The hall was built in an eclectic style by the Viennese architect Peter Paul Brang between 1905 and 1906 as the main seat of ethnic German associations in the town. As such, it was intended to contrast with Celje National Hall, which had a similar function for the local Slovenes. The building’s original name was the “German Center”and it was used as the main community center for the purposes of the local German-speaking population and by those that identified with German culture.
In 1919, after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, the building was confiscated from the German community by the new Yugoslav authorities and renamed “Celje Hall”. Several cultural associations were placed in the building, including the prestigious Hermagoras Society publishing house, which was after the Carinthian Plebiscite expelled from its original location in Klagenfurt, Austria. Throughout the period of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the German community tried to get back the property and the building, but they were unsuccessful. After the Nazi German occupation of northern Slovenia and Lower Styria in April 1941, the building was again restored to its former use. With the defeat of the Nazi regime in May 1945, most of the ethnic Germans fled the town together with the occupying German armed forces, whereas the others were expelled by the Yugoslav Communist authorities. The building was again renamed “Celje Hall”.
The Step Pyramid at Saqqara was built by the architect Imhotep at the instigation of King Djoser sometime between 2630 and 2611 BCE. The pyramid was the first large building to be made entirely of cut stone blocks, and it was far larger than anything that had gone before. The Step Pyramid paved the way for the great pyramids of the following century.
Imhotep chose a site where his building would dominate the area.There he built a six-stepped pyramid that was 61 m tall and symbolized the hill on which creation began.The pyramid was surrounded by other large buildings. The whole complex was bounded by a wall that was more than 1.6 km long.
Enclosed within the wall were buildings such as a temple and storage rooms for provisions and grave goods that had also been provided in earlier royal tombs.What was new, however, was a court where the king could celebrate his jubilees— ceremonies through which the power of the king was believed to be ritually renewed.
All the buildings were lavishly furnished and decorated. In the underground rooms, for example, the walls were hung with panels of blue-glazed tiles, while in another location, there were low-relief carvings that showed the king performing the running ceremony that was part of his coronation. A life-size statue of Djoser seated on his throne was installed in a special room close to the temple, and many other statues of gods and of members of the royal family were dotted around the enclosure. The storage rooms contained more than 40,000 stone vessels, which probably contained wine, oil, and foodstuffs.
The temple in the complex had an important role to play in the cult of dead kings. Priests in the temple carried out ceremonies and rituals that were designed to serve the dead kings in the same way as they had when the kings were alive. In this way, the present king’s ancestors were venerated, and the continuity that was essential to Egyptian civilization was preserved.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser stands in the desert at Saqqara. In the foreground are stone replicas of the kiosks that would have been in use during festivals to celebrate the royal jubilee.
Theodore Roosevelt was born on October 27, 1858, inside a Manhattan brownstone on East 20th Street. was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Here is a list of top 10 facts that you probably did not know about him.
– 1 –
His mother and his first wife died on the same day.
On Valentine’s Day in 1884, Roosevelt’s mother passed away from typhoid fever. One floor above in the same house, his first wife, Alice, died less than 12 hours later from Bright’s disease and complications from giving birth to the couple’s first child just two days before. “The light has gone out of my life,” Roosevelt wrote in his diary that night.
– 2 –
Roosevelt was a New York City police commissioner.
After his appointment in 1895, Roosevelt attempted to reform one of America’s most corrupt police departments. The future president regularly took midnight rambles to make sure officers were walking their beats. His decision to enforce an unpopular law that banned the sale of alcohol in saloons on Sundays made him a very unpopular figure in New York, but he persisted in the crusade even after receiving two letter bombs in the mail.
– 3 –
Roosevelt went skinny-dipping in the Potomac River.
During his presidency, the noted outdoorsman often escaped the confines of the White House. Roosevelt sailed his presidential yacht on the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and regularly led hiking expeditions in Rock Creek Park where he would scale cliffs and use twigs and stumps for target practice with his revolver. After strenuous walks along the Potomac, the president on occasion would shed all his clothes and take a plunge in the river to cool off.
– 4 –
He won the Nobel Peace Prize.
