Joseph de Ca'th Lon loves Archaeology,History and Anthropology.Malta is a great opportunity to enjoy the most amazing Megalithic Temples and discoverthepast of the Humanity. Today, he's visiting the TarxienTemples with TheGrandma.
The Tarxien Temples are an archaeological complex in Tarxien. They date to approximately 3150 BC.
The site was accepted as a UNESCOWorld Heritage Site in 1992 along with the other Megalithic temples on the island of Malta. The Tarxien
consist of three separate, but attached, temple structures. The main
entrance is a reconstruction dating from 1956, when the whole site was
restored. At the same time, many of the decorated slabs discovered on
site were relocated indoors for protection at the Museum of Archaeology in Valletta.
The first temple has been dated to approximately 3100 BC and is the most elaborately decorated of the temples of Malta. The middle temple dates to about 3000 BC, and is unique in that, unlike the rest of the Maltese temples, it has three pairs of apses instead of the usual two.The east temple is dated at around 3100 BC. The remains of another temple, smaller, and older, having been dated to 3250 BC, are visible further towards the east.
Of particular interest at the temple site is the rich and intricate stonework, which includes depictions of domestic animals carved in relief, altars, and screens decorated with spiral designs and other patterns.
Demonstrative
of the skill of the builders is a chamber set into the thickness of the
wall between the South and Central temples and containing a relief showing a bull and a sow.
Excavation of the site reveals that it was used extensively for
rituals, which probably involved animal sacrifice. Especially
interesting is that Tarxien provides rare insight into how the megaliths were constructed: stonerollers were left outside the South temple.
Additionally,
evidence of cremation has been found at the center of the South temple,
which is an indicator that the site was reused as a Bronze Age cremation cemetery.
The large stone blocks were discovered in 1914 by local farmers ploughing a field. After the accidental discovery of the nearby Tarxien hypogeum
in 1913, the proprietor of the land underneath which the temples were
buried figured that the large stones that were continually struck by
workers' ploughs may also have had some archaeological value.
On that notion, he contacted the director of the National Museum, Sir Themistocles Zammit,
who began to dig even on his first inspection of the site, where he
discovered the center of the temple compound. It was not long before Zammit found himself standing in what appeared to be an apse formed by a semicircle of enormous hewn stones.
Over the course of three years, Zammit enlisted the help of local farmers and townspeople for an excavation project of unprecedented scale in Malta. By 1920, Zammit
had identified and carried out restoration work on five separate but
interconnected temples, all yielding a remarkable collection of
artifacts, including the famous Fat Ladystatue, a representation of a Mother Goddess or a fertility charm, according to the Malta Archaeological Museum, the Fat Ladystatue is sexless, and could represent either a man or a woman, and several unique examples of prehistoric relief, including ships.
The temples were included on the Antiquities List of 1925. Further excavations at the temples were conducted in the post-World War II period under the directorship of Dr. J.G. Baldacchino.
Protective tent-like shelters, similar to those at Ħaġar Qim and Mnajdra, were built around the Tarxien Temples in 2015, and were completed in December of that year.
The discovery of the complex did much to further Malta's national identity, solidly confirming the existence of a thriving ancient culture on the island.
Also, the general interest aroused by the finds engendered for the first time a public
concern for the protection of Malta's historical treasures, including a
need for management of the sites, the promulgation of laws, and other
measures to protect and preserve monuments.
At the same time, Sir Themistocles' thorough method in excavating the site paved the way for a new scientific approach to archaeology.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about the British colonization of Egypt, and about the Nile, the longest river in Africa.She has remembered a trip along the river with her friends ClaireFontaine, TinaPicotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon, TonyiTamaki and Jordi Santanyí.Itwas an incredible experience to remember and explain.
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest river in the world, though this has been contested by research suggesting that the Amazon River is slightly longer.
Of the world's major rivers, the Nile is one of the smallest, as measured by annual flow in cubic metres of water. About 6,650 km long, its drainage basin covers eleven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan, and Egypt.
In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan. Additionally, the Nile is an important economic river, supporting agriculture and fishing.
The Nile has two major tributaries -the White Nile and the Blue Nile. The White Nile is traditionally considered to be the headwaters stream. However, the BlueNile is the source of most of the water of the Nile downstream, containing 80% of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region. It begins at Lake Victoria and flows through Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast. The two rivers meet at the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the NubianDesert to Cairo and its large delta, and the river flows into the Mediterranean Sea at Alexandria. Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river and its annual flooding since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of the Aswan Dam. Nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt developed and are found along river banks. The Nile is, with the Rhône and Po, one of the three Mediterranean rivers with the largest water discharge.
The standard English names White Nile and Blue Nile refer to the river's source, derived from Arabic names formerly applied to only the Sudanese stretches that meet at Khartoum.
In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥ'pī (Hapy) or Iteru, meaning river. In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, pronounced piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic), means the river, and comes from the same ancient name. In Nobiin the river is called Áman Dawū, meaning the great water. In Luganda the river is called Kiira or Kiyira. In Runyoro it is called Kihiira. In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called en-Nīl, while in Standard Arabic it is called an-Nīl. In Biblical Hebrew, it is הַיְאוֹר, Ha-Ye'or or הַשִׁיחוֹר, Ha-Shiḥor.
