My Science School

It is possible to list at least four basic forces which brought about the dissolution of the British Empire. First, both Britain and her colonies recognized that some kind of self-government was necessary in territories which were separated by thousands of miles from Britain. Administration centred in London was increasingly difficult and expensive.

Secondly, the colonies themselves began to chafe against British rule and to demand to manage their own affairs. A note of aggressive nationalism entered into the appeals for self-government.

In the third place, individual British colonies and other nations began to forge economic, social and political links. Two world wars also greatly reduced Britain's power in the world and made some colonies look elsewhere for leadership.

Finally, many Britons themselves realized that the Empire had become unwieldy and that relationships within it were a handicap rather than a gain.

Nevertheless, there was not a complete break up but the growth of an association of independent nations called the Commonwealth. There were three bonds which united the association. The close economic relationship of trade, labour and capital; the acceptance of many Commonwealth countries of British social, economic educational, political, military and legal institutions and customs; and the savings that could be made in the member countries by acceptance of British military and diplomatic services.

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The Suffragettes were given that name by a newspaper reporter who wrote that not only did the members of the Women's Social and Political Union want female suffrage, or the right to vote, but that they meant to get it. The name was accepted immediately, perhaps because words ending in "ette" often denoted something feminine.

The greatest leader of the suffragette movement was Emmellne Pankhurst (1858-1928), who founded the WSPU in 1903. The question of women's right to vote had been raised already by keir Hardie, Philip Snowden and George Lansbury. In 1905 two suffragettes, Christable Pankhurst (Emmeline's daughter) and Annie kenney were roughly handled at a Liberal meeting in Manchester and then arrested as they tried to address the crowd outside. They chose to serve a prison sentence and thereby aroused attention all over the world.

Suffragettes persistently lobbied Members of Parliament, one of whom, Bamford Slack, agreed to introduce a Bill in Parliament. He was prevented from doing so by other MPs prolonging the previous debate. The suffragettes decided on militant action. They were ill-treated, abused, arrested and sent to prison, where they went on hunger strike because they were not treated as political prisoners. They lost some public sympathy by the violence of their demonstrations, which included smashing windows and slashing pictures in public galleries.

Seven suffrage Bills were defeated in Parliament, but gradually public support increased and hundreds of thousands of pounds were given to the movement.

In 19 Lloyd George's government sponsored the representation of the People Act, which gave the vote to married women, women householders and women university graduates over 30. Ten years later women voters were given equality with men.

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Magna Carta is the great charter of English liberty granted by King John in 1215 at Runnymede, near Windsor. It was reissued with some alterations in 1216 and again with further changes in 1217. In 1225 King Henry III reissued it and it is this document that is the Magna Carta of English law and history.

King John had quarrelled with the Church, barons merchants and eventually the whole nation. Magna Carta, produced by Stephen Langton, Archbisnop of Canterbury, insisted that the King should obey that law.

The Charter asserted the right to personal liberty and to property; protested against punishment administered without trial; required that justice should be properly administered and that there should be a right to free trial.

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After seven months afloat Noah came to rest, the Bible tells us, "upon the mountains of Ararat". Mount Ararat, an extinct volcanic massif 17,160 feet high consists of two peaks seven miles apart and separated by a saddle 8,800 feet above sea level. It stands in Turkish territory overlooking the point where the frontiers of Turkey, Iran and Soviet Armenia coverage, and is about 25 miles in diameter.

The story of the Ark is still a living tradition among the Armenians, who believe themselves to be the first race of men to appear in the world after the Deluge. Local legend maintains that the remains of the Ark were long to be seen on top of the mountain. Near the foot of a mountain chasm stood the village of Aghuri, where according to tradition, Noah built his altar and made sacrifice after his safe deliverance, and where he planted his vineyard. The village was destroyed by earthquake in 1840. A Persian legend refers to Ararat as the cradle of the human race; the Persian name for it is KohiNuh, meaning Noah's Mountain.

