Table

A Table is an article of furniture consisting of a flat top on at least one leg. It is derived from the Latin word “Tabula” which means a plank or a flat piece of board.

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In ancient Greece tables were used for eating. Such tables were lightweight and portable so they could be easily removed when the meal was over and pushed under a bed after use.

The Romans inherited their designs from late Greek styles and moved toward richer designs. The Romans also developed more permanent tables with round or rectangular tops supported by three or four legs to accommodate their increased number of household goods. 

Roman dining table: mensa lunata. By Gaius Cornelius 

Loo tables were very popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were originally made for the popular card game called loo or lanterloo, but were soon adopted for other purposes such as as candlestands, tea tables, or small dining tables. The typical loo table has an oval or round top, and a hinged mechanism fitted to a pedestal base, enabling the table to be easily stored when not in use.

Folded late 18th century English loo table with Japanese motifs. By Hiart

The sewing table was a small table designed to hold sewing materials and implements, providing a convenient work place for women who sewed. They originated in England around 1770 and was adopted in post-Revolutionary War America. Prior to the use of the sewing table, women kept needlework in a basket or bag.

Work table, about 1840,, By VAwebteam at English Wikipedia

Billiards tables are bounded tables on which billiards and similar games are played. All provide a flat surface, covered with cloth, (sometimes erroneously called felt) elevated above the ground. 

Billiards originated as an early version of lawn bowls and Billiard cloth is colored green in recollection of the game's outside lawn origins. 

Mary Queen of Scots owned one of the world's first billiard tables. After she was imprisoned she was allowed at first to keep a table in her Tower of London cell. Later it was removed and whilst awaiting her execution she complained of being deprived of her billiard table. 

Pool table pixiebay

Traditionally, tables in Japan, chabudai, are low, sometimes round tables, for tea and food.

When retired teacher Claire Wiegand-Beckmann bought an old card table for $25 at a garage sale it proved to be a good investment. She later discovered that it was one of six tables left in the world by furniture makers John Seymour & Son. The table, an 18th-century gem, was sold at Sotheby's in 1998 for $541,500.

The longest Ramadan iftar table was organized in June 2017. The record-breaking iftar table brought together 5,400 people from all over Lebanon, who gathered at the wooden heart-shaped table at Beirut’s Waterfront. At 2,184 m (7,165 ft 4 in) table it beat the former record held by Ghana. 

Source Encyclopedia Brittanica

Tabasco sauce

Shortly after Edmund McIlhenny returned to Avery Island, Louisiana, from self-imposed exile during the Civil War, he obtained some hot pepper seeds from a traveler who had recently arrived in the US state from Central America. McIlhenny planted them on Avery Island, and then experimented with pepper sauces until he hit upon one he liked. 

In 1870, two years after he begun selling his creation, Edmund McIlhenny received a patent for his singular formula for processing peppers into a fiery red sauce. He created a brand name "Tabasco" for this new product. The name comes from the Mexican state of Tabasco. 

When Tabasco Sauce first hit the shelves in 1868, the price, when adjusted for inflation, of a single bottle was a massive $17.

A Tabasco advertisement from ca. 1905

Tabasco made its first mass appearance on the battlefield during the Vietnam War. Thousands of bottles were shipped to American troops who appreciated the taste of home. It  was introduced by McIlhenny’s great-grandson Walter, who'd become CEO of the family business in 1949. Walter Mcilhenny was a former general in the military during World War II.

A green sauce — made with a jalapeño pepper base — was the first new flavor. It debuted in 1993. 

Other Tabesco sauce flavors that are now manufactured include chipotle-based smoked, habanero, garlic, "sweet and spicy", and "Buffalo style" sauces. The habanero, chipotle, and garlic sauces include the tabasco peppers blended with other peppers, whereas the jalapeño variety does not include tabasco peppers. 

A few of the varieties of Tabasco sauce. The original on the far right. By DJM 

None of the new Tabesco sauces has the three-year aging process the flagship product uses.
Today, Tabasco brand pepper sauce is distributed in more than 185 countries. Labels are printed in 22 different languages and dialects.

The flagship Tabasco product has, and has always had, just three ingredients — Tabasco peppers, salt and high quality vinegar. The recipe hasn't changed since the sauce was manufactured in 1868.