The man famed for his exploits at San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War and “Big Stick” diplomacy captured the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in mediating the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended the Russo-Japanese War. Roosevelt was the first American to capture the award, and he used the prize money to fund a trust to promote industrial peace.
– 5 –
Roosevelt was the first sitting president to leave the country.
In November 1906, Roosevelt made presidential history by becoming the first chief executive to leave the United States. He sailed aboard USS Louisiana to personally inspect the construction of the Panama Canal, a project that he had championed as president.
– 6 –
A boxing accident left him virtually blind in one eye.
Roosevelt boxed for Harvard University’s intramural lightweight championship and continued to spar recreationally during his political career. During his days in the White House, he regularly put up his dukes against former professional boxers and other sparring partners until a punch from a young artillery officer smashed a blood vessel and left him nearly blind in his left eye.
– 7 –
Roosevelt was a prolific author.
From his earliest days, Roosevelt had a passion for reading and writing. He penned his first book, “The Naval War of 1812,” at the age of 23 and earned a reputation as a serious historian. Over the course of his lifetime, Roosevelt authored 38 books, which included an autobiography, a biography of Oliver Cromwell, a history of New York City and the four-volume series “The Winning of the West.” The outdoorsman also wrote numerous books and magazine articles about hunting and his frontier exploits.
– 8 –
He was a member of the Hasty Pudding Club.
While a Harvard undergraduate, Roosevelt won election into the Hasty Pudding Club, and he was the social club’s secretary during his senior year. Roosevelt was one of five presidents—the others being John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy—to have been a club member.
– 9 –
Roosevelt once scaled the Matterhorn.
While a student at Harvard, Dr. Dudley Sargent warned Roosevelt, who had been a sickly child, that, because of a weak heart, failure to lead a sedentary life could have fatal consequences. “Doctor, I’m going to do all the things you tell me not to do,” Roosevelt responded. “If I’ve got to live the sort of life you have described, I don’t care how short it is.” A year after graduation, Roosevelt took time from his European honeymoon with Alice to scale the 15,000-foot Swiss Alp with two guides.
– 10 –
He volunteered to lead an infantry unit in World War I.
At the outbreak of World War I, the 58-year-old ex-president was eager to return to the front lines. Roosevelt vehemently lobbied President Woodrow Wilson to send him to France at the head of a 200,000-man expeditionary force. Around the country, supporters of the hero of San Juan Hill staged rallies of support, but Roosevelt would not get called to fight in the war that eventually claimed his son Quentin, who was killed in action when his plane was shot down over France in 1918.
1910 cartoon shows Roosevelt’s multiple roles from 1899 to 1910.
A finely-ground smokeless tobacco inhaled through the nostrils, ‘taking snuff’ originated in the Americas and was introduced into Spain following Columbus’s second voyage to the New World in the 1490s. The supposed medicinal properties of tobacco saw it spread around Europe, rising in fortune in the 1560s when the French Queen Catherine de’ Medici declared it a wonder for headaches (it had been recommended by John Nicot, who later gave his name to nicotine). The fashion spread throughout Europe, and by the 1700s snuff was considered a luxury product and mark of refinement. Though the stereotypical image of the snufftaker is the Georgian dandy, it was also popular among women – George III’s queen was so fond of it that she earned the nickname ‘Snuffy Charlotte’. As with most fashions it fell from favour, as new stimulants appeared.
Sneezes were common after a pinch of snuff but they would be mocked as the sign of a beginner.
The ancient Egyptians believed that writing was invented by the god Thoth and called their hieroglyphic script “mdju netjer” (“words of the gods”). The word hieroglyph comes from the Greek hieros (sacred) plus glypho (inscriptions) and was first used by Clement of Alexandria.
The earliest known examples of writing in Egypt have been dated to 3,400 BC. The latest dated inscription in hieroglyphs was made on the gate post of a temple at Philae in 396 AD.
The hieroglyphic script was used mainly for formal inscriptions on the walls of temples and tombs. In some inscriptions the glyphs are very detailed and in full colour, in others they are simple outlines. For everyday writing the hieratic script was used.
