Emma Christoffersen was twenty-eight years old when she collapsed moments after leaving a long flight from Australia. Her death highlighted the statistics concerning health-related problems during long flights. In fact, more people die from health-related incidents during flights than from air crashes. Studies show that poor air quality, low oxygen levels, and cramped seating are […]
Even the most war-hardened journalists must have felt a cold shiver of shock on the day that Miguel Gil Moreno was shot dead by rebels from Sierra Leone. Miguel was killed close to where he had recently shot his last pictures, which were images of a massacre of UN troops. The death of Miguel, who […]
When a catastrophe strikes a ship at sea and she goes to the bottom, there is usually some clue to her fate – a bit of debris or perhaps a floating life jacket. Five years after her sinking, a life jacket from the Lusitania was found, for example, floating along a wharf in Philadelphia – […]
The term Renaissance man was coined to describe the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. He was a man of so many accomplishments in so many areas of human endeavour that his like has rarely been seen in human history. Casual patrons of the arts know him as the painter of “La Gioconda” – more commonly […]
The term creative writing means imaginative writing, or writing as an art. The primary concern of creative writing is not with factual information, or with the more routine forms of communication. It does, however, use many of the same skills. A novel, for example, may contain much sociological, political or psychological information. Scholars may study […]
The tales told by minstrels during the Middle Ages are called romances. At that time, the nobles of Europe lived in desolate castles. There were few books to read, and travel was difficult. In such a life, visitors were eagerly welcomed, and most welcome of all was the minstrel. The family would gather around the […]
Other American industrialists and factory managers were stunned when automobile manufacturer Henry Ford announced in 1914 that he would pay his assembly line workers $5.00 a day and reduce the working day from nine to eight hours. The average daily wage in American industry at the time was $2.34. He became world famous almost overnight. […]
Over 200 years ago, the British chemist Joseph Priestley received an intriguing bouncy ball from an American friend. It was made of a material he had not seen before. Priestley noticed that it could rub away pencil marks, and so he named the material rubber. Not only has the name stuck, but since then rubber […]
The Roman writer Seneca once commented: “All things are cause either for laughter or weeping.” The 18th-century French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais echoed Seneca’s words by stating: “I hasten to laugh at everything, for fear of being obliged to weep.” Both Seneca and Beaumarchais understood that laughing and crying are closely related emotional responses to some […]
If one term can be used to describe the forces that have shaped the modern world, it is Romanticism. Romanticism had a dynamic impact on art, literature, science, religion, economics, politics, and the individual’s understanding of self. There is no single commonly accepted definition of Romanticism, but it has some features upon which there is […]