#AtoZChallenge Archives – Page 31 of 43

April 16, 2022April 18, 2022

N is for Navigators

1400 map of the Atlantic, from Treaty of Tordesillas. Photo by kajmeister in Lisbon.

Have you ever wondered why the Brazilians speak Portuguese? All of South and Central America were overrun with Spanish colonizers–except for Brazil.

The pope brokered a deal with the countries on the Iberian Peninsula to split the world in two halves. The Portuguese got everything to the east, and the Spanish got everything to the west. Easy peasy. The Treaty of Tordesillas.

The Royal Bastard of Fond Memory

Portugal is the stubborn left arm of land on the Iberian Peninsula, never willing to be absorbed. They have their own language, distinctive music, and naval heroes. They timed their independence well, coming together as a country when Spain was still a shattered group of provinces. It helped to have a royal bastard who reigned for nearly half a century.

April 14, 2022April 16, 2022

M is for Marble

The marble-tiled floor of St. Marks in Venice. Photo by kajmeister.

It’s just rock. A geological anomaly of a particular type of creature squeezed in a certain way than pushed out of place by a few tectonic events. Voila! A sculptor’s paradise; an architect’s dream. Imagine the floor! They did…

What Is that Stuff?

Ever since Italians noticed that they had mountains full of this really pretty stone, they’ve been sending blocks of it over to wherever sculptors are drooling. Lots of sculpture is carved from granite, which is cheaper and does last, but not as smooth. Marble forms because limestone is getting heated to “really extreme temperatures” so that minerals within the rock get fused together. In a purty way!

More marble flooring in St. Mark’s. Photo by KK.

Why Is It There?

As Luca Lotelli and Sam Anderson explained in a fascinating NY Times piece, the Italian Apuan alps is the site of one of the oldest quarries of white marble in the world. Cosimo de Medici extracted stone here for marble that the Renaissance artists used.

April 12, 2022April 13, 2022

K is for Kepler

German Kepler stamp, from astampaday.com

Johannes Kepler was a late Renaissance astronomer/astrologer whose work helped launch Newton and the Scientific Revolution. A devout Christian, Kepler searched for ways to prove the divine within nature and the cosmos, creating models that tried to reconcile the Trinity with the movements of the planets and astro-phenomena. While Kepler had his own religious skirmishes with authorities, he managed to avoid the accusations of heresy and tragedy that enfolded is contemporary Galileo.

He also explained snowflakes.

Horoscope from imperial astrologer Kepler. Photo from wikipedia.

Astronomy and Astrology: the STEM Disciplines in 1597

Back in 1600, astronomy was one of the foremost of the sciences, along with astrology. Since astrologers had to calculate planetary conditions down to precise moments of birth using limited information, their work was intricate, even if we might scoff at its purpose today. Astronomy and astrology were, therefore, branches of mathematics, which were categorized under the liberal arts. Math was sometimes taught as part of theology. Physics, which hadn’t developed much beyond Archimedes jumping out of the bathtub, was categorized as a part of “natural philosophy.”

Kepler enjoyed math as a youth and ended up studying under Tycho Brahe in Poland, as well as being imperial mathematician to the Holy Roman Emperors Rudolf II, Matthias, and Ferdinand II. If you want to know what an H.R.E. is, see G is for Ghibellines.