After the Emperor Theodsius I ordered the closure of all pagan temples throughout the Roman empire in the late 4th century AD, knowledge of the hieroglyphic script was lost. decipher the script.
DECIPHERMENT
Many people have attempted to decipher the Egyptian scripts since the 5th century AD, when Horapollo provided explanations of nearly two hundred glyphs, some of which were correct. Other decipherment attempts were made in the 9th and 10th by Arab historians Dhul-Nun al-Misri and Ibn Wahshiyya, and in the 17th century by Athanasius Kircher. These attempts were all based on the mistaken assumption that the hieroglyphs represented ideas and not sounds of a particular language.
The discovery, in 1799, of the Rosetta Stone, a bilingual text in Greek and the Egyptian Hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts enabled scholars such as Silvestre de Sacy, Johan David Åkerblad and Thomas Young to make real progress with their decipherment efforts, and by the 1820s Jean-François Champollion had made the complete decipherment of the Hieroglyphic script.
HIEROGLYPHS REPRESENTING SINGLE CONSONANT
These glyphs alone could be used to write Ancient Egyptian and represent the first alphabet ever divised. In practice, they were rarely used in the fashion.
HIEROGLYPHS REPRESENTING TWO CONSONANTS
HIEROGLYPHS REPRESENTING THREE CONSONANTS
DETERMINATIVES
Determinatives are non-phonetic glyphs which give extra information about the meanings of words, distinguish homophones and serve as word dividers.
NUMERALS
By combining the following glyphs, any number could be constructed. The higher value signs were always written in front of the lower value ones.
SAMPLE TEXT
Transliteration: iw wnm msh nsw, this means “The crocodile eats the king”.
Internationally respected merchants and traders, these ancient peoples left behind one very significant, long-lasting legacy
Who were they?
The Phoenicians were an ancient people who lived in what is now Lebanon (and some surrounding areas). They flourished from c1500-300 BC and were famed traders.
Figure 1: location of Phoenicia and its trade route.
Where did they come from?
Ancient writers believed the Phoenicians had arrived from the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean, but modern evidence suggests the society developed c3000 BC out of the Canaanite people in the same region. The first Phoenician city, Byblos, dates back to around this time, but it would be more than 1,500 years before the other great Phoenician cities emerged.
Where did the name ‘Phoenicians’ come from?
It was coined by the Ancient Greeks. A popular theory is that the name derived from the Greek word for the colour of an expensive purple dye that the Phoenicians extracted from sea snails. The Phoenicians would not have referred to themselves by this name, and the term they used is not known.
Did they rule a country, or an empire?
Not in the way that we would understand it today. The Phoenicians were more like a confederation of independent city states, the best known of which were Byblos, Tyre, Sidon and Arwad. The Phoenicians developed trading networks across the Mediterranean and, to support these, they established small colonies along the coasts of Europe and North Africa – reaching as far west as modernday Spain. One Phoenician colony, Carthage (in what is now Tunisia), ended up becoming a major power in its own right.
Figure 2: locations of phoenicians colonies with further description.
Why did the Phoenicians focus so extensively on trade?
It was probably because of the geography of their lands. The region was not suited to farming, but had a long Mediterranean coast as well as cedar forests – a wood prized across the ancient world. So trading made good economic sense and, as the centuries progressed, they became highly skilled at it. They were renowned for the speed of their ships, their genius for navigation and their craftsmanship. The Phoenicians traded all manner of things including linen, wine, spices, slaves and, of course, cedar wood.
Figure 3: description of Phoenician trade and the patterns of ancient trade.
How did the Phoenicians relate to the other ancient civilisations of their day?
Much of what we now know about the Phoenicians is based on the reports of other peoples who encountered them, including the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Israelites. As well as trading with these civilisations, the Phoenicians often lived under the domination of the more powerful ones, beginning with Ancient Egypt. Some of these overlords allowed the Phoenicians to operate relatively freely, valuing their trading and communication networks. One ruler who went to war against the Phoenicians, however, was the Macedonian King Alexander the Great. In 332 BC, he captured the Phoenician city of Tyre and put thousands of its inhabitants to the sword, selling tens of thousands more into slavery. Nearly 200 years later, Rome crushed the great Phoenician outpost of Carthage and by 64 BC the Phoenician citystates had all been incorporated into the Roman Empire.
