Interesting Dead Person of the Day

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Sigurdsristning (The Sigurd Carving) or Ramsund Stone

See also: http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=12675

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0px-Sigurd.jpg
See Wikipedia for Numeric Key

Sigurd or Sigurðr at Wikipedia

Sigurd is interesting. It is not certain that he is dead, though. He may be entirely mythological. He is the archetypal Germanic uber-hero, Sigurd the dragon slayer. His story and his geneology are told most interestingly in the Old Norse (12th Century?) Volsung Saga.

The Volsung Saga has some basis in fact. There are recognizable historical figures in it such as Attila the Hun ca. 406–453 AD. The story is probably the vestiges of an oral history from the period of the Germanic migrations AD 300 and 500. See also: maps. During this time Germanic tribes (Goths, Vandals, Franks, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Burgundians, Alans, Langobards, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Suebi, and Alamanni) poured out of northern Europe, spreading over the south, Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Oral histories tend to become garbled over time and they develop mythic character. The author of the Volsung Saga made little or no attempt at rationalizing his much older source material. Geography and chronology are completely skewed. The saga's "story grammar" is extremely alien to modern sensibilities. Imagine playing Dungeon Siege with a projector so that the characters are larger than life; you have consumed a full sheet of blotter acid, and just as you are peaking, the earth crosses the event horizon of a black hole -- concepts of space and time become meaningless. This situation is not entirely dissimilar to reading the Volsung Saga.

By contrast the author of the Middle High German Nibelungenlied presents Sigurd/Siegfried's story in a highly rationalized manner.

The story of Sigurd/Siegfried is found in Wagner's Ring Cycle. There are reflections of it in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. As a part of German Romanticism, it also contributed to the deluded Aryan Race wetdreams of Hitler and his cronies -- not Sigurd's fault.

Interesting. Maybe not dead, though.

(edit: There are also echos in the plot of Dungeon Siege II, that is if it can be said to have a plot.)

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John Harrison at Wikipedia

March 24, 1693 - March 24 1776

John Harrison was a Yorkshire lad. He was initially a carpenter. He eventually became one of England's foremost horologists (clockmakers). He introduced many improvements to clock technology, but most notably, he made the first chronometer, a clock accurate enough that it could be used to overcome the problem of calculating longitude in marine navigation. There was substantial prize money posted for solving the problem of longitude calculation, a sum of £20,000. Harrison had friends and supporters, such as the astronomer Edmund Halley, but it took him almost forty years after the first successful demonstration of his chronometer to collect the money. There were egos, rivalries and class prejudice involved in the delay -- Harrison was after all a mere commoner from Yorkshire, a man of menial background and not a gentleman scientist of quality. In the end, it took the personal intervention of King George III before the then very elderly Harrison received his proper reward and recognition.

Further reading:

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/con...355/viewPage/2

http://www.solarnavigator.net/history/john_harrison.htm

http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jht...13/ixhome.html

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How about an old friend, I have recently rediscovered: Sir Francis Bacon.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/bacon/

Quite a fascinating fellow, even if he was a lawyer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by El_Squid

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl3...ges/bacon.jpeg

How about an old friend, I have recently rediscovered: Sir Francis Bacon.

http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/bacon/

Quite a fascinating fellow, even if he was a lawyer.

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Cool. I like him, too.

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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Joan of Arc at Wikipedia

From Wikipedia:

"Joan of Arc, also Jeanne d'Arc (1412[2] – 30 May 1431) is a national heroine of France and a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She believed she had visions from God that told her to recover her homeland from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent her to the siege at Orléans as part of a relief mission. She gained prominence when she overcame the light regard of veteran commanders and lifted the siege in only nine days. Several more swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Rheims and settled the disputed succession to the throne.

The renewed French confidence outlasted her own brief career. Court intrigues slowed further offensive action. Her leg was wounded during an unsuccessful attempt to recover Paris and she was captured the following spring during a battle near Compiègne. A politically motivated trial convicted her of heresy. The English regent John, duke of Bedford had her burnt at the stake in Rouen. She had been the heroine of her country at the age of seventeen and died at just nineteen. Some twenty-four years later Pope Callixtus III reopened the case and a new finding overturned the original conviction. Her piety to the end impressed the retrial court. Pope Benedict XV canonized her on 16 May 1920.

