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Although boots were a popular style of women’s footwear in the Nineteenth Century, they were not recognized as a high fashion item until the 1960s. They became widely popular in the 1970s and have remained a staple of women’s winter wardrobes since then.

Knee-high boots have existed in the fashion world since at least the 1950s

:D
 
Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh of Egypt, was a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, a family of Greek origin that ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great's death during the Hellenistic period. The Ptolemies, throughout their dynasty, spoke Greek and refused to speak Egyptian, which is the reason that Greek as well as Egyptian languages were used on official court documents like the Rosetta Stone. By contrast, Cleopatra did learn to speak Egyptian and represented herself as the reincarnation of an Egyptian goddess, Isis.

Her and her great love, Marcus Antonius, made a formidable team which took all of Rome to bring down. They had three children together: twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and later, a son, Ptolemy Philadelphos. Their middle names mean Sun, Moon and Brotherly Love respectively.

There are a number of unverifiable stories about Cleopatra, of which one of the best known is that, at one of the lavish dinners she shared with Antony, she playfully bet him that she could spend ten million sesterces on a dinner. He accepted the bet. The next night, she had a conventional, unspectacular meal served; he was ridiculing this, when she ordered the second course — only a cup of strong vinegar. She then removed one of her priceless pearl earrings, dropped it into the vinegar, allowed it to dissolve, and drank the mixture.

Needless to say, she won the bet ;). I wonder how he chose to pay her? :p
 
Interesting Facts about Cleopatra

Her full name was Cleopatra Thea Philopator VII

After the death of her father, Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos, she became the Pharaoh of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, ruling for 21 years, from 51 BC to 30 BC

She was the last Pharaoh of Egypt. After her death, Egypt became a Roman territory

She wasn't an Egyptian, but was of Macedonian Greek origin, descendant of Ptolemy I, a Greek general of Alexander the great, who upon his death, became the king of Egypt

She was the only person in the whole of the Ptolemaic dynasty who could speak Egyptian; she was in fact a master of 9 languages

She had three sisters; two older and one younger. The eldest was named after her mother Cleopatra V Tryphaena, which means pleasure seeker. Hence, there were two Cleopatras in the family. They were distinguished by their middle names

There were around seven Cleopatras in the dynasty, which is why she is officially known as Cleopatra VII

She married her 12 year old brother Ptolemy XIII, when she was 18. They ruled together for 4 years before he was drowned

Was mistress of Julius Caesar, and she probably married him
Had 4 children – Caesarion also known as Ptolemy Caesar (son of Julius Caesar) and Alexander Helios, Cleopatra Selene II and Ptolemy Philadelphus (children of Mark Antony)

After the death of Caesar, she and Mark Antony fell in love and got married.
Contrary to the popular belief that she was beautiful, historians say she wasn't . They cite the proof from coins dating back to her time, which depict her with a hooked nose and masculine features

Mark Antony committed suicide on the battlefield after being misinformed about the death of Cleopatra
Shattered after hearing the news of the death of Mark Antony, she committed suicide by making an asp, an Egyptian cobra, bite her in the breast. One of the most famous love stories (Antony and Cleopatra, thus ended tragically. She was then only 39. She believed she was the daughter of Egyptian goddess Isis and the bite of an asp would take her to the gods

The word Cleopatra is in itself a mystery. Historians have been toiling hard for decades to uncover the hidden secrets, but have been unsuccessful always. Only time will tell, when the secrets are uncovered, whether she was beautiful, ugly, or Caesar's wife but until then, she will be always be remembered as the mysterious Egyptian queen who mesmerized one and all.

By Sourabh Gupta
 
Cleopatra's lover, and as it was often described, true mate, Marcus Antonius, is somewhat more of a complex character.

Mark Antony (in Latin, Marcus Antonius) came from a distinguished Roman family. His grandfather had been one of Rome's leading public speakers, and his father, Marcus Antonius Creticus, had died in a military expedition against pirates when Antony was young.

Antony received his first overseas experience in the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, when, during 57 to 55 B.C.E. , he served with the Roman governor of Syria, which was a province of Rome. From there he went to serve with Caesar (100–44 B.C.E. ) in Gaul. In 50 B.C.E. , after returning to Rome, Antony was elected a tribune, an office that represented the people's interests. Tribunes were expected to stand up for the rights of individuals and for those who were not members of the highest classes of Roman society. By contrast, the Senate, Rome's primary governing and advisory body, was composed primarily of members from a small hereditary aristocracy (political upper class).

