5 Myths about George Washington, Debunked

UPDATED:JULY 28, 2021 ORIGINAL:DEC 11, 2019

5 Myths About George Washington, Debunked

No, he didn’t really chop down that cherry tree, and his teeth weren’t wooden.SARAH PRUITT

Tetra Images/Getty Images

When it comes to mythic American figures, George Washington leads the pack. Commander in chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States, Washington was revered as the “Father of the Nation,” and set up on a pedestal even during his own lifetime. After his death, his legend only grew.

But some of the most famous stories that have passed down through generations about Washington—involving his childhood, his military career and even his appearance—fall squarely into the category of fiction, rather than fact.

Myth #1: He chopped down a cherry tree.

George Washington chopping down the cherry tree — Young George Washington confessing to cutting down a cherry tree.Archive Photos/Getty Images

In undoubtedly the most famous story about Washington’s boyhood, he received a hatchet for a gift, and used it to hack at a cherry tree. When his father, Augustine, asked him who chopped down the tree, young George confessed, earning a hug and the fatherly praise that his honesty was worth more than 1,000 such trees.

In reality, no evidence exists to suggest the nature of Washington’s relationship with Augustine, who died when he was 11, and the story was invented by Mason Locke Weems, one of Washington’s first biographers. A minister-turned-itinerant bookseller, “Parson” Weems published The Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington in 1800, a year after the great man’s death; the cherry tree story didn’t appear until the fifth edition came out in 1806. Weems’s biography benefited from its focus on Washington’s private side (particularly his close bond with his father) rather than his well-known public career, and became a huge bestseller read by generations of American schoolchildren.https://5905e7cc12a5715677c3139c7bc05c46.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

Myth #2: He visited Betsy Ross in 1776 and asked her to sew the first American flag.

George Washington Myths: Betsy Ross and the American flag — George Washington with Betsy Ross as she works on the American flag.Francis G. Mayer/Corbis/VCG/Getty Images

As the story goes, Betsy Ross was sitting in her upholstery shop in Philadelphia in the spring of 1776 when Washington, then commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, came in with three members of the Continental Congress and asked Ross to make a new flag for the rebellious colonies. After looking at the proposed design, Ross suggested making stars with five points, instead of six. She then made a sample flag, which was approved as the new banner of the United States.

There are several problems with this version of events, which gained widespread popularity in the late 19th century, thanks to claims made by Ross’s own descendants. Though Ross did make flags during the Revolutionary War, no historical evidence exists to confirm that she made the first American flag, and most scholars agree that the story is probably more fiction than fact. According to Edward G. Lengel, former chief editor of Washington’s papers and author of Inventing George Washington (2011), Washington did visit Philadelphia briefly in 1776, but he did not meet with anyone in Congress or anyone else about flags, and it’s unclear whether he had made Betsy Ross’s acquaintance.

Myth #3: He had wooden teeth.

George Washingtons teeth, dentures — Dentures worn by George Washington.Gerry Broome/AP Photo

Next to the cherry tree legend, George Washington’s supposed wooden teeth are possibly the most repeated myth about the first president. The truth is, though Washington was famous for his enviable strength and healthy constitution, he suffered from dental problems his entire life. By the time he became president in 1789, Washington had only one of his natural teeth remaining; he finally had that one pulled in 1796.

Uncomfortable to wear, dentures affected how Washington looked in portraits, as well as his public speaking. The dental appliance he wore featured filed-down teeth from animals (probably cows or horses) as well as human teeth (possibly, but not definitely, those of slaves) and teeth fashioned from ivory (including elephant, walrus and hippopotamus). While they may have taken on the appearance of wood after being stained through use, they were never made of wood, which with its porousness, splinters and susceptibility to expansion and contraction with moisture, was not a material commonly used by dentists at the time.

Myth #4: He knelt in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge.

George Washington Myths: The Prayer at Valley Forge — The prayer at Valley Forge.Library of Congress

Among the most prominent legends that grew up around the Continental Army’s now-famous winter encampment at Valley Forge in 1777-78 is the story of a pacifist Quaker man named Isaac Potts supposedly stumbling on Washington kneeling in the snow and praying to God for his army’s deliverance. Moved by Washington’s faith, Potts converted to the Revolutionary cause. Over the years, the scene has been painted, depicted on postage stamps, plaques, marble sculptures and stained glass. President Ronald Reagan even called the image of Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge “the most sublime picture in American history.”

But like the cherry tree legend, little hard evidence exists that this story actually happened. The first version, again, came from Weems, who wrote about it initially in 1804 and later included it in an edition of his Washington biography. As Blake McGready wrote in 2018 in The Journal of the American Revolution, Weems likely intended the story as an allegory illustrating the strength of Revolutionary-era values, and how patriotism could transcend religious differences. Though Potts was a real person and technically could have stumbled upon Washington in prayer as Weems describes, there’s no evidence Potts abandoned his pacifism, and no contemporary evidence to suggest the scene at Valley Forge ever took place.

Myth #5: As the first U.S president, he lived in the White House.

1 Cherry Street, Presidents House — The first presidential residence at 1 Cherry Street in New York, where Washington lived briefly in 1789.Kean Collection/Getty Images

Washington never lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and Washington, D.C. wasn’t even the nation’s capital when he was president. President Washington resided first in a New York mansion facing the East River, at 1 Cherry Street; it was owned by Samuel Osgood, who served as the first postmaster general of the United States. In early 1790, Washington moved his household to another residence in a more convenient location on Broadway, close to Trinity Church.

Later that year, when the temporary capital of the United States moved to Philadelphia, the Washingtons moved into a mansion at 6th and Market Streets, formerly owned by William Penn, the English Quaker best known for founding the colony of Pennsylvania. They remained there until 1797, when John Adams moved into the house as the nation’s second president. Though Washington approved plans for the new capital’s construction and specified the location of the executive mansion (or White House), Adams would be the first president to live there, taking up residence in November 1800.

BY SARAH PRUITT

Sarah Pruitt is a writer and editor based in seacoast New Hampshire. She has been a frequent contributor to History.com since 2005, and is the author of Breaking History: Vanished! (Lyons Press, 2017), which chronicles some of history’s most famous disappearances.

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10 Things You May Not Know About Christopher Columbus

UPDATED:JULY 28, 2021 ORIGINAL:OCT 5, 2012

Check out 10 things you may not know about the explorer who sailed the ocean blue in 1492.CHRISTOPHER KLEIN

1. Columbus didn’t set out to prove the earth was round.
Forget those myths perpetuated by everyone from Washington Irving to Bugs Bunny. There was no need for Columbus to debunk the flat-earthers—the ancient Greeks had already done so. As early as the sixth century B.C., the Greek mathematician Pythagoras surmised the world was round, and two centuries later Aristotle backed him up with astronomical observations. By 1492 most educated people knew the planet was not shaped like a pancake.

2. Columbus was likely not the first European to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
That distinction is generally given to the Norse Viking Leif Eriksson, who is believed to have landed in present-day Newfoundland around 1000 A.D., almost five centuries before Columbus set sail. Some historians even claim that Ireland’s Saint Brendan or other Celtic people crossed the Atlantic before Eriksson. While the United States commemorates Columbus—even though he never set foot on the North American mainland—with parades and a federal holiday, Leif Eriksson Day on October 9 receives little fanfare.

3. Three countries refused to back Columbus’ voyage.
For nearly a decade, Columbus lobbied European monarchies to bankroll his quest to discover a western sea route to Asia. In Portugal, England and France, the response was the same: no. The experts told Columbus his calculations were wrong and that the voyage would take much longer than he thought. Royal advisors in Spain raised similar concerns to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Turns out the naysayers were right. Columbus dramatically underestimated the earth’s circumference and the size of the oceans. Luckily for him, he ran into the uncharted Americas.https://4e819bda72e1c339d6bf9f61894b3312.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

4. Nina and Pinta were not the actual names of two of Columbus’ three ships.
In 15th-century Spain, ships were traditionally named after saints. Salty sailors, however, bestowed less-than-sacred nicknames upon their vessels. Mariners dubbed one of the three ships on Columbus’s 1492 voyage the Pinta, Spanish for “the painted one” or “prostitute.” The Santa Clara, meanwhile, was nicknamed the Nina in honor of its owner, Juan Nino. Although the Santa Maria is called by its official name, its nickname was La Gallega, after the province of Galicia in which it was built.

5. The Santa Maria wrecked on Columbus’ historic voyage.
On Christmas Eve of 1492, a cabin boy ran Columbus’s flagship into a coral reef on the northern coast of Hispaniola, near present-day Cap Haitien, Haiti. Its crew spent a very un-merry Christmas salvaging the Santa Maria’s cargo. Columbus returned to Spain aboard the Nina, but he had to leave nearly 40 crewmembers behind to start the first European settlement in the Americas—La Navidad. When Columbus returned to the settlement in the fall of 1493, none of the crew were found alive.

6. Columbus made four voyages to the New World.
Although best known for his historic 1492 expedition, Columbus returned to the Americas three more times in the following decade. His voyages took him to Caribbean islands, South America and Central America.

7. Columbus returned to Spain in chains in 1500.
Columbus’s governance of Hispaniola could be brutal and tyrannical. Native islanders who didn’t collect enough gold could have their hands cut off, and rebel Spanish colonists were executed at the gallows. Colonists complained to the monarchy about mismanagement, and a royal commissioner dispatched to Hispaniola arrested Columbus in August 1500 and brought him back to Spain in chains. Although Columbus was stripped of his governorship, King Ferdinand not only granted the explorer his freedom but subsidized a fourth voyage.

