Rudolf the Red was a famous early meteorologist, noted for his ability to prognosticate precipitation. Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear.
Edward Norton Lorenz, an MIT meteorologist with a penchant for computerized numerical analysis of weather, pioneered the basics of modern chaos theory in mathematics, including the concept of the strange attractor and the term “butterfly effect”.
Edward Norton was a name of a fictional character played by Art Carney in “The Honeymooners” and later the real name of an actor twice nominated for Academy Awards.
Ezra Norton was a well known figure in the early Australian newspaper industry. He and his rival, Sir Frank Packer, carried on a bitter feud for many years, resulting in a bout of fisticuffs in front of Society Sydney at the Easter racing carnival.
Sydney Biddle Barrows, a descendant of Pilgrim colonists, became known as the Mayflower Madam for her entrepreneurial role in a high-society New York prostitution organization in the 1980’s. She is now a marketing consultant.
“You’re Just In Love” is one of Irving Berlin’s best known counterpoint songs – where two melodies and lyrics are sung consecutively and then together. It was first performed in his musical Call Me Madam
The town of Berlin, Ontario, changed its name on the outbreak of the Great War to Kitchener, after Lord Kitchener, the British Minister of War.
Lord Kitchener’s full title was Earl Kitchener of Khartoum and of Broome in the County of Kent. The reference to Khartoum was in honour of his victory at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 which recaptured the city.
Omdurman, then the capital of Sudan, was connected by bridge across the White Nile to the present capital of Khartoum in 1926.
The Latin words pontem facere, meaning ‘to make a bridge’, gave rise to the title Pontifex. The Pontifex Maximus was the chief of the College of Priests in Ancient Rome. The title has passed into English as ‘pontiff’, often used for the Pope, and as ‘pontifical’, used to describe liturgical rites presided over by bishops.
The Yantra is a geometrical design representing the cosmos used in Hindu liturgical rites and meditation, especially in Tantrism.
The Yantra River in Bulgaria has a length of 285 km. It flows into the Danube.
The** Danube** River touches or passes through ten countries, more than any other river. The Danube begins in Germany and encounters Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine. It eventually flows into the Black Sea.
An der schönen blauen Donau (known in English as ‘The Blue Danube’) is a waltz composed by Johann Strauss II. It is one of the most popular pieces of classical music ever written. It has come to be particularly associated with Vienna, and is broadcast on Austrian radio and television stations each year on New Year’s Eve.
The Blue Danube is the music played in the score of Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey as the Pan Am Clipper spaceplane gracefully, almost dancingly, docks with the hub of the rotating space station.
The score for 2001: a Space Odyssey also contains works by György Ligeti, including his extremely difficult micropolyphonic pieces Lux Aeterna and the Kyrie from his Requiem.
The Iliad and The Odyssey, by Homer, are the oldest extant works of western literature, dating from the 8th Century BC.
Johnny Hart, the cartoonist who drew B.C. and The Wizard of Id, was a radical religious conservative who, in an interview with The Washington Post stated that “Jews and Muslims who don’t accept Jesus will burn in Hell” and that “homosexuality is the handiwork of Satan.”
The word Satan is derived from the Hebrew, and means ‘adversary’.
In Matthew’s gospel Jesus calls the apostle Peter ‘Satan’ when Peter tries to persuade Him from carrying through his redemptive mission.
While there are four canonical gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, there are many more non-canonical gospels. One of these is the Gospel of Peter, discovered in a burial tomb with an Egyptian monk.