The English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος. Beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. Homer called the river Αἴγυπτος, Aiguptos, but in subsequent periods, Greek authors referred to its lower course as Neilos; this term became generalised for the entire river system. Thus, the name may derive from Ancient Egyptian expression nꜣ rꜣw-ḥꜣw(t) the mouths of the front parts, which referred specifically to the branches of the Nile transversing the Delta, and would have been pronounced ni-lo-he in the area around Memphis in the 8th century BCE. Hesiod at his Theogony refers to Nilus (Νεῖλος) as one of the Potamoi (river gods), son of Oceanus and Tethys.
Another derivation of Nile might be related to the term Nil, which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original sources of indigo dye. Another may be Nymphaea caerulea, known as The Sacred Blue Lily of the Nile, which was found scattered over Tutankhamun's corpse when it was excavated in 1922. Another possible etymology derives from the Semitic term Nahal, meaning river. Old Libyan has the term lilu, meaning water (in modern Berber ilel ⵉⵍⴻⵍ means sea).
With a total length of about 6,650 km between the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is among the longest rivers on Earth. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,254,555 square kilometers, about 10% of the area of Africa. Compared to other major rivers, though, the Nile carries little water (5% of that of the Congo River, for example). The Nile basin is complex, and because of this, the discharge at any given point along the main stem depends on many factors including weather, diversions, evaporation and evapotranspiration, and groundwater flow.
Upstream from Khartoum (to the south), the river is known as the White Nile, a term also used in a limited sense to describe the section between Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum, the river is joined by the Blue Nile. The White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia. Both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift.
Below the Aswan Dam, at the northern limit of Lake Nasser, the Nile resumes its historic course. North of Cairo, the Nile splits into two branches (or distributaries) that feed the Mediterranean: the Rosetta Branch to the west and the Damietta to the east, forming the Nile Delta.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of their closest friends ClaireFontaine, Joseph de Ca'thLon, Tonyi Tamaki, LauraCollins, Tina Picotes and Jordi Santanyí. They have celebrated Sant Jordi together.
Sant Jordi is the patron of Catalonia and much more places and his origin is unknown. Some studies talk about his Palestinian origin while other talk about his Egyptian one.
The Grandma has been reading the legend of Saint Jordi based in The Golden Legend, in Latin Legenda aurea or Legenda sanctorum, the collection of hagiographies by Jacobus de Voragine that was widely read in late medieval Europe. More than a thousand manuscripts of the text have survived. It was likely compiled around the years 1259–1266, although the text was added to over the centuries.
Georgius tribunus, genere Cappadocum, pervenit quadam vice in provinciam Libyae in civitatem, quae dicitur Silena. Iuxta quam civitatem erat stagnum instar maris, in quo draco pestifer latitabat, qui saepe populum contra se armatum in fugam converterat flatuque suo ad muros civitatis accedens omnes inficiebat.
Quapropter compulsi, cives duas oves quotidie sibi dabant, ut eius furorem sedarent, alioquin sic muros civitatis invadebat et aerem inficiebat, quod plurimi interibant. Cum ergo iam oves paene deficerent (maxime cum harum copiam habere non possent), inito consilio ovem cum adiuncto homine tribuebant.
Cum igitur sorte omnium filii et filiae hominum darentur et sors neminem exciperet, et iam paene omnes filii et filiae essent consumpti, quadam vice filia regis unica sorte est deprehensa et draconi adiudicata.
Tunc rex contristatus ait: «Tollite aurum et argentum et dimidium regni mei et filiam mihi dimittite, ne taliter moriatur.»
Quod rex videns coepit filiam suam flere dicens: «Heu me, filia mea dulcissima, quid de te faciam? Aut quid dicam? Quando plus videbo nuptias tuas?» Et conversus ad populum dixit: «Oro, ut indutias octo dierum lugendi mihi filiam tribuatis.»
Quod cum populus admisisset, in fine octo dierum reversus populus est cum furore dicens: «Quare perdis populum tuum propter filiam tuam! En omnes afflatu draconis morimur.»
Tunc, rex, videns quod non posset filiam liberare, induit eam vestibus regalibus et amplexatus eam cum lacrimis dixit: «Heu me, filia mea dulcissima, de te filios in regali gremio nutrire credebam et nunc vadis, ut a dracone devoreris.
Heu me, filia mea dulcissima, sperabam ad tuas nuptias principes invitare, palatium margaritis ornare, tympana et organa audire, et nunc vadis, ut a dracone devoreris. «Et deosculans dimisit eam dicens: «Utinam, filia mea, ego ante te mortuus essem, quam te sic amisissem.»
Tunc illa procidit ad pedes patris petens ab eo benedictionem suam. Quam cum pater cum lacrimis benedixisset, ad lacum processit.
Quam beatus Georgius casu inde transiens ut plorantem vidit, eam quid haberet interrogavit. Et illa: «Bone iuvenis, velociter equum adscende et fuge, ne mecum pariter moriaris.» Cui Georgius: «Noli timere, filia, sed dic mihi quid hic praestolaris omni plebe spectante!»
Et illa: «Ut video, bone iuvenis, magnifici cordis es tu, sed mecum mori desideras! Fuge velociter.» Cui Georgius: «Hinc ego non discedam donec mihi, quid habeas, intimabis.» Cum ergo totum sibi exposuisset, ait Georgius: «Filia noli timere, quia in Christi nomine te iuvabo.»
Et illa: «Bone miles, sed te ipsum salvare festines, mecum non pereas. Sufficit enim, si sola peream. Nam me liberare non posses et tu mecum perires.» Dum haec loquerentur, ecce draco veniens caput de lacu levavit. Tunc puella tremefacta dixit: «Fuge, bone domine, fuge velociter.»
