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~
Tomorrow is another day ... another Smile
another tear ... another winter and another summer
" But there 'll Never BE another YOU "
إستبــــرق
~ Fireworks cascaded from the tower's spire to the base and lasers blazed out from all levels leaving the crowds awestruck. The height was disclosed in arithmetic progression, with the numbers being flashed onto the screen, one after another .
Calfskin-covered book with gold embossed binding inscribed "Burritt's Arithmetick", © 1818. Includes a table of logarithms, and their use with arithmetic and astronomical tables. Includes a pull-out illustration of the moon and solar eclipse. Authored by Elijah Hinsdale Burritt.
Found in collection.
Inscribed on the front inside cover, "Presented to the Hand Academy by Mr. Daniel Hand No. 111".
Has a "Hand High School Madison, Conn." stamp inside, opposite the inscription.
5 3/8" x 8 3/4" x 1"
Obj ID# B2022.307
See additional books in our collection at flic.kr/s/aHsmXePP6j
(Photo credit - Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)
Calfskin-covered book with gold embossed binding inscribed "Burritt's Arithmetick", © 1818. Includes a table of logarithms, and their use with arithmetic and astronomical tables. Includes a pull-out illustration of the moon and solar eclipse. Authored by Elijah Hinsdale Burritt.
Found in collection.
Inscribed on the front inside cover, "Presented to the Hand Academy by Mr. Daniel Hand No. 111".
Has a "Hand High School Madison, Conn." stamp inside, opposite the inscription.
5 3/8" x 8 3/4" x 1"
Obj ID# B2022.307
See additional books in our collection at flic.kr/s/aHsmXePP6j
(Photo credit - Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)
A quality Swiss product over a hundred years old. And an amazing contemporary witness from the industrial revolution. Seen in a household goods store in Chur that has also existed since 1867. But today it's just an exhibit.
Heinrich Daemen-Schmid emigrated from Germany to Zurich, Switzerland, and produced these cylindrical slide rule calculators with the Loga Calculator company from 1900. A patent of Julius Billeter is also indicated on it. However, the connection between the two remains unclear. The Billeter family believes that Heinrich Daemen-Schmid was once an employee at Billeter. The Daemen family doesn't know about it. Both claim to be the inventors of this calculating machine, which is not true. It has been mentioned before in 1888 and has been developed and improved.
The indication of the meter length refers to the total length of the individual stripes on the cylinder. The longer, the more exact the calculations. There were models of 1.2 m, 2.4 m, 7.5 m, 10 m, 15 m and 24 m. The 24 m type was the most accurate slide rule in the world with an accuracy of 5 to 6 decimal places, and cost 1921 Fr. 1000. A simple 1.2 m hand model was available for Fr. 110. There were not only different sizes, but also different types for specific business areas. For example, versions for simple arithmetic tasks, craft businesses, triangular calculations for geometers or finance. Around 28 different versions were available. I could not assign what purpose the type shown in the photo was for. It must be one of the older ones. Between 1900 and 1935 firm of Heinrich Daemen-Schmid manufactured approximately 30,000 cylindrical Loga-Calculators. Of the largest 24 m specimens, three to six are believed to have survived. In 1912 the device was also patented in the USA. International banker Jacques Kayalaff purchased one of them around 1925 for $500. In the 1930s, the production began to change from cylindrical slide rules to disc slide rules, and in 1979 the company was dissolved.
The first electronic pocket calculators, which came onto the market 1970 in Switzerland, only mastered basic arithmetic operations and cost over CHF 500. But that marked the end of the slide rule age. The noisy electro-mechanical calculating machines for basic arithmetic survived a little longer. Switzerland, November 28, 2022.
Life is like arithmetic we spend all our time trying to figure it out hoping one way or another that it all adds up to the multiplication of happiness and the subtraction of hate.~Bryant
Cirque Italia hosts a visit from the WonderKids Club Preschool Program from The Little Gym of Frederick.
The WonderKids Club is no typical preschool program, because in addition to learning important academics like reading, writing, arithmetic, and stem skills, these kids spend an hour each day learning athleticism, tumbling, gymnastics, dance, music, and performance arts! Cirque Italia is no ordinary circus - it’s a circus specializing in performance arts that incorporate water elements throughout their show, in an artistic and family friendly way! So, when the amazing performers from Cirque Italia were willing to host a visit to teach the WonderKids all about the dedication it takes to perform day in and day out under the big top, it was a match made in acrobatic heaven!! cirqueitalia.com/
In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.
Mignon McLaughlin
This pattern on a piece of cloth, reminds me of Time and space continuum.
The grain here is intentional by keeping a higher ISO than normal.
f/2.2 1/60th ISO 4500
Single exposure in low light, wide angle.
MacroMonday Wisdom
Check it out on black. Left click photo.
Wisdom begings with the tools of reading and arithmetic. The first letter in reading is A and the first number is 1. The beginning of knowledge.
Equal: Agreeing in quantity, size, quality, degree, value, etc.; having the same magnitude, the same value, the same degree, etc. - from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Project Gutenberg, public domain
The equals sign, which we now take for granted, was first used in 1557, by a Welsh mathematician named Robert Recorde. (See the Wikipedia article on the equals sign: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equals_sign)
Equations used: two equations from “simple” arithmetic; Ohm’s law; Einstein’s energy/mass equivalence equation; Euler’s equation; the law of Sines; An equation for compound interest; Slope-intercept formula for a straight line; Newton’s law of universal gravitation.
The largest equation in the graphic, from "simple arithmetic" illustrates one of the main ideas of arithmetic, namely that a thing is equal to itself. Another one uses a zero. Zero, as we now use it, was invented in India in the 9th century AD. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero) Euler's equation, also known as Euler’s identity, relates perhaps the most important constants of mathematics, pi, e, and the square root of minus one. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity) There are other ways of representing compound interest, depending on the situation, but the equation used will cover many of them. The Law of Sines has been used in astronomy, to measure distances of bodies within the solar system from the earth. It can also be used in surveying.
Two of the most important statements in English that use the word equal are:
Philippians 2:6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: (King James version)
and
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - U. S. Declaration of Independence (I know. At the time, all men weren’t considered equal, and women weren’t included. But it was, and is, a great idea.)
I have created a number of other posters. See the "Posters and charts . . ." album. There's a link on the right. One of the most popular of these, with over 10,000 views, is a poster on the theme of "two." That's right, two, as in 2.
Thanks for looking. Larger sizes available.
21/365 Does anyone remember using these? Before all the electronic devices, we used slide rules and log tables to do our calculations. Amazing devices: they need no charging, firmware updates or instruction manual and don't become obsolete every 5 years.
Shot with a 20mm extension tube and a Sigma 50mm f/1.4.
Automobile arithmetic:
Lamborghini + Mercedes + Porsche + Ferrari = Audi.
Don't worry if it doesn't make sense, unless you can afford to own one of these machines.
SuperCar Club, Customs House, Sydney, Australia (Wednesday 4 Feb 2009 @ 11:05am).
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in a "light Scots dialect" of English, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.
He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.
As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include "A Red, Red Rose", "A Man's a Man for A' That", "To a Louse", "To a Mouse", "The Battle of Sherramuir", "Tam o' Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
Life and background
Burns was born two miles (3 km) south of Ayr, in Alloway, the eldest of the seven children of William Burnes (1721–1784), a self-educated tenant farmer from Dunnottar in the Mearns, and Agnes Broun (1732–1820), the daughter of a Kirkoswald tenant farmer.
He was born in a house built by his father (now the Burns Cottage Museum), where he lived until Easter 1766, when he was seven years old. William Burnes sold the house and took the tenancy of the 70-acre (280,000 m2) Mount Oliphant farm, southeast of Alloway. Here Burns grew up in poverty and hardship, and the severe manual labour of the farm left its traces in a weakened constitution.
He was given irregular schooling and a lot of his education was with his father, who taught his children reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, and history and also wrote for them A Manual of Christian Belief. He was also taught and tutored by the young teacher John Murdoch (1747–1824), who opened an "adventure school" in Alloway in 1763 and taught Latin, French, and mathematics to both Robert and his brother Gilbert (1760–1827) from 1765 to 1768 until Murdoch left the parish. After a few years of home education, Burns was sent to Dalrymple Parish School in mid-1772 before returning at harvest time to full-time farm labouring until 1773, when he was sent to lodge with Murdoch for three weeks to study grammar, French, and Latin.
By the age of 15, Burns was the principal labourer at Mount Oliphant. During the harvest of 1774, he was assisted by Nelly Kilpatrick (1759–1820), who inspired his first attempt at poetry, "O, Once I Lov'd A Bonnie Lass". In 1775, he was sent to finish his education with a tutor at Kirkoswald, where he met Peggy Thompson (born 1762), to whom he wrote two songs, "Now Westlin' Winds" and "I Dream’d I Lay".
Despite his ability and character, William Burnes was consistently unfortunate, and migrated with his large family from farm to farm without ever being able to improve his circumstances. At Whitsun, 1777, he removed his large family from the unfavourable conditions of Mount Oliphant to the 130-acre (0.53 km2) farm at Lochlea, near Tarbolton, where they stayed until William Burnes's death in 1784. Subsequently, the family became integrated into the community of Tarbolton. To his father's disapproval, Robert joined a country dancing school in 1779 and, with Gilbert, formed the Tarbolton Bachelors' Club the following year. His earliest existing letters date from this time, when he began making romantic overtures to Alison Begbie (b. 1762). In spite of four songs written for her and a suggestion that he was willing to marry her, she rejected him.
Robert Burns was initiated into the Masonic lodge St David, Tarbolton, on 4 July 1781, when he was 22. In December 1781, Burns moved temporarily to Irvine to learn to become a flax-dresser, but during the workers' celebrations for New Year 1781/1782 (which included Burns as a participant) the flax shop caught fire and was burnt to the ground. This venture accordingly came to an end, and Burns went home to Lochlea farm. During this time he met and befriended Richard Brown, who encouraged him to become a poet. He continued to write poems and songs and began a commonplace book in 1783, while his father fought a legal dispute with his landlord. The case went to the Court of Session, and Burnes was upheld in January 1784, a fortnight before he died.
Mauchline
Robert and Gilbert made an ineffectual struggle to keep on the farm, but after its failure they moved to Mossgiel Farm, near Mauchline, in March, which they maintained with an uphill fight for the next four years. In mid-1784 Burns came to know a group of girls known collectively as The Belles of Mauchline, one of whom was Jean Armour, the daughter of a stonemason from Mauchline.
Burns’s first child, Elizabeth "Bess" Burns, was born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton, while he was embarking on a relationship with Jean Armour, who became pregnant with twins in March 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father "was in the greatest distress, and fainted away". To avoid disgrace, her parents sent her to live with her uncle in Paisley. Although Armour's father initially forbade it, they were married in 1788. Armour bore him nine children, three of whom survived infancy.
Burns had encountered financial difficulties due to his lack of success as a farmer. In order to make enough money to support a family, he accepted a job offer from Patrick Douglas, an absentee landowner who lived in Cumnock, to work on his sugar plantations near Port Antonio, Jamaica. Douglas' plantations were managed by his brother Charles, and the job offer, which had a salary of £30 per annum, entailed working in Jamaica as a "book-keeper", whose duties included serving as an assistant overseer to the Black slaves on the plantations (Burns himself described the position as being "a poor Negro driver").[8] The position, which was for a single man, would entail Burns living on a plantation in rustic conditions, as it was unlikely a book keeper would be housed in the plantation's great house. Apologists have argued in Burns's defence that in 1786, the Scottish abolitionist movement was just beginning to be broadly active. Burns's authorship of "The Slave's Lament", a 1792 poem argued as an example of his abolitionist views, is disputed. His name is absent from any abolitionist petition written in Scotland during the period, and according to academic Lisa Williams, Burns "is strangely silent on the question of chattel slavery compared to other contemporary poets. Perhaps this was due to his government position, severe limitations on free speech at the time or his association with beneficiaries of the slave trade system".
Around the same time, Burns fell in love with a woman named Mary Campbell, whom he had seen in church while he was still living in Tarbolton. She was born near Dunoon and had lived in Campbeltown before moving to work in Ayrshire. He dedicated the poems "The Highland Lassie O", "Highland Mary", and "To Mary in Heaven" to her. His song "Will ye go to the Indies, my Mary, And leave auld Scotia's shore?" suggests that they planned to emigrate to Jamaica together. Their relationship has been the subject of much conjecture, and it has been suggested that on 14 May 1786 they exchanged Bibles and plighted their troth over the Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage. Soon afterwards Mary Campbell left her work in Ayrshire, went to the seaport of Greenock, and sailed home to her parents in Campbeltown. In October 1786, Mary and her father sailed from Campbeltown to visit her brother in Greenock. Her brother fell ill with typhus, which she also caught while nursing him. She died of typhus on 20 or 21 October 1786 and was buried there.
As Burns lacked the funds to pay for his passage to Jamaica, Gavin Hamilton suggested that he should "publish his poems in the mean time by subscription, as a likely way of getting a little money to provide him more liberally in necessaries for Jamaica." On 3 April Burns sent proposals for publishing his Scotch Poems to John Wilson, a printer in Kilmarnock, who published these proposals on 14 April 1786, on the same day that Jean Armour's father tore up the paper in which Burns attested his marriage to Jean. To obtain a certificate that he was a free bachelor, Burns agreed on 25 June to stand for rebuke in the Mauchline kirk for three Sundays. He transferred his share in Mossgiel farm to his brother Gilbert on 22 July, and on 30 July wrote to tell his friend John Richmond that, "Armour has got a warrant to throw me in jail until I can find a warrant for an enormous sum ... I am wandering from one friend's house to another."
On 31 July 1786 John Wilson published the volume of works by Robert Burns, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect. Known as the Kilmarnock volume, it sold for 3 shillings and contained much of his best writing, including "The Twa Dogs" (which features Luath, his Border Collie), "Address to the Deil", "Halloween", "The Cotter's Saturday Night", "To a Mouse", "Epitaph for James Smith", and "To a Mountain Daisy", many of which had been written at Mossgiel farm. The success of the work was immediate, and soon he was known across the country.
Burns postponed his planned emigration to Jamaica on 1 September, and was at Mossgiel two days later when he learnt that Jean Armour had given birth to twins. On 4 September Thomas Blacklock wrote a letter expressing admiration for the poetry in the Kilmarnock volume, and suggesting an enlarged second edition. A copy of it was passed to Burns, who later recalled, "I had taken the last farewell of my few friends, my chest was on the road to Greenock; I had composed the last song I should ever measure in Scotland – 'The Gloomy night is gathering fast' – when a letter from Dr Blacklock to a friend of mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects to my poetic ambition. The Doctor belonged to a set of critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His opinion that I would meet with encouragement in Edinburgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a single letter of introduction."
On 27 November 1786 Burns borrowed a pony and set out for Edinburgh. On 14 December William Creech issued subscription bills for the first Edinburgh edition of Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish dialect, which was published on 17 April 1787. Within a week of this event, Burns had sold his copyright to Creech for 100 guineas. For the edition, Creech commissioned Alexander Nasmyth to paint the oval bust-length portrait now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which was engraved to provide a frontispiece for the book. Nasmyth had come to know Burns and his fresh and appealing image has become the basis for almost all subsequent representations of the poet. In Edinburgh, he was received as an equal by the city's men of letters—including Dugald Stewart, Robertson, Blair and others—and was a guest at aristocratic gatherings, where he bore himself with unaffected dignity. Here he encountered, and made a lasting impression on, the 16-year-old Walter Scott, who described him later with great admiration:
[His person was strong and robust;] his manners rustic, not clownish, a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are presented in Mr Nasmyth's picture but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished, as if seen in perspective. I think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits ... there was a strong expression of shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when he spoke with feeling or interest. [I never saw such another eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distinguished men of my time.]
The new edition of his poems brought Burns £400. His stay in the city also resulted in some lifelong friendships, among which were those with Lord Glencairn, and Frances Anna Dunlop (1730–1815), who became his occasional sponsor and with whom he corresponded for many years until a rift developed. He embarked on a relationship with the separated Agnes "Nancy" McLehose (1758–1841), with whom he exchanged passionate letters under pseudonyms (Burns called himself "Sylvander" and Nancy "Clarinda"). When it became clear that Nancy would not be easily seduced into a physical relationship, Burns moved on to Jenny Clow (1766–1792), Nancy's domestic servant, who bore him a son, Robert Burns Clow, in 1788. He also had an affair with a servant girl, Margaret "May" Cameron. His relationship with Nancy concluded in 1791 with a final meeting in Edinburgh before she sailed to Jamaica for what turned out to be a short-lived reconciliation with her estranged husband. Before she left, he sent her the manuscript of "Ae Fond Kiss" as a farewell.
In Edinburgh, in early 1787, he met James Johnson, a struggling music engraver and music seller with a love of old Scots songs and a determination to preserve them. Burns shared this interest and became an enthusiastic contributor to The Scots Musical Museum. The first volume was published in 1787 and included three songs by Burns. He contributed 40 songs to volume two, and he ended up responsible for about a third of the 600 songs in the whole collection, as well as making a considerable editorial contribution. The final volume was published in 1803.
