July 1 2023 - That most famous iceberg found

 

The fame of the Titanic can only be matched by the iceberg that it hit.  The iceberg was distinctive with three peaks. There are photos of the iceberg taken by the chief steward of the SS Prinz Adalbert with a streak of red paint along the iceberg's base.  That had gotten his attention along with the three peaks.  And the history of icebergs is astonishing: "The iceberg began its slow journey to the North Atlantic over three thousand years ago. Again, we can only guess at the exact details, but the story likely began with snowfall on the western coast of Greenland somewhere around 1,000 BCE. After a few months, this snow has been turned into a more compacted form called firn, which then over subsequent decades is compressed into dense ice by the weight of newer snow on top of it. The frozen water in these glaciers is slowly forced further westward toward the sea. When they finally reach the coast of the Arctic Ocean, the lapping tides break off chunks of the ice, and icebergs are calved from the glacier, some 30 centuries after their source water was first deposited. The iceberg that sank the Titanic began its journey as a rough contemporary of King Tutankhamun, entire civilizations rising and falling while it made its slow march to infamy." Yesterday a CBC radio item said that it is now known that icebergs migrate north and south, living on average 100 - 200 years. And a team of scientists say that they have found the famous iceberg with paint on the side, along with a tea cup.  And sufficient compositional analysis to confirm the identity. The tea cup got my attention. I realized that the segment might have been on the This is Thatshow - an entertainment show that fabricates the issues.  So it seems unlikely that the Titanic iceberg will get towed into Halifax any time soon. It has likely passed on. This is the rose arch at Longwood. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

June 29 2022 - Most Famous? It's Dwayne

 

How is it that Dwayne Johnson is the most famous person in the world "as of 2022"?  Where was I? Likely looking at news stories rather than entertainment stories.  He shows up in the top 10 in numerous lists.  My cynicism comes into play as these lists are typically the same source that is reproduced over and over. "Dwayne, nicknamed "The Rock" was a WWE champion wrestler earlier and is now an actor and producer. He is one of the greatest professional wrestlers the game has ever witnessed."  (Note the quality of English, grammar, and style of the sentence above). On to  Forbes where he is listed as #4 of highest-paid entertainers and #10 celebrity - the 2022 films are Black Adam and Red Notice.  "One of his popular mannerisms as the character The Rock was to raise one eyebrow up with one down as a taunt to mock his opponents during interviews (this is called The People's Eyebrow)." And how is it that Joe Biden is #2 or Elon Musk #3?  Then comes Jeff Bezos at #4. Down the list at #10 is Justin Bieber who has recently been diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by facial nerve paralysis.  That is very significant when you compare Johnson's description as  "The Rock" to Bieber's as "Yummy".   It turns out that Justin Bieber is googled more than Jesus.  We know that Jesus is, in fact,  the most famous and known person in the world.  Every religion references him - either for or against.  It is considered that only people in remote places of the planet do not know of him.  But then what is "famous"today?  It shows up for celebrities - entertainers and sports figures.  Not for heads of state, royalty, scientists, writers, and those who made history.  That is famous in the past tense.  So we can wonder where will Dwayne Johnson be in 10 years or 100 years?  What will be famous from 2022? Here's one of our Niagara roads that the Porsche Club travelled on a few years ago.  This seems like a little bit of heaven - a narrow, winding country road lined with trees and fences.  All that summer green.

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Aug 13 2021 - The Famous Friday the 13ths

 

Has someone put together the list of historic Friday the 13ths?  This version comes from History.com HERE.    "On Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of King Philip IV of France arrested hundreds of the Knights Templar, a powerful religious and military order formed in the 12th century for the defense of the Holy Land. Imprisoned on charges of various illegal behaviors (but really because the king wanted access to their financial resources), many Templars were later executed. Some cite the link with the Templars as the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition, but like many legends involving the Templars and their history, the truth remains murky. In more recent times, a number of traumatic events have occurred on Friday the 13th, including the German bombing of Buckingham Palace (September 1940); the murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens, New York (March 1964); a cyclone that killed more than 300,000 people in Bangladesh (November 1970); the disappearance of a Chilean Air Force plane in the Andes (October 1972); the death of rapper Tupac Shakur (September 1996) and the crash of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off the coast of Italy, which killed 30 people (January 2012)." I more more events - but they are all very unpleasant to horrible - they are covered in Livescience.com HERE.   But I did find the famous Friday the 13th movies all be ranked by Tomatometer Here. The full name is Rotten Tomatoes - clearly ranking bad movies.  There are 12 movies to rank so this would have taken some work effort.  The titles are all over the place in terms of approach and consistency - titles like Friday the 13th Part 3 or Part V - A new Beginning.  What about The Final Chapter or the Final Friday,  And there's Freddy Vs. Jason.  The original movie is ranked #1.  It was called "quaint". Here's another image of the sculpture at the Aga Khan Museum.  I so enjoy metal reflections where lines are distorted.  I look forward to being able to visit Toronto again and all its variations of sculptures.  Such a dilemma with the pandemic - one goes directly from destination to destination, minimizing contacts.