With Caesar's death, Antony was forced to fight a two-front war. One front was against those who had plotted to kill Caesar. The other was with Caesar's supporters, who were undecided on how to avenge Caesar and as to who would lead them. Antony might have ensured his leadership without difficulty if the young Octavian, nephew of Caesar, had not appeared, claiming to be Caesar's adopted son and heir and also demanding to be given Caesar's political power.

Antony and Octavian now moved eastward to face the army of those who had killed Caesar. The two forces met at Philippi, Greece, in 42 B.C.E. , where Antony's military skill led to victory. While Octavian returned to Italy, Antony went east to put affairs in order in the eastern provinces. He also prepared a war against Parthia (located in present-day Iran), and, needing Egyptian support, he met with Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, in 41 B.C.E. An immediate romance followed. This was interrupted when the news arrived that Antony's brother and wife were openly defying Octavian in Italy. Antony moved back west and peace was patched up in 40 B.C.E. with Antony's wedding to Octavian's sister, Octavia, after the death of Antony's first wife. Antony soon went east again, beating back the Parthians. In 36 B.C.E. he again took up his affair with Cleopatra, becoming involved with her both romantically and politically.

At the close of 33 B.C.E. the Second Triumvirate legally came to an end. At the same time the crisis between Octavian and Antony was reaching a climax. Antony still had support in Rome. Octavian turned public opinion against Antony, however, doing so by announcing Antony's divorce of Octavia for Cleopatra, reading Antony's will (in which his strong ties to Cleopatra were stressed), and starting rumors against Antony.

Octavian gathered support in Italy, while Antony's Roman friends had mixed emotions about waging war on the side of the Egyptian queen. The two men and their armies met off at Actium, Greece, on September 2, 31 B.C.E. In a confused battle Antony's fleet was defeated. He fled back to Egypt with Cleopatra. Upon Octavian's arrival in Egypt, Antony committed suicide. Octavian went on to become the first emperor of Rome, taking the name Augustus.
 
Augustus Caesar

He ruled an empire that stretched from Spain to Judea and turned the Mediterranean Sea into a peaceful Roman lake. Augustus Caesar, born Gaius Octavius Thurinus, was a part of the triumvirate that took over the rule of Rome after the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. When the triumvirate fell apart, he took sole power of Rome in 27 BC when the Roman Senate voted him the title of Augustus, which means “illustrious one.” Later they would worship him, and all the emperors that followed him, as a god. Augustus’s rule marked the beginning of nearly 200 years of peace called the Pax Romana.
Essential Facts

Augustus was already an adult when Julius Caesar adopted him. Caesar had no male heir and had been impressed when the then-named Octavius made a perilous journey through hostile territory to join Caesar’s army. Octavius was a plebeian, the lower class of Rome, until his adoption by Caesar made him a patrician.
Part of the reason for the deterioration of the triumvirate of Octavius, Marc Antony, and Marcus Lepidus was Antony’s involvement with Cleopatra. Antony was already married to Octavius’s sister when he made a marriage contract with Cleopatra. This duplicity did not sit well and Octavius used the incident to raise an army to defeat Antony.
Augustus’s reorganization of the provincial Roman system created a stable environment for collecting taxes and administrating government throughout the empire.
Augustus married Livia Drusilla, who had been married to Tiberius Claudius Nero. Both Augustus and Livia divorced their respective spouses to marry.
Augustus lived a long life and served Rome well. When he died in AD 14 at the age of 77, he was declared a Roman god, and every emperor after him adopted the title of Caesar.
 
The human body loses 30,000 dead skin cells every second and within one month it has replenished the whole surface.
 
It took the first man to walk around the world 4 years, 3 months, and 6 days to complete his journey.
 
The Main Library at Indiana University sinks over an inch every year because engineers failed to take into account the weight of all the books that would occupy the building.

Somebody got fired :D
 
When your cheeks blush, your stomach lining does also.

My stomach lining must be constantly red :eek:
 
Much as with people, there are irrational, perfect and complex numbers
As in philosophy, there are transcendental numbers
As in the art, there are imaginary and surreal numbers
 
In 1895, at the age of 17, Albert Einstein applied for early admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule or ETH). He passed the math and science sections of the entrance exam, but failed the rest (history, languages, geography, etc.)! Einstein had to go to a trade school before he retook the exam and was finally admitted to ETH a year later.
 
The renowned and world famous Glastonbury Pop festival is under threat of cancellation in 2012 because it coincides with the London Olympics.

Why is that a threat you may ask?

Because there will not be enough Portaloos in the country to supply Glastonbury as they will all be deployed at the Olympic venues :eek:
 
In celebration for tomorrow... ;)

Father's Day is a celebration of fathers inaugurated in the early twentieth century to complement Mother's Day in celebrating fatherhood and male parenting. Father's Day is celebrated on a variety of dates worldwide and typically involves gift-giving, special dinners to fathers, and family-oriented activities.The first observance of Father's Day actually took place in Fairmont, West Virginia on July 5, 1908. It was organized by Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, who wanted to celebrate the lives of the 210 fathers who had been lost in the Monongah Mining disaster several months earlier in Monongah, West Virginia, on December 6, 1907. It's possible that Clayton was influenced by the first celebration of Mother's Day that same year, just a few miles away. Clayton chose the Sunday nearest to the birthday of her recently deceased father.Unfortunately, the day was overshadowed by other events in the city, West Virginia did not officially register the holiday, and it was not celebrated again. All the credit for Father's Day went to Sonora Dodd from Spokane, who invented independently her own celebration of Father's Day just two years later, also influenced by Jarvis' Mother's Day.Clayton's celebration was forgotten until 1972, when one of the attendants to the celebration saw Nixon's proclamation of Father's Day, and worked to recover its legacy. The celebration is now held every year in the Central United Methodist Church – the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was torn down in 1922. Fairmont is now promoted as the "Home of the First Father's Day Service". A bill to accord national recognition of the holiday was introduced in Congress in 1913. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to speak in a Father's Day celebration and wanted to make it official, but Congress resisted, fearing that it would become commercialised. US President Calvin Coolidge recommended in 1924 that the day be observed by the nation, but stopped short of issuing a national proclamation. Two earlier attempts to formally recognize the holiday had been defeated by Congress. In 1957, Maine Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal accusing Congress of ignoring fathers for 40 years while honoring mothers, thus "[singling] out just one of our two parents"[4] In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972.


Happy Father's Day. :) :kiss:
 
Today is Midsummer in many European cultures. European midsummer-related holidays, traditions, and celebrations are pre-Christian in origin. They are particularly important in Northern Europe - Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania - but are found also in Germany, Ireland, parts of Britain (Cornwall especially), France, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Ukraine, other parts of Europe, and elsewhere - such as Canada, the United States, Puerto Rico, and also in the Southern Hemisphere (mostly in Brazil, Argentina and Australia), where this imported European celebration would be more appropriately called Midwinter.

Midsummer is also sometimes referred to by Neopagans and others as Litha, stemming from Bede's De temporum ratione which provides Anglo-Saxon names for the months roughly corresponding to June and July as "se Ærra Liþa" and "se Æfterra Liþa" (the "early Litha month" and the "later Litha month") with an intercalary month of "Liþa" appearing after se Æfterra Liþa on leap years. The fire festival or Lith- Summer solstice is a tradition for many pagans.

Solstice celebrations still center around the day of the astronomical summer solstice. Some choose to hold the rite on the 21st of June, even when this is not the longest day of the year, and some celebrate June 24, the day of the solstice in Roman times.
Although Midsummer is originally a pagan holiday, in Christianity it is associated with the nativity of John the Baptist, which is observed on the same day, June 24, in the Catholic, Orthodox and some Protestant churches. It is six months before Christmas because Luke 1:26 and Luke 1.36 imply that John the Baptist was born six months earlier than Jesus, although the Bible does not say at which time of the year this happened.
 
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Some Midsummer's Traditions:

Hungary: On June 21 Hungarians celebrate "Saint Ivan's Night" (Szentiván-éj) (Iván derived from the slavic form of John, translated as Jovános, Ivános, Iván in Hungarian). The whole month of June was once called Month of St. Ivan until the 19th century. Setting fires is a folklore tradition this night. Girls jumped over it, while boys watched the spectacular. Most significant among the customs of the summer is lighting the fire of Midsummer Night (szentiváni tűzgyújtás) on the day of St. John (June 24), when the sun follows the highest course, when the nights are the shortest and the days the longest. The practice of venerating St. John the Baptist developed in the Catholic church during the 5th century, and at this time they put his name and day on June 24. Naturally, the summer solstice was celebrated among most peoples, so the Magyars may have known it even before the Conquest. Although the Arab historian Ibn Rusta speaks of the Magyars’ fire worshipping, we so far have no data that could connect it to this day. At any rate, in the Middle Ages it was primarily an ecclesiastical festivity, but from the 16th century on the sources recall it as a folk custom. The most important episode of the custom is the lighting of the fire.