The Tabasco bottle is still modeled after the cologne-style bottles used for the first batch of sauce in 1868. 

Every bottle of Tabasco starts its journey on Avery Island, an island that's about two-hours west of New Orleans. It is manufactured in one factory on Avery Island that has been owned by the McIlhenny family since 1869.

In 2005, Avery Island was hit hard by Hurricane Rita. As a result, the McIlhenny family constructed a 17-foot (5.2 m)-high levee around the low side of the factory and invested in back-up generators.

Originally all peppers used in Tabasco sauce were grown on Avery Island. Today peppers grown on the island are used to produce seed stock, which is then shipped to foreign growers primarily in Central and South America.

All peppers used in Tabasco sauce are picked by hand. The pepper pickers compare the color of the peppers to a small red stick; if the colors match, the peppers are ripe and will be used in the sauce production process.

Tabasco sauce is aged in barrels previously used for Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey.

Tabasco pepper mash aging in barrels on Avery Island, By Skb8721

Tabasco is the official hot sauce supplier to the British royal household. It's also served aboard Air Force One.

Saddam Hussein once pranked his guests by adding Tabasco to koftas he'd cooked for them. Some of the panicked guests initially fearing that the paranoid dictator had poisoned them.

The aliens on the show Roswell put Tabasco sauce on everything, but the actors actually used V8 Berry Splash to protect their mouths.

Sources Food For Thought by Ed Pearce, Today

T-shirt

A T-shirt or tee shirt is a slip on shirt usually with short sleeves, no collar and no buttons. T-shirts are usually made from cotton fabric or fabric which contains a mix of cotton and polyester. 

The T-shirt was invented in 1904 Wisconsin-based Cooper Underwear Company in 1904 as a 'bachelor undershirt'. It was marketed to American bachelors who couldn't sew or replace buttons. The T-shirt was so named as it has the shape of the letter T when spread out flat. 

The word T-shirt had become part of American English by the 1920s when it appeared in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

The t-shirt first came into vogue in the 1940s when the US Navy introduced a limited cotton undershirt of this style. The American troops would often strip off to their underwear in the tropical heat. 

US Merchant Marine sailor in 1944

Printed T-shirts were in limited use by 1942 when an Air Corps Gunnery School T-shirt appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

When Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire premiered at a New York theater on December 3, 1947, Marlon Brando took to the stage wearing a bright white capped-sleeve T-shirt. It was the first time it had appeared in public as anything but an undergarment. Brando's wearing of the apparel was not because of prior stage direction, but because the actor had worn one to rehearsals.

The T-shirt was transformed from establishment uniform to a symbol of countercultural cool by James Dean in the 1955 movie Rebel without a Cause.

James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause

When Jean Seburg appeared in a Herald Tribune T-shirt in Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 movie Breathless, brands began to apply themselves seriously to exploiting the medium's marketing potential.

Today, many notable and memorable T-shirts produced in the 1970s have become ensconced in pop culture. Examples include the bright yellow happy face T-shirts and graphic designer Milton Glaser's 1977 "I ♥ N Y” poster and T-shirt campaign. 

An American T-shirt maker in Miami printed shirts for the Spanish market which promoted the Pope's visit. Instead of "I Saw the Pope" (el Papa), the shirts read "I Saw the Potato" (la papa).

It is now estimated more Ramones t-shirts have been sold worldwide than Ramones albums.

Ted Hastings set the Guinness world record for "Most T-Shirts Worn at Once"  in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, on February 17, 2019. He wore 260 shirts ranging from medium up to 20X to raise money for a school playground.

Syringe

A syringe is an instrument for injecting or extracting liquids or gases. It consists of a sliding plunger that fits tightly in a precise cylindrical tube. The plunger can be pulled and pushed inside the tube, letting the syringe draw in or expel the fluid through an orifice at the open end of the tube.

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The word "syringe" is derived from the Greek syrinx, meaning "Pan flute", "tube").

The syringe itself has been known since ancient times. One of the innovative and delicate eye surgery techniques used by the Romans was the removal of cataracts by couching. This involved using a sophisticated thin needle syringe to remove the clouding.

During the 1st century AD Aulus Cornelius Celsus mentions the use of piston syringes to treat medical complications in his De Medicina.

