th century there had been more than 10 recorded excavations, and the site was considered to be in a “sorry state”, says English Heritage – several sarsens were leaning. Consequently the Society of Antiquaries lobbied the site’s owner, Sir Edmond Antrobus, and offered to assist with conservation. ( HistoryExtra )

 

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1. It is really, really old
The site went through various transformations and didn’t begin as a ring of stones. The circular earth bank and ditch that surrounds the stones can be dated back to about 3100 BC, while the first stones are believed to have been raised at the site between 2400 and 2200 BC.  Over the next few hundred years, the stones were rearranged and new ones added, with the formation we know today being created between 1930 and 1600 BC.

 

2. It was created by a people who left no written records

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This, of course, is the main reason why so many questions persist around the site.

 

3. It could have been a burial ground
In 2013, a team of archaeologists excavated the cremated remains of 50,000 bones at the site, belonging to 63 men, women and children. These bones date back as early as 3000 BC, though some are only dated back to 2500 BC. This suggests that Stonehenge may have been a burial ground at the start of its history, though it is not clear if that was the site’s primary purpose.

 

4. Some of the stones were brought from nearly 200 miles away

They were quarried at a town near the Welsh town of Maenclochog and somehow transported to Wiltshire – a feat that would have been a major technical accomplishment at the time.

 

5. They are known as “ringing rocks”
The monument’s stones possess unusual acoustic properties – when struck they produce a loud clanging sound – which likely explains why someone bothered to transport them over such a long distance. In certain ancient cultures, such rocks are believed to contain healing powers. In fact, Maenclochog mean “ringing rock”.

 

6. There is an Arthurian legend about Stonehenge
According to this legend, the wizard Merlin removed Stonehenge from Ireland, where it had been erected by giants, and rebuilt it in Wiltshire as a memorial to 3,000 nobles slain in battle with the Saxons.

 

7. The body of a decapitated man was excavated from the site
The 7th century Saxon man was found in 1923.

 

8. The earliest known realistic painting of Stonehenge was produced in the 16th century

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9. It was the cause of a battle in 1985
The Battle of the Beanfield was a clash between a convoy of approximately 600 New Age travellers and around 1,300 police that took place over the course of several hours on 1 June 1985. The battle erupted when the travellers, who were en route to Stonehenge to set up the Stonehenge Free Festival, were stopped at a police roadblock seven miles from the landmark.  The confrontation turned violent, with eight police and 16 travellers being hospitalised and 537 of the travellers arrested in one of the biggest mass arrests of civilians in English history.

 

10. It attracts more than a million visitors a year
The enduring myths surrounding Stonehenge make the UNESCO World Heritage Site hugely popular. When it first opened to the public as a tourist attraction in the 20th century, visitors were able to walk among the stones and even climb on them. However, due to serious erosion of the stones, the monument has been roped off since 1997, and visitors only allowed to view the stones from a distance.  Exceptions are made during the summer and winter solstices, and the spring and autumn equinoxes, however.  ( HistoryHit )

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Fact of the Day - CHESS PIECES

 

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Did you know... that a chess piece, or chessman, is any of the six different types of movable objects used on a chessboard to play the game of chess? (Wikipedia)

 

You probably know what chess is. If you do, you most likely know how chess pieces move and which pieces are worth what.

However, what you may not know is why they worth that much and how to efficiently use them to win more games. You may not know these simple facts and ideas that applicable to chess pieces. Intrigued? Read on…


Pawn
1.  Pawn is the weakest piece on the chess board, it worth one point (1 point = 1 pawn).

2.  Pawn is the only chess piece that can promote to any other piece once it reaches the 8th rank (or 1st for black).

3.  Once a pawn reaches 6-7 rank (or 2-3 for black) it worth as much as a rook.

4.  Doubled pawns are weaker than connected pawns since they cannot protect each other.

5.  Pawn which doesn’t have any opponent’s pawns on its way is called a past pawn.

6.  Once a pawn becomes past it gains value.

7.  “Passed pawns must be pushed”.

8.  Central pawns are considered to be more valuable than pawns on the edge since they occupy/control central squares:  e4-e5-d3-d5 which play significant role in chess strategy.

9. Isolated pawns are usually weaker in the endgame than in the middle game.

10. The strongest pawn structure is all pawns connected together.

11. If a pawn does not control (and cannot control) a square, that square is called weak square.

12. Pawns cannot go backwards, so when making pawn moves it needs to be taken into consideration in order to avoid creation of weak squares, which can be used by the opponent’s pieces as outposts.

 

Knight
1. Knight is a minor, short range chess piece which is worth 3 points (or 3 pawns).

2. Knight is a very special chess piece since it’s the only piece that can jump over other pieces.

3. Check by the Knight cannot be interposed by any other piece, the King can move away or the Knight can be taken to stop the check (if it’s possible).

4. Knight is a very powerful piece due to its ability to ‘fork’ opponent’s pieces.

5. Knight’s fork on King and Queen is known as ‘Royal Fork’.

6. The best position for the Knight on the chessboard is at the center. There Knight can control the maximum amount of squares: 8.

7.  In a blitz game knight worse as much as the rook due to its ability to fork pieces.

8. Knights are considered to be strong in the closed positions, where pawn structure does not allow much movement over the files and diagonals.

9. Knights are considered to be weak on the open board with many open files and diagonals.

10. It is not possible to force a checkmate of a lone King with 2 Knights + King.

 

Bishop
1. Bishop is a minor, long range piece which is worth 3 points (3 pawns).

2. The best position for the Bishops is on the open long diagonals, that way the Bishop can cover many squares.

3. Bishop pair is a very powerful weapon since two bishops working together can control many squares from the distance, creating possibilities for tactics and attacks.

4. Bishops are very useful at pinning opponent’s pieces.

5. In open position Bishops are more powerful than Knights, in closed positions Knights are stronger.

6. Always think twice before exchanging a Bishop for a Knight since a pair of Bishops is much stronger than a Bishop and a Knight (usually).

7. It is possible to checkmate a lone King with 2 Bishops + King

8. Queen + Knight is usually a better pair than Queen + Bishop in the endgame.

9. In the endgame with pawns on both sides of the board Bishop is a stronger piece than the Knight, since it can attack and support pawns on opposite sides of the board.

10. It is possible to checkmate a lone King with a Bishop and Knight + King.

 

Rook
1. Rook is a chess piece which is worth 5 points (5 pawns).

2. Rook is a very powerful piece when it occupies an open file.

3. Therefore, it is very important to put the rook on the open file, by doing so you will control many squares and create possibilities for further advances of pieces into opponent’s territory.

4. Pair of Rooks lined up on an open file is even more powerful than a single rook occupying the file. The one rook can advance to opponent’s territory while the other one supports it.

5. Rooks are very powerful on 7th rank (or 2nd rank for Black) since they can easily attack opponent’s pawns.

6. Rooks are very good at given a back rank mate on the 8th rank (or 1st for Black).

7. Rooks are also good at protecting the 8th rank (or 1st for White) from getting back rank mated by opponent’s Rooks.

8. Two rooks can easily checkmate a lone King. Therefore, 2 Rooks vs. King is an easy technical win.

9. It is possible to checkmate a lone King with a Rook + King.

10. Rooks are usually not active in the opening and early middle game, but they are crucial endgame players.

 

Queen
1. Queen is the most powerful attacking piece which is worth 9 point (9 pawns).

2. It is the most powerful piece on the board since it can move both diagonally and horizontally.

3. Even though Queen is the most powerful chess piece, don’t hurry getting it into the game, since opponent may try to attack it and develop its own pieces gaining tempos.

4. Even though the Queen is an attacking piece you need to be careful so it doesn’t get trapped and captured, since losing a Queen with no compensation is a huge fiasco and almost automatically means lost game.

5. Queen’s another very important property is that it can perpetual check opponent’s King and draw a game (for example if you are behind in material and will lose otherwise).