On his return from Edinburgh in February 1788, he resumed his relationship with Jean Armour and they married in March 1788. He took out a lease on Ellisland Farm, Dumfriesshire, settling there in June. He also took up a training position as an exciseman or gauger, which involved long rides and detailed bookkeeping. He was appointed to duties in Customs and Excise in 1789. Burns chose the land of Ellisland a few miles north of the town of Dumfries, from Patrick Miller's estate at Dalswinton, where he had a new farmhouse and byre built. He and Jean moved in the following summer 1789 to the new farm house at Ellisland. In November 1790, he had written his masterpiece, the narrative poem "Tam O' Shanter". The Ellisland farm beside the river Nith, now holds a unique collection of Burns's books, artefacts, and manuscripts and is mostly preserved as when Burns and his young family lived there. Burns gave up the farm in 1791 to move to Dumfries. About this time he was offered and declined an appointment in London on the staff of The Star newspaper, and refused to become a candidate for a newly created Chair of Agriculture in the University of Edinburgh, although influential friends offered to support his claims. He did however accept membership of the Royal Company of Archers in 1792.
After giving up his farm, he removed to Dumfries. It was at this time that, being requested to write lyrics for The Melodies of Scotland, he responded by contributing over 100 songs. He made major contributions to George Thomson's A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice as well as to James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum.[citation needed] Arguably his claim to immortality chiefly rests on these volumes, which placed him in the front rank of lyric poets. As a songwriter he provided his own lyrics, sometimes adapted from traditional words. He put words to Scottish folk melodies and airs which he collected, and composed his own arrangements of the music including modifying tunes or recreating melodies on the basis of fragments. In letters he explained that he preferred simplicity, relating songs to spoken language which should be sung in traditional ways. The original instruments would be fiddle and the guitar of the period which was akin to a cittern, but the transcription of songs for piano has resulted in them usually being performed in classical concert or music hall styles. At the 3 week Celtic Connections festival Glasgow each January, Burns songs are often performed with both fiddle and guitar.
Thomson as a publisher commissioned arrangements of "Scottish, Welsh and Irish Airs" by such eminent composers of the day as Joseph Haydn and Ludwig van Beethoven, with new lyrics. The contributors of lyrics included Burns. While such arrangements had wide popular appeal. Beethoven's music was more advanced and difficult to play than Thomson intended.
Burns described how he had to master singing the tune before he composed the words:
My way is: I consider the poetic sentiment, correspondent to my idea of the musical expression, then chuse my theme, begin one stanza, when that is composed—which is generally the most difficult part of the business—I walk out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in nature around me that are in unison or harmony with the cogitations of my fancy and workings of my bosom, humming every now and then the air with the verses I have framed. when I feel my Muse beginning to jade, I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there commit my effusions to paper, swinging, at intervals, on the hind-legs of my elbow chair, by way of calling forth my own critical strictures, as my, pen goes.
Burns also worked to collect and preserve Scottish folk songs, sometimes revising, expanding, and adapting them. One of the better known of these collections is The Merry Muses of Caledonia (the title is not Burns's), a collection of bawdy lyrics that were popular in the music halls of Scotland as late as the 20th century. At Dumfries, he wrote his world famous song "A Man's a Man for A' That", which was based on the writings in The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine, one of the chief political theoreticians of the American Revolution. Burns sent the poem anonymously in 1795 to the Glasgow Magazine. He was also a radical for reform and wrote poems for democracy, such as – "Parcel of Rogues to the Nation" and the "Rights of Women".
Many of Burns's most famous poems are songs with the music based upon older traditional songs. For example, "Auld Lang Syne" is set to the traditional tune "Can Ye Labour Lea", "A Red, Red Rose" is set to the tune of "Major Graham" and "The Battle of Sherramuir" is set to the "Cameronian Rant".
Burns alienated some acquaintances by freely expressing sympathy with the French, and American Revolutions, for the advocates of democratic reform and votes for all men and the Society of the Friends of the People which advocated Parliamentary Reform. His political views came to the notice of his employers, to which he pleaded his innocence. Burns met other radicals at the Globe Inn Dumfries. As an Exciseman he felt compelled to join the Royal Dumfries Volunteers in March 1795.
Latterly Burns lived in Dumfries in a two-storey red sandstone house on Mill Hole Brae, now Burns Street. The home is now a museum. He went on long journeys on horseback, often in harsh weather conditions as an Excise Supervisor, and was kept very busy doing reports. The father of four young children, he was also frequently occupied as a song collector and songwriter.
As his health began to give way, he aged prematurely and fell into fits of despondency. Rumours of intemperance (alleged mainly by temperance activist James Currie) may have been overstated. Hard manual farm labour earlier in his life may have damaged Burns's health. Burns possibly had a long-standing rheumatic heart condition, perhaps beginning when he was 21, and a bacterial infection, possibly arising from a tooth abscess, may have exacerbated this.
On the morning of 21 July 1796, Burns died in Dumfries, at the age of 37.
The funeral took place on Monday 25 July 1796, the day that his son Maxwell was born. He was at first buried in the far corner of St. Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries; a simple "slab of freestone" was erected as his gravestone by Jean Armour, which some felt insulting to his memory. His body was eventually moved to its final location in the same cemetery, the Burns Mausoleum, in September 1817. The body of his widow Jean Armour was buried with his in 1834.
Armour had taken steps to secure his personal property, partly by liquidating two promissory notes amounting to fifteen pounds sterling (about 1,100 pounds at 2009 prices). The family went to the Court of Session in 1798 with a plan to support his surviving children by publishing a four-volume edition of his complete works and a biography written by James Currie. Subscriptions were raised to meet the initial cost of publication, which was in the hands of Thomas Cadell and William Davies in London and William Creech, bookseller in Edinburgh. Hogg records that fund-raising for Burns's family was embarrassingly slow, and it took several years to accumulate significant funds through the efforts of John Syme and Alexander Cunningham.
Burns was posthumously given the freedom of the town of Dumfries. Hogg records that Burns was given the freedom of the Burgh of Dumfries on 4 June 1787, 9 years before his death, and was also made an Honorary Burgess of Dumfries.
Through his five surviving children (of 12 born), Burns has over 900 living descendants as of 2019.
Armour died on 26 March 1834 and was interred into the Burns Mausoleum on 31 March 1834. The opening of the mausoleum provided an opportunity to exhume Burns body by a local group who believed in phrenology, a pseudo-science whose practitioners believed an individuals personality could be predicted by measuring the skulls.
The group was led by Archibald Blacklock, a surgeon, and John McDiarmid, Dumfries Courier editor and phrenologist. Other members of the group included Adam Rankine, James Kerr, James Bogie, Andrew Crombie and their assistants.
The night before Armour's funeral, the group was supposedly granted permission to exhume Burns's body by Armour's brother, Robert Armour.
The group attempted to entered the mausoleum at 7pm. There were many people present in the graveyard and they decided to try again later that evening.
The skull was removed and taken to James Fraser, a local plasterer of Queensbury Street, Dumfries. The skull was later returned to the tomb.
A plaster cast was sent to George Combe, a Scottish lawyer and practitioner of phrenology based in Edinburgh. Combe published a report about his findings, entitled ‘Phrenological development of Robert Burns. From a cast on his skull moulded at Dumfries, the 31st day of March, 1834’.
It is unknown how many casts were made by Fraser, with some sources reporting three were made. Six casts are known though some may be copies of the original cast.
Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh
The Hunterian, University of Glasgow
Writer’s Museum, a museum in Edinburgh
Dumfries Museum
East Ayrshire Museums
National Trust for Scotland’s Robert Burns Birthplace Museum
Burns's style is marked by spontaneity, directness, and sincerity, and ranges from the tender intensity of some of his lyrics through the humour of "Tam o' Shanter" and the satire of "Holy Willie's Prayer" and "The Holy Fair".
Burns's poetry drew upon a substantial familiarity with and knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and English literature, as well as the Scottish Makar tradition. Burns was skilled in writing not only in the Scots language but also in the Scottish English dialect of the English language. Some of his works, such as "Love and Liberty" (also known as "The Jolly Beggars"), are written in both Scots and English for various effects.
His themes included republicanism (he lived during the French Revolutionary period) and Radicalism, which he expressed covertly in "Scots Wha Hae", Scottish patriotism, anticlericalism, class inequalities, gender roles, commentary on the Scottish Kirk of his time, Scottish cultural identity, poverty, sexuality, and the beneficial aspects of popular socialising (carousing, Scotch whisky, folk songs, and so forth).
The strong emotional highs and lows associated with many of Burns's poems have led some, such as Burns biographer Robert Crawford, to suggest that he suffered from manic depression—a hypothesis that has been supported by analysis of various samples of his handwriting. Burns himself referred to suffering from episodes of what he called "blue devilism". The National Trust for Scotland has downplayed the suggestion on the grounds that evidence is insufficient to support the claim.
Burns is generally classified as a proto-Romantic poet, and he influenced William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Bysshe Shelley greatly. His direct literary influences in the use of Scots in poetry were Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson. The Edinburgh literati worked to sentimentalise Burns during his life and after his death, dismissing his education by calling him a "heaven-taught ploughman". Burns influenced later Scottish writers, especially Hugh MacDiarmid, who fought to dismantle what he felt had become a sentimental cult that dominated Scottish literature.
Burns had a significant influence on Alexander McLachlan and some influence on Robert Service. While this may not be so obvious in Service's English verse, which is Kiplingesque, it is more readily apparent in his Scots verse.
Scottish Canadians have embraced Robert Burns as a kind of patron poet and mark his birthday with festivities. 'Robbie Burns Day' is celebrated from Newfoundland and Labrador to Nanaimo. Every year, Canadian newspapers publish biographies of the poet, listings of local events and buffet menus. Universities mark the date in a range of ways: McMaster University library organized a special collection and Simon Fraser University's Centre for Scottish Studies organized a marathon reading of Burns's poetry. Senator Heath Macquarrie quipped of Canada's first Prime Minister that "While the lovable [Robbie] Burns went in for wine, women and song, his fellow Scot, John A. did not chase women and was not musical!" 'Gung Haggis Fat Choy' is a hybrid of Chinese New Year and Robbie Burns Day, celebrated in Vancouver since the late 1990s.
In January 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was invited to attend a Robert Burns celebration by Robert Crawford; and if unable to attend, send a toast. Lincoln composed a toast.
An example of Burns's literary influence in the US is seen in the choice by novelist John Steinbeck of the title of his 1937 novel, Of Mice and Men, taken from a line in the second-to-last stanza of "To a Mouse": "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." Burns's influence on American vernacular poets such as James Whitcomb Riley and Frank Lebby Stanton has been acknowledged by their biographers. When asked for the source of his greatest creative inspiration, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan selected Burns's 1794 song "A Red, Red Rose" as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life.
The author J. D. Salinger used protagonist Holden Caulfield's misinterpretation of Burns's poem "Comin' Through the Rye" as his title and a main interpretation of Caulfield's grasping to his childhood in his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. The poem, actually about a rendezvous, is thought by Caulfield to be about saving people from falling out of childhood.
Burns became the "people's poet" of Russia. In Imperial Russia Burns was translated into Russian and became a source of inspiration for the ordinary, oppressed Russian people. In Soviet Russia, he was elevated as the archetypal poet of the people. As a great admirer of the egalitarian ethos behind the American and French Revolutions who expressed his own egalitarianism in poems such as his "Birthday Ode for George Washington" or his "Is There for Honest Poverty" (commonly known as "A Man's a Man for a' that"), Burns was well placed for endorsement by the Communist regime as a "progressive" artist. A new translation of Burns begun in 1924 by Samuil Marshak proved enormously popular, selling over 600,000 copies. The USSR honoured Burns with a commemorative stamp in 1956. He remains popular in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Burns clubs have been founded worldwide. The first one, known as The Mother Club, was founded in Greenock in 1801 by merchants born in Ayrshire, some of whom had known Burns.[75] The club set its original objectives as "To cherish the name of Robert Burns; to foster a love of his writings, and generally to encourage an interest in the Scottish language and literature." The club also continues to have local charitable work as a priority.
Burns's birthplace in Alloway is now a National Trust for Scotland property called the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. It includes: the humble Burns Cottage where he was born and spent the first years of his life, a modern museum building which houses more than 5,000 Burns artefacts including his handwritten manuscripts, the historic Alloway Auld Kirk and Brig o Doon which feature in Burns's masterpiece 'Tam o Shanter', and the Burns Monument which was erected in Burns's honour and finished in 1823. His house in Dumfries is operated as the Robert Burns House, and the Robert Burns Centre in Dumfries features more exhibits about his life and works. Ellisland Farm in Auldgirth, which he owned from 1788 to 1791, is maintained as a working farm with a museum and interpretation centre by the Friends of Ellisland Farm.
Significant 19th-century monuments to him stand in Alloway, Leith, and Dumfries. An early 20th-century replica of his birthplace cottage belonging to the Burns Club Atlanta stands in Atlanta, Georgia. These are part of a large list of Burns memorials and statues around the world.
Organisations include the Robert Burns Fellowship of the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the Burns Club Atlanta in the United States. Towns named after Burns include Burns, New York, and Burns, Oregon.
In the suburb of Summerhill, Dumfries, the majority of the streets have names with Burns connotations. A British Rail Standard Class 7 steam locomotive was named after him, along with a later Class 87 electric locomotive, No. 87035. On 24 September 1996, Class 156 diesel unit 156433 was named The Kilmarnock Edition at Girvan station to launch the new Burns Line services between Girvan, Ayr and Kilmarnock, supported by Strathclyde Partnership for Transport.
Several streets surrounding the Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.'s Back Bay Fens in Boston, Massachusetts, were designated with Burns connotations. A life-size statue was dedicated in Burns's honour within the Back Bay Fens of the West Fenway neighbourhood in 1912. It stood until 1972 when it was relocated downtown, sparking protests from the neighbourhood, literary fans, and preservationists of Olmsted's vision for the Back Bay Fens.
There is a statue of Burns in The Octagon, Dunedin, in the same pose as the one in Dundee. Dunedin's first European settlers were Scots; Thomas Burns, a nephew of Burns, was one of Dunedin's founding fathers.
A crater on Mercury is named after Burns.
In November 2012, Burns was awarded the title Honorary Chartered Surveyor by The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the only posthumous membership so far granted by the institution.
The oldest statue of Burns is in the town of Camperdown, Victoria.[80] It now hosts an annual Robert Burns Scottish Festival in celebration of the statue and its history.
In 2020, the Robert Burns Academy in Cumnock, East Ayrshire opened and is named after Burns as an honour of Burns having spent time living in nearby Mauchline.
The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to honour Burns with a commemorative stamp, marking the 160th anniversary of his death in 1956.
The UK postal service, the Royal Mail, has issued postage stamps commemorating Burns three times. In 1966, two stamps were issued, priced fourpence and one shilling and threepence, both carrying Burns's portrait. In 1996, an issue commemorating the bicentenary of his death comprised four stamps, priced 19p, 25p, 41p and 60p and including quotes from Burns's poems. On 22 January 2009, two 1st class stamps were issued by the Royal Mail to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Burns's birth.
Burns was pictured on the Clydesdale Bank £5 note from 1971 to 2009. On the reverse of the note was a vignette of a field mouse and a wild rose in reference to Burns's poem "To a Mouse". The Clydesdale Bank's notes were redesigned in 2009 and, since then, he has been pictured on the front of their £10 note. In September 2007, the Bank of Scotland redesigned their banknotes to feature famous Scottish bridges. The reverse side of new £5 features Brig o' Doon, famous from Burns's poem "Tam o' Shanter", and pictures the statue of Burns at that site.
In 1996, the Isle of Man issued a four-coin set of Crown (5/-) pieces on the themes of "Auld Lang Syne", Edinburgh Castle, Revenue Cutter, and Writing Poems. Tristan da Cunha produced a gold £5 Bicentenary Coin.
In 2009 the Royal Mint issued a commemorative two pound coin featuring a quote from "Auld Lang Syne".
In 1976, singer Jean Redpath, in collaboration with composer Serge Hovey, started to record all of Burns's songs, with a mixture of traditional and Burns's own compositions. The project ended when Hovey died, after seven of the planned twenty-two volumes were completed. Redpath also recorded four cassettes of Burns's songs (re-issued as 3 CDs) for the Scots Musical Museum.
In 1996, a musical about Burns's life called Red Red Rose won third place at a competition for new musicals in Denmark. Robert Burns was played by John Barrowman. On 25 January 2008, a musical play about the love affair between Robert Burns and Nancy McLehose entitled Clarinda premiered in Edinburgh before touring Scotland. The plan was that Clarinda would make its American premiere in Atlantic Beach, FL, at Atlantic Beach Experimental Theatre on 25 January 2013. Eddi Reader has released two albums, Sings the Songs of Robert Burns and The Songs of Robert Burns Deluxe Edition, about the work of the poet.
