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Is Sumerian the oldest language in the world?

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Is Sumerian the oldest language in the world?

yes or no?

I usually claim that to understand the answer, you first have to understand the question. To me, that statement is something of a general truth, an axiom. But when you arrive at the question of languages, this becomes absolutely fundamental. To determine what is old and what is a language, we need to clarify what we mean.

Definition of the oldest language in the world.

Languages are in constant evolution. They come from somewhere, and they change as people move around, or are visited by other linguistic groups. The more influence a group has, from other groups, the more its language change

  • So, is it correct to say that a language that has developed less is older than a language that has developed more?
  • And when does a language become another language?

What do we mean by “oldest language”?

  • Greek is a very old language. The first writing is something called linear B, and it dates as far back as 1400 BC. The greek that Homer used for writing his bestsellers, Iliad, and Odyssey, is called Homeric Greek (… Obviously).  After Homer, there was great evolution and many changes to the language.
  • Latin is also a very old language. Latin is the base for numerous languages that developed in the territory of the Roman Empire, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Italian. The Italian language was somewhat determined in the 12th, and 13th centuries and formalized with the writings of Dante Alighieri in late 1200 and early 1300.
Homer
The Trojan Horse

A normal Greek-speaking person of today doesn’t understand much of ancient Greek, but it still holds the origins of the modern Greek language.

A normal Italian-speaking person of today doesn’t understand much of Latin, but it still holds the origins of the modern Italian language.

Greek is considered very old, and so is Latin. But Italian isn’t… Do you see the problem? Could it be that it’s just a matter of how you label a language?

The oldest written language.

Even though, when determining the oldest writings in history, you will have to face some of the same issues as with the only spoken ones, those without written documents. Writing is still a more solid ground to stand on. The written language has a document, something that’s physical, at least if it’s written on stone or clay. And the age of that document/thing can be determined and proven.

oldest language in the world
The Kish tablet

So, the oldest written thing is the Kish tablet. It’s a limestone tablet found in Iraq, in the Babylon province. It has an early form of partly syllabic, cuneiform writing probably in Sumerian. It dates from 3500 BC.

In Jiahu, China, some 100 miles, (150km) south of Zhengzhou, in 1989, artifacts were found containing writings that looked like very early Chinese symbols, dated to 6000 BC. The consensus among scholars is that these are not actual writings as the symbols don’t seem to contain any grammatical hierarchy. but rather only a simple geometric design.

Symbols of this character have been found in Serbia, Greece, many locations in the middle east, and other parts of the world. 

oldest language in the world
Bull, Hieroglyph from Deir el-Bahri ca. 2000 BC.
Bull, Lubang Jeriji Saléh, Indonesia. 40.000 years old.

Different types of writing.

Many language historians claim that the writing started in Mesopotamia, with the Sumerians, and the cuneiform script. Some think that the whole idea of writing then spread into other areas with merchants and diplomacy/warfare. The fact is that even if the Sumerians were first, we have many findings of other languages dated shortly after in the neighborhood. And we can’t know if there could be other examples of writings, that we haven’t found yet:

  •  In Egypt, the first known hieroglyphs are from around 3400 BC.
  •  In India, we have findings of the Harrapan script from around 3000 BC.

The most interesting aspect of the Jiahu-symbols is that they could be some sort of ancestor to the present Chinese Hanzi script, which is logographic writing, meaning the symbols are syllables or whole words rather than sounds. And that would make it by far the oldest written language still in use. 

But now we are talking about writings. Spoken Chinese is a completely different matter. 

But, for now, let’s stick with the Kish tablets for the prize as the oldest writing.

The oldest spoken language.

Determining the age of a language becomes much more difficult when you don’t have anything written. As we don’t have recordings or anybody old enough to remember, we will have to stick with hypotheses. And this is where the excellent historical linguists come in.  

  • When did humans start to talk?
  • At what point could our sounds be considered speaking?
  • And if it died out shortly after, should we still count it?

These are very interesting topics, and if you read on, I’ll get back to it, to the very first words any human being uttered ever.

But for now, the question has to be…

What is the oldest spoken language still in use today?

And we’re back to my example with the Greek and the Italian. We need to determine what “still in use” means. How far from the original can you get and still count it as the same language? Here are two examples of English. The first was from around 800 and the second was from somewhere between 1200 and 1500. How much of these languages do you understand?

Another aspect is to determine what we mean by spoken.

  • Does it have to be a mother tongue to be considered alive today?
  • Does it have to be used uninterruptedly, or could there be holes in the timeline?

Latin is a good example. Because it is still in use today. People know how to speak it. It is studied in schools and used by priests, singers, and doctors all over the world. But it’s not a mother tongue to anybody… And maybe it never was. 

Latin is not old enough to be regarded in this group of very old languages. But Sanskrit is. Sanskrit is definitely among the contestants, and some would argue that this branch of the Indo-European language tree is, in fact, the oldest. 

The oldest language in the world – Sanskrit and Hebrew.

Sanskrit’s first appearance comes in the ancient Indian collection of Vedic hymns, Rig Veda from about 1400 BC. Veda means knowledge, and these hymns are religious and metaphysical verses dealing with the universe, God, and the meaning of life. Two problems arise:

  1. We don’t have Rig Veda. Much like we don’t have any original of the Bible, The oldest written text of the Rig Veda is from the 13th century AD. 
  2. Today nobody is born with Sanskrit as their mother tongue, but it exists as a religious and ceremonial language. Should it still be counted as the oldest language in the world?
Tamil language
The Rig Veda

Sanskrit is similar to the other Indo-European languages and probably descended from some common ancestor. Many words are close to those in Latin, Greek, and even English.

Talking about the Bible, Hebrew is also very old. Similar to Sanskrit, it is a religious language that was out of use for a long period of time. It was revived in the 1800s, and when the state of Israel was founded in 1948 it became the official language of Israel. But we don’t have the original writings of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. The oldest complete copy is from around 1000 AD. Hebrew has some 5 million speakers worldwide, so it’s definitely live and kicking… But it was dead as a spoken language for over a thousand years. Do we count it?

More possible candidates.

  • Tamil, is another language claimed by some scholars to be the oldest language in the world. The first documents in Tamil are from the 6th century BC. But it is possible that the language is much older than that. It has an unbroken timeline and today more than 75 million people speak Tamil.
  • Chinese. 
  • Greek. (With the disclaimer above.)
  • Lithuanian. Just like all the other European languages, it has Indo-European roots. But while most other languages have developed and changed, Lithuanian has maintained some of its original features.  But does that make it older?
  • Farsi – Persian. Farsi is documented from around 500 BC. That is early enough. But the Persians have at least some relationship, cultural and linguistic, with the former inhabitants of their territory, the Sumerians. If you count them as Persians, then Farsi is by far the oldest language in the world. But to me, that would be a rather long stretch. Farsi is spoken by ca. 70 million people worldwide.

which was the first language?What defines a Language?

  1. A language is a mechanism for communicating with others, mostly of the own species.
  2. The language is sound-based or based on signs with the hands. The body-language expression doesn’t count in this case.
  3. It has to be variable.

Many social animal species can communicate vocally, by barking howling, snorking, squeaking, roaring, etc. But they are mostly limited to pre-determined sounds. We, on the other hand, can express an infinite amount of information based on the combination of syllables, and sounds.

The word house can be used in a variety of ways. You go to your house, or away from it, or it could be someone else’s house, or I could build a house… Or tear it down. It all comes down to where you put the prepositions, where you put the word inside the phrase, genus, the grammatical number, and many other possible variations.  And that’s just one, single word.

Our brother primates do not have a well-defined language. They have sounds, and they can be quite communicative, but they don’t speak. 

The oldest language in the world is sign-based.

Scientists have tried to teach chimpanzees to speak with words, but with little success. When teaching them to speak with symbols, they are much more fortunate. This could suggest that the origin of language lies in concrete symbols, rather than abstract words.

It’s a known fact that children with deaf parents, that is, children who have sign language as their mother tongue, so to speak, can communicate with words much earlier than speaking children. They learn their first words already at 6 months, and at around one year, they have a reasonable vocabulary, to be able to express simple phrases.  

Sometimes you don’t even need words…

Professor Michael Corballis Ph.D. suggests that the oldest language in the world originated from gestures rather than sounds. He proposes a very early start of the language process in early humans. As far back as 6 million years ago. And it started with hand-, and facial expressions. If you’ve ever seen a political discussion in Italy, you know what a likely theory that is.

Homo Erectus, our forefather, was an ingenious creature. He traveled, he spread, and he created settlements with different types of buildings, in a hierarchical structure. Could he have done all that without some sort of language? Homo Erectus didn’t have our vocal apparatus, he didn’t have all our muscles in the throat, the mouth, and the tongue. But he stood up. And by standing up he freed his hands for gestures, and he showed his face for expressions.

Final thoughts

Today there are more than 5000 languages on this planet. More than 5000 ways to express simple things, write poetry, or books, or cry out for help. But all these languages have some sort of common origin. They all started out somewhere as simple sounds and gestures. From there they evolved and became a full palette of humanistic wonders… Our modern languages. 

oldest language in the world

So, what is the oldest language in the world? If you’ve borne with me this far, you understand what I’m getting at. There is no oldest language in the world. Because they all come from somewhere and they go somewhere else. Every language is in a transformative phase between before and after. 

We can determine which is the oldest language in the world only by defining the criteria. And the result would change according to the criteria. 

So, yes, Sumerian is the oldest language in the world if you count written documents… And that’s not a bad criterion. 


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Conclusion

Yes, Sumerian is the oldest language in the world if you count earliest writings, and you consider both living and dead languages. 

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Did nylon get its name from the two cities, New York and London?

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Did nylon get its name from the two cities, New York and London?

yes or no?

The reason for the story of the two cities.

Where does the name, nylon come from? A dear friend of mine once claimed that his boat was involved in how Nylon was named after the two cities, New York and London.

He was at the time the owner of a beautiful 47 feet motor-cruiser built in the 1930s. It was an extraordinary boat, shining copper, thick oak, velvet, and silk. A piece of old-age luxury reminding him of the old days, when the world was richer and simpler… At least for the British. 

Anyway, what he said was that his vessel crossed the Atlantic in the 30s. He had documentation of that. And that the owner at one time was an English scientist involved in the creation of Nylon. After a whisky or two in the deckhouse, overlooking the mouth of the river Hamble, the story got more detailed. 

Nylon name New York London.

Two scientists, one of them possibly Wallace Carothers, the inventor of Nylon, spent a few weeks on the boat going from London to New York. The passage gave them lots of time to discuss the denomination of the new discovery, in which they both were deeply involved. By the time they reached the big Apple, they had agreed upon naming the new fiber NYLON, from the start and finish destinations of their trip… Or more precisely, the finish and start, New York, and London.

Where does the name nylon come from?The story doesn’t really add up, though. 

  • First of all, nobody, going from England to the US with a small motor yacht, parts from London. He would part from, let’s say, Plymouth… Nyply. Maybe not a very good name for promotional purposes.
  • Secondly, there is no record whatsoever of any British scientist having had anything to do with the discovery of Nylon. Although much of the scientific expertise in many fields, still was concentrated in Europe before the war, Nylon was an American product. Developed by Carothers and his colleagues under the DuPont umbrella in the US. Carothers visited Europe twice in the mid-thirties. He was at the time suffering from frequent depressions and psychological illness, and it’s highly unlikely that he would have endeavored in any adventurous expedition over the Atlantic. 

Other possible explanations. 

Another myth claims that the two cities’ names were merged on an airplane when two chemists thought up the word on an intercontinental flight from London to New York. Not even that is plausible. 

Nylon new york london
Wallace Hume Carothers

When the first ever intercontinental passenger airline started in 1939, from New York to Marseilles, Nylon was already established. The big announcement of the new fantastic material occurred on October 27, 1938. The name, Nylon, was then repeated when another promotional push was launched at the New York World’s fair in 1939. 

So it’s highly unlikely that the two cities had anything to do with it. (Sorry buddy, your boat is just a boat…). 

Now You’re Lost, Old Nippon – NYLON, is another suggestion. Any smooth, almost transparent fabric was, traditionally, made from silk, and more than half of all silk worldwide was produced in Japan. That particular phrase could have meant thumbing the nose at the rapidly climbing industrial power of the east. 

So, where does the name nylon come from?

If it had nothing to do with either New York or London, where does the name nylon come from?

Nylon new york london

The scientific name is polyhexamethylene adipamide. But the label, Nylon, indicates not one material but a group of materials. In fact, nylon is used in a wide variety of applications. And it can be mixed with additives to achieve a vast number of different properties.

As the original name wasn’t very sexy, the marketers at DuPont were trying hard to come up with something more interesting. Carothers called his plastics Polyamide 66, or fiber 66. The two numbers have survived to modern times. The particular type of nylon that Carothers and his colleagues developed, is today referred to as Nylon 66, polyhexamethylene adipamide.

Soon after the product launch, representatives of DuPont declared that the name was random, at least more or less random. The -on at the end was just a general material kind-of ending, similar to other fibers, synthetic or non…Rayon, Cotton. The nyl didn’t really mean anything… 

Later explanations.

In a publication by DuPont from 1978, a more thorough explanation is presented. According to the authors, the process of finding a name was quite complicated. A list of some 400 names was put forth, many of which were immediately thrown out. F.ex. Duparooh – DuPont Pulls A Rabbit Out Of a Hat.

Where does the name nylon come from?

In the end the list was shortened to just a few names: 

  • Delawear – Delaware, the state where the production facility was located, and Wear.
  • Dusilk
  • Rayamide
  • Silkex

K. Gladding, the director of the Nylon plant suggested:

  • No-Run, as in no-unravel. Stocking made of this material didn’t unravel.

The last steps.

No run was a little steep to promote. In fact, the company suffered to some degree when claiming that these stockings were Strong as steel and smooth as a spider web. They were certainly strong, much more resistant than silk, but still, they weren’t unbreakable. And many women, trusting the DuPont’s claims, treated their new stockings carelessly, causing them to – right… Unravel.

Where does the name nylon come from?

When DuPont changed the campaign strategy to focus less on technical and scientific innovation, and more on the practical aspect, comfort, and style, the sales skyrocketed. In the first year after WW2, there were riots outside the warehouses, when production couldn’t keep up with the astronomical demand. In one occasion in Pittsburg, 40.000 women queued up for hours. The 13.000 pairs available sold out in minutes, leading to fights breaking out.

In the end, No-Run was just a little too provocative. So they changed the order of the vowels, Nu-Ron… Nuron. But that sounded too much like neuron, the brain cell. An L was put in… Nulon, the U changed to I… Nilon. Lastly the I was substituted by an Y to clarify the pronunciation. 

And there you have it, Nylon. From No Run, as in No Unravel.

Wallace Carothers tragically took his own life on April 28, 1937. 


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Conclusion

No, the name Nylon has nothing to do with New York and London. It was simply an imaginative description that was supposed to be selling. A good, catchy, word, easy to promote.

Nylon riots
American Ladies queuing for Nylon/Stockings after the war., Tennessee

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Was Football/Soccer born when a group of soldiers kicked an enemy’s cut-off head between them?

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Was Football/Soccer born when a group of soldiers kicked an enemy’s cut-off head between them?

yes or no?

First of all, we’re talking about football/soccer… A game you play with your feet. And of course, the name indicates just that… Foot and Ball. But if you follow me back into the fog of the early football history, you will see that the distinction between Football, American football, and Rugby isn’t all that easy to grasp. Because they are all neatly tied together back there in the distant past.

The History of Football

In ancient China, as well as Japan and other eastern countries, they played football. Cuju (蹴鞠) is recognized by FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) as the oldest documented football-style game. It was played as far back as 200 BC in China, and it included many different styles. Often it was played as an exhibitionistic game with only one team. The idea was to pass the ball within the team and a single winner was declared at the end.

cuju

The ancient Greeks also played football, as well as the Romans… And probably every other group of people in the whole wide world. From Greenland to Australia, from America to Africa. We do not know exactly in what way these games were played, how the winner was determined, how the “ball” was made, and if they were allowed to use their hands or only kick the ball with their feet.

The reason for Cuju being declared the oldest documented football game in the world is obviously because it was documented. In China, writing was common knowledge and the Emperor kept logs of the various events. And so we have an idea about the game and the rules. 

From many other parts of the world, documentation started when people started writing about it. But we can not know for sure when football was born. There are findings older than those from China, for example in South America, but the problem is the same… The documentation. Without properly written descriptions, it’s hard to determine if a game is this or that, football or something else.

The Medieval game

It’s evident though, that different games involving a ball-ish thingy and a lot of youngsters running around have been around for a long time. But to distinguish true football from other ball games we need to determine a few attributes. 

  • It has to include a ball.
  • It has to be a reasonably big “ball”. One that is played with parts of your body, not with a racket or a stick.
  • It has to be competitive. And there should be lots of people in the field, teams, possibly more than one.
  • You should play it with your feet, kicking the ball… Wait, What?

And here’s where football shows its common origins with Rugby and American Football. 

Because the history of football shows that the vast majority of the different styles used hands and feet to move the ball… And many were exaggeratingly violent. If you want to have an idea of how it could have looked like back in the day, there actually is a medieval football game still played today… A game that has undergone few changes during the ages. 

The Florentine Football – Calcio Fiorentino 

Every year in June you have the possibility to see four teams of young hooligans play a tournament of two semifinals and one final. And what you witness is more of a group-MMA than actual football. It’s extremely brutal. Although modern rules are modified to avoid serious damage to the players, it’s still very different from a normal football match. 

This Italian football game was the first with rules written on paper, dating from 1580. Rules that involve 27 players in each team. A Strange feature is that the defenders are allowed to use any means to stop an attacker from reaching the home net and scoring. That includes tackling, throwing, hitting, but also fist-fighting.  

The game is very interesting not only because it’s an interesting game in itself, but also because it gives you an idea of what football could have been like in Europe in the middle ages. Because these games were widespread all over the continent… That is, in times when they were not prohibited. 

Because the violent nature of football made it a target for legislation. After a match, there could be players and spectators injured and also damage to property. Football suffered a ban or an intended ban in England in 1314, 1349, 1363, 1389, 1401, 1477, and 1540… And that’s just England.

Another interesting fact is that women’s football was not allowed in the English Football Association’s (FA) pits until 1971. The reason was that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged”.

the ball of American and European football
These two balls are from the second part of the 19th century. Soccer/Football – Top American Football – Bottom They more or less have the same form and size.

The Ball

We don’t have good descriptions of the ball back in the earliest days of the history of football. There’s a note from China when they started using an animal bladder as the inner air-filled chamber. It replaced a feather-filled ball.

We can assume that the early balls were very different and that they took what they had close at hand to create it.

In the middle ages, the normal way to play was with a pig’s bladder… Or some other big animal’s. 

The task of inflating the ball was not for the squeamish. The pig’s bladder would be blown up while still in its very smelly state, solely by lung power down the snapped stem of a clay pipe inserted into the opening of the bladder.

With time the bladder was covered with pieces of leather stitched together to make the ball more uniform and less gross. Then came the development towards round balls. Something that was trickier to achieve. 

A non-spherical animal bladder can’t be managed very well with the feet, you can’t dribble, and you can’t control it. And just like in so many other fields, it could have been the technical progress that finally bridged over to banning holding the ball with the hands. It wasn’t until 1872, when the spherical ball became mandatory, that 100% foot-based football became at all possible. 