6. Queen is also very powerful mating piece; most checkmates in chess are being announced by the Queen.

7. Even though a Queen a lot stronger than the Rook (9 points vs. 5) the endgame Queen vs. Rook is not as easy to win as it seems.

8. If you have a chance of exchanging a Queen on 3 minor pieces of your opponents it may be a good deal for you (especially with rooks present on the board).

9. Exchanging a Queen for two Rooks is also something to think about. In many cases two Rooks can be stronger than the Queen.

 

King
1. King is a very special piece since ‘losing’ the King means losing the game.

2. If King is in danger (via check) a player is not allowed to ignore it, he must remove the check first.

3. Even though King is the most valuable piece it’s relative value in points is 3.5, which makes him a little stronger than Knight and Bishop but weaker than a Rook.

4. Keeping a King safe should be a high priority of any chess player. It can be achieved by ‘castling’.

5. Even though a King is the most valuable piece, it is a powerful weapon when it comes to the endgame.

6. Activating the King early in the endgame can be a decisive factor between winning and losing. If you have a chance getting King into the game without exposing him into danger, go for it.

 

Some are huge fans of this game, obsessing over the tricks of getting the opponent into checkmate in the quickest possible time frame. Others simply couldn’t care less, while there are some who haven’t got a clue how to play this popular board game. Whatever your opinion of chess, there’s no escaping the fact that it has a fascinating history and boasts some pretty interesting facts.

 

The Origins of Chess
Chess is now played all over the world, but its origins supposedly began in India way back in the 6th century.  Historians don’t actually know exactly where chess came from, but the majority agree that India is the most likely place.  The game has changed throughout the years, and it took almost a thousand years to make its way to Southern Europe.  By the 15th century, Spain was slowly but surely becoming a fan of this popular game, and the 19th century saw the rules of gameplay standardized as chess tournaments began.

 

The International Chess Tournament
London was the home of the first international chess tournament, which took place in 1851.

 

Howard Staunton, an English master of chess, organized the event as a way of bringing together the best chess players in Europe.  Adolf Anderssen won the event, beating 15 other players and subsequently becoming champion throughout the 1850’s and 1860’s.

 

Wilhelm Steinitz is a name you should definitely know when it comes to the world of chess.  Born in Austria, he won the first World Championship in 1886, and went on to win 25 chess matches in total and lose just two matches.  At the age of 58, he lost his title to Emanuel Lasker, who went on to be the longest reigning champion (26 years and 337 days).

 

Lasker was also a good friend of Albert Einstein, who stated that he didn’t have time for chess and didn’t want to endure anything which would force his mind to work any further after a hard day.  However, Einstein became a fan of the board game in later life, but we don’t know whether or not it was Emanuel Lasker who talked him into it.  However, he never played a game for as many hours as Stepak and Mashian did – this pair beat the world record after 24 hours and 30 minutes of gameplay in 1980.  Nine years later, Nikolic and Arsovic beat the record for the most moves played in a chess game, totaling a staggering 269.

 

Did You Know…
There are 5,949 moves possible in a chess game, which makes it very possible that somebody else might come along and steal their crown in the future.  With 64 squares on a chess board, it’s impossible to imagine more than a couple of thousand outcomes of a game.  However, after each player has had four moves, there are more than 318 billion possible positions.  As chess players know, pawns can move either one space or two spaces on their first move. This is a rule which was brought about by the Spaniards in 1280.  Over a century before the Spanish brought about this rule, a priest came up with an invention which we still use to this day.  It was the year 1125, and the priest knew that he would be in trouble for playing chess, since this was against the rules of the Church.  
Rather than submit himself to this holy law, he devised the folding chessboard.  He designed it to look exactly like two books when it was placed on a bookshelf, so nobody ever found out his little secret.

 

Chess is good for your brain.
Alongside Sudoku and other puzzles and games, chess has been named as one of the best ways to improve the mind and the memory.  Patients with Alzheimer’s are often encouraged to play chess in their spare time, and it has been introduced in many schools for young students.  In some cases, it has been seen to enhance the test results of school children, and scientists have been known to argue that chess can actually increase intelligence levels. It seems that many people will be able to benefit from playing chess, since an estimated 600 million people around the world know how to play the game.

