1.
Calendar
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A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, a date is the designation of a single, specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a calendar or a partly or fully chronological list of documents. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not necessarily, synchronized with the cycle of the sun or the moon. The most common type of calendar was the lunisolar calendar. Latin calendarium meant account book, register, the Latin term was adopted in Old French as calendier and from there in Middle English as calender by the 13th century. The course of the Sun and the Moon are the most evident forms of timekeeping, nevertheless, the Roman calendar contained very ancient remnants of a pre-Etruscan 10-month solar year. The first recorded calendars date to the Bronze Age, dependent on the development of writing in the Ancient Near East, a larger number of calendar systems of the Ancient Near East becomes accessible in the Iron Age, based on the Babylonian calendar. This includes the calendar of the Persian Empire, which in turn gave rise to the Zoroastrian calendar as well as the Hebrew calendar, calendars in antiquity were lunisolar, depending on the introduction of intercalary months to align the solar and the lunar years. This was mostly based on observation, but there may have been attempts to model the pattern of intercalation algorithmically. The Roman calendar was reformed by Julius Caesar in 45 BC, the Julian calendar was no longer dependent on the observation of the new moon but simply followed an algorithm of introducing a leap day every four years. This created a dissociation of the month from the lunation. The Islamic calendar is based on the prohibition of intercalation by Muhammad and this resulted in an observationally based lunar calendar that shifts relative to the seasons of the solar year. The first calendar reform of the modern era was the Gregorian calendar. Such ideas are mooted from time to time but have failed to gain traction because of the loss of continuity, massive upheaval in implementation, a full calendar system has a different calendar date for every day. Thus the week cycle is by not a full calendar system. The simplest calendar system just counts time periods from a reference date and this applies for the Julian day or Unix Time
2.
Henry VIII of England
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Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. Henry was the second Tudor monarch, succeeding his father, Henry VII, Henry is best known for his six marriages and, in particular, his efforts to have his first marriage, to Catherine of Aragon, annulled. Despite his resulting excommunication, Henry remained a believer in core Catholic theological teachings, domestically, Henry is known for his radical changes to the English Constitution, ushering in the theory of the divine right of kings to England. Besides asserting the supremacy over the Church of England, he greatly expanded royal power during his reign. Charges of treason and heresy were commonly used to quash dissent, and he achieved many of his political aims through the work of his chief ministers, some of whom were banished or executed when they fell out of his favour. Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich and his contemporaries considered Henry in his prime to be an attractive, educated, and accomplished king, and he has been described as one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne. He was an author and composer, as he aged, Henry became severely obese and his health suffered, contributing to his death in 1547. He is frequently characterised in his life as a lustful, egotistical, harsh. He was succeeded by his son Edward VI, born 28 June 1491 at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, London, Henry Tudor was the third child and second son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. Of the young Henrys six siblings, only three – Arthur, Prince of Wales, Margaret, and Mary – survived infancy and he was baptised by Richard Fox, the Bishop of Exeter, at a church of the Observant Franciscans close to the palace. In 1493, at the age of two, Henry was appointed Constable of Dover Castle and Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports. He was subsequently appointed Earl Marshal of England and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland at age three, and was inducted into the Order of the Bath soon after. The day after the ceremony he was created Duke of York, in May 1495, he was appointed to the Order of the Garter. Henry was given an education from leading tutors, becoming fluent in Latin and French. Not much is known about his early life – save for his appointments – because he was not expected to become king, as Duke of York, Henry used the arms of his father as king, differenced by a label of three points ermine. In 1502, Arthur died at the age of 15 of sweating sickness, Arthurs death thrust all his duties upon his younger brother, the 10-year-old Henry. After a little debate, Henry became the new Duke of Cornwall in October 1502, Henry VII gave the boy few tasks. Young Henry was strictly supervised and did not appear in public, as a result, the young Henry would later ascend the throne untrained in the exacting art of kingship
3.
Stephen Jay Gould
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Stephen Jay Gould was an American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science. He was also one of the most influential and widely read writers of science of his generation. Gould spent most of his teaching at Harvard University and working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1996 Gould was also appointed as the Vincent Astor Visiting Research Professor of Biology at New York University, Goulds most significant contribution to evolutionary biology was the theory of punctuated equilibrium, which he developed with Niles Eldredge in 1972. The theory proposes that most evolution is characterized by periods of evolutionary stability. The theory was contrasted against phyletic gradualism, the idea that evolutionary change is marked by a pattern of smooth. Most of Goulds empirical research was based on the land snail genera Poecilozonites and he also contributed to evolutionary developmental biology, and received wide praise for his book Ontogeny and Phylogeny. In evolutionary theory he opposed strict selectionism, sociobiology as applied to humans and he campaigned against creationism and proposed that science and religion should be considered two distinct fields whose authorities do not overlap. Gould was known by the public mainly from his 300 popular essays in the magazine Natural History. In April 2000, the US Library of Congress named him a Living Legend, Stephen Jay Gould was born and raised in the community of Bayside, a neighborhood of the northeastern section of Queens in New York City. His father Leonard was a stenographer and a World War II veteran in the United States Navy. His mother Eleanor was an artist whose parents were Jewish immigrants living and working in the citys Garment District, when Gould was five years old his father took him to the Hall of Dinosaurs in the American Museum of Natural History, where he first encountered Tyrannosaurus rex. I had no idea there were such things—I was awestruck, Gould once recalled and it was in that moment that he decided to become a paleontologist. Raised in a secular Jewish home, Gould did not formally practice religion, when asked directly if he was an agnostic in Skeptic magazine, he responded, If you absolutely forced me to bet on the existence of a conventional anthropomorphic deity, of course Id bet no. But, basically, Huxley was right when he said that agnosticism is the honorable position because we really cannot know. Id be real surprised if there turned out to be a conventional God, though he had been brought up by a Marxist father, he stated that his fathers politics were very different from his own. In describing his own views, he has said they tend to the left of center. According to Gould the most influential political books he read were C. Wright Mills The Power Elite, while attending Antioch College in the early 1960s, Gould was active in the civil rights movement and often campaigned for social justice
4.
Arthur C. Clarke
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Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction writer, science writer and futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He is perhaps most famous for being co-writer of the screenplay for the 1968 film 2001, A Space Odyssey, Clarke was a science writer, who was both an avid populariser of space travel and a futurist of uncanny ability. On these subjects he wrote over a dozen books and many essays, in 1961 he was awarded the Kalinga Prize, an award which is given by UNESCO for popularizing science. These along with his fiction writings eventually earned him the moniker Prophet of the Space Age. His other science fiction writings earned him a number of Hugo and Nebula awards, for many years Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were known as the Big Three of science fiction. Clarke was a proponent of space travel. In 1934, while still a teenager, he joined the British Interplanetary Society, in 1945, he proposed a satellite communication system, an idea which won him the Franklin Institutes Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1963, and other honours. Later he was the chairman of the British Interplanetary Society from 1946–47, Clarke emigrated from England to Sri Lanka in 1956, largely to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year he discovered the ruins of the ancient Koneswaram temple in Trincomalee. Clarke augmented his fame later on in the 1980s, from being the host of television shows such as Arthur C. He lived in Sri Lanka until his death and he was knighted in 1998 and was awarded Sri Lankas highest civil honour, Sri Lankabhimanya, in 2005. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England, and grew up in nearby Bishops Lydeard, as a boy, he grew up on a farm enjoying stargazing, fossil collecting, and reading American science fiction pulp magazines. He received his education at Huish Grammar school in Taunton. Early influences included dinosaur cigarette cards, which led to an enthusiasm for fossils starting about 1925, in his teens, he joined the Junior Astronomical Association and contributed to Urania, the societys journal, which was edited in Glasgow by Marion Eadie. At Clarkes request, she added an Astronautics Section, which featured a series of articles by him on spacecraft and he moved to London in 1936 and joined the Board of Education as a pensions auditor. Clarke spent most of his wartime service working on ground-controlled approach radar, as documented in the semi-autobiographical Glide Path, although GCA did not see much practical use during the war, it proved vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948–1949 after several years of development. Clarke initially served in the ranks, and was an instructor on radar at No.2 Radio School. He was commissioned as an officer on 27 May 1943
5.
Utopia
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A utopia is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia and you could also say that utopia is a perfect place that has been made so there are no problems. The term has been used to describe intentional communities, the term utopia was coined from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The word comes from Greek, οὐ and τόπος and means no-place, however, in standard usage, the words meaning has narrowed and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society. Eutopia, derived from Greek εὖ and τόπος, means good place, in English, eutopia and utopia are homophonous, which may have given rise to the change in meaning. Chronologically, the first recorded utopian proposal is Platos Republic, part conversation, part fictional depiction, and part policy proposal, Republic would categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of golden, silver, bronze and iron socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in a rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, plato stressed this structure many times in both quotes by him and in his published works, such as the Republic. The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, the educational program for the rulers is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war, during the 16th century, Thomas Mores book Utopia proposed an ideal society of the same name. Some maintain the position that Mores Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, but the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning good, also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly good place is really no place. Ecological utopian society describes new ways in which society should relate to nature and these works perceive a widening gap between the modern Western way of living that destroys nature and a more traditional way of living before industrialization. Ecological utopias may advocate a society that is more sustainable, according to the Dutch philosopher Marius de Geus, ecological utopias could be inspirational sources for movements involving green politics. Particularly in the early 19th century, several ideas arose. These ideas are often grouped in a utopian socialist movement. A once common characteristic is a distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money. Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the good, leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts. One classic example of such a utopia was Edward Bellamys Looking Backward, Another socialist utopia is William Morriss News from Nowhere, written partially in response to the top-down nature of Bellamys utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed, it moved away from utopianism, in a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect, there is no inflation, and only perfect social and financial equality exists
6.
Odometer
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An odometer or odograph is an instrument that indicates distance travelled by a vehicle, such as a bicycle or automobile. The device may be electronic, mechanical, or a combination of the two, the noun derives from the Greek words hodós and métron. Possibly the first evidence for the use of an odometer can be found in the works of the ancient Roman Pliny, both authors list the distances of routes traveled by Alexander the Great as by his bematists Diognetus and Baeton. However, the accuracy of the bematistss measurements rather indicates the use of a mechanical device. 2% from the actual distance. From the nine surviving bematists measurements in Plinys Naturalis Historia eight show a deviation of less than 5% from the actual distance, three of them being within 1%. An odometer for measuring distance was first described by Vitruvius around 27 and 23 BC, hero of Alexandria describes a similar device in chapter 34 of his Dioptra. Some researchers have speculated that the device might have included technology similar to that of the Greek Antikythera mechanism, the odometer of Vitruvius was based on chariot wheels of 4 feet diameter turning 400 times in one Roman mile. For each revolution a pin on the axle engaged a 400 tooth cogwheel thus turning it one complete revolution per mile and this engaged another gear with holes along the circumference, where pebbles were located, that were to drop one by one into a box. The distance traveled would thus be given simply by counting the number of pebbles, whether this instrument was ever built at the time is disputed. Leonardo da Vinci later tried to build it himself according to the description, however, in 1981 engineer Andre Sleeswyk built his own replica, replacing the square-toothed gear designs of da Vinci with the triangular, pointed teeth found in the Antikythera mechanism. With this modification, the Vitruvius odometer functioned perfectly, the odometer was also independently invented in ancient China, possibly by the prolific inventor and early scientist Zhang Heng of the Han Dynasty. By the 3rd century, the Chinese had termed the device as the jì lĭ gŭ chē, there is speculation that some time in the 1st century BC, the beating of drums and gongs were mechanically-driven by working automatically off the rotation of the road-wheels. This might have actually been the design of one Loxia Hong, the odometer was used also in subsequent periods of Chinese history. In the historical text of the Jin Shu, the oldest part of the compiled text, the passage in the Jin Shu expanded upon this, explaining that it took a similar form to the mechanical device of the south-pointing chariot invented by Ma Jun. As recorded in the Song Shi of the Song Dynasty, the odometer and south-pointing chariot were combined into one wheeled device by engineers of the 9th century, 11th century, and 12th century. The Sun Tzu Suan Ching, dated from the 3rd century to 5th century, the historical text of the Song Shi, recording the people and events of the Chinese Song Dynasty, also mentioned the odometer used in that period. At the completion of every li, the figure of a man in the lower storey strikes a drum, at the completion of every ten li. The carriage-pole ends in a phoenix-head, and the carriage is drawn by four horses, the escort was formerly of 18 men, but in the 4th year of the Yung-Hsi reign-period the emperor Thai Tsung increased it to 30
7.
Millennium Dome
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Located on the Greenwich Peninsula in South East London, England, the exhibition was open to the public from 1 January to 31 December 2000. The project and exhibition was the subject of political controversy as it failed to attract the number of visitors anticipated. All of the exhibition and associated complex has since been demolished. The dome still exists, and it is now a key feature of The O2. The Prime Meridian passes the edge of the Dome and the nearest London Underground station is North Greenwich on the Jubilee line. The dome is one of the largest of its type in the world, in plan view it is circular,365 m in diameter. It has become one of the United Kingdoms most recognisable landmarks and it can easily be seen on aerial photographs of London. Its exterior is reminiscent of the Dome of Discovery built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, the architect was Richard Rogers and the contractor was a joint venture company, McAlpine/Laing Joint Venture formed between Sir Robert McAlpine and Laing Management. The building structure was engineered by Buro Happold, and the roof structure weighs less than the air contained within the building. Although referred to as a dome it is not strictly one as it is not self-supporting, but is in fact a giant Big Top, for this reason, it has been disparagingly referred to as the Millennium Tent. The twelve posts represent the months of the year, another reference to time in its dimensions, alongside its height. The canopy is made of PTFE-coated glass fibre fabric, a durable and weather-resistant plastic and its symmetry is interrupted by a hole through which a ventilation shaft from the Blackwall Tunnel rises. The land was previously derelict and contaminated by toxic sludge from East Greenwich Gas Works that operated from 1889 to 1985, the clean-up operation was seen by the then Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine as an investment that would add a large area of useful land to the crowded capital. The incoming Labour government elected in 1997 under Tony Blair greatly expanded the size, scope and it also significantly increased expectations of what would be delivered. Just before its opening Blair claimed the Dome would be a triumph of confidence over cynicism, boldness over blandness, in the words of BBC correspondent Robert Orchard, the Dome was to be highlighted as a glittering New Labour achievement in the next election manifesto. Fisher Athletic were a team interested in moving to the Dome. The Dome was planned to take over the functions performed by the London Arena and this is the function which The O2 Arena has now undertaken. Night Rain and Faith Festivals Calendar Self Portrait, sponsored by Marks & Spencer, sculpture design by Gerald Scarfe What we do, Work, the Journey Zone, outlining the history and development of transport, was one of the few singled out for praise
8.
Time
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Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. Time is often referred to as the dimension, along with the three spatial dimensions. Time has long been an important subject of study in religion, philosophy, and science, nevertheless, diverse fields such as business, industry, sports, the sciences, and the performing arts all incorporate some notion of time into their respective measuring systems. Two contrasting viewpoints on time divide prominent philosophers, one view is that time is part of the fundamental structure of the universe—a dimension independent of events, in which events occur in sequence. Isaac Newton subscribed to this realist view, and hence it is referred to as Newtonian time. This second view, in the tradition of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant, holds that time is neither an event nor a thing, Time in physics is unambiguously operationally defined as what a clock reads. Time is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units and International System of Quantities, Time is used to define other quantities—such as velocity—so defining time in terms of such quantities would result in circularity of definition. The operational definition leaves aside the question there is something called time, apart from the counting activity just mentioned, that flows. Investigations of a single continuum called spacetime bring questions about space into questions about time, questions that have their roots in the works of early students of natural philosophy. Furthermore, it may be there is a subjective component to time. Temporal measurement has occupied scientists and technologists, and was a motivation in navigation. Periodic events and periodic motion have long served as standards for units of time, examples include the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the swing of a pendulum, and the beat of a heart. Currently, the unit of time, the second, is defined by measuring the electronic transition frequency of caesium atoms. Time is also of significant social importance, having economic value as well as value, due to an awareness of the limited time in each day. In day-to-day life, the clock is consulted for periods less than a day whereas the calendar is consulted for periods longer than a day, increasingly, personal electronic devices display both calendars and clocks simultaneously. The number that marks the occurrence of an event as to hour or date is obtained by counting from a fiducial epoch—a central reference point. Artifacts from the Paleolithic suggest that the moon was used to time as early as 6,000 years ago. Lunar calendars were among the first to appear, either 12 or 13 lunar months, without intercalation to add days or months to some years, seasons quickly drift in a calendar based solely on twelve lunar months
9.
