Matthew Parker

Matthew 'Nosey' Parker (1504-1575), was the original 'Nosey' Parker. He was the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1559 and 1575 in which capacity he devoted much of his time to historical research to discover the roots of the new English church. This involved the archbishop asking many questions of people who had been around during the English church's break with Rome and his relentless questioning combined with his rather long nose caused his critics to dub him "Nosey Parker".

Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504-1575)

Probably Parker's most famous saying, prompted by the arrival of Mary Queen of Scots in England, was "I fear our good Queen has the wolf by the ears"

Matthew Parker was a keen book collector. His De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae was the first privately printed English book.

Charlie Parker

The jazz saxophone giant Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas on August 29, 1920. He was the only child of Adelaide "Addie" (Bailey) and Charles Parker.

In 1939 Charlie Parker (playing at a Harlem jam session) begins experimenting with a style which will be called first ReBop, then Bebop.

Bebop is synonymous with fast improvisation and complicated chord structures and Charlie Parker's exciting alto saxophone flights won him the popular nickname of Bird, yet he played equally creatively in ballads and in heartfelt blues such as "Parker's Mood"'. His broken melodies were rich with surprising accents and highly contrasted rhythms.

Portrait of Charlie Parker in the Three Deuces of New York (N.Y.), in August 1947

The classic bebop combo consisted of saxophone, trumpet, bass, drums, and piano. This was a format used (and popularized) by both Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in their 1940s groups and recordings.

In 1949, the New York night club Birdland was named in Parker's honor. Located at 1678 Broadway, just north of West 52nd Street in Manhattan, it was popular with many of the writers of the Beat generation.

Three years later, jazz pianist George Shearing wrote "Lullaby of Birdland", named for both Parker and the nightclub.

The famous jazz musician Miles Davis started out as a teenager playing bebop with Charlie Parker.

Parker married for the first time when he was 15, and had a succession of four marriages throughout his short life.

Parker and his common-law wife, Chan Berg, lived in the ground floor of the townhouse at 151 Avenue B, across from Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village between 1950 and 1954.

151 Avenue B in 2011

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As a teenager, Parker developed a morphine addiction while hospitalized after an automobile accident, and subsequently became addicted to heroin. He continued using heroin throughout his life, and it caused him to miss performances and be considered unemployable

At one point, due to his excessive drinking and trouble-making, Parker was banned from the Birdland club that bore his name.

Parker's addiction to heroin ultimately contributed to his death at 34-years-old He passed away in New York City on March 12, 1955 at the age of 34 from cirrhosis, internal bleeding and pneumonia caused by a heart attack, whilst watching The Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show on television.

Charlie Parker's heroin and alcohol addictions were so severe, that after his death, the coroner mistakenly estimated him to be between 50 and 60 years old.

Parker was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Missouri, in a hamlet known as Blue Summit, located close to I-435 and East Truman Road.

Parker's grave at Lincoln Cemetery

A biographical film called Bird, starring Forest Whitaker as Parker and directed by Clint Eastwood, was released in 1988. The movie stemmed from Eastwood's enthusiasm for Bebop.

Sources Comptons Encyclopedia, Artistfacts

Paris

HISTORY

Julius Caesar conquered the Celtic Parisii tribe on July 8, 51 B.C. The Romans called the place that is now known as Paris, Lutetia, or Lutetia Parisiorum.

When the Romans took Lutetia, they burned and rebuilt the city. But it wasn't in the same spot as it is now. It was 7 miles west of its modern location in Nanterre.

The place got a shorter name, Paris, in 212 AD. The name is derived from its early inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe.

As the Roman Empire began to fall apart in the West, the Germanic tribe called the Franks moved in, taking Paris in 464. In 506, their king Clovis I made it his capital.

Paris was sacked by Viking raiders, probably under the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok on March 29, 845. They withdrew once they had been paid a huge ransom of 7,000 French livres (2,570 kilograms or 5,670 pounds) of silver and gold from Charles the Bald.

