Tammy Lowe's Blog, page 7

Interesting Fact of the Day...

In the eleventh century, forks were considered scandalous.

During a royal wedding in Venice, the bride (niece of the Byzantine Emperor) pulled out a golden fork.

The guests gasped when they saw the opulent instrument.

The clergymen scolded her. “God, in his infinite wisdom, has provided man natural forks—his fingers!” The Venetians cried, “it’s an insult to substitute them with metal forks!”

When the bride died from the plague a short time later they were convinced it was punishment for her vanity.

It was at least another five hundred years before forks gained any sort of popularity.

Interesting Fact of the Day...

Here’s your useless, (but fascinating) fact of the day, even if (like me) you don’t know a thing about art!

The Ghent Altarpiece

aka

The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

Completed in 1432, this is the most important painting in our history—The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. It’s the first oil painting and the first great panel painting of the Renaissance. It also happens to be the most stolen piece of artwork of all time. Check out its fascinating history:

”Just about everything bad that could happen to a painting has happened to...Jan van Eyck’s Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (also known as the Ghent Altarpiece). It’s almost been destroyed in a fire, was nearly burned by rioting Calvinists, it’s been forged, pillaged, dismembered, censored, stolen by Napoleon, hunted in the first world war, sold by a renegade cleric, then stolen repeatedly during the second world war, before being rescued by The Monuments Men, miners and a team of commando double-agents. The fact that it was the artwork the Nazis were most desperate to steal – Göring wanted it for his private collection, Hitler as the centrepiece of his citywide super-museum – has only increased its renown.”

To this day, the panel on the bottom left is still missing. A few summers ago, treasure hunters decided it could be buried under one of the town squares in Ghent. So, authorities had to turn away people with pick axes showing up to dig up the town square.

I have seen it twice and it is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful in real life.

Interesting Fact of the Day...

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I’ve discovered a useless (but interesting) fact:

Almost all of us are pronouncing Dr. Jekyll wrong!

Even the movies!

You see, there's a famous British Horticulturalist from the late 1800’s named Gertrude Jekyll. Because she has a David Austin rose named after her, I happen to know that her last name is pronounced Jee-kill, not Jek-ill. All along, I assumed her family pronounced their last name differently than Dr. Jekyll of Robert Louis Stevenson fame.

But, yesterday I read that Stevenson was best buddies with Gertrude’s brother and “borrowed” their last name for his book, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stunned, I thought...does this mean we’re all pronouncing it wrong?

So, I did a little digging.

Sure enough...it’s right there in Oxford Dictionary's own blog under the Robert Louis Stevenson section:

“But how are we supposed to pronounce Jekyll’s name?

Jekyll is pronounced ‘Jee-kill’. This is the common pronunciation of that surname, and the one that Stevenson himself used. As Stevenson stated in an interview: ‘let the name be pronounced as though it spelt “jee-kill”; not “jek-ill”’.

*mind blown*

Did you know...

The clothes make the Medieval man.

A suit of chain mail armor is like the bespoke suit of our day and age.

Did you know it cost the equivalent of TWO farms PLUS all the laborers AND animals?

Interesting Fact of the Day...

Here’s an interesting fact of the day for you:

There was once a sadistic and evil teenager...who happened to be the Roman emperor.

At one of his dinner parties, an avalanche of beautiful, scented rose petals fell from a false ceiling.

What’s so horrible about that you might ask?

Well, he found it entertaining to watch his guests suffocate to death. Unable to crawl out, they basically drowned in the flower petals.

Needless to say, after being emperor for only four years, he was assassinated—at the age of sixteen.

The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1888)

Dreaming of Summer...

One of my favourite things to do on summer evenings is watch for the twinkling of fireflies in my garden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqRFmCjNADo

Turns out, I can sort of garden!

Come stroll through my little garden...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LpwOI8gF5U

The Lasagna Church

I’m very excited because today I get to be guest host over at hilarious author, Stuart West's blog! I put on my "travel writer" hat to take you off the beaten path in Rome to the amazing "Lasagna" Church.

Come on over!

https://stuartrwest.blogspot.com/…/time-tripping-with-ya-au…

Betcha I can make you smile...

I love when people do wacky and wonderful things like this. It makes the ordinary extraordinary.

Have a wonderful day today!

https://youtu.be/UkSPUDpe0U8