North Carolina

HISTORY

In 1584, Sir Walter Raleigh sent out 108 colonists from Plymouth, England under his cousin Sir Richard Grenville to establish two colonies in what is now known as North Carolina. One of these, the Roanoke Colony later became known as the Lost Colony, the settlers having disappeared without trace by 1590.

Map of the coast of Virginia and North Carolina, drawn 1585–1586 by Theodor de Bry

Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, was born in the Roanoke Colony.

Manteo, a Native American Croatan Indian, was the chief of a local tribe that befriended the English settlers who landed at Roanoke Island.  On Sunday, August 13, 1587, Manteo was christened on Roanoke Island, making him the first Native American to be baptized into the Church of England.

Manteo

The first permanent settlers in North Carolina came from the state of Virginia in 1655 as there was not enough farmland in their previous residence.

The name Carolina comes from the Latin for Charles (Carolus) after King Charles I of England.

The Province of Carolina was granted by charter in 1663 to eight Lords Proprietor in reward for their assistance in restoring Charles II of England to the throne.

In 1722 the land was divided into present day North Carolina and South Carolina.

Thomas Jefferson's father, Colonel Peter Jefferson, was a land surveyor who was one of the surveyors who laid out the virginal North Carolina border.

North Carolina made the smallest per-capita contribution to the Revolutionary War of any state, as only 7,800 men joined the Continental Army under General George Washington.

In 1789 North Carolina ratified the United States Constitution and was admitted as the 12th U.S. State.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the oldest public universities in the United States, received its charter on December 11, 1789. The university first began enrolling students in 1795, and was the only one to award degrees in the 18th century,

Old East Residence Hall, built in 1793. By Caroline Culler Wikipedia

In 1860, North Carolina was a slave state. About one third  of the people in the state were slaves.

North Carolina fought as part of the Confederacy during the Civil War, although it was the last of the states to leave the Union. The state sent about 125,000 troops to fight in the war and about 40,000 of them died.

Shaw University, the first historically black university in the United States, was founded in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1865.

The largest house in the world was built in Asheville, North Carolina in 1885. Biltmore House has 250 rooms and is on an estate of 12,000 acres.

The first powered flight took place at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903. Orville Wright flew in his Wright Flyer One for 12 seconds at a height of 500 feet and covered 37,120 feet.

WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provided the world's first internet radio broadcast in 1994.

FUN FACTS

As of 2015, there was about 10,042,802 people living in North Carolina.

North Carolina topographic map. The Appalachian Mountains brown, the Piedmont yellow, and Atlantic Coastal Plain green

It is against the law to sing out of tune in North Carolina.

North Carolina produces with 1.2 billion pounds of sweet potatoes a year.

North Carolina is the largest producer of tobacco in the United States, growing nearly 375 million pounds per year.

Charlotte, the biggest city in North Carolina, is the second biggest banking center in the United States, making banking very important in North Carolina. BB&T and Bank of America have their main offices in the state.

Charlotte skyline. By Riction - Wikipedis Commons

Charlotte is the only major U.S. city where a one-bedroom apartment is actually cheaper than a studio, on average.

North Carolina has more state maintained roads than any other American state.

North America

HISTORY

The original people of North America lived in a wide range of environments. On the grass plains of the Midwest they hunted to extinction several American species, including the camel and mammoth. On the east side of the continent there were woodlands, where they killed elk and deer.

The cultivation of crops in America begins in the Tehuacan valley, southeast of the present-day Mexico City. Squash and chili were the earliest plants to be grown around 5000 BC soon followed by maize and then by beans and gourds.

Satellite imagery of North America.

The early crops that were grown in North America were all species which needed to be individually planted, rather than their seeds being scattered or sown over broken ground, as there were no animals in America at this time strong enough to pull a plough.

Bjarni Herjólfsson, a 10th century Norse explorer, is believed to have been the first European to sight North America in 986 while blown off course for Greenland. Despite begging from his crew to explore, he refused to stop and look around. He was later criticized by King Eric of Norway for his lack of investigation

Leif Erikson, the first known European to have set foot on North America, made landfall at three places on the continent around 1000 AD, one of which he named Vinland - the land of wine.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus sighted a Bahamian island, believing he had reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, becoming the first European to set foot in North America since Leif Erikson.