Alfred B. Street wrote the words and Henry Tucker wrote the music for a song called Our Own Robbie Burns in 1856.
Burns Night, in effect a second national day, is celebrated on Burns's birthday, 25 January, with Burns suppers around the world, and is more widely observed in Scotland than the official national day, St. Andrew's Day. The first Burns supper in The Mother Club in Greenock was held on what was thought to be his birthday on 29 January 1802; in 1803 it was discovered from the Ayr parish records that the correct date was 25 January 1759.
The format of Burns suppers has changed little since. The basic format starts with a general welcome and announcements, followed with the Selkirk Grace. After the grace comes the piping and cutting of the haggis, when Burns's famous "Address to a Haggis" is read and the haggis is cut open. The event usually allows for people to start eating just after the haggis is presented. At the end of the meal, a series of toasts, often including a 'Toast to the Lassies', and replies are made. This is when the toast to "the immortal memory", an overview of Burns's life and work, is given. The event usually concludes with the singing of "Auld Lang Syne".
Greatest Scot
In 2009, STV ran a television series and public vote on who was "The Greatest Scot" of all time. Robert Burns won, narrowly beating William Wallace. A bust of Burns is in the Hall of Heroes of the National Wallace Monument in Stirling.
A crater on the planet Mercury has been named after Burns.
Walker is a residential suburb and electoral ward in the south-east of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
The place-name 'Walker' is first attested in 1242, where it appears as Waucre. This means 'wall-carr', that is to say, 'the marsh by the Roman wall', a reference to Hadrian's Wall. Today, a small fragment of the wall can be found in neighbouring Byker to the west, and Segedunum, a major site at the end of the Wall can be found in Wallsend to the east.
Large-scale coal-mining began in the area in the early 1700s, with up to ten collieries in operation in the Walker area. A wagon-way was constructed during this period to facilitate transportation of coal to the riverside staithes.
Walker used to have a large shipbuilding industry, particularly the yard of Armstrong Whitworth at High Walker, but this has declined over the past 50 years and the area has suffered as a result, with many jobs being taken away from the community.
From 1809 to 1883, Walker was home to an iron-making company, Losh, Wilson and Bell (known towards the end as Bells, Goodman and finally as Bells, Lightfoot).
Walkerville was developed as a model housing exhibition along the lines of the Garden city movement held under the auspices of the National Housing Reform Council in 1908 and is an early example of small-scale town planning prior to the Housing, Town Planning, &c. Act 1909. One of the prime campaigners behind the exhibition was Councillor David Adams (1871-1943), who later became an MP and Lord Mayor of Newcastle. The chosen site was Corporation estate, Walker, and the gold medal for the horseshoe layout of the site was awarded to Watson and Scott of Newcastle. The exhibition was of a range of 'model cottages' for working people of different types from two to three bedrooms, by different architects and backed by a range of patrons including Wallsend Cooperative Society, at that time a provider of mortgage capital for its members. Newcastle Corporation also built homes as part of the exhibition. The Gold medal-winning architects were AT Martindale, White & Stephenson, Edward Cratney and TE Davidson. David Adams described the planning and development of the Walker and Willington estates in a series of articles for The Northern Echo.
Walker is an area between Welbeck Road and the banks of the River Tyne, although the modern electoral ward of Walker incorporates Pottery Bank and St Anthony's. When most Geordies refer to Walker they also incorporate the areas of Daisy Hill and Eastfield. Walkergate, located between Welbeck Road and the Network rail line are sometimes considered parts of Walker. Other parts of Walker are Walkerdene (which is situated south of 'Fossway' and north of 'Welbeck Road', west of 'Waverdale Avenue' and east of 'Scrogg Road') and Walkerville (which is located under the railway bridge and to the right, these houses are mainly private stock whereas other areas of Walker are council and ex-council stock). Other areas included are Daisy Hill and Eastfield which help make up the city Ward of Walkergate.
The area is notable for Walker Park, the Walker Riverside Park, and the Lady Stephenson Library (now known as 'Walker Library') as well as the Lightfoot Sports Centre, which is set to undergo a £2.5m refurbishment. Alderman Sir William Haswell Stephenson, built the library in 1908 in memory of his wife Eliza, who died in 1901. The library closed on 29 June 2013 and contents have been relocated into a purpose built area within Walker Activity Dome in July 2013 (The Lightfoot Sports Centre). Walker Park received a Green Flag Award in 2019.
Walker is served by the Tyne and Wear Metro, with a station at Walkergate, and has a main bus terminus on Walker Road, although this is quite dilapidated and badly serviced.
Most children attend a local primary school, These are St Vincent's RC, Tyneview, Welbeck Academy, West Walker, Walkergate, and Central Walker. The two main Secondary Schools which service the area are Benfield School, a specialist Sports College, and Walker Riverside Academy, a high performing specialist technology and visual arts school for 11- to 18-year-olds.
Newcastle City Council's Walker Riverside regeneration scheme launched in 2003 aims to revitalise the area with new houses, schools, jobs and community facilities, environmental improvements, and a new neighbourhood centre to be known as the Heart of Walker. The scheme has its own newsletter known as the "Walker Eye", which goes to almost 7,000 homes and businesses locally.
Much of the older and run-down housing stock along Walker Road is in the process of being demolished and replaced with new homes which are a mixture of council and private housing. The stated aim was to build 1,600 new and replacement homes over a 15-year period.
As part of the new Heart of Walker development, plans have recently been unveiled to open a new state-of-the-art primary school on a site next door to the redeveloped Lightfoot Centre, where the old Wharrier Street Primary School was. The £7.5m project merged Wharrier Street and St Anthony's Primary Schools in Autumn 2012 to create the new Central Walker Church of England Primary.
Plans for the area's regeneration were approved by the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Ruth Kelly.
In August 2018 it was announced that two high-rise blocks, Titan House and Hexham House were to be demolished. The flats and neighbouring Church Walk shopping centre will be replaced by a new housing development and shops.
Notable people
Cheryl Cole, singer, born on 30 June 1983, lived in Walker and Heaton, attending Walker Comprehensive School, Middle Street, before she found fame with Girls Aloud.
Walker is the birthplace of Eric Burdon, lead singer of The Animals, who later recorded with War at the beginning of that band's career. The Animals recorded a song called "Gonna Send You Back to Walker", a repurposed version of a song by American R&B singer Timmy Shaw, "Gonna Send You Back to Georgia (A City Slick)."
Another Walkerite, the author, journalist and broadcaster Keith Topping, titled one of the chapters in his novel The Hollow Men, The St. Anthony's Chinese Takeaway Massacre. The novelist is co author on Dr Who: The Hollow Men (1998) with Martin Day.
The former Newcastle United striker Shola Ameobi grew up in Walker, where he played for Walker Central F.C.; which was launched in 1988 by the Wallsend-born former Newcastle United footballer Lee Clark, and ex-club scout Brian Clark (no relation).
Stan Anderson, rugby union player who made one Test match appearance for England in the 1899 Home Nations Championship.
David MacBeth, an English pop music singer was born in Walker. Despite releasing a string of singles on three record labels between 1959 and 1969, MacBeth's only chart success was with his version of "Mr. Blue", which peaked at number 18 in the UK Singles Chart. MacBeth took part in the 1963 Roy Orbison/The Beatles Tour.
Geordie Shore stars Marty McKenna and Chantelle Conelly are both also from Walker.
P7100329
Napier's bones is a manually-operated calculating device created by John Napier of Merchiston, Scotland for the calculation of products and quotients of numbers. The method was based on lattice multiplication, and also called 'rabdology', a word invented by Napier.
History / biography
> www.17centurymaths.com/contents/napier/jimsnewstuff/Napie...
> mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Napier/
> collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co60130/napi...
How it works:
> mathworld.wolfram.com/NapiersBones.html
> www.cut-the-knot.org/blue/Napier.shtml
(I made this shot with the Olympus Tough TG5 on the Underwater setting. Seriously. The underwater setting gave the best light in the make-shift studio set-up with daylight and with only a bit of sharpening in PS).
All recently inspired by:
www.flickr.com/photos/189866730@N08/52199576171/in/faves-...
What's left from flames licking vinyl siding, melting like so much candle wax in the sun. It's a sight I've seen a hundred times, twisted and distorted result. Are we supposed to see beauty in damage and destruction? Don't ask me, but I do. There's nothing doing, no words to make it right. No way to solve the aching aftermath, that arthritic arithmetic of paying back a painful loss. You might describe life as solving a series of problems, until you reach the eventual final one. They're all presented in a measure as if to test a stimulus, and we only fail the test by not surviving it. If you weren't brought down than you must be up for more – like an old oak losing a branch it thinks it never needed, or a three-legged dog getting along just fine. Kind words to make your thin skin thicker, the bark is worth the bite.
May 16, 2022
Port George, Nova Scotia
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Engraving inside Vol. I only of the First Edition (1852) of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This copy must have been owned by a child because it has some arithmetic penciled in the front endpapers; it also has a little penciled inscription in a child's hand that says "a good book". A gift inscription in ink reads: "[given to] Mrs Emeline Chittenden by Sam C. Robinson".
While our Society sadly lacks the second volume, we are pleased to have a First Edition copy in its original publisher's binding (even if it is a little worn!), allowing us a glimpse into how the original readers experienced Stowe's novel in New England. We believe this is an early, but not first, printing of the First Edition. For more on this hugely influential novel, we invite you to explore the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center's website by clicking here - www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/harriet-beecher-stowe/u....
8vo (190 x 115mm), pp. 312 with wood-engraved illustrations by W. Baker, original publisher's cloth binding stamped in gold. Spine lacking.
Obj ID# B2021.63
See additional books in our collection at flic.kr/s/aHsmXePP6j
(Photo credit - Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)
It is out of this understanding of rebellion as salvation for all that the most courageous acts of solidarity are born. One is reminded of Simone Weil, whom Camus lauded as “the only great spirit of our times” and who, as she lay dying of tuberculosis, defied her doctors’ orders by refusing to eat more than the rations her compatriots in Nazi-occupied France were given. Invoking such heroes, Camus writes:
This insane generosity is the generosity of rebellion, which unhesitatingly gives the strength of its love and without a moment’s delay refuses injustice. Its merit lies in making no calculations, distributing everything it possesses to life and to living men. It is thus that it is prodigal in its gifts to men to come. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present. […] Rebellion proves in this way that it is the very movement of life and that it cannot be denied without renouncing life. Its purest outburst, on each occasion, gives birth to existence. Thus it is love and fecundity or it is nothing at all. At the end of this tunnel of darkness, however, there is inevitably a light, which we already divine and for which we only have to fight to ensure its coming. All of us, among the ruins, are preparing a renaissance beyond the limits of nihilism. But few of us know it. In a sentiment of especial poignancy today, as Europe struggles to welcome the world’s refugees and displaced families so ungenerously referred to as a “crisis,” Camus adds:
In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die… With this joy, through long struggle, we shall remake the soul of our time, and a Europe which will exclude nothing.
The Rebel is a magnificent and acutely timely read in its totality. Complement it with Susan Sontag on courage and resistance and Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, then revisit Camus on strength of character, happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons, the art of awareness, and the touching letter of gratitude he sent to his childhood teacher shortly after winning the Nobel Prize.
Building on Nietzsche’s ideas about the fine line between constructive and destructive rebellion — ideas Camus sees as “born of abundance and fullness of spirit” — he summarizes this orientation of mind: One must accept the unacceptable and hold to the untenable… From absolute despair will spring infinite joy, from blind servitude, unbounded freedom. To be free is, precisely, to abolish ends. The innocence of the ceaseless change of things, as soon as one consents to it, represents the maximum liberty. The free mind willingly accepts what is necessary. Nietzsche’s most profound concept is that the necessity of phenomena, if it is absolute, without rifts, does not imply any kind of restraint. Total acceptance of total necessity is his paradoxical definition of freedom. The question “free of what?” is thus replaced by “free for what?” Liberty coincides with heroism. It is the asceticism of the great man, “the bow bent to the breaking-point.” In a passage of remarkable resonance today, when we are confronting a wave of violence so strangely divorced from everything the past has taught us — those countless bloody lessons in the perennial fact that violence is always without victors — Camus considers the only adequate role of history:
History … is only an opportunity that must be rendered fruitful by a vigilant rebellion. “Obsession with the harvest and indifference to history,” writes René Char admirably, “are the two extremities of my bow.” If the duration of history is not synonymous with the duration of the harvest, then history, in effect, is no more than a fleeting and cruel shadow in which man has no more part. He who dedicates himself to this history dedicates himself to nothing and, in his turn, is nothing. But he who dedicates himself to the duration of his life, to the house he builds, to the dignity of mankind, dedicates himself to the earth and reaps from it the harvest that sows its seed and sustains the world again and again. More than half a century before Rebecca Solnit’s electrifying case for the vital difference between blind optimism and hope as an act of rebellion, Camus writes: The words that reverberate for us at the confines of this long adventure of rebellion are not formulas for optimism, for which we have no possible use in the extremities of our unhappiness, but words of courage and intelligence which, on the shores of the eternal seas, even have the qualities of virtue. No possible form of wisdom today can claim to give more. Rebellion indefatigably confronts evil, from which it can only derive a new impetus. Man can master in himself everything that should be mastered. He should rectify in creation everything that can be rectified. And after he has done so, children will still die unjustly even in a perfect society. Even by his greatest effort man can only propose to diminish arithmetically the sufferings of the world. But the injustice and the suffering of the world will remain and, no matter how limited they are, they will not cease to be an outrage. Dimitri Karamazov’s cry of “Why?” will continue to resound; art and rebellion will die only with the last man.
[…]
Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the humiliated. The most pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only?
Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? And yet true rebellion, Camus argues, is an act motivated by concerned with the common good rather than by self-interest: The affirmation implicit in every act of rebellion is extended to something that transcends the individual in so far as it withdraws him from his supposed solitude and provides him with a reason to act. […] An act of rebellion is not, essentially, an egoistic act. Of course, it can have egoistic motives… The rebel … demands respect for himself, of course, but only in so far as he identifies himself with a natural community. […] When he rebels, a man identifies himself with other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical. With an eye to the osmotic relationship between construction and destruction, Camus adds: Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. While this essay is a particularly spirited expression of his lifelong mission to defeat nihilism, Camus uses the writings of Nietzsche — who proclaimed himself “the first perfect nihilist of Europe” — as a springboard for exploring the constructive potentiality of rebellion. He writes: Because his mind was free, Nietzsche knew that freedom of the mind is not a comfort, but an achievement to which one aspires and at long last obtains after an exhausting struggle. He knew that in wanting to consider oneself above the law, there is a great risk of finding oneself beneath the law. That is why he understood that only the mind found its real emancipation in the acceptance of new obligations. The essence of his discovery consists in saying that if the eternal law is not freedom, the absence of law is still less so.
[…]
The sum total of every possibility does not amount to liberty… Chaos is also a form of servitude. Freedom exists only in a world where what is possible is defined at the same time as what is not possible. Without law there is no freedom.
Despair, like the absurd, has opinions and desires about everything in general and nothing in particular. Silence expresses this attitude very well. But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice — even though he says nothing but “no” — he begins to desire and to judge… Not every value entails rebellion, but every act of rebellion tacitly invokes a value… Awareness, no matter how confused it may be, develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden, dazzling perception that there is something in man with which he can identify himself, even if only for a moment.
“You say you want a revolution,” the Beatles sang in 1968 as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was erecting the pillars of nonviolence on the other side of the Atlantic, “Well, you know / We all want to change the world… But when you talk about destruction / Don’t you know that you can count me out… If you want money for people with minds that hate / All I can tell you is brother you have to wait.”
Perhaps such is the curse of our species: Only in violent times do we remember, in our bones and our sinews, that hate is not a weapon of rebellion but of cowardice; that no true revolution is achieved through destruction and nihilism; that the only way to change the world is through constructive and life-affirming action. No one has made this point more persuasively and elegantly than Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) in his sublime and sublimely timely 1951 book The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt (public library).The Rebel (French: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Camus relates writers and artists as diverse as Epicurus and Lucretius, Marquis de Sade, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Stirner, André Breton, and others in an integrated, historical portrait of man in revolt. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several 'countercultural' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. This work has received ongoing interest, influencing modern philosophers and authors such as Paul Berman and others.
Fred Rosen has examined the influence of ideas of Simone Weil on Camus' thinking in The Rebel. George F Selfer has analysed parallels between Camus and Friedrich Nietzsche in philosophical aesthestics
One of Camus' primary arguments in The Rebel concerns the motivation for rebellion and revolution. While the two acts - which can be interpreted from Camus' writing as states of being - are radically different in most respects, they both stem from a basic human rejection of normative justice. If human beings become disenchanted with contemporary applications of justice, Camus suggests that they rebel. This rebellion, then, is the product of a basic contradiction between the human mind's unceasing quest for clarification and the apparently meaningless nature of the world. Described by Camus as "absurd," this latter perception must be examined with what Camus terms "lucidity." Camus concludes that the absurd sensibility contradicts itself because when it claims to believe in nothing, it believes in its own protest and the value of the protester's life. Therefore, this sensibility is logically a "point of departure" that irresistibly "exceeds itself." In the inborn impulse to rebel, on the other hand, we can deduce values that enable us to determine that murder and oppression are illegitimate and conclude with "hope for a new creation."
