What was happening 450 years ago




















Germany, supporting Austria, declared war on Russia. England came into the war when Germany invaded neutral Belgium. Hence this was not a world war as World War 2 but involved the whole of the world wide British Empire who came to Europe to help the English plus the Americans who also came to help the English.

The English lost a million lives in this war, not won by England and her allies until The main feature of this war were trenches. That is the main battle line between the Germans on the one side and the English and French on the other were two long parallel trenches stretching over miles from the English channel to Switzerland. This generated a military stalemate. The side that attacked was immediately wiped out by the other side.

Weapons This stalemate needed one side to think up a new weapon to mow through the opposing trenches. Two inventions finally came on the scene but both too late to make any real difference at the time The aeroplane, nobody thought of using it to drop bombs.

They were deployed first in the Battle of the Somme in but were not reliable enough to make any difference until about November The Submarine.

As in World War 2 the Germans developed the submarine and even at this early stage of its development to devastating effect against the English merchant naval fleet carrying food to England. German U boats were one of the main contributors to the Americans coming to support England in this war as the Germans developed a strategy of "if you see it torpedo it" and some US ships got in the way.

All parties came to realise that one Sub could sink one Battleship which would have cost some hundred times as much. Some 10 or so years after the war an arms race developed as to who could build the biggest and fastest Battleships with the biggest guns. Those involved were England and France, who couldn't afford it together with the US and for the first time Japan.

The Germans were not allowed to build Battleships so they cheated and built smaller ships but armed like a Battleship. They became known as Pocket Battleships. With both economic considerations and the fact that Battleships were vulnerable to Submarines the Americans tried to bring about an arms Battleship limitation treaty.

Unfortunately after apparently agreeing the Germans and the Japanese ignored it. No wonder we have spy planes these days. England the most powerful nation on earth both in military might and economic wealth. Morals highly questionable.

Inventions, Inventions, Inventions. The Victorian PeriodThe bright side. His famous book Oliver Twist was in part autobiographical. London was so dirty diseases were rampant particularly cholera.

The potato famine. Certainly taken from the poor Red Indian in the first place years ago notorious gangsters like "Billy the Kid" were on a killing trails. His and other "gun slingers" used the Colt six shooting revolver actually 5 shot invented in the US by Samuel Colt years ago was the American Civil War North versus South.

The North won and abolished slavery in the South. The industrial revolution and scientific inventions years ago the Industrial Revolution, which started in England, and had been going about years and was spreading to Europe and the USA. The industrial Revolution was the name given to the first factory automation initially in the manufacture of Textiles.

This brought people from cottage industries in villages into the squalor, filth and disease generated by big cities. Germans; Herr Otto and Herr Daimler years ago saw a prolific range of inventions around electricity, culminating in the inventions of the electric light bulb and the electric motor.

All well known names to Physics pupils at school age. These inventors in Europe were followed by the American Edison probably the most prolific inventor of all time who produced the electric light bulb, the first public supply of electricity, the gramophone, the movies and the thermionic valve-later the triode.

The latter was made obsolete by the transistor and the silicon chip. English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan also independently invented the electric light bulb He also invented Bromide paper still used today for photographic prints. Initially the transmission of coded text messages long on, short on and off over copper wire between England and France by Morse Code and then in the US Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to carry voice over the same wires Englishman Charles Darwin publishes his theory of "Origin of Species by means of natural selection" Now of course supported by genetics.

Then dangerous and revolutionary thinking flying in the face of the accepted "Creation" in the Bible. The English stop trading in slaves, started in earnest some years ago. During this period England was endlessly at war with France as the French perused their concept of European domination and at the same time tried to stop the English with their mission to extent their empire globally.

The two French leaders who built up the French army into a European dominating fighting machine were; firstly King Louis the 14th, The Sun King and after the French revolution and the guillotine for Louis 16th and his wife Marie Antoinette , Emperor Napoleon Both were for the expansion of France across Europe.

Both were highly successful particularly Napoleon who at one time virtually ruled the whole of continental Europe all the way to the walls of Moscow in Russia. Napoleon determined to invade the English territories of Egypt and India. He was stopped by the famous English fleet commander Admiral Nelson who first completely destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile and then the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar at the gateway to the Mediterranean The Enlightenment This was a European movement starting in England and France following the new discoveries of the physicists particularly Sir Isaac Newton and Chemists of the day who were using logical thought to explain life as opposed to the rigid dogmas of the Church.

