Days That Changed The World

When I first started to ponder the theme of Days that Changed the World my mind went immediately to the book 'Ten Days That Shook The World'  by John Reed, his first-hand account of the Russian revolution in 1917. But after a bit more pondering the thought occurred that did those days really shake someone going to the shops in Geelong, Australia or Nuuk in Greenland? I doubt it.

And does the phrase actually mean the World or the human perception of our planet? I can’t think of any one single war, political upheaval or natural disaster that has shook the whole of the world for us. Presuming that Noah’s Ark was a myth in Mesopotamian times.

But I can think of a single event that did shake the world and change it forever. This is how the Natural History Museum describes it: "Sixty-six million years ago, dinosaurs had the ultimate bad day. With a devastating asteroid impact, a reign that had lasted 180 million years was abruptly ended."

In 1980, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez and his geologist son Walter published a theory that a historic layer of iridium-rich clay was caused by a large asteroid colliding with Earth. The instantaneous devastation in the immediate vicinity and the widespread secondary effects of an asteroid impact were considered to be why the dinosaurs died out so suddenly.

An asteroid impact is supported by really good evidence because we've identified the crater. It's now largely buried on the seafloor off the coast of Mexico. It is exactly the same age as the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, which can be tracked in the rock record all around the world.

The impact site, known as the Chicxulub crater, is centred on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The asteroid is thought to have been between 10 and 15 kilometres wide, but the velocity of its collision caused the creation of a much larger crater, 150 kilometres in diameter - the second-largest crater on the planet. The date of the dinosaur extinction is 66.0 million years ago.

But what caused global mass extinctions? Around 75% of Earth's animals, including dinosaurs, suddenly died out at the same point in time. So how was it all caused by a rock hurtling into the coast of Central America? The asteroid hit at high velocity and effectively vaporised. It made a huge crater, so in the immediate area there was total devastation. A huge blast wave and heatwave went out and it threw vast amounts of material up into the atmosphere. It sent soot travelling all around the world. It didn't completely block out the Sun, but it reduced the amount of light that reached the Earth's surface. So it had an impact on plant growth.

Like dominos, this trailed up the food chain, causing the ecosystem to collapse. There is a lot of discussion over the actual kill mechanism and how long that period lasted. There are still a lot of unknowns. But it was a massive event affecting all life on Earth, from microorganisms all the way through to dinosaurs. The casualty list is long. Among them, ammonites, some microscopic plankton, and large marine reptiles all died out.

But the loss made room for the beginnings of the modern world.

I did have to trim that article a bit but I hope the main thrust of it makes sense.

As for another day that changed the world. I wrote the following for the birth of my friend’s grandson, Blake:

Friday 19th January 2018

(for Blake Ricci)

Sunrise in London was 7-56

it was not raining

The London Model Engineering Exhibition

opened in The Alexandra Palace at 10 am

mars bars were 60p

the sun shone at midday

but it was cloudy in Firenze

Paddington Bear 2 is the best film ever

the top selling single was River

Sunset in London was 4-26

Jupiter was visible

Derby County and Bristol City drew 0- 0

someone in Preston

went to bed at 11-15

on an ordinary sort of day

and so missed the fact

that the world changed

at 11-36 pm

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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A Trip to Manchester Museum

On Monday we took our oldest nephew to Manchester Museum and, just as he has never experienced a museum before, I have never experienced a museum in the company of a five year old. I found that I had to change the way I would normally approach a day out like this. This day wasn't about me increasing my knowledge, taking in every item, reading every description, or even obtaining a collection of well-composed photographs. Rather it was about finding a way to keep Josh engaged, showing him new things and attempting to explain them in an exciting way.

We found 'Which is your favourite?' to be an effective question for getting Josh to actually look in each cabinet (the temptation to bounce off to explore the next room was difficult for him to resist). Although, as with any question posed to a child, his response occasionally surprised. For instance, whilst looking at a cabinet of carved wooden statues Josh declared: I like that one the best. The one with the really big boobies.

When there were things he could touch he seemed even more engaged. He had the opportunity to stroke a stuffed fox, running his fingers over body, tail, feet, nose and ears to discover how the fur felt different on each part.  

There was something joyful about him jumping to the next display and hearing the word 'awesome' spill from his mouth, and there was a sense of feeling special when he'd skipped ahead to only return, take my hand and say, I need to show you this really cool thing.

