Veda #35 : Fortune Cookies 11:57 PM

Day 35
"How did Fortune Cookies get its name?"

Did you ever heard of fortune cookies?. A traditional chinese's snack made from flour, sugar, vanilla, and oil with a small rolled paper wrapped inside, with some quotes written on them. Although there is still some dispute about it's origin, fortune cookies have become an iconic symbol in American culture, inspiring many products. Anyway, how did the "fortune" could get inside a cookies?

The Origin
There is still some unclear definition about the origin of this cookies whether they were made from Chinese traditions or an American actually made it as snacks. Most people nowadays believe that fortune cookies were created by a Japanese man named Makoto Hagiwara in 1914 in San Francisco. Hagiwara owned what is now called the Golden Gate Park Japanese Tea Garden, where he served tea and fortune cookies. However, many still hold to the popular belief that fortune cookies were invented by a Chinese-American named David Jung, who owned the Hong Kong Noodle Company in Los Angeles. He claimed to have stuffed the cookies with passages from the Bible and handed them out to unemployed men near his bakery in 1918.

But if we track back the inspiration of this cookies, we could go far back in time. Many accounts trace the cookies’ origin back to 13th and 14th century China, which was then occupied by the Mongols. According to legend, secret plans for an uprising were hidden in moon cakes that would ordinarily have contained lotus nut paste, which was unpalatable to the Mongols. The successful uprising, planned with the help of the hidden notes, led to the formation of the Ming Dynasty. This story may be true, and later could become the first inspiration of fortune cookies.

How the Fortune Got Its Name
Actually, this cookies purposes was to encourage peoples. This was called "Fortune", traditionally, the fortunes were Confucian phrases about life. Nowadays, the fortunes inside the cookies contain just about everything from quotes to advice. In order to make this fortune come true, there were many beliefs about this.

Variations on this idea include not eating the cookie if a fortune seems unlucky, or eating the entire cookie as well as the fortune, or the idea that the entire cookie must be eaten before the fortune is read. Conversely, the fortune must be read before any of the cookie is eaten. While some people believe the fortune will not come true if it is read aloud, or read at all, other people follow rules involving how the cookie is selected—including selecting a cookie with closed eyes, passing a cookie to another person at the table, or choosing the cookie that seems to be pointing directly at you.
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Veda #21 : It's Just (Not) An Ordinary Pocket 10:56 PM

Day 21
Question by : Me - "Why did my jeans always have a little "second-pocket" in the right pocket?"


Pay an attention to your jeans, the right pocket. In those pocket you'll see a second little pocket inside it. At a glance, it was no more than just an accesory or an accentuation, or maybe every jeans has it. But actually there is a history behind it. So tonight, we're gonna reveal why they had this little pocket inside every trousers that popularized by Levi Strauss on 1880.

As one kind of textiles, jans was originated from Genoa, Italy, on 1560. This kind of textiles usually wore by Navy. The French called this trousers with "bleu de Génes", means Genoa's blue. Although its origin was from Europe, but as a fashion item, jeans was popularized by Levi Strauss, 20 year old male that moved to San Fransisco as clothes merchant, at 1880. That time, the gold fever was a great issue on US soil.

However, when he was still at California, his goods were sold out, except one canvas tent. He then cut this tent and make several trousers that later he sold it to gold miners. And unexpectedly, this workers loves this trousers because this kind of trousers are highly durable and didn't rip easily. Levi then takes this opportunity to imported more garments from Genoa, called "Genes" and he changed the name into "Jeans".
Those workers loves Levi's jeans and made it as an official trousers for gold miner, and they even made their own name "Levi's Jeans" and this was the first Jeans brand name in the world that later changed into "Levi's 501"


Now, back to the pocket issue.
This jeans prototype was actually made for the gold miners. It has 5 pockets, 2 at the back, 2 at the front, and 1 little pocket on the front right pocket. This wasn't an accessory, but it was really designed for the gold miner to store their small gold pieces when they found it.
Nowadays, Jeans has produced with so many brand name, and apparently, this little pocket become a standard issue for every jeans. Of course, it isn't meant to store the gold pieces... :)
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Veda #20 : Tomato is a fruit (technically, not officially) 11:22 PM

Day 20
"Tomato is a fruit, this is why"


Most of you probably know this classic question, "What is tomato?is it a fruit or a vegetable?". And probably you also knew the answer that most people think of it as a vegetable. This misnomer could be because tomatoes are so easy to grow in the vegetable garden or because they are a favorite salad recipe item. In the grocery store, we generally understand a fruit to be a natural plant product that is sweet, and a vegetable to be a natural plant product that is not sweet. In this standard definition, apples, strawberries, grapes and bananas are all fruits, while green beans, tomatoes, squash and potatoes are all vegetables.
The fact?tomato technically is a fruit.

Okay, most of you maybe also know it...but do you know why it is technically a fruit?