8. A lunar eclipse may have saved Columbus.
In February 1504, a desperate Columbus was stranded in Jamaica, abandoned by half his crew and denied food by the islanders. The heavens that he relied on for navigation, however, would guide him safely once again. Knowing from his almanac that a lunar eclipse was coming on February 29, 1504, Columbus warned the islanders that his god was upset with their refusal of food and that the moon would “rise inflamed with wrath” as an expression of divine displeasure. On the appointed night, the eclipse darkened the moon and turned it red, and the terrified islanders offered provisions and beseeched Columbus to ask his god for mercy.

9. Even in death, Columbus continued to cross the Atlantic.
Following his death in 1506, Columbus was buried in Valladolid, Spain, and then moved to Seville. At the request of his daughter-in-law, the bodies of Columbus and his son Diego were shipped across the Atlantic to Hispaniola and interred in a Santo Domingo cathedral. When the French captured the island in 1795, the Spanish dug up remains thought to be those of the explorer and moved them to Cuba before returning them to Seville after the Spanish-American War in 1898. However, a box with human remains and the explorer’s name was discovered inside the Santo Domingo cathedral in 1877. Did the Spaniards exhume the wrong body? DNA testing in 2006 found evidence that at least some of the remains in Seville are those of Columbus. The Dominican Republic has refused to let the other remains be tested. It could be possible that, aptly, pieces of Columbus are both in the New World and the Old World.

10. Heirs of Columbus and the Spanish monarchy were in litigation until 1790.
After the death of Columbus, his heirs waged a lengthy legal battle with the Spanish crown, claiming that the monarchy short-changed them on money and profits due the explorer. Most of the Columbian lawsuits were settled by 1536, but the legal proceedings nearly dragged on until the 300th anniversary of Columbus’ famous voyage.BY CHRISTOPHER KLEIN

27 Jul 202127 Jul 2021 AMIR P. ADAM

History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More

Published: Amir P. Adam,27 July 2021

JUL 9, 2021

History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More

From hot-air balloons floating over Paris to a dirigible crashing over New Jersey, here are some of the biggest moments of aviation history. AARON RANDLE

For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The quest has led from kite flying in ancient China to hydrogen-powered hot-air balloons in 18th-century France to contemporary aircraft so sophisticated they can’t be detected by radar or the human eye.

Below is a timeline of humans’ obsession with flight, from da Vinci to drones. Fasten your seatbelt and prepare for liftoff.

1505-06: Da Vinci dreams of flight, publishes his findings

Few figures in history had more detailed ideas, theories and imaginings on aviation as the Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. His book Codex on the Flight of Birds contained thousands of notes and hundreds of sketches on the nature of flight and aerodynamic principles that would lay much of the early groundwork for—and greatly influence—the development of aviation and manmade aircraft.

November 21, 1783: First manned hot-air balloon flight

Two months after French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier engineered a successful test flight with a duck, a sheep and a rooster as passengers, two humans ascended in a Montgolfier-designed balloon over Paris. Powered by a hand-fed fire, the paper-and-silk aircraft rose 500 vertical feet and traveled some 5.5 miles over about half an hour. But in an 18th-century version of the space race, rival balloon engineers Jacques Alexander Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert upped the ante just 10 days later. Their balloon, powered by hydrogen gas, traveled 25 miles and stayed aloft more than two hours.https://dbb1cb0c34ee087c31dfc99ba8a45e3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

1809-1810: Sir George Cayley introduces aerodynamics

At the dawn of the 19th century, English philosopher George Cayley published “On Aerial Navigation,” a radical series of papers credited with introducing the world to the study of aerodynamics. By that time, the man who came to be known as “the father of aviation” had already been the first to identify the four forces of flight (weight, lift, drag, thrust), developed the first concept of a fixed-wing flying machine and designed the first glider reported to have carried a human aloft.

WATCH: ‘The Machines That Built America’ premieres Sunday, July 18 at 9/8c. Watch a preview now.https://www.history.com/embed/1907032131914

September 24, 1852: Giffard’s dirigible proves powered air travel is possible

Half a century before the Wright brothers took to the skies, French engineer Henri Giffard manned the first-ever powered and controllable airborne flight. Giffard, who invented the steam injector, traveled almost 17 miles from Paris to Élancourt in his “Giffard Dirigible,” a 143-foot-long, cigar-shaped airship loosely steered by a three-bladed propeller that was powered by a 250-pound, 3-horsepower engine, itself lit by a 100-pound boiler. The flight proved that a steam-powered airship could be steered and controlled.

1876: The internal combustion engine changes everything

Building on advances by French engineers, German engineer Nikolaus Otto devised a lighter, more efficient, gas-powered combustion engine, providing an alternative to the previously universal steam-powered engine. In addition to revolutionizing automobile travel, the innovation ushered in a new era of longer, more controlled aviation.https://dbb1cb0c34ee087c31dfc99ba8a45e3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

December 17, 1903: The Wright brothers become airborne—briefly

Orville and Wilbur Wright on a test flight

Flying from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first controlled, sustained flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft. Each brother flew their wooden, gasoline-powered propeller biplane, the “Wright Flyer,” twice (four flights total), with the shortest lasting 12 seconds and the longest sustaining flight for about 59 seconds. Considered a historic event today, the feat was largely ignored by newspapers of the time, who believed the flights were too short to be important.

1907: The first helicopter lifts off

A vintage French postcard featuring the helicopter of Paul Cornu of Lisieux, France, who piloted the first manned flight of a rotary wing aircraft on 13th November 1907. — A vintage French postcard featuring the helicopter of Paul Cornu of Lisieux, France, who piloted the first manned flight of a rotary wing aircraft in November 1907.Paul Popper/Popperfoto via Getty Images

French engineer and bicycle maker Paul Cornu became the first man to ride a rotary-wing, vertical-lift aircraft, a precursor to today’s helicopter, when he was lifted about 1.5 meters off the ground for 20 seconds near Lisieux, France. Versions of the helicopter had been toyed with in the past—Italian engineer Enrico Forlanini debuted the first rotorcraft three decades prior in 1877. And it would be improved upon in the future, with American designer Igor Sikorsky introducing a more standardized version in Stratford, Connecticut in 1939. But it was Cornu’s short flight that would land him in the history books as the definitive first.

1911-12: Harriet Quimby achieves two firsts for women pilots

Journalist Harriet Quimby became the first American woman ever awarded a pilot’s license in 1911, after just four months of flight lessons. Capitalizing on her charisma and showmanship (she became as famous for her violet satin flying suit as for her attention to safety checks), Quimby achieved another first the following year when she became the first woman to fly solo across the English channel. The feat was overshadowed, however, by the sinking of the Titanic two days earlier.

October 1911: The aircraft becomes militarized

Italy became the first country to significantly incorporate aircraft into military operations when, during the Turkish-Italian war, it employed both monoplanes and airships for bombing, reconnaissance and transportation. Within a few years, aircraft would play a decisive role in the World War I.

January 1, 1914: First commercial passenger flight

On New Year’s Day, pilot Tony Jannus transported a single passenger, Mayor Abe Pheil of St. Petersburg, Florida across Tampa Bay via his flying airboat, the “St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line.” The 23-mile flight (mostly along the Tampa Bay shore) cost $5.00 and would lay the foundation for the commercial airline industry.

1914-1918: World war accelerates the militarization of aircraft

World War I became the first major conflict to use aircraft on a large-scale, expanding their use in active combat. Nations appointed high-ranking generals to oversee air strategy, and a new breed of war hero emerged: the fighter pilot or “flying ace.”

According to The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Military Aircraft, France was the war’s leading aircraft manufacturer, producing nearly 68,000 planes between 1914 and 1918. Of those, nearly 53,000 were shot down, crashed or damaged.

READ MORE: 6 Famous World War I Flying Aces

June 1919: First nonstop transatlantic flight

The first nonstop transatlantic flight ended with a nosedive into a bog in western Ireland. The pilots walked away unscathed.Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Flying a modified ‘Vickers Vimy’ bomber from the Great War, British aviators and war veterans John Alcock and Arthur Brown made the first-ever nonstop transatlantic flight. Their perilous 16-hour journey, undertaken eight years before Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic alone, started in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where they barely cleared the trees at the end of the runway. After a calamity-filled flight, they crash-landed in a peat bog in County Galway, Ireland; remarkably, neither man was injured.

1921: Bessie Coleman becomes the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license

The fact that Jim Crow-era U.S. flight schools wouldn’t accept a Black woman didn’t stop Bessie Coleman. Instead, the Texas-born sharecropper’s daughter, one of 13 siblings, learned French so she could apply to the Caudron Brothers’ School of Aviation in Le Crotoy, France. There, in 1921, she became the first African American woman to earn a pilot’s license. After performing the first public flight by a Black woman in 1922—including her soon-to-be trademark loop-the-loop and figure-8 aerial maneuvers—she became renowned for her thrilling daredevil air shows and for using her growing fame to encourage Black Americans to pursue flying. Coleman died tragically in 1926, as a passenger in a routine test flight. Thousands reportedly attended her funeral in Chicago.

1927: Lucky Lindy makes first solo transatlantic flight

Charles Lindbergh with his historic plane 'Spirit of St. Louis' — Charles Lindbergh with his historic plane ‘Spirit of St. Louis’

Nearly a decade after Alcock and Brown made their transatlantic flight together, 25-year-old Charles Lindbergh of Detroit was thrust into worldwide fame when he completed the first solo crossing, just a few days after a pair of celebrated French aviators perished in their own attempt. Flying the “Spirit of St. Louis” aircraft from New York to Paris, “Lucky Lindy” made the first transatlantic voyage between two major hubs—and the longest transatlantic flight by more than 2,000 miles. The feat instantly made Lindbergh one of the great folk heroes of his time, earned him the Medal of Honor and helped usher in a new era of interest in the possibilities of aviation.

