Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
Hiragana is a part of the Japanese writing system. Japanese writing normally consists of kanji which are used for the main words in a sentence, usually content words, and hiragana which are used for the little words that make up the grammar (in English these would be words like “from” and “his”) called particles. Hiragana is also used for the endings of some of the words.  

Hiragana is a syllabary, which means that each hiragana character stands for a syllable. It is therefore different from a language such as English which uses an alphabet in which most of the letters stand for one bit of sound (phoneme). There is also another syllabary called katakana which is mostly used for foreign words and names. The two kana systems are quite easy to learn, but kanji takes years of practice. In contrast, the kana systems can be learnt in two weeks.
In the past, hiragana was considered women's writing, while men wrote in kanji. Since kanji are convenient for writing in Chinese but not as convenient for Japanese, it was women, such as Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote the first hiragana books, poems and songs. Later the Buddhist clerics, such as Rennyo (d. 1498), wrote in hiragana to make their religious messages easier to read, so more people could read them.

Sometimes the whole of a text may be written in hiragana to make it easy. This is used in books for young children, or for students starting to learn Japanese, or when writing the lyrics for songs underneath the music where it is important to show how the words fit the music. Some rare or strange kanji may also have so-called furigana characters above it. They are hiragana which show how the kanji is to be pronounced.
In Hiragana each character (kana) is either a vowel (such as "a": あ); a consonant followed by a vowel (such as "ka": か); or, at the end of a syllable, an "n": (ん), although sometimes this sounds more like an “m” or “ng”.

As an example of how the grammatical endings are used we can take the verb “to eat” which is食べる (taberu).  Here the main part of the word “eat” (pronounced “ta” in this case) is the kanji 食.  The other two syllables: “be-ru” are in hiragana (べる).  To say “I ate” or “you ate” etc. you would say “tabemashita”, written食べました (“be-ma-shi-ta” is written in hiragana).

Table of hiragana

The main hiragana characters are shown in this table. 

Notice that the sound “hu” is unknown in Japanese, so ふ is pronounced “fu” with an “f” which is blown lightly, like someone blowing out a candle.
To write the voiced sounds for “g”, “d”, “z” and “b” two little lines called a dakuten (゛) are added after a character starting with the unvoiced sounds  “k”, “t”, “s” and “h”.  A circle, (゜), is added after a “h” for the sound “p”.  For example: は gives the sound “ha”; ば gives the sound “ba”; ぱ gives the sound “pa”.

Sometimes when words are joined together to make compound words, the first sound of the second part changes from unvoiced to voiced.  For example: “hana”: はな (nose) + ち“chi” (blood) becomes はなぢ  “hanaji” (nosebleed)

Some Japanese syllables which have sliding sounds add a small version of the hiragana for ya, yu or yo (ゃ, ゅ and ょ) This is called “yōon”. For example: “sha” sounds like “shi”+”ya” so “densha” (a tram) is written でんしゃ. A small “tsu” っ called a “sokuon” shows a doubled consonant: “Nippon” (Japan) is written にっぽん. Without the small “tsu” the first syllable would sound like the word “knee”.
A student starting to learn to write Japanese can start with hiragana or with katakana. Hiragana is the basis of learning Japanese script. However, for someone who is about to visit Japan and just wants to be able to recognize a few words, katakana will be more useful as it will help to read many of the road signs, shop names and the names of things on restaurant menus.

Related pages
 Japanese language
Katakana
Kanji
 Syllabary

Other websites 
 Real Kana Practice hiragana using different typefaces
 Learn how to read and write hiragana 
 Test your hiragana knowledge 

Japanese writing system
sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Hiragana
Kuomintang (KMT; ; English: Chinese Nationalist Party), also known as Guomindang (GMD), is the main political party in Republic of China (Taiwan). It was ruling in Mainland China until 1949 when Communists captured the mainland and the KMT moved to Taiwan. It was founded by Song Jiaoren and Sun Yat-sen. Chiang Kai-shek later led the party for decades.

References

Political parties in Taiwan
Conservative parties
Nationalist organizations in Taiwan
Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese nationalist politician and military leader who was  President of the Republic of China, born in Xikou on October 31, 1887.  His father was a merchant who died when Chiang was eight years old.  Chiang became an officer in the army of the Manchu empire, but supported the Chinese Xinhai Revolution of 1911 that converted China into a republic. 

He led the Republic of China from 1930 to 1949 on mainland China until he was overthrown by Mao Zedong in the Chinese Civil War. He fled to Taiwan where he ruled from 1950 until his death in 1975, although his government was still officially called the Republic of China.

Military career 

After his father died, Chiang joined the army. At first, he went to Baoding in northern China to study military science.  Later, he went to Japan to learn more about the military.  On October 10, 1911, Chiang Kai-Shek came back to China.
In 1918, he joined the Nationalist Party of Sun Yat-sen.  Sun Yat-sen helped Jiang Kai-Shek make a military academic school called Huangpu Military School. In 1926 and 1927 he led the Northern Expedition to conquer local warlords and unify China.  After Sun Yat-sen died, he pushed out the Communists in 1927. In 1928, he made a new government in Nanjing, and became head of the state. He focused on fighting the Communists and the Empire of Japan. In 1937, Japan began to invade China, and Chiang was in charge of the Nationalist Chinese Army, until the war ended in 1945. Chiang ruled China until 1949, when Mao Zedong, who led the Communist Party of China, attacked Chiang and his officials, and they were forced to flee to Taiwan.

References

Other websites 
 Chiang Kai-shek, Citizendium
1887 births
1975 deaths
Anti-communists
Chinese generals
Methodists
Presidents of the Republic of China
Former dictators
Prime ministers
Taiwanese military people
Time People of the Year
World War II political leaders
Politicians from Zhejiang
Dark matter is a type of matter thought to be responsible for much of the mass in the universe.

The idea arose when astronomers found that the mass of large astronomical objects, and their gravitational effects, was much greater than the mass from the "luminous matter" that contains stars, gas, and dust.

Dark matter was first proposed by Jan Oort in 1932 as a reason for the spinning speeds of stars in the Milky Way. Fritz Zwicky in 1933 used dark matter to explain "missing mass" in the spinning speeds of galaxies in clusters. Later, many other observations have suggested that there is dark matter in the universe. The spinning speeds of galaxies, gravitational lensing of background objects, the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters of galaxies: these are some of the examples that make scientists believe in dark matter.
According to the Planck mission team, and based on the standard model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the known universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy.Thus, dark matter is estimated to make up 84.5%  of the total matter in the universe, while dark energy plus dark matter make up 95.1% of the total "stuff" in the universe.
 
Because dark matter does not seem to give off or reflect light, x-rays, or any other radiation, the instruments that are used to find normal matter (like hot gas, stars, planets, and us) can't find dark matter. It seems that dark matter is not made of the same thing as the matter we see every day on Earth. The only way we can tell if dark matter is there, is by how it affects things we can "see" by gravity.
In 2006, a group of scientists claimed that they had found a way to find dark matter. Since dark matter is supposedly very different from normal matter, it is expected to act differently. The scientists observed two far-away galaxy clusters that had crashed into each other at high speed: normal matter would have been scattered nearby after the collision, while dark matter would not. By measuring gravity, they were able to detect what looked like two clouds of dark matter, with a cloud of normal matter (hot gas) in between them.

Related pages 
 Dark energy
 Expansion of the Universe
 Nature timeline

References 

Astrophysics
Cosmology
Matter
Katakana (カタカナ) is a Japanese script used for writing words borrowed from other languages. It is easier to read than the kanji (the picture method based on Chinese characters). Once the 46 katakana symbols have been learned, the reader knows how to pronounce them.

Katakana and hiragana are both syllabaries. In English we use the letters of the alphabet. In most words each letter stands for a bit of sound (a phoneme). In a syllabary each symbol stands for a syllable. For example: in English we write “Wagamama”: each of the eight letters standing for a sound: “W-a-g-a-m-a-m-a”. But if the word “Wagamama” is divided into syllables there are four syllables (blocks of sound): Wa-ga-ma-ma. In Katakana it is written with four symbols: ワガママ.

Hiragana works in the same way, but the symbols are mostly different. Katakana is perhaps a little easier to learn than Hiragana because the symbols are simpler and more “squared off”. Together Katakana and Hiragana are called “Kana”.
Table of katakana 
This is a table of the basic katakana strokes. The first chart shows the basic katakana (characters with red letters next to them are no longer used today).

From the first table it can be seen that there are 46 basic characters (top left, first five columns, from "a" to "wa"). Diphthongs (vowels that slide from one sound to the other) have to be written with an extra symbol in small print. For example: the sound “mu” in our word “music” sounds like “myu” so it is written ミュ (mi+yu). So the word “musical” (as in a stage musical) is written: ミュージカル.
A long vowel is shown in katakana by a kind of dash called a “choon” (ー).

How Katakana is used 
Katakana is used to write words which have been borrowed from other languages, or to write foreign names and names of countries. For example, America is written as アメリカ.
It is not always easy for us to recognize these words because the Japanese language does not have some of the sounds that we do in English. This means that Japanese have to find other ways to pronounce and write the word. For example: the word “coffee” is written コーヒー (koo-hii). Sometimes the word is shortened as well: “television” is written as テレビ (pronounced “te-re-bi”).

Sometimes it is impossible to show the difference between two foreign words, e.g. ラーラー could spell either the name “Lara” or “Lala” (as in the Teletubbies). The Japanese have just one sound which is somewhere between our “r” and “l”.

In the Japanese language a consonant is always followed by a vowel. Words or syllables cannot end in a consonant (except n or m), so the Japanese put in an extra vowel. “Ski” (as in skiing) becomes “suki” (スキ), and a “musical”, as we have seen, becomes “myuujikaru” (ミュージカル).
Katakana are also used for onomatopoeic words like “ding”, or for making words look important, or for scientific names such as the names of birds. Sometimes sentences in books or cartoons may be written in katakana to show that someone is supposed to be speaking with a foreign accent. It is often used to write the names of Japanese companies, i.e. Suzuki is written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ.

A small “tsu” ッ called a “sokuon” shows what we would write as a double consonant, e.g. the English word “bed” is used in Japanese for a western-style bed. It is pronounced “beddo” and written ベッド. The ッ makes the “e” vowel short.

Learning to read the katakana characters is useful for reading some of the signs in Japan, or items on the restaurant menus.
Japanese sentences are usually written in a mixture of katakana, hiragana and kanji, e.g.:
私はアメリカ人です (Watashi wa amerikajin desu: I am American). Here “amerika” is written in katakana, "Watashi"(私) and the ending “jin”(人) are both written in kanji, and “desu” (I am) is in hiragana.

Related pages 
 Japanese language
 Hiragana
 Writing system
 Syllabary

Footnote

Other websites 
 Real Kana Practice katakana using different typefaces
 Katakana Lessons 
 Test your Katakana knowledge 

Japanese writing system
sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Katakana
Sanja Stijačić (born 14 November 1965) is a Serbian flutist. She is also a professor at the Faculty of Arts (Priština), University of Priština in Kosovska Mitrovica, Serbia and at the University of East Sarajevo, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Stijacic, Sanja
1965 births
Living people
Flutists
A comb is a tool used to care for hair or other fibers. It has small pieces sticking out of a main frame; these are called "teeth." A comb is usually flat.