Tunc Georgius equum ascendens et cruce se muniens draconem contra se advenientem audaciter aggreditur et lanceam fortiter vibrans et se Deo commendans ipsum graviter vulneravit et ad terram deiecit dixitque puellae: «Proice zonam tuam in collum draconis nihil dubitans, filia.»
Quod cum fecisset, sequebatur eam velut mansuetissima canis. Cum ergo eum in civitatem duceret, populi hoc videntes per montes et colles fugere coeperunt dicentes: «Vae nobis, quia iam omnes peribimus!»
Tunc beatus Georgius innuit iis dicens: «Nolite timere, ad hoc enim me misit Dominus ad vos, ut a poenis vos liberarem draconis. Tantummodo in Christum credite et unusquisque vestrum baptizetur et draconem istum occidam.»
Tunc rex et omnes populi baptizati sunt, beatus Georgius evaginato gladio draconem occidit et ipsum extra civitatem efferri praecepit. Tunc quattuor paria boum ipsum in magnum campum foras duxerunt.
Baptizati autem sunt in illa die XX milia exceptis parvulis et mulieribus. Rex autem in honorem beatae Mariae et beati Georgi ecclesiam mirae magnitudinis construxit.
De cuius altari fons vivus emanat, cuius potus omnes languidos sanat. Rex vero infinitam pecuniam beato Georgio obtulit, quam ille recipere nolens pauperibus eam dari praecepit.
Tunc Georgius de quatuor regem breviter instruxit, scilicet ut ecclesiarum dei curam haberet, sacerdotes honoraret, divinum officium diligenter audiret et semper pauperum memor esset; et sic osculato rege inde recessit.
In aliquibus tamen libris legitur quod dum draco ad devorandum puellam pergeret, Georgius se cruce muniuit et draconem aggrediens interfecit.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closestfriends, Tina Picotes, who has been visiting New York City. They have been talking about Cleopatra's Needle, one of three similarly named Egyptian obelisks erected in Central Park.
Cleopatra's Needle in New York City is one of three similarly named Egyptian obelisks.
It was erected in Central Park, west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, onFebruary 22, 1881.It was secured in May 1877 by judge Elbert E. Farman, the United States Consul General at Cairo, as a gift from the Khedive for the United States remaining a friendly neutral as the European powers -France and Britain- maneuvered to secure political control of the Egyptian government. The transportation costs were largely paid for by railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, the eldest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Made of red granite, the obelisk stands about 21 metres high, weighsabout 200 tons, and is inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
It was originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thutmose III, in 1475 BC.
The granite was brought from the quarries of Aswan near the first cataract of the Nile. The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramesses II to commemorate his military victories.
The obelisks were moved to Alexandria and set up in the Caesareum -a temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Mark Antony or Julius Caesar- by the Romans in 12 BC, during the reign of Augustus, but were toppled some time later. This had the fortuitous effect of burying their faces and so preserving most of the hieroglyphs from the effects of weathering.
The original idea to secure an Egyptian obelisk for New York City came from the March 1877 New York City newspaper accounts of the transporting of the London obelisk.
The newspapers mistakenly attributed to a Mr. John Dixon the 1869 proposal of the Khedive of Egypt, Isma'il Pasha, to give the United States an obelisk as a gift for increased trade. Mr. Dixon, the contractor who, in 1877, arranged the transport of the London obelisk, denied the newspaper accounts.
In
March 1877, Mr. Henry G. Stebbins, Commissioner of the Department of
Public Parks of the City of New York, undertook to secure the funding to
transport the obelisk to New York. However, when railroad magnate
William H. Vanderbilt was asked to head the subscription, he offered to
finance the project with a donation of more than US$100,000, equivalent
to $2,430,313 in 2020.
Stebbins then sent two acceptance letters to the Khedive through the Department of State which forwarded them to Judge Farman in Cairo. Realizing that he might be able to secure one of the two remaining upright obelisks -either the mate to the Paris obelisk in Luxor or the London mate in Alexandria- Judge Farman formally asked the Khedive in March 1877, and by May 1877 he had secured the gift in writing.
The obelisk was placed on an obscure site behind the museum. Henry Honeychurch Gorringe, who supervised the movement of the obelisk, William Henry Hulbert, who was involved in early development of the plan, and Frederic Edwin Church, a cofounder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a member of the Department of Public Parks in New York City, selected the site of the obelisk in 1879.
Gorringe
wrote, In order to avoid needless discussion of the subject, it was
decided to maintain the strictest secrecy as to the location determined
on. He noted that the prime advantage of the Knoll was its isolation and that it was the best site to be found inside the park, as it was
quite elevated and the foundation could be firmly anchored in bedrock,
lest Manhattan suffer some violent convulsion of nature.
The
formidable task of moving theobelisk from Alexandria to New York was
given to Henry HonychurchGorringe, a lieutenant commander on leave from
the U.S. Navy. The 200-ton granite obelisk was first shifted from
vertical to horizontal, nearly crashing to ground in the process. In
August 1879 the movement process was suspended for two months because
of local protests and legal challenges. Once those were resolved, the
obelisk was transported seven miles to Alexandria and then put into the
hold of the steamship SS Dessoug, which set sail June 12, 1880.
The
Dessoug was heavily modified with a large hole cut into the starboard
side of its bow. The obelisk was loaded through the ship's hull by
rolling it upon cannonballs.
Even with a broken propeller, the SS Dessoug was able to make the journey to the United States.
