Main reason for Yuri’s selection was
appearance:
Nice face wins space race
Dilmika Tennakoon
Vostok I lift-off |
Yuri Gagarin - the Russian astronaut was the first human in space.
The flight was a massive victory for the Soviet Union as the United
States could not put a man in space before Soviet Union. This brought
about changes in political, social, cultural and technical perspectives
in many ways.
On April 12 1961, Vostok 1 lifted off with astronaut Yuri Gagarin on
board. Gagarin’s capsule was controlled from the ground. His flight
circled the Earth once, lasting only one hour and 48 minutes. The launch
of the first shuttle mission on April 12, 1961 was a huge success
achieved by Soviet Union in space missions.
Space race
In 1961, the Mercury Project - first manned space mission was
prepared for launch by the United State. Alan Shepared was the astronaut
who was in charge of the project. But due to technical difficulties the
mission was postponed until May. On May 5, 1961 he became the first
American in space.
However the Soviet Union took the opportunity to launch the first
manned space mission before America and they were first to win the space
race with a huge success. Though the Soviets space mission was a shock
to the American government, President Kennedy congratulated the Soviets
on their achievement.
Soviet Union chose Yuri because his outward appearance was
perfect for space race propaganda |
Gherman Titov and Yuri Gagarin were the two capable and qualified
astronauts to fly the Vostok. But only one astronaut could be
accommodated. Both Titov and Gagarin were smaller in height and build,
smart, and both were excellent pilots. But only Yuri had the charisma
and outgoing personality to deal with the media. He was handsome, polite
and humble. Soviet Union chose him because his outward appearance was
perfect for space race propaganda.
Due to the popularity made by the first man in space the Soviet
government did not use Gagarin for later space missions. Soviet
government did not want to loose their space hero as the space missions
were too risky and dangerous. Instead he trained other astronauts.
Traditions
It is said that Gagarin emptied his bladder on his way to launching
site. It later became a tradition for astronauts to urinate on the back
tire of the transport bus before their flights.
However there are some arguments regarding that Soviets lied about
Gagarin’s space flight. A book published for the 50th anniversary of
Gagarin’s flight 108 Minutes That Changed the World by Russian
journalist Anton Pervushin, revealed that Soviet scientists have made an
error on the landing of the space flight. Soviet literature claims that
Gagarin and the Vostok landing capsule had landed on the proper site.
But the book says that there was no one on the ground to meet Gagarin
when he was arrived 500 miles south of Moscow because he was supposed to
land nearly 250 miles further south.
The book further reveals that “nobody was waiting or looking for Yuri
Gagarin. Therefore the first thing he had to do after landing was set
off to look for people and communications equipment so he could tell
them where he was”
The author says that Gagarin has landed separately by a parachute and
not inside the capsule as the Soviets claim.
Gagarian was only 34 years when he died in a jet crash during a
training flight. A year after his death Neil Armstrong, an American
astronaut, became the first man to walk on the moon. Somehow the
Americans went into the annals of space history for Apollo 11’s flight
to the Moon in July 1969.
Inquisition of Galileo Galilei:
Astronomer who moved the earth
Gaston de Rosayro
In the dark ages, whoever was contrary
to the Catholic Church could be caught by the inquisitors. Those who
were accused of heresy and blasphemy would often go through intense
torture, perpetual incarceration or painful and slow death. Galileo
Galilei in April 1633, head bowed, sat before the Roman Inquisition,
an old man, tired and broken. Yielding to irresistible pressure, he
recanted his heretical view that the Earth goes around the Sun
rather than is stationary at the centre of the Universe, as taught
by Aristotle and, most significantly, the Church. It is the defining
folk image of the clash between science and religion.
Inquisition of Galileo |
Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa Italy in 1564, was a mathematician,
physicist and astronomer who defended the Copernican model named after
the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Corpenicus - of the heliocentric theory
of the universe that the Earth and other planets revolved around the sun
and not the opposite as scriptures suggested.
His observations provided powerful support for the idea, though they
were still just about compatible with the Ptolemaic idea in which the
Sun and planets described weird “epicyclic” circles within circles about
completely empty points in space. Nevertheless, Galileo felt confident
enough to present the merits of the Copernican view in his book
‘Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems’ in 1632. It was a fatal
mistake.
