Historical Sidelines

This is being reposted because more has been added to it.

I find that history books tend to give the main sweep of events but often neglect the numerous "side stories" that do not fit into the main sweep. Today, let's have a look at some of these historical sidelines that should not be forgotten. 

The modern sciences of cosmology and cosmogony, the underlying structure and origin of the universe, revolve around the so-called "Big Bang". This is the cataclysmic explosion of matter and energy that virtually all scientists in these fields accept as marking the beginning of the universe. It is easy to forget that the Big Bang Theory did not originate in scientific circles at all but is a Christian idea. A Belgian priest named Georges Lemaitre suggested that the universe must have begun with such a cataclysm based on what is stated in the Bible about God's creation of the universe and it proved to be correct. 

In celebrating the recent 40th anniversary of the first landing of men on the moon, there is one really impressive feat that seems to get left out. It happened not on the first moon landing, Apollo 11, but on the next one, Apollo 12, in November 1969. In 1967, an unmanned spacecraft, Surveyor, landed on the moon at provide photo images of the surface. In an outstanding feat of navigation, Apollo 12 landed near Surveyor so that the astronauts could remove it's camera and bring it back to earth. The total surface area of the moon is about four times the size of countries like the U.S. or Canada or, China so let's not forget this. 

Cotton is not native to North America and coffee is not native to South America. All of the cotton ever grown in North America originated in some seeds brought from London and all of the coffee grown in South America is from a plant taken there from the Netherlands. 

An incredible but overlooked fact is that the vast majority of the stars in the sky that can be seen with the naked eye have Arabic names. This does not include the brightest stars such as Antares, Arcturus, Vega, Sirius, etc. because these stars were named in ancient times. It also does not include the stars that can only be seen with a telescope. The reason is that after the end of the Roman Empire but before the renaissance, it was the Middle East that made most of the advances in science. "Algebra" is also derived from an Arabic word. 

We tend to forget how our alphabet was derived from earlier hieroglyphics. Have you ever noticed how an "A" resembles the head and horns of a bull upside-down? An "H" resembles a door or a two-story house. "J" looks like a fishing hook. "M" or "W" seems to be derived from the waves on water. "R" looks like a person's profile. "S" might be from a bow and "V" an inverted symbol for a hill or mountain. "T" resembes a pillar or column holding up a roof. 

The west African nation of Liberia was founded by a group of former slaves in the U.S. that had been given their freedom and sailed back to Africa many generations after their ancestors had been taken as slaves. They named their new capital city "Monrovia" after the U.S. president that gave them freedom. I am surprised that this amazing story does not get more attention. 

Sweden was once an imperial power and a long-forgotten fact is that the U.S. state of Delaware had it's beginnings as a Swedish colony. 

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a short-lived union between Egypt and Syria. The two became one nation known as the United Arab Republic, or the U.A.R. Egypt is still sometimes referred to by that name. There were high hopes that the new united nation would be the focal point of a vast Pan-Arab nation. But the Iraqi King Qassim favored an alliance with the U.S.S.R. Also, many Syrians were concerned that theirs, the smaller of the two nations would be dominated by Egypt and there were wealthy Syrians that felt threatened by Egyptian leader, Gamel Nasser's socialist ideas. A faction of the Syrian Army rose up and declared indpendence from the U.A.R. 

An unforgettable episode is the radio broadcast of "The War of the Worlds" in 1938. It was a story about an invasion of earth by Martians. The trouble is that millions of people in eastern New York State and New Jersey took it seriously and thought it was an actual live news broadcast of such an invasion in progress. In 1968 the scenario was repeated in Buffalo, with a science fiction radio broadcast about Martians landing on Grand Island. Some people believed that it was for real, reportedly including the Canadian military, which came to the border to try and stop any Martians from entering Canada.

In the Niagara Falls area, Grand Island was once, before the reestablishment of Israel, planned as the Jewish homeland of "Ararat" and nearby Navy Island was proposed as the site of the United Nations Headquarters. Neither was to be. 

A Lebanese tradition is immigration to Latin America. Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu is of Lebanese descent and is, at the time of this writing, the richest man in the world. This is an immigration trend of which little is written. 

In the Eighteenth Century, Russia sought immigrants from Europe to establish farms on it's vast landscape. Most European countries had colonies to which people could move if they wished. But from the small German-speaking duchies and principalities across central Europe, which were not yet a united nation, hundreds of thousands answered the call. The result was the settlement of so-called "Volga Germans" deep inside Russia around the Volga River. The settlers ultimately numbered nearly two million. They operated very prosperous farms and life revolved around Christianity. Of course, trouble was on the horizon with the advent of atheistic Communism and the world wars. Today, little remains of the Volga Germans in that area. 

