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Did You Know? The Easter bunny originates from an ancient Anglo-Saxon carnivalThe ancient Anglo-Saxons celebrated the return of spring with a carnival commemorating their goddess of offspring and of springtime, Eostre. The word carnival possibly originated from the Latin ’carne vale’ meaning "flesh, farewell" or "meat, farewell." The offerings were rabbits and coloured eggs, bidding an end to winter. As it happened, the pagan festival of Eostre occurred at the same time of year as the Christian observance of the Resurrection of Christ and it didn’t take the Christian missionaries long to convert the Anglo-Saxons when they encountered them in the 2nd century. The offering of rabbits and eggs eventually (in the 8th century, it is thought) became the Easter bunny and Easter eggs. Prior to 325 AD, Easter was variously celebrated on different days of the week, including Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In that year, the Council of Nicaea was convened by emperor Constantine. It issued the Easter Rule which states that Easter shall be celebrated on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. The "full moon" in the rule is the ecclesiastical full moon, which is defined as the 14th day of a tabular lunation, where day 1 corresponds to the ecclesiastical New Moon. It does not always occur on the same date as the astronomical full moon. The ecclesiastical "vernal equinox" is always on 21st March. Therefore, Easter must be celebrated on the first Sunday after 21st March. Christians commemorate the Friday before Easter as Good Friday, the day that Jesus was crucified. Easter Sunday is celebrated as the day Jesus rose again. HOT CROSS BUNS The word bun is derived from the Saxon word "boun" (pronounced ’bo-han’) which means "sacred ox." At the ancient Celtic feast of Eostre, an ox was sacrificed with the ox’s horns becoming a symbol for the feast. They were carved into the ritual bread, thus "hot cross buns." Initially, the cross on the buns represented the moon, the heavenly body associated with the goddess Eostre, and its four quarters. Today, the cross on hot cross buns represents the cross of Christ.
If you hit a diamond with a hammer, it will break!A diamond is the hardest natural substance on earth, but if it is placed in an oven and the temperature is raised to about 763 degrees Celsius (1405 degrees Fahrenheit), it will simply vanish, without even ash remaining. Only a little carbon dioxide will have been released. Diamonds are formed over a period of a billion or more years deep within earth’s crust - about 150km (90 miles) deep - and is pushed to the surface by volcanoes. Most diamonds are found in volcanic rock, called Kimberlite, or in the sea after having been carried away by rivers when they were pushed to the surface. A diamond is 58 times harder than the next hardest mineral on earth, corundum, from which rubies and sapphires are formed. It was only during the 15th century that it was discovered that the only way to cut diamonds was with other diamonds. Yet, diamonds are brittle. If you hit one hard with a hammer, it will shatter. The largest diamond The Cullinan was three times the size of the next largest diamond, the Excelsior, which was also found in South Africa. The world’s largest documented polished diamond - unearthed in 1986, also in South Africa - is called Unnamed Brown. It weighs 545 carats and was cut down from a 700 carat rough diamond. It took an international team of expert cutters 3 years to complete the masterpiece. Another impressive diamond that also took 3 years to cut, and also is part of the British crown jewels, is the Centenary Diamond. It weighs 273.85 carats and is the world’s largest flawless diamond. Not all diamonds are white. Impurities lend diamonds a shade of blue, red, orange, yellow, green and even black. A green diamond is the rarest. It is not the rarest gemstone, however. That title goes to a pure red ruby. Diamonds actually are found in fair abundance; thousands are mined every year. 80% of them are not suitable for jewellery - they are used in industry. Only diamonds of higher clarity are sourced to the jewellery stores. Synthetic diamonds Weighing diamonds Nothing happened between 3 and 13 September 1752 !In September 1752 the Julian calendar was replaced with the Gregorian calendar in Great Britain and its American colonies. The Julian calendar was 11 days behind the Gregorian calendar, so 14 September got to follow 2 September on the day of the change. The result was that between 3 and 13 September, absolutely nothing happened!The calendar switch also influenced the way George Washington’s birthday is celebrated. He was born on 11 February 1731, but the anniversary of his birth is on 22 February because of the 11 days eliminated from the calendar switch. At the same time, New Year’s Day was changed from 25 March to 1 January, thus according to the new calendar, Washington was born in 1732.The first Roman Calendar (introduced in 535BC) had 10 months, with 304 days in a year that began in March. January and February were added only later. In 46BC, Julius Caesar created "The Year of Confusion" by adding 80 days to the year making it 445 days long to bring the calendar back in step with the seasons. The solar year - with the value of 365 days and 6 hours - was made the basis of the calendar. To take care of the 6 hours, every 4th year was made a 366-day year. It was then that Caesar decreed that the year begins with the 1st of January.In 325AD Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, introduced Sunday as a holy day in a new 7-day week. He also introduced movable (Easter) and immovable feasts (Christmas).In 1545 the Council of Trent authorised Pope Paul III to reform the calendar once more. Advised by astronomer Father Christopher Clavius and physician Aloysius Lilius, Pope Gregory XIII ordered