24-hour clock
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The 24-hour clock is the convention of time keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 0 to 23. This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world today, in the practice of medicine, the 24-hour clock is generally used in documentation of care as it prevents any ambiguity as to when events occurred in a patients medical history. It is popularly referred to as time in the United States. In the case of a second, the value of ss may extend to 60. A leading zero is added for numbers under 10 and this zero is optional for the hours, but very commonly used in computer applications, where many specifications require it. Where subsecond resolution is required, the seconds can be a fraction, that is. The most commonly used separator symbol between hours, minutes and seconds is the colon, which is also the used in ISO8601. In the past, some European countries used the dot on the line as a separator, in some contexts, no separator is used and times are written as, for example,2359. In East Asia, time notation was 24-hour before westernization in modern times, the clocks were changed into 12 dual-hours style when they were shipped to China in the Qing dynasty. In the 24-hour time notation, the day begins at midnight,00,00, and the last minute of the day begins at 23,59. Where convenient, the notation 24,00 may also be used to refer to midnight at the end of a given date – that is,24,00 of one day is the time as 00,00 of the following day. The notation 24,00 mainly serves to refer to the end of a day in a time interval. A typical usage is giving opening hours ending at midnight, similarly, some railway timetables show 00,00 as departure time and 24,00 as arrival time. Legal contracts often run from the date at 00,00 until the end date at 24,00. While the 24-hour notation unambiguously distinguishes between midnight at the start and end of any date, there is no commonly accepted distinction among users of the 12-hour notation. Sometimes the use of 00,00 is also avoided, in variance with this, the correspondence manual for the U. S. Navy and U. S. Marine Corps formerly specified 0001 to 2400. The manual was updated in June 2015 to use 0000 to 2359, time-of-day notations beyond 24,00 are not commonly used and not covered by the relevant standards. In most countries, computers by default show the time in 24-hour notation, for example, Microsoft Windows and macOS activate the 12-hour notation by default only if a computer is in a handful of specific language and region settings
10.
12-hour clock
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The 12-hour clock is a time convention in which the 24 hours of the day are divided into two periods, a. m. and p. m. Each period consists of 12 hours numbered,12,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and 11. The 24 hour/day cycle starts at 12 midnight, runs through 12 noon, the 12-hour clock was developed over time from the mid-second millennium BC to the 16th century AD. The natural day- and night division of a calendar day forms the basis as to why each day is split into two cycles. Originally there were two cycles, one cycle which could be tracked by the position of the Sun followed by one cycle which could be tracked by the Moon and this would eventually evolve into the two 12-hour periods that started at midnight and noon which are used today. Noon itself is rarely abbreviated today, but if it is, the 12-hour clock can be traced back as far as Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Both an Egyptian sundial for daytime use and an Egyptian water clock for night-time use were found in the tomb of Pharaoh Amenhotep I, dating to c.1500 BC, these clocks divided their respective times of use into 12 hours each. The Romans also used a 12-hour clock, daylight was divided into 12 equal hours, in Northern Europe these dials generally used the 12-hour numbering scheme in Roman numerals, but showed both a. m. and p. m. periods in sequence. This is known as the system, and can be seen on many surviving clock faces, such as those at Wells. Elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Italy, numbering was more likely to be based on the 24-hour system, the 12-hour clock was used throughout the British empire. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the 12-hour analog dial, the 24-hour analog dial was reserved for more specialized applications, such as astronomical clocks and chronometers. Most analog clocks and watches use the 12-hour dial, on which the shorter hour hand rotates once every 12 hours. Some analog clock dials have a ring of numbers along with the standard 1-to-12 numbered ring. The number 12 is paired either with a 00 or a 24, while the numbers 1 through 11 are paired with the numbers 13 through 23 and this modification allows the clock to be read also in the 24-hour notation. This kind of 12-hour clock can be found in countries where the 24-hour clock is preferred, in several countries the 12-hour clock is the dominant written and spoken system of time. Other countries use the 12-hour clock mainly in spoken time, while the 24-hour notation is written, in most countries the 12-hour clock is used in speech alongside the 24-hour clock. The 12-hour clock in speech often uses such as in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening. Outside of English-speaking countries, the terms a. m. and p. m. are seldom used and often unknown