The obelisk and its 50-ton pedestal arrived at the Quarantine Station in New York in early July 1880. It took 32 horses hitched in pairs to bring it from the banks of the East River to Central Park.
Railroad ramps and tracks had to be temporarily removed and the ground flattened so that the obelisk could be rolled out of the ship, whose side had been cut open once again for the purpose. The obelisk was carried up the East River and transported to a temporary location off Fifth Avenue.
The final leg of the journey was made by pushing the obelisk with a steam engine across a specially built trestle bridge from Fifth Avenue to its new home on Greywacke Knoll, just across the drive from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It took 112 days to move the obelisk from Quarantine Station to its resting place.
Jesse B. Anthony, Grand Master of Masons in the State of New York, presided as the cornerstone for the obelisk was laid in place with full Masonic ceremony on October 2, 1880.
Over 9,000 Masons paraded up Fifth Avenue from 14th Street to 82nd Street, and it was estimated that over 50,000 spectators lined the parade route. The benediction was presented by R. W. Louis C. Gerstein. The obelisk was righted by a special structure built by Henry Honychurch Gorringe. The official ceremony for erecting the obelisk was held February 22, 1881.
The surface of the stone is heavily weathered, nearly masking the rows of Egyptian hieroglyphs engraved on all sides. Photographs taken near the time the obelisk was erected in the park show that the inscriptions or hieroglyphs, as depicted below with translation, were still quite legible and date first from Thutmosis III (1479–1425 BC) and then nearly 300 years later, Ramesses II the Great (1279–1213 BC).
The stone had stood in the clear dry Egyptian desert air for nearly 3,000 years and had undergone little weathering. In a little more than a century in the climate of New York City, pollution and acid rain have heavily pitted its surfaces.
In 2010, Dr. Zahi Hawass sent an open letter to the president of the Central Park Conservancy and the Mayor of New York City insisting on improved conservation efforts. If they were not able to properly care for the obelisk, he threatened to take the necessary steps to bring this precious artifact home and save it from ruin.
A time capsule buried beneath the obelisk contains an 1870 U.S. census, a Bible, a Webster's Dictionary, the complete works of William Shakespeare, a guide to Egypt, and a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence. A small box was also placed in the capsule by the man who arranged the obelisk's purchase and transportation, but its contents remain unknown.
Today, The Grandma has received the wonderful visit of one of her closest friends, Tina Picotes.
Tina loves classic dance, and they have been talking about Anna Pavlova, the Russian prima ballerina who is considered one of the best of all time who was born on a day like today in 1881.
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova, in Russian АннаПавловнаПавлова, born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova (12 February 1881-23 January 1931), was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20th centuries.
She was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev.
Pavlova is most recognized for her creation of the role of The Dying Swan and, with her own company, became the first ballerina to tour around the world, including performances in South America, India and Australia.
Anna Matveyevna Pavlova was born in the Preobrazhensky Regiment hospital, Saint Petersburg where her father, Matvey Pavlovich Pavlov, served.
Some sources say that her parents married just before her birth, others -years later. Her mother, Lyubov Feodorovna Pavlova, came from peasants and worked as a laundress at the house of a Russian-Jewish banker, Lazar Polyakov, for some time.
When Anna rose to fame, Polyakov's son Vladimir claimed that she was an illegitimate daughter of his father; others speculated that Matvey Pavlov himself supposedly came from Crimean Karaites (there is even a monument built in one of Yevpatoria's kenesas dedicated to Pavlova), yet both legends find no historical proof. Anna Matveyevna changed her patronymic to Pavlovna when she started performing on stage.
Young Pavlova's years of training were difficult. Classical ballet did not comeeasily to her. Her severely arched feet, thin ankles, and long limbs clashed with the small, compact body favoured for the ballerina of the time. Her fellow students taunted her with such nicknames as The broom and La petite sauvage.
Undeterred, Pavlova trained to improve her technique. She would practice and practice after learning a step. She said, No one can arrive from being talented alone. God gives talent, work transforms talent into genius.
She took extra lessons from the noted teachers of the day -Christian Johansson, Pavel Gerdt, Nikolai Legat- and from Enrico Cecchetti, considered the greatest ballet virtuoso of the time and founder of the Cecchetti method, a very influential ballet technique used to this day. In 1898, she entered the classe de perfection of Ekaterina Vazem, former Prima ballerina of the Saint Petersburg Imperial Theatres.
During her final year at the Imperial Ballet School, she performed many roles with the principal company. She graduated in 1899 at age 18, chosen to enter the Imperial Ballet a rank ahead of corps de ballet as a coryphée. She made her official début at the Mariinsky Theatre in Pavel Gerdt's Les Dryades prétendues(The False Dryads). Her performance drew praise from the critics, particularly the great critic and historian Nikolai Bezobrazov.
In the first years of the Ballets Russes, Pavlova worked briefly for Sergei Diaghilev. Originally, she was to dance the lead in Mikhail Fokine's The Firebird,but refused the part, as she could not come to terms with Igor Stravinsky's avant-garde score, and the role was given to Tamara Karsavina. All her life, Pavlova preferred the melodious musique dansante of the old maestros such as Cesare Pugni and Ludwig Minkus, and cared little for anything else which strayed from the salon-style ballet music of the 19th century.
While travelling from Paris to The Hague, Pavlova became very ill, and worsened on her arrival in The Hague. She sent to Paris for her personal physician, Dr Zalewski to attend her.