The hand-held ball games didn’t rely on bouncing and dribbling, and in 1892, Rugby got similar standards for their ball… But instead of a round ball, Rugby and American football use an oval one. 

Mob Football in Britain

From England, there are numerous articles and writings about football and football-type games played on fields or even in the streets in the middle ages. Often the teams were made up of schools or workers’ guilds, and just like the Fiorentine game, these mob football games were violent exhibitions. 

One of the earliest documentation from Ireland is from a protocol that tells of how Mr. John McCrocan was accused and charged of having Accidently stabbed Mr. William Bernard at a football game in 1308 in the city of Newcastle, County Down, Northern Ireland. 

I would like to see exactly how you do when you accidentally stab somebody…

The history of Modern Football. 

The history of modern football is intimately connected to Britain. We’ve already established that the game was played more or less everywhere, but it wasn’t until the 19th century in England that we started to have common rules. And common rules are needed if you would like to start playing matches, tournaments, and league football. 

In 1800, football was closely tied to schools and universities. Students all over Britain played football between themselves and together with their teachers. As the school system, back then, was mostly for upper-class children, they tried to limit the negative physical effects it had. Parents weren’t happy when their kid came home for Christmas leave with a broken jaw. 

Another important factor was the prospect to play with other teams from other schools. 

the history of footballThe first football rules and the path to the modern game.

In 1845 the Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, came up with a set of rules. It was the first attempt to unify and organize football as a standard game. Not surprisingly these rules included throwing and holding the ball. 

In 1848 another set of rules was concluded in Cambridge. These were decided among representatives from the different schools, including Rugby, and were more similar to modern football/soccer. The Cambridge rules weren’t accepted everywhere and there was quite a bit of confusion when different clubs met. Even to a point that sometimes the rules had to be drawn up for that particular match and agreed upon by the two teams. 

The biggest issues were not so much the duration of the match, the number of players, and how to score. But the disagreements were mainly two:

  1. Limit or not, the amount of violence allowed between players. Some promoters were determined to make football a non-violent game.
  2. Running while holding the ball. Rugby- and Harrow-players promoted this, while the others did not.
The foundation of Football Association
Some of the Gentlemen who wrote the Cambridge rules.

The history of the English Football Association

FA (the Football Association) was founded in 1863, and they needed a set of rules that could be agreed upon by everybody. In autumn of that year, professors from the various schools met in a series of sessions to, once and for all, resolve the issues with the rules of the game. It didn’t work out perfectly, but at the end of the year, there was a new Association for the game and a set of rules to which at least most of the clubs could agree. 

Distinctive new laws were: 

  • Hacking – kicking the shins of the opponents – was banned.  
  • Running with the ball was disallowed.

They also decided how the goal should be, with two lateral poles and a string between them.

In 1871 the Rugby Football Union (RFU) was formed promoting what is today referred to as Rugby. Interestingly, the Rugby School football club didn’t join the RFU until 1890, as they refused to abandon the Hacking-tactic. 

football in a fieldThe history of American Football

On November 6, 1869, the first-ever American Football match was played. The game was played according to the English rules, which were somewhat confusing at the time. Obviously, the American style developed more into the Rugby-game than into the foot-based Cambridge game. And in 1880 the American football player Walter Camp invented a set of new rules and ideas, that started a line of evolution distinctly different from both Rugby and European football or Association football, as it’s also called.

So by the end of 1800, we have the three different branches, Football/Soccer, Rugby, and American Football. Of these the Football/Soccer branch is by far the biggest. In fact, it’s the most popular sport in the world, with the most players and the biggest audience.

father of american football
Walter Camp – The father of American Football

But what about the kicking of the head?

Well, this is a legend firmly rooted in the beliefs of more than one football fan in every corner of the world. But it is a legend, and as such, we can’t really tell how much accuracy there is to it. 

The tale goes something like this: 

During the times of the Viking invasions in the 11th century, some English peasants found (…or cut off) a head of a Danish soldier. They then kicked it between them, probably as a sign of defiance against the Danish oppressors. A group of kids saw them and as it looked like a funny thing to do, they copied them and the game of Football was invented.

Just the fact that the event has been dated from 300 AD. up until the French revolution, as well as in almost every corner of the British islands, should encourage reasonable doubt. 

I can’t say what happened a thousand years ago in Britain, but I can say that it wouldn’t have been the first time angry peasants cut off the heads of the invaders. I don’t think it was the origin of football though.

 


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Conclusion

No, Football wasn’t first invented in Britain and its origins are not from a Danish head. What the British did, was to put up a standard of rules, from which modern Football evolved. And those same rules became the backbone for both Rugby and American Football

Courtesy of Sjöhistoriska museet, Stockholm

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With all the evidence and observations in recent years, can we finally accept that aliens exist here on earth?

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With all the evidence and observations in recent years, can we finally accept that aliens exist here on earth?

yes or no?

aliens existDo aliens exist here on earth?

If you look only at all the observations, grainy footage, people testifying that aliens exist and that they’ve seen strange light formations in the sky, or pilots stating that they’re being followed by flying objects that fly in a way that no known airplane can… Then it seems obvious that there has to be someone else out there.  And why shouldn’t there? 

Is it possible that we are the only ones living, dying, loving, and evolving in this amazing Universe?

Let’s take a look at what we know…

There have been many observations… Or maybe not?

In April, this year, 2020, the Pentagon released three videos of UFOs spotted by American military aircraft. The videos weren’t new as they were leaked already in 2007 and 2017. But the Pentagon wanted to clear up all misunderstandings and clarify that the footage was real in all three occasions, so they declassified them. 

One video from 2004 shows two navy fighter pilots following a round object hovering above the water, about 100 miles (160 km) out over the Pacific Ocean. The other two videos are from 2015 and they show a few other very fast unidentified objects, one of which rotating.

The Pentagon Videos

The most interesting fact about these videos is that they are official and very credible, as they come directly from the US military. What they show is probably very real and should be considered trustworthy. 

The problem, of course, is that the images are blurry. As are all the other thousands of photos and videos showing possible alien flying aircraft. Up until today, we don’t have any conclusive evidence of existing aliens or UFOs. There’s no extraterrestrial aircraft on display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C and there has been no documented “encounter of the third kind” ever. 

From the various UFO observations, we don’t have any substantial evidence that aliens exist. It’s still a question of believing, much like believing in a Deity.

The Universe is big.

The Universe is big… Let me rephrase that. The Universe is so big that a normal human brain can’t even begin to comprehend it. 

When talking about aliens and if they exist or not, you, first of all, have to acknowledge this fact. The distances are astronomical (…right). The known universe, that is the observable universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter. The Big Bang happened 13,8 billion years ago, but the radius of the Universe is still 46 billion light-years, 

aliens existThe reason for this seemingly paradoxical fact, I will write about in another post.

But these vast distances make it very difficult to observe other stars, planets, and galaxies, to see if the aliens exist there. Not only because it’s far away and you need very good binoculars. But more so because what we see is the past. 

If Alfie, the alien, waves his hand on a planet that orbits our closest neighboring star, 4 light-years away, that image and the light from his salute will take 4 years to reach the earth. When we look at that star, we see what happened four years ago.

If we look at something on the other side of the Universe, we see what happened there, billions of years ago. And a lot can happen in a few billion years.

If Aliens exist on earth and we wanted to see them, they would have to be from our neighborhood, very close by.

The speed of light in a vacuum is fixed, it doesn’t change… Ever. 

It is 299 792 458 meters per second, exactly. The first scientist ever who determined the light speed was the Danish astronomer Ole Christensen Rømer, also known as Olaus Roemer. The year was 1676. Before him, light was supposed to not have any speed at all. It just appeared and vanished instantaneously. 

But from Roemer and onward, people knew about the speed of light. And they knew how immensely fast it is. 

Light also doesn’t accelerate or decelerate, and it doesn’t matter from what angle, or if you yourself are moving towards, or away from the light source. It’s always 299 792 458 m/s. 

aliens existAlbert Einstein

Many hundreds of years after Roemer, the German scientist Albert Einstein determined a relationship between mass, speed, and time in his special theory of relativity. 

His conclusion was that if the speed of light is constant, then mass and time must be variable. Modern research has confirmed these theories. Experiments at the Cern Particle Accelerator complex in Bern, Switzerland show that when you close in on the speed of light, and you reach speeds that are hundreds of thousands of meters per second, the mass increases. It increases so much, in fact, that if you should reach light speed the mass would be infinite. And if the mass is infinite, it would take infinite energy to accelerate it further. 

And this makes Faster than Light travel impossible. 

But if aliens exist they could be very smart.

Of course, it’s impossible for us to say for sure that Alfie, the alien, doesn’t have some super technology that is far beyond our understanding. But the problem with this is that Einstein’s theories are not technologies. They are physical and scientific facts. And the only way the aliens could have faster than light aircraft is if we simply are wrong about how the physics in the universe work. And that couldn’t happen… Or could it? 

… Or they could have developed teleportation… Or they could use the quantum entanglement… Or they could exploit the curves in time-space or the expansion of the Universe. They could have technical knowledge that we couldn’t even imagine.

Our space shuttles and our science would probably be very rudimentary in the eyes of the aliens. We would be like a medieval peasant looking at a moving car.

So, if we can’t see them, maybe we could hear them?

aliens exist

Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a collective term for all kinds of searches for extraterrestrial life. This is mostly through “listening” to radio signals and sometimes looking for visible light signals. Quite a few projects have started and concluded ever since we first developed communication through radio signals. Huge telescopes are used to collect radio waves. These are then analyzed for patterns and groups of signals that could indicate an intelligent source. 

