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Category: True Story
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Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage
In this post, I wanted to share the experience of a visit to Andrew Jackson’ Hermitage in Nashville, Tennessee. The Hermitage, was the residence of US seventh president, Andrew Jackson the seventh president of the United States, from 1829 to 1837. Jackson redefined the meaning of being a true representative of “the people” but not without a controversial and often quite surprising presidential era. He helped to inspire a new era of belief and hope in the American dream.
Andrew Jackson was the first chief executive elected from west of the Allegheny Mountains, the first from other than Virginia or Massachusetts, and the first non-aristocrat. Over and above his charisma, which gained him the nick-name “Old Hickory”, he is said to have “not only expanded the powers of the office of president but also virtually redefined them.”
Michael Beschloss, an American historian quoted a famous prayer of John Adams, the first “president to live” in the White House, that heaven “bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it” and that “none bur honest and wise men ever rule under its roof.” The author then argues that the five presidents who followed Adams seem to suggest that his prayer has been heard. “Thomas Jefferson, who demanded ‘a government rigorously frugal and simple’ and had the foresight to double the size of the new nation with the Louisiana Purchase; James Madison, who took the country through the War of 1812 and helped establish the United States as a world power; James Monroe, who fashioned an enduring foreign policy doctrine; John Quincy Adams, who set the need for a national system of roads and canals, thoughtful regulation of national resources, and government aid to education; Andrew Jackson, who expanded the powers of the office, waged war against the notion of a national bank, expunged the national debt, and became a people’s hero.”
Andrew Jackson preferred the title General after he left the white house in 1837. During the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson led his troops through enemy territory to victory. General Jackson defended New Orleans against a full-scale attack by the British and forced them to withdraw. That war resulted in the procurement of millions of acres in the present-day southern United States, including Florida. It’s worthy mentioning that Jackson’s toughness and solid determination reminded his troops of a firmly rooted Hickory tree, and earned him the nickname “Old Hickory.”
The US state of Tennessee is the 36th largest and 16th most populous of the 50 United States of America. It boasts innumerable attractions and offers visitors unforgettable memories! They can soak in the beauty of nature while walking in the Great Smoky National Park, spend hours fishing in its rivers or wander among its abundant landmarks in American history.
Tennessee is where The Hermitage, residence of US seventh president, Andrew Jackson, is located. The ownership and control of the mansion and 25 acres of land was granted to the “Ladies’ Hermitage Association”. The Association opened it to the public. To-day’s visitors will find it restored to how it looked when Andrew Jackson returned to it after serving his second term. The tour in the Hermitage brings the visitor closer to Andrew Jackson the general, the president and the “common man” who had no formal military training prior the war of 1812.
During the residence tour, guests at the Hermitage are encouraged to ask questions and take full advantage of The Hermitage’s friendly and well trained staff. I recommend that tour to all visitors to Nashville, TN.
Nashville is also home to many famous African American writers such as Amiri Baraka, Toni Morrison and Alex Haley, music legends such as Bob Stagner, Charlie Bowman and Chuck Butler as well as ingenuous photographers such as Matthew Simmons, John Gentry and Liza Hippler. Besides being the capital of the state, it is also Country Music Capital, USA if not of the world. Other music genres, seven in all, call Tennessee home! It has legendary country music venues such as the Grand Ole Opry House which offers weekly country music stage concerts. It was founded on November 28, 1925 as the backdrop of a one-hour radio “barn dance” program and from then to the present, it has been the longest running radio broadcast in US history. Among the innumerable museums that Tennessee boasts are: Stax Museum of American Soul Music (Memphis),Tina Turner Museum and Flagg Grove School (Brownsville) and Withers Collection Museum and Gallery (Memphis). Nashville has what seems to me to be the largest ever auditorium, Ryman Auditorium. As a live performance venue, its seating capacity is 2,362! From 1943 to 1974, it was the home of the Grand Ole opry stage and radio show.
For more information, please see the following links:
https://thehermitage.com/visit/visitor-faqs/
https://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/jackson_hermitage.html
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2019 Lunar Eclipse Super Blood Wolf Moon
In August 2017, we treated out readers to an article and wonder-striking photos of a total Solar Eclipse. That was an unmissable spectacle for millions of people of all ages.
The January 20th, 2019 Super Blood Wolf Moon has promised and delivered a no less amazing spectacle. But before we continue, it is well to explain briefly what the longish name means.
A Super Moon is a moon at its closest distance from Earth, which in astronomical jargon is to say when the moon is at the Perigee. Being over 30,000 miles closer than it is at its farthest point away, the moon appears up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than at other times of the year. This is much enhanced if when the moon is at Perigee it happens also to be a full moon. Unfortunately for many of us, this might not always be seen with the naked eye due to adverse weather conditions and/or light pollution in most major cities. But weather and other factors permitting, it is a dazzling spectacle!.