She was told that she had pneumonia and required an operation. She was also told that she would never be able to dance again if she went ahead with it. She refused to have the surgery, saying If I can't dance, then I'd rather be dead. She died of pleurisy, in the bedroom next to the Japanese Salon of the Hotel Des Indes in The Hague, twenty days short of her 50th birthday.
Victor Dandré wrote that Pavlova died a half hour past midnight on Friday, 23 January 1931, with her maid Marguerite Létienne, Dr. Zalevsky, and himself at her bedside. Her last words were, Get my 'Swan' costume ready.
Dandré and Létienne dressed her body in her favorite beige lace dress and placed her in a coffin with a sprig of lilac. At 7 am, a Russian Orthodox priest arrived to say prayers over her body. At 7:30 am, her coffin was taken to the mortuary chapel attaching the Catholic hospital in The Hague.
Today, The Grandma has received wonderful news of one of her closest friends, Tina Picotes who is spending some days in Pretoria, South Africa. She has visited Fountains Valley, the oldest nature reserve in Africa, that was proclaimed on a day like today in 1895.
The Fountains Valley is a recreational resort at the southern entrance to Pretoria in South Africa.
It was proclaimed as a nature reserve by President Paul Kruger on 1 February 1895. Consequently, this 60 ha reserve, along with the contiguous Groenkloof Nature Reserve,constitute the oldest nature reserves on the African continent.
The Apies River flows through the resort, and there are two natural water sources in the area. The resort has various recreational facilities such as a caravan park, swimming pool, lapa, playground and barbecue facilities.
The historic ruins of the house of Lucas Cornelius Bronkhorst (1795-1875) is located near the resort. The Bronkhorst family was part of Hendrik Potgieter's trek party during the Great Trek, and were the first owners of the farms in the district where Pretoria was later established.
The Groenkloof Nature Reserve, located adjacent to the Fountains Valley at the southern entrance to Pretoria, was the first game sanctuary in Africa. The reserve of 600 ha is managed by the Department of Nature Conservation.
The National Heritage Monument is located within the reserve. It is flanked by Christina de Wit Avenue and Nelson Mandela Drive, that separate it from the Voortrekker Monument and Klapperkop Nature Reserves. In aggregate these reserves conserve some 1,400 ha of bankenveld vegetation which is threatened in Gauteng.
This valley on the southern outskirts of Pretoria was proclaimed a game sanctuary by President Paul Kruger on 25 February 1895.
Its main purpose was to protect the shy and timid oribi, which occurred there, and other game that were being depleted by hunters.
For many years however, the reserve was leased for exotic timber plantation, to supply wood and paper. A memorial wall is to be seen beside traces of the homestead of the early pioneer Lucas Bronkhorst, who settled here around 1839.
In April 2015 the head of the reserve, David Boshoff, was suspended and evicted from his council home by the Tshwane metro HR manager. The eviction came in the fifth month of a strike by the majority of the reserve's workers, who reportedly negated their agreement with management to return to work in February.
When the reserve was reproclaimed in 1994, the plantations were removed to allow the natural vegetation to regenerate. Open grassland occurs along the Apies valley and the higher plateau. Native trees occur at varying densities on the hillsides and in the lower valley. These include white stinkwood, hook-thorn, mountain karee, velvet bushwillow, wild pear and puzzle bush.
Since 1999 the reserve was stocked with various game species. These include zebra, blesbok, impala, kudu, blue wildebeest, red hartebeest (since 2002), giraffe (2002), sable (2003) and ostrich. Jackal, duiker and rock hyrax are also resident.
Over 120 bird species have been recorded in the reserve and the adjacent Fountains Valley. Game birds include guineafowl, Swainson's spurfowl and crested francolin. The grassy floodplain of the Apies river and its riparian vegetation provide breeding habitat for a number of weaver, bishop and widow species, while the open woodlands on the lower hill slopes provide breeding territories for bushshrike and tchagra species.
Special invertebrates of the reserve include Gunning's rock scorpion, golden-starburst baboon spider, the violin spider L. speluncarum which is endemic to caves of the Pretoria area, and the purse-web spider, Calommata transvaalica, which is severely threatened by urbanization in Gauteng.
South Africa gives me a perspective of what's real and what's not real. So I go back to South Africa to both lose myself and gain awareness of myself. Every time I go back, it doesn't take long for me to get caught into a very different thing. A very different sense of myself.
Today, The Grandma and her friends Claire Fontaine, Jordi Santanyí, Josep deCa'th Lon, Tina Picotes and Tonyi Tamaki want to talk about LaMarató de TV3, a Catalan public television program that raises funds for medical research and which has reached its 30th edition, this year dedicated to mental health diseases.
Mental health is a serious issue that affects a very high percentage of our society, while being highly stigmatized. The two main objectives of this Marató are to raise funds to research and raise awareness about the medical issues covered. It is a very significant day for Catalans, because they show one of the pillars of their idiosyncrasy, solidarity. No nation can move forward without solidarity and without a strong sense of community.
During the days leading up to the Marató de TV3, thousands of events are held throughout Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Andorra where anonymous people work together to raise funds which will then be donated to La Marató. Dances, popular culture, bingo, sports events, art exhibitions, concerts ... everything is worth it to be able to come together to make this joint effort a reality: to work together to be able to finance projects that improve everyone's quality of life.
Congratulations on these 30 years of solidarity. Congratulations to the Catalan public television (TV3) and to all the people who participate from the Catalan Countries or from other parts of the world.
