Johann Strauss wrote over 400 waltzes, most notably "An der schönen blauen Donau" (better known to the English-speaking world as "The Blue Danube"). Written to celebrate the River Danube that flows through Vienna, it was premiered as a choral piece on February 13, 1867 at a concert of the Vienna Men's Choral Association.
The title of the waltz comes from a poem by Karl Isidor Beck, which ends with the line "By the Danube, beautiful blue Danube."
The Danube is actually not blue, but Strauss chose the name because he thought it would be more appealing to the audience.
Its initial performance only got a lukewarm response and Strauss is reputed to have said "The devil take the waltz, my only regret is for the coda—I wish that had been a success!" Strauss adapted it into a purely orchestral version for the 1867 Paris World's Fair, and it this form that it is best known today.
Demand for the sheet music for the orchestral version of "The Blue Danube" was so high that it wore out the printing presses.
The German composer Johannes Brahms was a personal friend of Strauss. An anecdote dating around the time is that Strauss's stepdaughter, Alice von Meyszner-Strauss approached Brahms with a customary request that he autograph her fan. Brahms cheekily inscribed a few measures from the "Blue Danube," and then wrote beneath it: "Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms."
The piece's popularity was bolstered after its prominent use in the Stanley Kubrick film2001: A Space Odyssey. It was used to accompany the scene in which a spaceplane is seen docking with a space station after Kubrick made an association between the spinning motion of the satellites and the dancers of waltzes. The waltz was also used to accompany the film's closing credits.
The piece was also used as the gastrointestinal bypass surgery music in the 2003 film Super Size Me.
The waltz is often played at weddings and other special occasions.
Amelia Bloomer, born Amelia Jenks on May 27, 1818 in Homer, New York, was an American women's rights advocate, social reformer, and journalist.
She was the sixth of nine children in her family. Amelia grew up in a Quaker household, which instilled in her a strong sense of equality and social justice.
During her early years, Amelia received a limited formal education, as was common for girls at the time. However, she was an avid reader and continued to educate herself throughout her life. She developed a passion for literature, history, and social issues, which would later influence her advocacy work.
On April 15, 1840, at the age of 22, Amelia married lawstudent Dexter C. Bloomer. He became an attorney and their marriage allowed Amelia access to a wider social circle and opportunities to engage with various reform movements of the era. Dexter Bloomer was also supportive of his wife's interests and encouraged her activism.
Bloomer wrote on current affairs for her husband's newspaper before founding and editing Lily (1849–53), a temperance journal that, under the influence of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, also championed women's rights. It is believed the Lily, was the first newspaper edited entirely by a woman.
Bloomer advocated a move away from starched petticoats and whale-bone fitted corsets to something giving women freedom of movement. In 1851, the women’s rights campaigner told her American readers how to make the Turkish-style pantaloons and short skirt that she had adopted — and within weeks newspapers dubbed it the ‘Bloomer’ dress.
Although Bloomer's costume was not adopted for general wear, the bloomers were worn by women for gymnastic and other physical exercises through the turn of the century.
Bloomer suit
Amelia Bloomer's efforts were followed by those of doctors who wanted to put an end to the corset, but their attempts to inject reason into fashion met with failure.
These trousers were soon adopted in England where they became especially suitable for younger ladies taking up bicycling.
Although the bloomers themselves did not become a lasting fashion trend, Amelia Bloomer's efforts helped raise awareness about the need for women's dress reform and the larger issues of gender equality. Her activism and writing played a vital role in advancing the cause of women's rights and paved the way for future generations of feminists.
Amelia Bloomer continued her advocacy work throughout her life. She co-founded and served as the first president of the IowaWoman Suffrage Association and remained an active voice for women's rights until her death on December 30, 1894.
At a British Columbia auction in 1983, Houstontavern owner Jim Anderson paid $3,000 for a pair of "bloomers" once worn by Queen Victoria. They are history's most expensive used bloomers.
The bloodhound is also called St. Hubert hound (especially in Belgium and France) because its ancestry can be traced to the monastery of St. Hubert in Belgium. It was bred as a pack hound and used to track game - this it would do relentlessly for days on end if required. In the eleventh century, the Saint Hubert reached Britain with William the Conqueror, and was then selectively bred and refined.
Sir Walter Scott had a tomcat called Hinse who tormented the writer’s dogs until a bloodhound called Nimrod killed him in 1826.
