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Random Facts
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LaLaLa Laura
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Dec 21, 2013 06:38PM
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In cultures across pre-Christian Europe, mistletoe was seen as a representation of divine male essence (and thus romance, fertility and vitality).
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Or tons of drinking... LOL!
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The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe "Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other across the lines, and at certain points the Allied soldiers even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.
At the first light of dawn on Christmas Day, some German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man's-land, calling out "Merry Christmas" in their enemies' native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer."
http://www.history.com/topics/christm...
Not a Shot was Fired: Letters from the Christmas Truce of 1914
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Julia wrote: "The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe "Starting on Christmas Eve, many German and British troops sang Christmas carols to each other acro..."
Yup, I know this story, a good one :)
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"The first time Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes, she was so impassioned that she bit him on the face and drew blood."
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No wonder I had such a hard time meeting men, Laura! ;)
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Some more football facts here… http://www.rsvlts.com/2013/09/05/20-i...
1) Only 2.5% of all Earth's water is freshwater, which is what life needs to survive.
2) Almost all of it is locked up in ice and in the ground. Only a bit more than 1.2% of all freshwater (which was only 2.5% of all water) is surface water, which serves most of life's needs.
http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/earthwhe...
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-d..."What Is the Difference Between AD, BC, BCE, and CE in Identifying Historical Dates?"
[Note: CE=Common Era, BCE=Before Common Era]
"In one respect, there really is no difference between an AD/BC and BCE/CE system when it comes to historical dates. The year 23 AD is exactly the same as the year 23 CE, and 4004 BC is also 4004 BCE. ...
The term BC is short for "Before Christ." Historical dates before the birth of Christ become smaller as they approach the theoretical but non-existent Year Zero. Historical dates after the birth of Christ are classified as AD, short for the Latin phrase Anno Domini, or "in the year of our Lord." ...
Supporters of the BCE/CE method of identifying historical dates say the removal of Christian references works as a bridge between different religions and cultures. The BC/AD system appears to endorse Jesus Christ as the superior world religious figure, which could be viewed as disrespectful of other religions and belief structures. Although the birth of Christ is still used as a reference in the BCE/CE system, the Christian influence is not as apparent."
Even before I retired in 2004, history textbooks were moving to the BCE/CE notation.
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As a former history teacher and student of history, I prefer BCE/CE.
I agree, Jen--and when I taught World Literature, the Norton Anthologies used BCE/CE as well.
I'm taking a Coursera class called "How to Change the World", and here's one of my posts, based on a handout I made for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in 2010. Hope you can find one thing to try on here at least :-)WAYS TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT
Use cold water in the washer whenever possible; 90% of the energy that washing machines use goes toward heating the water.
Use dishes, glassware and coffee cups instead of disposable dishes and cups.
Use cloth bags for shopping; each year the U.S. uses 84 billion plastic bags, a significant portion of the 500 billion used worldwide. They are not biodegradable.
Twenty-seven million trees a year are destroyed to support our paper towel addiction. Clean up your spills with cotton kitchen towels.
Americans throw away 44 million newspapers every day. That's 500,000 trees a week, which is a good reason to recycle your paper or read it online.
Keep thermostat at 68 in winter and 78 in summer.
Use a battery powered mulching lawnmower; gasoline lawn mowers are among the dirtiest of modern machines. A study funded by the Swedish E.P.A. found that using a four-horsepower lawn mower for an hour causes the same amount of pollution as driving a car 93 miles.
Reduce your junk mail; An estimated 4 million tons (34 pounds per person) of paper junk mail are sent each year in the U.S. and nearly half of it is never opened. To help stop junk mail, write to: Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, 11 West 42nd St., PO Box 3861, New York, NY 10163-3861. By writing to them, you can reduce junk mail by up to 75%.
Skip the coffee stirrer; each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers. But skipping the stirrer doesn't mean drinking your coffee black. Simply put your sugar and cream in first, and then pour in the coffee, and it should be well mixed.
Avoid fast food; instead, eat at home or at a sit-down restaurant. Fast food restaurants are one of the worst polluters of the environment, both in the massive amounts of beef they must raise, in the wasted packaging, and in the energy they use. And they’re really unhealthy.
Diapers; use cloth diapers when you put a diaper on your child. Americans trash over 18 billion disposable diapers a year; this amount can go to the moon and back seven times. Diapers take up 1% of America's landfills and they take 500 years to decompose. Cotton diapers can be reused 100 times and decompose in 1 to 6 months. These disposable diapers consume 1,265,000 metric tons of wood pulp and 75,000 metric tons of plastic.
THANKS FOR THIS REMINDER JULIA!!!! I have YET to find my recycle center and IT HAS UPSET ME TREMENDOUSLY that recycling is not easy to do where I live now. (I stew about this fact and what it means about society and where I live because I seem to be the only one HERE concerned about the environment.) I pat myself on the back a million times that I already do many things on your list. :D
Julia wrote: "I agree, Jen--and when I taught World Literature, the Norton Anthologies used BCE/CE as well."Academics use BCE/CE as it is impartial. Both Norton and Longman attempt academic impartiality. Are there contemporary academic works that pander to Christian appellations?
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 29,000 kilometres (18,000 mi). The snapshot is one of the most widely distributed photographic images in existence. NASA officially credits the image to the entire Apollo 17 crew — Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Jack Schmitt — all of whom took photographic images during the mission. Apollo 17 was the last manned lunar mission. No humans since have been at a range where taking a whole-Earth photograph such as The Blue Marble would be possible.
It still gives me goosebumps to see that picture, Jen. I have a wonderful book called The Home Planet by Kevin W. Kelley, with a forward by Jacques CousteauLibrary Journal says:
"This is an oversized browsing book filled with magnificent pictures taken from space. As can be guessed from its title, most of the photographs are of portions of the earth's surface. The concise text consists of short quotations from astronauts and cosmonauts describing the emotional impact of being in space. Naturally, the comments are predominantly from Americans and Soviets, but among the 18 nations represented are France, Germany, Syria, and India. Each commentary is given in the speaker's native language with an English translation. A truly beautiful book."
Nice! I'm taking my husband to see: http://hiddenuniversemovie.com/His Valentine's Day present next weekend along with a Mythbusters' exhibit.
Oh, Jen--how wonderful! Hopefully the Hidden Universe will come out on DVD at some point. Great Valentine's ideas for your husband :-)
Thank you Julia, he took me to hear Itzhak Perlman :)
I was fascinated by the Water Boxes, done by artist Ichi Ikeda: http://www.ikedawater.org/03KyotoToyo...
"On March 2003, the 3rd World Water Forum was held in Kansai area (Kyoto, Shiga and Osaka) in Japan. More than twenty thousand people from all parts of the world gathered in the forum, hoping to discuss various water problems facing in the 21th Century and to create opportunities for collaborative activities in the future.
Among them, Ichi Ikeda presented a series of art works entitled '80 liters Water Box', appealing simply that water must exist as the fundamental human right for all people. During the 3rd World Water Forum, '80 liters Water Box' continued to ask participants in the forum as follows:
Ikeda: "It says that one person needs to have 80 liters of water per day to maintain the standard of life to some degree. But, according to the report, three fourth of the world population can use only 50 liters of water or less because of 'low water supply.' It is reported that some country people in Kenya are compelled to spend a day only with 5 liters of water. On the other hand, some American people use 1000 liters of water per day because watering the lawn and washing the car. Through showing 80 liters Water Box as the standard, I will ask visitors, “More than 80 liters or less?”
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Here's a special "heart" for Velentine's Day, from Yann Arthus-Bertrand. His wonderful book Earth from Above is incredible. http://www.yannarthusbertrand.org/en/...This picture is of the mangrove swamp of "Coeur de Voh"
in New Caledonia, France.
http://uniqueguitar.blogspot.com/2012...Jack Hall the Matchstick Man
Jack Hall was born in 1906 in Brighton, England. He never had any musical talent, but as a seaman in the Merchant Navy, he had a lot of time. The daily routine was monotonous, so to quell the boredom Jack needed to find something to do with the time. He began by picking up discarded matchsticks from the ship's deck that were routinely tossed away by his fellow crew members. He got the notion to glue them together an make something. He began asking all of his friends to not throw away their used matches, but to send them to him. Friends and family would mail them to him and when he arrived in port he always received letters containing used matches.
Whenever his ship was in port he would go ashore to pawnshops to exam musical instruments and study the measurement, shape and feel of a fiddle. Onboard ship, he transferred these to pencil sketches, determined to make a fiddle out of glue and matchsticks. His task took five hours a day over a six month period. Hall used more than 18,000 matchsticks and approximately 3 pounds of glue. He eventually whittled matchsticks down to around 14.000 and used another 1,000 for the chin rest.
