- Commonplace books (or commonplaces) are a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They have been kept from antiquity, and were kept particularly during the Renaissance and in the nineteenth century. Such books are similar to scrapbooks filled with items of many kinds: sententiae (often with the compiler’s responses), notes, proverbs, adages, aphorisms, maxims, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, prayers, legal formulas, and recipes. Entries are most often organized under subject headings and differ functionally from journals or diaries, which are chronological and introspective." Commonplaces are used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts; sometimes they were required of young women as evidence of their mastery of social roles and as demonstrations of the correctness of their upbringing. They became significant in Early Modern Europe.
- Moon (Wikipedia)
The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite. It orbits around Earth at an average distance of 384399 km (238,854 mi; about 30 times Earth’s diameter). The Moon is tidally locked to Earth. This makes the Moon’s near side face Earth always the same way, and synchronizes its rotation period (lunar day) to its orbital period (lunar month) of 29.5 Earth days. Conversley, the Moon’s gravitation causes tidal forces on Earth, which are the main driver of Earth’s tides.