MaryAnn Bernal's Blog, page 323
February 2, 2014
History Trivia - Second battle of St Alban's- Lancastrians defeat Yorkists
February 2
506 The Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum, a collection of Roman law, was drafted at Toulouse under Alaric II, King of the Visigoths.
962 Pope John XII crowned Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.
1032 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor became King of Burgundy.
1208 James I (the Conqueror) King of Aragon was born.
1461 England's War of the Roses: Second battle of St Alban's- Lancastrians defeated Yorkists.
1461 Owen Tudor, Welsh founder of the Tudor dynasty of England died.
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506 The Breviarium Alaricianum or Lex Romana Visigothorum, a collection of Roman law, was drafted at Toulouse under Alaric II, King of the Visigoths.
962 Pope John XII crowned Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, the first Holy Roman Emperor in nearly 40 years.
1032 Conrad II, Holy Roman Emperor became King of Burgundy.
1208 James I (the Conqueror) King of Aragon was born.
1461 England's War of the Roses: Second battle of St Alban's- Lancastrians defeated Yorkists.
1461 Owen Tudor, Welsh founder of the Tudor dynasty of England died.
February 1, 2014
Brenda Perlin Wins Flash Fiction Challenge
Congrats to Brenda Perlin, the readers’ choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The winning entry is recognized with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Photo by K.S. BrooksSentry
by Brenda Perlin
Devil looks on from the mountain top hoping to see his friend Jewel once again. She has gone missing and hasn’t been seen in days. He and Jewel were puppies when they were adopted from the Carson City Shelter. It was then that their young lives were changed forever. For the first time, nights were not so scary and their days were now filled with runs in the park and an abundance of love.
Something didn’t feel right but he couldn’t figure out what it was. He couldn’t remember a time when Jewel wasn’t by his side. Even though they often fought for attention and had food fights they were extremely bonded. He wasn’t sure what he would do if she were to stay away forever. Though, in his heart, he knew he would never see Jewel again. Still, everyday he stood in the same spot, watching and hoping she would come running back to him.
http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2014/01/31/brenda-perlin-wins-flash-fiction-challenge/
Fingal’s Cave
Three features combine to make Fingal’s Cave on Staffa perhaps the best known of all caves.
Fingal's Cave on the Isle of StaffaIts struture is unique. Nowhere else is there a sea cave formed completely in hexagonally jointed basalt. Its appeal lies in the size, the sounds, the colours, and the remarkable symmetry of this 227 foot cavern, and by Nature’s gift of fractured columns which form a crude walkway just above high water level, allowing exploring visitors to go far inside.
Secondly, the evergreen popularity of Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides Overture (Fingal’s Cave)” provides a continuous stirring reminder of this wonder of the world.
And thirdly, the impact of the cave on all those who enter it, and especially on those who do so alone, is likely to be remembered for life. Sir Walter Scott put it into words for us:
“…one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it …composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, baffles all description.”
How Fingal’s Cave was formed
The question “how was Fingal’s Cave formed?” is often posed. Eminent visitors have seriously asserted that it must, because of its regularity and because it points exactly at Iona, have been hollowed out of the island by hand. In fact, the answer is straightforward. Since the layer of rock made up of columns would all have been laid down at one time it follows that when the tilting occurred there would have been pressure above the present site of the cave, and a fissure would have been forced open directly below, where sea now surges in. The violent action of huge waves that would have struck the island during storms over thousands of years developed the fissure, undermining dozens of columns, to create the opening we marvel at today.
Origin of the NameThe origin of the name ‘Fingal’s Cave’ is wrapped in myth. Around 250 AD Finn MacCumhaill, or Fingal, was possibly an Irish general who had a band of faithful warriors – a Celtic parallel to King Arthur and his Round Table. Fingal is supposed to have been the father of Ossian, traditional bard of the Gaels.
Gaels migrated into Scotland from Ireland until the Norsemen began their raids on the Scottish coast, and the stories of Fingal would doubtless have come across too. Soon he became revered in Scotland and, boosted by the Ossianic heroic verse and songs, his name was a natural choice to assign to this dramatic and awe inspiring cavern.
