Like most Romans, the Emperor Augustus was extremely superstitious. He always put on his right shoe first because he believed that left was unlucky. Strangely, the Latin word for ‘left’ was ‘sinister’, and ‘right’ was ‘dexter’, from which we get words like dexterity which describes a good trait.
Official Left-Handers Day is coming up, so mark those calendars: August 13th.
At the federal level, Canada has two official languages: French and English. New Brunswick gives official language status to both those languages as well. Manitoba and Quebec are constitutionally required to give both languages equal status in certain areas, but do not classify both of them as official languages.
Mexico has no official federal language, although it recognizes 62 indigenous languages that are official in their native regions. The state of Yucatan recognizes Yucatec Maya as an official language, for instance, and other states recognize as many as 15 indigenous languages each.
The Chicxulub crater is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It was formed by a large asteroid or comet about 10 to 15 kilometres (6.2 to 9.3 miles) in diameter. The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary slightly less than 66 million years ago,and a widely accepted theory is that worldwide climate disruption from the event was the cause of a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs.
Copper Canyon (Barrancas del Cobre), in northern Mexico, is a series of six distinct massive canyons in the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains.
gImages: https://goo.gl/SuHof7
Comment: Another place on my list!
Copper is believed to be the oldest element known to the ancients. It is estimated that it was first isolated and used in 9000 BCE.
Nickel was discovered by copper miners. In medieval Germany, a red mineral was found in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) that resembled copper ore. However, when miners were unable to extract any copper from it, they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick), for besetting the copper. They called this ore *Kupfernickel *from the German Kupfer for copper. This ore is now known to be nickeline (aka niccolite), a nickel arsenide. In 1751, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt tried to extract copper from kupfernickel at a cobalt mine in the Swedish village of Los, and instead produced a white metal that he named after the spirit that had given its name to the mineral, nickel.
My name is Michael, I’ve got a nickel, I’ve got a nickel shiny and new is a lyric line in the 1972 song by Clint Holmes, Playground in My Mind. Released in 1972, the song reached the Billboard Hot 100 chart on 24 March 1973 when it rose to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and stayed there for 23 weeks. The song was granted gold disc status by the R.I.A.A. on 03 July 1973. The single went one better in Canada, topping the RPM 100 national singles charts there for three consecutive weeks in the same year (23 June to 07 July).
In the 19th century, developmental psychologists such as Friedrich Fröbel proposed playgrounds as a developmental aid, or to imbue children with a sense of fair play and good manners. However, it was only in the early 20th century, as the street lost its role as the default public space and became reserved for use by motor cars, that momentum built to remove children from the new dangers and confine them to segregated areas to play.
The statement “God is dead”, occurring in several of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche‘s (1844-1900) works, notably in The Gay Science, is one of his best-known remarks.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III, was originally known as Duke Friedrich Ludwig of Brunswick-Lüneburg, until his grandfather became King George I of Great Britain.
A cwm (or, “koom”) is a cirque, especially one in the mountains of Wales. A cirque is a half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion. In the Himalayas, the Western Cwm is a broad, flat, gently undulating glacial valley basin terminating at the foot of the Lhotse Face of Mount Everest.
Mount Everest was named for Sir George Everest, the British surveyor general of India from 1830 to 1843. New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to summit Mount Everest in 1953. According to Britannica, as of 2017 more than 7,600 people have reached the top of the mountain, and nearly 300 have perished in the attempt.
Sir George Everest pronounced his name with a long E — like EAVE-rest.
In the United Kingdom, Curious George was originally called “Zozo” in 1941, apparently to avoid using the name of the then King George VI for a monkey.
Hans and Margret Rey created Curious George Goes to the Hospital at the request of officials at Boston Children’s Hospital, who wanted a book to prepare children for a hospital stay. After it was published, many parents wrote to the Reys to tell them how effective the book was in reducing their child’s fear of hospitals.
Hospital Station is a 1962 science fiction book by author James White and is the first volume in the Sector General series. The stories are set in a multi-species space hospital that both treats and is inhabited by doctors from many planets. The series spans twelve books and a number of separate short stories.
Not in Play: rant: That someone hasn’t made a movie or TV series of this is a crime /rant
Barrow Brain and Spine / Barrow Neurological Institute, at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix AZ, is the first customer of startup medical device company Zap Surgical Systems in San Carlos CA. Zap Surgical manufactures a radiosurgery device to treat tumors in the brain, head and neck.
Zap Surgical FDA clearance: 510(k) Premarket Notification
What is now the state of Arizona was initially administered as part of the Territory of New Mexico until the southern half of that region seceded from the Union to form the Territory of Arizona.