1932: Amelia Earhart repeats Lindbergh’s feat

Amelia Earhart, pictured with the Lockheed Electra in which she disappeared in 1937. — Aviatrix Amelia EarhartSSPL/Getty Images

Five years after Lindbergh completed his flight, “Lady Lindy” Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, setting off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland on May 20, 1932 and landing some 14 hours later in Culmore, Northern Ireland. In her career as an aviator, Earhart would become a worldwide celebrity, setting several women’s speed, domestic distance and transcontinental aviation records. Her most memorable feat, however, would prove to be her last. In 1937, while attempting to circumnavigate the globe, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific ocean and was never seen or heard from again.

1937: The Hindenburg crashes…along with the ‘Age of Airships’

Between WWI and WWII, aviation pioneers and major aircraft companies like Germany’s Luftshiffbau Zeppelin tried hard to popularize bulbous, lighter-than-air airships—essentially giant flying gas bags—as a mode of commercial transportation. The promise of the steam-powered, hydrogen-filled airships quickly evaporated, however, after the infamous 1937 Hindenburg disaster. That’s when the gas inside the Zeppelin company’s flagship Hindenburg vessel exploded during a landing attempt, killing 35 passengers and crew members and badly burning the majority of the 62 remaining survivors.

October 14, 1947: Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier

An ace combat fighter during WWII, Chuck Yeager earned the title “Fastest Man Alive” when he hit 700 m.p.h. while testing the experimental X-1 supersonic rocket jet for the military over the Mojave Desert in 1947. Being the first person to travel faster than the speed of sound has been hailed as one of the most epic feats in the history of aviation—not bad for someone who got sick to his stomach after his first-ever flight.

READ MORE: 6 Renowned Tuskegee Airmen

1949: The world’s first commercial jetliner takes off

Early passenger air travel was noisy, cold, uncomfortable and bumpy, as planes flew at low altitudes that brought them through, not above, the weather. But when the British-manufactured de Havilland Comet took its first flight in 1949—boasting four turbine engines, a pressurized cabin, large windows and a relatively comfortable seating area—it marked a pivotal step in modern commercial air travel. An early, flawed design however, caused the de Havilland to be grounded after a series of mid-flight disasters—but not before giving the world a glimpse of what was possible.

1954-1957: Boeing glamorizes flying

With the debut of the sleek 707 aircraft, touted for its comfort, speed and safety, Seattle-based Boeing ushered in the age of modern American jet travel. Pan American Airways became the first commercial carrier to take delivery of the elongated, swept-wing planes, launching daily flights from New York to Paris. The 707 quickly became a symbol of postwar modernity—a time when air travel would become commonplace, people dressed up to fly and flight attendants reflected the epitome of chic. The plane even inspired Frank Sinatra’s hit song “Come Fly With Me.”

March 27, 1977: Disaster at Tenerife

In the greatest aviation disaster in history, 583 people were killed and dozens more injured when two Boeing 747 jets—Pan Am 1736 and KLM 4805—collided on the Los Rodeos Airport runway in Spain’s Canary Islands. The collision occurred when the KLM jet, trying to navigate a runway shrouded in fog, initiated its takeoff run while the Pan Am jetliner was still on the runway. All aboard the KLM flight and most on the Pan Am flight were killed. Tragically, neither plane was scheduled to fly from that airport on that day, but a small bomb set off at a nearby airport caused them both to be diverted to Los Rodeos.

1978: Flight goes electronic

The U.S. Air Force developed and debuted the first fly-by-wire operating system for its F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane. The system, which replaced the aircraft’s manual flight control system with an electronic one, ushered in aviation’s “Information Age,” one in which navigation, communications and hundreds of other operating systems are automated with computers. This advance has led to developments like unmanned aerial vehicles and drones, more nimble missiles and the proliferation of stealth aircraft.https://dbb1cb0c34ee087c31dfc99ba8a45e3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

1986: Around the world, without landing

American pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck) completed the first around-the-world flight without refueling or landing. Their “Rutan Model 76 Voyager,” a single-wing, twin-engine craft designed by Rutan’s brother, was built with 17 fuel tanks to accommodate long-distance flight. TAGSAVIATIONBY AARON RANDLE

https://dbb1cb0c34ee087c31dfc99ba8a45e3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.htmlhttps://dbb1cb0c34ee087c31dfc99ba8a45e3d.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

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8 Facts About Ancient Egypt’s Hieroglyphic Writing

JUL 27, 2021

8 Facts About Ancient Egypt’s Hieroglyphic Writing

The script found on the insides of ancient Egyptian temples, monuments and tombs represents a complex remnant of history.PATRICK J. KIGER

Next to the pyramids, the Sphinx and mummies, one of the most intriguing discoveries from ancient Egyptian civilization is a form of writing that appears like stylized pictures of people, animals and objects. Hieroglyphic writing, whose name comes from hieroglyphikos, the Greek word for “sacred carving,” has been found carved into stone walls more than 5,000 years ago, and was used up until the 4th century A.D.

The Egyptians adorned the insides of their temples, monuments and tombs with hieroglyphic writing and wrote it on papyrus, an ancient paper made from reeds.

Below are nine key facts about hieroglyphic writing.

1. Hieroglyphics uses pictures, but it isn’t picture writing.

Because the symbols used in hieroglyphic writing look like little pictures of people, animals and objects, it’s easy to assume that the hieroglyphs represent those things. Instead, some hieroglyphs signify sounds in the ancient Egyptian language, just as the characters in the Roman alphabet do. Others are ideographic signs, which represent concepts but don’t have a sound attached.

2. Hieroglyphic writing is linked to elite tombs.

Details of Hieroglyphs in Luxor, Valley of Kings. — Details of hieroglyphs in Luxor, Valley of Kings.Francesco Riccardo Iacomino/Getty Images

“The earliest hieroglyphic writing is commonly found on grave goods found in royal tombs at Abydos that precede the historical period,” explains Peter F. Dorman, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. “Since hieroglyphs are pictorial, the link with early formal art is indelible, especially the representation of the king with his royal titulary, which can be seen on commemorative monuments placed in the earliest temples.”

Though the system was eventually used for other types of writing, hieroglyphs never lost their initial connection with elite contexts in commemorative settings like temples and tombs, Dorman explains.

People who weren’t royals also sometimes used hieroglyphics in their private tombs and monuments, provided they were wealthy enough to afford the services of stone carvers.

3. Ancient Egyptians used other forms of writing.

Because hieroglyphic writing was so complicated, the ancient Egyptians developed other types of writing that were more convenient. Hieratic writing, a cursive script that was written on papyrus with a pen or brush, or upon a piece of limestone called an ostracon was invented for use primarily on papyrus, a more fragile material. But, Dornan says, it rarely made the jump to formal monuments. Demotic, another form of writing that was developed in the 800s B.C., was used for everyday documents, as well as for literary works.

4. Hieroglyphic writing has odd quirks.

Hieroglyphic writing doesn’t have any spaces between the words, and there’s no punctuation. That means that readers have to have a good grasp of ancient Egyptian grammar and know something about the context of a message in order to be able to tell individual words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs and chapters apart. Additionally, unlike modern English, hieroglyphics aren’t necessarily read horizontally from left to right. Hieroglyphics could be written either from left to right, or right to left, and vertically as well as horizontally.

5. Few Egyptians could read hieroglyphic writing.

In the later stages of ancient Egyptian civilization, only priests were able to read hieroglyphic writing, according to James P. Allen in his book Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs. “Inscriptions that were meant to have a larger audience were carved in Demotic instead,” he writes.

6. Hieroglyphic writing gradually died out.

After the Ptolemies, who were of Macedonian descent, began to rule Egypt in the 300s B.C., Greek replaced Egyptian as the official court language. About 600 years later, in 384 A.D., the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius approved a decree that banned pagan religion from being practiced in Egypt, which was the beginning of the end for the use of hieroglyphics, according to author Stephane Rossini.

By the time that the last known hieroglyphic writing was carved into the Philae Temple in 394 A.D. there probably were few Egyptian sculptors left who even could understand what they were being asked to carve into the walls, as Hilary Wilson writes in Understanding Hieroglyphs: A Compete Introductory Guide.

7. The Rosetta Stone led to a breakthrough.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 and featured writing in three different scripts: hieroglyphic, demotic and ancient Greek.

In 1799, French soldiers serving under Napoleon in Egypt, who were repairing a fort in the town of Rashid (also known as Rosetta), discovered a stone slab that became known as the Rosetta Stone. It was covered with writing in three different scripts—hieroglyphic writing, demotic and ancient Greek. The three languages engraved upon a single stone enabled researchers to decipher the hieroglyphic writing.

British scientist Thomas Young, who began studying the stone in 1814, first deduced that some of the symbols were phonetic spellings of royal names. Then, between 1822 and 1822, French linguist Jean-Francois Champollion was able to show that hieroglyphics were a combination of phonetic and ideographic symbols. He was able to decipher the text, which was a message from Egyptian priests to Ptolemy V written in 196 B.C.

“Ultimately Champollion had the upper hand, thanks to his deep study of Coptic, which is the latest phase of the Egyptian language,” Dorman explains. That knowledge “allowed him to recognize grammatical features that had escaped Young.”

8. Deciphering hieroglyphic writing remains a challenge.

Figuring out the meaning of texts written in hieroglyphic writing remains a big challenge for scholars, and requires a certain amount of subjective interpretation. Even reading them aloud isn’t easy.

