The guillotine was commonly used in France (including France's colonies), Switzerland, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Austria. It was also used in Sweden. Today, all of these countries have abolished (legally stopped) the death penalty. The guillotine is no longer used.
The guillotine is named after a French medical doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin. Guillotin was against the death penalty. Realising he could not stop the death penalty, Guillotin instead tried to think of a quicker, less painful way of executing people. On October 10, 1789, he suggested using a machine to do all the executions.
The actual guillotine was designed by another doctor, Antoine Louis. Guillotin did not help much with the design, but his name went down in history. Against Guillotin's wishes, the new machine quickly became known as the "Guillotine". Guillotin regretted this until death in 1814.
The design for a quick, painless, decapitation machine was given to Tobias Schmidt, a German engineer. Schmidt built the first guillotine and tested it, on animals at first, but later on dead humans. It was made of two fourteen-foot uprights joined by a crossbar, whose inside edges were grooved and greased with tallow; the weighted blade was either straight, or curved like an axe. The system was started by a rope and pulley, while the whole construction was set up on a platform. The first execution was in 1792.
The guillotine was still the only legal way to execute a person in France until 1979, when France stopped using the death penalty. In Nazi Germany, the guillotine was used to kill prisoners sentenced for serious crimes like murder, treason, or conspiracy against the government.
A guillotine was last used in West Germany in 1949 and East Germany in 1961. The last person guillotined was the Tunisian murderer Hamida Djandoubi in 1977.
School uniform
A school uniform is a standard set of clothing students wear when they go to some schools. It might have a particular color of trousers or skirt, plus a matching shirt and perhaps a jacket or necktie, with matching shoes.
In some countries, like Germany, students can wear anything they like when they go to school. In other countries, like England, there is usually a standard dress code in school, usually a set of dressing for girls and one for boys. Boys and girls need to wear "school uniforms" when they go to school. In many countries, such as the United States, some schools require wearing a uniform, and some do not.
Originally, school uniforms were introduced to hide the social differences between students, but uniforms can also help with safety. Using standard uniforms can also save the money needed to buy extra clothes as fashion to impress other people at school. Uniforms are also thought to improve discipline and school spirit.
However, school uniforms can also help with health and safety by having clothes which have been tested to be safer when worn. Some fabrics can cause skin rashes in some people, while a uniform can be made of comfortable fabrics. Also, loose-fitting clothes can get caught in machinery or playground equipment, which limits what activities children can do safely.
There are several types of economic bullying which can be lessened by use of school uniforms. When many students are from families with less money, sometimes students with more money have stood out because they wore newer shoes, where neither shoe was in poor shape. In schools where more students are rich, poorer students have been insulted for the old-style or tattered clothes they wore.
Primate
Primates are a group of mammals that contains all lemurs, monkeys and apes, including humans.
There are about 400 species of primates. All primates are similar to humans in some ways, but language is an important difference. Primates have hands with five fingers and flat fingernails (most other animals have claws). Most also have Breasts containing the Mammary gland. Primates are split into two groups: Strepsirrhini and Haplorhini. Haplorrhini includes monkeys, tarsiers and apes including humans. Strepsirrhini includes lemurs, lorises, galagos (also called bush babies) and the Aye-Aye.
Primates are one of the few eutherian groups which re-evolved full colour vision.
Tropic of Cancer
The Tropic of Cancer ("cancer" (♋) is Latin for crab) is one of the five major circles of latitude (imaginary lines around the Earth) that are often marked on maps of the Earth. This is the parallel of latitude that is 23° 26' 22" north of the Equator. At every June Solstice the Sun passes straight overhead on the tropic. This never happens anywhere north of the Tropic of Cancer.
Equinox
An equinox is when the sun passes directly over the equator. There are two equinoxes each year. Equinox can also mean either of the two days when this happens. On these days, the nights are equal in length at latitudes L° North and L° South. The word "equinox" comes from two Latin words meaning "equal" and "night".
Around the day of the equinox, the length of the day is a little over twelve hours and the length of the night is a little under twelve hours. They are not exactly equal because the sun is not a point in the sky and because the sunlight bends as it comes to earth. The exact day and time when this happens depend on how far away from the equator it is being measured. They occur on or around March 21 and September 21. Solstices fall around June 21st and December 21st at odd intervals.
The equinoxes are the beginning of spring, and autumn (or "fall" in the US).
The time of daylight is quite easy to measure. This was done in many cultures where festivals were celebrated at the equinoxes.
Teufelsbrücke
The Teufelsbrücke (bridge of the devil) is a bridge over the river Reuss in the Swiss canton of Uri.
The valley called "Schöllenenschlucht" is an important access route to the St.Gotthard alpine pass. However, the valley is very narrow, featuring a dangerous river Reuss.
The first bridge across the river was built in 1230. This was a wooden bridge. This meant that due to bad weather it had to be replaced often.
In the 16th century, it was replaced by a bridge of stone. That stone bridge was heavily damaged in the Napoleonic wars in 1799. Nobody could use the bridge because of the damage. Trade with Italy was done over the alpine pass at Splügen.
The first bridge was completely destroyed in a stormy night in 1888.
Only in 1820 could the order to build a new bridge be given. The construction of the bridge took 10 years.
In the middle of the 20th century, the second bridge was no longer able to handle the traffic. A third bridge, featuring two lanes, one for each direction, was built in 1958.
Building the first bridge was very hard. According to a local myth, the first bridge was built by the devil himself. The condition attached was that the devil should get the soul of the first to pass over the bridge. So, when the bridge was finished, people chased a goat over the bridge. Of course, the devil was furious, so he went to pick up a large stone (called "Teufelsstein", the devil's stone). He wanted to smash the bridge he just built to pieces. On his way to the ridge however, he encountered an old believing woman with a cross. Scared of the cross, he left the stone, and fled.
The devil's stone weighs 2000 tons. 300.000 Swiss Francs were used in 1977 to shift the stone 127 meters to make way for the motorway passing over the St.Gotthard pass.
Popular belief has it that the moving of the stone was the cause of an increased number of accidents on kilometre 16 on the St. Gotthard road tunnel.
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