La Marató de TV3, or La Marató, is a solidarity gala or telemarathon held annually by TV3 on the Sunday before Christmas and promoted by Televisió de Catalunya and the Fundació La Marató de TV3.
The first edition was held in 1992 and each year funds are raised for research on a type of disease; each year a different type of disease. An average of seven million euros is raised each year.
Its main purpose is to raise funds for research and dissemination of a disease or group of diseases. Over the years, it has grown in prestige and donations to the point of creating in 1996 the Fundació La Marató de TV3, which is responsible for managing the funds, the selection of the best scientific projects for funding and the campaigns of relevant awareness.
To raise money for the fund of the Marató, a thousand events are organized all over the Catalan Countries. Since 2005 it has had the Marató record, which is sold to the main newspapers in Catalonia. Before the start of the 2013 edition, the Marató has allocated more than 119 million euros in 607 years to 607 biomedical research projects.
For the 2020 edition, the Foundation's board of trustees has focused its attention on COVID-19, moving the topic of Mental Illness to the 2021 edition, which will be the 30th edition of the Marató.
Today, The Grandma has received wonderful news of one of her closest friends, Tina Picotes, who is spending some days in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands that was founded on a day like today in 1275.
Amsterdam is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands with a population of 872,680 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban area and 2,480,394 in the metropolitan area.
Found within the province of North Holland, Amsterdam is colloquially referred to as the Venice of the North, due to the large number of canals which form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Amsterdam was founded at the Amstel, that was dammed to control flooding; the city's name derives from the Amstel dam.
Originating as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdambecame one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, and became the leading centre for finance and trade.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded and many new neighbourhoods and suburbs were planned and built. The 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Sloten, annexed in 1921 by the municipality of Amsterdam, is the oldest part of the city, dating to the 9th century.
Amsterdam's main attractions include its historic canals, the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, Hermitage Amsterdam, the Concertgebouw, the Anne Frank House, the Scheepvaartmuseum, the Amsterdam Museum, the Heineken Experience, the Royal Palace of Amsterdam, Natura Artis Magistra, Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam, NEMO, the red-light district and many cannabis coffee shops. It drew more than 5 million international visitors in 2014.
The city is also well known for its nightlife and festival activity; with several of its nightclubs (Melkweg, Paradiso) among the world's most famous. Primarily known for its artistic heritage, elaborate canal system and narrow houses with gabled façades; well-preserved legacies of the city's 17th-century Golden Age. These characteristics are arguably responsible for attracting millions of Amsterdam'svisitors annually. Cycling is key to the city's character, and there are numerous bike paths.
The Amsterdam Stock Exchange is considered the oldest modernsecurities market stock exchange in the world. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered an alpha world city by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) study group.
The city is also the cultural capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters in the city, including: the Philips conglomerate, AkzoNobel, Booking.com, TomTom, and ING. Moreover, many of the world's largest companies are based in Amsterdam or have established their European headquarters in the city, such as leading technology companies Uber, Netflix and Tesla.
The Port of Amsterdam is the fifth largest in Europe. The KLM hub and Amsterdam's main airport, Schiphol, is the Netherlands' busiest airport as well as the third busiest in Europe and 11th busiest airport in the world.
The Dutch capital is considered one of the most multicultural cities in the world.
A few of Amsterdam's notable residents throughout history include: painters Rembrandt and Van Gogh, the diarist Anne Frank, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza.
Due to its geographical location in what used to be wet peatland, the founding of Amsterdam is of a younger age than the founding of other urban centers in the Low Countries. However, in and around the area of what later became Amsterdam, local farmers settled as early as three millennia ago. They lived along the prehistoric IJ river and upstream of its tributary Amstel.
The prehistoric IJ was a shallow and quiet stream in peatland behind beach ridges. This secluded area could grow there into an important local settlement center, especially in the late Bronze Age, the Iron Age and the Roman Age.
Neolithic and Roman artefacts have also been found downstream of this area, in the prehistoricAmstel bedding under Amsterdam's Damrak and Rokin, such as shards of Bell Beaker culture pottery (2200-2000 BC) and a granite grinding stone (2700-2750 BC). But the location of these artefacts around the river banks of the Amstel probably point to a presence of a modest semi-permanent or seasonal settlement of the previous mentioned local farmers. A permanent settlement would not have been possible, since the river mouth and the banks of the Amstel in this period in time were too wet for permanent habitation.
The origins of Amsterdam is linked to the development of the peatland called Amestelle, meaning watery area, from Aa(m) river + stelle site at a shoreline,river bank.
Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306. From the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League. In 1345, an alleged Eucharistic miracle in Kalverstraat rendered the city an important place of pilgrimage until the adoption of the Protestant faith.
In the 16th century, the Dutch rebelled against Philip II of Spain and hissuccessors. The main reasons for the uprising were the imposition of new taxes, the tenth penny, and the religious persecution of Protestants by the newly introduced Inquisition. The revolt escalated into the Eighty Years' War, which ultimately led to Dutch independence.
Strongly pushed by Dutch Revolt leader William the Silent, the Dutch Republicbecame known for its relative religious tolerance. Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Huguenots from France, prosperous merchants and printers from Flanders, and economic and religious refugees from the Spanish-controlled parts of the Low Countries found safety in Amsterdam. The influx of Flemish printers and the city's intellectual tolerance made Amsterdam a centre for the European free press.
The 17th century is considered Amsterdam's Golden Age, during which it became the wealthiest city in the western world. Ships sailed from Amsterdam to the Baltic Sea, North America, and Africa, as well as present-day Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Brazil, forming the basis of a worldwide trading network.
