“What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens.”
– Thomas G. West
On What Defines a People
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Tag Archives: People
Gesticulate [Verb.]
- To make gestures or motions while speaking.
- To say or express through gestures.
On Civilisation
“Civilisation is a movement, not a condition; a voyage, not a harbour.”
– Arnold Toynbee
Antediluvian
In Christian mythology, the antediluvian period is the biblical period between the Fall of man (when, at the beginning of time, in a magical garden, a talking snake convinced a man and woman to eat some fruit, whereupon the creator of the universe decided to abandon the garden and sentence humankind to death) and the flood (the moment when god decided to start over with mankind and drown everyone except a man called Noah and his family).
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King William III of The Netherlands (1817–1890) married Princes Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont when he was 61, she was 41 years his junior at the time. On top of that, Emma’s stepmother, Louise of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg was only eight months older than she was, making William effectively 41 years older than his mother-in-law.
King William III and Queen Emma of the Netherlands
Fingernails grow four times faster than toenails.
The combined growth of all the hairs on the average human head is about 30m (100ft) in a day, or 11km (7 miles) in a year.
The human body grows a new stomach lining every five days. The average lifespan of a human taste bud is ten days. The body grows a completely new skin every four weeks. The liver is replaced every six weeks. The human skeleton is replaced every three months.
Gregor Mendel (1822-84), the monk who founded the science of genetics, failed his teacher training course at the age of 28, getting his lowest marks in the biology paper. He taught all his life but never managed to pass the exam.
See other: Quite Interesting Facts
Tenses in Physics
“Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
– Albert Einstein
On Emancipation
“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”
– Timothy Leary
Saudade [Noun.]
In Portuguese, the feeling of missing something or someone. Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.
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