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Fact of the Day - LAWN MOWERS

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Did you know... that a lawn mower (or lawnmower) is a machine that uses blades to cut a lawn. There are different types of lawn mowers. The smallest are pushed by a human, they are good for small lawns and gardens. Ride-on mowers are good for larger lawns. The largest are pulled behind a tractor, they are made for grass at places like golf courses and parks. Always wear safety equipment while working with these machines.

 

A lawn mower functions by spinning either a thin blade, or a small piece of cable, to cause lacerations on the stems of grass & other plants. Severing the plant and reducing the height of the plant to a more pleasing appearance.

 

Cylinder Mowers

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The first gasoline-powered lawn mower, 1902.

 

The first lawn mower was invented by Edwin Beard Budding in 1827 in Thrupp, just outside Stroud, in Gloucestershire. Budding's mower was designed primarily to cut the lawn on sports grounds and expensive gardens, as a superior alternative to the scythe, and was patented in 1830. It took ten more years and further innovations to create a machine that could be worked by animals, and sixty years before a steam-powered lawn mower was built. In an agreement between John Ferrabee and Edwin Budding dated May 18, 1830, Ferrabee paid the costs of development, obtained letters of patent and acquired rights to manufacture, sell and license other manufacturers in the production of lawn mowers.

 

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Commercial lawn mower in use

April 1930 in Berlin.

 

Thomas Green produced the first chain-driven mower in 1859. Manufacture of lawn mowers began in the 1860s. By 1862, Farrabee's company was making eight models in various roller sizes. He manufactured over 5000 machines until production ceased in 1863. In 1870, Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana designed a human-pushed lawn mower, which was very lightweight and a commercial success. John Burr patented an improved rotary-blade lawn mower in 1899, with the wheel placement altered for better performance. Amariah Hills went on to found the Archimedean Lawn Mower Co. in 1871. Around 1900, one of the best known English machines was the Ransomes' Automaton, available in chain- or gear-driven models. JP Engineering of Leicester, founded after World War I, produced a range of very popular chain driven mowers. About this time, an operator could ride behind animals that pulled the large machines. These were the first riding mowers.

 

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Horse drawn lawn mower.

 

The rise in popularity of lawn sports helped prompt the spread of the invention. Lawn mowers became a more efficient alternative to the scythe and domesticated grazing animals. James Sumner of Lancashire patented the first steam-powered lawn mower in 1893. His machine burned petrol and/or kerosene as fuel. After numerous advances, the machines were sold by the Stott Fertilizer and Insecticide Company of Manchester and later, the Sumner's took over sales. The company they controlled was called the Leyland Steam Motor Company. Numerous manufacturers entered the field with gasoline-driven mowers after the turn of the century. The first grass boxes were flat trays but took their present shape in the 1860s. The roller-drive lawn mower has changed very little since around 1930. Gang mowers, those with multiple sets of blades, were built in the United States in 1919 by a Mister Worthington. His company was taken over by the Jacobsen Corporation, but his name is still cast on the frames of their gang units.

 

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Rotary mowers
Rotary mowers were not developed until engines were small enough and powerful enough to run the blades at a high speed. Many people experimented with rotary blades in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and Power Specialties Ltd. introduced a gasoline-powered rotary mower. One company that produced rotary mowers commercially was the Victa company, starting in 1952: these mowers were lighter and easier to use than the mowers that came before.

 

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Victa mower (1952)

 

Click the link below ⬇️ to learn more on the history of Lawn Mowers.

 

Source: Kids Encyclopedia - Lawn Mowers | Wikipedia - Lawn Mower | Did you Know Homes - History of Lawn Mowers

 

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Fact of the Day - PLAYING CARDS

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Did you know... that a playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. (Wikipedia)

 

Because we are all familiar with the modern deck of playing cards, a standard deck of Bicycle rider back playing cards seems very "normal" and "traditional" to most of us. But to people of the past, a deck like this is anything but normal! The reality is that playing cards have undergone a radical transformation since their first beginnings several centuries ago. Our modern playing cards evolved into a deck of 52 cards with four suits in red and black and with two Jokers by making a journey that took hundreds of years and involved travelling through many countries. In fact, the most significant elements that shaped today's deck were produced by the different cultures and countries that playing cards travelled through in order to get to the present day.

 

In this article, we will survey the history of playing cards, emphasizing in particular the geographic influences that have determined what modern playing cards look like today. Our whirlwind historical tour will begin in the East, under a cloud of uncertainty about the precise origin of playing cards. But from there we will make our way to Europe, first to Italy and Spain, then east to Germany, back west to France, and across the channel to England. Finally we will travel over the ocean to the United States, which is where most of our decks are produced today by USPCC in the form that we now know them.

 

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The East 
The precise origin of playing cards continues to be the subject of debate among scholars, and even the best theories rely more on speculation than proof. There is clear historical evidence that playing cards began to appear in Europe in the late 1300s and early 1400s, but how did they get there? They seem to have come from somewhere in the East, and may have been imported to Europe by gypsies, crusaders, or traders. The common consensus appears to be that an early form of playing cards originated somewhere in Asia, but to be completely honest, we cannot be entirely sure. Paper is fragile and typically does not survive well across the ages, so solid historical evidence is lacking.

 

Educated guesses have made links to the cards, suits, and icons of 12th century and even older cards in China, India, Korea, Persia, or Egypt, which may have been introduced to Europe by Arabs. Some scholars believe that playing cards were invented in China during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD. There does seem to be evidence of some kinds of games involving playing cards (and drinking!) from this time onward, including cards with icons representing coins, which also appear as icons on playing cards later in Western Europe. If correct, it would place the origins of playing cards before 1000 AD, and it would see them as originating alongside or even from tile games like dominoes and mahjong. Some have suggested that the playing cards first functioned as "play money" and represented the stakes used for other gambling games, and later became part of the games themselves. Others have proposed connections between playing cards and chess or dice games, but this is again speculative. It is very possible that playing cards made their way from China to Europe via Egypt in the Mamluk period, with decks from that era having goblets (cups), gold coins, swords, and polo-sticks, which represent the main interests of the Mamluk aristocracy, and bear parallels to the four suits seen in Italian playing cards from the 14th century.

 

But we cannot even be totally sure that playing cards did first appear in the East; and it may even be that the first ancestors of the modern deck of playing cards were first created in Europe after all, as an independent development. So let's head to Europe, to the earliest confirmed reference to playing cards there, which we find in a Latin manuscript written by a German monk in a Swiss monastery.

 

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Mamluk Playing Cards

 

Italy and Spain
In the manuscript dated 1377, our German monk friend Johannes from Switzerland mentions the appearance of playing cards and several different card games that could be played with them. In the 1400s playing cards often appear along with dice games in religious sermons as examples of gambling activities that are denounced, and there is clear evidence that a 52 card deck existed and was used in this time. The suit signs in the first European decks of the 14th century were swords, clubs, cups, and coins, and very likely had their origin in Italy, although some connect these with the cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks found on Egyptian playing cards from the Mamluk period. At any rate these are still the four suits still found in Italian and Spanish playing cards today, and are sometimes referred to as the Latin suits.

 

The court cards from the late 14th century decks in Italy typically included a mounted king, a seated and crowned queen, plus a knave. The knave is a royal servant, although the character could also represent a "prince", and would later be called a Jack to avoid confusion with the King. Spanish cards developed somewhat differently, the court cards being a king, knight, and knave, with no queens. The Spanish packs also didn't have a 10, and with the absence of 8s and 9s in the national Spanish game of ombre, it resulted in a 40 card deck.

 

The first playing cards in European Italy were hand-painted and beautiful luxury items found only among the upper classes. But as card playing became more popular, and methods were developed to produce them more cheaply, playing cards became more widely available. It was only natural that this new product eventually spread west and north, and the next major development occurred as a result of their reception in Germany, and one historian has described their rapid spread as "an invasion of playing cards", with soldiers also assisting their movement.

 

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Germany
To establish themselves as a card-manufacturing nation in their own right, the Germans introduced their own suits to replace the Italian ones, and these new suits reflected their interest in rural life: acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells; the latter being hawk-bells and a reference to the popular rural pursuit of falconry. The queen was also eliminated from the Italian courts, and these instead consisted of a King and two knaves, an obermann (upper) and untermann (under). Meanwhile the Two replaced the Ace as the highest card, to create a 48 card deck.

 

Custom decks abounded, and suit symbols used in the novelty playing cards from this era include animals, kitchen utensils, and appliances, from frying pans to printers' inkpads! The standard German suits of acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells were predominant, however, although in nearby Switzerland it was common to see a variation using flowers instead of leaves, and shields instead of hearts. The Germanic suits are still used in parts of Europe today, and are indebted to this period of history.

 

But the real contribution of Germany was their methods of printing playing cards. Using techniques of wood-cutting and engraving in wood and copper that were developed as a result of the demand for holy pictures and icons, printers were able to produce playing cards in larger quantities. This led to Germany gaining a dominant role in the playing card trade, even exporting decks to Western Europe, which had produced them in the first place! Eventually the new suit symbols adopted by Germany became even more common throughout Europe than the original Italian ones.

 

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France
Meanwhile early in the 15th century, the French developed the icons for the four suits that we commonly use today, namely hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, although they were called coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles respectively. It is possible that the clubs (trefles) derive from the acorns and the spades (piques) from the leaves of the German playing cards, but they may also have been developed independently. The French also preferred a king, queen, and knave as their court cards.

 

But the real stroke of genius that the French came up with was to divide the four suits into two red and two black, with simplified and clearer symbols. This meant that playing cards could be produced with stencils, a hundred times more quickly than using the traditional techniques of wood-cutting and engraving. With improved processes in manufacturing paper, and the development of better printing processes, including Gutenberg's printing press (1440), the slower and more costly traditional woodcut techniques previously done by hand were replaced with a much more efficient production. For sheer practical reasons, the Germans lost their earlier dominance in the playing card market, as the French decks and their suits spread all over Europe, giving us the designs as we know them today.

 

One interesting feature of the French dominance of playing cards in this time is the attention given to court cards. In the late 1500s French manufacturers began giving the court cards names from famous literary epics such as the Bible and other classics. It is from this era that the custom developed of associating specific court cards with famous names, the more well-known and commonly accepted ones for the Kings being King David (Spades), Alexander the Great (Clubs), Charlemagne (Hearts), and Julius Caesar (Diamonds), representing the four empires of Jews, Greeks, Franks, and Romans. Notable characters ascribed to the Queens include the Greek goddess Pallas Athena (Spades), Judith (Hearts), Jacob's wife Rachel (Diamonds), and Argine (Clubs). The Knaves were commonly designated as La Hire (Hearts), Charlemagne’s knight Ogier (Spades), Hector the hero of Troy (Diamonds), and King Arthur's knight Lancelot (Clubs).

 

The common postures, clothing, and accessories that we expect in a modern deck of playing cards today find their roots in characters like these, but we cannot be certain how these details originated, since there was much diversity of clothing, weapons, and accessories depicted in the French decks of this time. But eventually standardization began to happen, and this was accelerated in the 1700s when taxing on playing cards was introduced. With France divided into nine regions for this purpose, manufacturers within each region were ordered to use a standardized design unique to their region. But it was only when playing cards emigrated to England that a common design really began to dominate the playing card industry.

 

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England
Our journey across the channel actually begins in Belgium, from where massive quantities of cards began to be exported to England, although soldiers from France may also have helped introduce playing cards to England. Due to heavy taxes in France, some influential card makers emigrated to Belgium, and several card factories and workshops began to appear there. Rouen in particular was an important center of the printing trade. Thousands of decks of Belgian made playing cards were exported to countries throughout Europe, including England. In view of this, it is no surprise that English card players have virtually always been using the French designs.

 

But playing cards did not pass through Europe without the English leaving their stamp on them. To begin with, they opted to use the names hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs to refer to the suits that the French had designated as coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles. We do not know why, but they based two of the suit names (spades and clubs) on the names of the Italian deck rather than directly translate the French terms piques (pikes) and trefles (clovers); one possible explanation is the Spanish suits were exported to England before French ones. The word diamond is also somewhat unexpected, given that the English word for carreau (wax-painted tiles used in churches) at the time was lozenge. Whatever the reasons, it is to usage in England that we owe the names that we use for the suits today.

 

It is also to the English that we owe the place of honour given to the Ace of Spades, which has its roots in taxation laws. The English government passed an Act that cards could not leave the factory until they had proof that the required tax on playing cards had been paid. This initially involved hand stamping the Ace of Spades - probably because it was the top card. But to prevent tax evasion, in 1828 it was decided that from now on the Ace of Spades had to be purchased from the Commissioners for Stamp Duties, and that it had to be specially printed along with the manufacturer's name and the amount of duty paid. As a result, the Ace of Spades tended to have elaborate designs along with the manufacturer's name. Only in 1862 were approved manufacturers finally allowed to print their own Ace of Spades, but the fate of the signature Ace of Spades had been decided, and the practice of an ornate Ace with the manufacturer's name was often continued. As a result, to this day it is the one card in a deck that typically gets special treatment and elaborate designs.

 

The artwork on English court cards appears to have been largely influenced by designs produced in Rouen, Belgium, which produced large amounts of playing cards for export. They include details such as kings with crowns, flowing robes, beards, and longish hair; queens holding flowers and sceptres; and knaves that are clean-shaven, wearing caps, and holding arrows, feathers or pikes. But whatever variety was present, slowly disappeared as a result of the industrious efforts of Briton Thomas de la Rue, who was able to reduce the prices of playing cards due to increased output and productivity. This mass production he accomplished in the 1860s gave him a position of dominance in the industry, and the smaller manufacturers with their independent designs eventually were swallowed up, leading to the more standardized designs as we know them today. De la Rue's designs were first modernized by Reynolds in 1840, and then again by Charles Goodall in 1860, and it is this design that effectively still used today. It was also around this time that double-ended court cards became common (to avoid the need to turn the cards, thereby revealing to your opponent that you had court cards in your hand) and the existing full-length designs were adapted to make them double-ended.

 

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United States
The Americans are late companions to our historical journey, because for a long time they simply relied on imports from England to meet the demand for playing cards. Due to the general public's preference for goods of English origin, some American makers even printed the word "London" on their Ace of Spades, to ensure commercial success! From the earliest days of colonization there are even examples of native Americans making their own decks with original suit symbols and designs, evidently having learned card games from the new inhabitants.

 

Among American manufacturers, a leading name from the early 1800s is Lewis I. Cohen, who even spent four years in England, and began publishing playing cards in 1832. In 1835 he invented a machine for printing all four colours of the card faces at once, and his successful business eventually became a public company in 1871, under the name the New York Consolidated Card Company. This company was responsible for introducing and popularizing corner indices to the English pack, to make it easier for players to hold and recognize a poker hand by only fanning the cards slightly. Another printing company had already printed decks with indices in 1864 (Saladee's Patent, printed by Samuel Hart), but it was the Consolidated Card Company that patented this design in 1875. First known as "squeezers", decks with these indices were not immediately well received. A competing firm, Andrew Dougherty and Company initially began producing "triplicates", offering an alternative that used miniature card faces on the opposite corners of the cards. But new territory had been won, and indices eventually became standard, and today it is hard to imagine playing cards without them.

 

One final innovation that we owe to the United States is the addition of the Jokers. The Joker was initially referred to as "the best bower", which is terminology that originates in the popular trick-taking game of euchre, which was popular in the mid-19th century, and refers to the highest trump card. It is an innovation from around 1860 that designated a trump card that beat both the otherwise highest ranking right bower and left bower. The word euchre may even be an early ancestor of the word "Joker". A variation of poker around 1875 is the first recorded instance of the Joker being used as a wild card

 

Besides these changes, America has not contributed any permanent changes to the standard deck of cards, which by this time already enjoyed a long and storied history, and had become more and more standardized. However the United States has become important in producing playing cards. Besides the above mentioned companies, other well-known names of printers from the late 19th century include Samuel Hart and Co, and Russell and Morgan, the latter eventually becoming today's industry giant: the United States Playing Card Company. American manufacturers have been printing special purpose packs and highly customized decks of playing cards throughout their history, but the USPCC's Bicycle, Bee, and Tally Ho brands have become playing card icons of their own. The USPCC has absorbed many other playing card producers over more than a century of dominance, and they are considered an industry leader and printer of choice for many custom decks produced today.

 

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The true history of playing cards is a long and fascinating journey, one that has been enmeshed with many romantic interpretations over time, not all of which have a historical basis. What will the future hold for the fate of the humble playing card, and what will be the lasting contribution of our own era be to the shape and content of a "standard" deck? Only time will tell, but meanwhile you can enjoy a modern deck today, knowing that it has striking similarities with the playing cards of 15th century Europe, and that playing cards have been an integral part of life and leisure across the globe for more than 600 years!

 

 

Source: The History of Playing Cards: The Evolution of the Modern Deck | Wikipedia - Playing Card

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - HALLOWEEN CANDY

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DId you know... that for most American kids, it wouldn’t be Halloween without trick-or-treating for candy; however, that wasn’t always the case. When the custom of trick-or-treating started in the 1930s and early 1940s, children were given everything from homemade cookies and pieces of cake to fruit, nuts, coins and toys. In the 1950s, candy manufacturers began to get in on the act and promote their products for Halloween, and as trick-or-treating became more popular, candy was increasingly regarded as an affordable, convenient offering. It wasn’t until the 1970s, though, that wrapped, factory-made candy was viewed as the only acceptable thing to hand out to all the little ghosts and goblins that showed up on people’s doorsteps. A key reason for this was safety, as parents feared that real-life boogeymen might tamper with goodies that weren’t store-bought and sealed.

 

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Today, when it comes to Halloween candy, a number of the most popular brands are enduring classics. For example, the first Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bar was produced in 1900 and Hershey’s Kisses made their debut in 1907. Company founder Milton Hershey was a pioneer in the mass-production of milk chocolate and turned what previously had been a luxury item for the well-to-do into something affordable for average Americans. In the early 1900s, he also built an entire town, Hershey, Pennsylvania, around his chocolate factory. In 1917, Harry Burnett Reese moved to Hershey, where he was employed as a dairyman for the chocolate company and later worked at its factory. Inspired by Milton Hershey’s success, Reese, who eventually had 16 children, began making candies in his basement. In the mid-1920s, he built a factory of his own and produced an assortment of candies, including peanut butter cups, which he invented in 1928 and made with Hershey’s chocolate. During World War II, a shortage of ingredients led Reese to pull the plug on his other candies and focus on his most popular product, peanut butter cups. In 1963, Hershey acquired the H.B Reese Candy Company.

 

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In 1923, a struggling, Minnesota-born candy maker, Frank Mars, launched the Milky Way bar, which became a best-seller. In 1930, he introduced the Snickers bar, reportedly named for his favorite horse, followed in 1932 by the 3 Musketeers bar. Frank’s son Forrest eventually joined the company, only to leave after a falling out with his father. Forrest Mars relocated to England, where he created the Mars bar in the early 1930s. In 1941, he launched M&Ms. Mars anticipated that World War II would produce a cocoa shortage, so he partnered with Bruce Murrie, son of a Hershey executive, in order to have access to a sufficient supply of ingredients; the candy’s name stands for Mars and Murrie.

 

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Another crowd-pleasing Halloween candy, the Kit Kat bar, was first sold in England in 1935 as a Rowntree’s Chocolate Crisp and in 1937 was rechristened the Kit Kat Chocolate Crisp. The name is said to be derived from a London literary and political group, the Kit-Cat (or Kit Kat) club, established in the late 17th century. The group’s moniker is thought to be an abbreviation of the name of the man who owned the shop where the group originally gathered. Since 1988, the brand has been owned by Nestle, maker of another perennial trick-or-treat favorite, the Nestle Crunch bar, which debuted in the late 1930s.

 

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And of course, no Halloween would be complete without candy corn, which was invented in the 1880s by George Renninger of the Wunderle Candy Company of Philadelphia. Other companies went on to produce their own versions of the tricolor treat, none longer than the Goelitz Confectionery Company (now the Jelly Belly Candy Co.), which has been doing so since 1898.

 

Source: The Haunted History of Halloween Candy 


 

 

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Puella Magi in Latin means Magical Girl, but that's not the only meaning. Puella means "a young girl" but it also means "a female slave". Magi means "magician" with trickster personality, similar to Loki (from Norse mythology) or genie, so it can be translated as "deceiver". Then "Puella Magi" can be translated as "Slave of the Deceiver".

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Fact of the Day - HAND FAN

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Did you know... that a handheld fan, or simply hand fan, may be any broad, flat surface that is waved back-and-forth to create an airflow. (Wikipedia)

 

The origin of hand fan can be dated back to as far as 4,000 years ago, in Egypt. At that time, it was considered a sacred instrument and used in religious ceremonies. It was also seen as a symbol of royalty, as is evident from the two elaborate fans found in King Tut’s tomb. Other cultures where hand fans were used include Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Roman and Chinese. Read on to know more interesting and amazing information on the history, origin and background of fans.

 

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Bodbezan, Persian Handheld Fan

 

Hand fan is known to have been invented in China and Japan, with both holding different legends of its creation. In Japan, the fan was created after the folding wings of a bat, while the Chinese believe that the sight of a woman fanning her facemask at a festival led to the tool’s creation. The hand fan was taken to Europe by way of trade routes in the 1500s. In Europe, it became an exotic and stylish symbol of wealth and class.

 

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Japanese Fans

 

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Chinese Wall Fan; Prosperity Blossoms with Black Bamboo
 
The Italians became the first users of the hand fan in Europe. Trade increased and so did the fans. In the 17th century, fan making became a professional undertaking and the ‘Guild of Fan Makers’ was established. Until the mid-17th century, hand fans were considered a luxury item and made from expensive materials. They were often bejeweled as well. Printed fans turned up with the French Revolution, produced to make a political statement.

 

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17th century European Fan
 
The next hundred years saw a large range and variety of hand fans being developed. By the 18th century, they were being produced in almost all the countries across the world. Some even developed painted fans, which eventually became a recognized art form. In the 1920s, a single ostrich plume became a high fashion statement that was dyed to the same color as one’s dress. However, the early 20th century saw a decline in the use of hand fans, though they were still produced as an advertising medium.

 

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French Painted Fan
 
Spain engrained hand fans into their culture and still use them for their original purpose - that of keeping cool. The Japanese hand fan symbolizes various things, such as friendship, respect and good wishes. It is gifted to people on special occasions and forms an important stage prop for various Japanese dance performances. Japanese believe that the handle of the fan represents the beginning of life and the ribs are for the roads of life, going out in all directions.

 

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Traditional Japanese Dancers
 
In the present times, there are different styles of fans that are being manufactured, namely folding, brisé (made from separate sticks, linked together top and bottom), cockade (opens into a full circle) and a simple rigid shape on a handle. The two outer sticks are known as guards and are more decorated. Materials like tortoiseshell, ivory, bone, mother of pearl, metal and wood are used as guards and sticks. However, they are now more used for decorative purposes, rather than functional.

 

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Source: WIkipedia - Hand Fan | Lifestyle - History of Hand Fan

 

 

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Fact of the Day - WISHING WELL

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Did you know... that a wishing well is a term from European folklore to describe wells where it was thought that any spoken wish would be granted. The idea that a wish would be granted came from the notion that water housed deities or had been placed there as a gift from the gods. This practice is thought to have arisen because water is a source of life, and was often a scarce commodity. (Wikipedia)

 

Folktale Origins Of Wishing Wells

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Wishing well at Ramona marriage place old town, San Diego, California, 1930.

Source: (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

 

In the mall, in the park, or in your neighbor’s front yard, we see wishing wells in a lot of places and we all know what we are supposed to do…drop a coin in and make a wish. But how did this custom start and what was the original meaning of it? Did our ancestors truly believe that they had to pay for their wishes? And what is the significance of a well? Let’s dive deep into the folklore of wishing wells. 

 

Wishing Wells and Sacred Water
Since water is the key to life, finding sources of fresh water was important to our ancestors. Occasionally, fresh water sprang from unexpected places, like from underground springs or rivers. For many cultures, particularly ancient European cultures, underground springs were viewed as special, sacred waters that were given to mankind as a gift from the gods. To thank the gods for their gift, they would drop small tokens of their appreciation into the spring. Later, coins were used. 

 

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Ancient Well. Source: (terriwindling.com)

 

Wishing Wells and Clean Water
Clean, potable drinking water was—and still is—a concern. Anthropologists will tell you that settlements and town were established near sources of clean drinking water. To protect the water and keep it safe from contaminants, the people often built structures, such as wells or well houses and, these structures began a gathering place for the people of the town. Even if the water source was large, like a river or harbor, forts and castles were constructed to protect it. Oftentimes, it was thought that spirits or gods lorded over these water sources and kept them clean. 

 

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Pliny the Younger mentioned wishing wells

in his writing. Source: (reasonabletheology.org)

 

Wishing Wells and Ancient Rome
Wishing wells seem to be a very old tradition that was prevalent across Europe. One of our earliest written references to wishing wells came from the second century in the works of Pliny the Younger. He described several individual springs that converge into a still body of water. He wrote, “There the water, clear as glass, allows you to see gleaming pebbles on the bottom and the coins the people have thrown in.” 

 

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Wishing Well - Picture of Amigos Castle, Lightning Ridge.

 

Wishing Wells and the Germanic People
The Germanic tribes of Europe believed that spirits lived in the waters and actually created the water. The spirits liked to intervene in the lives of the humans living near them. If a person spoke aloud a wish or hope while standing over the water, the spirits might take pity of them and grant their wish. A person could sweeten the deal by dropping a small coin or another valuable token into the well in hopes that the spirits would be pleased. 

 

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Coventina's Well in Northumberland. Source: (northernvicar.co.uk)

 

Wishing Wells and the Celts
The idea of appeasing the spirits by tossing tokens into a well was especially common in the Celtic culture. The Celtic goddess, Coventina, who ruled overhealing and childbirth, had a famous well attributed to her in Northumberland. The people built a small temple to Coventina around the source of the spring water. Archeologists have discovered small token gifts to Coventina, including coins, glass and pottery items, buttons, and beads, dating back as far as 407 C.E.

 

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Mimir guards the Well of Wisdom in Norse mythology. Source: (ancientpages.com)

 

Wishing Wells and the Norse
One popular Norse legend revolves around a water deity named Mimir. According to the stories, Mimir lived in the Well of Wisdom and guarded the sacred waters. He drank from the well every day, making him the wisest being in all the land. The Norse god Odin, desperate to save the world from destruction, sought a sip from the Well of Wisdom. Mimir, however, demanded payment from Odin before he could drink. The price Mimir demanded was high. He asked for Odin’s right eye. Odin eventually agreed to pay the price and his eye was thrown into the well so others could see that a price must be paid in order to seek wisdom from the well. 

 

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Chalice Well in Somerset.

 

Wishing Wells and the Holy Grail
The Chalice Well, or Red Well, is located in Somerset, England. Iron oxide gives the water a red color that the ancient Brits associated with human blood. According to local legends, the well was the place where Joseph of Arimathea hid the Holy Grail, the chalice that was used to catch Jesus’s blood at the time of his crucifixion. This legend was used to explain the red color of the water. Since then, people have paid their respects by leaving offerings at the well. 

 

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Trevi Fountain in Rome. Source: (hubpages.com)

 

Wishing Wells are Big Business
Since tossing a coin into a wishing well or fountain in exchange for a granted wish is such a widespread custom, it had become big business. Take Rome’s Trevi Fountain, for example. More than 3,000 coins are tossed into the famed fountain each day. That adds up to about $1.5 million U.S. dollars per year! The city of Rome uses the money to fund programs for needy people in the community. 

 

Source: Mr-Mehra - Folktale Origins of Wishing Wells | Wikipedia - Wishing Well

 

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Fact of the Day - LASSIE

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Did you know... that Lassie is a fictional character created by Eric Knight. She is a female Rough Collie dog, and is featured in a short story that was later expanded to a full-length novel called Lassie Come-Home. Knight's portrayal of Lassie bears some features in common with another fictional female collie of the same name, featured in the British writer Elizabeth Gaskell's 1859 short story "The Half Brothers". In "The Half Brothers", Lassie is loved only by her young master and guides the adults back to where two boys are lost in a snowstorm.

 

Published in 1940, Knight's novel was filmed by MGM in 1943, as Lassie Come Home with a dog named Pal playing Lassie. Pal then appeared with the stage name "Lassie" in six other MGM feature films through 1951. Pal's owner and trainer Rudd Weatherwax then acquired the Lassie name and trademark from MGM and appeared with Pal (as "Lassie") at rodeos, fairs, and similar events across America in the early 1950s. In 1954, the long-running, Emmy winning television series Lassie debuted, and, over the next 19 years, a succession of Pal's descendants appeared on the series. The "Lassie" character has appeared in radio, television, film, toys, comic books, animated series, juvenile novels, and other media. Pal's descendants continue to play Lassie today. (Wikipedia)

 

In the mid-1950s, when television was still gaining momentum, "Lassie" stunned and entertained audiences. The canine became a household name.

 

When the famous canine Lassie hit the small screen in 1954, fans were ecstatic. After the brave pup became famous through a slew of hit films it made sense to launch a series.  The series quickly became one of the most beloved television shows in history. It had a massive audience for nearly 20 years but here are some interesting facts fans may not know about Lassie.

 

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Lassie and actor Jon Provost (aka Little Timmy) 

 

1. Timmy Never Fell Down A Well
Even though Timmy had many mishaps during the show and often needed Lassie to save him, he never fell down a well. The scenario was popular but never happened in the show. 

 

2. Lassie Was A Stunt Double
The handsome collie named Pal who ended up playing Lassie had been rejected at first for the role in "Lassie Come Home" because he was a male. However, after impressing the filmmakers as a stunt dog, they decided to give him the role completely.

 

3. Lassie Was Actually A Male
Since Pal did such an amazing job, the producers ended up casting all the dogs after him to play the role of the iconic lady were actually male dogs. Especially because the producers realized female dogs shed more when they went into heat and looked smaller than the male dogs.

 

4. Pal Played His Own Son
Pal was an amazing actor. In "Son of Lassie," the amazing pup played both the mother and son roles.

 

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Pal

 

5. His Last Appearance
Pal played the legendary dog "Lassie" in "Lassie Come Home" and his last appearance before he passed was the pilot of the "Lassie" TV series. He died in 1958.

 

6. Tommy Rettig Was Allergic To Dogs
The actor behind the character "Jeff Miller" in "Lassie" was allergic to dogs. In fact, besides getting too old for the childish role, it was one of the reasons why he left the show after just three seasons.

 

7. Knocked Off Air
The only time that "Lassie" was taken off air in the USA was for the annual CBS television showcase of "The Wizard of Oz" (1939). The film was played once a year from 1959 to 1967 and took place on a Sunday evening.

 

8. Timmy Had Two Sets Of Parents
From December 1957 to September 1958, Cloris Leachman and Jon Shepodd played Timmy’s parents. However, reports claim that Cloris argued a lot with the cast and crew and was eventually fired.  They were replaced with June Lockhart and Hugh Reilly.

 

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June Lockhart, Hugh Reilly, 

Jon Provost, Lassie

 

9. There Were More Dogs Involved
To ensure the dog playing Lassie was not lonely, there were other dogs on set. When the cameras were done filming, the dogs were allowed to play. In the early ’70s, a pup named Hey Hey played Lassie in the episodes Peace is Our Profession. He had two miniature poodles called Buttons and Bows on set to keep him company. 

 

10. Jeff And Porky Didn't Really Get Along
Even though Jeff and Porky played best friends on the show, they apparently did not get along off-camera. The pair reportedly often fought on set.

 

11. Alcoholism Made Robert Bray Leave
Robert Bray left the show after four seasons. Reports claim that the star left due to his struggles with alcoholism however, the official statement that was released claimed he had grown tired of his role. He never acted in anything else after "Lassie."

 

12. The Role Was A Family Affair
After Pal passed away after filming the first two episodes, his son, Lassie Jr., stepped up to the role. He took over the role until 1959 and was followed by Lassie Jr.’s sons, Spook and Baby, who took turns in the role until the last two seasons of the show before their brothers Mire and Hey Hey took over.

 

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Lassie (1940 - 1958)

 

13. Longest Lassie Pup
The collie that played Lassie the longest was named Baby. He was the grandson of Pal, the original Lassie and played the role for six years.

 

14. Baby Lived the Shortest
Even though Baby played Lassie the longest he actually lived the shortest.  Baby passed away suddenly at age 8 while most of the other dog actors lived to about 17 years.

 

15. Famous Theme Song
The famous "whistle" theme song which the show became known for was not the original opening and closing credits. It was introduced in Season 5 and the previous four seasons had a more traditional orchestral theme song.

 

16. Real Lassie

The real Lassie on whom the show was based was owned and trained by Rudd Weatherwax. She reportedly lived to be 19 years old.

 

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Rudd Weatherwax and Lassie, 1955

 

17. Andy Clyde's Final Performance
Andy Clyde's one-shot return to the series as "Ben Adams," after his recurring role as "Cully Wilson" was his final performance ever.

 

18. Syndicated Titles
When the seasons starring Jon Provost were syndicated to the daytime TV, they were titled "Jeff's Collie." Then when Provost left the series, his shows were syndicated as "Timmy and Lassie".

 

19. Who Was Timmy Named After
Timmy got his name from producer Bonita Granville. He was named after her mother, Timmie.

 

20. Full Cast Change
When Jon Provost grew tired of his role and left the series after seven seasons it led to the entire fire the rest of the human cast. 

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Lassie (2005 film)

 

Source: AmoMama - "Lassie" Facts You Might Not KnowWikipedia - Lassie | Wikipedia - Lassie (1954 TV series)

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Fact of the Day - ROLLER SKATES

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Did you know... that roller skates are shoes, or bindings that fit onto shoes, that are worn to enable the wearer to roll along on wheels. The first roller skate was effectively an ice skate with wheels replacing the blade. (Wikipedia)

 

The first recorded roller skate inventor, John Joseph Merlin, originally of Belgium, decided to debut his metal-wheeled roller skates at a fancy masquerade party in London in 1760. Merlin’s plan was to suavely skate into the salon while simultaneously playing a violin. Unfortunately, Merlin hadn’t practiced skating much prior to the soiree, nor were his skates engineered for turning. Merlin ended up crashing into a large mirror and suffering serious physical injuries, though his pride might have been the part of him most severely bruised.

 

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John Joseph Merlin

 

Though many more inventors would create their own versions of the roller skate over the next century, it wasn’t until 1863, when James Plimpton tried his hand at this whole roller-skate-inventing thing, that there came into existence a skate actually capable of turning. Plimpton’s four-wheeled skate made use of springy carriages called trucks that allowed the skater to turn by leaning in the direction of travel. Plimpton built a roller rink in his New York furniture-business office, and he also established the New York Roller Skating Association to promote skating.

 

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Roller skating tends to have its heydays and its fallow eras. Though the 1970s may be thought of as the most famous roller skating decade, the early 1900s experienced its own roller skating craze. In 1905, roller skating rinks opened in cities on the East Coast, and skating was often chosen over dancing and other types of entertainment. The craze then snaked its way across the Heartland and to major cities on the West Coast. By 1906, newspapers were running trend pieces about roller skating fashions. Then, in 1916, Charlie Chaplin starred in The Rink, the first movie about roller skating (below).

 

 

 

The first recorded marriage on roller skates took place in 1912 in Milwaukee between a Miss Hattie Baldwin and a Mr. W. McGrath, according to the National Museum of Roller Skating. And, yes, there is a National Museum of Roller Skating. It’s in Lincoln, Nebraska, and it recently celebrated its 30th anniversary.

 

In the 1950s and early ‘60s, the roller skating carhop was a ubiquitous sight at drive-ins. Movies like American Graffiti and TV shows like Happy Days further solidified the carhop’s place in American pop culture. Roller skating carhops still exist today, and the Sonic restaurant chain hosts an annual event called the Sonic Skate-Off, a competition to find the most skillful skating carhop from its 3,500 drive-ins nationwide.

 

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Utah carhop is finalist in national SONIC skating competition

 

At the height of the 1970s roller revolution, each major American city developed its own skate style, though some styles were more distinctive than others. Chicago especially became known as a roller skating city and became famous for JB skating, which borrowed many of its intricate moves from the Godfather of Soul (“JB” is said to be an abbreviation for “James Brown.”) Fancy footwork and standing dance routines are hallmarks of the JB style, and a well-known move is aptly called the “Crazy Leg.” The JB style is still practiced on Chicago skating rinks today.

 

In 1979, Cher released a song called “Hell on Wheels.” The accompanying video was one of the very first modern, MTV-style music videos. It features an interesting mix of truck drivers, bikers, and Cher on roller skates wearing a zebra-print jumpsuit.

 

Before he was Johnny of nobody-puts-Baby-in-a-corner fame, Patrick Swayze made his big-screen debut as Ace in 1979’s Skatetown USA. Dubbed “The Rock and Roller Disco Movie of the Year,” the film also starred Scott Baio and The Brady Bunch's Maureen McCormick. In the clip below, you can see Swayze as Ace, using his belt as an imaginative prop in a roller disco contest.