Super Moons, in themselves, are quite common though. There have been four (4) in 2018 but only one of them coincided with a full moon. Apart from other celestial phenomena, such as the spectacular meteor shower earlier this month, our moon this month (on January 20th in the US) coincided with a full moon. Furthermore, what made this January Super Moon a more interesting and rare occurrence is indicated in the remaining details of the name. The ‘Blood’ part marks the fact that the Super Moon seems to glow red as it emerges from a total lunar eclipse. Lunar eclipses are not uncommon; three (3) lunar eclipses were seen in various parts of the world in 2018. NASA, however, reckons that after this January Lunar Eclipse there will be no other total lunar eclipses till May 2021.
Moreover, what makes this eclipse rare is the fact that it coincided with a Super Moon. As the three celestial bodies, Sun, Earth and Moon, became perfectly aligned, the light refracted from the Earth’s air threw a reddish hue onto the face of the Moon. This is because the Earth’s atmosphere scattered all the short-wavelength light (in colours like green or blue) and left only longer-wavelength light which comprise the redder end of the spectrum. Hence the name: Blood Moon. It is good to remember that, unlike Solar Eclipses, which you need special protective goggles for, Lunar Eclipses are safe to look at with the naked eye.
The ‘Wolf’ part of the name goes back to Native American traditions from days preceding the use of solar calendars. Lunar calendars used different names for the months and were closely linked to people’s observations of their natural surroundings. Native Americans called the Full Moon in mid-winter Wolf Moon because of the all too frequent howling of hungry wolves out in search of food.
To witness all three phenomena in one go is what made this January 2019 Super Blood Wolf Moon a rare and indeed unmissable experience. Millions upon millions of people in North and South America, parts of Western Europe and Africa were able to catch that rare sight overnight on Jan 20 into Jan 21. It is pertinent here to note that the longest possible lunar eclipse is 1 hour and 47 minutes and that the longest total lunar eclipse of the last century, which occurred on July 16, 2000, lasted 1 hour and 46.4 minutes. This time (20/21 Jan. 2019) it did not last as long (only 1 hour and 2 minutes) but was no less spectacular!.
Unfortunately the viewing conditions based on weather were poor on the western half of the US ON Sunday 20, 2019. Few hours later, the sky became clear.
For more information, please visit the following links:
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/..
- https://inews.co.uk/news/ science/super-blood-wolf-moon-lunar-eclipse ..
- https://www.foxnews.com/science/rare-super-blood-wolf-moon-eclipse ..
- https://www.countryliving.com/wildlife/..
- https://news.sky.com/story/lunar-eclipse-rare- …
- https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/article/winter-sk..
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King Tutankhamun , The Nine Year Old Pharo
‘A nine year old king’ sounds like the stuff of a fairy tale yet it is no fairy tale! King Tutankhamun who ruled Egypt thirty three centuries ago was the son of King Amenhotep IV (better known as Akhenaten) & grand-son of King Amenhotep III. He came to the throne of Egypt at nine years of age! Just as Tut’s father, Akhenaten, had deserted his own father’s religion of many deities & upheld one deity, Aten the sun disk, young King Tut ended his father’s one deity practices, destroying its monuments & artistic manifestations, & returned to the numerous deities of his grandfathers. The young king did not live long though; some think he died at age 15 or 16 while others put it at 19 years of age. Modern DNA research & other state of the art technologies are increasingly revealing more about his life and death. But enough is already known anyway about his short reign, his half-sister-wife Ankhesenamun (Nefertiti’s daughter) & their off-spring (two still-born daughters whose fetuses were found in Tut’s tomb).
Howard Carter’s discovery of Tut’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, officially known as The Great and Majestic Necropolis of the Millions of Years of the Pharaoh, Life, Strength, Health in the West of Thebes, outside modern Luxor, is itself fantastic in its ups and downs and has captivated the world’s imagination alike with its facts as with its rumors of Pharaoh’s curse and other lore which kept the cinema industry going for decades.
November 4th, 1922 was the day Carter found the staircase which led to King Tut’s tomb. Although the antechamber has clearly been tampered with by robbers, Carter’s description of his first glimpse of its contents is still stunning. At first, he could see nothing in the light of the candle he inserted through a hole drilled in the door, but as his eyes “grew accustomed to the light, details of the room emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues, and gold — everywhere the glint of gold”. The actual burial chamber was opened in February 1923. This is where Carter found a series of gold sarcophagi at the heart of which lay the mummy of young king Tut with his solid gold funerary mask on his face & chest and gold sandals on his feet. There was yet another smaller room which contained the “greatest treasures of the tomb”; both of these chambers have fortunately escaped grave robbers for 3,000 years!