Another prominent theme in The Rebel, which is tied to the notion of incipient rebellion, is the inevitable failure of attempts at human perfection. Through an examination of various titular revolutions, and in particular the French Revolution, Camus argues that most revolutions involved a fundamental denial of both history and transcendental values. Such revolutionaries aimed to kill God. In the French Revolution, for instance, this was achieved through the execution of Louis XVI and subsequent eradication of the divine right of kings. The subsequent rise of utopian and materialist idealism sought "the end of history." Because this end is unattainable, according to Camus, terror ensued as the revolutionaries attempted to coerce results. This culminated in the "temporary" enslaving of people in the name of their future liberation. Notably, Camus' reliance on non-secular sentiment does not involve a defense of religion; indeed, the replacement of divinely-justified morality with pragmatism simply represents Camus' apotheosis of transcendental, moral values.
A third is that of crime, as Camus discusses how rebels who get carried away lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion and offer various defenses of crime through various historical epochs.
At the end of the book, Camus espouses the possible moral superiority of the ethics and political plan of syndicalism. He grounds this politics in a wider "midday thought" which opposes love of this life, and an unrelativisable normative commitment to fellow human beings, against ideological promises of the other world, end of history, or triumph of an alleged master race.
. . to remember 1964 and the movie: "Wonderful Life" . . . . Cliff Richard . . . and the Shadows . . . and the song On the beach? ( . .please don't forget to come back and comment!)
Sadly I do (I was 9), but happily my daughter (2+) doesn't!
But that doesn't stop her bopping away and loving to dance . . "on the beach"!
Minutes after this she collapsed in total exhaustion . . it had been a long day, "on the beach".
Oh, and by the way, how many of you have done mental arithmetic, already? ;-D
This lemur lives at Africa Alive in Suffolk.
The ring-tailed lemur, like all lemurs, is endemic to the island of Madagascar and endangered. Experiments have shown that the ring-tailed lemur, despite the lack of a large brain, can organize sequences, understand basic arithmetic operations and preferentially select tools based on functional qualities.
The ring-tailed lemur is a relatively large lemur. Its average weight is 4.9 lb. (2.2 kg) and its head–body length ranges between 15 and 18 in. (39 and 46 cm). Its tail length is 22 and 25 in. (56 to 63 cm), and its total length is between 37 and 43 in. (95 and 110 cm).
This lemur has a slender frame, narrow face and fox-like muzzle. Its long, bushy tail is ringed in alternating black and white bands, numbering 12 or 13 white rings and 13 or 14 black rings, and always ending in a black tip. Its tail is not prehensile, and is only used for balance and communication. It fur is dense, with the chest and throat being white or cream, while the back varies from grey to rosy-brown. The coloration is slightly darker around the neck and crown. The muzzle is dark greyish, the nose is black, and the eyes are encompassed by black triangular patches. Although slight pattern variations in the facial region may be seen between individuals, there are no obvious differences between males and females.
This species occupies the south and southwest Madagascar, where scattered populations of ring-tailed lemurs are found from Tolagnaro in the southeast to Morondava on the west coast and Ambalavao inland. Additionally, a single, isolated population inhabits the Andringitra Massif on the south-eastern plateau of the island. Preferred types of habitat are spiny forests, lowland gallery forests, dry scrubs, dry deciduous forests, and, sometimes, rock canyons. The population of Andringitra Massif lives at higher elevations, among bare rocks, low bushes, and subalpine vegetation. This area is known to have one of the harshest climates on the island.
Ring-tailed lemurs are active during the daytime hours and are semi-terrestrial. They spends as much as 33% of their time on the ground, more than any other lemur species. Despite this they have excellent climbing abilities.
They are social creatures, forming female dominated groups of up to 30 individuals. To keep warm and reaffirm social bonds, groups will huddle together. Females of this species not only dominate over males but also defeat the latter during fights, although they are known for their friendly behaviour towards other females. Ring-tailed lemurs are one of the most vocal primates and have a complex array of distinct calls that range from simple to complex.
These animals are omnivores eating fruits and leaves, particularly those of the tamarind tree, which when available, makes up as much as 50% of the diet, especially during the dry, winter season. This lemur eats from as many as three dozen different plant species, and its diet includes flowers, herbs, bark, nectar and sap. It has been observed eating decayed wood, earth, spider webs, insect cocoons, spiders, caterpillars, cicadas, grasshoppers, small birds and chameleons. During the dry season it becomes increasingly opportunistic.
Mating lasts from the middle of April to June. The gestation period is about 4 to 4.5 months, yielding 1 or 2 young, typically in August and September. A new born will have a birth weight of 2.5 oz. (70 g). Females of this species are very attentive mothers, sheltering, grooming, feeding, and eagerly carrying their offspring. After a while, the babies can be seen traveling on the abdomen of their mothers. By around 2 months old, infants start eating solid food. Then they begin riding on their mother's back and are finally weaned at 5 months old. Youngsters can expect to have a life span in the wild of about 16 years. The maximum lifespan reported in captivity was 27 years.
Ring-tailed lemurs have both native and introduced predators. Native predators include the fossa, the Madagascar harrier-hawk, the Madagascar buzzard and the Madagascar ground boa. Introduced predators include the small Indian civet and the domestic cat and dog.
The ring-tailed lemurs currently face the loss of their bush and forest habitat as a result of overgrazing, burning and tree cutting for the charcoal industry. Localized threats include hunting, trapping, and capture as a pet species. The total population in 2009 was between 10,000 and 100,000 individuals and the species was listed as 'Near Threatened' on the IUCN Red List. Today, ring-tailed lemurs are classified as 'Endangered' and their numbers continue to decrease.
The "Fraser Schoolhouse", built around 1837 by Thomas McKay, the founder of New Edinburgh in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
It was originally constructed as a semi-detached residence to
house the workmen building Thomas McKay's his elegant family villa (more like a mansion by today's standards). Known locally at the time as “McKay’s Castle,” the villa, which he
named Rideau Hall, which later became the official residence of the Governor-General of Canada.
Between 1838 and 1843, it served as New Edinburgh's first school.
A stonemason by trade, Thomas McKay had built Montreal’s Lachine Canal when he and his partner John Redpath were recruited by Colonel John By in 1826 to construct the first eight locks of the Rideau Canal. Using his profits, McKay purchased 1,100 acres near Rideau Falls that he named New Edinburgh in honour of his native Scotland. By 1833 he had two sawmills, a gristmill and a cloth factory underway, along with housing for workers and their families.
With his villa complete in 1838, McKay re-purposed the John Street building into a local school. On June 19, 1838, the Bytown Gazette advertised its opening for the teaching of “Reading and Elocution, French, Writing and Arithmetic, English Grammar and Geography.” The name Fraser School House is associated with its first teacher, James Fraser, who lived in one half of the semi-detached building, while the other half served as the classroom. After its closure in 1844, the school reverted to a double residence.
Reading, writing and arithmetic…oh the joy of young learning. I still love to read…not so fond of all the other any more; however I still like to learn new things. Reading takes me to places I have never been, it makes my dreams come true, and lets my imagination run with the wind. I become the character in the book, taking on their adventures as my own…living their life, feeling their pains and triumphs. I scale high mountains, fly above the clouds, live in a different time and place, sail the ocean blue and walk an unknown path. I learn about different cultures; rights and wrongs, about faith, love, and forgiveness.
Jump into your own adventure through a good book. Just take a few minutes at night before lights out and you’ll even sleep better too.
18/30 Today I am grateful for the written word.
Have a wonderfully Sunny, warm, joyful and
funny weekend. Thank You so warmly & wholeheartedly
for 152,011 views(per 342 public photos)!!!! As ever-
You are sincerely welcome.
"If we want a love message to be heard, it has got to
be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep
putting oil in it."
--Mother Teresa
"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just
one."
--Mother Teresa
The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never
jam today.
- Lewis Carroll
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
- Lewis Carroll
While the laughter of joy is in full harmony with our
deeper life, the laughter of amusement should be
kept apart from it.
- Lewis Carroll
The regular course was Reeling and Writhing, of
course, to begin with; and then the different branches
of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and
Derision.
- Lewis Carroll
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PHOTO:
Mabus - my British blue shorthair kitten with copper eyes.
There are only 5 British blue cats in Tel-Aviv (including my
own).
And this info I heard from one local owner of special
cat-food boutique.........Well, really, I beleive to him, to
this cat-food-seller. He knows this info pretty well.
It is so important & so actual for his own
business........
Please, see my notes on this photo above for more details
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Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
The hereios of the We're Here! group have paid a visit to the Mnemonics group today.
Stuck for an idea for your daily 365 photo? Join the hereios of the We're Here! group for inspiration.
“Jolly Number Tales, Book Two” by Guy Buswell, William Brownell, and Lenore John. Illustrated by Florence J. Hoopes and Margaret C. Hoopes. Ginn and Co., who copyrighted in 1937 and 1938. “A number storybook to be used both as a reader and as an aid in number work.”
By my reckoning and rather dodgy arithmetic there are 16 locomotives in this shot. Line nearest the camera has two 73's both of which I could not ID. The next 66 in line is 66732 and the nearer is 66717 "Good Old Boy". Next line over has 66719 "METRO-LAND" furthest away followed by an unidentified 66 and a 73 with 73213 "Rhodalyn" nearest camera. The 66 behind the grey wagons is 759 "Chippy". The seven 73's in the background are from left to right 964, 961, 201, 141, 128, 119 and 107.
Gateway to the inner courtyard of St. Emmeram Palace during the Romantic Christmas Market, Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Some background information:
St. Emmeram Abbey was founded around 739 as a Benedictine monastery in the town of Regensburg. For more than 200 years the bishops of Regensburg were also the abbots of the monastery. In 975, Saint Wolfgang, then bishop of Regensburg, voluntarily gave up the position of abbot and severed the connection, making the abbots of St. Emmeram's independent of the bishopric. It was also him who ordered the construction of a library at St Emmeram.
Over time, the library became well supplied with works by early Christian writers such as Saint Augustine, as well as by ancient writers such as Virgil and Seneca. In addition to works that had an overt religious or inspirational purpose, the library held a large collection of manuscripts used in the monastery school, focusing on subjects such as logic, arithmetic, rhetoric, grammar, and even astronomy and music. By the early eleventh century, the library at St. Emmeram had acquired a reputation for its great collection and the scriptorium of St. Emmeram's also had become a significant centre of book production and illumination, the home of works such as the sacramentary of Emperor Henry II (produced between 1002 and 1014) and the Uta Codex (shortly after 1002).
In 1295, the counter-king Adolf of Nassau made St. Emmeram an imperial abbey and therefore an independent sovereign power subject directly to the emperor. After a decline in its significance during the 16th century the abbey enjoyed a resurgence in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1731, the abbots were raised to the status of Princes of the Empire. Between 1731 and 1733, the abbey church was magnificently refurbished in the Baroque style by the Asam brothers.
In 1803, St. Emmeram, along with the Imperial City of Regensburg, the Bishopric of Regensburg and the two other Imperial Abbeys Niedermuenster and Obermuenster, lost its previous politically independent status to the newly formed Principality of Regensburg. But after the Treaty of Paris in 1810, the entire Principality of Regensburg was transferred to Bavaria.
In 1812 the monastic buildings were granted to the Princes of Thurn und Taxis, who had St. Emmeram's Abbey converted as their new residence. The family of Thurn und Taxis is a noble house that belongs to Germany’s high aristocracy. In 1490, they founded the pan-European postal service and occupied the postal monopoly until the foundation of the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806. By occupying the postal monopoly, the family became one of the wealthiest and most powerful in Germany. The noble house of Thurn und Taxis rendered great service to the postal system by speeding it up significantly: Before their time as postal monopolists, single horsemen and their horses had to deliver the mail all the way from the addressor to the addressee. But it was the idea of the house of Thurn und Taxis to establish coaching inns throughout Europe, where both exhausted horsemen and horses could be changed.
St. Emmeram Palace itself is larger than Buckingham Palace. During Advent season its magnificent park, imposing architecture and picturesque courtyard create a unique romantic atmosphere, which attracts thousands of tourists and local people each year and allows them to be taken back into the times of knights, princesses and horses and carriages. The castles’s courtyard is gently lit by torches, lanterns and candles. At its centre of this magical make believe village a mighty, beautifully decorated Christmas tree is positioned. Princess Gloria of Thurn und Taxis and her family like to mix with the guests at this event, which is held on their own doorstep.
The palace as well as the princely treasury and the royal stables are open to the public. Guided tours through the palatial rooms can be booked.
Regensburg with its population of about 140.000 inhabitants is located at the confluence of the rivers Danube and Regen at the northernmost bend in the Danube. It is the capital of the Bavarian administrative region Upper Palatinate. Since 2006, Regensburg's large medieval center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
A Merry Christmas 2018 and a Happy New Year 2019 to all of you! Have a great festive season together with your families and friends!
This lemur lives at Africa Alive in Suffolk.
The ring-tailed lemur, like all lemurs, is endemic to the island of Madagascar and endangered. Experiments have shown that the ring-tailed lemur, despite the lack of a large brain, can organize sequences, understand basic arithmetic operations and preferentially select tools based on functional qualities.
The ring-tailed lemur is a relatively large lemur. Its average weight is 4.9 lb. (2.2 kg) and its head–body length ranges between 15 and 18 in. (39 and 46 cm), with a tail length of 22 to 25 in. (56 to 63 cm).
This lemur has a slender frame, narrow face and fox-like muzzle. Its long, bushy tail is ringed in alternating black and white bands, numbering 12 or 13 white rings and 13 or 14 black rings, and always ending in a black tip. Its tail is not prehensile, and is only used for balance and communication. It fur is dense, with the chest and throat being white or cream, while the back varies from grey to rosy-brown. The coloration is slightly darker around the neck and crown. The muzzle is dark greyish, the nose is black, and the eyes are encompassed by black triangular patches. Although slight pattern variations in the facial region may be seen between individuals, there are no obvious differences between males and females.
This species occupies the south and southwest Madagascar, where scattered populations of ring-tailed lemurs are found from Tolagnaro in the southeast to Morondava on the west coast and Ambalavao inland. Additionally, a single, isolated population inhabits the Andringitra Massif on the south-eastern plateau of the island. Preferred types of habitat are spiny forests, lowland gallery forests, dry scrubs, dry deciduous forests, and, sometimes, rock canyons. The population of Andringitra Massif lives at higher elevations, among bare rocks, low bushes, and subalpine vegetation. This area is known to have one of the harshest climates on the island.
Ring-tailed lemurs are active during the daytime hours and are semi-terrestrial. They spends as much as 33% of their time on the ground, more than any other lemur species. Despite this they have excellent climbing abilities.
They are social creatures, forming female dominated groups of up to 30 individuals. To keep warm and reaffirm social bonds, groups will huddle together. Females of this species not only dominate over males but also defeat the latter during fights, although they are known for their friendly behaviour towards other females. Ring-tailed lemurs are one of the most vocal primates and have a complex array of distinct calls that range from simple to complex.
These animals are omnivores eating fruits and leaves, particularly those of the tamarind tree, which when available, makes up as much as 50% of the diet, especially during the dry, winter season. This lemur eats from as many as three dozen different plant species, and its diet includes flowers, herbs, bark, nectar and sap. It has been observed eating decayed wood, earth, spider webs, insect cocoons, spiders, caterpillars, cicadas, grasshoppers, small birds and chameleons. During the dry season it becomes increasingly opportunistic.
Mating lasts from the middle of April to June. The gestation period is about 4 to 4.5 months, yielding 1 or 2 young, typically in August and September. A new born will have a birth weight of 2.5 oz. (70 g). Females of this species are very attentive mothers, sheltering, grooming, feeding, and eagerly carrying their offspring. After a while, the babies can be seen traveling on the abdomen of their mothers. By around 2 months old, infants start eating solid food. Then they begin riding on their mother's back and are finally weaned at 5 months old. Youngsters can expect to have a life span in the wild of about 16 years. The maximum lifespan reported in captivity was 27 years.
Ring-tailed lemurs have both native and introduced predators. Native predators include the fossa, the Madagascar harrier-hawk, the Madagascar buzzard and the Madagascar ground boa. Introduced predators include the small Indian civet and the domestic cat and dog.
The ring-tailed lemurs currently face the loss of their bush and forest habitat as a result of overgrazing, burning and tree cutting for the charcoal industry. Localized threats include hunting, trapping, and capture as a pet species. The total population in 2009 was between 10,000 and 100,000 individuals and the species was listed as 'Near Threatened' on the IUCN Red List. Today, ring-tailed lemurs are classified as 'Endangered' and their numbers continue to decrease.
