- Lambda Scorpii (Wikipedia)
Lambda Scorpii is a triple star system and the second-brightest object in the constellation of Scorpius. It is formally named Shaula; Lambda Scorpii is its Bayer designation, which is Latinised from λ Scorpii and abbreviated Lambda Sco or λ Sco. With an apparent visual magnitude of 1.62, it is one of the brightest stars in the night sky.
- Despite popular opinion, dogs can actually see some color. They have 2 photoreceptors, blue and yellow. This means they are unable to see red and green, so finding a red ball on green grass is a very difficult task for a dog.
- Dolphins have pretty good eyesight underwater. As their eyes are located on either side of their head, the dolphin’s range of vision is wider than a human’s, including being able to see objects located behind them.
- Dragonflies have compound eyes, which consist of a number of smaller visual units. While houseflies have 6000 compound eyes, dragonflies have up to 30,000. These units present the dragonfly with one picture, not 30,000 little ones.
- The dragonfly eyes wrap almost all around its head, allowing it to see in all directions at once. With this 360 degree vision, it can see without moving its head. This includes behind it as well as underneath it.
- The colors humans see are detected by 3 color photoreceptors: red, blue, and green. Most species of dragonflies have many more color photoreceptors, up to 30 in fact. This means they are able to see colors humans cannot even imagine.
- Dragonflies can also see through a polarizing filter, much like when humans wear polarized sunglasses. This ability allows them to view prey that may be hiding underwater even if sunlight is hitting the water.
- Due to their incredible eyesight, dragonflies experience time differently than humans. Insects like flies and mosquitoes actually move very slowly for dragonflies. They can track a flying object and decide whether it is prey or not in less than 5 hundredths of a second.
- As well as being able to see more colors than humans, dragonflies are able to see ultraviolet light. These rays of light from the sun are invisible to humans, however the dragonfly’s ability to see them helps it hunt its prey.
- Sharks have an unusual organ called the ampullae of Lorenzini. This organ detects electromagnetic fields emitted when animals move. It allows them to see prey hiding in the sand as well as locate swimming prey very efficiently.
- Sharks have a layer of crystals located behind their retinas called the tapetum lucidum that allows them to see around 10 times better than a human in low light. However, their depth is limited, as sharks can only see clearly about 50 feet ahead.
- Pit vipers, pythons, and some boas have evolved a set of infrared sensitive receptors located in the nose of the snake. This allows them to see the body heat of prey species, much like night vision goggles.
- A football field is often used as a comparative measurement of length when talking about distances that may be hard to comprehend when stated in terms of standard units.
- The Luther decision makes clear that martial law exists as an emergency power that can be invoked in the United States, at least by state legislatures
- Jade forms under high pressure at subduction zones and is typically found around mountains or rivers, but Big Sur is the only known undersea source of quality nephrite—one of two types of jade—in the world.
- Henry Hall, the 94-year-old lighthouse keeper, discovered that a spark, probably from a candle in the lantern, had flown up and ignited the top of the tower. As Hall looked up to throw a bucket of water on the blaze, a stream of molten lead from the roof poured down his face and throat.
- In the Antarctic, Adélie penguins harbor consistent levels of the pesticide DDT even though it’s been widely banned since the 1970s. The source: glacier meltwater that trickles past the penguins on its way to the sea, eventually making its way into the penguins’ food webs.
- As for why the rudimentary compass was in the shape of a spoon, Silverman says the original diviners may have made the ladle shape to mimic the Big Dipper. In that constellation, the two stars at the end of the “bowl” point to the North Star. And since the spoon’s neck pointed south, that meant its bowl pointed north—just like the Big Dipper.
- In 1850, a group of families ventured from St. Paul along an Indian trail that is now Hazelwood Street. They were the Bells, Caseys, Conlins, and Vincents. At today’s County Road C, they turned to the east and began to build their log cabins. The sound of their axes alerted the Dakota who had a hunting camp nearby and thought the land was still theirs. The Dakota asked them to leave and the newcomers quickly retraced their steps.
- In the mid-1800s much of Maplewood was oak savanna. Look for a remnant of the savanna on the east side of Wakefield Lake, with mature oaks stretching broad limbs over a groundcover of prairie grasses.
- In 1886, William and Mary Dawson founded Gladstone, named after the British Prime Minister.
- SPECIAL NOTE: 86—DOS is not related to the popular CP/M operating system of Digital Research. Disk directory formatting and space allocation are completely different and incompatible. 86—DOS does, however, provide a utility called RDCPM which will transfer files from CP/M disks to 86—DOS disks. Further, operating system calls and calling conventions have been provided which make possible automatic translation of Z80 programs written for CP/M into 8086 programs that run under 86—DOS.
- “When I was feeling bad, and hurt, he came and helped me out,” he said. “He’d say, ‘Cuz, it’s going to be all right.’ And I accept that, especially from a good guy like hi[m].”
- Hues of pink — Chaney’s favorite color — were everywhere, a reminder of the vibrant life she led, which her loved ones reflected on.
- “People came to say their farewell to a woman that was worth the highest of honors as our bishop truly said in his statement, that she is a woman worthy of the highest of honors and today the community, along with the family, stood in concert to reiterate that,” Randall said.
- “He was serving, putting packages in his car when he got shot,” Lane said. “So this legacy is going to be about serving. So what we have to is serve, regardless of what color skin you are. Regardless of what religious background you came from. Regardless of what ethnic background you come from. The most important thing is it’s about serving the community, and that’s what he was doing, was serving the community when he got shot.”
- “He just did the best he could,” said Raasha Thompson, the mother of three of Morrison’s children. “He worked as hard as he could. He did what he could for his kids. He made sure he saw them. He made sure he was in their lives and that he got to know who they were.”
- “She was a devoted grandmother, mother and wife,” said Kamilah Whitfield. “And she gave so much of herself to her family. She loved cooking big meals. And she will be missed. We love you, grandmommy.”
- The name Betelgeuse is a corruption of the Arabic “yad al jauza,” which means the “hand of al-jauza,” al-jauza the ancient Arabs’ “Central One,” a mysterious woman.
- The planet, with a mass of at least 1.85 times that of Jupiter, is one of the few known to lie within a double-star system, and orbits the main star Gamma Cephei A with a period of 2.47 years at an average distance of 2.05 Astronomical Units (307 million kilometers, 191 million miles)
- “Errai” comes from Arabic and means “the Shepherd.”
- With a mass estimated to be 1.6 times that of the Sun, the star’s core is quietly fusing helium into carbon and oxygen.
- Gamma Cephei is accompanied by a low mass companion (a red dwarf with a mass around 0.3 or 0.4 solar masses) that orbits with a period between 57 and 66 years at a distance of about 19 AU.
- From the planet, the secondary star would shine with the light of a couple dozen full Moons.
- About a third of the way from Dubhe (the Big Dipper’s front bowl star) to Polaris (and a just a bit to the east) lies Giausar, the tail star of Western Draco the Dragon, to which Bayer assigned the Greek letter Lambda.
- Renton Formation—Nonmarine fine- to medium-grained arkosic sandstone and siltstone containing abundant subbituminous coal beds and carbonaceous shale.
- Tukwila Formation—Andesitic to dacitic volcanic sandstone, siltstone, shale, tuff-breccia, tuff, volcanic mudflow (lahar), carbonaceous shales, and minor lava flows or sills. Typically massive; only local sedimentary interbeds indicate structure. K-Ar age on plagioclase from tuff-breccia at top of unit, about 3 km west of quadrangle, yielded an age of 42.0±2.4 Ma (Turner and others, 1983)
- Extending a line from Megrez (δ) to Phecda (γ), on the inside of the bowl, leads to Regulus (α Leonis) and Alphard (α Hydrae). A mnemonic for this is “A hole in the bowl will leak on Leo.”
- By following the curve of the handle from Alioth (ε) to Mizar (ζ) to Alkaid (η), one reaches Arcturus (α Boötis) and Spica (α Virginis). A mnemonic for this is “Arc to Arcturus then speed (or spike) to Spica.”
- The approximate location of the Hubble Deep Field can be found by following a line from Phecda (γ) to Megrez (δ) and continuing on for the same distance again.
- Five of the stars of the Big Dipper are at the core of the Ursa Major Moving Group. The two at the ends, Dubhe and Alkaid, are not part of the swarm, and are moving in the opposite direction.
- The most recent distance estimate of the distance to the Pleiades based on the Gaia Data Release 3 is 135.74±0.10 pc.
- M56 is about 32,900 light-years away from Earth and measures roughly 84 light-years across, containing 230,000 solar masses (M☉).
- This cluster has an estimated age of 13.70 billion years and is following a retrograde orbit through the Milky Way.
- M57 is 0.787 kpc (2,570 light-years) from Earth.
- On May 23, 2024, the European Space Agency released an initial set of images from their Euclid mission. This included an unprecedented image of the region including M78. It showed hundreds of thousands of new objects including sub-stellar sized ones for the first time.
- The Andromeda Galaxy has a diameter of about 46.56 kpc (152,000 ly), making it the largest member of the Local Group of galaxies in terms of extension.
- The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of 5,000 light-years from Earth and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter.
- NGC 3766 is relatively young, with an estimated age of log (7.160) or 14.4 million years, and is approaching us at 14.8 km/s.
- NGC 6025 is a moderately young cluster with an age between 40 and 69 Myr.
- Andromeda is also associated with the Mesopotamian creation story of Tiamat, the goddess of Chaos. She bore many demons for her husband, Apsu, but eventually decided to destroy them in a war that ended when Marduk killed her. He used her body to create the constellations as markers of time for humans.
- Although visible to the Ancient Greeks, Antlia’s stars were too faint to have been commonly recognised as a figurative object, or part of one, in ancient asterisms.
- Aquarius is also associated with the Age of Aquarius, a concept popular in 1960s counterculture and Medieval Alchemy.
- In the first century, Ptolemy’s Almagest established the common Western depiction of Aquarius.
- Aquarius is identified as GU.LA “The Great One” in the Babylonian star catalogues and represents the god Ea himself, who is commonly depicted holding an overflowing vase.
- In Old Babylonian astronomy, Ea was the ruler of the southernmost quarter of the Sun’s path, the “Way of Ea”, corresponding to the period of 45 days on either side of winter solstice.
- In Ancient Egypt astronomy, Aquarius was associated with the annual flood of the Nile; the banks were said to flood when Aquarius put his jar into the river, beginning spring.
- Aquila was one of the 48 constellations described by the second-century astronomer Ptolemy.
- NASA’s Pioneer 11 space probe, which flew by Jupiter and Saturn in the 1970s, is expected to pass near the star Lambda (λ) Aquilae in about 4 million years.
- In ancient Babylon, the stars of Boötes were known as SHU.PA. They were apparently depicted as the god Enlil, who was the leader of the Babylonian pantheon and special patron of farmers.
- Homer mentions Boötes in the Odyssey as a celestial reference for navigation, describing it as “late-setting” or “slow to set”.
- Camelopardalis is in the part of the celestial sphere facing away from the galactic plane. Accordingly, many distant galaxies are visible within its borders.
- La Superba (Y CVn) is one of the reddest naked-eye stars and one of the brightest carbon stars.
- The stars of Canes Venatici are not bright. In classical times, they were listed by Ptolemy as unfigured stars below the constellation Ursa Major in his star catalogue.
- The official [Canes Venatici] constellation boundaries, as set by Belgian astronomer Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 14 sides.
- The planet Neptune was discovered by German astronomer Johann Galle, near Deneb Algedi (δ Capricorni) on 23 September 1846, as Capricornus can be seen best from Europe at 4:00am in September (although, by modern constellation boundaries established in the early 20th century CE, Neptune lay within the confines of Aquarius at the time of its discovery).
- It is easily recognizable due to its distinctive ‘W’ shape, formed by five bright stars.
- Cassiopeia had a supernova, Cassiopeia A, SN 1572.
- Corvus and Crater also featured in the iconography of Mithraism, which is thought to have been of middle-eastern origin before spreading into Ancient Greece and Rome.
- In ancient times, the constellation [Lupus] was considered an asterism within Centaurus, and was considered to have been an arbitrary animal, killed, or about to be killed, on behalf of, or for, Centaurus.
- Bartsch pointed to several passages in the Bible that supposedly mention unicorns, although these are now regarded as mistranslations.
- From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Norma Arm of the Milky Way passes through the constellation Norma, and it’s from the constellation that the arm’s name is derived.
- The space probe Voyager 1, the furthest man-made object from earth, is traveling in the direction of Ophiuchus. It is located between α Herculis, α Ophiuchi and κ Ophiuchi at right ascension 17h 13m and declination +12° 25’ (July 2020).
- Pictor has attracted attention because of its second-brightest star Beta Pictoris, 63.4 light-years distant from Earth, which is surrounded by an unusual dust disk rich in carbon, as well as two exoplanets (extrasolar planets).
- Only two of the stars in this constellation are brighter than visual magnitude 5: Alpha (α) and Beta (β) reticuli.
The little instrument used to draw up this catalogue.
Lacaille writing about Reticulum- In the notes to his southern star catalogue published by the French Royal Academy of Sciences in 1756 Lacaille described it as ‘The little instrument used to draw up this catalogue.
- The space probe Pioneer 11 is moving in the direction of this constellation. It will not near the closest star in this constellation for over a million years at its present speed, by which time its batteries will be long dead.
- Triangulum Australe appears on the flag of Brazil, symbolizing the three states of the South Region.
- Mare Crisium is 556 km (345 mi) in diameter, and 176,000 square kilometres (68,000 sq mi) in area.
- Mare Crisium is just visible from Earth with the naked eye as a small dark spot on the edge of the Moon’s face.
- Because of interstellar dust along the line of sight, the Galactic Center cannot be studied at visible, ultraviolet, or soft (low-energy) X-ray wavelengths.
- Through a series of peculiar velocity tests, astrophysicists found that the Milky Way was moving in the direction of the constellation of Centaurus at about 600 km/s.
- It is situated at a distance of somewhere between 150 and 250 Mly (million light-years) (47–79 Mpc), the larger being the most recent estimate, away from the Milky Way, in the direction of the constellations Triangulum Australe (The Southern Triangle) and Norma (The Carpenter’s Square).
- On 25 February 1979, when the Voyager 1 spacecraft was 9,200,000 km (5,700,000 mi) from Jupiter, it transmitted the first detailed image of the Great Red Spot. Cloud details as small as 160 km (100 mi) across were visible.
- The interior of the crater has a higher albedo than the surroundings, so the crater appears bright when the Sun is overhead.
- The exceptionally sparse gas of the Local Bubble is the result of supernovae that exploded within the past ten to twenty million years.
- The Solar System has been traveling through the region currently occupied by the Local Bubble for the last five to ten million years.
- The Solar System is located within a structure called the Local Bubble, a low-density region of the galactic interstellar medium. Within this region is the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), an area of slightly higher hydrogen density.
- The Milky Way has several satellite galaxies and is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which form part of the Virgo Supercluster, which is itself a component of the Laniakea Supercluster.
- The Solar System is located at a radius of about 27,000 light-years (8.3 kpc) from the Galactic Center, on the inner edge of the Orion Arm, one of the spiral-shaped concentrations of gas and dust.
- The Orion arm is located between the Carina–Sagittarius Arm, the local portion of which projects toward the Galactic Center, and the Perseus Arm’s local portion, which forms the main outer-most arm. It is one of the two major arms of the galaxy.
- The Solar System is close to its inner rim, about halfway along the arm’s length, in a relative cavity in the arm’s interstellar medium, known as the Local Bubble.
- The Pisces–Cetus Supercluster Complex is estimated to be about 1.0 billion light-years (Gly) long and 150 million light years (Mly) wide.
- Like the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), Neptune’s atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, along with traces of hydrocarbons and possibly nitrogen, but contains a higher proportion of ices such as water, ammonia and methane.
- Sir William Herschel first observed Uranus on 13 March 1781, leading to its discovery as a planet, expanding the known boundaries of the Solar System for the first time in history and making Uranus the first planet classified as such with the aid of a telescope.
- Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days.
- Phoenix was launched on August 4, 2007, at 5:26:34 a.m. EDT (09:26:34 UTC) on a Delta II 7925 launch vehicle from Pad 17-A of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
- Phoenix landed in the Green Valley of Vastitas Borealis on May 25, 2008, in the late Martian northern hemisphere spring (Ls=76.73), where the Sun shone on its solar panels the whole Martian day.
- Voyager 1 began photographing Jupiter in January 1979.
- Its [Voyager 1] closest approach to Jupiter was on March 5, 1979, at a distance of about 349,000 kilometres (217,000 miles) from the planet’s center.
- Voyager 1 finished photographing the Jovian system in April 1979.
- On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1 took the first “family portrait” of the Solar System as seen from outside, which includes the image of planet Earth known as Pale Blue Dot. Soon afterward, its cameras were deactivated to conserve energy and computer resources for other equipment.
- On February 17, 1998, Voyager 1 reached a distance of 69 AU (6.4 billion mi; 10.3 billion km) from the Sun and overtook Pioneer 10 as the most distant spacecraft from Earth. Traveling at about 17 km/s (11 mi/s), it has the fastest heliocentric recession speed of any spacecraft.
- On December 1, 2011, it was announced that Voyager 1 had detected the first Lyman-alpha radiation originating from the Milky Way galaxy. Lyman-alpha radiation had previously been detected from other galaxies, but because of interference from the Sun, the radiation from the Milky Way was not detectable.
- On September 12, 2013, NASA officially confirmed that Voyager 1 had reached the interstellar medium in August 2012 as previously observed. The generally accepted date of arrival is August 25, 2012 (approximately 10 days before the 35th anniversary of its launch), the date durable changes in the density of energetic particles were first detected.
- The Voyager 1 probe was launched on September 5, 1977, from Launch Complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, aboard a Titan IIIE launch vehicle.
- Although neither Voyager spacecraft is heading toward any particular star, Voyager 1 will pass within 1.6 light-years’ distance of the star Gliese 445, currently in the constellation Camelopardalis, in about 40,000 years.
- Acubens is a fourth-magnitude star with an apparent magnitude of 4.20, making it barely visible to the naked eye under good lighting conditions.
- The distance of Acubens calculated from the Gaia Data Release 2 parallax is roughly 50 parsecs from Earth, or approximately 164 light-years away.
- Adhafera is a giant star with a stellar classification of F0 III. Since 1943, the spectrum of this star has served as one of the stable anchor points by which other stars are classified.
- Adhafera has about three times the Sun’s mass and six times the radius of the Sun.
- Parallax measurements from the Hipparcos satellite yield an estimated distance to Adhafera of 274 light-years (84 parsecs) from the Sun.
- About 4.7 million years ago, Adhara was 34 light-years from the Sun, and was the brightest star in the sky with a magnitude of –3.99.
- Mizar’s and Alcor’s proper motions show they move together, along with most of the other stars of the Big Dipper except Dubhe and Alkaid, as members of the Ursa Major Moving Group, a mostly dispersed group of stars sharing a common birth.
- The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has confirmed the presence of two planets, Beta Pictoris b, and Beta Pictoris c, through the use of direct imagery.
- Castor is 51 light-years away from Earth, determined from its large annual parallax.
- Gamma Cephei is the naked-eye star that will succeed Polaris as the Earth’s northern pole star, due to the precession of the equinoxes. It will be closer to the northern celestial pole than Polaris around 3000 CE and will make its closest approach around 4000 CE. The ’title’ will pass to Iota Cephei some time around 5200 CE.
- Kaus Borealis, the Northern (part of the) Bow, was Al Tizini’s Rai al Na’aim, the Keeper of the Na’ams, the uncertainty as to the meaning of which has already been noticed; but Kazwini evidently understood by it Ostriches, for in his list it is, with the stars μ, Al Thalimain, plainly meaning these desert birds.
- Kochab has reached a state in its evolution where the outer envelope has expanded to 42 times the radius of the Sun.
- Along their respective orbits around the Milky Way, Beta Aurigae and the Sun are closing in on each other, so that in around one million years it will become the brightest star in the night sky.
- The Beta Aurigae system is believed to be a stream member of the Ursa Major Moving Group.
- Extending an imaginary straight line from this star [Merek] through the nearby Alpha Ursae Majoris (Dubhe) extends to Polaris, the north star.
- In 2012, an exoplanet designated Omicron Ursae Majoris Ab and orbiting the primary at 3.9 astronomical units, was found. This gas giant (4.1 times as massive as Jupiter) completes an orbit in 1630 days.
- The stellar classification of this star, G5 III, indicates that it is in the giant stage of its evolution.
- It [Muscida] has about three times the mass of the Sun and radiates 138 times the Sun’s luminosity from its outer atmosphere at an effective temperature of 5,282 K, giving it the yellowish hue of a G-type star.
- The Regulus system as a whole is the twenty-first brightest star in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of +1.35.
- The Hipparcos parallax for Sirius is only accurate to about ±0.04 light years, giving a distance of 8.6 light years. Sirius B is generally assumed to be at the same distance.
- Sirius A is classed as a type Am star, because the spectrum shows deep metallic absorption lines, indicating an enhancement of its surface layers in elements heavier than helium, such as iron.
- Sirius is a binary star system consisting of two white stars orbiting each other with a separation of about 20 AU (roughly the distance between the Sun and Uranus) and a period of 50.1 years.
- The Sun moves around the Galactic Center of the Milky Way, at a distance of 26,660 light-years.
- Parallax measurements give an estimated distance of roughly 230 light-years (71 parsecs) from the Sun, with a margin of error of 4%.
- This is a spectroscopic binary star system with a companion a mere 0.2 AU from the primary, assuming a distance of 71 parsecs, with an orbital period of 230 days.
- According to British conspiracy theorist David Icke, Alpha Draconis is the origin of blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilians who lurk in underground bases on Earth and plot against humanity (with the aid of powerful figures including royalty).
- Due to the precession of Earth’s rotational axis, Thuban was the naked-eye star closest to the north pole from 3942 BC, when it superseded Tau Herculis as the pole star, until 1793 BC, when it was superseded by Kappa Draconis.
- Vindemiatrix is a giant star with a stellar classification of G8 III.
- With 2.7 times the mass of the Sun and at an age of 700 million years, it [Vindemiatrix] has reached a stage in its evolution where the hydrogen fuel in its core is exhausted.
- The word magnitude in astronomy, unless stated otherwise, usually refers to a celestial object’s apparent magnitude.
- The magnitude scale dates to before the ancient Roman astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, whose star catalog popularized the system by listing stars from 1st magnitude (brightest) to 6th magnitude (dimmest). The modern scale was mathematically defined in a way to closely match this historical system.
- An open cluster is a type of star cluster made of tens to a few thousand stars that were formed from the same giant molecular cloud and have roughly the same age.
- In spiral galaxies, open clusters are largely found in the spiral arms where gas densities are highest and so most star formation occurs, and clusters usually disperse before they have had time to travel beyond their spiral arm.
- In irregular galaxies, open clusters may be found throughout the galaxy, although their concentration is highest where the gas density is highest.
- Open clusters are not seen in elliptical galaxies: Star formation ceased many millions of years ago in ellipticals, and so the open clusters which were originally present have long since dispersed.
- They are even found in the atmosphere and one cubic metre of air holds around one hundred million bacterial cells.
- Eukaryotes first emerged during the Paleoproterozoic, likely as flagellated cells.
- The species Torquigener albomaculosus was described by David Attenborough as “the greatest artist of the animal kingdom” due to the males’ unique habit of wooing females by creating nests in sand composed of complex geometric designs.
- Puffer poisoning usually results from consumption of incorrectly prepared puffer soup, fugu chiri, or occasionally from raw puffer meat, sashimi fugu.
- Mosses are commonly confused with liverworts, hornworts and lichens.
- Bigleaf maple can grow up to 48 metres (158 feet) tall, but more commonly reaches 15–20 m (50–65 ft) tall and 90–120 centimetres (35–47 inches).
- The bigleaf maple has the largest leaves of any maple, typically 15–30 cm (6–12 in) across with five deeply incised palmate lobes, with the largest running to 61 cm (24 in).
- The Latin specific epithet vulgaris means “common”.
- In traditional herbalism columbine was considered sacred to Venus; carrying a posy of it was said to arouse the affections of a loved one.
- The [columbine] plant is a member of the poisonous Ranunculus family and all parts of the plant, including the seeds, are poisonous if ingested.
- Corymbia citriodora is a tree that typically grows to a height of 25–40 m (82–131 ft), sometimes to 50 m (160 ft) and forms a lignotuber.
- It [Corymbia citriodora] has smooth, pale, uniform or slightly mottled, white to pink or coppery bark that is shed in thin flakes.
- Cytisus scoparius has been introduced into several other countries and continents, outside of its native range, and is commonly classified as a noxious invasive species in western North America, mainly in British Columbia (including on Vancouver Island), California, Oregon, Washington (west of the Cascades), the Sierra Nevada range, fragmented areas of North America’s eastern seaboard, as well as Australia (where it is a declared weed), New Zealand, and in India.
- Ginkgo leaf extract is commonly used as a dietary supplement, but there is insufficient clinical evidence that it supports human health or is effective against any disease.
- Ginkgo biloba is a living fossil, with fossils recognisably related to modern ginkgo from the early Permian (Cisuralian), with likely oldest record being that of Trichopitys from the earliest Permian (Asselian) of France, over 290 million years old.
- The leaves are unique among seed plants, being fan-shaped with veins radiating out into the leaf blade, sometimes bifurcating (splitting), but never anastomosing to form a network.
- The genus Ginkgo diversified and spread throughout Laurasia during the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous.
- At the end of the Pliocene, Ginkgo fossils disappeared from the fossil record everywhere except in a small area of central China, where the modern species survived.
- The name ‘bird’s foot’ refers to the appearance of the seed pods on their stalk. Five leaflets are present, but with the central three held conspicuously above the others, hence the use of the name ’trefoil’.
- This species of Phalaris may also be used as a source for the psychedelic drugs DMT, 5-MeO-DMT and 5-OH-DMT (bufotenin), as well as Hordenine and 5-MeO-NMT; however, N,N-DMT is considered most desirable.
- Its leaves are arranged alternately and are simple, obovate to oblanceolate in shape, 3 to 9 cm long, with serrated margins.
- They are lustrous and leathery in texture and dark green in color while new growth is a conspicuous bronze or red eventually turning green.
- Northwest coastal tribes used sword fern leaves to line fire pits for cooking, and line baskets and drying racks. The rhizomes could be eaten by peeling and then steaming or roasting them. The leaves and/or stems could be made into tea for certain maladies.
- Spores: reproductive spores are gold-red-brown and appear on the underside of leaf fronds year round
- The Coast Salish people of B.C. and Washington state use this plant as a pain reliever. When applied directly to the area where pain and inflammation occur, according to Della Rice Sylvester, an elder and medicine woman of the Cowichan tribe, the sword fern “takes the pain away!”. This traditional use has spread among the hiking communities and youth scouting organizations of the region, where it is a common piece of hiker’s lore that a rash from a stinging nettle can be counteracted by rubbing the spores on the underside of sword fern on the area.
- This species is listed by the World Conservation Union as one of the world’s worst invasive species.
- Rhododendron maximum is the state flower of the U.S. state of West Virginia.
- The flowers are produced in late spring and early summer on panicles of 3–20 together on the tips of the second-year side shoots, each flower 2–2.5 cm diameter with five white or pale pink petals.
- Rubus armeniacus was first introduced to North America in 1885 by Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa, California using seeds that he imported from India.
- S. japonicus has a relatively limited flowering period; a single flower has a blooming period of 4-5 days before wilting and a group of flowers last around 2 weeks
- Tansy has also been used as insect repellent and in embalming. It was packed into coffins, wrapped in funeral winding sheets, and tansy wreaths were sometimes placed on the dead.
- It is frequently seen running across lawns picking up earthworms, and its running and stopping behavior is a distinguishing characteristic.
- There is fossil evidence to suggest that snakes may have evolved from burrowing lizards, during the Cretaceous Period.
- The neuron is the main component of nervous tissue in all animals except sponges and placozoa.
- Non-animals like plants and fungi do not have nerve cells.
- Molecular evidence suggests that the ability to generate electric signals first appeared in evolution some 700 to 800 million years ago, during the Tonian period.
- At a synapse, the plasma membrane of the signal-passing neuron (the presynaptic neuron) comes into close apposition with the membrane of the target (postsynaptic) cell.
- In many synapses, the presynaptic part is located on an axon and the postsynaptic part is located on a dendrite or soma.
- In a chemical synapse, electrical activity in the presynaptic neuron is converted (via the activation of voltage-gated calcium channels) into the release of a chemical called a neurotransmitter that binds to receptors located in the plasma membrane of the postsynaptic cell.
- In an electrical synapse, the presynaptic and postsynaptic cell membranes are connected by special channels called gap junctions that are capable of passing an electric current, causing voltage changes in the presynaptic cell to induce voltage changes in the postsynaptic cell.
- Nuclear bomb detonation produces a small amount of local I-131 fallout. Most I-131 distributes over large distances, typically with only 10% making its way to the earth’s surface before undergoing spontaneous radioactive decay to stable xenon-131.
- Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33.
- In the Roman era, copper was mined principally on Cyprus, the origin of the name of the metal, from aes cyprium (metal of Cyprus), later corrupted to cuprum (Latin).
- Pure copper is orange-red and acquires a reddish tarnish when exposed to air. This is due to the low plasma frequency of the metal, which lies in the red part of the visible spectrum, causing it to absorb the higher-frequency green and blue colors.
- Iron’s abundance in rocky planets like Earth is due to its abundant production during the runaway fusion and explosion of type Ia supernovae, which scatters the iron into space.
- All plants, animals, and fungi need oxygen for cellular respiration, which extracts energy by the reaction of oxygen with molecules derived from food and produces carbon dioxide as a waste product.
- Tin extraction and use can be dated to the beginnings of the Bronze Age around 3000 BC, when it was observed that copper objects formed of polymetallic ores with different metal contents had different physical properties.
- Borosilicate glass is created by combining and melting boric oxide, silica sand, soda ash, and alumina.
- The word “halogen” means “salt former” or “salt maker”. When halogens react with metals, they produce a wide range of salts, including calcium fluoride, sodium chloride (common table salt), silver bromide and potassium iodide.
- Halogen lamps are a type of incandescent lamp using a tungsten filament in bulbs that have small amounts of a halogen, such as iodine or bromine added.
- A cation is a positively charged ion with fewer electrons than protons while an anion is a negatively charged ion with more electrons than protons.
- The HBO series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has criticized the company as a prominent instance of corporate consolidation, as has the TruTV series Adam Ruins Everything.
- The term “von Neumann architecture” has evolved to refer to any stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and a data operation cannot occur at the same time (since they share a common bus).
- On a large scale, the ability to treat instructions as data is what makes assemblers, compilers, linkers, loaders, and other automated programming tools possible. It makes “programs that write programs” possible.
- During the summer and autumn of 1971, I was part of a small group of programmers who were developing a time-sharing system called TENEX that ran on Digital PDP-10 computers. We were supporting a larger group working on natural language. Earlier, I had worked on the Network Control Protocol (NCP) for TENEX and network programs such as an experimental file transfer program called CPYNET.
- I was making improvements to the local inter-user mail program called SNDMSG. Single-computer electronic mail had existed since at least the early 1960’s and SNDMSG was an example of that. SNDMSG allowed a user to compose, address, and send a message to other users’ mailboxes.
- A mailbox was simply a file with a particular name. It’s only special property was its protection which only allowed other users to append to the file. That is, they could write more material onto the end of the mailbox, but they couldn’t read or overwrite what was already there. The idea occurred to me that CPYNET could append material to a mailbox file just as readily as SNDMSG could. SNDMSG could easily incorporate the code from CPYNET and direct messages through a network connection to remote mailboxes in addition to appending messages to local mailbox files.
- The missing piece was that the experimental CPYNET protocol had no provision for appending to a file; it could just send and receive files. Adding the missing piece was a no-brainer – just a minor addition to the protocol. I don’t recall the protocol details, but appending to a file was the same as writing to a file except for the mode in which the file was opened.
- Next, the CPYNET code was incorporated into SNDMSG. It remained to provide a way to distinguish local mail from network mail. I chose to append an at sign and the host name to the user’s (login) name. I am frequently asked why I chose the at sign, but the at sign just makes sense. The purpose of the at sign (in English) was to indicate a unit price (for example, 10 items @ $1.95). I used the at sign to indicate that the user was “at” some other host rather than being local.
- The first message was sent between two machines that were literally side by side. The only physical connection they had (aside from the floor they sat on) was through the ARPANET. I sent a number of test messages to myself from one machine to the other. The test messages were entirely forgettable and I have, therefore, forgotten them. Most likely the first message was QUERTYIOP or something similar. When I was satisfied that the program seemed to work, I sent a message to the rest of my group explaining how to send messages over the network. The first use of network email announced its own existence.
- These first messages were sent in late 1971. The next release of TENEX went out in early 1972 and included the version of SNDMSG with network mail capabilities. The CPYNET protocol was soon replaced with a real file transfer protocol having specific mail handling features. Later, a number of more general mail protocols were developed.
- A quick note on font size: you have to make your text editor font quite large to make it legible for your viewers! It will take a little while to get used to this. I use 26-point font in my editor, which provides only about 30 visible horizontal lines of code.
- Bill Gates recalls that, when he and Paul Allen read about the Altair in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics, they understood that the price of computers would soon drop to the point that selling software for them would be a profitable business.
- An auto clicker is automation software or a macro that is generally used to automate the clicking (or tapping) process in idle games.
- Pratchett even says in The Art of Discworld that he has received a number of letters from terminally ill fans in which they hope that Death will resemble the Discworld incarnation (he also says that those particular letters usually cause him to spend some time staring at the wall).
- Pratchett says Mort would have thought she [Ysabell] looked Pre-Raphaelite when he first encountered her, if he had only ever heard the word.
- Once ingested, psilocybin is rapidly metabolized to psilocin, which then acts on serotonin receptors in the brain.
- [Why does FM sound better than AM?] Someone gave me an analogy some time ago that made a lot of sense. If you shine a flashlight through a tree blowing in the wind and vary the brightness to convey information, the signal can get distorted pretty easily. However, if you have a constant brightness source and vary the color, it’s a lot easier to figure out what the source is trying to convey.
- It can also be as a shorthand or code for “cannabis” or “getting high”.
- The Pentagon refused to allow the film to be screened on military bases.
- Most of the [Equilibrium] filming used locations in Berlin, due to its unique mixture of fascist and modern architecture.
- Warhol gave Solanas a part in the film for $25 and as compensation for a script she had given to Warhol called Up Your Ass, which he had lost. Solanas later attempted to kill Warhol by shooting him.
- The film’s title refers to the Biblical story of Jacob’s Ladder, or the dream of a meeting place between Heaven and Earth (Genesis 28:12).
- The film’s police cars are 1986 Ford Taurus models painted black. The Taurus was chosen because of its futuristic, aerodynamic styling for the vehicle’s first production year.
- In the autobiographical documentary Voyage in Time (1983), Tarkovsky says he viewed Solaris as an artistic failure because it did not transcend genre as he believed his film Stalker (1979) did, due to the required technological dialogue and special effects.
- The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited Solaris as one of his favorite films.
- Spaceballs is a 1987 American space opera parody film co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks.
- It is primarily a parody of the original Star Wars trilogy, but also parodies other sci-fi films and popular franchises including Star Trek, Alien, The Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes, and Transformers.
- John Hurt makes a cameo appearance credited as himself, parodying his character Gilbert Kane’s death in the film Alien (1979).
- Yuki’s journey of self-discovery is triggered by a fire festival that the adventurers witness one night in the forest. She is moved by the spirit of the dancing crowd, the magic of the firelight, and especially the Buddhist hymn to transience: “Life is just a dream.” Later in the film, bound to a pole, she chants these words to her captor, who is moved enough to let her and her companions go.
- American director George Lucas has acknowledged the heavy influence of The Hidden Fortress on his 1977 film Star Wars, particularly in the technique of telling the story from the perspective of the film’s lowliest characters, C-3PO and R2-D2. Some of the major characters from Star Wars have clear analogues in The Hidden Fortress, including C-3PO and R2-D2 being based on Tahei and Matashichi, and Princess Leia on Princess Yuki.
- The Hidden Fortress was released theatrically in Japan on December 28, 1958. The film was the highest-grossing film for Toho in 1958, ranking as the fourth highest-grossing film overall in Japan that year.
- The bulk of the film was shot at Stage 1 of the Bavaria Studios in Munich, with the street scenes and the school interior in the real world shot in Vancouver, Canada (the Gastown Vancouver Steam Clock is in the scene where the three bullies are chased down Cambie Street past the steam clock at the intersection of Water Street and then on down Blood Alley), and the beach where Atreyu falls, which was filmed at Playa de Mónsul in San José, Almería, Spain.
- With the death of 117-year-old Nabi Tajima, on 21 April 2018, the Lost Generation cohort became extinct, making The Greatest Generation the earliest generation with living members.
- Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material.
- An exposed portion of bedrock is often called an outcrop.
- The various kinds of broken and weathered rock material, such as soil and subsoil, that may overlie the bedrock are known as regolith.
- Breccia is composed of coarse rock fragments held together by cement or a fine-grained matrix.
- Like conglomerate, breccia contains at least 30 percent of gravel-sized particles (particles over 2mm in size), but it is distinguished from conglomerate because the rock fragments have sharp edges that have not been worn down.
- The Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) is a 1,000 km (620 mi) long dipping fault that stretches from Northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino in northern California.
- Agate is a variety of chalcedony characterized by either transparency or color patterns, such as multi-colored curved or angular banding. Opaque varieties are sometimes referred to as jasper.
- In the Bronze Age chalcedony was in use in the Mediterranean region; for example, on Minoan Crete at the Palace of Knossos, chalcedony seals have been recovered dating to circa 1800 BC.
- Jasper is a variety of chert formed as primary deposits, found in or in connection with magmatic formations which owes its red color to hematite inclusions.
- If the cirque is subject to seasonal melting, the floor of the cirque most often forms a tarn (small lake) behind a dam, which marks the downstream limit of the glacial overdeepening.
- During the middle to late Miocene epoch, the Columbia River flood basalts engulfed about 163,700 km2 (63,200 sq mi) of the Pacific Northwest, forming a large igneous province with an estimated volume of 174,300 km3 (41,800 cu mi).
- Other terms for a drainage basin are catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin, water basin, and impluvium. In North America, they are commonly called a watershed, though in other English-speaking places, “watershed” is used only in its original sense, that of a drainage divide.
- The main effect of extrusion is that the magma can cool much more quickly in the open air or under seawater, and there is little time for the growth of crystals.
- The texture of extrusive rocks is characterized by fine-grained crystals indistinguishable to the human eye, described as aphantic.
- Crystals in aphantic rocks are small in size due to their rapid formation during eruption.
- In 1852, fluorite gave its name to the phenomenon of fluorescence, which is prominent in fluorites from certain locations, due to certain impurities in the crystal.
- The Whidbey Formation is characteristically compact, bedded, bluish to gray-brown silt and clay. Thin sand layers are present in places, but silt and clay dominate.
- Bald Hill, northwest of Monroe, consists primarily of andesite flows. These blue-green porphyritic rocks weather quite readily to a light grey material with a reddish hue which can easily be disintegrated by hand. At several localities on Bald Hill vertical dikes are exposed which contain andesite xenoliths in a fine grained matrix.
- The area consists primarily of Tertiary sedimentary and volcanic rocks and Pleistocene glacial and interglacial unconsolidated sediments.
- Much of the current topography was formed through the erosion of the depression by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet during the Vashon Glaciation, which lasted from about 19,000 – 16,000 BP.
- The [Georgia Depression] landscape features glacially striated tablelands and rolling hills underlain by sedimentary rocks.
- The majority of soils in the [Georgia] depression are formed from glacial till, glacial outwash, and Lacustrine deposits.
- Igneous rocks can be either intrusive (plutonic and hypabyssal) or extrusive (volcanic).
- An intrusion is any body of intrusive igneous rock, formed from magma that cools and solidifies within the crust of the planet.
- Intrusive rocks are characterized by large crystal sizes, and as the individual crystals are visible, the rock is called phaneritic.
- Jasper is an opaque rock of virtually any colour stemming from the mineral content of the original sediments or ash.
- Patterns arise during the consolidation process forming flow and depositional patterns in the original silica-rich sediment or volcanic ash.
- Hydrothermal circulation is generally thought to be required in the formation of jasper.
- Canada’s oldest ice is a 20,000-year-old remnant of the Laurentide Ice Sheet called the Barnes Ice Cap, on central Baffin Island.
- During the Late Pleistocene, the Laurentide ice sheet reached from the Rocky Mountains eastward through the Great Lakes, into New England, covering nearly all of Canada east of the Rocky Mountains.
- The concept of mineral is distinct from rock, which is any bulk solid geologic material that is relatively homogeneous at a large enough scale.
- Silicate minerals comprise approximately 90% of the Earth’s crust.
- Pangaea existed as a supercontinent for 160 million years, from its assembly around 335 million years ago (Early Carboniferous) to its breakup 175 million years ago (Middle Jurassic).
- The seas of the Early Carboniferous were dominated by rugose corals, brachiopods, bryozoans, sharks, and the first bony fish.
- Rocks are usually grouped into three main groups: igneous rocks, sedimentary rocks and metamorphic rocks.
- The fine particles that compose shale can remain suspended in water long after the larger particles of sand have been deposited.
- As a result, shales are typically deposited in very slow moving water and are often found in lakes and lagoonal deposits, in river deltas, on floodplains and offshore below the wave base.
- In most silicate minerals, silicon is tetrahedral, being surrounded by four oxides.
- Tectosilicates, or “framework silicates,” have a three-dimensional framework of silicate tetrahedra with SiO2 in a 1:2 ratio. This group comprises nearly 75% of the crust of the Earth.
- Hadean rocks are very rare, largely consisting of granular zircons from one locality (Jack Hills) in Western Australia.
- Earth in the early Hadean had a very thick carbon dioxide- and methane-rich prebiotic atmosphere, but eventually oceans made of liquid water were formed.
- It is believed that 43% of modern continental crust was formed in the Proterozoic, 39% formed in the Archean, and only 18% in the Phanerozoic.
- One of the most important events of the Proterozoic was the accumulation of oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.
- Angiosperms (flowering plants) appeared for the first time during the Early Cretaceous; Archaefructaceae, one of the oldest fossil families (124.6 Ma) was found in the Yixian Formation, China.
- The Holocene corresponds with the rapid proliferation, growth, and impacts of the human species worldwide, including all of its written history, technological revolutions, development of major civilizations, and overall significant transition towards urban living in the present.
- During the Late Jurassic Epoch, Pangaea broke up into two supercontinents, Laurasia to the north, and Gondwana to the south.
- Evidence from Milankovitch cycles suggests that the length of an Earth day during this epoch was approximately 22 hours.
- During the Lopingian, most of the earth was in the supercontinent Pangaea.
- The Lopingian ended with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where over 95% of species went extinct.
- The K–Pg extinction event, brought on by an asteroid impact (Chicxulub impact) and possibly volcanism (Deccan Traps), marked the beginning of the Paleocene and killed off 75% of species, most famously the non-avian dinosaurs.
- The end of the epoch was marked by the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), which was a major climatic event wherein about 2,500–4,500 gigatons of carbon were released into the atmosphere and ocean systems, causing a spike in global temperatures and ocean acidification.
- Key traits that evolved among hominins during the Pliocene include terrestrial bipedality and, by the end of the Pliocene, encephalized brains (brains with a large neocortex relative to body mass and stone tool manufacture.
- The supercontinent of Columbia broke up between 1500 and 1350 million years ago, and the fragments reassembled into the supercontinent of Rodinia around 1100 to 900 million years ago, on the time boundary between the Mesoproterozoic and the subsequent Neoproterozoic.
- The era saw the development of sexual reproduction, which greatly increased the complexity of life to come and signified the start of development of true multicellular organisms.
- This era saw the rise of oxygen in the atmosphere after oxygenic photosynthesis evolved in cyanobacteria as early as the Mesoarchean era.
- The beginning of the Paleozoic Era witnessed the breakup of the supercontinent of Pannotia and ended while the supercontinent Pangaea was assembling.
- Vast swaths of forests and swamps covered the land, which eventually became the coal beds characteristic of the Carboniferous stratigraphy evident today.
- The Cretaceous (along with the Mesozoic) ended with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a large mass extinction in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and large marine reptiles, died out, widely thought to have been caused by the impact of a large asteroid that formed the Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico.
- The first significant evolutionary radiation of life on land occurred during the Devonian, as free-sporing land plants (pteridophytes) began to spread across dry land, forming extensive coal forests which covered the continents.
- In the early Ectasian period, a day was 17 hours and 32 minutes. At the end of the Ectasian, it was 18 hours and 28 minutes.
- Two of the largest known impact events on Earth occurred during the Orosirian. Early in the period, 2023 Mya, a large asteroid collision created the Vredefort impact structure. The event that created the Sudbury Basin structure occurred near the end of the period, 1850 Mya.
- The supercontinent Columbia formed at the end of this period.
- During the Permian, all the Earth’s major landmasses were collected into a single supercontinent known as Pangaea, with the microcontinental terranes of Cathaysia to the east.
- One important event in this period was the initial establishment of terrestrial life in what is known as the Silurian-Devonian Terrestrial Revolution: vascular plants emerged from more primitive land plants, dikaryan fungi started expanding and diversifying along with glomeromycotan fungi, and three groups of arthropods (myriapods, arachnids and hexapods) became fully terrestrialized.
- Approximately 1.7 billion years ago, natural nuclear fission reactors were generating power in what is now Oklo, Gabon.
- Fossils of the oldest known sexually reproducing organism, Bangiomorpha pubescens, first appeared in the Stenian.
- The Triassic began in the wake of the Permian–Triassic extinction event, which left the Earth’s biosphere impoverished; it was well into the middle of the Triassic before life recovered its former diversity.
- The vast supercontinent of Pangaea dominated the globe during the Triassic, but in the following Jurassic period it began to gradually rift into two separate landmasses, Laurasia to the north and Gondwana to the south.
- The global climate during the Triassic was mostly hot and dry, with deserts spanning much of Pangaea’s interior. However, the climate shifted and became more humid as Pangaea began to drift apart.
- The Mississippian was a period of marine transgression in the Northern Hemisphere: the sea level was so high that only the Fennoscandian Shield and the Laurentian Shield were dry land.
- Most till consists predominantly of clay, silt, and sand, but with pebbles, cobbles, and boulders scattered through the till.
- Bedrock can be eroded through the action of glacial plucking and abrasion, and the resulting clasts of various sizes will be incorporated to the glacier’s bed.
- Till is derived from the erosion and entrainment of material by the moving ice of a glacier.
- Racehorse Creek (sir20095170.pdf)
- Fine-grained thinly foliated greenschist and black phyllite occur in a north-northwest-trending belt along the west edge of the area. The rocks are particularly conspicuous near Bacon Peak and in the vicinity of Mount Shuksan.
- On the west side of the Cascade Mountains, two lobes covered the Puget Lowlands. Along the north side of the Olympic Mountains the Juan de Fuca Lobe moved west, and between the Olympics and the Cascades the Puget Lobe moved south.
- As the Puget Lobe advanced, it deposited hundreds of feet of Lawton Clay, Esperance Sand, and Vashon Till. Meltwater flowing below the ice carved out troughs that we know as valleys.
- The Vashon Glaciation lasted from about 19,000 – 16,000 BP (Before Present – present defined as January 1, 1950 for this scale).
- The Vashon Glaciation is an extension of the Fraser Glaciation in which the Cordilleran Ice Sheet advanced south of the present day Canada–United States border into the Puget Sound region.
- 19,000 years ago marks the approximate time when glaciers crossed the present-day Canada–United States border into Western Washington, which is generally considered to be the beginning of the Vashon Glaciation.
- This southern part of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet is called the Puget Lobe.
- During the Vashon Glaciation, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet grew and advanced southwards at a rate of about 135 metres (443 ft) per year.
- Evbxp: Volcanic breccia—Dacitic to andesitic lithic tuff breccia with lesser (crystal) lithic lapilli tuff and minor agglomerate; typically dark green-gray to light gray, with multicolored red, green, and gray to black volcanic clasts; weathers gray-brown; moderately to poorly sorted; very thick to massive.
- Evcp: Volcaniclastic rocks—Lithic and feldspatholithic volcanic to tuffaceous sandstone, silty sandstone, and siltstone containing some interbeds of volcanic (pebble) conglomerate, tuff, lapilli tuff, breccia, shale, organic tuffaceous siltstone, and coal; leaf fossils and petrified wood common; generally light yellowish brown to very pale brown to light bluish gray to greenish gray sandstone, with some dark red to reddish brown to grayish black siltstone.
- Qaf: Alluvial fan deposits (Holocene to latest Pleistocene)—Debris-flow diamicton, sand, alluvial gravel, and boulder gravel; loose; massive to moderately stratified; poorly to moderately sorted.
- Qglr: Recessional glaciolacustrine (glacial lake) deposits—Silt and clayey or sandy silt to silty sand, typically with scattered dropstones; soft; light brown-gray to gray; deposited in proglacial lakes.
- The director of the FSB is appointed by and directly answerable to the president of Russia.
- The House Freedom Caucus does not disclose the names of its members and membership is by invitation only.
- The caucus acts as a bloc, with decisions that are supported by 80 percent made binding on all of its members, which has strengthened its influence among House Republicans.
- After the election of Donald Trump, the Freedom Caucus shifted its emphasis to loyalty to Trump, and became what Politico described as “more populist and nationalist, but less bound by policy principles.”
- SNAP is good for local economies – each dollar in federally funded SNAP benefits generates $1.79 in economic activity.
- Nearly nine out of 10 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants face barriers in providing their household with a healthy diet throughout the month, based on a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) study
- In his first major book on rational therapy, Ellis wrote that the central principle of his approach, that people are rarely emotionally affected by external events but rather by their thinking about such events, “was originally discovered and stated by the ancient Stoic philosophers.”
- After December 2018, tens of thousands of civilians around the Nduga Regency were displaced following an increased military presence after a massacre of workers constructing the Trans-Papua Highway, and conflict with separatist fighters.
- Western Asia and the Near East were the first regions to enter the Bronze Age, which began with the rise of the Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC.
- Located 12 kilometers southwest of the ancient site of Ur, Eridu was the southernmost of a conglomeration of Sumerian cities that grew around temples, almost in sight of one another.
- In 58 BC Julius Caesar launched the Gallic Wars and had conquered the whole of Gaul by 51 BC.
- Mesopotamia encompasses the land between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, both of which have their headwaters in the neighboring Armenian highlands.
- Overland routes in Mesopotamia usually follow the Euphrates because the banks of the Tigris are frequently steep and difficult.
- The island [Tyre] lay about a kilometre from the coast in Alexander [the Great]’s days, its high walls reaching 45.8 m (150 ft) above the sea on the eastern, landward facing, side of the island.
- As Alexander could not attack the city from the sea, he built a kilometre-long two hundred foot-wide causeway (claimed so by Diodorus) stretching out to the island on a natural land bridge no more than two meters deep.
- In the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a temple dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city and ruled over by a priestly governor (ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately tied to the city’s religious rites.
- When Ur was founded, the Persian Gulf’s water level was two-and-a-half metres higher than today. Ur is thought, therefore, to have had marshy surroundings; irrigation would have been unnecessary, and the city’s evident canals likely were used for transportation.
- At its launch in 2004, Gmail provided a storage capacity of one gigabyte per user, which was significantly higher than its competitors offered at the time.
- The axiom of choice was formulated in 1904 by Ernst Zermelo in order to formalize his proof of the well-ordering theorem.
- [Calculus] has two major branches, differential calculus and integral calculus; the former concerns instantaneous rates of change, and the slopes of curves, while the latter concerns accumulation of quantities, and areas under or between curves.
- Addition and multiplication are commutative in most number systems, and, in particular, between natural numbers, integers, rational numbers, real numbers and complex numbers.
- The derivative of a function of a single variable at a chosen input value, when it exists, is the slope of the tangent line to the graph of the function at that point.
- In standard axiomatic set theory, by the principle of extensionality, two sets are equal if they have the same elements (that is, neither of them has an element not in the other). As a result, there can be only one set with no elements, hence the usage of “the empty set” rather than “an empty set”.
- The natural numbers form a set, often symbolized as ℕ.
- A regular hexagon is defined as a hexagon that is both equilateral and equiangular.
- The sum of all the internal angles of any octagon is 1080°.
- A regular pentagon has Schläfli symbol {5} and interior angles of 108°.
- The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its edges or sides.
- An n-gon is a polygon with n sides; for example, a triangle is a 3-gon
- Polygons appear in rock formations, most commonly as the flat facets of crystals, where the angles between the sides depend on the type of mineral from which the crystal is made.
- For any tetrahedron there exists a sphere (called the circumsphere) on which all four vertices lie, and another sphere (the insphere) tangent to the tetrahedron’s faces.
- This sequence of six nines is sometimes called the “Feynman point”, after physicist Richard Feynman, who allegedly stated this same idea in a lecture. However it is not clear when, or even if, Feynman made such a statement. It is not mentioned in published biographies or in his autobiographies, and is unknown to his biographer, James Gleick.
- Groypers are extremely conservative and critical of more mainstream conservative organizations, which they believe to be insufficiently nationalist and pro-white; thus, they appeal to racist and xenophobic individuals.
- Fuentes and the Groyper movement later supported the candidacy of Laura Loomer for the 11th congressional district of Florida in 2022. On the night of the primary, Fuentes attended Loomer’s election watch-party, and they were filmed sharing a toast as results came in that seemed to suggest Loomer would actually defeat incumbent Congressman Daniel Webster; Loomer toasted “to the hostile takeover of the Republican Party.” When additional results came in confirming Loomer’s loss to Webster by a 7-point margin, she claimed without evidence in a speech to her supporters that her loss was due to voter fraud.
- The expression Age of Aquarius in popular culture usually refers to the heyday of the hippie and New Age movements in the 1960s and 1970s.
- Astrologer Neil Spencer denounced the lyrics as “astrological gibberish”, noting that Jupiter aligns with Mars several times a year and the Moon is in the 7th House for two hours every day.
- Denim initially gained popularity in 1873 when Jacob W. Davis, a tailor from Nevada, manufactured the first pair of rivet-reinforced denim pants.
- In brief, if the amending clause of the Constitution can itself be amended, then all express and implied limitations on the amending power might be overcome through a constitutional self-amendment.
- The U.S. has imposed martial law at least 68 times in its history.
- The Minnesota State Fair is the state fair of the U.S. state of Minnesota. Also known by its slogan, “The Great Minnesota Get-Together”, it is the largest state fair in the United States by average daily attendance and the second-largest state fair in the United States by total attendance, trailing only the State Fair of Texas, which generally runs twice as long as the Minnesota State Fair.
- The state fairgrounds, adjacent the Saint Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, are in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, midway between the state’s capital city of Saint Paul and the adjacent city of Roseville, near the Como Park and Saint Anthony Park neighborhoods of Saint Paul.
- One of the most significant dates in the [Minnesota State] fair’s history was September 2, 1901, when then-Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was visiting and first uttered the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Roosevelt became president just 12 days later, after William McKinley was assassinated.
- The Sammamish people (Lushootseed: sc̓ababš) are a Lushootseed-speaking Southern Coast Salish people.
- They [Sammamish People] are indigenous to the Sammamish River Valley in central King County, Washington.
- The Sammamish speak Lushootseed, a Coast Salish language which was historically spoken across most of Puget Sound, although its usage today is mostly reserved for cultural and ceremonial practices.
- For more than 10,000 years, the Sammamish people have hunted, fished, and gathered on their lands along Lake Washington and the Sammamish River and Lake.
- The popular version of the phrase was first used in 1740 by the author and bookseller Robert Dodsley, in his Chronicle of the Kings of England, where he described Henry II’s words as follows: “O wretched Man that I am, who shall deliver me from this turbulent Priest?”
- In The Chronicle of the Kings of England (1821), it becomes “Will none of these lazy insignificant persons, whom I maintain, deliver me from this turbulent priest?”, which is then shortened to “who shall deliver me from this turbulent priest?”
- In Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play Becket, Henry says, “Will no one rid me of him? A priest! A priest who jeers at me and does me injury.”
- In the 1964 film Becket, which was based on the Anouilh play, Henry says, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
- There are likely several English iterations of Henry II’s original quote because it had to be translated; Henry, though he understood many languages, spoke only Latin and French.
- In the second half of the 18th century, the piano became the most used keyboard instrument, and composers of the Classical Era such as Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven each wrote several piano concertos, and, to a lesser extent, violin concertos, and concertos for other instruments.
- The earliest years of Trance were defined by Frankfurt labels such as Eye Q, Harthouse, Fax +49-69/450464, Force Inc., and others. Producers such as Pete Namlook, Oliver Lieb, and Rolf Ellmer created noteworthy tracks such as “Eternal Spirit” by 4Voice, “Hearts” by L.S.G., and “We Came In Peace” by Dance 2 Trance.
- In 2023, an effort by John 00 Fleming and others led Beatport to split their trance genre category into two: Trance (Main Floor) and Trance (Raw/Deep/Hypnotic). The latter designed for the underground side of the genre.
- Littlemore explained that “we did see Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain and it influenced the way we could think about visualization”
- On 16 January 2024, the band released “Good People”, a collaboration with Pharrell Williams. The single marks the band’s first new music since 2018’s Delta, as well as without Marshall.
- The Caretaker describes himself as “fascinated by memory and its recall”, as well as suggesting the project is “a kind of audio black comedy”.
- The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, Italy, who was employed by Ferdinando de’ Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany, as the Keeper of the Instruments.
- In the Old Kingdom Atum was at the center of the Egyptian belief system, being partly responsible for the origins of existence, having created himself and everything else out of the primordial waters.
- On November 16, 2023, Casandra Ventura a/k/a “Cassie” filed a 35-page lawsuit in which she exposed Sean Combs for subjecting her to nearly a decade of physical, sexual and emotional abuse punctuated by rape, sex trafficking and being forced to engage in drug fueled nonconsensual sexual encounters with other men.
- The Court has jurisdiction over this matter pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332, as this action involves citizens of different states and the amount in controversy in this matter exceeds $75,000. The Court has supplemental jurisdiction over Plaintiff’s related claims arising under state and city law pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a).
- Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b), venue is proper in this Court because a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to this action, including the unlawful employment practices and intentional and negligent tortious conduct alleged herein, occurred in this district.
- Plaintiff Jane Doe is a citizen of Canada.
- Defendant Sean Combs is a citizen of the State of California.
- Defendant Harve Pierre is a citizen of the State of New York.
- Defendant the Third Assailant is, upon information and belief, a citizen of the State of New York.
- Defendant Daddy’s House Recordings, Inc. (“Daddy’s House”) is a music, media, and entertainment company founded and owned by Defendant Sean Combs. Daddy’s House is incorporated and headquartered in New York, New York. During the relevant time period, Daddy’s House and/or Sean Combs owned and operated the Daddy’s House Recording Studio wherein Ms. Doe was raped by Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and Third Assailant.
- Defendant Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (“Bad Boy”) is a music, media, and entertainment company founded and owned by Defendant Sean Combs. Bad Boy is incorporated and headquartered in New York, New York. During the relevant time period, Bad Boy and/or Sean Combs owned and operated the Daddy’s House Recording Studio wherein Ms. Doe was raped by Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and Third Assailant.
- In 2003, Ms. Doe was a 17-year-old 11th grader residing in a suburb of Detroit Michigan.
- At the time, Mr. Combs was 34 years old – twice the age of Ms. Doe – and one of the most well-known and influential music artists of all time.
- Ordinarily, when a lawsuit such as Ms. Ventura’s is filed that involves events that took place long ago, witnesses are few and far between and evidence hard to muster. Not so for the claims brought against Mr. Combs. Within minutes of the filing, salient facts of Ms. Ventura’s claims were confirmed by various witnesses, including a rival musician whose car Mr. Combs blew up as well as various individuals who observed Mr. Combs beat Ms. Ventura.
- A decade earlier, Mr. Combs founded Bad Boy and installed his longtime friend, Mr. Pierre, into the role of President.
- At the time, Mr. Combs had many connections to Michigan, including, among others, to the Black Mafia Family (“BMF”), a drug trafficking and money laundering organization that is rumored to have seeded Bad Boy. Accordingly, upon information and belief, Mr. Combs’ associates, including Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant, spent significant time in and around Detroit, Michigan.
- On one evening between the spring and fall of 2003, Ms. Doe was out with friends. It was not uncommon for her and her friends to frequent bars and lounges in the Detroit area. Certain of Ms. Doe’s friends were well connected with people in the music industry.
- On the evening in question, Ms. Doe was with friends in a lounge when she was approached by who she later learned was Mr. Pierre. Mr. Pierre was with his own friends, including the Third Assailant. Mr. Pierre, the Third Assailant and their friends were dressed in suits.
- Mr. Pierre repeatedly complimented Ms. Doe’s appearance, saying that she was hot, among other things. He then began talking about his self-described “best friend” and “brother,” Mr. Combs.
- Specifically, Mr. Pierre continually stated that Mr. Combs would love to meet Ms. Doe.
- Mr. Pierre even called Mr. Combs and put Ms. Doe on the line. Mr. Combs told Ms. Doe that he would love to meet her, and that she should accompany Mr. Pierre to New York City in a private jet.
- Shortly thereafter, Mr. Pierre directed Ms. Doe to go with him into the bathroom at the lounge. Once inside the bathroom, Mr. Pierre began to smoke crack cocaine from what appeared to be an aluminum can.
- After he finished smoking crack, Mr. Pierre suddenly took out his penis, demanded that Ms. Doe “suck [his] dick” and forced Ms. Doe’s head down to perform oral sex on him.
- After sexually assaulting Ms. Doe, Mr. Pierre directed her to accompany him, the Third Assailant and a third member of their group to an airport in Pontiac, Michigan, where Signature, a Fixed Base Operator, had prepared a private jet to take the four of them to New York City.
- Only a few days later, two other lawsuits were filed against Mr. Combs. In one, plaintiff Joi Dickerson-Neal alleged that Mr. Combs drugged and sexually assaulted her when she was a college student. The other lawsuit accused Ms. Combs and singer Aaron Hall of forcing the plaintiff and another unidentified woman into nonconsensual sex.
- Upon information and belief, the private jet landed at Teterboro Airport. Upon departing the jet, two black SUVs were awaiting the group.
- Ms. Doe got into an SUV with Mr. Pierre, and the Third Assailant and the other member of the group went in the second SUV.
- The SUVs brought the group to Daddy’s House Recording Studio, a recording studio and hangout owned and operated by Mr. Combs and Bad Boy.
- When Ms. Doe arrived, she was escorted into the building, where she distinctly remembers seeing a sign for the company, Technicolor.
- Upon entering the studio, Ms. Doe first encountered Mr. Combs. At the time she arrived, a female recording artist was using the studio as Mr. Combs and her parents watched on. She finished up shortly after Ms. Doe arrived and left.
- While still in the studio section of Daddy’s House, Mr. Combs asked Ms. Doe to sit on his lap to take a picture. A copy of the photograph is below.
- Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant began to ply Ms. Doe – a 17-year-old child at the time – with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol.
- While the evening became a blur, Ms. Doe does recall Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant hitting on her incessantly, stroking her body, asking to see her “ass” and telling her how “hot” and “sexy” she was.
- Various other pictures were taken in the studio that night, leaving no doubt that Ms. Doe was in Mr. Combs’ New York City studio, with Mr. Combs, on the night she was raped.
- As the night wore on, the 17-year-old Ms. Doe became more and more inebriated, eventually to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age.
- At the same time, a fourth lawsuit was filed; this one against Mr. Combs’ companies and Defendant Harve Pierre, the longtime President of Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. (“Bad Boy”). The suit alleged that Mr. Pierre used his position of power at Bad Boy to groom and sexually assault his former assistant, and that Bad Boy looked the other way at the time.
- Nevertheless, that evening Mr. Combs directed Ms. Doe to accompany him to the bathroom at the studio. Once there, Mr. Combs removed Ms. Doe’s skirt and underwear and penetrated her from behind with his penis while she hung over the sink.
- Ms. Doe did not consent to having sex with Mr. Combs, but he continued thrusting. At some point, Mr. Combs turned Ms. Doe around to face him. He told her that he could not orgasm and asked her to squeeze his nipples as hard as she could to help him “get off.” He then turned her back around and continued to rape her.
- By this point, Ms. Doe was coming in and out of consciousness because of the drugs and alcohol she had been given by Defendants. Her next memory was looking up into the mirror above the sink to find that the Third Assailant had replaced Mr. Combs and was raping her from behind. Mr. Combs was watching the Third Assailant sexually assault Ms. Doe from a chair outside of the bathroom.
- At this point, Ms. Doe mustered the energy to tell the Third Assailant to stop, and that she did not want to be having sex with him. The Third Assailant did not stop, and continued to rape Ms. Doe, who did not have the strength to force him off of her.
- After the Third Assailant was finished, he was replaced by Mr. Pierre, who began by having nonconsensual vaginal sex with Ms. Doe before violently forcing her to give him oral sex. During the latter part of the sexual assault, Mr. Pierre forced his penis into Ms. Doe’s mouth without her consent. Ms. Doe remembers that Mr. Pierre was sweaty and that she had difficulty breathing.
- When Mr. Pierre finished, he left Ms. Doe in the bathroom alone. Ms. Doe fell into the fetal position and lay on the floor. Her vagina was in pain.
- Finally, after a period of time, Ms. Doe regained her bearings. However, she could barely stand up following the gang rape, and had to be helped to walk out of the building and back into a car. She was taken back to an airport and flown back to Michigan. However, she has very limited recollection of her transport home, and only remembers being in her car sometime early in the morning. Her underwear was missing.
- As a result of being raped by Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant, Ms. Doe suffered significant emotional distress and feels of shame that have plagued her life and personal relationships for 20 years.
- Ms. Doe knew that speaking out against Defendants would be extremely difficult and that she would likely be subjected to retaliation and defamatory slurs and attacks.
- However, in November 2023, Ms. Doe read about a lawsuit filed against Mr. Combs by Casandra Ventura a/k/a “Cassie.” Ms. Ventura’s suit described a decade of physical, sexual and mental abuse. Most triggering for Ms. Doe was reading about Ms. Ventura’s allegations of sex trafficking and being forced to have sex with other men against her will. Ms. Doe obviously understands that she too had been sex trafficked, and that Mr. Combs’ behavior in forcing women into nonconsensual sex was not an isolated incident or unique only to Ms. Ventura.
- This is now the fifth lawsuit filed against Mr. Combs in the last three weeks. Incredibly, the allegations brought by Ms. Doe are in many ways even more egregious than those brought by his prior victims.
- Then, just days later, Ms. Doe read about a case filed against Mr. Pierre. The suit alleged that Mr. Pierre used his position of power at Bad Boy to groom and sexually assault his former assistant.
- Seeing two other women bravely speak out against Mr. Combs and Mr. Pierre, respectively, gave Ms. Doe the confidence to tell her story as well. As such, she files this suit.
- Plaintiff repeats and realleges each and every allegation in all of the preceding paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
- The above-described conduct of Defendant Mr. Combs, including, but not limited to, Mr. Combs’s sexual assault of Plaintiff in New York City, constitutes a “crime of violence” against Plaintiff and is a “crime of violence motivated by gender” as defined in § 10-1103 (“The term ‘crime of violence’ means an act or series of acts that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against the person as defined in state or federal law or that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against property as defined in state or federal law if the conduct presents a serious risk of physical injury to another, whether or not those acts have actually resulted in criminal charges, prosecution, or conviction,” and “The term ‘crime of violence motivated by gender’ means a crime of violence committed because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim’s gender.”).
- The above-described conduct of Defendant Mr. Pierre, including, but not limited to, Mr. Pierre’s sexual assault of Plaintiff in New York City, constitutes a “crime of violence” against Plaintiff and is a “crime of violence motivated by gender” as defined in § 10-1103 (“The term ‘crime of violence’ means an act or series of acts that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against the person as defined in state or federal law or that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against property as defined in state or federal law if the conduct presents a serious risk of physical injury to another, whether or not those acts have actually resulted in criminal charges, prosecution, or conviction,” and “The term ‘crime of violence motivated by gender’ means a crime of violence committed because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim’s gender.”).
- The above-described conduct of Defendant the Third Assailant, including, but not limited to, the Third Assailant’s sexual assault of Plaintiff in New York City, constitutes a “crime of violence” against Plaintiff and is a “crime of violence motivated by gender” as defined in § 10-1103 (“The term ‘crime of violence’ means an act or series of acts that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against the person as defined in state or federal law or that would constitute a misdemeanor or felony against property as defined in state or federal law if the conduct presents a serious risk of physical injury to another, whether or not those acts have actually resulted in criminal charges, prosecution, or conviction,” and “The term ‘crime of violence motivated by gender’ means a crime of violence committed because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim’s gender.”).
- Defendant Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. enabled Defendants’ commission of the crime of violence motivated by gender, and is therefore also liable under the VGMVPL.
- As a direct and proximate result of the aforementioned crime of violence and gender-motivated violence, Plaintiff has sustained and will continue to sustain, monetary damages, physical injury, pain and suffering, and serious psychological and emotional distress, entitling her to an award of compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive and declaratory relief, attorneys fees and costs, and other remedies as this Court may deem appropriate damages, as set forth in § 10-1104.
- The above-described conduct of Defendants constitutes a sexual offense as defined in Article 130 of the New York Penal Law.
- Pursuant to § 10-1105(a), this cause of action is timely because it is commenced within “two years and six months after September 1, 2022.”
- Specifically, in 2003, when she was only 17 years old and in the 11th grade, Ms. Doe was sex trafficked and gang raped by Mr. Combs, Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant.^1 In short:
- When she was just a teenager, Ms. Doe met Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant in a lounge in the Detroit, Michigan area. While at the lounge, Mr. Pierre insisted that he was “best friends” with Mr. Combs, and even called Mr. Combs with Ms. Doe.
- When Mr. Pierre finished, he left Ms. Doe in the bathroom alone. Ms. Doe fell into the fetal position and lay on the floor. Her vagina was in pain.
- Finally, after a period of time, Ms. Doe regained her bearings. However, she could barely stand up following the gang rape, and had to be helped to walk out of the building and back into a car. She was taken back to an airport and flown back to Michigan. However, she has very limited recollection of her transport home, and only remembers being in her car sometime early in the morning.
- Mr. Combs convinced Ms. Doe, who was half his age at the time, to accompany Mr. Pierre and the Third Assailant on a private jet to come to his studio in New York City.
- Before they left for the private jet, Mr. Pierre smoked crack cocaine in a bathroom at the lounge, in which he also sexually assaulted Ms. Doe by forcing her to give him oral sex.
- Mr. Pierre, Third Assailant and another gentleman then escorted the highschooler to a private jet, which flew them to Teterboro, New Jersey. There were SUVs awaiting the group at Teterboro, and the four of them were driven to Daddy’s House Recording Studio, a studio famously owned and operated by Mr. Combs and Bad Boy.
- While at the studio, Mr. Combs and his associates, including Mr. Pierre, plied Ms. Doe with drugs and alcohol. As the night wore on, the 17-year-old Ms. Doe became more and more inebriated, eventually to the point that she could not possibly have consented to having sex with anyone, much less someone twice her age.
- While at the studio, Ms. Doe was gang raped by Mr. Combs, the Third Assailant and Mr. Pierre, in that order.
- While Mr. Combs was raping Ms. Doe, he complained that he could not “get off” unless she pinched his nipples as hard as she could.
- Mr. Combs then watched on as Third Assailant, who Ms. Doe had not even realized had begun to have sex with her, raped Ms. Doe as she told him to stop.
- After Third Assailant was finished, Mr. Pierre took his turn at raping Ms. Doe and then violently forced her to give him oral sex, during which Ms. Doe was choking and struggling to breathe.
- Unlike many victims who have come forward after decades, Ms. Doe can prove that she not only met Mr. Combs on the night in question, but was in his studio, in New York City, with him on that night. Remember when viewing these, Ms. Doe was 17 years old.^2
- Ms. Doe has lived with her memories of this fateful night for 20 years, during which time she has suffered extreme emotional distress that has impacted nearly every aspect of her life and personal relationships. Given the brave women who have come forward against Ms. Combs and Mr. Pierre in recent weeks, Ms. Doe is doing the same.
- To that end, Ms. Doe brings this action seeking injunctive, declaratory and monetary relief against Defendants in violation of the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law, Gender Motivated Violence Act, N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§ 10-1101, et seq.(“VGMVPL”).
- WHEREFORE, Plaintiff prays judgment be entered in her favor against Defendants, and each of them, as follows:
- For a money judgment representing compensatory damages including consequential damages, lost wages, earning, and all other sums of money, together with interest on these amounts, according to proof;
- For a money judgment for mental pain and anguish and severe emotional distress, according to proof;
- For punitive and exemplary damages according to proof;
- For attorneys’ fees and costs;
- For prejudgment and post-judgment interest; and
- For such other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.
- In or around the summer of 2001, Plaintiff’s life was violently knocked off course when Defendants Sean Combs and Joseph Sherman viciously raped her at the Bad Boy Records studio in New York City.
- Defendant Joseph Sherman, a/k/a “Big Joe” is a male who, on information and belief, resides in Westchester County, New York. On information and belief, Sherman was employed by Combs and/or by the Combs Corporations during the relevant period. The facts of Combs’ ownership and titles and Sherman’s titles at the Combs Corporations enabled Sherman to commit the unlawful sexual violence against Plaintiff described herein and/or to harass and subsequently intimidate her into silence after the rape.
- Defendant Daddy’s House Recordings, Inc. (“Daddy’s House”) is a domestic business corporation that is incorporated in New York and on information and belief now has its principal place of business at 9255 Sunset Boulevard, 2nd Floor, West Hollywood, California 90069. Combs is listed as the CEO in public filings, with a listed address of 1710 Broadway, New York, New York 10019. At the time of the events alleged herein, Daddy’s House was a world-class recording studio owned by Combs located at 321 W 44th Street, Suite 201, New York, New York 10036. On information and belief, at all relevant times, Bad Boy and Combs together owned and operated Daddy’s House. On information and belief, the Bad Boy recording studio was located on the premises of Daddy’s House. Combs and Sherman used the Daddy’s House premises and their ownership and titles at Daddy’s House to commit the unlawful sexual violence against Plaintiff described herein and/or to harass and subsequently intimidate her into silence after the rape.
- Defendant CE OPCO, LLC d/b/a Combs Global, f/k/a Combs Enterprises LLC (“Combs Global”) is a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware that has its principal place of business at 9255 Sunset Boulevard, 2nd Floor, West Hollywood, California 90069. On information and belief, all members of Combs Global are citizens of Delaware, New York, and/or California. On information and belief, Combs Global is an alter ego for Combs and/or a successor in interest to Combs’ other corporations and/or was established or used by Combs for the purpose of moving, disposing of, and/or insulating his assets, including in connection with his criminal activities and to avoid liability. Combs Global currently owns, controls, and/or oversees Bad Boy and Combs’ other business ventures in the music, fashion, fragrance, beverage, marketing, film, television, and media industries.
- As part of his renowned Bad Boy record label and brand, Combs has established several corporate entities under the “Bad Boy” name over the past few decades, including but not limited to Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Books Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Records LLC, Bad Boy Entertainment LLC, and Bad Boy Productions LLC (together, “Bad Boy”). On information and belief, all Bad Boy corporate entities are alter egos for Combs, are controlled and/or directed by Combs, and/or were established or used by Combs for the purpose of moving, disposing of, and/or insulating his assets, including in connection with his criminal activities and to avoid liability. On information and belief, all active Bad Boy entities are now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global. Combs and Sherman used the Bad Boy premises/recording studio and their ownership and titles at Bad Boy to commit the unlawful sexual violence against Plaintiff described herein and/or to harass and subsequently intimidate her into silence after the rape.
- Defendant Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. is a domestic business corporation incorporated in New York, that on information and belief now has its principal place of business at 9255 Sunset Boulevard, 2nd Floor, West Hollywood, California 90069. Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. is part of the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs, and on information and belief is now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global. Combs is listed as the CEO in public filings, with a listed address of 1710 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
- Defendant Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc. is a domestic business corporation incorporated in New York, that on information and belief now has its principal place of business at 9255 Sunset Boulevard, 2nd Floor, West Hollywood, California 90069. Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc. is part of the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs, and on information and belief is now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global. Combs is listed as the CEO in public filings, with a listed address of 1710 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
- Defendant Bad Boy Books Holdings, Inc. is a domestic business corporation incorporated in New York, that on information and belief now has its principal place of business at 1440 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, New York 10018. Bad Boy Books Holdings, Inc. is part of the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs, and on information and belief is now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global. The CEO listed on public filings is Eddie Norward Jr., with a listed address of 1710 Broadway, New York, New York 10019, the same address listed for Sean Combs in public filings for Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc., and Daddy’s House Recordings, Inc.
- Defendant Bad Boy Records LLC is a Delaware limited liability company that on information and belief is headquartered in New York and/or California. On information and belief, all members of Bad Boy Records LLC are citizens of Delaware, New York, and/or California. On information and belief, Bad Boy Records LLC is part of the Bad Boy enterprise and/or a successor-in-interest to other Bad Boy Defendants that comprise the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs. On information and belief, Bad Boy Records LLC is now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global.
- Defendant Bad Boy Entertainment LLC is a New York limited liability company that on information and belief is headquartered in New York and/or California. On information and belief, all members of Bad Boy Entertainment LLC are citizens of New York and/or California. Bad Boy Entertainment LLC is part of the Bad Boy enterprise and/or a successor-in-interest to other Bad Boy Defendants that comprise the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs. On information and belief, Bad Boy Entertainment LLC is now owned and/or controlled by Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc. and/or by Combs, and/or by Combs Global.
- Defendant Bad Boy Productions LLC is a New York limited liability company that on information and belief is headquartered in New York and/or California. On information and belief, all members of Bad Boy Productions LLC are citizens of New York and/or California. Bad Boy Productions LLC is part of the Bad Boy enterprise and/or a successor-in-interest to other Bad Boy Defendants that comprise the Bad Boy enterprise founded and owned by Combs. On information and belief, Bad Boy Productions LLC is now owned and/or controlled by Combs and/or by Combs Global.
- Defendants Organizational Does 1-10 are currently unknown entities who were owned by and/or employed Defendants Combs and/or Sherman and enabled the commission of the conduct complained of herein. As the parties engage in discovery, Plaintiff retains the right to amend the Complaint to add these entities by name.
- Each of the Combs Corporations (a) aided and abetted Combs and Sherman in committing the unlawful sexual violence against Plaintiff described herein and/or in harassing and subsequently intimidating her into silence after the rape, (b) provided Combs and Sherman with the studio/office space where they committed the rape, and/or with chattel including recording equipment, storage equipment, etc. to record the rape and disseminate it; (c) are alter egos for Combs, completely dominated by him and used for his personal interests and to engage in wrongdoing which harmed Plaintiff and others, and/or (d) serve or have served as vehicles for Combs to move, dispose of, and/or insulate his assets, including in connection with his criminal activities and to avoid compensating the victims of his many crimes, including Plaintiff.
- This Court has subject-matter jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1332 because this case is between citizens of different states, and the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000.
- This Court has specific personal jurisdiction over Defendants because the acts giving rise to Plaintiff’s claims took place in New York State, and because several of the Defendants are domiciled in New York State and/or regularly transact business in New York State.
- Venue is proper in this District pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1391(b) because a substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to the claims occurred in this District.
- Plaintiff hereby demands a trial by jury on her claims in this action.
- Plaintiff was twenty-five at the time and dating one of Combs’ employees, a relationship that Combs exploited to lure Plaintiff into meeting him and Sherman alone. Once they successfully sequestered Plaintiff, Combs and Sherman gave Plaintiff a drink, likely laced with a drug that eventually caused her briefly to lose consciousness. She awoke to find herself bound and restrained.
- Plaintiff’s family immigrated to New York City when Plaintiff was a teenager in connection with her mother’s work. Her family ultimately settled in Rego Park, Queens, where she completed her education, and where she was living when she met Combs.
- Defendant Combs, also known by his stage names Puff Daddy, Puffy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Brother Love, or Love, is a prominent rapper, record executive, and businessman. He rose to fame in the 1990s with his record label Bad Boy, and continued to be a notable figure in the music and entertainment industry in the following years. Combs has continued to amass wealth and power through his business ventures in the music, fashion, fragrance, beverage, marketing, film, television, and media industries.
- The Bad Boy enterprise is the foundation of Combs’ wealth and power. Bad Boy has sold over 500 million records through its lucrative distribution deals with the top music companies in the world, and has signed acclaimed hip hop and R&B artists, including The Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, and Usher. Combs later founded CE OPCO, LLC a/k/a Combs Enterprises, later rebranded as Combs Global, to serve as a home for his portfolio of businesses, including his investments in the music, fashion, fragrance, beverage, marketing, film, television, and media industries. On information and belief, Combs Global houses Bad Boy and other notable businesses such as Combs’ fashion line Sean Jean, his vodka line Cîroc, and his cable media company REVOLT MEDIA.
- As detailed below, see infra ¶¶ 57 through 64, Combs has a long history of violence and of abusing and raping women, and there have been several civil lawsuits filed against Combs in the past year alleging sexual violence and abuse. On September 16, 2024 Combs was arrested and charged with racketeering and sex trafficking. He was denied bail.
- Defendant Sherman, also known as “Big Joe,” was employed by Combs as his bodyguard and head of security during the relevant time period described herein and served in various roles in the Combs Corporations. Sherman is also the founder of Rhymes N Dimes Magazine, Inc., a New York State registered corporation, and through or in connection with that company produces and distributes pornography. On information and belief, he has often distributed videos of his and/or his friends’ sexual assaults through his pornography company.
- Plaintiff met Defendant Combs in or around late 1999 or early 2000 through her then-boyfriend, who was an executive at Bad Boy. In addition to working together, Plaintiff’s boyfriend and Combs had a close personal relationship. Plaintiff frequently visited her boyfriend at the Bad Boy studio in New York City and attended events hosted at Combs’ residences. Over time, Plaintiff became familiar with Combs, and he knew about her relationship with her boyfriend.
- In or around the summer of 2001, Plaintiff received a call from Combs concerning her boyfriend’s employment at Bad Boy. He told her he wanted to meet with her in person to discuss her boyfriend’s supposed performance issues. Her boyfriend was determined to climb up the ladder at Combs’ records label and as his romantic partner, Plaintiff was committed to helping him. Plaintiff agreed to meet with Combs. In retrospect, it was evidently a sick and twisted way of using his ownership of and title at Bad Boy and its affiliate entities to abuse Plaintiff and also show his power and ability to humiliate her boyfriend, his executive.
- A few hours later, Combs arrived at Plaintiff’s mother’s residence in Queens with Sherman, who was employed by Combs as his bodyguard at the time. Sherman was driving an SUV and Combs was in the backseat. After Plaintiff entered the vehicle, Combs offered her a glass of wine, which she accepted.
- Combs began discussing his alleged concerns about her boyfriend’s performance at work. Meanwhile, as Plaintiff drank what had been handed to her, she started to feel lightheaded, dizzy, and physically weak. In retrospect, it is clear that Combs had caused a drug to be put into Plaintiff’s drink, as a few sips of wine had never impacted her that way.
- Combs and Sherman drove Plaintiff to the Bad Boy studio in Manhattan. When they arrived and Plaintiff tried to get out of the car, she realized that she was feeling odd, and found it difficult to walk. She assumed this was her fault, and did her best to act normal, and followed Combs as he led her eventually to a couch in a private room in the Bad Boy studio. She later came to understand this was Combs’s personal lounge and office at the Bad Boy studio. Combs sat on the couch next to Plaintiff and continued speaking to her. Plaintiff began feeling even more woozy and sedated. She then lost consciousness.
- Combs and Sherman proceeded to brutally sexually abuse and violate Plaintiff. Combs mercilessly raped her, anally and vaginally. Sherman forcefully slammed Plaintiff onto a table, slapped her, and repeatedly thrust his penis into her mouth. Both men were undeterred by Plaintiff’s cries for help throughout the attack.
- When Plaintiff regained consciousness, she was naked, and her hands were tied behind her back with what felt like a plastic grocery bag. Plaintiff shouted for help. In response Sherman lifted her up from the couch and forcefully slammed her face down on what was apparently a pool table. Shortly thereafter, Combs entered the room naked.
- Combs reached for a container of lubricant that smelled like menthol, and proceeded to apply it to his penis. He then bent Plaintiff over the table causing her feet to dangle above the floor, forcefully held her down, and anally penetrated her without her consent. Plaintiff is 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighed only 103 pounds at the time. Plaintiff was unable to move, totally overpowered physically, in addition to being drugged and bound.
- Plaintiff screamed out in pain, but Combs continued to violently anally rape her. He easily physically overpowered her, smashing her head down on the pool table while she futilely tried to wriggle out from under him.
- During the brutal attack, Plaintiff vomited into her mouth and on the table. At one point, she involuntarily defecated. Combs was undeterred. He wiped himself off, applied more lubricant, and without any acknowledgement of Plaintiff’s distress, proceeded to vaginally penetrate Plaintiff.
- Plaintiff experienced intense pain and burning sensations in her vagina and anus. Plaintiff continued to scream for help because of the extreme pain she felt as Combs penetrated her over and over. She then lost consciousness again.
- The next time she regained consciousness, Plaintiff was on the couch and Sherman was standing in front of her with his bare penis in her face. Sherman slapped Plaintiff in the face and forcefully inserted his penis into her mouth. Sherman slapped her yet again, and continued to thrust his penis into Plaintiff’s mouth. Plaintiff once again lost consciousness.
- When she next awoke, Plaintiff was on the couch naked and alone in the room.
- Plaintiff was in severe pain and distress. Her anus and vagina burned, her face and wrists were bruised, and her genital area smelled strongly of menthol. She felt a liquid, presumably semen, dripping out from inside of her.
- Her dress was thrown over her, her purse was on the couch next to her, and her bra was on the floor nearby. She did not see her underpants.
- Terrified that Combs and Sherman would return, Plaintiff quickly got dressed and bolted out of the studio room where she had been raped.
- Plaintiff never recovered from Defendants’ violent rape. She had suicidal thoughts and ideation and has received extensive psychological treatment because of Defendants’ attack. For decades, she remained silent and did not report the crime out of fear that Defendants would use their power to ruin her life, as they had repeatedly, explicitly threatened to do. To this day, Plaintiff suffers from severe depression, anxiety, and panic attacks, and still lives in fear of Defendants.
- Still dizzy and weak, Plaintiff called a livery driver that her family regularly hired and knew well. The driver picked her up from outside Bad Boy studio. She was disheveled, crying uncontrollably and suffering from agonizing pain.
- The driver drove her to the hospital and tried to convince her to report the rape and get a rape kit, but she was unable to leave the car, “shaking and crying hysterically” and terrified of what Combs would do to her and her family if she reported him.
- Plaintiff sustained serious physical injuries in the aftermath of the rape. As noted, she had burning in her vagina and anus, and bruising on her wrists and face. In the days after the assault, she suffered prolonged anal bleeding and hemorrhoids.
- Because of Combs’ power and notoriety, Plaintiff was afraid to report what had happened. She was involved in a contentious divorce and custody battle at the time and feared that reporting the rape would cause her to lose custody of her young child.
- Plaintiff confided in her boyfriend, Combs’ employee, hoping he would comfort and support her. But instead of supporting her, he discouraged her from disclosing the assault, telling her that it could negatively impact his own career.
- Following the assault and multiple times over the years, both Combs and Sherman contacted Plaintiff and warned her to be silent, threatening repercussions including Plaintiff potentially losing custody of her son if she ever disclosed the assault. Because of their enormous power in the industry, including through their ownership of and positions at the Combs Corporations, Plaintiff knew that they could follow through on their threats.
- Plaintiff told close friends that Combs and Sherman had drugged and savagely raped her, but as noted was afraid to report the attack to the police out of fear that Defendants would follow through on their threats. She was even afraid to stay in New York City while Combs lived there, so with the help of a friend, she fled to Pennsylvania. Plaintiff has in fact relocated multiple times throughout the years in an effort to stay away from Combs.
- Plaintiff has suffered irreparable harm because of the brutal rape by Defendants Combs and Sherman. She suffers from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. She also has suffered suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts, and has attempted to end her life.
- Plaintiff lives in constant fear. She struggles with hypervigilance and experiences anxiety and panic attacks in social settings, preferring to be alone. Her need to hide to feel safe has strained her relationships with friends and family.
- Defendants’ rape has also impacted Plaintiff’s ability to engage in sexual acts with her intimate partners. To this day, she cannot be in certain sexual positions without experiencing flashbacks of Combs violently penetrating her from behind.
- Any progress Plaintiff had made in healing from the attack over the years was dramatically reversed on or around November 27, 2023, when she learned for the first time that Combs and Sherman had video-recorded the horrific rape twenty-two years before and had shown the video to multiple men, seeking to publicly degrade and humiliate both Plaintiff and her boyfriend.
- On or around November 27, 2023, all the trauma of the rape came flooding back to Plaintiff when her former boyfriend revealed to her for the first time that Combs and Sherman had recorded and published the video of the horrific attack.
- Earlier that month, Cassie Ventura had come forward and filed a lawsuit against Combs for subjecting her to years of severe sexual and physical abuse. The case had been settled one day after it had been filed. Plaintiff’s former boyfriend invoked Ms. Ventura’s effort to hold Combs’ accountable and for the first time confessed that years earlier, but sometime after the actual rape itself, Sherman and Combs had showed him and a group of men – some of whom were also employed by Combs’ companies and/or their related entities – the video of Plaintiff being raped. He disclosed that Combs and Sherman had a pattern and practice of non-consensually recording women engaging in sexual acts and making those videos available to the public, including by selling tapes as pornography. A Bad Boy artist later corroborated in a text message that Sherman “use[d] to sell porn of him doing this to chix” and that Sherman “did that to a lot of women.”
- Plaintiff’s former boyfriend reported that he and the other men watched the recording of Plaintiff’s rape on a handheld camera while at the Bad Boy studio in New York City. Combs, Sherman, and some of the other men made derogatory comments about the former boyfriend’s relationship with Plaintiff, in an attempt to shame him into cutting ties with Plaintiff and to cause her further emotional harm and embarrassment.
- On information and belief, Defendants continued to show the video of the rape to others over the years and through to the present and/or sold the video as pornography.
- Plaintiff was shocked and horrified that Combs and Sherman had recorded and publicized the video of them raping her. After over two decades spent trying to heal and distance herself from the experience, Plaintiff was devastated by the news. She felt as if her life had been turned upside down, again, and like the rape had been happening again and again even as she was trying to forget it. She experienced acute psychological distress, plunging into a deep depression and having suicidal ideations. She felt intense fear, anger, and anxiety.
- Plaintiff lives with the distress of knowing that the video of her brutal rape is in circulation and that anyone, including her family, friends, and peers, could view it at any time.
- In a panic, she reached out to Sherman after learning about the tape, hoping to protect herself from further humiliation by convincing him to destroy the tape or provide it to her, but he did not respond.
- Combs has a long history of violence and abuse. This long-standing behavior has been enabled by his ownership of and titles at the Combs Corporations and their affiliated entities and the immense wealth and power he has amassed through such business dealings.
- Among a long list of allegations: In 1996 he was found guilty of criminal mischief for threatening a photographer from the New York Post with a gun. In 1999 he was arrested and charged with second-degree assault and criminal mischief in connection with the beating of a record executive, and arrested again the same year in relation to a shooting at a club in New York; that female victim has consistently stated that Combs shot her in the face at point-blank range.
- Combs also has a pattern and practice of using his power and influence in the music and entertainment industries to submit people to sexual violence, often drugging his victims and/or coercing them to consume drugs and recording the assaults, often without the victim’s knowledge, just as he did with Plaintiff. In the past year, a number of these people have come forward to accuse Combs of sexual assault, violent rapes and/or sex trafficking:
- In November 2023, three lawsuits were filed against Combs under the New York Adult Survivors Act. As noted above, Cassie Ventura, an artist signed to Bad Boy, sued Combs in the Southern District of New York for rape and years-long physical abuse, facilitated in part by Combs having supplied Ms. Ventura with copious amounts of drugs and urging her to take them, beginning in 2006. Combs regularly recorded Ms. Ventura engaging in sex acts he forced her to engage in.
- Joi Dickerson-Neal, who had appeared with Combs in a music video, sued Combs in New York County Supreme Court alleging Combs drugged her, sexually assaulted her, and secretly recorded the assault in 1991.
- Liza Gardner, whom Combs met at an event hosted by a record label affiliated with Bad Boy, sued him for raping her and a friend in 1990 or 1991 when she was only 16.
- In December 2023, an anonymous plaintiff sued Combs in the Southern District of New York for drugging and gang-raping her in 2003 when she was only 17 years old. That complaint alleges that Combs and one of his business associates and employees lured the plaintiff to Daddy’s House through their affiliations with the Bad Boy enterprise and its related entities, and raped her at the same location where Plaintiff was raped.
- In February 2024, Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, one of Combs’ former producers, sued Combs for forcing him to engage in unwanted sex acts and sex trafficking, among other allegations. In that complaint, Mr. Jones alleges that Combs regularly drugged others including minors by giving them alcoholic beverages laced with ecstasy and other date rape drugs, that he believes he himself was drugged by Combs, and that Combs routinely secretly recorded sexual encounters.
- In May 2024, two more women sued Combs. Former model Crystal McKinney sued Combs in the Southern District of New York for drugging and sexually assaulting her at his recording studio in 2003. Combs had promised to help advance Ms. McKinney’s modeling career, a promise she believed he would fulfill because of his ownership of and/or titles at the Bad Boy enterprise and its related entities. April Lampros, an intern at Arista Records, which was an owner of Bad Boy, also sued Combs in May 2024 in New York County Supreme Court for raping her on multiple occasions, secretly filming at least one of the assaults, and showing the recording to multiple people. Ms. Lampros alleges that Combs ordered her to take drugs on one occasion before he raped her.
- In July 2024, former adult film star Adria English – who was employed by Combs as an entertainer at his infamous White Parties that brought together the biggest names in the music and entertainment industries – sued Combs in the Southern District of New York for sex trafficking, alleging that he required her to consume drinks laced with ecstasy and secretly recorded the sexual acts he forced her to engage in.
- In September 2024, singer and songwriter Dawn Angelique Richard also sued Combs. Richard was employed by Combs as part of the girl group Danity Kane, formed by Combs, and later as a key member of Combs’ band Diddy – Dirty Money. She sued Combs in the Southern District of New York for sexual assault, false imprisonment, and for subjecting her to hostile working conditions due to her gender, including degrading comments and threats. Ms. Richard has alleged that Combs regularly supplied others including minors with copious amounts of drugs and alcohol, and subjected them to sexual acts while they were sedated and/or unconscious due to the drugs and alcohol.
- Plaintiff could not believe that Defendants would record themselves committing such a gruesome crime and then proceed proudly and widely to disseminate the recording of it. She was distraught and sunk into a deep depression. She again considered ending her life.
- On September 16, 2024, Combs was arrested at a Manhattan hotel after a grand jury indicted him on charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. The indictment details how “[f]or decades, [Combs] abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.” See United States of America v. Sean Combs, a/k/a Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” Index No. 24 Crim. 542, Indictment (SDNY), at ¶ 1. ^1 It notes that Combs’ abuse of women was enabled by “the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled—creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.” Id.
- The indictment notes that Combs’ “business” was operated at various times in both Manhattan and Los Angeles, “under a variety of United States-based corporate entities, including Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs Enterprises, and Combs Global (collectively, the ‘Combs Business’).” Id. at ¶ 2.
- According to the indictment, “[p]hysical abuse by [Combs] was recurrent and widely known.” Id. at ¶ 4. It notes that Combs’ assaults on women included “striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them.” Id. Combs was also charged with “us[ing] the Combs Business, including certain employees, to carry out, facilitate, and cover up his abuse and commercial sex” and the indictment notes that his employees’ conduct “was facilitated and assisted by Combs’ control of the Combs Business.” Id. at ¶ 5. The indictment specifically refers to the involvement of “Combs’ security staff,” likely referring to Sherman. Id. It notes that Combs and his affiliates recorded sexual assaults and controlled victims through the use of drugs. See id. at ¶ 12. In or about March 2024, law enforcement seized narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant from Combs’ residences. Id.
- Combs’ long history of violence against women makes unmistakably clear that his actions, including his attack of Plaintiff, have been motivated by gender. Specifically, he has a profound contempt for women and an ongoing practice of denigrating and trying to humiliate them.
- Combs’ treatment of Plaintiff accords with his pattern and practice of drugging, raping, and secretly recording the women he is abusing.
- Plaintiff hereby incorporates each of the foregoing paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
- By viciously and violently forcing sexual contact, oral sex, anal sex, and sexual intercourse on Plaintiff, Defendants Combs and Sherman committed a “crime of violence motivated by gender” under the Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act (“VGMVPA”) as defined in New York City Administrative Code § 10-1103.
- The requirement that the crime of violence be committed because of gender or on the basis of gender, and due, at least in part, to an animus based on the victim’s gender is satisfied because Defendants Combs and Sherman violently forced Plaintiff to engage in vaginal intercourse, and oral and anal sex without her consent. Gender animus inheres when consent is absent. Moreover, Combs’ long history of violence against women evinces a deep contempt for women, as does Sherman’s alleged pattern of committing his own sexual assaults, recording them, and selling them as pornography.
- Defendants Combs’ and Sherman’s rapes of Plaintiff presented a serious risk of physical injury to her and in fact caused her significant physical injuries including burning and pain in her vagina and anus, anal bleeding, and bruising to her face and wrists.
- The Combs Corporations enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender because Combs and Sherman raped Plaintiff at the Bad Boy studio, where on information and belief they routinely committed sexual assault and gender-motivated violence, as detailed in other civil lawsuits. Given Combs’ and Sherman’s long-standing pattern and practice of committing sexual violence against women, including at the same location where they raped Plaintiff, the Combs Corporations had and/or should have had knowledge of Combs and Sherman using the premises for this unlawful conduct, and did nothing to stop it.
- This action seeks redress for Defendants’ brutalizing, misogynistic, and violent attacks on Plaintiff, starting in 2001 with their rape and continuing in the subsequent years as they compounded her humiliation by showing the video of the sexual assault to others.
- The Combs Corporations enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender by failing to, among other things, protect Plaintiff from a known danger and/or have sufficient policies and procedures in place to prevent sexual assault and/or train their employees on identifying and preventing sexual assault. Given Combs’ and Sherman’s long-standing pattern and practice of committing sexual violence against women, including on premises owned and/or operated by Defendants, the Combs Corporations had and/or should have had knowledge that Combs and Sherman were a danger to Plaintiff, and did nothing to stop Combs and Sherman.
- The Combs Corporations enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender by failing to properly supervise Combs and/or Sherman. Further, Combs, as the owner of Bad Boy and Daddy’s House, watched Plaintiff being raped by his employee, on the premises of Bad Boy. The Combs Corporations had knowledge and/or should have had knowledge of Combs’ widespread and well-known practice of committing sexual assault and gender-motivated violence, including on premises owned and/or operated by Defendants, and did nothing to stop it.
- The Combs Corporations further enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender by actively placing, maintaining, and/or employing Combs and/or Sherman in positions of power and authority, despite the fact that they knew and/or should have known that Combs had a widespread and well-known practice of committing sexual assault and gender-motivated violence, including on premises owned and/or operated by Defendants. Combs and Sherman used their titles and authority conferred by the Combs Corporations, including as CEO, Founder, and Chairman (Combs) and Head of Security (Sherman), to facilitate and perpetuate the violent assault on Plaintiff, and to intimidate and force Plaintiff to keep quiet in subsequent years.
- The Combs Corporations also enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender because Combs and Sherman used Plaintiff’s boyfriend’s employment as an executive for Bad Boy and Daddy’s House, and their stated concerns about his performance at work, to lure Plaintiff out of her home to meet with them alone.
- On information and belief, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant Organizational Does 1 through 10, inclusive, are other parties not yet identified who have enabled Combs and/or Sherman to commit the crime of violence motivated by gender, in the ways articulated above and/or in other ways.
- As a result of Defendants’ actions, Plaintiff suffered damages in an amount to be determined at trial and pursuant to the fee-shifting provision of the statute.
- This legal action has been commenced within the statutory timeframe provided by the two-year look-back window for VGMVPA claims. See New York City Administrative Code § 10-1105.
- Plaintiff hereby incorporates each of the foregoing paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
- By raping Plaintiff and recording it, Defendants caused Plaintiff to be depicted in a video image unclothed and with intimate body parts exposed, and engaging in sexual conduct with another person in violation of New York Civil Rights Law § 52-B.
- Defendants published and/or disseminated the video without Plaintiff’s knowledge or consent. On information and belief, Defendants have continued to disseminate the video, including by selling it as pornography, through the present.
- Plaintiff Thalia Graves is a female who resides in Harris County, Texas.
- Plaintiff was fully identifiable in the video.
- Plaintiff had a reasonable expectation that Defendants would not secretly record a violent rape of her and disseminate the video to others.
- By intentionally publicly humiliating Plaintiff and trying to ruin Plaintiff’s romantic relationship with her then-boyfriend when they published the video, Defendants had the purpose of harassing, annoying, and/or alarming Plaintiff.
- As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ actions in violation of New York Civil Rights Law § 52-B, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer emotional harm, including mental anguish, emotional distress, and humiliation in an amount to be determined at trial.
- Defendants’ violations of New York Civil Rights Law § 52-B were malicious, willful, wanton, and outrageous, entitling Plaintiff to an award of punitive damages.
- Defendants should be ordered to account for and destroy all copies of the video that are in their actual or constructive possession, custody, or control.
- Defendants should be temporarily and permanently enjoined from further disseminating or publishing any intimate images of Plaintiff.
- Plaintiff hereby incorporates each of the foregoing paragraphs as if fully set forth herein.
- By recording and showing others the video of themselves violently raping Plaintiff, Defendants disclosed an intimate image of Plaintiff without her consent in violation of New York City Administrative Code § 10-180.
- Defendants are covered recipients because they recorded and/or caused the video to be recorded themselves.
- Defendant Sean Combs is a male who, on information and belief, resides in Los Angeles County, California, though at the time of filing was incarcerated in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. On information and belief, at all relevant times Combs owned and/or controlled Bad Boy Entertainment Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Productions Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Books Holdings, Inc., Bad Boy Records LLC, Bad Boy Entertainment LLC, Bad Boy Productions LLC, (collectively “Bad Boy”), Daddy’s House Recording Studio, Inc., and CE OPCO, LLC d/b/a Combs Global, f/k/a Combs Enterprises LLC (all together, the “Combs Corporations”). The facts of Combs’ ownership and titles at the Combs Corporations enabled him to commit the unlawful sexual violence against Plaintiff described herein and/or to harass and subsequently intimidate her into silence after the rape.
- On information and belief, Defendants have continued to disseminate the video, including by selling it as pornography, through the present.
- Such intimate images depicted Plaintiff unclothed and with intimate body parts exposed, and engaging in sexual conduct with another person, in violation of § 10-180.
- Plaintiff was fully identifiable in the video.
- Plaintiff had a reasonable expectation that Defendants would not secretly record a violent rape of her and disseminate the video to others and certainly did not intend for the recording to be disclosed to anyone.
- Defendants intentionally disclosed and disseminated the video to Plaintiff’s then-boyfriend and others without Plaintiff’s consent with the intent to publicly humiliate Plaintiff and ruin her relationship with her then-boyfriend, causing her economic, hysical, and/or substantial emotional harm.
- Defendants’ intention in disseminating and publishing the video was to harass, annoy, alarm, and humiliate Plaintiff, and to cause her economic, physical, and/or substantial emotional harm.
- As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ actions in violation of New York City Administrative Code § 10-180, Plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer emotional harm, including mental anguish, emotional distress, and humiliation in an amount to be determined at trial.
- Defendants’ violations of New York City Administrative Code § 10-180 were malicious, willful, wanton, and outrageous, entitling Plaintiff to an award of punitive damages.
- Defendants should be ordered to account for and destroy all copies of the video that are in their actual or constructive possession, custody, or control.
- Defendants should be temporarily and permanently enjoined from further disclosing and disseminating any intimate images of Plaintiff.
- WHEREFORE, Plaintiff respectfully requests that judgment be entered against Defendants as follows:
- Awarding compensatory damages for all physical injuries, emotional distress, psychological harm, anxiety, humiliation, physical and emotional pain and suffering, family and social disruption, and other harm, in an amount to be determined at trial;
- Awarding punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial;
- Awarding attorneys’ fees and costs pursuant to any applicable statute or law, including under New York City Administrative Code § 10-1104, New York Civil Rights Law § 52-B(2), New York City Administrative Code § 10-180, and any other applicable statute or law;
- Awarding pre- and post-judgment interest on all such damages, fees, and/or costs;
- Attaching any and all of Defendants’ real property and other assets located in the State of New York pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 64;
- Ordering Defendants to account for and destroy all copies of any and all images and videos taken of or in connection with Combs’ and Sherman’s sexual assault of Plaintiff that are in their actual or constructive possession, custody, or control, and enjoining Defendants temporarily and permanently from further disseminating or publishing any intimate images or videos of Plaintiff; and
- Awarding such other and further relief as this Court may deem just and proper.
- For decades, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct. To do so, COMBS relied on the employees, resources, and influence of the multi-faceted business empire that he led and controlled–creating a criminal enterprise whose members and associates engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other crimes, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
- SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, and others known and unknown, participated in unlawful and other activities related to the conduct of the Combs Enterprise’s affairs. These individuals included certain Combs Business employees, such as members of COMBS’ security staff, household staff, personal assistants, and high-ranking supervisors, as well as other close associates of COMBS.
- The purposes of the Combs Enterprise included the following:
- Operating a global business in the media, entertainment, and lifestyle industries, including, among other things, record labels, a recording studio, an apparel line, an alcoholic spirits business, a marketing agency, and a television network and media company;
- Preserving, protecting, promoting, and enhancing the power, reputation, and brand of SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, as a musician, entrepreneur, and figure in the entertainment industry;
- Enriching members and associates of the Enterprise, including its leader, COMBS, and in particular those who demonstrated loyalty to COMBS and willingness to conceal his crimes;
- Preserving, protecting, promoting, and enhancing the power of the Combs Enterprise, including the power of its leader, COMBS, through violence, use of firearms, threats of violence, coercion, and verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse;
- Fulfilling the personal desires of COMBS, particularly those related to COMBS’ sexual gratification, including through the exploitation of women and the use of commercial sex workers;
- Enabling COMBS and other members and associates of the Combs Enterprise to engage in unlawful acts of violence, including sexual violence; sex trafficking; forced labor; interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution; coercion and enticement to engage in prostitution; narcotics distribution; and other crimes, and concealing the commission of such acts;
- Securing absolute loyalty from members of the Combs Enterprise, including through acts of violence and threats; and
- Protecting the Combs Enterprise and its members and associates, including COMBS, from detection and prosecution by law enforcement authorities through acts of intimidation, manipulation, bribery, and threats of retaliation against individuals who witnessed the crimes committed by members and associates of the Enterprise.
- Among the means and methods by which SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, and other members and associates of the Combs enterprise conducted and participated in the conduct of the affairs of the Combs Enterprise included the following:
- COMBS, and other members and associates of the Combs Enterprise, wielded the power and prestige of COMBS’ role at the Combs Business to intimidate, threaten, and lure female victims into COMBS’ orbit, often under the pretense of a romantic relationship. COMBS then used force, threats of force, and coercion, to cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers that COMBS referred to as, among other things, “Freak Offs.” Freak Offs were elaborate and produced sex performances that COMBS arranged, directed, masturbated during, and often electronically recorded. In arranging these Freak Offs, COMBS, with the assistance of members and associates of the Combs Enterprise, transported, and caused to be transported, commercial sex workers across state lines and internationally. Freak Offs occurred regularly, sometimes lasted multiple days, and often involved multiple commercial sex workers. During Freak Offs, COMBS distributed a variety of controlled substances to victims, in part to keep the victims obedient and compliant. Sometimes unbeknownst to the victims, COMBS kept videos he filmed of victims engaging in sex acts with commercial sex workers. After Freak Offs, COMBS and the victims typically received IV fluids to recover from the physical exertion and drug use.
- Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise, including high-ranking supervisors, security staff, household staff, personal assistants, and other Combs Business employees, facilitated the Freak Offs by, among other things, booking hotel rooms for the Freak Offs; stocking the hotel rooms in advance with the required Freak Off supplies, including controlled substances, baby oil, lubricant, extra linens, and lighting; cleaning the hotel rooms after the Freak Offs to try to mitigate room damage; arranging for travel for victims, commercial sex workers, and COMBS to and from Freak Offs; resupplying COMBS with requested supplies; delivering large sums of cash to COMBS to pay the commercial sex workers; and scheduling the delivery of IV fluids. In or about March 2024, during searches of COMBS’ residences in Miami, Florida and Los Angeles, California, law enforcement seized various Freak Off supplies, including narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant.
- COMBS subjected victims to physical, emotional, and verbal abuse to cause the victims to engage in Freak Offs. COMBS maintained control over his victims through, among other things, physical violence, promises of career opportunities, granting and threatening to withhold financial support, and by other coercive means, including tracking their whereabouts, dictating the victims’ appearance, monitoring their medical records, controlling their housing, and supplying them with controlled substances. During and separate from Freak Offs, COMBS, among other things, hit, kicked, threw objects at, and dragged victims, at times, by their hair. These assaults often resulted in injuries that took days or weeks to heal. COMBS also threatened victims’ careers and livelihoods, including if they resisted participating in Freak Offs. Victims believed they could not refuse COMBS’ demands without risking their financial or job security or without repercussions in the form of physical or emotional abuse. COMBS also used the sensitive, embarrassing, and incriminating recordings that he made during Freak Offs as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of the victims.
- Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise, including COMBS’ security personnel, at times carried firearms. On more than one occasion, COMBS himself carried or brandished firearms to intimidate and threaten others, including victims of and witnesses to his abuse. In or about March 2024, during searches of COMBS’ residences in Miami, Florida and Los Angeles, California, law enforcement seized firearms and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers, as well as a drum magazine.
- Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise enabled COMBS’ control over victims by following his directions regarding financial payments to victims, advancing or suppressing the victims’ career opportunities, and acquiring the controlled substances COMBS used to keep the victims compliant. Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise at times witnessed COMBS’ violence toward the victims, or the victims’ injuries caused by Combs, without intervening. Instead, members and associates of the Combs Enterprise helped conceal the violence and abuse by, among other things, assisting COMBS in monitoring and preventing victims from leaving locations, such as hotels or COMBS’ residences. These occasions included instances in which a victim was required to remain in hiding-sometimes for several days at a time-to recover from injuries COMBS inflicted, without being publicly observed. Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise also assisted COMBS in locating and contacting victims who attempted to flee his abuse.
- When employees, witnesses to his abuse, or others threatened COMBS’ authority or reputation, COMBS and members and associates of the Enterprise engaged in acts of violence, threats of violence, threats of financial and reputational harm, and verbal abuse. These acts of violence included kidnapping and arson. In addition, on multiple occasions, COMBS threw both objects and people, as well as hit, dragged, choked, and shoved others.
- When COMBS’ authority or reputation was threatened by the possibility of negative publicity or legal or law enforcement action against him, including in or about late 2023 following public allegations of COMBS’ crimes, COMBS and members and associates of the Enterprise pressured witnesses and victims, including through attempted bribery, to stay silent and not report what they experienced or knew to law enforcement. On phone calls, COMBS and other members and associates of the Enterprise, among other things, provided these victims and witnesses with a false narrative of events in an effort to conceal COMBS’ crimes. COMBS caused these calls to be recorded on at least two occasions.
- From at least in or about 2008, through on or about the date of the filing of this Indictment, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, and others known and unknown, being persons employed by and associated with the Combs Enterprise described in paragraphs 6 through 12 of this Indictment, an enterprise engaged in, and the activities of which affected, interstate and foreign commerce, knowingly combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed together and with each other to violate the racketeering laws of the United States, to wit, Title 18, United States Code, Section 1962( c ), that is, to conduct and participate, directly and indirectly, in the conduct of the affairs of the Combs Enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, as that term is defined in Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961(1) and 1961 ( 5), consisting of:
- multiple acts involving kidnapping, chargeable under the following provisions of state law: California Penal Code § 207 (kidnapping), California Penal Code §§ 21 (a), 664 (attempt), California Penal Code § 31 ( aiding and abetting), and California Penal Code § 182 (conspiracy);
- multiple acts involving arson, chargeable under the following provisions of state law: California Penal Code§ 451 (arson), California Penal Code§§ 21(a), 664 (attempt), California Penal Code § 31 ( aiding and abetting), and California Penal Code § 182 (conspiracy);
- multiple acts involving bribery, chargeable under the following provisions of state law: California Penal Code § 137(a) (bribery of a witness), California Penal Code §§ 21(a), 664 (attempt), California Penal Code§ 31 (aiding and abetting), and California Penal Code § 182 (conspiracy);
- multiple acts indictable under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512 (relating to tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant)
- multiple acts indictable under Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1589 and 2 (relating to forced labor);
- multiple acts indictable under Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1591 and 2 (relating to sex trafficking);
- multiple acts indictable under Title 18, United States Code, Sections 2421 , 2422, and 2 (relating to transportation and inducement to travel for purposes of prostitution and other illegal sexual activities); and
- multiple offenses involving the possession with intent to distribute, or distribution of narcotics and controlled substances, including cocaine, oxycodone, alprazolam, 3,4-Methy lenedioxymethamphetamine, 4-Bromo-2,5-dimethoxyphenethy lamine, gamma hydroxybutyric acid, and ketamine, in violation of Title 21 , United States Code, Sections 841 (a)(l ), (b )(1 )(C), (b )(1 )(E), (b )(2), and 846 ( distribution and possession with intent to distribute and conspiracy to do the same), and Title 18, United States Code, Section 2 ( aiding, abetting, and willfully causing).
- It was a part of the conspiracy that SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, agreed that a conspirator would commit at least two acts of racketeering activity in the conduct of the affairs of the Combs Enterprise.
- From at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about 2018, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, as part of his agreement to conduct and participate in the conduct of the affairs of the Combs Enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, agreed to, in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, knowingly recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, advertise, maintain, patronize, and solicit by any means a person, knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, and coercion, as described in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(e)(2), and any combination of such means, would be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(a)(l) and (b)(l).
- From at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about 2018, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce, knowingly recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, provided, obtained, advertised, maintained, patronized, and solicited by any means a person, knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, and coercion, as described in Title 18, United States Code, Section 1591(e)(2), and any combination of such means, would be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, and attempted, aided and abetted, and willfully caused the same, to wit, COMBS recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, and maintained a person (“Victim-1 “), and attempted, aided and abetted, and willfully caused Victim-1 , to engage in commercial sex acts, knowing and in reckless disregard of the fact that Victim-1 was engaging in commercial sex acts as a result of force, fraud, and coercion.
- From at least in or about 2009, up to and including in or about 2024, in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, knowingly transported an individual in interstate and foreign commerce with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, and attempted, aided and abetted, and willfully caused the same, to wit, COMBS transported, aided and abetted, and willfully caused the transportation of female victims and commercial sex workers in interstate and foreign commerce on multiple occasions with the intent that they engage in prostitution.
- As a result of committing the offense alleged in Count One of this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, shall forfeit to the United States, pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1963, any and all interests the defendant acquired or maintained in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1962; any and all interests in, securities of, claims against, and property or contractual rights of any kind affording a source of influence over, the enterprise named and described herein which the defendant established, operated, controlled, conducted, and participated in the conduct of, in violation of Title 18·, United States Code, Section 1962; and any and all property constituting and derived from proceeds obtained, directly and indirectly, said offense, including but not limited to a sum of money in United States currency representing the amount of proceeds traceable to the commission of said offense.
- As a result of committing the offense alleged in Count Two of this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, shall forfeit to the United States, pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1594, any and all property, real and personal, involved in, used, or intended to be used to commit or to facilitate the commission of said offense and any and all property traceable to such property; any and all property, realand personal, constituting or derived from proceeds obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of said offense, including but not limited to a sum of money in United States currency representing the amount of property involved in said offense and proceeds traceable to the commission of said offense.
- SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, operated his business, headquartered at various times in Manhattan and Los Angeles, under a variety of United States-based corporate entities, including Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs Enterprises, and Combs Global (collectively, the “Combs Business”). Corporate entities in the Combs Business included, among other things, record labels, a recording studio, an apparel line, an alcoholic spirits business, a marketing agency, and a television network and media company.
- As a result of committing the offense alleged in Count Three of this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy ,” a/k/a “Diddy ,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, shall forfeit to the United States, pursuant to (i) Title 18, United States Code, Section 2428, any and all property, real and personal, constituting or derived from proceeds obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of said offense; and any and all property, real or personal, that was used or intended to be used to commit or facilitate the commission of said offense, and (ii) Title 18, United States Code, Section 981(a)(l)(C) and Title 28, United States Code, Section 2461 , any and all property, real and personal, that constitutes or is derived from proceeds traceable to the commission of said offense, including but not limited to a sum of money in United States currency representing the amount of proceeds traceable to the commission of said offense.
- If any of the above described forfeitable property, as a result of any act or omission of the defendant:
- cannot be located upon the exercise of due diligence;
- has been transferred or sold to, or deposited with, a third person;
- has been placed beyond the jurisdiction of the Court;
- has been substantially diminished in value; or
- has been commingled with other property which cannot be subdivided without difficulty;
- it is the intent of the United States, pursuant to Title 18, United States Code, Section 1963(m), Title 21, United States Code, Section 853(p), and Title 28, United States Code, Section 2461(c), to seek forfeiture of any other property of the defendant up to the value of the above forfeitable property
- At all times relevant to this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals. This abuse was, at times, verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual. As part of his pattern of abuse, COMBS manipulated women to participate in highly orchestrated performances of sexual activity with male commercial sex workers. At times, COMBS, and others acting at his direction, made arrangements for women and commercial sex workers to fly to COMBS’ location. COMBS ensured participation from the women by, among other things, obtaining and distributing narcotics to them, controlling their careers, leveraging his financial support and threatening to cut off the same, and using intimidation and violence.
- Physical abuse by SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy ,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, was recurrent and widely known. On numerous occasions from at least in or about 2009 and continuing for years, COMBS assaulted women by, among other things, striking, punching, dragging, throwing objects at, and kicking them. These assaults were, at times, witnessed by others and included one instance at a Los Angeles hotel in or about March 2016, which was captured on video and later publicly reported, where COMBS kicked, dragged, and threw a vase at a woman as she was attempting to leave. When a member of the hotel security staff intervened, COMBS attempted to bribe the staff member to nsure silence.COMBS’ violence was also not limited to these women. It extended to his employees, witnesses to his abuse, and others.
- SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, used the Combs Business, including certain employees, to carry out, facilitate, and cover up his abuse and commercial sex. Those employees-including security staff, household staff, personal assistants, and high-ranking supervisors-and other close associates acted as COMBS’ intermediaries, and their conduct was facilitated and assisted by COMBS’ control of the Combs Business.
- From at least in or about 2008, through on or about the date of the filing of this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, and others known and unknown, were members and associates of a criminal organization (the “Combs Enterprise” or the “Enterprise”). Members and associates of the Combs Enterprise engaged in, and attempted to engage in, among other activities, sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, coercion and enticement to engage in prostitution, narcotics offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
- The Combs Enterprise, including its leadership, its members, and its associates, constituted an “enterprise,” as defined by Title 18, United States Code, Section 1961 ( 4 ), that is, a group of individuals associated in fact, although not a legal entity. The Combs Enterprise consisted of: (i) SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant; (ii) entities within the Combs Business, including but not limited to Bad Boy Entertainment, Combs Enterprises, and Combs Global; (iii) individuals employed by and associated with the Combs Business; and (iv) others known and unknown.
- The Combs Enterprise constituted an ongoing organization whose members functioned as a continuing unit for a common purpose of achieving the objectives of the Combs Enterprise. The Combs Enterprise was engaged in, and its activities affected, interstate and foreign commerce. The Combs Enterprise operated in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere.
- At all times relevant to this Indictment, SEAN COMBS, a/k/a “Puff Daddy,” a/k/a “P. Diddy,” a/k/a “Diddy,” a/k/a “PD,” a/k/a “Love,” the defendant, was the leader of the Combs Enterprise.
- Thalia Graves alleges that when she was 25 and dating an executive who worked for Combs in the summer of 2001, Combs and Joseph Sherman lured her to a meeting at Bad Boy Recording Studios. She said they picked her up in an SUV and during the ride gave her a drink “likely laced with a drug.”
- According to the lawsuit, Graves lost consciousness and awoke to find herself bound inside Combs’ office and lounge at the studio. The two men raped her, slapped her, slammed her head against a pool table and ignored her screams and cries for help, the lawsuit alleges.
- “I am not questioning her integrity. I am just questioning her claims against me,” Sherman told News 4. “You got the wrong man. I wasn’t even in the same room with you. I have never seen you. I wasn’t even in New York that I recall at the time.”
- As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.
- According to [Bob] Woodward, one of Trump’s national security advisers, Keith Kellogg, secretly met with Netanyahu during a trip to Israel earlier this year [2024]. Upon his return, Kellogg publicly circulated a memo effectively blaming Biden for the Hamas-led attack on Israel
- And the book [War by Bob Woodward] reveals how her [Kamala Harris’s] forceful public tone following a meeting in July with Netanyahu — pledging that she would “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering — contrasted with her more amicable approach in private. The difference, according to Woodward, infuriated Netanyahu, who was taken aback by her public remarks.
- Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.
- The debacle, in which U.S. intelligence failed to foresee how quickly the Taliban would seize power, elicited sympathy from the architect of the initial 2001 invasion, George W. Bush, who told Biden, according to the book: “Oh boy, I can understand what you’re going through. I got [expletive] by my intel people, too.”
- “Barack never took Putin seriously,” Biden told a close friend.
- Biden’s own blunders were costly, the book reveals. In January 2022, he seemed to undercut American resolve by raising the possibility that Russia might seek only a “minor incursion.” His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to do damage control with counterparts in nine NATO countries, in addition to Japan, Woodward reveals.
- Putin, according to the book, told Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”
- “The Israelis always do this,” was the reaction of Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East coordinator, according to the book. “They claim ‘We got the intel! You’ll see it. You’ll see it.’ But like 50 percent of the time the so-called intel doesn’t actually show up.” Apparent drones reported by the Israelis turned out to be birds.
- To associates, Biden complained that Netanyahu was a liar only interested in his political survival. And he concluded the same of the prime minister’s associates, saying that 18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are “liars.”
- After Oct. 7, Graham continued to engage with the crown prince. During a March visit by the senator to Riyadh, which is recounted by Woodward, Graham proposed a phone call with Trump, so the crown prince pulled out a burner phone labeled “TRUMP 45.” In earlier meetings, the crown prince had brandished other such devices, including one labeled “JAKE SULLIVAN” for Biden’s national security adviser.
- During the March call with Trump, conducted by the crown prince over speakerphone while Graham was present, the former president teased the senator for once calling for the Saudi royal’s ouster over the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA concluded Mohammed had ordered. Graham brushed it off, professing to have been wrong about the autocrat.
- “Going to Mar-a-Lago is a little bit like going to North Korea,” the book quotes Graham as saying. “Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”
- “Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes in the book, “War,” which is set to be released Oct. 15.
- Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said, “None of these made-up stories by Bob Woodward are true," issuing a string of personal attacks on the author and saying Trump didn’t give him an interview for the book. Cheung argued that the book “either belongs in the bargain bin of the fiction section of a discount bookstore or used as toilet tissue.”
- Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, makes several appearances in the narrative, with Woodward presenting her as a shrewd and loyal No. 2 to Biden but not an influential voice in his administration’s foreign policy.
- Dimetrodon is often mistaken for a dinosaur or as a contemporary of dinosaurs in popular culture, but it became extinct some 40 million years before the advent of dinosaurs.
- Although reptile-like in appearance and physiology, Dimetrodon is much more closely related to mammals than to reptiles, though it is not a direct ancestor of mammals.
- Salter spent the last moments of his life firing back at the gunman who took nine other lives that fatal day. His acts perhaps slowed down the alleged terrorist and minimized the number of victims.
- On May 25 at his funeral service, his acts of heroism were recognized as he received the Medal of Honor and was promoted to lieutenant by the Buffalo Police Department.
- Lord Byron expected his child to be a “glorious boy” and was disappointed when Lady Byron gave birth to a girl.
- On 16 January 1816, at Lord Byron’s command, Lady Byron left for her parents’ home at Kirkby Mallory, taking their five-week-old daughter with her.
- On 21 April, Lord Byron signed the deed of separation, although very reluctantly, and left England for good a few days later.
- In June 1829, she was paralyzed after a bout of measles. She was subjected to continuous bed rest for nearly a year, something which may have extended her period of disability.
- By 1831, she [Ada Lovelace] was able to walk with crutches. Despite the illnesses, she developed her mathematical and technological skills.
- From 1832, when she was seventeen, her mathematical abilities began to emerge, and her interest in mathematics dominated the majority of her adult life.
- Ada Byron had an affair with a tutor in early 1833. She tried to elope with him after she was caught, but the tutor’s relatives recognised her and contacted her mother. Lady Byron and her friends covered the incident up to prevent a public scandal.
- She was in particular interested in Babbage’s work on the Analytical Engine. Lovelace first met him on 5 June 1833, when she and her mother attended one of Charles Babbage’s Saturday night soirées with their mutual friend, and Ada’s private tutor, Mary Somerville.
- Later that month [June 1833], Babbage invited Lovelace to see the prototype for his difference engine.
- On 8 July 1835, she married William, 8th Baron King, becoming Lady King.
- Lovelace was not shown the family portrait of her father [Lord Byron] until her 20th birthday.
- During a nine-month period in 1842–43, Lovelace translated the Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea’s article on Babbage’s newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine.
- In 1844, she commented to a friend Woronzow Greig about her desire to create a mathematical model for how the brain gives rise to thoughts and nerves to feelings (“a calculus of the nervous system”). She never achieved this, however.
- On 12 August 1851, when she was dying of cancer, Lovelace wrote to him asking him to be her executor, though this letter did not give him the necessary legal authority.
- She lost contact with her husband after confessing something to him on 30 August which caused him to abandon her bedside. It is not known what she told him.
- Lovelace died at the age of 36 on 27 November 1852, from uterine cancer.
- Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg in the German Empire, on 14 March 1879.
- In a memorial lecture delivered on 13 December 1965 at UNESCO headquarters, nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer summarized his impression of Einstein as a person: “He was almost wholly without sophistication and wholly without worldliness … There was always with him a wonderful purity at once childlike and profoundly stubborn.”
- At home on his deathbed, unable to speak owing to cancer that had metastasized, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for “LSD, 100 μg, intramuscular.” According to her account of his death in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:20 a.m. and a second dose an hour later; Huxley died aged 69, at 5:20 p.m. PST on 22 November 1963.
- Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, on 26 July 1894.
- He [Alexander Lebedev] is part owner of the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and owner of two UK newspapers with his son Evgeny Lebedev: the Evening Standard and The Independent.
- Lebedev was born in Moscow. His parents were part of the Moscow intelligentsia.
- Shulgin was born in Berkeley, California, to Theodore Stevens Shulgin (1893–1978) and Henrietta D. (Aten) Shulgin (1894–1960).
- [Alexander] Shulgin died at his home on June 2, 2014, at the age of 88.
- Alexander [the Great] admired Cyrus the Great, from an early age reading Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, which described Cyrus’s heroism in battle and governance as a king and legislator.
- On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47.
- On 20 August 2020, Navalny fell ill during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow and was hospitalised in the Emergency City Clinical Hospital No. 1 in Omsk (Городская клиническая больница скорой медицинской помощи №1), where the plane had made an emergency landing.
- Siddiq’s stand-up comedy tends to be in the storytelling style, versus the more common setup/punch-line style. Siddiq’s sets involve stories from his personal life, as well his observations on current events, sociopolitics and race.
- Tarkovsky died in Paris on 29 December 1986.
- In a short interview with Lanny Poffo, he stated that the movie meant so much to André that he made his wrestling pals watch an advanced copy of the VHS with him over and over again while supplying dinner, drinks, and sweetly asking each time, “Did you like my performance?”
- Roussimoff died at age 46 of congestive heart failure and apparent heart attack in his sleep, likely associated with his untreated acromegaly, at a Paris hotel on the morning of 28 January 1993.
- André René Roussimoff was born on 19 May 1946 in Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne, the son of immigrants Boris Roussimoff (1907–1993) and Mariann Roussimoff Stoeff (1910–1997); his father was Bulgarian and his mother was Polish.
- William Goldman, the author of the novel and the screenplay of The Princess Bride, wrote in his nonfiction work Which Lie Did I Tell? that Roussimoff was one of the gentlest and most generous people he ever knew.
- On 24 March 1973, Roussimoff debuted in the World Wide Wrestling Federation (later World Wrestling Federation) as a fan favorite, defeating Frank Valois and Bull Pometti in a handicap match in Philadelphia.
- Despite his lack of recognition in this field in his own time, Anselm is now famed as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God and of the satisfaction theory of atonement.
- Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC.
- At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato’s Academy.
- Clarke emigrated to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1956, to pursue his interest in scuba diving. That year, he discovered the underwater ruins of the ancient original Koneswaram Temple in Trincomalee.
- August Vandekerkhove was one of the first persons to coin the term, “the Age of Aquarius”, in a French magazine, “La Fronde” in late February 1890.
- Each year, on the afternoon of Palm Sunday, at 5 PM, people gather around his grave at the cemetery of Flacé, rue Ambroise Paré, in Mâcon in France to remember him.
- Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, into a Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg in what was then the Russian Empire.
- On March 6, 1982, Rand died of heart failure at her home in New York City. Her funeral included a 6-foot (1.8 m) floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign.
- Rand considered Immanuel Kant her philosophical opposite and “the most evil man in mankind’s history”; she believed his epistemology undermined reason and his ethics opposed self-interest.
- Cristofori was born in Padua in the Republic of Venice.
- Later in the decade, he used to strut around St. Marks Place and Second Avenue, longhaired and bearded like any number of hippies, but instead of adorning himself in flowers and beads, he wore a leather jacket, carried a switchblade and peddled manifestos full of cryptic poetry and angry agitprop.
- This is a group who once carried piles of stinking, festering trash from the East Village and dumped it on the steps of Lincoln Center.
- In 1968, they rallied in support of Valerie Solanas, the tormented feminist who shot Andy Warhol.
- The 1960s may be one of the most overwritten decades in American history, but the only scholarly treatment the group has ever received was a 2003 Harvard honors thesis.
- Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay on January 17, 1706, and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Boston.
- Franklin died from pleuritic attack at his home in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790. He was aged 84 at the time of his death.
- His last words were reportedly, “a dying man can do nothing easy,” to his daughter after she suggested that he change position in bed and lie on his side so he could breathe more easily.
- Beyoncé cited Madonna as an influence “not only for her musical style, but also for her business sense”, saying that she wanted to “follow in the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire.”
- Beyoncé has stated that she is personally inspired by Michelle Obama (the 44th First Lady of the United States), saying “she proves you can do it all”
- Beyoncé has expressed admiration for the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, posting in a letter “what I find in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, I search for in every day in music … he is lyrical and raw”.
- On April 4, 2008, Beyoncé and Jay-Z married without publicity.
- In 2006, the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), criticized Beyoncé for wearing and using fur in her clothing line House of Deréon.
- One night in 2013, founding Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir was playing a set with his RatDog quartet at the Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley, California when a group of patrons wouldn’t quiet down. Weir took the opportunity—mid-solo—to not-so-politely ask the group to keep it down. Except that’s not the phrase he used!
- After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died at No. 26 St George’s Square, London on 20 April 1912.
- Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf in Dublin, Ireland. The park adjacent to the house is now known as Bram Stoker Park.
- Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898.
- He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November [1963], at age 64, and died a few minutes later.
- The three Quartets for harpsichord, cello, flute and viola (H.537–539), a new collection of Songs (H.700–760), published by Donatius in Lübeck in 1789, and a pasticcio Passion for 1789 were all written in Bach’s last year. He died on December 14, 1788 of a “chest ailment” and was buried on December 19th in the crypt of the Michaeliskirche.
- [C. P. E.] Bach was an influential pedagogue, writing the influential “Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments”, which would be studied by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, among others.
- [C. P. E.] Bach, armed with a recommendation by the Graun brothers (Johann Gottlieb and Carl Heinrich) and Sylvius Leopold Weiss, obtained an appointment at Berlin in the service of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia, the future Frederick the Great.
- [C. P. E.] Bach used for his performances instruments (clavichord and fortepiano) made by Gottfried Silbermann, at that time a well-known builder of keyboard instruments.
- C. P. E. Bach was born on 8 March 1714 in Weimar to Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife, Maria Barbara.
- On November 16, 2023, she [Cassie Ventura] filed a lawsuit against Combs alleging that he subjected her to a decade-long “cycle of abuse, violence and sex trafficking.”
- Fort and Anna lived intermittently in London between 1920 and 1928, so Fort could carry out research in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
- Fort was born in Albany, New York, in 1874, of Dutch ancestry.
- After he collapsed on May 3, 1932, Fort was rushed to Royal Hospital. Later that same day, Fort’s publisher visited him to show him the advance copies of Wild Talents. Fort died only hours afterward, probably of leukemia. He was interred in the Fort family plot in Albany, New York.
- Charles Milles Maddox was born on November 12, 1934, to 15-year-old Ada Kathleen Maddox (1919–1973) of Ashland, Kentucky
- Roger Smith, as well as the HAFMC’s founder David Smith, received funding from the National Institutes of Health, and reportedly the CIA, to study the effects of drugs like LSD and methamphetamine on the counterculture movement in San Francisco’s Haight–Ashbury District.
- In the early morning of Christmas Day 1977, Chaplin died at home after having a stroke in his sleep.
- [Clive Davis] The head of BMG North America was axed in 2000, and retaliated by setting up his own label and discovering Alicia Keys. BMG then offered him $150m to rejoin the company.
- In 2011, Hal Vaughan published a biography about Chanel based on newly declassified documents, revealing that she had collaborated directly with the Nazi intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst.
- She died on Sunday, 10 January 1971, at the Hotel Ritz, where she had resided for more than 30 years.
- In September 1852, Webster returned to his Marshfield estate, where his health continued to decline due to cirrhosis and a subdural hematoma. He died in Marshfield, Massachusetts on October 24, 1852, at the age of 70, and is buried in Winslow Cemetery near his estate. His last words were, “I still live.”
- Daniel Webster was born on January 18, 1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, at a location within the present-day city of Franklin.
- Diana died on 31 August 1997 in a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris while her driver was fleeing the paparazzi.
- On 7 April 2022, Muratov was attacked by an unknown person and covered with red paint mixed with acetone while on a train from Moscow to Samara, supposedly as an act of support for Russian troops; According to U.S. intelligence agencies, the attack was organized by Russian intelligence services.
- Solaris ran in a 16k multi-bank rom cartridge and used 128 bytes of ram.
- On August 16, 1977, Presley was scheduled on an evening flight out of Memphis to Portland, Maine, to begin another tour. That afternoon, however, his fiancée Ginger Alden discovered him unresponsive on the bathroom floor of his Graceland mansion. Attempts to revive him failed, and he was pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital at 3:30 p.m. He was 42.
- Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Love (née Smith) and Vernon Presley.
- Ernest Rutherford was born on 30 August 1871 in Brightwater, a town near Nelson, New Zealand.
- For some time before his death, Rutherford had a small hernia, which he neglected to have fixed, and it became strangulated, rendering him violently ill. Despite an emergency operation in London, he died four days afterwards, at Cambridge on 19 October 1937 at age 66, of what physicians termed “intestinal paralysis”.
- Schrödinger was born in Erdberg [de], Vienna, Austria, on 12 August 1887, to Rudolf Schrödinger [de] (cerecloth producer, botanist) and Georgine Emilia Brenda Schrödinger (née Bauer) (daughter of Alexander Bauer [de], professor of chemistry, TU Wien). He was their only child.
- On 4 January 1961, Schrödinger died of tuberculosis, aged 73, in Vienna.
- Zola died on 29 September 1902 of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by an improperly ventilated chimney.
- Zola was born in Paris in 1840 to François Zola (originally Francesco Zolla) and Émilie Aubert.
- Ferdinando’s most permanent legacy was the result of his decision in 1688 to hire Bartolomeo Cristofori, a harpsichord builder from Padua, as his keeper of musical instruments.
- Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the capital of the Czech Republic).
- Frederick remained an admired historical figure through Germany’s defeat in World War I, and the Nazis glorified him as a great German leader prefiguring Adolf Hitler, who personally idolised him.
- The king condemned Katte to death and forced Frederick to watch his beheading at Küstrin on 6 November, leading the crown prince to faint just before the fatal blow.
- Frederick William ordered Fritz to undergo a minimal education, live a simple Protestant lifestyle, and focus on the Army and statesmanship as he had. However, the intellectual Fritz was more interested in music, books and French culture, which were forbidden by his father as decadent and unmanly.
- At age 16, Frederick seems to have embarked upon a youthful affair with Peter Karl Christoph von Keith, a 17-year-old page of his father.
- [Peter Karl Christoph von] Keith was dismissed from his service to the king and sent away to a regiment by the Dutch border, while Frederick was sent to the king’s hunting lodge at Wusterhausen in order to “repent of his sin”
- After the prince [Frederick II, better known as Frederick the Great] attempted to flee to England with his tutor, Hans Hermann von Katte, the enraged King [Frederick William I of Prussia] had Katte beheaded before the eyes of the prince, who himself was court-martialled.
- Frederick William had his son married to Princess Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel-Bevern, whom Frederick despised, but then grudgingly allowed him to indulge in his musical and literary interests again.
- On 17 October, after midnight, the physician leaned over him and asked whether he was suffering greatly. “No longer”, he replied. He died a few minutes before 2 a.m. He was 39.
- Galileo was born in Pisa (then part of the Duchy of Florence), Italy, on 15 February 1564, the first of six children of Vincenzo Galilei, a lutenist, composer, and music theorist, and Giulia Ammannati, who had married in 1562.
- Gary Kildall was born and grew up in Seattle, Washington, where his family operated a seamanship school.
- Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in Motihari, Bengal Presidency (now Bihar), British India into what he described as a “lower-upper-middle class” family.
- Early on the morning of 21 January [1949], an artery burst in Orwell’s lungs, killing him at the age of 46.
- George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
- Washington’s death came more swiftly than expected. On his deathbed, out of fear of being entombed alive, he instructed his private secretary Tobias Lear to wait three days before his burial. According to Lear, Washington died between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on December 14, 1799, with Martha seated at the foot of his bed. His last words were “‘Tis well”, from his conversation with Lear about his burial. He was 67.
- [Gottfried Silbermann] returned to Saxony as a master craftsman in 1710, and opened his own organ workshop in Freiberg one year later.
- During the 1740s, King Frederick the Great of Prussia became acquainted with Silbermann’s pianos and bought a number of them (the early-19th-century musicologist Johann Nikolaus Forkel claims this number was 15, though Stewart Pollens believes this to be “certainly exaggerated”).
- Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1 [OS: June 21], 1646, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz (1597–1652) and Catharina Schmuck (1621–1664).
- Clay never recovered from his illnesses, and died of tuberculosis aged 75 in his room at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 29, 1852.
- Henry Clay was born on April 12, 1777, at the Clay homestead in Hanover County, Virginia.
- Henry Ford was born July 30, 1863, on a farm in Springwells Township, Michigan.
- Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, on an unknown date between October 4, 1919, and January 2, 1920, inclusive. Asimov celebrated his birthday on January 2.
- Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643) at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire.
- In June 1661, Newton was admitted to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge. His uncle the Reverend William Ayscough, who had studied at Cambridge, recommended him to the university.
- In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus.
- In April 1667, Newton returned to the University of Cambridge, and in October he was elected as a fellow of Trinity.
- The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion.
- In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge.
- Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727).
- Following some brief involvement with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelema, the new religious movement founded by the English occultist Aleister Crowley.
- In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Jay-Z and Beyoncé appeared at a Hillary Clinton rally in Cleveland. Clinton praised Jay-Z for addressing racism, oppression, and the criminal justice system.
- On September 5, 2019, Epstein’s body was buried in an unmarked grave next to those of his parents at the I.J. Morris Star of David Cemetery in Palm Beach, Florida.
- Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in New York City at 6:30 a.m. EDT on August 10, 2019.
- Jeffrey Edward Epstein was born on January 20, 1953, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
- The real snub of Owens came from his own president. Even after ticker-tape parades for Owens in New York City and Cleveland, President Franklin D. Roosevelt never publicly acknowledged Owens’ achievements. Gold in the 100 meter, 200 meter, 400 meter relay, and long jump. Owens was never invited to the White House and never even received a letter of congratulations from the president. Almost two decades passed before another American president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, honored Owens by naming him ‘Ambassador of Sports’. In 1955.
- On July 3, 1971, Morrison was found dead in the bathtub of the apartment at approximately 6:00 a.m. by Courson. He was 27 years old.
- Jim Pugel, the former chief of the Seattle Police Department, announced his campaign for city council on January 29, 2019.
- Chérizier has denied that his nickname “Babekyou” (or “Barbecue”) came from accusations of his setting people on fire. Instead, he says it was from his mother having been a fried chicken street vendor.
- While serving as an officer in the Haitian National Police (HNP), Cherizier planned and participated in the November 2018 deadly attack against civilians in a Port-au-Prince neighborhood known as La Saline. During this attack, at least 71 people were killed, over 400 houses were destroyed, and at least seven women were raped by armed gangs.
- During Carnival 1728 the Crown Prince, Frederick the Great, visited Dresden and met or rehearsed with [Johann Georg] Pisendel and [Johann Joachin] Quantz.
- Quantz later told writer Friedrich Nicolai that he and Hans Hermann von Katte one day had to hide in a closet during an outburst of Frederick’s domineering father, who disapproved of his son’s hairstyle, musical studies, questionable books and fancy dressing gowns.
- Cage was born September 5, 1912, at Good Samaritan Hospital in downtown Los Angeles.
- Denver died on the afternoon of October 12, 1997, when his light homebuilt aircraft, a Rutan Long-EZ with registration number N555JD, crashed into Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California, while making a series of touch-and-go landings at the nearby Monterey Peninsula Airport. He was the plane’s only occupant. The official cause of death was multiple blunt force trauma resulting from the crash.
- Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. was born on December 31, 1943, in Roswell, New Mexico, to Erma Louise (née Swope; 1922–2010) and Captain Henry John “Dutch” Deutschendorf Sr. (1920–1982), a United States Army Air Forces pilot stationed at Roswell Army Air Field.
- He [John Locke] died on 28 October 1704, and is buried in the churchyard of All Saints’ Church in High Laver, near Harlow in Essex, where he had lived in the household of Sir Francis Masham since 1691.
- Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in a small thatched cottage by the church in Wrington, Somerset, about 12 miles from Bristol. He was baptised the same day, as both of his parents were Puritans.
- John M. Pinch, 83, of 2005 Barclay St., Maplewood, Minn., formerly of Dubuque and Epworth, Iowa, died Friday, Jan. 9, 2004, at Pillars Hospice Home, Maplewood.
- Services will be at 11 a.m. Monday at Reiff Funeral Home, Epworth, with the Rev. Terri Elder officiating. Burial will be in Highview Cemetery, Epworth, where military rites will be accorded by the Epworth American Legion John White Post 650 and the New Vienna (Iowa)Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 7736. Friends may call from 6 to 9 p.m. today at the funeral home.
- Mr. Pinch worked as sales manager for Marshall Fields in Minneapolis for many years.
- He was born on Feb. 8, 1920, in Farley, Iowa, son of Thomas J. and Regina B. (McKinney) Pinch.
- He graduated from Epworth High School.
- He married Dorothy Reed on Jan. 6, 1945, in Marietta, Okla.
- He was a veteran, having served in the Army as a Tech Sergeant for 51 months and in the National Guard for four years.
- He was a member of United Commercial Travelers of America for 52 years. He also was a member of Veterans of Foreign Wars of North St. Paul Post 1350.
- He loved fishing, hunting and gardening.
- Surviving are his wife, Dorothy Pinch, of Maplewood; two children, Anna M. Quinn and Rodney J. (Barb) Pinch, both of Stillwater, Minn.; five grandchildren, Michael J. Quinn, of Hugo, Minn., Michelle A. Quinn, of Maplewood, David Pinch, of Minneapolis, Jason Pinch, of Hyde Park, N.Y., and James Pinch, of Stillwater; two great-grandchildren, Jacob Carlson and Justin Quinn, both of Maplewood; and many nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors.
- He was preceded in death by his parents; and two sisters, Imogene (Cliff) Weeks and Marie (Jim) Farley.
- In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for work on Bell inequalities and the experimental validation of Bell’s theorem.
- Von Neumann’s closest friend in the United States was the mathematician Stanisław Ulam.
- Von Neumann was the first to establish a rigorous mathematical framework for quantum mechanics, known as the Dirac–von Neumann axioms, in his influential 1932 work Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.
- The Gregory Rift in the Great Rift Valley is named in his honour.
- He visited central Kenya in 1893 and again in 1919 and his 1896 book The Great Rift Valley is considered a classic.
- Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, on March 26, 1904, the elder son of hosiery importer and wholesaler Charles William Campbell, from Waltham, Massachusetts, and Josephine (née Lynch), from New York.
- Campbell died at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, on October 30, 1987, from complications of esophageal cancer.
- La Mettrie’s hedonistic and materialistic principles caused outrage even in the relatively tolerant Netherlands. So strong was the feeling against him that in 1748 he was compelled to leave for Berlin, where, thanks in part to the offices of Maupertuis, the Prussian king Frederick the Great not only allowed him to practice as a physician, but appointed him court reader.
- The most important of Caesar’s reforms was to the calendar, which saw the abolition of the traditional republican lunisolar calendar and its replacement with a solar calendar now called the Julian calendar.
- Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg.
- Marx developed a catarrh that kept him in ill health for the last 15 months of his life. It eventually brought on the bronchitis and pleurisy that killed him in London on 14 March 1883, when he died a stateless person at age 64.
- In the late 1980s, Katherine “Kat” Massey was tired of the perpetually overgrown lot on state property on her street, so she sent a letter on “Cherry Street Block Club” letterhead to the governor which led to it being cleaned up. Massey was the only one who knew that the letterhead — and the block club — were her own creations and that she was the only “club” member.
- On June 8, 2021, Britt announced her candidacy in the Republican primary for the 2022 Senate election in Alabama.
- As a Senate candidate, Britt publicly aligned herself with former President Donald Trump. Britt gave credence to Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
- Trump officially endorsed Britt on June 10, 2022, calling her a “fearless America First warrior”.
- Katie Britt is married to Wesley Britt, a former NFL player. They met while attending the University of Alabama, and married on March 8, 2008.
- Britt spokesman Sean Ross on Saturday confirmed to The Associated Press that the senator was speaking about the account of a young Mexican woman who told of being repeatedly raped in Mexico from 2004 to 2008 — when Republican George W. Bush was the U.S. president.
- Jacinto was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her were “foreigners visiting my city [Guadalajara] looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.”
- Gödel was born April 28, 1906, in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel (1874–1929), the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh, 1879–1966).
- In 1933, Gödel first traveled to the U.S., where he met Albert Einstein, who became a good friend.
- On March 8, 2024, Lara Trump was elected co-chair of the RNC by a unanimous vote.
- Donald Trump sought to hire Loomer to his presidential campaign in April 2023, though his senior campaign advisors strongly discouraged it.
- Staunch Trump supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene characterized Loomer as a “documented liar”.
- On January 14, 2019, Loomer convinced several men she met in a Home Depot parking lot, who she claimed were undocumented, to jump the fence with her at Nancy Pelosi’s Napa, California, home. The group set up a tent on Pelosi’s lawn to protest immigration before being removed by police. They were not arrested.
- On January 30, 2019, Loomer and others jumped the wall surrounding the California Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento. They wore Mexican serapes and sombreros, with one wearing a large false mustache, and said they were protesting Governor Gavin Newsom’s stance on immigration. They were arrested, given citations, and released within a few hours.
- Leonardo DiCaprio has distanced himself from Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs after a picture of him at one of the music mogul’s notorious ‘white parties’ emerged. / A source close to the Hollywood actor, 49, said he hadn’t had anything to do with Diddy ‘for years.’"
- Euler is credited for popularizing the Greek letter π (lowercase pi) to denote the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, as well as first using the notation f(x) for the value of a function, the letter i to express the imaginary unit √-1, the Greek letter Σ (capital sigma) to express summations, the Greek letter Δ (capital delta) for finite differences, and lowercase letters to represent the sides of a triangle while representing the angles as capital letters.
- Concerned about the continuing turmoil in Russia, Euler left St. Petersburg in June 1741 to take up a post at the Berlin Academy, which he had been offered by Frederick the Great of Prussia.
- Euler was a simple, devoutly religious man who never questioned the existing social order or conventional beliefs. He was, in many ways, the polar opposite of Voltaire, who enjoyed a high place of prestige at Frederick’s court.
- During his Berlin years (1741–1766), Euler was at the peak of his productivity. He wrote 380 works, 275 of which were published.
- In St. Petersburg on 18 September 1783, after a lunch with his family, Euler was discussing the newly discovered planet Uranus and its orbit with Anders Johan Lexell when he collapsed and died from a brain hemorrhage.
- On 21 January 1793, Louis XVI, at age 38, was beheaded by guillotine on the Place de la Révolution.
- Gandhi dedicated his life to discovering and pursuing truth, or Satya, and called his movement satyagraha, which means “appeal to, insistence on, or reliance on the Truth”.
- Marie Antoinette was guillotined at 12:15 p.m. on 16 October 1793.
- In June 2023, Greene was expelled from the conservative House Freedom Caucus after insulting fellow caucus member Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.
- Greene unsuccessfully attempted to oust Mike Johnson from his role as Speaker of the House of Representatives on May 8, 2024.
- Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835, in Florida, Missouri.
- King was fatally shot by James Earl Ray at 6:01 p.m., Thursday, April 4, 1968
- Michael King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta; he was the second of three children born to Michael King Sr. and Alberta King (née Williams).
- On October 28, 2023, Perry was found unresponsive in a hot tub at his home in Los Angeles. He was pronounced dead at 4:17 pm that day at the age of 54.
- On December 15, 2023, Perry’s death was revealed to have occurred due to “acute effects of ketamine”. Other circumstances that contributed to his death included the effects of buprenorphine, drowning, and coronary artery disease.
- Matthew Langford Perry was born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on August 19, 1969.
- Matthew Shepard was born in 1976 in Casper, Wyoming; he was the first of two sons born to Judy (née Peck) and Dennis Shepard.
- On the night of October 6, 1998, Shepard was approached by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson at the Fireside Lounge in Laramie; all three men were in their early 20s. McKinney and Henderson offered to give Shepard a ride home. They subsequently drove to a remote rural area and proceeded to rob, pistol-whip, and torture Shepard, tying him to a split rail fence and leaving him to die.
- Shepard was pronounced dead six days after the attack at 12:53 a.m. on October 12, 1998. He was 21 years old.
- Planck was born in 1858 in Kiel, Holstein (now Schleswig-Holstein), to Johann Julius Wilhelm Planck and his second wife, Emma Patzig.
- After World war II ended, Planck, his second wife, and their son were brought to a relative in Göttingen, where Planck died on October 4, 1947. He was buried in the old Stadtfriedhof (City Cemetery) in Göttingen.
- As was pointed out by Ehrenfest back in 1917 [4], neither classical atoms nor planetary orbits can be stable in a space with n > 3, and traditional quantum atoms cannot be stable either [5].
- Nero was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December AD 37 in Antium (modern Anzio), eight months after the death of Tiberius.
- Fuentes has repeatedly criticized Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and its founder, Charlie Kirk, accusing them of betraying Donald Trump by advocating in favor of mass legal immigration, support for foreign aid for the State of Israel, and queer issues.
- In December 2019, Fuentes approached conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who was walking by with his wife and young children, outside a TPUSA event in West Palm Beach, Florida. Fuentes had asked Shapiro why he had given a speech at Stanford University attacking Fuentes. The encounter was filmed and led to criticism of Fuentes.
- On November 22, 2022, Donald Trump hosted Fuentes and Kanye West at dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
- On March 10, 2022, Fuentes praised “czar Putin” for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which he claimed was to “liberate Ukraine from the Great Satan and from the evil empire in the world, which is the United States.”
- Niels Henrik David Bohr was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 7 October 1885, the second of three children of Christian Bohr, a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen, and his wife Ellen née Adler, who came from a wealthy Jewish banking family.
- Vaughan was born on December 18, 1905, in Salem, Massachusetts, as the son of a wealthy leather tanner and shoe manufacturer.
- His first film was Citizen Kane (1941), which he co-wrote, produced, directed and starred in as the title character, Charles Foster Kane.
- Wilde died of meningitis on 30 November 1900.
- Oscar Wilde was born at 21 Westland Row, Dublin (now home of the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College), the second of three children born to an Anglo-Irish couple: Jane, née Elgee, and Sir William Wilde.
- Picasso made his first trip to Paris, then the art capital of Europe, in 1900. There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature.
- During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues.
- Picasso was born at 23:15 on 25 October 1881, in the city of Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain.
- Dick suffered another stroke in the hospital, which led to brain death. Five days later, on March 2, 1982, he was disconnected from life support.
- Dick and his twin sister, Jane Charlotte Dick, were born six weeks prematurely on December 16, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois, to Dorothy (née Kindred; 1900–1978) and Joseph Edgar Dick (1899–1985), who worked for the United States Department of Agriculture.
- Along with his teacher, Socrates, and student Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy.
- Plutarch’s Life of Alexander, written as a parallel to that of Julius Caesar, is one of five extant tertiary sources on the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great. It includes anecdotes and descriptions of events that appear in no other source
- Plutarch’s best-known work is the Parallel Lives, a series of biographies of illustrious Greeks and Romans, arranged in pairs to illuminate their common moral virtues and vices, thus it being more of an insight into human nature than a historical account.
- Emerson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 25, 1803, to Ruth Haskins and the Rev. William Emerson, a Unitarian minister.
- Several versions of Hals’ portrait of Descartes are known, though Hals has painted only one of them and the rest are copies. One of those copies hangs in the Louvre. For a long time, the Louvre thought that they owned the original portrait by Hals, but nowadays the majority of art experts believes that the original is in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen.
- René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Province of Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596.
- Burton died in Trieste early on the morning of 20 October 1890 of a heart attack. His wife Isabel persuaded a priest to perform the last rites, although Burton was not a Catholic, and this action later caused a rift between Isabel and some of Burton’s friends. It has been suggested that the death occurred very late on 19 October and that Burton was already dead by the time the last rites were administered.
- Burton was born in Torquay, Devon, at 21:30 on 19 March 1821; in his autobiography, he incorrectly claimed to have been born in the family home at Barham House in Elstree in Hertfordshire.
- The Riverworld series of science fiction novels (1971–83) by Philip José Farmer has a fictional and resurrected Burton as a primary character.
- In 1980, Hayworth was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which contributed to her death in 1987 at age 68. The public disclosure and discussion of her illness drew attention to Alzheimer’s, and helped to increase public and private funding for research into the disease.
- A planned meeting with supporting dog teams from the base camp failed, despite Scott’s written instructions, and at a distance of 162 miles (261 km) from their base camp at Hut Point and approximately 12.5 miles (20.1 km) from the next depot, Scott and his companions died.
- Another Silverberg-Garrett collaboration, “Deus Ex Machina”, credited to “Robert Randall”, took the cover of the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly
- The New Testament indicates that Timothy traveled with Paul the Apostle, who was also his mentor.
- While included in the Pauline epistles of the New Testament, First and Second Timothy are considered by many biblical scholars to be pseudoepigraphical and not written by Paul.
- Timothy’s name appears as the co-author on 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, and Philemon.
- When Paul was in prison and awaiting martyrdom, he summoned his faithful friend Timothy for a last farewell.
- The apocryphal Acts of Timothy states that in the year 97 AD, the 80-year-old bishop tried to halt a procession in honor of the goddess Diana by preaching the Gospel. The angry pagans beat him, dragged him through the streets, and stoned him to death.
- Salvador Dalí was born on 11 May 1904, at 8:45 am, on the first floor of Carrer Monturiol, 20 in the town of Figueres, in the Empordà region, close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.
- Samuel Barclay Beckett was born in the Dublin suburb of Foxrock on 13 April 1906, the son of William Frank Beckett (1871–1933), a quantity surveyor of Huguenot descent, and Maria Jones Roe, a nurse.
- Confined to a nursing home and suffering from emphysema and possibly Parkinson’s disease, Beckett died on 22 December 1989.
- Sigmund Freud was born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents in the Moravian town of Freiberg, in the Austrian Empire (in Czech Příbor, now Czech Republic), the first of eight children.
- In 1867 Schwendener announced to the scientific world his hypothesis that lichen was formed by two separate organisms, a fungus and an alga. At the time his theory was largely rejected, but it was afterwards proven to be factual.
- Plato was a pupil of Socrates and outlived him by five decades.
- On 22 February 1943, Scholl, her brother, Hans, and their friend, Christoph Probst, were found guilty of treason and condemned to death.
- Prison officials were impressed by the condemned prisoners’ bravery, and let them smoke cigarettes together before they were executed.
- On 11 September, police loaded him into the back of a Land Rover, naked and manacled, and drove him 740 miles (1,190 km) to the hospital. There, Biko died alone in a cell on 12 September 1977.
- Bantu Stephen Biko was born on 18 December 1946, at his grandmother’s house in Tarkastad, Eastern Cape.
- McKenna died on April 3, 2000, at the age of 53.
- Terence McKenna was born and raised in Paonia, Colorado, with Irish ancestry on his father’s side of the family.
- He suffered a heart attack in his friend S. Rasnics’ swimming pool in 1963 and died on Bainbridge Island, Washington, aged 55. The pool was later filled in and is now a zen rock garden, which can be viewed by the public at the Bloedel Reserve, a 150-acre (60 hectare) former private estate. There is no marker to indicate that the rock garden was the site of Roethke’s death.
- Born in Bolton le Moors, Lancashire, in 1801, Cole immigrated with his family to the United States in 1818, settling in Steubenville, Ohio.
- Thomas Cole died at Catskill on February 11, 1848, of pleurisy.
- Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, “Glenmont” in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for [his second wife] Mina.
- Thomas Edison was born in 1847 in Milan, Ohio, but grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, after the family moved there in 1854.
- Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat in Fort Myers.
- Over his desk Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds’ famous quotation: “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility.
- On Sunday 12 August [1661], while preaching at the Savoy, he was seized with typhus fever, and died at his new lodgings in Covent Garden on 16 August.
- On the morning of June 8, 1809, Paine died, aged 72, at 59 Grove Street in Greenwich Village, New York City.
- Paine was born on January 29, 1736 (NS February 9, 1737), the son of Joseph Pain, a tenant farmer and stay-maker, and Frances (née Cocke) Pain, in Thetford, Norfolk, England.
- Leary died aged 75 on May 31, 1996.
- Leary was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, an only child in an Irish Catholic household.
- A 53-year-old Burlington woman who was walking along southbound Interstate 5 early Wednesday near the Bow Hill rest stop was struck and killed by two vehicles, the first of which left the scene.
- State Patrol determined the debris is associated with a 2008-2010 Ford Super Duty F-250, F-350 or F-450 truck that is possibly dark in color.
- The Skagit County Coroner’s Office has completed the examination of a 53 year old female, Tonya L. Pearson of Burlington, Washington. On 11/20/2019, Tonya Pearson was a pedestrian who was struck by a motor vehicle on I-5 south bound, mile post 207, Bow, Washington. The cause of death is multiple blunt force trauma injuries. The manner of death is accident. No further information will be released by this office.
- Detectives believe the Ford truck is dark in color and could have damage to the right front fender. They’ve scoured local body shops and auto dealers looking for the vehicle. “We have no idea that this person is a Washington resident, but what we do know is that the damage is significant enough that they had to fix it. Somebody knows something,” said Trooper Axtman.
- “We have a lighting fixture from the passenger headlight and we have pieces from a passenger side mirror. What that shows our investigators is that Tonya was standing at the time she was originally hit, by what we believe is a Super Duty F-250, 350 or 450. We don’t know if that’s a single cab, an extended cab, or a quad cab,” said Trooper Heather Axtman.
- On April 25, 1988, at the age of 52, Valerie Solanas died of pneumonia at the Bristol Hotel in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.
- Valerie Solanas was born in 1936 in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis Solanas and Dorothy Marie Biondo. Her father was a bartender and her mother a dental assistant.
- Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Streletskaya Ulitsa, Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk, on 22 April 1870, and baptised six days later; as a child, he was known as Volodya the common nickname variant of Vladimir.
- On 21 January 1924, Lenin fell into a coma and died later that day at age 53. His official cause of death was recorded as an incurable disease of the blood vessels.
- Putin worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg.
- Disney was born on December 5, 1901, at 1249 Tripp Avenue, in Chicago’s Hermosa neighborhood.
- In early November 1966, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was treated with cobalt therapy. On November 30, he felt unwell and was taken by ambulance from his home to St. Joseph Hospital where, on December 15, at age 65, he died of circulatory collapse caused by the cancer.
- William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) in Soho, London.
- On the day of his death (12 August 1827), Blake worked relentlessly on his Dante series. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, “Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me.” Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses. At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died.
- Thackeray became responsible for creating Punch’s notoriously hostile and negative depictions of the Irish during the Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1851.
- Gordon Lindsay’s report of the experience referred to the appearance of a “heavenly light. " Branham, according to Lindsay, was instructed three times by a “Voice” to “Look up. " When the evangelist lifted his head, the “heavenly light” became visible to the people. Significantly, however, this official biography, published in 1950, made no mention of the forerunner prophecy.
- The first extant reference to the visions was a sermon preached on 13 May 1956.
- Branham claimed that he had received an angelic visitation on May 7, 1946, commissioning his worldwide ministry and launching his campaigning career in mid-1946.
- William M. Branham was born near Burkesville, Kentucky, on April 6, 1909, the son of Charles and Ella Harvey Branham, the oldest of ten children.
- Churchill was born on 30 November 1874 at his family’s ancestral home, Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
- Churchill died on the morning of Sunday 24 January 1965 in his home at 28 Hyde Park Gate, London, exactly 70 years after the death of his father.
- For the matter of personal identity (and the philosophy of self), the EMT has the implication that some parts of a person’s identity can be determined by their environment.
- The first ontological argument in Western Christian tradition was proposed by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in his 1078 work, Proslogion (Latin: Proslogium, lit. ‘Discourse [on the Existence of God]’), in which he defines God as “a being than which no greater can be conceived,” and argues that such a being must exist in the mind, even in that of the person who denies the existence of God.
- There is strong evidence that the observable universe is composed almost entirely of ordinary matter, as opposed to an equal mixture of matter and antimatter. This asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the visible universe is one of the great unsolved problems in physics.
- There is no difference in the gravitational behavior of matter and antimatter. In other words, antimatter falls down when dropped, not up.
- The model’s key success lies in explaining the Rydberg formula for hydrogen’s spectral emission lines. While the Rydberg formula had been known experimentally, it did not gain a theoretical basis until the Bohr model was introduced.
- the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics or energy level diagrams before moving on to the more accurate, but more complex, valence shell atom.
- …in a Boltzmann-dominated universe, most Boltzmann brains have “abnormal” experiences, but most observers with only “normal” experiences are Boltzmann brains, due to the overwhelming vastness of the population of Boltzmann brains in such a universe.
- It has been speculated, since the 19th century, that the universe is fated to a heat death in which all the energy ends up as a homogeneous distribution of thermal energy so that no more work can be extracted from any source.
- In the Standard Model of physics, the mass of elementary particles is believed to be a result of their coupling with the Higgs boson in what is known as the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism.
- There are several distinct phenomena that can be used to measure mass. Although some theorists have speculated that some of these phenomena could be independent of each other, current experiments have found no difference in results regardless of how it is measured
- In quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle states that two or more identical particles with half-integer spins (i.e. fermions) cannot occupy the same quantum state within a quantum system simultaneously.
- In most metals, the plasma frequency is in the ultraviolet, making them shiny (reflective) in the visible range.
- Some metals, such as copper and gold, have electronic interband transitions in the visible range, whereby specific light energies (colors) are absorbed, yielding their distinct color.
- The first volume [of The Feyman Lectures on Physics] focuses on mechanics, radiation, and heat, including relativistic effects.
- Birch Bay is a headland bay created by the refraction of incoming waves on the headlands that lie on either side of the bay.
- Willapa Bay is fairly shallow: more than half of its surface area lies in the intertidal zone, and half of the volume of water inside it enters and leaves with every tide.
- The crossing of the St. Croix River was difficult for the railway, since the original bridge across the river was very low and trains had to contend with steep grades on both sides of the river. This made it necessary to use helper engines and to make trains shorter.
- The bridge is 184 feet (56 m) above the river and 2,682 feet (817 m) long, with five steel arches towering above the river.
- In the spring of 1792, Joseph Whidbey, master of HMS Discovery and Captain Vancouver’s chief navigator proved that it was not really a small bay as charted by the Spaniards (hence the name “Deception”), but a deep and turbulent channel that connects the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Saratoga Passage, which separates the mainland from what they believed was a peninsula (actually Fidalgo Island and Whidbey Island).
- In the early years of the 20th century, travelers of the horse-and-buggy era used an unscheduled ferry to cross from Fidalgo Island to Whidbey Island. To call the ferry, they banged a saw with a mallet and then sat back to wait.
- The bridge consists of seven fixed steel truss spans 1,050 feet (320 m) long in total, including a vertically lifting span 140 feet (43 m) long.
- Because the bridge feeds directly into downtown Stillwater on the Minnesota side, gridlock often occurred and traffic could back up on Minnesota State Highway 36 for many miles, especially on weekends and during the summer.
- The tower has the highest public viewing area west of the Mississippi River.
- On July 1, 2013, the Columbia Center’s observation deck, known as the Sky View, was remodeled from 270 degrees to a 360-degree viewing area.
- The 57-story IDS became the tallest skyscraper in Minneapolis when it surpassed the height of the 32-story Foshay Tower in 1972, ending that building’s 43-year reign over the city skyline.
- In 1996, a 32-year-old man knocked out a window in the 30th floor of the IDS Center and jumped to his death.
- The area of Nicollet Mall in front of the IDS Center is familiar to television viewers: the character of Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show was seen on Nicollet Mall looking at an IDS shop in the opening montage of the show.
- In the movie Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and the short film The Crimson Permanent Assurance, the IDS Tower is among a group of buildings creating a large financial district.
- The County Hall of Records houses the County Clerk-Recorder’s office and sits at the north-west corner of the Courthouse building.
- Elevators take visitors to an observation deck 520 ft (160 m) above ground in 41 seconds, which offers panoramic views of the downtown Seattle skyline, the Olympic and Cascade Mountains, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Elliott Bay, and various islands in Puget Sound.
- The public shopping area in the building’s lower levels has a permanent collection of works by noted artists, funded by 1% set-aside of the construction costs. The collection includes Flower Form 2 by Dale Chihuly.
- This building is the dominant feature of the capitol grounds, with its dome 287 feet (87 m) high, making it the tallest self-supporting masonry dome in the United States, and fifth tallest in the world, surpassed only by St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, Global Vipassana Pagoda in Mumbai, and Santa Maria Del Fiore in Florence.
- The structure was known as the Sears Tower from its construction until the naming rights were included in a 2009 lease with the Willis Group.
- Hood Canal is long and narrow with an average width of 1.5 miles (2.4 km) and a mean depth of 53.8 metres (177 ft).
- Along its entire length, Hood Canal separates the Kitsap Peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.
- Hood Canal and the rest of Puget Sound were created about 13,000 years ago, during the Late Pleistocene, by the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.
- Hood Canal is spanned by the Hood Canal Bridge, the third longest floating bridge in the world at 6,521 feet (1,988 m).
- Yellowknife (/ˈjɛloʊnaɪf/; Dogrib: Sǫǫ̀mbak’è) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
- The town was founded around 1168, after a silver discovery led to the first Berggeschrey, and has been a centre of the mining industry in the Ore Mountains for centuries.
- Freiberg also has a notable cathedral containing two famous Gottfried Silbermann organs. There are two other organs made by Gottfried Silbermann in the town – one at the St. Peter’s Church (Petrikirche) and the other one at the St. James’ Church (Jakobikirche).
- Several well-known composers lived and worked in Leipzig, including Johann Sebastian Bach (1723 to 1750) and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1835 to 1847).
- Potsdam was a residence of the Prussian kings and the German Emperor until 1918.
- On 12 January 2010, a 7.0 earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, devastating the city.
- Al-Karak lies 140 kilometres (87 mi) to the south of Amman on the ancient King’s Highway.
- Albert Einstein lived in a flat at the Kramgasse 49, the site of the Einsteinhaus, from 1903 to 1905, the year in which the Annus Mirabilis papers were published.
- Afton is well known for Afton Alps, the largest ski and snowboard area in the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
- Because many people confused South Stillwater with the city of Stillwater, the city changed its name to Bayport in 1922.
- Eagan was named for Patrick Eagan, who was the first chairman of the town board of supervisors.
- Golden Valley was incorporated on December 17, 1886.
- Lake Elmo, Washington County, Minnesota, was named by A. B. Stickney, now of St. Paul, Minn.,, from a nearby lake, that had been named from the novel “St. Elmo.” The town was formerly called Oakdale from the many Black Oak (Quercus nigra) trees that grow hereabouts. It is not known where the novelist found the name for her book, but it is supposed she “evolved it out of the depth of her own consciousness.” She did not get it from that corposant known as “St. Elmo’s fire,” which was named for St. Elmo, the patron saint of navigators.
- Little Canada began as the township of New Canada in 1858.
- Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Minnesota. This name is a combination of the Indian word minni water and the Greek polis, meaning city. The first house was built here in 1849. The town was incorporated In 1867. St. Anthony, a very old town on the east bank of the river and directly at the Falls of St. Anthony, was incorporated in 1856 and merged with Minneapolis in 1872. St. Anthony city was named from the Falls, and the falls were named by the early French missionaries and explorers for St. Anthony of Padua. The falls were first seen by these missionaries on St. Anthony’s day.
- Oakdale, Washington County, Minnesota, was so named because when established, the location was adjacent to a grove of oak trees in a little valley or “dale.”
- St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota. This place was started in 1838 and named in 1841. It was named from a log church which was built for Father M. Galtier, an early Jesuit missionary. The church was named for “The Apostle of the Gentiles.” The first house was built here in 1838. The place was made a village in 1849 and a city in 1854.
- A blue mid stripe represents the Mississippi River; a small cabin stands for Father Gaultier’s original St. Paul chapel; a dome represents Minnesota’s Capitol and capital; and a winged wheel indicates St. Paul’s position as a transportation hub. The flag also contains a star of the north, symbolic of Minnesota, and a red shield, representing the progress and spirit of the city, while gold stripes are symbolic of the future.
- Burial mounds in present-day Indian Mounds Park suggest the area was inhabited by the Hopewell Native Americans about 2,000 years ago.
- Shoreview made national headlines in September 1971 when a television tower on the site of the current Telefarm Towers collapsed during construction, killing seven workers.
- Stillwater, Washington County, Minnesota, was located in 1838 and named in 1842 by John McKasick, because, owing to the great depth of the waters in the river (St. Croix), and from the fact that the fall in the water until it reaches the Mississippi River, is very slight, the waters ran very still. At an early day the town was called Dakotah from the Dakota (Sioux) Indian tribe.
- Warroad was once one of the largest Ojibwe villages on Lake of the Woods.
- Kansas City, Missouri, was incorporated as a town on June 1, 1850, and as a city on March 28, 1853.
- The 9/11 Spirit of America Memorial is a monument in downtown Cashmere that is dedicated to victims and first responders of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
- Port Angeles (/ˈændʒələs/ AN-jəl-əs) is a city and county seat of Clallam County, Washington, United States.
- The city [Port Angeles] is situated on the northern edge of the Olympic Peninsula along the shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
- Port Angeles is located in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains, which means the city gets significantly less rain than other areas of western Washington.
- By 1900, Aberdeen had become home to many saloons, brothels, and gambling establishments. It was nicknamed “The Hellhole of the Pacific”, as well as “The Port of Missing Men” due to its high murder rate.
- The Enumclaw Plateau, on which the city resides, was formed by a volcanic mudflow (lahar) from Mount Rainier approximately 5,700 years ago.
- Warehouse chain Costco previously had its headquarters in Kirkland. While Costco is now headquartered in Issaquah, the city is the namesake of its “Kirkland Signature” store brand.
- The city [Lake Forest Park] is situated at the northwest end of Lake Washington along State Route 522, which provides connections to Seattle and Bothell.
- The Boeing Renton Factory has operated since World War II, when it manufactured the B-29 Superfortress; currently, it produces the 737 airliner.
- It has no direct road connection to the rest of King County, with access on U.S. Route 2 through Snohomish County. The relative isolation of Skykomish from the rest of the county and its services has led to calls for secession or joining Snohomish County.
- The southern terminus of the Vashon Highway is the Tahlequah Ferry Terminal in the Tahlequah neighborhood, connected to the Point Defiance neighborhood of Tacoma by the Point Defiance–Tahlequah ferry.
- The northern terminus of the Vashon Highway is the Heights Dock at Point Vashon, serving the state ferry docks at Southworth, and Fauntleroy in West Seattle.
- To the west Vashon Island is separated from the Kitsap Peninsula by the Colvos Passage.
- In the nearby Pacific Ocean, roughly 170 miles (270 km) west of Vashon Island, lies the 700-mile (1,130 km) tectonic boundary known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and as such, Vashon Island is one of many areas at risk for earthquakes or related natural disasters.
- Prior to European-American settlement, the Woodinville area was inhabited by the native Sammamish people. Indigenous peoples had occupied the area for thousands of years.
- Cle Elum was originally inhabited by the Kittitas band of the Yakama tribe. The tribe fished salmon, steelhead, and trout from the Yakima River.
- Hyak was established around 1915 at the eastern portal of the Snoqualmie Pass Milwaukee Road Railroad tunnel.
- The Wild Horse Wind Farm, owned by Puget Sound Energy, is located on ridge tops near Vantage.
- The area around Vantage has been occupied by the Wanapum Native Americans since prehistory.
- Vantage is known for Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park and its associated Wanapum Recreational Area, as a base camp for those attending nearby Gorge Amphitheatre, and its rock climbing.
- Anacortes was officially incorporated on May 19, 1891.
- The town lies mostly on the north bank of the Skagit River, and is split into half by the lower Baker River (a tributary to the Skagit River).
- Parts of Alderwood Manor lie in the Lynnwood MUGA (Municipal Urban Growth Area). Depending on location, buildings in Alderwood Manor may use either Lynnwood, Bothell, or Brier mailing addresses.
- On March 22, 2014, a large landslide near Oso dammed the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, with mud and debris covering an area of one square mile (2.6 km2).
- Referred to as the Lake Stevens Monster, the giant rock is considered the largest erratic in Washington and maybe in the United States. It measures 34 feet tall and 78 feet in length with a circumference of 210 feet.
- The Marysville skyline is dominated by views of Mount Pilchuck and the Cascade Mountains to the east and the Olympic Mountains to the west.
- Meadowdale is located along the eastern edge of Possession Sound in an area bounded by the cities of Edmonds and Lynnwood to the south, 148th Street Southwest to the north, and 52nd Avenue West to the east. All residences in the area use Edmonds addresses. The land area is 1.07 sq. miles.
- The 553-acre (224 ha) Thomas Lake area in the northeastern corner of the city, bordered to the north by 132nd Street and east by Seattle Hill Road, was annexed in 2005 and added 2,200 residents to the city’s population.
- Judge Richard A. Ballinger purchased Lake McAleer in 1901 and renamed it to Lake Ballinger for his father, later leaving the area to become Seattle mayor.
- Oso is located along the Stillaguamish River North Fork, which forms a valley between several arms of the Cascade Range.
- Smokey Point was settled in the early 20th century and was originally known as Rex Corner, named in the 1930s after the owner of a restaurant located at U.S. Route 99 and Lakewood Road (present-day Smokey Point Boulevard and 172nd Street NE, respective).
- Puget Sound lies to the west of the town [Woodway], including an unincorporated area known as Point Wells.
- Tenino Sandstone is part of a sedimentary layer known as the McIntosh Formation.
- This rock unit formed when thick layers of sand built up on the ocean floor, about 41 to 47 million years ago.
- The grains of sand that make up the Tenino Sandstone are very small, measuring about the size of a grain of sugar.
- The area was home to the Nooksack Indians in the millennia prior to the arrival of the first permanent settler Robert Johnson in 1872.
- Hudson, St. Croix County, Wisconsin. This place was called Buena Vista from the Mexican battlefield; earlier it was called Willow River from the river that runs into the St. Croix at this place. In 1852, the county board of Supervisors gave it its present name from the City of Hudson, New York; that was named for Henry Hudson, the navigator, who also gave his name to the river on which the City of Hudson, New York is located.
- In 1852, Alfred D. Gray, Hudson’s first mayor, petitioned to change the city’s name to Hudson, because the bluffs along the St. Croix River reminded him of the Hudson River in his native New York.
- U.S. Highway 12 once crossed the St. Croix River on a toll bridge between Wisconsin and Minnesota, which provided revenue for the town. With the construction of Interstate 94, the toll bridge was removed, though the long causeway extending to the former bridge location is now open to the public as a pedestrian walkway, known as “The Dike”.
- The horse Steamboat, the model for the bucking horse and rider motif on the Wyoming license, was stabled near Wheatland in a barn owned and maintained as a historical structure by Mike and Linda Holst. Steamboat is also the logo for the University of Wyoming.
- Africa is highly biodiverse; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna.
- Chilton County is reliably Republican at the presidential level. The last Democrat to win the county in a presidential election is Jimmy Carter, who won it by a majority in 1976.
- The Territorial Legislature of Minnesota established Hennepin County on March 6, 1852, and two years later Minneapolis was named the county seat.
- Adams is a strongly Republican county. The last Democrat to win the county was Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936.
- Located in Clallam County is Cape Alava, the westernmost point in both Washington and the contiguous United States, with a longitude of 124 degrees, 43 minutes and 59 seconds West (−124.733).
- Lincoln County is generally considered the second-largest producer of wheat in the United States (following Whitman County, Washington), sometimes producing 25 million bushels (680,000 t) per year.
- Lincoln County lies on the Channelled Scablands, known as the Big Bend Plateau. It lies 1,500-2,500 feet above sea level, with a system of channels eroded into bedrock by glacial rivers and streams, flowing from northeastern Washington.
- Pacific County is centered on Willapa Bay, a region that provides twenty-five percent of the United States oyster harvest, although forestry, fishing, and tourism are also significant elements of the county’s economy.
- The San Juan Islands were the subject of a territorial dispute between Great Britain and the United States from 1846 to 1872, leading to the Pig War in 1859.
- According to Heart of Washington, Whitman County produces more barley, wheat, dry peas, and lentils than any other county in the United States.
- Whitman County is part of the Palouse, a wide and rolling prairie-like region of the middle Columbia basin.
- Bahrain does not share a land boundary with another country but does have a 161 km (100 mi) coastline.
- the green of the flag represent the hope of a new democracy
- The red represents the courage of the ancestors
- the yellow is for the treasures of the nation
- On 1 December 1948, Costa Rica abolished its military force.
- Located in Northern Europe, Denmark consists of the northern part of the Jutland peninsula and an archipelago of 406 islands.
- Denmark has been inhabited since around 12,500 BC and agriculture has been evident since 3900 BC.
- Finland became a member of NATO on 4 April 2023, though it participated in the NATO Response Force before becoming a member.
- Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture.
- In 1978, a total of 918 people died at the Jonestown mass murder-suicide led by cult leader Jim Jones at a remote settlement in northwest Guyana.
- Navigator Christopher Columbus landed in Haiti on 6 December 1492, in an area that he named Môle-Saint-Nicolas, and claimed the island for the Crown of Castile.
- The red on the flag is said to be inspired by the pennant lifted by Manas, the country’s folk hero.
- Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its westernmost point is only 36.76 kilometres (22.84 mi) from Kazakhstan, nearly making a quadripoint.
- New Zealand is long and narrow—over 1,600 kilometres (990 mi) along its north-north-east axis with a maximum width of 400 kilometres (250 mi)[96]—with about 15,000 km (9,300 mi) of coastline and a total land area of 268,000 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi).
- The central and northern region bordering the Baltic Sea lie within the flat Central European Plain, but its south is hilly and mountainous.
- All UN member states consider Transnistria a legal part of the Republic of Moldova. Only the partially recognised or unrecognised states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have recognised Transnistria as a sovereign entity after it declared independence from Moldova in 1990 with Tiraspol as its declared capital.
- Ukraine gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved, and declared itself neutral.
- The book, “Gem Trails Of Washington” by G. Romaine, gives directions to access Deer Creek. Romaine states that the old railroad bridge over the creek is closed to foot traffic. That is no longer true, as the bridge and railroad grade have been converted into a greenways trail. The easiest access to the creek is to cross the bridge, turn right and go down under the bridge onto the gravel bar. Park on the shoulder of Lake Cavanaugh Road where it makes a sharp left turn just before the RR bridge.
- Take Highway 2 east past Waterville, Washington, for 8 miles, and turn right onto “H” Road. Follow this gravel road for 7 miles, down into the Douglas Creek canyon.
- Swamp Creek starts at Lake Stickney near Everett. It ends in Kenmore at the Sammamish River, which then flows into Lake Washington.
- Marckworth Forest is made up of state trust lands managed by the Department of Natural Resources as a working forest.
- While Marckworth Forest is open to the public for dispersed recreation, it does not have designated recreational trails or facilities like trailheads, designated parking areas, or campgrounds.
- The most prevalent invasive species in the forest are Rubis bifrons (Himalayan blackberry), Hedera helix (English ivy) and Phalaris arundinacea (reed canary grass).
- Futuna takes its name from an endonym derived from the local futu, meaning fish-poison tree.
- For starters, the nearest land mass is Russia: The slightly larger Big Diomede Island is just over two miles away, within eyeshot of the Alaskan villagers.
- Village permission should be sought (via letter) prior to visiting along with arrangements for transportation, housing and food. Self sufficiency is advised. Transportation to and from the island is restricted and expensive.
- My background is someone who has traveled to Little Diomede. The first step would be to talk to the school about renting a place to sleep. ¶ Second, you would need to fly to Nome on Alaska Air. There is a helicopter service to Diomede. You will probably fly to Wales, Alaska and catch the helicopter there. People are correct that air service is normally once a week. If you go to Diomede you need to plan to stay a while.
- The only bridge that reaches Whidbey Island is the Deception Pass Bridge, State Route 20, which connects the north end of Whidbey to the mainland via Fidalgo Island.
- Big Stone Lake is the source of the Minnesota River, which flows 332 miles (534 km) to the Mississippi River.
- Flow from the lake to the Minnesota River is regulated by the Big Stone Lake Dam, built in 1937 at the lake’s southern end.
- During the 1926-1931 drought, the existence of a leak in the center of the lake was verified where water flows out into a nearby aquifer.
- Water outflows from Lake Owasso underneath North Owasso Blvd to Lake Wabasso.
- Phalen Creek travels from Lake Phalen and drains into the Mississippi River just north of Lambert’s Landing.
- During the Miocene era, what is now the catchment area of the lake was on the western side of an uplifted area that functioned as a continental divide, with streams on the western side flowing into the Congo River basin and streams on the eastern side flowing to the Indian Ocean.
- A ribbon lake, Lake Washington is long, narrow and finger-like. Ribbon lakes are excavated by glaciers.
- the lake is mostly surrounded by private homes and the only public access is a boat ramp at the end of 37th Avenue South.
- Free guided public tours are available daily from May 1 through Sept 30, except Mondays and Tuesdays when viistor center is closed. Free tours start at 2:00 pm in the visitor center theater and last about an hour. You can join a tour anytime, no registrations are required.
- It is thought that the Chuckanut Formation shoreline was of riverine environments combined with a large scale “bedding plane” of material deposition.
- The Chuckanut Mountains were formed by the folding of the Chuckanut Formation (which is predominantly made up of layers of 55-million-year-old sandstone, conglomerate, shale, and bituminous and sub-bituminous coal) and the later Huntingdon Formation (predominantly shale and sandstone) on top, as well as an exposed section of pre-Jurassic-age phyllite
- The Olympics are made up of obducted clastic wedge material and oceanic crust. They are primarily Eocene sandstones, turbidites, and basaltic oceanic crust.
- Unlike the Cascades, the Olympic Mountains are not volcanic, and contain no native granite.
- The Farallon tectonic plate that formed a part of the Pacific Ocean floor (separate from the Pacific plate) inched eastward toward North America about 35 million years ago and most of the sea floor subducted beneath the continental land mass of the North America plate.
- The Olympics were shaped in the Pleistocene era by both alpine and continental glaciers advancing and retreating multiple times.
- Hinkhouse Peak is situated north of Washington Pass, at the east end of a high ridge which connects to Cutthroat Peak. A high ridge extending northeast connects it to Constitution Crags.
- Most precipitation runoff from the [Hinkhouse] peak drains into Early Winters Creek which is a tributary of the Methow River, but the south slope drains into a tributary of the Chelan River.
- Hinkhouse Peak is carved mostly from granite of the Golden Horn batholith.
- The stratovolcano is composed mainly of andesite lava flows and breccias and was largely formed prior to the most recent major glaciation (Fraser Glaciation), which occurred between about 25,000 and 10,000 years ago.
- On clear days it [Mount Rainier] dominates the southeastern horizon in most of the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area to such an extent that locals sometimes refer to it simply as “the Mountain”.
- With 26 major glaciers and 36 sq mi (93 km2) of permanent snowfields and glaciers, Mount Rainier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states.
- Around 5,000 years ago, a large chunk of the volcano slid away and that debris avalanche helped to produce the massive Osceola Mudflow, which went all the way to the site of present-day Tacoma and south Seattle.
- The sculpture at Mount Rushmore is built on land that was illegally taken from the Sioux Nation in the 1870s.
- The mountain is composed of Shuksan greenschist, oceanic basalt that was metamorphosed when the Easton terrane collided with the west coast of North America, approximately 120 million years ago. The mountain is an eroded remnant of a thrust plate formed by the Easton collision.
- The rounded knob is made of the Shuksan Greenschist, a metamorphic rock that forms when high temperatures and pressures compress basaltic rocks.
- Blanchard Mountain was once covered in a massive sandstone deposit called the Chuckanut Formation. Over time, this sandstone unit grew to be more than 10,000 feet thick, trapping many fossils of ancient plant and animal species.
- On April 25, 2004, the body of Alena Stathopoulos, 29 was found on the Squak Mountain trail not far from SE May Valley Road by two hikers. Her roommate Esther Rose Havekost was convicted in December 2004 for murdering her in their shared apartment and for paying a man $10,000 to dump the body. She was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
- Outside on the museum’s immense lawn, the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park, designed by Dan Kiley, contains the largest collection of monumental bronzes by Henry Moore in the United States. The park also includes works by Alexander Calder, Auguste Rodin, George Segal and Mark di Suvero, among others.
- The State Route 99 tunnel runs under Belltown for a number of blocks as it connects the Alaskan Freeway to Aurora Avenue North.
- The name “Broadview” was given to the neighborhood because of its panoramic views of the Puget Sound and Olympic Mountains, which can be viewed to the west from its steep, westerly hillsides.
- The Pigeon Point neighborhood is located on a high bluff directly south of the West Seattle Bridge at the south end of Elliott Bay.
- In the early 20th century, Madison Park became a popular summer destination for Seattleites due to its access via cable car and ferries to the Eastside.
- Pigeon Hill was so named for the abundance of pigeons that roosted there, and fed on the spilled grain of the nearby flour mill. (Seattle Department of Engineering. SWSHS/Log House Museum FIC2006.0936)
- View Ridge is located on a hill overlooking Magnuson Park as well as the former Naval Air Station Seattle.
- Also known as Port Blakely, the harbor was once home to a major lumber mill business, the Port Blakely Mill Company, established 1864
- The mill pond and ruins of the mill are accessible to the public in a city park at the west end of the harbor.
- The Pacific Ocean was born 750 million years ago at the breakup of Rodinia, although it is generally called the Panthalassa until the breakup of Pangea, about 200 million years ago.
- In the Early Jurassic the Pacific Plate opened originating from a triple junction between the Panthalassic Farallon, Phoenix, and Izanagi plates.
- Panthalassa was a hemisphere-sized ocean, much larger than the modern Pacific.
- The Bloedel Reserve has both natural and highly landscaped lakes, immaculate lawns, woods, a stone garden (formerly the swimming pool where poet Theodore Roethke drowned in 1963), a moss garden, a rhododendron glen, and a reflection garden designed with the assistance of landscape architects Richard Haag, Thomas Church, Kazimir Wall, and Danielle Stern.
- On June 8, 2020, protesters occupied the park and declared it part of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ). The area was renamed the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP) several days later.
- The ubiquitous English ivy (Hedera helix) has become invasive—as it has throughout the Pacific Northwest—taking over entire planters, particularly in the areas south of Seneca Street.
- Golden Gardens has exceptional views of Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains across the sound.
- A.H. Marshall was the first person to successfully climb each U.S. state highpoint. He completed the task in 1936 after standing atop Hoosier Hill.
- Adjacent to the park on the west side is the Beacon Food Forest, a 7 acres (2.8 ha) volunteer-run forest gardening project that provides food to neighbors and food shelves.
- The park sits on a ridge that runs parallel to the Snohomish River. The ridge, which reaches nearly 800 feet (240 m) at Bald Hill, consists of vertical basalt outcroppings that rise from the river floor.
- Located just off State Route 104, just north of the Hood Canal Bridge, this sandy shoreline is popular with kayakers, paddle boarders and beach walkers. This park also offers a small wetlands area for excellent local wildlife and birds viewing. Shellfish lovers will enjoy low tide harvesting during clam and oyster season, which make it a popular site for locals.
- The St. Croix Log Boom used a series of booms—logs chained end-to-end across the river—to catch timber as it floated downstream.
- On March 14, 1896, the Sutro Baths were opened to the public as the world’s largest indoor swimming pool establishment.
- From June 3, 1928 until 1950 a ferry service ran between Titlow Beach, Pt Fosdick and Fox Island.
- Much of the spit is accessible by car on the Ediz Hook Road (1.5 to 2 miles), which passes several turnouts and picnic areas, with broad views of Port Angeles and the Olympic Mountains, notably the peaks of Mount Angeles and Klahhane Ridge.
- The Minnesota Commercial Railway (reporting mark MNNR) is a short line railroad in the United States.
- It is based out of a roundhouse on Cleveland Ave. in St. Paul just blocks south of the former Amtrak station and its main yard is just to the north of the station.
- The line was formerly known as the Minnesota Transfer Railroad. It was privately owned by the major railroads serving the Twin Cities area.
- The Minnesota Transfer Railway (reporting mark MTFR) was a short line railroad in the United States. It was incorporated on March 22, 1883.
- The Minnesota Transfer Railway acquired the Minnesota Belt Line Railway in 1898.
- The belt line ran 14 miles from the Northern Pacific and Great Northern tracks in Fridley, called Belt Line Junction, to the Minneapolis stock yards in New Brighton.
- The region is one of the regions where agriculture was independently discovered, and from the Middle East it was spread, during the Neolithic, to different regions of the world such as Europe, the Indus Valley and Eastern Africa.
- Rattlesnake Ledge is a rock outcropping and viewpoint 1160 feet above Rattlesnake Lake.
- People have driven normally cars to the top like we have in years past but the road has started to deteriorate and now you will want something higher clearance such as a Subaru or truck to get up to the top near the radio towers.
- It’s a rough road, so a four-wheel-drive vehicle is recommended. Keep in mind that the road is not maintained and the conditions can vary based on the weather.
- The Columbia begins its 1,243-mile (2,000 km) journey in the southern Rocky Mountain Trench in British Columbia (BC).
- The periodic rupturing of ice dams at Glacial Lake Missoula resulted in the Missoula Floods, with discharges exceeding the combined flow of all the other rivers in the world, dozens of times over thousands of years.
- It [Minnesota River] flows southeast to Mankato, then turns northeast.
- It [Minnesota River] joins the Mississippi at Mendota south of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, near the historic Fort Snelling.
- The North Fork Nooksack River rises at the Nooksack Cirque east of Mount Shuksan within the western part of North Cascades National Park in central Whatcom County.
- At Nooksack Falls, the river flows through a narrow valley and drops freely 88 feet (27 m) into a deep rocky river canyon. The falls are viewable from the forested cover near the cliff edge.
- The presence of older glacial deposits within the St. Croix River basin proves that the Laurentide Ice Sheet has repeatedly glaciated this region during the Pleistocene Epoch.
- About 500 million years ago, a shallow sea covered the area, laying down layers of sand and minerals that make up much of the sandstone bluffs now seen along the river.
- The Skagit River was highly influenced by the repeated advance and retreat of the Puget Lobe of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet.
- By far the most famous waterfall in Washington, receiving over 1 million visitors every year, is the 268-foot (82 m) high Snoqualmie Falls.
- The North Fork [Stillaguamish] rises as several branches in a remote area of Skagit County near Finney Peak, approximately 10 miles (16 km) north of Darrington.
- The South Fork (30 miles (48 km)) originates from the northern slopes of Del Campo Peak and Morning Star Peak in central Snohomish County, 20 miles (32 km) south of Darrington, and flows west and northwest by Silverton, Verlot, and Granite Falls.
- It [Whetstone River] enters the Minnesota River at Ortonville, Minnesota, about 0.25 mi (0.4 km) after crossing the state line and just downstream of the Minnesota’s emergence from Big Stone Lake.
- While living under a bridge on the river after dropping out of high school and being kicked out of the family home, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain wrote the song “Something in the Way” about the experience. According to biographer Charles R. Cross, however, this was largely a myth created by Cobain.
- The freeway crosses the Sammamish River and turns east, passing to the south of the Redmond Town Center mall and Bear Creek and to the north of Marymoor Park.
- The Mount Baker Highway was constructed by Whatcom County in 1893 as a wagon road traveling northeast from Bellingham along the Nooksack River through Deming and Kendall to Maple Falls.
- SR 542 begins as Sunset Drive and the Mount Baker Highway at a partial cloverleaf interchange with I-5 to the northeast of downtown Bellingham.
- Flying Fish, 1999, Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Concourse B. 300+ life-size cast bronze fish representing over 50 different freshwater and anadromous species, swim along a “stream” of colored glass and mother-of-pearl in the terrazzo floor of an 850’ long concourse.
- The Salish Sea sits within the Georgia Depression, a large depression that formed out of the collision of continental plates about 150 million years ago.
- Since August 20, 2007, at least 20 detached human feet have been found on the coasts of the Salish Sea. The first discovery, on August 20, 2007, was on Jedediah Island in British Columbia.
- At the top, there are two observation decks, which offer a commanding view of the downtown Dubuque area.
- To access the collecting area, simply park off the side of the road so as not to block traffic and walk around the gate. Be sure that have a valid Discover Pass prominently displayed or you may be ticketed.
- The Bering Strait has been the subject of the scientific theory that humans migrated from Asia to North America across a land bridge known as Beringia when lower ocean levels – a result of glaciers locking up vast amounts of water – exposed a wide stretch of the sea floor, both at the present strait and in the shallow sea north and south of it.
- Humpback whales can be observed near the western end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, mostly from June to November, especially in areas near Neah Bay and La Push.
- There is a resident (non-nomadic) population of killer whale in the Strait and surrounding waters, where they feed on spawning Chinook salmon.