If having one’s name and life-story kept up in people’s minds and hearts renders one immortal, then young King Tut “is pretty spry for a guy who is more than 3,000 years old”, as Jesse Baker said in 2011. One might think that it is an indisputable fact that the young Pharaoh (with his treasure) has travelled more extensively after his death than in his life time! Only till one discovers that King Tut’s real remains have never left Egypt; what goes on display is an exact life-size 3-D replica made possible by CT scans. Nevertheless, it is the most widely archeological/artistic travelling exhibition from ancient Egypt. From the 1960s onwards, King Tut has so far visited the UK, Soviet Union, United States, Canada, Japan, France, Switzerland, and Germany etc. The last time an exhibition of King Tut’s treasures toured the US was not so long ago. Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibition started in Los Angeles County Museum of Art in June 16 to November 15, 2005. It then toured 18 cities in the US before leaving for Australia in January 2011.
A popular Egyptian saying claims that whoever drinks of the waters of the Nile is bound to return for more! It seems one can assert the same for the waters of North American rivers. King Tut is indeed back in Los Angeles. “King Tut: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” is at California’s Science Centre from March, 2018 onwards for ten months with extended summer visiting hours.
This exhibition is the result of the collaboration of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, Exhibitions International, IMG, and the California Science Center. Mostafa Waziry, the ministry’s secretary general, is on record saying, “To celebrate the 100th year anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of the boy king, Tutankhamun, as a part if the celebration, Egypt is sending 150 masterpieces to tour all over the world”. Among those 150 artifacts and antiquities are sixty which are on display for the very first time outside of Egypt. “Some stories are everlasting, and that is the case with the legend of King Tut,” said President of Exhibitions International, John Norman who also produced Tutankhamun’s earlier exhibitions. “For this new exhibition, we have curated an extraordinary collection of treasures from King Tut’s tomb and given this historical discovery a timely new dimension. Visitors will be truly immersed in a modern presentation like no other”.
The pleasure of California Science Center President, Jeff Rudolph, is evident in his assertion, “We are pleased to host the world premiere of ‘King Tut: Treasure of the Golden Pharaoh’ “. He added further, “Its ornate artifacts and multimedia displays will stimulate interest in the many sciences related to archaeology”.
The exhibition is a truly memorable experience which enables the visitor to trace the boy King’s journey from death to the after-life and explains the significance of each artifact interred with him. Thus there is, for example, a statue denoting the pharaoh’s resurrection at dawn, an exquisite wooden shrine with scenes of Tutankhamun and his wife Ankhesenamun giving a rare glimpse of the daily life of a royal household and a jeweled caffinette which held the King’s mummified liver with the goddess Isis depicted on each lid for protection. The exhibition features “nine distinct experiential galleries and an array of 3D visuals, digital content, 360-degree theatrical manifestations, custom soundscapes and more in an engaging, audio-guided tour”.
It is indeed a new experience altogether where dazzling multimedia enhances rare artifacts in ways never achieved before, taking us, the exhibition visitors, on an immersive journey of Tut’s quest for immortality. We were able to see and get in-depth information on the exquisite rings found on Tut’s fingers, the opulent jewelry that adorned his body, and those gold sandals which we have mentioned before. It is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime chance also to discover how the CT & DNA analysis of Tut’s 3,300 year old mummy together with other cutting-edge technologies have revealed new information about the boy king’s health , lineage and possible cause of death.
Zahi Hawass, the well-known archaeologist shares the same vision about the boy King’s exhibition. On August 11th “A night at the museum with Dr. Zahi Hawass” event at the California Science Center, Dr. Hawass is due to present the latest updates on his excavations in the Valley of the Kings. Then he will hold a private exhibition viewing of the KING TUT.
Last but by no means least, the boy king is clearly still looking after his interests and those of his people. If earlier tours of US cities benefited Egypt little financially, as Mark Lach, senior vice president for Arts and Exhibitions International, the organization which negotiated Tut’s return to the US, this is not the case this time around. When the boy king and his treasures go home this time, there will be also about $80 million to take back to Egypt. He is thus raising funds for Egypt, partially to preserve pharaonic temples and monuments but primarily to help the construction of ‘The Grand Egyptian Museum’ which will be his final resting place.