Island Of Madagascar
Off The East Coast Of Africa
Berenty Reserve
Madagascar’s beloved ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) have all but disappeared from many of the island nation’s forests. According to two worrying new studies, the species’ population has fallen to between 2,000 and 2,400 animals—a shocking 95 percent decrease since the year 2000.
To put that number in context, there are now fewer ring-tailed lemurs living in the wild than there are living in zoos around the world.
Wikipedia-
The ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) is a large strepsirrhine primate and the most recognized lemur due to its long, black and white ringed tail. It belongs to Lemuridae, one of five lemur families, and is the only member of the Lemur genus.
Like all lemurs it is endemic to the island of Madagascar. Known locally in Malagasy as maky ([makʲ] , spelled maki in French) or hira, it inhabits gallery forests to spiny scrub in the southern regions of the island. It is omnivorous and the most terrestrial of extant lemurs.
The animal is diurnal, being active exclusively in daylight hours.
The ring-tailed lemur is highly social, living in groups of up to 30 individuals. It is also female dominant, a trait common among lemurs. To keep warm and reaffirm social bonds, groups will huddle together. The ring-tailed lemur will also sunbathe, sitting upright facing its underside, with its thinner white fur towards the sun.
Like other lemurs, this species relies strongly on its sense of smell and marks its territory with scent glands. The males perform a unique scent marking behavior called spur marking and will participate in stink fights by impregnating their tail with their scent and wafting it at opponents.
As one of the most vocal primates, the ring-tailed lemur uses numerous vocalizations including group cohesion and alarm calls. Experiments have shown that the ring-tailed lemur, despite the lack of a large brain (relative to simiiform primates), can organize sequences, understand basic arithmetic operations and preferentially select tools based on functional qualities.
Cancer, Where Is Your Sting?
A neurosurgeon discovers hope and healing in the face of a terminal diagnosis.
J. Todd Billings/ April 19, 2016
Paul Kalanithi, a Stanford neurosurgeon, had devoted his life to a vision of helping the dying. But just as he was finishing his residency, terminal illness paid a personal visit.
Kalanithi died in March 2015, almost a year before the release of his extraordinary memoir, When Breath Becomes Air. The book (a No. 1 New York Times bestseller) tells the story of his incurable diagnosis, and the way he found his life reinvigorated in the shadow of death. And even though many readers miss this theme, the story shows how he and his wife, Lucy, both doctors, grew to understand Christianity’s promise of new life in profound ways.
Death’s Ambassador
As a reader, I have an unfortunate kinship with Kalanithi. I was diagnosed with an incurable cancer less than a year before he received his medical “death sentence.” I was 39; he was 35. Like Paul and Lucy, my wife and I found our lives in a fog. A sinister arithmetic shattered our hopes and plans for the decades ahead: the disease could bring death within months, or years, or decades. We were told to live one day at a time. Kalanithi received the same advice, but found it sorely inadequate. He cuts through this cliché with a surgeon’s scalpel:
The way forward would seem obvious, if only I knew how many months or years I had left. Tell me three months, I'd spend time with family. Tell me one year, I'd write a book. Give me ten years, I'd get back to treating diseases. The truth that you live one day at a time didn't help: What was I supposed to do with that day?
In prose that verges on poetic, Kalanithi exposes the chasm between doctor and patient, one he had never recognized during years of carefully treating dozens of dying patients. He does not offer self-help “lessons” or present himself as a “hero” in the war on cancer. Instead, as a lover of medicine, he fearlessly points to both its potential and its profound limits.
While Kalanithi wrote this book after his diagnosis (in the final 20 months of his life), he found that as he looked back, his whole life seemed to be preparing him for this trial. In college and graduate school, he was obsessed with death and the meaning of life. He studied literature and philosophy with great earnestness. Ultimately, he chose one of the most rigorous medical routes—neuroscience—because it confronted these questions concretely, with real people. He wanted to be present to those with severe brain damage and their families. He could not be their savior, but he could help them navigate their excruciating end-of-life decisions.
Sometimes he acted, in his own words, as “death’s enemy.” But often, he had to be “its ambassador,” preparing his patients for what was to come: “They see the past, the accumulation of memories, the freshly felt love, all represented by the body before them. I see the possible futures, the breathing machines connected through a surgical opening in the neck, the pasty liquid dripping in through a hole in the belly, the possible long, painful, and only partial recovery.” Kalanithi directed his life’s quest toward facing these realities head-on in the presence of the dying. “Had I been more religious in my youth, I might have become a pastor” for the dying, he observes. “For it was the pastoral role that I sought.”
Try 30 Days Free of The Behemoth
Emotional Toll
Kalanithi’s work took a toll on his marriage. The years he and Lucy spent working long hours in their residencies left them emotionally isolated. When Paul started to worry that he might have cancer, he withdrew. “I feel like we’re connected halfway,” Lucy told him. She needed a week apart to consider the state of their marriage.
Indeed, the medical work was emotionally taxing. Paul describes his friendship with Jeff, another surgeon, as they swapped stories. A recent surgery performed by Paul had not worked; the child had died. Jeff had similar stories, but was unable to open up. Several years later, Paul received an unexpected phone call from his co-resident, Victoria.
“Paul?”
Something was wrong. My stomach tightened.
“What’s up?” I said.
Silence.
“Vic?”
“It’s Jeff. He killed himself… He, uh—he apparently had a difficult complication, and his patient died. Last night he climbed onto the roof of a building and jumped off. I don’t really know anything else.”
Kalanithi counts the costs of his quest without sentimentality. He does not respond with the typical American scripts: that becoming an excellent surgeon was somehow “worth” the marital strife, or that doctors are heroes who save lives. Instead, he points to the profound limits of human medicine and human action itself.
“I wish, desperately, that I could’ve been walking with [Jeff] out the door of the hospital that evening,” because “I could have told Jeff what I had come to understand about life, and our chosen way of life...death comes for all of us. For us, for our patients: it is our fate as living, breathing, metabolizing organisms.” Yet, as surgeons, they had bought into a lie. “We had assumed an onerous yoke, that of mortal responsibility.”
As he had come to see, “our patients’ lives and identities may be in our hands, yet death always wins. Even if you are perfect, the world isn’t. The secret is to know that the deck is stacked, that you will lose, that your hands or judgment will slip, and yet still struggle to win for your patients.” Kalanithi understood that even the best surgeon cannot “win” against the problem of death. And yet, there remains a responsibility to act with compassion in a world wracked with pain and need.
With story after story, Kalanithi shows how our ambitions to “save the world” run up against sharp limits. Our responses to shocking pain and evil are never enough, and we are likely to lose family, vocation, and perhaps even the desire to live if we do not honestly face our creaturely limits.
Yet Kalanithi goes further, pointing to the One who can face the problem of death. Though “raised in a devout Christian family,” he—“like most scientific types”—came to believe in a material, scientific worldview with no need for God. But he came to recognize this as a kind of idolatry, for science cannot comprehend “love, hate, meaning,” or, most of all, God. “Scientific methodology,” he writes, “is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth.” Science is useful, but limited. Like medicine, it is a helpful servant. But as a master, it will leave you unprepared for the questions that matter most: how to live, how to love, how to die, and whether there is a God who loves us in the midst of it all.
Signs of New Life
Much of Kalanithi’s perspective reflects the testimony of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). And yet the book is saturated with hope. His career ambitions go unrealized. His vision for the future is shattered. But in this valley of dry bones, we begin to see signs of new life. His marriage is healed and restored. He connects deeply with his Christian faith and his local Presbyterian congregation. And as he draws near to his last breath, his life takes a surprising turn.
A child. (The book is dedicated to her.) When God granted Abraham a son, he provided a covenant promise that would prevail even after Abraham’s death. As Christians, we can now confess this as a foretaste of resurrection hope: death will not have the final word; God’s promise will. And a child was its sign. At the end of Kalanithi’s passionate quest, he shares one moment when his restlessness finds repose: holding close his eight-month-old daughter, a sign of hope.
There is perhaps only one thing to say to this infant, who is all future, overlapping briefly with me, whose life, barring the improbable, is all but past.
The message is simple:
When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have been, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.
In the end, When Breath Becomes Air points to a healing much greater than what a doctor can accomplish, and a hope much greater than the sum of our ambitions. Kalanithi points to the God who meets us in the mess of our frailty and mortality, and solves the problem of death once and for all. For it is Christ alone who takes away death’s sting. His victory gives us hope that our dry bones will find life again.
J. Todd Billings teaches theology at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He is the author of Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Brazos).
The Postcard
A postally unused Post Office Picture Card Series. On the divided back of the card is printed:
'Children (United Nations Year
of the Child).
(Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).
Reproduced from a stamp designed
by Edward Hughes ARCA FSIAD
and issued by the Post Office on the
18th. July 1979.
Postcard Price 8p.'
Charles Dodgson
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English writer of children's fiction, notably 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and its sequel 'Through the Looking-Glass'.
He was noted for his facility with word play, logic, and fantasy. The poems 'Jabberwocky' and 'The Hunting of the Snark' are classified in the genre of literary nonsense.
Charles was also a mathematician, photographer, inventor, and Anglican deacon.
Carroll came from a family of high-church Anglicans, and developed a long relationship with Christ Church, Oxford, where he lived for most of his life as a scholar and teacher.
Alice Liddell, daughter of the Dean of Christ Church, Henry Liddell, is widely identified as the original for Alice in Wonderland, though Carroll always denied this.
Scholars are divided about whether his relationship with children included an erotic component.
In 1982, a memorial stone to Carroll was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. There are Lewis Carroll societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of his works.
-- Charles Dodgson - The Early Years
Dodgson's family was predominantly northern English, conservative and high-church Anglican. Most of Dodgson's male ancestors were army officers or Church of England clergy.
His paternal grandfather Charles Dodgson had been an army captain, killed in action in Ireland in 1803 when his two sons were hardly more than babies. The older of these sons – yet another Charles Dodgson – was Carroll's father. He went to Westminster School and then to Christ Church, Oxford.
Lewis Carroll's father reverted to the other family tradition and took holy orders. He was mathematically gifted, and won a double first degree, which could have been the prelude to a brilliant academic career. Instead, he married his first cousin Frances Jane Lutwidge in 1830 and became a country parson.
Dodgson was born on the 27th. January 1832 in All Saints' Vicarage at Daresbury, Cheshire, the eldest boy and the third child. Eight more children followed. When Charles was 11, his father was given the living of Croft-on-Tees in the North Riding of Yorkshire, and the whole family moved to the spacious rectory. This remained their home for the next 25 years.
Charles's father was an active and highly conservative cleric of the Church of England who later became the Archdeacon of Richmond and involved himself in the intense religious disputes that were dividing the church. He was high church, inclining toward Anglo-Catholicism. Young Charles was to develop an ambivalent relationship with his father's values, and with the Church of England as a whole.
-- Charles Dodgson's Education
During his early youth, Dodgson was educated at home. His "reading lists" preserved in the family archives testify to a precocious intellect: at the age of seven, he was reading books such as The Pilgrim's Progress.
He also spoke with a stammer - a condition shared by most of his siblings - that often inhibited his social life throughout his years. At the age of twelve he was sent to Richmond Grammar School in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
-- Charles Dodgson at Rugby
In 1846, Dodgson entered Rugby School where he was evidently unhappy, as he wrote some years after leaving:
"I cannot say that any earthly considerations would
induce me to go through my three years again. I can
honestly say that if I could have been secure from
annoyance at night, the hardships of the daily life
would have been comparative trifles to bear."
Dodgson did not claim he suffered from bullying, but cited little boys as the main targets of older bullies at Rugby. Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, who was Dodgson's nephew, wrote that:
"Even though it is hard for those who have only
known him as the gentle and retiring don to
believe it, it is nevertheless true that long after
he left school, his name was remembered as that
of a boy who knew well how to use his fists in
defence of a righteous cause, which was the
protection of the smaller boys."
Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. Mathematics master R. B. Mayor observed:
"I have not had a more promising boy
at his age since I came to Rugby."
The mathematics textbook that the young Dodgson used was
Francis Walkingame's 'The Tutor's Assistant; Being a Compendium of Arithmetic.' It still survives and contains an inscription in Latin, which translates as:
"This book belongs to Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson: hands off!"
Some pages also included annotations such as the one found on page 129, where he wrote "Not a fair question in decimals" next to a question.
-- Charles Dodgson at Oxford
Charles left Rugby at the end of 1849 and matriculated at the University of Oxford in May 1850 as a member of his father's old college, Christ Church.
He went into residence in January 1851. He had been at Oxford only two days when he received a summons home. His mother had died of "inflammation of the brain" - perhaps meningitis or a stroke - at the age of 47.
Charles' early academic career veered between high promise and irresistible distraction. He did not always work hard, but was exceptionally gifted, and achievement came easily to him.
In 1852, he obtained first-class honours in Mathematics Moderations, and was shortly thereafter nominated to a Studentship by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey.
In 1854, he obtained first-class honours in the Final Honours School of Mathematics, standing first on the list, graduating Bachelor of Arts. He remained at Christ Church studying and teaching, but the next year he failed an important scholarship through his self-confessed inability to apply himself to study.
Even so, his talent as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship in 1855, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. Despite early unhappiness,
Dodgson was to remain at Christ Church, in various capacities, until his death, including that of Sub-Librarian of the Christ Church library, where his office was close to the Deanery, where Alice Liddell lived.
-- Charles Dodgson's Health Issues
As a very young child, Charles suffered a fever that left him deaf in one ear. At the age of 17, he suffered a severe attack of whooping cough, which was probably responsible for his chronically weak chest in later life. In early childhood, he acquired a stammer, which he referred to as his "hesitation"; it remained throughout his life.
The young adult Charles Dodgson was about 6 feet (1.83 m) tall and slender, with curly brown hair and blue or grey eyes (depending on the account). He was described in later life as somewhat asymmetrical, and as carrying himself rather stiffly and awkwardly, although this might be on account of a knee injury sustained in middle age.
-- Charles Dodgson's Stammer
The stammer has always been a significant part of the image of Dodgson. While one apocryphal story says that he stammered only in adult company and was free and fluent with children, there is no evidence to support this idea. Many children of his acquaintance remembered the stammer, while many adults failed to notice it.
Dodgson himself seems to have been far more acutely aware of it than most people whom he met; it is said that he caricatured himself as the Dodo in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, referring to his difficulty in pronouncing his last name, but this is one of the many supposed facts often repeated for which no first-hand evidence remains.
He did indeed refer to himself as the dodo, but whether or not this reference was to his stammer is simply speculation.
Dodgson's stammer did trouble him, but it was never so debilitating that it prevented him from applying his other personal qualities to do well in society. He lived in a time when people commonly devised their own amusements, and when singing and recitation were required social skills, the young Dodgson was well equipped to be an engaging entertainer.
He reportedly could sing tolerably well, and was not afraid to do so before an audience. He was adept at mimicry and storytelling, and was reputedly quite good at charades.
-- Charles Dodgson's Social Connections
In the interim between his early published writings and the success of the Alice books, Dodgson began to move in the pre-Raphaelite social circle. He first met John Ruskin in 1857 and became friendly with him.
Around 1863, he developed a close relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his family. He would often take pictures of the family in the garden of the Rossetti's house in Chelsea. He also knew William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, among other artists.
Charles knew fairy-tale author George MacDonald well - in fact it was the enthusiastic reception of Alice by the young MacDonald children that persuaded him to submit the work for publication.
-- Charles Dodgson's Politics, Religion, and Philosophy
In broad terms, Dodgson has traditionally been regarded as politically, religiously, and personally conservative. Martin Gardner labelled Dodgson as:
"A Tory who was awed by lords and
inclined to be snobbish towards
inferiors".
The Reverend W. Tuckwell, in his Reminiscences of Oxford (1900), regarded him as:
"Austere, shy, precise, absorbed in mathematical
reverie, watchfully tenacious of his dignity, stiffly
conservative in political, theological, social theory,
his life mapped out in squares like Alice's landscape".
Dodgson was ordained as a deacon in the Church of England on the 22nd. December 1861. In 'The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll', the editor states that:
"His Diary is full of such modest depreciations of
himself and his work, interspersed with earnest
prayers (too sacred and private to be reproduced
here) that God would forgive him the past, and
help him to perform His holy will in the future."
When a friend asked him in 1897 about his religious views, Dodgson wrote in response that he was a member of the Church of England, but doubted if he was fully a 'High Churchman'. He added:
"I believe that when you and I come to lie down
for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of
the great truths Christ taught us - our own utter
worthlessness and His infinite worth; and that He
has brought us back to our one Father, and made
us His brethren, and so brethren to one another -
we shall have all we need to guide us through the
shadows.
Most assuredly I accept to the full the doctrines
you refer to - that Christ died to save us, that we
have no other way of salvation open to us but
through His death, and that it is by faith in Him,
and through no merit of ours, that we are
reconciled to God; and most assuredly I can
cordially say I owe all to Him who loved me, and
died on the Cross of Calvary."
Dodgson also expressed interest in other fields. He was an early member of the Society for Psychical Research, and one of his letters suggests that he accepted as real what was then called 'thought reading.'