 

The oldest chess set was used in Harry Potter.
Fans of both chess and Harry Potter will be fascinated to read that the oldest discovered chess set was used during the filming of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  It was found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, but was made somewhere in Scandinavia and is thought to date back to pre-12th century.  Finally, chess is a game which has been enjoyed by young and old people for as long as it has been around.  Oscar Shapiro became a chess master at the age of 74, and by contrast, the youngest ever chess champion was Jordy Mont-Reynaud at the age of 10.

 

 

 

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - WEATHER BALLOONS

 

Did you know... that A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon that carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde? ( Wikipedia )

 

 

Weather balloon (also called sounding balloon) is a high altitude gas balloon that carries meteorological instruments whose role is to collect or send back information about weather like atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, and wind speed. Measuring device that measures these atmospheric parameters is called “radiosonde”. Wind speed is measured by tracking the speed of a weather balloon with radar, radio direction finding, or navigation systems like GPS. A subtype of weather balloon that is designed to stay at a constant altitude for long periods of time is called “transosonde”. Weather balloons are used because it is nearly impossible to predict the weather without knowing the weather conditions of the upper atmosphere.

 

Léon Teisserenc de Bort, the French meteorologist, is one on the inventors of weather balloons. He started using them in 1896 and since then he launched hundreds of weather balloons from his observatory in Trappes, France. These balloons helped him conduct experiments that lead to his discovery of the tropopause and stratosphere. Tropopause is the boundary in the Earth's atmosphere between the troposphere and the stratosphere where air ceases to cool with height, and becomes almost completely dry. Stratosphere is the next layer of the atmosphere which has a characteristic that it is cooler as further it is from the Earth. Transosondes were invented in 1958 as an experiment in measuring of radioactive debris from atomic fallout. Early weather balloons had to be retrieved in order to collect the data while today’s can send back the information. These data gathering and transmitting devices were developed in the 1930s.

 

Weather balloons are usually made of a highly flexible latex material or Chloroprene which is usually filled with hydrogen, which costs less, or helium, if it can be obtained. Speed by which the balloon is rising is controlled by the amount of gas with which the balloon is filled. Radiosonde, which measures atmospheric parameters and sends them by means of radio transmissions, is tied bellow the balloon and it hangs at the lower end of the string. Different radiosondes measure different parameters. Weather balloons can rise 40 km in the air. If higher altitude is needed, radiosondes are sent into the air with “sounding rockets”, rockets designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during sub-orbital flights. For heights greater than 1,500 kilometers, weather measurements are carried by satellites.

 

Some of measuring instruments that weather balloons usually carry in its radiosonde are: thermistor (ceramic-covered metal rod that works as a simple thermometer); hygristor (a slide coated with film of lithium chloride that works as a humidity sensor whose electrical resistance changes based on the humidity); and aneroid barometer (small metal canister that has air inside and a membrane that reacts to the outside pressure). If the weather balloon bursts because of too low atmospheric pressure, radiosonde will start falling to Earth. Because of that, radiosonde is equipped with a parachute which will bring it safely to the ground.

Zhuzhou Research & Design Institute of China, Totex and Cosmoprene of Japan and Pawan Rubber Products of India are the greatest manufacturers of weather balloons.

 

Twice a day, every day of the year, weather balloons are released simultaneously from almost 900 locations worldwide! This includes 92 released by the National Weather Service in the US and its territories. The balloon flights last for around 2 hours, can drift as far as 125 miles away, and rise up to over 100,000 ft. (about 20 miles) in the atmosphere!

 

Weather balloons, which are made of latex or synthetic rubber (neoprene), are filled with either hydrogen or helium. The sides are about 0.051 mm thick before release and will be only 0.0025 mm thick at typical bursting altitudes! The balloons, which start out measuring about 6 ft. wide before release, expand as they rise to about 20 ft. in diameter! An instrument called a radiosonde is attached to the balloon to measure pressure, temperature and relative humidity as it ascends up into the atmosphere. These instruments will often endure temperatures as cold as -139°F (-95°C), relative humidities from 0% to 100%, air pressures only a few thousandths of what is found on the Earth's surface, ice, rain, thunderstorms, and wind speeds of almost 200 mph! A transmitter on the radiosonde sends the data back to tracking equipment on the ground every one to two seconds. By tracking the position of the radiosonde, we can also calculate wind speed and wind direction. The radiosonde is powered by a small battery.

