History with Descriptions - A through Z

[JKendallDane]

Quarterdeck

The quarterdeck was the raised deck behind the main mast of a sailing ship. Traditionally it was where the captain commanded his vessel and where the ship's colors were kept.

http://www.stephensandkenau.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Geldermalsen-Quarter-deck.jpg

This led to it being used as the main ceremonial and reception area on board, and the word is still used to refer to such an area on a ship or even in naval establishments on land such as the lobbies of barracks on naval bases.

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[Hard_Rom]

Louis Riel

Louis David Riel; 22 October 1844 – 16 November 1885) was a Canadian politician, a founder of the province of Manitoba, and a political leader of the Métis people of the Canadian prairies. He led two resistance movements against the Canadian government and its first post-Confederation prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. Riel sought to preserve Métis rights and culture as their homelands in the Northwest came progressively under the Canadian sphere of influence. Over the decades, he has been made a folk hero by the Francophones, the Catholic nationalists, the native rights movement, and the New Left student movement. Riel has received more scholarly attention than practically any other figure in Canadian history.

His first resistance was the Red River Rebellion of 1869–1870. The provisional government established by Riel ultimately negotiated the terms under which the modern province of Manitoba entered the Canadian Confederation. Riel ordered the execution of a Protestant who annoyed him, Thomas Scott, and fled to the United States to escape prosecution. Despite this, he is frequently referred to as the "Father of Manitoba". While a fugitive, he was elected three times to the Canadian House of Commons, although he never assumed his seat. During these years, he was frustrated by having to remain in exile despite his growing belief that he was a divinely chosen leader and prophet, a belief which would later resurface and influence his actions. Because of this new religious conviction, Catholic leaders who had supported him before increasingly repudiated him. He married in 1881 while in exile in Montana in the United States; he fathered three children.

In 1884 Riel was called upon by the Métis leaders in Saskatchewan to articulate their grievances to the Canadian government. Instead he organized a military resistance that escalated into a military confrontation, the North-West Rebellion of 1885. Ottawa used the new rail lines to send in thousands of combat soldiers. It ended in his arrest and conviction for high treason. Rejecting many protests and popular appeals, Prime Minister MacDonald decided to hang him. Riel was seen as a heroic victim by francophone Canadians; his execution had a lasting negative impact on Canada, polarizing the new nation along ethno-religious lines. Although only a few hundred people were directly affected by the Rebellion in Saskatchewan, the long-term result was that the Prairie provinces would be controlled by the Anglophones, not the Francophones. An even more important long-term impact was the bitter alienation Francophones across Canada showed and anger against the repression of their countrymen.

Riel's historical reputation has long been polarized between portrayals as a dangerous half-insane religious fanatic and rebel against the Canadian nation, or by contrast a heroic rebel who fought to protect his Francophone people from the unfair encroachments of an Anglophone national government. He is increasingly celebrated as a proponent of multiculturalism, although that downplays his primary commitment to Métis nationalism and political independence.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Riel

 

[Carnal_Flower]

The Great Sphinx of Giza

The Great Sphinx of Giza (Arabic: أبو الهول‎‎ Abū al-Haul, English: The Terrifying One; literally: Father of Dread), commonly referred to as the Sphinx of Giza or just the Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a reclining or couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head) that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed to represent the face of the Pharaoh Khafra.

It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 241 ft long, 63 ft wide, and 66.34 ft) high It is the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558–2532 BC)

Colin Reader has proposed that the Sphinx was probably the focus of solar worship in the Early Dynastic Period. The lion has long been a symbol associated with the sun in ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Images depicting the Egyptian king in the form of a lion smiting his enemies date as far back as the Early Dynastic Period.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d3/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza_May_2015.JPG/330px-Great_Sphinx_of_Giza_May_2015.JPG

 

[JKendallDane]

The Trail of Tears

The name eventually given to the series of forced relocations of Indian nations in the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830.

http://www.unitedcherokeenation.net/v1/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/trail_of_tears.jpg

The relocated people suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while on route, and more than ten thousand died before reaching their various destinations. The removal included members of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to an area west of the Mississippi River that had been designated as Native Territory.

A very sad and mostly hidden part of American history.

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[ElectricBlue]

Udo Kier

I don't think he's a historical figure per se, but he was in Just Jaeckin' s film The Story of O, and also in the Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey movies Blood for Dracula and Flesh for Frankenstein. Which makes him a legend in my book!