Humans have been using combs as a tool for a long time, at least for 5,000 years. Combs are used by humans to separate tangled hairs, to keep their hair clean and to style their hair. They are also used as a decoration for hair.

Combs are used in the making of thread from fibers like wool or cotton. Combing makes all the fibres point the same way so a thread can be spun.

History 
The first use of the comb was about 5,000 years ago. Different kinds of comb have been found throughout history by archaeologists. The ancient Egyptians carved out combs. In ancient China, combs were worn as hair decorations and accessories. Over time, combs have become into tools for taking care of hair. Today, there are hundreds of different kinds of combs.
Use 
Combs can be used to fix stray hairs and untangle wet hair. Another common use for the comb is to make hair be put in one position before tying it up. Combs may also be used to part hair for coloring, conditioning and braiding. Combs can also be worn as accessories that hold hair up in a special style.

Gallery

References 

Basic English 850 words
Care
Perfume is a liquid that gives people, things and rooms a good smell. It is made of oils which give off scent to the surrounding air. The odoriferous compounds that make up a perfume can be manufactured synthetically or extracted from plant or animal sources.

Perfumes were used in the earliest human civilizations. Modern perfumery began in the late 19th century with the commercial synthesis of aroma compounds such as vanillin or coumarin. The artificial compounds gave a wider ranger of scents than natural materials.

Perfume smells more when temperature is warmer. So people put it on the neck, wrist and back of the knee, because these parts are warmer. Eau de Cologne is a type of perfume which can be splashed on the body. It is not so concentrated as the usual perfumes.

Sources
Sources

Plants 
Today, most common essential oils, such as lavender, peppermint, and eucalyptus, are distilled. Raw plant material, the flowers, leaves, wood, bark, roots, seeds, or peel, is put into a  distillation apparatus over water.  As the water is heated, the steam passes through the plant material collecting the scents. The steam flow through a coil, where it is condensing back to liquid, which is then collected.

Most citrus peel oils are cold pressed, like olive oil production. Citrus-fruit oils are cheaper than most other essential oils. Lemon or sweet orange oils got as by-products of the citrus industry are even cheaper.

Animal sources
Animal sources

Ambergris: lumps of  fatty compounds, secreted and expelled by the sperm whale. Because the harvesting of ambergris causes no harm to the whales, collecting it is not controversial.
Castoreum: from the scent glands of the North American beaver.
Civet musk: from the odorous sacs of civets, which are animals in the family Viverridae, related to the mongoose.
Honeycomb: from the honeycomb of the honeybee. 
Deer musk: from the musk sacs from the Asian musk deer.

Other natural sources
 Lichen. Commonly used lichens include oakmoss and treemoss thalli.
 Seaweed. Distillates are sometimes used as essential oil in perfumes. An example of a commonly used seaweed is Fucus vesiculosus, the bladder wrack. Natural seaweed fragrances are rarely used due to their higher cost and lower potency than synthetics.
Synthetic sources
Many modern perfumes contain synthesized odorants. Synthetics can provide fragrances which are not found in nature. For instance, Calone, a compound of synthetic origin, gives a fresh metallic marine scent that is widely used. Synthetic aromatics are often used as an alternate to compounds that are not easily got from natural sources.

History

The word perfume used today derives from the Latin per fumum, meaning "through smoke." Perfumery, or the art of making perfumes, began in ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt and was further refined by the Romans and Persians.

The world's first recorded chemist is considered to be a woman named Tapputi, a perfume maker who was mentioned in a cuneiform tablet from the 2nd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. She distilled flowers, oil, and calamus with other aromatics then filtered and put them back in the still several times.
In 2005, archaeologists uncovered what are believed to be the world's oldest perfumes in Pyrgos, Cyprus. The perfumes date back more than 4,000 years. The perfumes were discovered in an ancient perfumery. At least 60 stills, mixing bowls, funnels and perfume bottles were found in the  factory. In ancient times people used herbs and spices, like almond, coriander, myrtle, conifer resin, bergamot, as well as flowers.

The Arabian alchemist, Al-Kindi (Alkindus), wrote in the 9th century a book on perfumes which contained more than a hundred recipes for fragrant oils and medical substances.

The Persian chemist Avicenna introduced the process of extracting oils from flowers by means of distillation, the procedure most commonly used today. He first experimented with the rose. Until his discovery, liquid perfumes were mixtures of oil and crushed herbs or petals, which made a strong scent. Rose water was more delicate, and immediately became popular.
The art of perfumery was known in western Europe since the 13th or 14th centuries. By the 18th century, aromatic plants were grown in France, Sicily, and Italy.

References
Journey is an American rock band from San Francisco, formed in 1973. They are known for their hit songs like "Don't Stop Believin", "Anyway You Want It", "Open Arms", "Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' " and "Faithfully". Some of the members used to be members of the band Santana. The band has sold 75 million albums and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017.

Discography
Studio albums
 Journey (1975)
 Look into the Future (1976)
 Next (1977)
 Infinity (1978)
 Evolution (1979)
 Departure (1980)
 Escape (1981)
 Frontiers (1983)
 Raised on Radio (1986)
 Trial by Fire (1996)
 Arrival (2001)
 Generations (2005)
 Revelation (2008)
 Eclipse (2011)
 Freedom (2022)

1973 establishments in the United States
1970s American music groups
1970s establishments in California
1980s American music groups
1990s American music groups
2000s American music groups
2010s American music groups
American heavy metal bands
American rock bands
Musical groups established in 1973
Musical groups from San Francisco
Bruno Brun (born ) was a Yugoslavian clarinet player and professor at the Music Academy in Belgrade.