 

 

 

The Amish typically eschew technology and complicated machinery in favor of a very simple life. Cars, motorcycles, and even bikes are forbidden modes of transportation, but roller skates have been used for decades in Amish communities. In the 1990s, however, in the middle of the Rollerblade craze, the New York Times reported that though the Amish youth had adopted inline skates as transportation, only a third of Amish congregations had approved their use. Some of the elders were concerned that Rollerblades, which were able to achieve greater speeds than roller skates, could dilute the Amish no-frills lifestyle.

 

The largest parade of roller skaters took place in Paris on June 15, 2008, according to Guinness World Records. The parade consisted of 1188 participants who skated for 12.68 miles.

 

Once a mecca of roller skating, New York City now has only one remaining indoor roller rink, RollerJam USA on Staten Island (though another makeshift rink operates out of a gym in Brooklyn). RollerJam USA was badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy, and for a while it looked as though New York’s rink count would be reduced to zero.

 

It took $750,000 and six months of extensive repairs to finally reopen the rink this past spring, according to RollerJam USA’s owner Joe Costa. “It was worth it,” Costa says. “There’s still this whole underground skating community that you wouldn’t even know exists—people from the ‘70s who are still doing it. And there’s a new generation that’s definitely getting interested in roller skating. Gliding on skates to the music—there’s no feeling like it.”

 

My note: there's also another movie I enjoyed and that was Xanadu.

 

 

 

Source: MentalFloss - Roller Skates

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - MACHIAVELLI

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Did you know... that Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance diplomat, philosopher and writer, best known for The Prince, written in 1513. He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy or political science. (Wikipedia)

 

Niccolò Machiavelli is arguably the most influential political thinker from the Italian Renaissance. Following the publication of his political theory masterwork The Prince in 1532, his name became synonymous with ruthless political machinations. But was this Florentine philosopher really that bad?

 

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI HAD A FRONT-ROW SEAT TO RENAISSANCE POWER STRUGGLES.
Machiavelli was born in 1469 in the independent Republic of Florence. Long before he became known as the first modern political theorist (not to mention an inspiration for House of Cards), Machiavelli worked as a diplomat in the service of the Florentine government. In 1498, at only 29 years old, he was appointed as the head of the Second Chancery, which put him in control of the city's foreign relations. His number-one concern was the potential return of the Medici family—the most infamous power brokers in Renaissance Italy—who had been ousted from Florence in 1494. Machiavelli oversaw the recruitment and training of an official militia to keep them at bay, but his army was no match for the Medici, who were supported by Rome's papal militia. When the Medici retook Florence in 1512, their first order of business was to fire—and, just for the heck of it, torture—Machiavelli.

 

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The Medici Family: Money - Power - Magnificence

 

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI WROTE THE PRINCE TO REGAIN HIS LOST STATUS.
As a diplomat and a scholar in an age of constant warfare, Machiavelli observed and absorbed the rules of the political game. After he lost his job as a diplomat (and even served a short time in jail), he turned to scholarship, poring over the Latin texts of ancient Roman political philosophers for inspiration. By the end of 1513, he had completed the first version of what would become his masterwork: The Prince, a handbook for the power-hungry. The book offered tips to rising politicians for seizing power, and advice to incumbent princes for keeping it.

 

Ironically, Machiavelli dedicated the book to the Medici, hoping it would bring him back into their good graces. It remains unclear whether it was ever read by its intended audience, and Machiavelli never got to see The Prince go viral. It was published in 1532, five years after its author's death.

 

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NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI COMPARED THE NEED FOR LOVE TO THE VALUE OF FEAR.

One of The Prince’s primary lessons was that leaders must always try to strike a balance between seeking the love of their subordinates and inspiring fear. If a leader is too soft or kind, the people may become unruly; too cruel, and they might rebel. Machiavelli had a clear preference. "Since love and fear can hardly exist together,” he wrote, “if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved."

 

THE PRINCE’S RUTHLESSNESS MADE IT NOTORIOUS. 
Machiavelli’s political thesis became notorious because it focused almost entirely on helping rulers get what they want at whatever cost—in other words, the end always justified the means. Other political thinkers, while acknowledging Machiavelli’s brilliance, were appalled by his mercenary take on statesmanship. In the 18th century, French essayist Denis Diderot described Machiavelli's work as "abhorrent" and summed up The Prince as "the art of tyranny." Friedrich Schiller, a proponent of liberal democracy, referred to The Prince as an unwitting satire of the kind of monarchical rule it supposedly espouses (“a terrible satire against princes”). David Hume, the Scottish polymath and inveterate skeptic, called Machiavelli "a great genius" whose reasoning is "extremely defective.” Wrote Hume, "There scarcely is any maxim in his Prince which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted.”

 

But 20th-century British philosopher Bertrand Russell disagreed, saying that Niccolò Machiavelli was merely being honest on a subject that most preferred with a good sugarcoating. “Much of the conventional obloquy that attaches itself to his name, is due to the indignation of hypocrites,” Russell wrote [PDF], “who hate the frank avowal of evil-doing.”

 

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Bust of Russell in Red Lion Square

 

SHAKESPEARE CALLED VILLAINS MACHIAVELS.
Machiavelli’s notoriety spread so quickly that by the 16th century his name had found its way into the English language as an epithet for crookedness. In Elizabethan theatre, it came to denote a dramatic type: An incorrigible schemer driven by greed and unbridled ambition. In the prologue for The Jew of Malta, playwright Christopher Marlowe introduces his villain as “a sound Machiavell.” Even William Shakespeare used the term as a derogatory shorthand. “Am I politic? Am I subtle? Am I a Machiavel?” one character in The Merry Wives of Windsor asks rhetorically, before adding an indignant, “No!”

 

THE PRINCE WAS BANNED BY THE POPE.
When Machiavelli was out of a job, he did what most Renaissance thinkers did: He found a patron. Pope Clement VII, a Medici who had been elected in 1523, was happy to support the scholar. The pope even commissioned one of Machiavelli’s longest works, the Florentine Histories, which Machiavelli presented in 1526. But after the posthumous publication of The Prince in 1532, the papacy’s attitude toward Machiavelli’s work chilled. When Pope Paul IV established Rome's first Index of Forbidden Books in 1557, he made sure to include The Prince for its promulgation of dishonesty and dirty politics. (Machiavelli’s passion for classical writers and their pagan culture didn’t appeal to Pope Paul, either [PDF].)

 

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NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI COLLABORATED WITH LEONARDO DA VINCI.
In 1503, when Machiavelli was struggling to fortify Florence against its enemies, he turned to the ultimate Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci.

 

According to a 1939 biography of Leonardo, the two "seem to have become intimate" when they met in Florence. Machiavelli used his power to procure commissions for Leonardo and even appointed him Florence's military engineer between 1502 and 1503. Machiavelli was hoping to harness Leonardo’s ingenuity to capture Pisa, a fledgling city-state which Florentine leaders had been eager to subdue for decades. As expected, Leonardo came up with a revolutionary plan. He contrived a system of dams that would block off one of Pisa’s main waterways, which could have brought Pisa to the brink of a drought and given Machiavelli all the leverage he could have asked for. But the plan failed. The dam system ended up interrupting Florence's own agriculture, and so the government terminated the project. Leonardo left his post after only eight months.

 

Some scholars believe that the encounter with Leonardo left a deep mark on Machiavelli’s political thinking. They point to Machiavelli’s repeated emphasis on the power of technological innovation to decide a war, a view which they believe Leonardo had inspired. Machiavelli’s writing is rife with idiosyncratic expressions that seem to have almost been lifted from Leonardo's notebooks.

 

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI ACTUALLY BELIEVED IN A JUST GOVERNMENT.
Scholar Erica Benner argues that, despite his reputation, Machiavelli wasn’t amoral. Although The Prince openly encouraged politicians to take and offer bribes, cheat, threaten, and even kill if necessary, Machiavelli knew that even rulers had to obey some sense of justice, Benner wrote in The Guardian. He recognized that the race for power comes with very few scruples, but he also recognized that without respect for justice, society falls into chaos.

 

Source: MentalFloss - Niccolò Machiavelli | Wikipedia - Niccolò Machiavelli

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10 minutes ago, Lonewolfe187 said:

Serial Experiments Lain has a video game adaptation that only came out in Japan and like the show it focused on a variety of media and communications and it was even more darker and edgier than the original anime because it has way more violence like self harm and more intense side effects of mental illness.

Not my kind of anime.  I don't like it too dark and self harm is not something I want to watch.

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Fact of the Day - DARK MATTER

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'Dark matter hurricane'

 

Did you know... that dark matter is a form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total mass–energy density or about 2.241×10⁻²⁷ kg/m³.  Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained by accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and that it has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. Dark matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it doesn't absorb, reflect or emit electromagnetic radiation, and is therefore difficult to detect. (Wikipedia)

 

Dark matter may be one of the most unsettling concepts that modern physics has brought us: the idea that everything we’re familiar with in the Universe — galaxies, stars, planets, gas, dust, plasma, etc. — is just a tiny fraction of the matter that’s out there. That most of what exists in the Universe isn’t made out of the same stuff that we are, but is rather some new type of matter that’s different from everything we’ve ever discovered.

 

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Image credit: NASA/ESA/Richard Massey (California Institute of Technology).

 

1. “Dark” doesn’t just mean we don’t see it.
It means it doesn’t emit any electromagnetic radiation for all we can tell. Astronomers haven’t been able to find neither light visible to the eye, nor radiation in the radio range or x-ray regime, and not at even higher energies either.

 

2. “Matter” doesn’t just mean it’s stuff.
What physicists classify as matter must behave like the matter we are made of, at least for what its motion in space and time is concerned. This means in particular dark matter dilutes when it spreads into a larger volume, and causes the same gravitational attraction as ordinary, visible, matter. It is easy to think up “stuff” that does not do this. Dark energy for example does not behave this way.

 

3. It’s not going away.
You will not wake up one day and hear physicists declare it’s not there at all. (Well, you will, but those claims are rare, and those physicists are wrong.) The evidence is overwhelming: Weak gravitational lensing demonstrates that galaxies have a larger gravitational pull than visible matter can produce. Additional matter in galaxies is also necessary to explain why stars in the outer arms of galaxies orbit so quickly around the center. The observed temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background can’t be explained without dark matter, and the structures formed by galaxies wouldn’t come out right without dark matter either. Even if all of this was explained by a modification of gravity rather than an unknown type of matter, it would still have to be possible to formulate this modification of gravity in a way that makes it look pretty much like a new type of matter. And we’d still call it dark matter.

 

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Gravitational lensing caused by galaxies distorts the shape of galaxies farther away. From

the distortion, the total mass inside the galaxies causing the lensing can be inferred.

Image credits: NASA

 

4. Rubin wasn’t the first to find evidence for dark matter.
Though she was the first to recognize its relevance. A few decades before Vera Rubin noticed that stars rotate inexplicably fast around the centers of galaxies, Fritz Zwicky pointed out that a swarm of about a thousand galaxies which are bound together by gravity to the “Coma Cluster” also move too quickly. The velocity of the galaxies in a gravitational potential depends on the total mass in this potential, and the too large velocities indicated already that there was more mass than could be seen. However, it wasn’t until Rubin collected her data that it became clear this isn’t a peculiarity of the Coma Cluster, but that dark matter must be present in almost all galaxies and galaxy clusters.

 

5. Dark matter doesn’t interact much with itself or anything else.
If it did, it would slow down and clump too much and that wouldn’t be in agreement with the data. A particularly vivid example comes from the Bullet Cluster, which actually consists of two clusters of galaxies that have passed through each other. In the Bullet Cluster, one can detect both the distribution of ordinary matter, mostly be emission of x-rays, and the distribution of dark matter, by gravitational lensing. The data demonstrates that the dark matter is dislocated from the visible matter: The dark matter parts of the clusters seem to have passed through each other almost undisturbed, whereas the visible matter was slowed down and its shape was noticeably distorted.

 

The same weak interaction is necessary to explain the observations on the cosmic microwave background and galactic structure formation.
 

6. It’s responsible for the structures in the universe.
Since dark matter doesn’t interact much with itself and other stuff, it’s the first type of matter to settle down when the universe expands and the first to form structures under its own gravitational pull. It is dark matter that seeds the filaments along which galaxies later form when visible matter falls into the gravitational potential created by the dark matter. If you look at some computer simulation of structure formation, what is shown is almost always the distribution of dark matter, not of visible matter. Visible matter falls into, and hence, is assumed to follow the same distribution at later times.

 

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Formation of dark matter structures in the Millenium XXL computer simulation.