What was the Phoenicians’ greatest legacy?
It was undoubtedly their alphabet. Created c1000 BC, the Phoenician writing system of 22 letters was in itself not very revolutionary. In fact, it was really only a modification of similar alphabets that already existed in the region. Yet, because they were traders, the Phoenicians spread their alphabetall over the Mediterranean region and introduced it to people of many different civilisations. It soon became a valuable tool for international commerce and was almost certainly the source of the Greek alphabet, which later inspired the one that most Western languages – including English – use today.
Figure 4: Phoenician alphabet which was almost certainly the source of the Greek alphabet.
Before modern houses were large enough for individual rooms, many poorer families often slept in the same bed. The practice was charmingly called ‘pigging’, and it was common in rural Scotland and Ireland right up until the 20th century. With so many snoozers crammed into a small space, a form of etiquette inevitably developed: boys and girls were kept at opposite ends while the smallest kids slept nearest their parents in the centre, creating a sort of gendered Russian doll effect. The custom possibly inspired the nursery rhyme, “There were ten in the bed, and the little one said: ‘Roll over…’” Bizarrely, though, it wasn’t just family members who snuggled up under the covers. We’d be horrified if, when checking into a hotel, we found another family asleep in our room, but such renting of the family bed was common in Colonial America in the 1600s, having begun as a Dutch tradition called ‘queesting’. Visiting guests, or even paying strangers, sometimes crawled in alongside mother, father and the kids, to share the communal warmth. It’s fair to say that if the practice were revived today many newspaper editors would spontanesly combust from the intensity of their moral outrage!
Figure 1: an example of pigging in the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971).
197 – Emperor Septimius Severus defeats usurper Clodius Albinus in the Battle of Lugdunum, the bloodiest battle between Roman armies.
356 – Emperor Constantius II issues a decree closing all pagan temples in the Roman Empire.
1408 – The revolt of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, against King Henry IV, ends with his defeat and death at Bramham Moor.
1473 – Nicolaus Copernicus is born in Torun, a city in north-central Poland on the Vistula River. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
1600 – The Peruvian stratovolcano Huaynaputina explodes in the most violent eruption in the recorded history of South America.
1674 – England and the Netherlands sign the Treaty of Westminster, ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A provision of the agreement transfers the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam to England, and it is renamed New York.
Figure 1: Map of New Amsterdam (For full version click on the picture)
1701 – Philip V of Spain makes his ceremonial entry into Madrid.
1807 – Aaron Burr, a former U.S. vice president, is arrested in Alabama on charges of plotting to annex Spanish territory in Louisiana and Mexico to be used toward the establishment of an independent republic. He is later found innocent.
1847 – The first rescuers from Sutter’s Fort reach the surviving remnants of the Donner emigrant party at their snowbound camp in the high Sierra Nevada Mountains. The events leading up to the Donner party tragedy began the summer before, when 89 emigrants from Springfield, Illinois, set out overland for California. Initially all went well, and they arrived on schedule at Fort Bridger, Wyoming, in early August. There the emigrants made the mistake of deciding to leave the usual route in favor of a supposed shortcut recently blazed by the California promoter Lansford Hastings. The so-called Hastings Cutoff proved to be anything but a shortcut, and the Donner party lost valuable time and supplies on the trip. When the emigrants finally began the difficult final push over the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains, it was early October and uncomfortably late in the season to be attempting a high mountain passage.
Figure 2: Map of the route taken by the Donner Party, showing Hastings Cutoff—which added 150 miles (240 km) to their travels—in orange (For full version click on the picture).
1861 – Russian Tsar Alexander II abolishes serfdom.
1878 – Thomas Alva Edison patent the phonograph. The technology that made the modern music business possible came into existence in the New Jersey laboratory where Thomas Alva Edison created the first device to both record sound and play it back. He was awarded U.S. Patent No. 200,521 for his invention–the phonograph–on this day in 1878.
