Athletics

Athletics or track and field is a group of sporting events that involves competitive running, jumping, throwing, and walking.

Athletic competitions were held in Egypt as far back as 3800BC.

Most of the international competitions open to track and field athletes can be traced back to the Greek sporting festivals held as early as 1500 BC. The major festivals were the Olympic Games, held at Olympia; the Pythian Games, at Delphi; the Nemean Games, at Nemea; and the Isthmian Games, at Corinth. All were part of religious celebrations that honored the ancient Greek gods.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, organized sports declined in popularity until the 11th century, when the tournament became a favorite pastime of the nobility. The English also engaged in such field sports as throwing the bar or the hammer, but these were considered detrimental distractions from the military sport of archery and were sometimes actually forbidden by law. 

The term 'heats' referring to the preliminary contests to a sporting event, that eliminates competitors goes back to the horse track. Prior to a race, a horse was exercised to heat it up. A record of 1577 suggests, "walke him to chafe him, and put him in a heate."

A revival of athletics began in the middle of the 19th century in the schools and colleges of England and the U.S. In 1864 the first collegiate track and field meet was held between Oxford and Cambridge universities in England.

In 1868 the newly formed New York Athletic Club held the first American amateur track-and-field meet.

The first photo-finish took place at the Plainfield Track in New Jersey in 1888.

The International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) is the supreme governing body which controls athletics worldwide. It was founded in Stockholm in July 1912 with 17 members.

The first international athletics competition for women was held at the Pershing Stadium in Paris on August 20, 1922. It was called the "Women's Olympics." 77 participants from five nations competed in 11 events: running (60 metres, 100 yards, 300 metres, 1000 metres, 4 x 110 yards relay and hurdling 100 yards), high jump, long jump, standing long jump, javelin and shot put.

On February 5, 1929, black American inventor George Bresnahan received a patent for the world’s first starting blocks for athletes. Bresnahan called his invention a ‘Foot Support.’ The earliest recorded use of the term ‘starting blocks’, also by Bresnahan, was in 1937.  Before starting blocks, sprinters dug holes in the track to give support for their feet at the start.

The mile was run in under four minutes for the first time on May 6, 1954, when the barrier was broken by Roger Bannister at the Iffley Road track in Oxford with a time of 3:59. The record today is 3:43, held by Moroccan Hicham El Guerrouj.

The first Athletics World Championships took place in Helsinki in 1983.

The longest-standing modern Olympic athletics record is Bob Beamon's achievement in the men's long jump at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, which also stood as the world record for 23 years until Beamon's compatriot, Mike Powell, jumped farther at the 1991 World Championships in Athletics in Tokyo.

Sources Europress Family Encyclopedia, Daily Express

Athlete

The Greek mythological Atalanta was the daughter of King Iasus, who had hoped for a son. Disappointed that instead she was a girl, he left her on a mountaintop to die. A she-bear suckled and cared for Atalanta until hunters found and raised her, and she became a strong huntress. Swift of foot, Atalanta refused to marry unless the suitors defeated her in a trace, and she killed those who lost.
Many young men died in the attempt to win her hand until Hippomenes outrun her. He won the race by dropping three irresistible golden apples, given to him by the goddess Aphrodite. Every time Atalanta got ahead of Hippomenes, he rolled an apple ahead of her, and she would stop to pick it up.

In 1888 Charles Sherill of Yale University’s track team became the first runner to use the crouching start for a fast getaway in a foot race.

Betty Robinson, who won the first Olympic 100m for women in 1928 at just 16, was later involved in an airplane crash. A man who discovered her wrongly thought she was dead and drove her to an undertaker. She awoke from her coma seven months later, before returning to win a relay gold medal at the Munich Olympics in 1936.

There were just five individual track and field events for women at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Mildred "Babe" Didrikson qualified to compete in all of them, but Olympic rules limited female athletes to three. So, she skipped the discus and 100 meters. Then Didrikson took gold in the 80-meter hurdles and the javelin, setting new world records in both. In the high jump, she tied with her teammate Jean Shiley but took silver after a tie-breaking "jump off."

In 1935, Jesse Owens set three track and field world records and tied a fourth in a single day in Ann Arbor, Michigan--all in less than an hour.

Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes. He achieved this feat at the Iffley Road Track, Oxford, England, on May 6, 1954, in a time of 3 min 59.4 seconds. His world record lasted just 46 days before Australian John Landy, shaved 1.4 seconds off it.