 

[Hard_Rom]

Valley of Death

The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

1.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!
"Charge for the guns!" he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

2.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

3.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

4.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air,
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

5.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

6.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honor the charge they made,
Honor the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred.

 

[JKendallDane]

The Warren Commission

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy that had taken place a week earlier in Dallas, Texas. The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren.

Its 888-page final report concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald acted entirely alone. It also concluded that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later. The Commission's findings have proven controversial and have been both challenged and supported by later studies.

https://daliamaelachlan.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/kennedy.jpg?w=460&h=174

Ironically, one of the commission's members, Congressman Gerald Ford, would be the target of two assassination attempts while he served as President a decade later.

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[Hard_Rom]

Malcom X

Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), born Malcolm Little and later also known as el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans; detractors accused him of preaching racism and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.

Malcolm X was effectively orphaned early in life. His father was killed when he was six and his mother was placed in a mental hospital when he was thirteen, after which he lived in a series of foster homes. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for larceny and breaking and entering. While in prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam, and after his parole in 1952, quickly rose to become one of the organization's most influential leaders. He served as the public face of the controversial group for a dozen years. In his autobiography, Malcolm X wrote proudly of some of the social achievements the Nation made while he was a member, particularly its free drug rehabilitation program. The Nation promoted black supremacy, advocated the separation of black and white Americans, and rejected the civil rights movement for its emphasis on integration.

By March 1964, Malcolm X had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam and its leader Elijah Muhammad. Expressing many regrets about his time with them, which he had come to regard as largely wasted, he embraced Sunni Islam. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, which included completing the Hajj, he repudiated the Nation of Islam, disavowed racism and founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He continued to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and black self-defense.

In February 1965, he was assassinated by three members of the Nation of Islam.

 

[JKendallDane]

Isoroku Yamamoto

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Admiral_Isoroku_Yamamoto.jpg/220px-Admiral_Isoroku_Yamamoto.jpg

An admiral in the Japanese navy, Yamamoto's greatest strength was considered to be military strategy. He also worked as naval attaché at the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., and held several other jobs for the Japanese government.

Yamamoto was against getting into the Second World War and the war with the United States because he thought the US was too powerful. But it was not for him to decide.

So, once Japan made the decision, he knew that his country's only chance for victory lay in a surprise attack that would cripple the American naval forces in the Pacific. He is credited with conceiving the plan to attack Pearl Harbor and directing the Battle of Midway.

He died when American codebreakers identified his flight plans and his plane was shot down in 1943. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.

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[Handley_Page]

Isoroku Yamamoto

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/Admiral_Isoroku_Yamamoto.jpg/220px-Admiral_Isoroku_Yamamoto.jpg

An admiral in the Japanese navy, Yamamoto's greatest strength was considered to be military strategy. He also worked as naval attaché at the Japanese embassy in Washington, D.C., and held several other jobs for the Japanese government.

Yamamoto was against getting into the Second World War and the war with the United States because he thought the US was too powerful. But it was not for him to decide.

So, once Japan made the decision, he knew that his country's only chance for victory lay in a surprise attack that would cripple the American naval forces in the Pacific. He is credited with conceiving the plan to attack Pearl Harbor and directing the Battle of Midway.

He died when American codebreakers identified his flight plans and his plane was shot down in 1943. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.

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"We have woken a sleeping Dragon". . . .

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Zipporah

Zipporah or Tzipora (Modern Tsippora, Sepphōra; Ṣafforah) is mentioned in the Book of Exodus as the wife of Moses, and the daughter of Reuel/Jethro, the priest or prince of Midian and the spiritual founder and ancestor of the Druze. In the Book of Chronicles, two of her descendants are mentioned: Shebuel, son ofGershom, and Rehabiah, son of Eliezer.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

Albigensians (12th-13th Centuries) A reformist sect originating in Bulgaria and spreading westward to Spain. They opposed the lavishness of the Church, and in return Pope Innocent [sic] III declared a Crusade (1209-1229) against the "heretics." Their final defeat at Carcassone weakened the the strength of the Counts of Barcelona and began the process of subjugation of the Languedoc to the Languedoeil and the eventual hegemony of Paris over the Occitan.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Bugger

A bugger was originally a heretic—this was the meaning of Old French bougre. The word ultimately comes from Bulgarus, which was the Latin term for a Bulgarian, in particular one who belonged to the Orthodox Church, which was regarded by the Roman Catholic Church as heretical. Bugger was first used in English in reference to members of a heretical Christian sect based in Albi in southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Albigensians. The sexual use of the term arose in the 16th century from an association of heresy with forbidden sexual practices.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Kill them all and let God sort them out.