  • In 1995 the Phoenix project started listening to 800 solar systems similar to ours in a 200-light-year radius. In 2004 the project leader Peter Backus concluded that “we live in a quiet neighborhood”.
  • In fact, none of all these projects have ever found any proof of signals that could have been sent by an intelligent source. 
  • Between September 16, 2018, and October 30, 2019, researchers with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment detected a pattern in radio signal bursts occurring every 16.35 days. The pattern consists of one or two bursts every hour for four days. Then silence for 12 days. Possible sources could be the orbital motion of a star or a double star system, the scientists are puzzled. This is the first time such a periodical signal has been detected. The source is 500 light-years away

Aliens exist, but maybe we shouldn’t let them know we’re here… 

  • In 1974, the Arecibo Message, the most powerful broadcast ever deliberately beamed into space was made from Puerto Rico. It contains 73 lines of 23 characters. Our solar system, DNA, and a simple human being are displayed. It’s beamed towards the globular star cluster M13 which is 21.000 light-years away. We will have to wait quite some time for the answer.
  • aliens existIn 2015 a competition was announced to create a similar message, the Breakthrough Message, with a prize pot of $1.000.000 to whoever writes the best letter to our alien friends.
  • Many scientists, among them Stephen Hawking, argue that it’s not a good idea to make our existence known to whoever is out there. Not until we have an idea who we are talking to. Thus it would be smarter to just listen.
  • In January 2016 the Breakthrough Listen was launched. It is the biggest, most well-funded SETI-project in history, with $100 million in funding and thousands of hours of dedicated telescope time on state-of-the-art facilities. The announcement was flanked by some of the greatest scientists of our time, including Stephen Hawking, and Frank Drake.

And for those of you, who do not know who Frank Drake is…

The Drake equation.

In 1961 Frank Drake, the American astronomer and astrophysicist hosted a SETI-meeting at the Green Bank facility in West Virginia. Ten of the most famous scientists in the field should meet and discuss the possibility of alien life. Drake was occupied with all the practical aspects of everything, and a few days before they were all to arrive, he realized that he didn’t know what they were going to talk about… He didn’t have an agenda.  

So he put together a formula to determine the probability for the existence of alien life forms. And it goes like this:

N = N∗ x FQ x FHZ x FO x FL x FS

  • N = the number of planets with detectable signs of life
  • N∗ = the number of stars observed
  • FQ = the fraction of stars that are quiet
  • FHZ = the fraction of stars with rocky planets in the habitable zone
  • FO = the fraction of those planets that can be observed
  • FL = the fraction of planets that have life
  • FS = the fraction on which life is detectable… Intelligent life that transmits radio signals.
aliens exist
Frank Drake 2017 Courtesy of Amalex5

The Drake Equation is getting better with time.

It is easy to see that almost all of these parameters are extremely uncertain. And the result of the Drake equation can be within a very wide range. But now in 2020, we know more than Frank Drake did in 1961, and a few of the numbers can be estimated rather well.

  • The number of stars in the Milky Way is 250 billion give or take some hundred billion.
  • The number of planets is estimated to be at least one around each star. 
  • The number of planets within the habitable zone, the distance from the star that would have temperatures that could permit life to evolve, could be as much as 40 billion.

But how many of these develop life?  

Even if it’s just 1 in a thousand, it would mean 40 million planets with life on them. And even if, of all the aliens living there, only 1 in a thousand arrived at an intelligent form… Someone who could transmit radio signals, that would still mean 40.000 planets with intelligent life, just within the Milky Way. 

timeline earth's historyThe last part of the equation is the time aspect. 

  • The Earth was formed 4,6 billion years ago. 
  • After only half a billion years the first cellular organisms came to life. 
  • After the first bacteria, we had to wait 2,5 billion years before anything similar to a multicellular animal was developed. 
  • Another billion years before the first land-living vertebrates came up. 
  • 60 million years ago the Dinosaurs died out and the era of mammals started.
  • The first homo sapiens walked the earth 300.000 years ago. 
  • In all this, we’ve had radio transmission in merely 100 years. 100 out of 4.6 billion is 0,00000217% of the total time the world has existed. 

If every one of the 40.000 worlds in our galaxy that hosts intelligent life, would have the radio technology for only 100 years. Then the probability that they are there right now, at this very moment, is very small. It’s still just a fraction of a percent. 

Aliens could exist on more worlds out there, though…

But, on the other hand, if life isn’t all that rare among the planets… And intelligent life isn’t all that rare on the planets hosting life. 

And, on the other hand, if their intelligent life-form would exist for more than a hundred years… Maybe thousands or millions of years.

Then, the number of intelligent life could be enormous… Only counting our little galaxy. 

And the number of intelligent aliens in the whole of the universe could be more than we could ever imagine. 

Because the number of galaxies in the whole visible universe is estimated to be around 2.000.000.000.000… Yes, 2 trillion. And now we’re talking a very high probability that intelligent aliens actually exist. 

The Fermi paradox.

So, where are they? If there are millions and billions of aliens existing in the universe here and there, why don’t we encounter any?

Why isn’t there an alien spaceship at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C?

And why don’t we hear or see anything no matter how much we look for them?

The architect of the nuclear bomb
Enrico Fermi

This is called the Fermi Paradox, the obvious contradiction between the estimated probability for alien life, and the complete lack of evidence for it. 

The Nobel prize winner and leading member of the Manhattan Project (the development of an American nuclear bomb during ww2), Italian physicist Enrico Fermi uttered something along those lines at a lunch with his colleagues in 1950. 

He was neither the first nor the last to object to the often too positive estimates with the simple… If aliens exist, where are they?

So, if aliens exist, why can’t we see them?

Finally, we arrive at the most interesting piece of the argument… The reason for their complete absence. 

The answer to that question can be divided into various categories of possible reasons:

  • They don’t exist. We’re alone.
  • They exist, but they are too far away or for some other reason they are difficult to detect.
  • They’re here, but they’re hiding.

The first possibility is not all that bad. It’s sad and very lonely, but at least we can feel reasonably secure. Apart from meteorites and comets, we can sleep safely.

The third possibility is less encouraging. Why would they hide? The answer could be that they are afraid or that they have hostile intentions. But maybe we should have noticed any hostility by now. The time span of possible alien interactions is vast and if they just wanted to eat us, maybe they would have done so already.

Another reason could be the Zoo hypothesis. We are so inferior and fragile, that the alien race prefers to keep us in a zoo. Like pets they let us live out our lives and develop our civilization until we’re ready for the galactic community. Or their life-form is so strange that, for our own good, they don’t reveal themselves. 

Aliens exist but they’re not here and we can’t see them. 

The second category, however, is maybe the scariest. At least I think so. 

There are quite a few hypotheses as to why aliens exist, will exist, or have existed, but we can’t get in contact with them.

  • It could be that life is very rare, and that’s that. Our neighbors are simply too far away.  
  • Or that of all the life out there, intelligent life is very rare. (After the last months of the global pandemic, this is a highly sustainable hypothesis.). 
  • It could be that natural disasters are much more common elsewhere and that civilizations die out regularly because of heating or cooling suns, meteorites, or other cosmic dangers. These events could be much more common in other parts of the galaxy, f.ex. close to the center where there are much more objects flying around. Maybe the majority never reach intelligence at all. They die already in the bacteria phase.

Aliens existed but they all auto-destruct after some time.

Intelligence is closely connected to the will to destroy itself and others.    

The theory is this.

To arrive at intelligent life, you need two things… Aggressiveness and Laziness. 

Looking at the earth, aggression is common also among non-intelligent classes, but with intelligence, the bullying becomes much more effective. On our planet we humans have already destroyed most of nature, we have killed and extinct around 500 higher species in the last hundred years… And we continue to kill each other through warfare, and economic unbalance. 

In 1979 a computer error at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) was minutes away from causing a full retaliation against the Soviet Union for an attack on the US with 2.200 nuclear missiles. The retaliation had to be confirmed by President Carter, but he waited a few seconds, and the defense satellites could determine that it was a false alarm. 

In 1983 there were two more incidents, and there have been many others, before and after. 

We are destroying natural resources in a way that jeopardizes our own future. 

Sebastian Rudolf Karl von Hoerner, a German astrophysicist, was a supporter of the theory that all civilizations must destroy themselves after some time. Either by killing and destroying or by degeneration through laziness.

In this case, it’s dead-end… We will all die and there’s nothing we can do about it.

alien invation
War of the Worlds

The last option.  The scariest of them all. 

But the aggression could also be focused on other alien races. Let’s say that the aggression isn’t directed at the own race but at the other groups, species, and worlds. Just like the ants attack ants of another species if they come close, the aliens would make sure nobody can compete with them. 

Once they have a technological advantage they start to take out anyone that could propose a threat to them. By doing so they keep the star cluster, the galaxy, and possibly eventually the universe free from competition. 

In this case, we will not only die, but we will have a brutal, cruel, immediate, and definite death. War of the Worlds. And in this case, just like Steven Hawking pointed out, it would be very, very stupid to send out random signals in the universe. 

————

But going back to Enrico Fermi… If it’s so, and they’re coming for us, to destroy us and kill us, and if they have mind-blowingly advanced technology after thousands, and maybe millions of years of evolving…. 

Where are they? 


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Conclusion

No, we can’t say for sure that aliens exist. And we can not say that they don’t. 

Like my grandpa used to say after the mandatory political discussion at the family dinner. We actually don’t know shit!

the galaxy

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A baby Coyote is called a whelp. A baby Eel is called an elver. A baby Kangaroo is called Joey… no, sorry… A joey. And a baby Goat is a kid… And it’s called a kid.

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Puppets and their names

A baby Coyote is called a whelp. A baby Eel is called an elver. A baby Kangaroo is called Joey… no, sorry… A joey. And a baby Goat is a kid… And it’s called a kid.

yes or no?

names for baby animals

 

Common names for baby animals.