Blue plaque recording the first sub-4-minute mile run by Roger Bannister 

Jim Hines of the United States of America became on October 14, 1968 the first man ever to break the ten-second barrier in the 100 meters in the 1968 Summer Olympic Games held in Mexico City. His time was 9.95 seconds.

Jim Hines -- 100 mètres -- Mexico 1968

Haile Gebrselassie, the Ethiopian distance runner, ran six miles to and from school each day. He still runs with a crook in his arm, as if he’s carrying his books.

A day after his 105th birthday in September 2015, Japanese centenarian Hidekichi Miyazaki set a new record as the world’s oldest competitive sprinter. Nicknamed the ‘Golden Bolt’, he ran a 100-metre sprint in the over-80s category in 42.22 seconds.

Research shows that top sprinters have long ring fingers compared with their index fingers.

70% of U.S. elite athletes have a key heart gene variant that makes a good sprinter, while 75% of all Jamaicans have it.

Sources Creators, The Atalanta entry was originally written for Songfacts.com.

Athens

Situated on the Attic plain on the Greek mainland, Athens is surrounded by mountains on three sides,

The site was first inhabited about 3000 BC and it was named Athens after its patron goddess Athena.

Athena was the daughter of Zeus. She was born dressed in armor and is often depicted with a helmet and shield. She fought against Poseidon for the city of Athens.

Every year in Ancient Athens, citizens had the chance to vote their least favorite politician into exile.

Although most of the city dates from after the mid-19th century, important works of antiquity remain. The most prominent and famous landmark is the Acropolis, a flat-topped hill on which stand the remains of the Parthenon (below) and several other beautiful structures erected in the 5th century BC. 

By Steve Swayne 

On June 9, 411 BC, wealthy Athenians overthrew the democratic government of ancient Athens and replaced it with a short-lived oligarchy known as "The Four Hundred".

The Tower of the Winds is an octagonal Pentelic marble clocktower in the Roman Agora in Athens that is considered the world's first ever meteorological station. The structure features a combination of sundials, a water clock, and a wind vane. It was supposedly built by Andronicus of Cyrrhus around 50 BC, but according to other sources, might have been constructed in the 2nd century BC before the rest of the forum.

Panathenaic Stadium in Athens, Greece is the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. It had a greater capacity (50,000) in 144 AD than today (45,000).

The Parthenon was severely damaged on September 26, 1687. An ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by bombardment from Venetian forces led by Morosini who were besieging the Ottoman Turks stationed in Athens.

The first modern Olympiad was held in Athens. Because Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, the Greek capital city was considered to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. The games officially opened on April 6, 1896 and closed ten days later. 241 athletes from 14 nations participated in 43 events in nine disciplines.

Athens authorities spent four years demolishing rooftop billboards in an effort to beautify the city for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Athens spent $16 billion on the 2004 Olympics. They only budgeted for $1.5 billion.

It is the capital and largest city of Greece. The municipality of Athens is the most populous in Greece, with a population of 664,046 people (in 2011). 

At the heart of the modern Athens is Constitution Square, on or near which are found the Parliament Building and several museums.

In Athens, Greece, a driver's license can be taken away by law if the driver is deemed either unbathed or poorly dressed.

Athens has less green space than any other European capital (4%).

Athens is the only capital city in Europe where the air is more polluted outside than inside.

Athens is an anagram of hasten as well as the less common words ‘sneath’ (the pole of a scythe) and ‘snathe’ (to prune or lop trees).

Sources Funk & Wagnells Encyclopedia, Daily Express

Atheism

Atheism is a doctrine that denies the existence of deity.

Early Christians were considered atheists by the Roman Empire because they didn't believe in Polytheism.

Western atheism has its roots in pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, but did not emerge as a distinct world-view until the late Enlightenment. Criticism of Christianity became increasingly frequent in the 17th and 18th centuries, especially in France and England.

The first known atheist who threw off the mantle of deism, bluntly denying the existence of gods, was Jean Meslier, a French priest who lived in the early 18th century.

The first ever openly atheistic book published in Britain was Liverpool physician Matthew Turner's 1785 Answer to Dr Priestley's Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever.

The French Revolution took atheism outside the salons and into the public sphere.

In 1810 two students at Oxford University, Percy Shelley and Thomas Jefferson Hogg sent a radical anti religion pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, to the heads of the colleges. Both students refused to answer questions about the pamphlet and were expelled on March 25, 1811.

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In 1841 the German philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach, published The Essence of Christianity, which promoted humanistic atheism. The book argued that mankind had invented God as a spiritual answer to their needs, hopes and fears. His work proved to be a great influence on Karl Marx who at the time was a student at the University of Berlin.

