ONE OF THE MOST DECISIVE BATTLES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

ONE OF THE MOST DECISIVE BATTLES IN EUROPEAN HISTORY

In 732, on a hilltop between Tours and Poitiers in France, on of the most decisive battle in European history was fought. In the hundred years following ,armies inspired by the Islamic faith had pressed forward through north Africa and the Iberian Peninsula to arrive in the heart of Western Europe. In 732, the governor-general of Muslim Spain, Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, led an army across the Pyrenees and conquered Aquitaine, laying waste to Bordeauxe. He than headed for the kingdom of the Franks, toward the city of Tours.
              The Frankish leader Charles Martel placed his 30,000-strong army on high, wooded ground, in their line of advance. He formed his men into a tight infantry square, and waited. Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi held off from attacking from 7 days, although his force may have outnumbered the Franks by two to one. when he finally lunched his cavalry, the Frankish infantry stood firm and repelled their charges. After a long fight, the Muslim horsemen withdrew to defend their war  chests, and abandoned by his men, Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi was surrounded and killed.
               It is likely that Abd-ar-Rahman al-Ghafiqi had not sought to coquer European Chsistendom, but just to lead a raidinng expedition. But if the Frankish warriors had lost, nothing would have stood in the way of a Muslim takewover of western Europe. Charls Martel consolidate the Carolingian Empire, which formed a barrier to the northward expansion of Islam.
               

A JOURNEY THROUGH IMPOSSIBLE MOUNTAIN BARRIER TO ATTACK ROME.

A JOURNEY THROUGH IMPOSSIBLE MOUNTAIN BARRIER TO ATTACK ROME.

In the fall of 218 B.C.E., an exhausted,demoralized army lay scattered among the rocks,snow, and ice of a high Alpine pass.A  force of wild tribesmen from Spain , Libyan foot soldiers, and Numidian horsemen from north Africa had followed twenty-eight-year-old general Hannibal Barca in a bid to cross this apparently impossible mountain barrier.
           Hannibal's native city, Carthage, in what is now Tunisia, was engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the Roman republic from control of the western Mediterranean. In the spring of 218 B.C.E., Hannibal had led his army from Spain to Italy. He set out with more than 100,000 men, tens of thousands of horses and mules, and thirty-seven war elephants. A long journey to hostile territory greatly reduced the army even before it reached the Alps. There, advancing up narrow tracks through mountain gorges, Hannibal's soldier were attacked by the Alloroges and other local tribesmen. It took 9 days to reach the top of the pass.
            Hannibal, Who had shared in all his men's hardships, rallied the cold and hungry troops to under tack the descent into Italy, which, he said, would place Rome ion their hands. Walking walking on snow and ice, the animals and men struggled along the narrow downward track, terrified of falling to their deaths over the slippery edge. At one point they had to spend four days rebuilding the obliterated path. Only around 26,000 men made it to Italy, with a handful of elephants. Nonetheless, Hannibal had achieved an extraordinary feet in crossing the Alps and could now advance upon the Rome.  

EUREKA! The Archimedes Discovery While Taking a Bath....how to measure density..

HOW TO MEASURE DENSITY

           King Hieron of Sicily, wanting to find out if a crown he had been given was made of solid gold, or whether he had been palmed off with on containing silver, asked Archimedes to solve the problem. But how was he to do so without melting down the metal and destroying the crown? Interestingly while  taking a bath, Archimedes noticed the water level rose when he got in, and he realized that he could determine the gold density of the crown by weighing it in water. He was so excited by this discovery that he reputed to have rushed out naked into the street shouting "EUREKA!"  ("I have found it") .
                 Archimedes was born in 287 b.c.e. in the Greek city-state of Syracuse, Sicily, and is also credited with inventing the lever and the Archimedes screw - a device for lifting water  - and for setting fire to Roman ships using mirror and sun's rays during the siege of Syracuse.  When the city fell in 212 B.C.E., Archimedes, so it was said, was killed by a Roman soldier because he ignored a commend to leave his mathematical diagrams. Archimedes was held in great respect by the ancient world, both as a practical and theoretical  scientist . He wrote on mechanics, hydro-statics, catoptrics (refraction), and mathematics. Although much of his work is lost, his surviving writings were known to Islamic mathematicians in the middle ages. ................ 

