Old Town Square
Old Town Square is a historic square in the Old Town quarter of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. It is located between Wenceslas Square and the Charles Bridge, Prague Orloj is a medieval astronomical clock located on the Old Town Hall. The clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world, the Baroque St. Nicholas Church is another church located in the square, while the tower of the Old Town Hall offers a panoramic view of Old Town. An art museum of the Czech National Gallery is located in Kinský Palace, the squares center is home to a statue of religious reformer Jan Hus, who for his beliefs was burned at the stake in Constance, this led to the Hussite Wars. The statue known as the Jan Hus Memorial was erected on July 6,1915 to mark the 500th anniversary of his death. In front of the Old Town Hall is a memorial to martyrs beheaded on that spot during the Old Town Square execution by Habsburgs, twenty-seven crosses mark the pavement in their honour.
The crosses were installed during the repairs of Old Town Hall after the WW2, on November 3,1918, a Marian Column that had been erected in the square shortly after the Thirty Years War was demolished in celebration of independence from the Habsburg empire. At Christmas and Easter, markets are held on the square, a tall decorated tree and a musical stage are set up. The Christmas Markets on the Old Town Square are the largest Christmas markets in the Czech Republic and are visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors from the Czech Republic, the markets are mostly visited by Germans, Russians and British. In 2016, CNN rates Prague’s Christmas Markets among the world’s best, Old Town Square execution Old Town Square Live WebCam
Goat Story
It was the first Czech and East Europe feature-length computer animated film. The film was released on October 16,2008 by Phase 4 Films. It won the prize at the 2010 Buenos Aires International Childrens Film Festival. The film featured on the cover of the March 2008 edition of American magazine Animation, a sequel, Goat Story 2 was released in 2012. The film features a story about a friendship between the village-boy Kuba and his goat in medieval Prague. In Prague, Kuba falls in love with Máca, a worldly girl, the Goat begins to envy this relationship. Their story intertwines with that of the poor student Matěj Tale from Faust House, on 14 October 2001, it was announced that Jan Tománek was hired and set to direct and write Goat Story - The Old Prague Legends. David Sláma co-wrote the script for the film, hirsch co-produced the film with the budget of $1.8 million for release in 2008. Mike Buffo and Jo-Anne Krupa joined the cast on 9 July to voice Jemmy, on 10 December 2005, it was announced that David Solař would compose the music for the film.
Development, lighting and storyboarding of the film was completed in Prague, on 8 March 2007, Phase 4 Films and Bontonfilm acquired distribution rights to the film. The film was rated PG-13 for sensuality and nudity, the film grossed $1.3 million in the Czech Republic. A sequel, Goat Story 2 was released in 2012
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War.
After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast.
Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished in Europe during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture and its characteristics include the pointed arch, the ribbed vault and the flying buttress. Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the cathedrals, abbeys. It is the architecture of many castles, town halls, guild halls, universities and to a less prominent extent, private dwellings, for this reason a study of Gothic architecture is largely a study of cathedrals and churches. A series of Gothic revivals began in mid-18th-century England, spread through 19th-century Europe and continued, largely for ecclesiastical and university structures, the term Gothic architecture originated as a pejorative description. Hence, François Rabelais, of the 16th century, imagines an inscription over the door of his utopian Abbey of Thélème, Here enter no hypocrites, slipping in a slighting reference to Gotz and Ostrogotz.
Authorities such as Christopher Wren lent their aid in deprecating the old medieval style, the Company disapproved of several of these new manners, which are defective and which belong for the most part to the Gothic. Gothic architecture is the architecture of the medieval period, characterised by use of the pointed arch. As an architectural style, Gothic developed primarily in ecclesiastical architecture, the greatest number of surviving Gothic buildings are churches. The Gothic style is most particularly associated with the cathedrals of Northern France. At the end of the 12th century, Europe was divided into a multitude of city states, norway came under the influence of England, while the other Scandinavian countries and Poland were influenced by trading contacts with the Hanseatic League. Angevin kings brought the Gothic tradition from France to Southern Italy, throughout Europe at this time there was a rapid growth in trade and an associated growth in towns. Germany and the Lowlands had large flourishing towns that grew in comparative peace, in trade and competition with other, or united for mutual weal.