Cathars

Catharism was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries. Cathar beliefs varied between communities, because Catharism was initially taught by ascetic priests, who had set few guidelines. The Catholic Church denounced its practices including the 'Consolamentum' ritual, by which Cathar individuals were baptized and raised to the status of 'perfect'.

Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Byzantine Anatolia and the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, who were influenced by the Paulicians resettled in Thrace (Philipopolis) by the Byzantines. Though the term "Cathar" (/ˈkæθɑːr/) has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debatable.

From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and by persuading the local authorities to act against them. In 1208 Innocent's papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then abandoned the option of sending Catholic missionaries and jurists, declared Pierre de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade.

The Cathars spent much of 1209 fending off the crusaders. The Béziers army attempted a sortie but was quickly defeated, then pursued by the crusaders back through the gates and into the city. Arnaud-Amaury, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His reply, recalled by Caesarius of Heisterbach, a fellow Cistercian, thirty years later was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius"—"Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Albus Percival Wulfric Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

JK Rowling stated that she enjoys writing Dumbledore because he "is the epitome of goodness." Rowling said that Dumbledore speaks for her, as he "knows pretty much everything" about the Harry Potter universe. Rowling mentioned that Dumbledore regrets "that he has always had to be the one who knew, and who had the burden of knowing. And he would rather not know." As a mentor to the central character Harry Potter, "Dumbledore is a very wise man who knows that Harry is going to have to learn a few hard lessons to prepare him for what may be coming in his life. He allows Harry to get into what he wouldn't allow another pupil to do, and he also unwillingly permits Harry to confront things he’d rather protect him from." During his time as a student, Dumbledore was in Gryffindor House.[10] Rowling said in an interview that Dumbledore was about 150 years old.

On 19 October 2007, Rowling was asked by a young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love." Rowling said that she always thought of Dumbledore as being homosexual and that he had fallen in love with Gellert Grindelwald, which was Dumbledore's "great tragedy"; Rowling did not explicitly state whether Grindelwald returned his affections. Rowling explains this further by elaborating on the motivations behind Dumbledore's flirtation with the idea of wizard domination of Muggles: "He lost his moral compass completely when he fell in love and I think subsequently became very mistrustful of his own judgement in those matters so became quite asexual. He led a celibate and a bookish life."

Sadly, Dumbledore was brutally murdered in a (pre-determined) pact with Potions Master Severus Snape in Book 6, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQwgQoEoQ0uWqOkaKKkbkiR5gAGrHfUold-he60Ynd8cabfVV8R

 

[SilenceDances]

E--The Enigma Machine

The enigma machine was like a typewriter gone spy. It was invented in the early 1900s, and used by the nazis during WWII to encrypt code. Many different nations also used the machines, and different versions were created. Mathematicians figured out ways to crack the codes, so they made the machines more complex. They also invented a number of different attachments that made the coding more secure, or the machine easier to use.

Basically, the enigma machine worked like a typewriter, except each letter you typed in would go through a series of rotors (each one could lead to a different path), and it would come out as a different letter (never the original letter). It was a very complex system, based on a very simple one (substitution cypher).

Cryptologists worked diligently to decode the messages, and helped win the war.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Alan Turing

Father of Computing

Germany's Army, Air Force and Navy transmitted many thousands of coded messages each day during World War II.

These ranged from top-level signals, such as detailed situation reports prepared by generals at the battle fronts, and orders signed by Hitler himself, down to the important minutiae of war like weather reports and inventories of the contents of supply ships.

On the first day of war, at the beginning of September 1939, Alan Turing took up residence at Bletchley Park, the ugly Victorian Buckinghamshire mansion that served as the wartime HQ of Britain's top codebreakers.

There he was a key player in the battle to decrypt the coded messages generated by Enigma, the German military's typewriter-like cipher machine.

Thanks to Alan Turing and his fellow codebreakers, much of this information ended up in allied hands - sometimes within an hour or two of it being transmitted. The faster the messages could be broken, the fresher the intelligence that they contained, and on at least one occasion an intercepted Enigma message's English translation was being read at the British Admiralty less than 15 minutes after the Germans had transmitted it.

Turing pitted machine against machine. The prototype model of his anti-Enigma "bombe", named simply Victory, was installed in the spring of 1940. His bombes turned Bletchley Park into a codebreaking factory. As early as 1943 Turing's machines were cracking a staggering total of 84,000 Enigma messages each month - two messages every minute.

Turing personally broke the form of Enigma that was used by the U-boats preying on the North Atlantic merchant convoys. It was a crucial contribution. The convoys set out from North America loaded with vast cargoes of essential supplies for Britain, but the U-boats' torpedoes were sinking so many of the ships that Churchill's analysts said Britain would soon be starving.

"The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril," Churchill said later.

Just in time, Turing and his group succeeded in cracking the U-boats' communications to their controllers in Europe. With the U-boats revealing their positions, the convoys could dodge them in the vast Atlantic waste.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18419691

 

[JKendallDane]

John Herschell Glenn, Jr.

Marine Colonel, decorated military pilot during WW2 and Korea, Navy test pilot that set a coast-to-coast flying record of just over three hours in 1957, selected as one of the first NASA astronauts, and became the first American to orbit the earth on February 20, 1962.

https://sergevanduijnhoven.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/john-glenn-friendship-7.jpg

After retiring from NASA, Glenn first enjoyed a successful business career and then moved into politics eventually serving 24 years in the US Senate and even a Presidential candidate in 1984.

In 1998, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to go into space on a nine-day mission as a member of space shuttle Discovery's team.

The last surviving member of the original astronauts, the Mercury Seven, Glenn celebrated his 95th birthday yesterday.

(I was privileged to meet Glenn the first time in 1964 and several other times. He was, and still is, a living legend and true American hero.)

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[Hard_Rom]

Henry I King of England

Henry I (c. 1068 – 1 December 1135), also known as Henry Beauclerc, was King of England from 1100 to his death. Henry was the fourth son of William the Conqueror and was educated in Latin and the liberal arts. On William's death in 1087, Henry's elder brothers Robert Curthose and William Rufus inherited Normandy and England, respectively, but Henry was left landless. Henry purchased the County of Cotentin in western Normandy from Robert, but William and Robert deposed him in 1091. Henry gradually rebuilt his power base in the Cotentin and allied himself with William against Robert. Henry was present when William died in a hunting accident in 1100, and he seized the English throne, promising at his coronation to correct many of William's less popular policies. Henry married Matilda of Scotland but continued to have a large number of mistresses, by whom he had many illegitimate children.

Robert, who invaded in 1101, disputed Henry's control of England; this military campaign ended in a negotiated settlement that confirmed Henry as king. The peace was short-lived, and Henry invaded the Duchy of Normandy in 1105 and 1106, finally defeating Robert at the Battle of Tinchebray. Henry kept Robert imprisoned for the rest of his life. Henry's control of Normandy was challenged by Louis VI of France, Baldwin of Flanders and Fulk of Anjou, who promoted the rival claims of Robert's son, William Clito, and supported a major rebellion in the Duchy between 1116 and 1119. Following Henry's victory at the Battle of Brémule, a favourable peace settlement was agreed with Louis in 1120.

Considered by contemporaries to be a harsh but effective ruler, Henry skilfully manipulated the barons in England and Normandy. In England, he drew on the existing Anglo-Saxon system of justice, local government and taxation, but also strengthened it with additional institutions, including the royal exchequer and itinerant justices. Normandy was also governed through a growing system of justices and an exchequer. Many of the officials who ran Henry's system were "new men" of obscure backgrounds rather than from families of high status, who rose through the ranks as administrators. Henry encouraged ecclesiastical reform, but became embroiled in a serious dispute in 1101 with Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, which was resolved through a compromise solution in 1105. He supported the Cluniac order and played a major role in the selection of the senior clergy in England and Normandy.

Henry's only legitimate son and heir, William Adelin, drowned in the White Ship disaster of 1120, throwing the royal succession into doubt. Henry took a second wife, Adeliza, in the hope of having another son, but their marriage was childless. In response to this, Henry declared his daughter, Matilda, his heir and married her to Geoffrey of Anjou. The relationship between Henry and the couple became strained, and fighting broke out along the border with Anjou. Henry died on 1 December 1135 after a week of illness. Despite his plans for Matilda, the King was succeeded by his nephew, Stephen of Blois, resulting in a period of civil war known as the Anarchy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_I_of_England

 

[Hard_Rom]

Indian Rebellion of 1857

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 refers to a rebellion in India against the rule of the British East India Company, that ran from May 1857 to July 1859. The rebellion began as a mutiny of sepoys of the East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the cantonment of the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pradesh, northern Madhya Pradesh, and the Delhi region. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to East India Company power in that region, and was contained only with the fall of Gwalior on 20 June 1858. The rebellion has been known by many names, including the Indian Mutiny, India's First War of Independence, the Great Rebellion, the Indian Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Rebellion of 1857, the Uprising of 1857, the Sepoy Rebellion, the Indian Insurrection and the Sepoy Mutiny.

