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May 1, 2021 - May 1, 2022
Linguists believe that almost all modern alphabets are derived from the simplified version of hieroglyphics devised by the Egyptians four thousand years ago, possibly to communicate with their slaves.
Heraclitus thought the world was built from fire. Further, Heraclitus maintained that everything was constantly in motion.
Proponents of the Documentary Hypothesis, which according to Orthodox Jews is heretical, claim that the original five books came from four sources, eventually compiled into one by a fifth author or redactor. The arguments in favor of this theory are the multiple names used for God, varying styles of writing, and the repetition of stories.
If a single mistake is made, the entire scroll becomes invalid.
We also owe to Eratosthenes many modern concepts like longitude, latitude, musical scales, and prime numbers.
At his trial—recorded by Plato in the dialogue Apology—Socrates made his famous claim that the unexamined life is not worth living.
The Socratic Method, still used by professors in many law schools, is based on Socrates’ style of aggressively questioning his students.
By the end of World War I, a poor but culturally vibrant Black community had taken root in Harlem.
W. E. B. DuBois, famous for his sociological treatise The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and for his role in the founding of the NAACP in 1909.
Langston Hughes, incorporated rhythms from the newly burgeoning genre of jazz music into their works.
Plato was the teacher of Aristotle (384–322 BC).
For the first time in history, a large part of southeastern Europe and the Near East spoke the same language and shared a cultural background. Greek remained the lingua franca of the ancient world for centuries; the books of the New Testament were originally written in Greek.
The British playwright Oscar Wilde recounted the story of a man who ordered a plaster copy of the statue and then sued the railroad company when it arrived from Paris without arms. What surprised Wilde even more was the fact that the man won his case.
Though the Trojan War was long believed to be merely legend, archaeological discoveries in Turkey in the late 1800s suggested that it may have had some historical basis.
The Rosetta Stone was seized by the British in 1801 and now resides in the British Museum in London.
During World War I, the Rosetta Stone and other important exhibitions were moved from the British Museum to a subway station to protect them from the bombing of London.
The sensation of pain triggers the feeling of distress, thanks to a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate cortex.
People who are good at empathizing with others have more active anterior cingulate cortices. They actually feel other people’s pain.
Metaphysics—in Greek, “after physics.”
In 711 AD, less than a century after the prophet’s death, his followers conquered modern-day Spain, bringing Islam to Europe.
“Ozymandias” was inspired by a fallen statue at the funerary temple of Ramses II near Luxor, Egypt. According to the ancient historian Diodorus, the statue was once inscribed with the words, “King of Kings am I, Ozymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”
great-grandfather
Strange. Given Faulkner’s birthdate, you would think it would have been his father or possibly grandfather who participated in the Cvil War…
Due to Faulkner’s thick southern drawl, few in the audience at his Nobel Prize acceptance speech had any idea what he said until the text of his remarks was published in newspapers the next day. Since then, it has been acclaimed as one of the finest Nobel Prize acceptance speeches in history.
😂🤣😂
After the Black Death, it took four centuries for Europe’s population to rebound to its pre-1347 levels.
In 1992, 359 years after Galileo’s trial, Pope John Paul II formed a commission that recognized Galileo’s bravery and formally apologized for his punishment.
The RC Church — pathetically out of touch, as always.
While Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) regarded it as a great “scandal” that philosophy had not yet solved the problem of skepticism, Martin Heidegger (1899–1976) wrote that the great scandal was not that the problem was not solved but that philosophers thought that it stood in need of a solution.
🤣
the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo portrayed God within an oval created by airborne angels. Two Brazilian doctors, Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliviera, recently suggested that the artist consciously based the composition on the oval cross section of the human brain.
This feels like a stretch of credulity of these two doctors.
Christ is the Greek term for “messiah.”
The Spanish Inquisition
I didn’t expect this chapter… 😁
the last execution for heresy carried out by the Inquisition—by strangulation—was in 1826.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate—“Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”
La Commedia had an enormous effect on the development of the Italian language. Virtually all Italian literature until the 1200s had been written in Latin, so Dante’s decision to use vernacular Italian was a significant change.
Italian city-states became a unified nation in 1861,
The motif of a hero journeying into the underworld also figures prominently in two major texts that inspired Dante—Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid.
The chlorine from swimming pools, sea salt, and volcanoes cannot reach the stratosphere.
Not even the volcanoes? Is there some factual data to support this?
Possibly the most famous sentence in philosophy, René Descartes’s cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am—appears in the 1641 work Meditations on First Philosophy, written in Latin by the French philosopher.
In 1522, Luther produced a German translation of the New Testament in only eleven weeks, giving Germans their first chance to read the holy book in their own language.
Potassium-40, which is naturally found in the human body, has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. It has been used to date the beginning of life on the planet.
In the School of Athens, Plato points his finger up to indicate his interest in abstract, ethereal concepts, while Aristotle gestures down to the ground to show his preference for concrete subjects and worldly affairs.
The year 1905 is known as annus mirabilis, Einstein’s “year of miracles.”
Einstein’s papers on the theory of relativity were a continuation of work he began when he was sixteen years old.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
When Haydn’s voice changed in 1749, he was kicked out of St. Stephen’s boys’ choir to the streets with nothing but the clothes on his back, another indication of a musician’s station in life. He survived by giving lessons, composing diversion music for the wealthy of the city, and working as a servant and apprentice to the Italian composer Nicola Porpora (1686–1768).
In 1670, he published the Theological-Political Treatise, in which he argued that the Bible, like all scriptures, should be interpreted as a document produced by human beings, and not by God.
Thus, religion is a system of moral and political control, and all religions are equally valid, insofar as they perform this task effectively.
Spinoza believed God was simply the totality of nature, not an independent creator. He concluded there is no meaning, or purpose, to the world. In the final book of Ethics, Spinoza considered how, given this conclusion, we can still be happy.
According to Mormon beliefs, after Jesus was resurrected, he went to South America and chose a set of twelve apostles there. Among these were the Three Nephites, who did not die but rather remain on earth today awaiting the second coming of Jesus.
😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣
The term baroque was first used pejoratively in the nineteenth century to criticize the period. Today it is used colloquially to mean “extravagant,” “complex,” or “bizarre.”
Darwin enjoyed a privileged childhood. His father was a wealthy doctor, and his mother was the daughter of the famous potter Josiah Wedgwood.
It is rumored that on Haydn’s departure for London, Mozart prophetically told him, “We shall never meet again.” Mozart died before Haydn returned.