Image credits: MPA Garching.

 

7. It’s probably not smoothly distributed.
Dark matter doesn’t only form filaments on supergalactic scales, it also isn’t entirely smoothly distributed within galaxies — at least that’s what the best understood models say. Dark matter doesn’t interact enough to form objects as dense as planets, but it does have ‘halos’ of varying density that move around in galaxies. The dark matter density is generally larger towards the centers of galaxies. Since dark matter doesn’t rotate with the disk of stars we observe, solar systems like our own constantly move into a “wind” of dark matter particles.

 

8. Physicists have lots of ideas what dark matter could be.
The presently most popular explanation for the puzzling observations is some kind of weakly interacting particle that doesn’t interact with light. These particles have to be quite massive to form the observed structures, about as heavy as the heaviest particles we know already. If dark matter particles weren’t heavy enough they wouldn’t clump sufficiently, which is why they are called WIMPs for “Weakly Interacting Massive Particles.” Another candidate is a particle called the axion, which is very light but leaves behind some kind of condensate that fills the universe.

 

There are other types of candidate particles that have more complex interactions or are heavier, such Wimpzillas and other exotic stuff. Macro dark matter is a type of dark matter that could be accommodated in the standard model; it consists of macroscopically heavy chunks of unknown types of nuclear matter.
 

Then there are several proposals for how to modify gravity to accommodate the observations, such as MOG, entropic gravity, or bimetric theories. Though very different by motivation, the more observations have to be explained the more similar the explanations through additional particles have become to the explanations through modifying gravity.

 

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Image credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / F. Gastaldello (INAF/IASF, Milano, Italy) / CFHTLS.

 

9. And they know some things dark matter can’t be.
We know that dark matter can’t be constituted by dim brown dwarfs or black holes. The main reason this doesn’t work is that we know the total mass dark matter brings into our galaxy, and it’s a lot, about 10 times as much as the visible matter. If that amount of mass was made up from black holes, we should constantly see gravitational lensing events — but we don’t. It also doesn’t quite work with structure formation. And we know that neutrinos, even though weakly interacting, can’t make up dark matter either because they are too light and they wouldn’t clump strongly enough to seed galaxy filaments.

 

10. But we have no direct experimental evidence.
Despite decades of search, nobody has ever directly detected a dark matter particle and the only evidence we have is still indirectly inferred from gravitational pull. Physicists have been looking for the rare interactions of proposed dark matter candidates in many Earth-based experiments starting already in the 1980s. They are also on the lookout for astrophysical evidence of dark matter, such as signals from the mutual annihilation of dark matter particles. There have been some intriguing findings, such as the PAMELA positron excess, the DAMA annual modulation, or the Fermi gamma-ray excess, but physicists haven’t been able to link any of these convincingly to dark matter.

 

After everything the Universe has told us about itself, we’re convinced that some type of dark matter must exist: matter that’s different from any of the known particles in the Standard Model. This dark matter outmasses all other particles and radiation in the Universe by a factor of five or so, but has yet to be directly detected. We know it exists, but we don’t know exactly what it’s made of. Until we do, this will remain a mystery in need of a more complete solution.

 

Source: Dark Matter - Sabine Hossenfelder | Wikipedia - Dark Matter



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Fact of the Day - DOLPHINS

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Did you know... that Dolphin is a common name of aquatic mammals within the infraorder Cetacea? The term dolphin usually refers to the extant families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), and Pontoporiidae (the brackish dolphins), and the extinct Lipotidae (baiji or Chinese river dolphin). (Wikipedia)

 

Dolphins are known for being smart, playful creatures that can learn to perform impressive tricks. But you might not know that dolphins are also champion nappers who have helped the U.S. Navy protect nuclear warheads

 

DOLPHINS ARE EXCELLENT NAPPERS.
Since dolphins can't breathe underwater, they need to swim up to the ocean's surface to get air. So how do they sleep without drowning? Essentially, dolphins are champion power nappers. Rather than sleep for several hours at a time, they rest one hemisphere of their brain for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, and they take these "naps" several times each day. By resting one hemisphere of their brain at a time, dolphins can continue swimming, breathing, and watching for predators 24/7.

 

DOLPHINS COMMUNICATE WITH CLICKS AND WHISTLES …

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Dolphins communicate with one another underwater by making a variety of vocalizations. To find prey and navigate the ocean, they make clicking sounds, and they "speak" to other dolphins by whistling. Dolphins also produce loud burst-pulse sounds when they feel excited or aggressive, such as when they need to scare off a nearby shark. Some female dolphins also produce a burst-pulse to reprimand their offspring, called calves, for bad behavior.

 

BUT DOLPHIN LANGUAGE REMAINS A MYSTERY.
Although marine scientists have studied and recorded dolphin vocalizations for decades, many aspects of the animals’ language and how they communicate are still unknown. Scientists have not yet broken down the individual units of dolphin sounds, and they're still searching for a Rosetta Stone that links the animals' vocalizations to their behavior. By using new technologies—including algorithms and high-frequency recorders that work underwater—scientists hope to finally unlock the mystery of the dolphin language.

 

DOLPHINS USE ECHOLOCATION TO NAVIGATE.
To know where they are in relation to other objects and animals, dolphins use echolocation (a.k.a. biological sonar). After emitting a series of high-pitched clicks, they listen for the echoes to bounce off their surroundings. Based on these echoes, dolphins can judge where they are in space and determine the size and shape of nearby objects. Besides helping dolphins evade predators, echolocation allows them to trap, catch, and eat fish and squid.

 

DOLPHINS MAKE FRIENDS WITH OTHER DOLPHINS.

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Dolphins are highly social, and scientists are still discovering fascinating details about how the aquatic mammals socialize with one another. In 2015, scientists at Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute published research in the Marine Mammal Science journal about the social networks of dolphins. After spending over six years tracking 200 bottlenose dolphins in Florida's Indian River Lagoon, the scientists discovered that dolphins have friends. Instead of spending equal time with the dolphins around them, the animals actually segregate themselves into friend groups. Just like humans, dolphins seem to prefer the company of certain peers more than others.

 

EACH DOLPHIN RESPONDS TO ITS OWN NAME.
Dolphins aren't swimming around with name tags, but every dolphin has its own unique whistle. Scientists believe that dolphins use these signature whistles for life, and female dolphins may even teach their calves their whistles before they're born. Dolphins use their signature whistles to call out to one another and may be able to remember other dolphins' whistles after decades apart.

 

THERE ARE 44 DIFFERENT DOLPHIN SPECIES.

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Although bottlenose dolphins are the most well-known and recognizable, there are 43 other dolphin species. Most species live in temperate and tropical oceans, but a few live in colder oceans or rivers. Depending on their species, dolphins can vary considerably in their physical attributes and behavior. For example, the largest dolphin species, the Orca (also called Killer Whale), can be 30 feet long—10 times longer than the smallest dolphins.

 

DOLPHINS DON'T USE THEIR TEETH TO CHEW FOOD.

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Dolphins have teeth, but they don't use their chompers to chew food. Instead, dolphins use their teeth to catch prey (fish, crustaceans, and squid) and swallow it whole. Since they forgo chewing, digestion occurs in their stomach—or, more precisely, in part of their stomach. Dolphins have multiple stomach chambers, one of which is devoted to digestion, while the other chambers store food before it's digested.

 

DOLPHINS TYPICALLY GIVE BIRTH TO JUST ONE CALF.

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Depending on their species, most female dolphins (called cows) carry their babies for nine to 17 months before giving birth to a calf. Interestingly, calves are born tail first, rather than head first, so they don't drown during the birthing process. After nursing for one to two years, a calf typically stays with its mother for the next one to seven years, before mating and having its own calves.

 

A DOLPHIN'S SKIN CAN BE REGENERATED EVERY TWO HOURS.
If you've ever swum with dolphins, you know their skin looks and feels super smooth and sleek. There's a reason for that—a dolphin's epidermis (outer layer of skin) can be sloughed off and replaced with new skin cells as often as every two hours. Because their skin regenerates so often, it stays smooth and, as most scientists believe, reduces drag as they swim.

 

THE U.S. NAVY TRAINS DOLPHINS TO PROTECT NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
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A bottlenose dolphin named K-Dog from the Commander Task Unit jumps out of

the water in 2003. Commander Task Unit is comprised of special mine clearing

teams from The United Kingdom, Australia, and the U.S.
BRIEN AHO, U.S. NAVY/GETTY IMAGES

 

Despite dolphins' general friendliness, some of them are trained for combat. The Navy Marine Mammal Program at San Diego's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) trains dozens of bottlenose dolphins (as well as sea lions) to help the U.S. Navy. In the past, the U.S. military has used dolphins in conflicts in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. Today, thanks to their intelligence, speed, and echolocation skills, dolphins are trained to find enemy swimmers, locate underwater mines, and guard nuclear arsenals.

 

DOLPHINS ARE NOT THE SAME AS PORPOISES.

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To the untrained eye, dolphins and porpoises look nearly identical, and many people mistakenly think that porpoises are a type of dolphin. But the two species belong to completely different families and differ in their physical attributes. So how can you tell them apart? Dolphins, which are usually bigger than porpoises, typically have longer beaks and curved dorsal fins. Porpoises, on the other hand, have more triangular dorsal fins as well as spade-shaped (rather than conical) teeth.

 

HUNTING, OVERFISHING, AND RISING OCEAN TEMPERATURES THREATEN DOLPHINS.
Some dolphin species are endangered or functionally extinct (like China's baiji dolphin) due to hunting, overfishing, and pollution. Although dolphin meat is high in mercury, the animals are still hunted for their meat and eaten in parts of Japan and the Faroe Islands of Denmark. Overfishing means that dolphins' food sources are shrinking, and some dolphins get caught up in fishing nets and die. Additionally, climate change and rising ocean temperatures are driving some fish and squid away from their natural habitats, putting dolphins' main food source at risk.

 

A SUPERPOD CAN CONSIST OF MORE THAN 1000 DOLPHINS.

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Dolphins live in groups, called pods, that typically contain dozens or hundreds of dolphins. By swimming in a pod, dolphins work together to hunt prey, evade predators, and care for sick or injured members. But different pods can also merge, forming a superpod of more than 1000 dolphins. Superpods are typically temporary and occur in parts of the ocean with plentiful food (and less competition for tasty squid).

 

THE OLDEST DOLPHIN IN CAPTIVITY LIVED TO THE AGE OF 61.
Dolphin lifespan varies greatly by species. Most dolphins in the wild live for a few decades, while those in captivity have a drastically reduced lifespan and may live for only a few years. So it's all the more shocking that the oldest dolphin in captivity lived to be a sexagenarian. Nellie, a bottlenose dolphin who lived in a marine entertainment park in Florida, was born in 1953. She appeared on TV shows and commercials and performed tricks for the park's attendees before passing away in 2014.

 

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Source: MentalFloss - Facts About Dolphins | WIkipedia - Dolphin | Dolphin Sounds | Nellie's Legacy

 

 

 

Edited by DarkRavie
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Fact of the Day - BUDDHA

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Did you know... that the Buddha was a philosopher, mendicant, meditator, spiritual teacher, and religious leader who lived in Ancient India. He is revered as the founder of the world religion of Buddhism. He taught for around 45 years and built a large following, both monastic and lay. (Wikipedia)

 

Buddha, (Sanskrit: “Awakened One”) clan name (Sanskrit) Gautama or (Pali) Gotama, personal name (Sanskrit) Siddhartha or (Pali) Siddhattha, (born c. 6th–4th century BCE, Lumbini, near Kapilavastu, Shakya republic, Kosala kingdom [now in Nepal]—died, Kusinara, Malla republic, Magadha kingdom [now Kasia, India]), the founder of Buddhism, one of the major religions and philosophical systems of southern and eastern Asia and of the world. Buddha is one of the many epithets of a teacher who lived in northern India sometime between the 6th and the 4th century before the Common Era.

 

His followers, known as Buddhists, propagated the religion that is known today as Buddhism. The title buddha was used by a number of religious groups in ancient India and had a range of meanings, but it came to be associated most strongly with the tradition of Buddhism and to mean an enlightened being, one who has awakened from the sleep of ignorance and achieved freedom from suffering. According to the various traditions of Buddhism, there have been buddhas in the past and there will be buddhas in the future. Some forms of Buddhism hold that there is only one buddha for each historical age; others hold that all beings will eventually become buddhas because they possess the buddha nature (tathagatagarbha).

