House of Wisdom

Along with all other libraries in Baghdad, the House of Wisdom was destroyed during the Mongol invasion of Baghdad in 1258. It was said that the waters of the Tigris ran black with ink from the enormous quantities of books flung into the river.

Black Madonnas

The most persuasive explanation is that Black Madonnas illustrate a line in the Song of Songs 1:5 from the Old Testament: "I am black, but beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem…", especially as several of the Black Madonnas are inscribed in Latin with this line: Nigra sum sed formosa.

Stonewall Jackson

In his delirium, his dying words were, "Let us cross over the river and rest in the shade of the trees."

Citizen Henry

Citizen Henry was a woman who accompanied André-Jacques Garnerin on a trip by balloon on 8 July 1798 from the Parc Monceau in Paris. She was credited as the first woman "who ever had the courage to trust herself in the regions of air," although several women had already made ascents in a balloon: on 20 May 1784, the Marchioness and Countess of Montalembert, the Countess of Podenas and a Miss de Lagarde had taken a trip on a tethered balloon in Paris, and Elizabeth Thible had made an ascent in an untethered balloon on 4 June 1784.
Although the public and press were in favour of Garnerin's idea, he was forced to appear in front of officials of the Central Bureau of Police to attempt to justify his project. Chief among their concerns was the effect that the air pressure might have on the organs of the delicate female body, though it appears that they were also concerned of the moral implications of a man and woman being alone in a balloon together. When questioned as to the expected results of the atmospheric pressure and what would happen if the woman was to lose consciousness Garnerin replied that he did not expect anything untoward to occur and that he would be personally responsible for dealing with any mishaps. Unsatisfied with Garnerin's responses, the police issued an injunction against him, forbidding the ascent on the grounds that the young woman was committing herself to the venture without any idea of the possible outcome.
Consultation with the Minister of the Interior and Minister of the Police followed and the injunction was eventually overturned on the grounds that "there was no more scandal in seeing two people of different sexes ascend in a balloon than it is to see them jump into a carriage." They also decided that the decision of the woman to take the balloon trip showed proof of her confidence in the experiment and a degree of personal intrepidity.
There is no record of the relationship between Garnerin and Citoyenne Henri, where he recruited her for the trip or what her motives were in accepting. Garnerin gave her a present after the trip and there was fervent press interest in the beautiful young girl for a few days, but her fame did not endure: shortly afterwards, Garnerin's wife and niece became well-known for their parachuting exploits and Madame Blanchard was celebrated for her solo ballooning exploits, relegating the less impressive exploits of Citoyenne Henri to a footnote in aeronautic history.

Titles of Mary

Woman Clothed With the Sun, Virgin by the Sea, Tower of Ivory, Star That Bore the Sea, Seat of Wisdom, Reparatrix, Queen of Heaven and Earth, Our Lady Who Appeared, Our Lady of the Golden Heart, Never Fading Wood, Morning Star, Mater Dei, Loom of the Incarnation, House Built by Wisdom

Flensted Mobiles

Mobiles are a traditional craft in denmark but the modern mobile was created in 1954 by Christian Flensted and his wife Grethe. Christian Flensted became known as the uromager, a name impossible to translate into english, which means a maker of things mischievous and always on the move.

Earwax in Whales

Many species of whale have an annual buildup of earwax, adding one, two, or four layers (depending upon the species) each year. Similar to the incremental dating method of dendrochronology for trees, the number of layers can be counted to determine the age of the whale after its death.

The log cabin and hard cider candidate:

Tip and Ty
What's the cause of this commotion, motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on

For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too.
And with them we'll beat little Van, Van, Van,
Van is a used up man.
And with them we'll beat little Van.

Whirling Dervish

Yrast (Swedish pronunciation: [y:ɾɐst], English: [ˈɪrast]) is a technical term in nuclear physics that refers to a state of a nucleus with a minimum of energy (when it is least excited) for a given angular momentum. Yr is a Swedish adjective derived from the Old Norse hvirfla, the same root as the English whirl. Yrast is the superlative of yr and can be translated whirlingest, although it literally means "dizziest" or "most bewildered".



My second favorite hymn:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Twins

The Fort Crawford Medical Museum, Prairie du Chien, WI, chronicles the digestive experiments of our hero, Dr. Beaumont, but the real stars are the Transparent Twins, two clear plastic female mannequins. Organs glow, arteries pulse, nerves shimmer in cool blue. They rotate to display their transparent backsides.

The twin on the right does all the talking -- probably because her sister has no face. (Note: the Twins model in the promo photo, left, is arranged with the talking sister on the left.)

