164 BC During Maccabbean revolt Judas Maccabaeus recaptures Jersusalem and rededicates the Second Temple, commemorated since as Jewish festival Hanukkah In the narrative of I Maccabees, after Antiochus IV issued his decrees forbidding Jewish religious practice, a rural Jewish priest from Modiin, Mattathias the Hasmonean, sparked the revolt against the Seleucid Empire by refusing to worship the Greek gods. Mattathias killed a Hellenistic Jew who had stepped forward to take Mattathias's place in sacrificing to an idol. Afterwards, he and his five sons fled to the wilderness of Judah. After Mattathias's death about one year later in 166 BC, his son Judah Maccabee led an army of Jewish dissidents to victory over the Seleucid dynasty in guerrilla warfare, which at first was directed against Hellenized Jews, of whom there were many.
The Maccabees destroyed pagan altars in the villages, circumcised boys and forced Hellenized Jews into outlawry. Judah's nickname "Maccabbeus," now used in popular culture to describe the Jewish partisans as a whole, is taken from the Hebrew word for "hammer". The revolt itself involved many battles, in which the light, quick and mobile Maccabean forces gained notoriety among the slow and bulky Seleucid army, and also for their use of guerrilla tactics. After the victory, the Maccabees entered Jerusalem in triumph and ritually cleansed the Temple, reestablishing traditional Jewish worship there and installing Jonathan Apphus, Judah's youngest brother, as high priest. A large Seleucid army was sent to quash the revolt, but returned to Syria on the death of Antiochus IV. Beforehand, Judas Maccabbeus made an agreement with Rome
Judah from Die Bibel in Bildern credit: wikipedia
1620 Mayflower Compact signed by Pilgrims at Cape Cod, The Mayflower was an English ship that transported the first English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims, from Plymouth, England, to the New World in 1620. There were 102 passengers, and the crew is estimated to have been about 30, but the exact number is unknown. The ship has become a cultural icon in the history of the United States. The Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact prior to leaving the ship and establishing Plymouth Colony, a document which established a rudimentary form of democracy with each member contributing to the welfare of the community. There was a second ship named Mayflower, which made the London to Plymouth, Massachusetts, voyage several times.
Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882) credit: wikipedia
1791 Colonel Napoléon Bonaparte is promoted to 1st Lieutenant and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic. The military career of Napoleon Bonaparte spanned over 20 years. As emperor, he led the French Armies in the Napoleonic Wars. He is widely regarded as a military genius and one of the finest commanders in world history. He fought 60 battles, losing only eight, mostly at the end.[1] The great French dominion collapsed rapidly after the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon was defeated in 1814; he returned and was finally defeated in 1815 at Waterloo. He spent his remaining days in British custody on the remote island of St. Helena
1801 Antoine-Jean Gros - Bonaparte on the Bridge at Arcole credit: wikipedia
1787 Andrew Jackson admitted to the bar 7th President of the United States March 4, 1829 – March 4, 1837Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party.[1] He was born somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means.
The Battle of New Orleans. General Andrew Jackson stands on the parapet of his makeshift defenses as his troops repulse attacking Highlanders, by painter Edward Percy Moran in 1910. Credit: wikipedia
1791 Colonel Napoléon Bonaparte is promoted to 1st Lieutenant and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic.
1818 Russia's Tsar Alexander I petitions for a Jewish state in Palestine Alexander I (Russian: Александр Павлович, Aleksandr Pavlovich; 23 December [O.S. 12 December] 1777 – 1 December [O.S. 19 November 1825 reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1801 and 1825. He was the son of Paul I and Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg. Alexander was the first Russian King of partitioned Poland, reigning from 1815 to 1825, as well as the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland, reigning from 1809 to 1825. He was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later Emperor Paul I, and succeeded to the throne after his father was murdered. He ruled Russia during the chaotic period of the Napoleonic Wars. As prince and during the early years of his reign, Alexander often used liberal rhetoric, but continued Russia's absolutist policies in practice. In the first years of his reign, he initiated some minor social reforms and (in 1803–04) major, liberal educational reforms, such as building more universities. Alexander appointed Mikhail Speransky, the son of a village priest, as one of his closest advisors. The Collegia was abolished and replaced by the State Council, which was created to improve legislation. Plans were also made to set up a parliament and sign a constitution.
Tsar Alexander I. from russia, painted by en:George Dawe in 1824 (part, version with less environment of low interest at the topside. credit: wikipedia
1906 China prohibits the opium trade The history of opium in China began with the use of opium for medicinal purposes during the 7th century. In the 17th century the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking spread from Southeast Asia, creating a far greater demand. Imports of opium into China stood at 200 chests annually in 1729, when the first anti-opium edict was promulgated. By the time Chinese authorities reissued the prohibition in starker terms in 1799, the figure had leaped; 4,500 chests were imported in the year 1800. The decade of the 1830s witnessed a rapid rise in opium trade, And by 1838, just before the First Opium War, it had climbed to 40,000 chests. The rise continued on after the Treaty of Nanking (1842) that concluded the war. By 1858 annual imports had risen to 70,000 chests (4,480 long tons (4,550 t)), approximately equivalent to global production of opium for the decade surrounding the year 2000
Opium smokers c1880 by Lai Afong. credit: wikipedia
1970 General Hafez al-Assad becomes Prime Minister of Syria following military coup Hafez al-Assad 6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was a Syrian politician who served as President of Syria from 1971 to 2000. He was also Prime Minister from 1970 to 1971, as well as Regional Secretary of the Regional Command of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and Secretary General of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Assad participated in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état which brought the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power, and the new leadership appointed him Commander of the Syrian Air Force. In 1966, Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Ba'ath Party and brought a radical military faction headed by Salah Jadid to power. Assad was appointed defense minister by the new government. Four years later, Assad initiated a third coup which ousted Jadid, and appointed himself as the undisputed leader of Syria.
Assad's first inauguration as President in the People's Council, March 1971 credit: wikipedia
Istanbul - Museo archeologico - Testa di statua dell'imperatore romano Diocleziano (284-305 d.C.) credit wikipedia
Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus
Diocletian born Diocles (22 December 244 – 3 December 311) was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in Dalmatia, Diocletian rose through the ranks of the military to become Roman cavalry commander to the Emperor Carus. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on campaign in Persia, Diocletian was proclaimed emperor. The title was also claimed by Carus' surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus.
Diocletian's reign stabilized the empire and marks the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian as Augustus, co-emperor, in 286. Diocletian reigned in the Eastern Empire, and Maximian reigned in the Western Empire. Diocletian delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, junior co-emperors, under himself and Maximian respectively. Under this 'tetrarchy', or "rule of four", each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. Diocletian secured the empire's borders and purged it of all threats to his power. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298.
A 1581 reprint of the Digestorum from Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis (527–534). The Corpus drew on the codices of Gregorius and Hermogenian, drafted and published under Diocletian's reign. credit wikipedia
Galerius, aided by Diocletian, campaigned successfully against Sassanid Persia, the empire's traditional enemy. In 299 he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon. Diocletian led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favourable peace.
Why Famous: Roman emperor from 284 to 305. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299. He styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire's masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies and architecture. He is perhaps best remembered for "The Diocletianic Persecution" (303–11), the empire's largest and bloodiest official persecution of Christianity.
Died: December 3, 311
762 Bögü, Khan of the Uyghurs, conquers Lo-Yang, capital of the Chinese Empire
In 657 the Western Turkic Khaganate was defeated by the Tang dynasty, after which the Uyghurs defected to the Tang. Prior to this the Uyghurs had already shown an inclination towards alliances with the Tang when they fought with them against the Tibetans and Turks in 627
In 742, the Uyghurs, Karluks, and Basmyls rebelled against the Second Turkic Khaganate
Basmyls captured the Turk capital of Otukan and killed the reigning Özmiş Khagan. Later that year a Uyghur-Karluk alliance formed against the Basmyls and defeated them. Their khagan was killed and the Basmyls ceased to exist as a people. Hostilities between the Uyghurs and Karluks then forced the Karluks to migrate west into Zhetysu and conflict with the Turgesh, whom they defeated and conquered in 766.
The Uyghur Khaganate at its greatest extent credit wikipedia
The Uyghur leader was from the Yaghlakar clan (Old Turkic language: Old Turkic letter R1.svgOld Turkic letter Q.svgOld Turkic letter L1.svgOld Turkic letter G1.svgOld Turkic letter Y1.svg, Jaγlaqar, Chinese: 藥羅葛; pinyin: Yàoluógé), one of the nine original Uyghur tribes that made up the Uyghur Khaganate, along with 胡咄葛 Huduoge, 啒罗勿 Guluowu, 貊歌息讫 Mogexiqi, 阿勿嘀 A-Wudi, 葛萨 Gesa, 斛嗢素 Huwasu, 藥勿葛 Yaowuge, Xiyawu 奚牙勿. Aside from the Uyghurs were six other Tiele tribes: Pugu (仆骨); Hun (浑); Bayegu (拔野古) (Bayïrku); Tongluo (同罗) (Tongra); Sijie (思结); & Qibi (契苾) (Kibir). The Uyghur khagan's personal name was Qullığ Boyla or Guli Peiluo (Chinese: 骨力裴羅). He took the title Qutlugh Bilge Köl Kaghan "Glorious, wise, mighty kaghan", claiming to be the supreme ruler of all the tribes. He built his capital at Ordu-Baliq. According to Chinese sources, the territory of the Uyghur Empire then reached "on its eastern extremity, the territory of Shiwei, on the west the Altai Mountains, on the south it controlled the Gobi Desert, so it covered the entire territory of the ancient Xiongnu
1695 Zumbi last leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil and ex-slave, is executed
Zumbi (1655 – November 20, 1695), also known as Zumbi dos Palmares (Portuguese pronunciation: [zũˈbi dus pɐwˈmaɾis]), was an important warrior figure in Brazilian history, being one of the pioneers of resistance to slavery.
Busto de Zumbi dos Palmares em Brasília. credit wikipedia
He was also the last of the kings of the Quilombo dos Palmares, a settlement of Afro-Brazilian people who had liberated themselves from enslavement, in the present-day state of Alagoas, Brazil. Zumbi today is revered in Afro-Brazilian culture as a powerful symbol of anti-slave and anti-colonial resistance
1815 2nd Treaty of Paris: France & her allies agree France pay indemnities after Battle of Waterloo, ending Napoleonic Wars
A map of the Eastern boundary of France to illustrate The Second Peace of Paris 20th Nov. 1815 credit wikipedia
Treaty of Paris of 1815,[1] was signed on 20 November 1815 following the defeat and second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. In February, Napoleon had escaped from his exile on Elba; he entered Paris on 20 March, beginning the Hundred Days of his restored rule. Four days after France's defeat in the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was persuaded to abdicate again, on 22 June. King Louis XVIII, who had fled the country when Napoleon arrived in Paris, took the throne for a second time on 8 July.
What Happened On This Day – 19 November November 19 is the 323rd day of the year (324th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 42 days remaining until the end of the year.
The second spacecraft to land on the Moon, Apollo 12 was the 6th manned flight of NASA’s Apollo program. Crew members Charles Conrad Jr. and Alan L. Bean became the 3rd and 4th humans to step on the surface of the Moon. The first 2 were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
The Brazilian footballer, often considered to be the greatest athlete of the 20th century, made his 1,000th professional goal against Vasco da Gama at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
Pele, considered one of the greatest soccer players ever to take the field, was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Tres Coracos, Brazil, in 1940. He acquired the nickname Pele during his childhood though the name has no meaning in his native Portuguese. When he was a teenager, he played for a minor league soccer club in Bauru in Sao Paulo state and in 1956 joined the major league Santos Football Club in the city of Sao Paulo, playing inside left forward. Two years later, he led the Brazilian national team to victory in the World Cup. Pele, who was only 17 years old, scored two goals to defeat Sweden in the final.Pele was blessed with speed, balance, control, power, and an uncanny ability to anticipate the movements of his opponents and teammates
Map of the Holocaust in occupied Poland during World War II. The outline shows the borders of the Second Polish Republic at the time of the Nazi-German-and-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 with demarcation line between the two invading armies marked in red. Internal boundaries show the administrative divisions of occupied territories imposed by Nazi Germany when the Final Solution was set in motion during and after Operation Barbarossa of 1941. credit wikipedia
The concentration camp in occupied Poland was set up in 1941. In November 1943, in anticipation of the advancement of Soviet troops, the Nazis tried to evacuate the camp and used the inmates to remove traces of executions and mass killings in the past. On this day, the inmates staged an uprising and attempted to escape. Most escapees, however, were recaptured and killed.
The treaty, officially known as, Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty and The United States of America, was signed between representatives of the United States and Britain. It called for the British to surrender northwestern posts to the U.S. and for them to consider the United States as a most favored nation for trade between the two countries.
The Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation, Between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America, commonly known as the Jay Treaty, and also as Jay's Treaty, was a 1795 treaty between the United States and Great Britain that averted war, resolved issues remaining since the Treaty of Paris of 1783 (which ended the American Revolutionary War), and facilitated ten years of peaceful trade between the United States and Britain in the midst of the French Revolutionary Wars, which began in 1792. The Treaty was designed by Alexander Hamilton and supported by President George Washington. It angered France and bitterly divided Americans.
Sadat was the first Arab head of state to visit Israel and address the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. His visit came under severe criticism both in Israel and in the Arab world. Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978 for their attempts to bring a resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Mohamed Anwar el-Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. Sadat was a senior member of the Free Officers who overthrew King Farouk in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and a close confidant of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, under whom he served as Vice President twice and whom he succeeded as President in 1970.
The original uploader was Prince UAE at Arabic Wikipedia. - Transferred from ar.wikipedia to Commons.
Tommy George Thompson (born November 19, 1941) is an American Republican politician who was a state legislator in Wisconsin, and 42nd Governor of Wisconsin from 1987 to 2001, and is the longest serving governor in the state's history. During his tenure as governor he was chair of Amtrak, the nation's passenger rail service. He served as the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001–05, appointed by George W. Bush.After his time in the Bush Administration, Thompson was a partner with the law-firm Akin Gump and Chairman of Deloitte's global healthcare practice and has served on the board of 22 other organizations
19th United States Secretary of Health and Human Services credit wikipedia
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindustani: (About this soundlisten); née Nehru; November 19, 1917 – October 31, 1984), was an Indian politician, stateswoman and a central figure of the Indian National Congress. She was the first and, to date, the only female Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India. Despite her surname Gandhi, she is not related to the family of Mahatma Gandhi; Gandhi is a common surname in Gujarat. She served as Prime Minister from January 1966 to March 1977 and again from January 1980 until her assassination in October 1984, making her the second longest-serving Indian Prime Minister after her father.
In office
January 14, 1980 – October 31, 1984 credit wikipedia
American politician, 20th President of the United States
James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was an American soldier and politician who served as the 20th President of the United States in 1881. He was the second president to be assassinated, killed after only about 6 months in office. Garfield had served nine terms in the House of Representatives, and had been elected to the Senate before his candidacy for the White House, though he declined the Senate seat once he was elected president. He is the only sitting House member to be elected president
Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649)[a] was the monarch over the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland on the death of his elder brother, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1612. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later, he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France instead.
Thomas Harper Ince (November 16, 1880 – November 19, 1924) was an American silent film producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. Ince was known as the "Father of the Western" and was responsible for making over 800 films. He revolutionized the motion picture industry by creating the first major Hollywood studio facility and invented movie production by introducing the "assembly line" system of filmmaking. He was the first mogul to build his own film studio dubbed "Inceville" in Palisades Highlands. Ince was also instrumental in developing the role of the producer in motion pictures. Two of his films, The Italian (1915), for which he wrote the screenplay, and Civilization (1916), which he directed, were selected for preservation by the National Film Registry.
Thomas H. Ince publicity photo. Thomas Ince Studios, Culver City credit wikipedia
American religious leader, 6th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Joseph Fielding Smith Sr. (November 13, 1838 – November 19, 1918) was an American religious leader who served as the sixth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He was the nephew of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, and was the last president of the LDS Church to have known him personally.
6th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints credit wikipedia
Smith was born in Far West, Missouri, on November 13, 1838. Just a few days before he was born, his father had been taken prisoner under the auspices of the Missouri Executive Order 44 (infamously called the "extermination order" due to its threat against the lives of Mormons who refused to leave the state after clashes between them and a Missouri militia).
At point of bayonet, Hyrum was marched to his home in Far West and ordered to say farewell to his wife. He was told that his "doom was sealed" and that he would never see her again. Hyrum was still in custody in Liberty Jail, Missouri, when Smith was born. He was named after his uncle, Joseph Smith, and his mother's brother, Joseph Fielding. His mother and maternal aunt, Mercy Fielding Thompson, fled with their children to Quincy, Illinois, early in 1839, and they later moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, when the majority of the church's members settled. Hyrum was later released from custody during a transfer from Liberty Jail and joined his family in Nauvoo. Joseph F. Smith stated as an adult that he had memories of Nauvoo, and could recall his Uncle Joseph and events that occurred at his uncle's home; he was nearly six years old when his father and uncle were killed in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844.
Portrait of Richard Mentor Johnson attributed to Matthew Harris Jouett, c. 1818 credit wikipedia
American politician, 9th Vice President of the United States Richard Mentor Johnson (October 17, 1780 November 19, 1850) was the ninth Vice President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. He is the only vice president ever elected by the United States Senate under the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment. Johnson also represented Kentucky in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate; he began and ended his political career in the Kentucky House of Representatives.
Johnson was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1806. He became allied with fellow Kentuckian Henry Clay as a member of the War Hawks faction that favored war with Britain in 1812. At the outset of the War of 1812, Johnson was commissioned a colonel in the Kentucky Militia and commanded a regiment of mounted volunteers from 1812 to 1813. He and his brother James served under William Henry Harrison in Upper Canada. Johnson participated in the Battle of the Thames. Some reported that he personally killed the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, which he later used to his political advantage.
Franz Schubert by Josef Kriehuber (1846) credit wikipedia
Austrian composer Franz Peter Schubert 31 January 1797 – 19 November 1828) was an Austrian composer of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. Despite his short lifetime, Schubert left behind a vast oeuvre, including more than 600 secular vocal works (mainly Lieder), seven complete symphonies, sacred music, operas, incidental music and a large body of piano and chamber music. His major works include the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667 (Trout Quintet), the Symphony No. 8 in B minor, D. 759 (Unfinished Symphony), the three last piano sonatas (D. 958–960), the opera Fierrabras (D. 796), the incidental music to the play Rosamunde (D. 797), and the song cycles Die schöne Müllerin (D. 795) and Winterreise (D. 911).
Born to immigrant parents in the Himmelpfortgrund suburb of Vienna, Schubert's uncommon gifts for music were evident from an early age. His father gave him his first violin lessons and his older brother gave him piano lessons, but Schubert soon exceeded their abilities. In 1808, at the age of eleven, he became a pupil at the Stadtkonvikt school, where he became acquainted with the orchestral music of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. He left the Stadtkonvikt at the end of 1813, and returned home to live with his father, where he began studying to become a schoolteacher; despite this, he continued his studies in composition with Antonio Salieri and still composed prolifically. In 1821, Schubert was granted admission to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde as a performing member, which helped establish his name among the Viennese citizenry. He gave a concert of his own works to critical acclaim in March 1828, the only time he did so in his career. He died eight months later at the age of 31, possibly due to typhoid fever.
Theobald Wolfe Tone, posthumously known as Wolfe Tone (20 June 1763 – 19 November 1798), was a leading Irish revolutionary figure and one of the founding members of the United Irishmen, and is regarded as the father of Irish republicanism and leader of the 1798 Irish Rebellion. He was captured at Letterkenny port on 3 November 1798,[1] and he died sixteen days later for reasons that are disputed.
Certainly few of you reading this material might think of the great Italian composer and violinist as an individual who has got talent following a pact with the devil. But a closer look shows that sources Paganini weather was not bad away from rumors and, moreover, he chose not to rebut ever. In fact, right from his birth in a poor family of a merchant lacks luck, his mother had a dream premonition in which i was told that her son will get the greatest violinist in the world it has ever known.
Following this dream, his parents did everything to fulfill the prophecy. By the age of 7 years, Paganini perfectly learned the secrets of mandolin and violin, which played the first tools. Up to age 11 she was beginning to show itself, because up to 13 years to be already known as a violin virtuoso. Up to 19 years began to compose his own music, and at age 23 already create works of tremendous value. At 27 and already had a huge audience wildly successful ... and rumors of collusion to assure such a fame already circulating on everyone's lips. Curiously, when asked whether such a rumor is true, Paganini replied nonchalantly: "How else do you think I could sing the way I do?"
Niccolò Paganini (1819), by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres photo: wikipedia.org
Paganini's decline began at age 40 when he was diagnosed with syphilis. Weather empirical treatments, treatments that included mercury and opium, they practically destroyed health. Dressed always in black, pale, almost without any tooth, Paganini was only a shadow of the beautiful and talented young man who astounded Europe. People were convinced that Paganini now paying the price of which had given talent unnatural.
Of all of Yahoo’s services, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger have probably been the only ones that survived the test of time and the onslaught of rivals. Well, as of June, this year, Yahoo Mail was the last one standing. But even before it shutdown, Yahoo was seen playing around with a new group chat called Squirrel, which eventually became this new Yahoo Together.
But enough about the past. After all, Yahoo Together is meant to address present concerns. Specifically the chaos that group SMS chats bring. Do people still actually use “group SMS”? Either way, Yahoo Together promises group chats that won’t drive you insane, by letting you create custom groups revolving around a specific topic.
So you can invite anyone and everyone in your address book but only deal with your siblings for mom’s surprise birthday party. Or have a secret clique that talks about others in your address book that isn’t part of that conversation. So instead of having 10 people talking about 18 different things at once, you can group them into 18 different topics, with all of those 10 people in the same chat rooms
Yahoo Together does advertise some features not all instant messaging apps provide. Those make it easy to share photos and files but never make it easy to search for them after the fact. They don’t also let you set alarms to remind everyone in the chat about that so important group date. Yahoo Together does.
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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by slashgear . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
The last strong earthquake in Mexico (September 2018), which had a magnitude of 8.2 degrees on the Richter scale, led to the appearance of strange alloys in the sky, as well as the cracking of a tectonic plate, as recent seismologists have discovered.
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"The fissure spread across the width of the tectonic plate," said seismologist Diego Melgar of the University of Diego.
As the Science Alert recalls, the Puebla-Morelos earthquake had its epicenter in the Pacific Ocean and was felt all over Mexico. Along the shore is the tectonic boundary between the Cocos plaque in the ocean and the North American, Caribbean and Panama plates. So the earthquakes in the region are not new, considering that the edge of the Cocos tectonic plate moves beneath these tectonic plates.
The earthquake called Tehuantepec on September 7, 2018, and the magnitude slightly less than 7.1 degrees Richter on September 19, 2018, are part of a rare earthquake with bent refractive lines. They started normally with the collision between two plates, one of them sliding beneath the other. "But then the Cocos tectonic plate began to penetrate under the Mexican shore and changed its course. It slopes horizontally under the tectonic plate on which Mexico is located, "Melgar said.
Whether it's balancing on a blade of grass or taking on the appearance of frozen smoke, aerogels have been blowing us away with their amazing properties in recent years. And just when you thought they couldn't get any freakier, researchers have created a graphene aerogel that can support over 6,000 times its own weight.
Aerogel: Remarkable Insulating Material of the Future
Thalia dealbata Fraser ex Roscoe credit: wikipedia
Along with being super strong, the new aerographene is bendy, conductive, and mimics the structure of a plant stem. The unique properties of the material could make it an ideal component in flexible electronics such as smart windows, curved TV screens, and printable solar panels.
Speaking with ScienceAlert, Hao Bai . a materials engineer from Zhejiang University, says the graphene aerogel is unique from other aerogels available.
Dr. Hao Bai Tomsia Biomaterials Research Group credit: tomsia
"Learning from nature always offers new insights for developing new materials and technology," says Bai. "Our graphene aerogel is different from current aerogels in both microstructures and properties."
Weighing a minuscule 0.16 milligrams per cubic centimetre, graphene aerogel is 7.5 times lighter than air and about 1000 times less dense than water. This stuff is so light that you can balance it on a fluffy dandelion head or on the stamen of a flower. Out of all the aerogels, graphene aerogel is the least dense and considered one of the lightest solid materials on Earth. Apart from blowing our minds, aerogels are already proving useful for a wide variety of applications, from cleaning up oil spills to creating high-energy batteries. Researchers have even managed to convert sunlight into water vapour at room temperature using graphene aerogel, which makes it possible to turn wastewater into drinkable water.
Enhanced mechanical, thermal, and electric properties of graphene aerogels via supercritical ethanol drying and high-temperature thermal reduction Scientific Reports
But when it comes to moving machine parts, flexible sensors, and bendable energy storage devices, researchers have struggled to create aerogels that have both the strength and resilience required for these applications. "Strength and resilience are usually mutually exclusive in regular aerogels," Bai explains. "There is a high demand for strong and resilient aerogels in many important fields, but it is very difficult to achieve both of these properties." In recent years, we've seen several attempts to achieve these properties in graphene aerogels, including through the use of 3D printing and freeze-drying. The problem with these processes is that they only produce graphene aerogels with a random architectural structure, which doesn't provide robust strength and resilience.
Aerogel High Strength (Page 4) - Line.17QQ.com
Looking at the natural world, the secret to the strength and bendiness of porous materials like plant stems comes down to how the material is arranged at the nanoscale. Even if the material itself is weak and porous, the highly organised arrangement of the material makes it strong and flexible. "Many natural materials have developed unprecedented properties by building complex multiscale architectures," Bai says. "We wondered whether we could mimic these features to create an aerogel that is both strong and resilient." To find out, Bai and his team turned to the powdery alligator-flag (Thalia dealbata), a hardy aquatic plant native to South America and Mexico. Even though the stem of this plant is slender and porous, it can withstand frequent wild winds thanks to its grid-like layered microstructure.