He graduated from the Belgrade Music Academy in  and continued his education in Paris. He played as a soloist in Yugoslavia and other countries. He was one of the founders of the "Association of Musical Artists of Serbia".

His most famous students are Milenko Stefanovic, Mihailo Zivanovic, Ernest Ackun, Ante Grgin and Nikola Srdic.

References
 Blagojevic, Andrija."Bruno Brun () - Founder of the Yugoslav clarinet school."  ''The Clarinet'', Vol. 41/3 (), pp. 46-51.
 Blagojević, Andrija. "The Performance Career of Bruno Brun."  The Clarinet, Vol. 47/3 (), pp. 34–37.

1910 births
Clarinetists
Yugoslavian musicians
Rheinstetten is a city in the south-west of Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg. It has about 20,000 inhabitants.

References

Other websites
The Faculty of Arts of Priština (Serbian: Факултет уметности у Приштини or Fakultet umetnosti u Prištini) is the faculty of arts of the University of Priština in Kosovo, Serbia.

History 
The Faculty of Arts of Pristina was founded in 1973 as the Academy of Arts, and got its present name in 1986. Because of Albanian terrorist attacks it was moved in 1999. It first moved to Varvarin and later to Zvečan, where it is now. It is part of the University of Priština temporarily relocated in Kosovska Mitrovica.

Divisions 
Art
Music
Theatre

Degrees offered

Acting 
 Bachelor of Arts
 Master of Arts

Music 
 Bachelor of Music
 Master of Music

Visual arts 
 Bachelor of Arts
 Master of Arts

Notable teachers 

Jasmina Novokmet
Milenko Stefanovic
Sanja Stijacic

Other websites 

 Official website
 Infostud 
 Ministry of Education of Republic of Serbia 

Colleges and universities in Europe
Buildings and structures in Serbia
1973 establishments in Europe
Organizations based in Serbia
Jasmina Novokmet (born 8 September 1969 in Pristina, Yugoslavia) is a Serbian conductor, professor of conducting and former associate dean at the Faculty of Arts of Priština.  She is a former student of Jovan Šajnović.

Living people
1969 births
Serbian musicians
Conductors
People from Pristina
The Magna Carta was a document that was sealed by King John after negotiations with his barons  and their French and Scots allies at Runnymede, Surrey, England in 1215.

There they sealed the Great Charter, called in Latin Magna Carta. It established a council of 25 barons to see John keep to the clauses, including access to swift justice, parliamentary assent for taxation, scutage limitations, and protection from illegal imprisonment.

Because he was forced to seal the charter, John sought approval to break it, from his spiritual overlord Pope Innocent III. Denouncing it as "not only shameful and demeaning but also illegal and unjust", the Pope agreed. The Magna Carta is still considered one of the most important documents ever written, having inspired the way we view issues of justice and liberty and influenced laws regarding such throughout the world.
The Magna Carta has influenced English law right down to the present day. It is one of the most celebrated documents in the History of England. It is recognized as a cornerstone of the idea of the liberty of citizens.

Content 
The Magna Carta contains 63 clauses written in Latin on parchment. Only three of the original clauses in Magna Carta are still law today. One defends the freedom and rights of the English Church, another confirms the liberties  customs of the City of London and other towns. This clause (translated) is the main reason the Carta is still famous:

"No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, stripped of his rights or possessions, outlawed, exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice".

This clause limits the power of rulers, and introduces the idea of lawful process and the idea of a jury. The BBC summarised the main points of the document as:
No one is above the law, not even the king.
Everyone has a right to a fair trial.
No taxation without representation.

The BBC said the Magna Carta "established a number of important principles, which have been copied around the world... It inspired the US Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".

History 
The origin is in the medieval feudal system, in which the King's word was law. It solved, at the time, a conflict between King John and his main men: the barons and bishops. Dispute grew between the barons and bishops and King John over taxes and disputes with the Pope. 

The barons chose their time to put John under pressure. John had lost a battle against the French, been excommunicated by the Pope (1209–1213), and feared civil war at home. He met the barons at Runnymede, 20 miles south-west of London, in June 1215. The negotiation was managed by John's half-brother, William Longspée, and Elias of Dereham, steward to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton.
The content of the Carta was designed to re-balance power between the King and his subjects, but especially between John and the barons. When King John set his seal on Magna Carta he conceded the fundamental principle that even as king he was not above the law.  That meant kings would not have as much power as they did before.  The Carta also laid down rules of inheritance, and that convictions required some kind of official process. It stated that people had rights not to be unlawfully imprisoned. In other words, the king is bound to rule within the law. 

Thirteen original copies of the Carta were made and distributed.  Only four survive today.  The four copies are in The British Library, The Bodleian Library, Lincoln Castle and Salisbury Cathedral.  The Magna Carta was sent out again in 1220 by Henry III.  In 2009 UNESCO recognized it in its Memory of the World register.  The British Library brought all four copies together in February 2015, so that scholars could examine them side by side.
Related pages 
 Loyumba Shinyen

References 

Politics of the United Kingdom
13th-century treaties
13th century in England
1215
English law‎
A catapult is a type of machine used as a weapon to throw rocks, large arrows, or other things such as hot tar, that would cause damage to something else.  Often, catapults were set on higher ground or on castle towers to let them shoot farther.  They shot rocks to break castle walls, or pitch or hot tar to set the target on fire.

Catapults use weights and levers to send the rocks or other things into the air. They do not throw as far as modern weapons do, and are not useful in modern warfare.  Catapults were common in the past, especially the Middle Ages.

Nowadays catapults are used to study old weapons, and as experiments (for example in physics or engineering classes). Some old ones are kept in museums.