For further information about King Tut, you may consider the following links:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2018/03-04/findingkingtutstomb
https://interactive.wttw.com/remembering-chicago/tutmania-field-museum
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2015/septemberoctober, vol. 36, Number 5
https:// nationalgeographic.com
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/13/132743793/king-tutankhamens-farewell-tour
https://californiasciencecenter.org/exhibits/king-tut-treasures-of-the-pharaoh
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-night-at-the-museum-with-dr-zahi-hawass-tickets-47166098069
https://californiasciencecenter.org/Press-room/Press-releases/king-tut-treasure
https://foxla.com/entertainment/features/king-tut-treasures
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2018/03-04/findingkingtutstomb
https://interactive.Wttw.com/remembering-Chicago/tut mania-field-Museum -
2017 Guinness Record of the Longest Pizza in Fontana, California, USA
Pizza is popular; there is hardly a corner of the globe where you cannot buy. Almost everybody, young and old, go drooling at the mere utterance of the word. There are many authentic, traditional recipes and more pizza chains than there are perhaps for any other type of food.
The competition urge in humans, which we touched upon in our articles on racing (horses and/or cars) is present here, too. There have been numerous competitions seeking to establish which is best in presentation or taste or which chef is faster or neater in the making of his/her pizza, in other words tests of the skills of “dough-obsessed divas with superstar status”.
There is for instance the annual World Pizza Championship in Naples where judges have to sample innumerable pizzas in many categories. There have also been competitions for the largest pizza and in 2012 that was won by Rome with a pizza that measured 1261.65 square meters.
Preparation of The Longest Pizza However, the June 10, 2017 at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California was different. It was an attempt by PizzaOvens.com and sponsors to set a new World record for the longest pizza ever. The work as planned occupied the area from outside of turn 3 of the legendary NASCAR oval track along the tram route to the fan zone (see below the link for the track map).
According to the earlier media release by PizzaOvens.com:
-The dough weighed about 17600 lbs
-The sauce weighed about 5.600 lbs
-The cheese weighed about 3.600 lbs
-Total weight of pizza is 26000 lbs (around 7,000 Pizza)
-The scaffolding was provided by At-PAC Scaffolding Solutions and erected by Scaffold Works and Capstone Scaffolding. Using GPS equipment, Joseph E Bonadiman & Associates Inc. (JBA) confirmed that the 700 section scaffolding covered 7,000 lineal feet.
-At its peak, the oven was moving at around 1 ft/Sec. The assemblers needed to work fast or the oven would catch up with them. The oven was cooking at 900*F and once it started it cannot pause or stop.
-The assemblers made up of top pizzaiolos from across the US rotated every four hours to stay fresh. It was estimated that the pizza would be ready to cut and serve at around 4PM. But people did not have to wait till then to eat; there was numerous food stalls offering a wide variety of foods and drinks. This is also a historic charity event as all proceeds and product will go to the local Homeless Shelters and Food Banks.
The oven is moving at around 1 ft/Sec. The event in Fontana successfully surpassed the last Guinness record of the longest pizza of 2016 which itself exceeded the length of the pizza of the previous year. In 2015, the longest pizza was 5,234 ft. 4.8 in /1,595.45 meters long. It was the creation of La Pizza+1 of Sante Ludovico, NIPfood of Dovilio Nardi and Tomato World Week 2015 at Milan’s Expo 2015. That record was beaten in 2016 when Napoli Village created a pizza 6,082 ft 3.40 in /1,853.88 meters long. The pizza was running all along the picturesque Caracciolo’s seafront. 250 proud chefs of traditional Neapolitan pizza gathered for the big event which was organized by Oramate, the company behind Napoli Village together with the Association of Neapolitan pizza-masters, the city if Naples and Univerde Foundation.
Certificate of 2017 Guinness Record of The Longest Pizza 
Fash Asvadi,Dir of Pizzaovens Inc & Sponsors Celebrating On June 10, 2017, the record was beaten and the championship moved west to Fontana, California, that currently hold the new record of 6,333 ft 3.6 in/1,930.390 meters long pizza. There was also live music and lots of entertainments for all ages ensuring a most enjoyable day for all the family.
The Longest Pizza event, as already mentioned, took place at the Auto Club Speedway which is about 45 minutes north east of Downtown Los Angeles. It used to be called California Speedway. The track is owned and operated by International Speedway Corporation. Its construction, on the site of Kaiser Steel Mill, started in 1995 and was finished in 1996. Paul Tracy was the first driver to test the track. The official opening and ribbon cutting ceremony took place on June 20, 1997 with the first race, a NASCAR West Series, being held the following day. Like other race tracks, the Auto Club Speedway is often used in commercials, television shows and films. Most famous among those is the film The Bucket List (2007) which featured Jack Nicholson and Morgen Freedman driving a vintage Shelley Mustang and a Dodge Challenger around the two-mile track.
For more information please refer to the following links:
-http://www.PizzaOvens.com
–https://www.autoclubspeedway.com/Guest-Info/Maps.aspx
(The map for Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California)
–http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-pizza
–http://www.lapizzapiuuno.it/index.php?id=1294
–http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-pizza