Powdery Thalia (Thalia dealbata) Credit: Garden Supply Co
Taking cues from the plant's complex structure, the team used bidirectional freezing to mimic its architecture in graphene aerogel.
First, graphene oxide particles are dispersed in water, which form sheets as the liquid freezes. Once completely frozen, the graphene oxide sheets form a three-dimensional network similar to the structure of ice crystals. Finally, thermal reduction and sublimation produced graphene aerogel that mirrored the bridged layers of the powdery alligator-flag stem.
Architecture of the Thalia dealbata stem and biomimetic graphene ResearchGate
Next, the team put the aerogel through a series of compression tests to see whether its architecture produced strength and resilience. After 1,000 compressive cycles the researchers discovered that the graphene aerogel was capable of supporting over 6,000 times its own weight and spring back to its original state. The material also retained 85 per cent of its strength before compression was applied. This is a significant jump from aerogels with a random architecture, which tend to retain just 45 per cent of their original strength after only 10 compressive cycles. Although the enormous strength and resilience of the aerogel is amazing all on its own, the researchers also wanted to know whether the material was conductive under compression.
The team placed the aerogel in a circuit with an LED, and applied different compression strains. Sure enough, they found that the aerogel remained conductive even when compressed, indicating that it could play a role in flexible electronics and sensors. Now that the researchers have finally created a graphene aerogel that is strong, resilient and conductive, the next step is figuring out whether nature can be used as a reference for developing other kinds of aerogels, such as cellulose-based or polymer-silica composites. "Learning from natural models will definitely help to develop new materials," Bao told ScienceAlert. "The challenges still remain in how much we can discover and understand nature's secrets, and if we can really mimic nature with synthetic approaches."
We can only dream of what nature will help us design next. Other articles on the same theme:
Stephen Hawking says humanity must find a new home Max Alexander/Starmus
The renowned physicist Stephen Hawking is working on a spacecraft that can travel at a fifth of the speed of light – meaning it could reach the nearest star and send back images of a suspected ‘Second Earth’ within 25 years – in a bid to save humanity.
The Space Telescope That Could Find a Second Earth Space Air & Space Magazine
In a speech at the Starmus Festival, Professor Hawking warned humans must soon colonise another planet if we are to survive. One explanation for why Earth has not been contacted by an advanced civilisations from another part of the Universe is that every time ‘intelligent’ life evolves it annihilates itself with “war, disease and weapons of mass destruction”, he said.
The myth that humans can mass-colonise another planet News24
And in addition to the chance that we will meet this fate, Professor Hawking said the planet had become too small for our burgeoning population with its “physical resources … being drained at an alarming rate”. Climate change, an asteroid strike or some other kind of cataclysmic cosmic event also pose significant threats. The proposed spacecraft, called a Star Chip, would be just a few centimetres in size with a lightsail weighing a few grams. It would be powered by an array of lasers based on Earth that would drive the tiny probe “on a beam of light” at about 100 million miles an hour, a fifth of light speed.
Credit: duluthnewstribune
“Such a system could reach Mars in less than an hour, reach Pluto in days, pass Voyager [the space probe launched in 1977] in under a week, and reach Alpha Centauri in just over 20 years,” Professor Hawking said. “Once there, the nano craft could image any planets discovered in the system, test for magnetic fields and organic molecules, and send the data back to Earth in another laser beam. “This tiny signal would be received by the same array of dishes that were used to transit the launch beam, and return is estimated to take about four light years.
And he admitted: “Of course, this would not be human interstellar travel, even if it could be scaled up to a crewed vessel. It would be unable to stop.
“But it would be the moment when human culture goes interstellar, when we finally reach out into the galaxy. And if Breakthrough Star Shot should send back images of a habitable planet orbiting our closest neighbour, it could be of immense importance to the future of humanity.”
Because it is travelling so fast any pictures taken by a camera on the Space Chip would be “slightly distorted” due to the effects of special relativity, as first described by Albert Einstein. This would be the first time anything has travelled fast enough to see such effects.
Breakthrough Starshot Optics & Photonics News
And extolling the virtues of the human attribution – “out most powerful attribute” – he said: “With this, we can roam anywhere in space and time. And I do.
“We can witness nature’s most exotic phenomena while in a car, snoozing in bed, or pretending to listen to someone boring at a party. And I do.”
Montreal institute going ‘open’ to accelerate science
Guy Rouleau, the director of McGill University’s Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) and Hospital in Canada, is frustrated with how slowly neuroscience research translates into treatments. “We’re doing a really shitty job,” he says. “It’s not because we’re not trying; it has to do with the complexity of the problem.”