This is going to be a little different from the usual article arrangement. It’s a yes right away. Yes, as in the names above are correct. An immediate spoiler. But then again, maybe it isn’t anything to argue about. The baby animal names are what they are. Peace.

So instead of reasoning and trying to go through a logical evaluation of all the proofs for or against, I will just list the different animals and the names of their cubs… And their kits, pups, whelps, fawns, calves, and all the others.

Here we go…

Calf

names for baby animals

The cow’s baby is called a calf, and this is what etymonline has to say about the word:

 Old English cealf (Anglian cælf) “young cow,” from Proto-Germanic *kalbam …, perhaps from PIE *gelb(h)-, from root *gel- “to swell,” hence, “womb, fetus, young of an animal.”

But the name, calf is quite common for many other animals, all within the vegetarian animal sphere. No predators have younglings that are called calves.

  • Camels
  • Elephants
  • Giraffes
  • Hippopotamuses
  • Deer
  • Moose, Elks
  • Rhinoceroses

These are all big grass-eaters. But the term calf is interestingly also used for water mammals, such as:

  • Whales
  • Dolphins
  • Walruses
  • Other larger Seals 

Pup

names for baby animals

Pup, or puppy, is the name of a young dog. Pup is actually the shortened form, and puppy is the original. Those small, helpless, unbearably cute little fur-balls that roll around the house, a few weeks after their mother has given birth. They are all pups, and it couldn’t be a more suitable name. So, let’s go to the list of all the other animals who have children named pups:

  • Agoutis 
  • Anteaters
  • Armadillos
  • Bats
  • Coyote (Actually their children are also called whelps, just like the question in the introduction)

  • Gerbils

  • Guinea pigs 
  • Hamsters
  • Moles
  • Prarie dog
  • Wolves (They too can be named whelps) 

And this category has some water-living creatures too namely:

  • Seals
  • Sharks

It’s not as well defined as with calves. Pup is a more general name and on the list are many different kinds of animals. 

Giving names to baby animals is sometimes quite random and illogical. It is also depending on factors that come with a tradition. And traditions are old and strange, and they deal with things that are important to the farming society, and close to a farmer’s everyday life. So most of the farm animals have their specific names. Even names that are different for various stages in the youngster’s development. As well as different names for the adults, 

While animals further away from the farmhouse have to cope with more general names like hatchling or cub. 

Chick

names for baby animals

Next on the list of our names of baby animals, is chick: Its origin is probably chicken but it’s cut off to make it shorter and cuter. Chick is also a way to nominate a young woman, preferably good-looking. This meaning of the word came into use in the 20th century, but long before that “chick” could be used as a synonym for a child, of both sexes. Apart from young hens, the term is used for many other youngsters in the Aves class, i.e. birds. But it’s an exclusive name for the babies of birds. no other animal’s children are called chicks. Here’s the list:

  • Chickens (…of course. Also Pullet for a young hen and Cockrell for a young rooster)
  • Crows
  • Falcons
  • Finches
  • Larks
  • Nightingales
  • Parrots
  • Ostriches
  • Penguins

… And many others. 

Fledgling, indicates the young bird when it has full-grown wings and is ready to fly. Insects can be fledglings too. 

Fledgling also has the transferred meaning of inexperienced, amateur, just like the bird who tries his wings for the first time. 

Nestling is consequently a bird before it becomes a Fledgling.

Swimming birds often have their own names. Their babies are often associated with the name of their species:

     Species  –  Baby

  • Swans – Cygnet  (Cygnus is the Latin word for swan.)
  • Peacocks – Peachick  (Sort of logical…)
  • Owls   –   Owlet   
  • Ducks  –  Duckling
  • Mallards – Duckling   (Well it looks like a duck… Kind of.)
  • Gooses –  Gosling

Other bird names

        Species – Baby

  • Hawks  –   Eyas
  • Partridges – Cheeper
  • Turkeys  –  Poult

Hatchling

When an egg hatches the normal name to give to whoever comes out of it, would be hatchling. And hatchling can be used for birds, fishes, amphibians, and a small group of mammals, only found in Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea. but is most commonly used for repìtiles.

  • Turtles
  • Crocodiles
  • Lizards
  • Snakes (…If they are hatched from an egg. If they are born as live offspring they are called Neonates.)

Cub

names for baby animals

Cub is another of the more general names for animals’ kids. Interestingly this is what etymonline writes about it: 

1520s, cubbe “young fox,” of unknown origin. 

Nowadays the fox cub is sometimes referred to as kit or even pup. Cub is generally used for fury, large predators. Check it out:

  • Foxes (but they’re also called Kit or Pup.)
  • Bears
  • Lions
  • Tigers
  • Badgers (but they can also be called Kit.)
  • Hyenas
  • Leopards
  • Pandas
  • Raccoons 

Joey

names for baby animals

This is a cool name for baby animals. Joey, like a cup of coffee… It could be of native Australian origin but is more likely coming from the word Joey as a diminutive of Joseph, meaning anything that’s young and small. Possibly referring to the British politician Joseph Hume.

Joeys are mostly found in Australia and they are all marsupials: 

  • Kangaroos
  • Wallabies
  • Wombats
  • Tasmanian Devils
  • Opossums 
  • Koalas

Kit

A shortened form of Kitten, meaning small. It normally refers to a young or undersized fury animal. 

  • Foxes (Also cub and pup)
  • Badgers (Also cub)
  • Squirrels
  • Skunks
  • Muskrats
  • Ferrets

Whelp

The word whelp is very old and is of Germanic origin. It was the typical name for a young dog, as well as other animals in that family. The German word for puppet is welpe. Nowadays it is mostly replaced by pup or puppet. But the kids of the wild dogs are sometimes called whelps:

  • Dogs (less common)
  • Wolves
  • Cayotes
  • Hyenas (even though they’re not dogs but cats)

Baby, Infant

Orangutang

Now, over to the animals that are so close to us that they got our names for their kids. The various species of monkeys, from the small tree-living species to the big primates have offsprings that are called just like our kids… Yeah, they’re called babies or infants. 

Nymph, larva, nit, egg, and pupa

Here we are talking about insects, spiders, and centipedes e.g. Arthropods. About 80% of all animals are in this group. And all these very small creatures have their own different strategy to multiply and reproduce. Most of these strategies involve an egg and some sort of transformation. Some insects go through many phases before they become the final, flying queen, the butterfly, which is more or less the only part of its life that is appreciated by us humans. It can be egg – larva – pupa – butterfly in that sequence.

Others are eggs, and then they become nymphs, and finally full-grown insects without passing the pupa phase. They often still have to change the shell as they grow. And maybe they also have slow and active phases where they grow and change respectively. 

In short, there are many ways to do this. 

egg nymph pupaLove strategy

And the names are correspondingly illustrative. The egg is the first round ball, the egg. The larva is the long crawling thingy that eats our crop and kills our trees. This is the eating phase. Then it turns into a pupa. The pupa doesn’t eat anything. It just transforms. The last phase is the flying insect. This phase is all about reproduction. And that’s why it flies… And that’s why some of them don’t live very long. It just has to find a partner, lay the eggs, and that’s that. 

(… To think that for us it can take 10 or 20 years to find the right one…. And some people never do.)

Getting back to the insects and spiders… They’re all called what they are in that special phase of their life: Larva, nymph, egg, insect, etc. There is no individual nomination. It’s the same word for all… An egg is an egg.

Although Oysters have Spats, and Jellyfishes have Ephyrae.

Other strange baby animal names.

      Species – Baby

  • Pigeon – Squab
  • Llama – Cria
  • Elephant Seal – Weaner
  • Hare – Leveret
  • Rabbit – Bunny

and of course, the cutest of them all:

  • Cat – Kitten

And finally, the names of the baby animals on a farm.

Piglet

Not very difficult, at least not if you’ve read Winnie the Pooh. It’s the Pig’s baby. 

  • Pigs
  • Boars 

But they can also be called a shoat or a farrow.

Foal

lamb

Foal is the name of the Horse’s offspring. Zebras, Asses, and other horse-like animals can also call their cubs, foal. Just like I reasoned before about the farm animals having much more and precise names, the horse’s small ones can be called stat, stag, youngster, yearling, or hogget… As well as colt if it’s a male and filly if it’s a female. 

Lamb 

That’s the sheep’s kid. 

Kid

Yep, the Goat’s offspring is called Kid. Its origin is Old Norse, kið, meaning young goat. A grown male, intact goat is called a Billy… 

I see a funny combination of these two names…

… And the fish babies, what are they called?

Trout

Just like insects and spiders, the fishes go through various stadiums before they reach adulthood. These are normally egg, larva, fry, and fingerling. The egg is an egg. The larva is when the fish is hatched but can not eat. Fry is when it eats by itself, and fingerling when it has developed working fins and scales and practically is ready to swim away. 

That is, as long as it’s not an eel. In that case, it’s called Elver.

https://youtu.be/kXmqwRj0o4E

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Conclusion

Yes, a baby Coyote is called a whelp. A baby Eel is called an elver. A baby Kangaroo is called a joey. And a baby Goat is called a kid. 

Many people do not agree about these names though, and there are many local variations as well as generational differences. The discussion about the correct nomination of the smallest members of our world continues… Sometimes very vividly…

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If you put your batteries in the fridge, will they last longer?

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If you put your batteries in the fridge, will they last longer?

yes or no?

The old myth about batteries’ supposedly longer life if you put them in the refrigerator.

I still remember when I was very small and my Aunt told me to go get the milk from the fridge. I was around 4 or 5 and it was a great responsibility to go get stuff and bring it back. So I tumbled away, into the kitchen, and open the refrigerator door. Totally flabbergasted, I watched the long lines of batteries inside the fridge door, between the milk, the fruit juice, and bottles of various nature. All kinds of batteries, big ones, small ones, round, and squared, all side by side standing and lying like frozen soldiers in a landscape model. It was awesome, at least for a 5-year-old.   