A bloodhound called Ludivine joined the Elkmont Half Marathon in Alabama on January 16, 2016, after her owners let her out for a quick break on race day, not realizing the excitement unfolding nearby.
Drawn by the energy and commotion, Ludivine wandered onto the marathon route and happily trotted alongside the runners. Despite having no training or leash, Ludivine enthusiastically ran the entire 13.1 miles, even stopping to sniff interesting smells and socialize with cows along the way. She crossed the finish line in an impressive seventh place overall, beating out many human competitors. This unexpected canine feat captured hearts worldwide. Ludivine became a local hero and even received a medal for her participation.
Bloodhounds are large dogs, with males typically weighing between 80 and 110 pounds and standing 23 to 27 inches tall at the shoulder. Females are slightly smaller, typically weighing between 65 and 90 pounds and standing 21 to 25 inches tall.
Bloodhounds have a short, dense coat that is typically black and tan, liver and tan, or red. They are relatively low-maintenance dogs, but they do require regular brushing to remove dead hair and prevent mats.
Bloodhounds are generally healthy dogs, but they are prone to certain health conditions, such as hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, and skin allergies. They also have a lifespan of 10 to 12 years, which is shorter than some other breeds.
Despite their large size and powerful appearance, Bloodhounds are known for their gentle and affectionate nature. They are generally friendly, patient, and good-natured dogs, making them suitable familypets.
Bloodhounds are renowned for their exceptional sense of smell. They possess the ability to track scents over great distances and are often used in search and rescue operations and criminal investigations.
The bloodhound's nose consists of approximately 230 million olfactory cells, or “scent receptors” — forty times the number in humans. They have been used to trail human scent since Roman times.
The bloodhound is the only animal whose evidence is admissible in an American court. Its sensitive nose is used in court to match scene-of-crime evidence to criminals.
Bloodhounds have an incredible ability to track scents that are days, and sometimes even weeks, old. They have been known to follow a scent trail over various terrains and obstacles, demonstrating their persistence and determination.
Bloodhounds are known for their loose, wrinkled skin, especially around their face and neck. This loose skin helps to trap scent particles, aiding them in their tracking abilities. They also have long, droopy ears that help funnel scents towards their nose.
The bloodhounds’ long ears not only help their hearing, but also aid their sense of smell. By dragging their ears along the ground, they sweep up particles that make up a scent trail.
A Bloodhound named Tigger holds the Guinness World Record for the longest ears on a living dog. Tigger's ears measured 34.9 cm (13.75 inches) for the left ear and 34.2 cm (13.5 inches) for the right ear, giving him a total ear span of 69.2 cm (27.25 inches)!
According to some sources, the first blood transfusion took place in 1492, when Pope Innocent VIII was given the blood of three ten-year-old boys. The evidence for this story is unreliable and may have been motivated by anti-Semitism.
The first reported successful blood transfusions were performed by the Incas as early as the 1500s. Spanish conquistadors witnessed blood transfusions when they arrived in the sixteenth century. Frenchman Dr. Jean-Baptiste Denys, the physician to King Louis XIV, administered on June 15, 1667 the first ever documented blood transfusion from animal to human. He injected into the veins of a dying 15-year old boy eight ounces of lamb’s blood and temporarily succeeded in restoring him. However the boy subsequently died and Denis was accused of murder.
After Jean Baptiste Denis’ pioneering blood transfusion, many attempts were made throughout Europe to improve on his procedure. However so many patients died from the resulting incompatibility reactions that by the turn of the 18th century, the process was banned in England and France.
William Halsted administered the first blood transfusion in the United States in 1881, after discovering that blood, once charged with air, can be reintroduced into a patient's body.
British poster encouraging people to donate blood for the war effort.
Alexander Bogdanov was a Russian physician who experimented with blood transfusion to gain eternal youth. He died on April 7, 1928 after injecting himself with blood from a student infected with malaria and tuberculosis, who also may have been the wrong blood type.
American surgeon and medical researcher Charles Richard Drew (June 3, 1904 – April 1, 1950) was a pioneer in preserving blood. His work led to large-scale blood bank use, U.S. blood donations to Britons in World War II, and the use of bloodmobiles. As the most prominent African American in the field, Drew protested against the practice of racial segregation in the donation of blood, and resigned his position with the American Red Cross, which maintained the policy until 1950.
