Sunday, October 03, 2004
Cyclopedia of Factoids - The Letter B
Barbie
Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959. It was modelled on a minuscule German sex doll called "Lilli". Barbie was the nickname of Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Ruth proceeded to found Mattel with her husband, Elliott. It is now one of the world's largest toy manufacturers (revenues - c. $5 billion annually, a third of which in Barbie sales). More than 1 billion Barbies were sold by 1996. Mattel commemorated this event by manufacturing a "Dream Barbie".
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~tsawyer/barbie/barb.html
http://www.barbiecollectibles.com/whatshot/barbiehistory/index.asp
http://www.mattel.com/our_toys/ot_barb.asp
Bathory, Erszebet
If you think that today's serial killers are unsurpassed, try this for size:
In 1611, Countess Erszebet Bathory was tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess recorded in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in her estate when it was raided.
The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a dungeon and repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to have bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she could thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their ashes scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until she died in 1614.
She was married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame.
She was notorious as an inhuman sadist long before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into a horse's stomach and left to die.
For a hundred years after her death, by royal decree, mentioning her name in Hungary was a crime.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/demons/vampires/booksandmoviesebathory.htm
http://www.alienplayground.net/disgusting/idols.html
http://bathory.freehosting.net/ebathori.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/objectrelations.html
Berliner
When President John F. Kennedy sought to impress the Germans in 1961 - then besieged by the Russians - he visited Germany and famously said, in a public speech: "Ich bin ein Berliner". Alas, "Berliner" in German is also a kind of yummy doughnut with jam filling and vanilla icing. This gave rise to the fallacy - adopted even by "The Economist" - that "Berliner" is wrong usage or gaffe.
It is not. "Berliner" in German means "that which belongs to Berlin or of Berlin". The Berlin Wall is the "Berliner Mauer", for instance. Berlinerin is the female form of Berliner. Kennedy was grammatically correct to have said "Ich bin ein Berliner".
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa021700a.htm
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/berliner.htm
Bible
The Jews do not include the 27 books of New Testament in their Bible. The factoids below relate to the version of the Bible used by Christians everywhere: Old (39 books) and New Testament. Altogether 1189 chapters (929 of which are in the Old Testament), 31173 verses. The Old Testament contains 592439 words (2728100 letters), the New Testament contains 181253 words (838380 letters). Of the 27 books of the New Testament, 14 were written by St. Paul.
The Bible contains words in Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek.
The Bible is the bestseller of all times. More than 50 copies are still being sold every minute. The Bible is also the most shoplifted book in the world.
According to the Concordance - a compilation of the words and names in the Bible - cats are not mentioned at all. Christians appear only 3 times (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16). The words "grandmother" and "eternity" only once each. The Bible records seven suicides and seven different Jeremiahs - but not a single "trinity".
The books of Esther and the Song of Solomon do not contain the word "God". The Jewish codifiers of the Bible almost left them out (i.e., almost declared them apocryphal).
Amen is the word that seals the Bible.
http://www.gospelcom.net/bible
http://bible.crosswalk.com/
http://unbound.biola.edu/
http://www.concordance.com/
Bioluminiscence
The bobtail squid lives in the shallow waters of the coast of Hawaii. During the day, it is buried deep in the sand. It emerges to hunt at nightfall. Moonlight is its mortal enemy: conveniently for its predators, the squid casts a black and moving shadow. To fend off these risks, the squid emits a blue glow from a "light organ". The luminosity perfectly matches the amount of moonlight filtering through the water, rendering the squid indistinguishable from its light-flooded environs.
To generate the fine tuned radiance, the squid hosts a community of luminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri. From the first moments of its life, the squid circulates bacteria-infested seawater through a hollow chamber in its body. Only the Vibrio fischeri cells are caught by the squid's tiny cilia. Henceforth, the squid provides his microscopic "prisoners" with oxygen and amino acids - and they reciprocate with emitted light.
The squid constantly monitors to what extent the night sky is illuminated, using dedicated sensors on the surface of its body. It then adjusts an iris-like "shutter" to release the correct amount of light from his bacterial colony. The squid replaces the hosted vibrios daily.
Still, bacteria multiply ceaselessly. How is a constant level of luminescence maintained as time passes?
Woody Hastings, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois, noticed in the early 1960s that though the bacterial population doubles every 20 minutes - the quantity of luciferase (the light producing enzyme) remains constant for up to five hours. luciferase production resumes only when a certain "critical mass" (quantitative threshold) is attained. This is called "quorum sensing".
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/
http://www.biolum.org/
Black Death
AIDS has infected hitherto 42 million people, of which perhaps 22 million have died.
The "Black Death" - an epidemic of bubonic plague which ravaged both Europe and the Mediterranean in 1347-1351- killed one quarter to one third of the population - c. 25 million people. This is the equivalent of 250 million today. It took 150 years for the population to recover its pre-epidemic levels.
Scholars believe that the plague emanated from the Middle East through southern Russia, between the Black and the Caspian seas.
Contemporaries did not use the term "Black Death". They called it the "Pestilence" or the "Great Mortality". They regarded it as divine punishment of humanity's sins.
http://www.ento.vt.edu/IHS/plague.html
Black Holes
Black holes are extremely dense bodies. Their density and gravitation are so enormous that it was thought nothing - not even electromagnetic radiation such as light - can escape them once caught by their gravitational pull. Hence the "black" in "black holes". This is what laymen and the media know about them.
Yet, the truth is different.
The English physicist Stephen William Hawking proved that in the vicinity of tiny black holes, it is possible for one member of an electron-positron or proton-antiproton pair of particles to escape while the other is hurled towards the singularity (i.e., the center of the black hole). The escaping particle draws energy from the black hole itself and thus "evaporates" it. It is as if the black hole gives off heat, thermal radiation.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoles.html
http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_home.html
Bolivar, Simon
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) is a Latin American folk hero, revered for having been a revolutionary freedom fighter, a compassionate egalitarian and a successful politician. He is credited with the liberation from Spanish colonial yoke of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, a country named after him. Venezuela's new strongman, Hugo Chavez, renamed his country The Bolivarian republic of Venezuela to reflect the role of his "Bolivarian revolution".
Yet, while alive, Bolivar was a much hated dictator and - at the beginning of his career - a military failure.
