A fell (from Old Norse fell, fjall,
"mountain") is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a
mountain range or moor-covered
hills. The term is most often employed in Fennoscandia, the Isle
of Man, parts of Northern
England, and Scotland. See pictures
at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fell
Fennoscandia,
also referred to as Fenno-Scandinavia, is a geographical cape located in the
North Atlantic and Northern Europe commonly referred to as the Nordic
region. The Nordic area is made up of
the Kola Peninsula, Karelia, Finland, and the Scandinavian Peninsula. Fennoscandia encompasses Sweden, Murmansk
Oblast, and a large part of Karelia, Finland, Northern Leningrad Oblast, and
Norway. Fennoscandia was coined from the
Latin term Fennia meaning Finland and Scandia meaning Scandinavian. Wilhelm Ramsay, a Finnish geologist, was the first
person to use the name Fennoscandia in 1898.
Fennoscandia includes the
northwest region of Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. These regions are home to some of the oldest
rocks on Earth which have been studied by numerous geologists for years. Geologically, the peninsula is entirely
different compared to the rest of Europe.
The bedrock on the Peninsula is Archaean gneiss and granite with some
limestone, which has undergone abundant deformations through the tectonic
activity. The lithosphere in this
peninsula is between 124 and 186 miles thick, and during the ice age epoch, the
great ice-sheet weathered and depressed the surface resulting in the creation
of a thin glacial material covering and numerous innumerable streams and lakes. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/where-is-fennoscandia.html
The
lithosphere is the rocky outer part of the Earth. It is made up of the brittle crust and the top
part of the upper mantle. The
lithosphere is the coolest and most rigid part of the Earth. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/lithosphere/
'At one
fell swoop' is one of those phrases that we may have picked up early in our
learning of the language and probably worked out its meaning from the context
in which we heard it, without any clear understanding of what each word
meant. Most native English speakers
could say what it means but, if we look at it out of context, it doesn't appear
to make a great deal of sense. So,
what's a 'fell'? We use the word in a
variety of ways: to chop, as in fell a
tree; a moorland or mountain, like those in the northern UK; the past tense of
fall, as in 'he fell over'. None of
those seems to make sense in this phrase and indeed the 'fell' here is none of
those. It's an old word, in use by the
13th century, that's now fallen out of use other than in this phrase, and is
the common root of the term 'felon'. The
Oxford English Dictionary defines 'fell' as meaning 'fierce, savage; cruel,
ruthless; dreadful, terrible', which is pretty unambiguous. Shakespeare either coined the phrase, or gave
it circulation, in Macbeth.
Link to other phrases and sayings
from Shakespeare at https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/at-one-fell-swoop.html
In 1665,
following an outbreak of the bubonic plague in England, Cambridge University
closed its doors, forcing Isaac Newton to return home to Woolsthorpe
Manor. While sitting in the garden there
one day, he saw an apple fall from a tree, providing him with the inspiration
to eventually formulate his law of universal gravitation. Newton later relayed the apple story to
William Stukeley, who included it in a book, “Memoir of Sir Isaac Newton’s
Life,” published in 1752. In 2010, a
NASA astronaut carried a piece of the ancient apple tree aboard the space
shuttle Atlantis for a mission to the International Space Station. The Royal Society, a scientific organization
once headed by Newton, loaned the piece of the tree for the voyage, as part of
a celebration of the 350th anniversary of the group’s founding. Today, the original apple tree continues to
grow at Woolsthorpe Manor. https://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-isaac-newton
The good news is that in
2019 the Turkish poet İlhan Çomak won a major award, the Sennur Sezer poetry
prize, for his eighth and most recent book of poems, Geldim Sana (I Came to You). The bad news is that he is in prison and has
been in prison for 26 years, since his arrest as a geography student at the age
of 22. All his books have been written
in prison. How did he come to be
there? One factor, most likely the main
factor, is that he is Kurdish. That is
not a crime in itself, but belonging to, or even associating with a Kurdish
political organisation is. There is also
the specific matter of starting a forest fire, but no serious evidence has ever
been brought to prove that. The only
“proof” was his confession under torture and this has been highlighted in any
appeals to free him. It is not unusual
in Turkey for writers to be
imprisoned. There have been, and still
are, too many to mention here but none has been incarcerated for as long as
Çomak. Some have published from inside,
some with great success. One of Turkey’s
greatest poets, Nâzım Hikmet, who died in 1963, spent much of his life in
prison or exile. Georges Szirtes
A popular video game has
become home to a virtual library where players can lay eyes on censored news
articles from around the world. In a
virtual library found in Minecraft—a game where users can build virtual worlds
out of blocks and create their own storylines—users can access the work of
journalists who have been killed, jailed or exiled by governments, including
articles by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The project, launched by Reporters Without
Borders, design collective Blockworks, advertising agency DDB Germany and
production company MediaMonks, gives users access to articles banned in five
countries that rank poorly on the nongovernmental organization's World Press Freedom Index: Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam. Work in the
library, launched March 12, 2020 to mark the World Day Against Cyber
Censorship, is available in English and the original language in which the
texts were written. More than 145
million players are active on the platform each month, Reporters Without
Borders said in a statement, adding that the platform offers "unlimited
freedom" in countries that have no press freedom. Amy Woodyatt https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/tech/minecraft-uncensored-library-scli-intl/index.html
10
Household Uses for Rubbing Alcohol by
Erin Huffstetler Includes cleaning glass,
water spots, grime from keyboards and phones, and how to make hand sanitizer.
During the 19th century,
four major outbreaks of cholera between 1832 and 1866 ravaged London
communities and led to the death of tens of thousands of people. Cholera ('Asiatic cholera') had spread
from the Indian subcontinent to Europe.
Attempts were made to stem the arrival of the disease, with the
quarantine of incoming ships (Gazette issue 18807). Doctor and
anaesthetist John Snow’s investigation suggested another means of transmission
more likely. Snow’s conclusion by 1849,
in his paper, 'On the Mode of Communication of Cholera', was that cholera
spread through ingesting contaminated water, rather than inhaling a noxious
form of bad air. Snow had sought
evidence to back up his theory, such as a workhouse that was close to the Broad
Street pump and a prime site for cholera to take hold. But only 5 of the 530 inmates had contracted
cholera, because nobody from the workhouse drank the pump water, as the
building had its own well. And at the
Lion Brewery, workers were given an allowance of free beer every day so never
drank water, and there were no fatalities.
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/100519
March 16, 2020 With more school closures across the country
imminent including in Minnesota and Wisconsin because of the coronavirus
pandemic, restaurants, businesses and community organizations are turning their
attention toward feeding kids in need. Hope
Breakfast Bar in St. Paul on Monday announced it will temporarily close the
restaurant to start operating as a community kitchen. The West Seventh Street restaurant started
offering breakfast takeout bags to families in need last weekend. More requests are expected to flood in,
especially with schools slated to close in Minnesota and Wisconsin running through
at least March 27 for Minnesota and at least April 6 for Wisconsin. Nancy Ngo
https://www.twincities.com/2020/03/16/restaurants-begin-offering-meals-to-feed-hungry-kids-and-families/ See also Around the country, restaurants are
serving free food to kids at The Washington Post March 17, 2020
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2241
March 17, 2020
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