This movement had started some years previously with Englishman John Locke England rule in India including present day Pakistan in the west through Bangladesh and Malaya and Burma in the east. England's focus in India and further east was always for trade and raw materials. The vehicle formed in to protect England's trade, then political interests in this area was the East India Company based in Bengal now Bangladesh.

The English had to overpower the French trying to establish themselves in the same area for the same purpose. This was achieved some years later as the superior power of the English Navy sank the French ships as they tried to feed the French garrison with food and arms. Plus the fact that France were more focussed on European than World domination. The English also had to persuade the local Indian rulers and people more than 30 million people compared with 8 in England that English rule was best.

This was slightly more difficult than walking into North America or Australia because the Indian peoples were numerous and had a sophisticated culture with considerable wealth generated from minerals, farming, manufacture and trade.

The Indus river valley in present day Pakistan rivalled the Nile in Egypt and the Tigris and Euphrates in present day Iraq then Babylon as one of the origins of civilisation About years ago.

There followed invasions and rule by Aryans years ago who established the Hindu religion. The Mauryan Empire followed years ago until the arrival of the Muslims years ago and then an invasion via Afghanistan by a relation of Genghis Khan Babur culminating in the highly successful Muslim Mughal Empire in Babur's grandson Akbar set up the golden age for India with agricultural prosperity and a buoyant export trade.

The English arrived at this time and a little later the Persians by land, they took Delhi and created the Maratha confederation covering whole of the north and central areas of India. A Muslim area Mysore became an equally formidable power in the south. The old Mughal Emperor was no more than a Maratha puppet. Only the smallest and deep-water species that fed primarily on fish survived. Sharks soon began to increase in size once again, and continued to evolve larger forms throughout the Palaeogene 66 to 23 million years ago.

It was during this time that Otodus obliquus , the ancestor to megalodon Otodus megalodon , appeared. Despite what many might think, megalodon is not related to great white sharks. In fact it may have been in competition with the great white shark's ancestors, which evolved during the Middle Eocene 45 million years ago from broad-toothed mako sharks. There are at least eight different species of hammerhead shark, and while fossil teeth evidence suggests that their ancestors may have existed 45 million years ago, molecular data points to a much more recent appearance during the Neogene which began 23 million years ago.

The strange shape of their head is thought to mainly help in electroreception the detection of naturally occurring electric fields or currents as they hunt for prey. It may also improve their vision, enhance their swimming and refine their ability to smell. Since the End-Cretaceous mass extinction, sharks have come to dominate the oceans once again, returning to the role of apex predator along with large marine mammals. Because most of the skeleton of sharks is made from soft cartilage, it takes special conditions for this to preserve.

The teeth, however, are made from a much tougher material known as dentin, which is harder and denser even than bone. While this enables a powerful bite, it also increases the chance that the teeth will fossilise as they are less likely to decompose. The other reason is simply numbers. Rather than having just a few sets of teeth that last all their life, sharks are continually producing new teeth.

As an older one breaks or wears down, it simply falls out of the front of the mouth and onto the sea floor, as a new tooth takes its place.

Depending on species and diet, over its entire lifetime a shark can produce between 20, and 40, teeth. This means that there is a much greater chance that a shark tooth will be preserved and turned into a fossil. Not only are the teeth the most common part of sharks to be found, they're one of the most common fossils of any organism. There is no single reason sharks survived all five major extinction events - all had different causes and different groups of sharks pulled through each one.

One general theme, however, seems to be the survival of deep-water species and the dietary generalist. It is possible that shark diversity may also have played an important role. Emma explains, 'I think it is safe to say that it is partly because sharks are able to exploit different parts of the water column - from deep, dark oceans to shallow seas, and even river systems.

They eat a wide variety of food, such as plankton, fish, crabs, seals and whales. This diversity means that sharks as a group are more likely to survive if things in the oceans change.

Rather than sharks simply being incredibly hardy, it is more likely that their amazing diversity is the key to their success. Prehistoric Britain BC. Roman Britain 43 AD. Anglo Saxon Britain Viking Britain Medieval Britain Tudor Britain Stuart Britain Scientists have previously believed the Late Ordovician event some million years ago was linked to the end of an ice age, resulting in rising sea levels and plummeting oxygen levels in the oceans.

Around 85 per cent of all marine-based species died out — at a time when most of our present day continents formed a single land mass, Pangaea. However new research suggests volcanic eruptions released enough carbon dioxide to heat up the planet and deoxygenate the oceans, resulting in the asphyxiation of the species that lived there.

Professor David Bond from the University of Hull, one of the lead researchers, compared the process to the fizziness of a bottle of cola.



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