De medicina

In the 9th century an Egyptian surgeon used a glass suction tube to remove cataracts from a patient.

The Irish physician Francis Rynd invented the first syringe with a hollow needle in 1844. He used it to inject a sedative to treat neuralgia, revolutionizing medicine with a single push of a plunger.

Scottish doctor Alexander Wood (December 10, 1817 –February 26, 1884), invented in 1853 a hypodermic syringe with a needle fine enough to pierce the skin. Wood's innovation allowed drugs to be administered intravenously without the patient's skin having to be cut first. It is said he found inspiration in the sting of a honeybee.

The hypodermic syringe was a breakthrough in anesthetics and was originally, mainly used for giving injections of morphine as a painkiller. Doctors believed that morphine is not addictive if it bypasses the digestive tract and the needle Wood perfected allowed the drug to be injected directly into the blood stream, thus avoiding the stomach.

There is a story in circulation that Wood's wife, Rebecca Massey, was an intravenous morphine addict and was the first person the over dose from a morphine injection. However, according to her gravestone in Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh, she outlived her husband and died on February 6, 1895.

Alexander Wood

After the initial failure of his opera William Tell, Gioachino Rossini gave up composing and decided to concentrate on cooking. He produced some inventive recipes and devised a way of stuffing macaroni with foie gras by means of a silver syringe.

In 1954, Becton, Dickinson and Company created the first mass-produced disposable syringe and needle. It was developed for Dr. Jonas Salk's mass administration of the new Salk polio vaccine for one million American children.

Phil Brooks was an African-American inventor from Kansas who received a patent for a Disposable Syringe on April 9, 1974. The disposable syringe that he invented was designed to be easier and safer to use than previous models. The patent number for his invention was indeed U.S. Patent 3,802,434.

Source Thought

Syria

HISTORY

Syria was the location of one of the earliest civilizations and was a centre of Neolithic culture around 10,000BC.

The Syrian region was originally divided between various small kingdoms which fought against Israel and were subdued by the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria.

According to Biblical accounts, the Syrian region has been coveted since the time of the Pharaohs, with disputes stretching beyond the reign of King Solomon and into the era of the "Kings of Assyria."

The Assyrians occupied the region between 721 and 633 BC. The name Syria is derived from Assyria.

Syria was subsequently occupied by Babylonia, Persia and Macedonia, but gained importance under Seleucus Nicator, founder of Antioch in 300 BC, and Antiochus the Great.

One of the oldest cities in the world, Damascus was founded in the second millennium BC in a fertile spot between barren mountains and a sandy desert.

The King James Bible refers to Damascus 45 times in the Old Testament and 15 in the New.

St Paul received his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus, and his sight was restored there Ananias in a house on Straight Street.

The Damascus Straight Street c. 1900

After forming part of the Roman and Byzantine Empires, Rashidun forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid took control of Syria and Palestine in the Battle of Yarmouk on August 20, 636. This marked the first great wave of Muslim conquests after the death of Muhammad.

Damascus was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750.

During the Middle Ages, Syria was the scene of many of The Crusaders' exploits.

Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire between 1516 and 1918.

1803 Cedid Atlas, showing Ottoman Syria labelled as "Al Sham" in yellow

The country was occupied by French and British troops 1918 to 1919. In 1920, the short-lived independent Arab Kingdom of Syria, came into existence. The first modern Arab state, it was established under Faisal I of the Hashemite family.

Faisal I's rule over Syria ended after only a few months, following the Battle of Maysalun. After the San Remo conference, the League of Nations put Syria under a French mandate.

Syria became independent in 1946 and three years later came under military rule.

In 1958 Syria merged with Egypt, to become the United Arab Republic, but after an army coup in 1961 Syria seceded and the Independent Syrian Arab Republic was established.

The current flag was first adopted on February 22, 1958 to represent Syria as part of the United Arab Republic, and was used until 1961. It was re-adopted in 1980.

The flag is based on the Arab Liberation Flag, which had four colors - black, green, white and red - representing four major dynasties of Arab history: Abbasids, Faṭimids, Umayyads, and Hashimites.

The Ba'ath Party came to power in Syria in 1963 in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.

Syria was put under emergency law in 1963 effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens. It was lifted in 2011 when civil war broke out.