 

A parachute, attached to the end of the balloon, allows the radiosonde to fall slowly to the ground at speeds less than 22 mph after the balloon bursts. Each radiosonde contains a mailing bag and instructions on what to do if you find one. About 20% of the 75,000 radiosondes sent up each year in the US are found and returned. These instruments are fixed and reused, saving the government money.

 

Weather balloons are the primary source of data above the ground. They provide valuable input for computer forecast models, local data for meteorologists to make forecasts and predict storms, and data for research. Computer forecast models which use weather balloon data are used by all forecasters worldwide, from National Weather Service meteorologists to your local TV weatherman! Without this information, accurate forecasts beyond a few hours would be almost impossible!

 

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Fact of the Day - HAUNTED PLACES

 

Did you know... that In ghostlore, a haunted house or ghost house is a house or other building often perceived as being inhabited by disembodied spirits of the deceased who may have been former residents or were familiar with the property? (Wikipedia)

 

Throughout the world, there are stories of haunted places where the unfortunate souls of the people who died still linger on. 

 

Come Play With Us
The Maple Hill Cemetery was built in 1882 in Huntsville Alabama, which makes it the oldest burial site in the town. The cemetery spreads across a massive 100 acres. In the 1960s, multiple children went missing, and their bodies were dumped at a playground that is right next to the cemetery. Locals say that around 10 pm every night the swings will rock and the slide will groan under an invisible weight. The sound of children’s giggling can also be heard in the darkness.

 

Please Find Me
In the 17th Century, the Dutch East India Company built the massive Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa. The edifice allowed traders to have a place to rest during their travels. For a while, people reported seeing a ghostly apparition of a woman they called “The Lady in Grey” sobbing. The employees of the castle decided to dig in the area where the ghost was seen; sure enough, the body of a woman had been buried at the site. Once she was exhumed and given a proper burial, the hauntings allegedly stopped.

 

I Failed You
After the end of World War II, Japan surrendered to the United States. Legend has it that a large group of Japanese pilots committed Hara-Kiri, or ritual suicide, for their failure to serve the Emperor. Now, people say that the Atsugi hangar bay is haunted by the ghosts of these men. People have reported seeing red eyes floating in the night.

 

Stay Away
Poveglia Island in Italy was used to quarantine people with the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century; thousands of people died excruciating, painful deaths on the island. In 1630, when a recurrence of the disease spread through Italy, the government again sent the bodies to Poveglia Island. The island is now abandoned, and locals avoid it, well, like the plague.

 

The Devil Made Me Do It
Limerick County, Ireland, is home to the ancient ruins of the 13th century St. Katherine’s Abbey, where nuns lived and prayed. Legend has it that one nun was secretly working with the devil. One day, the other nuns found her sitting in a chair: she was dead, her eyes were open, and her face was contorted in a scream of horror. The nuns claimed that the Devil finally came for her soul.

 

I Seem To Have Lost My Head
Jack the Ripper was a vicious serial killer who brutally slaughtered women in London in the 1880s. On 29 Hanbury Street, the body of a decapitated woman, one of Jack’s victims, was found. Years later, a brewery opened on the spot where she died; people say that they sometimes see the figure of a decapitated woman walking at night, searching for her killer.

 

A Peaceful Place to Die
The Aokigahara Forest sits on the edge of Mt. Fuji in Japan. The forest is beautiful and mysterious, filled with lush vegetation and twisting trees. Since the 1950s, over 500 people have committed suicide in these woods, earning it the name The Suicide Forest. Every so often, the police sweep the forest to collect the bodies of suicide victims. Those who visit the woods to hike will see evidence of nooses and the random belongings of those who died.

