The Bayeux Tapestry represents scenes of the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, culminating in the Battle of Hastings. The scenes number seventy-two and over each is a short description in Latin. It is embroidered in colored wool on linen, and is more than 60 m long and about 50 cm wide. The tapestry, recorded in an …

Silent birth is all about providing the best possible environment for the birthing mother and her new baby. Its origins can be found in L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health and are firmly rooted in a fundamental and abiding principle that women, particularly expectant mothers, be given the utmost in care and respect. A silent birth …

His name was Jean de la Fontaine. His father was the ranger of the forest of the duchy of Chateau-Thierry in Champagne. Jean was born there July 8, and educated at first for the Church. He truned, however, to the law but abandoned this on succeeding to his father’s rangership in 1647. He married the same year but soon separated …

The names that the famous swordsmen assumed when they joined the French King’s bodyguard of musketeers were Athos, Porthos and Aramis. By these names they are known throughout Alexandre Dumas’ magnificent novel The Three Musketters. It is not until the swashbuckling D’ Artangnan sets out twenty years later, that the true names of them all are revealed. D’ Artangnan, now …

Gulliver’s Travels. Its title was originally The Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World by Laemuel Gulliver. The book was so well presented with an illustrated portrait of Gulliver and maps, that many credulous people believed it to be a true story. Indeed, a bishop in Ireland angrily asserted that in his opinion it was full of improbable untruths …

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter’s Mill, in Coloma, California. News of the discovery brought some 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. Of the 300,000, approximately half arrived by sea and half came overland. The gold-seekers, called “Forty-niners” (as …

Condoleezza Rice — Rice was born on 14 November 1954 in Birmingham, Alabama the only child of Angelena Ray Rice, a high school science, music and oratory teacher, and John Wesley Rice, Jr., a high school guidance counselor and Presbyterian minister. Her unusal first name, Condoleezza, derives from the music-related term (opera stage instruction), con dolcezza, which in Italian means, …

Bono — Paul David Hewson famously known as Bono was born in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin on 10 May 1960. He was raised in Glasnevin with his brother, Norman Robert Hewson (who is eight years older than Bono), by their mother Iris, a Church of Ireland Anglican, and their father Brendan Robert “Bob” Hewson, a Roman Catholic. His parents initially …

Archbishop Peter Akinola was born on 27 January 1944 to a Yoruba family in Abeokuta in southwestern Nigeria. Akinola was four years old when his father died, and he was sent to live with an uncle. He attended school between ages 10 and 16, when he left school to learn a trade. After an apprenticeship in Lagos, Akinola became a …

Alexander Hamilton was born in the British West Indies in 1755 or 1757. There is some dispute of his birth year due to early records and Hamilton’s own claims. He was born out of wedlock to James A. Hamilton and Rachel Faucett Lavien. His mother died in 1768 leaving him largely an orphan. He worked for Beekman and Cruger as …