In 1895, Charles developed an argument on deductive reasoning in his article 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles', which appeared in one of the early volumes of Mind. The article was reprinted in the same journal a hundred years later in 1995, with a subsequent article by Simon Blackburn entitled 'Practical Tortoise Raising.'
-- Charles Dodgson's Literary and Artistic Activities
From a young age, Dodgson wrote poetry and short stories, contributing heavily to the family magazine Mischmasch and later sending them to various magazines, enjoying moderate success.
Some time after 1850, he wrote puppet plays for his siblings' entertainment, of which one has survived: 'La Guida di Bragia'.
Between 1854 and 1856, his work appeared in the national publications The Comic Times and The Train, as well as smaller magazines such as the Whitby Gazette and the Oxford Critic. Most of this output was humorous, sometimes satirical, but his standards and ambitions were exacting. In July 1855 he wrote:
"I do not think I have yet written anything
worthy of real publication (in which I do not
include the Whitby Gazette or the Oxonian
Advertiser), but I do not despair of doing
so someday."
In March 1856, he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A romantic poem called 'Solitude' appeared in The Train under the authorship of 'Lewis Carroll.'
This pseudonym was a play on his real name: Lewis was the anglicised form of Ludovicus, which was the Latin for Lutwidge, and Carroll an Irish surname similar to the Latin name Carolus, from which comes the name Charles. The pseudonym was chosen by editor Edmund Yates from a list of four submitted by Dodgson, the others being Edgar Cuthwellis, Edgar U. C. Westhill, and Louis Carroll.
-- The Alice Books
In 1856, Dean Henry Liddell arrived at Christ Church, bringing with him his young family, all of whom would figure largely in Dodgson's life over the following years, and would greatly influence his writing career.
Dodgson became close friends with Liddell's wife Lorina and their children, particularly the three sisters Lorina, Edith, and Alice Liddell.
Charles was widely assumed for many years to have derived his own 'Alice' from Alice Liddell; the acrostic poem at the end of Through the Looking-Glass spells out her name in full, and there are also many superficial references to her hidden in the text of both books.
Dodgson himself repeatedly denied in later life that his 'little heroine' was based on any real child, and he frequently dedicated his works to girls of his acquaintance, adding their names in acrostic poems at the beginning of the text.
Gertrude Chataway's name appears in this form at the beginning of The Hunting of the Snark, and it is not suggested that this means that any of the characters in the narrative are based on her.
Information is scarce (Dodgson's diaries for the years 1858–1862 are missing), but it seems clear that his friendship with the Liddell family was an important part of his life in the late 1850's, and he grew into the habit of taking the children on rowing trips (first the boy Harry, and later the three girls) accompanied by an adult friend to nearby Nuneham Courtenay or Godstow.
It was on one such expedition on the 4th. July 1862 that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and greatest commercial success. He told the story to Alice Liddell, and she begged him to write it down, and Dodgson eventually (after much delay) presented her with a handwritten, illustrated manuscript entitled 'Alice's Adventures Under Ground' in November 1864.
Before this, the family of friend and mentor George MacDonald read Dodgson's incomplete manuscript, and the enthusiasm of the MacDonald children encouraged Dodgson to seek publication. In 1863, he took the unfinished manuscript to Macmillan the publisher, who liked it immediately.
After possible alternative titles were rejected - 'Alice Among the Fairies' and 'Alice's Golden Hour' - the work was finally published as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 under the Lewis Carroll pen-name, which Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier.
The illustrations were by Sir John Tenniel; Dodgson evidently thought that a published book would need the skills of a professional artist. Annotated versions provide insights into many of the ideas and hidden meanings that are prevalent in these books.[ Critical literature has often proposed Freudian interpretations of the book as "a descent into the dark world of the subconscious", as well as seeing it as a satire upon contemporary mathematical advances.
The overwhelming commercial success of the first Alice book changed Dodgson's life in many ways. The fame of his alter ego Lewis Carroll soon spread around the world. He was inundated with fan mail, and with sometimes unwanted attention.
Indeed, according to one popular story, Queen Victoria herself enjoyed Alice in Wonderland so much that she commanded that he dedicate his next book to her, and was accordingly presented with his next work, a scholarly mathematical volume entitled 'An Elementary Treatise on Determinants.'
Dodgson himself vehemently denied this story, commenting:
"It is utterly false in every particular:
nothing even resembling it has
occurred."
It is also unlikely for other reasons. As T. B. Strong commented in a Times article:
"It would have been clean contrary to all
his practice to identify the author of Alice
with the author of his mathematical works".
Although Charles began earning quite substantial sums of money, he continued with his seemingly disliked post at Christ Church.
Late in 1871, he published the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Its somewhat darker mood possibly reflects changes in Dodgson's life. His father's death in 1868 plunged him into a depression that lasted some years.
-- The Hunting of the Snark
In 1876, Dodgson produced his next great work, The Hunting of the Snark, a fantastical 'nonsense' poem, with illustrations by Henry Holiday, exploring the adventures of a bizarre crew of nine tradesmen and one beaver, who set off to find the snark.
It received largely mixed reviews from Carroll's contemporary reviewers, but was enormously popular with the public, having been reprinted seventeen times between 1876 and 1908. It has seen various adaptations into musicals, opera, theatre, plays and music. Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti reputedly became convinced that the poem was about him.
-- Sylvie and Bruno
In 1895, 30 years after the publication of his masterpieces, Carroll attempted a comeback, producing a two-volume tale of the fairy siblings Sylvie and Bruno. Carroll entwines two plots set in two alternative worlds, one set in rural England and the other in the fairytale kingdoms of Elfland, Outland, and others.
The fairytale world satirises English society, and more specifically the world of academia. Sylvie and Bruno came out in two volumes and is considered a lesser work, although it has remained in print for over a century.
-- Charles Dodgson's Photography (1856–1880)
In 1856, Dodgson took up the new art form of photography under the influence first of his uncle Skeffington Lutwidge, and later of his Oxford friend Reginald Southey. He soon excelled at the art, and became a well-known gentleman-photographer. Charles even toyed with the idea of making a living out of it in his early years.
A study by Roger Taylor and Edward Wakeling exhaustively lists every surviving print, and Taylor calculates that just over half of his surviving work depicts young girls, though about 60% of his original photographic portfolio is now missing.
Dodgson also made many studies of men, women, boys, and landscapes; his subjects also include skeletons, dolls, dogs, statues, paintings, and trees. His pictures of children were taken with a parent in attendance, and many of the pictures were taken in the Liddell garden because natural sunlight was required for good exposures.
Charles also found photography to be a useful entrée into higher social circles. During the most productive part of his career, he made portraits of notable sitters such as John Everett Millais, Ellen Terry, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Michael Faraday, Lord Salisbury, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
By the time that Dodgson abruptly ceased photography in 1880, over 24 years), he had established his own studio on the roof of Tom Quad. Over the course of 24 years he created around 3,000 images, and was an amateur master of the medium, although fewer than 1,000 images have survived time and deliberate destruction.
Charles stopped taking photographs because keeping his studio working was too time-consuming. He used the wet collodion process; commercial photographers who started using the dry-plate process in the 1870's took pictures more quickly.
-- Charles Dodgson's Inventions
In order to promote letter writing, Dodgson invented "The Wonderland Postage-Stamp Case" in 1889. This was a cloth-backed folder with twelve slots, two marked for inserting the most commonly used penny stamp, and one each for the other current denominations up to one shilling.
The folder was then put into a slipcase decorated with a picture of Alice on the front, and the Cheshire Cat on the back. It was intended to organize stamps wherever writing utensils were stored. Carroll expressly noted in 'Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing' that it was not intended to be carried in a pocket or purse, as individual stamps could easily be carried on their own. The pack included a copy of a pamphlet version of this lecture.
Another invention was a writing tablet called the nyctograph that allowed note-taking in the dark, thus eliminating the need to get out of bed and strike a light when one woke with an idea. The device consisted of a gridded card with sixteen squares and a system of symbols representing an alphabet of Dodgson's design, using letter shapes similar to the Graffiti writing system on a Palm device.
Charles also devised a number of games, including an early version of what today is known as Scrabble. He appears to have invented - or at least certainly popularised - the 'doublet', a form of brain-teaser that is still popular today, changing one word into another by altering one letter at a time, each successive change always resulting in a genuine word.
The games and puzzles of Lewis Carroll were the subject of Martin Gardner's March 1960 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.
Charles' other inventions include:
-- A rule for finding the day of the week for any date
-- A a means for justifying right margins on a typewriter
-- A steering device for a velociam (a type of tricycle)
-- Fairer elimination rules for tennis tournaments
-- A new type of postal money order
-- Rules for reckoning postage
-- Rules for a win in betting
-- Rules for dividing a number by various divisors
-- A cardboard scale for the Senior Common Room at Christ Church which, held next to a glass, ensured the right amount of liqueur for the price paid
-- A double-sided adhesive strip to fasten envelopes or mount things in books
-- A device for helping a bedridden invalid to read from a book placed sideways
-- At least two ciphers for cryptography.
Charles also proposed alternative systems of parliamentary representation. He proposed the so-called Dodgson's method. In 1884, he proposed a proportional representation system based on multi-member districts, each voter casting only a single vote, quotas as minimum requirements to take seats, and votes transferable by candidates through what is now called Liquid democracy.
-- Charles Dodgson's Mathematical Work
Within the academic discipline of mathematics, Dodgson worked primarily in the fields of geometry, linear and matrix algebra, mathematical logic, and recreational mathematics, producing nearly a dozen books under his real name.
Dodgson also developed new ideas in probability and linear algebra (e.g., the first printed proof of the Kronecker–Capelli theorem). He also researched the process of elections and committees; some of this work was not published until well after his death.
-- Charles Dodgson's Mathematical Logic
Charles' work in the field of mathematical logic attracted renewed interest in the late 20th. century. Martin Gardner's book on logic machines and diagrams, and William Warren Bartley's posthumous publication of the second part of Dodgson's symbolic logic book have sparked a re-evaluation of Dodgson's contributions to symbolic logic.
In his Symbolic Logic Part II, Dodgson introduced the Method of Trees, the earliest modern use of a truth tree.
-- Charles Dodgson's Algebra
Robbins' and Rumsey's investigation of Dodgson condensation, a method of evaluating determinants, led them to the alternating sign matrix conjecture, which is now a theorem.
-- Charles Dodgson's Recreational Mathematics
The discovery in the 1990's of additional ciphers that Dodgson had constructed, in addition to his 'Memoria Technica', showed that he had employed sophisticated mathematical ideas in their creation.
-- Charles Dodgson's Correspondence
Dodgson wrote and received as many as 98,721 letters, according to a special letter register which he devised. He documented his advice about how to write more satisfying letters in a missive entitled 'Eight or Nine Wise Words about Letter-Writing'.
-- Charles Dodgson - The Later Years
Dodgson's existence remained little changed over the final twenty years of his life, despite his growing wealth and fame. He continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and remained in residence there until his death.
Public appearances included attending the West End musical Alice in Wonderland (the first major live production of his Alice books) at the Prince of Wales Theatre on the 30th. December 1886.
The two volumes of his last novel, Sylvie and Bruno, were published in 1889 and 1893, but the intricacy of this work was apparently not appreciated by contemporary readers; it achieved nothing like the success of the Alice books, with disappointing reviews and sales of only 13,000 copies.
The only known occasion on which Charles travelled abroad was a trip to Russia in 1867 as an ecclesiastic, together with the Reverend Henry Liddon. He recounts the travel in his 'Russian Journal', which was first commercially published in 1935.
-- The Death of Charles Dodgson
Dodgson died of pneumonia following influenza on the 14th. January 1898 at his sisters' home, 'The Chestnuts', in Guildford, Surrey, just four days before the death of Henry Liddell. Charles was two weeks away from turning 66 years old.
His funeral service was held at the nearby St. Mary's Church, and he was laid to rest at the Mount Cemetery in Guildford.
-- Charles Dodgson's Sexuality
Some late twentieth-century biographers have suggested that Dodgson's interest in children had an erotic element, including Morton N. Cohen in his 1995 book 'Lewis Carroll: A Biography.'
Cohen, speculates that:
"Dodgson's sexual energies sought unconventional
outlets.
We cannot know to what extent sexual urges lay
behind Charles's preference for drawing and
photographing children in the nude. He contended
the preference was entirely aesthetic. But given his
emotional attachment to children as well as his
aesthetic appreciation of their forms, his assertion
that his interest was strictly artistic is naïve.
He probably felt more than he dared acknowledge,
even to himself."
Cohen goes on to note that:
"Dodgson apparently convinced many of his friends
that his attachment to the nude female child form
was free of any eroticism, however later generations
look beneath the surface."
He argues that Dodgson may have wanted to marry the 11-year-old Alice Liddell, and that this was the cause of the unexplained "break" with the family in June 1863, an event for which other explanations are offered.
Biographers Derek Hudson and Roger Lancelyn Green stop short of identifying Dodgson as a paedophile (Green also edited Dodgson's diaries and papers), but they concur that he had a passion for small female children and next to no interest in the adult world. Catherine Robson refers to Carroll as:
"The Victorian era's most
famous (or infamous) girl
lover".
Several other writers and scholars have challenged the evidential basis for Cohen's and others' views about Dodgson's sexual interests. Hugues Lebailly has endeavoured to set Dodgson's child photography within the "Victorian Child Cult", which perceived child nudity as essentially an expression of innocence.
Lebailly claims that studies of child nudes were mainstream and fashionable in Dodgson's time, and that most photographers made them as a matter of course. Lebailly states that child nudes even appeared on Victorian Christmas cards, implying a very different social and aesthetic assessment of such material.
Lebailly concludes that it has been an error of Dodgson's biographers to view his child-photography with 20th.- or 21st.-century eyes, and to have presented it as some form of personal idiosyncrasy, when it was consistent with the norms of the time.
Karoline Leach's re-appraisal of Dodgson focused on his controversial sexuality. She argues that the allegations of paedophilia rose initially from a misunderstanding of Victorian morals, as well as the mistaken idea - fostered by Dodgson's various biographers - that he had no interest in adult women.
Leach termed the traditional image of Dodgson "the Carroll Myth". She drew attention to the large amounts of evidence in his diaries and letters that he was also keenly interested in adult women, married and single, and enjoyed several relationships with them that would have been considered scandalous by the social standards of his time.
She also pointed to the fact that many of those whom he described as "child-friends" were girls in their late teens and even twenties. She argues that suggestions of paedophilia emerged only many years after his death, when his well-meaning family had suppressed all evidence of his relationships with women in an effort to preserve his reputation, thus giving a false impression of a man interested only in little girls.
Similarly, Leach points to a 1932 biography by Langford Reed as the source of the dubious claim that many of Carroll's female friendships ended when the girls reached the age of 14.
In addition to the biographical works that have discussed Dodgson's sexuality, there are modern artistic interpretations of his life and work that do so as well – in particular, Dennis Potter in his play 'Alice' and his screenplay for the motion picture 'Dreamchild', and Robert Wilson in his musical 'Alice'.
-- Charles Dodgson's Ordination
Dodgson had been groomed for the ordained ministry in the Church of England from a very early age, and was expected to be ordained within four years of obtaining his master's degree, as a condition of his residency at Christ Church.
Charles delayed the process for some time, but was eventually ordained as a deacon on the 22nd. December 1861. But when the time came a year later to be ordained as a priest, Dodgson appealed to the dean for permission not to proceed.
This was against college rules and, initially, Dean Liddell told him that he would have to consult the college ruling body, which would almost certainly have resulted in his being expelled.
However for unknown reasons, Liddell changed his mind overnight, and permitted him to remain at the college in defiance of the rules. Dodgson never became a priest, unique amongst senior students of his time.
There is no conclusive evidence about why Dodgson rejected the priesthood. Some have suggested that his stammer made him reluctant because he was afraid of having to preach. Wilson quotes letters by Dodgson describing difficulty in reading lessons and prayers rather than preaching in his own words.
However Dodgson did indeed preach in later life, even though not in priest's orders, so it seems unlikely that his impediment was a major factor affecting his choice.
Wilson also points out that the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who ordained Dodgson, had strong views against clergy going to the theatre, one of Dodgson's great interests. Charles was interested in minority forms of Christianity (he was an admirer of F. D. Maurice) and "alternative" religions such as theosophy.
Dodgson became deeply troubled by an unexplained sense of sin and guilt at this time (the early 1860's), and frequently expressed the view in his diaries that he was a "vile and worthless" sinner, unworthy of the priesthood. This feeling of sin and unworthiness may well have affected his decision to abandon being ordained into the priesthood.
-- The Missing Diaries
At least four complete volumes and around seven pages of text are missing from Dodgson's 13 diaries. The loss of the volumes remains unexplained; the pages have been removed by an unknown hand.
Most scholars assume that the diary material was removed by family members in the interests of preserving the family name, but this has not been proven. Except for one page, material is missing from his diaries for the period between 1853 and 1863 (when Dodgson was 21–31 years old).