Mendelssohn’s Historic VisitIn 1829, on 7th August, Felix Mendelssohn visited Fingal’s Cave. With his friend Klingemann, Mendelssohn set out on the newly introduced paddle steamer service to sail round Mull calling at Iona and Staffa, returning down the Sound of Mull to Oban. The day was wild and all the passengers were ill. Klingemann tells of the arrival at Staffa:
“We were put out into boats and lifted by the hissing sea up the the pillar stumps to the celebrated Fingal’s Cave. A greener roar of waves surely never rushed into a stranger cavern – its many pillars making it look like the inside of an immense organ, black and resounding, and absolutely without purpose, and quite alone, the wide grey sea within and without.”
Conditions were so bad that the little craft had only reached Tobermory by nightfall, and Mendelssohn can hardly have enjoyed seeing Fingal’s Cave since he was so seasick. However, the visit to Staffa, and the sight and sound of the Atlantic swell tumbling into the Cave, made a profound impression on him. The theme in the illustration, which he later developed into the ever-popular Hebrides Overture, occurred to him immediately. He was just 20 years old.
http://www.staffatours.com/the-islands/staffa/fingals-cave/
The Hope Diamond Gives Up One of Its Secrets
By Kate SeamonsPublished January 28, 2014
Newser
In this Sept. 23, 2009 file photo, the Hope Diamond is displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) It's legendary, supposedly cursed, admired daily by thousands, and the star of a video game—and yet we don't know all there is to know about the Hope Diamond, or so a recent discovery indicates.
The 45.52-carat diamond has given up one of its secrets to French mineral scientist François Farges and Jeffrey Post, the Smithsonian's curator of minerals. Their detective work involved computer modeling and a 17th-century lead replica that Farges found in 2009 among the National d'Histoire Naturelle's collection, and led them to an intriguing conclusion: When King Louis XIV possessed the diamond, it was mounted on a gold background and cut in a way that could cause a sun to appear at the blue stone's center—all too appropriate for the Sun King, whose colors were blue and gold, reports Smithsonian Magazine
Louis XIV bought the originally 112 3/16-carat, crudely cut diamond in 1668 from a French merchant who obtained the jewel somewhere in India. Five years later it was recut to its 67 1/8-carat size, according to the Smithsonian Encyclopedia, at which time it became known as the French Blue.
In the years between its theft (in 1792, during the French Revolution) and reappearance (in 1812, in Britain), it was again cut to its current size, obliterating those former dimensions—until Farges uncovered the replica, which would have been used by jewelers in need of a stand-in for the actual diamond while creating settings.
But the replica made clear that the French Blue was cut in an unusual way, eschewing the sharp angles that maximize the reflection of light. In exploring the reasoning behind the cut, Farges and Post arrived at their conclusion.
Interestingly, it was only with the discovery of the replica that it was conclusively proven that the French Blue and the Hope Diamond were the same stone.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/28/hope-diamond-gives-up-one-its-secrets/?intcmp=trending
Newser
In this Sept. 23, 2009 file photo, the Hope Diamond is displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File) It's legendary, supposedly cursed, admired daily by thousands, and the star of a video game—and yet we don't know all there is to know about the Hope Diamond, or so a recent discovery indicates.The 45.52-carat diamond has given up one of its secrets to French mineral scientist François Farges and Jeffrey Post, the Smithsonian's curator of minerals. Their detective work involved computer modeling and a 17th-century lead replica that Farges found in 2009 among the National d'Histoire Naturelle's collection, and led them to an intriguing conclusion: When King Louis XIV possessed the diamond, it was mounted on a gold background and cut in a way that could cause a sun to appear at the blue stone's center—all too appropriate for the Sun King, whose colors were blue and gold, reports Smithsonian Magazine
Louis XIV bought the originally 112 3/16-carat, crudely cut diamond in 1668 from a French merchant who obtained the jewel somewhere in India. Five years later it was recut to its 67 1/8-carat size, according to the Smithsonian Encyclopedia, at which time it became known as the French Blue.