that Thursday, 4 October 1582 was to be the last day of the Julian calendar. The next day was Friday, 15 October. For long-term accuracy, every 4th year was made a leap year unless it is a century year like 1700 or 1800. Century years can be leap years only when they are divisible by 400 (e.g. 1600). This rule eliminates three leap years in four centuries, making the calendar sufficiently correct for all ordinary purposes.Protestant rulers ignored the new calendar that the Pope ordered. It was not until 1698 that Germany and the Netherlands changed to the Gregorian calendar. As mentioned, Britain made the change only in 1752. Russia adopted the new calendar in 1918, China in 1949.In spite of the leap year, the Gregorian year is about 26 seconds longer than the earth’s orbital period. Thus the beginning of the third millennium should have been celebrated at 9:01pm on 31 December 1999. But considering that the Gregorian calendar starts with Year 1, and not Year 0, adding 2000 years means that the third millennium started at 21h00:34s on 31 December 2000. However, because Dionysis Exeguus - the 6th Century monk whose task it was to pivot the calendar around the birth of Jesus Christ - miscalculated the founding of Rome by about 4 years (and left out the year 0), the true third millennium actually started on 31 December 1995.The calendars
The Oscar Awards were held twice in 1930The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was established in May 1927 as a non-profit corporation to promote the art of movie making. In the first year, the Academy had 36 members, with Douglas Fairbanks Sr as president. The first Academy Awards, now better known as the Oscars, were presented at a private dinner in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with less than 250 persons attending. Today, the Academy has over 6 000 honorary members - the Oscar Awards are viewed by more than a billion people on television.The first television broadcast of the Oscars took place in 1953 - on black and white TV, telecasted throughout the US and Canada. Telecasting in colour begun in 1966, and since 1969, the Oscars have been telecast throughout the world. By the mid-1990s it was telecast in over 100 countries.The first OscarsAt the first Acadamy Awards, Best Director awards went to Lewis Milestone for Two Arabian Knights and Frank Borzage for 7th Heaven. The first award for Actor in a Leading Role went to Emil Jannings for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. The first Best Actress award was won Janet Gaynor for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise. The first Best Picture award went to WINGS. Those were the days of the silent movies, thus WINGS was the only silent to have won a Best Picture Oscar. It also featured Gary Cooper in a minor role. Swiss-born Jannings grew up in Germany and had a heavy German accent which, with the advent of sound in movies, basically put an end to his Hollywood movie career.The most popular night in the worldThe Academy Award ceremony basically was a non-public affair in 1927 and 1928. But it had created such public interest that the Oscar Presentation Night was introduced in 1929. Until 1954 the Oscars were presented mostly on a Thursday. From 1955 to 1958, they were presented on a Wednesday. From 1959 until 1998 the Oscars were, with a few exceptions, presented on a Monday night. Only since 1999 did the Awards ceremony take place on a Sunday (in March). In total up to 2005, the famous statuettes have been handed out on 32 Monday nights, 21 Thursday nights, 8 Wednesdays, 6 Tuesdays, 2 Fridays, once on a Saturday (1948), and four times on a Sunday.In 1930, the Academy Awards were held twice: on 3 April and on 5 November. No ceremony was held in 1933. Since 1940 people have been kept on the edge of their seats with the familiar phrase "The envelope please."The Envelope Please
Only one actress has won the Best Actress award four times: Katharine Hepburn is the only actress to have won the Best Actress award four times, for Morning Glory (1932/3), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? (1967), The Lion in Winter (1968), and On Golden Pond (1981). In 1968 Katherine Hepburn was tied with and Barbra Streisand for the Best Actress award.Anthony Quinn’s performance as painter Paul Gaugin in Lust for Life (1956) is the shortest ever to win an Academy Award. He was on screen for only 8 minutes. Judi Dench made the second shortest Oscar-winning performance, winning Supporting Actress for her potrayal of Elizabeth I in "Sheakespeare in Love" (1999).In 1997 James Cameron’s Titanic received 11 Oscars, sharing the record of the most Oscars awards for a single film with William Wyler’s Ben Hur (1959). The closest runner-up is West Side Story with 10 Oscars in 1961.Family matters
Only two married couples won Oscars for acting roles: Laurence Olivier (Hamlet, 1948) and Vivian Leigh (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1951); and Joanne Woodward (The Three Faces of Eve, 1957) and Paul Newman (The Color of Money, 1986). The only sisters to have won Oscars are Joan Fontaine (Suspicion, 1941) and Olivia de Havilland (To Each His Own, 1946, and The Heiress, 1949).No thank you!
2007 OSCARS
Genetically modified plants can grow plasticPlants have been used for centuries as medicines - now genetically modified plants can produce plastic, skin tissue agents and human blood proteins. Biotechnologists have created genetically modified (GM) plants that can grow plastic. They managed this by inserting 4 genes from a plastic-producing bacteria into varieties of oilseed rape (Eurasian plant) and cress. Conventional plastics are made from oil and do not degrade easily, but the plant plastic is biodegradable. But it is expensive. Petroleum-derived plastic cost about $1 per kg (2,2 lb) but plant plastic would cost $5 per kg (2,2 lb). |
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