For centuries the Americans believed that God forbade anyone to reach the top of Ararat and view the remains of the Ark. However on September 7, 1829, Johann Hacob von Parrot (1792-1840), a German in the Russian service, made the first successful ascent known. Since then the mountain has been climbed many times.

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Throughout history, kings have often been supposed to enjoy a special relationship with the gods of their people, and in many cases, have been regarded as gods themselves.

In ancient Egypt, the king or pharaoh was believed to be divine and the Hittite kings were modified after their deaths. The Minoan kings of Crete were identified with the bull headed sun god. In many primitive tribes in Asia and Africa, the king was identified with the scared and divine animal of his tribe. The Swedes and Prussians of pagan Europe had Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru were, if not gods themselves, considered to be direct descendants.

Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C), who had himself declared a god in the last year of his life, was followed by a number of god kings throughout the Near East. In the Roman Empire the practice of making the emperor a god originated when Julius Caesar was pronounced divus Julius after his death. The Byzantine emperors were venerated as God's representative of earth.

The Japanese emperor was thought of as supernatural in some degree, but their term "kami" usually translated as "god", does not have such an all embracing meaning as in the West. In China kings interceded with the gods for their people.

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"General" Custer made his famous last stand on the banks of the Little Big Horn river near what is now the interchange for United States highways 87 and 212, in the State of Montana. Today the Custer Battlefield National Monument marks the scene of the battle.

George Armstrong Custer, born in 1839, was called "General" by the men of the 7th Cavalry Brigade under his command. He has shown his brilliance as a cavalry officer in the American Civil War (1861-65) reaching the rank of major general.

In 1876 when Sioux and Cheyennes were on the warpath with Chief Sitting Bull as their leader, Custer and his 7th Cavalry Brigade were under the command of General Terry. The brigade of 655 men was ordered by Terry to advance towards the Indians, but not to attack until the rest of the army-composed of three columns under General Crook, Gibbon and Terry-had moved into position.

Custer reached the Little Big Horn to see the large Indian camp on the opposite side of the river. For a reason that will never be known, Custer decided to disobey orders and attack. Dividing his bridgade into three, he sent Major Reno and Captain Benteen, each with three companies, to attack the flanks. At the same time he led 264 troopers on a frontal approach across the river.

His force stood no chance when the Indians attacked. The troopers dismounted from their horses to seek cover, but there was none. When the Indians drove off their horses, the troopers' fate was sealed.

Believing that Reno and Benteen would soon come to their aid, they fought bravely, but the flank attacks had been foiled and the cavalry put to flight. Custer and 264 men fought to the last man.

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Harry Houdini, (1874-1926), a famous escapologist, had many methods of freeing himself from chains and other forms of restraint. Some of them remain secret even today.

One of his secrets was an ability to expand his muscles to an abnormal degree so that, when he relaxed them, chains that had seemed to be bound tightly round him became comparatively loose. An authority on the mechanism of all kinds of locks, he knew many different ways of opening them. Also, he was amazingly agile, having begun his performing career as a circus acrobat.

Houdini publicly claimed that he could not be injured by a blow to the abdomen. But he died from peritonitis after a blow ruptured his appendix. He was struck unexpectedly by a college student who did not realize that Houdini had first to steel himself to withstand the blow.

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America gets its name from the traditional family name Amerigo belonging to Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512), who was an Italian navigator and merchant.

The period during which he made his voyages falls between 1497 and 1504. The first took place in 1499-1500 when, it is believed, he discovered the mouth of the Amazon and sailed as far as the Cape of La consolacion or Sao Agostinho (about 6° latitude South). On the way back he reached. Trinidad and then made for Haiti, believing all the time that he was sailing along the coast of the extreme easterly peninsula of Asia.

At the end of 1500, under the auspices of the Portuguese government, he reached the coast of Brazil and discovered the Plate river. This voyage was of tremendous importance in that Vespucci became convinced, and convinced others, that the newly discovered lands were not part of Asia, but a New World.

In 1507, a humanist scholar named Waldseemuller suggested that the newly discovered world should be named America, after Amerigo. The extension of the name to North America came later.