 

All forms of Buddhism celebrate various events in the life of the Buddha Gautama, including his birth, enlightenment, and passage into nirvana. In some countries the three events are observed on the same day, which is called Wesak in Southeast Asia. In other regions the festivals are held on different days and incorporate a variety of rituals and practices. The birth of the Buddha is celebrated in April or May, depending upon the lunar date, in these countries. In Japan, which does not use a lunar calendar, the Buddha’s birth is celebrated on April 8. The celebration there has merged with a native Shintō ceremony into the flower festival known as Hanamatsuri.

 

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Hanamatsuri

 

General Considerations
The clan name of the historical figure referred to as the Buddha (whose life is known largely through legend) was Gautama (in Sanskrit) or Gotama (in Pali), and his given name was Siddhartha (Sanskrit: “he who achieves his aim”) or Siddhattha (in Pali). He is frequently called Shakyamuni, “the sage of the Shakya clan.” In Buddhist texts, he is most commonly addressed as Bhagavat (often translated as “Lord”), and he refers to himself as the Tathagata, which can mean either “one who has thus come” or “one who has thus gone.” Information about his life derives largely from Buddhist texts, the earliest of which were not committed to writing until shortly before the beginning of the Common Era, several centuries after his death. The events of his life set forth in these texts cannot be regarded with confidence as historical, although his historical existence is accepted by scholars. He is said to have lived for 80 years, but there is considerable uncertainty concerning the date of his death. Traditional sources on the date of his death or, in the language of the tradition, “passage into nirvana,” range from 2420 BCE to 290 BCE. Scholarship in the 20th century limited this range considerably, with opinion generally divided between those who placed his death about 480 BCE and those who placed it as much as a century later.

 

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Buddhist Texts

 

Historical Context
The Buddha was born in Lumbini (Rummin-dei), near Kapilavastu (Kapilbastu) on the northern edge of the Ganges River basin, an area on the periphery of the civilization of North India, in what is today southern Nepal. Scholars speculate that during the late Vedic period the peoples of the region were organized into tribal republics, ruled by a council of elders or an elected leader; the grand palaces described in the traditional accounts of the life of the Buddha are not evident among the archaeological remains. It is unclear to what extent these groups at the periphery of the social order of the Ganges basin were incorporated into the caste system, but the Buddha’s family is said to have belonged to the warrior (Kshatriya) caste. The central Ganges basin was organized into some 16 city-states, ruled by kings, often at war with each other.

 

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Ganges

 

The rise of these cities of central India, with their courts and their commerce, brought social, political, and economic changes that are often identified as key factors in the rise of Buddhism and other religious movements of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. Buddhist texts identify a variety of itinerant teachers who attracted groups of disciples. Some of these taught forms of meditation, Yoga, and asceticism and set forth philosophical views, focusing often on the nature of the person and the question of whether human actions (karma) have future effects. Although the Buddha would become one of these teachers, Buddhists view him as quite different from the others. His place within the tradition, therefore, cannot be understood by focusing exclusively on the events of his life and times (even to the extent that they are available). Instead, he must be viewed within the context of Buddhist theories of time and history.

 

According to Buddhist doctrine, the universe is the product of karma, the law of the cause and effect of actions, according to which virtuous actions create pleasure in the future and non virtuous actions create pain. The beings of the universe are reborn without beginning in six realms: as gods, demigods, humans, animals, ghosts, and hell beings. The actions of these beings create not only their individual experiences but the domains in which they dwell. The cycle of rebirth, called samsara (literally “wandering”), is regarded as a domain of suffering, and the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice is to escape from that suffering. The means of escape remains unknown until, over the course of millions of lifetimes, a person perfects himself, ultimately gaining the power to discover the path out of samsara and then compassionately revealing that path to the world.

 

A person who has set out on the long journey to discover the path to freedom from suffering, and then to teach it to others, is called a bodhisattva. A person who has discovered that path, followed it to its end, and taught it to the world is called a buddha. Buddhas are not reborn after they die but enter a state beyond suffering called nirvana (literally “passing away”). Because buddhas appear so rarely over the course of time and because only they reveal the path to liberation (moksha) from suffering (dukkha), the appearance of a buddha in the world is considered a momentous event in the history of the universe.

 

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Bodhisattva

 

The story of a particular buddha begins before his birth and extends beyond his death. It encompasses the millions of lives spent on the bodhisattva path before the achievement of buddhahood and the persistence of the buddha, in the form of both his teachings and his relics, after he has passed into nirvana. The historical Buddha is regarded as neither the first nor the last buddha to appear in the world. According to some traditions he is the 7th buddha; according to another he is the 25th; according to yet another he is the 4th. The next buddha, named Maitreya, will appear after Shakyamuni’s teachings and relics have disappeared from the world. The traditional accounts of the events in the life of the Buddha must be considered from this perspective.

 

Click below ⬇️ to read more on Buddha.

 

Source: Britannica - Buddha Founder of Buddhism | Wikipedia - Gautama Buddha

 

 

 

 

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The Legend Of Zelda came from Miyamoto's expierinces growing up in Sonobe exploring the wilderness of the local area and from visiting a cave after several days of reluctance which has sinced served as the main inspiration towards developing games. Zelda was named after Zelda Fitzgerald since the developers really liked the name Zelda because of how pleaseant it sounded King Arthur and Peter Pan were major inspirations as well to the story development. 

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Fact of the Day - Aretha Franklin

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Did you know... that Aretha was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Before she was a global sensation, Aretha Louise Franklin was a young girl with a big voice. She was born in a tiny home in Memphis, Tennessee in 1942 to C.L. and Barbara Franklin. Her parents, a well-known Baptist minister and a talented singer and musician, laid the groundwork for their daughter's roots in the gospel traditions of the church early on. When she was 5, the family moved to Detroit when her father took over as pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church, and it later became the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Detroit. It was there that Aretha Franklin's talents and views grew.

 

Though she became known as the Queen of Soul, Franklin's music was genre-bending—it touched on everything from gospel to pop—and her songs topped the R&B charts as well as the pop charts. Here's what you should know about the artist whose career spanned some six decades before her death from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor on August 16, 2018, at the age of 76.

 

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1942 - 2018

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN KNEW SAM COOKE FROM CHILDHOOD AND WANTED TO EMULATE HIS CAREER.
In the early 1950s, Franklin met Cooke—who is often referred to as the King of Soul—at her church. "I was sitting there waiting for the program to start after church, and I just happened to look back over my shoulder and I saw this group of people coming down the aisle," she told NPR in 1999. "And, oh, my God, the man that was leading them—Sam and his brother L.C. These guys were really super sharp. They had on beautiful navy blue and brown trench coats. And I had never seen anyone quite as attractive—not a male as attractive as Sam was. And so prior to the program my soul was kind of being stirred in another way."

 

Much like Franklin, Cooke was the son of a minister and started his career in gospel before transitioning to pop. "All singers aspired to be Sam," Franklin told Rolling Stone in 2014. "Sam was what you call a singer's singer … He didn't do a lot of running around on the stage, and because he knew he didn’t have to. He had a voice, and he didn't have to do anything but stand in one place and wipe you out."

 

Franklin covered a couple of Cooke's songs, including "A Change Is Gonna Come" in 1967 and "You Send Me" in 1968.

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN'S DAD GROUNDED HER DIVANESS.

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Aretha Franklin Circa 1968

 

When Franklin was 16, she visited New York City—her first time beyond Detroit's city limits since her family moved there from Memphis when she was 5—and took vocal lessons and a choreography class. "When I went home, I didn't think I was supposed to do housework anymore," she told Canadian TV in 1998. "This is too mundane for me. I'm not supposed to do that. I've been to New York. I'm a star now!"

 

She explained how she watched her sisters and cousin clean house, but didn't chip in. Her father walked into the room and asked her why she wasn't helping. "I said, 'I'm a star. I'm not supposed to do that. I've been to New York City.' He said, 'Well, listen, star, you better get in the kitchen and introduce yourself to all those dirty dishes.' I have not been a star since. I really needed that. He grounded me and he gave me balance, and from then on I'm not a star, I'm the lady next door."

 

As a teen, Franklin toured on the gospel circuit, and by 1960 she had a record deal with Columbia. By October of that year, her first label single, "Today I Sing the Blues," was released. It reached No. 10 on the R&B chart, but generally, Columbia didn't know how to market her. Franklin's albums and songs were middling chart hits, and though she was making good money touring, she wasn't a top act. When her contract expired in late 1966, she chose to move to Atlantic Records. There, her career skyrocketed.

 

HER HIT "RESPECT" WAS ABOUT RESPECTING EVERYONE.

 

 

When Franklin recorded Otis Redding's song "Respect" in 1967, she didn't have a specific feminist or civil rights agenda in mind. "My sister and I, we just liked that record [Respect]," Franklin told Vogue in 2016. "And the statement was something that was very important … It's important for people. Not just me or the Civil Rights movement or women—it's important to people. … As people, we deserve respect from one another.” That's also what the song's line "give me my propers" refers to—Franklin told The New York Times that the phrase was street slang for mutual respect.

 

The anthem was Franklin's first No. 1 hit, and it quickly became her signature song. Not only did the song empower others, but it was a lifelong mantra for Franklin. "I give it and I get it," she said of the importance of respect. "Anyone that I don't get it from does not deserve my time or attention."

 

FRANKLIN WROTE THE MOST FAMOUS LINE OF "RESPECT"—AND IT WASN'T SEXUAL, AS MANY HAVE SUGGESTED.
Besides the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" refrain, the repeated lyric "sock it to me" is the most famous line of the song. Redding didn't write that part, though—Franklin did. In 1999, Franklin told NPR that she and her younger sister decided to include the line while playing around on the piano one day. "It was a cliché of the day," Franklin said. "We didn't just come up with it, it really was cliché. And some of the girls were saying that to the fellows, like, 'Sock it to me in this way' or 'sock it to me in that way.' It was nonsexual, just a cliché line." The two backup singers who sang that refrain were Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn.

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN CARRIED HER PURSE EVERYWHERE, EVEN ONSTAGE.

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At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, Franklin performed a show-stopping rendition of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for honoree Carole King (who co-wrote the song in 1967 specifically for Franklin, and then recorded a version of her own for her 1971 solo album, Tapestry). When she walked out on stage, Franklin was wearing a floor-length mink coat and carrying a sparkling clutch, which she laid on top of the piano before sitting down to play—a habit she had had for decades.

 

In a 2016 profile in The New Yorker, editor David Remnick wrote that Franklin made it a point early in her career to be paid upfront—in cash, sometimes of amounts up to $25,000—before performances, so keeping her handbag on her or within eyeshot was a security measure. "It's the era she grew up in," television host and author Tavis Smiley told Remnick. "She saw so many people, like Ray Charles and B. B. King, get ripped off … and she won’t have it. You are not going to disrespect her."

 

"She's got her money, she's ready to move, to go wherever she needs to be," Rickey Minor, who was the musical director of the Kennedy Center Honors, told The New York Times. "How many times do you have to leave your purse in the dressing room and have it go missing before you say, 'I worked hard for this money—I'm going to put my purse right here where I can see it'?"

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN BELIEVED IN EQUAL PAY.
In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, she commented on gender disparity. "If women are going to do the same job, why not give equal pay? Because that job is harder for a woman than a man sometimes," she said. "We deserve parity, and maybe even a little more. Especially if it's physically taxing, we should get a little more money, if you have enough heart to take it on."

 

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ARETHA FRANKLIN USED HER MONEY TO FUND SOCIAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM.
In addition to being a socially conscious artist in public, Franklin also worked behind the scenes to support the Civil Rights Movement. "When Dr. King was alive, several times she helped us make payroll," Franklin's longtime friend, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, told the Detroit Free Press in 2018. "On one occasion, we took an 11-city tour with her as Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte … and they put gas in the vans. She did 11 concerts for free and hosted us at her home and did a fundraiser for my campaign … She has shared her points of view from the stage for challenged people, to register to vote, to stand up for decency."

 

Another family friend, the Reverend Jim Holley, echoed Jackson. "Whenever there was a tragedy with families, any civil rights family, she was always giving," Holley said. "She used her talent and what God gave her to basically move the race forward. A lot of people do the talking but they don't do the walking. She used her talent and her resources. She was that kind of person, a giving person."

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN OFFERED TO BAIL ACTIVIST ANGELA DAVIS OUT OF JAIL.
In 1970, communist activist and academic Angela Davis was arrested for allegedly purchasing guns used in a California courthouse shootout. Franklin rushed to her defense and offered to pay Davis's bail. "Angela Davis must go free," Franklin told Jet. "Black people will be free. I've been locked up [for disturbing the peace in Detroit] and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can't get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I'm going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she's a black woman and she wants freedom for black people. I have the money; I got it from black people—they've made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people." Davis was eventually released (a local dairy farmer posted her $102,500 bail) and acquitted of all charges.