Amsterdam's merchants had the largest share in both the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. These companies acquired overseas possessions that later became Dutch colonies.
Amsterdam was Europe's most important point for the shipment of goods and was the leading financial centre of the western world.
In 1602, the Amsterdam office of the international trading Dutch East India Company became the world's first stock exchange by trading in its own shares.
The Bank of Amsterdam started operations in 1609, acting as a full-service bank for Dutch merchant bankers and as a reserve bank.
Amsterdam's prosperity declined during the 18th and early 19th centuries. The wars of the Dutch Republic with England and France took their toll on Amsterdam. During the Napoleonic Wars, Amsterdam's significance reached its lowest point, with Holland being absorbed into the French Empire. However, the later establishment of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815 marked a turning point.
The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's second Golden Age. New museums, a railway station, and the Concertgebouw were built; in this same time, the Industrial Revolution reached the city. The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine, and the North Sea Canal was dug to give the port a shorter connection to the North Sea. Both projects dramatically improved commerce with the rest of Europe and the world. In 1906, Joseph Conrad gave a brief description of Amsterdam as seen from the seaside, in The Mirror of the Sea.
Shortly before the First World War, the city started to expand again, and new suburbs were built.
Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940 and took control of the country. Some Amsterdam citizens sheltered Jews, thereby exposing themselves and their families to a high risk of being imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi concentration camps, of whom some 60,000 lived in Amsterdam.
Perhaps the most famous deportee was the young Jewish girl Anne Frank, who died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Many new suburbs, such as Osdorp, Slotervaart, Slotermeer and Geuzenveld, were built in the years after the Second World War.
The required large-scale demolitions began in Amsterdam's former Jewish neighborhood. Smaller streets, such as the Jodenbreestraat and Weesperstraat, were widened and almost all houses and buildings were demolished. At the peak of the demolition, the Nieuwmarktrellen broke out; the rioters expressed their fury about the demolition caused by the restructuring of the city.
As a result, the demolition was stopped and the highway into the city's centre was never fully built; only the metro was completed. Only a few streets remained widened. The new city hall was built on the almost completely demolished Waterlooplein. Meanwhile, large private organizations, such as StadsherstelAmsterdam, were founded to restore the entire city centre.
Although the success of this struggle is visible today, efforts for further restoration are still ongoing. The entire city centre has reattained its former splendour and, as a whole, is now a protected area. Many of its buildings have become monuments, and in July 2010 the Grachtengordel (the three concentric canals: Herengracht, Keizersgracht, and Prinsengracht) was added to the UNESCO WorldHeritage List.
In the 21st century, the Amsterdam city centre has attracted large numbers of tourists: between 2012 and 2015, the annual number of visitors rose from 10 to 17 million. Real estate prices have surged, and local shops are making way for tourist-oriented ones, making the centre unaffordable for the city's inhabitants. These developments have evoked comparisons with Venice, a city thought to be overwhelmed by the tourist influx.
Amsterdam experienced an influx of religions and cultures after the Second World War. With 180 different nationalities, Amsterdam is home toone of the widest varieties of nationalities of any city in the world. The proportion of the population of immigrant origin in the city proper is about 50% and 88% of the population are Dutch citizens.
Amsterdam has been one of the municipalities in the Netherlands which provided immigrants with extensive and free Dutch-language courses, which have benefited many immigrants.
Amsterdam lives and breathes creativity. One moment you walk into a building from the 17th century, and the next you find yourself in a hub of creative start-up companies.
Today, The Grandma has received great news of one of her closest friends, TinaPicotes, who is visiting Prague.They have been talking about this beautiful city and about its attraction,the PragueAstronomicalClock or the PragueOrloj, a clock that was first mentioned on a day like today in 1410.
The Prague Astronomical Clock or Prague Orloj, in Czech Pražský orloj, is amedieval astronomical clock attached to the Old Town Hall in Prague, thecapital of the Czech Republic.
The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest clock still in operation.
The Orloj is mounted on the southern wall of Old Town Hall in the Old Town Square.
The clock mechanism has three main components -the astronomical dial,representing the position of the Sun and Moon in the sky and displaying various astronomical details; statues of various Catholic saints stand on either side of the clock; The Walk of the Apostles, an hourly show of moving Apostle figures and other sculptures, notably a figure of a skeleton that represents Death,striking the time; and a calendar dial with medallions representing the months.
According to local legend, the city will suffer if the clock is neglected and its good operation is placed in jeopardy; a ghost, mounted on the clock, was supposed to nod its head in confirmation. According to the legend, the only hope was represented by a boy born on New Year's night.
The oldest part of the Orloj, the mechanical clock and astronomical dial, dates back to 1410, when it was created by clockmaker Mikuláš of Kadaň and Charles University professor of mathematics and astronomy Jan Šindel.
The first recorded mention of the clock was on 9 October 1410. Later, presumably around 1490, the calendar dial was added, and the clock facade was decorated with gothic sculptures.
Formerly, it was believed that the Orloj was constructed in 1490 by clock master Jan Růže, also called Hanuš; this is now known to be a historical mistake. A legend, recounted by Alois Jirásek, has it that the clockmaker Hanuš was blinded on the order of the Prague Councillors so that he could not repeat his work; in turn, he disabled the clock, and no one was able to repair it for the next hundred years.
In 1552, it was repaired by Jan Táborský (1500–1572), master clockmaker of Klokotská Hora, who also wrote a report of the clock where he mentioned Hanuš as the maker of this clock. This mistake, corrected by Zdeněk Horský, was due to an incorrect interpretation of records from the period.