His aide and friend, Gen. Daniel O'Leary, an Irish soldier described him so:
"His chest was narrow, his figure slender, his legs particularly thin. His skin was swarthy and rather coarse. His hands and feet were small …a woman might have envied them. His expression, when he was in good humor, was pleasant, but it became terrible when he was aroused. The change was unbelievable."
Bolivar explained his motives:
"I confess this (the coronation of Napoleon in 1804) made me think of my unhappy country and the glory which he would win who should liberate it"
And, later, after a victory against the Spaniards in 1819:
"The triumphal arches, the flowers, the hymns, the acclamations, the wreaths offered and placed upon my head by the hands of lovely maidens, the fiestas, the thousand demonstrations of joy are the least of the gifts that I have received," he wrote. "The greatest and dearest to my heart are the tears, mingled with the rapture of happiness, in which I have been bathed and the embraces with which the multitude have all but crushed me."
Venezuela became independent in 1811 and Bolivar, being a minor - though self-aggrandizing - political figure, had little to do with it. After his first major military defeat, in defending the coastal town of Puerto Cabello against royalist insurgents out to oust the newly independent Venezuela, he advocated the creation of a professional army (in the Cartagena Manifesto). Far from being a revolutionary he, justly, opposed the reliance on guerrilleros and militiamen.
He then reconquered Caracas, Venezuela's capital, at the head of a small army and declared himself a dictator. He made Congress award him the title of El Libertador (the Liberator). The seeds of his personality cult were sown. When he lost Caracas to the royalists in yet another botched campaign, he retreated and captured Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia in December 1814.
After a series of uninterrupted military defeats, Bolivar exiled himself to Jamaica. In a sudden conversion, he published the Jamaica Letter (1815) in which he supported a model of government akin to the British parliamentary system - yet, only following a phase of "guided leadership" (identical to Hitler's "Fuhrerprinzip").
But the self-anointed leader did not hesitate to desert his soldiers and leave them stranded after yet another of his military exploits - an attempt to capture Caracas - unravelled in 1816. He simply defected to Haiti, letting his loyal troops fend for themselves as best they could.
There followed a string of successful - even brilliant - battles and coalitions with local warlords and politicians which culminated in the liberation of Peru. In 1824, Bolivar was declared dictator - or, to be precise, "Emperor" - of Peru and commander in chief of its army. Bolivar liked power and its trappings. In the constitution he composed in 1826, he suggested that the president of Bolivia - the name given to the entire region, except Peru - should be appointed for life and should have the right to choose his successor.
This president - presumably, Bolivar - was described unabashedly by Bolivar himself as:
"The sun which, fixed in its orbit, imparts life to the universe. …Upon him rests our entire order, notwithstanding his lack of powers …a life term president, with the power to choose his successor, is the most sublime inspiration amongst republican regimes."
In a letter to Santander, the Liberator expounded:
"I am convinced, to the very marrow of my bones, that our America can only be ruled through a well-managed, shrewd despotism."
The National Geographic describes how:
"William Tudor, the American consul at Lima, wrote in 1826 of the 'deep hypocrisy' of Bolívar, who allowed himself to be deceived by the 'crawling, despicable flattery of those about him.' Later, John Quincy Adams would define Bolívar's military career as 'despotic and sanguinary' and state baldly that 'he cannot disguise his hankering after a crown.' In Bogotá the U. S. minister and future president, Gen. William Henry Harrison, accused Bolívar of planning to turn Gran Colombia into a monarchy: 'Under the mask of patriotism and attachment to liberty, he has really been preparing the means of investing himself with arbitrary power.' "
When, in 1828, a constitutional convention in Colombia rejected amendments to the constitution that he proposed, Bolivar assumed dictatorial powers in a coup d'etat.
Now, Bolivar was the oppressor. He has murdered, or exiled his political rivals throughout his career. He confiscated church funds and imposed onerous taxes on the populace. Consequently, the "Liberator" faced numerous uprisings and narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. By the time he died he was so despised that the government of Venezuela refused to allow his body onto its soil. It took 12 years of constant petitioning by the family to let his remains be interred in the country that he helped found.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7609/eng/bio.html
http://wekker.seagull.net/bolivar/biograf_menu.html
Bra
Mary Phelps Jacob - a rich socialite - received the first patent for a bra in 1914. Her corset - replete with whaleback bones was visible under a brand new evening gown she purchased. She used handkerchiefs and ribbon to replace the bones. The bra was born. she sold the patent to Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1,500. They made $15 million over the next 30 years. Bras were one size fits all until 1928.
An interesting coincidence: one of the forerunners of the bra was patented by a George Phelps in 1875. Other bra-like devices were patented in 1893 and 1889.
During the first world war, in 1917, the US War Industries Board called on women to stop buying metal-rich corsets. Some 28,000 tons of metals were thus made available to the war effort.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa042597.htm
http://www.patentmuseum.com/ebayhtmls/111mj.html
Burma (Aung San)
Aung San Suu Kyi is a much revered opposition leader in Myanmar (Burma) (born 1945). She has bravely resisted - and still does - the murderous military regime in her homeland and has won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Her mother was ambassador to India in the 1960s. She is cherished by all her countrymen.
Moreover, Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of an illustrious figure in Burmese history, a national hero - Aung San, who was murdered in 1947.
Aung San may be a hero to the Burmese but he has collaborated with the Japanese war-crime tainted military machine throughout the second world war - though he conveniently switch allegiances to the winning side five months before the Japanese capitulated.
Aung San raised a Burmese contingent - the "Burma Independence Army" - to assist the Japanese in their invasion of Burma in 1942. He was rewarded with the post of minister of defense in Ba Maw's puppet government (1943-5).
In March 1945, in what amounted to a coup, he opportunistically defected, together with the Burma National Army, to the Allies, and worked closely with the British, whom he hitherto claimed to have been fighting for independence.