Galileo Galilei was a genius. Of that there is no doubt. He
discovered that the period of a pendulum is independent of the size of
its swing, reputedly by comparing the duration of the swing of the
bronze chandelier in the cathedral in Pisa with the regular throb of his
own pulse. He deduced the laws governing falling bodies by timing them
as they slid down gently inclined planes.
Learning of the invention of a magnifying device containing a convex
and a concave lens by the German-Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey in
1608, Galileo threw himself into the construction of his own version.
Recognising that its magnification depended crucially on the ratio of
the “focal” length of the main, “objective”, lens to the focal length of
the “eyepiece”, he rapidly evolved a telescope which could make distant
objects appear 30 times bigger.
He immediately turned it on the heavens. Galileo was not the first to
sweep a telescope across the night sky or even to draw what he saw. The
credit for that goes to the Englishman Thomas Harriot, who sketched the
crater-strewn Moon in the summer of 1609. But Galileo was a supreme
publicist - not to mention an artist and communicator - and it was his
book ‘The Starry Messenger’, published in Venice in spring 1610, that
set the intellectual world of 17th-century Europe on fire. Like Harriot,
Galileo discovered that the face of the Moon was not perfect, but
sullied by craters and mountain chains.
He witnessed the planet Venus go from crescent to full and back under
changing illumination from the sun. And he discovered that the planet
Jupiter was orbited by four moons, irrefutable evidence that not all
bodies circled the Earth. Galileo was aware of the Catholic Church’s
1616 edict against the Copernican worldview. So he carefully concocted a
fictional debate between adherents of the various world systems,
purporting to be even-handed but favouring the evidence-based Copernican
view.
A devout Catholic, he even had the book approved by the Vatican. It
was to no avail. In 1633, Galileo, a frail old man of 69 who had to be
carried in a litter, was forced to make the arduous journey from
Florence to Rome. He was never actually tortured by the Roman
Inquisition but it knew the terror value of allowing the threat to hang
unspoken in the air.
Galileo Galili demonstrating the telescope |
In September 1632, the Inquisition accused Galileo of violating the
injunction of 1616 and ordered him to Rome. Galileo faced a trial before
ten cardinals in April 1633. The cardinals’ decision read: “We
pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have
rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy,
that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and
contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the centre
of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the
earth does move, and is not the centre of the world.”
The great irony is that many of the intellectuals of the Church were
well versed in the latest scientific ideas and happy to embrace them.
But this was not a trial about which scientific idea was supported by
the evidence, as Galileo had naively believed.
His arguments - which he thought were so strong they would easily win
over the Roman Inquisition - were barely even alluded to. The trial was
about one thing and one thing only: power. Who wielded it and who
yielded to it. The Roman Church at the time was reeling from the
Protestant Reformation, which had reinterpreted the Scriptures. Seeing
its power eroded in northern Europe, it felt a desperate need to
reassert its authority against any act of defiance.
The publication of Galileo’s book, despite its approval by the
Vatican, was just such an act. In truth, Pope Urban VIII was damned if
he did, damned if he didn’t. Insisting on a literal interpretation of
the Bible was of course bound to come into conflict with observations as
scientific instruments improved.
On the other hand, the Church had to reassert its slipping power over
the minds of men or face oblivion.
The Inquisition’s uncompromising message was simple: “You will
believe this because we say so.” Galileo was led away to spend the last
years of his life a prisoner in his own home. And a pattern was set for
the clash between science and religion, which has echoed down the
centuries to this very day.
Galileo was supposed to be imprisoned, but the Pope commuted this
sentence to house arrest at Galileo’s home near Florence, where he died
blind at the age of 78. Despite the Church’s attempt to stop free
thinking and hide the truth, the message of the great thinker did not
die along with his body. All the pain and the lost years in jail seem
insignificant when compared with the greatness of his thoughts.
After being forced to recant his ‘heretical’ views, legend has it
that as he shuffled away to imprisonment, he muttered, in defiance of
his ecclesiastical tormentors: “E pur si muove!” - “And yet it does
move” - an explicit contradiction of the biblical doctrine that the
Earth is fixed in space.
