Masada

After church today, we had our monthly meeting for the Grace Book Club.  I mentioned in a previous post that we read The Dovekeepers this month, which was an amazing book.  Angela came prepared, as always, with pictures on her tablet of Masada that included scale models of Herod's temple as well as actual photographs of what Masada looks like today.  Apparently there is a museum at the site that opened in 2007 and the author visited it and was able to be more accurate in her telling of the story since she was actually there and saw the ruins.  She was able to know exactly where the dovecote was in relation to other buildings for example.

In reading about Masada, I also found out this interesting fact:


"The Chief of Staff of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), Moshe Dayan, initiated the practice of holding the swearing-in ceremony of soldiers who have completed their Tironut (IDF basic training) on top of Masada. The ceremony ends with the declaration: "Masada shall not fall again." The soldiers climb the Snake Path at night and are sworn in with torches lighting the background."

And lastly, I always thought that it was a confirmed fact that the Jews committed mass suicide to avoid being slaughtered by the Romans who had seiged Masada.  However, only 30 skeletons have been found at the site and there is no evidence of a mass burial.  This is odd since apparently there were 960 inhabitants at the time of the mass suicide.  I doubt that the Romans moved all the bodies off of Masada.  So it remains a mystery as to whether it was all a myth or did in fact happen.

What I Learned: It is not an historical fact that the Jews committed mass suicide at Masada.  Also, the Israeli Army uses Masada for their swearing-in ceremony.

Dick Clark

I found out today that Dick Clark died yesterday.  The last time I "saw" him was on NYE with Ryan Seacrest and he didn't look very good then.  He died on April 18th of a massive heart attack that he suffered following a surgery to fix an enlarged prostrate. He was 82. I also learned that his real name was Richard Wagstaff Clark.  Obviously I assumed his real first name was Richard, but Wagstaff? What a weird middle name.

What I Learned: Dick Clark died.

Ichabod

As I was reading my daily Bible reading tonight in 1 Samuel, I discovered that there is someone in the Bible named Ichabod.  I had no idea that Ichabod was a Biblical name.  Did you?

1 Samuel 4:21- She named the boy Ichabod,^[b] saying, “The Glory has departed from Israel”—because of the capture of the ark of God and the deaths of her father-in-law and her husband.

To read it in context, click here.

What I Learned: Ichabod is a Biblical name.

Noah

I was doing my daily Bible reading tonight in Numbers and found something curious. Numbers 26:33 states:

"And Zelophehad the son of Hepher had no sons, but daughters: and the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, and Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah."

Is Noah the first gender neutral name? It is in the Bible as both a male and female name! It's curious that nowadays it is more a boy's name because I did some research and apparently the name Noah is very popular as a girl's name in Arab cultures and not used as a boy's name. It is also odd because so many boy's names are used for girls (like Avery...) but not very often is a girl's name used for a boy. It seems that the original form of the name Noah is feminine and the male Noah in the Bible is actually pronounced No -ACH, which is a different name.  Any Bible scholars want to weigh in on this one?

What I learned: Noah is a girl's name in the Bible.

Jewish Baptism

Today I learned something both interesting, disturbing and weird. Apparently, the Mormon church has a  practice where they baptize posthumously. More specifically, they are adamant about performing them for Jewish Holocaust victims. They have apparently baptized Anne Frank 9 times. Well known Jewish author Elie Wiesel found out that he was on a list of living Jews whom the Mormon church planned on baptizing once they died. Elie Wiesel, rightly revolted and astonished at this practice, has called on Mitt Romney, being a notable Mormon now in the public eye, to condemn this practice. I did a little bit of research and found that Jews (and others) have been fighting the Mormon church about this for decades. Obviously it is reemerging because of the campaign, but also apparently because as much as the Mormon church claims it is taking Holocaust victims out of their genealogical database to be baptized, it was found this month that the parents of Simon Wiesenthal, a Jewish rights activist and Holocaust survivor, were added to the database. This is also when it was discovered that Anne Frank had been baptized for the ninth time by the church.

What I learned: Mormons practice Baptism for the Dead.