Christopher Columbus never set foot on mainland North America.

When Columbus returned to Spain he bought back with him the previously unknown tobacco plant, the pineapple fruit, the turkey and the chili pepper.. In his log he wrote "there is also plenty of ají, which is their pepper, which is more valuable than [black] pepper, and all the people eat nothing else, it being very wholesome"

Genoese navigator John Cabot discovered the mainland of North America. Little is known about his life. About 1490 he settled in Bristol, England, and set sail in 1497 with two ships, accompanied by his three sons. They made landfall somewhere on the coast of North America on June 24, 1497. The exact location of the landfall has long been disputed, with historians proposing either Newfoundland or Cape Breton Island (Nova Scotia) as the most likely places.

John Cabot in traditional Venetian garb by Giustino Menescardi (1762). 

America was named after either Italian cartographer Amerigo Vespucci or English merchant Richard Amerike, the money-man behind British ship Matthew, which discovered the North American mainland in 1497.

The Spanish established the first permanent settlement at St. Augustine, Florida in 1565. At St Augustine there was the first introduction of cattle, horses, pigs, and sheep into North America.

Map of North America, from 1621.

French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle explored the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, the Mississippi River, and the Gulf of Mexico between the late 1660s and his death in 1687. He was probably the first white man to visit the mid-west of North America.

France formally ceded much of its North American land to the British in the Treaty of Paris, after Great Britain's victory over France and Spain during the Seven Years' War. The treaty signed February 10, 1763 marked the beginning of an era of British dominance outside Europe.

Scottish-Canadian explorer Alexander Mackenzie was the first recorded person to complete a transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico, He reached the westernmost point of his journey on July 22, 1793 and inscribed his name on a rock near the water's edge of Dean Channel. Mackenzie wrote the message with a reddish paint made of vermilion and bear grease, and turned back east.

Inscription on a stone at the end of Alexander Mackenzie's 1792–1793 Canada crossing  Wikipedia

President Thomas Jefferson commissioned an expedition shortly after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 to explore and to map the newly acquired territory, to find a practical route across the western half of North America to the Pacific Ocean. The leaders of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, left St. Louis with 33 volunteers on May 14, 1804. They arrived at the Pacific Coast of Oregon in November 1805 and returned to St Louis on September 23, 1806.

The final boundaries of the southern United States were formed creating North and South America on December 30, 1853.

The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1950.

In 1967, 75 per cent of the North American population resided within 500 miles of Niagara Falls.

FUN FACTS

North America covers an area of about 9,540,000 square miles (24,709,000 square kilometers), about 16.5% of the earth's land area and about 4.8% of its total surface.

 It is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa

In 2013, North America's population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7.5% of the world's population, if the Caribbean is included. It is the 4th most populous continent.

There are eight time zones in North America.

America roughly translates in Chinese to 'beautiful country'.

Due to obesity, North America has 6% of the world's population and 34% of the world's human biomass.

In 1990, the most obese state in America still had a lower rate than the least obese state in America today.

The lowest ever temperature in North America was set on February 3, 1947, when the mercury dropped to a bone-chilling −63.0 °C (−81.4 °F) in Snag, Yukon. This small village is located near the Alaska border, and it is known for its harsh climate. The extreme cold was a result of a combination of clear skies, calm winds, and frigid Arctic air masses typical in the region during winter.

Source Historyworld.net

Normans

NORMAN HISTORY

During the early 10th century, the incursions of Vikings into the rivers of France evolved into more permanent encampments. The Duchy of Normandy in north France, was established in 911 by the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte between a Norse chieftain named Rollo and the Frankish King Charles The Simple.

Rollo was said to have been so big that no horse could be found to carry him.

Statue of Rollo in Rouen. By Frédéric BISSON from Rouen, France - Wikipedia

The Normans successfully established a foothold in Southern Italy in 1017, after the Lombards there had asked for their help in fighting against the Byzantine Empire. The Normans liked it so much they invaded it themselves.

In 1066 the Normans, under the leadership of William The Conqueror, invaded England in Viking longships with fortified platforms for archers.

The invasion culminated in the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066. William's claim to the English throne derived from his familial relationship with the childless Anglo-Saxon King Edward the Confessor, who had died nine months earlier and was succeeded by his brother-in-law Harold Godwinson.

