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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.
“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.”
Chapter heading from the First Book in Arithmetic, 1888, Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square. Early infographics for the math-challenged.
Highest Explore Position #278 ~ On January 8th 2009.
Ring Tailed Lemur - Wingham Wildlife Park, Wingham, Kent, England - Sunday January 4th 2009.
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This time we have a portrait of the lil Ring Tailed Lemur sans Moi...which is much better I'd say...lol..:O))))
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I hope everybody is having a great Hump Day Wednesday - HBW Everybody..:O)))
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ~ The Ring-tailed Lemur (Lemur catta) is a large Strepsirhine primate and the most recognized lemur due to its long, black and white ringed tail. It belongs to Lemuridae, one of four lemur families. It is the only member of the Lemur genus. Like all lemurs it is endemic to the island of Madagascar. Known locally as Hira (Malagasy) or Maki (French, Hungarian and Malagasy), it inhabits gallery forests to spiny scrub in the southern regions of the island. It is omnivorous and the most terrestrial of 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 matriarchal, a trait common among lemurs but uncommon among other primates. To keep warm and reaffirm social bonds groups will huddle together forming a lemur ball. 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 utilizes numerous vocalizations including group cohesion and alarm calls. Despite the lack of a large brain (relative to Simiiform primates) experiments have shown that the Ring-tailed Lemur can organize sequences, understand basic arithmetic operations and preferentially select tools based on functional qualities.
Despite being listed as Near Threatened by the IUCN Red List and suffering from habitat destruction, the Ring-tailed Lemur reproduces readily in captivity and is the most populous lemur in zoos worldwide, numbering more than 2000 individuals. It typically lives 16 to 19 years in the wild and 27 years in captivity.
Etymology ~ The term lemur was selected by early biologists because the calls of some elusive lemur species brought to mind the cries of the spirits of the dead, or lemures, from Roman mythology. The species name, catta, comes from the similarity between the Ring-tailed Lemur's purring vocalization and that of the Domestic Cat.
Evolutionary history ~ All mammalian fossils from Madagascar come from recent times. Thus, little is known about the evolution of the Ring-tailed Lemur, let alone the order Lemuriformes, which comprises the entire endemic primate population of the island. However, chromosomal and molecular evidence suggest that lemurs are more closely related to each other than to other Strepsirrhine primates. For this to have happened, it is thought that a very small ancestral population came to Madagascar via a single rafting event between 50 and 80 million years ago. Subsequent evolutionary radiation and speciation has created the diversity of Malagasy lemurs seen today. The Ring-tailed Lemur itself is thought to share closer affinities than the rest of its subfamily, Lemurinae, to the bamboo lemurs of the genus Hapalemur, which may be a sister group of the family Lemuridae.
It is so much easier to count metric money than imperial money. One look and you can tell that that is $104 (there is a pile of coins behind the tall stack). Honestly, we've got enough complications in life today without having to do extra mental arithmetic at the shops.
July 2012 Scavenger Challenge #4. Metric measurement makes more sense! Show how easy it is to count by tens.
Taken with iPhone 4S.
Royal Math Gnomes inspired by the Waldorf math curriculum: King Addition, Queen Subtraction, Prince Multiplication, Princess Division, and the Equals Wizard.
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many
you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--
or five six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice
and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky--
or the answer is wrong and you have to start all over and
try again and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply – and you carry
the multiplication table in your head and hope you won't lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you eat one
and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the other,
how many animal crackers will you have if somebody offers you
five six seven and you say No no no and you say Nay nay nay
and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she gives you
two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is better in arithmetic,
you or your mother?
Title
•[Untitled photo, possibly related to: Boyd Jones doing his arithmetic lesson at the blackboard in the Alexander Community School in Greene County, Georgia]
Names
•Delano, Jack, 1914-1997, photographer
Created / Published
•1941 Nov.
Headings
•- United States--Georgia--Greene County
Notes
•- This image in a jacket marked "Killed."
•- Title and other information from a possibly related negative. Image came to Library of Congress untitled. (There was no caption for this image in the FSA/OWI shelflist.)