The Vikings arrived outside Paris again in late November 885, demanding tribute. This was denied by Odo, Count of Paris, so The Vikings  began laying siege with a variety of siege engines. The siege was maintained for months, but without any significant assaults. In October 886, Charles the Fat arrived with his army. However, he didn't bother fighting them. He instead paid them 700 livres (257 kg) of silver to go and raid to the then rebelling Burgundy instead.

 Palais de la Cité and Sainte-Chapelle from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry 1410

King Henry III laid the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris, on May 31, 1578.

The storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789 in Paris marked the beginning of the French Revolution, leading to many massacres. The population of Paris had dropped by 100,000 to 500,000 during the Revolution, but between 1799 and 1815, it surged with 160,000 new residents.

The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, commemorating those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars, was formally inaugurated in 1836.

The arch of the Arc de Triomphe is 162ft tall. A few weeks after the end of World War I, French aviator Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport fighter plane through the Arch to salute all the airmen killed in the war.

The grand boulevards of Paris were built in the mid-1800s partly to make it harder for rioters and revolutionaries to barricade the streets like they had in earlier uprisings. The streets and monuments were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, giving it the name "The City of Light."

French President Adolphe Thiers ordered the evacuation of Paris on March 18, 1871 after an uprising broke out as the result of France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. It lead to the establishment of the Paris Commune government. The Commune held power for two months, until it was harshly suppressed by the French army during the "Bloody Week" at the end of May 1871.

Paris hosted the 1889 Universal Exposition, which was held to mark the centennial of the French Revolution and featured the new Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower, under construction in August 1888,

The 1900 Universal Exposition gave Paris the first Paris Métro line. The Paris Métro system was built by engineer Fulgence Bienvenüe and architect Hector Guimard.

The 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris displayed many machines, inventions, and architecture that are now nearly universally known, The fair was where talking films and escalators were first publicized.

Both the second Summer Olympic Games in 1900 and the eighth in 1924 took place in Paris.

A German gun fired a shell into Paris every 20 minutes from a distance of 77 miles over a 139 day period in 1918, killing 1,000 people.

Before Paris was liberated from the Nazis during World War II, Hitler ordered military governor Dietrich von Choltitz the to demolish the Eiffel Tower and other major landmarks. He refused this direct order, and surrendered to the Allies instead, saving the tower. Von Choltitz later asserted his affection for the French Capital and his belief that Hitler had gone insane as reasons for his defiance.

 On August 25, 1944, Allied troops marched down the Champs-Élysées in Paris, marking the end of four years of German occupation during World War II. The city had been liberated just two days earlier, on August 23, after a week-long uprising by the French Resistance.

The Allied troops who marched down the Champs-Élysées were from the 2nd Armored Division of the Free French Forces, led by General Philippe Leclerc. They were joined by French Resistance fighters and civilians, who lined the streets to cheer them on. The mood was jubilant, as Parisians celebrated their liberation from the Nazis.

General Charles de Gaulle on the Champs-Élysées celebrating the liberation of Paris 

The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of the Paris in the neighboring commune of Saint-Denis.

Terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday November 13, 2015 by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant killed 130 people and injured 413 others. The attacks were the deadliest on France since the Second World War,

FUN PARIS FACTS

Historically, Paris had a single stop sign located at the exit of a construction company's driveway onto Quai Saint-Exupéry in the 16th arrondissement. This sign was frequently stolen due to its uniqueness, leading to its permanent removal between 2012 and 2014. Since then, Paris has not had any official stop signs within the city limits. Paris relies on traffic lights, roundabouts, and the "priorité à droite" (priority to the right) rule, meaning that unless otherwise indicated, drivers must yield to vehicles coming from the right. The logic behind this is that stop signs tend to slow down traffic unnecessarily in a city already prone to congestion. Roundabouts and lights are considered more efficient for keeping things moving.

There are 12 roads that radiate out from the Arc de Triomphe. A car accident occurs here roughly every seven minutes.