Joan of Arc has remained an important figure in Western culture. From Napoleon to the present, French politicians of all leanings have invoked her memory. Major writers and composers who created works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Schiller, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Twain, Shaw, and Brecht. Depictions of her continue in film, television, and song."

Leonard Cohen's song, Joan of Arc, an examination of female passion, has long been one of my favs.

Recent news: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4711784.stm


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Sir John Harington at the National Portrait Gallery

Sir John at Wikipedia

Sir John Harington (1561 – November 20, 1612), a Godchild of Elizabeth I, was the (re)inventor of the flushable toilet. Toilets are known to have existed as early as 2500 BC, but the technology has appeared and disappeared with the rise and fall of various societies over time. Sir John's was probably the first flushable English toilet. The euphemism, the john, is thought to be taken from Harington's name.

Harington had studied law but became a courtier poet. His writing was often satirical, and as a result he was often in disfavour and banished from court.

A publication about his toilet in 1596, A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax, was both technical and satirical. "This was published under the author's pseudonym of Misacmos. There were in fact three sections to this dissertation, but the real point of the publication was that Harrington described in detail and with diagrams, and with a good many none too savoury digressions, often aimed at particular and well-known men at Court, his invention of the water-closet, on which John Harrington's chief claim to fame ought to rely. (Ajax was a pun on the words 'a jakes', jakes being the Elizabethan word for a privy). The work was issued under the initials T.C., which stood for T. C. Traveller. He explained 'how unsavoury places may be made sweet, noisome places made wholesome, filthy places made cleanly', at a cost of thirty shillings and eightpence. The Queen was much displeased, not with the indecorous passages in the book, but with veiled allusions to the Earl of Leicester. At one moment Harrington was in great danger of facing Star Chamber: it is almost certain that Elizabeth's affection for him saved him from that process. But the edict went forth that that he leave the Court. By 1598 the Queen had forgiven her godson and commanded that a Harrington water-closet be installed at Richmond Palace."

Below is an early water closet, probably not one of Harington's.

http://www.muswell-hill.com/foxandco...atercloset.jpg

A rambling and coprophillic letter by the writer Thomas Nashe would seem to indicate that some of Harington's jakes were set up for public use in St. Pauls churchyard with somewhat unpleasant results:

Only mr Harrington {of} late hath sett up sutch filthy stinking iakes in pouls churchyard, that the stationers wold giue any mony for a couer [fo]r it. what shold moue him to it I know not, except he [m]eant to bid a turd in all gentle readers teeth, or whereas [D]on Diego & Brokkenbury be****t pouls, to prevent the like incon- [u]enience, he hath reuiued an old innes a court tricke of turning [ ]out in a paper, & framed close stools for them t[o] carry [in] there pockets as gentlewomen do there spuges th[ ] [ ] O it is detestable and abhominable, farre worse then [Mu]nday[s] ballet of vntruesse, or Gillian a Braynfords [Wi]ll in which she bequeathed a score of farts amongst her frends [&] able to make any man haue a stinking breath that lookes [b]ut on the outstide of it. Sure had I beene of his cousayle he shold haue sett for ye mott or word before it Fah, & dedicated it to the house of the shakerlies that giue for there armes thre doggs turds reaking, For my paarte I pitty him & pray for him that he may haue many good stooles to his last ending, & so I wold wish all his frends to pray, for otherwise it is to be feared yt according as Seneca reports the last words Claudiius Ces was hard to speake were Hei mihi vereor concacaui me so he will die with a turd in his mouth at his last gaspe & bee coffind vp in a iakes farmer tunne no other nosewise christian, for his horrible pfume being able to come nere him.

Normalized letter text

Further reading
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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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http://www.trama.com.br/elis/elis1_800x600.jpg

Elis Regina (March 17, 1945 - January 19, 1982)

Elis was an amzing singer. "She was nicknamed Furacao (hurricane) and Pimentinha (little pepper) because of her seemingly boundless energy." She had mind-blowing timing and phrasing.

Her 1974 album with Antino Carlos Jobim, "Elis & Tom, is often cited as one of the greatest bossa nova albums of all time."

http://www.southamericanway.com/covers/lg/acder74br.jpg

She takes my breath away. Listen! Watch!

From WFMU: http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/02/elis_regina.mov (Right click. Save as. 11 MB. Requires Quicktime.)