When the war was over, he established a private militia, under his commend - the People's Volunteer Organization. He proceeded to negotiate Burma's independence from Britain and its first elections. He was murdered - with his brother and four others - probably by a political opponent, U Saw, in 1947.
http://www.geocities.com/toekyi/aungsan.html
http://aungsan.com/
==========================================
Cyclopedia of Factoids
http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidsindex.html
Download the FREE First Book of Links and Factoids - hundreds of amazing factoids and links:
http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/factoid.rtf
http://www.authorsden.com/adstorage/161/factoid.doc
Barbie was invented by Ruth Handler in 1959. It was modelled on a minuscule German sex doll called "Lilli". Barbie was the nickname of Ruth's daughter, Barbara. Ruth proceeded to found Mattel with her husband, Elliott. It is now one of the world's largest toy manufacturers (revenues - c. $5 billion annually, a third of which in Barbie sales). More than 1 billion Barbies were sold by 1996. Mattel commemorated this event by manufacturing a "Dream Barbie".
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~tsawyer/barbie/barb.html
http://www.barbiecollectibles.com/whatshot/barbiehistory/index.asp
http://www.mattel.com/our_toys/ot_barb.asp
Bathory, Erszebet
If you think that today's serial killers are unsurpassed, try this for size:
In 1611, Countess Erszebet Bathory was tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in Hungary for slaughtering 612 young girls. The true figure may have been 40-100, though the Countess recorded in her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in her estate when it was raided.
The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a dungeon and repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and cut. The Countess may have bitten chunks of flesh off their bodies while alive. She is said to have bathed and showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she could thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their ashes scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to her bedroom until she died in 1614.
She was married to a descendant of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame.
She was notorious as an inhuman sadist long before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth of a talkative servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into a horse's stomach and left to die.
For a hundred years after her death, by royal decree, mentioning her name in Hungary was a crime.
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/demons/vampires/booksandmoviesebathory.htm
http://www.alienplayground.net/disgusting/idols.html
http://bathory.freehosting.net/ebathori.html
http://samvak.tripod.com/objectrelations.html
Berliner
When President John F. Kennedy sought to impress the Germans in 1961 - then besieged by the Russians - he visited Germany and famously said, in a public speech: "Ich bin ein Berliner". Alas, "Berliner" in German is also a kind of yummy doughnut with jam filling and vanilla icing. This gave rise to the fallacy - adopted even by "The Economist" - that "Berliner" is wrong usage or gaffe.
It is not. "Berliner" in German means "that which belongs to Berlin or of Berlin". The Berlin Wall is the "Berliner Mauer", for instance. Berlinerin is the female form of Berliner. Kennedy was grammatically correct to have said "Ich bin ein Berliner".
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/weekly/aa021700a.htm
http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/berliner.htm
Bible
The Jews do not include the 27 books of New Testament in their Bible. The factoids below relate to the version of the Bible used by Christians everywhere: Old (39 books) and New Testament. Altogether 1189 chapters (929 of which are in the Old Testament), 31173 verses. The Old Testament contains 592439 words (2728100 letters), the New Testament contains 181253 words (838380 letters). Of the 27 books of the New Testament, 14 were written by St. Paul.
The Bible contains words in Hebrew, Aramaic and Koine Greek.
The Bible is the bestseller of all times. More than 50 copies are still being sold every minute. The Bible is also the most shoplifted book in the world.
According to the Concordance - a compilation of the words and names in the Bible - cats are not mentioned at all. Christians appear only 3 times (Acts 11:26; 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16). The words "grandmother" and "eternity" only once each. The Bible records seven suicides and seven different Jeremiahs - but not a single "trinity".
The books of Esther and the Song of Solomon do not contain the word "God". The Jewish codifiers of the Bible almost left them out (i.e., almost declared them apocryphal).
Amen is the word that seals the Bible.
http://www.gospelcom.net/bible
http://bible.crosswalk.com/
http://unbound.biola.edu/
http://www.concordance.com/
Bioluminiscence
The bobtail squid lives in the shallow waters of the coast of Hawaii. During the day, it is buried deep in the sand. It emerges to hunt at nightfall. Moonlight is its mortal enemy: conveniently for its predators, the squid casts a black and moving shadow. To fend off these risks, the squid emits a blue glow from a "light organ". The luminosity perfectly matches the amount of moonlight filtering through the water, rendering the squid indistinguishable from its light-flooded environs.
To generate the fine tuned radiance, the squid hosts a community of luminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischeri. From the first moments of its life, the squid circulates bacteria-infested seawater through a hollow chamber in its body. Only the Vibrio fischeri cells are caught by the squid's tiny cilia. Henceforth, the squid provides his microscopic "prisoners" with oxygen and amino acids - and they reciprocate with emitted light.
The squid constantly monitors to what extent the night sky is illuminated, using dedicated sensors on the surface of its body. It then adjusts an iris-like "shutter" to release the correct amount of light from his bacterial colony. The squid replaces the hosted vibrios daily.
Still, bacteria multiply ceaselessly. How is a constant level of luminescence maintained as time passes?
Woody Hastings, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois, noticed in the early 1960s that though the bacterial population doubles every 20 minutes - the quantity of luciferase (the light producing enzyme) remains constant for up to five hours. luciferase production resumes only when a certain "critical mass" (quantitative threshold) is attained. This is called "quorum sensing".
http://www.lifesci.ucsb.edu/~biolum/
http://www.biolum.org/
Black Death
AIDS has infected hitherto 42 million people, of which perhaps 22 million have died.
The "Black Death" - an epidemic of bubonic plague which ravaged both Europe and the Mediterranean in 1347-1351- killed one quarter to one third of the population - c. 25 million people. This is the equivalent of 250 million today. It took 150 years for the population to recover its pre-epidemic levels.
Scholars believe that the plague emanated from the Middle East through southern Russia, between the Black and the Caspian seas.
Contemporaries did not use the term "Black Death". They called it the "Pestilence" or the "Great Mortality". They regarded it as divine punishment of humanity's sins.
http://www.ento.vt.edu/IHS/plague.html
Black Holes
Black holes are extremely dense bodies. Their density and gravitation are so enormous that it was thought nothing - not even electromagnetic radiation such as light - can escape them once caught by their gravitational pull. Hence the "black" in "black holes". This is what laymen and the media know about them.
Yet, the truth is different.
