Cosimo de’ Medici (1389)

The son of a Florentine banker, Cosimo de’ Medici was an able financier who vastly expanded the family’s banking business. In 1433, he was banished from the city by a rival family but returned a year later. With the support of the people, he became the first of the Medici family to rule Florence. He sought a balance of power among the Italian states and made his power as little felt as possible. He was also a noted patron of scholarship and the arts. What celebrated sculptor did he support? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Nubian Pyramids

In the 8th century BCE, Egypt was conquered by Kushites from Napata—a city located to the south of Egypt in the area known today as Sudan. Although Napatan pharaohs ruled Egypt, it was Egypt that had an enormous cultural impact on Napata, prompting a period of vigorous pyramid-building that continued even in Napata’s successor kingdom, Meroë. Approximately 220 pyramids were eventually built as tombs for Kushite kings and queens. These pyramids differ from their Egyptian counterparts in what way? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Steamship RMS Queen Mary Is Launched (1934)

Construction on the Queen Mary ocean liner began in Scotland in 1930. In 1934, British King George V’s consort, Queen Mary, christened the ship in her own name. Operated by the Cunard Line, the glamorous luxury ship carried passengers between New York and England for decades—except during World War II, when it was painted grey and converted to carry troops. In the 1960s, air travel rendered transatlantic passenger ships obsolete, and the Queen Mary was retired. Where is it now? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Birthday of Johnny Appleseed

John Chapman—better known as Johnny Appleseed for his lifelong dedication to planting apple seedlings all over the American Midwest—was born on this day in 1774. While some frontier settlers thought he was a saint, or at the very least a religious fanatic, with his tin pot hat and coffee-sack tunic, the Native Americans regarded him as a great medicine man since he planted herbs as well as apples. Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Thomas Stearns “T. S.” Eliot (1888)

Eliot was an American-British poet and critic and an immensely distinguished literary figure who, from the 1920s on, was the most influential English-language modernist poet. His early poems, such as “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “The Waste Land,” express the anguish and barrenness of modern life and the isolation of the individual. In his later poetry, he turned from spiritual desolation to hope for human salvation. What book by Eliot is the basis for the musical Cats? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary

Prokudin-Gorsky: The Empire That Was Russia

Educated as a chemist, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky devoted himself to the development of early color photography. By taking rapid sequences of monochrome photos through different colored filters and overlaying them, he was able to reconstruct original color scenes. Around 1905, he set out to document the Russian Empire and went on to capture vivid portraits of a lost world—the nation on the eve of World War I and the coming Russian revolution. What did Tsar Nicholas II give him to aid in the project? Discuss

Source: The Free Dictionary