MOST POWERFUL BOMB (H-bomb) WIPES OUT ISLAND

MOST POWERFUL BOMB (H-bomb) WIPES OUT ISLAND

           In 1954 The US today exploded the most powerful bomb ever made - and tiny  Bikini Atoll in the south Pacific died. The explosion was the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT - hundreds of times more powerful than the weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The " Bravo" test of the world's first full-scale hydrogen bomb was a complete success. Cameras were there to record the awesome flash and the immense mushroom cloud - the symbol of our post - war era. But the bomb was apparently even more powerful than expected: the shock went right off the dials of the recording instruments. Though the atoll was cleared of islanders and the seas were patrolled, there are reports that Japanese fisherman on boats more than 70 miles from the blast have been seriously burnt by white ash that fell from the sky. In a smaller test blast two years ago , a complete island vanished.  This puts the US well ahead in the arms race, but it is only a matter of time before the Soviets test their own H-bomb.

BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE

BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE

            There was of course, no ''bang'', big or small, because there was no medium in which sound could exist. It was the beginning of time, space, matter, energy, everything - all inexplicably  created out of a ''singularity'' in which none of these existed before. In the 1960s, scientist detected the echo of the Big Bang in the form of background radiation from across the sky. impressively, they have produced a theoretical explanation of what must have happened in the very first second of the universe. When the universe was still tiny and incredibly hot, a sudden expansion occurred as matter moved from the minute quantum scale to that of a small but growing cosmos. Vast amounts of matter and antimatter were created, almost all of which mutually annihilated, leaving just a tiny portion matter. As the universe cooled from its enormous  levels of energy, subatomic particles assembled. It was not for another 380,000 years that temperatures fell sufficiently for electrons and protons to come together to form atoms.
           Vast cloud of hydrogen collected, cohering into ever - denser masses that compacted under the force of gravity until hydrogen atom at the center fused into helium, releasing energy that made them bum as stars. When some of these exploded into supernovae, heavier atoms were made, which form the raw materials for the universe as we know it.
           The theory of Big Bang was put forward in the 1950s, and it is still the unchallenged scientific explanation of the origins of the universe.

THE MONGOL CONQUEROR, WHO BUILT THE PYRAMID OF SKULL

THE MONGOL CONQUEROR, WHO BUILT THE PYRAMID OF SKULL

      On this day, 1405 Taimur the Lame, the Mongol conqueror who built the Pyramid of skull all over Central Asia, is dead - laid low by disease during an expedition to conquer China. He was 68. Timur (called Tamerlane in Europe) carved out a vast Empire by the sword, stretching from Mongolia to India, from Baghdad to Egypt - although he was crippled in his youth and often had to be carried into a battle on a litter. Claiming direct descent from Genghis Khan, he conquered hi native Transoxiana (Uzbekistan) 35 years ago, and made Samarkand his capital. Then he attacked all his neighbors in turn. His terms were simple: surrender or death - and hesitation meant mass be headings. A brilliant technician, Timur routed the Golden Horde, conquered the Turks, Anatolians, Mamelukes, Arbas and Persians, and sacked Delhi, Damascus Baghdad. He filled Samarkand with looted art treasures -  for Taimur loved art, and was a philosopher who impressed the great minds of his time, even though he was illiterate. his four sons now inherit the empire.

PYRAMID OF GIZA HOUSES

BUILDING OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

        Khufu's monument is the only one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient world to survive today. built in 2575 B.C.E., it house of the tomb of king Khufu, who for twenty-three years had been King of  Upper ad Lower Egypt. Few records survive from his reign, but inscriptions suggest the campaigned both in Nubia to the south and Canaan to the north. Despite this paucity of information,  his reputation has endured for millennia. Khufu is remembered as a cruel ruler, determined to achieve two great goals: to ensure the survival of the dynasty beyond his son Khephren; and to ensure hi own immortality, through the building of the great Pyramid, the largest monument of the Ancient World. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, writing some 2,000 years later, claimed Khufu forced his daughter to work as a prostitute to raise funds for his pyramid.
        The logistics of constructing such a massive object, 480 feet (146 m) and comprising some 2.3 million blocks of stone, in a relatively short period were astounding. Yet they were obviously overcome. The building simple design, unusual Egypt for not being covered with inscriptions or prayers, has fascinated observers for millennia. In recent years exploration of the structures narrow passageways using robot-mounted cameras has suggested that the Pyramid was aligned with the star Orion in order to allow the King's soul to travel to the stars.
         Beside the pyramid was a 141-foot-long (43 m) funeral boat in which the King was carried to his final resting place, and smaller tombs for members of his household - an unprecedented sight at the time.  