- The original inhabitants of New South Wales were the Aboriginal tribes who arrived in Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.
- Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge.
- The center star signifies copper production; Arizona produces more copper than any other state in the US.
- Much of Louisiana’s lands were formed from sediment washed down the Mississippi River, leaving enormous deltas and vast areas of coastal marsh and swamp.
- The flag of Louisiana consists of a rectangular field of blue with the arms of Louisiana, a pelican vulning herself, in white in the center, with a ribbon beneath, also in white, containing in blue the state motto: “Union Justice Confidence”
- On May 25, 2006, a law was enacted requiring the flag to include “an appropriate display of three drops of blood” on the pelican’s breast
- The official flag of Louisiana shall be that flag now in general use, consisting of a solid blue field with the coat-of-arms of the state, the pelican tearing its breast to feed its young, in white in the center, with a ribbon beneath, also in white, containing in blue the motto of the state, “Union, Justice and Confidence”, the whole showing as below. The design of the flag depicting the pelican tearing at its breast to feed its young shall include an appropriate display of three drops of blood.
- It is the only landlocked state in New England, and it is the easternmost and the smallest in area of all landlocked states.
- West Virginia is located entirely within the Appalachian Region, and the state is almost entirely mountainous, giving the reason for the nickname The Mountain State and the motto Montani Semper Liberi (“Mountaineers are always free”).
- Between 60 million years ago and 10 million years ago, the Somali Plate began rifting from the African Plate along the East African Rift.
- On December 26, 2004, a large portion of the boundary between the Burma Plate and the Indian Plate slipped, causing the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
- The remains of the Farallon Plate are the Explorer, Gorda, and Juan de Fuca plates, subducting under the northern part of the North American Plate; the Cocos Plate subducting under Central America; and the Nazca Plate subducting under the South American Plate.
- The last megathrust earthquake at the Cascadia subduction zone was the 1700 Cascadia earthquake, estimated to have a moment magnitude of 8.7 to 9.2.
- The Juan de Fuca Plate system has its origins with Panthalassa’s oceanic basin and crust.
- On its western edge, the Farallon Plate has been subducting under the North American Plate since the Jurassic Period.
- For the most part, the North American Plate moves in roughly a southwest direction away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at a rate of about 2.3 centimeters (~1 inch) per year. At the same time, the Pacific Plate is moving to the northwest at a speed of between 7 and 11 centimeters (~3-4 inches) a year.
- The [Pacific] plate first came into existence as a microplate 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Izanagi Plates.
- The Sunda Plate was formerly considered a part of the Eurasian Plate, but the GPS measurements have confirmed its independent movement at 10 mm/yr eastward relative to Eurasia.
- Butte Creek is a historically significant site in Pacific County that was part of the original Butte Creek Homestead of Marion and Sarah Ann Monohon. The area was renovated and reopened in 2019 and offered visitors a .8-mile loop trail, seven picnic sites with new tables and regraded roadways and paths.
- There are no water sources, so bring your own.
- Once through, you will find a few picnic tables, a pit toilet, a garbage can and some nice views of the neighboring Cascade Mountains along the I-90 corridor. If it’s a clear day try and find the lookout on top of Granite Mountain!
- The tunnel was constructed from 1912 to 1914 by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (“The Milwaukee Road”) as part of its line from Chicago to Seattle
- Helpful notes to newcomers: there is no water, so it is a good idea to bring your own to wash off the rocks…if the gate is open I would suggest bringing a bucket of water with you. the dirt is a sticky red mud. bring shovels too.
- On the morning of September 7, 1971, while being constructed, the tower suddenly collapsed – “bent like spaghetti,” according to eyewitnesses.
- There is only one town, however, with three towers that are each roughly the same height as the IDS tower stacked on top of the Wells Fargo Center, and that town is Shoreview.
- The three aerial FM radio and television towers are just north along I-694 in Shoreview, the suburb just north of Arden Hills and Roseville on the St. Paul side of the Twin Cities. Telefarm Towers are the pair to the west, and KMSP Tower is to the east.
- You can see them from miles away, slowly materializing out of the ozone when you travel toward them on I-35W or 694 on a clear day, and the red safety lights pulsing through clouds or fog or the night sky.
- KMSP sits right in the middle of a county park, and, in fact, one set of guy wires that hold it aloft terminate on a jetty in the middle of a marshy lake.
- the surrounding area around KMSP is the more pleasant (or at least pedestrian-friendly), situated as it is within the boundaries of Vadnais-Snail Lakes Regional Park
- His brother did not fall from the tower tied off to a piece of steel and was not cut in two. “That is not so,” he said. The workers were not tied to the structure while working, Barnard said. He did see his brother fall, but he was not cut in two.
- Barnard keeps photos of the broken welds on the collapsed tower — they are a reminder to him that he thinks the collapse of the tower was not the fault of the workers or the company he worked for, National Steel Erectors out of Oklahoma.
- “That was welded in Columbus, Ohio and sent to us in boxcars,” he said. “The welds were no good. It pulled apart.”
- The tower was also a unique type of construction holding three vertical antennas on a triangular base 1,300 feet off the ground.
- The project was supervised by a company located in Oklahoma. “Safety concerns were raised during the installation and were many times rebuffed by the Oklahoma supervisors,” stated the failure analysis.
- When the tower fell, a brother of a victim was working below and watched his brother falling, cut in two and still fastened with a safety belt to a piece of steel.
- The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry later determined faulty welding was the cause of the collapse, according to an Oct. 18, 1993, Pioneer Press article.
- The [Telefarm] towers were built in the 1970s for analog television, and were replacements for a single “candelabra” style tower that collapsed prior to completion in 1971, killing six workers on the tower and one on the ground.
- The falls occur as Denny Creek emerges from a narrow canyon, spreading across a broad granite shelf and cascading 29 feet in undulating sheets of water. At the base of the cascade the creek veils out further, sometimes splitting into as many as three distinct channels, and plunging 142 feet into a narrower and deeper section of the canyon than above.
- According to Article II, Section 2, Clause I of the Constitution, the president of the United States is “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
- Pence declared President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris victorious.
- A week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection
- In February, after Trump had left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction, but fell short of the required two-thirds, resulting in his acquittal.
- Senate Republicans blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack […]
- […] so the House instead approved a select investigation committee consisting of seven Democrats and two Republicans.
- They held nine televised public hearings on the attack in 2022, voted to subpoena Trump, and recommended that the Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecute Trump.
- On August 1, 2023, following a special counsel investigation, Trump was indicted on four charges.
- On February 8, 2024, the Justice Department released the report by special counsel Hur, which concluded that the “evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt”, so “no criminal charges are warranted in this matter”.
- The 2016 presidential election saw a wave of populist sentiment in the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, with both candidates running on anti-establishment platforms in the Democratic and Republican parties, respectively.
- Defendant DONALD J. TRUMP was the forty-fifth President of the United States of America. He held office from January 20, 2017, until January 20, 2021. As president, TRUMP had lawful access to the most sensitive classified documents and national defense information. gathered and owned by the United States government, including information from the agencies that comprise the United States Intelligence Community and the United States Department of Defense.
- The Mar-a-Lago Club was located on South Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach, Florida, and included TRUMP’s residence, more than 25 guest rooms, two ballrooms, a spa, a gift store, exercise facilities, office space, and an outdoor pool and patio. As of January 2021, The Mar-a-Lago Club had hundreds of members and was staffed by more than 150 full-time, part-time, and temporary employees.
- Between January 2021 and August 2022, The Mar-a-Lago Club hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, movie premieres, and fundraisers that together drew tens of thousands of guests.
- The United States Secret Service (the “Secret Service”) provided protection services to TRUMP and his family after he left office, including at The Mar-a-Lago Club, but it was not responsible for the protection of TRUMP’s boxes or their contents. TRUMP did not inform the Secret Service that he was storing boxes containing classified documents at The Mar-a-Lago Club.
- a. Information was classified as TOP SECRET if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
- b. Information was classified as SECRET if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
- c. Information was classified as CONFIDENTIAL if the unauthorized disclosure of that information reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority was able to identify or describe.
- National security information was information owned by, produced by, produced for, and under the control of the United States government. Pursuant to Executive Order 12958, signed on April 17, 1995, as amended by Executive Order 13292 on March 25, 2003, and Executive Order 13526 on December 29, 2009, national security information was classified as “TOP SECRET,” “SECRET,” or “CONFIDENTIAL,” as follows:
- The classification marking “NOFORN” stood for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals” and denoted that dissemination of that information was limited to United States persons.
- Classified information related to intelligence sources, methods, and analytical processes was designated as Sensitive Compartmented Information (“SCI”). SCI was to be processed, stored, used, or discussed in an accredited Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (“SCIF”), and only individuals with the appropriate security clearance and additional SCI permissions were authorized to have access to such national security information.
- When the vulnerability of, or threat to, specific classified information was exceptional, and the normal criteria for determining eligibility for access to classified information were insufficient to protect the information from unauthorized disclosure, the United States could establish Special Access Programs (“SAPs”) to further protect the classified information. The number of these programs was to be kept to an absolute minimum and limited to programs in which the number of persons who ordinarily would have access would be reasonably small and commensurate with the objective of providing enhanced protection for the information involved. Only individuals with the appropriate security clearance and additional SAP permissions were authorized to have access to such national security information, which was subject to enhanced handling and storage requirements.
- Pursuant to Executive Order 13526, information classified at any level could be lawfully accessed only by persons determined by an appropriate United States government official to be eligible for access to classified information and who had signed an approved non-disclosure agreement, who received a security clearance, and who had a “need-to-know” the classified information. After his presidency, TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain classified documents.
- Over the course of his presidency, TRUMP gathered newspapers, press clippings, letters, notes, cards, photographs, official documents, and other materials in cardboard boxes that he kept in the White House. Among the materials TRUMP stored in his boxes were hundreds of classified documents.
- The classified documents TRUMP stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods.
- At 12:00 p.m. on January 20, 2021, TRUMP ceased to be president. As he departed the White House, TRUMP caused scores of boxes, many of which contained classified documents, to be transported to The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, where he maintained his residence. TRUMP was not authorized to possess or retain those classified documents.
- The Mar-a-Lago Club was an active social club, which, between January 2021 and August 2022, hosted events for tens of thousands of members and guests. After TRUMP’s presidency, The Mar-a-Lago Club was not an authorized location for the storage, possession, review, display, or discussion of classified documents. Nevertheless, TRUMP stored his boxes containing classified documents in various locations at The Mar-a-Lago Club—including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room.
- a. In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey (“The Bedminster Club”), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a “plan of attack” that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was “highly confidential” and “secret.” TRUMP also said, “as president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”
- b. In August or September 2021, at The Bedminster Club, TRUMP showed a representative of his political action committee who did not possess a security clearance a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.
- On two occasions in 2021, TRUMP showed classified documents to others, as follows:
- a. suggesting that his attorney falsely represent to the FBI and grand jury that TRUMP did not have documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;
- b. directing defendant WALTINE NAUTA to move boxes of documents to conceal them from TRUMP’s attorney, the FBI, and the grand jury;
- c. suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents called for by the grand jury subpoena;
- d. providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully; and
- d. providing to the FBI and grand jury just some of the documents called for by the grand jury subpoena, while claiming that he was cooperating fully; and
- e. causing a certification to be submitted to the FBI and grand jury falsely representing that all documents called for by the grand jury subpoena had been produced—while knowing that, in fact, not all such documents had been produced.
- On March 30, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) opened a criminal investigation into the unlawful retention of classified documents at The Mar-a-Lago Club. A federal grand jury investigation began the next month. The grand jury issued a subpoena requiring TRUMP to turn over all documents with classification markings. TRUMP endeavored to obstruct the FBI and grand jury investigations and conceal his continued retention of classified documents by, among other things:
- a. On January 17, nearly one year after TRUMP left office, and after months of demands by the National Archives and Records Administration for TRUMP to provide all missing presidential records, TRUMP provided only 15 boxes, which contained 197 documents with classification markings.
- b. On June 3, in response to a grand jury subpoena demanding the production of all documents with classification markings, TRUMP’s attorney provided to the FBI 38 more documents with classification markings.
- c. On August 8, pursuant to a court-authorized search warrant, the FBI recovered from TRUMP’s office and a storage room at The Mar-a-Lago Club 102 more documents with classification markings.
- As a result of TRUMP’s retention of classified documents after his presidency and refusal to return them, hundreds of classified documents were not recovered by the United States government until 2022, as follows:
- Defendant NAUTA was a member of the United States Navy stationed as a valet in the White House during TRUMP’s presidency. Beginning in August 2021, NAUTA became an executive assistant in The Office of Donald J. Trump and served as TRUMP’s personal aide or “body man.” NAUTA reported to TRUMP, worked closely with TRUMP, and traveled with TRUMP.
- Although the Book of Genesis does not mention him, Christians often identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan.
- People are free to leave Buddhism and renounce the religion without any consequence enacted by the Buddhist community.
- In general Hinduism is more tolerant to apostasy than other faiths based on a scripture or commandments with a lower emphasis on orthodoxy and has a more open view on how a person chooses their faith.
- A person is considered apostate if he or she converts from Islam to another religion. A person is an apostate even if he or she believes in most of Islam, but denies one or more of its principles or precepts, both verbally or in writing.
- Jehovah’s Witness publications define apostasy as the abandonment of the worship and service of God, constituting rebellion against God, or rejecting “Jehovah’s organization”.
- Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) are considered by church leadership to engage in apostasy when they publicly teach or espouse opinions and doctrines contrary to the teachings of the church, or act in clear and deliberate public opposition to the LDS Church, its doctrines and policies, or its leaders.
- Used without qualification, “bardo” is the state of existence intermediate between two lives on earth.
- Indeed, one can consider any momentary state of consciousness a bardo, since it lies between our past and future existences; it provides us with the opportunity to experience reality, which is always present but obscured by the projections and confusions that are due to our previous unskillful actions.
- The Tibetan text describes, and is intended to guide one through, the experiences that the consciousness has after death, in the bardo, the interval between death and the next rebirth.
- Screenwriter and film producer Bruce Joel Rubin, who once lived in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, considers his 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder a modern interpretation of the Bardo Thodol.
- Isaiah seems always to have had a prominent place in Hebrew Bible use, and it is probable that Jesus himself was deeply influenced by Isaiah.
- An early Christian tradition deriving from Papias of Hierapolis (c.60–c.130 AD) attributes authorship of the gospel to Mark, a companion and interpreter of Peter, but most scholars believe that it was written anonymously, and that the name of Mark was attached later to link it to an authoritative figure.
- It is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, which scholars interpret as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD)—a war that led to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. This would place the composition of Mark either immediately after the destruction or during the years immediately prior.
- There is nothing in Genesis 3:15 or the surrounding context to indicate the sin of the garden involved sexual relations between Eve and the serpent.
- Branham accused Eve of producing a “hybrid” race, and he provided a way to trace the hybrid line of the Serpent’s Seed to Africans and Jews through Ham the biblical progenitor of the African peoples, King Ahab, Judas Iscariot, Roman Catholics, and the future Antichrist.
- Billy Graham used the phrase “synagogue of Satan” to refer to the Jews in a private 1973 White House conversation with President Richard Nixon. When tapes of the conversation were released many years later, Graham apologized for what were deemed by many to be antisemitic remarks.
- Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier prophets and messengers, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.
- Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God and the unaltered, final revelation.
- Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous revelations, such as the Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Injil (Gospel).
- They believe that Muhammad is the main and final Islamic prophet, through whom the religion was completed.
- The teachings and normative examples of Muhammad, called the sunnah, documented in accounts called the hadith, provide a constitutional model for Muslims.
- Islam teaches that God (Allah) is one and incomparable.
- It states that there will be a “Final Judgment” wherein the righteous will be rewarded in paradise (jannah) and the unrighteous will be punished in hell (jahannam).
- The Five Pillars—considered obligatory acts of worship—comprise the Islamic oath and creed (shahada); daily prayers (salah); almsgiving (zakat); fasting (sawm) in the month of Ramadan; and a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca.
- Islamic law, sharia, touches on virtually every aspect of life, from banking and finance and welfare to men’s and women’s roles and the environment.
- The religion of Islam originated in Mecca about 610 CE.
- The main temple to Enki was called E-abzu, meaning “abzu temple” (also E-en-gur-a, meaning “house of the subterranean waters”), a ziggurat temple surrounded by Euphratean marshlands near the ancient Persian Gulf coastline at Eridu.
- The pilcrow may be used at the start of separate paragraphs or to designate a new paragraph in one long piece of copy
- The pilcrow was a type of rubrication used in the Middle Ages to mark a new train of thought, before the convention of visually discrete paragraphs was commonplace.
- SpongeBob SquarePants is an energetic and optimistic yellow sea sponge who lives in a submerged pineapple.
- On 22 March 2024, The Islamic State – Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the 2024 Crocus City Hall attack through the Amaq news agency, U.S. officials confirmed the claim shortly after.
- On 7 March 2024, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) announced that it had neutralized a terrorist cell linked to IS in Moscow, which had intended to attack a synagogue in the city.
- On 19 March, Putin said the U.S. embassy’s warning “resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”
- At around 20:00 MSK (UTC+3), before the band began their performance, masked gunmen in combat fatigues opened fire on the crowd using AK-74-style assault rifles.
- The Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS–KP), a South-Central Asia-based regional affiliate of the Islamic State, claimed responsibility in a statement through the Amaq News Agency shortly after the attack.
- The Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attack on the Crocus City Hall on the outskirts of Moscow. The full statement posted on its Telegram account reads: Islamic State fighters attacked a large gathering of Christians in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of the Russian capital, Moscow, killing and wounding hundreds and causing great destruction to the place before they withdrew to their bases safely.
- U.S. officials said they had privately told Russian officials about the intelligence pointing to an impending attack. It is not clear how much information the United States gave Russian officials beyond what was in the public warning.
- Russia has charged four suspects it says carried out the attack in a Moscow concert hall that killed at least 137 people.
- The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on the morning of 24 February 2022, when Putin announced a “special military operation” to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine.
- UBL: The brothers, who conducted the operation, all they knew was that they have a martyrdom operation and we asked each of them to go to America but they didn’t know anything about the operation, not even one letter. But they were trained and we did not reveal the operation to them until they are there and just before they boarded the planes.
- WWUS74 KLIX 281550 NPWLIX
- URGENT — WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA 1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28, 2005
- …DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED…
- HURRICANE KATRINA…A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH… RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.
- MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
- THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
- HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
- AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
- POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
- THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.
- AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE…OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE…ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.
- ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET…DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!
- Katrina began on August 23, 2005, with the merger of a tropical wave and the remnants of Tropical Depression Ten.
- The National Weather Service’s New Orleans/Baton Rouge office issued a vividly worded bulletin on August 28 predicting that the area would be “uninhabitable for weeks” after “devastating damage” caused by Katrina, which at that time rivaled the intensity of Hurricane Camille.
- A bull’s head became the basis for the alef sign (our A) because the early West Semitic word for bull ˀalpu begins with an alef sound.
- A house is the basis for the bêt (our B) sign because the early West Semitic word for house was baytu.
- It is popularly suggested that cockroaches will “inherit the earth” if humanity destroys itself in a nuclear war. While cockroaches do, indeed, have a much higher radiation resistance than vertebrates, with a lethal dose perhaps six to 15 times that for humans, they are not exceptionally radiation-resistant compared to other insects, such as the fruit fly.
- By transmitting diseases, mosquitoes cause the deaths of over 725,000 people each year.
- Mosquitoes prefer to feed on people with type O blood, an abundance of skin bacteria, high body heat, and pregnant women.
- In ancient Rome, peafowl were served as a delicacy. The dish was introduced there in approximately 35 B.C.
- The word “virgin” indicates that the olives have been pressed to extract the oil; no heat or chemicals have been used during the extraction process, and the oil is pure and unrefined.
- First cold pressed means “that the fruit of the olive was crushed exactly one time – i.e., the first press. The cold refers to the temperature range of the fruit at the time it is crushed”.
- Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalí would intentionally use pareidolia in their works, often in the form of a hidden face.
- A seasoned surface is hydrophobic and highly attractive to oils and fats used for cooking. These form a layer that prevents foods, which typically contain water, from touching and cooking onto the hydrophilic metallic cooking surface underneath. These properties are useful when frying, roasting and baking.
- The track was performed live for the first time during Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton Men’s Autumn/Winter 2024 runway show at Paris Fashion Week today (January 16). The band was be joined by the iconic producer and The Native Vocalists in a special short live set for all in attendance.
- The action of consecration – which means to make holy – isn’t done by the participants of the ceremony. It is done by those who gave the ultimate sacrifice at Gettysburg, and they had done it for us, the generations of Americans who stood there on Cemetery Hill, as well as those who were not yet born.
- Todd published the memoir under the pseudonym Jamal T. Millwood, a reference to a conspiracy theory that Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder was faked and he is living under that alias.
- Todd says he believes the memoir is real, but when pressed on who the sources are or how he could guarantee they had legitimate writings from Porter, Todd declines to give specifics on how he fact-checked or verified the material.
- Todd — real name Todd Christopher Guzze, according to records — is behind the book. He describes himself as a producer, author and investigative journalist, and claims to have worked on and solved some of pop culture’s biggest murder investigations, including Nicole Brown Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey, and the Zodiac killer, among others. He also claims to have evidence that Kurt Cobain’s suicide was actually a murder.
- Albuquerque uses the Zia sun symbol from the New Mexico state flag, but with the colors reversed: the sun is yellow on a crimson field.
- The sun symbol of the Native American Zia Pueblo has four arms signifying the importance of the number four in their spiritual beliefs: four figures in the four cardinal directions, the four seasons, the four aspects of the day (sunrise, noon, sunset, and night), and the four stages of life (childhood, youth, adulthood, and old age).
- In the lower part of the seal appears, in three lines, BOSTONIA/CONDITA A.D. / 1630. (“Boston Founded AD. 1630”). On a ring of “continental buff” surrounding the seal is SICUT PATRIBUS SIT DEUS NOBIS (“God be with us as He was with our fathers”) at the top, and CIVITATIS REGIMINE DONATA AD. 1822. (“Presented with the government of a body politic in the year of Our Lord 1822”), at the bottom, all in blue.
- The motto “God be with us as He was with our fathers” comes from 1 Kings, 8:57
- This visit reinforced that the Biden Administration’s erosion of U.S. deterrence globally and its failed policies vis- à-vis Iran have opened America up to a regional war in the Middle East with devastating consequences for our ally Israel. This trip also affirmed the need to restore the America First approach to national security and support Israel in its war of survival.
- Israel will not accept a long-term ceasefire proposal pushed on them by the international community, nor will Israel accept the imposition of a Palestinian state by the international community.
- Johnson endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign for president, and Trump has endorsed Johnson. Johnson and Trump are considered close allies, having worked closely together since 2017.
- Johnson was sworn into office as a member of Congress on January 3, 2017.
- A shared aversion to Ramzan Kadyrov is one of the few things that self-styled “pro-war patriots” and Kremlin critics have in common, the underlying cause of which is the brazenness with which Kadyrov and his cronies flaunt the impunity they have been granted by the Kremlin in exchange for keeping Chechnya in line
- Putin offered impunity to his new Chechen allies who, back then, were represented by Ramzan’s father, Akhmad, effectively giving them free rein to murder Chechen militants who fought against Russian rule, and, more importantly, to crack down on anyone who supported the Chechen underground or even the idea of Chechen independence.
- The newspaper was controlled by Tony O’Reilly’s Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010.
- Singer-songwriter whose 2023–2024 Eras Tour became the highest-grossing concert tour of all time. The tour had a significant cultural and economic impact in 2023. Time described Swift as the first Person of the Year to be recognized for their “achievement in the arts”. Swift was also part of the 2017 Person of the Year, called the “Silence Breakers”. She was noted by the magazine as the first woman to be recognized more than once and the first woman to appear twice on a Person of the Year cover.
- At a rally in Ohio March 16, 2024, Trump again read “The Snake,” calling it “a very accurate metaphor, and it’s about our border, it’s about the people we have coming in, and don’t be surprised when bad things happen, because bad things will happen.”
- The song is perhaps best known for its opening lines: “Timothy Leary’s dead / No, n-n-no he’s outside looking in”, which allude to Leary’s use of eastern mysticism (most notably The Tibetan Book of the Dead) to frame the psychedelic experience.
- “Legend of a Mind” is one of the Moody Blues’ longer songs, lasting about six and a half minutes, with a two-minute flute solo by Ray Thomas, in the middle.
- If this Discourse appear too long to be read at once, it may be divided into six parts: and, in the first, will be found various considerations touching the Sciences; in the second, the principal rules of the Method which the Author has discovered; in the third, certain of the rules of Morals which he has deduced from this Method; in the fourth, the reasonings by which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human Soul, which are the foundations of his Metaphysic; in the fifth, the order of the Physical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the explication of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties pertaining to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes; and, in the last, what the Author believes to be required in order to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet been made, with the reasons that have induced him to write.
- Good Sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.
- And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging aright and of distinguishing Truth from Error, which is properly what is called Good Sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men; and that the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of Reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects.
- For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it.
- The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.
- I was especially delighted with the Mathematics, on account of the certitude and evidence of their reasonings: but I had not as yet a precise knowledge of their true use; and thinking that they but contributed to the advancement of the mechanical arts, I was astonished that foundations, so strong and solid, should have had no loftier superstructure reared on them.
- On the other hand, I compared the disquisitions of the ancient Moralists to very towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud: they laud the virtues very highly, and exhibit them as estimable far above anything on earth; but they give us no adequate criterion of virtue, and frequently that which they designate with so fine a name is but apathy, or pride, or despair, or parricide.
- I revered our Theology, and aspired as much as any one to reach heaven: but being given assuredly to understand that the way is not less open to the most ignorant than to the most learned, and that the revealed truths which lead to heaven are above our comprehension, I did not presume to subject them to the impotency of my Reason; and I thought that in order competently to undertake their examination, there was need of some special help from heaven, and of being more than man.
- Of Philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for many ages by the most distinguished men, and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is not still in dispute, and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others; and further, when I considered the number of conflicting opinions touching a single matter that may be upheld by learned men, while there can be but one true, I reckoned as well-nigh false all that was only probable.
- As to the other Sciences, inasmuch as these borrow their principles from Philosophy, I judged that no solid superstructures could be reared on foundations so infirm; and neither the honour nor the gain held out by them was sufficient to determine me to their cultivation for I was not, thank Heaven, in a condition which compelled me to make merchandise of Science for the bettering of my fortune; and though I might not profess to scorn glory as a Cynic, I yet made very slight account of that honour which I hoped to acquire only through fictitious titles.
- And, in fine, of false Sciences I thought I knew the worth sufficiently to escape being deceived by the professions of an alchemist, the predictions of an astrologer, the impostures of a magician, or by the artifices and boasting of any of those who profess to know things of which they are ignorant.
- For these reasons, as soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world.
- I spent the remainder of my youth in travelling, in visiting courts and armies, in holding intercourse with men of different dispositions and ranks, in collecting varied experience, in proving myself in the different situations into which fortune threw me, and, above all, in making such reflection on the matter of my experience as to secure my improvement.
- For it occurred to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each individual with reference to the affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater ingenuity and art to render them probable.
- In addition, I had always a most earnest desire to know how to distinguish the true from the false, in order that I might be able clearly to discriminate the right path in life, and proceed in it with confidence.
- It is true that, while busied only in considering the manners of other men, I found here, too, scarce any ground for settled conviction, and remarked hardly less contradiction among them than in the opinions of the philosophers.
- So that the greatest advantage I derived from the study consisted in this, that, observing many things which, however extravagant and ridiculous to our apprehension, are yet by common consent received and approved by other great nations, I learned to entertain too decided a belief in regard to nothing of the truth of which I had been persuaded merely by example and custom: and thus I gradually extricated myself from many errors powerful enough to darken our Natural Intelligence, and incapacitate us in great measure from listening to Reason.
- But after I had been occupied several years in thus studying the book of the world, and in essaying to gather some experience, I at length resolved to make myself an object of study, and to employ all the powers of my mind in choosing the paths I ought to follow; an undertaking which was accompanied with greater success than it would have been had I never quitted my country or my books.
- For myself, I have never fancied my mind to be in any respect more perfect than those of the generality; on the contrary, I have often wished that I were equal to some others in promptitude of thought, or in clearness and distinctness of imagination, or in fulness and readiness of memory.
- And besides these, I know of no other qualities that contribute to the perfection of the mind; for as to the Reason or Sense, inasmuch as it is that alone which constitutes us men, and distinguishes us from the brutes, I am disposed to believe that it is to be found complete in each individual; and on this point to adopt the common opinion of philosophers, who say that the difference of greater and less holds only among the accidents, and not among the forms or natures of individuals of the same species.
- I will not hesitate, however, to avow my belief that it has been my singular good fortune to have very early in life fallen in with certain tracks which have conducted me to considerations and maxims, of which I have formed a Method that gives me the means, as I think, of gradually augmenting my knowledge, and of raising it by little and little to the highest point which the mediocrity of my talents and the brief duration of my life will permit me to reach.
- For I have already reaped from it such fruits that, although I have been accustomed to think lowly enough of myself, and although when I look with the eye of a philosopher at the varied courses and pursuits of mankind at large, I find scarcely one which does not appear vain and useless, I nevertheless derive the highest satisfaction from the progress I conceive myself to have already made in the search after truth, and cannot help entertaining such expectations of the future as to believe that if, among the occupations of men as men, there is any one really excellent and important, it is that which I have chosen.
- After all, it is possible I may be mistaken; and it is but a little copper and glass, perhaps, that I take for gold and diamonds.
- I know how very liable we are to delusion in what relates to ourselves, and also how much the judgments of our friends are to be suspected when given in our favour.
- But I shall endeavour in this Discourse to describe the paths I have followed, and to delineate my life as in a picture, in order that each one may be able to judge of them for himself, and that in the general opinion entertained of them, as gathered from current report, I myself may have a new help towards instruction to be added to those I have been in the habit of employing.
- My present design, then, is not to teach the Method which each ought to follow for the right conduct of his Reason, but solely to describe the way in which I have endeavoured to conduct my own.
- They who set themselves to give precepts must of course regard themselves as possessed of greater skill than those to whom they prescribe; and if they err in the slightest particular, they subject themselves to censure.
- But as this Tract is put forth merely as a history, or, if you will, as a tale, in which, amid some examples worthy of imitation, there will be found, perhaps, as many more which it were advisable not to follow, I hope it will prove useful to some without being hurtful to any, and that my openness will find some favour with all.
- From my childhood, I have been familiar with letters; and as I was given to believe that by their help a clear and certain knowledge of all that is useful in life might be acquired, I was ardently desirous of instruction.
- But as soon as I had finished the entire course of study, at the close of which it is customary to be admitted into the order of the learned, I completely changed my opinion.
- For I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther in all my attempts at learning, than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance.
- And yet I was studying in one of the most celebrated Schools in Europe, in which I thought there must be learned men, if such were anywhere to be found. I had been taught all that others learned there; and not contented with the sciences actually taught us, I had, in addition, read all the books that had fallen into my hands, treating of such branches as are esteemed the most curious and rare.
- I knew the judgment which others had formed of me; and I did not find that I was considered inferior to my fellows, although there were among them some who were already marked out to fill the places of our instructors.
- And, in fine, our age appeared to me as flourishing, and as fertile in powerful minds as any preceding one.
- I was thus led to take the liberty of judging of all other men by myself, and of concluding that there was no science in existence that was of such a nature as I had previously been given to believe.
- I still continued, however, to hold in esteem the studies of the Schools.
- I was aware that the Languages taught in them are necessary to the understanding of the writings of the ancients; that the grace of Fable stirs the mind; that the memorable deeds of History elevate it; and, if read with discretion, aid in forming the judgment; that the perusal of all excellent books is, as it were, to interview with the noblest men of past ages, who have written them, and even a studied interview, in which are discovered to us only their choicest thoughts; that Eloquence has incomparable force and beauty; that Poesy has its ravishing graces and delights; that in the Mathematics there are many refined discoveries eminently suited to gratify the inquisitive, as well as further all the arts and lessen the labour of man; that numerous highly useful precepts and exhortations to virtue are contained in treatises on Morals; that Theology points out the path to heaven; that Philosophy affords the means of discoursing with an appearance of truth on all matters, and commands the admiration of the more simple; that Jurisprudence, Medicine, and the other Sciences, secure for their cultivators honours and riches; and, in fine, that it is useful to bestow some attention upon all, even upon those abounding the most in superstition and error, that we may be in a position to determine their real value, and guard against being deceived.
- But I believed that I had already given sufficient time to Languages, and likewise to the reading of the writings of the ancients, to their Histories and Fables.
- For to hold converse with those of other ages and to travel, are almost the same thing.
- It is useful to know something of the manners of different nations, that we may be enabled to form a more correct judgment regarding our own, and be prevented from thinking that everything contrary to our customs is ridiculous and irrational,—a conclusion usually come to by those whose experience has been limited to their own country.
- On the other hand, when too much time is occupied in travelling, we become strangers to our native country; and the over curious in the customs of the past are generally ignorant of those of the present.
- Besides, fictitious narratives lead us to imagine the possibility of many events that are impossible; and even the most faithful histories, if they do not wholly misrepresent matters, or exaggerate their importance to render the account of them more worthy of perusal, omit, at least, almost always the meanest and least striking of the attendant circumstances; hence it happens that the remainder does not represent the truth, and that such as regulate their conduct by examples drawn from this source, are apt to fall into the extravagances of the knight-errants of Romance, and to entertain projects that exceed their powers.
- I esteemed Eloquence highly, and was in raptures with Poesy; but I thought that both were gifts of nature rather than fruits of study.
- Those in whom the faculty of Reason is predominant, and who most skilfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of Rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the Art of Poetry.
- I was then in Germany, attracted thither by the wars in that country, which have not yet been brought to a termination; and as I was returning to the army from the coronation of the Emperor, the setting in of winter arrested me in a locality where, as I found no society to interest me, and was besides fortunately undisturbed by any cares or passions, I remained the whole day in seclusion[^1], with full opportunity to occupy my attention with my own thoughts.
- And because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood, and have been of necessity, for a length of time, governed by our desires and preceptors, (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while neither perhaps always counselled us for the best,) I farther concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct or solid as they would have been, had our Reason been mature from the moment of our birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.
- Of these one of the very first that occurred to me was, that there is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate parts, upon which different hands have been employed, as in those completed by a single master.
- Thus it is observable that the buildings which a single architect has planned and executed, are generally more elegant and commodious than those which several have attempted to improve, by making old walls serve for purposes for which they were not originally built.
- Thus also, those ancient cities which, from being at first only villages, have become, in course of time, large towns, are usually but ill laid out compared with the regularly constructed towns which a professional architect has freely planned on an open plain; so that although the several buildings of the former may often equal or surpass in beauty those of the latter, yet when one observes their indiscriminate juxtaposition, there a large one and here a small, and the consequent crookedness and irregularity of the streets, one is disposed to allege that chance rather than any human will guided by reason, must have led to such an arrangement.
- And if we consider that nevertheless there have been at all times certain officers whose duty it was to see that private buildings contributed to public ornament, the difficulty of reaching high perfection with but the materials of others to operate on, will be readily acknowledged.
- In the same way I fancied that those nations which, starting from a semi-barbarous state and advancing to civilisation by slow degrees, have had their laws successively determined, and, as it were, forced upon them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular crimes and disputes, would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect institutions than those which, from the commencement of their association as communities, have followed the appointments of some wise legislator.
- It is thus quite certain that the constitution of the true religion, the ordinances of which are derived from God, must be incomparably superior to that of every other.
- And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the past pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a single end.
- In the same way I thought that the sciences contained in books, (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations,) composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience.
- And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.
- The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things, to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected in the same way, and that there is nothing so far removed from us as to be beyond our reach, or so hidden that we cannot discover it, provided only we abstain from accepting the false for the true, and always preserve in our thoughts the order necessary for the deduction of one truth from another.
- Now, in conclusion, the Method which teaches adherence to the true order, and an exact enumeration of all the conditions of the thing sought includes all that gives certitude to the rules of Arithmetic.
- And I had little difficulty in determining the objects with which it was necessary to commence, for I was already persuaded that it must be with the simplest and easiest to know, and, considering that of all those who have hitherto sought truth in the Sciences, the mathematicians alone have been able to find any demonstrations, that is, any certain and evident reasons, I did not doubt but that such must have been the rule of their investigations.
- I resolved to commence, therefore, with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth, and to a distaste for all such reasonings as were unsound.
- But I had no intention on that account of attempting to master all the particular Sciences commonly denominated Mathematics: but observing that, however different their objects, they all agree in considering only the various relations or proportions subsisting among those objects, I thought it best for my purpose to consider these proportions in the most general form possible, without referring them to any objects in particular, except such as would most facilitate the knowledge of them, and without by any means restricting them to these, that afterwards I might thus be the better able to apply them to every other class of objects to which they are legitimately applicable.
- Perceiving further, that in order to understand these relations I should sometimes have to consider them one by one, and sometimes only to bear them in mind, or embrace them in the aggregate, I thought that, in order the better to consider them individually, I should view them as subsisting between straight lines, than which I could find no objects more simple, or capable of being more distinctly represented to my imagination and senses; and on the other hand, that in order to retain them in the memory, or embrace an aggregate of many, I should express them by certain characters the briefest possible.
- In this way I believed that I could borrow all that was best both in Geometrical Analysis and in Algebra, and correct all the defects of the one by help of the other.
- And, in point of fact, the accurate observance of these few precepts gave me, I take the liberty of saying, such ease in unravelling all the questions embraced in these two sciences, that in the two or three months I devoted to their examination, not only did I reach solutions of questions I had formerly deemed exceedingly difficult, but even as regards questions of the solution of which I continued ignorant, I was enabled, as it appeared to me, to determine the means whereby, and the extent to which, a solution was possible; results attributable to the circumstance that I commenced with the simplest and most general truths, and that thus each truth discovered was a rule available in the discovery of subsequent ones.
- Nor in this perhaps shall I appear too vain, if it be considered that, as the truth on any particular point is one, whoever apprehends the truth, knows all that on that point can be known.
- The child, for example, who has been instructed in the elements of Arithmetic, and has made a particular addition, according to rule, may be assured that he has found, with respect to the sum of the numbers before him, all that in this instance is within the reach of human genius.
- But the chief ground of my satisfaction with this Method, was the assurance I had of thereby exercising my reason in all matters, if not with absolute perfection, at least with the greatest attainable by me: besides, I was conscious that by its use my mind was becoming gradually habituated to clearer and more distinct conceptions of its objects; and I hoped also, from not having restricted this Method to any particular matter, to apply it to the difficulties of the other Sciences, with not less success than to those of Algebra.
- I should not, however, on this account have ventured at once on the examination of all the difficulties of the Sciences which presented themselves to me, for this would have been contrary to the order prescribed in the Method, but observing that the knowledge of such is dependent on principles borrowed from Philosophy, in which I found nothing certain, I thought it necessary first of all to endeavour to establish its principles.
- And because I observed, besides, that an inquiry of this kind was of all others of the greatest moment, and one in which precipitancy and anticipation in judgment were most to be dreaded, I thought that I ought not to approach it till I had reached a more mature age, (being at that time but twenty-three,) and had first of all employed much of my time in preparation for the work, as well by eradicating from my mind all the erroneous opinions I had up to that moment accepted, as by amassing variety of experience to afford materials for my reasonings, and by continually exercising myself in my chosen Method with a view to increased skill in its application.
