Reggae

Reggae has been the predominant form of Jamaican music since the 1970s. The genre is characterized by a heavily accented onbeat.

Ska is a music genre that combines elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. It originated in 1950s Jamaica and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae.

Ska developed in the 1960s when Jamaican musicians such as Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs.

In ska, the singer does a style of Jamaican singing called "toasting." When a singer is "toasting", they make sounds, repeat words, invent rhymes, and shout into the microphone. The Jamaican "toasting" style of singing and talking was a significant influence on rap music in the 1980s.

Jamaican vocal trio the Folkes Brothers' 1960 recording of "Oh Carolina" was a landmark single in the development of Jamaican modern music. The Prince Buster-produced recording marked the beginning of Jamaican musicians mixing native beats, gospel, ska and American R&B, eventually forming reggae.

Rocksteady, the earliest form of reggae, emerged as a genre in 1966 with the success of performers like Alton Ellis. His hit single "Get Ready - Rock Steady" is arguably the first rocksteady recording; its stylistic uniqueness is due to the bassist not showing up for the recording session, necessitating the keyboardist to play the bass part.

Alton Ellis performing live in 2007

As a popular musical style, rocksteady was short-lived; its heyday only lasted about two years, from 1966 until 1968. Despite its short lifespan, rocksteady's influence is great. Many reggae singers grew out of rocksteady groups.

Following rocksteady, Roots reggae becomes the dominant sound in Jamaica, with Bob Marley & the Wailers leading the way towards a new, distinctively Jamaican fusion of folk, R&B, rock and ska .

Bob Marley live in concert in Dalymount Park on 6 July 1980.

A 1968 single by Toots and the Maytals, "Do the Reggay" was the first popular song to use the word "reggae," effectively naming the genre and introducing it to a global audience.

Until Toots and the Maytals recorded the single, "reggay" had been the name of a passing dance fashion in Jamaica. However, the song's connection of the word with the music itself led to its use for the style of music that developed from it.

Toots and the Maytals By Celaur - 

It is common for reggae to be sung in Jamaican Patois, Jamaican English, and Iyaric dialects. The songs are generally about poverty, politics, and Rastafarianism, the Jamaica-based religious cult.

Ska became popular again in the 1980s in Britain when bands such as The Specials, The English Beat (known just as "The Beat" in England), and Madness achieved huge success with their English take on ska music.

A white guy from Canada has been recorded twice in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the best selling reggae single in US history. Snow's "Informer" recording was #1 on the American Hot 100 charts for seven consecutive weeks.

Source Compton's Encyclopedia

Refrigerator

HISTORY

The first refrigerant was ammonia, a poisonous gas. Carl Von Linde's ammonia system was introduced in the mid 1870s and used in some commercial and industrial refrigeration systems, and occasionally, one would leak, causing a minor emergency. This would never do in homes, where people could be trapped in their sleep, so home refrigeration was slow to take off.

McCray pre-electric home refrigerator ad (1905) 

Before fridges were invented, Russians and Finns kept their milk fresh by putting live frogs in it.

In 1913 the first refrigerators for home and domestic use were invented by Fred W. Wolf of Fort Wayne, Indiana with models consisting of a unit that was mounted on top of an ice box.

The first European-made refrigerator, lined with ceramic tiles, was made the same year by AEG of Nuremberg, Germany. In the UK, it sold for £85, which was the price of a typical small country cottage at the time.

By 1916 Electric refrigerators were being sold to American housewives, at the exorbitant cost of $900.

In 1914, engineer Nathaniel B. Wales of Detroit, introduced an idea for a practical electric refrigeration unit, which later became the basis for the Kelvinator.

Three years later the Kelvinator company introduced the first refrigerator with any type of automatic control. This was the first refrigerator with a small and reliable enough electric motor to be sold en masse. By 1923, the Kelvinator company held 80%of the market for domestic electric refrigerators.

Kelvinator ad from 1920.

In 1922, a refrigerator based on an entirely different operating system was invented by Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters in Sweden while they were still students at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. Their absorption refrigerators used a 3-fluid configuration and could operate without a pump. They became the basis for the Electrolux Refrigerator, which first appeared two years later, and was powered by natural gas.

Sales of home refrigerators only began to take off in 1927 when General Electric Company introduced its"Monitor-Top" refrigerator. The first hermetic compressor refrigerator, it enclosed the refrigeration parts in a small cabinet.

General Electric "Monitor-Top" refrigerator, introduced in 1927.