Jack completed his fiddle in 1936 and went into the mess room to belt out a few notes for his amazed mates. Between 1936 and 1939, Hall had created a mandolin, an acoustic guitar, a larger 12 sided mandolin and a tenor banjo.
Perhaps the most striking feature of Mr. Hall's work is the beautiful designs derived from his placement of the sets match sticks. Each had to be cut down individually to varied lengths to fit into what seems to be a puzzle as much as a guitar.
In the 1940's, the breakout of WWII interrupted Jack Hall as he volunteered to serve aboard a deep sea rescue tug boat. After his discharge from the services in 1945, Mr. Hall quietly gave up is hobby and stored his treasures away in the attic of his home until 1951 when it was put on display at the Festival of Great Britain.
In 1976 a Radio Brighton reporter did a story on Jack Hall and visited his home to see the instruments for himself. In 1984, Mr. Hall revived interest in his hobby by building a ukulele out of 10,000 matches. It was not until 1991 when a group of four musicians played Jack's instruments on BBC Television, astonishing viewers and the musicians.
And BBC has a good 2 minute video of the instruments: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-...
"For nearly 40 years an albino gorilla named Snowflake was adored by people around the world.In 1967, local villagers in Africa’s Equitorial Guinea captured a remarkable baby gorilla. This young male was unlike any gorilla the villagers had seen before; instead of the thick brown fur of most gorillas, this baby had a coat of pure white.
Through a series of fortunate circumstances, the rare white gorilla ended up at the Barcelona Zoo, where he became an international star. He was given the Spanish name Copito de Nieve and the English name Snowflake. He died of skin cancer in 2003, a common problem for albinos."
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episod...
"Originally named Nfumu Ngui in Fang language ("white gorilla") by his captor, he was then nicknamed Floquet de Neu (Catalan for little snowflake) by his keeper Jordi Sabater Pi; he became famous with the name given to him by Sabater when National Geographic Magazine featured him on the main page in March 1967, with the English name Snowflake. This name spread among the press.
Sabater himself called the gorilla Copi or Floquet, and in the later years Nfumu. The asteroid 95962 Copito, discovered by Spanish astronomer J. Manteca, is named in his honour."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflak...
Do the zoos not take UV precautions for albino animals?
The Barcelona zoo did all they could, but as with any cancer, only so much can be done:"At the time of death he was thought to be between 38 and 40 years old; the average lifespan of a gorilla in the wild is 25. Since 2001, he had suffered from an unusual form of skin cancer, almost certainly related to his albinism condition, known as oculocutaneous albinism type 1 or OCA1. In September 2003, it was publicly announced that he was dying. Thousands visited the zoo to say goodbye before he was euthanized in November 2003."
Poor baby... Glad he had a long life.
Yes, since how he was captured showed the same inhumanity Dian Fossey faced in her work:"The only albino gorilla known to man, he was captured in the Equatorial forest of Nko, on October 1, 1966, by Benito Mañé, an ethnic Fang farmer, who had killed the rest of his group (all charcoal black in color) in order to obtain this unusual albino specimen. (bold mine) During the massacre, his mother was shot by Mañé whilst she tore a banana stem apart in his banana plantation. The small creature was found clinging to his mother's neck, his head buried deep in her black fur. Benito kept him at his own home for four days and then transported him to Bata, where he was purchased by Sabater Pi, who worked for the Barcelona Zoo's Ikunde Center, in Spanish Guinea, and paid 10,500 pesetas for the gorilla."
Unbelievable what humans do to other creatures! At least Sabater seemed to truly care for him.
That really disgusts me, Julia. I can't understand why people have such horrible actions towards animals or humanity. :(
Great Alice Walker quote, Jen. This one has the same idea in speaking of animals:"In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth."
Henry Beston
The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Short & Sweet Treats
Books mentioned in this topic
Fifty Shades of Grey (other topics)Hamlet (other topics)
Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (other topics)
Deutsche Mythologie (other topics)
Great Barrier Reef (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Daniel Stashower (other topics)Jacob Grimm (other topics)
David Doubilet (other topics)
Henry Beston (other topics)
Yann Arthus-Bertrand (other topics)
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