The word "metro" comes from the French word "metropolitain." The Métro covers over 124 miles with 300 stations and 16 lines. About 4.5 million people daily travel beneath the city on the Paris subway to reach the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral, or the Arc de Triomphe. Every building in Paris is less than 500 meters from a train station, so accessibility is never a problem.

Paris has public sparkling water fountains throughout the city to encourage more people to drink water.

In Paris there are 1,803 monuments, 173 museums and 450 parks and gardens in the city.

The Louvre is the most visited art museum in the world.

There are more dogs than children in Paris.

The official city motto of Paris is "Fluctuat nec mergitur", meaning "She is tossed by the waves but does not sink."

Ambroise Paré

Ambroise Paré was born in 1510 in Bourg-Hersent in north-western France. His father was a country artisan.

As a youth, Paré was apprenticed to his older brother, who was a barber-surgeon in Paris. He was also a pupil at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris hospital.

During the The Italian War of 1536-1538, firearms were a new weapon on the battlefield and were causing new and different wounds. To stop the bleeding, surgeons poured boiling oil to seal soldiers' wounds after amputations. This burned an already suffering soldier.

At Piedmont, during the 1536-1538 Italian campaign of Francis I, Paré was a young war surgeon just getting started on the battlefield. When he run out of boiling oil to pour over the soldiers wounds, he improvised and used an old Roman technique making up a mix of egg yolks, oil of roses and turpentine. The next morning he was surprised to see those soldiers with the mix he made up were much better than the soldiers who had been scalded.

Paré was a keen observer and did not allow the beliefs of the day to supersede the evidence at hand. He noted that bandages, soothing lotions and ointments were a more effective treatment than the burning with boiling oil or red-hot iron cures for gunshot wounds. Paré proved that tying blood vessels was an effective way of stopping hemorrhages and he recognized the necessity of keeping wounds clean.

Ambroise Paré conducted a rather grim experiment to test the efficacy of bezoar stones, which were believed to cure poison. To prove his skepticism, he arranged for a condemned criminal to be given a bezoar and to be freed if he lived. The man died in agony, proving that bezoars do not work..

The master-surgeon devised sophisticated artificial hands and arms for wounded soldiers, which mimicked the movements of the natural limbs, including an artificial hand with fingers moved by cogwheels, which worked so well a handless cavalryman was able to grasp his horse's reins.

Ambroise Paré Posthumous (fantasy) portrait by William Holl

In 1552, Paré became the official royal surgeon to Henry II of France, but was unable to cure the king's fatal blow to the head, which he received during a tournament seven years later. Paré stayed in the service of the kings of France to the end of his life, also serving Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III.

Paré wrote his first book based on his experiences treating soldiers on the battlefield in 1545. Methods of Treating Wounds was written in French as he did not speak Latin. The surgeon wrote several other books and in 1675  a collection of Paré's works was published at Paris.

He was severely criticized by the Faculty of Physicians. Etienne Gourmelen, the dean of the Faculty, stated no books on medicine could be published except through the Faculty of Physicians. However, Paré had the support of the king so his books sold without the Faculty.

The title page of Ambroise Paré's Oeuvres.

Paré was sympathetic to the Huguenot cause, though he seems to have kept appearances of being Catholic to avoid danger. On August 24, 1572, the day of the St.Bartholomew's Day Massacre, Paré's life was saved when King Charles IX locked him in a clothes closet.

Paré died in Paris on December 20, 1590 from natural causes in his 80th year.

Paré, attributed his success with his patients to the fact that "I treated them, God cured them".

Parasite

At least 60 per cent of species on Earth are parasites, an organism living in or on another organism, from it gets part or all of its food. It usually shows some degree of adaptive modification, and causes some degree of damage to its host.

Certain types of maggots are parasitic, like the Botfly larvae. These larvae spend part of their life cycle as parasites under the skin of living animals.