“It’s not so much the usage of phonetic signs that makes translations challenging, but rather the fact that the full vocalization of ancient Egyptian is not written out,” Dorman says. “So the pronunciation of words and especially the intricacies of the Egyptian verbal system remain topics of conjecture.”

27 Jul 2021 AMIR P. ADAM

10 Inventions From China’s Han Dynasty That Changed the World

Published: Amir P.Adam,27 July 2021

SEP 20, 2019

10 Inventions From China’s Han Dynasty That Changed the World

The 400-year rule of the Han Dynasty generated a slew of innovations in everything from agriculture to metallurgy to seismology.PATRICK J. KIGER

Photo12/Universal Images Group/Getty Image

When a commoner named Liu Bang became the first emperor of the Han Dynasty in 206 B.C., it was the start of a period of more than 400 years that was marked by advances in everything from record-keeping to agriculture to health care.

“There were major inventions and developments in science and technology,” Robin D.S. Yates, the James McGill Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal, explains. “As with all inventions, some of these only came into their own in later, sometimes much later times.”

Here are a few of the biggest breakthroughs of the Han Dynasty.

The Invention of Paper

Inventions of the Han Dynasty: Paper — The production of paper.API/Gamma-Rapho/Getty Images

The earliest scrap of paper still in existence, a crude material made mostly from hemp fiber found in a tomb in China in 1957, dates back to sometime between 140 and 87 B.C. But Cai Lun, a eunuch in the Han court in 105 A.D., is credited as the inventor of the first really high-quality writing paper, which he fashioned by crushing and combining tree bark, hemp, linen rags, and scraps from fishing nets and then treating the mixture with lye to break it down into finer fibers, according to Li Shi’s book The History of Science and Technology in the Qin and Han Dynasty.https://9b5e6c92b35d5b98f57ecb076ebffbc5.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“Administrative documents continued to be written on boards of wood and slips of bamboo for several centuries—they preserved better, perhaps,” Yates explains. But after the collapse of the dynasty, Cai Lun’s improved paper came into its own.

The Suspension Bridge

Inventions of the Han Dynasty: Suspension Bridge — An undated photograph of a Chinese built suspension bridge, with boats docked at a pier in foreground, in the Szechwan Province, China.Buyenlarge/Getty Images

According to Robert Temple’s highly-regarded history of Chinese inventions, The Genius of China, the Han Dynasty saw the development of the suspension bridge, a flat roadway suspended from cables, which probably evolved from simple rope bridges developed to span small gorges. But by 90 A.D., Han engineers were building more sophisticated structures with wooden planks.

Deep Drilling

Han Dynasty salt miners in the First Century B.C. were the first to build derricks and use cast iron drill bits to dig holes as deep as 4,800 feet into the Earth in search of brine, which they would extract from below with tubes, according to Temple’s book. The technique they developed was the forerunner of modern oil and gas exploration.

The Wheelbarrow

Inventions of the Han Dynasty: Wheelbarrow — A model of a Chinese wheelbarrow. It can accommodate a much larger wheel, thus reducing the rolling resistance, and by having the wheel almost directly under the load it reduced the weight on the user’s arms.SSPL/Getty Images

The wheelbarrow was developed in China perhaps as early as 100 B.C, according to this 1994 article by M.J.T. Lewis in the journal Technology and Culture.https://9b5e6c92b35d5b98f57ecb076ebffbc5.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

The Seismograph

Inventions from the Han Dynasty: Seismoscope — The Chinese astronomer, mathematician and seismologist, Zhang Heng (78-139 A.D.) described the earliest seismoscope known in about 132 A.D. Arriving shock waves displace a pendulum linked to a mechanism which opens the jaws of the dragon facing the direction of the earthquake. A ball falls from the dragon’s teeth into the mouth of a toad below to record the event. SSPL/Getty Images

Zhang Heng, an early Chinese scientist, explored fields ranging from astronomy to clock-making. But he’s probably best known for creating the first device for detecting distant earthquakes, which he introduced to the Han court in 132 A.D. Its design was simple—an urn equipped with a pendulum.

When it picked up a vibration, it dropped a ball from the mouth of a metal dragon into a metal frog, creating a loud clang. The first time that happened, nobody in the court reportedly felt anything, but a few days later, a messenger from a village 400 miles away arrived to inform the emperor that an earthquake had occurred there.

The Blast Furnace

Right around the beginning of the Han Dynasty in the early 200s B.C., Chinese metallurgists built the first blast furnaces, which pumped a blast of air into a heated batch of iron ore to produce cast iron, according to Chinese technology historian Donald B. Wagner.

The Adjustable Wrench

According to Temple, the First Century B.C. Chinese used a tool somewhat similar to the one used by plumbers and tinkerers, in which a sliding caliper gauge allowed the pieces to be adjusted. (Modern wrenches have a worm screw, a different mechanism, but the function is the same.) Initially, the devices seem to have been used for measuring, rather than loosening and tightening lug nuts or pipes.

The Moldboard Plow

Inventions of the Han Dynasty: Plow, Kuan — 12th century Chinese print of a farmer and ox plow.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

According to Robert Greenburger’s book The Technology of Ancient China, the Chinese were using iron plows to till farm fields as far back as the 6th Century B.C. But a couple of hundred years later, some ingenious Han inventor came up with the kuan, also known as the moldboard plow. The tool had a central piece that ended in a sharp point, and wings to push the soil away and reduce the friction. The new plow helped the Chinese practice contour plowing, in which they followed the shapes of the hills, to reduce soil erosion.

The Stirrup

Inventions from the Han Dynasty: Stirrups — An illustration of a man on a horse dating back 2,000 years during the Han Dynasty.Cl2004lhy/Getty Images

Ancient horsemen had to let their legs dangle as they rode, though the Romans rigged a hand-hold on saddles to help them stay on the horse when things got rough. A Han Dynasty inventor made things a lot easier by making cast iron or bronze devices that a rider could slip his foot into, according to Temple. It was such a revolutionary invention that it spread over the next several centuries across Asia to Europe, where it made it possible for medieval knights to ride their steeds in heavy armor without tumbling off.

The Rudder

The Chinese developed the device for steering a ship in the First Century A.D., according to Chinese technology historian Yongxiang Lu.

The rudder enabled ships to steer without using oars, making it a lot easier to navigate. According to Temple’s book. the invention took about millennium to reach the west, where it helped Christopher Columbus and other explorers navigate the ocean. TAGSINVENTORSBY PATRICK J. KIGER

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Tupac Facts: 22 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know About The Legendary Rapper

Tupac’s all-too-short career is legendary, but it’s a few precise moments that made him into the extraordinary rapper, actor and personality that he was.