 

I’ll Do Anything to Stay
During the 1700s in Louisiana, a slave girl named Chloe was noticed by her master, Judge Clark Woodruff, for her good looks. She was asked to leave the fields of Myrtles Plantation to become a house maid for Woodruff’s wife and daughters—and to keep the judge’s bed warm. Once Woodruff started losing interest, Chloe was afraid of losing her position and began to eavesdrop on the family. Chloe was caught, and Woodruff cut one of her ears off as a punishment; she wore a green turban after the incident to cover her ears.

 

Fearing the loss of her status now more than ever, Chloe devised a plan: she would grind up poisonous leaves into a cake and serve the dessert to the family. They would then get sick and she could nurse them back to health with the antidote. Her plan backfired: The children immediately became violently ill from the poison, and died. Chloe, now wracked with guilt, confessed to her friends, who then promptly turned on her, dragged her from her bed in the middle of the night, and hanged her.

 

Modern visitors to the Myrtles Plantation have reported seeing the figure of a woman wearing a green turban walking the grounds. The house now has Halloween tours where people claim to feel a spooky presence surrounding them.

 

Goodbye, Cruel World
In Savannah, Georgia, there is an 18th Century three-story home called the Hampton Lillibridge House. The home miraculously—or supernaturally—survived Savannah’s Great Fire of 1820, which destroyed many surrounding homes. The house has a dark past: the original owner, Hampton Lillibridge, died in the house; later, a sailor renting out one of the house’s rooms hanged himself from the ceiling; after this, a construction worker was crushed to death while performing renovations on the house. The house has even been exorcised by a priest.

 

Why Did You Do It?
In 1912, in Villisca, Iowa, the Moore Family was murdered while they slept. The killer chopped every member up with an axe, ran away, and was never seen again. The house is still standing, and it was preserved as a museum for ghost tours. Visitors of the Moore house claim to hear creaking floorboards and the sounds of children crying.

 

Red Mary
In Ireland during the 1600s, a beautiful redheaded girl named Maire Rua inherited a vast fortune. She and her second husband, Conor O’Brien, then built a massive estate known as Leamanagh Castle. After O’Brien died in battle, Rua knew that the only way to support her castle and 11 children was to marry a third man, John Cooper, who worked for the infamous political leader Oliver Cromwell.

 

Locals were jealous that Maire (who they called “Red Mary”) was able to maintain her wealth and status, and were angry that she had married someone connected to Cromwell. Rumors began to spread that Rua was a black widow who had killed 25 husbands in order to keep their money. Other rumors claimed that she abused her housekeepers. A group of local men kidnapped Rua and trapped her inside of a hollow tree, where she screamed for help that never came. She starved to death inside of the tree before her body was discovered. Even to this day, people say they see the ghost of a redheaded woman walking through Leamanagh Castle.

Want to read more about Haunted Places?  Click here.

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Fact of the Day - MYSTERY PLAY

 

Did you know... that Mystery plays and miracle plays are among the earliest formally developed plays in medieval Europe. Medieval mystery plays focused on the representation of Bible stories in churches as tableaux with accompanying antiphonal song. (Wikipedia)

 

Mystery play, one of three principal kinds of vernacular drama in Europe during the Middle Ages (along with the miracle play and the morality play)? The mystery plays, usually representing biblical subjects, developed from plays presented in Latin by churchmen on church premises and depicted such subjects as the Creation, Adam and Eve, the murder of Abel, and the Last Judgment.

 

mystery-play-miniature-Valenciennes-Hube

Setting for the Valenciennes mystery play, miniature by Hubert Cailleau, 1547; in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
(Courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris)

 

During the 13th century, various guilds began producing the plays in the vernacular at sites removed from the churches. Under these conditions, the strictly religious nature of the plays declined, and they became filled with irrelevancies and apocryphal elements. Furthermore, satirical elements were introduced to mock physicians, soldiers, judges, and even monks and priests. In England, over the course of decades, groups of 25 to 50 plays were organized into lengthy cycles, such as the Chester plays and the Wakefield plays. In France a single play, The Acts of the Apostles by Arnoul and Simon Gréban, contained 494 speaking parts and 61,908 lines of rhymed verse; it took 40 days to perform. They died out in many areas with the Reformation.

