16 dezembro 2016

Australia was named before it was discovered. Ancient...



Australia was named before it was discovered. Ancient geographers had supposed that land in the north must be balanced by land in the south — Aristotle had written, “there must be a region bearing the same relation to the southern pole as the place we live in bears to our pole” — and Romans told legends of a Terra Australis Incognita, an “unknown land of the South.” While humans had been living there for millennia, no Roman or Indian or Chinese had actually known there was land there!

In 1814 the British explorer Matthew Flinders suggested applying the speculative name, Terra Australis, to the actual continent which was relatively recently “discovered.” And in a footnote he wrote, “Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term, it would have been to convert it to AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.”

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"What the world of tomorrow will be like is greatly dependent on the power of imagination in those..."

“What the world of tomorrow will be like is greatly dependent on the power of imagination in those who are learning to read today.”

- Astrid Anna Emilia Lindgren (1907-2002), Swedish writer of fiction and screenplays. She is best known for children’s book series featuring Pippi Longstocking, as well as the children’s fantasy novels Mio min Mio, Ronia the Robber’s Daughter and The Brothers Lionheart. Lindgren’s works have been translated into over 90 languages, and Pippi Longstocking has been translated into over 60 languages alone!
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Hubble "Crane-s" in for a Closer Look at a Galaxy


Spiral galaxy IC 5201 sits 40 million light-years from us in the Crane constellation. As with most spirals we see, it has a bar of stars slicing through its center.

from NASA http://ift.tt/2gSlccM
via IFTTT
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December 16th 705: Empress Wu Zetian diesOn this day in 705, Wu...





December 16th 705: Empress Wu Zetian dies

On this day in 705, Wu Zetian, the only sovereign empress of China, died aged 81. Born during the Tang dynasty, she entered the court of Emperor Taizong as a concubine when she was 14 years old. After Taizong’s death, the new emperor Gaozong defied custom and chose the well-educated Wu to remain as his favourite concubine. She rose to become Gaozong’s empress in 655, after eliminating the current empress by allegedly killing her own child and framing the empress. The new empress quickly silenced the elder statesmen who opposed her position on the grounds that she did not hail from the established aristocracy, with critics exiled and, often, executed. Emperor Gaozong was a sickly man, and frequently entrusted affairs of state to Wu, who managed imperial business essentially single-handedly. Wu was a capable leader, known for her sound management, her decisiveness, and her ruthlessness; these attributes won her the respect, and fear, of the Chinese imperial court. Her greatest accomplishments included agricultural and education reform, stabilisation of the imperial bureaucracy, and imperial expansion. Upon Gaozong’s death in 683, his son by Wu ascended to the throne, but, concerned by the machinations of his ambitious wife, Wu had him exiled and installed her other son as emperor. In 690, when she was 65 years old, the empress claimed the throne for herself, and ruled as a sovereign empress for 15 years. The question of succession led Wu to designate her exiled son as heir, rather than choosing a member of her own family, thus ensuring the continuation of the Tang dynasty. In 705, senior officials conspired to compel the aging Wu to yield power to her son. She accepted their demands and retired from the throne, dying in December of that year. Despite decades of condemnation as a vicious usurper, the achievements of Empress Wu Zetian, who defied the gender conventions of her day, are increasingly being acknowledged.

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