In 1970 the moderate wing of the Ba'ath party, led by lieutenant general Hafiz al-Assad, secured power in a bloodless coup and in the following year Assad was elected president.

Syrian president Hafez al-Assad on a official portrait.

Hafiz al-Assad died of a heart attack on June 10, 2000. He was succeeded as president by his second-oldest son Bashar al-Assad (born September 11, 1965). He was also made commander in chief of the armed forces, and leader of the Ba'ath Party.

SYRIAN CIVIL WAR

The Syrian Civil War began on March 15, 2011, with demonstrations demanding the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad. The protests continued and the following month the Syrian Army fired on demonstrators across the country. After months of military battles, the protests turned into an armed rebellion.

About 11 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes by the Civil War. Five million have fled to neighboring countries.

Because of the ongoing Syrian Civil War, the value of Syria's overall exports has been slashed. It dropped, from the figure of US$12 billion in 2010 to only US$4 billion in 2012. Syria's oil and tourism industries in particular have been devastated. As of 2015, the Syrian economy relies upon inherently unreliable revenue sources such as dwindling customs and income taxes which are heavily bolstered by lines of credit from Iran. 

Syria was ranked last on the Global Peace Index from 2016 to 2018; it was deemed the most violent country in the world due to the civil war.

Palmyra offensive in March 2016. By Tasnim News Agency

Although Damascus (population 1.7 million) is the capital of Syria, for many decades the largest city was Aleppo. With an official population of 4.6 million in 2010, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War; however many parts of the city suffered massive destruction between 2012 and 2016 now Aleppo is probably the second-largest city in Syria after Damascus.

The Syrian rebel forces captured Damascus on December 8, 2024. This swift victory followed multiple successful offensives against the Assad regime, led to the flight of President Bashar al-Assad to Russia.

FUN SYRIA FACTS

Arabic is the official language of Syria. Aramaic was the lingua franca of the region before the advent of Arabic, and is still spoken among Assyrians.

According to a 2010 research by Michael Izady, 68.4% of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, 11.3% are Alawites, 11.2% are Christians and 3.2% are Druze, and 3.2% are Shias. However, since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, around 500,000 Christians have left the country.

Syria has competed at the Olympics since 1948 winning one gold, one silver and one bronze medal. The gold medal was won by Ghada Shouaa for the women's heptathlon in 1996.

The two most popular local beers in Syria are Al-Shark and Barada, both Government-owned.

Source Daily Express

Syphilis

Syphilis is a venereal disease caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum. It is most commonly spread through sexual activity, but may also be transmitted from mother to baby during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis. 

There are four stages of syphilis: the primary, secondary, latent, and tertiary stages. In each stage, the signs and symptoms of syphilis are different. In the primary stage, a person usually just has a wound on their skin, called a "chancre." In the secondary stage, a person usually gets a rash. In the "latent" stage, which can last for years, there are few or no symptoms.  If syphilis reaches the tertiary stage, which is the most severe, it causes many serious symptoms. These can include problems with the nervous system and the heart. Eventually, many people with tertiary syphilis will die if they do not get medical treatment.

Reddish papules and nodules due to secondary syphilis. By Herbert L. Fred, MD, Hendrik A. van Dijk,

Syphilis was first recorded in Europe in Naples, Italy, during a French invasion (Italian War of 1494–98). It is believed the disease originated in the Americas and was brought to Italy by the returning crewmen from Christopher Columbus' voyage across the Atlantic. 

Syphilis was initially known as the "French disease" by the people of Naples, "Italian disease" by the French, "Spanish disease" by the Dutch, and "Christian Disease" by the Turks.

In the 1500s, Scotland called syphilis "Grandgore"—the only European country that didn't shift the blame by naming it after another nation.

An early medical illustration of people with syphilis, Vienna, 1498

In leading the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean and an Eastern Empire, Vasco da Gama also inadvertently spearheaded the spread of syphilis as far east as Japan.

The pastoral name "syphilis" (the name of a character) was first used by the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro as the title of his Latin poem Syphilis sive morbus gallicus ("Syphilis or The French Disease"). It told of a shepherd boy named Syphilus who insulted Greek god Apollo and was punished by that god with a horrible disease. In this poem Fracastoro advanced the innovative theory that syphilis is spread by "seeds" sown by human contact.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, syphilis was one of the largest public health burdens in terms of prevalence, symptoms, and disability. 