The English physicist Stephen William Hawking proved that in the vicinity of tiny black holes, it is possible for one member of an electron-positron or proton-antiproton pair of particles to escape while the other is hurled towards the singularity (i.e., the center of the black hole). The escaping particle draws energy from the black hole itself and thus "evaporates" it. It is as if the black hole gives off heat, thermal radiation.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoles.html
http://cfpa.berkeley.edu/BHfaq.html
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/bh_home.html
Bolivar, Simon
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) is a Latin American folk hero, revered for having been a revolutionary freedom fighter, a compassionate egalitarian and a successful politician. He is credited with the liberation from Spanish colonial yoke of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, a country named after him. Venezuela's new strongman, Hugo Chavez, renamed his country The Bolivarian republic of Venezuela to reflect the role of his "Bolivarian revolution".
Yet, while alive, Bolivar was a much hated dictator and - at the beginning of his career - a military failure.
His aide and friend, Gen. Daniel O'Leary, an Irish soldier described him so:
"His chest was narrow, his figure slender, his legs particularly thin. His skin was swarthy and rather coarse. His hands and feet were small …a woman might have envied them. His expression, when he was in good humor, was pleasant, but it became terrible when he was aroused. The change was unbelievable."
Bolivar explained his motives:
"I confess this (the coronation of Napoleon in 1804) made me think of my unhappy country and the glory which he would win who should liberate it"
And, later, after a victory against the Spaniards in 1819:
"The triumphal arches, the flowers, the hymns, the acclamations, the wreaths offered and placed upon my head by the hands of lovely maidens, the fiestas, the thousand demonstrations of joy are the least of the gifts that I have received," he wrote. "The greatest and dearest to my heart are the tears, mingled with the rapture of happiness, in which I have been bathed and the embraces with which the multitude have all but crushed me."
Venezuela became independent in 1811 and Bolivar, being a minor - though self-aggrandizing - political figure, had little to do with it. After his first major military defeat, in defending the coastal town of Puerto Cabello against royalist insurgents out to oust the newly independent Venezuela, he advocated the creation of a professional army (in the Cartagena Manifesto). Far from being a revolutionary he, justly, opposed the reliance on guerrilleros and militiamen.
He then reconquered Caracas, Venezuela's capital, at the head of a small army and declared himself a dictator. He made Congress award him the title of El Libertador (the Liberator). The seeds of his personality cult were sown. When he lost Caracas to the royalists in yet another botched campaign, he retreated and captured Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia in December 1814.
After a series of uninterrupted military defeats, Bolivar exiled himself to Jamaica. In a sudden conversion, he published the Jamaica Letter (1815) in which he supported a model of government akin to the British parliamentary system - yet, only following a phase of "guided leadership" (identical to Hitler's "Fuhrerprinzip").
But the self-anointed leader did not hesitate to desert his soldiers and leave them stranded after yet another of his military exploits - an attempt to capture Caracas - unravelled in 1816. He simply defected to Haiti, letting his loyal troops fend for themselves as best they could.
There followed a string of successful - even brilliant - battles and coalitions with local warlords and politicians which culminated in the liberation of Peru. In 1824, Bolivar was declared dictator - or, to be precise, "Emperor" - of Peru and commander in chief of its army. Bolivar liked power and its trappings. In the constitution he composed in 1826, he suggested that the president of Bolivia - the name given to the entire region, except Peru - should be appointed for life and should have the right to choose his successor.
This president - presumably, Bolivar - was described unabashedly by Bolivar himself as:
"The sun which, fixed in its orbit, imparts life to the universe. …Upon him rests our entire order, notwithstanding his lack of powers …a life term president, with the power to choose his successor, is the most sublime inspiration amongst republican regimes."
In a letter to Santander, the Liberator expounded:
"I am convinced, to the very marrow of my bones, that our America can only be ruled through a well-managed, shrewd despotism."
The National Geographic describes how:
"William Tudor, the American consul at Lima, wrote in 1826 of the 'deep hypocrisy' of Bolívar, who allowed himself to be deceived by the 'crawling, despicable flattery of those about him.' Later, John Quincy Adams would define Bolívar's military career as 'despotic and sanguinary' and state baldly that 'he cannot disguise his hankering after a crown.' In Bogotá the U. S. minister and future president, Gen. William Henry Harrison, accused Bolívar of planning to turn Gran Colombia into a monarchy: 'Under the mask of patriotism and attachment to liberty, he has really been preparing the means of investing himself with arbitrary power.' "
When, in 1828, a constitutional convention in Colombia rejected amendments to the constitution that he proposed, Bolivar assumed dictatorial powers in a coup d'etat.
Now, Bolivar was the oppressor. He has murdered, or exiled his political rivals throughout his career. He confiscated church funds and imposed onerous taxes on the populace. Consequently, the "Liberator" faced numerous uprisings and narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. By the time he died he was so despised that the government of Venezuela refused to allow his body onto its soil. It took 12 years of constant petitioning by the family to let his remains be interred in the country that he helped found.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/7609/eng/bio.html
http://wekker.seagull.net/bolivar/biograf_menu.html
Bra
Mary Phelps Jacob - a rich socialite - received the first patent for a bra in 1914. Her corset - replete with whaleback bones was visible under a brand new evening gown she purchased. She used handkerchiefs and ribbon to replace the bones. The bra was born. she sold the patent to Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for $1,500. They made $15 million over the next 30 years. Bras were one size fits all until 1928.
An interesting coincidence: one of the forerunners of the bra was patented by a George Phelps in 1875. Other bra-like devices were patented in 1893 and 1889.
During the first world war, in 1917, the US War Industries Board called on women to stop buying metal-rich corsets. Some 28,000 tons of metals were thus made available to the war effort.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa042597.htm
http://www.patentmuseum.com/ebayhtmls/111mj.html
Burma (Aung San)
Aung San Suu Kyi is a much revered opposition leader in Myanmar (Burma) (born 1945). She has bravely resisted - and still does - the murderous military regime in her homeland and has won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Her mother was ambassador to India in the 1960s. She is cherished by all her countrymen.
Moreover, Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of an illustrious figure in Burmese history, a national hero - Aung San, who was murdered in 1947.
Aung San may be a hero to the Burmese but he has collaborated with the Japanese war-crime tainted military machine throughout the second world war - though he conveniently switch allegiances to the winning side five months before the Japanese capitulated.
Aung San raised a Burmese contingent - the "Burma Independence Army" - to assist the Japanese in their invasion of Burma in 1942. He was rewarded with the post of minister of defense in Ba Maw's puppet government (1943-5).