Aircraft carriers use much more powerful steam catapults to throw airplanes into the air.

References

Other websites 
How does a catapult work  - A thorough explanation of different types of catapults with images.
Animated Catapults Animations of a Roman mangonel and onager and a medieval trebuchet
Year 1552 (MDLII) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar.

Events
Births
 February 1 – Edward Coke, English business person (d. 1634)
 February 8 – Agrippa d'Aubigné, French poet and soldier (d. 1630)
 February 19 – Melchior Klesl, Austrian statesman and cardinal (d. 1630)
 February 28 – Joost Bürgi, Swiss clockmaker and mathematician (d. 1632)
 June 18 – Gabriello Chiabrera, Italian poet (d. 1637)
 July 18 – Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1612)
 August 24 – Lavinia Fontana, Italian painter (d. 1614)
 September 22 – Tsar Vasili IV of Russia (d. 1612)
 October 6 – Matteo Ricci, Italian Jesuit missionary to China (d. 1610)
 December 29 – Henri I de Bourbon, prince de Condé (d. 1588)
 December 30 – Simon Forman, English occultist and astrologer (d. 1611)
 date unknown
 Hans von Aachen, German mannerist painter (d. 1615)
 Thomas Aufield, English martyr (d. 1585)
 Jean Bertaut, French poet (d. 1611)
 Miguel de Benavides, Spanish clergyman (d. 1605)
 Richard Hakluyt, English writer, editor and translator (b. c. 1552 or 1553; d. 1616)
Philemon Holland, English translator (d. 1637)
 Francisco Goméz de Sandoval y Rojas, Duke of Lerma, Spanish politician (d. 1625)
 Dom Justo Takayama, Japanese daimyo (d. 1615)
 Jean Hotman, Marquis de Villers-St-Paul, French diplomat (d. 1636)
 Jack Ward, English pirate (d. 1622)
Deaths 
 January 10 – Johann Cochlaeus, German humanist (b. 1479)
 January 22 – Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, English politician (b. 1509)
 February 26 – Heinrich Faber, German composer (b. 1500)
 April 18 – John Leland, English historian (b. 1502)
 May 26 – Sebastian Münster, German map maker (b. 1488)
 June 10 – Alexander Barclay, British poet (b. 1476)
 July 9 – György Szondy Hungarian soldier
 August 15 – Hermann of Wied, German Catholic archbishop (b. 1477)
 October 14 – Oswald Myconius, Swiss Protestant reformer (b. 1488)
 October 17 – Andreas Osiander, German Protestant theologian (b. 1498)
 December 2 – Francis Xavier, Spanish Jesuit missionary (b. 1506)
 December 20 – Katharina von Bora, wife of Martin Luther (b. 1499)
Year 1562 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar.

Events 
 May 1 – Jean Ribault, French navigator, lands in Florida.
 September 22 – Maximilian becomes King of Bohemia.
 October – John Hawkins starts the English slave trade. He ships slaves from Sierra Leone to Hispaniola in the Caribbean.
 November 20 – Maximilian of Bohemia is elected King of the Romans.
 The Mughal Emperor Akbar conquers Malwa.

Births 
 January 13 – Mark Alexander Boyd, Scottish poet and soldier of fortune 
 January 20 – Ottavio Rinuccini, Italian composer 
 Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, Dutch composer 
 May 6 – Pietro Bernini, Italian sculptor 
 July 25 – Katō Kiyomasa, Japanese samurai 
 November 25 – Lope de Vega, Spanish poet and dramatist
 Isabella Andreini, Italian actress 
 John Bull, English composer
 Henry Constable, English poet
 Maeda Toshinaga, Japanese nobleman 
 Cornelis van Haarlem, Dutch painter
Deaths 
 January – Ilie II Rareş, Prince of Moldavia 
 January 9 – Amago Haruhisa, Japanese samurai and warlord 
 October 9 – Gabriele Falloppio, Italian anatomist 
 October 13 – Claudin de Sermisy, French composer 
 November 17 – Antoine de Bourbon, father of Henry IV of France 
 December 6 – Jan van Scorel, Dutch painter 
 December 7 – Adrian Willaert, Flemish composer 
 Matteo Bandello, Italian novelist 
 Nicholas Grimald, English poet and theologian
Births 
 January – Leonhard Hutter, German Lutheran theologian (d. 1616)
 January 30 – Franciscus Gomarus, Dutch theologian (d. 1641)
 March 5 – John Coke, English politician (d. 1644)
 April 15 – Guru Arjan Dev, fifth Sikh leader (A. 1606)
 June 1 – Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, English statesman and spymaster (d. 1612)
 September 4 – Wanli Emperor of China (d. 1620)
 October 14 – Jodocus Hondius, Flemish artist (d. 1633)
 November 8 – Henry I, Duke of Lorraine (d. 1624)
 November 19 – Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, English statesman (d. 1626)
 December 19 – Lord William Howard (d. 1640)
 date unknown
 Yi Su-gwang, Korean scholar (d. 1628)
 Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire (d. 1606)
 John Dowland, English composer (d. 1626)
 Michael Drayton, English poet (d. 1631)
 Scipione Gentili, Italian legal scholar (d. 1616)
 Anna Guarini, Italian virtuoso singer (d. 1598)
 Hosokawa Gracia, Japanese noblewoman (d. 1600)
 Marcin Kazanowski, Polish nobleman (d. 1636)
Zygmunt Kazanowski, Polish nobleman (d. 1634)
 Robert Naunton, English politician and writer (d. 1635)
 Joshua Sylvester, English poet (d. 1618)
 Jean Titelouze, French organist and composer (d.1633)
Deaths 
 February 1 – Emperor Menas of Ethiopia (b. 1559)
 February 24 – Francis, Duke of Guise, French soldier and politician (b. 1519)
 March 24 – Hosokawa Harumoto, Japanese military leader (b. 1514)
 March 28 – Heinrich Glarean, Swiss music theorist (b. 1488)
 May 21 – Martynas Mažvydas, writer of the first printed book in Lithuanian (b. 1510)
 ?June – Elizabeth Seymour, Marchioness of Winchester, English noblewoman (b. 1513)
 June 6 – Ikeda Nagamasa, Japanese military commander (b. 1519)
 June 9 – William Paget, 1st Baron Paget, English statesman (b. 1506)
 August 11 – Bartolomé de Escobedo, Spanish composer (b. 1500)
 August 18 – Étienne de La Boétie, French judge and writer (b. 1530)
 September 17 – Henry Manners, 2nd Earl of Rutland, English soldier (b. 1526)
 November – Ioan Iacob Heraclid, ruler of Moldavia (b. 1511)
 December 29 – Sebastian Castello, French theologian (b. 1515)
 date unknown – Odet de Selve, French diplomat (b. c. 1504)
A minuet is a dance which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries in France.  It was danced by the aristocracy, especially at the court of King Louis XIV.