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Whitney's cotton gin was exceedingly important as it more than trebled the amount of cotton which could be picked free of seeds in a day. This stimulated the extension of the cotton plantations and the growth of Negro slavery in the south of the United States. In that way the cotton gin was indirectly responsible for the American Civil War.

Eli Whitney (1765-1825) was born in Westboro, Massachusetts. After graduating from Yale College in 1792, he became aware of the need for a machine which would separate cotton from its seeds. The Industrial Revolution was in-full flood and inventions such as John Kay's flying shuttle (1733) and James Hargreaves's spinning jenny (1769) had created a growing demand for raw cotton as the production of finished goods was now so much faster and easier.

Whitney produced, in only a few weeks, a hand operated machine or gin, and by April 1793 had built a machine that could clean 50 pounds of cotton fibres a day. It consisted of a wooden cylinder encircled by rows of slender spikes, set half an inch apart, which extended between the bars of a grid set so closely together that the seeds could not pass, although the lint was pulled through by the revolving spikes. A revolving brush cleaned the spikes and the seeds fell into an-other compartment.

The gin was immediately in great demand. Country black-smiths helped to fulfil the orders when the factory Whitney set up at New Haven, Connecticut, was unable to cope with all the orders. In the South, almost the whole region was given over to cotton growing, increasing the value of slaves and reinforcing the slave system, which had been declining.

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Karl Marx was buried in Highgate Cemetery in North London on 17 March, 1883. On his gravestone are carved these sentences from his works:

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."

"Workers of all lands, unite."

Karl Marx had German-Jewish parents. He started work as a journalist, after attending university in Bonn, Berlin and Jena where he studied law, philosophy and history. When he was 25 his newspaper was closed down, and he left Germany in search of freedom. After being expelled from France he went to Brussels where with Frederick Engels he wrote The Communist Manifesto.

He eventually settled in England, where he lived with his family in poverty in Soho, London. It was here that he wrote his classic work Das Kapital, which describes in an historical setting the working of the capitalist system and what Marx felt would be its ultimate evolution into control of all the means of production and supply by the workers.

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Although the Christian calendar is nominally dated from the year of Christ's birth, modern researchers have placed the actual year between 4 and 7 B.C. When the calendar was changed the monk Dionysius Exiguus (500-600) set the date of "the incarnation of the Lord" as the year 753 after the founding of the city of Rome. But his arithmetic was inaccurate.

The Gospels say that Jesus was born while Herod was on the throne, and Herod died about 749, according to the Roman calendar, or about 4 B.C. Also the census mentioned by St Luke as the reason why Joseph and Mary travelled to Bethlehem seems to have been held in the Roman year 747 or 6 B.C.

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Ducking stools first came into use as a punishment for women at the beginning of the 17th Century and were used in England as late as the beginning of the 19th. A ducking stool was a wooden armchair fastened to the end of a long wooden beam fixed like a seesaw on the edge of a river or pond. Sometimes it was mounted on wheels so that it could be pushed through the streets.

The stool was used to punish nagging wives, witches and prostitutes. An iron band kept the victim from falling out of the chair when it was plunged under the water. It was the duty of magistrates to order the number of duckings a woman should be given.

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Julius Caesar, generally regarded as the greatest genius of ancient Rome, was murdered on March 15, 44 B.C., by a band of aristocrats who were members of the Senate, or ruling assembly, and were opposed to his one-man system of government.

Caesar, who was 58, had reached a position of dominance in the republic of Rome after a brilliant career as soldier, writer, scholar and administrator. Throughout his life he had seen the state torn by revolution and civil war, and an outworn system of government made powerless by the quarrels of rival claimants to power. In 49 B.C. he embarked on a series of campaigns to gain absolute control, succeeding five years later in being proclaimed dictator for life with the title of imperator.

More than 50 members of the senatorial party, united by a mixture of selfish and patriotic motives conspired to kill him. Marcus Junius Brutus, who seems to have been a true patriot and had been forgiven by Caesar for fighting against him, was persuaded to lead the conspiracy by the real instigator, Cassius Longinus. Despite a number of attempts to warn him, Caesar took his place in the Senate House on the fateful day of March 15, called by the Romans the Ides of March.