Her death was stupid. She succumbed to a bad combination of Cinzano and cocaine, during a night that she spent up alone in her bedroom, making plans for the future and listening to tapes for her new record. An accident and a senseless waste. This was on January 19, 1982. She was not yet 37 years old. Brazil was shocked and shattered by the news.

Further reading (pics and discography)

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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Monk Zone: the Official Site

Wikipedia says that "Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was a jazz pianist and composer."

True but inadequate.

It is hard to explain just how cool Monk is/was. He was eccentric, and his music was brilliant because of it. He composed/improvised strangely angular, strangely syncopated melodies with notes often so outrageously wrong that they were brilliantly right and beautiful. I have loved him since I was a little kid. Words cannot express how much I miss him.

:sad:

Wikipedia: "Monk's manner was idiosyncratic. It is said that he would rarely speak to anyone other than his beloved wife Nellie, and certainly in later years it was reported that he would go through an entire tour without speaking to the other members of his group. Visually, he was renowned for his distinctively "hip" sartorial style in suits, hats and sunglasses, and he developed an unusual, highly syncopated and percussive manner of playing piano. He was also noted for the fact that, at times, he would stop playing, stand up from the keyboard and dance while the other musicians in the combo played. There has been speculation that some of Monk's quirky behaviour was due to mental illness."

Indeed, his mannerisms were suggestive of high functioning autism or Asperger's Syndrome.

If he had been normal, whatever that may be, what a loss it would have been.

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http://w00.middlebury.edu/ID085A/gal...r/Iwasdead.jpg
Yokoo Tadanori (1936-1965 vendre un canard Ã* moitié?)

"Yokoo Tadanori, "Tadanori Yokoo." Client: Matsuya Department Store. 72.8 x 103 cm. This was a poster for the "Persona Exhibition," a group exhibition by 16 designers held at the Matsuya Department Store in the Ginza, Tokyo, in 1965. The legend at the bottom reads (in English) Having reached a climax at the age of 29, I was dead. A handsign signifying sex, a photo of the artist at age 1 1/2, and two erupting Mt. Fuji's are placed in the poster's four corners. In front of one of the Mt. Fuji's is a bullet train, a symbol of "reborn" postwar Japan just as hackneyed as Mt. Fuji, a symbol of old (or changeless) Japan."

Yokoo is the Andy Warhol of Japan but without Warhol's affectations. The hand symbol can also represent death -- remember "the Paul is dead" nonsense. A number of ironies at work here.

Mouse Pad

Yokoo San at Wikipedia France

Well, he said he was dead.

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...hn_Wilmot2.jpg
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
at Wikipedia

April 1, 1647–July 26, 1680

John Wilmot was born 300 years too soon. He was a self-destructive, hedonistic libertine, given to excesses of debauchery. He was also brilliant, regarded as one of the greatest literary wits of his day. He would have made a great sixties rock star -- sex, drugs, and rock and roll would have been very much to his taste. He would have very quickly got the hang of trashing hotel rooms.

He was a well-educated poet and satirist of the first order. He was also a pornographer, although there are arguments that his pornography was a lampooning of the excesses of his age -- an explosion of sexuality and drunkenness after years of Puritanism. He was also a con-artist: in a period of banishment from court, he set him self up as a quack/snake-oil doctor, one Dr. Bendo, and was apparently quite successful at fleecing the public.

His friendship with King Charles II probably saved him from being beheaded, although Charles must have been very sorely tempted on many occasions.

He died at the age of 33 probably from the complications of multiple STDs, syphilis most likely being the primary cause.

It is difficult to separate myth from reality. Over the years Wilmot has been used both by puritans and libertines, an object lesson of the evils of excess on the one hand, and a model of free-spirited life without the imprisonment of morality on the other. Both uses have helped to obscure the truth.

There is a recent movie, The Libertine, about his life. Johnny Depp puts in an amazing performance as Wilmot.

Further reading.

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...of_miranda.jpg

Francisco de Miranda, the forgotten precursor to Simon Bolivar, the Liberator. Not only tried to liberate South America, but fought in the American Revolution and had an affair with Catherine the Great. Quite an interesting fellow.