Bill Haast, known as the Snake Man, injected himself with venom every day for 60 years. He has been credited for saving numerous lives by donating his blood which is rich in antibodies. In 2019, researchers from the University of British Columbia figured out how to convert blood type A into the universal Type O, which all patients can receive in a transfusion, regardless of their own blood type. This could broaden the supply of blood and ease shortages. 1 in 10,000 units of blood that are transfused in the US are the wrong kind of blood for the patient. It was tradition in Ireland that if you donated a pint of blood, you'd receive a pint of Guinness to replace the lost iron. Chile has the highest percentage of people belonging to one singular blood group. 85% of the population are O +ve. Canadian researchers discovered how to convert blood types A, B and AB to universal donor O-negative. They found that human gut bacteria makes a class of enzymes which react with the non-O type red blood cells, essentially transforming them into O-negative. Greyhounds are universal blood donors and can donate blood to almost any other breed of dog. Cats have only three blood types: A, B, and AB. 94-99% of all US domestic cats are type A. Type AB is the rarest. There is no universal donor type. Cats can successfully receive blood donations from dogs.
Blood pressure refers to the force exerted by the blood against the walls of the arteries as it circulates through the body. It is commonly expressed as two values: systolic pressure over diastolic pressure.
Blood pressure is typically measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg). A normal blood pressure reading for adults is typically around 120/80 mmHg, with the systolic pressure of 120 and diastolic pressure of 80. However, optimal blood pressure can vary slightly depending on factors such as age, overall health, and individual circumstances.
Below shows a healthcare professional performing blood pressure monitoring on a patient.
By rawpixel.com - http://allfreephotos.net/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org
High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is a condition where the blood pressure consistently remains elevated above normal levels. Hypertension can put additional strain on the heart and blood vessels, potentially leading to various health problems if left uncontrolled. Conversely, low blood pressure, known as hypotension, is when the blood pressure is consistently lower than normal, which may cause symptoms like dizziness or fainting.
High blood pressure is classified as a reading of more than 140/90 millimetres of mercury. The first figure, the systolic pressure, corresponds to the ‘surge’ that occurs with each heart beat while the diastolic reading is the pressure in the ‘resting’ stage between beats.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly half of adults in the United States (47%) have hypertension, defined as a systolic blood pressure greater than 130 mmHg or a diastolic blood pressure greater than 80 mmHg or are taking medication for hypertension.
Half of those with high blood pressure are aged 60 or over.
In developed countries, the risk of suffering high blood pressure over your lifetime is 90 per cent.
There are many things you can do to control your blood pressure, including losing weight, eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly, and not smoking.
The first blood pressure cuff was invented in 1881 by an Italian doctor named Scipione Riva-Rocci. Astronauts lose as much as 22% of their blood while in space, as a reaction to the uniform blood pressure caused by microgravity. Until their body replaces this blood, many returning astronauts can't stand for more than a few minutes without fainting.
In 2009, Ozzie (c. 1961 – January 25, 2022), an African-born western lowland gorilla at Zoo Atlanta,
learned how to take his own blood pressure, He did this by inserting his arm in a sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff). The average giraffe has a blood pressure two or three times that of the average human.
An early development leading to the establishment of blood banks occurred with the discovery that sodium citrate prevents clotting, allowing longer preservation of blood.
Belgian doctor Albert Hustin performed the first non-direct transfusion on March 27, 1914, though this was a diluted solution of blood. Later in the year, Argentine doctor Luis Agote used a much less diluted solution. Both used sodium citrate as an anticoagulant.
Photo below shows Luis Agote (second from right) overseeing one of the first safe and effective blood transfusions in 1914.
The development of the possibility of the refrigerated storage of blood opened the way for the first blood banks to be established in Britain during the First World War. It was not widely used and had only twenty-six requests for blood from hospitals. By the 1930s, Stalin had established over sixty large blood centers and many more smaller ones, which covered the whole of the vast Soviet Union.
In the USA the first large-scale blood bank was not created until 1937, when Bernard Fantus the director of therapeutics at the Cook County Hospital in Chicago, created a hospital laboratory that preserved and stored donor blood. Fantus described it as a "blood bank”, the first time the term had been used. By the time of the Second World War a few years later blood banks and blood transfusions were being widely used. Jim Becker had faithfully followed the Green Bay Packers since shortly after he returned from the Korean War in 1952. He routinely sold his blood to buy season tickets, which inadvertently saved his life when he was found in 1975 to have Hemochromatosis, a genetic disorder that leads to toxic iron deposition in the body, and an early death. The only treatment is bloodletting. Prince Charles became the first member of the Royal Family to become a blood donor on March 1, 1985. Nurses confirmed his blood was red, not blue. In 2004, German football club FC Union Berlin was facing bankruptcy and didn't have the €1.5 million deposit required to participate in the season. Their fans gave blood en masse through the ‘Bleed for Union’ campaign and donated the money they got to save the club.