The invading Normans brought with them to England pre-built wooden castles with planks already cut to size. Within 40 years of the Norman Conquest, around 1,000 castles had been built.

The motte and bailey defences of Launceston Castle in England. By Chris Shaw, Wikipedia

William the Conqueror was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on December 25, 1066, although he still faced rebellions over the following years and was not secure on his throne until after 1072.

Coronation of William the Conqueror.

The Norman conquest of England put an end to 500 years of Anglo-Saxon rule. Within 20 years of the conquest, the entire English aristocracy had lost its land and wealth.

NORMAN LIFE

The Norman lord wore his hair in an extraordinary style, the whole of the back of his head shaved bare, but with hair left long over the forehead and front.

After the Norman Conquest of the still long-haired English, continental fashion changed, requiring beards and long curled hair, filled out with false hair.

Norman clothing was simple, often made from wool, which had been spun into thread by the women and children, and sometimes woven locally. Some cloth and leather though, would probably have to be bought at the market in the nearest town.

Victorian interpretation of the Normans' national dress, 1000–1100

The Normans were rather partial to rabbit pie and stew.

Britain was rabbit free until William Of Conqueror bought with him a colony of bunnies.

After the Norman Conquest of England, nobles referred to the meat they ate in French, but the peasants who raised animals for meat referred to them in Anglo-Saxon. This is why modern English has words such as beef and pork for meat, but cow and pig for the animals it comes from.

Source Daily Express

Noodle

The Chinese began grinding wheat into flour with a grindstone, instead of cooking it whole around 250 BC. They mixed the flour with water to make a dough, which they steamed and boiled. From the mixture they made noodles, which by the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD) had become a staple food for the population.

Misua noodle Chinese noodle noodle-making Lukang Town, Taiwan Province

The earliest written record of noodles is found in a book dated to the Eastern Han period (25–220 AD.)

When the composer Giuseppe Verdi needed inspiration, he had a bowl of noodle soup.

Characterized by its use of kansui—the mixture of baking soda and water that gives ramen noodles their chewy texture and characteristic yellow color—and meat broth, the popular Japanese dish ramen is actually Chinese. It was introduced to Japan in the 1910s and was originally known as “shina soba”: shina for China, soba for the noodle dish already well established in Japanese cuisine.

Simon Sang Sung of Singapore holds the Guinness World Record for most noodle strings made from a single lump of dough in 59.29 seconds. He made a total of 8,192 noodles, which is a rate of 138 noodles per second. This record was set on July 31, 1994, at the Singapore Food Festival. 

To achieve this record, Sung used a special type of dough that was made with high-gluten flour. He also used a special noodle-making machine that was able to produce the noodles at a very fast rate. Sung's record-breaking performance was made possible by his years of experience as a noodle maker. He began learning the craft at a young age from his father, who was also a noodle maker.

The world record for the longest noodle was broken in December 2017 after chefs from Chinese company Xiangnian Food Co. Ltd successfully cooked a single strip measuring a whopping 3,084 m (10,119 ft 1.92 in). Noodles are a symbol of longevity in China, so the Chinese company broke the record in light of their Seniors’ Day.

Instant noodles were invented by Momofuku Ando of Nissin Foods in Japan. They were launched in 1958 under the brand name Chikin Ramen.

Ando deliberately picked chicken as the staple of his noodle empire because there is not a single culture, religion or country that forbids the eating of chicken.

Cup Noodles were invented in 1971. The idea for them came after Momofuku Ando watched American supermarket executives break up his ramen to fit into styrofoam coffee cups, add boiling water and then proceed to eat the ramen with forks.

In 2005, Momofuku Ando invented Space Ramen, made to be eaten in a weightless environment.

There is a whole museum detailing the creative process of Momofuku Ando, the inventor of Chikin Ramen,

In the year 2000, Japanese citizens voted that instant noodles are the best national invention of the 20th century.

Today there are 95 billion servings of instant noodles eaten every year.

China consumes 42 billion packages of instant noodles per year – nearly half of the world's consumption at 44%.

Only around 300 people in the world know the 300-year-old traditional preparation of the Chinese Nanshan noodle.

There are 80,000 ramen shops throughout Japan.

Every year, Tokyo ramen chain Menya Musashi offers a special chocolate ramen during the first two weeks of February.