- It is true, however, that it is not customary to pull down all the houses of a town with the single design of rebuilding them differently, and thereby rendering the streets more handsome; but it often happens that a private individual takes down his own with the view of erecting it anew, and that people are even sometimes constrained to this when their houses are in danger of falling from age, or when the foundations are insecure.
- With this before me by way of example, I was persuaded that it would indeed be preposterous for a private individual to think of reforming a state by fundamentally changing it throughout, and overturning it in order to set it up amended; and the same I thought was true of any similar project for reforming the body of the Sciences, or the order of teaching them established in the Schools: but as for the opinions which up to that time I had embraced, I thought that I could not do better than resolve at once to sweep them wholly away, that I might afterwards be in a position to admit either others more correct, or even perhaps the same when they had undergone the scrutiny of Reason.
- I firmly believed that in this way I should much better succeed in the conduct of my life, than if I built only upon old foundations, and leant upon principles which, in my youth, I had taken upon trust.
- For although I recognised various difficulties in this undertaking, these were not, however, without remedy, nor once to be compared with such as attend the slightest reformation in public affairs.
- Large bodies, if once overthrown, are with great difficulty set up again, or even kept erect when once seriously shaken, and the fall of such is always disastrous.
- Then if there are any imperfections in the constitutions of states, (and that many such exist the diversity of constitutions is alone sufficient to assure us,) custom has without doubt materially smoothed their inconveniencies, and has even managed to steer altogether clear of, or insensibly corrected a number which sagacity could not have provided against with equal effect; and, in fine, the defects are almost always more tolerable than the change necessary for their removal; in the same manner that highways which wind among mountains, by being much frequented, become gradually so smooth and commodious, that it is much better to follow them than to seek a straighter path by climbing over the tops of rocks and descending to the bottoms of precipices.
- Hence it is that I cannot in any degree approve of those restless and busy meddlers who, called neither by birth nor fortune to take part in the management of public affairs, are yet always projecting reforms; and if I thought that this Tract contained aught which might justify the suspicion that I was a victim of such folly, I would by no means permit its publication.
- I have never contemplated anything higher than the reformation of my own opinions, and basing them on a foundation wholly my own.
- And although my own satisfaction with my work has led me to present here a draft of it, I do not by any means therefore recommend to every one else to make a similar attempt.
- Those whom God has endowed with a larger measure of genius will entertain, perhaps, designs still more exalted; but for the many I am much afraid lest even the present undertaking be more than they can safely venture to imitate.
- The single design to strip one’s self of all past beliefs is one that ought not to be taken by every one.
- The majority of men is composed of two classes, for neither of which would this be at all a befitting resolution: in the first place, of those who with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in their judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and circumspect thinking; whence it happens, that if men of this class once take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the beaten highway, they will never be able to thread the byeway that would lead them by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and continue to wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own Reason.
- For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men of the greatest learning.
- But I had become aware, even so early as during my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been maintained by some one of the philosophers; and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not on that account barbarians and savages, but on the contrary that many of these nations make an equally good, if not a better, use of their Reason than we do.
- I took into account also the very different character which a person brought up from infancy in France or Germany exhibits, from that which, with the same mind originally, this individual would have possessed had he lived always among the Chinese or with savages, and the circumstance that in dress itself the fashion which pleased us ten years ago, and which may again, perhaps, be received into favour before ten years have gone, appears to us at this moment extravagant and ridiculous.
- I was thus led to infer that the ground of our opinions is far more custom and example than any certain knowledge.
- And, finally, although such be the ground of our opinions, I remarked that a plurality of suffrages is no guarantee of truth where it is at all of difficult discovery, as in such cases it is much more likely that it will be found by one than by many.
- I could, however, select from the crowd no one whose opinions seemed worthy of preference, and thus I found myself constrained, as it were, to use my own Reason in the conduct of my life.
- But like one walking alone and in the dark, I resolved to proceed so slowly and with such circumspection, that if I did not advance far, I would at least guard against falling.
- I did not even choose to dismiss summarily any of the opinions that had crept into my belief without having been introduced by Reason, but first of all took sufficient time carefully to satisfy myself of the general nature of the task I was setting myself, and ascertain the true Method by which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay within the compass of my powers.
- Among the branches of Philosophy, I had, at an earlier period, given some attention to Logic, and among those of the Mathematics to Geometrical Analysis and Algebra,—three Arts or Sciences which ought, as I conceived, to contribute something to my design.
- But, on examination, I found that, as for Logic, its syllogisms and the majority of its other precepts are of avail rather in the communication of what we already know, or even as the Art of Lully, in speaking without judgment of things of which we are ignorant, than in the investigation of the unknown; and although this Science contains indeed a number of correct and very excellent precepts, there are, nevertheless, so many others, and these either injurious or superfluous, mingled with the former, that it is almost quite as difficult to effect a severance of the true from the false as it is to extract a Diana or a Minerva from a rough block of marble.
- Then as to the Analysis of the ancients and the Algebra of the moderns, besides that they embrace only matters highly abstract, and, to appearance, of no use, the former is so exclusively restricted to the consideration of figures, that it can exercise the Understanding only on condition of greatly fatiguing the Imagination;[^1] and, in the latter, there is so complete a subjection to certain rules and formulas, that there results an art full of confusion and obscurity calculated to embarrass, instead of a science fitted to cultivate the mind.
- By these considerations I was induced to seek some other Method which would comprise the advantages of the three and be exempt from their defects.
- And as a multitude of laws often only hampers justice, so that a state is best governed when, with few laws, these are rigidly administered; in like manner, instead of the great number of precepts of which Logic is composed, I believed that the four following would prove perfectly sufficient for me, provided I took the firm and unwavering resolution never in a single instance to fail in observing them.
- The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
- The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.
- The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.
- And, finally, as it is not enough, before commencing to rebuild the house in which we live, that it be pulled down, and materials and builders provided, or that we engage in the work ourselves, according to a plan which we have beforehand carefully drawn out, but as it is likewise necessary that we be furnished with some other house in which we may live commodiously during the operations, so that I might not remain irresolute in my actions, while my Reason compelled me to suspend my judgment, and that I might not be prevented from living thenceforward in the greatest possible felicity, I formed a provisory code of Morals, composed of three or four maxims, with which I am desirous to make you acquainted.
- The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, adhering firmly to the Faith in which, by the grace of God, I had been educated from my childhood, and regulating my conduct in every other matter according to the most moderate opinions, and the farthest removed from extremes, which should happen to be adopted in practice with general consent of the most judicious of those among whom I might be living.
- For, as I had from that time begun to hold my own opinions for nought because I wished to subject them all to examination, I was convinced that I could not do better than follow in the meantime the opinions of the most judicious; and although there are some perhaps among the Persians and Chinese as judicious as among ourselves, expediency seemed to dictate that I should regulate my practice conformably to the opinions of those with whom I should have to live; and it appeared to me that, in order to ascertain the real opinions of such, I ought rather to take cognizance of what they practised than of what they said, not only because, in the corruption of our manners, there are few disposed to speak exactly as they believe, but also because very many are not aware of what it is that they really believe; for, as the act of mind by which a thing is believed is different from that by which we know that we believe it, the one act is often found without the other.
- Also, amid many opinions held in equal repute, I chose always the most moderate, as much for the reason that these are always the most convenient for practice, and probably the best, (for all excess is generally vicious,) as that, in the event of my falling into error, I might be at less distance from the truth than if, having chosen one of the extremes, it should turn out to be the other which I ought to have adopted.
- And I placed in the class of extremes especially all promises by which somewhat of our freedom is abridged; not that I disapproved of the laws which, to provide against the instability of men of feeble resolution, when what is sought to be accomplished is some good, permit engagements by vows and contracts binding the parties to persevere in it, or even, for the security of commerce, sanction similar engagements where the purpose sought to be realized is indifferent: but because I did not find anything on earth which was wholly superior to change, and because, for myself in particular, I hoped gradually to perfect my judgments, and not to suffer them to deteriorate, I would have deemed it a grave sin against good sense, if, for the reason that I approved of something at a particular time, I therefore bound myself to hold it for good at a subsequent time, when perhaps it had ceased to be so, or I had ceased to esteem it such.
- My second maxim was to be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able, and not to adhere less steadfastly to the most doubtful opinions, when once adopted, than if they had been highly certain; imitating in this the example of travellers who, when they have lost their way in a forest, ought not to wander from side to side, far less remain in one place, but proceed constantly towards the same side in as straight a line as possible, without changing their direction for slight reasons, although perhaps it might be chance alone which at first determined the selection; for in this way, if they do not exactly reach the point they desire, they will come at least in the end to some place that will probably be preferable to the middle of a forest.
- In the same way, since in action it frequently happens that no delay is permissible, it is very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to act according to what is most probable; and even although we should not remark a greater probability in one opinion than in another, we ought notwithstanding to choose one or the other, and afterwards consider it, in so far as it relates to practice, as no longer dubious, but manifestly true and certain, since the reason by which our choice has been determined is itself possessed of these qualities.
- This principle was sufficient thenceforward to rid me of all those repentings and pangs of remorse that usually disturb the consciences of such feeble and uncertain minds as, destitute of any clear and determinate principle of choice, allow themselves one day to adopt a course of action as the best, which they abandon the next, as the opposite.
- My third maxim was to endeavour always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in respect of things external to us, all wherein we fail of success is to be held, as regards us, absolutely impossible and this single principle seemed to me sufficient to prevent me from desiring for the future anything which I could not obtain, and thus render me contented; for since our will naturally seeks those objects alone which the understanding represents as in some way possible of attainment, it is plain, that if we consider all external goods as equally beyond our power, we shall no more regret the absence of such goods as seem due to our birth, when deprived of them without any fault of ours, than our not possessing the kingdoms of China or Mexico; and thus making, so to speak, a virtue of necessity, we shall no more desire health in disease, or freedom in imprisonment, than we now do bodies incorruptible as diamonds, or the wings of birds to fly with.
- But I confess there is need of prolonged discipline and frequently repeated meditation to accustom the mind to view all objects in this light; and I believe that in this chiefly consisted the secret of the power of such philosophers as in former times were enabled to rise superior to the influence of fortune, and, amid suffering and poverty, enjoy a happiness which their gods might have envied.
- For, occupied incessantly with the consideration of the limits prescribed to their power by nature, they became so entirely convinced that nothing was at their disposal except their own thoughts, that this conviction was of itself sufficient to prevent their entertaining any desire of other objects; and over their thoughts they acquired a sway so absolute, that they had some ground on this account for esteeming themselves more rich and more powerful, more free and more happy, than other men who, whatever be the favours heaped on them by nature and fortune, if destitute of this philosophy, can never command the realization of all their desires.
- In fine, to conclude this code of Morals, I thought of reviewing the different occupations of men in this life, with the view of making choice of the best.
- And, without wishing to offer any remarks on the employments of others, I may state that it was my conviction that I could not do better than continue in that in which I was engaged, viz., in devoting my whole life to the culture of my Reason, and in making the greatest progress I was able in the knowledge of truth, on the principles of the Method which I had prescribed to myself.
- This Method, from the time I had begun to apply it, had been to me the source of satisfaction so intense as to lead me to believe that more perfect or more innocent could not be enjoyed in this life; and as by its means I daily discovered truths that appeared to me of some importance, and of which other men were generally ignorant, the gratification thence arising so occupied my mind that I was wholly indifferent to every other object.
- Besides, the three preceding maxims were founded singly on the design of continuing the work of self-instruction.
- For since God has endowed each of us with some Light of Reason by which to distinguish truth from error, I could not have believed that I ought for a single moment to rest satisfied with the opinions of another, unless I had resolved to exercise my own judgment in examining these whenever I should be duly qualified for the task.
- Nor could I have proceeded on such opinions without scruple, had supposed that I should thereby forfeit any advantage for attaining still more accurate, should such exist.
- And, in fine, I could not have restrained my desires, nor remained satisfied, had I not followed a path in which I thought myself certain of attaining all the knowledge to the acquisition of which I was competent, as well as the largest amount of what is truly good which I could ever hope to secure.
- Inasmuch as we neither seek nor shun any object except in so far as our understanding represents it as good or bad, all that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment,—that is, to the acquisition of all the virtues with all else that is truly valuable and within our reach; and the assurance of such an acquisition cannot fail to render us contented.
- Having thus provided myself with these maxims, and having placed them in reserve along with the truths of Faith, which have ever occupied the first place in my belief, I came to the conclusion that I might with freedom set about ridding myself of what remained of my opinions.
- And, inasmuch as I hoped to be better able successfully to accomplish this work by holding intercourse with mankind, than by remaining longer shut up in the retirement where these thoughts had occurred to me, I betook me again to travelling before the winter was well ended.
- And, during the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exibited on the theatre of the world; and, as I made it my business in each matter to reflect particularly upon what might fairly be doubted and prove a source of error, I gradually rooted out from my mind all the errors which had hitherto crept into it.
- Not that in this I imitated the Sceptics who doubt only that they may doubt, and seek nothing beyond uncertainty itself; for, on the contrary, my design was singly to find ground of assurance, and cast aside the loose earth and sand, that I might reach the rock or the clay.
- In this, as appears to me, I was successful enough; for, since I endeavoured to discover the falsehood or incertitude of the propositions I examined, not by feeble conjectures, but by clear and certain reasonings, I met with nothing so doubtful as not to yield some conclusion of adequate certainty, although this were merely the inference, that the matter in question contained nothing certain.
- And, just as in pulling down an old house, we usually reserve the ruins to contribute towards the erection, so, in destroying such of my opinions as I judged to be ill-founded, I made a variety of observations and acquired an amount of experience of which I availed myself in the establishment of more certain.
- And further, I continued to exercise myself in the Method I had prescribed; for, besides taking care in general to conduct all my thoughts according to its rules, I reserved some hours from time to time which I expressly devoted to the employment of the Method in the solution of Mathematical difficulties, or even in the solution likewise of some questions belonging to other Sciences, but which, by my having detached them from such principles of these Sciences as were of inadequate certainty, were rendered almost Mathematical: the truth of this will be manifest from the numerous examples contained in this volume[^1].
- And thus, without in appearance living otherwise than those who, with no other occupation than that of spending their lives agreeably and innocently, study to sever pleasure from vice, and who, that they may enjoy their leisure without ennui, have recourse to such pursuits as are honourable, I was nevertheless prosecuting my design, and making greater progress in the knowledge of truth, than I might, perhaps, have made had I been engaged in the perusal of books merely, or in holding converse with men of letters.
- These nine years passed away, however, before I had come to any determinate judgment respecting the difficulties which form matter of dispute among the learned, or had commenced to seek the principles of any Philosophy more certain than the vulgar.
- And the examples of many men of the highest genius, who had, in former times, engaged in this inquiry, but, as appeared to me, without success, led me to imagine it to be a work of so much difficulty, that I would not perhaps have ventured on it so soon had I not heard it currently rumoured that I had already completed the inquiry.
- I know not what were the grounds of this opinion; and, if my conversation contributed in any measure to its rise, this must have happened rather from my having confessed my ignorance with greater freedom than those are accustomed to do who have studied a little, and expounded, perhaps, the reasons that led me to doubt of many of those things that by others are esteemed certain, than from my having boasted of any system of Philosophy.
- But, as I am of a disposition that makes me unwilling to be esteemed different from what I really am, I thought it necessary to endeavour by all means to render myself worthy of the reputation accorded to me; and it is now exactly eight years since this desire constrained me to remove from all those places where interruption from any of my acquaintances was possible, and betake myself to this country,[^1] in which the long duration of the war has led to the establishment of such discipline, that the armies maintained seem to be of use only in enabling the inhabitants to enjoy more securely the blessings of peace; and where, in the midst of a great crowd actively engaged in business, and more careful of their own affairs than curious about those of others, I have been enabled to live without being deprived of any of the conveniences to be had in the most populous cities, and yet as solitary and as retired as in the midst of the most remote deserts.
- I am in doubt as to the propriety of making my first meditations in the place above mentioned matter of discourse; for these are so metaphysical, and so uncommon, as not, perhaps, to be acceptable to every one.
- And yet, that it may be determined whether the foundations that I have laid are sufficiently secure, I find myself in a measure constrained to advert to them.
- I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable.
- Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of Geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.
- But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the Sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the Philosophy of which I was in search.
- In the next place, I attentively examined what I was, and as I observed that I could suppose that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place in which I might be; but that I could not therefore suppose that I was not; and that, on the contrary, from the very circumstance that I thought to doubt of the truth of other things, it most clearly and certainly followed that I was; while, on the other hand, if I had only ceased to think, although all the other objects which I had ever imagined had been in reality existent, I would have had no reason to believe that I existed; I thence concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking, and which, that it may exist, has need of no place, nor is dependent on any material thing; so that “I,” that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body, and is even more easily known than the latter, and is such, that although the latter were not, it would still continue to be all that it is.
- After this I inquired in general into what is essential to the truth and certainty of a proposition; for since I had discovered one which I knew to be true, I thought that I must likewise be able to discover the ground of this certitude.
- And as I observed that in the words I think, hence I am, there is nothing at all which gives me assurance of their truth beyond this, that I see very clearly that in order to think it is necessary to exist, I concluded that I might take, as a general rule, the principle, that all the things which we very clearly and distinctly conceive are true, only observing, however, that there is some difficulty in rightly determining the objects which we distinctly conceive.
- In the next place, from reflecting on the circumstance that I doubted, and that consequently my being was not wholly perfect, (for I clearly saw that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt,) I was led to inquire whence I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself; and I clearly recognised that I must hold this notion from some Nature which in reality was more perfect.
- As for the thoughts of many other objects external to me, as of the sky, the earth, light, heat, and a thousand more, I was less at a loss to know whence these came; for since I remarked in them nothing which seemed to render them superior to myself, I could believe that, if these were true, they were dependencies on my own nature, in so far as it possessed a certain perfection, and, if they were false, that I held them from nothing, that is to say, that they were in me because of a certain imperfection of my nature.
- But this could not be the case with the idea of a Nature more perfect than myself; for to receive it from nothing was a thing manifestly impossible; and, because it is not less repugnant that the more perfect should be an effect of, and dependence on the less perfect, than that something should proceed from nothing, it was equally impossible that I could hold it from myself: accordingly, it but remained that it had been placed in me by a Nature which was in reality more perfect than mine, and which even possessed within itself all the perfections of which I could form any idea; that is to say, in a single word, which was God.
- And to this I added that, since I knew some perfections which I did not possess, I was not the only being in existence, (I will here, with your permission, freely use the terms of the schools); but, on the contrary, that there was of necessity some other more perfect Being upon whom I was dependent, and from whom I had received all that I possessed; for if I had existed alone, and independently of every other being, so as to have had from myself all the perfection, however little, which I actually possessed, I should have been able, for the same reason, to have had from myself the whole remainder of perfection, of the want of which I was conscious, and thus could of myself have become infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, all-powerful, and, in fine, have possessed all the perfections which I could recognise in God.
- For in order to know the nature of God, (whose existence has been established by the preceding reasonings,) as far as my own nature permitted, I had only to consider in reference to all the properties of which I found in my mind some idea, whether their possession was a mark of perfection; and I was assured that no one which indicated any imperfection was in him, and that none of the rest was awanting.
- Thus I perceived that doubt, inconstancy, sadness, and such like, could not be found in God, since I myself would have been happy to be free from them.
- Besides, I had ideas of many sensible and corporeal things; for although I might suppose that I was dreaming, and that all which I saw or imagined was false, I could not, nevertheless, deny that the ideas were in reality in my thoughts.
- But, because I had already very clearly recognised in myself that the intelligent nature is distinct from the corporeal, and as I observed that all composition is an evidence of dependency, and that a state of dependency is manifestly a state of imperfection, I therefore determined that it could not be a perfection in God to be compounded of these two natures, and that consequently he was not so compounded; but that if there were any bodies in the world, or even any intelligences, or other natures that were not wholly perfect, their existence depended on his power in such a way that they could not subsist without him for a single moment.
- I was disposed straightway to search for other truths; and when I had represented to myself the object of the geometers, which I conceived to be a continuous body, or a space indefinitely extended in length, breadth, and height or depth, divisible into divers parts which admit of different figures and sizes, and of being moved or transposed in all manner of ways, (for all this the geometers suppose to be in the object they contemplate,) I went over some of their simplest demonstrations.
- And, in the first place, I observed, that the great certitude which by common consent is accorded to these demonstrations, is founded solely upon this, that they are clearly conceived in accordance with the rules I have already laid down.
- In the next place, I perceived that there was nothing at all in these demonstrations which could assure me of the existence of their object: thus, for example, supposing a triangle to be given, I distinctly perceived that its three angles were necessarily equal to two right angles, but I did not on that account perceive anything which could assure me that any triangle existed: while, on the contrary, recurring to the examination of the idea of a Perfect Being, I found that the existence of the Being was comprised in the idea in the same way that the equality of its three angles to two right angles is comprised in the idea of a triangle, or as in the idea of a sphere, the equidistance of all points on its surface from the centre, or even still more clearly; and that consequently it is at least as certain that God, who is this Perfect Being, is, or exists, as any demonstration of Geometry can be.
- But the reason which leads many to persuade themselves that there is a difficulty in knowing this truth, and even also in knowing what their mind really is, is that they never raise their thoughts above sensible objects, and are so accustomed to consider nothing except by way of imagination, which is a mode of thinking limited to material objects, that all that is not imaginable seems to them not intelligible.
- The truth of this is sufficiently manifest from the single circumstance, that the philosophers of the Schools accept as a maxim that there is nothing in the Understanding which was not previously in the Senses, in which however it is certain that the ideas of God and of the soul have never been; and it appears to me that they who make use of their imagination to comprehend these ideas do exactly the same thing as if, in order to hear sounds or smell odours, they strove to avail themselves of their eyes; unless indeed that there is this difference, that the sense of sight does not afford us an inferior assurance to those of smell or hearing; in place of which, neither our imagination nor our senses can give us assurance of anything unless our Understanding intervene.
- Finally, if there be still persons who are not sufficiently persuaded of the existence of God and of the soul, by the reasons I have adduced, I am desirous that they should know that all the other propositions, of the truth of which they deem themselves perhaps more assured, as that we have a body, and that there exist stars and an earth, and such like, are less certain; for, although we have a moral assurance of these things, which is so strong that there is an appearance of extravagance in doubting of their existence, yet at the same time no one, unless his intellect is impaired, can deny, when the question relates to a metaphysical certitude, that there is sufficient reason to exclude entire assurance, in the observation that when asleep we can in the same way imagine ourselves possessed of another body and that we see other stars and another earth, when there is nothing of the kind.
- For how do we know that the thoughts which occur in dreaming are false rather than those other which we experience when awake, since the former are often not less vivid and distinct than the latter?
- And though men of the highest genius study this question as long as they please, I do not believe that they will be able to give any reason which can be sufficient to remove this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God.
- For, in the first place, even the principle which I have already taken as a rule, viz., that all the things which we clearly and distinctly conceive are true, is certain only because God is or exists, and because he is a Perfect Being, and because all that we possess is derived from him whence it follows that our ideas or notions, which to the extent of their clearness and distinctness are real, and proceed from God, must to that extent be true.
- Accordingly, whereas we not unfrequently have ideas or notions in which some falsity is contained, this can only be the case with such as are to some extent confused and obscure, and in this proceed from nothing, (participate of negation,) that is, exist in us thus confused because we are not wholly perfect.
- And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing.
- But if we did not know that all which we possess of real and true proceeds from a Perfect and Infinite Being, however clear and distinct our ideas might be, we should have no ground on that account for the assurance that they possessed the perfection of being true.
- But after the knowledge of God and of the soul has rendered us certain of this rule, we can easily understand that the truth of the thoughts we experience when awake, ought not in the slightest degree to be called in question on account of the illusions of our dreams.
- For if it happened that an individual, even when asleep, had some very distinct idea, as, for example, if a geometer should discover some new demonstration, the circumstance of his being asleep would not militate against its truth; and as for the most ordinary error of our dreams, which consists in their representing to us various objects in the same way as our external senses, this is not prejudicial, since it leads us very properly to suspect the truth of the ideas of sense; for we are not unfrequently deceived in the same manner when awake; as when persons in the jaundice see all objects yellow, or when the stars or bodies at a great distance appear to us much smaller than they are.
- For, in fine, whether awake or asleep, we ought never to allow ourselves to be persuaded of the truth of anything unless on the evidence of our Reason.
- And it must be noted that I say of our Reason, and not of our imagination or of our senses: thus, for example, although we very clearly see the sun, we ought not therefore to determine that it is only of the size which our sense of sight presents; and we may very distinctly imagine the head of a lion joined to the body of a goat, without being therefore shut up to the conclusion that a chimæra exists; for it is not a dictate of Reason that what we thus see or imagine is in reality existent; but it plainly tells us that all our ideas or notions contain in them some truth; for otherwise it could not be that God, who is wholly perfect and veracious, should have placed them in us.
- And because our reasonings are never so clear or so complete during sleep as when we are awake, although sometimes the acts of our imagination are then as lively and distinct, if not more so than in our waking moments, Reason further dictates that, since all our thoughts cannot be true because of our partial imperfection, those. ‘possessing truth must infallibly be found in the experience of our waking moments rather than in that of our dreams.
- I would here willingly have proceeded to exhibit the whole chain of truths which I deduced from these primary; but as with a view to this it would have been necessary now to treat of many questions in dispute among the learned, with whom I do not wish to be embroiled, I believe that it will be better for me to refrain from this exposition, and only mention in general what these truths are, that the more judicious may be able to determine whether a more special account of them would conduce to the public advantage.
- I have ever remained firm in my original resolution to suppose no other principle than that of which I have recently availed myself in demonstrating the existence of God and of the soul, and to accept as true nothing that did not appear to me more clear and certain than the demonstrations of the geometers had formerly appeared; and yet I venture to state that not only have I found means to satisfy myself in a short time on all the principal difficulties which are usually treated of in Philosophy, but I have also observed certain laws established in nature by God in such a manner, and of which he has impressed on our minds such notions, that after we have reflected sufficiently upon these, we cannot doubt that they are accurately observed in all that exists or takes place in the world: and farther, by considering the concatenation of these laws, it appears to me that I have discovered many truths more useful and more important than all I had before learned, or even had expected to learn.
- I had after this described the Reasonable Soul, and shewn that it could by no means be educed from the power of matter, as the other things of which I had spoken, but that it must be expressly created; and that it is not sufficient that it be lodged in the human body exactly like a pilot in a ship, unless perhaps to move its members, but that it is necessary for it to be joined and united more closely to the body, in order to have sensations and appetites similar to ours, and thus constitute a real man.
- I here entered, in conclusion, upon the subject of the soul at considerable length, because it is of the greatest moment: for after the, error of those who deny the existence of God, an error which I think I have already sufficiently refuted, there is none that is more powerful in leading feeble minds astray from the straight path of virtue than the supposition that the soul of the brutes is of the same nature with our own; and consequently that after this life we have nothing to hope for or fear, more than flies and ants; in place of which, when we know how far they differ we much better comprehend the reasons which establish that the soul is of a nature wholly independent of the body, and that consequently it is not liable to die with the latter; and, finally, because no other causes are observed capable of destroying it, we are naturally led thence to judge that it is immortal.
- But because I have essayed to expound the chief of these discoveries in a Treatise which certain considerations prevent me from publishing, I cannot make the results known more conveniently than by here giving a summary of the contents of this Treatise.
- I came next to speak of the earth in particular, and to show how, even though I had expressly supposed that God had given no weight to the matter of which it is composed, this should not prevent all its parts from tending exactly to its centre; how with water and air on its surface, the disposition of the heavens and heavenly bodies, more especially of the moon, must cause a flow and ebb, like in all its circumstances to that observed in our seas, as also a certain current both of water and air from east to west, such as is likewise observed between the tropics; how the mountains, seas, fountains, and rivers might naturally be formed in it, and the metals produced in the mines, and the plants grow in the fields; and in general, how all the bodies which are commonly denominated mixed or composite might be generated: and, among other things in the discoveries alluded to, inasmuch as besides the stars, I knew nothing except fire which produces light, I spared no pains to set forth all that pertains to its nature,—the manner of its production and support, and to explain how heat is sometimes found without light, and light without heat; to show how it can induce various colours upon different bodies and other diverse qualities; how it reduces some to a iquid state and hardens others; how it can consume almost all bodies, or convert them into ashes and smoke; and finally, how from these ashes, by the mere intensity of its action, it forms glass: for as this transmutation of ashes into glass appeared to me as wonderful as any other in nature, I took a special pleasure in describing it.
- It was my design to comprise in it all that, before I set myself to write it, I thought I knew of the nature of material objects.
- But like the painters who, finding themselves unable to represent equally well on a plain surface all the different faces of a solid body, select one of the chief, on which alone they make the light fall, and throwing the rest into the shade, allow them to appear only in so far as they can be seen while looking at the principal one; so, fearing lest I should not be able to comprise in my discourse all that was in my mind, I resolved to expound singly, though at considerable length, my opinions regarding light; then to take the opportunity of adding something on the sun and the fixed stars, since light almost wholly proceeds from them; on the heavens since they transmit it; on the planets, comets, and earth, since they reflect it; and particularly on all the bodies that are upon the earth, since they are either coloured, or transparent, or luminous; and finally on man, since he is the spectator of these objects.
- Further, to enable me to cast this variety of subjects somewhat into the shade, and to express my judgment regarding them with greater freedom, without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned, I resolved to leave all the people here to their disputes, and to speak only of what would happen in a new world, if God were now to create somewhere in the imaginary spaces matter sufficient to compose one, and were to agitate variously and confusedly the different parts of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established.
- On this supposition, I, in the first place, described this matter, and essayed to represent it in such a manner that to my mind there can be nothing clearer and more intelligible, except what has been recently said regarding God and the soul; for I even expressly supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so debated in the Schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of which is not so natural to our minds that no one can so much as imagine himself ignorant of it.
- Besides, I have pointed out what are the laws of nature; and, with no other principle upon which to found my reasonings except the infinite perfection of God, I endeavoured to demonstrate all those about which there could be any room for doubt, and to prove that they are such, that even if God had created more worlds, there could have been none in which these laws were not observed.
- Thereafter, I showed how the greatest part of the matter of this chaos must, in accordance with these laws, dispose and arrange itself in such a way as to present the appearance of heavens; how in the meantime some of its parts must compose an earth and some planets and comets, and others a sun and fixed stars.
- And, making a digression at this stage on the subject of light, I expounded at considerable length what the nature of that light must be which is found in the sun and the stars, and how thence in an instant of time it traverses the immense spaces of the heavens, and how from the planets and comets it is reflected towards the earth.
- To this I likewise added much respecting the substance, the situation, the motions, and all the different qualities of these heavens and stars; so that I thought I had said enough respecting them to show that there is nothing observable in the heavens or stars of our system that must not, or at least may not appear precisely alike in those of the system which I described.
- I was not, however, disposed, from these circumstances, to conclude that this world had been created in the manner I described; for it is much more likely that God made it at the first such as it was to be.
- But this is certain, and an opinion commonly received among theologians, that the action by which he now sustains it is the same with that by which he originally created it; so that even although he had from the beginning given it no other form than that of chaos, provided only he had established certain laws of nature, and had lent it his concurrence to enable it to act as it is wont to do, it may be believed, without discredit to the miracle of creation, that, in this way alone, things purely material might, in course of time, have become such as we observe them at present; and their nature is much more easily conceived when they are beheld coming in this manner gradually into existence, than when they are only considered as produced at once in a finished and perfect state.
- From the description of inanimate bodies and plants, I passed to animals, and particularly to man.
- But since I had not as yet sufficient knowledge to enable me to treat of these in the same manner as of the rest, that is to say, by deducing effects from their causes, and by showing from what elements and in what manner Nature must produce them, I remained satisfied with the supposition that God formed the body of man wholly like to one of ours, as well in the external shape of the members as in the internal conformation of the organs, of the same matter with that I had described, and at first placed in it no Rational Soul, nor any other principle, in room of the Vegetative or Sensitive Soul, beyond kindling in the heart one of those fires without light, such as I had already described, and which I thought was not different from the heat in hay that has been heaped together before it is dry, or that which causes fermentation in new wines before they are run clear of the fruit.
- For, when I examined the kind of functions which might, as consequences of this supposition, exist in this body, I found precisely all those which may exist in us independently of all power of thinking, and consequently without being in any measure owing to the soul; in other words, to that part of us which is distinct from the body, and of which it has been said above that the nature distinctively consists in thinking,—functions in which the animals void of Reason may be said wholly to resemble us; but among which I could not discover any of those that, as dependent on thought alone, belong to us as men, while, on the other hand, I did afterwards discover these as soon as I supposed God to have created a Rational Soul, and to have annexed it to this body in a particular manner which I described.
- But, in order to show how I there handled this matter, I mean here to give the explication of the motion of the heart and arteries, which, as the first and most general motion observed in animals, will afford the means of readily determining what should be thought of all the rest.
- And that there may be less difficulty in understanding what I am about to say on this subject, I advise those who are not versed in Anatomy,
- And that there may be less difficulty in understanding what I am about to say on this subject, I advise those who are not versed in Anatomy, before they commence the perusal of these observations, to take the trouble of getting dissected in their presence the heart of some large animal possessed of lungs, (for this is throughout sufficiently like the human,) and to have shewn to them its two ventricles or cavities: in first place, that in the right side, with which correspond two very ample tubes, viz., the hollow vein, (vena cava,) which is the principal receptacle of the blood, and the trunk of the tree, as it were, of which all the other veins in the body are branches; and the arterial vein, (vena arteriosa,) inappropriately so denominated, since it is in truth only an artery, which, taking its rise in the heart, is divided, after passing out from it, into many branches which presently disperse themselves all over the lungs; in the second place, the cavity in the left side, with which correspond in the same manner two canals in size equal to or larger than the preceding, viz., the venous artery, (arteria venosa,) likewise inappropriately thus designated, because it is simply a vein which comes from the lungs, where it is divided into many branches, interlaced with those of the arterial vein, and those of the tube called the windpipe, through which the air we breathe enters; and the great artery which, issuing from the heart, sends its branches all over the body.
- I should wish also that such persons were carefully shewn the eleven pellicles which, like so many small valves, open and shut the four orifices that are in these two cavities, viz., three at the entrance of the hollow vein, where they are disposed in such a manner as by no means to prevent the blood which it contains from flowing into the right ventricle of the heart, and yet exactly to prevent its flowing out; three at the entrance to the arterial vein, which, arranged in a manner exactly the opposite of the former, readily permit the blood contained in this cavity to pass into the lungs, but hinder that contained in the lungs from returning to this cavity; and, in like manner, two others at the mouth of the venous artery, which allow the blood from the lungs to flow into the left cavity of the heart, but preclude its return; and three at the mouth of the great artery, which suffer the blood to flow from the heart, but prevent its reflux.
- Nor do we need to seek any other reason for the number of these pellicles beyond this that the orifice of the venous artery being of an oval shape from the nature of its situation, can be adequately closed with two, whereas the others being round are more conveniently closed with three.
- Besides, I wish such persons to observe that the grand artery and the arterial vein are of much harder and firmer texture than the venous artery and the hollow vein; and that the two last expand before entering the heart, and there form, as it were, two pouches denominated the auricles of the heart, which are composed of a substance similar to that of the heart itself; and that there is always more warmth in the heart than in any other part of the body; and, finally, that this heat is capable of causing any drop of blood that passes into the cavities rapidly to expand and dilate, just as all liquors do when allowed to fall drop by drop into a highly heated vessel.
- For, after these things, it is not necessary for me to say anything more with a view to explain the motion of the heart, except that when its cavities are not full of blood, into these the blood of necessity flows,—from the hollow vein into the right, and from the venous artery into the left; because these two vessels are always full of blood, and their orifices, which are turned towards the heart, cannot then be closed.
- But as soon as two drops of blood have thus passed, one into each of the cavities, these drops which cannot but be very large, because the orifices through which they pass are wide, and the vessels from which they come full of blood, are immediately rarefied, and dilated by the heat they meet with.
- In this way they cause the whole heart to expand, and at the same time press home and shut the five small valves that are at the entrances of the two vessels from which they flow, and thus prevent any more blood from coming down into the heart, and becoming more and more rarefied, they push open the six small valves that are in the orifices of the other two vessels, through which they pass out, causing in this way all the branches of the arterial vein and of the grand artery to expand almost simultaneously with the heart—which immediately thereafter begins to contract, as do also the arteries, because the blood that has entered them has cooled, and the six small valves close, and the five of the hollow vein and of the venous artery open anew and allow a passage to other two drops of blood, which cause the heart and the arteries again to expand as before.
- And, because the blood which thus enters into the heart passes through these two pouches called auricles, it thence happens that their motion is the contrary of that of the heart, and that when it expands they contract.
- But lest those who are ignorant of the force of mathematical demonstrations, and who are not accustomed to distinguish true reasons from mere verisimilitudes, should venture, without examination, to deny what has been said, I wish it to be considered that the motion which I have now explained follows as necessarily from the very arrangement of the parts, which may be observed in the heart by the eye alone, and from the heat which may be felt with the fingers, and from the nature of the blood as learned from experience, as does the motion of a clock from the power, the situation, and shape of its counterweights and wheels.
- But if it be asked how it happens that the blood in the veins, flowing in this way continually into the heart, is not exhausted, and why the arteries do not become too full, since all the blood which passes through the heart flows into them, I need only mention in reply what has been written by a physician[^1] of England, who has the honour of having broken the ice on this subject, and of having been the first to teach that there are many small passages at the extremities of the arteries, through which the blood received by them from the heart passes into the small branches of the veins, whence it again returns to the heart; so that its course amounts precisely to a perpetual circulation.
- Of this we have abundant proof in the ordinary experience of surgeons, who, by binding the arm with a tie of moderate straitness above the part where they open the vein, cause the blood to flow more copiously than it would have done without any ligature; whereas quite the contrary would happen were they to bind it below; that is, between the hand and the opening, or were to make the ligature above the opening very tight.
- For it is manifest that the tie, moderately straitened, while adequate to hinder the blood already in the arm from returning towards the heart by the veins, cannot on that account prevent new blood from coming forward through the arteries, because these are situated below the veins, and their coverings, from their greater consistency, are more difficult to compress; and also that the blood which comes from the heart tends to pass through them to the hand with greater force than it does to return from the hand to the heart through the veins.
- And since the latter current escapes from the arm by the opening made in one of the veins, there must of necessity be certain passages below the ligature, that is, towards the extremities of the arm through which it can come thither from the arteries.
- This physician likewise abundantly establishes what he has advanced respecting the motion of the blood, from the existence of certain pellicles, so disposed in various places along the course of the veins, in the manner of small valves, as not to permit the blood to pass from the middle of the body towards the extremities, but only to return from the extremities to the heart; and farther, from experience which shows that all the blood which is in the body may flow out of it in a very short time through a single artery that has been cut, even although this had been closely tied in the immediate neighbourhood of the heart, and cut between the heart and the ligature, so as to prevent the supposition that the blood flowing out of it could come from any other quarter than the heart.