The custom survived longest and in the most complete form in the north-western part of the linguistic region, where as late as the 1930s they still lit a Midsummer Night fire. The way of arranging the participants by age and by sex has suggested the possibility that these groups sang by answering each other, but there are hardly any remnants that appear to support this possibility. People jumped over the fire after they lit it. This practice is mentioned as early as the 16th century, although at that time in connection with a wedding; still, it is called “Midsummer Night fire”. The purpose of jumping over the fire is partly to purify, partly because they believed that those whose jump is very successful will get married during the following carnival.

BTW: Nowadays, they create two fires - only the bold and the brave (and the slightly insane) will jump the big. Trust me on this one :D ;).


Italy: In Italy, the feast of Saint John the Baptist has been celebrated in Florence from medieval times, certainly in the Renaissance, with festivals sometimes lasting the three days from 21 to 24 June. This happens nowadays also in Cesena with a special street market and celebration that last from June 21 to 24. Saint John the Baptist is the patron saint of Genoa, Florence and Turin where a fireworks display takes place at the celebration on the river. In Turin Saint John's cult is also diffused since medieval times when the city stops to work for two days and people from the surroundings comes to dance around the bonfire in the central square.

Norway: As in Denmark, Sankthansaften is celebrated on June 23 in Norway. The day is also called Jonsok, which means "John's wake", important in Roman Catholic times with pilgrimages to churches and holy springs. For instance, up until 1840 there was a pilgrimage to the stave church in Røldal (southwest Norway) whose crucifix was said to have healing powers. Today, however, Sankthansaften is largely regarded as a secular or even pre-Christian event.

In most places the main event is the burning of a large bonfire. In parts of Norway a custom of arranging mock marriages, both between adults and between children, is still kept alive. The wedding was meant to symbolize the blossoming of new life. Such weddings are known to have taken place in the 1800s, but the custom is believed to be older.
It is also said that if a girl puts flowers under her pillow that night, she will dream of her future husband.

Romania: In Romania, the Midsummer celebrations are named Drăgaica or Sânziene. Drăgaica is celebrated by a dance performed by a group of 5-7 young girls of which one is chosen as the Drăgaica. She is dressed as a bride, with wheat wreath, while the other girls, dressed in white wear a veil with bedstraw flowers. Midsummer fairs are held in many Romanian villages and cities. The oldest and best known midsummer fair in Romania is the Drăgaica fair, held in Buzău between 10 and 24 June every year.

UK: In Great Britain from the 13th century, Midsummer was celebrated on Midsummer Eve (St. John's Eve, June 23) and St. Peter's Eve (June 28) with the lighting of bonfires, feasting and merrymaking.
Other Midsummer festivities had uneasy relations with the Reformed establishment. The Chester Midsummer Watch Parade, begun in 1498, was held at every Summer Solstice in years when the Chester Mystery Plays were not performed. Despite the cancellation of the plays in 1575, the parade continued; in 1599, however, the Lord Mayor ordered that the parades be banned and the costumes destroyed. The parade was permanently banned in 1675.

Traditional Midsummer bonfires are still lit on some high hills in Cornwall (see Carn Brea and Castle an Dinas, St. Columb Major). This tradition was revived by the Old Cornwall Society in the early 20th century. Bonfires in Cornwall were once common as part of Golowan, which is now celebrated at Penzance, Cornwall. This week long festival normally starts on the Friday nearest St John's Day. Golowan lasts several days and culminates in Mazey Day. This is a revival of the Feast of St John (Gol-Jowan) with fireworks and bonfires.
 
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Tomorrow is Canada Day, a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act which united three British colonies (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada, that is Ontario and Quebec) into a single country within the British Empire. Originally called Dominion Day, the name was changed in 1982, the year that Canada gained full independence from the United Kingdom. Canada Day observances take place throughout Canada as well as internationally.

Canada Day also coincides with Quebec's and more specifically, Montreal's Moving Day, the day which many leases expire and there's a mass move city-wide.
 
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