A new study for the American Sociological Association found that the most popular prison currency is no longer cigarettes, but ramen noodles.

It would cost you only about $140 a year if you ate ramen for every meal.

Noise

Around 600 BC, roosters and tinsmiths were banned in Sybaris, Greece because of their noise.

Before the Industrial Revolution, the principal sources of noise were cannon fire, church bells and thunder.

The scientific unit of sound intensity is the decibel. A decibel is one tenth of a Bel, which was named after telecommunications pioneer Alexander Graham Bell.

Alexander Graham Bell

One decibel (1dB) is the smallest difference in sound level the human ear can detect.

A 64-year-old Sydney man Henry Romanowski filed 19,600 noise complaints about airport noise over a 12 month period in 2011-12. He averaged approximately one complaint for every 20 minutes, which comprised almost two-thirds of all aircraft noise complaints made to Airservices Australia in Sydney over the period.

Annalisa Flanagan, a primary school teacher in Finaghy, south Belfast is listed in the Guinness Book Of Records for the loudest shout. Ironically it happened when she yelled the word "quiet" at a Citybus shouting contest in 1994, reaching an impressive 121.7 dB.

The quietest place on Earth is in a small studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The anechoic chamber at Orfield Laboratories was certified by the Guinness Book of Records at --13 dBA in 2013 in a one hour measurement. That is so quiet you can hear the internal workings of your body.

Human shouting usually registers under 90dB. A howler monkey registers about 128.

The loudest land animal is the Howler monkey whose deep growls can travel up to three miles in the forest.

The water boatman can sing with its penis. It rubs said part against its abdomen, thereby producing a sound. Such is the volume level that the insect ranks as the loudest creature in the world relative to its size.

The blue whale can produce sounds of up to 188 decibels, louder than a jet engine at take-off, and their calls have been detected 530 miles away.

However, the blue whale is not actually the loudest animal on Earth. The sperm whale is louder: its communicative clicks have been measured at 230 dB.

The loudest noise ever recorded was the eruption of the Krakatoa in 1883. The sound ruptured the ear drums of sailors 40 miles away and was heard in Australia over 2,000 miles away from the blast.

Since sound can travel through water better than it can air, the potential number of decibels is greatly increased. LFA Sonar used by ships and submarines is the loudest man made noise, reaching 200+ decibels. Marine biologists believe that sea creatures may beach themselves to escape the sound.

A 240 decibel soundwave is enough to make your head resonate so much that it explodes.

There is a a steady, droning sound in parts of the world that only certain members of the population can hear. The mysterious "hum" can be heard in places as disparate as Taos, New Mexico, Windsor, Ontario, Bristol, England; and Largs, Scotland. About two percent of the people living in any given Hum-prone area can hear the sound, and the majority of them are ages 55 to 70.

The Tulsa Center of the Universe is an acoustic anomaly located in Oklahoma. When one stands in the center of the circle and makes a noise, that noise is echoed back several times louder than it was made, but no one standing outside the circle can hear a thing.

There is no noise in space whatsoever. Physicians state that in order for the sound to emerge the sound wave needs a medium. On Earth atmosphere is the medium and that is how we hear sounds. However, there is no atmosphere in space, so no sounds can be heard.

Source Daily Express

Nobel Prize

ALFRED NOBEL

Alfred Bernhard Nobel (October 21, 1833 –December 10, 1896) was a Swedish chemist and millionaire, who invented dynamite and established almost 100 arms factories.

Alfred Nobel

His father was Immanuel Nobel, the inventor of plywood.

The Nobel Prizes came about when a brother of Nobel died and a French newspaper mistakenly printed Alfred's obituary under the headline: "The merchant of death is dead." Desperate to leave a positive legacy, he decided to bequeath his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes.

Nobel signed his last will and testament, setting aside the bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after his death on November 27, 1895.

THE NOBEL PRIZE

Nobel's will instituted the prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine.  In 1968, Sweden's central bank added a prize for Economics in memory of Nobel.

A golden medallion with an embossed image of Alfred Nobel facing left in profile Wikipedia

All the prizes are awarded in Sweden, except the Peace Prize, which is announced in Norway because of a request in Nobel's will.

No more than three recipients may share a Nobel Prize.

FIRSTS

The first Nobel Prizes were awarded on December 10, 1901.

