Soo...another year is passing, and this time it’s moving into a whole new decade. Hopefully one that promises to be better ( at least politically) than the last few. But there have been some amazing discoveries this past year, so let’s review:
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Monday Crimson Quillfeather
Tuesday ejoanna
Wednesday Pam from Calif
Thursday art ah zen
Friday FloridaSNMOM
Saturday Gwennedd
Sunday loggersbrat
This past year saw a government shutdown that caused such distress for the workers and even caused the Smithsonian Institute to shut down their museums, a completely devastating fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral which is still being repaired, we got our first look at a black hole, discovered a new human ancestor species in an unexpected place, watched helplessly as almost 75 thousand fires burned in the Amazon, and saw the end of the latest Star wars trilogy.
The Smithsonian has garnered their top Ten Stories of the Year and we had some amazing achievements, discoveries and Very Interesting Things happen this year:
1. A map that lets you plug in your current address to see what where you live looked like 750 MILLION years ago...or later if you like. It’s an interactive map, so you can use it to look up any time between the present and millions of years ago.
2. The True Story of England’s Warrior King, King Henry V. Henry was a contradiction in that while awaiting his ascension to the throne he was a playboy, but when he became king at 27, he changed dramatically:
“[He]believed he was “divinely ordained to carry out God’s great work”: namely, humbling the prideful nation of France with a show of military might “
Trevor Royle’s Lancaster Against York: The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain
He spent his entire 9 ruling years fighting one enemy or another. Eventually he died of dysentery on the battlefield in France.
3. A Hidden Japanese Settlement Found in the Forests of British Columbia:
[I]n 2004, archaeology professor Robert Muckle was alerted to a site within the forests of British Columbia’s North Shore mountains, where a few old cans and a sawblade had been discovered. He suspected the area was once home to a historic logging camp, but he did not anticipate that he would spend the next 14 years unearthing sign after sign of a forgotten Japanese settlement—one that appears to have been abruptly abandoned.
The site sits some 12 miles northeast of Vancouver, BC. Muckle thinks that the site containing the remains of houses, a shrine and a bathhouse as well as gardens, begun as a logging site, but once the logging stopped, some Japanese continued to live there.
4. Things You Didn’t Know About the Apollo 11 Mission
June of this year marked the 50th Anniversary of the moon landing, so Smithsonian launched an article by Charles Fishman ( author of One Giant leap; The Impossible Mission That Flew us to The Moon) that answers some reader’s questions about the mission. A behind-the-scenes look at that remarkable achievement.
5. How a 16 Million Year Old Tree Can Tell You about the Passage of Time
The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History has a new exhibit as of June this year, A highly polished slab of a 16 million old Sequoia. The tree slice offers up a rare look into the history of the world through it’s rings. The tree lived some 16 million years ago, but died in it’s 260 th year. It was then preserved naturally by petrifying. It gives a unique perspective on life millions of years ago
6. How to Correctly Calculate Your Dog’s Age:
Actually...a year in a dog’s life is NOT equivalent to 7 human years. It’s much more complicated than that!! It all has to do with Methylation...the accumulation of methyls that “stick” to our DNA. All mammals accumulate such methyls and calculating the accretion helps determine how dogs age in comparison to humans. Humans accumulate these methyls at a very steady rate and scientists now call this rate the “epigenetic clock”. While a dog’s “clock” looks much like a human’s in the first few months of life, it changes as the dog grows past early puppyhood
But the comparison breaks down after early puppyhood. The dog clock ticks much faster with pups speeding through puberty and reaching sexual maturity within their first year. Then, the dog's epigenetic clock slows down as the dog ages, and begins to match up with humans again in its later years.
7. You can Find out with This Map where the US is Combating Terrorism
It is estimated that America is at war in about 40% of the World’s countries. And there’s actually a map for that!
8. Find out all about Florida’s Snake Problem:
TRIGGER WARNING!! The site has images of snakes
Florida has a very real problem with snakes. It’s estimated that there are well over 10,000 pythons running loose in the everglades...some experts estimate that there are perhaps hundreds of thousands. And they have eaten nearly all the native wildlife.
most Floridians agree that having large invasive snakes eating up the native wildlife is not a good thing. Given the pythons’ many survival advantages, they will never be eliminated. Today the objective is containment and control.
9. Find Out from the Diaries of Confederate Soldiers About the True Role of Slavery at Gettysburg:
Many of the soldiers in General Lee’s army also travelled with their slaves in tow. What happened to those slaves? Historian Kevin M. Levin finds out through looking through the diaries of Confederate soldiers who travelled with Lee’s army to the Mason-Dixon Line.
Enslaved workers constituted the backbone of the Confederate war effort. Although stories of these impressed workers and camp slaves have been erased from our popular memory of the war in favor of mythical accounts of black Confederate soldiers, their presence in the Confederate army constituted a visual reminder to every soldier —slaveowner and non-slaveowner alike—that their ultimate success in battle depended on the ownership of other human beings.
10. Find out About the Mystery of The Devil’s Corkscrew!
Hmm...one of the most intriguing fossils can be found in Nebraska’s northwest badlands. Tall, left or right-hand corkscrews buried in the soft sandstone of the area known as the Harrison Formation and believed to be 20 to 23 million years old. They have fascinated scientists for ages. And nobody seemed to have a theory that anyone else agreed on as to what could possibly have formed these helices. It became a stalemate.
Eventually in the 1970’s Larry Martin , a fossil expert from the U of Kansas and his student, Deb Bennett, began to study these unusual spirals...and...
Mystery solved. What started out with the finding of curious fossils from the badlands of Nebraska led to a detailed reconstruction of an ancient ecosystem and the lives of some of its inhabitants. Every fossil carries this potential—to clue researchers into discoveries about the ancient environment and the plants and organisms that once thrived in it.
www.smithsonianmag.com/...