Edith Cavell

Edith Cavell (1865-1915) was an English training nurse living in Belgium. When the First World War broke out, she was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk in the East of England. She returned to Brussels, where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross.

Cavell in a garden in Brussels with her two dogs before the outbreak of war

Cavell's strong Anglican beliefs propelled her to help all those who needed help. In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Cavell began sheltering British soldiers and funneling them out of occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands.

Edith Cavell was arrested on August 3, 1915 and charged with harboring Allied soldiers. The British nurse had been betrayed by Gaston Quien, who was later convicted by a French court as a collaborator.

Edith Cavell was executed by a German firing squad on October 12, 1915. The night before her execution, she told the Anglican chaplain Reverend Stirling Gahan, "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone." These words are inscribed on her statue in St Martin's Place, near Trafalgar Square in London.

George Bellows, The Murder of Edith Cavell, 1918, Princeton University Art Museum

Her heroism led Edith to become a popular name for girls in Belgium and France.

On June 23, 1940, Adolf Hitler, his forces having taken control of France, made his one and only trip during the war to Paris. Before he left, he ordered that a memorial to Edith Cavell be demolished.

The Church of England commemorates Cavell on October 12 in its calendar of saints. This is a memorial in her honour rather than formal canonisation, and so not a "saint's feast day" in the traditional sense. 

The Episcopal Church officially added Cavell to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar in 2022 with a feast day on October 12.

A mountain is named after her: Mount Edith Cavell, in Alberta, Canada.

Cave

On September 12, 1940, the entrance to Lascaux Cave in southwestern France was discovered by 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat. Ravidat returned to the scene with three friends, Jacques Marsal, Georges Agnel, and Simon Coencas, and entered the cave via a long shaft. The teenagers discovered that the cave walls were covered with paintings of animals, which were later estimated by experts to be 17,300 years old.

Cave painting of Aurochs, horses, and deer at Lascaux By Prof saxx Wikipedia

For years, scientists didn't know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths.

The floor of the Cave of Swallows in Aquismón, San Luis Potosí, Mexico has a 1092 feet (333-meter)) freefall drop from the lowest side of the opening, with a 370-meter (1,214 ft) drop from the highest side. The first documented exploration was on December 27, 1966 by T. R. Evans, Charles Borland and Randy Sterns.

The largest known cave shaft in the world—measured as the deepest single vertical drop—is Vrtoglavica Cave in Slovenia. Its 603 metres (1,979 feet) of uninterrupted vertical drop was measured in 1996 by Slovenian cavers. This means a person could fall over half a kilometre straight down without hitting a ledge—making it the deepest single shaft ever recorded.

Vrtoglavica holds the record for deepest single drop. Other cave systems, like Krubera Cave (Veryovkina Cave) in Georgia, are much deeper overall, but their depth is made up of multiple drops and passages rather than one massive shaft.

With 405 miles of surveyed passageways Mammoth Cave in Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park is by far the world's longest known cave system.

Movile Cave is a cave near Mangalia, Constanța County, Romania discovered by Cristian Lascu in 1986 a few kilometers from the Black Sea coast.  Life in the cave had been sealed off from the outside world for the past 5.5 million years and it is based completely on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. The atmosphere deep in the cave it like an alien planet, and to date over 69 unique species of flora and fauna have been discovered.

Up to 40 million people in China still live in caves. Called yaodong, many have electricity and running water.

More people actually live in caves now than during the Stone Age.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Sơn Đoòng Cave in Phong Nha-Kẻ Bàng National Park, Vietnam is the biggest known cave in the world. 30,000 foot long, it’s so big that it has its own river, jungle and climate.

At 2,212 meters (7,257 ft) deep,Veryovkina Cave in Abkhazia, Georgia is the deepest-known cave on Earth. Since 1982, a team known as "Perovo-speleo" has been researching and going deeper and deeper. In 2021, at a depth of  (1100m(3,600 ft), they found the body of a tourist.