•- Appears to be related to negative LC-USF34-046429-D www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2017796842/
•- Transfer; United States. Office of War Information. Overseas Picture Division. Washington Division; 1944.
•- More information about the FSA/OWI Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsaowi
•- Temp. note: usf34batch5
•- Film copy on SIS roll 4, frame 1097.
Source Collection
•Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)
LCCN Permalink
•https://lccn.loc.gov/2017796823
This elementary school arithmetic book is 97 years old. It belonged to my dad. From a small-town school system, he went on to get his masters degree in mechanical engineering. He was really good at helping me with math, and he was a really good dad.
All of his children and grandchildren went into engineering.
What I find most amazing is that kids in sixth grade were taught so many useful things (like finance) that were dropped out of the curriculum later.
Title page of 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)
Math homework for my Psycholgical Measurements class. It the first time that I had math homework since I was a freshman.
This vintage stationery store replica was part of the 1970 Khz pop culture exhibit at Seoul's Sejong Culture Center. The vintage textbooks tacked up to the display counter include (right to left) "morals," "Korean language," "arithmetic," "games" (??), "Chinese character study," and a diary. Most of this cool stuff is real, and pricey as collectibles. ;-)
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)
Well OK here's my 16 things
16 Things
1 – I learned all I ever wanted to know about War at the young age of 19, in 1952 in Korea,
2 – I tell all of our grand kids that I’m 39 years old…but they stop believing me after about the 2nd grade. (Do they have to teach them arithmetic so young?)
3 – When I was younger we had an uncle, Uncle Maurice. He brought his camera to every family gathering and made everyone smile for a photo. Lately everyone in the family is calling me “Uncle Maurice”
4 – My first experience with Photoshop was the 06 version. Then I graduated to 07, now I’m using CS2 and still trying to learn it.
5 – Clara and I have 9 Daughters, no sons, just beautiful girls. These girls so far have given us 22 Grandchildren.
6 – We currently have 8 Grandchildren in the 10 and under age group.
7 – 7 years ago, we found Santa Claus’ phone number and one of the Grandchildren has called him each year, and invited him to our Christmas Eve Party. And he has shown up every year, just for a short visit, it’s after all his busy night. He always has something in his bag for each of the squealing kids.
8 – As part of this Christmas Eve party, Clara has all the Grandchildren gather around a cake with candles and they sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.
9 – I started to work; it doesn’t seem that long ago, as a Letter Carrier for the U.S. Postal Service. I was promoted to Supervisor and I retired as a Station Manager.
10 – My life as a retiree now revolves around photos, cutting grass, Photoshop, woodworking, my new Sony DSLR camera.
11 – Clara is very busy baby sitting, baking birthday cakes (Spiderman; Winnie the Pooh: etc. I serve as her assistant and try to keep kids out of her way.
12 – I like little math tricks. All the older grand kids know how to multiply any 2 digit number times 11. 7 year old Joshua is our whiz, he can do it faster than I can.
13 – We always did things around the dinner table to teach the kids, like learning the capitals of the states. I was trying to learn all I could about color and I told the girls why the sky is blue. A few weeks later one of the teachers asked the class that question and Jean was the only one who knew the answer. That made me move up several points in her eyes.
14 – I can’t stand most seafood. I never eat shrimp or clams, about all I can handle is Tuna and haddock, preferably blackened.
15 – My one regret is that I didn’t finish college. Marriage and children got in the way of that when I got out of the service. I was fortunate though in that in my generation just a year or so of college gave you a leg up on the other guys.
16 – Well anyway 9 girls and 22 grandchildren later all we have left at our house is a 2 ½ year old female Yorkie that we call Zoey. She’s not real pretty but we love her just the same.
I did not have instructions for either the pentagonal or heptagonal boxes, but the instructions I had for the hexagonal and octagonal boxes were essentially identical except for the angle of a single crease. I guessed that the same instructions could also be used to produce the other two boxes by making that single change. I could easily figure out what angle would be needed for the pentagonal and heptagonal shapes, but figuring out how to create a fold at that angle without using a protractor - merely using additional folds to the paper - took a bit more thinking. But in the end I triumphed!