In March 1945, in what amounted to a coup, he opportunistically defected, together with the Burma National Army, to the Allies, and worked closely with the British, whom he hitherto claimed to have been fighting for independence.
When the war was over, he established a private militia, under his commend - the People's Volunteer Organization. He proceeded to negotiate Burma's independence from Britain and its first elections. He was murdered - with his brother and four others - probably by a political opponent, U Saw, in 1947.
http://www.geocities.com/toekyi/aungsan.html
http://aungsan.com/
==========================================
Cyclopedia of Factoids
http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidsindex.html
Download the FREE First Book of Links and Factoids - hundreds of amazing factoids and links:
http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/factoid.rtf
http://www.authorsden.com/adstorage/161/factoid.doc
Friday, September 03, 2004
Cyclopedia of Factoids - The Letter A
A
Abdication Crisis
The love affair of Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson in 1936 is the stuff of romantic dramas. Alas, reality was a lot less inspiring. Even as she was being wooed by her regal paramour - and while still being married to Ernest Aldrich Simpson, who knew of the Prince's attentions and even discussed the adulterous relationship with him - Wallis had an affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, a car salesman.
So reveal documents released in January 2003 by the Public Record Office in the United Kingdom. Trundle is described as a "very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer". He lived at 18 Bruton Street in Mayfair, London (a prestigious address).
Simpson's first husband was Earl Winfield Spencer. The King met her on January 10, 1931 but was not impressed. Even in the months after May 1934, when he met her for the second time, dined with her and her husband in their London flat and invited them to his country retreat - she did not captivate him. He did take her on a cruise, two years later, unaccompanied by her husband. He tried to introduce her in court, but George V was outraged. Upon his death, the Prince of Wales became King on January 20, 1936. Ernest Simpson - who was having a long-term affair of his own - moved out of the Simpson household in July 1936.
Nor was Wallis the Prince's first American liaison. He contemplated marrying one, Thelma Furness, but then dumped her for Simpson. The British media - though perfectly aware of all the goings-on, reported noting almost until the King's abdication. The European and American press, in contrast, provided extensive coverage of the developing romance.
At first, the King did not wish to marry Simpson, merely to make her his consort by changing the law to allow for a morganatic marriage (of people from different classes, with no rights of inheritance). Simpson herself thought of giving up the marriage. Yet, finally, they got married after the abdication, in France. Though Simpson became the Duchess of Windsor, she could not be addressed as "Her Royal Highness".
Additionally, the King was not allowed by the British government to address the British people and the Empire through the BBC.
The government's constitutional experts wrote:
"If the King disregarded it, constitutional monarchy would cease to exist. The King is bound to accept and act upon the advice of his ministers ... for the King to broadcast in disregard of that advice would be appealing over the heads of his constitutional advisers. "The last time when this happened in English history was when Charles I raised His Standard at the beginning of the Civil War on 22 August 1642."
Edward abdicated from the throne on 11 December 1936, making a different speech.
After having abdicated the throne, in exile, not allowed to return on pain of losing their allowance, the couple visited Adolf Hitler in 1937. Simpson was thrilled to be "entertained by Herr Hitler" but there is no proof of further contacts with the Nazi regime with the exception of a telegram from Edward to Hitler, urging peace. Edward was later appointed Governor of the Bahamas. Recently released FBI files identify Simpson as a Nazi sympathizer, though. The FBI suspected her of having an affair with a leading Nazi and spied on her.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/uk/2706889.stm
Abraham
Abraham, the son of Terah, Noah's descendent, and brother of Nahor and Haran, first appears in the Bible in Genesis 11:27. He may have been born in Ur, in today's Iraq, near Nasiryah, around 4000 years ago. His brother, Nahor, definitely was born in Ur and, having fathered Lot, also died in Ur Kasdim (Ur of the Chaldeans). Ur was the capital of S(h)umer but the Kasdim - Khaldeans - did not make it to Ur until 1300 years after the birth of Abraham. Why do the Bible call it Ur Kasdim?
Abraham's family are described as pastoral nomads. Wandering shepherds rarely pitch their tents, proverbial or not, next to metropolises. Terah left Ur only to settle near yet another city, Harran, on the current border between Turkey and Syria. He spent the next 60 years of his life there. Harran is 1200 kilometers off the beaten path to Canaan (today's Israel and Palestine). Why such a diversion?
Scholars suggest that Ur is actually Urfa in Turkey - about 30 kilometers away from Harran. It boasts a cave where Abraham is said to have been born.
SOURCE: Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths and Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses.
http://www.ot-studies.com/Documents/Ur.htm
http://members.aol.com/mfuprojects/abrahambirth.html
Ants
There are 11,000 species of ants. The oldest ant fossil is more than 90 million years old. Ants are closely related to bees and wasps. They are so numerous that in some habitats - the Amazon forest, for instance - their combined weight is four times the combined weight of all other animals in the area. Ants have brains. The main nerve - similar to our spine - runs along the bottom of the ant's body. Ants smell, taste and touch with their antennas. Their cylinder-like heart pumps colorless blood throughout their body.
Ants digest only liquid food or food rendered liquid with their digestive juices. Ants share digested food with each other. They can carry 15-20 times their body weight.
Only the colony's queen breeds. Unfertilized eggs develop into males. The queen also lives much longer - up to 10 years, compared to worker ants which survive on average 50-150 days and up to 2 years in the tropics.
Some ant varieties create no nests. Instead, worker ants link their legs to form a living fabric on which the queen resides and performs her functions.
http://www.lingolex.com/ants.htm
http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79E/Page_02.html
Appendix
The appendix is located at the beginning of the large intestine. Many types of animals have it, including rabbits and rodents. It contains gut associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) involved in recognizing foreign antigens in ingested food. The appendix is also helpful in the maturation of certain white blood cells (B lymphocytes) and antibodies (Immunoglobulin, or IgA). Molecules manufactured in the appendix serve as "traffic guides" and direct lymphocytes to other parts of the body. The appendix is not, therefore, useless, as most people think. It is part of the immune system. The GALT disappears after age 60, though.
The appendix has additional functions. Endocrine cells appear in the appendix of the human fetus and produce biogenic amines and peptide hormones, both instrumental in maintaining bodily homeostasis.
