Columbus Day is a holiday celebrating the day Columbus landed on San Salvador. It is celebrated in many countries. This holiday is very controversial because of the way Columbus treated the Native Americans at the time.
Veterans Day
Veterans Day is the American holiday when people who had served in the military during war-time are remembered and thanked. It is both a federal and a state holiday. The holiday is celebrated on the same day as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day in other countries. These holidays are all November 11. This is the day seen as the end of World War I. The first World War ended on November 11, 1918.
The holiday was first created as Armistice Day in 1919 by President Woodrow Wilson. Thirty states made it a state holiday that year. It was made a holiday for the entire country in 1938. In June 1, 1954, the name was changed to Veterans Day.
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, 12 October 1872; d. London, 26 August 1958) was the most important English composer of his generation.
Vaughan Williams always pronounced his first name “Rafe” - (“Vaughan” rhymes with “born”). His father was a rector. Ralph was very young when his father died. The family moved to Dorking near London. He went to Charterhouse School and played the viola in the school orchestra. He studied at the University of Cambridge and at the Royal College of Music where Hubert Parry was his teacher.
Vaughan Williams wanted to be a good composer, so he went abroad to study with famous composers like Max Bruch in Berlin and Maurice Ravel in Paris. Yet he knew that he must not simply imitate these composers, so he also studied English folk song. He became good friends with the composer Gustav Holst. The two men always showed one another the music they were writing so that they could help one another by offering criticism.
In 1910 he wrote a work which became one of his best-known pieces of music: the "Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis". The piece is for a string orchestra divided into two sections. It uses a theme by the famous 16th century composer Tallis. He also wrote hymn tunes for the English Hymnal. One of his most popular hymn tunes is the one called "Sine Nomine" sung to the words “For all the saints”. Another lovely work is "The Lark Ascending". This is a short work for solo violin and orchestra. The violin sounds like a skylark singing in the sky. In 1934 he wrote a short piece for flute, harp and string orchestra called "Fantasia on Greensleeves" which is based on the famous English Renaissance tune "Greensleeves".
During his long life Vaughan Williams wrote nine symphonies, works for the stage, songs, choral music and chamber music. In 1938 he wrote a famous piece called "Serenade to Music" for 16 solo singers and orchestra. It was one of several works he wrote inspired by Shakespeare. The words were from the play "The Merchant of Venice". It was written for the 50th anniversary of Sir Henry Wood’s career as a conductor. In 1953 he wrote music for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, including a very short and simple motet "O taste and see" which has remained very popular with church choirs.
In his old age he became quite deaf. This was because of the noise of gunfire he had been exposed to when he was serving as a stretcher bearer in World War I.
Some of Vaughan Williams’s best works are those where he makes his music sound like folk song. He loved the poetry of Housman and used some of the poems in a song cycle called "On Wenlock Edge" for tenor, piano and string quartet. His music always sounds English. He was born in the 19th century which was a time when people thought English musicians were not very good. Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar (who was a little older) made people realise that it was possible for an Englishman to write beautiful, moving music.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980
Recycling
Recycling is the process of recovering scrap or waste and reprocessing the material into useful products. Glass, paper, plastic, and metals such as aluminum and steel are all commonly recycled. Dead plants, fruit and vegetable scraps can be recycled through composting. It is important, however, not to confuse recycling with reusing, which is where old things, such as clothes, are donated or given a new use instead of being thrown out.
One reason that people give for recycling is that it reduces trash in landfills and incinerators. Another reason people recycle is to reduce the amount of raw materials and energy used in making things. Most of the time, it takes less energy to recycle trash than to throw it away, "The Economist" says. Recycling can reduce your carbon footprint and it can help to minimize the whole size of landfills around the world.
The 3 R's are Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
Most people make about two kilograms of waste (trash) every day, and about 7% of this waste is made up of plastic products that can be recycled. Today, plastic can be recycled into products like picnic tables, park benches, and even high-chairs.
First, plastic is collected and taken to a recycling center, where it is "sorted out". When plastic is sorted out, symbols have to be printed on every recyclable plastic product used. There are two types of plastic: "polyethylene" and "polymer". There are two kinds of polyethylene plastic, too: "high density polyethylene" (HDPE), and "low density polyethylene" (LDPE). HDPE plastic is usually used to make furniture, and LDPE plastic are usually things like milk jugs, plastic and grocery bags.
HDPE plastic is ground into a small powder. LDPE plastic, which are usually thin films, need to be ground by a special machine. After that, both plastics are washed with hot water and . Dirt and other things, like labels, are taken off. After the wash, the powder is dried with hot air.
Sometimes, the powder is sold. But other times, the powder is heated, colored, and then put into a "pelletizer". The pelletizer makes the powder into little , which are bought by a company that shapes the pellets into pieces of plastic "wood". This plastic wood is used to make flowerpots, trash cans, pipes, picnic tables, benches, toys, mats, and many other things.
Transnistria
Transnistria, Transdniestria, or Pridnestrovie, officially the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR; ), is a partially-recognized state in Eastern Europe.
The country is recognized by three other partially or unrecognized states, Abkhazia, Nargorno-Karabakh Republic, and South Ossetia. The country declared independence from Moldova on 2 September 1990. With the help of the Russian army, it defeated the Moldovan army in the War of Transnistria.
There has been peace since 1992, but the Council of Europe calls Transnistria a "frozen conflict" region.
There is argument about whether it is really a country or not. The region continues to boast independence, and acts independently over its territory with the help of peacekeeping forces from foreign countries.
In a vote in 17 September 2006, 97% voted to be free from Moldova. This vote has not been accepted by Moldova, which calls the territory the "Territory of the Left Bank of the Dniester".
Transnistria is the only independent state to still use the hammer and sickle on its flag.
Mercalli intensity scale
The Mercalli intensity scale (or more precisely the Modified Mercalli intensity scale) is a scale to measure the intensity of earthquakes. Unlike with the Richter scale, the Mercalli scale does not take into account energy of an earthquake directly. Rather, they classify earthquakes by the effects they have (and the destruction they cause). When there is little damage, the scale describes how people felt the earthquake, or how many people felt it.
Very often, non-geologists use this scale, because it is easier for people to describe what damage an earthquake caused, than to do calculations to get a value on the Richter scale.