Civic building was of importance to these towns as a sign of wealth. England and France remained largely feudal and produced grand domestic architecture for their kings and bishops, the Catholic Church prevailed across Europe at this time, influencing not only faith but wealth and power. Bishops were appointed by the lords and they often ruled as virtual princes over large estates. The early Medieval periods had seen a growth in monasticism, with several different orders being prevalent. Foremost were the Benedictines whose great abbey churches vastly outnumbered any others in France, a part of their influence was that towns developed around them and they became centers of culture and commerce
Gravity
Gravity, or gravitation, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass are brought toward one another, including planets and galaxies. Since energy and mass are equivalent, all forms of energy, including light, on Earth, gravity gives weight to physical objects and causes the ocean tides. Gravity has a range, although its effects become increasingly weaker on farther objects. The most extreme example of this curvature of spacetime is a hole, from which nothing can escape once past its event horizon. More gravity results in time dilation, where time lapses more slowly at a lower gravitational potential. Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental interactions of nature, the gravitational attraction is approximately 1038 times weaker than the strong force,1036 times weaker than the electromagnetic force and 1029 times weaker than the weak force. As a consequence, gravity has an influence on the behavior of subatomic particles. On the other hand, gravity is the dominant interaction at the macroscopic scale, for this reason, in part, pursuit of a theory of everything, the merging of the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics into quantum gravity, has become an area of research.
While the modern European thinkers are credited with development of gravitational theory, some of the earliest descriptions came from early mathematician-astronomers, such as Aryabhata, who had identified the force of gravity to explain why objects do not fall out when the Earth rotates. Later, the works of Brahmagupta referred to the presence of force, described it as an attractive force. Modern work on gravitational theory began with the work of Galileo Galilei in the late 16th and this was a major departure from Aristotles belief that heavier objects have a higher gravitational acceleration. Galileo postulated air resistance as the reason that objects with less mass may fall slower in an atmosphere, galileos work set the stage for the formulation of Newtons theory of gravity. In 1687, English mathematician Sir Isaac Newton published Principia, which hypothesizes the inverse-square law of universal gravitation. Newtons theory enjoyed its greatest success when it was used to predict the existence of Neptune based on motions of Uranus that could not be accounted for by the actions of the other planets.
Calculations by both John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier predicted the position of the planet. A discrepancy in Mercurys orbit pointed out flaws in Newtons theory, the issue was resolved in 1915 by Albert Einsteins new theory of general relativity, which accounted for the small discrepancy in Mercurys orbit. The simplest way to test the equivalence principle is to drop two objects of different masses or compositions in a vacuum and see whether they hit the ground at the same time. Such experiments demonstrate that all objects fall at the rate when other forces are negligible
Planetarium
A planetarium is a theatre built primarily for presenting educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navigation. Whatever technologies are used, the objective is normally to link together to provide an accurate relative motion of the sky. Typical systems can be set to display the sky at any point in time, past or present, planetaria range in size from the Hayden Planetariums 21-meter dome seating 423 people, to three-meter inflatable portable domes where children sit on the floor. Such portable planetaria serve education programs outside of the permanent installations of museums, the term planetarium is sometimes used generically to describe other devices which illustrate the solar system, such as a computer simulation or an orrery. Planetarium software refers to an application that renders a three-dimensional image of the sky onto a two-dimensional computer screen. The term planetarian is used to describe a member of the staff of a planetarium.
The ancient Greek polymath Archimedes is attributed with creating a primitive device that could predict the movements of the Sun and the Moon. The discovery of the Antikythera mechanism proved that such devices already existed during antiquity, campanus of Novara described a planetary equatorium in his Theorica Planetarum, and included instructions on how to build one. The Globe of Gottorf built around 1650 had constellations painted on the inside and these devices would today usually be referred to as orreries. In fact, many planetaria today have what are called projection orreries, the small size of typical 18th century orreries limited their impact, and towards the end of that century a number of educators attempted some larger scale simulations of the heavens. The efforts of Adam Walker and his sons are noteworthy in their attempts to fuse theatrical illusions with educational aspirations, walkers Eidouranion was the heart of his public lectures or theatrical presentations. Every Planet and Satellite seems suspended in space, without any support and these devices most probably sacrificed astronomical accuracy for crowd-pleasing spectacle and sensational and awe-provoking imagery.
The oldest, still working planetarium can be found in the Dutch town Franeker and it was built by Eise Eisinga in the living room of his house. It took Eisinga seven years to build his planetarium, which was completed in 1781 and this was displayed at the Deutsches Museum in 1924, construction work having been interrupted by the war. The planets travelled along overhead rails, powered by electric motors,180 stars were projected onto the wall by electric bulbs. Atwoods work at the Chicago Academy of Sciences and by the ideas of Walther Bauersfeld, in August 1923, the first Zeiss planetarium projected images of the night sky onto the white plaster lining of a 16 m hemispherical concrete dome, erected on the roof of the Zeiss works. The first official public showing was at the Deutsches Museum in Munich on October 21,1923, when Germany was divided into East and West Germany after the war, the Zeiss firm was split. Part remained in its headquarters at Jena, in East Germany
Astrolabe
An astrolabe is an elaborate inclinometer, historically used by astronomers and navigators, to measure the inclined position in the sky of a celestial body, day or night. It can thus be used to identify stars or planets, to determine local latitude given local time and vice versa, to survey and it was used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance for all these purposes. While the astrolabe is effective for determining latitude on land or calm seas, the mariners astrolabe was developed to solve that problem. OED gives the translation star-taker for the English word astrolabe and traces it, through medieval Latin, to the Greek word astrolabos from astron star, in the medieval Islamic world the word asturlab was given various etymologies. In Arabic texts, the word is translated as akhdh al-kawakib which corresponds to an interpretation of the Greek word, al-Biruni quotes and criticizes the medieval scientist Hamzah al-Isfahani who had stated, asturlab is an arabization of this Persian phrase.
