Construction for the Glenn Highway began at a camp on the Richardson Highway in a valley of the Copper River named Glennallen after two U.S. Army explorers of the late 19th century: Capt. Edwin Glenn and Lt. Henry T. Allen. The highway was completed in 1945. The town of Glennallen developed as a small community around the site of the camp. It became a commercial center for motor traffic along the Glenn and Richardson highways. It is one of the few communities in the region that was not built on the site of a Native village.
Edwin, King of Northumbria, reigned from 616 to 632. He was one of the most powerful English rulers of his time, recognized as overlord by all the kings in England except the King of Kent.
Edwin was the first Christian King of Northumbria. He was killed in battle in 632 against a coalition of King Cadwallon of Gwynedd and King Penda of Mercia. After his death he was venerated as a saint.
One of the later rulers of Northumbria was Halfdan Ragnarsson, who ruled from 876–877. He was a Viking leader of the Great Heathen Army who wanted revenge against Northumbria for the death of his father. Halfdan was killed in Ireland in 877 while trying to gain control over the Kingdom of Dublin.
Graffiti left by Vikings in Runic script has been found in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. For centuries it was believed that the runic inscriptions were just cracks on the marble in the southern gallery of Hagia Sophia. However, in 1964, the “cracks” were decoded as meaning “Halvdan carved these runes.”
They are believed to date to the 9th century AD, long before the Varangian Guard – an elite Viking unit of the Byzantine Army – was first formed under Emperor Basil II in 988 AD.
The decoding of Mayan script has been a very long involved process, obstructed by 16th-century efforts to eradicate the script and thereby destroy “pagan” religions in favor of Christianity. Also contributing to decoding delay was Western rejection of the work of Yuri Knorozov, whose Soviet government praised his approach as “Marxist-Leninist.” The Mayans’ written numerals used place-value with a zero and predated the Hindu “digits of Aryabhatta,” but employed base-20 rather than base-10.
Christianity is the largest religious group in the world.
— 2.4B: Christianity
— 1.8B: Islam
— 1.15B: Hinduism
— 521M: Buddhism
— 394M: Chinese Traditional
— 300M: ethnic religions
— 100M: African traditional religions
— 30M: Sikhism
— 15M: Spiritism
— 14.4M: Judaism
Cat Stevens, a British singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, changed his name to Yusuf Islam in 1977 after converting to Islam.
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) was born in London on July 21, 1948. His birth name was Steven Demetre Georgiou. Although his father was Greek Orthodox and his mother was a Baptist, he received his early education at St Joseph Roman Catholic Primary School.
Cat Stevens converted to Islam. There are approximately 2.7 million conversions to Christianity every year, according to the World Christian Encyclopedia.
Christian converts from Islam include:
Rotimi Adebari – first Black mayor in Ireland
Parveen Babi – former Indian actress
Chamillionaire (born Hakeem Seriki) – American rapper
Hansen Clarke – U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 13th congressional district
Donald Fareed – Iranian televangelist and minister
Muhsin Muhammad – current NFL American football player for the Carolina Panthers, raised in a Muslim household
Julia Volkova – Russian singer and actress
Christian converts from Judaism include:
Bo Belinsky – American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball
Max Born – German physicist and mathematician, he won the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physics
Gerty Cori – Czech-American biochemist who became the third woman—and first American woman—to win a Nobel Prize in science, and the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
Bob Dylan – popular musician
Fritz Haber – German chemist and Nobel laureate in Chemistry
Shia LaBeouf – Hollywood actor who decided to leave Judaism and become a Christian while playing a Christian character in the movie Fury (2014)
Gustav Mahler – composer
While worshiping at statues is haram in Islam, the Buddhist religion is noted for its many statues of the Buddha. Several of the most famous Buddha statues are in Thailand. The ancient Ramkhamhaeng Stele mentioned a large gold statue in the center of the ancient capital Sukhothai, but no such statue was known.
While doing renovations in 1955, a minor temple in Bangkok needed to move its large plaster statue of Buddha. The statue was much heavier than expected, fell, and was damaged during the movement. When the broken plaster was removed, the statue was found to be made of solid gold. It is now thought to be the long-forgotten Sukhothai statue mentioned in the Ramkhamhaeng Stele.