My Aunt as well as many of her generation was convinced that putting the batteries in the fridge, was a way to extend their life. Even the freezer was a safe bet for many of the older generation. The cold environment slows down the self-discharge and keeps the batteries in better health until the day you take them out and fry them… or use them in some electric tool or a radio or something. 

This myth was generated a long time ago and many still are absolutely convinced that keeping the batteries in the fridge, makes them last longer. 

But is it true?

The science behind the batteries’ life span.

batteries life

Batteries release energy through a chemical reaction between two or more compounds stored inside the closed shell. Electrons flow out of the one terminal, through whatever device they’re powering, and back into the other terminal. When a battery is plugged in, this flow depends on the workload. The more energy the lamp or the RC-car uses, the faster the batteries run out of energy. But when batteries are not plugged in they still leak a little from one terminal to the other. So, after a long time, they will discharge even if they are never used. This is called the self-discharge, and it’s actually higher at higher temperatures and lower at lower temperatures. 

So: Yes, batteries keep longer if they’re in a cold environment.

But, that’s not the whole truth.

Before the modern Alkaline batteries entered our homes, we used zinc-carbon batteries for our everyday needs. Until a few decades ago, alkaline batteries were regarded as rather exclusive. A famous manufacturer, with a drummer-bunny as their trademark had almost monopolistic control of the market. And their batteries were looked upon as much more effective than all the others. Normal batteries were Zinc–carbon batteries, and these had a much shorter life. The benefit of putting them in the fridge was noticeable, just like my Aunt and everybody in here generation new.

batteries life

While the old batteries had a significantly longer life span when stored in the fridge or even the freezer, modern batteries gain very little. Science is moving forward. Today we also have many different types of batteries, from huge starter batteries for trucks, to tiny lithium cells for computers and cell phones. And to complicate the argument. they all have different self-discharge rates.

Here’s a list of how fast batteries generally self-discharge:

  • Alkaline: Modern alkaline batteries are very stable. They lose a few percent of their charge per year.
  • Zinc-carbon: As said before, these batteries have a much shorter life. They, lose about 20% a year in self-discharge. 
  • Lithium-ion (rechargeable): These are found in laptops, mobile phones, and high-end portable power tools. They discharge a little faster around 5% per month.
  • Nickel-Cadmium (NiCa)(rechargeable): These were the ancestors of Lithium-ion batteries. These lose around 10% per month.
  • Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) (rechargeable): These replaced much of the Nickel-Cadmium batteries as they have a better capacity. The early generation of these had a terrible self-discharge rate… Around 30% per month at room temperature. Later versions, Low self-discharge (LSD) NiMH batteries, have a much longer life, on par with the disposable alkaline batteries.  

But it’s not fair to compare a rechargeable computer battery to a disposable flashlight battery. Rechargeable batteries don’t rely so much on long life and low self-discharge, since they can be recharged at any time.

They can be dangerous too.

Batteries can explode. Yes, they can and it’s a hazard risk that should be reckoned with. A normal lead-acid starter battery for your car produces hydrogen gas when charged… And hydrogen is highly explosive. 

The Lithium-ion battery in your cell phone can also explode for various reasons. If the charger is malfunctioning, if it’s too strong for the device, if there are poor ventilation and high temperature in the room, or if not charging at all but for some other reason gets too hot.  

  • Don’t talk or use the phone in any other way when it’s charging.
  • Don’t charge it on your bedroom table when you sleep.
  • Don’t leave it in your car, or in any other very hot place. 

The complicated reality of the batteries’ life.

Putting batteries in the fridge is still only possible with a small number of types of batteries, namely the small AA, AAA D, and Cs. Nobody puts a lead-acid car battery in the fridge, and nobody dismantles the Li-ion battery of the cell phone just to put it in the refrigerator overnight. 

As said before, batteries inside computers and other electrical devices don’t have to be very long-life. They get charged every day anyway, or every second or third. For those batteries, it’s much more important to have a long life regarding the total recharging cycles it can take without losing capacity. 

And some batteries can also be damaged if the temperature is too low, especially if they are not fully charged. 

Some batteries, like the Li-ion, have a much higher self-drainage when they are fully charged. Those should be stored at about half-charge… And, they last longer in the fridge.

And batteries can be damaged by humidity. In some refrigerators, the humidity is high, especially in summer…  

But now it’s getting too complicated.

Voltaic Pile
Courtesy of Bcrowell. The first battery in the world – The Voltaic Pile.

And that’s why we can’t say that the batteries’ life increases if you keep them cold. Generally speaking, it is true, but there are so many different factors to take into consideration, that the cold completely loses its importance. The battery manufacturers suggest dry and cool normal room temperature for storing batteries. Here are some more tips:

  • Alkaline and non-rechargeable lithium batteries can be stored for 10 years with moderate loss capacity.
  • Remove the battery from the equipment and store it in a dry and cool place.
  • Avoid freezing. Batteries suffer damage more easily if they are kept in freezing temperatures while discharged.
  • Nickel-based batteries can be stored completely discharged. 
  • Lithium-ion must be stored in a charged state. If it’s left completely discharged for more than a week it has to be disposed of.


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Yes, batteries lose less power when stored at a low temperature. But it’s very little, and it’s so complicated to give general advice that you probably do best to follow the guidelines of the manufacturer… Detach from the electronic device, and store in a cool and dry place. 

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Have scientists and make-up artists have finally discovered why the face of Donald Trump is orange?

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Have scientists and make-up artists finally discovered why the face of Donald Trump is orange?

yes or no?
trump orange
Brad Thomas and Donald Trump. Courtesy of Gene Ho Photography

Why is Donald Trump orange?

Donald Trump, the former president of the USA has an extraordinary skin color. It is yellowish almost orange and it has caused a lot of speculation among journalists, fellow politicians, and ordinary people as to why that is… Why is his facial skin tone so… strange? 

He is blondish and has a blond complexion. So, it’s no wonder that he has delicate skin, a skin that maybe shouldn’t be exposed to much to the sun. And he should use good protection and not sunbathe during the hot hours. 

But, with all that said, in later years he is becoming increasingly orange. An artificial, synthetic color that does very little to improve his physical appearance. 

Nobody, apart from his closest family, knows exactly the reason for the strange skin tone. 

trump is orange

The various theories.

There have been speculations. Most of them regard self-tanning with tanning beds or spray-tanning, or the use of colored lotions. 

Self-tanning would justify the whiter areas around the eyes, but it can’t explain the whiter areas around the face, at the hairline, and on the hands. Many people from within the White House have stated that there are no tanning beds inside the premises, and there is no spray-tanning boot.   

Colored lotions are a possible explanation. Especially as the complexion of the face seems to be very different from what we can see of the rest of the body. A very orange foundation without any other levels of makeup could possibly produce the kind of color we see in the President’s face. 

The White House’s explanation.

The White House has declared many times that the orange look on Donald Trump’s face is due to Good Genes. It is not specified how good genes make someone’s face turn orange. 

In September 2019 the President said that the strange color was caused by all the low-energy bulbs.

 – The light bulb. People said what’s with the light bulb? Trump stated speaking before Republican legislators in Baltimore

 – …And I looked at it, the bulb that we’re being forced to use.., the light’s no good. I always look orange. And so do you. The light is the worst.

trump orangeThe untold truth! Why is Trump orange?

In December 2019 Washington Post published a story about how Trump supposedly should have used employed undocumented immigrants at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. Interviews with the household workers uncovered a new possible reason for Trump’s orange face: Artificial face color.

trump is orange

According to one of the housekeepers, the shade of the makeup that she had to put in Donald Trump’s room every day was “una naranja espantosa”, a scary orange. After more investigation, only one possible product came up… The Bronx boosting hydrating concealer orange.

Now, the Bronx Boosting Hydrating Concealer in Orange isn’t a high-end makeup line. The company making it is a Swiss firm, Bronx colors. Their products are medium- to low-end, and even they don’t consider this particular product very interesting.

To be perfectly correct, it’s a concealer, not a foundation. It should be used to correct imperfections in skin tone. It’s not meant to be applied evenly on the face as a foundation is. But I’m not an expert. 

Isabelle von Känel, the Chief Operating Officer of Bronx Colors, can’t confirm that Trump uses their product. 

 – We are not sending him any products, but just like anyone else, he could buy from any retailer or from any other source. 

The product is not available in retail in the USA, and maybe it’s for the best. Some unofficial reviews and bloggers have slammed it pretty good. And Isabelle von Känel confirms that they haven’t been marketing it for the US market. Discussions are being made but so far there is no distribution in America. 

the president of the USA

Conclusion

We cannot say for sure why Trump is orange. But I think, without proof, that we can exclude the Bronx Colors Urban Cosmetics as responsible for his skin tone. The probability that the man who was the President of the United States as well as the 766th richest person on earth, would go through lengthy measures to buy a cheap brand from Switzerland, a brand that doesn’t even sell in the US, just to have the exclusive privilege to have his face turn orange… Well, that probability is close to zero, as I see it. 


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No, Scientists and Make-up artists are still searching for the truth to the riddle… Why is Donald Trump’s face orange?

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Do dogs have sweat glands on the tongue? Is it the evaporating sweat that cools the dog?

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Do dogs have sweat glands on the tongue? Is it the evaporating sweat that cools the dog?

yes or no?

How does a dog keep its cool?