In medieval Islamic sources, there is a fictional and popular etymology of the words as lines of lab, in this popular etymology, Lab is a certain son of Idris. This etymology is mentioned by a 10th-century scientist named al-Qummi but rejected by al-Khwarizmi, Lab in Arabic means sun and black stony places. An early astrolabe was invented in the Hellenistic world by Apollonius of Perga, a marriage of the planisphere and dioptra, the astrolabe was effectively an analog calculator capable of working out several different kinds of problems in spherical astronomy. Theon of Alexandria wrote a treatise on the astrolabe. Some historians attribute the invention to Hypatia, the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, noting that Synesius. Astrolabes continued in use in the Greek-speaking world throughout the Byzantine period, about 550 AD the Christian philosopher John Philoponus wrote a treatise on the astrolabe in Greek, which is the earliest extant Greek treatise on the instrument. In addition, Severus Sebokht, a bishop who lived in Mesopotamia, Astrolabes were further developed in the medieval Islamic world, where Muslim astronomers introduced angular scales to the astrolabe, adding circles indicating azimuths on the horizon.
It was widely used throughout the Muslim world, chiefly as an aid to navigation and as a way of finding the Qibla, the first person credited with building the astrolabe in the Islamic world is reportedly the 8th-century mathematician Muhammad al-Fazari. The mathematical background was established by the Muslim astronomer Albatenius in his treatise Kitab az-Zij, the earliest surviving dated astrolabe is dated AH315. In the Islamic world, astrolabes were used to find the times of sunrise and the rising of fixed stars, to help schedule morning prayers. In the 10th century, al-Sufi first described over 1,000 different uses of an astrolabe, in areas as diverse as astronomy, navigation, timekeeping, Salat, etc. The spherical astrolabe, a variation of both the astrolabe and the sphere, was invented during the Middle Ages by astronomers and inventors in the Islamic world. The earliest description of the spherical astrolabe dates back to Al-Nayrizi, in the 12th century, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī invented the linear astrolabe, sometimes called the staff of al-Tusi, which was a simple wooden rod with graduated markings but without sights
Vehicle armour
Military vehicles are commonly armoured to withstand the impact of shrapnel, missiles or shells, protecting the personnel inside from enemy fire. Such vehicles include armoured fighting vehicles like tanks and ships, civilian vehicles may be armoured. These vehicles include cars used by reporters and others in conflict zones or where violent crime is common, armoured cars are routinely used by security firms to carry money or valuables to reduce the risk of highway robbery or the hijacking of the cargo. Armour may be used in vehicles to protect from other than a deliberate attack. Some spacecraft are equipped with specialised armour to protect them against impacts from micrometeoroids or fragments of space junk, the design and purpose of the vehicle determines the amount of armour plating carried, as the plating is often very heavy and excessive amounts of armour restrict mobility. In order to decrease this problem, some new materials and material compositions are being researched which include buckypaper, rolled homogeneous armour is strong and tough.
Steel with these characteristics is produced by processing cast steel billets of appropriate size and forging irons out the grain structure in the steel, removing imperfections which would reduce the strength of the steel. Aluminium is used when weight is a necessity. It is most commonly used on APCs and armoured cars, wrought iron was used on ironclad warships. Early European iron armour consisted of 10 to 13 cm of wrought iron backed by up to one meter of solid wood, titanium is roughly the weight of aluminium, but as strong as iron. So despite being rather expensive, it finds an application in areas where weight is a concern, such as personal armour, because of its high density, depleted uranium can be used in tank armour, sandwiched between sheets of steel armour plate. Plastic metal was a type of vehicle armour originally developed for merchant ships by the British Admiralty in 1940, the original composition was described as 50% clean granite of half-inch size, 43% of limestone mineral, and 7% of bitumen.
