History

History of the Greek alphabet

Jovan Stosic February 13, 2024

The history of the Greek alphabet starts with the adoption of Phoenician letter forms in the 9th–8th centuries BC during early Archaic Greece and continues to the present day. The Greek alphabet was developed during the Iron Age, centuries after the loss of Linear B, the syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek until the Late Bronze Age collapse and Greek Dark Age. This article concentrates on the development of the alphabet before the modern codification of the standard Greek alphabet.

The Phoenician alphabet was consistently explicit only about consonants, though even by the 9th century BC it had developed matres lectionis to indicate some, mostly final, vowels.[1] This arrangement is much less suitable for Greek than for Semitic languages, and these matres lectionis, as well as several Phoenician letters which represented consonants not present in Greek, were adapted according to the acrophonic principle to represent Greek vowels consistently, if not unambiguously.

The Greek alphabet was developed by a Greek with first-hand experience of contemporary Phoenician script. After it was established in the Greek mainland, it was exported eastwards to Phrygia, where a similar script was devised. It was also exported westwards with Euboean or West Greek traders, where the Etruscans adapted the Greek alphabet to their own language, which eventually led to the Latin alphabet.

 

Source: History of the Greek alphabet – Wikipedia

History of the Greek alphabet was last modified: February 13th, 2024 by Jovan Stosic

Diprotodon

Jovan Stosic August 19, 2023

Diprotodon (Ancient Greek: “two protruding front teeth”) is an extinct genus of marsupial from the Pleistocene of Australia containing one species, D. optatum. The earliest finds date to 1.77 million to 780,000 years ago but most specimens are dated to after 110,000 years ago. Its remains were first unearthed in 1830 in Wellington Caves, New South Wales, and contemporaneous paleontologists guessed they belonged to rhinos, elephants, hippos or dugongs. Diprotodon was formally described by English naturalist Richard Owen in 1838, and was the first named Australian fossil mammal, and led Owen to become the foremost authority of his time on other marsupials and Australian megafauna, which were enigmatic to European science.

Diprotodon is the largest-known marsupial to have ever lived, it greatly exceeds the size of its closest living relatives wombats and koalas. It is a member of the extinct family Diprotodontidae, which includes other large quadrupedal herbivores. It grew as large as 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) at the shoulders, over 4 m (13 ft) from head to tail, and possibly weighed almost 3,500 kg (7,700 lb). Females were much smaller than males. Diprotodon supported itself on elephant-like legs to travel long distances, and inhabited most of Australia. The digits were weak; most of the weight was probably borne on the wrists and ankles. The hindpaws angled inward at 130°. Its jaws may have produced a strong bite force of 2,300 newtons (520 pounds-force) at the long and ever-growing incisor teeth, and over 11,000 newtons (2,500 lbf) at the last molar. Such powerful jaws would have allowed it to eat vegetation in bulk, crunching and grinding plant materials such as twigs, buds and leaves of woody plants with its bilophodont teeth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diprotodon

Diprotodon was last modified: August 19th, 2023 by Jovan Stosic

Mississippi Bubble | 18th Century Financial Crisis, French History

Jovan Stosic August 19, 2023

Mississippi Bubble, a financial scheme in 18th-century France that triggered a speculative frenzy and ended in financial collapse. The scheme was engineered by John Law, a Scottish adventurer, economic theorist, and financial wizard who was a friend of the regent, the Duke d’Orléans. In 1716 Law established the Banque Générale, a bank with the authority to issue notes. A year later he established the Compagnie d’Occident (“Company of the West”) and obtained for it exclusive privileges to develop the vast French territories in the Mississippi River valley of North America. Law’s company also soon monopolized the French tobacco and African slave trades, and by 1719 the Compagnie des Indes (“Company of the Indies”), as it had been renamed, held a complete monopoly of France’s colonial trade. Law also took over the collection of French taxes and the minting of money; in effect, he controlled both the country’s foreign trade and its finances.

Given the potential for profits involved, public demand for shares in the Compagnie des Indes increased sharply, sending the price for a share from 500 to 18,000 livres, which was out of all proportion to earnings. By 1719 Law had issued approximately 625,000 stock shares, and he soon afterward merged the Banque Générale with the Compagnie des Indes. Law hoped to retire the vast public debt accumulated during the later years of Louis XIV’s reign by selling his company’s shares to the public in exchange for state-issued public securities, or billets d’état, which consequently also rose sharply in value. A frenzy of wild speculation ensued that led to a general stock-market boom across Europe. The French government took advantage of this situation by printing increased amounts of paper money, which was readily accepted by the state’s creditors because it could be used to buy more shares of the Compagnie. This went on until the excessive issue of paper money stimulated galloping inflation, and both the paper money and the billets d’état began to lose their value. Meanwhile the expected profits from the company’s colonial ventures were slow to materialize, and the intricate linking of the company’s stock with the state’s finances ended in complete disaster in 1720, when the value of the shares plummeted, causing a general stock market crash in France and other countries. Though the crash was not directly attributable to Law, he was the obvious scapegoat and was forced to flee France in December 1720. The enormous debts of his company and bank were soon afterward consolidated and taken over by the state, which raised taxes in order to retire it.

https://www.britannica.com/money/topic/Mississippi-Bubble

Mississippi Bubble | 18th Century Financial Crisis, French History was last modified: August 19th, 2023 by Jovan Stosic

Mercury 7 astronauts peer vote

Jovan Stosic August 19, 2023

Prior to naming Alan Shepard as the pilot for the first US human spaceflight, Bob Gilruth asked the seven Mercury astronauts for a peer vote. To the best of my knowledge, Gilruth never publicly revealed the results. In fact he stated that he destroyed the responses.

According to the individual astronauts:

  • John Glenn voted for Scott Carpenter
  • Carpenter voted for Glenn
  • Wally Schirra voted for Shepard
  • Gordon Cooper voted for Gus Grissom

Shepard’s, Grissom’s and Deke Slayton’s votes are unknown (at least to me anyway).

http://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum38/HTML/001164.html

Mercury 7 astronauts peer vote was last modified: August 19th, 2023 by Jovan Stosic