Do dogs sweat? The dog is completely covered with fur. That is one of the things that make it so cuddly and cute. Well, there are hairless dog breeds. In fact, at this time there are three recognized dog breeds without fur: The Chinese Crested Dog, the Xoloitzcuintli, and the Peruvian Inca Orchid. But all the rest have fur… Long, short, curly, straight, and wire-haired. 

hairless dog
Xoloitzcuintli, Courtesy of Weexolo

Fur can keep the cold out. But it can also keep the heat out. But if you opt for sweating as a way to control your body heat, you will inevitably run into problems. When your whole body is covered with hair, you will have to invent something else. So, dogs use practically two cooling systems. One is under the paws and the other is in the mouth.  

Do dogs sweat?

The cooling system under the paws is much like ours. The dogs do sweat, and the sweat evaporates. To evaporate it absorbs energy from the skin, and the temperature decreases. Exactly the same as with us humans. But the paws of a dog are small and insufficient and they are not enough to regulate the body temperature.

The second way is to pant. And here we have the myth about them sweating through their tongue. No, dogs don’t sweat through the tongue. There is no need for it. On the tongue and in the mouth there is quite enough moisture to function as an evaporator, exactly as the sweating system. And the effect is exactly the same.

If you notice the dog opening its mouth, it’s beginning to feel hot. As the temperature rises, it will start panting, faster and faster until it’s pushing and pulling like a steam engine. At this point, the moisture has become rivers of saliva and it can be quite a sloppy experience, at least with certain dog breeds. 

Dogs can suffer badly from overheating though.

These systems are not as efficient as our whole-body-sweating plant, though. A dog can suffer badly from overheating. They can even die from too much heat. The classical and very tragic cases are dogs left in cars. Many people do not realize that the inside of a car can reach 60-70° celsius ( 140-160* Fahrenheit) on a hot summer day. Even after 10 minutes, the dog can start showing symptoms of overheating and dehydration. And it can die from a heart attack if time is prolonged and the dog isn’t assisted. 

The problem here is often that the driver doesn’t remember about the dog. If you absolutely have to leave your dog in the car, the rules are:

  • Park in the shadow
  • Lower the windows 
  • Limit the time the dog is alone in the car
  • Leave a bowl of water for your friend 

The summer can be a hard time for a dog. And if the temperature is tropical, and the heat is unbearable, even our four-legged friend needs some attention in the hot season. Avoid long walks and if you still have to go, plan for plenty of rest. No running, plenty of shadow and lots of water to drink and to play in. 

horses sweatBut what about the other animals?

Every child of mother nature has its own strategy. Many animals are poikilotherm and they skip this problem more or less altogether, as their body heat adapts to the surrounding temperature. These are most reptiles, insects, fish, spiders, snails, amphibians, and others. Actually, most animals on earth are poikilotherm.  

Among homeotherms, the animals who maintain a constant or close to constant temperature inside, no matter the temperature of the environment, there are various ways to affront the temperature problem. 

Dogs do not sweat very much, but other animals do.

Primates have sweat glands all over the body, just like we do… And horses. If you’ve ever seen a horse after a race, you know what I’m talking about. It’s all wet.

Pigs roll in the mud. The water in the mud evaporates and cools the skin. After that, the hard mud protects against the hot sun. Hippos do the same and they also emit a red-orange secret to protect the skin against the ultraviolet rays of the sun. That’s another myth… Hippos don’t sweat blood. It just looks that way. 

If you don’t sweat and don’t have water, you can use other wet substances. Feces, urine, saliva… Well, it’s gross but still true. Some birds use a mixture of urine and feces on their legs to cool them off. 

do dogs sweat

Many other birds have very superficial blood vessels on their legs and they can cool the blood by flying or standing in water. 

Kangaroos have superficial blood vessels on their arms. When it gets hot, they simply lick their forearms and let the sun evaporate the saliva. (That’s a good trick even for us. Put your pulse under running cold water and you will immediately feel relieved.)

Some dessert dwellers have very big ears. Cooling the blood through vessels just under the skin is good economy in an environment where there is no water. 

… And stay in the shade.

do dogs sweat

Apart from all the interior tricks, we still have the classical wind, water, and shade. Jumping into the cold water on a hot summer day is a bliss. And resting in the shades of the Acacia tree on the Savannah is a good way to keep cool… As is getting up on the hillside where it’s windy.

Then, of course, a good air conditioner…D


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Conclusion

No, dogs do not sweat through the tongue. But they pant and the panting creates a heavy current of air, the saliva evaporates and cools the dog. 

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Do countries spend more on the military than they do on healthcare and education?

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Do countries spend more on the military than they do on healthcare and education?

yes or no?

Why is the military so costly?

  • Military expenditure is terrible, money-consuming, and non-productive. It’s a sector that contributes to corruption, political instability, and death…
  • The military is where disciplined and courageous men are ready to sacrifice their lives to defend our freedom and national integrity. 

Both these statements could be true, depending on who you are, and where and when you live. The reason we have a military force can’t be determined easily and very often comes down to who is in charge of it.

But one thing we all must agree on is that it often is an expensive luxury to have a strong military. So, why is it so expensive?

The military, a long time ago

While the old Greeks had an army of soldiers, we have armies of equipment. The ancient time armed forces were men with various weapons, and as such, the expenses were almost exclusively salaries. Today, a big part of the military expenses is taken up by things… Airplanes, ships, canons, and all the high-tech stuff – drones, robots, and various automatic intelligence- and weapon systems.  

Soldiers in old times also earned their fair share from looting. Some of the wars were self-sufficient as the armies could simply steal from their enemies or from anybody else who stood in the way. The antique armies were extremely costly in peacetime, but could even be productive, as in providing an economic surplus, in war.

military expenditure

The cost of maintaining a military force was by far the biggest expense a society could have had back then. Furthermore, it was the main reason why the government or the central public administration invented taxes in the first place. Keeping large amounts of soldiers, and constructing and maintaining defense structures, mobile and not, required a lot of money.

Still, the taxes weren’t nearly as heavy as they are today. And the central administration didn’t intervene in people’s everyday life. There were no public schools, no social protection, no pensions, no national debt… And not much healthcare. So, calculating the percentage of the military expenses of old times compared to today maybe isn’t all that meaningful. 

Spending in figures

So, how do we spend our tax money… The year 2019?

Looking at the US, military expenses are in second or third place, depending on how you calculate the posts in the budget. With an incredible 676 billion dollars, the armed forces eat up 15% of the national revenue. It is by far the biggest military budget in the world and the US army is also the military force with the best power index in the world. 

Still, the cost for the military is far behind healthcare and social security, which together mount up to 40% of the total budget.

This is a general trend in Western Europe and North America. Countries pay more for healthcare than they do for soldiers and guns. But the poorer the country, the more that principle is weakened. Obviously, because a poorer country has less money to spend.  

military expenditureAs you can see the military expenditure today is roughly one-third of the expenses in 1960, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product globally. The actual number (2018) is 2,141. That means that a little more than two percent of the world’s GDP is used for military personnel and equipment.

Let’s look at the cost of the military in some countries…

The top four countries are:

  • The USA $732 billion (Not $676 as mentioned above. That just illustrates how difficult it is to understand a budget.) – 3,4% of the Gross Domestic Product
  • China $261 billion. – 1,9% of GDP
  • India $71 billion. – 2,6% of GDP
  • Russia $65 billion (Only fourth place for the former superpower). – 3,9% of GDP

More countries:

  • France $50 billion. 1,8% of the GDP
  • South Korea $44 billion – 2,6% of the GDP
  • Iran $13 billion – 2,8% of the GDP
  • Singapore $11 billion (!) – 3,0% of the GDP

Ok, let’s look at these countries’ healthcare costs.

As the military expenditure worldwide is diminishing, healthcare cost is increasing. More money is available for curing the sick every year, and that too is a good thing. Domestic Government health expenditure per capita worldwide is now a little more than 600 dollars. That is, any person in this world gets an average of 600 dollars to pay for his healthcare costs from his government in one year. The spread here is enormous though. Most money goes to a citizen of the USA, partly because the American health system is of poor cost-efficiency. The least money goes to a citizen in Congo and South Sudan. 

military expenditure

Government health expenditure per capita:

  • The USA $5139. –  8,56% of GDP (To that you have to add another $5000 from the private health assurance plan.).
  • China $476 – 2,92% of GDP 
  • India $69 – 2,8% of GDP
  • Russia $801 – 3,05% of GDP

More countries:

  • France $3863 – 8,72% of GDP
  • South Korea $1709 – 4,36% of GDP 
  • Iran $896 – 4,44% of GDP
  • Singapore $2058 – 2,14% of GDP

… And the poorest countries:

  • The Democratic Republic of Congo $1,93 – 0,40% of GDP
  • South Sudan $1,93 – 0,83% of GDP

So, how about Education?

Education is even more difficult to understand, as funding comes from a lot of different sources… Government, region, province, and municipality.  I limit myself to giving you the percentage of GDP that the countries pay for general education on every level:

  • The USA – 5% of GDP
  • China – 4% of GDP 
  • Russia – 3,7% of GDP
  • India – 3% of GDP
  • France –  5,4% of GDP
  • South Korea – 4,6% of GDP
  • Iran – 4% of GDP
  • Singapore $8 billion – 3% of GDP
  • The Democratic Republic of Congo – 1,5% of GDP
  • South Sudan – 1% of GDP

Military expenditure, education, and healthcare – statistics.

military expenditureAll these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially those for education, which varies from different sources. Statistics can be deceitful. But we can enjoy a steady trend where the military costs decline and the healthcare costs increase. Maybe governments all over the world finally start to understand what the important things in life are.

But education is lagging behind. Education in various regions of the world is getting more money, but the increase is moderate. And some countries, especially in the south, have cut drastically in school funding in later years.