In the years between its theft (in 1792, during the French Revolution) and reappearance (in 1812, in Britain), it was again cut to its current size, obliterating those former dimensions—until Farges uncovered the replica, which would have been used by jewelers in need of a stand-in for the actual diamond while creating settings.
But the replica made clear that the French Blue was cut in an unusual way, eschewing the sharp angles that maximize the reflection of light. In exploring the reasoning behind the cut, Farges and Post arrived at their conclusion.
Interestingly, it was only with the discovery of the replica that it was conclusively proven that the French Blue and the Hope Diamond were the same stone.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/28/hope-diamond-gives-up-one-its-secrets/?intcmp=trending
Researchers find 300,000-year-old hearth in Israel
Digging HistoryPublished January 28, 2014
FoxNews.com
Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha'ayin, with an arrow pointing to a 300,000-year-old hearth recently uncovered. (The Weizmann Institute) They weren’t cooking brontosaurus burgers -- but maybe mammoth meat?
A team of researchers has uncovered the oldest hearth in Israel, a 300,000-year-old fire pit where prehistoric humans roasted ancient meats. Scientists estimate that humans discovered fire over a million years ago, and this find helps determine when our ancestors learned to cultivate it and use it as a tool, said Ruth Shahack-Gross of the Kimmel Center for Archeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
“These findings help us to fix an important turning point in the development of human culture – that in which humans first began to regularly use fire both for cooking meat and as a focal point – a sort of campfire – for social gatherings,” Shahack-Gross said in a press release.
“They also tell us something about the impressive levels of social and cognitive development of humans living some 300,000 years ago.”
The hearth was discovered in the Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha’ayin, a spot archaeologists have plumbed for nearly 15 years. During recent work there, Shahack-Gross spied a thick deposit of wood ash, hardened and compressed over the centuries into sediment and buried in the center of the cave.
By taking thin slices of it and studying it under a microscope -- using a technique called infrared spectroscopy -- she and her colleagues Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University determined that bits of bone and soil that had been heated to very high temperatures were mixed in with the ash.
There were also tiny but clear layers in the ash, which she called conclusive proof that the area had been the site of a large hearth that was used over and over again.
Around the hearth area they found flint tools that were clearly used for cutting meat -- early knives and forks, in a sense. Flint tools found just a few feet away had a different shape and were clearly designed for other activities.
Also in and around the area were burnt animal bones -- further evidence for use of the fire pit for cooking meat.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/28/researchers-find-300000-year-old-hearth-in-israel/
FoxNews.com
Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha'ayin, with an arrow pointing to a 300,000-year-old hearth recently uncovered. (The Weizmann Institute) They weren’t cooking brontosaurus burgers -- but maybe mammoth meat?A team of researchers has uncovered the oldest hearth in Israel, a 300,000-year-old fire pit where prehistoric humans roasted ancient meats. Scientists estimate that humans discovered fire over a million years ago, and this find helps determine when our ancestors learned to cultivate it and use it as a tool, said Ruth Shahack-Gross of the Kimmel Center for Archeological Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
“These findings help us to fix an important turning point in the development of human culture – that in which humans first began to regularly use fire both for cooking meat and as a focal point – a sort of campfire – for social gatherings,” Shahack-Gross said in a press release.
“They also tell us something about the impressive levels of social and cognitive development of humans living some 300,000 years ago.”
The hearth was discovered in the Qesem Cave near the central Israel town of Rosh Ha’ayin, a spot archaeologists have plumbed for nearly 15 years. During recent work there, Shahack-Gross spied a thick deposit of wood ash, hardened and compressed over the centuries into sediment and buried in the center of the cave.
By taking thin slices of it and studying it under a microscope -- using a technique called infrared spectroscopy -- she and her colleagues Avi Gopher and Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University determined that bits of bone and soil that had been heated to very high temperatures were mixed in with the ash.