It will actually never be known that he actually did say the words.
But still, it’s nice to think he did.
Filiki Eteria
Filiki Eteria or Society of Friends was a secret 19th Century
organization, whose purpose was to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece
and to establish an independent Greek state. Society members were mainly
young Phanariot Greeks from Russia and local chieftains from Greece. One
of the leaders of the society was Alexander Ypsilantis. In the spring of
1821 the society initiated the Greek War of Independence.
Chaos theory
The term ‘chaos theory’ comes from the fact that the systems that the
theory describes are apparently disordered, but chaos theory is really
about finding the underlying order in apparently random data. According
to the Chaos theory seemingly random events are actually predictable
from simple deterministic equations.
In a scientific context, the word chaos has a slightly different
meaning than it does in its general usage as a state of confusion,
lacking any order. Chaos, with reference to chaos theory, refers to an
apparent lack of order in a system that nevertheless obeys particular
laws or rules.
Homing instinct
Homing instinct is the ability exhibited by animals including birds,
bees, salmon, rats, cats and even snails to find their way back home
even after traveling long distances over unfamiliar territory.
Schoolboy befriends jackdaw
Bird brained: Sunderland schoolboy Emmanuel Adams has amazingly befriended
this wild jackdaw he passes each day on the way to school
|
Parents and pupils at St Mary’s RC Primary School in Sunderland
complained of being tormented by this jackdaw when it first began
appearing at the gates in early December. It menaced pupils, divebombing
children whenever they ventured outside the classroom. Children were so
terrified that teachers shortened playtimes and kept them inside to
prevent further attacks.
The council even gave the school a high-tech bird scaring device to
try to drive it away. But now, like a real life Kes, the bird has
befriended one pupil who passes it on his way to school. Amazingly, the
bird started landing on ten-year-old Emmanuel Adams’ shoulder as he
walked to class. His feathered friend, who he has named Jack, has taken
a shine to Emmanuel, who says the bird is ‘not a bully’.
Just like the 1969 film Kes, where a Northern schoolboy tames and
befriends a wild Kestrel, the bird and the boy have become firm friends.
And for the past few days the curious crow has even been living with the
Adams family, alongside three dogs, four fish and Emmanuel’s sisters,
Rebecca, 16, Alexi, 11, and Androniki, nine.
Emmanuel’s mother, Carolyn Adams, 46, a full-time mum, said: ‘The
bird took an instant liking to Emmanuel, he would approach him as he
walked to school.
He picked him out from the other schoolkids. ‘One day he just sat on
Emmanuel’s arm and from then on he would go to school with the bird
perched on his arm or shoulder. ‘A lorry driver nearly crashed watching
him, he was so amazed by it. ‘On Tuesday it wouldn’t leave his arm and
he walked straight into the house with it. It seems to have settled here
and it sits and lets Emmanuel stroke it. ‘Emmanuel has been sat with
Jack on his shoulder watching telly and while he had his revision work
on his lap, Jack was trying to turn the pages. ‘I’ve got some wild bird
feed and I’ve read online that they’re omnivorous so I gave him some of
our mince and pasta last night. I’ve given him fruit too.
Mrs Adams admitted she feels bad about having a wild bird in the
house and said she has contacted bird charities for advice on looking
after Jack.
Daily Mail
1633 - The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition
begins.
1820 - Alexander Ypsilantis is declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a
secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece.
1831 - Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in
Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
1927 - Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members
executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.
1934 - The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is
measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire
1937 - Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed
to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.
1945 - US President Franklin D Roosevelt dies while in office;
vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.
1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer
space, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
1980 - Samuel Doe takes control of Liberia in a coup d’état, ending
over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
1980 - Terry Fox begins his ‘Marathon of Hope’ at St John’s,
Newfoundland.
1988 - Harvard University patents genetically engineered mouse (1st
for animal life)
1990 - First meeting of East German democratically elected
parliament, acknowledges responsibility for Nazi holocaust and asks for
forgiveness
1999 -US President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for
giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil
lawsuit. |