 

IN THE BLUES BROTHERS, ARETHA FRANKLIN HAD WANTED TO SING "RESPECT" INSTEAD OF "THINK."

 

 

 

Aretha Franklin appeared in two non-documentary films, and both times she played a singing diner waitress, Mrs. Murphy. Director John Landis wrote the part specifically for Franklin, which she played in 1980's The Blues Brothers. In it, the script called for Franklin, as a sassy diner owner, to sing her song "Think" to her guitarist husband as a way to dissuade him from joining Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's band.

 

Franklin had other ideas for her song number, though—she wanted to sing her biggest hit, "Respect," instead of "Think," a song she'd co-written and that had become her seventh Top 10 hit back in 1968. "We had written 'Think' into the script, with the dialogue leading into the song and the song actually furthering the plot of the film, so we didn't want to change it," Landis told The Hollywood Reporter. Franklin obliged but asked to change the piano part of the prerecorded track herself. "She sat down at the piano with the mic and, with her back to us, started playing and singing," Landis said. "Her piano playing actually made a difference. It was more soulful."

 

But, as usual, the Queen eventually got her way. In the 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000, she sang "Respect."

 

Click below  ⬇️ to read more about Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.

 

Source: MentalFloss - Aretha Franklin | Wikipedia - Aretha Franklin

 

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11 minutes ago, DarkRavie said:

Fact of the Day - Aretha Franklin

huge_avatar

 

Did you know... that Aretha was the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

 

Before she was a global sensation, Aretha Louise Franklin was a young girl with a big voice. She was born in a tiny home in Memphis, Tennessee in 1942 to C.L. and Barbara Franklin. Her parents, a well-known Baptist minister and a talented singer and musician, laid the groundwork for their daughter's roots in the gospel traditions of the church early on. When she was 5, the family moved to Detroit when her father took over as pastor of the New Bethel Baptist Church, and it later became the center of the Civil Rights Movement in Detroit. It was there that Aretha Franklin's talents and views grew.

 

Though she became known as the Queen of Soul, Franklin's music was genre-bending—it touched on everything from gospel to pop—and her songs topped the R&B charts as well as the pop charts. Here's what you should know about the artist whose career spanned some six decades before her death from a pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor on August 16, 2018, at the age of 76.

 

4F25485000000578-0-image-a-48_1534455513

1942 - 2018

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN KNEW SAM COOKE FROM CHILDHOOD AND WANTED TO EMULATE HIS CAREER.
In the early 1950s, Franklin met Cooke—who is often referred to as the King of Soul—at her church. "I was sitting there waiting for the program to start after church, and I just happened to look back over my shoulder and I saw this group of people coming down the aisle," she told NPR in 1999. "And, oh, my God, the man that was leading them—Sam and his brother L.C. These guys were really super sharp. They had on beautiful navy blue and brown trench coats. And I had never seen anyone quite as attractive—not a male as attractive as Sam was. And so prior to the program my soul was kind of being stirred in another way."

 

Much like Franklin, Cooke was the son of a minister and started his career in gospel before transitioning to pop. "All singers aspired to be Sam," Franklin told Rolling Stone in 2014. "Sam was what you call a singer's singer … He didn't do a lot of running around on the stage, and because he knew he didn’t have to. He had a voice, and he didn't have to do anything but stand in one place and wipe you out."

 

Franklin covered a couple of Cooke's songs, including "A Change Is Gonna Come" in 1967 and "You Send Me" in 1968.

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN'S DAD GROUNDED HER DIVANESS.

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Aretha Franklin Circa 1968

 

When Franklin was 16, she visited New York City—her first time beyond Detroit's city limits since her family moved there from Memphis when she was 5—and took vocal lessons and a choreography class. "When I went home, I didn't think I was supposed to do housework anymore," she told Canadian TV in 1998. "This is too mundane for me. I'm not supposed to do that. I've been to New York. I'm a star now!"

 

She explained how she watched her sisters and cousin clean house, but didn't chip in. Her father walked into the room and asked her why she wasn't helping. "I said, 'I'm a star. I'm not supposed to do that. I've been to New York City.' He said, 'Well, listen, star, you better get in the kitchen and introduce yourself to all those dirty dishes.' I have not been a star since. I really needed that. He grounded me and he gave me balance, and from then on I'm not a star, I'm the lady next door."

 

As a teen, Franklin toured on the gospel circuit, and by 1960 she had a record deal with Columbia. By October of that year, her first label single, "Today I Sing the Blues," was released. It reached No. 10 on the R&B chart, but generally, Columbia didn't know how to market her. Franklin's albums and songs were middling chart hits, and though she was making good money touring, she wasn't a top act. When her contract expired in late 1966, she chose to move to Atlantic Records. There, her career skyrocketed.

 

HER HIT "RESPECT" WAS ABOUT RESPECTING EVERYONE.

 

 

When Franklin recorded Otis Redding's song "Respect" in 1967, she didn't have a specific feminist or civil rights agenda in mind. "My sister and I, we just liked that record [Respect]," Franklin told Vogue in 2016. "And the statement was something that was very important … It's important for people. Not just me or the Civil Rights movement or women—it's important to people. … As people, we deserve respect from one another.” That's also what the song's line "give me my propers" refers to—Franklin told The New York Times that the phrase was street slang for mutual respect.

 

The anthem was Franklin's first No. 1 hit, and it quickly became her signature song. Not only did the song empower others, but it was a lifelong mantra for Franklin. "I give it and I get it," she said of the importance of respect. "Anyone that I don't get it from does not deserve my time or attention."

 

FRANKLIN WROTE THE MOST FAMOUS LINE OF "RESPECT"—AND IT WASN'T SEXUAL, AS MANY HAVE SUGGESTED.
Besides the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" refrain, the repeated lyric "sock it to me" is the most famous line of the song. Redding didn't write that part, though—Franklin did. In 1999, Franklin told NPR that she and her younger sister decided to include the line while playing around on the piano one day. "It was a cliché of the day," Franklin said. "We didn't just come up with it, it really was cliché. And some of the girls were saying that to the fellows, like, 'Sock it to me in this way' or 'sock it to me in that way.' It was nonsexual, just a cliché line." The two backup singers who sang that refrain were Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn.

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN CARRIED HER PURSE EVERYWHERE, EVEN ONSTAGE.

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At the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors, Franklin performed a show-stopping rendition of "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" for honoree Carole King (who co-wrote the song in 1967 specifically for Franklin, and then recorded a version of her own for her 1971 solo album, Tapestry). When she walked out on stage, Franklin was wearing a floor-length mink coat and carrying a sparkling clutch, which she laid on top of the piano before sitting down to play—a habit she had had for decades.

 

In a 2016 profile in The New Yorker, editor David Remnick wrote that Franklin made it a point early in her career to be paid upfront—in cash, sometimes of amounts up to $25,000—before performances, so keeping her handbag on her or within eyeshot was a security measure. "It's the era she grew up in," television host and author Tavis Smiley told Remnick. "She saw so many people, like Ray Charles and B. B. King, get ripped off … and she won’t have it. You are not going to disrespect her."

 

"She's got her money, she's ready to move, to go wherever she needs to be," Rickey Minor, who was the musical director of the Kennedy Center Honors, told The New York Times. "How many times do you have to leave your purse in the dressing room and have it go missing before you say, 'I worked hard for this money—I'm going to put my purse right here where I can see it'?"

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN BELIEVED IN EQUAL PAY.
In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, she commented on gender disparity. "If women are going to do the same job, why not give equal pay? Because that job is harder for a woman than a man sometimes," she said. "We deserve parity, and maybe even a little more. Especially if it's physically taxing, we should get a little more money, if you have enough heart to take it on."

 

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ARETHA FRANKLIN USED HER MONEY TO FUND SOCIAL AND CIVIL RIGHTS ACTIVISM.
In addition to being a socially conscious artist in public, Franklin also worked behind the scenes to support the Civil Rights Movement. "When Dr. King was alive, several times she helped us make payroll," Franklin's longtime friend, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, told the Detroit Free Press in 2018. "On one occasion, we took an 11-city tour with her as Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte … and they put gas in the vans. She did 11 concerts for free and hosted us at her home and did a fundraiser for my campaign … She has shared her points of view from the stage for challenged people, to register to vote, to stand up for decency."

 

Another family friend, the Reverend Jim Holley, echoed Jackson. "Whenever there was a tragedy with families, any civil rights family, she was always giving," Holley said. "She used her talent and what God gave her to basically move the race forward. A lot of people do the talking but they don't do the walking. She used her talent and her resources. She was that kind of person, a giving person."

 

ARETHA FRANKLIN OFFERED TO BAIL ACTIVIST ANGELA DAVIS OUT OF JAIL.
In 1970, communist activist and academic Angela Davis was arrested for allegedly purchasing guns used in a California courthouse shootout. Franklin rushed to her defense and offered to pay Davis's bail. "Angela Davis must go free," Franklin told Jet. "Black people will be free. I've been locked up [for disturbing the peace in Detroit] and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can't get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I'm going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she's a black woman and she wants freedom for black people. I have the money; I got it from black people—they've made me financially able to have it—and I want to use it in ways that will help our people." Davis was eventually released (a local dairy farmer posted her $102,500 bail) and acquitted of all charges.

 

IN THE BLUES BROTHERS, ARETHA FRANKLIN HAD WANTED TO SING "RESPECT" INSTEAD OF "THINK."

 

 

 

Aretha Franklin appeared in two non-documentary films, and both times she played a singing diner waitress, Mrs. Murphy. Director John Landis wrote the part specifically for Franklin, which she played in 1980's The Blues Brothers. In it, the script called for Franklin, as a sassy diner owner, to sing her song "Think" to her guitarist husband as a way to dissuade him from joining Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi's band.

 

Franklin had other ideas for her song number, though—she wanted to sing her biggest hit, "Respect," instead of "Think," a song she'd co-written and that had become her seventh Top 10 hit back in 1968. "We had written 'Think' into the script, with the dialogue leading into the song and the song actually furthering the plot of the film, so we didn't want to change it," Landis told The Hollywood Reporter. Franklin obliged but asked to change the piano part of the prerecorded track herself. "She sat down at the piano with the mic and, with her back to us, started playing and singing," Landis said. "Her piano playing actually made a difference. It was more soulful."

 

But, as usual, the Queen eventually got her way. In the 1998 sequel Blues Brothers 2000, she sang "Respect."

 

Click below  ⬇️ to read more about Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.

 

Source: MentalFloss - Aretha Franklin | Wikipedia - Aretha Franklin

 

 

 

My parents are really into her music.

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Fact of the Day - EARTHQUAKES

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Did you know... that earthquakes don't cause giant cartoonish chasms to open up? But they can tear up the landscape like this.


According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), roughly 500,000 detectable earthquakes occur each year—meaning at least a few will have hit by the time you’ve finished reading this article. Of that gigantic number, however, only about 100,000 are intense enough for humans to feel the effects, and just 100 or so of those actually cause any destruction. In other words, the Earth quakes a lot, whether we realize it or not. So why do earthquakes happen, when do they happen, and can you avoid them by moving to the moon?

 

YOU CAN BLAME EARTHQUAKES ON EARTH’S INNER CORE.

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Plate tectonics: When we discovered how the Earth really works

 

Understanding earthquakes requires a brief journey to the center of the Earth, which is a solid ball of iron and other metals that can reach temperatures up to 10,800°F. The extreme heat from that inner core emanates through its surrounding layers—first through the outer core, mostly made of liquid iron and nickel, and then on to the mostly solid rock layer called the mantle. This heating process causes constant movement in the mantle, which makes the Earth’s crust above it move, too.

 

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The crust comprises a patchwork of giant, individual rock slabs called tectonic plates. Sometimes when two plates are sliding against each other, the friction between their jagged edges causes them to temporarily get stuck. The pressure builds until it can finally overcome the friction, and the plates finally go their separate ways. At that point, all the pent-up energy is released in ripples—or seismic waves—that literally shake the land sitting on the Earth’s crust.