The picture below is a portrait of Gerard de Lairesse by Rembrandt van Rijn, circa 1665–67. De Lairesse, himself a painter and art theorist, had congenital syphilis that deformed his face and eventually blinded him. 

The wigs that English judicial officials wear today were invented in the 16th century —to cover the baldness of syphilis.

Since smallpox and syphilis lesions look similar, many American Civil War soldiers got syphilis attempting to vaccinate themselves against smallpox.

In 1885 Arthur Conan Doyle was awarded a doctorate from Edinburgh for his dissertation on syphilis.

The causative organism of syphallis, Treponema pallidum, was first identified by Fritz Schaudinn and Erich Hoffmann in 1905.

Electron micrograph of Treponema pallidum on cultures of cotton-tail rabbit epithelium cells 

The first effective treatment for syphilis was Salvarsan (meaning "that which saves by arsenic"), developed in 1910 by Paul Ehrlich. For four years he and his assistants had tried hundreds of compounds with molecules not unlike dyes but containing arsenic, as a part of his program to find a "magic bullet" that could locate and destroy the disease microbes in the body with only minor damage to the patient. The six hundred and sixth one they tried was found to be effective against the Treponema pallidum bacterium.

Malaria was once used to treat syphilis.  Between 1917 and the mid 1940s,Viennese neurologist Dr. Wagner von Jauregg injected sufferers with malaria-infected blood, causing an extremely high fever that ultimately killed the disease. Jauregg won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1927 for the treatment. It remained in use until penicillin came along and gave doctors a better, safer way to cure the STD.

The effectiveness of the treatment of syphilis with penicillin was confirmed in trials in 1943. Before the discovery and use of Salvarsan and then antibiotics, mercury was often used with the result that the patient was often killed by the treatment. 

Syphilis became much less common after penicillin became available in the 1940s. In 1999 it is believed to have infected 12 million additional people, with greater than 90% of cases in the developing world. However, since 2000, Since 2000, rates of syphilis have been increasing in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and Europe, primarily among men who have sex with other males.

In 2015, Cuba became the first country in the world to eradicate mother to child transmission of syphilis.

Synagogue

The synagogue is a Greek word meaning simply a place of meeting. For the Jews it was at once the local place of worship, a court of law and a day school.

Princes Road synagogue, Liverpool

The first Temple at Jerusalem was built by Solomon c950BC. Public worship by the Jews was performed there until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586BC.

A form of worship grew up during the Jews' exile in Babylon, when it was not possible to sacrifice at the Temple, consisting of readings from the sacred Scriptures, a sermon, prayers and psalms. Instead, these services took place at the synagogue - a room and the Scrolls of the Law are all that is needed  At first a temporary solution, the synagogue proved in the long term a crucial element in the Jewish ability to worship anywhere.

From about the age of 6, Jesus Christ would have received some education from a teacher paid for by the Nazareth synagogue, using used what we now know as the Old Testament as his textbook.

The Bevis Marks synagogue is the oldest surviving synagogue in Britain. Built in 1701 for Spanish and Portuguese Sephardic Jews, it is located off Bevis Marks, in the City of London. With much carved woodwork and with galleries supported on columns, it was built in a style very similar to Christopher Wren's contemporary London churches.

Bevis Marks Synagogue. By Deror avi - 

The Congregation Shearith Israel often called The Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue – is the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. It was established in 1654, but it wasn't until the next century that the Congregation was able to build a synagogue of its own; It was built on Mill, now William, Street in lower Manhattan and was dedicated on April 8, 1730. 

Congregation Shearith Israel at Central Park West. By Gryffindor

The Beth Yaacov Synagogue, located in Madrid, Spain, holds historical significance as the first new synagogue to be built in the country since the Jews were expelled by Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, in 1492. It opened its doors in 1968 and has since served as a symbol of the revival of Jewish life and culture in Spain after centuries of absence.

The right to name Congregation Albert, a synagogue in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was auctioned off for $250.

The largest synagogue in the world is probably the Belz Great Synagogue, in Jerusalem, whose main sanctuary seats up to 10,000. Construction on the edifice lasted for over 15 years and the synagogue was dedicated in 2000.