- Manjirō Nakahama: From Castaway to Samurai (hakaimagazine.com)
On October 4, 1987, the town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts (population 16,000), had a pair of unlikely visitors: Akihito, crown prince of Japan (today, the emperor), and his wife, Princess Michiko. Why would Japanese royalty visit this small American whaling and fishing port? The events that forged the unlikely connection between Japan and Fairhaven began 146 years earlier.
- In the second place, I examined what were the first and most ordinary effects that could be deduced from these causes; and it appears to me that, in this way, I have found heavens, stars, an earth, and even on the earth, water, air, fire, minerals, and some other things of this kind, which of all others are the most common and simple, and hence the easiest to know.
- I remarked, moreover, with respect to experiments, that they become always more necessary the more one is advanced in knowledge; for, at the commencement, it is better to make use only of what is spontaneously presented to our senses, and of which we cannot remain ignorant, provided we bestow on it any reflection, however slight, than to concern ourselves about more uncommon and recondite phænomena: the reason of which is, that the more uncommon often only mislead us so long as the causes of the more ordinary are still unknown; and the circumstances upon which they depend are almost always so special and minute as to be highly difficult to detect.