Over lunch he examined the museum map, mentally checked off where we had been and planned where we would go next... 

After lunch, with map unfolded, clutched in both hands, he became our guide and we followed without objection.

In the vivarium, Shaun lifted him up to see the leaf frogs which were suckered onto the leaves in disguise. A little later, we overhead him repeating what Shaun had told him about them to another adult, pointing them out and telling her what they were.

He pressed buttons on a giant earth and saw red coloured dots erupt to represent volcanoes and green flashing ones to show the earthquakes. He circle around the sphere's circumference, trying to take in every light before they darkened.

In tiredness he still found the strength to be amazed by Stan the T-Rex, desperate to take a photograph so he didn't forget his overall favourite thing.

*             *             *

Monday was a day of discovery for us all.

Thank you for reading,

Lara.

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Patches, Parrots and 'Arrrs'

On Sunday, as I was drawing with my three-year-old nephew, he asked if I could draw him a boat. As I was colouring in the hull, he instructed that I needed to add a sail and a scary flag.

He then put my drawing skills to the test by asking for the inclusion of a pirate, which according to Joshy had to have a hat, a patch and a parrot. As I attempted to draw out his requests in thick Crayola felt tip pens, I asked if he could make up a story about pirates (sneakily thinking I could get Josh to unwittingly write this blog post). I started him off with the classic and culturally ingrained ‘Once upon a time...’

Once upon a time, there were dinosaurs that roared loudly. Scary, roaring dinosaurs. They chased the pirates away. The pirates ran back to their boat and sailed away from the dinosaurs. They went to an island to find treasure, gold treasure. They had a key. When they used the key – ‘POP!’ – because there was a Jack-in-the-box hidden inside. Then the cavemen came and took the pirates underpants and then took them to the dinosaurs. And the dinosaurs wore them and roared because they were happy. The end.

Anyone who regularly reads books to children will be able to see that Josh’s story has been greatly influenced by a specific children’s book, Dinosaurs Love Underpants. This book, along with others, have formed part of Josh’s current knowledge of a world he’s still learning and trying to understand. At the minute, for him, his favourite books (full of imagination) are just as real and valid as concrete objects or authenticated facts.

From both what Josh asked me to draw and from the story he told, it is clear that Josh has managed to acquire the same stereotypical depiction of a pirate as would be held by most adults. However, where we perhaps just accept this stereotyped view of a pirate, Josh is presently in a ‘why?’ phase – questioning everything and looking for answers. And it got me thinking: is this view of pirates derived from reality or has it been constructed overtime by fictional works (such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan) and subsequently reinforced via the medium of film?

So what was based on reality and what has been made up?

Did pirates really have pet parrots?

Exotic pets were certainly popular amongst sailors, if for no other reason than the high price they could command in the European markets, and parrots were especially popular, perhaps because they could be taught to talk. Several probate inventories of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries list parrots or parrot cages amongst the possessions of seamen, but most importantly perhaps is the description of parrots to be found in William Dampier's journal of his circumnavigation in which he describes the parrots of Campeachy Bay as "yellow and red, very coarsely mixed; and they would prate [talk] very prettily…"

(from www.piratesinfo.com)

Did pirates really wear eye patches ?

There is one theory that the eye patch was worn over one eye so the pirate could move between the darkness of below-deck to the brightness of topside without waiting for the eyes to adjust.

Another theory: the eye patch stereotype predates the "Golden Age of Piracy" by some 200 years. Up until the 1500s one of the key tools of maritime navigation was the cross staff, which required the navigator to look directly into the sun at high noon. This led to a lot of sailor/navigators who were partially blind in one eye. After significant sight loss, many would likely have taken to wearing an eyepatch over the afflicted eye. By the 1500s other tools like the back staff had been invented which eliminated the need to look directly into the sun, but by then the sailor/eyepatch image had made its way into public consciousness.

(from Pirate Master)

Did pirates really say ‘Arrr’?

Most scholars think English-speaking Golden Age pirates spoke exactly the same as English-speaking merchant sailors of the time, since large numbers in both groups tended to be from riverfront neighborhoods around London, he said.

Many of the phrases that most people think of as pirate speech today can actually be traced back to the 1950s Disney movie Treasure Island, starring Robert Newton as fictional pirate Long John Silver (hear Newton as Silver).

(from National Geographic)

Thank you for reading,

Lara

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