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on December 10, 1906 for his role in mediating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, which had been raging since 1904. Roosevelt's efforts to bring the two warring nations to the negotiating table were instrumental in bringing about a peaceful settlement, and his work was recognized by the Nobel Committee with the prestigious award. This made Roosevelt the first American to ever win a Nobel Prize.

The first black Nobel Peace Prize winner was Ralph J. Bunche, who won in 1950 for his mediation efforts in Palestine.

RECORDS

Saint Lucia has won more Nobel prizes per head of population than any other country.

Lawrence Bragg won the prize for physics in 1915 at the age of 25, the youngest-ever winner.

Linus Pauling (chemistry and peace) and Marie Curie (chemistry and physics) are the only winners of two Nobel Prizes in different disciplines. Pauling is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes: the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962.

Marie Curie, one of four people who have received the Nobel Prize twice

John Bardeen (physics) and Frederick Sanger (chemistry) each won two Nobels in the same discipline.

FUN FACTS

The Nobel Peace Prize can not be awarded to a dead person.

Mahatma Gandhi was nominated for the peace prize several times but never won. The Nobel Committee declined to award a prize in 1948, the year of Gandhi's death, on the grounds that "there was no suitable living candidate." The Nobel committee has said this is the 'greatest omission' in its history.

Although the Scots comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the world's population, 11 percent of all Nobel prizes have been awarded to Scotsmen.

Table at the 2005 Nobel Banquet in Stockholm. By Hansbaer - Wikipedia

Jews are only about 0.2% of the worlds population but account for about 20% of Nobel Laureates.

William Faulkner's screenplay for Ernest Hemingway's 1944 novel To Have and Have Not marks the only time in film history that two Nobel Prize-winning authors were associated with the same motion picture.

Eight Nobel Prize winners had birthdays on February 28. No other date has as many.

The singer Olivia Newton-John's grandfather Max Born won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1954.

Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner was a Hungarian American theoretical physicist and mathematician. He received half of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles." On hearing of being awarded the Nobel Prize, Wigner confessed that he had "never expected to get my name in the newspapers without doing something wicked."

Noah

NOAH'S ARK

Thousands of years ago the Hebrew farmer Noah was the only person left who remembered God and his creation. The world was flooded with evil and God's response to the severe situation was to have Noah and his family build an ark that enabled them to survive a widespread flood over the Earth. The rest of humanity was wiped out.

According to Book of Genesis, the Ark was 450ft by 75ft and 45ft high- that is taller than a three-storey building and with a deck size of 36 tennis courts.

Noah was the first great ship builder and his ark was constructed out of cypress wood.

The Building of Noah's Ark (painting by a French master of 1675).

On board his ark Noah included at least one pair of every kind of animal, (seven pairs of every type of clean animal, which was used for sacrifice.) Noah needed around 40,000 animals to represent every kind of creature.

Biblical scholars have long asserted November 25, 2348 to be the day of the Great Deluge, or Flood.

After the Great Flood the Hebrew Noah landed his ark on the summit of the Ararat mountain range - the highest part of the Caucasus, where grapes originated. He alighted from the ark, planted a vineyard and got drunk on some of its wine.

After the great flood it is said that Noah made a pudding with all the food remaining on board: beans, chickpeas, dried fruits, nuts, rice and wheat.

The name Noah means 'rest'.

A group of fourth year master's students from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester calculated that Noah's ark, built to accommodate at least two of every animal species, would have floated using the dimensions ordained in the Bible.

Various replicas of the Ark exist. The one at Johan's Ark in Dordrecht, Netherlands is the only full-scale Ark interpretation that is actually floating and mobile.

Replica of Noah's Ark in Dordrecht, Netherlands. By Ceinturion - Wikipedia

OTHER ACCOUNTS OF THE GREAT FLOOD

Other people groups recount similar stories such as the Babylonian flood tale from the Epic of Gilgameash.

The Bakossi people of the Mungo River in Cameroon have a legend that their ancestor Ngoe built an ark to save his family and many animals from a great flood.

Noah, or Nug, is one of the main prophets of Islam. In the Quran, his wife is said to drown in the flood.

An Islamic depiction of Noah in a 16th-century Mughal miniature.

Source Food For Thought by Ed Pearce