6 posts tagged “famous”

Seneca’s nephew Lucan in his work surpassed his uncle in portraying the horrors and powers of witchcraft. In his play, just before the decisive battle of Pharsalus, in which Julius Caesar defeats the forces of Pompey, the two armies are moving through Thessaly, the country of witchcraft in Lucan’s work. Here one of Pompey’s sons consults a famous witch called Erictho about the outcome of the future battle.

Erictho is the most powerful of witches, and because she is so powerful she is presented as being quite loathsome and disgusting. Such are her powers that she can even compel some of the lesser gods to serve her and even cause them to shudder at her spells. As exaggerated as these plays are they demonstrate knowledge of magical practices found in the Greek magical texts. These works also shows that Roman audience must have easily understood the concept of magic in a negative sense but also in the sense of being a practice aimed at influencing or controlling the forces of the cosmos, even the gods themselves.

Famous Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl wanted to test the legends and sailed the Kon-Tiki, a balsa-wood raft, from South America into the Pacific in 1947. By that expedition Thor tried to show that humans could have settled Polynesia from the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean, with sailors using the prevailing winds and simple vessels.

Soon by using DNA, linguistic and archaeological evidence, scientists began to realize that the Austronesian-speaking peoples, including the Polynesians, probably originated from islands in eastern Asia, possibly from Taiwan, and moved southwards and eastwards through the South Pacific Ocean. The common ancestry of all the Austronesian languages supports this theory. At least some of the migration occurred against the prevailing winds and was deliberate migration rather than just accidental. Austronesian and Polynesian navigators may have deduced the existence of uninhabited islands by observing migratory patterns of birds.The possibility of such migration seems more likely in the view of recent research. More and more boat builders construct vessels by using traditional materials and techniques, sail them using ancient navigation methods.

Naturally, our famous pirates were not unemployed, there was a constant demand from France and England for able and ruthless sailors that could be used as a striking force. Infamous great pirate Henry Morgan was on the rise when he started recruiting his sailors from Tortuga for his great and cruel expeditions against Spanish colonies. France was also trying to bribe the pirates, so it could create a stronghold in the Caribbean.

The fun for the pirates ended with the Treaty of Ratisbon in 1684 signed by major European powers. The piracy in the Caribbean grew to such extent that part of this treaty is dedicated to the united decision to put an end to piracy in and around Tortuga. And several years earlier English parliament forbade pirates to sail under foreign flags. The punishment for disobedience was death in the gallows.

Most of the pirates, especially those who had families did not want to end their life dancing on the rope, so they had to join English fleet and hunt their own pirate buddies who were still sailing under the flag of a Jolly Roger. That was the end of the free pirate life on the Turtle Island.

For many years Conan Doyle was friends with the famous American escape artist and magician Harry Houdini. Unlike the famous writer, Houdini was an opponent of the Spiritualist movement. His contempt for Spiritualism even doubled in the 1920s when his mother died. He was touring America and Europe making public speeches against mediums.

Houdini made his goal to publicly expose Spiritualist mediums as frauds and presented many examples as proof that they employed trickery fooling gullible people. But for some reason Houdini’s efforts had an opposite effect on his friend Conan Doyle. The famous author became utterly convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers. Conan Doyle even wrote a book about it. No matter how hard Houdini tried, he could not dissuade Conan Doyle. Harry unsuccessfully tried his best convincing Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks. In the end two friends had a bitter quarrel in public. This even ended their friendship and they never spoke to each other again.

Great British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was one of the most successful writers in the beginning of the twentieth century. His most famous work - stories about detective Sherlock Holmes brought him fame and fortune. As we know, Sherlock was a hard core realist and intellectual who relied on the method of “deductive reasoning”. This helped him to solve any case of crime no matter how weird, bizarre or fantastic it looked.

Unfortunately Sherlock’s creator himself in the second half of his life did not follow the steps of his hero. Conan Doyle fell the victim to the Spiritualism. The reason for this were very tragic events in his family that affected and traumatized Doyle on the deep personal level. His beloved wife Louisa died in 1906. Some years later other started happening one after the other. Doyle lost one by one his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews. After World War I, because of these unfortunate and sad deaths, Conan Doyle sank into deep depression. So it happened that the only solace he found was Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

If you watched a movie about 300 brave Spartans, you know that king Leonidas was one of the most important figures in Greco-Persian wars. But there was also another equally or even more important statesman whose name is is rarely mentioned due to certain reasons that need to be explained.

I am talking about famous Themistocles from Athens. It was him who persuaded Athenians to build a powerful fleet and it is thanks to him that Greek ships defeated the much larger Persian navy and forced king Xerxes I of Persia to retreat. The naval battle of Salamis took place in 480 BC and was the turning point of the campaign, leading to eventual Persian defeat.

After the war Themistocles showed himself as a brilliant statesman again and again by making his native Athens the finest trade place in Greece. But then his life took a really tragic turn. He was accused by his fellowmen of arrogance and taking bribes. That led to the exile of Themistocles from Athens to Argos. Yet, his troubles did not end there.

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