Plutarch, the Greek historian, tells how the conspirators crowded about Caesar, pretending to make a petition. One of them, Metillius Cimber, then gave the signal for the attack and another, Casca, stabbed Caesar in the neck. The others struck at him with their swords, but Caesar continued to struggle until he saw Brutus joining in the attack. Then he fell dying from 23 wounds at the foot of the monument to Pompey, his great military rival whom he had defeated on his way to power.

But the assassins failed to save the republic. Brutus and Cassius committed suicide after being defeated in battle and in 31 B.C. the Roman Empire was founded under augustus, Julius Caesar's nephew.

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Re-emphasizing the call from the Intergovernmental Group on Tea to direct greater efforts towards expanding demand, particularly in tea-producing countries, where per capita consumption is relatively low, and supporting efforts to address the declining per capita consumption in traditional importing countries, the General Assembly decided to designate 21 May as International Tea Day.

The Day will promote and foster collective actions to implement activities in favour of the sustainable production and consumption of tea and raise awareness of its importance in fighting hunger and poverty.

Tea production and processing contributes to the reduction of extreme poverty (Goal 1), the fight against hunger (Goal 2), the empowerment of women (Goal 5) and the sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems (Goal 15).

Moreover, there is an urgent need to raise public awareness of the importance of tea for rural development and sustainable livelihoods and to improve the tea value chain to contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Credit : United Nations

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Sometimes, unusual things happen and remain etched in history for generations to wonder about. We are going to look at a few such events that are so unbelievable that they are worth remembering.

The height of irony

A fire that started in the U.S. Patent Office in the 19th century destroyed many patents, but one destroyed patent stands out. Ironically, the patent for a fire hydrant was among the patents that were destroyed in the fire. Imagine the feelings of the owner of the patent upon hearing the news!

A bad hare day!

“Napoleon and the attack of the bunnies”! Sounds like a picture book title, doesn’t it? But this really happened. Napoleon Bonaparte, the mighty French emperor, faced and defeated many an army, but he didn’t quite know how to deal with bunnies. After Napoleon signed a treaty marking the end of the war with Russia, they decided to celebrate in style by hunting rabbits. Except, the person assigned to round up rabbits for the hunt released nearly 3,000 tame ones. Instead of running away in fear, they began to hop about relentlessly around the men, literally driving them away.

The mega-successful spoof

We all get into the mood to pull a prank on unaware folks, and being the editor of Rolling Stone magazine and being solely responsible for the content that goes into the magazine gives you that extra prank power! Thus The Masked Marauders were created. The editor mentioned that the band was formed by Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger plus three members from the Beatles. Needless to say, this created a lot of attention and interest in the album. Thinking quickly, the magazine hired an unknown band to create the tracks. Believe it or not, 100,000 copies were sold!

Dreadful prank on the Dreadnought

In 1910, the crew aboard the English warship HMS Dreadnought received a telegram informing them about a visit from the Emperor of Abyssinia. Not wanting to offend the king, the crew did everything they could to throw a grand red-carpet welcome. This would have been appreciated if it had really been the emperor. Turns out it was a prank played by author Virginia Woolf and a few other pranksters who’d disguised themselves cleverly.

 The aliens have landed

In 1938, author H.G. Wells’ famous novel War of the Worlds was broadcast as a Halloween special radio programme. But people mistook it as real news about an alien invasion! And worst of all, there was no Facebook or Twitter where you could check with others whether it was true. Remarkably, it spread from person to person simply through word of mouth, until there was widespread panic and confusion.

A flood like no other

People are used to dealing with water, but what if there’s a flood of… something else? In 1919, in Boston, a tank contain millions of gallons of molasses somehow burst open during an unusual heat wave, releasing the molasses into the streets. Rightly termed the Great Molasses Flood, the sticky mess haunted the residents long after it was cleared up. During the rest summer, residents said they continued to smell molasses on really hot days.

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