Month: September 2024

Mayflower Sets Sail for New England (1620)

The Mayflower set sail from England to the New World with 102 passengers and about 25 crew members. After a two-month voyage marked by disease, the ship dropped anchor in Cape Cod Bay. After spending the winter selecting a suitable site for their new colony and drawing up an agreement for its temporary government by the will of the majority—the Mayflower Compact—the surviving passengers settled Plymouth. Why did the Speedwell, which set out with the Mayflower, turn back? Discuss

Julia Drusilla (16 CE)

Drusilla was the sister of the Roman Emperor Caligula, a man widely characterized as insane, autocratic, and cruel. Drusilla was reportedly her brother’s favorite sibling. During banquets at his residence, she consistently occupied the seat of honor normally reserved for the host’s wife and, perhaps because of this practice, was rumored to be Caligula’s lover. Upon Drusilla’s death, Caligula had the Roman Senate declare her “Diva Drusilla,” deifying her as a representation of what goddess? Discuss

Orcas

Found in oceans worldwide, orcas display sophisticated hunting techniques and social behaviors that have been described by experts as manifestations of a shared culture. Like other dolphins, orcas produce a variety of vocalizations used for communication and echolocation. Orca mothers have even been observed training their young in the group’s dialect, and it is said that groups that share ancestors are likely to have a similar set of call types. What does this suggest about orca vocal behavior? Discuss

Steam Locomotive John Bull Operates for the First Time (1831)

The John Bull is a steam locomotive that ran on the Camden and Amboy Railroad, the first railroad built in New Jersey. Retired in 1866, the locomotive was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1885 and became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world in 1981, when it was operated in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of its first use. Though its official name was Stevens, crews began calling it John Bull, and the name eventually stuck. What made them choose that name? Discuss

Dame Agatha Christie (1890)

Christie, a British mystery novelist and playwright known for her detective figures Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple, wrote over 75 novels, including Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None. Her books have been translated into 100 languages and have sold over 100 million copies, and her play The Mousetrap, still running after 23,000 performances, holds the record for longest initial run in theatrical history. What prompted Christie’s 1926 disappearance? Discuss

Exabytes

An exabyte is a unit of information or computer storage equal to one quintillion bytes—an amount roughly represented by the number 1 followed by 18 zeros. Though the term is rarely encountered in any practical context, a popular, hotly contested assertion, which often cites as support a project at the UC Berkeley School of Information, is that “all words ever spoken by human beings” can be represented by approximately 5 exabytes of data. What is meant by the related term “exaflood”? Discuss

Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Founded (1960)

OPEC is a multinational organization that was established in 1960 to coordinate the petroleum production and export policies of its original members, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. Other nations have since joined the organization. In 1973, OPEC began a series of oil price increases in retaliation for Western support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, and its members’ income greatly increased as a result. What member country withdrew from OPEC in 2008? Discuss

María Capovilla (1889)

Capovilla was an Ecuadorian supercentenarian whose life spanned three centuries. At the time of her death shortly before her 117th birthday in 2006, she was recognized as the world’s oldest living person. She was also the last remaining documented person born in the 1880s. At age 100, Capovilla nearly died and was given last rites by a priest, but she recovered and lived in good health for another 16 years. She had 20 great-grandchildren and how many great-great-grandchildren? Discuss