Sometimes the French spelling menuet is used, or the Italian minuetto.  It was a moderate or slow dance.  There were always three beats in a bar (3/4 time).

Composers liked the music of the minuet and often wrote them just as pieces of music for a keyboard or other instruments.  Composers like Bach and Handel included them in their suites (collection of dance movements).  Lully started to put them in his operas, often in pairs: Minuet I, Minuet II, then Minuet I repeated.  Often the second minuet would be played by three instruments, so it was called a trio.
In the Classical music period the minuet and trio were used in symphonies and sonatas. They usually formed the third movement of a four movement work. Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all wrote minuets and trios.  Gradually the minuets became faster so that they were called scherzos.  By the 19th century the waltz had become fashionable among the new middle class.  The polite minuet went out of fashion.

Ballroom dances
Musical forms
A Scherzo is a piece of music which is quite fast. In the 19th century Romantic composers started to write scherzos in their symphonies and sonatas instead of the traditional minuets. They are similar to a minuet, always with three beats in a bar,  but they are faster and less "polite". Some composers like Chopin and Brahms wrote scherzos as separate pieces for the piano.

References  

Musical forms
1592 (MDXCII) was a leap year that began on Wednesday.

Events 
 April 13 – The Siege of Busan begins.
 April 24 – Battle of Sangju: The Koreans lose against the Japanese.

Deaths 
 February – Thomas Cavendish, English sailor and explorer
 February 13 – Jacopo Bassano, Italian painter
 September 3 – Robert Greene, English writer

Births 
 March 28 – John Amos Comenius, Czech teacher and writer
Events 
 January – Mehmed III succeeds Murad III as Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
 May 18 – The Treaty of Tyavzino brings to an end the Russo-Swedish War (1590–1595).
 May 24 – The Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
 June 9 – Battle of Fontaine-Française:  Henry IV of France defeats the Spanish, but is nearly killed.
 July 21 – A Spanish expedition led by navigator and explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira makes the first European landing in Polynesia, on the Marquesas Islands.
 August 13 – Battle of Calugareni: The Wallachians, led by Michael the Brave, accomplish a great victory against the large army of the Turks, numbering over 150,000 men, led by Sinan Pasha. Wallachian tactical victory.
 October 26 – Battle of Giurgiu: Michael the Brave again defeats the Turkish army led by Sinan Pasha, pushing them on the right side of the Danube.
 December 9 – Probable first performance of William Shakespeare's Richard II.
Date unknown 
 Probable first performance of William Shakespeare's plays Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream in London.
 The Austrians start a rebellion against the Ottomans in Bulgaria.
Births 
 January 6 – Claude Favre de Vaugelas, French grammarian and man of letters (d. 1650)
 April 12 – Miles Hobart (d. 1639)
 June 9 – King Wladislaus IV of Poland (d. 1648)
 June 13 – Jan Marek Marci, Bohemian physician and scientist (d. 1677)
 June 19 – Guru Har Gobind, the Sixth Sikh Guru (d. 1606)
 September 21 – Adrian Fearney, British pirate (d. 1641)
 November 13 – George William, Elector of Brandenburg (d. 1640)
 December 4 – Jean Chapelain, French poet (d. 1674)
 December 5 – Henry Lawes, English musician (d. 1662)
 December 27 – Bohdan Khmelnytsky, hetman of Ukraine (d. 1657)
 date unknown
 Thomas Carew, English poet (d. 1645)
 Miles Corbet, English Puritan politician (d. 1662)
 Jean Desmarets, French writer (d. 1676)
 Henry Herbert, English official (d. 1673)
 Lars Kagg, Swedish soldier and politician (d. 1661)
 Thomas May, English poet and historian (d. 1650)
 Henri II de Montmorency (d. 1632)
 Bartholomaeus Nigrinus, Polish Rosicrucian (d. 1646)
 Pocahontas, Algonquian princess (d. 1617)
Mikołaj Potocki, Polish politician (d. 1651)
 Robert Sempill the younger, Scottish writer (d. 1663)
 Cornelius Vermuyden, Dutch engineer (d. 1683)
 probable
 Dirck van Baburen, Dutch painter (d. 1624)
 Albrycht Stanisław Radziwiłł, Lithuanian chancellor (d. 1656)
Deaths 
 January 15 – Murad III, Ottoman Sultan (b. 1546)
 January 24 – Archduke Ferdinand II of Austria (b. 1529)
 February 12 – Archduke Ernest of Austria, Governor of the Spanish Netherlands (b. 1553)
 February 21 – Robert Southwell, Jesuit priest and poet (b. 1561)
 April 25 – Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (b. 1544)
 May 25 – Valens Acidalius, German critic and poet (b. 1567)
 May 26 – Philip Neri, Italian churchman (b. 1515)
 August 24 – Thomas Digges, English astronomer (b. 1546)
 August 26 – Antonio, Prior of Crato, claimant to the throne of Portugal (b. 1531)
 September – Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople (b. 1530)
 October 19 – Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, English nobleman (b. 1537)
 November 5 – Luis Barahona de Soto, Spanish poet (b. 1548)
 November 12 – John Hawkins, English shipbuilder and trader (b. 1532)
 November 29 – Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Basque soldier and poet (b. 1533)
 December 14 – Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon (b. 1535)
 date unknown
date unknown
 Grzegorz Branicki, Polish nobleman (born 1534)
 Turlough Luineach O'Neill, Irish chief of Tyrone (b. c. 1530)
 Robert Sempill, Scottish ballad-writer (b. 1530)
 Thomas Whythorne, English writer and musician (b. 1528)
1599 was a common year which started on Friday.