In India there are 29 caves joined together which are filled with paintings from the Buddhist, Hindu  and Jainism religions. They were constructed in 520 BC and have a size of 8,242 ha, making it one of the largest man-made cave structures ever built.

Cooper Pedy is an Australian town that lies in the outback 850 kilometres north of Adelaide. Temperatures soar to between 35 and 45 degrees in the shade in summer sending more than half of its population of 4000 underground to live in caves carved underground to stay away from the heat.

The Legend of Zelda franchise was inspired by creator Shigeru Miyamoto's childhood fascination with exploring caves.

The first use of the term "man cave" is attributed to the 1993 publication, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

Cavalry

Polo was first played in Persia in the 6th century BC where it was used to train cavalrymen.

The historian, Livy (59 BC-17AD), related the story of Philip V of Macedonia (238-179 BC) who gave a number of fallen cavalrymen a public funeral in the hope that this would make his army more amenable to fight.

Sweden experimented with a Moose cavalry in the 1700s.

During the exceptionally cold winter of 1795, a French Hussar regiment captured the Dutch fleet on the frozen Zuiderzee, a bay to the northwest of the Netherlands. The French seized 14 warships and 850 guns. This is one of the only times in recorded history where a cavalry has captured a fleet.

The circus developed from the riding school in European cities of the late 18th century, often under the guidance of former cavalry officers.

The Battle of Brandy Station fought on June 9, 1863, around Brandy Station, Virginia was the largest predominantly cavalry engagement of the American Civil War, as well as the largest ever to take place on American soil. During this pivotal event, the Union and Confederate armies faced off in a display of military might and strategic maneuvering. The battlefield at Brandy Station became the backdrop for intense combat, as cavalry units from both sides clashed with determination and bravery.

The significance of the Battle of Brandy Station extends beyond its sheer scale. It represented a turning point in the Civil War, highlighting the evolving tactics and capabilities of cavalry forces. 

"Cavalry Charge Near Brandy Station, Virginia", a drawing by Edwin Forbes of the Battle of Brandy Station

The first book of rules for 'Sphairistike or Lawn Tennis' was published by retired British cavalryman Major Walter Clopton Wingfield in 1873.

Before Edgar Rice Burroughs  (1875-1950)  wrote his Tarzan books, he attended the Michigan Military Academy. Burroughs was a mediocre student and flunked his examination for West Point. He ended up as an enlisted soldier with the 7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory.

Giovanni Agnelli studied at a military academy, and became a cavalry officer before founding Fiat in 1899.

On 22 August 1914, a British cavalryman in the Great War fired in anger during combat, the first time that had happened on mainland Europe since the Battle of Waterloo 99 years earlier.

The October 31, 1917 World War I Battle of Beersheba featured the last successful cavalry charge in history. The Australian Mounted Division's 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments conducted a mounted infantry charge with bayonets in their hands, capturing Beersheba and part of the Yildirim Army Group garrison as it was withdrawing.

The charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba painted by George Lambert 

The 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts) was part of U.S. Army Forces Far East's Philippine Department, during World War II. The last US Cavalry regiment to engage in horse mounted warfare they once repulsed a Japanese Tank Assault at Binalonan, Pangasinan.

The last major cavalry charge in military history took place on August 24, 1942. 600 Italian cavalrymen charged a position of 2,000 Soviet soldiers at Izbushensky near the Don River, slashing with sabers and throwing hand grenades. Despite heavy losses, the Italians managed to dislodge the Soviets. 

Cavalier

The name “Cavalier” was used derogatorily in 1642 by supporters of Parliament to describe swaggering courtiers with long hair and swords, who reportedly welcomed the prospect of war.

During the civil war in England in the mid-1600s, the Cavaliers wore shoulder-length hair in ringlets.

Oliver Cromwell condemned the decadence of the cavalier's flowing hair, moustaches and beards. He believed beards were an icon of the bourgeois cavalier classes and as a result they were going out of fashion. 