Hertz

Today's Google logo was in honor of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz' birthday (2/22/1857). Everyone's heard of the hertz as a unit of measurement for frequency but that's about all I knew about him. So I did some research and found out that he was responsible for clarifying the electromagnetic theory of light. He also proved the existence of electromagnetic waves by making instruments that could transmit radio pulses. I also learned that a hertz technically stands for cycles per second.

What I Learned: What exactly Heinrich Hertz accomplished as a scientist, as well as what a Hertz more specifically stands for.

Liberace

My mom is reading a biography of Liberace and yesterday I learned some interesting things while talking to her about it. First of all, for some reason I thought he was maybe 10-15 years older than Elton John, but he was born in 1919, which makes him older than my grandpa (except that he's dead; Liberace is dead I mean, not my grandpa)! I had no idea. I knew he was from the great city of West Allis (that stallion!) but learned that he grew up in a house on National Avenue across the street from the Veteran's Administration building, which is a little over a mile from my house. I also learned that at age 2, he would listen to his 8 year old sister practice piano and then just play it back perfectly. Age 2 people. While everyone knows Liberace is a piano player, I guess I always saw him first as a crazily sequined man of the stage who also played piano. But by age 7 he got a scholarship to go to the Wisconsin College of Music. Age 7!!

What I learned: Liberace was a musical genius.

International Date Line

Tonight we went to the annual Tiefel New Year's Eve Party. It was fun as usual, even though we were only there for an hour and a half (Jared's family was in town so we just made an appearance at the party and then went back home to celebrate the New Year with them). While we were I learned an interesting fact.

Apparently, back in 1892, the U.S. convinced Samoa to switch to the east side of the international date line in order to align their days with the U.S. and nearby American Samoa, a trading partner. In that year, they celebrated July 4th two days in a row to make the switch. Samoa was the last place on earth to see the sun set. Now, New Zealand and Australia are major trading partners and this causes problems as those countries are on the other side of the date line, meaning that even though they are really close together, when it's sunday in Samoa, it's already monday in New Zealand. In order to remedy this problem, on Thursday at midnight, they skipped right to Saturday the 31st. They are now the first place on earth to see the sunrise.

What I learned: Samoa skipped a day to move to the west side of the international date line.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/12/30/samoa-skips-friday-in-leap-across-international-date-line/

Presidents' Life Span

I was reading in Time today that the average life span of the first eight Presidents was 79.8 years. This is amazing considering that the average life span at that time was under age 40 for men. The article also states that despite the belief that being President lowers life expectancy due to increased stress, 2 out of 3 presidents have outlived their contemporaries. I am really curious to know why this is as it seems completely rational to me that being President, no matter what the economy is like, or whether or not we are at war, etc, is one of the most stressful jobs you can ever have. Maybe it's because most presidents only have it for 4 years (obviously some have it for 8). After those years, it seems that most presidents make a career out of writing an autobiography, or doing the lecture circuit or simply "retiring." So maybe the real reason is because while they might have a super stressful job for four years, much of their later years is spent in a more relaxed manner than most. Who knows.

What I learned: The first eight U.S. Presidents averaged 79.8 years old, almost double the life expectancy at the time.

Pea Straw

Yesterday, my post was about Knecht Ruprecht, a man in German folklore. In his description, it states:

"Tradition holds that he appears in homes on St. Nicholas day (December 6), and is a man with a long beard, wearing fur or covered in pea-straw."





My mom read this post and asked me what pea straw was. I said I didn't know, so I decided (with her prompting) to find out.

Pea straw is the by-product from growing peas. It's basically the dried vines of pea plants after the peas have been harvested. Today, pea straw is commonly used as garden mulch (it reduces the amount of water loss from the soil) or for animal bedding. This is all very interesting, but what I really want to know is a) how can a man be covered in pea straw and b) how/why did this become part of the folklore? It would be like us saying that santa's elves are covered in hay. Those crazy Germans.

What I learned: Pea straw is simply the dried vines of pea plants.

