Browsing: October

A Brief History On October 24, 1260, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres was dedicated.  Taking about 26 years to build, the great church is on the site of previous iterations of the cathedral, going as far back as the 4th Century and having additions to the beautiful edifice through the years, and in 1979 designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  The cathedral draws visitors to see the relic called the Sancta Camisa, a tunic worn by Mary when Christ was born. Digging Deeper Religious buildings often receive the highest efforts of architects and artists of their day,…

A Brief History On October 23, 4004 BC, the Earth experienced its first day, having been created by God at 6 pm the previous night, at least according to the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, James Ussher.  Ussher apparently used the Bible to make his calculations of the date of the creation of the Earth around 1650. Digging Deeper In fact, another Biblical researcher, Englishman John Lightfoot, had a decade earlier made his own calculations placing the Earth’s birthday at 3929 BC. Which clergyman should Christians believe?  Or should Christians believe modern scientists that claim the Earth…

A Brief History On October 22, 1721, Peter I, better known as Peter the Great, Czar of All Russia for nearly four decades at this point, announced the existence of the Russian Empire, the first time Russia had been so declared.  What was so “great” about Peter? Digging Deeper Well, for one thing, he created the Russian Empire, which he proclaimed after defeating Sweden.  Ruling with an iron fist, Peter was a prototypical absolute monarch. Some of his accomplishments include modernizing the Russian Navy and switching to the Julian Calendar, as well as personally updating the written Russian language. While…

A Brief History On October 22, 1910, a murderer named Hawley Crippen became the first person captured via the help of radio to be convicted of a crime.  A sort of quack doctor, Crippen worked in homeopathic medicine in the US but was not allowed to practice medicine in England when he moved to London. Digging Deeper Authorities in Canada were alerted via radio that the fugitive was on board an ocean liner and Crippen was arrested on arrival in Canada, the first known instance of an arrest facilitated by radio. Other notable crime fighting firsts include: The first use…

A Brief History On October 21, 1983, the standard metric unit of length, the meter, was redefined as “the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.”  The meter had been defined originally in 1791 by the French National Assembly as one 10 millionth the distance from the Equator to the North Pole. Digging Deeper This calculation means the circumference of the Earth via the polar route was exactly 40,000 kilometers.  Other units of length were based on a decimal system of the meter, such as “millimeter” or 1/1000 of a meter or a “kilometer,” or 1000…