1884 – an astonishing series of 37 tornadoes sweeps across the Southeast United States. The twisters, which came at a time in which there was no warning system in place to alert area residents, killed 167 people and injured another 1,000.
1902 – Smallpox vaccination becomes obligatory in France.
1903 – The Austria-Hungary government decrees a mandatory two year military service.
1915 – British and French battleships launch a massive attack on Turkish positions at Cape Helles and Kum Kaleh at the entrance to the Dardanelles, the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia in northwestern Turkey and the only waterway linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea.
1919 – The First Pan African Congress meets in Paris, France.
1942 – Port Darwin, on the northern coast of Australia, is bombed by the Japanese.
1942 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, initiating a controversial World War II policy with lasting consequences for Japanese Americans. The document ordered the removal of resident enemy aliens from parts of the West vaguely identified as military areas. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in 1941, Roosevelt came under increasing pressure by military and political advisors to address the nation’s fears of further Japanese attack or sabotage, particularly on the West Coast, where naval ports, commercial shipping and agriculture were most vulnerable. Included in the off-limits military areas referred to in the order were ill-defined areas around West Coast cities, ports and industrial and agricultural regions. While 9066 also affected Italian and German Americans, the largest numbers of detainees were by far Japanese.
Figure 3: Executive Order 9066 (For full version click on the picture).
1945 – Operation Detachment, the U.S. Marines’ invasion of Iwo Jima, is launched. Iwo Jima was a barren Pacific island guarded by Japanese artillery, but to American military minds, it was prime real estate on which to build airfields to launch bombing raids against Japan, only 660 miles away.
1952 – Danilo Türk is born, Slovene academic and politician, 3rd President of Slovenia.
1959 – The United Kingdom grants Cyprus independence, which is then formally proclaimed on August 16, 1960.
1965 – Dissident officers move several battalions of troops into Saigon on this day with the intention of ousting Gen. Nguyen Khanh from leadership. General Khanh escaped to Dalat with the aid of Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, commander of the South Vietnamese Air Force, who then threatened to bomb Saigon and the Tan Son Nhut Airport unless the rebel troops were withdrawn. Ky was dissuaded from this by Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, who told Ky that more political instability might have a negative impact on continued U.S. aid. Khanh was able to get troops to take over from the insurgents without any resistance on February 20.
1967 – Benicio del Toro is born, Puerto Rican-American actor, director, and producer.
1970 – The Chicago Seven (formerly the Chicago Eight–one defendant, Bobby Seale, was being tried separately) are acquitted of riot conspiracy charges, but found guilty of inciting riot.The eight antiwar activists were charged with the responsibility for the violent demonstrations at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.
1974 – Alexander Solzhenitsyn awaits reunion with his family after exile from Russia. Publication of The Gulag Archipelago, a detailed history of the Soviet prison system, prompted Russia to exile the 55 year-old author. One of Russia’s most visible and vocal dissidents, Solzhenitsyn once served an 11-year prison term. Solzhenitsyn had previously been prevented by the Soviets from receiving a Nobel Prize for literature, but finally in 1978, he received the award in Switzerland.
1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave hospital.
1996 – Colorado Avalanche goaltender Patrick Roy earns his 300th win in the National Hockey League. Roy retired from hockey in 2003 with 551 career wins, a record that still stands.
2003 – An Ilyushin Il-76 military aircraft crashes near Kerman, Iran, killing 275.
2006 – A methane explosion in a coal mine near Nueva Rosita, Mexico, kills 65 miners
2010 – professional golfer Tiger Woods gives a televised news conference in which he apologizes for his marital infidelities and admits to “selfish” and “foolish” behavior. The 34-year-old Woods, one of the greatest players in the history of golf as well as one of the world’s highest-paid athletes, read a scripted statement at PGA headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, before a pre-selected audience that included his mother but not his Swedish-born wife, Elin Nordegren. Members of the media were present but were not allowed to ask questions.
2011 – The debut exhibition of the Belitung shipwreck, containing the largest collection of Tang dynasty artefacts found in one location, begins in Singapore.
2012 – Forty-four people are killed in a prison brawl in Apodaca, Nuevo León, Mexico.
ALL HISTORY NOW 