Geographers can tell you that the one thing that most rivers and their adjacent flood plains in the world have in common is that they have rich histories associated with human settlement and development. This especially true in arid regions which are very dependent upon water. Two excellent examples are the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates…
When the railroads moved west to the Great Plains, the “Cattle Boom” began. Southern Texas became a major ranching area with the raising of longhorn cattle from Mexico. Cattle were branded by the rawhides who guarded them on horseback on the ranges. Before the Civil War, small herds of Texas cattle were driven by the…
The Greek Orthodox Church is one of the three major branches of Christianity, which “stands in today’s society as one of the communities created by the apostles of Jesus in the region of the eastern Mediterranean, and which spread by missionary activity throughout Eastern Europe” (Meyendorff 5).The word orthodox comes from Greek, meaning right-believing. Currently…
The Byzantine Empire, the survivor of the Roman Empire, flourished into the oldest and longest lasting empire in our history. It began with Constantine the Great’s triumph of Christianity. He then transferred his capital from Rome to the refounded Byzantium in the early 4th century, year 330 AD, and named it Constantinople after himself. This…
After the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the wandering Jews lived in tents or booths, called Sukkots. They were pitched wherever they happened to stop for the night. Today it is called the Sukkot the festival of booths remembering both the ancient agricultural booths and those of the Exodus. The harvest festival of thanksgiving, Sukkot,…
The Shinto religion was started in the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) of Japanese history. The Tokugawa Enlightenment inspired a group of people who studied kokugaku, which roughly translated means nativism, Japanese Studies, or Native Studies. Kokugakus intent was to recover Japanese character to what it was before the early influences of foreigners, especially the Chinese. Some…
“The term “Conservative” had been attached to the moderates by the Reformers because the moderates had branded them as radicals. This name hardly describes the movement aptly. Conservative Judaism, is the American version of the principles of positive historical Judaism. The conservatives accept the findings of modern scholarship that Judaism is the product of a…
The word Christmas comes from the old English “Cristes maesse” meaning Christ’s Mass. The Holiday celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. The actual birthday of Jesus is not known; therefore, the early Church Fathers in the 4th century fixed the day around the old Roman Saturnalia festival (17 – 21 December), a traditional pagan festivity.…
A heresy which arose in the fourth century, and denied the Divinity of Jesus Christ. DOCTRINE First among the doctrinal disputes which troubled Christians after Constantine had recognized the Church in A.D. 313, and the parent of many more during some three centuries, Arianism occupies a large place in ecclesiastical history. It is not a…
Fetishism is a perversion that is found, primarily in men, in which genital discharge is impossible without the presence of their fetish. A fetish, however can be a variety of things, yet there are three basic types of fetishes: an inanimate object (e.g. women’s clothing, shoes, gloves, underwear), a part of the human body (e.g.…
The Soviet Space Program, Vostok, was designed to be the first manned spacecraft, and therefore introducing the first man in space. Vostok I succeeded in orbiting the earth on April 12, 1961, and the first man in space was Yuri Gagarin. The vehicle used for the Vostok program consisted of two models. The first model…
The PLO was set up in 1964 by an Arab League decision in response to growing signs of Palestinian unrest. The Palestinians desired to reclaim the lands occupied by Israel, which they felt belonged to them, as said in the Bible. In 1964 the Arab states created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). While it was…
Origins A Spirit of Reform in the late 1800’s 1. Henry George believed that poverty could be eliminated by using land productively by everyone. Also taxing the nonproductive more than the productive. 2. Edward Bellamy believed that the government should create a trust to take care of the needs of the people rather than profit.…
Cyprus, an island in the Eastern Mediterranean, at the cross-roads of three continents – Europe, Asia and Africa – has one of the oldest histories of the world, dating back 9000 years. Its strategic position, its wealth in forests and mineral deposits, as well as its skilled craftsmen, made it the prized possession of the…
The first decades (1830s to 1860s) of Queen Victoria’s reign produced a vigorous and varied body of literature that attempted to come to terms with the current transformations of English society, but writers in the latter decades (1870s to 1900) withdrew into AESTHETICISM, a preoccupation with sensation as an end in itself. Confronted by the…
Locations Large deposits of Uranium in the U.S are found in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. Most of Canada’s Uranium comes from the province of Saskatchewan. There is a lot of Uranium in the oceans but we do not have the technology to mine it at a cheap cost. Mining When uranium is…
The Eiffel tower, or tour de Eiffel, is located in Paris, France. It is very famous and a wonderful tourist attraction. The wrought-iron skeleton is located on Champ de Mars. It also contains restaurants, a weather station, and spaces for experiments, but they all came at a cost of over $1 million, but the fees…
The Theater of Dionysus was Europe’s first theater, and stood immediately below the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. It was originally built in the late 5th century B.C. The theater was an outdoor auditorium in the shape of a great semicircle on the slope of the Acropolis, with rows of seats on which about eighteen thousand…
The Spartans were the most formidable warriors in all of history. They dedicated their entire lives to warfare. They were taught to endure cold, hunger, pain; their courage on the battlefield was second to none. The Spartan code was to fight hard, follow orders without question and to die rather than retreat or surrender. To…
The City of Rome, Italy is located along the Tiber River in the west-central part of the Italian mainland, approximately a mere fifteen miles inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea. The City of Rome is situated on the famous Seven Hills of Rome, which are again bordered by hills to the north, south, and east. Rome…