"How do you do? We are the transparent twins. Imagine if your skin suddenly became transparent -- then you would look much like me."

Mysterious pelvic organs blink on. "My eggs, when fertilized by sperm from my husband, will turn into a child." Two higher bulbs brighten. "My breasts provide milk for the newborn..."

Queen Anne's Lace

When Anne of Denmark became engaged to James of Scotland the fourteen year old princess embroidered shirts for her fiancé while three hundred tailors worked on her wedding dress. The flower was named after the lace that she made, and the black spot is believed to a drop of blood from where she pricked herself.

The English spy Thomas Fowler reported of the engagement between Denmark and Scotland, that Anne of Denmark was "so far in love with the King's Majesty as it were death to her to have it broken off and hath made good proof divers ways of her affection which his Majestie is apt in no way to requite". The Scottish King James wrote, "God is my witness, I could have abstained longer than the weal of my country could have permitted, [had not] my long delay bred in the breasts of many a great jealousy of my inability, as if I were a barren stock".



After they were married it was quickly brought home to the seventeen-year-old queen that she was to have no say in the care of her son. James appointed as head of the nursery his former nurse Helen Little, who installed Henry in James's own old oak cradle. Most distressingly for Anne, James insisted on placing Prince Henry in the custody of John Erskine, earl of Mar, at Stirling Castle, in keeping with Scottish royal tradition. Nervous of the lengths to which Anne might go to regain her son, James formally charged Mar in writing never to surrender Henry to anyone except on orders from his own mouth, "because in the surety of my son consists my surety", nor to yield Henry to the queen even in the event of his own death.
After public scenes in which James reduced her to rage and tears over the issue, Anne became so bitterly upset that in July 1595 she suffered a miscarriage. Anne saw a belated opportunity to gain custody of Henry in 1603 when James left for London, taking the earl of Mar with him, to assume the English throne following the death of Queen Elizabeth. Pregnant at the time, Anne descended on Stirling with a force of "well supported" nobles, intent on removing the nine-year-old Henry, whom she had hardly seen for five years; but Mar's mother and brother would allow her to bring no more than two attendants with her into the castle. The obduracy of Henry's keepers sent Anne into such a fury that she suffered another miscarriage: according to David Calderwood, she "went to bed in anger and parted with child the tenth of May".
After narrowly surviving the birth and death of her last baby, Sophia, in 1607, Anne’s made a decision to have no more children.

Although Anne's flower was named for her marital hopes, it is an interesting circumstance that women have used the seeds from Queen Anne's Lace, for centuries as a contraceptive. The earliest written reference dates back to the late 5th or 4th century B.C. appearing in a work written by Hippocrates, and John Riddle writes in Eve's Herbs, that queen anne's lace seeds are one of the more potent antifertility agents available. Research on small animals has shown that extracts of the seeds disrupt the implantation process, or if a fertilized egg has implanted for only a short period, will cause it to be released.

Asiatic Peafowl

In my dreams I hear the peacock that used to live across the street. That was when I was in Mississippi and Ma Bell had a bird orphanage and I had a baby pet flying squirrel for a day. The bird sounded like a woman who didn't have anything at hand to throw.

Basalawarmi

Basalawarmi (died January 6, 1382), commonly known as the Prince of Liang, was a descendant of Kublai Khan and a Yuan Dynasty loyalist who fought against the ascendant Ming Dynasty. In The Deer and the Cauldron, a novel written by Jinyong, the main character retells a humorous mythical account of Basalawarmi's defeat. In this legend, Basalawarmi is said to have hundreds of war elephants, obtained from what is now modern-day Myanmar, in his army. The Ming general Ma Hua defeats Basalawarmi by unleashing ten thousand mice which drive Basalawarmi's war elephants to terror, alluding to the widespread myth that elephants are afraid of mice. Basalawarmi himself is not presented favorably; he is described as a drunken, fat, and cowardly old man.

Copernicus stamps

Someone else says:
More stamps have been issued honoring Copernicus than for any other mathematician. In 1973, the five hundredth anniversary of Copernicus' birth, almost every country issued stamps, usually in a series, in his honor. It is ironic that the Vatican City did so. It is surprising that the United States did so, for we have rarely honored persons of mathematical achievement. To my knowledge the only US stamps of this nature honor Benjamin Banneker, Copernicus, Albert Einstein, and President Garfield.

Hacienda

People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.

&

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any temple to the sun. You'll never see the hacienda. It doesn't exist. The hacienda must be built. In the new city every man will live in his own cathedral.