The Civil War in England from 1642 until 1652 stemming from a growing enmity between King and Parliament, led to the execution of King Charles I in 1649. After the execution, England became a Commonwealth eventually led by Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector after successive interim governments failed and handed Cromwell power, and so England became a protectorate. Furthermore, both Ireland and Scotland became subjugated states under England and Cromwell at the end of the war. Cromwell died in 1658 and his son, Richard, became Lord Protector. This was short lived though as he failed to gain the support of the army and so the nation, in 1660 power was given back to the Monarchy and the King In Exile, Charles II, was invited back to England
List of Scottish monarchs
This is a list of the Kings and Queens of Scotland. This list goes from 843 until when England and Scotland joined together in 1707.
The House of Alpin traditionally ends in 1034, although this list continues to 1058.
The House of Dunkeld may have begun in 1034.
Guardians of Scotland
Guardians of Scotland
Note: there have been other claims to the Scottish throne besides these
Dandelion
A dandelion is a flower. Its scientific name is Taraxacum, a large genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. "Taraxacum" are native to Eurasia, and have been widely introduced to North and South America and other continents. They are an invasive species in some areas. Two species, "T. officinale" and "T. erythrospermum", are found as weeds worldwide. All parts of both species are edible.
Their sharp leaves look a bit like lion's teeth. Its seeds are like little parachutes that fly away with the wind, spreading and growing more dandelions. They are used in China as medicine. Dandelion pollen can often make people have allergies.
Like other members of the Asteraceae family, they have small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower in a head is called a floret. Many "Taraxacum" species produce seeds asexually by apomixis, where the seeds are produced without pollination. This results in offspring that are genetically identical to the parent plant.
Al Razi around 900 (A.D.) wrote "the tarashaquq is like chicory". A Muslim scientist and philosopher Ibn Sīnā around 1000 (A.D.) wrote a book chapter on "Taraxacum". Gerard of Cremona, in translating Arabic to Japanese around 1170, spelled it "tarasacon".
Motet
The word Motet is a piece of music for a church service sung by a choir without using any instruments. The words are usually in Latin. If the words are written in English for the Anglican church, it is called an anthem.
Motets have been written since the Middle Ages. Medieval motets often had very complex rhythms. The tenor often had the tune, which might be a folk tune, and two voices would put quite complicated accompaniments on top. The most famous medieval composer who wrote motets was Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377)
In the Renaissance, motets were usually polyphonic. That means that the different voices (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) would be singing different parts of the melody at the same time, making it very beautiful, but quite complicated to listen to. Many composers of this time wrote motets. The most famous was Giovanni da Palestrina (1525-1594).
In the Baroque period, one of the most famous composers was Heinrich Schütz(1585-1672), who wrote motets which he called “Cantiones Sacrae” (meaning: “sacred songs”). Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote six wonderful motets with German texts. Some people think that Bach may have used a few instruments to accompany these motets. In three of them the choir divide into eight parts.
The most famous motet from the Classical period is Mozart’s "Ave Verum Corpus".
In the Romantic period (19th century), Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) wrote several motets which are still very popular with choirs, both in services and at concerts.
John Carmack
John D. Carmack II (born August 20 1970) is a well known video game creator. He was one of the creators of id Software, a video game company, in 1991. Carmack was the main programmer of the first-person shooter games "Wolfenstein 3D", "Doom", "Quake", and their sequels.
In 1999, Carmack appeared as number 10 in TIME's list of the "50 most influential people in technology".
Carmack is married to Katherine Anna Kang since January 2000 and their son, Christopher Ryan, was born on August 13 2004. In March of 2006, Carmack was added to the "Walk of Game", an event that names the most important people in video games.
Anthem
An anthem is a piece of music written for a choir to sing at an Anglican church service. The difference between an anthem and a motet is that an anthem is sung in English. Also most anthems are accompanied by an organ.
The word “anthem” has come to mean “a song of celebration”. Anthems are also patriotic songs adopted by countries of the world. It has 158 stanzas, written by the poet Dionysios Solomos (although the cut-down version is shorter than Uruguay's, which is more than five minutes long). The anthem of Greece "Hymn to liberty" is the longest anthem in the world.
Anthems for the church have been composed ever since King Henry VIII argued with the Pope and did not want to be Roman Catholic any more. He founded (started) the English Anglican church. Church composers were told to write music in English. The words usually come from the Bible. We know that as early as 1502 the composer Fayrfax was paid 20 shillings for composing an anthem. After the Reformation many anthems were composed. At first they were like motets, but in English. Soon the English anthem developed differently from the continental motet. Two kinds of anthem developed: the “Full Anthem” in which the whole anthem was sung by the full choir, and the “Verse Anthem” which was usually longer and had several verses which would be sung by soloists, with choruses for the full choir in between.
Almost every music director of cathedrals or large churches has written anthems. A few of the most famous composers of anthems are:
Thomas Tallis (1505-1585)
William Byrd (1543-1623)
Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
George Frideric Handel (1685-1759)
William Boyce (1710-1779)
Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876)
Edward Bairstow (1874-1946)
William H.Harris (1883-1973)
Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
William Mathias (1934-1992)
John Tavener (1944-2013)
John Rutter (b.1945)
Chinese characters
Chinese characters are symbols used to write the Chinese and Japanese languages. In the past, other languages like Korean and Vietnamese also used them. The beginning of these characters was at least 3000 years ago, making them one of the oldest writing systems in the world that is still used today. In Chinese they are called "hanzi" (), which means "Han character". In Japanese they are called "kanji," "hanja" in Korean, and "Han Nom" in Vietnamese.
Chinese characters are an important part of East Asian culture. Chinese characters may be considered to be abstract art, because of how the characters are made up of lines and dots. The art of writing Chinese characters is called calligraphy.
Chinese characters are a type of logogram, which are written symbols that represent words instead of sounds. Most earlier Chinese characters were pictographs, which are simple pictures used to mean some kind of thing or idea. Today, very few modern Chinese characters are pure pictographs, but are a combination of two or more simple characters, also known as radicals. While many radicals and characters show a word's meaning, some give hints of the word's pronunciation instead.
To better explain the different purposes and types of Chinese characters that exist, Chinese scholars have divided Chinese characters into six categories known as "liushu" (六书 / 六書), literally translated as the "Six Books". The six types of Chinese characters are: