Author Archive

World History

The Greek Philosophers

The names of the three most important Greek philosophers, in order of their dates of birth and also their influence, are:

Socrates (469-399 BC)
Plato (c. 429-c. 347 BC)
Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Socrates taught Plato, and Plato taught Aristotle. Together they created the foundations of Western philosophy. Use your visual memory and imagine them meditating in a health SPA. Or think of the phrase: Smart People of Athens.

Roman Emperors

After Julius Caesar, the Roman general and statesman who became dictator of the Roman Empire before his assassination in 44 BC, the first five emperors of Rome were all Caesars. The first emperor was Julius Caesar’s adopted son (and great-nephew), Augustus, who handed down the title to his son-in-law Tiberius. From Augustus to Nero, Caesar’s descendants, by adoption, marriage, or birth, all inherited the family name:

Augustus (31 BC-AD 14)
Tiberius (AD 14-37)
Caligula (AD 37-41)
Claudius (AD 41-54)
Nero (AD 54-68)

Here’s a phrase to help remember the names by which they were most commonly known:

Another Tom Cat Caught Napping.

The next six Roman emperors after Nero are Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian:

At The Cat Club Never Give Out Violent Vermin To Dogs

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

The seven wonders of the ancient world were chronicled in the second century B.C., but a list has been discovered in The Histories of Herodotus in the fifth century B.C. The final list of amazing monuments to religion, mythology, and art was compiled in the Middle Ages.

1. Statue of Zeus at Olympia
2. Lighthouse (Pharos) of Alexandria
3. Mausoleum of Halicarnassus
4. Pyramids of Egypt
5. Hanging Gardens of Babylon
6. Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
7. Colossus of Rhodes

This mnemonic phrase has proved useful in remembering the seven wonders:

Seems Like Mata Hari Picked Her Targets Carefully.

Mythological Matters

Mnemosyne is the Greek goddess of memory, daughter of Gaia and Uranus. She lay with Zeus for nine nights and gave birth to the nine Muses: Calliope, Euterpe, Clio, Erato, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania.

Carol Eats Crunchy Eggs, Mashed Potatoes, Then Throws Up.

Clarrissa Eats Candy Every Morning, Politely Taking Turns.

In classical art, the Muses are represented by emblems, or mnemonic symbols, of which the masks of comedy and tragedy are probably the most familiar.

Name — Association — Mnemonic symbol

Calliope — Chief of the muses and muse of epic poetry – writing tablet  
Euterpe — Muse of music — flute  
Clio — Muse of history — scroll and books  
Erato — Muse of love poetry — lyre and crown of roses  
Melpomene — Muse of tragedy — tragic mask  
Polyhymnia — Muse of sacred poetry — pensive expression  
Terpsichore — Muse of dance — dancing with a lyre
Thalia – Muse of comedy — comic mask
Urania — Muse of astronomy –  staff and celestial globe

Joan of Arc

Also known as the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) a French national heroine, claimed that it was God’s mission for her to reclaim her homeland from English domination toward the end of the Hundred Years War. She triumphed at the Siege of Orléans in 1429, which led to Charles VII’s coronation at Reims, but was later captured at a skirmish near Compiègne. The English regent John of Lancaster, first Duke of Bedford, had her burned at the stake at Rouen when she was only 19. She was canonized in 1920.

This mnemonic phrase describes the short life of Joan of Arc:

ORLEANS CAMPAIGN RUIN

Orleans — victory — 1429
Compiegne — capture — 1430
Rouen – trial and death — 1431

The Six Wives of Henry VIII

Henry VIII (1491-1547) married six times in a quest to have a son and heir. His decision to divorce his first wife and remarry was the root of the split of the Roman Catholic Church, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the formation of the Church of England. The following is a list of Henry’s wives in order of marriage dates from first to last:

1510 — Catherine of Aragon (mother of Mary I)
1533 — Anne Boleyn (mother of Elizabeth I)
1536 — Jane Seymour (mother of Edward VI)
1540 — Anne of Cleves
1540 — Catherine Howard
1543 — Catherine Parr

Use this rhythmic couplet to remember their first names:

Kate & Anne & Jane & Anne & Kate again & again!

Using the initial letters of their surnames gives the phrase:

All Boys Should Come Home, Please.

The following memorable rhyme reveals the ultimate fate of these six women:

Divorced, beheaded, died,
Divorced, beheaded, survived.

The above excerpt is a digitally scanned reproduction of text from print. Although this excerpt has been proofread, occasional errors may appear due to the scanning process. Please refer to the finished book for accuracy.

The above is an excerpt from the book i before e (except after c): old-school ways to remember stuff
by Judy Parkinson
Published by The Reader’s Digest Association Inc.; April 2008;$14.95US; 978-0-7621-0917-3
A Reader’s Digest book published in association with Michael O’Mara Books Limited. Copyright (c) Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2008.

Originally published here.