A Tetragnatha montana spider parasitised by an Acrodactyla quadrisculpta larva

When fruit flies are infected with a parasite, they self-medicate with booze—they seek out food with higher alcohol content.

Mice have weak bladders and spread urine around homes. Nearly two thirds carry the toxoplasmosis parasite which, if pregnant women are infected, can cause birth defects.

Examples of parasites in humans include tapeworms, leeches and head lice.

Human head lice

The largest parasite ever extracted from the body of a human being was a 37-foot tapeworm.

World-wide, the most serious cause of human death by a parasite is malaria.

Tokyo has a parasite museum with over 300 different parasites, including a 300ft-long tapeworm.

Paralympic Games

Paralympics is the equivalent of the Olympic Games for disabled people. They are held every four years where possible in the same city or country as the Olympic Games.

The word Paralympics combines the word Para (the Greek preposition for beside or alongside) with the word Olympics because the games happen parallel to the Summer and Winter Olympics.

The Paralympics have grown from a small gathering of British World War II veterans in 1948 to become one of the largest international sport events by the early 21st century.

MILESTONES

The event was inaugurated at the Olympic Games, in Rome between September 18 - 25 September 1960. 400 athletes competed in the "Parallel Olympics", which became known as the first Paralympics.

The Games were initially open only to athletes in wheelchairs; at the 1976 Summer Games in Toronto, Canada, athletes with different disabilities were included for the first time at a Summer Paralympics.

The Soviet Union refused to host the 1980 Paralympics, stating that none of their citizens had disabilities.

It was at the 1988 Summer Paralympics in Seoul, South Korea, that the Paralympic Summer Games were first held directly after the Olympic Summer Games, in the same host city, and using the same facilities. Since then, all Paralympic Games are now held in the same city that hosted the Olympics, with a two-week gap between each.

Australian flag bearer Paul Croft at the Opening Ceremony. By Australian Paralympic Committee, 

The 1992 Winter Paralympics in Tignes and Albertville, France were the first Winter Games to use the same facilities as the Winter Olympics.

Spain's basketball team was stripped of their Special Olympic gold medal at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics after it was discovered they organized a team of healthy individuals to pose as mentally handicapped.

The current Paralympic flag was first flown during the Closing Ceremony of the Athens Paralympic Games in 2004.

The Paralympic flag By Scazon - http://www.flickr.com/photos/scazon/3616974103/

The Paralympic motto is "Spirit in Motion". The motto was introduced in 2004 at the Paralympic Games in Athens. The previous motto was "Mind, Body, Spirit", introduced in 1994.

FUN FACTS

Paralympic athletes have many different kinds of disabilities, so there are several categories in which the athletes compete. The disabilities are in six broad categories: amputee, Cerebral Palsy, intellectual disability, wheelchair, visually impaired, and Les Autres (This means "The Others" in French.)

Those who are deaf, cannot participate in the Paralympics, a separate sports event called the [Deaflympics] is held to cater to them.

There are only four sports in the Paralympic Games out of the total 20 that are not part of the Olympic Games. They are goal ball, boccia, wheelchair rugby, and powerlifting.

Paralympic medals have steel balls inside them which, when shaken, makes a rattling sound that helps notify visually impaired athletes to determine between medals.

Lee Pearson, winner of ten Paralympic gold medals for dressage, is allergic to horses.

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Paraguay

HISTORY

The first Europeans in the area that corresponds to modern day Paraguay were Spanish explorers in 1516. Ten years later Sebastian Cabot, the pilot-major of Charles V, Holy Roman emperor and king of Spain, explored up the rivers Paraná and Paraguay.

Juan de Salazar de Espinosa was a Spanish explorer and conquistador who is credited with founding the city of Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. He was born in Espinosa de los Monteros, Burgos, Spain, in 1508. In 1535, he set sail from Spain as part of the expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza to explore the Río de la Plata region. In January 1536, the expedition arrived at the estuary of the Río de la Plata. Salazar was one of the first Europeans to explore the Paraguay River, and he was instrumental in the founding of Asunción on August 15, 1537.