The 20th century saw the political advancement of atheism, spurred on by interpretation of the works of Marx and Engels. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union and other communist states promoted state atheism and opposed religion, often by violent means.

In 2003, the Department of Veterans Affairs approved a policy allowing emblems for atheism, humanism, and agnosticism alongside traditional religious symbols on American gravestones.

In 2014 there were seven countries in which you could be executed for being an atheist (Afghanistan, Iran, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan).  

The highest rates of atheism occur in nations where citizens have high economic and political stability.

In Hinduism, atheism is considered to be a valid path to spirituality, as it can be argued that God can manifest in several forms with "no form" being one of them.

While projections show Islam and Christianity having population booms into 2050, atheism is expected to dwindle as time goes on. The main reason is atheists have extremely low fertility rates in comparison to Christians and Muslims.

Atheophobia is the fear or hatred of atheists or atheism.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

Kemal Atatürk was born (under the name Ali Rıza oğlu Mustafa which means "Mustafa son of Ali Rıza") in the spring (possibly May 19) of 1881.

He entered this world in Salonika (now Thessaloniki, Greece), the son of a minor official who became a timber merchant.

In 1893, Mustafa entered a military high school where his mathematics teacher gave him the second name Kemal (meaning perfection in Turkish) in recognition of young Mustafa's superior achievements.

Six years later,  Kemal attended the military academy in Istanbul, graduating as staff captain in January 1905. 

Atatürk on the day of graduation from the War Academy in 1905

Kemal fought in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War in 1911-1912 and was promoted to major in November 1911. He organized the defense of the Dardanelles during the Balkan Wars (1912–13).

In 1915, when the Dardanelles/Gallipoli campaign was launched, Kemal, recently promoted to Colonel, became a national hero by winning successive victories against the landing British French and ANZAC armies, pinning them down at their beachheads, which finally forced the invaders to evacuate Gallipoli in January 1916.

When Turkey became a republic on October 29, 1923 Kemal was the first president.

Kemal ruthlessly set out to westernize the republic he had established. European dress was imposed, polygamy was abolished, women were enfranchised and the Latin script replaced the Arabic.

Mustafa Kemal married Lâtife Hanım on January 29, 1923, Lâtife Hanım symbolized the new face of Turkish women as a first lady who was very present in public life which, in Turkey, was a novelty by the standards of her day. 

By the summer of 1925, their relationship had disintegrated and they divorced on August 5, 1925. 

During his lifetime, Atatürk adopted thirteen children: a boy and twelve girls. They include Sabiha Gökçen, Turkey's first female pilot and the world's first female fighter pilot. 

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's residence at Atatürk Museum Mansion in Ankara between 1921 and 1932 was his longest at any place in his life.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

In 1934, when the surname law was adopted making all Turks assume surnames, the national parliament gave Mustafa Kemal the name "Atatürk" (Turkish for Father of the Turks).

A heavy drinker most of his life, Atatürk developed liver and kidney problems during his last year. He died on November 10, 1938, at age 57.

Atatürk's state funeral took place twice, once immediately after his death in 1938 and then again in 1953 when his remains were transferred to a mausoleum that overlooks Ankara.

Atatürk statues have been erected in all Turkish cities by Turkish Government, and most towns have their own memorial to him.

His portrait can be seen in all public buildings, in all schools and classrooms, on all school books and on all Turkish lira banknotes.

At the exact time of Atatürk's death, on every November 10th, at 09:05 am, most vehicles and people in the country's streets pause for one minute in remembrance.

Astronomer

In 2134 BC, Chinese royal astronomers Hsi and Ho were beheaded as punishment for failing to predict an eclipse.

The heliocentric theory and spherical Earth concepts were proposed by Yajnavalkya, an Indian astronomer in 8th-9th BC. He also calculated the distance between Earth and Sun, and Moon. Yajnavalkya also calculated the duration of an year to a precision of six minutes longer than modern measurement.

Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (c 510-428 BC) was the first to correctly explain eclipses. He also theorized the Sun was a star and that stars were burning rocks but the other stars are too far away to feel their heat.

Italian cosmologist Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy on February 17, 1600.  His crime was suggesting that the stars were distant suns possibly surrounded by their own planets — which is, in fact, the case.

The trial of Giordano Bruno by Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari

Ole Roemer (September 25, 1644 - September 19, 1710) was a Danish astronomer who calculated the speed of light. He became a professor of astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and in later life created a system of measurements including a temperature scale that divided the measurements between freezing water and boiling water into 60 degrees. He also invented the mercury thermometer. Roemer also ran the police force in Copenhagen and fired all the officers because morale was low.

On March 4, 1675, John Flamsteed was appointed by Charles II as the first Astronomer Royal of England. The post gave Flamsteed a stipend of £100 a year. That amount has never changed.

John Flamsteed. By Sir Godfrey Kneller - http://wellcomeimages.org

Arthur Storer (c. 1648 – 1686) was America's first colonial astronomer. He came to Calvert County, Maryland, from Lincolnshire, England. He was among the first observers to sight and record data Halley's Comet.

Astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil travelled from France to India in 1760 to measure the transit of Venus. His ship blew off course, and he missed the date. Le Gentil stayed in India for eight years to try again, but the sky was too cloudy. He also contracted dysentery and nearly went insane. When Le Gentil returned home, he had been declared dead, his wife remarried, his estate plundered, and his job lost.

Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon were best known for determining the Mason–Dixon line, which came to mark the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania (1764–1768). They were also accomplished astronomers who recorded the transit of Venus in 1761. 

In 1801, the astronomer William Herschel pointed out that there is a correlation between sunspot activity and the price of wheat.

Edwin Hubble was one of the first astronomers to postulate that many formerly known "nebulae" were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. His proof that Andromeda, previously believed to be a nebula, is actually another galaxy, and that the Milky Way is only one of many such galaxies in the universe was first published in 1924.

Astronomy Day is a world-wide event observed each fall and spring. The first International Astronomy Day was organized by the president of the Astronomical Association of Northern California, Doug Berger, in 1973.

Saadat Shahr is a small rural community in Iran, which is nicknamed ‘Astronomy Town’ because of the residents’ passion for stargazing. The town clubbed together to pay for an observatory and on special occasions all the lights are cut to improve the view of the night sky.

Astronomer is an anagram of moon starer.

Source Daily Express

Astronaut

ASTRONAUT HISTORY

According to legend, Wan Hu, a supposed Chinese mandarin of about 2,000 years BC, became the “first astronaut” by tying 47 firework rockets to a chair. Dressed in regal splendor, he had 47 servants light each of the rockets and then took off as they ran for cover. When the smoke cleared, he was gone. 

Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1. Gagarin was born in the Smolensk region of the Soviet Union. He became a pilot in 1957 and on April 12, 1961 completed one orbit of the Earth, taking 108 minutes from launch to landing.

Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin sarcastically commented that upon reaching outer space he failed to see God. 

The word astronaut is derived from the Greek words ástron (star) and nautes (sailor). It was first used in 1929 and gained popular acceptance after the first manned space flight by Major Yuri Gagarin of the USSR on April 12, 1961.

Rear Admiral Alan Shepard was the first American to travel into outer space. On May 5, 1961, Shepard was launched, on a sub-orbital flight in Mercury-Redstone 3, reaching an altitude of 101.2 nautical miles (187.5 kilometers). Shepard's mission was a 15-minute suborbital flight with the primary objective of demonstrating his ability to withstand the high g forces of launch and atmospheric re-entry.

Screen grab of Alan Shepard from the NASA film "Freedom 7".

Astronaut John Glenn (July 18, 1921 – December 8, 2016) became the first American to orbit the earth, making three orbits in 4 hours, 55 minutes abroad Friendship 7 in 1962.

During the same trip, Glenn had the first meal in space when he ate pureed applesauce squeezed from a tube.

Gordon Cooper launched into space on May 15, 1963, for what turned out to be the last of the Project Mercury missions. During that 34-hour mission he became the first American to spend an entire day in space, the first to sleep in space, and the last American launched on an entirely solo orbital mission.

Cooper was so relaxed on the morning of his launch into space that he fell asleep in his space capsule while waiting for blastoff.

Cooper's re-entry vehicle lost nearly all power. He had to manually calculate re-entry by scratching lines on his window for attitude and using his wrist watch for timing.

On June 16, 1963, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Tereshkova , the daughter of a Soviet war hero, was a factory worker who was obsessed with skydiving. Her skills at this risky sport bought the youngster to the attention of the authorities, and she was inducted into the Soviet Air Force so that she could become a cosmonaut.

Valentina Tereshkova orbited the Earth 48 times aboard Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963. She is still the only woman ever to go on a solo space mission.

In the 1960s Soviet Russia trained an all-female space squad in absolute secrecy. One of these cosmonauts was Valentina Tereshkova. But the existence of the female program was classified. Moscow shut the space squad down, and hid its existence for decades.

Valentina Tereshkova pictured as a Major of the Soviet Air Forces. By RIA Novosti archive

Alexei Leonov, a Russian cosmonaut, became the first person to walk in space on March 18, 1965. Leonov was tethered to the airlock with a 5m-long “umbilical cord” that prevented him from drifting into space. When Leonov got the instruction to come back inside the spacecraft, he had been outside for ten minutes. He said: "My feeling was that I was a grain of sand."

Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was the first human to die during a spaceflight when the Soyuz 1 space capsule crashed after re-entry on April 24, 1967. The module's drogue and main braking parachute failed to deploy correctly. There were rumors his friend, Yugi Gagarin, was so angry with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev that he threw a drink in his face. Komarov had a state funeral and his ashes were placed in the wall of the Kremlin.

Soviet Union-1964-stamp-Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov

The farthest distance from Earth an astronaut has traveled was 401,056 km (249,205 mi), when Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, and Fred Haise went around the Moon during the Apollo 13 emergency.

The Apollo 15 astronauts left a 3 inch "fallen astronaut" statuette on the surface of the moon in 1971 to commemorate all the men and women who died in pursuit of space travel. 

Back from the Moon, Apollo astronauts had to go through customs and declare moon rock as cargo.

On December 14, 1972, astronaut Gene Cernan entered the Lunar Module just behind crewmate Harrison Schmidt for their return trip back to Earth on board Apollo 17. He was the last of 12 men ever to have stood on the Moon.

Gene Cernan at the beginning of EVA 3

Czech Vladimír Remek became the first non-Russian or non-American to go into space, when he was launched aboard Soyuz 28 on March 2, 1978. Remek's flight was part of the Soviet Union's Intercosmos program, which aimed to involve other socialist countries in manned spaceflight. Remek's mission was a joint flight with Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Gubarev, and their spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

During his eight-day mission, Remek conducted scientific experiments and observations, and he became a symbol of Czechoslovakian-Soviet friendship and cooperation during the Cold War.

Dr. Sally K. Ride (May 26, 1951 – July 23, 2012) became the first American woman to be sent into space when she was selected to serve on a six- day flight of the orbiter Challenger in 1983. At the time, she was the youngest American to enter outer space.

The first African American to travel in space was U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford. A decorated Air Force pilot in Vietnam before joining NASA in the late 1970s, on August 30,  1983, Bluford made his first journey into space when he served as a mission specialist aboard the space shuttle Challenger.  He participated in four Space Shuttle flights between 1983 and 1992.

Astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan was the first American woman to walk in space when she took a stroll on October 11, 1984,

The first Muslim person in space was Royal Saudi Air Force pilot Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. He flew from June 17 through June 24, 1985, as a payload specialist on aboard the United States shuttle Discovery. He was also the first member of a royal family to be an astronaut.

Roughly 40 per cent of astronauts get space sickness during their first few days in space. The condition is jokingly measured as a ‘Garn’, after Jake Garn, a U.S. senator who joined the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1985. He was so severely ill that a scale for sickness was created based on him, with ‘one Garn’ the highest possible level.

In 1986 the New Hampshire schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe became the first ordinary citizen in space. Sadly she died with six crew members when the space shuttle Challenger exploded.

The first Japanese citizen to be sent to space was Toyohiro Akiyama, a journalist who flew aboard the Mir space station in 1990 through a commercial program. He wasn't part of the official Japanese space program at the time and spent his time in space craving cigarettes.

Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut, flew her only space mission from September 12 to 20, 1992, as a Mission Specialist on STS-47, a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan, as well as the 50th shuttle mission. 

Dr. Mae C. Jemison 

Jemison was inspired to apply to NASA by the Star Trek character, Lieutenant Uhura. She later went on to make a cameo appearance in Star Trek: The Next Generation, becoming the first real astronaut to appear in the series.

Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returned to Earth on March 22, 1995 after setting a record of 438 days in space. He spent his days aboard the Mir space station conducting experiments and performing scientific research. It was revealed that Polyakov did not suffer from any prolonged performance impairments as a result of his long period in space. 

Polyakov looks out Mir's window during rendezvous operations with the Space Shuttle Discovery

When Space Shuttle Discovery blasted off on October 29, 1998 with 77-year old John Glenn on board, he became the oldest person to go into space.

John Glenn

Italian American engineer and multimillionaire Dennis Tito became the first space tourist when in mid-2001, he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield made history when he recorded "Jewel in the Night" whilst orbiting the Earth on the International Space Station - it was the first ever song to be recorded in outer space. Recording conditions evidently weren't perfect as when the folksy tune was uploaded onto YouTube on December 24, 2012. The crooning spaceman warned his listeners we "might hear the slight buzz of the station's fans in the background."

FUN ASTRONAUT FACTS

Astronauts come from America – Space explorers from Russia are called "cosmonauts."

All NASA astronauts must learn how to speak Russian, and all cosmonauts must learn how to speak English.

When Hilary Clinton was young, she wrote to NASA to ask if she could become an astronaut. They wrote a very polite letter back saying they didn’t take girls.

The actor Brian Blessed is a fully trained astronaut, having completed over 800 hours of 'space training' in Moscow, and "remains the number one civilian on the wait list for the International Space Station." 

Astronauts don't do laundry but rather eject their clothes into space to burn up in the atmosphere.

According to NASA, the top three items most missed by astronauts on space flights are ice-cream, pizza and fizzy drinks.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them.

Playtex, a company that is now known for women's undergarments and feminine products, created the Apollo spacesuits.

In space, astronauts cannot cry, because there is no gravity, so the tears can't flow.

Since weightlessness causes the spine to expand and straighten, astronauts may measure two or three inches taller in space than they do on Earth.

More than half of U.S. astronauts report back pain during their mission, since their back muscles weaken due to weightlessness.

Research shows that the volume changes in the fluid found around the brain and spinal cord are why many returning astronauts need spectacles.

NASA estimates that during his year on the International Space Station, Scott Kelly drank about 193 gallons of filtered bodily waste.

NASA paid volunteers $18,000 to lie in bed to study the effect on astronauts of being in space.

Astronauts have the highest job mortality rate at 7.5%.

The notion that NASA astronauts carry suicide pills for use in case they are marooned in outer space is untrue. Exposure to outer space results in a much faster and smoother demise compared to a suicide pill.

Want to apply to be a NASA astronaut? All you need are advanced degrees in biology, science, or mathematics and 1000 hours of jet piloting.

To become an astronaut in Japan you are tested in your ability to fold a thousand paper cranes.

Sources Daily Mail, GreatFacts

Astrology

Astrology is the study of the positions and movements of celestial objects—in particular, the sun, moon, and planets—and their supposed effect on life and events on earth. 

The word astronomy dates to the 13th century but originally meant what we now call astrology.

The Magi were a class of Babylonian astrologers, who are best known today for predicting the birth of King Jesus.

Conventional post-12th century depiction of the Biblical magi 

The Magi were pretty good at predicting things such as solar and lunar eclipses, so they used this to predict people's future. An eclipse of the sun was considered so unlucky for a king that the Magi advised them to put someone else on the throne that day so the bad luck would fall on them.

Erra-Imittī, meaning “Support of Erra” ca. 1805–1799 BC was king of Isin, an important city-state in modern Iraq, who according to the Sumerian King List ruled for eight years. He took the Magi’s advice and put his gardener on the throne. But doing the day Erra-Imittī died, so the gardener remained King.

Pope Julius II set the time of his coronation in 1503 according to astrological calculations, despite the fact that the church during the Renaissance frowned on the occult as bordering on heresy.

Astrologer Girolamo Cardono predicted his death on September 21, 1576. He had been studying his own horoscope and determined that this was the day he would die. He made his prediction known to his friends and family, and on the appointed day, he went to bed and refused to get up. He died later that day, apparently of natural causes.

Gerolamo Cardano

In Europe during the Middle Ages astrology had a powerful influence, as kings and other public figures had their own astrologers. Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Queen on a day chosen as propitious by her astrologer John Dee.

The most famous astrologer of the 17th century William Lilly (May 1, 1602 – June 9, 1681) published a renowned book that is still in print today - Christian Astrology. He is most famous for predicting the Great Fire of London in 1666 on the basis of the stars. Lilly also predicted the downfall of the king in 1666, citing September 3 (the day after the fire) as an auspicious date. Some anti monarchists took this forecast so seriously that they planned to start a fire to help it happen, but their plot was discovered. Although the fire happened anyway, by accident it still didn't result in the overthrow of the king as Lilly predicted.

No one would have been surprised if their monarchy had fallen. Charles I had been executed 17 years earlier and Charles II had many enemies. And there were often fires in London (after 1666 they rebuilt houses in stone instead of wood). So predicting at fire or a king’s downfall was a good bet for Lilly.

Benjamin Franklin, while feuding with Titan Leeds, used astrology to predict his death and published this in the Poor Richards Almanac. When Leeds didn't die on that date, referred to him as "the ghost of Titan Leeds" thereafter and encouraged him to pass on.

In 1981 an assassination attempt was made on United States President Ronald Reagan. For the next seven years his wife, Nancy, consulted a California Astrologer. On May 3, 1988, The White House acknowledged that First Lady Nancy Reagan used astrological advice.

Nancy Reagan

Susan Miller, the founder of Astrology Zone, placed responsibility for the 2020 coronavirus pandemic on the dwarf planet Pluto in March 2020 after her earlier, pre-COVID-19 prediction of a “great” 2020 seemed to miss the mark. However, the fact that astrologers did not see the virus coming didn't make their practice any less popular. In fact, horoscope sites reported rising traffic in April and May 2020 as people looked to the stars to give shape to a formless quarantine life.

A 1985 double blind study found that participants were unable to pick their personalized astrological descriptions out of a line up any better than random chance. 

A research that analyzed the birthdays of all 20 million husbands and wives in England and Wales failed to reveal any evidence of attraction or compatibility between people of particular star signs.

Seventy-five per cent of people who believe in astrology are women.

Sources Christianity magazine, New York Times

Asthma

Asthma is a respiratory disease in which spasm and constriction of the bronchial passages and swelling of their mucous lining cause obstruction of breathing, often due to allergy, particularly to animal fur or feathers, dust, molds, and pollen.

King William III suffered from an irritating asthmatic cough. The English monarch’s asthma was badly  affected by the dank London river air so he moved to Hampton Court not long after his accession.

Figure A (below) shows the location of the lungs and airways in the body. Figure B shows a cross-section of a normal airway. Figure C shows a cross-section of an airway during asthma symptoms. 

Charles Dickens suffered from asthma. He found relief from his "chest troubles" only with opium, a popular asthma remedy of his day. Mr. Omer, one of the asthmatic characters in his autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, reflected Dickens's own suffering.

President Teddy Roosevelt was given strong coffee and puffs of cigar as a child to 'help' with his asthma.

President Coolidge suffered from asthma and because he mistrusted physicians, he treated himself with newly developed medicines and breathed chlorine released into the air of a closed room in vain attempts to ease his condition.

As a sickly infant, Leonard Bernstein sometimes turned blue from asthma. He became a prodigious pianist, conductor, composer, and lecturer, although he continued to suffer from asthma throughout his life. Audiences often heard him wheezing above the orchestra.

The actor Martin Freeman, star of Sherlock and The Hobbit, had asthma as a child and would sometimes faint when singing and dancing for his family. They initially believed it was part of his act.

Paula Radcliffe, who for a long time was the women's world record holder for fastest marathon, is an asthmatic.

A British woman with asthma once coughed so violently that one of her lungs slipped out of her chest between two of her ribs.

World-wide 180,000 people die of asthma every year.

Asthma affects one in fifteen children under the age of eighteen.

Children who grow up in Amish communities have much lower rates of asthma, potentially due to their exposure to dairy farms at an early age.

Regular coffee drinkers have about one-third less asthma symptoms than those non-coffee drinkers.

In Imogiri, Indonesia, eating fruit bat meat is thought to cure asthma.

1-year-old Mishka, became the first sea-otter to be diagnosed with asthma in 2015. The Seattle aquarium resident was taught to use an inhaler originally designed for cats.

Asteroid

Asteroids are small or minor planets that are members of the inner Solar System and that move in elliptical orbits primarily between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Millions of asteroids exist, but their total mass is only a few hundredths of the mass of the Moon. These rocky fragments range in size from 1 km/0.6 mi to 900 km/560 mi in diameter.

The Chicxulub Impact was an asteroid that landed on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico around 66 million years ago. The event was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs.

The first person to discover an asteroid was Italian priest and astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi in 1801. He discovered Ceres on January 1, 1807 naming it after the Roman goddess of agriculture. Ceres is 582 miles in diameter, the largest object in the asteroid belt that lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is the only dwarf planet within the orbit of Neptune.

The word ‘asteroid’, meaning star-shaped, was coined by William Herschel in 1802.

German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers discovered 4 Vesta, the brightest asteroid and the second-most massive body in the asteroid belt in 1807.

Discovered on December 22, 1891, 323 Brucia was the first asteroid to be found by the use of astrophotography. It was also the first of over 200 asteroids discovered by Max Wolf, a pioneer in that method of finding astronomical objects.

In March 1989 an asteroid passed through the exact position where Earth was only six hours earlier.