Judy Parkinson is a graduate of Bristol University in England. She is a producer of documentaries, music videos, and commercials, as well as the recipient of a Clio Award for a Greenpeace Advertisement. Parkinson has published four books and has contributed to a show of life drawings at the Salon des Arts, Kensington. She resides in London.


National Geographic: Icons of Power – Empress of Ambition, Catherine the Great


Description

Join Icons of Power as we venture into the court of the Empress Catherine the Great and bear witness to epic history and scandals of truly royal proportions. With sweeping cinematography and rich, dramatic reenactments soaked in 18th Century detail, we’ll trace Catherine’s journey from a humble, impoverished home in Germany to the throne of an empire that spanned two- thirds of the globe. We’ll follow the empress to war, to court, and even to bed. From the scorched battlefields of the Crimea to the gilded palaces of St. Petersburg, we’ll venture deep into the world of the Empress Catherine – a world of secret trysts and cunning deception, of conquest and glory – and bring to life the characters and events that shaped her reign.

National Geographic: Icons of Power – Empress of Ambition, Catherine the Great

Catherine Bach Posters, Introducing Data Centres, And How The Effects Of Big Daddy And Jagger May Mean The End Of High Ranking As A Measure Of Success

My Catherine Bach posters page used to be on my site at www.kruse.co.uk/ but for various SEO reasons I moved it and all my other poster pages over to my web space at my broadband provider NTL so her posters landed up at my ntlworld homepages. Around this time I registered www.here-be-posters.co.uk/ and pointed it from the registration company using a 302 temporary redirect to my ntlworld web space.

 

This was a far from perfect solution to anything at all. I was rushed with this, flustered with that and I didn’t take time to do a proper job. This threw up an unlikely benefit, though, one I may not have noticed otherwise.

 

What I should have done was to move the posters, as soon as they began to get successful in their own right, over to their own dedicated web space under their own domain name. Which, just recently, I did, I’ve been kind of busy with my SEO work plus, of course, there’s always a ton of optimisation-related study to be done. So I just recently got round to this and now my SERPS are in great confusion.

 

Plus, of course, a lot more than is usual is affecting Google’s results just now. We’re experiencing the end of the Big Daddy Data Centre upgrade. Some say we’re still suffering the aftershocks from the Jagger algorithm update from last year. So the SERPS are turbulent. You can input a query into Google one minute and get a certain set of results, try the same search a few minutes later and the returned results will show a significant difference. This makes life quite extra-ordinarily difficult for the practicing search engine optimiser as clients will most often judge results purely by the position that they see their site returned in Google’s results in a search for their keywords or phrases. It doesn’t look good if you inform a client that they’re now at position three and when they look for themselves they’re at position thirty-three.

 

Those of you who have the Google toolbar can probably check the variations in the results for yourselves. Open your browser to a Google search page and input a phrase where you know a particular site should normally be returned in the top ten. Examine the SERPS. Then try the same search in the search box in the Google Toolbar. It’s increasingly probable that, while the returned results won’t be wildly, hysterically at variance with the ones you’ve just seen, they will be different to a significant degree.

 

Google doesn’t give its results out from just one place, it distributes them from a series of data centres which are located around the world. When a new set of results is sent to the individual data centres the nature of telecommunications being what it is they don’t all arrive at the same time. This results in what could be described as a series of mini-Google Dances across the range of data centres. In practice this means a search will produce different results from different geographical locations around the globe at different times. This wasn’t a problem when it was a regular and predictable occurrence but now it’s so frequent it can be confusing for searchers. Worse, of course, if my client’s in the States and I’m here in the UK. I can click through to Google America but still there’s no telling which data centre I’m going to get, and I’ve no idea what my client’s going to get either, which complicates matters even further. Not to mention, of course, the problem of the Google “Sandbox” causing sites to appear briefly at the top of some SERPS thus muddying the search waters still more.

 

The practical consequences of all this are that in one set of search results I get my old page about Catherine at ntlworld appear and the page at www.here-be-posters.co.uk/ isn’t even anywhere in the SERPS. In others, neither appear, while in some the ntlworld page is in the top ten with here-be-posters nowhere in evidence. Encouragingly, though, in some others the here-be-posters page is rising rapidly through the ranks. So, if I can’t rely on a stable ranking for input, what can I do to determine if I finally now have the content and link strategy right?

 

Noting an increase in traffic could well be part of the answer. With SERPS fluctuating the way they are an accurate rank is difficult to pin down but a significant rise in properly targeted traffic should make its presence felt by an increase in ROI – and that, after all, is what SEO is all about. High ranking itself, in all the confusion, is starting to take a back-seat to what should have been foremost in our endeavours all along, an increasing volume of interested visitors.

 

Indeed, the good news for Catherine Bach is that, judging by her traffic, her poster page seems at last to have found a home at www.here-be-posters.co.uk/. Her stream of visitors, quite justly I say, rises as I speak. I mean, Jessica Simpson is fine but hey! She’s no Catherine Bach!

Originally published here.


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