Early domestic refrigerators used sulfur dioxide, methyl formate, or ammonia as the refrigerating medium, which could all do damage if inhaled or ingested. In the late 1920s, a research team was formed by General Motors to find a safer, low-toxicity alternative to these refrigerants. The team, headed by Thomas Midgley, Jr, improved the synthesis of CFCs and demonstrated their usefulness for such a purpose and their stability and nontoxicity. In 1930, General Motors and DuPont formed Kinetic Chemicals to produce Freon, the chlorofluorocarbons or CFC compounds.

A few decades later, people began to realize what the CFCs were doing to the ozone layer. Most uses of CFCs are now banned or severely restricted by the Montreal Protocol of August 1987.

Early refrigerators could only be opened from the outside, making accidental trappings—particularly of children playing with discarded devices—a possibility. So many children were climbing into refrigerators, getting stuck inside, and suffocating to death that the US government passed the Refrigerator Safety Act in 1956. So most companies switched to magnetic strips on fridge doors, which would create an air-proof seal, but would open from the inside with a light push. Even tests with children were conducted.

Domestic refrigerators became largely universal by the late 1960s. In 1956 in the UK 8% of homes had fridges, 33% by 1962 and 69% by 1971.

By 2005, a refrigerator was present in 99.5% of American homes.

As low income countries grow rich a fridge is among the first things people buy - in China ownership went from 24% of homes in 2004 to 88% in 2014.

FUN REFRIGERATOR FACTS

Domestic refrigerators run at 4°. A colder-running version (at c.-20°C) is the deep freeze, which can store food for some months.

The very first household refrigerators would cost about $16,000 today.

Early refrigerators could only be opened from the outside, making accidental trappings—particularly of children playing with discarded devices—a possibility, and several such deaths have been recorded. Modern designs close with a magnetic mechanism that can be opened from the inside, reducing the danger of accidental trappings.

By Bretwa - Own work,

In the movie Back to the Future, the original idea was for the time machine to be a refrigerator, but because the director Robert Zemeckis was afraid that children would imitate the film and get trapped in fridges, they changed it to a DeLorean car.

Kimchi is widely enjoyed and a crucial part of the Korean diet. Traditionally, kimchi was stored in earthenware pots called onggi buried underground for optimal temperature and fermentation control. Today over 98% of Korean homes have kimchi fridges.

The average fridge door is opened 154 times each week.

Source Europress Encyclopedia

Refrigeration

Refrigeration is the application of cold for the preservation of food. The application is old, and cold caverns, cellars and where available snow have always been used for the purpose.

There is a 5000 year old refrigeration technique using only principles of evaporation and humidity that can be produced with basic pottery, sand, a rag, and water.

Ancient Egyptian Pharaohs made slaves fan their wine all night to cool it down.

By 400 BC, Persian engineers had mastered the technique of storing ice in the middle of summer in the desert.

Few colonial Americans used ice to refrigerate foods due to a lack of ice-storehouses and iceboxes. By the the 19th century these two things became more widely available, and individuals used axes and saws to harvest ice for their storehouses.

Ice became a mass-market commodity by the early 1830s in the US with the price of ice dropping from six cents per pound to a half of a cent per pound. This ice market further expanded further with the introduction of railroads to transport it.

Ice harvesting in Massachusetts, 1852, showing the railroad line in the background

Ice harvesting created a “cooling culture” as many used ice and iceboxes to store their fish, meat, dairy products and even fruits and vegetables. These early cold storage practices paved the way for many Americans to accept the refrigeration technology that would soon take over the country. 

American inventor Oliver Evans, designed the first closed circuit refrigeration machine that used vapor instead of liquid in 1805.

Another American inventor Jacob Perkins is known as the father of the refrigerator. He is credited with the first patent for the vapor-compression refrigeration cycle, assigned on August 14, 1835 and titled, "Apparatus and means for producing ice, and in cooling fluids." The idea had come from Oliver Evans' design, who never constructed his refrigeration machine.

Jacob Perkins was the first to describe how pipes filled with volatile chemicals whose molecules evaporated very easily could keep food cool, like wind chilling your skin after a dip in the sea. But he neglected to publicize his invention and its evolution was slow.

An American doctor, John Gorrie of Apalachicola, Florida was granted Patent No. 8080 for a machine to make ice on May 6, 1851. His design was based on the ones of  Oliver Evans and Jacob Perkins' and was intended to make ice to cool the air for his yellow fever patients. Gorrie sought to raise money to manufacture his machine, but the venture failed when his partner died.

James Harrison, the Scottish/Australian owner of the Geelong Advertiser became interested in refrigeration when whilst cleaning movable type with ether, he noticed that the evaporating fluid would leave the metal type cold to the touch. Harrison's first mechanical ice-making machine began operation in 1851 on the banks of the Barwon River at Rocky Point in Geelong, Victoria, Australia.

In 1855 James Harrison patented an ether liquid-vapor compression refrigeration system, which used a compressor to force the refrigeration gas to pass through a condenser, where it cooled down and liquefied.

A brewery became interested in Harrison's device and he was asked to adapt it so that it would cool beer. The result was the first practical use of a refrigeration machine. Harrison's system was almost immediately taken up by the brewing and meat-packing industries of Geelong.

The first industrial refrigeration system using gaseous ammonia dissolved in water was developed by Ferdinand Carré of France in 1859 and patented in 1860. His design was based on the gas–vapour system of James Harrison.

In 1862 Carré exhibited his ice-making machine at the Universal London Exhibition, producing an output of 200 kilograms (440 lb) per hour.

Carré's ice-making device

In early 1870s an engineering professor at the Technological University Munich in Germany, Carl von Linde, published articles in the Bavarian Industry and Trade Journal describing his research findings in the area of refrigeration.

Von Linde's first refrigeration system used dimethyl ether as the refrigerant and was built by Maschinenfabrik Augsburg (now MAN AG) for the Spaten Brewery in 1873.

In 1876 Von Linde patented equipment to liquefy air using the Joule Thomson expansion process and regenerative cooling. Von Linde's improved method of liquefying gases such as ammonia, sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride as refrigerants was widely used for that purpose until the late 1920s.

Ammonia is a poisonous gas and occasionally, one would leak, causing a minor emergency. Though the ammonia systems were too dangerous for domestic use, they could still be used in ship's holds, and within a decade of von Linde's discovery, refrigerated ships were carrying Australian, New Zealand and Argentinean exports to Europe. Ammonia is still in wide use as a refrigerant in industrial applications.

The first attempt to ship refrigerated meat from the souhern hemisphere was made when the Northam sailed from Australia to England in 1876; however the refrigeration machinery broke down en route and so the cargo was lost.

In 1880 a Director of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company (NZALC), William Soltau Davidson convinced the owners of the Dunedin to refit the sailing ship with a Bell-Coleman compression refrigeration machine, cooling the entire hold. On February 15, 1882, the Dunedin left New Zealand with 4331 mutton, 598 lamb and 22 pig carcasses, 2,226 sheep tongues. 250 kegs of butter, chicken, hare, pheasant and turkey.

The Dunedin loading at Port Chalmers in 1882.

The Dunedin arrived in London a little over three months after setting sail. Carcasses were sold at the Smithfield market over the following fortnight by John Swan and Sons. The success of the shipment effectively launched the refrigerated meat industry.

World Refrigeration Day is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of the refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat-pump sector and focuses attention on the significant role that the industry and its technology play in modern life and society. Held annually on June 26, it was established by the World Refrigeration Day Secretariat in Derbyshire, England.

The day was chosen to celebrate the birth date of William Thomson on June 26, 1824. Thomson formed the first and second laws of thermodynamics and was made Lord Kelvin in 1892 in recognition of his achievements in thermodynamics. Absolute temperatures are stated in units of kelvin in his honor. The existence of a lower limit to temperature (absolute zero) was known before his work, but Lord Kelvin found its correct value as approximately −273.15 degree Celsius or −459.67 degree Fahrenheit.

Sources Europress Encyclopedia, The Independent

Reformation

The Protestant Reformation in Christianity is a term used to describe a series of events that happened in the 16th century. Because of corruption within the Roman Catholic hierarchy, some people saw a need to reform the church.

The Reformation movement was anticipated from the 12th century by the Waldenses, Lollards and Hussites. They attacked the corruption of the clergy and stressed the importance of Scripture.

The movement became effective in the 16th century when the new centralized absolute monarchies gave support to reform by challenging the political power of the papacy and confiscated church wealth.

During the early 16th century, the papacy was earning a good income by the indulgences system that allowed Christians to purchase remission from penance in purgatory. In 1515, Pope Leo X started a new indulgence campaign, meaning letters excusing you from sin, to raise money for the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica, a church in Rome. Rich people sometimes even bought these in advance, for sins they planned on committing.

Appalled at this Martin Luther, a Catholic monk from Germany, nailed up on the church door at Wittenburg, his 95 Theses, (the standard way of raising issues for debate), arguing that a Christian has had a full pardon from God and no need of indulgences.

Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses

A reformed movement arose in Zurich, Switzerland in 1521 led by merchant Conrad Grebel and theologian Ulrich Zwingli. The adherents emphasized to a large extent the study of the Bible and belief in its supreme authority.

Around the same time, Nicholas Storch found the Abecedarian Anabaptist sect in Germany. Driven from Wittenburg by Luther, Storch traveled through Germany preaching the equality of all men and claiming that as knowledge of the Scriptures is communicated directly by the Holy Spirit, it is wrong to learn to read. He also attacked infant baptism and as a consequence his movement was attacked by both Catholics and Lutherans.

By the mid 1520s, millions of peasants were rebelling against the nobles in the name of equality of the humanity in front at God. Thomas Müntzer, a learned associate of Nicholas Storch, over-enthusiastically encouraged and guided a huge peasant revolt against the army of the princes. Müntzer was particularly inspired by Daniel 2:44, which outlines how the everlasting kingdom of God would consume all other kingdoms.

The revolt was crushed at Frankenhausen and Muntzer was captured and tortured to death on May 27, 1525.

Contemporary portrait of Thomas Müntzer.

Luther opposed their peasant war, lashing out at them in a paper Against the Murdering and Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

Many countries in Europe followed this trend of reformation and the continent was divided by denomination. Though not personally interested in religious reform, King Francis I of France initially maintained an attitude of tolerance, in accordance with his interest in the humanist movement.

After Francis was defeated at the Battle of Pavia in 1525 and his subsequent capture, the French Parliament took advantage of the French king's absence and passed such anti-Lutheran laws as banning translations of the Bible into French.

By the turn of the 1530s, the name Protestants was in general use ending the religious unity of Western Europe

By Ernio48 -  Wikipedia Commons

The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V did not wish to see Spain or the rest of Habsburg Europe divided, and in light of continual threat from the Ottomans, preferred to see the Catholic Church reform itself from within. He persuaded Pope Paul III to inaugurate a Catholic Counter-Reformation to counter activities of the Reformation.

The Council of Trent was convened on December 13, 1545 as a reaction to the Protestant Reformation and it proceeded to meet intermittently for eighteen years. On adjourning, Pope Pius IV ratified all its decrees and definitions, which enjoined strict obedience upon all Roman Catholics. The decrees also stressed some points of faith that the Protestants' objections had put in danger such as the reinforcement of the seven sacraments and their beliefs on transubstantiation.

By the mid-17th century the present European alignment had been reached, with a separation of the Catholic and Protestant churches. The Peace of Westphalia of May 15, 1648 recognized Protestants, and is generally seen as the end of this process.

The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, (1648) by Gerard ter Borch

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Referendum

ETYMOLOGY

A referendum or plebiscite or referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to vote on a particular proposal.

By Rama - Own work,  Wikipedia

Australia defines 'referendum' as a vote to change the constitution and 'plebiscite' as a vote that does not affect the constitution.

In 1998,UK Conservative MP Alan Clark asked the House of Commons Speaker for a ruling on whether the plural of 'referendum' was 'referendums' or 'referenda'. The Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, ruled that it is "all a matter of taste".

The Latin 'referendum' (plural: referenda) means the question that is being referred to the voters. However, its change of meaning in English to refer to a voting procedure justifies the use of the English plural word of referendums.

CRITICS

Critics of the referendum argue that the electorate are likely not to be sufficiently informed to make decisions on complicated or technical issues.

Pro-Russian protesters in Ukraine, demanding a referendum, By HOBOPOCC 

Both Ancient Greek Philosopher Plato and United States Founding Father James Madison thought voters are too easily persuaded by their own internal feelings of a matter instead of focusing on the good of the nation. That is to say they vote selfishly.

REFERENDUMS IN HISTORY

Britain's first referendum took place in 1920. The result was the people in Scotland voted for the limited application of alcohol prohibition.

On March 29, 1936, Adolf Hitler received 99% of the votes in a referendum to ratify Germany's illegal reoccupation of the Rhineland, receiving 44.5 million votes out of 45.5 million registered voters.

In a  June 2, 1946 referendum, Italians voted to turn Italy from a monarchy into a Republic. It was the first time that the country's women were able to vote.

The State of Vietnam referendum held on October 23, 1955 determined the future governmental form of the nation that was to become South Vietnam. It was contested by Prime Minister Ngô Đinh Diệm, who proposed a republic, and former emperor Bảo Đại, the head of state.