Other regions of Company-controlled India, such as the Bengal division of Bengal Presidency (comprising present-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand), the Bombay Presidency, and the Madras Presidency, remained largely calm. In Punjab, the Sikh princes backed the Company by providing soldiers and support. The large princely states of Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir, as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion. In some regions, such as Oudh, the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against European presence. Some rebel leaders, such as Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, became folk heroes in the nationalist movement in India half a century later.

The rebellion led to the dissolution of the East India Company in 1858. It also led the British to reorganise the army, the financial system and the administration in India. The country was thereafter directly governed by the crown as the new British Raj.

 

[Carnal_Flower]

Louis Jolliet

French-Canadian explorer
Written by The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica

Louis Jolliet, Jolliet also spelled Joliet (born before Sept. 21, 1645, probably Beaupré, near Quebec—died after May 1700, Quebec province) French Canadian explorer and cartographer who, with Father Jacques Marquette, was the first white man to traverse the Mississippi River from its confluence with the Wisconsin to the mouth of the Arkansas River in Arkansas.

Jolliet received a Jesuit education in New France (now in Canada) but left his seminary in 1667 and went to France. The following year he returned to New France to work in the fur trade.

In 1672 he was commissioned by the governor of New France to explore the Mississippi, and he was joined by Marquette. On May 17, 1673, the party set out in two birchbark canoes from Michilimackinac (St. Ignace, Mich.) for Green Bay, on Lake Michigan. Continuing up the Fox River in central Wisconsin and down the Wisconsin River, they entered the Mississippi about a month later. Pausing along the way to make notes, to hunt, and to glean scraps of information from Indians, they arrived in July at the Quapaw Indian village (40 miles north of present Arkansas City, Ark.) at the mouth of the Arkansas River. From personal observations and from the friendly Quapaw Indians, they concluded that the Mississippi flowed south into the Gulf of Mexico—not, as they had hoped, into the Pacific Ocean. In July the party returned homeward via the Illinois River and Green Bay. Their journey is described in Marquette’s journal, which has survived.

 

[Hard_Rom]

Khazars

The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people, who created what for its duration was the most powerful polity to emerge from the breakup of the western Turkish steppe empire, known as the Khazar Khanate or Khazaria. Astride a major artery of commerce between northern Europe and southwestern Asia, Khazaria became one of the foremost trading emporia of the medieval world, commanding the western marches of the Silk Road and playing a key commercial role as a crossroad between China, the Middle East and Kievan Rus'. For some three centuries (c. 650–965) the Khazars dominated the vast area extending from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the northern Caucasus.

Khazaria long served as a buffer state between the Byzantine empire and both the nomads of the northern steppes and the Umayyad empire, after serving as Byzantium's proxy against the Sasanian Persian empire. The alliance was dropped around 900. Byzantium began to encourage the Alans to attack Khazaria and weaken its hold on Crimea and the Caucasus, while seeking to obtain an entente with the rising Rus' power to the north, which it aspired to convert to Christianity. Between 965 and 969, the Kievan Rus' ruler Sviatoslav I of Kiev conquered the capital Atil and destroyed the Khazar state.

 

[JKendallDane]

Pierre L'Enfant

A French-born American architect and civil engineer who is best known for designing the layout of the streets of Washington, D.C. along with choosing the locations of the White House, the Capitol Building, and the idea of a "Grand Avenue" that later became the National Mall.

L'Enfant is buried in Arlington National Cemetery on the hill behind JFK's grave site where he "forever has a view" of the city he helped design.

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[ElectricBlue]

Machiavelli

(1469 – 1527) was an Italian Renaissance historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer. He has often been called the founder of modern political science. He was for many years a senior official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs He wrote his most renowned work The Prince (Il Principe) in 1513.

"Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He even seemed to endorse it in some situations. The term "Machiavellian" is often associated with political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik.

 

[Handley_Page]

Michelson & Morely:

The later 1800s were a time of great scientific advancement. One of the real stumbling
blocks was the existence [or not] and a conductive medium [called an aether]. The logic of this stemmed from the fact that sound travelled as a wave, conducted by air (or water); so what was it that conducted light?
And, for that matter, how fast was it ?
In 1885, they decided to try and find out.
It was not a notable success; where there should have been a 'something', there wasn't.
This upset the physics world for several years.