 

The form in which the mystery plays developed contributed to their demise at the end of the 16th century. The church no longer supported them because of their dubious religious value, Renaissance scholars found little of interest in their great rambling texts, and the general public preferred professional traveling companies that were beginning to arrive from Italy. In England the mystery cycles and miracle plays were suspected of Roman Catholic tendencies and were gradually suppressed.

 

At their height, the mystery plays were quite elaborate in their production. In England they were generally performed on pageant wagons, which provided both scaffold stage and dressing room and could be moved about readily. In France and Italy, however, a production might take place on a stage 100 feet (30 m) wide, with paradise represented at one end of the stage, hell at the other, and earthly scenes between the two. The plays did not attempt to achieve unity of time, place, and action, and therefore they could represent any number of different geographic locations and climates in juxtaposition. Mechanical devices, trapdoors, and other artifices were employed to portray flying angels, fire-spouting monsters, miraculous transformations, and graphic martyrdoms. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

 

The mystery plays and morality plays of the 15th and 16th centuries were very different from modern drama. They were performed in public spaces by ordinary people, and organised and funded by guilds of craftsmen and merchants.

 

The words ‘theatre’ and ‘drama’ conjure a specific set of ideas, writers and images for us today. Shakespeare may well be the first name to spring to mind – followed perhaps by Ibsen or Chekhov. Then, most likely, comes the image of a fixed stage, a darkened room and a reverent hush as the lights go down and the curtains go up. What kind of stories do we expect to be performed for us? Tragedy, often, as well as romance, explorations of the meaning of humanity, or, at the other end of the spectrum, slapstick comedy. Theatre may be rich in variety, but it nonetheless comes with its own set of associations and expectations attached.

 

While modern theatre undoubtedly finds many of its origins in medieval drama, the mystery plays, pageants and morality plays of the 15th and 16th centuries are actually a very different animal, with quite a different set of associations. Imagine not a fixed stage and a darkened room, but mobile theatre out on the streets. Some people are watching carefully, but others are chatting with their friends, or buying food and merchandise from nearby vendors – keeping only one eye on the stage. Instead of the latest big name from an HBO series, you may well recognise a number of the actors from your own daily life. And instead of a focus on the individual and human relationships, you’re treated to scenes from the Bible, about Christianity and the history of salvation. Medieval drama took many forms, but the most spectacular of all was the religious drama of towns such as York, Chester, Coventry and Wakefield, known as the ‘mystery plays.’

 

The mystery plays are sequences of performances, sometimes referred to as ‘cycle plays’ because they make up a cycle of 48 surviving short playlets. Throughout the 15th and into the 16th century, around 300 years before the building of the London playhouses, these cycles were the most popular and enduring form of theatre in Britain, performed annually in the biggest towns and cities of the country. They are most commonly known as the ‘mystery plays’ for two reasons. Firstly, they took the mysteries of God as their primary theme. They aimed to show, in the course of a day, the whole history of the universe from the creation of Heaven and Earth to the Last Judgement – the end of the world, when everyone on earth will be judged by God and divided between Heaven and Hell, salvation and damnation. Secondly, these plays were organised, funded and produced by guilds, which were also called ‘mysteries’ in the Middle Ages. Guilds were associations of craftsmen or merchants, who were in charge of regulating and teaching their trade; they were often wealthy and wielded considerable power.

 

The mystery plays gave guilds the opportunity to advertise and show off their wares. A play about Noah’s Ark and the Flood would be sponsored by the Shipbuilders, who provided the ark itself, and the Goldsmiths would be in charge of the play of the Magi, donating lavish gifts as props. According to a surviving public proclamation from York, the guilds were also in charge of sourcing ‘good players, well arranged, and openly speaking’. Significantly, these players weren’t usually professionals. They were ordinary people with a taste for drama – so you might well see your friend, neighbour or local butcher in the cast, as Herod, Noah or even Jesus.

