The genus "Nabokovia" was named after him in honor of this work, as were a number of butterfly and moth species (e.g. many species in the genera "Madeleinea" and "Pseudolucia" have names alluding to Nabokov or names from his novels). In 1967, Nabokov commented: "The pleasures and rewards of literary inspiration are nothing beside the rapture of discovering a new organ under the microscope or an undescribed species on a mountainside in Iran or Peru. It is not improbable that had there been no revolution in Russia, I would have devoted myself entirely to lepidopterology and never written any novels at all".
Abingdon, Oxfordshire
Abingdon is a town in England. It is in the Thames Valley in southern England, 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of Oxford. It is the seat (place of the government) of the Vale of White Horse district in Oxfordshire. Abingdon was once the county town of Berkshire. It is one of several places which claim to be Britain's oldest occupied town.
Abingdon is at a place where people were able to easily cross the Thames. The area has been lived in since the Bronze Age. The bridge over the Thames at Abingdon is more than 550 years old. Work started on the bridge in 1416, and it replaced an old wooden bridge.
The Abingdon Abbey was built in 675 AD by the Benedictines who called it Abbandun. By 1538 it was the sixth richest abbey in Britain. Most of it was destroyed after 1538 when King Henry VIII closed the monasteries. The gatehouse and several smaller buildings are still standing.
There is a market in Abingdon every Monday, which first started in 1556. A canal was built in 1810 to join Abingdon to other towns including London, Bristol and Birmingham. The canal was in use until 1906.
The MG motor cars were made in Abingdon for 50 years until the factory closed in 1980. However the headquarters of the MG Car Club are still in the town.
Yeadon
Yeadon is a town near Leeds in England. It is in West Yorkshire and part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. It is home to Leeds Bradford International Airport.
George Washington Carver
George Washington Carver (c. January 1860 – January 5, 1943) was an American educator, botanist (someone who works with plants), and inventor. He is best known for his work with peanuts, sweet potatoes, and other crops.
Carver's reputation is based on his research into and promotion of alternative crops to cotton, such as peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes, which also aided nutrition for farm families. He wanted poor farmers to grow alternative crops both as a source of their own food and as a source of other products to improve their quality of life.
The most popular of his 44 practical bulletins for farmers contained 105 food recipes using peanuts. He also developed and promoted about 100 products made from peanuts that were useful for the house and farm, including cosmetics, dyes, paints, plastics, gasoline, and nitroglycerin. He received numerous honors for his work, including the Spingarn Medal of the NAACP.
He was born into slavery in January 1864 in Diamond, Missouri. The exact date of his birth is unknown. He studied in Simpson College when he was 22. Much of Carver's fame is based on his research. He died on January 5, 1943 after a fall he had in his home in Tuskegee, Alabama on January 5, 1943.
1744
Julian calendar
The Julian calendar, proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BCE (708 AUC), was a reform of the Roman calendar. It was first used in 1 January 45 BCE. It was the main calendar in most of the world, until Pope Gregory replaced that with the Gregorian calendar in 4 October 1582.
During the 20th and 21st centuries, the date according to the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian date.
The Julian calendar has two types of year: common years of 365 days and leap years of 366 days. There is a simple cycle of three common years followed by a leap year and this pattern repeats forever. However, the rule was not followed in the first years after the of the reform in 45 BCE. Due to a counting error, every 3rd year was a leap year instead of the 4th. The leap years were:
However, in 8 BCE (746 AUC), emperor Augustus Caesar corrected the problem. The next leap year was 7 CE (160 AUC).
With the simple cycle, the length of the Julian year is exactly 365.25 days (365 days and 6 hours), but the actual time it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun once is closer to 365.2422 days (about 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds). This difference is about 365.25 - 365.2422 = 0.0078 days (11 minutes and 14 seconds) each year, although Greek astronomers knew that. This made the seasons get out of track, since the real first day of spring in western Europe (the equinox - day and night the same length) was happening earlier and earlier before the traditional 21 March as the centuries went by. By the 1500s, it was starting around 11 March, ten days 'too early' according to the calendar.
The first step of the reform was to realign the 25 December with the Winter solstice by making 46 BCE (708 AUC) 445 days long. In ordinary Roman calendar, the common year had 355 days and the leap year (one year after the common year) had 378 days. The 46 BCE was a leap year, according to the calendar. Julius Caesar added 67 more days by adding two extra months (those are called "Prior" and "Posterior" in letters of Cicero) between November and December.
Gregorian calendar
The Gregorian calendar is the calendar that is used throughout most of the world. It began being used in 1582. It replaced the previous Julian calendar because the Julian calendar had an error: it added a leap year (with an extra day every four years) with no exceptions. The length of the Julian year was exactly 365.25 days (365 days and 6 hours), but the actual time it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun once is closer to 365.2425 days (about 365 days, 5 hours and 49 minutes). This difference is about eleven minutes each year.
This made the seasons get out of track, since the real first day of spring in western Europe (the equinox - day and night the same length) was happening earlier and earlier before the traditional March 21 as the centuries went by. By the 1500s, it was starting around March 11, ten days 'too early' according to the calendar. So what they did was to move the calendar forward ten days in 1582, and at the same time to make sure it did not happen again. To do this, they made an exception to the previous 'leap year rule' (add February 29 every four years). There would be no February 29 for every year that ends in 00 - unless it could be divided by 400. So the year 2000 was a leap year, because it could be divided by 400, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 would be common years, with no February 29.
It was first suggested by the Neapolitan doctor Aloysius Lilius, and was made official by Pope Gregory XIII, for whom it was named, on February 24, 1582. The official change took place the following October, when Thursday, 4th was followed by Friday, 15th.
The months of the Gregorian calendar year are, in order:
If February has 28 days, then the year is 365 days long.
If February has 29 days, then the year is called a "leap year" and it is 366 days long. A leap year usually happens once every four years. Some examples of leap years are 2004, 2008, and 2012. The next leap year is 2024.
Not every country started using the new calendar immediately. Spain, Portugal, and Italy started to use the new calendar on Friday, October 15, 1582, following Julian Thursday, October 4, 1582. In Europe's Protestant countries, people feared that the new calendar was an attempt by the Catholic Church to silence their movement. The England and the rest of the British Empire adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752; by which time it was necessary to correct by "eleven" days (Wednesday, September 2, 1752 being followed by Thursday, September 14, 1752).