It was the Italian airship "Italia" that was the first aircraft to fly over the north pole. In 1928, it succeeded in reaching the pole. Difficult weather conditions prevented landing but flags and a cross presented by the pope were dropped there. The airship never made it back to base due to extreme weather conditions and crashed on an ice floe. The crash caused part of the cabin to break free and ten men were thrown onto the ice, one of which was killed. These were rescued but the airship, suddenly free of a significant amount of weight, thrust back up into the sky with six of the crew still aboard. The airship disappeared into the clouds and has never been found or heard from again. 

It is worth remembering why the city of Trelew on the coast of Argentina has a Welsh name. In the Nineteenth Century, it was founded as a remote outpost for Welsh settlers far away from civilization. The settlement became quite prosperous and attracted more settlers from Wales and everything was done in the Welsh language. Times changed when refrigeration was invented. Argentine beef could be shipped to Europe on refrigerated ships, where it brought premium prices. Soon, much of Argentina became one vast ranch of cattle. Immigrants poured in, mostly from southern Europe, to become ranchers and gueros, the Argentine version of cowboys, and the once-remote Welsh outpost of Trelew suddenly found itself in the middle of civilization. 

China once had it's own version of Christopher Columbus. In the Fifteenth Century, over a hundred years before the voyage of Columbus, Zheng He is believed to have made seven voyages with fleets of large ships all around the Indian Ocean. There is a controversial opinion that he reached North America but certainly brought all manner of African animals back to China.

I wonder if Jesus was foretold by name, in the Old Testament about five hundred years before His time. The Book of Zechariah tells of a "Joshua" who will "take away the sin of the world in one day". This was written before the Hellenistic Age. What I find interesting is that the name of Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua.

Soldiers returning from war tend to start families. The Baby Boom, following the Second World War, is defined as those born between 1945 and 1964, and is seen demographically as a bulge in the population. But have you ever wondered why we do not seem to ever hear of a similar baby boom after the First World War? It is because so many people were killed by the Spanish Flu, maybe 50-100 million, and it tended to kill people in their prime.

Peter the Great, the best-known tsar of Russia's Romanov Dynasty, had his namesake city of St. Petersburg specially built as the country's capital city, moving the capital from Moscow. The Communists would later move the capital back to Moscow. To get new ideas Peter actually moved to the Netherlands and got a job as a laborer in a shipyard. He also visited England and became friends with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. This voyage is known as the "Grand Embassy" and is remembered today because the Russian flag is actually based on the Dutch flag.

This is the Dutch flag:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_Netherlands#/media/File%3AFlag_of_the_Netherlands.svg 

If we take the red bar at the top and put it at the bottom it gives us the Russian flag:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Russia#/media/File%3AFlag_of_Russia.svg 

Something that I noticed but couldn't see pointed out anywhere is that the brilliant supernova in the year 1054, which created what we now refer to as the Crab Nebula, took place just as a momentous world event was going on. This was the ill-fated meeting in Constantinople between representatives of the pope and the Patriarch of Constantinople. The meeting would result in the Eastern Orthodox Church splitting away from the Catholic Church. All of the rivalry between east and west ever since, including Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the eastern fronts of both world wars and, the Cold War, have been secular manifestations of this split. The supernova, an exploding star, lasted a long time and was so brilliant that it was visible during the day. Could it have been a warning from God? It was documented in Arab, Chinese and, Japanese records but apparently not by Europeaans.

Something amazing that I couldn't see had ever been pointed out is the parallels between the destructions of the Jewish Temple in ancient times and the splits in the Christian Church in more recent times. The original Israelite religious center was Shiloh, in the central highlands or what would today be called the West Bank. It was destroyed by the Philistines in 1050 B.C. Shiloh was never rebuilt because it was replaced by Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. The siege by the Babylonians which destroyed that Temple began in 587 B.C. There is the famous prophecy in the Book of Daniel about the 69 "weeks of years", which amounts to 483 years. This was the time between the reconsideration of the Temple, after the return from exile in Babylon, until the Crucifixion of Jesus. The prophecy is actually of Seventy Weeks of Years but the final seven years is reserved for the time of the Antichrist. The two major splits in the church was the Eastern Orthodox, splitting away in 1054, and the Protestants, splitting away beginning in 1517. Notice that from 1050 to 587 B.C. is 463 years. From 1054 to 1517 is also 463 years. From 1517 to the beginning of the Millennium is 483 years. 

Chewing gum was actually brought about by the villain of the Alamo, and the Texas battle for independence, Mexican general and president Santa Anna. In his later years he was in exile in New York. He had a money-making idea of a plant-based substitute for rubber. The idea wasn't successful in that, but did lead to the modern version of chewing gum.

Indians, people from India, should emphasize zero more. It is impossible to do complex calculations with understanding the concept of zero, which was first developed in India. I consider this as the single most important invention ever and the modern world would be absolutely impossible without it. Also Christopher Columbus was seeking a way to India when he sailed and that is why natives of the western hemisphere are called "Indians", he mistakenly believed that he had landed in India.