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May 27 2021 - This is the car Bill Gates drives

 

That subject line does spark our curiosity, without doubt.   What is the draw of the famous and celebrities?   ~Will we find out unusual things about them?  Things we can't imagine? What makes us curious about how they live their lives compared to our lives?   ~Will we be on the same wave-length for daily living, or find out how completely differently they live their lives? What makes us think there is something extraordinary about their daily living?   ~Don't we figure there has to be given the attention fans and the media? How do we decide what a normal life is? ~ Aren't we so immersed in the "everyday" that it takes a celebrity's normal day to show us the differences? What are banal things that a person would avoid to do if they were a celebrity? ~ Grocery shopping, laundry, getting gas...are these the things that people consider boring and tedious and want freedom from? These might be questions about celebrity living. I seem to think there are a few top things we are interested in: 1. Cars What are the 15 incredible female celebrity cars?  What are the ten unique celebrity cars? Celebrities and their A-List cars. How many cars does {  },  {  }, and {  } have? 2. Houses Which celebrity has the best house?  Most expensive celebrity homes. 10 celebrity homes on the market right now. 3. Vacations The 13 most popular vacation destinations to spot celebrities. What resorts do celebrities stay at? Celebrities and their vacation homes.     I found this one in the archives of the Photo of the Day - what a lot of great crackle and colour.

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World's Most Famous Person

Famous people, influential people, people who have remained in the social consciousness of humanity over decades, centuries, and millennia.  Ranker.com who we have visited before has received 2.1M votes from 147.1 voters on this topic.   I choose to list the top 11 so that Shakespeare can be included: Jesus Albert Einstein Isaac Newton Leonardo da Vinci Aristotle Muhammad Galileo Galilei Alexander the Great Charles Darwin Plato William Shakespeare The list is fascinating, although the perspective is people here/now voting.  Here's the full list HERE. Jesus shows up as number 1 in all of the lists I looked at.  I've summarized some of the  rationale from listverse.com - the full article is HERE  "Of the just over 7 billion people on Earth, just about one-third worship Jesus as the Christ of God so 2.33 billion people know who he is.  In addition, the followers of Islam and Judaism both know who he was.  There are some 1.75 billion Muslims on Earth.  There are 1.3 billion atheists the world over who know who he is.  It is possible that the only people on Earth who have no idea who he was are those people who belong to the 100 or so primitive, uncontested tribes remaining around the world. Google claims that 129,864,880 books have been written and bound throughout history and still survive in book form in some library in the world. Out of these, it is estimated that 40% are about Jesus.  There are 52 million different books circulating the world right now that are in some way concerned with Jesus." TIME Magazine articles on the 100 most famous people show up again and again. TIME has selected an official Person of the Year since 1927, as well as the top 100 people each year, so they are deeply invested in this area.  And isn't this an important aspect of our social consciousness - those who form our social past. Today's picture is a buoy against a white background, making the buoy almost disappear.  It seems almost like a fish tail to me.

Wishing not Weeping

There are famous Angel Statues in Cemeteries.  The most famous is "Angel of Grief".  She has her own entry in Wikipedia.  There are replicas in Canada, Costa Rica, Cuba, Luxembourg, U.K. and U.S.  There's one in Montreal's Mt. Royal Park.  As I look through the U.S. listings, and there are many, where do I see one?  It is near Longwood Gardens at the Longwood Cemetery in Kennett Square. That makes it my next destination when we go to Longwood. However, a day trip would be to Rochester in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. Our Grimsby Angel, in comparison, is wishing and wanting, hoping and praying.