Asunción quickly became the center of the Spanish colonial province of Paraguay. It was a strategic location, situated on the banks of the Paraguay River, and it was well-positioned to control trade between the interior of the continent and the Atlantic Ocean. Asunción also became a major center for the production of tobacco and yerba mate.

View of the city of Asunción during the 1864-70 Paraguayan War.

The Reduccion System was a resettlement policy employed by the Spaniards which was designed for a convenient administration of the colonies. Their strategy in South America was to gather native populations into centers called "Indian reductions" (reducciones de indios), in order to Christianize, tax, and govern them more efficiently. The Jesuit interpretation of this strategy was implemented primarily in an area that corresponds to modern-day Paraguay amongst the Tupi-Guarani peoples. There, a Jesuit utopia was founded in which their Spanish Jesuit overseers satisfied all the Indians' spiritual and material needs. Every day was a mixture of work, song and prayer and unlike other conquered parts of America where the Indians were kept as slaves, here all property was held in common.

The reducciones flourished in Eastern Paraguay for about 150 years, until the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish Crown in 1767.

Paraguay overthrew the local Spanish administration on May 14, 1811. May 14th is now celebrated as the country's independence day.

Paraguay's first dictator was José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia who ruled Paraguay from 1814. For the next 24 years, until his death in 1840 he ran the country with the aid of only three other people, with very little outside contact or influence.

Francia intended to create a utopian society based on the French theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract. He forbade colonial citizens from marrying one another and allowed them to marry only blacks, mulattoes or natives, in order to break the power of colonial-era elites and to create a mixed-race or mestizo society.

Francia is still considered a national hero, with a museum dedicated to his memory in Yaguarón.

José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Paraguay's first dictator.

Francia imbued Paraguay with a tradition of autocratic rule that lasted, with only a few breaks, until 1989.

The flag of Paraguay was first adopted in 1842. Its design, a red–white–blue triband, was inspired by the colours of the French flag, believed to signify independence and liberty.

Paraguay is the only country in the world with a national flag that's not the same on both sides: the obverse of the flag shows the national coat of arms, and the reverse shows the seal of the treasury. It was revised in 2013 to bring the flag towards its original design.

Flag of Paraguay (obverse). 

In 1864 Francisco Solano López, the dictator of Paraguay, plunged his country into an ill-advised war with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. 90% of the men in Paraguay died in the War of the Triple Alliance, which took place over the next five years and the country suffered extensive territorial losses. It remains the bloodiest international conflict in Latin American history, and the real causes of this war are still highly debated.

Following the War of the Triple Alliance, Paraguayan women ended up outnumbering men with ratios of 4:1 or even 20:1 in some regions. As a result, the local catholic church authorized polygamy to rebuild the population.

On February 3, 1989, a military coup headed by General Andrés Rodríguez assumed power. As president, Rodríguez instituted political, legal, and economic reforms and initiated a rapprochement with the international community.

Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti

In 1992, Paraguay adopted a new constitution, which limited the presidency to a single five-year term.

FUN FACTS

Paraguay is landlocked, being bordered to the North and East by Brazil, the West by Bolivia, and the South and Southeast by Argentina.

The ethnic makeup of the population is like the following: Mestizo (mixed European and Amerindian) 80%, European 20%, unmixed Amerindian 1-3%, Asian 1-4%.

Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, is the dominant religion in Paraguay. According to the 2002 census, 89.9% of the population is Catholic.

Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

In Paraguay, maracas are most commonly made from the porrongo gourd, and are only played by men.

Acne affects 79-95% of western adolescents, yet a study of non-westernized tribes in Paraguay found no cases of acne.

Paraguay runs on 100% hydroelectric power and only consumes 10% of the electricity it generates, exporting the rest. Almost all of this power comes from the Itaípu dam, which also provides over 25% of Brazil's electricity.
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