I created pdf instruction files for the pentagonal and hexagonal boxes so that viewers could compare two sets of instructions and see for themselves how similar they were. I put a lot of time and effort into making the instructions as clear and explicit as possible so that even a complete novice could follow them easily. I took photographs of every step of the folding-in-progress, and used photoshop to add extra information (circles around specified points, red lines indicating fold lines, etc) in several spots. I did not, however, put a lot of time and effort into making the pdf files visually pleasing. In general I put each instruction, with photo(s), on a separate page, so there's a fair deal of empty white space. But what the documents lack in formatting, they more than make up for in detail. They are certainly more detailed than any other instructions I have seen for the hexagonal model or similar models. You can find them online at ...well when I tried to paste in the link to the site I kept getting error messages, so I'll post the link as a comment below.
A 'stock' photograph for the finance pages - just one of hundreds taken during the first Whitehaven Snappers 'Redstock' Day
As solar activity increases we're getting more dramatic features. Some quick arithmetic -- the chromosphere is about 2500 miles deep; earth's diameter is 7900 miles. So I think the earth would fit snugly under that arch (it might be a bit hot, there though!)
Tech Stuff: Questar 3.5"/DayStar Quark Chromosphere/Baader D-ERF/TeleVue 2.5X Powermate/QHY 5III 174 mono/
Firecapure/AS3/pipp/ffmpg/GIMP/ACDSee. As always, special filters are required for safe viewing and photography of the sun!
Arithmetic Foundation book and Arithmetic quiz c. 1940s
Various American Manufacturers
Courtesy of Mickey McGowan, Unknown Museum Archives
L2021.0909.002, .006
Mickey Math and Toy adding machine c. 1960s
Various American Manufacturers
Courtesy of the Computer History Museum
XB229.82; X81.82
L2021.0904.008; ; L2021.0904.011
Little Professor 1976
Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI)
Dallas
Courtesy of the Computer History Museum
102630257; L2021.0904.010
At mid-century, a large school-aged population and Russia’s successful launch of Sputnik I in 1957 (the first satellite to successfully orbit the Earth), triggered an urgency for new, more rigorous mathematical curricula in the United States. Advocates of the “New Math” movement encouraged learning through discovery rather than just memorizing methods of solving problems with the goal of creating a new generation of scientists and mathematicians. Today, STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) teaching integrates four disciplines into a program offering practical instruction with “real-world” applications. Even so, universal mathematics literacy remains an ongoing challenge.
Source:
www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/mathematics-vintage-and-mod...
After countless years and missed opportunities, my friend Austin and I finally made it inside the Halfway Prairie School
on Highway 19 in Mazomanie. Originally opened in 1844 (yes four years before WI became a state) and closed in 1961 as a result of consolidation, I can now cross visiting the interior off my bucket it.
Somalia, September 2013: Ismahan, holding her sleeping 3-year-old sister, studies arithmetic at a school for displaced children, in Mogadishu. She looks after her younger sibling while her parents work. That same day, the Government launched a Go-To-School Initiative to get 1 million children and youths into the classroom. School enrolment rates in Somalia are among the lowest in the world, and girls are the least likely to obtain an education.
©UNICEF/Colin Delfosse
To see more: www.unicef.org/photography
Also download the UNICEF Photography iPhone app here
***
Do you remember how slowly the days passed when you were a child? An 80-mile car trip seemed endless. It took forever for summer to come. When it finally did, by late-July, summer seemed interminable.
Basic arithmetic reveals that for a two-year old, the next year will represent 33% of her life thus far, whereas for a 19-year old, the next year represents 5%, and for a 39 year-old, only 2.5%...
More than anything else, the young child's perceptions influence how she experiences life. She has few markers that delineate the passage of time. On the first of each month, she pays no rent or mortgage. She has no job, and does not commute. She is likely to be regularly clothed, bathed, and cared for.
The child arises each day with no agenda, no to do list. She experiences hunger, irritation, and sleepiness. She has some favorite activities -- her major activity is play. Each day brings new wonders... Meanwhile, she has no report to finish, no checkbook to balance, no across-town meetings. She does not even wear a watch.
Your life is a bit more complicated, and is related increasingly to how society has become more complex. Independent of who you are or what you do for a living, chances are that you're busy, perhaps extremely busy, and are a part of our active, generally hard-working population.