This was a period when Dodgson began suffering great mental and spiritual anguish, and confessing to an overwhelming sense of his own sin. This was also the period of time when he composed his extensive love poetry, leading to speculation that the poems may have been autobiographical.
Many theories have been put forward to explain the missing material. A popular explanation for one missing page (27th. June 1863) is that it might have been torn out to conceal a proposal of marriage on that day to the 11-year-old Alice Liddell.
However, there has never been any evidence to suggest that this was so, and a paper offers some evidence to the contrary which was discovered by Karoline Leach in the Dodgson family archive in 1996.
This paper is known as the "Cut Pages in Diary" document, and was compiled by various members of Carroll's family after his death. Part of it may have been written at the time when the pages were destroyed, though this is unclear.
The document offers a brief summary of two diary pages that are missing, including the one for the 27th. June 1863. The summary for this page states that Mrs. Liddell told Dodgson that there was gossip circulating about him and the Liddell family's governess, as well as about his relationship with "Ina", presumably Alice's older sister Lorina Liddell.
The "break" with the Liddell family that occurred soon after was presumably in response to this gossip. An alternative interpretation has been made regarding Carroll's rumoured involvement with "Ina": Lorina was also the name of Alice Liddell's mother.
What is deemed most crucial and surprising is that the document seems to imply that Dodgson's break with the family was not connected with Alice at all; until a primary source is discovered, the events of the 27th. June 1863 will remain in doubt.
-- Charles Dodgson's Migraine and Epilepsy
In his diary for 1880, Dodgson recorded experiencing his first episode of migraine with aura, describing very accurately the process of "moving fortifications" that are a manifestation of the aura stage of the syndrome.
Unfortunately, there is no clear evidence to show whether this was his first experience of migraine per se, or whether he may have previously suffered the far more common form of migraine without aura. The latter seems most likely, given that migraine most commonly develops in the teens or early adulthood.
Another form of migraine aura called Alice in Wonderland syndrome has been named after Dodgson's little heroine because its manifestation can resemble the sudden size-changes in the book. It is also known as micropsia and macropsia, a brain condition affecting the way that objects are perceived.
For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object such as a basketball and perceive it as if it were the size of a golf ball. Some authors have suggested that Dodgson may have suffered from this type of aura, and used it as an inspiration in his work, although there is no evidence that he did.
Dodgson also suffered two attacks in which he lost consciousness.They were diagnosed as "epileptiform" seizures. Some have concluded from this that he was a lifetime sufferer of this condition, but there is no evidence of this in his diaries beyond these two attacks.
Sadi Ranson has suggested that Carroll may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, in which consciousness is not always completely lost but altered, and in which the symptoms mimic many of the same experiences as Alice in Wonderland.
Carroll had at least one incident in which he suffered full loss of consciousness and awoke with a bloody nose, which he recorded in his diary and noted that the episode left him not feeling himself for "quite sometime afterward". This attack was diagnosed as possibly "epileptiform" and Carroll himself later wrote of his "seizures" in the same diary.
Most of the standard diagnostic tests of today were not available in the nineteenth century. Yvonne Hart, consultant neurologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, has concluded that Dodgson very likely had migraine, and may have had epilepsy, but she emphasises that she would have considerable doubt about making a diagnosis of epilepsy without further information.
-- Charles Dodgson's Legacy
There are societies in many parts of the world dedicated to the enjoyment and promotion of Charles' works and the investigation of his life.
Copenhagen Street in Islington, north London is the location of the Lewis Carroll Children's Library.
In 1982, Charles' great-nephew unveiled a memorial stone to him in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.
In January 1994, an asteroid, 6984 Lewiscarroll, was discovered and named after Carroll.
The Lewis Carroll Centenary Wood near his birthplace in Daresbury opened in 2000.
Born in All Saints' Vicarage, Daresbury, Cheshire, in 1832, Lewis Carroll is commemorated at All Saints' Church, Daresbury in its stained glass windows depicting characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In March 2012, the Lewis Carroll Centre, attached to the church, was opened.
(When Exeter’s Robinson Female Seminary (RFS) opened in 1867, it was intended to be an adademic school similar to Phillips Exeter Academy. At the time, schools for young women tended to focus on needlework and deportment. Not so at RFS, where women were taught academic subjects only: arithmetic, mathematics, history, English grammar, botany, physiology, algebra, rhetoric, geometry, philosophy, and astronomy. Greek and Latin could be added for those preparing for college. The school was formed based a bequest of $200,000 from cotton trader William Robinson. In 2020, his bequest would have a relative project worth of over $479 million.)
(Written in ink on the verso of the below CDV: Ellen L. Wentworth, May 18, 1883.)
Ellen Lang Wenworth was born 25 July 1865 in Exeter, New Hampshire, the daughter of George Albert Wentworth (1835-1906) and Emily Johnson Hatch (1842-1895). Ellen never married. She grew up in Exeter with at least two siblings. He father was a long-time professor of mathematics for Phillips Exeter Academy. Ellen first earned a BA from Smith College and then attended RFS. In censuses fom 1870 through 1840, Ellen lived in Exeter; none of the censuses listed an occupation. From 1900 through 1940, she lived with her sister Norah in Exeter. Ellen did travel extensively to Europe, both with her father and alone. (Her passport listed her as being 5' 1“ tall.) Ellen was active in the Congregationl Church and a long-time Sunday school teacher at the church. She was also president of the Current Events Club and the Thursday Circle. Ellen Wenworth died at Hobb’s Home in North Hampton on 10 August 1952.
Photographer Alfred W. Anderson was born 21 March 1838 in Canada, the son of David A. Anderson (1788-1864) and Jane Coffin (1795-1865). On 19 September 1862, Alfred enlisted in Co. G, Massachusetts 50th Infantry Regiment; he was mustered out on 24 August 1863. He was married on 23 November 1864 to Caroline “Carrie" B. Quimby (1840-1929). In 1865, Anderson was listed as a photographic artist in Haverhill, Massachusetts, although there is an earlier reference to him being a daguerreotype artist in 1862. Anderson continued to work in Haverhill until his death on 13 March 1910.
Peter I commonly known as Peter the Great, was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch who remained the ultimate authority. His methods were often harsh and autocratic.
Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish Empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and its domination of the Baltic region while elevating Russia's standing to the extent it came to be acknowledged as an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.
In 1700, he introduced the Gregorian calendar but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change; they wanted to maintain its distinct identity and avoid appearing influenced by Catholic practices.[citation needed] In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. He founded the city of Saint Petersburg on the shore of the Neva as a "window to the West" in May 1703. In 1712 Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where it remained – with only a brief interruption – until 1918. He promoted higher education and industrialization in the Russian Empire.
Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, a year before his death.
Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign.
Early life
Peter was named after the apostle. He grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, Tsar Alexis of Russia, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors.
This position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family (Maria Miloslavskaya was the first wife of Alexis I) and Naryshkin family (Natalya Naryshkina was his second) over who should inherit the throne. He jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696. Ivan, was next in line but was chronically ill and of infirm mind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma (a council of Russian nobles) chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar, with his mother as regent.
This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, and was ratified. Sophia, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy (Russia's elite military corps) in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict, some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Artamon Matveyev, and Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence.
The Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys (the clan of Ivan) and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia then acted as regent during the minority of the sovereigns and exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Ivan and Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems. He lived at Preobrazhenskoye. This throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.
At the age of 16, Peter discovered an English boat on the estate, had it restored and learned to sail. He received a sextant, but did not know how to use the instrument. Therefore, he began a search for a foreign expert in the German Quarter. Peter befriended two Dutch carpenters, Frans Timmerman and Karsten Brandt, and several other foreigners in Russian service. Peter studied arithmetic, geometry, and military sciences. He was not interested in a musical education but seems to have liked fireworks and drumming.
Peter was not particularly concerned that others ruled in his name. He engaged in such pastimes as shipbuilding and sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689. The marriage was a failure, and ten years later Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union.
By the summer of 1689, Peter, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands. When she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with some leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by others from the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra; there he slowly gathered adherents who perceived he would win the power struggle. Sophia was eventually overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family.
Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs. Power was instead exercised by his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was only when Natalya died in 1694 that Peter, then aged 22, became an independent sovereign. Formally, Ivan V was a co-ruler with Peter, though being ineffective. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696 without male offspring, two years later.
Peter grew to be extremely tall, especially for the time period, reportedly standing 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m). Peter had noticeable facial tics, and he may have suffered from petit mal seizures, a form of epilepsy. Meanwhile, he was a frequent guest in German quarter, where he met Anna and Willem Mons.
Ideology of Peter's reign
As a young man, Peter I adopted the Protestant model of existence in a pragmatic world of competition and personal success, which largely shaped the philosophy of his reformism. He perceived the Russian people as rude, unintelligent, stubborn in their sluggishness, a child, a lazy student. He highly appreciated the state's role in the life of society, saw it as an ideal instrument for achieving high goals, saw it as a universal institution for transforming people, with the help of violence and fear, into educated, conscious, law-abiding and useful to the whole society subjects.
He introduced into the concept of the autocrat's power the notion of the monarch's duties. He considered it necessary to take care of his subjects, to protect them from enemies, to work for their benefit. Above all, he put the interests of Russia. He saw his mission in turning it into a power similar to Western countries, and subordinated his own life and the lives of his subjects to the realization of this idea. Gradually penetrated the idea that the task should be solved with the help of reforms, which will be carried out at the autocrat's will, who creates good and punishes evil. He considered the morality of a statesman separately from the morality of a private person and believed that the sovereign in the name of state interests can go to murder, violence, forgery and deceit.
He went through the naval service, starting from the lowest ranks: bombardier (1695), captain (1696), colonel (1706), schout-bij-nacht (1709), vice-admiral (1714), admiral (1721). By hard daily work (according to the figurative expression of Peter the Great himself, he was simultaneously "forced to hold a sword and a quill in one right hand") and courageous behavior he demonstrated to his subjects his personal positive example, showed how to act, fully devoting himself to the fulfillment of duty and service to the fatherland.
Reign
Peter implemented sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing Russia. Heavily influenced by his advisors from Western Europe, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making Russia a maritime power. He faced much opposition to these policies at home but brutally suppressed rebellions against his authority, including by the Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.
Peter implemented social modernization in an absolute manner by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles. One means of achieving this end was the introduction of taxes for long beards and robes in September 1698.
In his process to westernize Russia, he wanted members of his family to marry other European royalty. In the past, his ancestors had been snubbed at the idea, but now, it was proving fruitful. He negotiated with Frederick William, Duke of Courland to marry his niece, Anna Ivanovna. He used the wedding in order to launch his new capital, St Petersburg, where he had already ordered building projects of westernized palaces and buildings. Peter hired Italian and German architects to design it.
As part of his reforms, Peter started an industrialization effort that was slow but eventually successful. Russian manufacturing and main exports were based on the mining and lumber industries. For example, by the end of the century Russia came to export more iron than any other country in the world.
To improve his nation's position on the seas, Peter sought more maritime outlets. His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. The Baltic Sea was at the time controlled by Sweden in the north, while the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were controlled by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire respectively in the south.
Peter attempted to acquire control of the Black Sea, which would require expelling the Tatars from the surrounding areas. As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. Peter's primary objective became the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Azov, near the Don River. In the summer of 1695 Peter organized the Azov campaigns to take the fortress, but his attempts ended in failure.
Peter returned to Moscow in November 1695 and began building a large navy in Voronezh. He launched about thirty ships against the Ottomans in 1696, capturing Azov in July of that year.
Grand Embassy
Peter knew that Russia could not face the Ottoman Empire alone. In 1697, he traveled "incognito" to Western Europe on an 18-month journey with a large Russian delegation–the so-called "Grand Embassy". He used a fake name, allowing him to escape social and diplomatic events, but since he was far taller than most others, he could not fool anyone. One goal was to seek the aid of European monarchs, but Peter's hopes were dashed. France was a traditional ally of the Ottoman Sultan, and Austria was eager to maintain peace in the east while conducting its own wars in the west. Peter, furthermore, had chosen an inopportune moment: the Europeans at the time were more concerned about the War of the Spanish Succession over who would succeed the childless King Charles II of Spain than about fighting the Ottoman Sultan.
In Königsberg, the Tsar was apprenticed for two months to an artillery engineer. In July he met Sophia of Hanover at Coppenbrügge castle. She described him: "The tsar is a tall, handsome man, with an attractive face. He has a lively mind is very witty. Only, someone so well endowed by nature could be a little better mannered." Peter rented a ship in Emmerich am Rhein and sailed to Zaandam, where he arrived on 18 August 1697. He studied saw-mills, manufacturing and shipbuilding but left after a week. Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, the Tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool. The diligent and capable Tsar assisted in the construction of an East Indiaman ship Peter and Paul specially laid down for him. During his stay the Tsar engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights, and seamen—including Cornelis Cruys, a vice-admiral who became, under Franz Lefort, the Tsar's advisor in maritime affairs. Peter later put his knowledge of shipbuilding to use in helping build Russia's navy.
Peter felt that the ship's carpenters in Holland worked too much by eye and lacked accurate construction drawings. On 11 January 1698 (Old Style) Peter arrived at Victoria Embankment with four chamberlains, three interpreters, two clock makers, a cook, a priest, six trumpeters, 70 soldiers from the Preobrazhensky regiment, four dwarfs and a monkey. Peter stayed at 21 Norfolk Street, Strand and met with King William III and Gilbert Burnet, attended a session of the Royal Society, received a doctorate from Oxford University, trained a telescope on Venus at the Greenwich Observatory, and saw a Fleet Review by Royal Navy at Deptford. He studied the English techniques of city-building he would later use to great effect at Saint Petersburg. At the end of April 1698 he left after learning to make watches, carpenting coffins and posing for Sir Godfrey Kneller.
The Embassy next went to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. Peter spoke with Augustus II the Strong and Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.[18] Peter's visit was cut short, when he was forced to rush home by a rebellion of the Streltsy. The rebellion was easily crushed before Peter returned home; of the Tsar's troops, only one was killed. Peter nevertheless acted ruthlessly towards the mutineers. Over one thousand two hundred of the rebels were tortured and executed, and Peter ordered that their bodies be publicly exhibited as a warning to future conspirators. The Streltsy were disbanded, some of the rebels were deported to Siberia, and the individual they sought to put on the Throne — Peter's half-sister Sophia — was forced to become a nun.
Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to wear European clothing and cut off their long beards, causing his Boyars, who were very fond of their beards, great upset. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles. Peter also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.
In 1698, Peter I instituted a beard tax to modernize Russian society. In the same year Peter sent a delegation to Malta, under boyar Boris Sheremetev, to observe the training and abilities of the Knights of Malta and their fleet. Sheremetev investigated the possibility of future joint ventures with the Knights, including action against the Turks and the possibility of a future Russian naval base. On 12 September 1698, Peter officially founded the first Russian Navy base, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.
In 1699, Peter changed the date of the celebration of the new year from 1 September to 1 January. Traditionally, the years were reckoned from the purported creation of the World, but after Peter's reforms, they were to be counted from the birth of Christ. Thus, in the year 7207 of the old Russian calendar, Peter proclaimed that the Julian Calendar was in effect and the year was 1700. On the death of Lefort in 1699, Menshikov succeeded him as Peter's prime favourite and confidant. In 1701, the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation was founded; for fifteen years, not only naval officers, but also surveyors, engineers, and gunners were educated there.
Great Northern War
First Winter Palace
Peter made a temporary peace with the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to keep the captured fort of Azov, and turned his attention to Russian maritime supremacy. He sought to acquire control of the Baltic Sea, which had been taken by the Swedish Empire a half-century earlier. Peter declared war on Sweden, which was at the time led by the young King Charles XII. Sweden was also opposed by Denmark–Norway, Saxony, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Preobrazhensky regiment took part in all major battles of the Great Northern War.
Russia was ill-prepared to fight the Swedes, and their first attempt at seizing the Baltic coast ended in disaster at the Battle of Narva in 1700. In the conflict, the forces of Charles XII, rather than employ a slow methodical siege, attacked immediately using a blinding snowstorm to their advantage. After the battle, Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army. He invited Nicolaas Bidloo to organize a military hospital. In 1701, Peter the Great signed a decree on the opening of Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation.
While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg on 29 June 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Peter moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1703. While the city was being built along the Neva he lived in a modest three-room log cabin (with a study but without a fire-place) which had to make room for the first version of the Winter palace. The first buildings which appeared were the Peter and Paul Fortress, a shipyard at the Admiralty and Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Following several defeats, Polish King Augustus II the Strong abdicated in 1706. Swedish king Charles XII turned his attention to Russia, invading it in 1708. After crossing into Russia, Charles defeated Peter at Golovchin in July. In the Battle of Lesnaya, Charles suffered his first loss after Peter crushed a group of Swedish reinforcements marching from Riga. Deprived of this aid, Charles was forced to abandon his proposed march on Moscow.