1. Despite becoming a West Coast legend, Tupac wasn’t even born there…Tupac was actually born in East Harlem, New York City. This may seem surprising as he later helped to fuel a deadly feud between the East Coast and West Coast, with Pac choosing to rep the latter. He moved to California in 1988. Picture: Rex
2. Tupac had some harsh words for Donald Trump back in 1992.In a unreleased interview with MTV Pac said: “Everybody’s taught that. You wanna be successful? You wanna be like Trump? Gimme gimme gimme, push push push push, step step step, crush crush crush. That’s how it all is… It’s too much money here. Nobody should be hitting the lotto for 36 million and we’ve got people starving in the streets. That’s not idealistic, that’s just real. That’s just stupid… There’s no way that these people should own planes and there are people who don’t have houses.”
3. Believe it or not, studying Shakespeare would define Pac’s entire career.It certainly doesn’t sound like a conventional start for a rapper, but one of Tupac’s biggest influences was in fact Shakespeare. He studied the English writer when he attending the Baltimore School for the Arts and said: “I love Shakespeare. He wrote some of the rawest stories, man. I mean look at Romeo and Juliet. That’s some serious ghetto s**t.”
4. Before he was a famous rapper, Tupac was in ‘Digital Underground’.He went on to become possibly the most famous rapper in the world, but like most people Tupac has to work his way up the top spot. His career kicked off as a backup dancer and MC in the hip-hop group Digital Underground before he became a solo artist. Picture: Yearbook
5. The beginning of Pac’s notorious fall-out with Biggie.Tupac and Biggie were the main agents in the notorious East Coast – West Coast beef. But before it started they were actually friends. The issues started when Biggie released ‘Who Shot Ya?’ – a song that Tupac interpreted as a dis song towards him. The track was the beginning of what went on to become the infamous hip-hop coastal war and shaped the music Tupac made from that moment on.
6. Tupac predicted: “I will spark the brain that will change the world.”In one of his most extraordinary interviews Tupac ever gave, with MTV in 1994, the rapper came out with the line that would go on to be the most quoted Tupac statement of all time: “I’m not saying I’m going to rule the world or I’m going to change the world. But I guarantee I will spark the brain that will change the world. That’s our job – to spark somebody else watching us.”
7. Tupac was arrested for sexually assaulting a woman.The victim alleged that Shakur and his entourage raped her in a hotel room. Pac denied the charges, but was sentenced to 1.5 to 4.5 years in prison. He served nine months in total from February 14, 1995 at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. Picture: MTV
8. Swapping talent for freedom in 2Pac’s legendary deal with Suge Knight.When Tupac was in prison in 1995 it was music producer Suge Knight and Jimmy Iovine who paid the hefty $1.4 million bail to get him released, as Tupac couldn’t afford to pay it himself. In return Tupac contractually agreed to make three albums under Death Row Records.
9. The controversy surrounding Tupac’s song lyrics.Tupac often wrote lyrics about issues including racism, police brutality, poverty and politics. His album ‘2Pacalypse Now’ was one of his most political works and a defining moment in his career came as a result of it when it was claimed the album influenced a youth in Texas to shoot a state trooper. Then US Vice President Dan Quayle publicly criticised Tupac at the time, saying: “There’s no reason for a record like this to be released. It has no place in our society.”
10. The release of his first album ‘2Pacalypse Now’.In ’91 Tupac released his first album 2Pacalypse now. The album didn’t generate any top 10 hits and didn’t find the success that many think it did. Nonetheless, it was a defining moment of 2Pac’s career and proved influential in the creation of the next generation of rappers including Nas, Eminem and Game, who all said it inspired their music.
11. Tupac broke into the mainstream with the release of his second album in ’93.Tupac may not have found the success he hoped for with his first album but his second studio album broke him into the mainstream when it was released in 1993. The album spawned singles ‘Keep Ya Hear Up’ and ‘I Get Around’ and eventually reached platinum status.
12. “We need to shock the people, so let’s shock the people!”That’s what Tupac told the Grammys crowd in 1996 before being joined on stage by the reunited Kiss, who were in full costume for the first time in 15 years. Picture: Getty
13. Forming the group ‘Thug Life.’In 1994 Tupac formed the hip-hop group ‘Thug Life’ consisting of Syke Stretch, Mopreme Shakur, The Rated R, Macadoshis and Kato. The group only released one album ‘Thug Life: Volume 1’ – which sold gold. To mark the formation of the band Tupac had the infamous ‘Thug Life’ tattoo inked across his stomach. Picture: Getty
14. Tupac and a very close friendship with Jada Pinkett (now Jada Pinkett Smith).In the documentary Tupac: Resurrection, Shakur says, “Jada is my heart. She will be my friend for my whole life.” Jada also calls him “one of my best friends. He was like a brother. It was beyond friendship for us. The type of relationship we had, you only get that once in a lifetime.” Jada has since denied there was any romance between the pair.
15. The release of ‘All Eyez On Me’.Tupac’s 1996 album, featuring some of his most populars singles including ‘How Do U Want It’ and ‘California Love’ went on to become one of the most acclaimed albums in 90’s rap. It was 5x certified platinum after just two months and 9x platinum after just two years.
16. Getting a name on the big screen in his breakout film ‘Juice.’Tupac had been acting since he was a kid but his breakout-acting role was in the 1992 American Crime Drama ‘Juice.’ Tupac played Roland Bishop, a troubled teen that turns into a murderous sociopath. Two years later Tupac starred in ‘Above The Rim,’ for which he also contributed to the soundtrack with ‘Pour Out A Little Liqour.’
17. More music has been released since Tupac’s death than when he was alive.Shakur has sold over 75 million records worldwide, with the bulk of that coming after his death; seven of his 11 platinum albums were released posthumously.
18. Snoop Dogg and Tupac’s on off relationship.Snoop and Tupac were often seen out together, they were close. But Snoop recently confirmed that his last encounter with Pac wasn’t a good one. After being asked in an interview how he felt about Biggie and Puff, Snoop called them his ‘Homeboys.’ Tupac clearly felt betrayed by this, as the next time he saw Snoop he totally ignored him. That was the pair’s last encounter before Tupac died.
19. The release of California Love.The first single 2Pac released, as a part of his death with Death Row Records was ‘California Love.’ Note the Dr Dre produced track hears Tupac rap “Out on bail, fresh out of jail, California dreamin”. The track went on to become his most successful and probably his most loved.
20. The moment Snoop Dogg was joined by a Tupac hologram at Coachella.In 2012 the Coachella audience didn’t know how to react when Tupac was presented right before their eyes in a hologram form. He performed alongside Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg, making history even after his death.
21. Meeting Joshua and creating ‘Joshua’s Dream.’In 1993 Tupac received a letter from the parents of a dying boy named Joshua. They said it was Joshua’s dying wish to meet Tupac. Tupac flew to Maryland to meet Joshua and took him to a basketball game. The boy obviously made a huge impact on Tupac, as soon after Joshua’s death Tupac renamed his publishing company from Ghetto Gospel Music to Joshua’s Dream.
22. Fuelling the fire in the infamous East Coast/ West Coast beef.Tupac was not happy with Biggie and he made it known on 1996 single ‘Hit ‘Em Up,’ when he took shots at his former friend and a ton of other East Coast rappers including Puff Daddy. The most notorious lyric was Tupac claiming that he had slept with Biggie’s wife, Faith Evans. Tupac was killed three months after its release.

Featured AMIR P. ADAM

Top 10 countries with the worst education system in Africa

by Contributor 5th March 2021 in EDUCATION Reading Time: 7 mins readA A Share on FacebookShare on TwitterJoin @Biznake on Telegram

Worst education system in Africa: The United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Educational Development Index (EDI) tends to attract most attention for the countries that perform at the very top. First-world and OECD countries are lauded for the strength of their education systems, the level at which their populations are developing, and much is made of who may have moved up or down within the top 10. Unsurprisingly, these top countries consist mostly of Scandinavian and Nordic countries – Norway is currently ranked number 1 under the Human Development Index (HDI) while the bottom half of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) report is heavily populated by countries from the developing world.

One factor studied in the HDI is the Education Index. The UNDP ranks countries through a series of parameters that lets us know just how good – or bad – a country’s education system really is. All the way at the very bottom you’ll find that the entries are almost invariably African; a stark reminder, if any were needed, of the abysmal social conditions and living standards within the continent.

Rentier states are countries wherein the government’s lucrative sales of national resources mean they forego tax revenue – revenue that would normally fund national social programs and policies. Many familiar with this phenomenon know it as the ‘Resource Curse,’ and are aware that it’s a problem that tends to afflict – but is not limited to – former-colonial, developing countries. These resources can be anything from coffee, minerals, and crops, to diamonds, gold, or the big resource on campus – oil. This type of state rentierism is a hallmark of governments in South America, Africa, and the Middle East, that tend to be up to their ears in natural resources with very little regulation.https://79c07c25ae25377d1fdeba7dba6bb077.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

African states have suffered from this problem, with natural resources fueling or even sparking civil and interstate wars. The blood diamonds funding the rebels in Sierra Leone is just one stark example. In states riddled with much larger problems, such as child soldiers, civil wars, genocide, corruption, and widespread tribal conflict, it might seem understandable that education falls by the wayside. But many people on the world stage believe that education is the ‘key’ to the growth of the developing world and that it is an indispensible resource that cannot be ignored. Below is a list of ten countries with the worst education levels in the world. Let’s hope that sometime in the future, things start looking up for countries like…

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10. Angola (0.685 EDI)

Tenth on the list with an Education Development Index of 0.685 is Angola. With the highest Adult Literacy Rate (ALR) on this list of 70.1%, Angola still clearly stands head and shoulders above its continental compatriots on this list. In fact, Angola has increased efforts to improve the national education system in accordance with UNESCO’s ‘Education for All’ program, and hopes to achieve its goals by 2015. Currently the United Kingdom’s Chatham House has proposed joint efforts to help the coastal African nation achieve and surpass the initiative’s proposed target of a 2015 completion date.

Unfortunately, ranking 111th in the UNESCO EDI still means that the education system in Angola is in dire straits.

9. Gambia (0.677 EDI)

Next up there’s Gambia with an EDI score of 0.677, and Adult Literacy Rate of 50 % (the eleventh lowest in the world). In Gambia, there is only a 4.1% Tertiary Enrollment Ratio for the national education system which consists of a whopping 574 schools. The Gambian president Yahya Jammeh was recently quoted as stating that ‘Gays are vermin’ while at a recent UN address, a comment which might serve to illuminate the current state of the country’s development. According to President Jammeh, Gambia is fighting gays “the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes” and LGBT could only stand for “Leprosy, Gonorrhea, Bacteria and Tuberculosis”. Perhaps once national education is given a higher priority on the national agenda, the country’s leaders could find themselves more enlightened to the blight of oppressed groups in their country.

8. Zambia (0.654 EDI)

At the 8th position is Zambia. In Zambia, there are three universities and several technical schools that provide higher education. The Ministry of Science and Technology and vocational Training (MSTVT) in Zambia was also developed in 1992 to foster growth in technological fields. Educational opportunities beyond secondary school are limited in Zambia. After secondary school, most students study at the various colleges, around the country. Normally they all select students on the basis of ability; competition for places is intense.

7. Guinea (0.634 EDI)

Guinea’s 114 ranking in UNESCO’s Education analysis gives a pretty clear picture of education in the West African country. It’s Adult Literacy Rate of 41% is the tenth lowest in the world, and there is an abysmally low ‘Satisfaction with Education Quality’ ranking of 3 in their HDI ranking. Currently, the country is witnessing protests throughout the capital city of Conakry following a series of power cuts that affected the poorest sections of the population. Guinean citizens have begun protesting through the streets and have even ransacked government buildings in the ensuing riots. Ongoing social unrest like this means the government’s – and students’ focus – is far from educational improvement.

6. Eritrea (0.623 EDI)

Coming in 6th is Eritrea – ranked 115st in the world – boasting one of the highest adult literacy rates on this list with a 67.8% ALR. Things can’t be so bad, right? Think again. The country’s Tertiary Enrollment ratio was a dismal 2% and the country has a Gross Primary Enrollment ratio of 45% – the lowest on this list. The former Ethiopian province is currently going through a bit of a scandal as the government has been forcing Eritrean expatriates living in Britain to pay a 2% “Diaspora tax”. The dictatorship in Eritrea has caused a massive diaspora to flee the country, and it was recently reported that many Eritrean refugees have been found in slave and torture camps while in Egypt and Sudan.