If you continually feel pressured, don't take it personally. You are experiencing the same dilemma as millions of other people, and you are part of the most time-pressed society of over-information and communication in history
Jeff Davidson, edited passage from Breathing Space: Living and Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society
***
will be back to comments very soon my dear sweet friends :)
WHAT A TRIP! is the topic for Thursday 27th December 2012
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© Lawrence Goldman 2011, All Rights Reserved
This work may not be copied, reproduced, republished, edited, downloaded, displayed, modified, transmitted, licensed, transferred, sold, distributed or uploaded in any way without my prior written permission.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv_2x6JmuaE
A place of mathematics and wonder. God's word and sacred arithmetics.
I noticed this morning on the interwebs that Union Pacific had an office special leaving Council Bluffs and heading towards Joliet, Illinois. I've never photographed one of these and railfans seem to be pretty excited about them. In addition, I didn't have a picture of UP 2010.
Doing some arithmetic and looking at the map, I figured it would run through Geneva, Illinois about 4pm. At 2:30, I was far enough ahead on a project I was working on to take a break, so I headed over to the station. I figured if I got there by 3pm, I might catch it if it was ahead of my guestimate. If it was late - too bad. I had to leave about 4:10.
I took a few photos of passing trains while waiting, and noticed a few other railfans had appeared at the far end of the platform. I figured that maybe, just maybe, I would get lucky. But it got to be a little after 4 and it started to rain, so I figured I'd depart. Just as I was about to leave the platform and head to the parking deck, I saw a train coming from the west. It wasn't a Metra, and from the body language of the foamers at the far west end of the platform, I figured it wasn't a normal freight.
Holy crap! I had this thing pegged to within 5 minutes! It was the freaking train! I managed to set the camera and fired off a few shots, one of which you see above. The clouds actually cooperated. I'd rather shoot in cloudy light, then in the miserable sunlight (train coming out of the west - not a good thing).
See the other end of this train here.
www.flickr.com/photos/jimfrazier/4772143733/in/photostream/
Metra Station
Geneva, Illinois
July 7, 2010
COPYRIGHT 2010 by JimFrazier All Rights Reserved. This may NOT be used for ANY reason without consent.
k100707cDSC_6515a640
A baby quilt I made using a In Color Order's Arithmetic pattern. I hand-embroidered the baby's name on the top before quilting it.
in 1708 lord orford founded a school were children were to be instructed English and arithmetic and the school closed in 1978
i miss my calculator. this was my best friend back in college. for some reason, i miss accounting...despite my hatred towards it. i guess it grew on me after all.
The Grandchildren playing in the hay. Special moments like this you want to last forever...I have attached a wonderful short story that helped me to cherish what's truly important...Our pastor has shared this many times over the years...
3,900 Saturdays
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning.
Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You
know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about "a thousand marbles." I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.
"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job. I'm sure they pay you well, but it's a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy
hours a week to make ends meet. It's too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital," he continued.
"Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities." And that's when he began to explain his theory of a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.
"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm getting to the important part.
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail," he went on, "and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.
"Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.
"There's nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.
"It was nice to meet you, Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here, on the band. This is a 75 year old man, K9NZQ, clear and going strong, good morning!"
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off.
I guess he gave us all a lot to think about.
I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.
Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss.
"C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast."
"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile.
"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out? I need to buy some marbles."
--author unknown
© All my images are copyrighted.
If you intend to use any of my pictures, for any usage, you need to contact me first.
Image Details
Free game:
www.erroba.be/MentalArithmetic/
Learn your kids and yourself to do mental arithmetic in a playful way.
Technical details
Programmed using HTML5/Canvas and Typescript.
If your browser does not show the game as above, be sure to update your browser to the latest version.
I recommend Chrome, since it renders the fastest of all tested browsers.
If your Chrome browser does not play sounds, navigate to the chrome://flags/ url and be sure to disable the "Gesture requirement for media playback" flag.
On my Android tablet Firefox seems to work the best, Chrome doesn't render in an Anti-Aliased way, strange because on my desktop running Windows 7, Chrome does it.
Somebody any ideas on that?
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