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Harald Sack

Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Master Architect and Sculptor of the Italian Baroque

Gian Lorenzo Bernini – Master Architect and Sculptor of the Italian Baroque

On December 7, 1598, Italian architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born. He is considered to be the leading sculptor of the baroque age. In addition he designed buildings, painted, wrote plays, and designed metalwork and stage sets. Whenever you are be in Rome, for sure you will find yourself somewhere in the neighborhood of Bernini’s artwork. “What we have is given by God and to teach it to others is to return…
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The Discovery of Nefertiti

The Discovery of Nefertiti

On December 6, 1912, German archeologist Ludwig Borchardt and his team discovered the famous bust of Nefertiti at excavations in Thutmose‘s workshop in Amarna, Egypt. Ever since, the iconic bust of Nefertiti has become one of the most famous relics of the ancient world, and an icon of feminine beauty. Nefertiti The name Nefertiti means nothing less than ‘the beauty has come’. The origins of the Great Royal Wife of the Egyptian…
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Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle

Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle

On December 5, 1901, German theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize laureate Werner Heisenberg was born, who along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan laid the foundations of quantum mechanics. He is probably best known for his Uncertainty Principle, asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain physical properties can be known. “The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.” — Werner Heisenberg,…
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Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

On December 3, 1857, Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad was born. He is regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. Though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. “A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be…
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The Great Train Robbery and the Birth of the Western Movie

The Great Train Robbery and the Birth of the Western Movie

On December 1, 1903, the very first Western movie ‘The Great Train Robbery‘ premiered, directed by Edwin S. Porter, a former Edison Studios cameraman.[5] Although only 12 minutes long, it is considered a milestone in film making, expanding on Porter’s previous work ‘Life of an American Fireman’. Actually, it also was the first narrative movie, one that told a story. In this film, a number of by the time rather innovative techniques…
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The Wonderful Worlds of Jonathan Swift

The Wonderful Worlds of Jonathan Swift

On November 30, 1667, Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer, poet and cleric Jonathan Swift was born. He is probably best remembered for his satire “Gulliver’s Travels” and is regarded as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, who originally published all of his works under pseudonyms. “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.” — Jonathan Swift, The Battle of the Books, preface…
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Christian Doppler and the Doppler Effect

Christian Doppler and the Doppler Effect

On November 29, 1803, Christian Johann Doppler, Austrian Physicist and mathematician was born in Salzburg. Doppler is widely known for his principle, the Doppler effect, that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. He used this concept to explain the color of binary stars. “There have been applied sciences throughout the ages. … However this so-called practice was not much more than paper…
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Jocelyn Bell Burnell and the Discovery of Pulsars

Jocelyn Bell Burnell and the Discovery of Pulsars

On November 28, 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Anthony Hewish discovered the first Pulsar, a fast rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. The radiation of a pulsar can only be observed when the beam of emission is pointing toward the Earth, much the way a lighthouse can only be seen when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance…
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Lope de Vega and the Spanish Golden Age of Literature

Lope de Vega and the Spanish Golden Age of Literature

On November 25, 1562, Spanish poet Lope de Vega, or with full name Félix Lope de Vega Carpio, one of the key figures in the Spanish ‘Siglo de Oro’, the Golden Century Baroque literature, was born. His reputation in the world of Spanish literature is second only to that of Miguel de Cervantes, [3] while the sheer volume of his literary output is unequalled, making him one of the most prolific authors in…
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You are either a Spinozist or not a Philosopher at all

You are either a Spinozist or not a Philosopher at all

On November 24, 1632, Jewish-Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardi origin Baruch Spinoza was born. By laying the groundwork for the Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe, Spinoza came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy. “Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight…
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