There were also tiny but clear layers in the ash, which she called conclusive proof that the area had been the site of a large hearth that was used over and over again.
Around the hearth area they found flint tools that were clearly used for cutting meat -- early knives and forks, in a sense. Flint tools found just a few feet away had a different shape and were clearly designed for other activities.
Also in and around the area were burnt animal bones -- further evidence for use of the fire pit for cooking meat.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/01/28/researchers-find-300000-year-old-hearth-in-israel/
History Trivia - Elizabeth I of England signs the Warrant of Execution for Mary Queen of Scots
February 1
772 Adrian I was elected pope. During one of the longest pontificates in history, he forged a strong bond with Charlemagne and presided over the Second Council at Nicea where twenty-two canons relating to points of discipline was established.
1327 Edward III was crowned King of England, but the country was ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
1587 Elizabeth I of England signed the Warrant of Execution for Mary (Queen of Scots).
772 Adrian I was elected pope. During one of the longest pontificates in history, he forged a strong bond with Charlemagne and presided over the Second Council at Nicea where twenty-two canons relating to points of discipline was established.
1327 Edward III was crowned King of England, but the country was ruled by his mother Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer.
1587 Elizabeth I of England signed the Warrant of Execution for Mary (Queen of Scots).
January 31, 2014
The Adventures of Cecilia Spark featured on ebookSoda
The Adventures of Cecilia Spark: the Brimstone Forestby Ngaire Elder, Illustrated by Peter MaddocksEnchanting children's adventureCecilia's bug-hunting adventure in the garden takes an interesting turn when she's trapped by a witch and taken to Brimstone forest. On her adventures she meets strange and wonderful creatures including the Troglosauruses and a dragon! Fabulous tale for ages 5-8.Similar To:A Dragon Named Dragon;Amelia Bedelia;
Burly and Grum and the Secret City
http://www.ebooksoda.com/ebook-deals/the-adventures-of-cecilia-spark-the-brimstone-forest-by-ngaire-elder-illustrated-by-peter-maddocks
The Phil Naessens Show Super Bowl XLVIII Preview
http://phillipnaessens.wordpress.com/2014/01/31/the-phil-naessens-show-super-bowl-xlviii-preview/
On this edition of the Phil Naessens Show J.A. Sherman joins Phil to discuss the Oklahoma City Thunder’s recent thumping of the Miami Heat and Sherm shares his thoughts on whether or not he thinks the Heat can win three championships in a row. J.R. Wilco joins Phil to discuss the injury to Manu Ginobili, why the Spurs can’t beat a top seven NBA team and his thoughts on the Heat winning it all. Joe Mullinax joins Phil to preview Super Bowl XLVIII and much more
On this edition of the Phil Naessens Show J.A. Sherman joins Phil to discuss the Oklahoma City Thunder’s recent thumping of the Miami Heat and Sherm shares his thoughts on whether or not he thinks the Heat can win three championships in a row. J.R. Wilco joins Phil to discuss the injury to Manu Ginobili, why the Spurs can’t beat a top seven NBA team and his thoughts on the Heat winning it all. Joe Mullinax joins Phil to preview Super Bowl XLVIII and much more
History Trivia - Guy Fawkes executed
January 31
36 BC Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia Minor was born.
314 Silvester I began his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Miltiades. During his pontificate, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, St. Peter's Basilica, and several cemeterial churches over the graves of martyrs were founded.
1606 Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes was executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England. Guy Fawkes and fellow surviving Gunpowder Plotters were hanged, drawn and quartered at Westminster.
36 BC Antonia Minor, daughter of Mark Antony and Octavia Minor was born.
314 Silvester I began his reign as Pope of the Catholic Church, succeeding Pope Miltiades. During his pontificate, the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, St. Peter's Basilica, and several cemeterial churches over the graves of martyrs were founded.
1606 Gunpowder Plot: Guy Fawkes was executed for his plotting against Parliament and James I of England. Guy Fawkes and fellow surviving Gunpowder Plotters were hanged, drawn and quartered at Westminster.