Cauliflower

Broccoli and cauliflower are the only vegetables that are flowers.

The cauliflower is actually a flower that hasn’t developed yet.

The cauliflower is a member of the same vegetable family as broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts and cabbage.

The name cauliflower means “cabbage flower.”

The head of a cauliflower is called a curd.

China and India make up a whopping 73% of the world's cauliflower production.

The 'cauliflower creak' is the sound of cauliflowers growing so fast you can hear the florets rubbing together.

Cauliflowers are used in movie sound effects. Cracking one at the stem simulates the sound of human bone breaking.

Cattle

HISTORY OF CATTLE

Cattle are thought to have descended from middle eastern aurochs, which were large ox-like creatures.

It is believed that almost all cattle is descended from only 80 aurochs tamed in northern Mesopotamia about 10,000 years ago.

The last auroch was a female that was killed by a poacher in 1627 on a reserve near Warsaw, Poland.

Cattle branding was practiced 4,000 years ago. Old tomb paintings show Egyptians branding their fat, spotted cattle.

The Vikings brought European cattle to America about the year 1000. Their colony disappeared, however, and their cattle disappeared with it.

Columbus next brought European cattle to Hispaniola (Haiti) in 1493.

Cortez took Spanish cattle to what is now Mexico. Because of the great length of their horns, these cattle were called longhorns.

The first dairy cows in America were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1611.

The first Devon cattle reached what is now the United State in 1623. The ship Charity brought a consignment of red cattle (one bull and three heifers) from Devonshire to Edward Winslow, the agent for Plymouth Colony. These red cattle of Devonshire, brought in by the Pilgrims, were probably the first pure-bred cattle to reach North America

Beginning in 1742 with a bull calf from the cow Silver and two cows, Pidgeon and Mottle, inherited from his father's estate, Benjamin Tomkins is credited with founding the Hereford breed. This was 18 years before Robert Bakewell began developing his theories of animal breeding.

The selective breeding of cattle began in England in about 1770, with pioneer work by Robert Bakewell, an English farmer who lived between 1725 and 1795. His method was to pick a bull of good beef quality and mate it to a cow of similar good qualities. By carrying this plan of mating through several generations of cattle, he developed fine beef-type animals that usually had young of the same characteristics. His methods, qualified by later scientific discoveries in genetics, are still used by cattle breeders.

The Jersey breed of cattle originated on the Island of Jersey,  which is located in the English channel. The Jersey is one of the oldest dairy breeds,  the result of selected matings of the large, brindle cattle of Normandy and the small black cattle of Brittany. A 1789 law prohibiting the importation of cattle to the Isle of Jersey is still in effect.  Jerseys are the only cattle on the island.

The Jersey breed was known in England as early as 1771 and was regarded very favourably because of its milk and butterfat production. The first importations of Jerseys into the United States were in 1815.

Texas pioneers from the United States raised the longhorns. Their herds grew very large, and, soon after Texas joined the Union in 1845, Texans began driving cattle eastward to New Orleans and northeastward into Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. Still later they were driven to feed on the grasses of the northern Great Plains. Until the 1870s and the arrival of railroads in the West, the drives continued. The whole great ranching country of the West prospered with longhorn cattle. There the techniques of herding and branding were developed.

CATTLE FUN FACTS

The world's cattle population doubled, 1960-80.

There are 1 billion cattle in the world — 200,000,000 of those cattle are in India, where the slaughter of cows is largely illegal.

The pacu jawi (from Minangkabau, "bull race") is a traditional bull race in Tanah Datar, West Sumatra, Indonesia. During the race the jockey holds the tails of two bulls (male cattle) while they sprint across a muddy rice field.

By Rodney Ee - Pacu Jawi Final-45,

There are over 9 million beef and dairy cattle in New Zealand.

The word "cattle" comes from the Latin word "caput" which means property or capital.

Cows are the female animal once they have had a baby calf. Heifers are cows that haven't had a baby yet. Bulls are the males capable of mating and steers are bulls that have been castrated (only removing testicles). The general descriptor for the species as a whole is "cattle."

Cattle are the only mammals that pee backwards.

Cattle can produce up to 180 liters of saliva in one day.

The crossbreed of bison and domestic cattle is called a "Beefalo."

The word "maverick" came into use after Samuel Maverick, a Texan refused to brand his cattle. Eventually any unbranded calf became known as a 'maverick.'

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

Catholicism

The term “catholic” (a Greek word meaning “universal”) was used in the early 2nd century for the first time in a letter of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch, to the Smyrnaeans. He was also the first Christian writer to stress the Virgin Birth.

In 1054, the Church split in two, in the East-West Schism. The church in Western Europe which followed the Pope became known as the Roman Catholic Church, and the churches in the rest of the world which did not think that the Pope should lead all Christians became known as the Orthodox Church.

In Elizabethan England, following the Reformation, the Roman Catholic religion was outlawed and many lost their lives because of their faith.

In 1568 William Allen, an exiled English Catholic priest, founded a seminary at Douai in The Netherlands, to train English priests for the Catholic community in England. He desired to restore Roman Catholicism in his home country and wanted to ensure there was a supply of trained clergy ready when Catholicism was restored.

The "Devils Advocate" was an official position within the Catholic Church, which was established in 1587 during the reign of Pope Sixtus V.  The Devils Advocate would argue against any proposed sainthood in order to uncover any hidden or overlooked flaws.

Oliver Cromwell insisted on absolute freedom of religion for all except Roman Catholics. He allowed God fearing believers in his army from all denominations except the Catholics.

John Southworth was the last English Catholic priest to be executed in 1654.

When the Franciscan, John Wall, was executed in 1678, he became the last Roman Catholic to die for his faith in England.

In 1759, for the first time, the Pope gave his permission for the Bible to be translated into all languages of the Catholic states.

In England a 1778 Catholic Relief Act lifted some of the restrictions on Roman Catholics placing them in the same category as dissenters. There was opposition to the measure and  Lord George Gordon formed the Protestant Association to secure repeal of act. In London violent anti-Catholic riots led by Lord Gordon resulted in Catholic chapels being wrecked and prisons stormed by mobs drunk on gin from a burning distillery.

The first Roman Catholic Church to be built by Royal permission since the Reformation in Britain was constructed at East Lulworth, Dorset in 1782. George III authorized the building of the Rotunda, as the architect’s design made it look more like a house than a church.

Samuel Wesley, a son of Charles Wesley, become a Catholic in 1784. His Uncle John commented,  “You can be saved in any church and you can be damned in any church. What matters is how is your heart with Christ?”

The priests of Maryland petitioned Rome for a bishop for the United States. They were allowed to select the city for a cathedral and on a one-off basis to name the candidate for presentation to the pope. Father John Carroll was selected Bishop of Baltimore by the American clergy in April 1789 by a vote of 24 out of 26. On November 6, 1789, Pope Pius VI approved the election, naming Carroll the first Catholic bishop in the newly independent United States.

Portrait of Bishop John Carroll, by Gilbert Stuart

Stephen T. Badin, a French Catholic missionary who emigrated to America after the French Revolution, completed his studies at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland in 1793, becoming the first Catholic priest to be ordained in America.

In 1787 Bishop John Carroll proposed the establishment of a local Roman Catholic college in Georgetown, Maryland (now a part of Washington, D.C.) after the American Revolution allowed for the free practice of religion. Georgetown College, the first Catholic university in the United States, was founded on January 23, 1789. Future Congressman William Gaston was enrolled as the school's first student on November 22, 1791, and instruction began on January 2, 1792.

John Carroll published his proposals for a school at Georgetown in 1787, 

King George III forced the British prime minister, William Pitt, to resign in 1801, when he refused to allow Catholic Emancipation, using his weapon of threatened madness to defeat him.