Knecht Ruprecht

Today, Jared and I took Avery to the Domes as Mondays are free for Milwaukee residents. We wanted to see how the third dome was decorated for Christmas (we went three years ago and they had Christmas Trees everywhere representing different countries). Well this year, the dome just had poinsettias in it and then randomly placed throughout were painted figures made from wood representing different Christmas personas from different countries. Each figure also had a plaque briefly describing the legend/folklore of each.

The figure I found the most interesting was Knecht Ruprecht, loosely translated as Knight Rupert or Servant Rupert. Because I'm being lazy, here is the description of him from wikipedia:

In the folklore of Germany, Knecht Ruprecht, or Knight Rupert, is a companion of Saint Nicholas. He first appears in written sources in the 17th century, as a figure in a Nuremberg Christmas procession.^[1]

Tradition holds that he appears in homes on St. Nicholas day (December 6), and is a man with a long beard, wearing fur or covered in pea-straw.^[2] Knecht Ruprecht sometimes carries a long staff and a bag of ashes, and wears little bells on his clothes.^[2] Sometimes he rides on a white horse, and sometimes he is accompanied by fairies or men with blackened faces dressed as old women.^[2]

According to tradition, Knecht Ruprecht asks children whether they can pray. If they can, they receive apples, nuts, and gingerbread. If they cannot, he beats the children with his bag of ashes.^[2] In other (presumably more modern) versions of the story, Knecht Ruprecht gives naughty children useless, ugly gifts such as lumps of coal, sticks, and stones, while well-behaving children receive sweets from Saint Nicholas. He also can be known to give naughty children a switch (stick) in their shoes for their parents to beat them with, instead of candy, fruit and nuts, in the German tradition.

What I learned: Germans have ridiculous folklore, where they can have a character who leaves a switch for parents to beat their children with. I wonder how many parents used that excuse: "Oh look, Knecht Rupert left a switch in your shoes because he knew you were naughty. I guess I have to beat you now!" How terrible!

Suleiman

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mom is giving me Advent presents. Today, the clue was
"Suleiman's Empire. Look inside."

I have heard of Suleiman but could not place the name. In my head, he was a Persian emperor in maybe the  1100s or something. But that couldn't be right as a) we don't own a Persian rug (or a Persian anything for that matter) and b) you can't exactly look inside of one anyway if we did. So I had to look online to find the answer.

Suleiman I, also known as Suleiman the Magnificent, was the longest reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, reigning from 1520-1566. Not only was I off regarding where he ruled, but I was way off on the time frame. I also read that he married a girl from his harem, which was not the traditional thing to do, and her name was Roxelana. For some reason I found this funny and kept hearing the song "Roxanne" in my head. I wonder if Sting was inspired by this historical person to write his song..ok, probably not, but it is ironic that this famous prostitute was named Roxelana.

If you haven't realized it yet, the clue meant I had to look in our ottoman for my gift. Clever.

What I learned: Suleiman was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in the 1500s (during the life of Luther!); I also realized that I don't know that much about the Ottoman Empire and now I want to read more about it. It's odd that I have studied this time period extensively and did not remember learning anything about Suleiman, probably because European history is taught way more often than any other type of world history. Clearly I need to broaden my studies!

Proletariat

I started to read the Communist Manifesto while here in North Carolina since I finished the other book I brought. Now this might make me sound stupid but I had never really known what proletariat meant. Let me clarify-I might have known at one time but have forgotten and always assumed it had a complicated meaning and never bothered to look it up because I thought I would just forget the meaning anyway if it was long and involved. So I never have. But because I was going to read the Communist Manifesto, I figured now would be the time to look it up so that I would understand what I was reading. So I looked it up and it means: The working class. That’s pretty much it. Really? Man, I feel stupid now that I never bothered before. I mean, there can be more specifics, like usually it refers to workers who do manual labor or who work in industry as opposed to other areas of work. And it can also be even more specific than that and can refer to the absolute poorest class and/or people that don’t own any property and have to sell their labor to survive. But more or less, it just means working class. From now on, I guess I’ll always look up words that I’m not quite sure of the meaning.

What I learned: Proletariat refers simply to the working class.