The mistaken assumption that Hanuš was the maker is probably connected with his reconstruction of the Old Town Hall in the years 1470–1473. The clock stopped working many times in the centuries after 1552, and was repaired many times. The legend was used as the main plot in the animated film Goat story-The Old Prague Legends.
In 1629 or 1659 wooden statues were added, and figures of the Apostles were added after a major repair in 1787–1791. During the next major repair in the years 1865–1866 the golden figure of a crowing rooster was added.
The Orloj suffered heavy damage on 7 and especially 8 May 1945, during thePrague uprising, when the Nazis fired on the south-west side of the Old Town Square from several armoured vehicles in an unsuccessful attempt to destroy one of the centres of the uprising.
The hall and nearby buildings burned, along with the wooden sculptures on the clock and the calendar dial face made by Josef Mánes. After significant effort, the machinery was repaired, the wooden Apostles restored by Vojtěch Sucharda, and the Orloj started working again in 1948.
The Orloj was renovated in autumn 2005, when the statues and the lower calendar ring were restored. The wooden statues were covered with a net to keep pigeons away.
The last renovation of the astronomical clock was carried out from January to September 2018, following a reconstruction of the Old Town Tower. During the renovation, an electric clock mechanism that had been in operation since 1948 was replaced by an original mechanism from the 1860s.
The Orloj was taken down for reconstruction and replaced by a LED screen in early 2018, with the restoration works scheduled to last for the whole summer tourist season of 2018 and the restored actual Orloj eventually being back in service soon enough to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Czechoslovakia at the end of October 2018. With the reconstruction and restoration work completed, it resumed operations at 6 p.m. local time on 28 September 2018.
The astronomical dial is a form of mechanical astrolabe, a device used in medieval astronomy. Alternatively, one may consider the Orloj to be a primitive planetarium, displaying the current state of the universe.
The astronomical dial has a background that represents the standing Earth and sky, and surrounding it operate four main moving components: the zodiacal ring, an outer rotating ring, an icon representing the Sun, and an icon representing the Moon.
The background represents the Earth and the local view of the sky. The blue circle directly in the centre represents the Earth, and the upper blue is the portion of the sky which is above the horizon. The red and black areas indicate portions of the sky below the horizon. During the daytime, the Sun sits over the blue part of the background and at night it sits over the black. During dawn or dusk, the mechanical sun is positioned over the red part of the background.
Written on the eastern (left) part of the horizon is aurora (dawn in Latin) and ortus (rising). On the western (right) part is occasus (sunset), and crepusculum (twilight).
Golden Roman numerals at the outer edge of the blue circle are the timescale of a normal 24-hour day and indicate time in local Prague time, or Central European Time.
Curved golden lines dividing the blue part of the dial into 12 parts are marks for unequal hours. These hours are defined as 1/12 of the time between sunrise and sunset, and vary as the days grow longer or shorter during the year. Inside the large black outer circle lies another movable circle marked with the signs of the zodiac, which indicates the location of the Sun on the ecliptic. The signs are shown in anticlockwise order. In the photograph accompanying this section, the Sun is currently moving anticlockwise from Cancer into Leo.
The displacement of the zodiac circle results from the use of a stereographic projection of the ecliptic plane using the North Pole as the basis of the projection. This is commonly seen in astronomical clocks of the period.
The small golden star shows the position of the vernal equinox, andsidereal time can be read on the scale with golden Roman numerals. The zodiac is on the 366-tooth gear inside the machine. This gear is connected to the sun gear and the moon gear by a 24-tooth gear.
At the outer edge of the clock, golden Schwabacher numerals are set on a black background. These numbers indicate Old Czech Time or Italian hours,with 24 indicating the time of sunset, which varies during the year from as early as 16:00 in winter to 20:16 in summer. This ring moves back and forth during the year to coincide with the time of sunset.
The golden Sun moves around the zodiacal circle, thus showing its position on the ecliptic. The sun is attached to an arm with a golden hand, and together they show the time in three different ways:
-The position of the golden hand over the Roman numerals on the background indicates the time in local Prague time.
-The position of the Sun over the curved golden lines indicates the time inunequal hours.
-The position of the golden hand over the outer ring indicates the hours passedafter sunset in Old Czech Time.
Additionally, the distance of the Sun from the centre of the dial shows the time of sunrise and sunset. The Sun and its hand are on the 365-tooth gear inside the machine.
The movement of the Moon on the ecliptic is shown similarly to that of the Sun, although the speed is much faster, due to the Moon's orbit around the Earth. The Moon's arm is on the 379-tooth gear inside the clock machine.
The half-silvered, half-black sphere of the moon also shows the Lunar phase. The Moon has a 57-tooth gear inside its sphere, and is slowly rotated by a screw-thread attached to a weight, advancing two teeth per day. This movement, powered only by gravity, makes the Orloj unique in the world among astronomical clocks showing the phases of the Moon. The mechanism was created by an unknown maker, probably in the mid-17th century. Unlike the original device, the construction of which was described in a report from 1570, this mechanism produces much smaller deviation from the actual lunar phase of about one day in five years.
.jpg)
Joseph de Ca'th Lon loves Archaeology, History and Anthropology.
Malta is a great opportunity to enjoy the most amazing Megalithic Temples and discover the past of the Humanity.
Today, he's visiting the Tarxien Temples with The Grandma.
.jpg)
.jpg)