Finally, the appendix is used to replace the "sphincter muscle" in urinary a bladder surgically reconstructed from intestinal tissue (after removal of the original bladder). It also replaces removed ureters, leading urine from the kidney to the bladder.
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/digest/summary/append/
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/stomach/appendicitis.html
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section3/chapter25/25e.htm
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian massacres in Turkey started in the 19th century and continued well after the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which some 600,000 Armenians perished. The Armenians were also raided by Kurdish tribesmen on a regular basis. An Ottoman military tribunal, convened between 1919-21, even convicted for the crimes members of the administration of the Young Turks, including cabinet ministers.
Many of the perpetrators fled the country only to return, triumphant, after the establishment of modern Turkey in 1923. The Turkish government today denies that an organized, premeditated genocide ever took place and pegs the number of Armenian fatalities at 200-300,000 at the most.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Armenians formed guerrilla movements in eastern Van (the Armenakans, in 1885) and in Russia. Radical nationalist parties were established by Russian-Armenian emigrants in 1887 (Hunchak or Henchak, "The Bell") and in 1890 in Georgia (Dashnak or Dashnaktsutyun, "Union"). Mass demonstrations in the Turkish capital (in 1890 and 1895) and armed uprisings followed (in 1894-5). The Dashnaks even invaded Turkey from Russia in 1896 - a demonstrative act which resulted in the slaughter of 50,000 Armenians.
The suppression of these revolts claimed 200,000 Armenian lives. In 1909, in Adana, more than 23,000 Armenians were massacred as the warships of the Great Powers stood idly by. In 1912-3 the Great Powers, led by Russia, pressured Turkey to cease its mistreatment of the Armenians. This intervention was resented by the Ottoman authorities. By 1915, Armenian calls for autonomy were deemed a danger to the disintegrating realm, now at war with Russia.
When the first world war broke, Turkey allied itself with the Germans. All Armenian men aged 20-45 were conscripted to the army as soldiers, soon to be disarmed and serve as pack animals or in menial jobs. When Russian Armenians recruited Turkish Armenians for the anti-Turkish Russian Army of the Caucasus, in April 1915, the elite of the Armenian community was arrested and executed. Between May and June 1915 the Armenian population was deported to Mesopotamia. The deportation followed mass executions.
Many more died from starvation, exposure, dehydration, abuse and outright torture. The survivors - less than 300,000 - were subjected to additional slaughter in Syria. People were beaten with blunt instruments, burnt alive or drowned forcibly. The massacres were carried out by military officers with dictatorial powers, aided by criminals especially released from jails and assigned to their gruesome duties.
Armed resistance in Van province, Mussa Dagh, Shabin Karahisar and Urfa - as well as setbacks in the war - prevented the Turks for deporting the urban Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire's major cities. Today there are less than 60,000 Armenians in Turkey compared to at least 1.8 million in 1910.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/
http://www.cilicia.com/armo10.html
Art, Modern
We are all acquainted with the tales - many apocryphal, some real - of how art critiques, curators, collectors and buyers were fooled into purchasing "works of art" created by monkeys. The animals "painted" by dipping their paws in pigments and running to and fro over empty canvasses.
There are numerous such striking examples of the fluidity of what constitutes art and the dubious expertise of art "professionals".
There is no other masterpiece so studied, analyzed and scrutinized as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Yet, when it was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1912, forgers passed 6 replicas as the original, selling them for a fortune. The painting was rediscovered in 1915.
Henri Matisse is revered as the father of Fauvism and of modern painting in general. Yet, one of his more famous tableaux, Le Bateau (The Boat), hung upside down for 2 months in 1961 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not one of the art critics, journalists, 116,000 visitors, or curators has noticed it.
Perhaps the most famous case of artistic misjudgment involves Vincent van Gogh whose work has hitherto fetched the highest prices ever paid in auctions. Despite his connections with leading painters, gallery owners, art professors and critics - his brother owned a successful art dealership in Paris - van Gogh sold only one piece while alive: "Red Vineyard at Arles." His brother bought it from him. By the time he died he had painted 750 canvasses and 1600 drawings.
http://www.geocities.com/illonaz/ArtHistory.htm
Atlantis
Atlantis (or Atlantica) was described in antiquity as a large island in the sea to the west of the known world (the Western Ocean), near the Pillars of Hercules (the Gibraltar Straits?). It was not, therefore, a part of the known geography of the period. An earthquake was said to have submerged it in the ocean.
It is first mentioned in the dialogs Timaeus and Critias written by the Greek philosopher Plato (428-347 BC). An Egyptian priest was supposed to have described it to the Greek statesman Solon (638-559 BC).
The priest insisted that Atlantis was enormous - bigger than Asia Minor (today, a part of Turkey) and Libya combined. It harbored a technologically advanced civilization, recounted the priest, in the 10th millennium BC (c. 12,000 years ago).
Curiously, he also said that the Atlantians conquered all the lands of antiquity, bar Athens (which only came into existence in the Neolithic period, about 3000 years later).
Arab geographers propagated the story of Atlantis and medieval European authors referred to it as fact.
Current oceanographers, scholars and conspiracy theorists place Atlantis all over the map - from an island in the Aegean Sea (Thera, or Santorini it suffered an earthquake in 1640 BC and housed the flourishing Cycladic civilization), through the Canary Islands to Scandinavia. Considering that many ancient civilizations - such as Troy, long considered a mere fable - were unearthed by archeologists, it is not futile to continue to look for Atlantis.
http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Archaeology/Alternative/Lost_Civilizations/Atlantis/
Automatic Switchboard (Phone Exchange)
Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, faced unfair competition. The wife of a competing undertaker was an operator at the local (manual) telephone exchange. She re-routed calls to her husband, even when the caller asked for Strowger.
In an effort to get rid of her, Strowger invented the first automatic, electromechanical switchboard and, together with his cousin, produced the first model in 1888. He was granted a patent in 1891.
Strowger joined forces with Joseph B. Harris and Moses A. Meyer to form “Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange” in October 1891. A year later, the first Strowger exchange was installed with great fanfare at La Porte, Indiana. It had less than 80 subscribers.