Diệm won the election, which was widely marred by electoral fraud, with 98.2% of the vote. In the capital Saigon, Diệm was credited with more than 600,000 votes, although only 450,000 people were on the electoral roll. He accumulated tallies in excess of 90% of the registered voters, even in rural regions where opposition groups prevented voting.

Ngô Đình Diệm d

In a 1967 referendum in Gibraltar on whether to remain British, 99.64 per cent voted in favor.

On June 5, 1975, the UK held its first referendum on the question of whether the country should continue to be a member of the European Economic Community.  The electorate voted by a majority of more than two to one (17,378,581 votes to 8,470,073) to stay in.

In 1977, voters in an Australian referendum were asked to choose their national anthem from a list of four songs. "Advance Australia Fair" won but Australian Capital Territory voted for "Waltzing Matilda."

In 1973, Greenland joined the European Economic Community with Denmark. However, in a referendum in 1982, a majority of the population voted for Greenland to withdraw from the EEC, which was effected three years later.

A status referendum was held in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands on April 6, 1984. All 261 registered voters participated in the vote, with 88% voting for integration with Australia. The referendum has been described as the "smallest act of self-determination ever conducted."

Cocos (Keeling) Islands,. By ja:利用者:MUK - ja

In 1989, a referendum in Uruguay voted for an increase in pensioners’ incomes.

The Georgian independence referendum took place on March 31, 1991: nearly 99 percent of the voters supported the country's independence from the Soviet Union. Ten days later, shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgia declared independence.

In 1993, San Francisco held a referendum over whether a policeman could patrol with a ventriloquist's dummy called Brendan O'Smarty. The voters agreed that he could.

In a 1995 referendum, 50.58 percent of the Quebec population supported the province of Quebec remaining a part of Canada, narrowly averting sovereignty.

In 1995, Ireland voted, by the narrow margin of 50.3 per cent to 49.7 per cent, to legalize divorce.

On Thursday June 23, 2016 the United Kingdom voted for the second time in 41 years on its membership to what is now known as the European Union (EU). The "Leave" option was voted by 52% of voters, as opposed to 48% of voters who wished to "Remain."

FUN REFERENDUM FACTS

UK's European Union Referendum Act 2015 contains 26,678 words, making it slightly longer than Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Since 1911, New Zealand has held 38 national referendums, of which 26 have been about alcohol. In 1949 and 1967, New Zealand had referendums on pub closing times.

In 1949, New Zealand voted on whether to allow off-course betting: 68 per cent voted in favor.

Source Daily Express

Redneck

A "redneck" is a disparaging term used in the US to describe a rural white person from the South, who typically has a working-class job, and reactionary political views.

The first use of “redneck” appears to refer to the Scottish Covenanters of the 17th century, who were a Scottish Presbyterian movement.  In 1637 King Charles I of England demanded that his Scottish subjects abandon their Presbyterian church in favor of the Church of England. The Covenanters responded with the National Covenant, in which they declared their allegiance to their religion over the King of England. They signed the oath in blood, and to symbolize their pledge, wore blood-red bandannas around their necks.

These dissenters, as they were perceived by the overruling English, eventually migrated to Ireland, and from there to the American colonies, where they made their way south in search of open land.

Many Southerners today trace their ancestry back to these migrants who brought not only their culture of rough and ready individualism, but also the term "redneck."

Originally written for Songfacts

Red herring

The phrase "a red herring" is used either to denounce an evasive action or remark intended to divert people's attention from the real issue or a literary device that leads readers or audiences towards a false conclusion.

When herrings are kippered by smoking and salting in order to preserve them, they turn reddish-brown.

Red herrings By misocrazy from New York, NY 

Three explanations have been given for the derivation of the phrase, all of which are derived from fox hunting. They all refer to the fact that prior to refrigeration herrings were known for being strongly pungent.

The term was invented in 1807 by English politician and journalist William Cobbett, referring to how he used red herrings to lay a false trail, while training hunting dogs in order to divert them from chasing a hare,

In 19th century England fox lovers sabotaged the hunt by dragging "smoked" red herrings along the route away from the fox. The dogs became confused, following the strong scent of the herring rather than the fox, hence the phrase "red herring" meaning to follow the wrong clue.

Or, the phrase recalls the practice of fox hunters whilst training their hounds to drag a pungent "red herring" across the animal's trail; its smell was intended to cover up the quarry's scent.

Sources Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999, Red Herrings and white Elephants: The Origins Of The Phrases We Use Every Day by Albert Jack