5. Ethiopia (0.622 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

Ethiopia brings us to number 5 with a 0.622 EDI – barely nudging out Eritrea by 0.001 – and an ALR of 39%; the 5th lowest in the world. With some of the lowest educational statistics in the world, the system in Ethiopia looks bleak for the country’s schoolchildren.

With a Gross Enrollment Ratio of 5.5%, the situation would seem almost hopeless but a recent World Bank publication states that the WB’s Board of Executive Directors has “approved major financing for Ethiopia to transform the quality of its teaching and learning for more than 21 million children in primary and secondary schools”. The project will receive US $550 million of investment towards their goal of increasing educational quality in the country. Hopefully the project is successful and Ethiopia can find its way out of the bottom rungs of international education rankings.

4. Central African Republic (0.617 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

4th last in UNESCO’s Education ranking is the Central African Republic. Their 56.6% adult literacy rate only makes them 19th last in the world, but their education levels may be taking a back seat to the mass exodus taking place within the country that some are calling an “ethnic cleansing”. The country is currently engulfed in internal violence with “people killed by machetes, torture, lynchings, shootings, explosion and burning”. The religious clash has killed thousands and displaced millions since the beginning of the violence in 2012. Despite the violence, UN officials are still pushing for increased education efforts in the country and are aiming to improve education levels amongst refugees.

3. Mali (0.612 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

Mali comes in at number 3 with a 31.1% adult literacy rate making it the second lowest on this list. 2012 saw massive amounts of internal violence within the country when the nomadic Tuareg tribe took control in the northern part of the country while making a push for independence from the central Malian state. The violence has since slowed but is far from ending anytime soon. Recently, incidents in the country have included a mine being overrun by gunmen, landmine victims, and the members of the Malian military being found in shallow graves outside the capital.

2. Burkina Faso (0.594 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

Tied for the lowest adult literacy rate on this list is Burkina Faso with an ALR of 27.7%. The poor education levels don’t stop there for Burkina Faso with only 2% of the Adult Population having a secondary education. It gets even worse when their stats are scrutinized a little further – their gross enrollment ratio is a concerning 3.3%. Citizens of Burkina Faso began rallying as early as January of this year in protest of the autocratic regime currently in place. Protestors are looking to achieve a full democracy by ousting their current leader Zephirin Diabre. If this sounds a little unfamiliar to you, you’re not alone – most Western media outlets have paid the protests next to no attention throughout the crisis. Diabre is accused of large-scale embezzlement and stealing funds from the public for his own personal accounts.

1. Niger (0.528 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

Oil-rich and regionally powerful Niger tops has the lowest education level in the world today. Tied for the lowest adult literacy rate on this list at 28.7%, the educational situation in Niger is bleak. The population in the country with a secondary education? 5.1%. The gross enrollment ratio? 1.5%. There is no civil war, a minimal influx of refugees from neighbouring countries and a relatively stable political system in comparison to many African countries. Yet unfortunately, Niger is consistently at the bottom of UN indexes for almost every category of analysis – Adult Literacy Rate, Education Development Index, and Human Development Index.Share TweetSendShare

22 Jul 202126 Jul 2021 AMIR P. ADAM

Jeff Bezos blasts into space on own rocket: ‘Best day ever!’AP NEWS

Jeff Bezos blasts into space on own rocket: ‘Best day ever!’

By MARCIA DUNNyesterday1 of 29Oliver Daemen, from left, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and space tourism company Blue Origin, Wally Funk and Bezos’ brother Mark pose for photos in front of the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, derby, after their launch from the spaceport near Van Horn, Texas, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

VAN HORN, Texas (AP) — Jeff Bezos blasted into space Tuesday on his rocket company’s first flight with people on board, becoming the second billionaire in just over a week to ride his own spacecraft.

The Amazon founder was accompanied by a hand-picked group: his brother, an 18-year-old from the Netherlands and an 82-year-old aviation pioneer from Texas — the youngest and oldest to ever fly in space.

“Best day ever!” Bezos said when the capsule touched down on the desert floor in remote West Texas after the 10-minute flight.

Named after America’s first astronaut, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket soared on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, a date chosen by Bezos for its historical significance. He held fast to it, even as Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson pushed up his own flight from New Mexico and beat him to space by nine days.

The two private companies chasing space tourism dollars, though, have drawn criticism for catering to the rich while so many are struggling amid the pandemic.

During Tuesday’s flight, Blue Origin’s capsule reached an altitude of about 66 miles (106 kilometers), more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) higher than Branson’s July 11 ride. The 60-foot (18-meter) booster accelerated to Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound to get the capsule high enough, before separating and landing upright.

Unlike Branson’s piloted rocket plane, Bezos’ capsule was completely automated and required no official staff on board for the up-and-down flight.

During their several minutes of weightlessness, video from inside the capsule showed the four floating, doing somersaults, tossing Skittles candies and throwing balls, with lots of cheering, whooping and exclamations of “Wow!” The Bezos brothers also joined their palms to display a “HI MOM” greeting written on their hands. The capsule landed under parachutes, with Bezos and his guests briefly experiencing nearly six times the force of gravity, or 6 G’s, on the way back.

Led by Bezos, they climbed out of the capsule after touchdown with wide grins, embracing parents, partners and children, then popped open bottles of sparkling wine, spraying one another.

“My expectations were high and they were dramatically exceeded,” Bezos said later.

Their flight lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds — five minutes shy of Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 flight in 1961. Shepard’s daughters, Laura and Julie, were introduced at a press event a few hours later.

Sharing Bezos’ dream-come-true adventure was Wally Funk, from the Dallas area, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same tests as NASA’s all-male astronaut corps in the early 1960s but never made it into space.

“I’ve been waiting a long time to finally get it up there,” Funk said.

“I want to go again — fast,” she added.

Joining them on the ultimate joyride was the company’s first paying customer, Oliver Daemen, a last-minute fill-in for the mystery winner of a $28 million charity auction who opted for a later flight. The Dutch teen’s father took part in the auction, and agreed on a lower undisclosed price last week when Blue Origin offered his son the vacated seat.MORE ON SPACE TOURISM

“It was so amazing,” Daemen said. “Let’s hope that many, many more people can do this.”

Four hours after their flight, Bezos drove his crew over to see the rocket that carried them safely to space.

Among the items brought on the flight: A pair of aviator Amelia Earhart’s goggles and a piece of fabric from the original Wright Flyer.

“I got goose bumps,” said Angel Herrera of El Paso, who watched the launch from inside Van Horn High School, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) away. “The hair on the back of my neck stood up, just witnessing history.”

No one is rushing to buy a ticket from this bleak and isolated town.

“This ride is only for the wealthy,” pizza shop owner Jesus Ramirez said after watching the launch, adding that he hoped the venture would attract businesses to the town and provide opportunities for local companies.

Blue Origin — founded by Bezos in 2000 in Kent, Washington, near Amazon’s Seattle headquarters — hasn’t revealed its price for a ride to space but has lined up spots for other auction bidders. Ticket sales, including the auction, are approaching $100 million, Bezos said. Two more flights are planned by year’s end.

The recycled rocket and capsule used Tuesday flew on the last two space demos, according to company officials.

Virgin Galactic already has more than 600 reservations at $250,000 apiece. Founded by Branson in 2004, the company has sent crew into space four times and plans two more test flights from New Mexico before launching customers next year.

Blue Origin’s approach was slower and more deliberate. After 15 successful unoccupied test flights to space since 2015, Bezos finally declared it was time to put people on board. The Federal Aviation Administration agreed last week, approving the commercial space license.

Bezos, 57, who also owns The Washington Post, claimed the first seat. The next went to his 50-year-old brother, Mark Bezos, an investor and volunteer firefighter, then Funk and Daemen. They spent two days together in training.

University of Chicago space historian Jordan Bimm said the passenger makeup is truly remarkable. Imagine if the head of NASA decided he wanted to launch in 1961 instead of Shepard on the first U.S. spaceflight, he said in an email.

“That would have been unthinkable!” Bimm said. “”It shows just how much the idea of who and what space is for has changed in the last 60 years.”

Bezos stepped down this month as Amazon’s CEO and last week donated $200 million to renovate the National Air and Space Museum.

Fewer than 600 people have reached the edge of space or beyond. Until Tuesday, the youngest was 25-year-old Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov and the oldest at 77 was Mercury-turned-shuttle astronaut John Glenn.

Both Bezos and Branson want to drastically increase those overall numbers, as does SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who’s skipping brief space hops and sending his private clients straight to orbit for tens of millions apiece, with the first flight coming up in September.

“We’re going to build a road to space so our kids and their kids can build the future,” Bezos said. “We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth.”

Despite appearances, Bezos and Branson insist they weren’t trying to outdo each other by strapping in themselves. Bezos noted this week that only one person can lay claim to being first in space: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who rocketed into orbit on April 12, 1961.

Branson sent a congratulatory tweet: “Impressive! Very best to all the crew from me and all the team” at Virgin Galactic.

Blue Origin is working on a massive rocket, New Glenn, to put payloads and people into orbit from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The company also wants to put astronauts back on the moon with its proposed lunar lander Blue Moon; it’s challenging NASA’s sole contract award to SpaceX.

Included in the many people that Bezos thanked Tuesday was “every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer. Because you guys paid for all this.” Bezos has said he finances the rocket company by selling $1 billion in Amazon stock each year.

___

Featured AMIR P. ADAM

GK Fact: Know the 5 places across the world that have No Gravity (Zero Gravity)

Publish Date: 22 Jul, 2021 | Author: Amir Phil Adam

Zero gravity spots in World:

We all have at a certain point in our life would have heard about the word “Gravity”. Well, Gravity is a force that holds the sun and other objects and planets in the solar system. It is also the force that holds us and everything on the surface of the earth and pulls objects towards the center of the Earth.