Strowger died in 1902 but his company still survives as AG Communications Systems.
http://www.roserpark.net/greenwood/strowger.html
http://www.strowger.com/history.html
http://www.agcs.com
==========================================
Cyclopedia of Factoids
http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidsindex.html
Download the FREE First Book of Links and Factoids - hundreds of amazingfactoids and links:
http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/factoid.rtf
http://www.authorsden.com/adstorage/161/factoid.doc
Abdication Crisis
The love affair of Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson in 1936 is the stuff of romantic dramas. Alas, reality was a lot less inspiring. Even as she was being wooed by her regal paramour - and while still being married to Ernest Aldrich Simpson, who knew of the Prince's attentions and even discussed the adulterous relationship with him - Wallis had an affair with Guy Marcus Trundle, a car salesman.
So reveal documents released in January 2003 by the Public Record Office in the United Kingdom. Trundle is described as a "very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer". He lived at 18 Bruton Street in Mayfair, London (a prestigious address).
Simpson's first husband was Earl Winfield Spencer. The King met her on January 10, 1931 but was not impressed. Even in the months after May 1934, when he met her for the second time, dined with her and her husband in their London flat and invited them to his country retreat - she did not captivate him. He did take her on a cruise, two years later, unaccompanied by her husband. He tried to introduce her in court, but George V was outraged. Upon his death, the Prince of Wales became King on January 20, 1936. Ernest Simpson - who was having a long-term affair of his own - moved out of the Simpson household in July 1936.
Nor was Wallis the Prince's first American liaison. He contemplated marrying one, Thelma Furness, but then dumped her for Simpson. The British media - though perfectly aware of all the goings-on, reported noting almost until the King's abdication. The European and American press, in contrast, provided extensive coverage of the developing romance.
At first, the King did not wish to marry Simpson, merely to make her his consort by changing the law to allow for a morganatic marriage (of people from different classes, with no rights of inheritance). Simpson herself thought of giving up the marriage. Yet, finally, they got married after the abdication, in France. Though Simpson became the Duchess of Windsor, she could not be addressed as "Her Royal Highness".
Additionally, the King was not allowed by the British government to address the British people and the Empire through the BBC.
The government's constitutional experts wrote:
"If the King disregarded it, constitutional monarchy would cease to exist. The King is bound to accept and act upon the advice of his ministers ... for the King to broadcast in disregard of that advice would be appealing over the heads of his constitutional advisers. "The last time when this happened in English history was when Charles I raised His Standard at the beginning of the Civil War on 22 August 1642."
Edward abdicated from the throne on 11 December 1936, making a different speech.
After having abdicated the throne, in exile, not allowed to return on pain of losing their allowance, the couple visited Adolf Hitler in 1937. Simpson was thrilled to be "entertained by Herr Hitler" but there is no proof of further contacts with the Nazi regime with the exception of a telegram from Edward to Hitler, urging peace. Edward was later appointed Governor of the Bahamas. Recently released FBI files identify Simpson as a Nazi sympathizer, though. The FBI suspected her of having an affair with a leading Nazi and spied on her.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/uk/2706889.stm
Abraham
Abraham, the son of Terah, Noah's descendent, and brother of Nahor and Haran, first appears in the Bible in Genesis 11:27. He may have been born in Ur, in today's Iraq, near Nasiryah, around 4000 years ago. His brother, Nahor, definitely was born in Ur and, having fathered Lot, also died in Ur Kasdim (Ur of the Chaldeans). Ur was the capital of S(h)umer but the Kasdim - Khaldeans - did not make it to Ur until 1300 years after the birth of Abraham. Why do the Bible call it Ur Kasdim?
Abraham's family are described as pastoral nomads. Wandering shepherds rarely pitch their tents, proverbial or not, next to metropolises. Terah left Ur only to settle near yet another city, Harran, on the current border between Turkey and Syria. He spent the next 60 years of his life there. Harran is 1200 kilometers off the beaten path to Canaan (today's Israel and Palestine). Why such a diversion?
Scholars suggest that Ur is actually Urfa in Turkey - about 30 kilometers away from Harran. It boasts a cave where Abraham is said to have been born.
SOURCE: Bruce Feiler, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths and Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses.
http://www.ot-studies.com/Documents/Ur.htm
http://members.aol.com/mfuprojects/abrahambirth.html
Ants
There are 11,000 species of ants. The oldest ant fossil is more than 90 million years old. Ants are closely related to bees and wasps. They are so numerous that in some habitats - the Amazon forest, for instance - their combined weight is four times the combined weight of all other animals in the area. Ants have brains. The main nerve - similar to our spine - runs along the bottom of the ant's body. Ants smell, taste and touch with their antennas. Their cylinder-like heart pumps colorless blood throughout their body.
Ants digest only liquid food or food rendered liquid with their digestive juices. Ants share digested food with each other. They can carry 15-20 times their body weight.
Only the colony's queen breeds. Unfertilized eggs develop into males. The queen also lives much longer - up to 10 years, compared to worker ants which survive on average 50-150 days and up to 2 years in the tropics.
Some ant varieties create no nests. Instead, worker ants link their legs to form a living fabric on which the queen resides and performs her functions.
http://www.lingolex.com/ants.htm
http://ant.edb.miyakyo-u.ac.jp/INTRODUCTION/Gakken79E/Page_02.html
Appendix
The appendix is located at the beginning of the large intestine. Many types of animals have it, including rabbits and rodents. It contains gut associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) involved in recognizing foreign antigens in ingested food. The appendix is also helpful in the maturation of certain white blood cells (B lymphocytes) and antibodies (Immunoglobulin, or IgA). Molecules manufactured in the appendix serve as "traffic guides" and direct lymphocytes to other parts of the body. The appendix is not, therefore, useless, as most people think. It is part of the immune system. The GALT disappears after age 60, though.
The appendix has additional functions. Endocrine cells appear in the appendix of the human fetus and produce biogenic amines and peptide hormones, both instrumental in maintaining bodily homeostasis.
Finally, the appendix is used to replace the "sphincter muscle" in urinary a bladder surgically reconstructed from intestinal tissue (after removal of the original bladder). It also replaces removed ureters, leading urine from the kidney to the bladder.
http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/digest/summary/append/
http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/stomach/appendicitis.html
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section3/chapter25/25e.htm
Armenian Genocide
The Armenian massacres in Turkey started in the 19th century and continued well after the Armenian genocide of 1915 in which some 600,000 Armenians perished. The Armenians were also raided by Kurdish tribesmen on a regular basis. An Ottoman military tribunal, convened between 1919-21, even convicted for the crimes members of the administration of the Young Turks, including cabinet ministers.