Montreal institute going 'open' to accelerate science | Science
So he and his colleagues at the renowned institute decided to try a radical solution. Starting this year, any work done there will conform to the principles of the “open- science” movement—all results and data will be made freely available at the time of publication, for example, and the institute will not pursue patents on any of its discoveries. Although some large-scale initiatives like the government-funded Human Genome Project have made all data completely open, MNI will be the first scientific institute to follow that path, Rouleau says. notes sciencemag
“It’s an experiment; no one has ever done this before,” he says. The intent is that neuroscience research will become more efficient if duplication is reduced and data are shared more widely and earlier. Opening access to the tissue samples in MNI’s biobank and to its extensive databank of brain scans and other data will have a major impact, Rouleau hopes. “We think that it is a way to accelerate discovery and the application of neuroscience.”
Neuroscientists have used a classic branch of maths in a totally new way to peer into the structure of our brains. What they've discovered is that the brain is full of multi-dimensional geometrical structures operating in as many as 11 dimensions.
Human head and brain, 3D MRI scan - Stock Image
We're used to thinking of the world from a 3-D perspective, so this may sound a bit tricky, but the results of this new study could be the next major step in understanding the fabric of the human brain - the most complex structure we know of.
This latest brain model was produced by a team of researchers from the Blue Brain Project, a Swiss research initiative devoted to building a supercomputer-powered reconstruction of the human brain.
Diffusion Tensor Imaging Art Prints Fine Art America
The team used algebraic topology, a branch of mathematics used to describe the properties of objects and spaces regardless of how they change shape. They found that groups of neurons connect into 'cliques', and that the number of neurons in a clique would lead to its size as a high-dimensional geometric object.
"We found a world that we had never imagined," says lead researcher, neuroscientist Henry Markram from the EPFL institute in Switzerland.
"There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to 11 dimensions."
Just to be clear - this isn't how you'd think of spatial dimensions (our Universe has three spatial dimensions plus one time dimension), instead it refers to how the researchers have looked at the neuron cliques to determine how connected they are.
"Networks are often analysed in terms of groups of nodes that are all-to-all connected, known as cliques. The number of neurons in a clique determines its size, or more formally, its dimension," the researchers explain in the paper.
Human brains are estimated to have a staggering 86 billion neurons, with multiple connections from each cell webbing in every possible direction, forming the vast cellular network that somehow makes us capable of thought and consciousness.
With such a huge number of connections to work with, it's no wonder we still don't have a thorough understanding of how the brain's neural network operates. But the new mathematical framework built by the team takes us one step closer to one day having a digital brain model.
To perform the mathematical tests, the team used a detailed model of the neocortex the Blue Brain Project team published back in 2015. The neocortex is thought to be the most recently evolved part of our brains, and the one involved in some of our higher-order functions like cognition and sensory perception.
After developing their mathematical framework and testing, the team also confirmed their results on real brain tissue in rats.
According to the researchers, algebraic topology provides mathematical tools for discerning details of the neural network both in a close-up view at the level of individual neurons, and a grander scale of the brain structure as a whole.
By connecting these two levels, the researchers could discern high-dimensional geometric structures in the brain, formed by collections of tightly connected neurons (cliques) and the empty spaces (cavities) between them.
"We found a remarkably high number and variety of high-dimensional directed cliques and cavities, which had not been seen before in neural networks, either biological or artificial," the team writes in the study.
"Algebraic topology is like a telescope and microscope at the same time," says one of the team, mathematician Kathryn Hess from EPFL.
"It can zoom into networks to find hidden structures, the trees in the forest, and see the empty spaces, the clearings, all at the same time."
Those clearings or cavities seem to be critically important for brain function. When researchers gave their virtual brain tissue a stimulus, they saw that neurons were reacting to it in a highly organised manner.
"It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building [and] then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc," says one of the team, mathematician Ran Levi from Aberdeen University in Scotland.
"The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materialises out of the sand and then disintegrates."
These findings provide a tantalising new picture of how the brain processes information, but the researchers point out that it's not yet clear what makes the cliques and cavities form in their highly specific ways.
And more work will be needed to determine how the complexity of these multi-dimensional geometric shapes formed by our neurons correlates with the complexity of various cognitive tasks.
But this is definitely not the last we'll be hearing of insights that algebraic topology can give us on this most mysterious of human organs - the brain.