In a layman’s language, gravity is an invisible force that attracts objects towards each other. And hence, if you bend more, there are chances that you may fall, but considering the places with no gravitational force, a person will never fall, even after bending much. So, with this, we hope that your concept about gravity is clear, hence, we in this article further, will know about “5 Places on Earth with no gravity.”

1. Mystery Spot, Santa Cruz California:

In 1939, this place was discovered by a group of surveyors and was opened to the general public in 1940 by George Prather. A circular area of around 150 square feet, the place is claimed to have some different type of irregularity in the magnetic field and is called Mystery Spot. Visiting the place, you may witness water flowing in an upward direction, changes in the size of people and things, deflection of magnetic compasses at certain angles and even you can stand at certain angles without falling down.

2. St. Ignace Mystery Spot, Michigan:

The place was found by a group of surveyors in the 1950s when suddenly their devices stopped working. This Mystery Spot is spread across 300 square feet and even animals hold back from visiting this place. Some irregular phenomena such as standing on the wall, keeping a chair on the wall with two feet of the chair on the wall, and the other two in the air. Staying here for long, your head will feel like it’s getting lighter.

3. Cosmos Mystery Area, Rapid City:

The place has some trees mysteriously bowed, and you can stand here without falling at an angle. Some other weird phenomena such as ball going upward and when you yourself go upwards, the place feels to have changed.

4. Spook Hill, Florida:

The place is a gravity hill where seems to roll up the spooky hill which is an optical illusion. Even after turning off your vehicle, you will experience that it is being pulled up towards the mountain. During the time when Native Americans lost their land to settlers, the pioneer mail risers noticed their horses struggling downhill, and hence named the spot “Spook Hill”.

5. Magnetic Hill, Leh:

A small route that stretches for about 30 km from Leh towards Kargil, is known as the Magnetic Hill of Ladakh. People usually experience that while turning off the engine of their vehicles and keeping it in neutral gear, some weird force pulls the vehicle up the hill and the vehicles even go up to 20 kilometers per hour while moving. It is believed that a magnetic force is pulling the car uphill, and hence, even the aircrafts passing from the region fly at a higher altitude to avoid magnetic interferences.

Image Featured AMIR P. ADAM

Top 30 Sites for Online Education and Learning

AmirP.Adam,July 13, 2021 15 Min

The world is constantly changing and growing, and so are all the wonderful things to learn in it. From changing perspectives on history and studies of people to the world of deep AI and computer science, there’s more to know than ever before.

When you’re out of school, however, it can be hard to find places to learn new things, create new skills, and expand your horizons. The Internet is helping to solve this by making courses and training easier to find than ever before. Online classes are the perfect way for most to continue their education and we’ve put together a list of sources to help you find the best fit for you.

Here are 30 of the best online learning sites, offering a mix of free and paid classes, courses, training, certificates, and much more.

1. Academic Earth

Academic Earth is a collection of free online college courses from some of the world’s leading universities and colleges. On its site you’ll be able to find specific courses in many subjects as well as search by university. It collects playlists and video groups to help you learn from many different services, too.

Academic Earth is a smart search tool and a good place to start your journey. It collects many free courses from around the world, so you may click on a lesson plan and be taken to another partner on our list, such as MIT OpenCourseWare.

2. Alison Learning Paths

Alison offers free online courses created by experts in various fields. You’ll find a mix of educators and entrepreneurs creating this content. Some are sponsored by different companies to help with very specific projects such as applying for different types of certifications and exams. Classes fall under a few major categories such as marketing, health, humanities, science, and technology. Some of the more advanced classes do have a cost, but the service offers many free online learning paths designed to give you the groundwork to earning a diploma elsewhere.

3. Better Explained

For people who want to learn math and how it is applied in the real world, Better Explained offers interesting classes, articles, and lessons. Individual lessons are generally free and so are online course texts. You can purchase “complete” courses that come with PDF versions of textbooks, video lessons, more quizzes, and invitations to webinars when they occur.

Courses cover a wide range of study areas and complexities, plus some specific places where math rules guide computer programming and web development.‍

4. Bloc

Focused on web development, Bloc is a more intensive option for those who want to learn quickly. Instead of short courses or lectures, this highly structured program runs for 25 hours per week over several months. With tuition starting at $8,500, bloc.io doesn’t come cheap—but it does offer a great option for those who are ready to commit to a career change.

It presently offers learning focused specifically on building skills in two tracks: web design or web development.

5. Canvas Network

Canvas Network provides educators access to professional development courses and programs, and some of its courses are also open to the public. You can sign up with just an email and access a wide range of content and lessons. Its content is also available under an open license, so if you want to ultimately create your own content and lesson plans, you can utilize what Canvas makes available in some cases.

Canvas offers courses and tools in a variety of languages, making it open and more accessible than some other options in our list.‍

6. Codecademy

Previously backed by the White House, Codecademy is dedicated to teaching people how to code. The free service helped more than 45 million people in its first seven years and has stuck with its fast-paced teaching method designed to keep you moving and stay encouraged with supportive groups and a gamified points system. There are free courses as well as a paid Pro Membership that offers more direct guidance and support for creating a real-world portfolio that you can use to jumpstart a freelance career.

The school offers courses on a number of languages—including PHP, Python and Ruby—and students are often already building and deploying projects by the time they finish their course.

7. Coursera

Coursera is perhaps the biggest name in online courses and education. It has a global roster of universities and partners to offer more than 3,900 specialized courses. Much of the service is available for free, or you can use it to earn an online degree from an accredited university.

Software companies have also added many of their certification lessons and exams to Coursera, which can help you with things like database management and using enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools. In 2020, it partnered with Disney and Pixar to celebrate the film Soul with a curated set of courses to learn creative arts and careers.

Between its free courses, paid degrees, and membership programs, Coursera likely offers the largest number of classes, courses, and accreditation support of any on our list.‍

8. Drawspace

For creatives, Drawspace offers full courses and individual lessons to help you master different drawing techniques. It provides a mix of content that is free or paid. You can learn the basics of drawing and painting all the way through advanced elements, drawing people, and even techniques such as creating art with tea bags or making your own colors.

If you want to become an artist, Drawspace includes some lessons on working as a visual artist, how to get past an artist’s block, and even how to teach art to others.‍

9. edX

edX is an online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT and it has taught more than 20 million people since its launch. It’s a global non-profit organization and features courses from teachers and universities all over the planet in topics such as computer science, languages, engineering, psychology, writing, electronics, biology, and marketing. Most courses are free, though you can also pay for a verification certificate that attests you’ve completed a course.

You can also use the platform to start researching degree programs.‍

10. Harvard Online Courses

If you’re interested in studying about business development or STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), Harvard University has made some of its courses and special projects available online. The Harvard Online Courses program gives you a mix of programs that are free or have a fee — ranging from $25 to a few thousand dollars. Topics vary from the latest in computing trends to learning how early explorers navigated using the stars or even real estate development for a post-COVID world.

Most courses are self-paced and include both lectures from Harvard professors and additional study materials. Every piece of audio or video content comes with a transcript to provide greater accessibility. While Harvard has put thousands of courses online over the years, it offers only a few hundred at any given time. This means most courses have registration deadlines.

11. General Assembly

Focusing on education in design, business, and technology, General Assembly has campuses in more than 30 cities around the world plus a comprehensive online education experience. It offers a mix of full-time and part-time classes online plus workshops, free training, and coding events.

Traditionally, many of its offerings are in-person or are a mix of online and in-person options. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it added livestream and online options for every event it runs. Many moved online-only, and the company says it expects to expand online classes going forward because of the response to its digital tools.

General Assembly livestreams popular lectures and provides real-time interaction with the lecturer and other students. Costs vary if your choices are one-off lectures or multi-part workshops.

12. GFC Global

The GCFLearnFree.org program is an educational tool from the Goodwill Community Foundation (GCF) Global initiative. It has been offering classes for nearly 20 years and is primarily focused on essential business skills to help people find work. You’ll also discover life skills around finances, freelance work, Internet and computer skills, and creative hobbies.

If you want to learn a core work computer program—getting as specific as learning the differences between Office 2019, 2016, and 2013—this is likely the strongest resource on our list. The service currently offers more than 2,000 lessons on 200 topics, all for free.

13. Hack Design

Hack Design is a design course program designed to help you create a career in design and then continue to grow. Its main offering is a weekly design lesson delivered via email. Most content is free, and they do provide a curated list of fundamental courses in its Lessons 101 offering.

One thing to note is that Hack Designs does not always follow a traditional course. Because its teachers often come from design firms, some lessons are put in the form of blog posts and other materials hosted on the websites of those firms. That said, you’ll get access to talented thought leaders and new experiences, such as games to help you test your kerning ability.

14. HTML Dog

If you want to learn HTML, a great place to start is HTML Dog. The site offers free tutorials, techniques, and examples of web content in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. HTML Dog is focused on helping you get a website up and running, so much of the content is step-by-step guides and references to perform a specific task.

This option is a great free way to polish your skills or get help with a specific issue you’re experiencing on a website. However, it doesn’t dive deep into theory or feature long explanations of computer science in general.

15. Instructables

Learning is fun when it’s hands-on is the approach that Instructables takes. This website is designed specifically to showcase projects where people build physical items, including food. You’ll learn fundamental engineering and even advanced electronics. From turning old linens into ropes and old coins into rings all the way to creating drones or coding a 3D game, there’s plenty to discover. Projects are mostly submitted by users and hobbyists, so available topics often lean toward pop culture, such as creating props and costumes for characters of popular video games.