The pet blood bank is an UKcharity that asks pet owners to let their pets donate blood. Dogs have either positive or negative blood, and negative blood can be used for any dog in need.
Greyhounds are universal blood donors, and with few exceptions, blood from any greyhound can be given to any other breed of dog.
Aztecs believed that the sun died every night and needed human blood to give it strength to rise the next day.
The term blueblood used in Britain since the 19th century to refer to the aristocracy, originated in Spain. Families from Castile were keen to stress the difference between their skin and the marauding Moors from Africa. To prove their breeding, they claimed their veins were a purer blue and their ‘blue blood’ was visible because of their fair skin.
At the turn of the 20th century, a research assistant at the Vienna Pathological Institute, Karl Landsteiner, proved that there are different types of blood that people can have. He identified four major human blood groups, which he labelled A, O, B, and AB. Landsteiner showed that when transfusing blood from one person to another the blood serum from one patient would often cause the red blood cells of the other to clot. This explains the hazardous nature of blood transfusions. Landsteiner's classification system enabled the safe transfusions of blood making it possible to ensure the transferred blood is compatible with a patient's own.
There are four main Blood types: A, B, AB and O and each Blood type is either Rh positive or negative. The most common blood type in the world is O+. The rarest type is AB-.
Golden Blood or Rh-null, is the rarest of the other blood types, with only about 43 people having been reported to have it worldwide. Its properties make it attractive in numerous medical applications and make it very valuable.
There are 62,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body. Laid end to end, they'd stretch around the world more than twice.
In 24 hours, the blood in the body travels a total of 12,000 miles - that's four times the width of North America.
Each square inch of human skin consists of twenty feet of blood vessels.
Members of the Nazi SS had their blood type tattooed on their armpits.
Japanese games tell you characters' blood types because they believe that the blood group determines someone's personality.
Your body is creating and killing 15 million red blood cells per second.
The average life span of a single red blood cell is 120 days.
Blood cells Pixibay
The average human adult has between 4.7 and 5.0 litres of blood in their body. Our blood accounts for about seven per cent of our total body weight.
An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
Every day, our kidneys filter about 50 gallons of blood through their 140 miles of tubes.
Our total blood supply is filtered by the kidneys about once every five minutes.
Blood enters the heart through its atriums and leaves through the ventricles. “Atrium” is Latin for “entrance hall” and “ventriculus” means “little belly”.
Every additional kilo you weigh requires your body to produce 650 km of blood vessels.
The amount of blood in a pregnant woman’s system will have increased by 50 per cent by the twentieth week of pregnancy.
ANIMAL BLOOD
Blood from horseshoe crabs is harvested every year and is the single best way to test for bacterial toxins in the manufacture of any medical substance or device put into the human body. This has led to a massive effort by scientists to try to conserve this invaluable resource.
Chicken liver can be used to change A type blood to O type blood.
The blood of mammals is red and the blood of insects is usually colorless or pale yellow. The reason for this difference lies in the composition of the blood and the respiratory system of insects. Unlike mammals, insects do not have red blood cells or a specialized oxygen-carrying molecule like hemoglobin. Instead, their hemolymph primarily consists of a fluid called plasma, which transports nutrients, hormones, and waste products.
Spiders and snails have blue blood owing to the presence of haemocyanin which contains copper.
A lobster's blood is colorless but when exposed to oxygen it turns blue.
The skink species known as Prasinohaema are commonly referred to as the green-blooded skinks. These skinks have bright green blood due to high levels of a green bile pigment called biliverdin.
While there are animals on Earth with blue, green, and colorless blood, there are no creatures with black blood.
In seventy-five years the human heart pumps 3,122,000,000 gallons of blood, enough to fill in oil tanker over 46 times.
There is no red light 30 feet underwater, so blood appears green.
The blue blood in your veins is an illusion- it is actually red. Your veins just look blue because of the way they reflect light.
Werner Forssmann, a physician, risked his own life to show that cardiac catheterization could work. He cut a hole in his arm and inserted a catheter into a vein, not knowing if the catheter might pierce a vein. He was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine.
Due to their similar protein composition, blood can be used as an egg substitute in baking and making ice cream.
