Fun Facts

Astronomy has always been one the most interesting and baffling subjects of all times. From the very first time when someone decided to watch the night sky and observe the different heavenly bodies, human beings have been mystified with this science. As more and more inferences were made, astronomers revolutionized the very basis of human thinking and reasoning. Observations of the sky led the famous astronomers like Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler to give us the structure of the solar system and the planetary bodies that revolve around the sun. The advances in technology give a stamp of approval to these theories. From the invention of the telescope to the highly sophisticated satellites roving Mars, these scientific instruments have enhanced our understanding of our world and the world beyond.

However, the more progress we make the greater is the expanse that opens up in front of us. From a single new discovery comes in a thousand other questions of ‘what’, ‘when’ and ‘why’s. The more we know, the more controversial it gets.

Let us talk about the stars for example. The first thing that man must have observed when he looked at the night sky must have the thousands of twinkling dots, filling up the vast sky. That must have surely mystified him. However, thousands of years later, we are still struggling and trying to understand the existence of these stars. You surely know that the light that travels from a star does not reach us immediately. For instance, the light coming to us from the Sun takes 8 minutes to reach us. Therefore, the ray of light striking inside your room had actually started out 8 minutes ago. Similarly, the light coming from a star that is say, 100 light years away, is literally, 100 years old as we see it from the Earth! If you look up and spot that star in the sky you are actually looking at what it was like 100 years ago. That star may have exploded and died but you still see it very much alive! Therefore, you have actually seen something that was present in the past or more appropriately, you’ve seen back in time… 100 years ago!

Astronomers have just recently seen the furthest back in time that is they have gone back 13 billion years. They have measured light from a star that exploded back then, which was close to when our universe was formed. Having seen this light, we have managed to see back almost to the start of all times. This is the closest we have gone back to when The Big Bang happened.

Possibly, in a few years we will get to observe light from some other distant stars that were formed right when the Big Bang happened. Possibly, with light taking so many years to reach us from the distant ends of the universe, we may even see the Big Bang happening… LIVE! Now if that is not baffling, I do not what is!

Fun Stuff History, looking back, time

If you are of the opinion that history is full of boring dates and of what happened before you were even born and hated the history exams you had to take during school then here’s something that’ll lighten up your mood. I’m going to take you back to 16th century England where there was ‘Much ado about nothing’.

This was the time of King Henry VIII. One thing that you may know about him is that he had he’d married six times. His first wife was Catherine of Aragon. She was first married to King Henry’s brother Arthur, but was widowed a few months later. She then married King Henry and became the Queen of England. She became pregnant six times altogether but she either gave birth to stillborn children or her new born died soon after birth. Her only child to survive was a girl, Mary. This greatly unsettled the King who wanted a male heir to his throne and began to believe that his marriage to the Queen was cursed. He began pursuing Anne Boleyn who was a maid of honour at the Queen’s court. The King’s courtship with Anne resulted in him divorcing Catherine and marrying Anne. Anne was pregnant at least three times with King Henry’s children but the only surviving child was a girl, Elizabeth. In 1536, Anne Boleyn was charged with witchcraft, treason and incest and was executed. The day after, the King was betrothed to Jane Seymour. She became the third Queen of England and gave birth to a male heir, Edward. Soon after giving birth to her son, Jane died of complications. King Henry’s fourth wife was Anne of Cleves whom he married in 1540. However, six months later their marriage was annulled. A few weeks later the King married Catherine of Howard who became the fifth Queen. However in the two years of her marriage she did not give birth to any children and was charged with treason and adultery. Like her cousin Anne Boleyn, she was beheaded and buried in an unmarked grave. The King’s last wife was Catherine Parr whom he married in 1543. She however did not conceive any child from the King, who later died in 1547.

Besides his six wives, King Henry had also kept two mistresses in his life, Bessie Blount, who gave birth to a son, Henry Fitzroy and Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s sister who two children, Catherine and Henry, had believed to be fathered by King Henry. However the King did not acknowledge the two children as is own as he did Henry Fitzroy.

After his death, King Henry VIII was left with four children; Mary, Henry, Elizabeth and Edward. Edward, who was the King’s only legitimate male heir to the throne, succeeded him. But Henry was only nine at the time and died at the age of 15. After his death, the next to the throne was Mary, who became the Queen and ruled for five years until her death. Elizabeth became the next Queen of England and ruled the kingdom for the next 44 years of her life. Today we know her as the Queen Elizabeth I of England. She was the only child of King Henry’s to have ruled for such along time, she was a woman and the daughter of Anne Boleyn who had been executed by The King.

While the King kept craving for a male heir, and remarrying one woman after another, his second child from his second wife became the legacy we now remember so well.

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