16. iTunes U

If you have Apple products or an account, the company’s iTunes U is a collection of courses and lectures from leading universities. Part of its iTunes software, you can access courses by topic or university. In many cases, you’ll be able to get audio and video of lectures, have access to some books and materials, and even download quizzes with answer keys.

Some schools now use iTunes U as part of their online classes, allowing people to ask questions and teachers to respond, plus submit work and receive grades.

17.iversity

Hailed as the “Coursera of Europe,” Berlin-based iversity has partnered with European and international universities to offer academic courses for free. The company has recently added certificates and verification of course completion for most of its classes, allowing students to verify course participation and learnings with an official document. Costs vary and there are a few free options as well.

Businesses can now partner with iversity to train their workforce or you can take classes specific to a type of work, organization, or software. If Du sprichst Deutsch or Tu parles Français, this service could be a great help.

18. Khan Academy

Khan Academy is a non-profit online platform providing a completely free library of educational “micro-lectures.” Focusing on more traditional academic subjects, Khan Academy provides a mix of video and text-based materials in math, science, economics, humanities, and a bit of computer programming. Since Khan Academy is free for anyone to use, it’s a great way to get a taste for a subject before moving onto a more advanced course elsewhere.

The organization has expanded its online services for school-age students significantly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and learners of all ages can benefit from the growth in content, lesson plans, and more.

19. Lifehack

Lifehack is a learning tool focused on making the most of your life by “hacking” it to achieve more or accomplish things easier. It offers free assessments, books, and classes plus a podcast video series. Courses revolve around a specific philosophy that the company created to promote a specific type of lifestyle. You can start with free options on things such as how to stop procrastinating and how to be more motivated in your daily life.

Of the items on our list, this resource is focused more on how you live and learn instead of learning a specific subject, skill, or trade.

20. LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda.com)

In 2020, veteran online educator, Lynda.com became LinkedIn Learning. With subscriptions starting at $19.99 per month, LinkedIn Learning offers an extensive video skills and tutorial library. Your subscription also includes LinkedIn’s Premium Career features so it can be useful for growing your career.

The service is largely focused on technology skills like programming in multiple languages. You’ll need a LinkedIn account, and the company says that it will both provide courses and make recommendations based on your current job, skills, and what professionals like you are learning.

21. MIT OpenCourseWare

The MIT OpenCourseWare project offers a broad set of courses for you to browse however you want. You don’t need to enroll or even sign up for an account. Available courses include the syllabus and instructional materials you need—many even offer free online versions of the textbooks mentioned by the teachers.

There are undergraduate and graduate-level courses in business, energy, fine arts, the humanities, math, science, teaching, and more. You can also sort by audio and video classes if you find that type of content easier to use and more engaging.

22. Open Culture

Open Culture is a website that collects online education materials and supports lifelong learning with free classes, audio, and video. The non-profit looks across the Internet to find free learning resources and gathers them so they’re easy for you to browse, sort, and find something you want to learn. It currently lists more than 1,500 free courses, predominantly from universities.

For some of its classes, you can choose to receive a credit or certificate for completing the class. This option does come with a price and Open Culture earns an affiliate fee from the place that hosts the course, such as Coursera or edX.

23. Open Learning Initiative

Carnegie Mellon University puts most of its classes online and there’s a free section available to anyone. The “independent learner courses” under its Open Learning Initiative are free for anyone. Once you find a course you want to take, you’ll need to create an account and add it to your list of courses. From there, you get a great dashboard that shows your “Open & Free” course options and will track the status of the classwork you perform.

You’ll find resources from business management and computer programming to learning better study and research habits to more traditional courses such as general chemistry, engineering statistics, environmental technology, and more. Free courses focus on STEM content, but you’ll find some paid plans for other subjects, such as French.

24. Open Yale Courses

Yale University makes a broad range of its lectures and classes available through the Open Yale Courses program. Each course includes a full set of class lecture videos featuring Yale professors, as well as course materials including syllabi, suggested readings, exams, problem sets, and answer keys. There were dozens of courses available at the time of writing this and Yale says it regularly rotates available classes and adds new options. Many courses are foundational and introductory reviews of broad areas of study, such as biology, physics, and political science.

25. Oxford University Podcasts

Oxford University has put many of its lecture series online in the form of podcasts. These free courses typically feature multiple episodes and sometimes multiple professors. You can find everything from biology and gardening to philosophy and business or even global politics, history, and archaeology.

The service offers multiple ways to get these podcasts and videos, whether you watch online, download, or access through a partner service. If you find one you love, you can even embed it on your own website.

26. Skillcrush

Skillcrush is a coding-focused learning company that offers free and paid classes in areas like design, user experience, digital marketing, and HTML coding. The company offers an ongoing free coding bootcamp to help people learn the basics and then charges for more in-depth classes with hands-on support. It is designed for people new to computer science and coding, so there’s no requirement for prior experience or an existing coding knowledge.

27. Skillshare

Skillshare is a community marketplace for new skills and there’s a good chance it has sponsored your favorite independent artists, YouTubers, or podcasters. With a broad range of different subjects to choose from, Skillshare offers an online catalog of video-based courses, as well as in-person workshops in multiple cities.

Many classes are available to take without a membership and for free. Some classes do have a cost as these teachers use online training as their source of income. You can pay for them individually or get access with a premium membership. Memberships cost either $19 per month or $99 per year and will make paid programs either free or reduce their cost.

28. Stanford Engineering Everywhere

Stanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) expands the Stanford experience to students and educators online and at no charge. Classes can be streamed or downloaded. Courses are focused on engineering and include the courses taken by the majority of Stanford’s undergraduates. There are also advanced options on AI and linear system optimization.

29. Udacity

Udacity is a platform with a strong focus on technology, with a small but well-crafted selection of courses. If you’re looking to break into data science, AI, or cloud computing, Udacity’s data science program has an impressive roster of teachers from companies like Salesforce and Facebook.

Udacity’s pricing structure allows you to pay monthly for your courses as part of what it calls a “nano degree.” Generally, these cost $339 per month or you can pay for multiple months at a time to save a little. Classes come with real-world projects, tech support, and career services.

30. Udemy

Udemy is an established personal learning company that offers courses ranging from $10 to $500 depending on the class and teacher. Most are inexpensive, but as the subject matter gets more specialized or complex, costs can quickly scale. It’s a bit more expensive compared to the other platforms on our list once you start taking multiple classes.

One of the nicest elements of Udemy is that it offers a wide range of classes on traditional educational topics as well as specific business skills—such as specific ways to use Excel for financial analysis—and past students provide ratings for all of these classes.

Start your education journey today

Online learning provides a chance for anyone to continue their education and sharpen their skills. We hope you’ve found this list helpful and are excited to pursue knowledge and grow. And for more free resources and advice, you can also check out Upwork’s Resource Center. Good luck in your classes and studying, and wherever this new information may take you.Share

5 Myths About George Washington, Debunked

Myth #1: He chopped down a cherry tree.

Myth #2: He visited Betsy Ross in 1776 and asked her to sew the first American flag.

Myth #3: He had wooden teeth.

Myth #4: He knelt in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge.

Myth #5: As the first U.S president, he lived in the White House.

FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn’t look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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History of Flight: Breakthroughs, Disasters and More

1505-06: Da Vinci dreams of flight, publishes his findings

November 21, 1783: First manned hot-air balloon flight

1809-1810: Sir George Cayley introduces aerodynamics

September 24, 1852: Giffard’s dirigible proves powered air travel is possible

1876: The internal combustion engine changes everything

December 17, 1903: The Wright brothers become airborne—briefly

1907: The first helicopter lifts off

1911-12: Harriet Quimby achieves two firsts for women pilots

October 1911: The aircraft becomes militarized

January 1, 1914: First commercial passenger flight

1914-1918: World war accelerates the militarization of aircraft

June 1919: First nonstop transatlantic flight

1921: Bessie Coleman becomes the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license

1927: Lucky Lindy makes first solo transatlantic flight

1932: Amelia Earhart repeats Lindbergh’s feat

1937: The Hindenburg crashes…along with the ‘Age of Airships’

October 14, 1947: Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier

1949: The world’s first commercial jetliner takes off

1954-1957: Boeing glamorizes flying

March 27, 1977: Disaster at Tenerife

1978: Flight goes electronic

1986: Around the world, without landing

FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn’t look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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8 Facts About Ancient Egypt’s Hieroglyphic Writing

1. Hieroglyphics uses pictures, but it isn’t picture writing.

2. Hieroglyphic writing is linked to elite tombs.

3. Ancient Egyptians used other forms of writing.

4. Hieroglyphic writing has odd quirks.

5. Few Egyptians could read hieroglyphic writing.

6. Hieroglyphic writing gradually died out.

7. The Rosetta Stone led to a breakthrough.

8. Deciphering hieroglyphic writing remains a challenge.

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10 Inventions From China’s Han Dynasty That Changed the World

CONTENTS

The Invention of Paper

The Suspension Bridge

Deep Drilling

The Wheelbarrow

The Seismograph

The Blast Furnace

The Adjustable Wrench

The Moldboard Plow

The Stirrup

The Rudder

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ReadAlso

10. Angola (0.685 EDI)

9. Gambia (0.677 EDI)

8. Zambia (0.654 EDI)

7. Guinea (0.634 EDI)

6. Eritrea (0.623 EDI)

5. Ethiopia (0.622 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

4. Central African Republic (0.617 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

3. Mali (0.612 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

2. Burkina Faso (0.594 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

1. Niger (0.528 EDI) – Worst education system in Africa

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Jeff Bezos blasts into space on own rocket: ‘Best day ever!’

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GK Fact: Know the 5 places across the world that have No Gravity (Zero Gravity)