Wikipedia claims $250 million as the intrinsic worth of the statue’s gold, but the gold is an alloy and its intrinsic worth is only about $110 million at today’s gold price.
The “Great Buddha” of Kamakura is a monumental outdoor bronze statue of Amida Buddha, and one of the most famous icons of Japan. At this popular tourist attraction, visitors can look at a giant straw slipper made to the size of the Buddha’s foot (over a yard long), buy cakes in the shape of the Buddha filled with custard cream or sweet red bean paste, or enter inside the 44 feet / 13 meter statue. Because the bronze conducts and traps heat, during the summer the temperature inside the statue can reach over 100ºF / 40°C.
[Japan is unexpectedly hot during the summer! Being inside the Buddha was like being in a giant inverted cooking pot. Thank goodness for the ubiquitous vending machines selling sports drinks, like Aquarius and Pocari Sweat, which despite its odd name is citrusy and mild, much better than Gatorade]
In addition to the Daibutsu, there are at least five or six other notable temples in Kamakura, and within walking distance of the Kita-Kamakura stop on the JR rail line. One of the temples is reputed to contain one of Buddha’s teeth.
Hyperdontia is a medical condition, in which the subject has additional teeth beyond the normal number. These extra teeth are referred to as supernumerary teeth.
Rock singer Freddie Mercury, of the band Queen, had four supernumerary incisors, which may have been a factor in his unusual facial appearance, and overbite.
Freddie Mercury spent most of his childhood in India and began taking piano lessons at the age of seven. Then, in 1954, at the age of eight, Mercury was sent to study at St. Peter’s School, a British-style boarding school for boys, in Panchgani near Bombay (now Mumbai). When he was 12, he formed a school band, The Hectics, and covered rock and roll artists such as Cliff Richard and Little Richard. It has been said that one of his formative musical influences at the time was Bollywood singer Lata Mangeshkar, but one of Mercury’s former bandmates from the Hectics has said that “that is a lot of rubbish. The only music he listened to, and played, was Western pop music.”
A friend from the time recalls that Freddie Mercury had “an uncanny ability to listen to the radio and replay what he heard on piano.”
One of the roles of Mercury / Hermes was to act as a psychopomps, namely to lead the souls of the recently deceased to the afterlife.
Only two spacecraft have ever visited the planet Mercury. It is difficult to reach the planet due to its proximity to the Sun and it’s gravitation field. Mariner 10 visited during 1974-75, flying by Mercury three times and mapping half its surface. The MESSENGER probe was launched in 2004 to explore Mercury’s high density, its geological history, the nature of its magnetic field and more and operated from 2011 to 2015. A third mission, BepiColombo, was launched in October 2018 and is expected to arrive in Mercury orbit in December 2021.
Spacecraft first landed on, or impacted on, the following planets / moons / bodies, in chronological order: the Moon in 1959, Venus in 1966, Mars in 1971, Jupiter in 1995, Eros (asteroid) in 2001, Titan in 2005, Itokawa (asteroid) in 2005, Comet 9P/Tempel 1 in 2005, Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko in 2014, Mercury in 2015, Saturn in 2017, and Ryugu (asteroid) in 2018.
Robert McCall, who did conceptual art for Arthur Kubrick’s 1968 sf epic 2001: A Space Odyssey, also painted the image used on the U.S. Postal Service’s 1978 stamp honoring NASA’s Viking landings on Mars: 1978 15c Viking Missions to Mars for sale at Mystic Stamp Company
Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system, has 53 known moons and is believed to have 9 more. A ‘day’ on Saturn is between 10 and 11 Earth hours, and it takes over 29 Earth years for Saturn to completely orbit the sun.
ETA: Saturn appeared on a Forever US postal stamp in 2016.
Automobile manufacturer Saturn Corporation existed from 1985 to 2010 as a subsidiary of General Motors. When Saturn was originally conceived, GM planned to sell 500,000 Saturns a year. The goal was never reached. 1994 was their best year and they sold 286,003 cars.