- But there are many other circumstances which evince that what I have alleged is the true cause of the motion of the blood: thus, in the first place, the difference that is observed between the blood which flows from the veins, and that from the arteries, can only arise from this, that being rarefied; and, as it were, distilled by passing through the heart, it is thinner, and more vivid, and warmer immediately after leaving the heart, in other words, when in the arteries, than it was a short time before passing into either, in other words, when it was in the veins; and if attention be given, it will be found that this difference is very marked only in the neighbourhood of the heart; and is not so evident in parts more remote from it.
- Is not also the operation which converts the juice of food into blood easily comprehended, when it is considered that it is distilled by passing and repassing through the heart perhaps more than one or two hundred times in a day?
- And what more need be adduced to explain nutrition, and the production of the different humours of the body, beyond saying, that the force with which the blood, in being rarefied, passes from the heart towards the extremities of the arteries, causes certain of its parts to remain in the members at which they arrive, and there occupy the place of some others expelled by them; and that according to the situation, shape, or smallness of the pores with which they meet, some rather than others flow into certain parts, in the same way that some sieves are observed to act, which, by being variously perforated, serve to separate different species of grain?
- And, in the last place, what above all is here worthy of observation, is the generation of the animal spirits, which are like a very subtle wind, or rather a very pure and vivid flame which, continually ascending in great abundance from the heart to the brain, thence penetrates through the nerves into the muscles, and gives motion to all the members; so that to account for other parts of the blood which, as most agitated and penetrating, are the fittest to compose these spirits, proceeding towards the brain, it is not necessary to suppose any other cause, than simply, that the arteries which carry them thither proceed from the heart in the most direct lines, and that, according to the rules of Mechanics, which are the same with those of Nature, when many objects tend at once to the same point where there is not sufficient room for all, (as is the case with the parts of the blood which flow forth from the left cavity of the heart and tend towards the brain,) the weaker and less agitated parts must necessarily be driven aside from that point by the stronger which alone in this way reach it.
- In the next place, the consistency of the coats of which the arterial vein and the great artery are composed, sufficiently shows that the blood is impelled against them with more force than against the veins.
- And why should the left cavity of the heart and the great artery be wider and larger than the right cavity and the arterial vein, were it not that the blood of the venous artery, having only been in the lungs after it has passed through the heart, is thinner, and rarefies more readily, and in a higher degree, than the blood which proceeds immediately from the hollow vein?
- And what can physicians conjecture from feeling the pulse unless they know that according as the blood changes its nature it can be rarefied by the warmth of the heart, in a higher or lower degree, and more or less quickly than before?
- And if it be inquired how this heat is communicated to the other members, must it not be admitted that this is effected by means of the blood, which, passing through the heart, is there heated anew, and thence diffused over all the body?
- Whence it happens, that if the blood be withdrawn from any part, the heat is likewise withdrawn by the same means; and although the heart were as hot as glowing iron, it would not be capable of warming the feet and hands as at present, unless it continually sent thither new blood.
- We likewise perceive from this, that the true use of respiration is to bring sufficient fresh air into the lungs, to cause the blood which flows into them from the right ventricle of the heart, where it has been rarefied and, as it were, changed into vapours, to become thick, and to convert it anew into blood, before it flows into the left cavity, without which process it would be unfit for the nourishment of the fire that is there.
- This receives confirmation from the circumstance, that it is observed of animals destitute of lungs that they have also but one cavity in the heart, and that in children who cannot use them while in the womb, there is a hole through which the blood flows from the hollow vein into the left cavity of the heart, and a tube through which it passes from the arterial vein into the grand artery without passing through the lung.
- In the next place, how could digestion be carried on in the stomach unless the heart communicated heat to it through the arteries, and along with this certain of the more fluid parts of the blood, which assist in the dissolution of the food that has been taken in?
- I had expounded all these matters with sufficient minuteness in the Treatise which I formerly thought of publishing.
- Nor does this inability arise from want of organs: for we observe that magpies and parrots can utter words like ourselves, and are yet unable to speak as we do, that is, so as to show that they understand what they say; in place of which men born deaf and dumb, and thus not less, but rather more than the brutes, destitute of the organs which others use in speaking, are in the habit of spontaneously inventing certain signs by which they discover their thoughts to those who, being usually in their company, have leisure to learn their language.
- And this proves not only that the brutes have less Reason than man, but that they have none at all: for we see that very little is required to enable a person to speak; and since a certain inequality of capacity is observable among animals of the same species, as well as among men, and since some are more capable of being instructed than others, it is incredible that the most perfect ape or parrot of its species, should not in this be equal to the most stupid infant of its kind, or at least to one that was crack-brained, unless the soul of brutes were of a nature wholly different from ours.
- And we ought not to confound speech with the natural movements which indicate the passions, and can be imitated by machines as well as manifested by animals; nor must it be thought with certain of the ancients, that the brutes speak, although we do not understand their language.
- For if such were the case, since they are endowed with many organs analogous to ours, they could as easily communicate their thoughts to us as to their fellows.
- It is also very worthy of remark, that, though there are many animals which manifest more industry than we in certain of their actions, the same animals are yet observed to show none at all in many others: so that the circumstance that they do better than we does not prove that they are endowed with mind, for it would thence follow that they possessed greater Reason than any of us, and could surpass us in all things; on the contrary, it rather proves that they are destitute of Reason, and that it is Nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs: thus it is seen, that a clock composed only of wheels and weights can number the hours and measure time more exactly than we with all our skill.
- And after these, I had shewn what must be the fabric of the nerves and muscles of the human body to give the animal spirits contained in it the power to move the members, as when we see heads shortly after they have been struck off still move and bite the earth, although no longer animated; what changes must take place in the brain to produce waking, sleep, and dreams; how light, sounds, odours, tastes, heat, and all the other qualities of external objects impress it with different ideas by means of the senses; how hunger, thirst, and the other internal affections can likewise impress upon it divers ideas; what must be understood by the common sense (sensus communis) in which these ideas are received, by the memory which retains them, by the fantasy which can change them in various ways, and out of them compose new ideas, and which, by the same means, distributing the animal spirits through the muscles, can cause the members of such a body to move in as many different ways, and in a manner as suited, whether to the objects that are presented to its senses or to its internal affections, as can take place in our own case apart from the guidance of the will.
- Nor will this appear at all strange to those who are acquainted with the variety of movements performed by the different automata, or moving machines fabricated by human industry, and that with help of but few pieces compared with the great multitude of bones, muscles, nerves, arteries, veins, and other parts that are found in the body of each animal.
- Such persons will look upon this body as a machine made by the hands of God, which is incomparably better arranged, and adequate to movements more admirable than is any machine of human invention.
- And here I specially stayed to show that, were there such machines exactly resembling in organs and outward form an ape or any other irrational animal, we could have no means of knowing that they were in any respect of a different nature from these animals; but if there were machines bearing the image of our bodies, and capable of imitating our actions as far as it is morally possible, there would still remain two most certain tests whereby to know that they were not therefore really men.
- Of these the first is that they could never use words or other signs arranged in such a manner as is competent to us in order to declare our thoughts to others: for we may easily conceive a machine to be so constructed that it emits vocables, and even that it emits some correspondent to the action upon it of external objects which cause a change in its organs; for example, if touched in a particular place it may demand what we wish to say to it; if in another it may cry out that it is hurt, and such like; but not that it should arrange them variously so as appositely to reply to what is said in its presence, as men of the lowest grade of intellect can do.
- The second test is, that although such machines might execute many things with equal or perhaps greater perfection than any of us, they would, without doubt, fail in certain others from which it could be discovered that they did not act from knowledge, but solely from the disposition of their organs: for while Reason is an universal instrument that is alike available on every occasion, these organs, on the contrary, need a particular arrangement for each particular action; whence it must be morally impossible that there should exist in any machine a diversity of organs sufficient to enable it to act in all the occurrences of life, in the way in which our reason enables us to act.
- Again, by means of these two tests we may likewise know the difference between men and brutes.
- For it is highly deserving of remark, that there are no men so dull and stupid, not even idiots, as to be incapable of joining together different words, and thereby constructing a declaration by which to make their thoughts understood; and that on the other hand, there is no other animal, however perfect or happily circumstanced which can do the like.
- Three years have now elapsed since I finished the Treatise containing all these matters; and I was beginning to revise it, with the view to put it into the hands of a printer, when I learned that persons to whom I greatly defer, and whose authority over my actions is hardly less influential than is my own Reason over my thoughts, had condemned a certain doctrine in Physics, published a short time previously by another individual,[^1] to which I will not say that I adhered, but only that, previously to their censure, I had observed in it nothing which I could imagine to be prejudicial either to religion or to the state, and nothing therefore which would have prevented me from giving expression to it in writing, if Reason had persuaded me of its truth; and this led me to fear lest among my own doctrines likewise some one might be found in which I had departed from the truth, notwithstanding the great care I have always taken not to accord belief to new opinions of which I had not the most certain demonstrations, and not to give expression to aught that might tend to the hurt of any one.
- This has been sufficient to make me alter my purpose of publishing them; for although the reasons by which I had been induced to take this resolution were very strong, yet my inclination, which has always been hostile to writing books, enabled me immediately to discover other considerations sufficient to excuse me for not undertaking the task.
- And these reasons, on one side and the other, are such, that not only is it in some measure my interest here to state them, but that of the public, perhaps, to know them.
- If some of the matters of which I have spoken in the beginning of the Dioptrics and Meteorics should offend at first sight, because I call them hypotheses and seem indifferent about giving proof of them, I request a patient and attentive reading of the whole, from which I hope those hesitating will derive satisfaction; for it appears to me that the reasonings are so mutually connected in these Treatises, that, as the last are demonstrated by the first which are their causes, the first are in their turn demonstrated by the last which are their effects.
- Nor must it be imagined that I here commit the fallacy which the logicians call a circle; for since experience renders the majority of these effects most certain, the causes from which I deduce them do not serve so much to establish their reality as to explain their existence; but on the contrary, the reality of the causes is established by the reality of the effects.
- Nor have I called them hypotheses with any other end in view except that it may be known that I think I am able to deduce them from those first truths which I have already expounded; and yet that I have expressly determined not to do so, to prevent a certain class of minds from thence taking occasion to build some extravagant Philosophy upon what they may take to be my principles, and my being blamed for it. I refer to those who imagine that they can master in a day all that another has taken twenty years to think out, as soon as he has spoken two or three words to them on the subject; or who are the more liable to error and the less capable of perceiving truth in very proportion as they are more subtle and lively.
- As to the opinions which are truly and wholly mine, I offer no apology for them as new,—persuaded as I am that if their reasons be well considered they will be found to be so simple and so conformed to common sense as to appear less extraordinary and less paradoxical than any others which can be held on the same subjects; nor do I even boast of being the earliest discoverer of any of them, but only of having adopted them, neither because they had nor because they had not been held by others, but solely because Reason has convinced me of their truth.
- Though artisans may not be able at once to execute the invention which is explained in the Dioptrics, I do not think that any one on that account is entitled to condemn it; for since address and practice are required in order so to make and adjust the machines described by me as not to overlook the smallest particular, I should not be less astonished if they succeeded on the first attempt than if a person were in one day to become an accomplished performer on the guitar, by merely having excellent sheets of music set up before him.
- And if I write in French, which is the language of my country, in preference to Latin, which is that of my preceptors, it is because I expect that those who make use of their unprejudiced natural Reason will be better judges of my opinions than those who give heed to the writings of the ancients only; and as for those who unite good sense with habits of study, whom alone I desire for judges, they will not, I feel assured, be so partial to Latin as to refuse to listen to my reasonings merely because I expound them in the vulgar Tongue.
- In conclusion, I am unwilling here to say anything very specific of the progress which I expect to make for the future in the Sciences, or to bind myself to the public by any promise which I am not certain of being able to fulfil; but this only will I say, that I have resolved to devote what time I may still have to live to no other occupation than that of endeavouring to acquire some knowledge of Nature, which shall be of such a kind as to enable us therefrom to deduce rules in Medicine of greater certainty than those at present in use; and that my inclination is so much opposed to all other pursuits, especially to such as cannot be useful to some without being hurtful to others, that if, by any circumstances, I had been constrained to engage in such, I do not believe that I should have been able to succeed.
- Of this I here make a public declaration, though well aware that it cannot serve to procure for me any consideration in the world, which, however, I do not in the least affect; and I shall always hold myself more obliged to those through whose favour I am permitted to enjoy my retirement without interruption than to any who might offer me the highest earthly preferments.
- I have never made much account of what has proceeded from my own mind; and so long as I gathered no other advantage from the Method I employ beyond satisfying myself on some difficulties belonging to the speculative sciences, or endeavouring to regulate my actions according to the principles it taught me, I never thought myself bound to publish anything respecting it.
- For in what regards manners, every one is so full of his own wisdom, that there might be found as many reformers as heads, if any were allowed to take upon themselves the task of mending them, except those whom God has constituted the supreme rulers of his people, or to whom he has given sufficient grace and zeal to be prophets; and although my speculations greatly pleased myself, I believed that others had theirs, which perhaps pleased them still more.
- But as soon as I had acquired some general notions respecting Physics, and beginning to make trial of them in various particular difficulties, had observed how far they can carry us, and how much they differ from the principles that have been employed up to the present time, I believed that I could not keep them concealed without sinning grievously against the law by which we are bound to promote, as far as in us lies, the general good of mankind.
- For by them I perceived it to be possible to arrive at knowledge highly useful in life; and in room of the Speculative Philosophy usually taught in the Schools, to discover a Practical, by means of which, knowing the force and action of fire, water, air, the stars, the heavens, and all the other bodies that surround us, as distinctly as we know the various crafts of our artizans, we might also apply them in the same way to all the uses to which they are adapted, and thus render ourselves the lords and possessors of nature.
- And this is a result to be desired, not only in order to the invention of an infinity of arts, by which we might be enabled to enjoy without any trouble the fruits of the earth, and all its comforts, but also and especially for the preservation of health, which is without doubt, of all the blessings of this life, the first and fundamental one; for the mind is so intimately dependent upon the condition and relation of the organs of the body, that if any means can ever be found to render men wiser and more ingenious than hitherto, I believe that it is in Medicine they must be sought for.
- It is true that the science of Medicine, as it now exists, contains few things whose utility is very remarkable: but without any wish to depreciate it, I am confident that there is no one, even among those whose profession it is, who does not admit that all at present known in it is almost nothing in comparison of what remains to be discovered; and that we could free ourselves from an infinity of maladies of body as well as of mind, and perhaps also even from the debility of age, if we had sufficiently ample knowledge of their causes, and of all the remedies provided for us by Nature.
- But since I designed to employ my whole life in the search after so necessary a Science, and since I had fallen in with a path which seems to me such, that if any one follow it he must inevitably reach the end desired, unless he be hindered either by the shortness of life or the want of experiments, I judged that there could be no more effectual provision against these two impediments than if I were faithfully to communicate to the public all the little I might myself have found, and incite men of superior genius to strive to proceed farther, by contributing, each according to his inclination and ability, to the experiments which it would be necessary to make, and also by informing the public of all they might discover, so that, by the last beginning where those before them had left off, and thus connecting the lives and labours of many, we might collectively proceed much farther than each by himself could do.
- 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.
- But in this I have adopted the following order: first, I have essayed to find in general the principles, or first causes of all that is or can be in the world, without taking into consideration for this end anything but God himself who has created it, and without educing them from any other source than from certain germs of truths naturally existing in our minds.
- 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.
- Afterwards, when I wished to descend to the more particular, so many diverse objects presented themselves that I believed it to be impossible for the human mind to distinguish the forms or species of bodies that are upon the earth, from an infinity of others which might have been, if it had pleased God to place them there, or consequently to apply them to our use, unless we rise to causes through their effects, and avail ourselves of many particular experiments.
- Thereupon, turning over in my mind all the objects that had ever been presented to my senses, I freely venture to state that I have never observed any which I could not satisfactorily explain by the principles I had discovered.
- But it is necessary also to confess that the power of nature is so ample and vast, and these principles so simple and general, that I have hardly observed a single particular effect which I cannot at once recognise as capable of being deduced in many different modes from the principles, and that my greatest difficulty usually is to discover in which of these modes the effect is dependent upon them; for out of this difficulty I cannot otherwise extricate myself than by again seeking certain experiments, which may be such that their result is not the same, if it is in the one of these modes that we must explain it, as it would be if it were to be explained in the other.
- As to what remains, I am now in a position to discern, as I think, with sufficient clearness what course must be taken to make the majority of those experiments which may conduce to this end: but I perceive likewise that they are such and so numerous, that neither my hands nor my income, though it were a thousand times larger than it is, would be sufficient for them all; so that, according as henceforward I shall have the means of making more or fewer experiments, I shall in the same proportion make greater or less progress in the knowledge of nature.
- This was what I had hoped to make known by the Treatise I had written, and so clearly to exhibit the advantage that would thence accrue to the public, as to induce all who have the common good of man at heart, that is, all who are virtuous in truth, and not merely in appearance, or according to opinion, as well to communicate to me the experiments they had already made, as to assist me in those that remain to be made.
- But since that time other reasons have occurred to me, by which I have been led to change my opinion, and to think that I ought indeed to go on committing to writing all the results which I deemed of any moment, as soon as I should have tested their truth, and to bestow the same care upon them as I would have done had it been my design to publish them.
- But I conceive myself the more bound to husband the time that remains the greater my expectation of being able to employ it aright, and I should doubtless have much to rob me of it, were I to publish the principles of my Physics: for although they are almost all so evident that to assent to them no more is needed than simply to understand them, and although there is not one of them of which I do not expect to be able to give demonstration, yet, as it is impossible that they can be in accordance with all the diverse opinions of others, I foresee that I should frequently be turned aside from my grand design, on occasion of the opposition which they would be sure to awaken.
- This course commended itself to me, as well because I thus afforded myself more ample inducement to examine them thoroughly, for doubtless that is always more narrowly scrutinized which we believe will be read by many, than that which is written merely for our private use, (and frequently what has seemed to me true when I first conceived it, has appeared false when I have set about committing it to writing;) as because I thus lost no opportunity of advancing the interests of the public, as far as in me lay, and since thus likewise, if my writings possess any value, those into whose hands they may fall after my death may be able to put them to what use they deem proper.
- But I resolved by no means to consent to their publication during my lifetime, lest either the oppositions or the controversies to which they might give rise, or even the reputation, such as it might be, which they would acquire for me, should be any occasion of my losing the time that I had set apart for my own improvement.
- For though it be true that every one is bound to promote to the extent of his ability the good of others, and that to be useful to no one is really to be worthless, yet it is likewise true that our cares ought to extend beyond the present; and it is good to omit doing what might perhaps bring some profit to the living, when we have in view the accomplishment of other ends that will be of much greater advantage to posterity.
- And in truth, I am quite willing it should be known that the little I have hitherto learned is almost nothing in comparison with that of which I am ignorant, and to the knowledge of which I do not despair of being able to attain; for it is much the same with those who gradually discover truth in the Sciences, as with those who when growing rich find less difficulty in making great acquisitions, than they formerly experienced when poor in making acquisitions of much smaller amount.
- Or they may be compared to the commanders of armies, whose forces usually increase in proportion to their victories, and who need greater prudence to keep together the residue of their troops after a defeat than after a victory to take towns and provinces.
- For he truly engages in battle who endeavours to surmount all the difficulties and errors which prevent him from reaching the knowledge of truth, and he is overcome in fight who admits a false opinion touching a matter of any generality and importance, and he requires thereafter much more skill to recover his former position than to make great advances when once in possession of thoroughly ascertained principles.
- As for myself, if I have succeeded in discovering any truths in the Sciences, (and I trust that what is contained in this volume[^1] will show that I have found some,) I can declare that they are but the consequences and results of five or six principal difficulties which I have surmounted, and my encounters with which I reckoned as battles in which victory declared for me.
- I will not hesitate even to avow my belief that nothing further is wanting to enable me fully to realize my designs than to gain two or three similar victories; and that I am not so far advanced in years but that, according to the ordinary course of nature, I may still have sufficient leisure for this end.
- It may be said, that these oppositions would be useful both in making me aware of my errors, and, if my speculations contain anything of value, in bringing others to a fuller understanding of it; and still farther, as many can see better than one, in leading others who are now beginning to avail themselves of my principles, to assist me in turn with their discoveries.
- But though I recognise my extreme liability to error, and scarce ever trust to the first thoughts which occur to me, yet the experience I have had of possible objections to my views prevents me from anticipating any profit from them.
- For I have already had frequent proof of the judgments, as well of those I esteemed friends, as of some others to whom I thought I was an object of indifference, and even of some whose malignity and envy would, I knew, determine them to endeavour to discover what partiality concealed from the eyes of my friends.
- But it has rarely happened that anything has been objected to me which I had myself altogether overlooked, unless it were something far removed from the subject: so that I have never met with a single critic of my opinions who did not appear to me either less rigorous or less equitable than myself.
- And further, I have never observed that any truth before unknown has been brought to light by the disputations that are practised in the Schools; for while each strives for the victory, each is much more occupied in making the best of mere verisimilitude, than in weighing the reasons on both sides of the question; and those who have been long good advocates are not afterwards on that account the better judges.
- As for the advantage that others would derive from the communication of my thoughts, it could not be very great; because I have not yet so far prosecuted them as that much does not remain to be added before they can be applied to practice.
- If, however, they prefer the knowledge of some few truths to the vanity of appearing ignorant of none, as such knowledge is undoubtedly much to be preferred, and, if they choose to follow a course similar to mine, they do not require for this that I should say anything more than I have already said in this Discourse.
- For if they are capable of making greater advancement than I have made, they will much more be able of themselves to discover all that I believe myself to have found; since as I have never examined aught except in order, it is certain that what yet remains to be discovered is in itself more difficult and recondite, than that which I have already been enabled to find, and the gratification would be much less in learning it from me than in discovering it for themselves.
- Besides this, the habit which they will acquire, by seeking first what is easy, and then passing onward slowly and step by step to the more difficult, will benefit them more than all my instructions.
- Thus, in my own case, I am persuaded that if I had been taught from my youth all the truths of which I have since sought out demonstrations, and had thus learned them without labour, I should never, perhaps, have known any beyond these; at least, I should never have acquired the habit and the facility which I think I possess in always discovering new truths in proportion as I give myself to the search.
- And, in a single word, if there is any work in the world which cannot be so well finished by another as by him who has commenced it, it is that at which I labour.
- And I think I may say without vanity, that if there is any one who can carry them out that length, it must be myself rather than another: not that there may not be in the world many minds incomparably superior to mine, but because one cannot so well seize a thing and make it one’s own, when it has been learned from another, as when one has himself discovered it.
- And so true is this of the present subject that, though I have often explained some of my opinions to persons of much acuteness, who, whilst I was speaking, appeared to understand them very distinctly, yet, when they repeated them, I have observed that they almost always changed them to such an extent that I could no longer acknowledge them as mine.
- I am glad, by the way, to take this opportunity of requesting posterity never to believe on hearsay that anything has proceeded from me which has not been published by myself; and I am not at all astonished at the extravagances attributed to those ancient philosophers whose own writings we do not possess; whose thoughts, however, I do not on that account suppose to have been really absurd, seeing they were among the ablest men of their times, but only that these have been falsely represented to us.
- It is observable, accordingly, that scarcely in a single instance has any one of their disciples surpassed them; and I am quite sure that the most devoted of the present followers of Aristotle would think themselves happy if they had as much knowledge of nature as he possessed, were it even under the condition that they should never afterwards attain to higher.
- In this respect they are like the ivy which never strives to rise above the tree that sustains it, and which frequently even returns downwards when it has reached the top; for it seems to me that they also sink, in other words, render themselves less wise than they would be if they gave up study, who, not contented with knowing all that is intelligibly explained in their author, desire in addition to find in him the solution of many difficulties of which he says not a word, and never perhaps so much as thought.
- Their fashion of philosophizing, however, is well suited to persons whose abilities fall below mediocrity; for the obscurity of the distinctions and principles of which they make use enables them to speak of all things with as much confidence as if they really knew them, and to defend all that they say on any subject against the most subtle and skilful, without its being possible for any one to convict them of error.
- In this they seem to me to be like a blind man, who, in order to fight on equal terms with a person that sees, should have made him descend to the bottom of an intensely dark cave: and I may say that such persons have an interest in my refraining from publishing the principles of the Philosophy of which I make use; for, since these are of a kind the simplest and most evident, I should, by publishing them, do much the same as if I were to throw open the windows, and allow the light of day to enter the cave into which the combatants had descended.
- But even superior men have no reason for any great anxiety to know these principles, for if what they desire is to be able to speak of all things, and to acquire a reputation for learning, they will gain their end more easily by remaining satisfied with the appearance of truth, which can be found without much difficulty in all sorts of matters, than by seeking the truth itself which unfolds itself but slowly and that only in some departments, while it obliges us, when we have to speak of others, freely to confess our ignorance.
- It is true, indeed, as regards the experiments which may conduce to this end, that one man is not equal to the task of making them all; but yet he can advantageously avail himself, in this work, of no hands besides his own, unless those of artisans, or parties of the same kind, whom he could pay, and whom the hope of gain (a means of great efficacy) might stimulate to accuracy in the performance of what was prescribed to them.
- For as to those who, through curiosity or a desire of learning, of their own accord, perhaps, offer him their services, besides that in general their promises exceed their performance, and that they sketch out fine designs of which not one is ever realized, they will, without doubt, expect to be compensated for their trouble by the explication of some difficulties, or, at least, by compliments and useless speeches, in which he cannot spend any portion of his time without loss to himself.
- And as for the experiments that others have already made, even although these parties should be willing of themselves to communicate them to him, (which is what those who esteem them secrets will never do,) the experiments are, for the most part, accompanied with so many circumstances and superfluous elements, as to make it exceedingly difficult to disentangle the truth from its adjuncts; besides, he will find almost all of them so ill described, or even so false, (because those who made them have wished to see in them only such facts as they deemed conformable to their principles,) that, if in the entire number there should be some of a nature suited to his purpose, still their value could not compensate for the time that would be necessary to make the selection.
- So that if there existed any one whom we assuredly knew to be capable of making discoveries of the highest kind, and of the greatest possible utility to the public; and if all other men were therefore eager by all means to assist him in successfully prosecuting his designs, I do not see that they could do aught else for him beyond contributing to defray the expenses of the experiments that might be necessary; and for the rest, prevent his being deprived of his leisure by the unseasonable interruptions of any one. But besides that I neither have so high an opinion of myself as to be willing to make promise of anything extraordinary, nor feed on imaginations so vain as to fancy that the public must be much interested in my designs; I do not, on the other hand, own a soul so mean as to be capable of accepting from any one a favour of which it could be supposed that I was unworthy.
- These considerations taken together were the reason why, for the last three years, I have been unwilling to publish the Treatise I had on hand, and why I even resolved to give publicity during my life to no other that was so general, or by which the principles of my Physics might be understood.
- But since then, two other reasons have come into operation that have determined me here to subjoin some particular specimens, and give the public some account of my doings and designs.
- Of these considerations, the first is, that if I failed to do so, many who were cognizant of my previous intention to publish some writings, might have imagined that the reasons which induced me to refrain from so doing, were less to my credit than they really are; for although I am not immoderately desirous of glory, or even, if I may venture so to say, although I am averse from it in so far as I deem it hostile to repose which I hold in greater account than aught else, yet, at the same time, I have never sought to conceal my actions as if they were crimes, nor made use of many precautions that I might remain unknown; and this partly because I should have thought such a course of conduct a wrong against myself, and partly because it would have occasioned me some sort of uneasiness which would again have been contrary to the perfect mental tranquillity which I court.
- And forasmuch as, while thus indifferent to the thought alike of fame or of forgetfulness, I have yet been unable to prevent myself from acquiring some sort of reputation, I have thought it incumbent on me to do my best to save myself at least from being ill-spoken of.
- The other reason that has determined me to commit to writing these specimens of philosophy is, that I am becoming daily more and more alive to the delay which my design of self-instruction suffers, for want of the infinity of experiments I require, and which it is impossible for me to make without the assistance of others: and, without flattering myself so much as to expect the public to take a large share in my interests, I am yet unwilling to be found so far wanting in the duty I owe to myself, as to give occasion to those who shall survive me to make it matter of reproach against me some day, that I might have left them many things in a much more perfect state than I have done, had I not too much neglected to make them aware of the ways in which they could have promoted the accomplishment of my designs.
- And I thought that it was easy for me to select some matters which should neither be obnoxious to much controversy, nor should compel me to expound more of my principles than I desired, and which should yet be sufficient clearly to exhibit what I can or cannot accomplish in the Sciences.
- Whether or not I have succeeded in this it is not for me to say; and I do not wish to forestall the judgments of others by speaking myself of my writings; but it will gratify me if they be examined, and, to afford the greater inducement to this, I request all who may have any objections to make to them, to take the trouble of forwarding these to my publisher, who will give me notice of them, that I may endeavour to subjoin at the same time my reply; and in this way readers seeing both at once will more easily determine where the truth lies; for I do not engage in any case to make prolix replies, but only with perfect frankness to avow my errors if I am convinced of them, or if I cannot perceive them, simply to state what I think is required for defence of the matters I have written, adding thereto no explication of any new matter that it may not be necessary to pass without end from one thing to another.
- Wednesday, August 7, 1867. — We walked down to the Porto da Ponte Grande, where the ajojo or raft lay. I never saw such an old Noah’s Ark, with its standing awning, a floating gipsy “pál,” some seven feet high and twenty-two long, and pitched like a tent upon two hollowed logs. The river must indeed be safe, if this article can get down without accident.
- George the Third was the grandson of George the Second, who was the son of George the First, who was the cousin of Anne, who was the sister-in-law of William the Third, who was the son-in-law of James the Second, who was the brother of Charles the Second, who was the son of Charles the First, who was the son of James the First, who was the cousin of Elizabeth, who was the sister of Mary, who was the sister of Edward the Sixth, who was the son of Henry the Eighth, who was the son of Henry the Seventh, who was the cousin of Richard the Third, who was the uncle of Edward the Fifth, who was the son of Edward the Fourth, who was the cousin of Henry the Sixth, who was the son of Henry the Fifth, who was the son of Henry the Fourth, who was the cousin of Richard the Second, who was the grandson of Edward the Third, who was the son of Edward the Second, who was the son of Edward the First, who was the son of Henry the Third, who was the son of John, who was the brother of ‘Richard the First, who was the son of Henry the Second, who was the cousin of Stephen, who was the cousin of Henry the First, who was the brother of William Rufiis, who was the son of William the Conqueror, who was the son of a whore.
- The book was dedicated in part to science fiction author Philip José Farmer, who had explored sexual themes in works such as The Lovers (1952).
- But “Godot” is not pronounced “G’doh!”, as if Homer Simpson were greeting an Australian. The correct pronunciation is “Goddo”, as if he were the sixth Marx Brother – Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, Gummo, Goddo.
- For instance, directors often puzzle about the “Where are all these corpses from?” section in Act Two: What the hell are these guys talking about? What does it mean? Beckett’s notebook specifies that they have suddenly seen the audience and are horrified. It’s a gag. It’s a dig at the audience. What it’s not is an Intellectual Mountain. Much of the fog in the more mystical sections clears away when you can say, “Hello! It’s a joke!”
- In the first painting, Childhood, all the important story elements of the series are introduced: the voyager, the angel, the river, and the expressive landscape. An infant is safely ensconced in a boat guided by an angel. The landscape is lush; everything is calm and basking in warm sunshine, reflecting the innocence and joy of childhood. The boat glides out of a dark, craggy cave which Cole himself described as “emblematic of our earthly origin, and the mysterious Past.” The river is smooth and narrow, symbolizing the sheltered experience of childhood. The figurehead on the prow holds an hourglass representing time.
- Third in the series, Manhood, shows a now grown figure in the vessel, amid the tribulations of adult life. Storm clouds ominously darken the sky, wind whips at the man’s clothing and rain falls in the background as the boat approaches a treacherous part of the river which has become rocky and rapid, running through a treacherous gorge marked by a gnarled, leafless tree. Gentler country lies at the bottom of the defile and the distant sky line lightens in that direction hinting of the hope of better times ahead. Among the dangers the man has not lost his faith: he has let go of his boat’s tiller (which may have broken) and is part kneeling, gazing upward with hands clasped together. The vessel’s figurehead now holds the hourglass while far above, behind and unseen by the voyager, his guardian angel continues to watch over from the Heavens, shining brightly through a break in the clouds.
- The final painting, Old Age, is an image of death. The man has grown old; he has survived the trials of life. The waters have calmed, the river flows into the waters of eternity. The figurehead and hourglass are missing from the battered boat; the withered old voyager has reached the end of earthly time. In the distance, an angel descends from heaven, while the guardian angel hovers close, gesturing toward the other. The man is once again joyous with the knowledge that Faith has sustained him through this perilous life to the promise of Heaven. The landscape is practically gone, just a few rough rocks represent the edge of the earthly world, and dark water stretches onward. Cole describes the scene: “The chains of corporeal existence are falling away; and already the mind has glimpses of Immortal Life.”
- The second painting, Youth, shows the same lush, green landscape, but here the view widens as does the voyager’s life experience. Now the youth has firm hold of the tiller as the angel watches and waves from the shore, allowing him to take control. The subject’s youthful enthusiasm and energy is evident in his forward-thrusting pose and billowing clothes. In the distance, an ethereal citadel towers in the sky, a shimmering white beacon that represents the dreams and ambitions of humanity.
- Various media outlets reported that Putin made many false claims and misleading statements during the interview, and that Carlson failed to properly challenge him.
- According to Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the interview occurred on February 6.
- On 11th November, 1572, Tycho noticed an unfamiliar bright star in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and continued to observe it with a sextant. It was a very brilliant object, equal to Venus at its brightest for the rest of November, not falling below the first magnitude for another four months, and remaining visible for more than a year afterwards.
- Aldous Huxley took the name of one of his most famous works, The Doors of Perception, from this work. The Doors of Perception, in turn, inspired the name of the American rock band The Doors.
- Huxley’s contemporary C. S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce about the divorce of Heaven and Hell, in response to Blake’s Marriage.
- April 23 – Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
- August 29 – Hurricane Katrina makes landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast, causing severe damage, killing over a thousand people and dealing an estimated $108 billion in damage.
- [August 1] Eleven mountaineers from international expeditions die on K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, in the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering.
- December 27 – Israel invades the Gaza Strip, in response to rockets being fired into Israeli territory by Hamas, and due to weapons being smuggled into the area.
- March 19 – An Energy release of a Gamma-ray burst called the GRB 080319B is the brightest event ever recorded in the Universe.
- November 1 – Satoshi Nakamoto publishes “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”.
- November 4 – 2008 United States presidential election: Democratic U.S. Senator Barack Obama defeats Republican candidate John McCain and is elected the 44th President of the United States, making him the first African-American to be elected to the office.
- September 15 – Stocks fall sharply Monday on a triptych of Wall Street woe: Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy filing, Merrill Lynch’s acquisition by Bank of America, and AIG’s unprecedented request for short-term financing from the Federal Reserve.
- September 28 – SpaceX Falcon 1 becomes the world’s first privately developed space launch vehicle to successfully make orbit.
- April 2 – 148 people are killed, the majority students, in a mass shooting at the Garissa University College in Kenya, perpetrated by the militant terrorist organization al-Shabaab.
- April 25 – A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Nepal and causes 8,857 deaths in Nepal, 130 in India, 27 in China and 4 in Bangladesh with a total of 9,018 deaths.
- January 7 – Two gunmen belonging to Al-Qaeda’s Yemen branch kill 12 people and injure 11 more at the Paris headquarters of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, prompting an anti-terrorism demonstration attended by over a million people and more than 40 world leaders
- July 29 – Microsoft releases the desktop operating system Windows 10.
- March 6 – NASA’s Dawn probe enters orbit around Ceres, becoming the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet.
- October 3 – A United States airstrike on a Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Afghanistan kills an estimated 20 people.
- April 3 – The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung publish the “Panama Papers”, a set of 11.5 million confidential documents from the Panamanian corporate Mossack Fonseca that provides detailed information on more than 214,000 offshore companies, including the identities of shareholders and directors including noted personalities and heads of state.
- December 23 – The United Nations Security Council adopts Resolution 2334 condemning “Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967”.
- February 12 – Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill sign an Ecumenical Declaration in the first such meeting between leaders of the Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches since their schism in 1054.
- January 8 – Joaquín Guzmán, widely regarded as the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, is recaptured following his escape from a maximum-security prison in Mexico.
- July 14 – 2016 Nice truck attack: 86 people are killed and more than 400 others injured in a truck attack in Nice, France, during Bastille Day celebrations.
- July 5 – NASA’s Juno spacecraft enters orbit around Jupiter and begins a 20-month survey of the planet.
- July 6 – The augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go is released, breaking numerous records in terms of sales and revenue.
- June 12 – A gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State opens fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and injuring 53 others.
- June 23 – The United Kingdom votes in a referendum to leave the European Union.
- May 28 [2016] – Gorilla Harambe is shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in an incident involving a child and becomes a global meme.
- November 8 – 2016 United States presidential election: Businessman and television personality Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States in a surprise victory against his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
- August 2 – Apple Inc. becomes the world’s first public company to achieve a market capitalization of $1 trillion.
- August 7 – The United States reimposes sanctions on Iran.
- At the Katowice Climate Change Conference, nearly 200 nations agree rules on implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement.
- February 18 – Kizlyar church shooting: a man carrying a knife and a double-barreled shotgun opens fire on a crowd at an Orthodox church in Kizlyar, Dagestan, killing five women and injuring several other people; the perpetrator is shot and killed by police.
- [July 6] Former Aum Shinrikyo leader Shoko Asahara and six other main members of Aum Shinrikyo, who led the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, are executed by hanging.
- [June 3] At least 109 people are killed and hundreds wounded by the eruption of Volcán de Fuego, Guatemala’s deadliest volcanic eruption in over a century.
- March 11: China’s government approves a constitutional change that removes term limits for its leaders, granting Xi Jinping the status of “President for Life”. Xi is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (paramount leader).
- March 18 – In the Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin is elected for a fourth term.
- North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un meets Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping, leaving the country for the first time since assuming office in 2011.
- May 25 – The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, imposing strict privacy controls for European citizens worldwide.
- October 2 – The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, triggering a diplomatic crisis for Saudi Arabia.
- April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO, doubling the alliance’s border with Russia.
- December 31 – Queen Margrethe II of Denmark announces her abdication effective January 14, 2024, after 52 years on the throne.
- January 5 – The funeral of Pope Benedict XVI is held at St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican City.The funeral was attended by an estimated 50,000 people.
- June 18 – Titan submersible implosion: All five crew members of Titan, a deep-sea submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic, are killed following a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.
- The 2023 Chinese presidential election is held with the National People’s Congress unanimously re-electing Xi Jinping as the President of the People’s Republic of China to an unprecedented third term.
- March 14 – OpenAI launches GPT-4, a large language model for ChatGPT, which can respond to images and can process up to 25,000 words.
- May 24 – Canada and Saudi Arabia agree to restore full diplomatic relations after a breakdown in relations in 2018 over the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi.
- November 17 – The global average temperature temporarily exceeds 2 °C above the pre-industrial average for the first time in recorded history.
- 2023 Israel–Hamas war: Hamas launches an incursion into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, prompting a military response from the Israel Defense Forces. Israel launches numerous air strikes on Lebanon after rockets are fired by Hezbollah and further attempts are made to penetrate Israel.