This is particularly sad because studies show a correlation between education level and spread, and some very beneficial returns.

children in icu
  • Countries with higher educational attainment in the past are more likely to have democratic political regimes today
  • Women’s education is inversely correlated with child mortality
  • Education outcomes predict economic growth

I, and many with me, think that education- and healthcare costs are much better options than military and soldiers. Especially in times with contagious diseases, I would like to see even more of the world’s resources available to science, medicine, and healthcare. And fortunately, the trends go in that direction.

Education costs and healthcare costs are bigger than the military costs in the world today. That can easily change though.

Germany went from a yearly military budget of less than $2 billion in 1933 to over $400 billion in 1944. The German arms race eventually forced everybody else to follow. The USA went from a yearly military expenditure of $10 billion at the start of the war, to $700 billion at the end. That’s about the same money as today and it was roughly 32% of the nation’s GDP at the time. 

In 1943 both Germany and the UK used astronomically 64% of their GDP on the military… Almost two-thirds of everything that was produced went to the army and the navy.

As long as we can speak and discuss, as long as the dialogue remains loud and steady and the silence doesn’t spread, then there is hope of continuing disarming. Good schools and well-equipped hospitals are always better than cannons and machine guns.


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Conclusion

No, the world today is not spending more on the military than on healthcare and education. It’s the other way around.

Still, many of us could easily imagine even more money for hospitals and schools… 

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Was the true story about Romeo and Juliet different from the one told in the play by William Shakespeare?

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Was the true story about Romeo and Juliet different from the one told in the play by William Shakespeare?

yes or no?

Romeo and Juliet. The true story.

Romeo and Juliet is a play by the extraordinary English author William Shakespeare. Written probably in 1595 (we don’t know the exact year…), it is, together with Hamlet, maybe the most famous text in all of Shakespeare’s production. And it has reached an audience far beyond book readers, and theater public. The title, Romeo and Juliet, has become a sign of deep and true love, so strong and passionate that living without the other becomes unbearable. 

It was an immediate success when it came out and has been played from its birth date until modern days all over the world, probably hundreds of thousands of times. Romeo and Juliet has been filmed more than 150 times for TV as well as for the big screen, it’s been turned into ballets, operas, modernized plays, and musicals, of which the most famous is of course West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein.

romeo and juliet the true storyA short synopsis.

Verona, Italy. The two families Montague and Capulet are at “war”. The young girl Juliet from the Capulet clan falls in love with Romeo from the Mantague-clan. Juliet is supposed to marry another Capulet guy but she marries Romeo secretly.

Romeo, together with two other Montague buddies, meets Tybalt, Juliet’s cousin. They start to fight and Tybalt and one of Romeo’s friends die. Tybalt by the hand of Romeo. 

Romeo becomes the main target for the Capulet family and The feud ignites. And now we reach the famous ending…

Juliet gets a poisonous potion from a monk, but one that will only make her seem dead. Instead, she will sleep for several days, before waking up again, as good as new. She sends a message to Romeo, but he receives only half of it and thinks she’s really dead. 

Overcome by grief he runs to her tomb, sees her lifeless body, and kills himself, he too with poison, but real, strong, killing-10-men-kinda-poison. Then Juliet wakes up, sees her lover dead, and ends her life with Romeo’s dagger. 

The context in which the play was written.

Shakespeare was reasonably young when he wrote it, around 30. The play was designed to be performed in daylight on a simple thrust stage, a very economic and minimalistic setup. One balcony and one tomb. Apart from that, there should be no or very little scenery. The costumes and the skill of the actors together with the text should be enough to grasp the concentration of the audience.

Romeo and Juliet. The true story.

romeo and juliet the true story

Romeo and Juliet was in no way an invention by Shakespeare. The sad love-story frame was popular throughout Europe, and not only in western renaissance literature but since the beginning of writing itself. People have always loved to cry over innocent, true, and deep love that goes wrong. It’s in our DNA. 

The story about Pyramus and Thisbe in Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, tells a story about two young lovers who run away together, since their parents don’t consent to their love. Pyramus mistakes a bloody veil for the death of Thisbe, and kills himself. When the girl comes back, she too puts an end to her life.

The story is interestingly included in A Midsummer Night’s dream, by Shakespeare 

Ephesiaca by the Greek 3rd-century writer Xenophon of Ephesus is often mentioned as another source. 

Matteo Bandello was a very famous Italian novelist, as well as churchman. He rewrote the novel of Luigi da Porto (more about him in a while…) and published it in French in mid 16th century. He lived his last years in Agen in France, where he was appointed Bishop. This is how the names changed into the French Juliet, Montague , and Capulet, from the Italian Giulietta, Montecchi, and Capelletti. Romeo got to keep his name.

Arthur Brooke wrote The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, published in 1562, based on Bandello’s work. Shakespeare probably got quite a bit of his material from that novel. 

But let’s go back to Italy and try to find the origins of Romeo and Juliet there.

Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti

Il Novellino is a book with 50 short stories, probably written by Masuccio from Salerno in mid 15th century. It tells the story, number 33, of a love couple in Siena, Toscana. Mariotto och Ganozza is the youngster’s name. They’re involved in a much lighter, happier, and more erotically charged affair. Mariotto doesn’t kill himself, but he’s decapitated, and Ganozza doesn’t die but seeks solitude in a convent after her lover’s death.

And here we return to the text by Luigi da Porto. He wrote the novel Historia novellamente ritrovata di due nobili amanti, Newly found story of two noble lovers at the beginning of 1500. He was definitely inspired by Masuccio’s story but changed the location to Verona. Da Porto was born in Vicenza and both cities were important metropolis of the very powerful Republic of Venice. (Venice was at the time fighting The League of Cambrai; the Papal states, Maximilian I of Habsburg, Spain, France, and the Dukes of Mantova and Ferrara… Most of Europe all by themselves.) 

The names of the two feuding clans, Montecchi and Capelletti as well as Romeo, could have come from Dante Alighieri and his Divina Comedia written already in the beginning of 1300.

Fighting for Venice.

Saint Mark's Square, Venice, ItalyIt is highly probable that Da Porto at the time of writing the book just had experienced a love affair, with his 16 years old cousin, Lucina Sarvognan in Udine, north of Venice. He is supposed to have entered a Carnival Masquerade Ball in Udine, with a false invitation. Maybe so that he could be with his love for just one evening. The novel is dedicated to her.

The Sarvognans was an extremely important noble house in Friuli. They controlled politics and business and they were respected among the highest authorities in Venice. So powerful that the different branches of the big family tree had feud-like disagreements for lengthy periods of time.

Lucina Sarvognan and Luigi da Porto were cousins, but Luigi on his mother’s side. Unfortunately, they were on different sides of the Family tree and they couldn’t show their love openly. They were supposed to have been married secretly, but we have no evidence for that. Da Porto was 26 years and Lucina was 16. It could have been more of Da Porto falling in love and Lucina being flattered, but as said, we don’t know. Anyway, this could have been the origin of Romeo and Juliet the true story. 

Romeo and Juliet, the true story. Time of War.

Juliet's balcony, Verona, Italy
A balcony in Verona said to be the one where Juliet stood when approached by Romeo. In reality, it’s just a balcony.

When Da Porto wrote his book, there was a multitude of disorder in Udine and Friuli. Two political movements fought over the territory, the Strumieri, who included Nobles like the Castellani, and on the other side, the Zambarlani, who were more or less the big part of the Sarvognan family, Burgers, and farmers. Da Porto’s uncle Antonio Sarvognans was the leader of the latter. 

To this came the wars with the French and with the Habsburgs (Austria), which also divided the loyalties of the Friulians. Not everybody was in favor of Venice. 

Da Porto participated in the battles against the Habsburgs at the northern borders, and he was badly wounded. He retired to his Villa outside of Vicenza. From his bedroom window, he had a spectacular view of the hillside city of Montecchio Maggiore with its two hilltop castles. That is what he was looking at outside when he wrote the novel and it surely had an impact on his choice of names as well as subject. 

san trovaso church
San Trovaso

So, at the end of our journey, let’s go back to Venice…

Even in Venice, there were feuds. The true story of Romeo and Juliet could also be found in the feud between the Castellani and the Nicolotti in Venice. 

Venice was practically divided between these two families with their allies. The Castellani controlled the southern and eastern parts, while the Nicolotti held the northern parts. They kept their territories and fought against any kind of connection between the fractions for many hundreds of years. So fierce were the hate and distrust that controlled fist-fights were arranged at the bridges. Two teams lined up from each side, and the object was to simply throw the guy from the other side into the canal. 

The San Trovaso-church was situated exactly where their territories met. And it’s maybe the only church in the world that has two main entrances… So that the two clans couldn’t start arguing while entering the holy temple.

Da Porto was familiar with the situation, being a citizen of the Republic. He could very well have included the everyday situation in Venice in his writing. 

Romeo and Juliet, summing it up.

romeo and juliet the true story

William Shakespeare got his story from Arthur Brooke, who got it from Matteo Bandello, who got it from Luigi da Porto, who got the story from Masuccio Salernitano, who at least got a lot of fragments to his story from older writers. Stories about tragic love affairs have always been popular. Especially in the middle ages, stories of family feuds, poison, murders, suicides, and young love were highly profitable. 

I believe Da Porto wrote about what he knew, and just like any good writer should, he borrowed from what he had around him. 

There is no evidence of his marriage to Lucina. We don’t even know if their love was real or just imaginative from Da Porto’s side. 

William Shakespeare then took the story and turned it into a universal masterpiece. 

But it doesn’t end there. From the beginning of time, it had continued to grow and it continued to grow even after Shakespeare… And one of the best versions up to date is, without any doubt, West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein. 


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Conclusion

No, Romeo and Juliet in Da Porto’s world, or in the world of any other of the many authors, wasn’t very different from the play by Shakespeare. That’s simply because there is no true story. There are no real-life Romeo and Juliet, apart from the story about every young lover out there who suffers.

Romeo and Juliet is a story… A very good one, but still just a story.

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