Events 
 January 8 – The Jesuit educational plan known as the Ratio Studiorum is issued.
 June 20 – The Synod of Diamper is convened.
 August 15 – First Battle of Curlew Pass: Irish forces defeat the English.
 September 21 – The first reported performance of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at the Globe Theatre in London, is recorded by Swiss traveller Thomas Platter the Younger.
 * October 18 – Battle of Sellenberk: Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, defeats the army of Andrew Báthory near Șelimbăr, leading to the first recorded uniting of the Romanians.
Events 

Sasaki Kojiro, a famous swordsmen instructor and general, under Tokugawa Ieyasu, was slain in a duel against legendary swordsman, Musashi Miyamoto at Hesagigawa.

1612
The griffin (also called gryphon, gryphen, griffon, griffen, and gryphin), is a legendary creature. It has the head, front legs, and wings of an eagle. The rest of the body looks like a part of a lion.

In the past griffin was a symbol of strength and dexterity. It often looked after a treasure.

The Griffin is used as the symbol for Brisbane Waters Secondary College on the Central Coast of New South Wales, Australia. following the griffin is the Collegiate phrase "Strength Through Unity"

Legendary creatures
Chordates, phylum Chordata, are a phylum of animals which have a notochord. The group includes vertebrates, with some closely related invertebrates.

Classification

Taxonomy 
Phylum Chordata
 Tunicata – (tunicates, formerly Urochordata; 3,000 species)
 †Vetulicolia (8 Cambrian species of fossil)
 Cephalochordata – (lancelets, 30 species)
 Vertebrata (vertebrates – animals with backbones; 57,739 species)
  Agnatha (jawless vertebrates; 100+ species)
 Myxini or Hyperotreti (hagfish; 65 species)
 Conodonta (Conodonts)
 Hyperoartia (Lampreys)
 †Cephalaspidomorphi (Paleozoic jawless fish)
 †Pteraspidomorphi (Paleozoic jawless fish)
 Gnathostomata (jawed vertebrates)
 †Placodermi (Paleozoic armoured forms)
 Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish; 300+ species)
 †Acanthodii (Paleozoic "spiny sharks")
 Osteichthyes (bony fishes; 30,000+ species)
 Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish; about 30,000 species)
 Sarcopterygii (lobe-finned fish)
 Tetrapoda (four-legged vertebrates; 18,000+ species)

Phylogeny
Phylogeny 

Note: Lines show likely evolutionary relationships.  Extinct groups are marked with a "†". Extinct animals are ones that have completely died out.

Origin of chordates 
According to a long-standing theory, the origin of chordates may be found in transformed larvae of sea-squirts (tunicates). Adult tunicates are sessile, but their larvae are motile, and have some features found in early vertebrates.  The process of paedomorphosis, where juvenile features are retained in the adult, is the proposed mechanism. Genome analysis shows that tunicates are the closest living relatives of vertebrates.

References

Other websites 

Chordate node at Tree Of Life 
Chordate node at NCBI Taxonomy
Sanlúcar la Mayor is a Spanish town in the Province of Sevilla. It has a population of 11,762 and is 137 km² in area.

Towns in Spain
Municipalities in Andalusia
Pyrolysis is the chemical breakdown of compounds, which contain carbon, by heat. Pyrolysis happens under pressure and if the temperature is above 430 °C (800 °F). It is normally used for organic things, and is involved in charring. 

Organic reactions
Chemical processes
Uri is one of the twenty-six cantons of Switzerland. Cantons are like states, provinces, or territories, but Swiss. 35,000 people live there. William Tell is from there.

Municipalities 
The municipalities of the canton of Uri are: Altdorf, Andermatt, Attinghausen, Bauen, Bürglen, Erstfeld, Flüelen, Göschenen, Gurtnellen, Hospental, Isenthal, Realp, Schattdorf, Seedorf, Seelisberg, Silenen, Sisikon, Spiringen, Unterschächen, Wassen

Other websites 
 Official site 
 Official statistics
Michael Andreas Helmuth Ende (12 November 1929 – 28 August 1995) was a German writer of fantasy and children's fiction. He was born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria. He wrote fantasy books for children. He died of stomach cancer in Filderstadt, Baden-Wuerttemberg.

His books

Momo (1973)
The Neverending Story (1979)
 

1929 births
1995 deaths
Cancer deaths in Germany
Deaths from stomach cancer 
German children's writers
Writers from Bavaria
An applet is a computer program that can be run  inside a web browser. Most of the time, applets are written in Java. They are used to display a scrolling menu on a website, for example, the applet is also used to show some applications. In Java, there is a class called "Applet," which is extended when writing applets.

Software
Veneto is one of the twenty regions of Italy, in northeastern Italy on the Adriatic Sea. The capital is Venice.

Geography
The region is in Northeast Italy, bordered to the north by the Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol region (and Austria in the northeastern corner), to the east by the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, to the southeast and south by the Adriatic Sea, to the southwest by the Emilia-Romagna region, and to the west by the Lombardy region.

Veneto is the 8th largest region in Italy, with a total area of . The main river in the region is the Po. The highest mountain in the region is Marmolada (), in the Belluno province, with an altitude of .

Provinces 
Veneto is divided in a Metropolitan City (Venice) and six provinces:

Largest municipalities
The 10 communi with more people living in it are:

Gallery

References

Other websites

 Regione del Veneto Official site
Molise is one of the twenty regions of Italy, in Southern Italy on the Adriatic Sea. The capital is the city of Campobasso.

Molise previously formed, with the Abruzzo region, the old region of Abruzzi e Molise. Molise was separated from that region in 1963, making Molise the youngest region in Italy.

Geography 
The region is located in South Italy bordered by Abruzzo to the north, Lazio to the west, Campania to the south, Apulia to the southeast and the Adriatic Sea to the east.

Molise, with a total area of , is the second smallest region after Valle d'Aosta. The main rivers in the region are:
 Fortore,  long.
 Trigno,  long.
 Biferno,  long; it is the main river of those that flow only in the Molise region.
 Volturno, ; it is the main river in South Italy by its length and its discharge.

The highest mountain in the region is La Meta (its eastern summit) (), in the Isernia province, with an altitude of .

Provinces 
Molise is divided into two provinces:
Largest municipalities
The 10 communi of the region with more people living in it are:

Gallery

References

Other websites

 Official Site
The Philippine Sea is the body of water east of the Philippines and Taiwan. It is a part of the western end of the Pacific Ocean.  The Philippine Sea is bounded by china Japan to the north, the Marianas to the east and Palau to the south.

Geology
It straddles on the Philippine Plate.

Related pages 
 Kyushu-Palau Ridge

References 

Seas of the Pacific Ocean
Bodies of water of Asia
Bodies of water of Oceania
Geography of the Philippines
The Visayas or Visayan Islands (Cebuano and Wáray-Wáray: Kabisay-an, Tagalog: Kabisayaan, Spanich: Bisayas), is one of the three principal geographical divisions of  the Philippines; the other two divisions are Mindanao, to the south, and Luzon, to the north.

People living in this islands are called Visayans.

Geography
The Visayas consists of several islands in central Philippines around the Visayan Sea, with the Philippine Sea to the east and the Sulu Sea to the west.

The main islands (and area) are:
 Bohol, 
 Cebu, 
 Leyte, 
 Negros, 
 Panay, 
 Samar,

Regions and provinces

Administratively, the Visayas is divided into 3 regions: Western Visayas, Central Visayas and Eastern Visayas. Each region is headed by a Regional Director.

The Visayas is composed of 16 provinces, each headed by a governor.
Western Visayas (Region VI)
Western Visayas consists of the islands of Panay and the western half of Negros; it has a population, in 2010, of 7,102,438. The regional center is Iloilo City. Its provinces are:
 Aklan
 Antique
 Capiz
 Guimaras
 Iloilo
 Negros Occidental

Central Visayas (Region VII)
Central Visayas includes the islands of Cebu and Bohol and the eastern half of Negros; it has a population, in 2010, of 6,800,180. The regional center is Cebu City. Its provinces are:
 Bohol
 Cebu
 Negros Oriental
 Siquijor

Eastern Visayas (Region VIII)
Eastern Visayas consists of the islands of Leyte and Samar; it has a population, in 2010, of 4,101,322. The regional center is Tacloban. Its provinces are:
 Biliran
 Leyte
 Southern Leyte
 Eastern Samar
 Northern Samar
 Samar

References

Other websites

 Die Visayas - Inselwelt in der Mitte der Philippinen 

Islands of the Philippines
Tuscany (Italian: Toscana) is a region in the center of Italy. It has an area of 22,990 km² and a population of about 3.6 million people (in 2004). The capital is Florence. 

Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy. Six Tuscan localities have been made UNESCO protected sites: the historical center of Florence (1982), the historical center of Siena (1995), the square of the Cathedral of Pisa (1987), the historical center of San Gimignano (1990), the historical center of Pienza (1996) and the Val d'Orcia (2004).

Geography 
Tuscany borders Emilia-Romagna to the north, Liguria to the north-west, Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, Umbria and Marche to the east, and Lazio to the south-east. The territory is two thirds hilly and one fourth mountainous. The rest is made up of the plains that form the valley of the Arno River.
Economy 
Tuscany is known for its wines (the most famous of which are Chianti, Morellino di Scansano, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and Brunello di Montalcino) and has 120 protected regions (nature reserves). Other agricultural products include cattle (particularly the famous "Fiorentina" steak) and the production of olive oil, principally in Lucca.

The subsoil in Tuscany is rich in mineral resources. There are iron ore, copper, mercury and lignite mines, the famous soffioni (fumarole) at Larderello, and the vast marble mines in Versilia. Although its share is falling, agriculture is still important. In the region's inland areas, cereals, potatoes, olives and grapes are grown. The swamplands, which used to be marshy, now produce vegetables, rice, tobacco, beets and sunflowers.

Tourism is important to the so-called "Cities of Art" (Florence, Arezzo, Lucca, Pisa, Siena, San Gimignano), as well as on the coast and in the isles (Elba).