On October 29, 1991 Galileo became the first spacecraft to visit an asteroid when it made a flyby of 951 Gaspra. The American spacecraft flew by it on its way to Jupiter.

NASA image of 951 Gaspra; colors are exaggerated

The asteroid 243 Ida was the first asteroid found to have a moon when it was visited by NASA's Galileo probe on August 28, 1993. The moon, which is about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) in diameter, was named Dactyl.

The Galileo spacecraft also made other important discoveries about Ida. It found that Ida is a heavily cratered asteroid that is about 31 kilometers (19 miles) in diameter. It also found that Ida has a peculiar shape, with two large lobes connected by a narrow neck.

NASA's robotic space probe NEAR Shoemaker touched down on Eros on February 12, 2001, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit and soft land on an asteroid. To the surprise of the controllers, the spacecraft was undamaged and operational after the landing at an estimated speed of 1.5 to 1.8 meters per second.

Between 2006 and 2007, an asteroid about five meters across was temporarily captured by Earth’s gravity, giving us a tiny second moon for about nine months.

The Japanese Hayabusa space mission was the first to return samples of an asteroid (25143 Itokawa) to Earth for analysis.

After arriving at Itokawa, in November 2005, Hayabusa landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of asteroidal material, which were returned to Earth aboard the spacecraft on June 13, 2010.

A computer rendering of Hayabusa above Itokawa's surface

The Jupiter trojans are a large group of asteroids that share the orbit of the planet Jupiter around the Sun. The first one discovered, 588 Achilles, was spotted in 1906 by German astronomer Max Wolf. By convention they are named after mythological figures from the Trojan War. Around one million of them are larger than 1 km in diameter.

The asteroid 99942 Apophis, which is classified as a near-Earth and potentially hazardous asteroid, has a diameter of 370 meters (1,210 feet). It caused alarm in December 2004 when initial observations suggested that there was a 2.7% chance of a collision with Earth on April 13, 2029. However, subsequent observations provided more accurate predictions that ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029. During the brief period when there was concern about its potential impact, Apophis achieved a record-high rating of level 4 on the Torino scale on December 27, 2004.

On Friday April 13, 2029, 99942 Apophis will pass by Earth closer than the moon and will visible to the naked eye from rural as well as darker suburban areas.  It will be the closest asteroid of its size in recorded history.

TK7 was the first Trojan asteroid discovered sharing the Earth's orbit around the Sun. It was discovered in October 2010 by astronomers from Athabasca University, UCLA, and University of Western Ontario.

On January 22, 2014, ESA scientists reported the detection, for the first definitive time, of water vapor on Ceres. The finding was unexpected because while comets are typically considered to sprout jets and plumes, asteroids do not generally exhibit such features.

Ceres Wikipedia commons

594913 ʼAylóʼchaxnim (provisional designation 2020 AV2) is a near-Earth asteroid discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility on January 4, 2020. It is the first asteroid discovered to have an orbit completely within Venus's orbit.

On September 26, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft deliberately collided with the asteroid  the minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos. The space mission wanted to see how much a spacecraft impact deflects an asteroid through a transfer of momentum as a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). 

On Friday April 13, 2029, 99942 Apophis, a 370-meter diameter asteroid will pass by Earth closer than the moon and will easily be observed with the naked eye.

An asteroid hits the ground about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times harder than a raindrop.

Any asteroid 82 feet (25 m) in diameter or less won't make it to Earth's surface—it will burn up in the planet's atmosphere.

In spite of the way they are portrayed in sci-fi films, a space vehicle can travel safely through the asteroid belt. The distance between two objects in the asteroid belt ranges in the hundreds of thousands of miles. Astronauts would probably not even realize they were flying through the belt.

Ceres is the largest asteroid. It is 940 km/584 miles in diameter.

Vesta has a light-colored surface and is the brightest asteroid as seen from Earth.

A 100 mile-long asteroid in our solar system, 241 Germania, is believed to boast mineral wealth worth $95.8 trillion — nearly equivalent to the world’s total annual gross domestic product.

NASA believes the value of minerals on the asteroid belt exceeds $600,000,000,000,000,000,000.

The Kuiper belt is a circumstellar disc in the Solar System extending beyond the orbit of Neptune, at 30 to 50 astronomical units from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies that are remnants from the Solar System's formation.

The Kuiper belt is home to three officially recognized dwarf planets: Haumea, Makemake, and Pluto, the largest and most massive member.

Sources Daily Express, Hutchinson Encyclopedia © RM 2011