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Serendipity
Serendipity is an unplanned fortunate discovery. Serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of product invention and scientific discovery. Etymology The first noted use of "serendipity" was by Horace Walpole on 28 January 1754. In a letter he wrote to his friend Horace Mann, Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made about a lost painting of Bianca Cappello by Giorgio Vasari by reference to a Persian fairy tale, ''The Three Princes of Serendip''. The princes, he told his correspondent, were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of." The name comes from ''Serendip'', an old Persian name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon), hence ''Sarandib'' by Arab traders. It is derived from the Sanskrit ''Siṃhaladvīpaḥ'' (Siṃhalaḥ, Sri Lanka + dvīpaḥ, island). The word has been exported into many other languages, with the general meaning of "unexpected discovery" or "fortunate chance". Applications Inventio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horace Walpole
Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician. He had Strawberry Hill House built in Twickenham, southwest London, reviving the Gothic Revival, Gothic style some decades before his Victorian era, Victorian successors. His literary reputation rests on the first Gothic fiction, Gothic novel, ''The Castle of Otranto'' (1764), and his ''Letters'', which are of significant social and political interest. They have been published by Yale University Press in 48 volumes. In 2017, a volume of Walpole's selected letters was published. The youngest son of the first British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, he became the 4th and last Earl of Orford of the second creation on his nephew's death in 1791. Early life: 1717–1739 Walpole was born in London, the youngest son of Prime Minister ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Three Princes Of Serendip
''The Three Princes of Serendip'' is the English version of the story ''Peregrinaggio di tre giovani figliuoli del re di Serendippo'' published by Michele Tramezzino in Venice in 1557. Tramezzino claimed to have heard the story from one Cristoforo Armeno, who had translated the Persian fairy tale into Italian, adapting Book One of Amir Khusrau's '' Hasht-Bihisht'' of 1302. The story first came to English via a French translation, and now exists in several out-of-print translations."serendipity, n." ''OED Online''. Oxford University Press. June 2017. Retrieved 2 November 2017. ''Serendip'' is the Classical Persian name for Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The story has become known in the English-speaking world as the source of the word serendipity, coined by Horace Walpole because of his recollection of the part of the "silly fairy tale" in which the three princes by "accidents and sagacity" discern the nature of a lost camel. In a separate line of descent, the story was used by Voltaire in h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Names Of Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka ( si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Lankā; ta, சிறி லங்கா / இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai), officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in the northern Indian Ocean which has been known under various names over time. ''Lanka'' ''Lak-vaesiyaa'' in Sinhala means an inhabitant of the island of Lanka. ''Lak-diva'' in E'lu (old Sinhala) means the island of Lanka. Another traditional Sinhala name for Sri Lanka was ''Lakdiva'', with ''diva'' also meaning "island". A further traditional name is ''Lakbima''. ''Lak'' in both cases is derived again from ''Lanka''. The same name could have been adopted in Tamil as ''Ilankai;'' the Tamil language commonly adds "i" before initial "l". The Sanskrit epic ''Ramayana'' mentioned it ''Lanka'' and the abode of King Ravan. The name of Sri Lanka was introduced in the context of the Sri Lankan independence movement, pushing for the independence of British Ceylon during the firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and southeast of the Arabian Sea; it is separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with India and Maldives. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is its legislative capital, and Colombo is its largest city and financial centre. Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million (2020) and is a multinational state, home to diverse cultures, languages, and ethnicities. The Sinhalese are the majority of the nation's population. The Tamils, who are a large minority group, have also played an influential role in the island's history. Other long established groups include the Moors, the Burghers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lost Artworks
Lost artworks are original pieces of art that credible sources indicate once existed but that cannot be accounted for in museums or private collections or are known to have been destroyed deliberately or accidentally, or neglected through ignorance and lack of connoisseurship. The US FBI maintains a list of "Top Ten Art Crimes"; a 2006 book by Simon Houpt and a 2018 book by Noah Charney and several other media outlets have profiled the most significant outstanding losses. Chronology of notable loss events * Rhodes earthquake, 226 BCE *First Mithridatic War ** Sack of Athens, 1 March 86 BCE * Antikythera shipwreck, ''86-50'' BCE * Lauseion fire, 475 * Nika riots, 13 January 532- *Byzantine Iconoclasm ** Iconoclasm of Leo III, 726-741 ** Second Byzantine Iconoclasm, 814-842 *Jin–Song Wars, 1125–1234 ** Jingkang Incident (Sack of Kaifeng), 10 January 1126- *Fourth Crusade, 1202–1204 ** Sack of Constantinople, 12–15 April 1204 * Bonfires of the vanities, 1492–1497 * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Russian Language
Russian (russian: русский язык, russkij jazyk, link=no, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the First language, native language of the Russians, and belongs to the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. Besides Russia itself, Russian is an official language in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is used widely as a lingua franca throughout Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to some extent in the Baltic states. It was the De facto#National languages, ''de facto'' language of the former Soviet Union,1977 Soviet Constitution, Constitution and Fundamental Law of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1977: Section II, Chapter 6, Article 36 and continues to be used in public life with varying proficiency in all of the post-Soviet states. Russian has over 258 million total speakers worldwide. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Finnish Language
Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedish). In Sweden, both Finnish and Meänkieli (which has significant mutual intelligibility with Finnish) are official minority languages. The Kven language, which like Meänkieli is mutually intelligible with Finnish, is spoken in the Norwegian county Troms og Finnmark by a minority group of Finnish descent. Finnish is typologically agglutinative and uses almost exclusively suffixal affixation. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs are inflected depending on their role in the sentence. Sentences are normally formed with subject–verb–object word order, although the extensive use of inflection allows them to be ordered differently. Word order variations are often reserved for differences in information structure. Finnish orth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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