 

SCIENTISTS CAN’T PREDICT EARTHQUAKES, BUT THEY CAN OCCASIONALLY FORECAST THEM.
Unfortunately, there’s no fancy device that warns us whenever an earthquake is coming. But while scientists can’t predict exactly when or where an earthquake will occur, they can occasionally forecast the probability that one will hit a certain area sometime soon (and if that sounds a little vague, it’s because it is). For one, we know where the tectonic plates border each other, and that’s where the high-magnitude earthquakes occur. The Ring of Fire, for example, is an area along the rim of the Pacific Ocean where approximately 81 percent of the world’s biggest earthquakes happen. We also know that especially large earthquakes are sometimes preceded by tiny quakes called foreshocks (though they can’t be identified as foreshocks unless a larger earthquake actually hits—if that doesn’t happen, they’re just regular, small earthquakes). When small quakes near a plate boundary coincide with other geological changes, it can indicate that a big earthquake is coming.

 

In February 1975, for instance, the Chinese city of Haicheng experienced possible foreshocks after months of shifts in land elevation and water levels, so officials ordered its million residents to evacuate immediately. The next day, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked the region. Though there were 2000 casualties, it’s estimated that 150,000 could have been killed or injured if nobody had fled.

 

THERE’S A VERY SMALL CHANCE THAT “THE BIG ONE” WILL OCCUR IN THE NEXT YEAR.

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You can actually see parts of the San Andreas Fault along the Carrizo Plain in

California's San Luis Obispo County.

 

That said, successful forecasts like Haicheng’s are rare, and scientists spend a lot of time monitoring known fault lines—the borders between plates—to try to determine how much pressure is building up and when it might cause a problem. It’s not an exact science.

 

One fluctuating forecast is for “The Big One,” a huge earthquake that’s expected to hit the San Andreas Fault Zone, an 800-mile network of fault lines that runs from Northern to Southern California, sometime in the future. Right now, the USGS forecasts a 31 percent chance that a 7.5-magnitude quake will hit Los Angeles in the next 30 years and a 20 percent chance that such a quake will occur in San Francisco’s Bay Area.

 

The likelihood of “The Big One” is partially dependent on other earthquakes in that fault zone. After two back-to-back quakes hit Ridgecrest, California, in 2019, seismologists observed pressure changes in the surrounding fault lines, and a study published in July 2020 suggested that the chances of “The Big One” happening in the next year may have increased to 1.15 percent—three to five times likelier than previously thought.

 

UNDERWATER EARTHQUAKES CAN CAUSE TSUNAMIS.
Because so much of Earth’s surface is covered in water, many earthquakes don’t touch land at all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t affect people. When plates shift on the ocean floor, the energy displaces the water above them, causing it to rise dramatically. Then, gravity pulls that water back down, which makes the surrounding water form a massive wave, or tsunami.

 

Earthquakes can also indirectly cause tsunamis by altering the landscape. On July 9, 1958, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Lituya Bay in northeastern Alaska, causing a rockslide on a bordering cliff. As an estimated 40 million cubic yards of rock rushed into the bay, the force created an estimated 1720-foot wave—the largest tsunami of all time.

 

ALASKA ALSO HOLDS THE RECORD FOR THE LARGEST EARTHQUAKE IN THE U.S.

 

 

The boundary between the North American and Pacific plates runs through and around Alaska, which means that Alaskans are no strangers to earthquakes; according to the Alaska Earthquake Center, one is detected in the state about every 15 minutes.

 

On March 28, 1964, a 9.2-magnitude earthquake—the largest ever recorded in the U.S.—hit Prince William Sound, a body of water that borders the Gulf of Alaska. Not only did the initial force level buildings and homes, but it also generated a series of landslides, tsunamis, and other earthquakes (called aftershocks) that affected communities as far as Oregon and California.

 

Scientists discovered that the earthquake had happened because the Pacific plate wasn’t just rubbing up against the North American plate—it was actually slipping under it. The area where these plates converge is known as a “subduction zone.” Occasionally, the pressure builds up and causes a major movement, or megathrust, when it finally releases. Though experts still couldn't predict these movements, studying the damage did help Alaskans shore up their defenses for future earthquakes. Officials passed better building codes, and the town of Valdez, which sat on unstable land, was actually moved four miles east.

 

THE WORLD'S LARGEST RECORDED EARTHQUAKE HAPPENED IN CHILE.
The 1960 earthquake near Valdivia, Chile, was larger than Alaska’s earthquake four years later, but the conditions that caused it were similar. The Nazca plate, which runs beneath the Pacific Ocean along South America’s west coast, is slipping under the South American plate (which is beneath the continent itself). On May 22, 1960, there was a huge shift along a 560- to 620-mile length of the Nazca plate, causing a catastrophic, record-breaking earthquake with a magnitude of 9.5. Just like in Alaska, this quake set off a series of tsunamis and aftershocks that decimated whole towns. It’s difficult to quantify the damage, but it’s estimated that at least 1655 people died and another 2 million people ended up homeless.

 

AN EARTHQUAKE CAN LEAVE GENETIC SCARS ON A SPECIES.
Approximately 800 years ago, an earthquake near Dunedin, New Zealand, thrust a section of its coast upward and wiped out the bull kelp that had lived there. New bull kelp soon started settling in the area, and their descendants today look indistinguishable from the neighboring kelp that never got displaced. In July 2020, scientists published a study in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B showing that the two kelp populations actually have different genetic makeup. Their findings suggest that earthquakes—and similar geological catastrophes—can have an extremely long-lasting impact on the biodiversity of the affected area.

 

THE RICHTER SCALE FOR MEASURING EARTHQUAKES ISN’T ALWAYS ACCURATE.
In 1935, Charles Richter devised a scale for determining an earthquake’s magnitude by measuring the size of its seismic waves with a seismograph. Basically, a seismograph is an instrument with a mass attached to a fixed base; the base moves during an earthquake, while the mass does not. The movement is converted into an electrical voltage, which is recorded by a moving needle onto paper in a wave pattern. The varying height of the waves is called amplitude. The higher the amplitude, the higher an earthquake scores on the Richter scale (which goes from one to 10). Since the scale is logarithmic, each point is 10 times greater than the one below it.

 

But seismic wave amplitude in one specific area is a limited metric, especially for larger earthquakes that affect pretty vast regions. So, in the 1970s, seismologists Hiroo Kanamori and Thomas C. Hanks came up with a measurement called a “moment,” found by multiplying three variables: distance the plates moved; length of the fault line between them; and rigidity of the rock itself. That moment is essentially how much energy is released in an earthquake, which is a more comprehensive metric than just how much the ground shakes.

 

To put it in terms the general public could grasp, they created the moment magnitude scale, where the moment is converted to a number value between one and 10. The values increase logarithmically, just like they do on the Richter scale, so it’s not uncommon for newscasters or journalists to mistakenly mention the Richter scale when they’re actually talking about the moment magnitude scale.

 

THE MOON HAS EARTHQUAKES, TOO.

 

 

Aptly called moonquakes, these seismic shifts can happen for a few reasons (that we know of so far). Deep moonquakes are usually because Earth’s gravitational pull is manipulating the moon’s interior structures. A surface-level quake, on the other hand, is sometimes the result of a meteoroid impact or the stark temperature change between night and day. But in May 2019, scientists suggested a possible fourth reason for shallower shakes: The moon is shrinking as its core cools, and this process is causing shifts in its crust. As the crust shifts, the scarps—or ridges—that we see on the moon’s surface may shift, too.

 

Source: MentalFloss - Earthquake facts

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Fact of the Day - BLUES MUSIC

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Did you know.... that the blues is a form of music that started in the United States during the start of the 20th century. It was started by former African slaves from spirituals, praise songs, and chants. The first blues songs were called Delta blues. These songs came from the area near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Many African Americans were taken to the north esp. in the northwest of the United States, to find work. They took the blues with them and developed it into new styles. The most important is the Chicago Blues, which is played with electric amplified instruments. But other cities and states have their own form of Blues developed from the Delta Blues (f. e. Texas Blues, West Coast Blues and others). (Wiki.KidzSearch)

 

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B. B. King

 

The blues, a term coined by the writer Washington Irving in 1807, is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as a type of music “marked by recurrent minor intervals”—so-called blue notes —and by “melancholy lyrics.” These lyrics reflect the oppression experienced by people of African descent in the United States: slavery, prison, chain gangs, and the indignities of the Jim Crow era.

 

Blues is a typically American music with its earliest roots in African forms. It originated with the slaves that were brought over from West Africa. The contemporary Malian musician Ali Farka Touré considers blues to be the type of music most similar to his own; specifically, Touré hears echoes of Tamascheq music in the music of blues artists such as John Lee Hooker. Because slaves were forbidden to use drums, they turned to traditional African “ring shouts” and created rhythms with their hands and feet. Through ring shouts slaves worshipping in “praise houses” connected the newly imposed Christianity to their African roots. “Field hollers,” produced by slaves as a means of communication, were another early vocal style that influenced the blues. Work songs sung by prison road gangs also highly influenced the blues in its early days. The art of storytelling is another important element of the blues. Lyrically, the blues ranges from forms based on short rhyming verses to songs using only one or two repeated phrases.

 

Over time, the blues evolved from a parochial folk form to a worldwide language. The influence of the blues can be found in most forms of popular music, including jazz, country, and rock and roll. The lines between blues and jazz are often blurred. Kansas City jazz, for example, is known for its bluesy sound. Certain artists, such as Charles Brown, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, and Mose Allison—all masters of the keyboard—make music that is hard to categorize as either purely jazz or purely blues. Likewise, gospel is closely related to the blues. The music of the “father of gospel,” Thomas A. Dorsey, was a blend of blues and spirituals.

 

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Thomas Dorsey, 1929

 

Ashenafi Kebede (1982) assigns the blues to four categories: country blues, city blues, urban blues, and racial blues. Country blues was traditionally performed by street musicians without any formal training. City blues is a standardized version of country blues. During the 1940s, as a result of the impact of communication media, city blues evolved into the more commercialized and formalized urban blues, a style characterized by big band accompaniment, modern amplification devices, and new instruments like the saxophone and electric guitar. Racial blues are songs based on racial distinctions between blacks and whites.

 

The great composer and musician W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was one of the first to bring blues into the popular culture, around 1911. Instrumental blues was first recorded in 1913. Aaron Thibeaux (T-Bone) Walker—whose recording debut, “Wichita Falls Blues,” was cut in 1929 for Columbia Records—is believed to be the first bluesman to use an amplified acoustic guitar.

 

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T-Bone Walker

 

The first vocal blues was recorded by an African American woman, Mamie Smith, in 1920. Angela Davis (1998) argues that in the early 1920s African American females were given priority over African American males as recording artists due to their initial success (p. xii). Bessie Smith is said to be the greatest and the most influential blues singer of the 1920s. Bessie Smith’s catalogue of blues recordings still stands as the yardstick by which all other female blues singers are evaluated. Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is also regarded as one of the best of the classic 1920s blues singers. She was “most likely the first woman to incorporate blues into ministerial and vaudeville stage shows, perhaps as early as 1902”. Alberta Hunter is identified as helping to bridge the gap between classic blues and cabaret-flavored pop music in the 1920s.

 

Artists such as Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, and Magic Sam moved the blues guitar into the modern era. Other prominent figures of the second half of the twentieth century include Son Seals, one of the leading guitar stylists of Chicago’s post-1960s blues generation; Muddy Waters, who has been dubbed the “patriarch of post–World War II (1939-1945) Chicago blues”; and Howlin’ Wolf, who was a singer, a songwriter, a guitarist, and a harmonica player. Sonny Boy Williamson was responsible for the transformation of the harmonica (or blues “harp”) from a simple down-home instrument into one of the essential parts of the Chicago blues sound. Little Walter is noted for his revolutionary harmonica technique, and was also a guitarist.

 

Blues guitarist Luther Allison, from the late 1960s, was influenced by Freddie King, who was considered to be one of the linchpins of modern blues guitar. Albert King, who played left-handed and holding his guitar upside down, was one of the premier modern electric guitar artists. Jimmy Reed sold more records in the 1950s and early 1960s than any other blues artist except B. B. King, who is the most successful blues concert artist ever. Bobby “Blue” Bland is considered one of the creators of the modern soul blues sound. Blues giant John Lee Hooker is known as the father of the boogie —an incessant one-chord exercise in blues intensity and powerful rhythm.

 

While the blues was historically an African American form, in the early 1960s the urban bluesmen were “discovered” by young white American and European musicians. Prior to this discovery, black blues artists had been unable to reach a white audience. Among the best-known English blues artists are Eric Clapton and John Mayall; celebrated white American bluesmen include Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Johnny Winter, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. All were heavily influenced by the great African American blues artists.

 

At the start of the twenty-first century, the blues is still going strong, as evidenced by the numerous national and international blues societies, publications, and festivals.

 

Click the link below ⬇️ to read more on Blues Music

Source: Encyclopedia - Blues

 

 

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