 

Another detail which sets these plays apart from modern drama is their mobility. The plays were usually performed on separate pageant wagons, with wheels, so that they could be moved. The wagons would proceed, one after another, and the players would perform on them at various fixed stations around the town or city. The audience could pay a bit more to have a seat at these various stations, or they could stand – and this gave them more autonomy over their experience. They could either stay at one station and watch every play, or dip in and out, wandering between the different stations – something more akin to the immersive theatre which has found such popularity in recent years, than a West End show or a play at the National. The players performed their historical stories in up-to-date settings, making references to local landmarks, disputes and characters in order to root the action not only in the contemporary moment, but in their particular location. In this way, the players drew their audience into the playworld, making the mysteries of God and the history of Christianity feel more present and accessible.

 

Mystery plays may have been the most popular form of theatre in the Middle Ages, but they weren’t the only one. Mumming, revels, interludes and pageants were all part of medieval theatrical life, and a number of critics have even drawn attention to the performative nature of church rituals, such as the Liturgy and the Eucharist. Another popular genre was the morality play, which endured into the Tudor period. Morality plays are allegorical (i.e. the characters and events have symbolic meaning) and provide their audience with Christian moral guidance. In this kind of religious drama we follow a primary character (representing mankind) as they encounter a cast of personified vices and virtues, before ultimately turning to righteousness and salvation. Such serious themes are counterpointed by moments of farcical comedy, primarily provided by the vice characters. The plays were usually quite short and were performed by semi-professionals who relied on public support.

 

One such play is Everyman, which was printed in 1510. In this play, the titular character discovers that he is about to die. He must provide God with a book of accounts, detailing the good deeds he has done, in order to save his soul and gain access to Heaven. In despair, Everyman realises that he has misspent his life and his account book is almost empty. The play follows him on a spiritual journey, where allegorical characters such as Friendship and Beauty desert him but others, for example Good Deeds and Confession, instruct and advise him, helping him to turn his life around before his death. The play not only teaches the audience some complex Christian doctrine, but more importantly it encourages them to look to their own lives and souls, before it’s too late. Little is known about the circumstances in which Everyman was performed – and, in fact, there is no record of any performance at all until 1901. On the title page of the printed edition, Everyman is referred to as a ‘treatise’ as well as a ‘play’, which has led some critics to suggest that it might have been designed for reading rather than performance. However, it is certainly presented as a play, with characters and assigned dialogue, and it was successfully updated for a modern audience at the National in London in 2015. Carol Ann Duffy translated the older text into modern verse and Chiwetel Ejiofor took the lead role, as a rich banker who is visited by Death during his over-extravagant, drug-fuelled birthday party.

 

Theatre today looks and feels very different. The mystery plays may be revived in York every other year, but they exist as a novelty and historical artefact rather than an integral part of annual life. Morality plays, meanwhile, need significant updates to make them palatable for a modern audience. However, it’s worth remembering that these are the plays that Shakespeare, Marlowe and their contemporaries would have grown up watching. They have, in their own way, inspired those forms of drama which remain popular today, and they speak to an enduring concern not only of contemporary drama, but of literature more generally: what happens when we die, and how do we live a good life until then? (Discovering Literature: Medieval)


A play, as most of you know, is where live actors get on a stage and act out a story in front of an audience. During Medieval times most plays were religious and were used to teach people about the Bible, the lives of saints, or how to live your life the right way. There were three different types of plays performed during medieval times; The Mystery Play, the Miracle Play and the Morality Play.

 

Mystery plays were stories taken from the Bible. Each play had four or five different scenes or acts. The priests and monks were the actors. Each scene or act was performed at a different place in town and the people moved from one stage to the next to watch the play. The play usually ended outside the church so that the people would go to church and hear a sermon after watching the play.

The Miracle play was about the life or actions of a saint, usually about the actions that made that person a saint. One popular Miracle play was about Saint George and the dragon.

Morality plays were designed to teach people a lesson in how to live their life according to the rules of the church.

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