Many of the perpetrators fled the country only to return, triumphant, after the establishment of modern Turkey in 1923. The Turkish government today denies that an organized, premeditated genocide ever took place and pegs the number of Armenian fatalities at 200-300,000 at the most.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Armenians formed guerrilla movements in eastern Van (the Armenakans, in 1885) and in Russia. Radical nationalist parties were established by Russian-Armenian emigrants in 1887 (Hunchak or Henchak, "The Bell") and in 1890 in Georgia (Dashnak or Dashnaktsutyun, "Union"). Mass demonstrations in the Turkish capital (in 1890 and 1895) and armed uprisings followed (in 1894-5). The Dashnaks even invaded Turkey from Russia in 1896 - a demonstrative act which resulted in the slaughter of 50,000 Armenians.
The suppression of these revolts claimed 200,000 Armenian lives. In 1909, in Adana, more than 23,000 Armenians were massacred as the warships of the Great Powers stood idly by. In 1912-3 the Great Powers, led by Russia, pressured Turkey to cease its mistreatment of the Armenians. This intervention was resented by the Ottoman authorities. By 1915, Armenian calls for autonomy were deemed a danger to the disintegrating realm, now at war with Russia.
When the first world war broke, Turkey allied itself with the Germans. All Armenian men aged 20-45 were conscripted to the army as soldiers, soon to be disarmed and serve as pack animals or in menial jobs. When Russian Armenians recruited Turkish Armenians for the anti-Turkish Russian Army of the Caucasus, in April 1915, the elite of the Armenian community was arrested and executed. Between May and June 1915 the Armenian population was deported to Mesopotamia. The deportation followed mass executions.
Many more died from starvation, exposure, dehydration, abuse and outright torture. The survivors - less than 300,000 - were subjected to additional slaughter in Syria. People were beaten with blunt instruments, burnt alive or drowned forcibly. The massacres were carried out by military officers with dictatorial powers, aided by criminals especially released from jails and assigned to their gruesome duties.
Armed resistance in Van province, Mussa Dagh, Shabin Karahisar and Urfa - as well as setbacks in the war - prevented the Turks for deporting the urban Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire's major cities. Today there are less than 60,000 Armenians in Turkey compared to at least 1.8 million in 1910.
http://www.armenian-genocide.org/
http://www.cilicia.com/armo10.html
Art, Modern
We are all acquainted with the tales - many apocryphal, some real - of how art critiques, curators, collectors and buyers were fooled into purchasing "works of art" created by monkeys. The animals "painted" by dipping their paws in pigments and running to and fro over empty canvasses.
There are numerous such striking examples of the fluidity of what constitutes art and the dubious expertise of art "professionals".
There is no other masterpiece so studied, analyzed and scrutinized as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Yet, when it was stolen from the Louvre in Paris in 1912, forgers passed 6 replicas as the original, selling them for a fortune. The painting was rediscovered in 1915.
Henri Matisse is revered as the father of Fauvism and of modern painting in general. Yet, one of his more famous tableaux, Le Bateau (The Boat), hung upside down for 2 months in 1961 in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Not one of the art critics, journalists, 116,000 visitors, or curators has noticed it.
Perhaps the most famous case of artistic misjudgment involves Vincent van Gogh whose work has hitherto fetched the highest prices ever paid in auctions. Despite his connections with leading painters, gallery owners, art professors and critics - his brother owned a successful art dealership in Paris - van Gogh sold only one piece while alive: "Red Vineyard at Arles." His brother bought it from him. By the time he died he had painted 750 canvasses and 1600 drawings.
http://www.geocities.com/illonaz/ArtHistory.htm
Atlantis
Atlantis (or Atlantica) was described in antiquity as a large island in the sea to the west of the known world (the Western Ocean), near the Pillars of Hercules (the Gibraltar Straits?). It was not, therefore, a part of the known geography of the period. An earthquake was said to have submerged it in the ocean.
It is first mentioned in the dialogs Timaeus and Critias written by the Greek philosopher Plato (428-347 BC). An Egyptian priest was supposed to have described it to the Greek statesman Solon (638-559 BC).
The priest insisted that Atlantis was enormous - bigger than Asia Minor (today, a part of Turkey) and Libya combined. It harbored a technologically advanced civilization, recounted the priest, in the 10th millennium BC (c. 12,000 years ago).
Curiously, he also said that the Atlantians conquered all the lands of antiquity, bar Athens (which only came into existence in the Neolithic period, about 3000 years later).
Arab geographers propagated the story of Atlantis and medieval European authors referred to it as fact.
Current oceanographers, scholars and conspiracy theorists place Atlantis all over the map - from an island in the Aegean Sea (Thera, or Santorini it suffered an earthquake in 1640 BC and housed the flourishing Cycladic civilization), through the Canary Islands to Scandinavia. Considering that many ancient civilizations - such as Troy, long considered a mere fable - were unearthed by archeologists, it is not futile to continue to look for Atlantis.
http://dmoz.org/Science/Social_Sciences/Archaeology/Alternative/Lost_Civilizations/Atlantis/
Automatic Switchboard (Phone Exchange)
Almon B. Strowger, an undertaker in Kansas City, faced unfair competition. The wife of a competing undertaker was an operator at the local (manual) telephone exchange. She re-routed calls to her husband, even when the caller asked for Strowger.
In an effort to get rid of her, Strowger invented the first automatic, electromechanical switchboard and, together with his cousin, produced the first model in 1888. He was granted a patent in 1891.
Strowger joined forces with Joseph B. Harris and Moses A. Meyer to form “Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange” in October 1891. A year later, the first Strowger exchange was installed with great fanfare at La Porte, Indiana. It had less than 80 subscribers.
Strowger died in 1902 but his company still survives as AG Communications Systems.
http://www.roserpark.net/greenwood/strowger.html
http://www.strowger.com/history.html
http://www.agcs.com
==========================================
Cyclopedia of Factoids
http://samvak.tripod.com/factoidsindex.html
Download the FREE First Book of Links and Factoids - hundreds of amazingfactoids and links:
http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/factoid.rtf
http://www.authorsden.com/adstorage/161/factoid.doc