It was typically applied in a two inches thick and backed by half an inch of steel. Plastic armour could be applied by pouring it into a cavity formed by the backing plate. Bulletproof glass is a term for glass that is particularly resistant to being penetrated when struck by bullets. The industry generally refers to it as bullet-resistant glass or transparent armour, bullet-resistant glass is usually constructed using a strong but transparent material such as polycarbonate thermoplastic or by using layers of laminated glass. The desired result is a material with the appearance and light-transmitting behaviour of standard glass, the polycarbonate layer, usually consisting of products such as Armormax, Cyrolon, Lexan or Tuffak, is often sandwiched between layers of regular glass. The use of plastic in the laminate provides impact-resistance, such as physical assault with a hammer, the plastic provides little in the way of bullet-resistance
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a perfect sphere of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass is about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99. 86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Suns mass consists of hydrogen, the rest is mostly helium, with smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, neon. The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star based on its spectral class and it formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into a disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became so hot and dense that it eventually initiated nuclear fusion in its core and it is thought that almost all stars form by this process.
The Sun is roughly middle-aged, it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion years and it is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large enough to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and probably Earth. The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, the synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today. The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south, all Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. The English weekday name Sunday stems from Old English and is ultimately a result of a Germanic interpretation of Latin dies solis, the Latin name for the Sun, Sol, is not common in general English language use, the adjectival form is the related word solar. The term sol is used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet. A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, whereas a mean Martian sol is 24 hours,39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds.
From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, in the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton. The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna, in ancient Roman culture, Sunday was the day of the Sun god. It was adopted as the Sabbath day by Christians who did not have a Jewish background, the symbol of light was a pagan device adopted by Christians, and perhaps the most important one that did not come from Jewish traditions
Roman numerals
The numeric system represented by Roman numerals originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers in this system are represented by combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, Roman numerals, as used today, are based on seven symbols, The use of Roman numerals continued long after the decline of the Roman Empire. The numbers 1 to 10 are usually expressed in Roman numerals as follows, I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, Numbers are formed by combining symbols and adding the values, so II is two and XIII is thirteen. Symbols are placed left to right in order of value. Named after the year of its release,2014 as MMXIV, the year of the games of the XXII Olympic Winter Games The standard forms described above reflect typical modern usage rather than a universally accepted convention. Usage in ancient Rome varied greatly and remained inconsistent in medieval, Roman inscriptions, especially in official contexts, seem to show a preference for additive forms such as IIII and VIIII instead of subtractive forms such as IV and IX.
Both methods appear in documents from the Roman era, even within the same document, double subtractives occur, such as XIIX or even IIXX instead of XVIII. Sometimes V and L are not used, with such as IIIIII. Such variation and inconsistency continued through the period and into modern times. Clock faces that use Roman numerals normally show IIII for four o’clock but IX for nine o’clock, this is far from universal, for example, the clock on the Palace of Westminster in London uses IV. Similarly, at the beginning of the 20th century, different representations of 900 appeared in several inscribed dates. For instance,1910 is shown on Admiralty Arch, London, as MDCCCCX rather than MCMX, although Roman numerals came to be written with letters of the Roman alphabet, they were originally independent symbols. The Etruscans, for example, used
Death (personification)
Death, known as the Grim Reaper, is a common element in culture and history. As a personified force it has been imagined in many different ways, in some mythologies, the Grim Reaper causes the victims death by coming to collect him. In turn, people in some stories try to hold on to life by avoiding Deaths visit, in many mythologies, Death is personified in male form, while in others, Death is perceived as female. Mot was personified to Canaanites as a god of death and he was considered a son of the king of the gods, El. His contest with the storm god Baʿal forms part of the myth cycle discovered in the 1920s in the ruins of Ugarit, lacunae obscure some of the details, but Mot apparently consumes Baʿal before being split open and mutilated by that gods sister, the warrior Anat. After a time, both gods are restored and resume battle before the sun goddess Shapash prompts a truce by warning Mot that, if forced to, El would intervene on Baʿals behalf. The Phoenicians worshipped death under the name Mot and a version of Mot became Maweth, Ancient Greece found Death to be inevitable, and therefore, he is not represented as purely evil.
He is often portrayed as a bearded and winged man, but has portrayed as a young boy. Death, or Thanatos, is the counterpart of life, death being represented as male and he is the twin brother of Hypnos, the god of sleep. He is typically shown with his brother and is represented as being just and his job is to escort the dead to the underworld, Hades. He hands the dead over to Charon, who mans the boat that carries them over the river Styx, which separates the land of the living from the land of the dead. It was believed if the ferryman did not receive some sort of payment. Thanatos sisters, the Keres, were the spirits of violent death and they were associated with deaths from battle, disease and murder. The sisters were portrayed as evil, often feeding on the blood of the body after the soul had been escorted to Hades and they had fangs and talons, and would be dressed in bloody garments. Breton folklore shows us a spectral figure portending death, the Ankou, the Ankou drives a deathly wagon or cart with a creaking axle.
The cart or wagon is piled high with corpses and a stop at a cabin means instant death for those inside. In Ireland there was a known as a dullahan, whose head would be tucked under his or her arm, and the head was said to have large eyes. The dullahan would ride a horse or a carriage pulled by black horses, and stop at the house of someone about to die, and call their name
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