You are here: Home › Search Results for: "africa"

Search Results for: africa

explorer
Jacob Roggeveen and the Easter Island

Jacob Roggeveen and the Easter Island

Tabea Tietz
On April 5, 1722, Dutch seafarer Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to discover the Polynesian island Rapa Nui, which he named Easter Island. Arent Roggeveen Arent Roggeveen was an accomplished scholar and teacher in mathematics, astronomy, and navigational theory. He managed to obtain a charter from the States-General of the United Netherlands in order to head towards the South Sea in 1675. However, he found no shareholders among the conservative Dutch merchants,…
Read more
history
General Thomas Alexandre Dumas – Napoleon’s ‘Black Devil’

General Thomas Alexandre Dumas – Napoleon’s ‘Black Devil’

Harald Sack
On March 25, 1762, Thomas Alexandre Dumas was born. Dumas was the Father of the famous French author Alexandre Dumas [5] and the first black General in the French army. The story of his life should become the blueprint for his son’s most famous novels ‘The Count of Monte Christo‘ and ‘The Three Musketeers‘. “Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but…
Read more
archeology
Giovanni Battista Belzoni and the Egyptian Adventure

Giovanni Battista Belzoni and the Egyptian Adventure

Tabea Tietz
On March 2, 1818, Prolific Italian explorer Giovanni Battista Belzoni – also known as ‘The Great Belzoni‘ – discovered the burial chamber of Pharaoh Khafra in the 2nd of the large pyramid‘s of Giza. But, like in all the other burial chambers in the great pyramids, the sarcophagus was empty. Early Years Belzoni was born in Padua, Italy, as the son of a barber. At the age of 16, he moved to…
Read more
literature
John Steinbeck and his View of the American Society

John Steinbeck and his View of the American Society

Tabea Tietz
On February 27, 1902, American writer and Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel Laureate John Steinbeck was born. His works comprise twenty-seven books, including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books, and five collections of short stories, among them ‘The Grapes of Wrath‘, ‘East of Eden‘, and ‘Of Mice and Men‘. “The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion…
Read more
biology
Sir Francis Galton – Polymath

Sir Francis Galton – Polymath

Tabea Tietz
On February 16, 1822, the cousin of Charles Darwin, Sir Francis Galton was born. Galton the polymath, was known for his fundamental contributions to anthropology, geographics, genetics, psychology, statistics, and eugenics. He also was the first to apply statistical methods to the study of human differences and inheritance of intelligence, and introduced the use of questionnaires and surveys for collecting data on human communities, which he needed for genealogical and biographical works and for…
Read more
biology
Charles Darwin and the Natural Selection

Charles Darwin and the Natural Selection

Tabea Tietz
On February 12, 1809, the English naturalist Charles Darwin was born. He popularized the term ‘natural selection‘ as a milestone in modern biology, which was introduced in his masterpiece ‘On the Origin of Species‘ in 1859. “It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate…
Read more
explorer
Vasco da Gama and the Route to India

Vasco da Gama and the Route to India

Tabea Tietz
On December 24, 1524, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, passed away. He is referred to as one of the most successful explorers in the Age of Discovery and was the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. After decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed in Calicut on…
Read more
art
Wassily Kandinsky – the First Expressionist

Wassily Kandinsky – the First Expressionist

Harald Sack
On December 16, 1866, Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky was born. With Franz Marc he was co-founder of the editorial association Der Blaue Reiter. Kandinsky was an artist of Expressionism and one of the pioneers of abstract art. He is often named as the creator of the world’s first abstract painting according to his own statements, which may, however, have been predated by the year 1910 instead of 1913. “The first…
Read more
literature
Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad and the Heart of Darkness

Harald Sack
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…
Read more
astronomy
Sir Arthur Eddington – The Man who Proved Einstein’s General Relativity

Sir Arthur Eddington – The Man who Proved Einstein’s General Relativity

Tabea Tietz
On November 22, 1944, British astrophysicist and philosopher Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington passed away. He became famous for his 1919 solar eclipse expedition to Principe, where he conducted astrophysical experiments to give proof for Albert Einstein‘s seminal theory of general relativity. “At terrestrial temperatures matter has complex properties which are likely to prove most difficult to unravel; but it is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be…
Read more
Relation Browser
Timeline
0 Recommended Articles:
0 Recommended Articles: