The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Culture (The Intellectual Devotional Series)

by David S. Kidder

solid form is less dense than its liquid form,

Water striders, light insects with padlike feet, take advantage of water’s surface tension. They literally walk on water.

Water’s surface tension is strong enough to drown flying insects that accidentally fall into it.

Vivaldi (1678–1741) wrote The Four Seasons in 1725,

each of the four concertos representing a season of the year.

three movements: the first, an allegro, or fast section; the second, a slow section called adagio or largo; and the third, a ...

he included four sonnets with the manuscript laying out the impressions he was trying...

first concerto, “...

one of Vivaldi’s performances in 1715, the audience was wowed by his virtuosity on the violin.

Vivaldi, like Mozart after him, died poor and was buried in an unmarked grave.

Solomon established peace through alliances and political marriage.

Solomon’s polygamy led to significant internal strife as many of the women practiced idol worship and he did little to enforce Jewish traditions upon them.

Still, King Solomon is remembered for his great wisdom,

Solomon’s first temple, which was destroyed in 586 BC, was replaced by the second temple, completed in 515 BC. The second temple was subsequently destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. Jews believe that during the coming of the Messiah, a third temple will be built on the same spot as the first two.

After the Babylonians destroyed the temple, the Ark of the Covenant disappeared. While it is assumed that the Ark was stolen and destroyed, some people believe that it exists and is hidden.

Mongol warrior, who in the span of two decades led his ruthless army of nomadic tribesman to conquer vast stretches of Asia.

At the time of his death, the Mongol Empire he founded was the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world.

Genghis Khan was born as Temujin, the son of a Mongol chieftain.

Temujin became chief of a Mongol tribe at age thirteen. He was a charismatic leader. Temujin was eventually able to unify the rest of the Mongol tribes, whose leaders then gave him the title Genghis Khan—the “emperor of all emperors.”

At its height, shortly after Genghis Khan’s death, the Mongol empire stretched from Korea to Eastern Europe.

The Mongol armies were disciplined, effective, and notoriously vicious.

the Mongol Empire founded by Genghis Khan opened the way for trade and the exchange of ideas between the two continents. The Mongols opened the Silk Road, a trade route between Asia and Europe, and Europeans, such as the Italian Marco Polo, traveled to the land of the khans.

round tents known as yurts,

The Mongols repeatedly tried to invade the island of Japan, but their crude navy was destroyed by wind. In Japan, the legend of the kamikaze (divine wind) was passed down for centuries as evidence of Japan’s invincibility.

William Faulkner (1897–1962) is considered the greatest literary voice of the American South.

Faulkner’s first major success was not a poem but a novel, The Sound and the Fury (1929), which is still considered his finest.

Faulkner writes in a stream-of-consciousness narrative and discards any notion of a chronological plot.

quintessential Renaissance man.

illegitimate son of Ser Piero da Vinci.

The crust of the earth is made of several plates, fifty miles thick, which move slowly over the earth’s molten core, like ice on a frozen pond. When two plates pull apart, collide, or rub against each other, the result is an earthquake.

The epicenter is the point on the earth’s surface vertically above the hypocenter.

S-waves travel slowly and transversely, displacing walls and fencing.

L-waves cause the ground to move up and down like the waves in

the o...

The intensity of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale.

Earthquakes below 4.0 usually can’t be felt on the surface.

1989 World Series between the Oakland Athletics and the San Francisco Giants was interrupted by a 6.9 earthquake that caused a ten-day delay in the games.

explosion of volcanoes can also cause earthquakes.

The indigenous people of Mozambique believe that the earth is a living creature with the same problems as people. When it gets sick with fever and chills, we feel it shake.

soon became a disciple of John Blow (1649–1708), who served two terms as the organist at Westminster Abbey and was one of the leading English composers of the era.

In 1679, at age twenty, Purcell succeeded his teacher as organist at the Chapel Royal and began composing incidental music for theater as well as church music.

Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas was the first real opera written in the English language.

Epicureans believed all that exists are atoms and the void, or empty space. Consequently, the soul itself is composed of atoms; it is material and dies with the body. The Epicureans believed in gods, but they thought that the gods would be too occupied with their own pleasures to concern themselves with human affairs.

the Epicureans focused on the question: What is the good life? Their answer: The good life was a life of happiness. Happiness was the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain.

The Epicureans therefore believed one should live mostly in an austere way, eating simple foods and enjoying only the occasional luxury.

first, to be the center of the Jewish faith in Israel; second, to be a place for the performance of animal sacrifices to God; and third, to be a permanent home for the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the original Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai.

it was destroyed by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II. The Babylonians looted and destroyed the temple, including, presumably, the Holy Ark and the Ten Commandments.

The site of the first two temples, the Temple Mount, regarded as the holiest location in Judaism, is also an extremely important location for Christianity and Islam. Islam’s Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, both built in the sixth century, make it the third holiest site in the Muslim faith.

Part of King Herod’s retaining wall survived the Romans’ destruction and still exists today, known as the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall.

victims typically lived only a few days after the symptoms—vomiting, diarrhea, and black tumors on the skin—first appeared.