Bishop John Carroll oversaw the construction of the first cathedral in the 13 United States, The Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore. It was designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the United States Capitol. The cornerstone of the cathedral was laid on July 7, 1806, by Carroll, but he did not live to see its completion.

Carroll lays the cornerstone for the Cathedral of the Assumption in Baltimore

Work on The Basilica of the Assumption in Baltimore was completed in 1821. It is the oldest cathedral in continuous use in the Unites States.

The UK Home Secretary, Robert Peel, carried through the Catholic Relief Act on March 24, 1829, which repealed the penal laws against the 200,000 British and Irish Catholics.

By Issagm at en.wikipedia - Wikipedia Commons

In 1850 Rome re-established a hierarchy in England and Wales with 12 bishops in territorial dioceses under the archbishop of Westminster. The first Cardinal Archbishop was the celebrated scholar and bishop Nicholas Wiseman.

The Knights of Columbus, the world's largest Catholic fraternal service organization, was founded on March 29, 1862.  Started by Father Michael J. McGivney in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1882, it was named in honor of the mariner Christopher Columbus.

Originally serving as a mutual benefit society to working class and immigrant Catholics in the United States, The Knights of Columbus developed into a fraternal benefit society dedicated to providing charitable services, promoting Catholic education and Catholic public policy positions, and actively defending Catholicism in various nations. As of 2015 there were 1,918,122 knights, and membership has grown each year for 44 consecutive years.

George W. Bush greets Fourth Degree Knights at the 122nd Annual Convention.

Pope Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, a list of 80 errors regarding the social, political and economical life of the 19th century. This ultra conservative document was an attack against the liberal forces, condemning many modern ideas such as socialism and secular education, which the pope associated with secularisation and anti-clericalism. It highlighted how the mid-nineteenth century Catholic church opposed progress and modernisation.

The Roman Catholic Specialized Association for Priests was founded in London in 1866, with a training house for missionaries to be sent throughout the British Empire.

The 1869 First Vatican Council was called by Pope Pius IX to deal with the many challenges to church authority perceived in the growth of democracy, socialism, industrialisation and secularism in general.

On becoming Pope, Leo XIII started working to reconcile the Catholic church and the modern world. He declared in 1879 Thomas Aquinas’ Scholastic system that science and religion could live together to be the official Catholic philosophy.

In 1961 Pope John XXIII issued an encyclical, Mater et Magistra, in which he sought reconciliation, unity and co-operation between individuals, social groups and denominations. For the first time the papacy was stressing the need for technologically advanced countries to help emerging nations by using their technological skills.

In 1966 The Catholic Church abolished its list of Forbidden Books, which had existed since the sixteenth century. By 1948 over 4,000 titles had been censored including works by Erasmus, Defoe, Descartes and Immanuel Kant.

A new updated Catechism was initiated by Pope John Paul II in 1984, the first since 1566. It was the product of years of work by 12 cardinals. The 690–page document covered Catholic belief about God, the Sacraments, prayer and morality based on the Ten Commandments. It significantly lengthens a long list of existing sins. Amongst the new transgressions were speeding, artificial insemination, embryo research and taking too many aspirin.

In an 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II stated in unequivocal terms his opposition to abortion, birth control, genetic manipulation, and euthanasia, and employed the church's strongest language to date against capital punishment.

On the first Sunday in the first Lent of Christianity's third millennium at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica Pope John Paul II apologized for Catholicism's history of "violence in the service of truth." He declared "that the Church “should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters.”

In 2013, the number of followers of the Catholic Church was 1.253 billion – comprising 17.7% of the global population. This is a dramatic increase from the figured in 1950, wherein only 437 million people followed Catholicism and 654 million in 1970.

Japan has had three Catholic prime ministers: Hara Takashi, Shigeru Yoshida and Taro Aso. That's more than the amount of Catholic prime ministers of Britain and Catholic presidents of the US combined.

The Catholic Church is the largest land owner in New York City.

The Catholic Church runs 26% of the world’s hospitals.

Source Holyart