NELSON MANDELA WAS FREED TODAY AFTER 26 YEARS IN JAIL

NELSON MANDELA WAS FREED TODAY AFTER 26 YEARS IN JAIL

         On this day in 1990 Nelson Mandela was freed today after 26 years in jail for his opposition to South Africa's white racist regime. President E.W. de Klerk unconditionally revoked the 72 year old black leader's life sentence for treason and sabotage. Met at the prison by his wife Winnie and a crowd of supporters, Mandela set off to a jubilant crowd in front of Cape Town's city hall. His message was one of  ''peace, democracy and freedom'' - but he also endorsed the African National Congress's ''armed struggle''. In jail, he had refused offers of freedom in exchange of renouncing violence. Mandela, a lawyer, became an ANC leader in 1949, working under Noble peace  Prize-winner Albert Luthuli. The ANC, founded in 1912, was committed to peaceful resistance for 48 years, in spite of the brutal official response to black protest. But when white people massacred black protesters Sharpeville in 1960, Mandela started a sabotage campaign. In jail he become the symbol of freedom in the black struggle that has no forced de Klerk's government to renounce apartheid. 

DEATH OF SOCRATES, the famous Philosopher

SOCRATES IS FOUND GUILTY 

         The Athenians needed a scapegoat. Politically, the city's fortunes were at a low ebb in 399 B.C.E. after  a humiliating defeat, five years before, at the hands of its traditional enemy, Sparta. There was one man in Athens who had made himself a reputation for being awkward- the great Philosopher  Socrates. He liked to ask difficult and irritating questions; he mocked those in power and spent his time debating ideas with a band of devoted pupils. He was also known as an associate of some of Athens's discredited leaders. So Socrates was put on trial, charged with not believing in the gods and with corrupting the young men of Athens. Socrates 's famous pupil Plato left an account of his trial, in which he states that Socrates could have saved himself by paying a fine, but instead refuse to answer the charges against him, claiming he had done nothing wrong. He was found guilty and was sentenced to death by drinking poison hemlock, a toxic herb that paralyzes the nervous system. Still debating questions such as the immortality of the soul with the friends who had gathered around him, Socrates took the poison calmly from the executioner and drunk it in one swallow. Death followed quickly.
         Socrates was one of the most significant thinkers in the course of history and, with Plato and Aristotle, was largely responsible for founding Western philosophy. He was interested in the values that make people act as they do, yet left no writings of his own. Most of what we do know of his teachings comes from the Dialogues of Plato. 

THE PUMP,CIRCULATING THE BLOOD AROUND THE BODY

HARVEY'S DISCOVERY,the pump,circulating the blood around the body.

        We take the function of heart so much for granted that it is difficult to grasp the magnitude of William Harvey's discovery, published   in his work Exercitatio Anatomica Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animal ) , that it is a pump, circulating the blood around the body and back to the heart.
         Born in 1578 in Folkestone, Kent, Harvey had studied medicine at the University of Padua, reputed to have best Medical school in Europe (Italy was regarded as the center of anatomical study), Where he had sat at the feet of Hieronymus Fabricius (Girolamo Fabrici), the leading anatomist of the day. On returning to England in 1602, he married the  daughter of  a physician to the royal household, and it may have been through her family's influence that he obtained the post of physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London.
         Harvey's great passion was for anatomy. Determined to discover how blood passes through the heart, he dissected every kind of creature from earthworms and insect to animals, eventually arriving at a correct description of  the circulatory system. His book made him famous throughout Europe, although traditionalists, especially in France, ridiculed his findings, which contradicted the long established writings of Galen (c.129-216). A few years after Harvey's death in 1657, Marcello Malpighi was able to confirm with a microscope that he had correctly assumed the existence of capillaries, too small to be identified with the human eye, linking the arterial to the venous system. 

EARLY FORM OF DEMOCRACY

EARLY FORM OF DEMOCRACY

     The man who created the structure of the world's first and most influential democracy, Cleisthenes, spent a large part of his life fighting for the rights of his own prominent family against other  noble factions in Athens, which included several decades in enforced exile. Eventually he achieved power by siding with the common people and seeking to implement the spirit of the reforms of the lawgiver Solon, who had attempted to balance the interests of the different communities of the city.
      Clesthenes therefore abolished the traditional forms of political organization based on family and clan, replacing it with that of ten ''tribes'' based on villages or demes, and set up a legislative council (''bouble'') on which the member were chosen by lot from among the entire citizenry, with quotas of representatives of each deme among its 500 members, Thee was strict rules about who was eligible and how long they could serve on the council, and the law courts and the military command were organized in a similar manner. In doing so, Cleisthenes ensured that political participation was greatly widened and that it would be difficult for cliques to dominate the state and rule only in their own interests. The years of tyranny ere over.
        Although this is often seen as the beginning of direct democracy in which all citizens participated equally, Cleisthenes himself did not call this system democracy ( meaning ''rule by the people''), but rather isnomia, or equal rights for all. In many ways he left much of the traditional culture of Athens intact, but his reforms are seen as the begging of the golden age of Athens, during which democracy is grew and culture flourished.