The sword developed from the dagger when the construction of longer blades became possible, from the late 3rd millennium BC in the Middle East, first in arsenic copper, then in tin-bronze.
Blades longer than 60 cm (24 in) were rare and not practical until the late Bronze Age because the tensile strength of bronze is relatively low, and consequently longer blades would bend easily. The development of the sword out of the dagger was gradual; the first weapons that can be classified as swords without any ambiguity are those found in Minoan Crete, dated to about 1700 BC, reaching a total length of more than 100 cm. These are the “type A” swords of the Aegean Bronze Age.
The terms “broadsword” and “backsword” were not used in the 17th and 18th centuries and are of Victorian invention, referring to double-edged and single-edged basket-hilted swords respectively. Both terms were introduced to distinguish these cut and thrust swords from the narrower rapier and smallsword.
*Argyroxiphium *is a small genus of plants in the sunflower family, Asteraceae. Its members are known by the common names of silversword or greensword due to their long, narrow leaves and the silvery hairs on some species. It belongs to a larger radiation of over 50 species, including the physically different genera Dubautia and Wilkesia. This grouping is often referred to as the silversword alliance. These perennials are endemic to Hawaiʻi, occurring only on the islands of Maui and Hawaiʻi in an extremely localized distribution. They are primarily found above 1,500 m (4,900 ft) in elevation in alpine deserts or bogs, indicating an adaptation to low-nutrient soils. The Kaʻū or Mauna Loa Silversword (A. kauense) is the most adaptable: it can be found in rocky lava flows, bogs, and open forest.
The Malayo-Polynesian languages are known for strings of vowels pronounced as separate syllables. For example, in Hawaiian, “kaʻaʻawa” means “the wrasse (fish)”. From the Hawaiian spelling Kaʻaʻawa it is seen that each a is pronounced separately and distinctly, set apart by the two ʻokinas which represent glottal stops. In Tagalog, “Maaari”, meaning “it could happen” is pronounced ma-a-ari.
The first written record of Tagalog is the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, which dates to 900 CE and exhibits fragments of the language along with Sanskrit, Malay, Javanese, and Old Tagalog. The first known complete book to be written in Tagalog is the Doctrina Christiana (Christian Doctrine), printed in 1593. The Doctrina was written in Spanish and two transcriptions of Tagalog; one in the ancient, then-current Baybayin script and the other in an early Spanish attempt at a Latin orthography for the language.
The word Tagalog is derived from taga-ilog (“river dweller”), composed of tagá (“native of” or “from”) and ílog (“river”). Linguists such as Dr. David Zorc and Dr. Robert Blust speculate that the Tagalogs and other Central Philippine ethno-linguistic groups had originated in Northeastern Mindanao or the Eastern Visayas.
The term Visayas, used for the major island group of the Central Philippines, is possibly derived from the name of the 7th-century Hindu-Buddhist Srivijaya Empire in Sumatra. In the 12th century, settlers from the collapsing empire led by Datu Putih and his retinue, settled in the island of Panay and its surrounding islands.
The Giant Rat of Sumatra is a fictional giant rat, first mentioned by Arthur Conan Doyle in “The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire”. As part of the tale, the protagonist, Sherlock Holmes, declares that there is a “story” connected with this rat, presumably a detective case he has handled. The name of the rat and its implied unpublished history were later used in works by many other writers. That may include the script of The Princess Bride and its reference to “rodents of unusual size”.
The largest known rodent, the capybara of South America, is 4 feet long and can weigh 100 lbs or more. It is sometimes raised for its meat, as is its closest cousin, the guinea pig.
In 1494, Portugal and Spain, the two great maritime European powers of that time, on the expectation of new lands being discovered in the west, signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which they agreed, with the support of the Pope, that all the land outside Europe should be an exclusive duopoly between the two countries.
The treaty established an imaginary line along a north-south meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, roughly 46° 37’ W. In terms of the treaty, all land to the west of the line (known to comprise most of the South American soil) would belong to Spain, and all land to the east, to Portugal. As accurate measurements of longitude were impossible at that time, the line was not strictly enforced, resulting in a Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian.
The Spanish treasure fleet from Mexico in 1628 was captured by the Dutch Admiral Piet Hein, who brought the treasure back to the Netherlands, where it helped finance the Dutch rebellion against the Spanish Empire, also known as the Eighty Years War.
This was the only time a a large part of a Spanish “silver fleet” from the Americas was captured, these fleets being normally very well-protected.
Piet Hein’s descendant, physicist/mathematician Piet Hein, devised subtle anti-Nazi graffiti, called *gruks *(or Grooks). His later invention of the superellipse became central to Scandinavian architecture, and devised the games of Hex, Tangloids, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, Pyramystery, and the Soma cube.
An ellipse is the locus of points in a plane, the sum of whose distance from two fixed points, called foci, is constant. A superellipse is the locus of points (x, y) in a plane satisfying:
(abs(x/a))^n + (abs(y/b))^n = 1.
The derivative of an ellipse is a continuous function, while the derivative of a superellipse will often have points of discontinuity.
An ellipsoid is a closed quadric surface that is a three-dimensional analogue of an ellipse. The standard equation of an ellipsoid centered at the origin of a Cartesian coordinate system and aligned with the axes is
(x^2/a^2) + (y^2/b^2) + (z^2/c^2) = 1.
The points (a,0,0), (0,b,0) and (0,0,c) lie on the surface and the line segments from the origin to these points are called the semi-principal axes of length a, b, c. They correspond to the semi-major axis and semi-minor axis of the appropriate ellipses.
Cartesian means of or relating to the French philosopher René Descarte, It is taken from his Latinized name Cartesius. It is used for both Science and Philosophy, both of which Descarte excelled in.
Actor Rene Auberjonois, best known for playing Clayton Endicott II on Benson, Paul Lewiston on Boston Legal, and Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, portrayed Father Francis Mulcahy in the original movie of MAS*H…
A shoal of fish is a loosely organized group where each fish swims and forages independently but is attracted to other members of the group and adjusts its behavior, such as swimming speed, so that it remains close to the other members of the group. Schools of fish are much more tightly organized, synchronizing their swimming so that all fish move at the same speed and in the same direction.
In Hans Christian Andersen’s story “The Little Mermaid”, the title character has no name (unlike Disney’s Ariel); neither does she have a pet fish like Disney’s Flounder.
Andersen’s ending is not a romantically happy one: the Prince marries a human girl; the mermaid thinks about killing him with a knife that her sisters give her, but when she decides to let him live instead, she loses her magical human form and becomes a “daughter of the air”. She is told by another Daughter of the Air: “After we have striven for three hundred years to do all the good in our power, we receive an immortal soul and take part in the happiness of mankind.”
Hans Christian Andersen, looking back on his childhood school years, recalled that they were the most bitter in his life. At one school, he lived with his schoolmaster who beat him in order to “improve his character,” or so he was told. The school faculty discouraged him from writing, and he sunk into depression.
One of his tales, The Emperor’s New Clothes, is referred to in today’s business world when management’s direction and strategy seem folly to the masses. Nobody wants to be the one to tell the emperor that he has no clothes on.