Charles XII refused to retreat to Poland or back to Sweden and instead invaded Ukraine. Peter withdrew his army southward, employing scorched earth, destroying along the way anything that could assist the Swedes. Deprived of local supplies, the Swedish army was forced to halt its advance in the winter of 1708–1709. In the summer of 1709, they resumed their efforts to capture Russian-ruled Ukraine, culminating in the Battle of Poltava on 27 June. The battle was a decisive defeat for the Swedish forces, ending Charles' campaign in Ukraine and forcing him south to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Russia had defeated what was considered to be one of the world's best militaries, and the victory overturned the view that Russia was militarily incompetent. In Poland, Augustus II was restored as King.
Peter, overestimating the support he would receive from his Balkan allies, attacked the Ottoman Empire, initiating the Russo-Turkish War of 1710. Peter's campaign in the Ottoman Empire was disastrous, and in the ensuing Treaty of the Pruth, Peter was forced to return the Black Sea ports he had seized in 1697. In return, the Sultan expelled Charles XII.
The Ottomans called him Mad Peter (Turkish: deli Petro), for his willingness to sacrifice large numbers of his troops in wartime. Peter I loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities. In 1704 Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a child with Ethiopian origin, was presented to him; in 1716 Peter took him to Paris.
In 1711, Peter established by decree a new state body known as the Governing Senate. Normally, the Boyar duma would have exercised power during his absence. Peter, however, mistrusted the boyars; he instead abolished the Duma and created a Senate of ten members. The Senate was founded as the highest state institution to supervise all judicial, financial and administrative affairs. Originally established only for the time of the monarch's absence, the Senate became a permanent body after his return. A special high official, the Ober-Procurator, served as the link between the ruler and the senate and acted, in Peter own words, as "the sovereign's eye". Without his signature no Senate decision could go into effect; the Senate became one of the most important institutions of Imperial Russia.
1712, Peter I issued a decree establishing an Engineering School in Moscow, which was supposed to recruit up to 150 students, and two-thirds of them were to consist of nobles.[31] Therefore, on 28 February 1714, he issued a decree calling for compulsory education, which dictated that all Russian 10- to 15-year-old children of the nobility, government clerks, and lesser-ranked officials must learn basic mathematics and geometry, and should be tested on the subjects at the end of their studies.
Peter's northern armies took the Swedish province of Livonia (the northern half of modern Latvia, and the southern half of modern Estonia), driving the Swedes out of Finland. In 1714 the Russian fleet won the Battle of Gangut. Most of Finland was occupied by the Russians.
In 1716, the Tsar visited Riga, and Danzig in January, Stettin, and obtained the assistance of the Electorate of Hanover and the Kingdom of Prussia fighting a war against Sweden at Wismar. He was forced to leave Mecklenburg. In Altona he met with Danish diplomats. He went on to Bad Pyrmont in May/June, because of an illness he stayed at this spa. He arrived in Amsterdam in December, where he bought some interesting collections: those of Frederik Ruysch, Levinus Vincent and Albertus Seba and paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian for his Kunstkamera. He visited a silk manufacture and a paper-mill, and learned to create paper and to spin silk. He visited Herman Boerhaave and Carel de Moor in Leiden and ordered two mercury thermometers from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and instruments from Musschenbroek. In April 1717 he continued his travel from Flushing to Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands and Dunkirk, Calais, Paris, where he obtained many books and proposed a marriage between his daughter and King Louis XV. Saint-Simon described him as "tall, well-formed and slim…with a look both bewildered and fierce." Via Reims, and Spa Peter travelled on to Maastricht, at that time one of the most important fortresses in Europe, where he was received by Daniël van Dopff, the commander of the fortress. He went back to Amsterdam and visited the Hortus Botanicus and left the city early September.
The Tsar's navy was powerful enough that the Russians could penetrate Sweden. Still, Charles XII refused to yield, and not until his death in battle in 1718 did peace become feasible. After the battle near Åland, Sweden made peace with all powers but Russia by 1720. In 1721, the Treaty of Nystad ended the Great Northern War. Russia acquired Ingria, Estonia, Livonia, and a substantial portion of Karelia. In turn, Russia paid two million Riksdaler and surrendered most of Finland. The Tsar retained some Finnish lands close to Saint Petersburg, which he had made his capital in 1712. Between 1713 and 1728, and from 1732 to 1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.
Title
Following his victory in the Great Northern War, he adopted the title of emperor in 1721.
By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign emperor Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, of Tver, of Yugorsk, of Perm, of Vyatka, of Bulgaria and others, sovereign and great prince of the Novgorod Lower lands, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Belozersk, of Udora, of Kondia and the sovereign of all the northern lands, and the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.
Later years
In 1717, Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia against the Khanate of Khiva. The expedition ended in complete disaster when the entire expeditionary force was slaughtered.
In 1718, Peter investigated why the formerly Swedish province of Livonia was so orderly. He discovered that the Swedes spent as much administering Livonia (300 times smaller than his empire) as he spent on the entire Russian bureaucracy. He was forced to dismantle the province's government.
To the end of 1717, the preparatory phase of administrative reform in Russia was completed. After 1718, Peter established colleges in place of the old central agencies of government, including foreign affairs, war, navy, expense, income, justice, and inspection. Later others were added, to regulate mining and industry. Each college consisted of a president, a vice-president, a number of councilors and assessors, and a procurator. Some foreigners were included in various colleges but not as president. Peter did not have enough loyal, talented or educated persons to put in full charge of the various departments. Peter preferred to rely on groups of individuals who would keep check on one another. Decisions depended on the majority vote.
Peter's last years were marked by further reform in Russia. On 22 October 1721, soon after peace was made with Sweden, he was officially proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Some proposed that he take the title Emperor of the East, but he refused. Gavrila Golovkin, the State Chancellor, was the first to add "the Great, Father of His Country, Emperor of All the Russias" to Peter's traditional title Tsar following a speech by the archbishop of Pskov in 1721. Peter's imperial title was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia, and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs. In the minds of many, the word emperor connoted superiority or pre-eminence over kings. Several rulers feared that Peter would claim authority over them, just as the Holy Roman Emperor had claimed suzerainty over all Christian nations.
In 1722, Peter created a new order of precedence known as the Table of Ranks. Formerly, precedence had been determined by birth. To deprive the Boyars of their high positions, Peter directed that precedence should be determined by merit and service to the Emperor. The Table of Ranks continued to remain in effect until the Russian monarchy was overthrown in 1917.
The once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was in deep decline. Taking advantage of the profitable situation, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, otherwise known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great", which drastically increased Russian influence for the first time in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, and prevented the Ottoman Empire from making territorial gains in the region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over territory to Russia, comprising Derbent, Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Baku, and Astrabad. Within twelve years all the territories were ceded back to Persia, now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht, the Treaty of Ganja, and as the result of a Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which was the common enemy of both.
Peter introduced new taxes to fund improvements in Saint Petersburg. He abolished the land tax and household tax and replaced them with a poll tax. The taxes on land and on households were payable only by individuals who owned property or maintained families. The new head taxes were payable by serfs and paupers. In 1725 the construction of Peterhof, a palace near Saint Petersburg, was completed. Peterhof (Dutch for "Peter's Court") was a grand residence, becoming known as the "Russian Versailles".
In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust, began having problems with his urinary tract and bladder. In the summer of 1724, a team of doctors performed surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine. Peter remained bedridden until late autumn. In the first week of October, restless and certain he was cured, Peter began a lengthy inspection tour of various projects. According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue.
This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peter's bladder problems and caused his death. The story, however, has been viewed with skepticism by some historians, pointing out that the German chronicler Jacob von Staehlin is the only source for the story, and it seems unlikely that no one else would have documented such an act of heroism. This, plus the interval of time between these actions and Peter's death seems to preclude any direct link.
In early January 1725, Peter was struck once again with uremia. Legend has it that before lapsing into unconsciousness Peter asked for a paper and pen and scrawled an unfinished note that read: "Leave all to ..." and then, exhausted by the effort, asked for his daughter Anna to be summoned.
Peter died between four and five in the morning 8 February 1725. An autopsy revealed his bladder to be infected with gangrene. He was fifty-two years, seven months old when he died, having reigned forty-two years. He is interred in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
After the death of Peter I, there were immediately students who came to the Military College with a request to "leave science" under the pretext of "unconsciousness and incomprehensibility."
Religion
Peter did not believe in miracles and founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church when he was eighteen. In January 1695, Peter refused to partake in a traditional Russian Orthodox ceremony of the Epiphany Ceremony, and would often schedule events for The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters to directly conflict with the Church. He often used the nickname Pakhom Mikhailov (Russian: Пахом Михайлов) among the ministers of religion who made up his relatively close circle of long-term drinking companions. He drank less than the others, deliberately getting the others drunk in order to listen to their drunken conversations.
Peter was brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith, but he had low regard for the Church hierarchy, which he kept under tight governmental control. The traditional leader of the Church was the Patriarch of Moscow. In 1700, when the office fell vacant, Peter refused to name a replacement, allowing the patriarch's coadjutor (or deputy) to discharge the duties of the office. Peter could not tolerate the patriarch exercising power superior to the tsar, as indeed had happened in the case of Philaret (1619–1633) and Nikon (1652–66). In 1716 he invited Theophan Prokopovich to come to the capital. In 1718 he ordered to translate the "Introduction to European History" (a work by Samuel Pufendorf); the Ecclesiastical Regulations of 1721 are based on it. The Church reform of Peter the Great therefore abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with a Holy Synod that was under the control of a Procurator, and the tsar appointed all bishops.
In 1721, Peter followed the advice of Prokopovich in designing the Holy Synod as a council of ten clergymen. For leadership in the Church, Peter turned increasingly to Ukrainians, who were more open to reform, but were not well loved by the Russian clergy. Peter implemented a law that stipulated that no Russian man could join a monastery before the age of fifty. He felt that too many able Russian men were being wasted on clerical work when they could be joining his new and improved army.
A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper-class society. Most parish priests were sons of priests and were very poorly educated and paid. The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry. Politically, the Church was impotent.
Marriages and family
Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fifteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Peter's mother selected his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, with the advice of other nobles in 1689. This was consistent with previous Romanov tradition by choosing a daughter of a minor noble. This was done to prevent fighting between the stronger noble houses and to bring fresh blood into the family. He also had a mistress from Westphalia, Anna Mons.
Upon his return from his European tour in 1698, Peter sought to end his unhappy marriage. He divorced the Tsaritsa and forced her to join a convent. She had borne him three children, although only one, Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, had survived past his childhood.
Menshikov introduced him to Marta Helena Skowrońska, a Polish-Lithuanian peasant, and took her as a mistress some time between 1702 and 1704. Marta converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was given the name Catherine. Though no record exists, Catherine and Peter married secretly between 23 Oct and 1 December 1707 in St. Petersburg. Peter valued Catherine and married officially, at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 19 February 1712.
His eldest child and heir, Alexei, was suspected of being involved in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Alexei was tried and confessed under torture during questioning conducted by a secular court (count Tolstoy). He was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The sentence could only be carried out with Peter's signed authorization, and Alexei died in prison, as Peter hesitated before making the decision. Alexei's death most likely resulted from injuries suffered during his torture. Alexei's mother Eudoxia was punished. She was dragged from her home, tried on false charges of adultery, publicly flogged, and confined in monasteries while being forbidden to be talked to.
In 1724, Peter had his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remained Russia's actual ruler.
Issue
By his two wives, he had fifteen children: three by Eudoxia and twelve by Catherine. These included four sons named Pavel and three sons named Peter, all of whom died in infancy. Only three of his children survived to adulthood. He also had three grandchildren: Tsar Peter II and Grand Duchess Natalia by Alexei and Tsar Peter III by Anna.
Mistresses and illegitimate children
Princess Maria Dmitrievna Cantemirovna of Moldavia (1700–1754), daughter of Dimitrie Cantemir
Unnamed son (1722 - 1723?) – different sources say that the baby was stillborn or died before he was one year old.
Lady Mary Hamilton, Catherine I's lady in waiting of Scottish descent.
Miscarriage (1715)
Unnamed child (1717 - 1718?)
Legacy
Peter's legacy has always been a major concern of Russian intellectuals. Riasanovsky points to a "paradoxical dichotomy" in the black and white images such as God/Antichrist, educator/ignoramus, architect of Russia's greatness/destroyer of national culture, father of his country/scourge of the common man. Voltaire's 1759 biography gave 18th-century Russians a man of the Enlightenment, while Alexander Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" poem of 1833 gave a powerful romantic image of a creator-god. Slavophiles in mid-19th century deplored Peter's westernization of Russia.
Western writers and political analysts recounted "The Testimony" or secret will of Peter the Great. It supposedly revealed his grand evil plot for Russia to control the world via conquest of Constantinople, Afghanistan and India. It was a forgery made in Paris at Napoleon's command when he started his invasion of Russia in 1812. Nevertheless, it is still quoted in foreign policy circles.
The Communists executed the last Romanovs, and their historians such as Mikhail Pokrovsky presented strongly negative views of the entire dynasty. Stalin however admired how Peter strengthened the state, and wartime, diplomacy, industry, higher education, and government administration. Stalin wrote in 1928, "when Peter the Great, who had to deal with more developed countries in the West, feverishly built works in factories for supplying the army and strengthening the country's defenses, this was an original attempt to leap out of the framework of backwardness." As a result, Soviet historiography emphasizes both the positive achievement and the negative factor of oppressing the common people.
After the fall of Communism in 1991, scholars and the general public in Russia and the West gave fresh attention to Peter and his role in Russian history. His reign is now seen as the decisive formative event in the Russian imperial past. Many new ideas have merged, such as whether he strengthened the autocratic state or whether the tsarist regime was not statist enough given its small bureaucracy. Modernization models have become contested ground.
He initiated a wide range of economic, social, political, administrative, educational and military reforms which ended the dominance of traditionalism and religion in Russia and initiated its westernization. His efforts included secularization of education, organization of administration for effective governance, enhanced use of technology, establishing an industrial economy, modernization of the army and establishment of a strong navy.
Historian Y. Vodarsky said in 1993 that Peter, "did not lead the country on the path of accelerated economic, political and social development, did not force it to 'achieve a leap' through several stages.... On the contrary, these actions to the greatest degree put a brake on Russia's progress and created conditions for holding it back for one and a half centuries!" The autocratic powers that Stalin admired appeared as a liability to Evgeny Anisimov, who complained that Peter was, "the creator of the administrative command system and the true ancestor of Stalin."
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. Russia became a great power, without whose concurrence no important European problem could thenceforth be settled. His internal reforms achieved progress to an extent that no earlier innovator could have envisaged."
While the cultural turn in historiography has downplayed diplomatic, economic and constitutional issues, new cultural roles have been found for Peter, for example in architecture and dress. James Cracraft argues:
The Petrine revolution in Russia—subsuming in this phrase the many military, naval, governmental, educational, architectural, linguistic, and other internal reforms enacted by Peter's regime to promote Russia's rise as a major European power—was essentially a cultural revolution, one that profoundly impacted both the basic constitution of the Russian Empire and, perforce, its subsequent development.
In popular culture
Peter has been featured in many histories, novels, plays, films, monuments and paintings. They include the poems The Bronze Horseman, Poltava and the unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great, all by Alexander Pushkin. The former dealt with The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue raised in Peter's honour. Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a biographical historical novel about him, named Peter I, in the 1930s.
The 1922 German silent film Peter the Great directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and starring Emil Jannings as Peter
In 1929 A.N. Tolstoy's play was true to the party line, depicting Peter as a tyrant who "suppressed everyone and everything as if he had been possessed by demons, sowed fear, and put both his son and his country on the rack."
The 1937–1938 Soviet film Peter the Great
The 1976 film How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor, starring Aleksey Petrenko as Peter, and Vladimir Vysotsky as Abram Petrovich Gannibal, shows Peter's attempt to build the Baltic Fleet.
Peter was played by Jan Niklas and Maximilian Schell in the 1986 NBC miniseries Peter the Great.
The 2007 film The Sovereign's Servant depicts the unsavoury brutal side of Peter during the campaign.
A character based on Peter plays a major role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.
Peter is one of many supporting characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle – mainly featuring in the third novel, The System of the World.
Peter was portrayed on BBC Radio 4 by Isaac Rouse as a boy, Will Howard as a young adult and Elliot Cowan as an adult in the radio plays Peter the Great: The Gamblers and Peter the Great: The Queen of Spades, written by Mike Walker and which were the last two plays in the first series of Tsar. The plays were broadcast on 25 September and 2 October 2016.
A verse in the "Engineers' Drinking Song" references Peter the Great:
There was a man named Peter the Great who was a Russian Tzar;
When remodeling his the castle put the throne behind the bar;
He lined the walls with vodka, rum, and 40 kinds of beers;
And advanced the Russian culture by 120 years!
Peter was played by Jason Isaacs in the 2020 'antihistory' Hulu series The Great.
Peter is featured as the leader of the Russian civilization in the computer game Sid Meier's Civilization VI.
Peter was played by Ivan Kolesnikov in the 2022 Russian historical documentary film Peter I: The Last Tsar and the First Emperor.