Francisco de Miranda

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Roger Bacon at Wikipedia

Roger Bacon (c. 1214 – 1294) was a Franciscan friar. He was also an empiricist polymath scientist, and perhaps in this sense he was the first modern scientist. His reputation has been damaged somewhat by his interests in alchemy and astrology -- much of the damage inflicted by later misinterpretation, misuse, abuse, and mythologizing by literary writers, clerical writers, historians, mystics, dingbats, and new-agers, etc. A shoveling away of the BS shows him to be both smaller and larger than his legend.

He lived in an age of great upheaval. England was in a state of civil war and near complete lawlessness -- King Stephen and the Empress Maude in rivalry for the throne. The Catholic Church was wracked by schisms. The Franciscan Order was wracked by schisms. There was great social/religious unrest in Europe. Ecclesiastical government was repressive and heavy-handed. Heretics were lurking under every bed. It was not a propitious time for someone like Bacon, a man possessed of/by an inquiring mind, and in his later life, he was probably held in solitary confinement for ten to fourteen years --sentenced to a living Hell and condemned to an eternal Hell, being denied confession, sacrament and absolution. He was eventually released.

Brian Clegg, a modern biographer of Bacon, summarizes Bacon in the context of his time very nicely:

"A contemporary of Bacon's, Bishop Ambrose of Milan, adapted this guiding principle of Augustine's to the study of nature: 'To discuss the nature and position of the Earth does not help us in our hope of the life to come.' Bacon's approach, as he made clear in the Opus majus, was that 'The result of all true philosophy is to arrive at a knowledge of the Creator through knowledge of the created world.' Bacon was not dismissing the importance of scripture, or saying that the authorities were wrong, but pointing out that it should also be possible to gain knowledge of God by understanding his creation -- the natural world itself. But in putting the power of investigation above the authority of scripture, he seemed in danger of putting man above God. Bacon must of been aware of what he was doing, and the reaction of the Church authorities should have come as no surprise to him. The light of the truth as he saw it must have been so blinding that he was prepared to risk anything to share it with others."


A sample of Bacon's writng


Reommended reading: Clegg, Brian. The First Scientist: a Life of Roger Bacon. 2003. ISBN 1-84119-618-5


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Time Mar. 13 2006


http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...newick24m.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11532671/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/first/kennewick.html


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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...0/Question.png

Wikipedia: "Ahmad ibn al-'Abbās ibn Rashīd ibn Hammad ibn Fadlan (أحمد ابن العباس ابن رشيد ابن حماد ابن فضلان) was a 10th century Muslim writer and traveler who wrote an account of his travels as a member of an embassy of the Caliph of Baghdad to the king of the Volga Bulgars, the Kitāb ilā Malik aṣ-Ṣaqāliba كتاب إلى ملك الصقالبة."

Little is known about Ibn Fadlan personally beyond whatever is revealed in his account of his travels. His writing provides an interesting description of a people he called the Rūs روس or Rūsiyyah. If he is correct in this designation, we have what is possibly the earliest description of Swedish/Russian Vikings. The high point of his flattery is: "They are the filthiest of God's creatures."

See: Viking Answer Lady for answers

See also: http://www.nordicway.com/search/Viki...the%20East.htm

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It is my pure and virtuous heart that
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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...91/Faraday.jpg
Michael Faraday at Wikipedia

September 22, 1791 – August 25, 1867

Wikipedia: "Michael Faraday is considered to have been one of the great scientists in history. Some historians of science refer to him as the greatest experimentalist in the history of science. It was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology."

He also laid important groundwork for scientists that followed. Einstein was particularly indebted. Faraday understood theoretically that light itself was merely electromagnetic energy.

Faraday was self-educated. He was from a poor menial background. His lack of formal education hampered him: training in mathematics would have advanced his work considerably. In an era before meritocracy, his social background was a constant impediment, sidelining him for years in unproductive underemployment and exposing him to cruel public humiliation.

Wikipedia: "In a class-based society, Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy [Sir Humphry Davy, president of the Royal Society] went on a long tour to the continent in 1813-5, his valet refused to go. Faraday was part of the party as Davy's scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy's valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Davy failed to find a replacement, and Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy's wife, Jane Apreece, refused to treat Faraday as an equal (making him travel outside the coach, eat with the servants, etc.) and generally made Faraday so miserable he contemplated returning to England alone and giving up science altogether. However, it was not long before Faraday surpassed Davy."

Faraday was also a devout Christian, one with a brain.

Faraday at PBS.


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