According to The Encyclopedia Britannica, it sums it up like this:
Fruit - in its strict botanical sense, the fleshy or dry ripened ovary of a plant, enclosing the seed or seeds. Thus, apricots, bananas, and grapes, as well as bean pods, corn grains, tomatoes, cucumbers, and (in their shells) acorns and almonds, are all technically fruits.
This definition of fruit is very broad, and encompasses almost everything that contains seeds. So that's mean, tomato is a FRUIT


BUT
Tomato officially is a vegetable!
here's the story : Back in 1893, US decided there were tariffs placed on tomatoes imported from the West Indies because they were considered a vegetable, and imported vegetables were subject to tariffs. The case originated on February 4, 1887 when the Nix Family sued Edward L. Hedden, tax collector of the port of New York to recover back duties collected on their tomatoes.

Webster's Dictionary was consulted, along with Worcester's Dictionary and the Imperial Dictionary for the definitions of "fruit" and "vegetable." The passages from the dictionaries defined "fruit" as the seed of plants, or that part of plants which contains the seed, and especially the juicy, pulpy products of certain plants, covering and containing the seed.

This case was brought to the highest US Supreme Court at that time, and the court stated that :
"Botanically, tomatoes are considered a fruit of the vine, just as are cucumbers, squashes, beans, and peas. But in common language of people, whether sellers or consumers of provisions, all these are vegetables which are grown in kitchen gardens, and which, eaten cooked or raw, are, like potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, and lettuce, usually served at dinner in, with, or after the soup, fish, or meats which constitute the principal part of the repast, and not like fruits generally, as dessert."
and the result officially labeled tomatoes as VEGETABLE

confuse?for me, tomato is a fruit :p how about you?
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Veda #17 : Punctuation 11:34 PM

Day 17
Question by : none - "history of punctuation"

Little bit interesting tonight, we're gonna learn about the history and name of punctuation and symbols. Not the whole symbol though, but several symbols that have their story. Last post was about keyboard layout, now why don't we describe the symbols.
okay here goes

1. Question mark (?)
this symbol came from latin word "Questio", indicating a question, so at first time, people have to write questio after the question. To save some spaces and times in writing, they abbreviated it from Questio to "qo" with the letter "q" above the "o". And because the increasing on writing speed, it transform like the question mark we know now.

2. Exclamation mark (!)
Just like the question mark, this was made by stacking two letters. This symbol came from latin word "io", means "happy call" or "shout of happines". At first, they put an "i" above the "o" and gradually become like what we use now.

3. Equal mark (=)
Founded by an English mathematician, Rober Recorde, on 1557, with this thought "I'll use this usual mark, a pair of twin lines, because there aren't two things can be more equal than this two lines". So he often use it to equaling a comparison on his formula. The first equal mark made by Recorde was 5 times longer than the one we know.

4. Ampersand (&)
This mark came from Latin word "Et" means "and". This was founded by Marcus Tullius Tiro, first century writer from Rome. The name "Ampersand" was given 17 centuries later. At earlier 1800s, the scholar learn this symbol as the 27th letter after "Z", but they haven't found the name yet. So they often said it ABC, until Z, and then they said "and per se, and", gradually became "ampersand".

5. Cross mark / Octothorp (#)
This symbol has quite an unique name, "Thorpe" from old Normandic language means "farm land". This was first used in map-making to symbolize the village that surrounded by eight farm. According to Latin language, 8 is called "Octa" and farm is called "Thorpe", that's why they called this symbol an "Octothorp".

6. Dollar mark ($)
US government published their own currency at 1794, and at that time they still used an old world currency "Peso" or "Spanish dollar". The first America's 1 dollar coin was exactly the same with Spanish's Peso, both weight and value, so they use the same abbreviation : "Ps" - Not Photoshop. Gradually, they write the letter "p" above the "s", and then, the round circle on "P" is ignored, and leave behind the letter "S" with a vertical line.

7. At mark (@)
Ray Tomilson, an engineer whom first invented this symbol confess that he didn't think long enough why he did use this symbol to send the very first email between two computers. He randomly pick the "@" symbol because it was similar with the letter "A" in the first letter of "address".
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Veda #16 : QWERTY 10:01 PM

Day 16
Question by : none - "Why our present keyboard have this random arrangement?"

Take a look to your keyboard, everyday you use it, and some of you maybe use it on your phone. Now let's take a detailed look, and imagine it for a while, why they had this "random" arrangement. Why didn't sort it from A,B,C,D to Z?
This is maybe an interesting and "out-of-the-box" invention. We should know that every invention ever made was meant to made human's life easier. But unfortunately, this QWERTY arrangement was meant to harden it, and in contrary, this particular arrangement of letters on a keyboard is the near-universal standard for the entire English-speaking world.

The History
To understand how it get it's arrangement, we should travel back to the early invention of computer, the great-grandmother, Typewriter. The first practical typewriter was patented in the United States in 1868 by Christopher Latham Sholes. His machine was known as the type-writer. It had a movable carriage, a lever for turning paper from line to line, and a keyboard on which the letters were arranged in alphabetical order (A-Z). But Sholes had a problem. Sholes' original prototypes had a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming. So the story goes that he arranged the keys with the most common letters in hard to reach spots, to slow typists down and try to avoid this problem.

Sholes' early prototype of QWERTY layout

QWERTY's effect reducing those annoying clashes, was determined to speed up typing rather than slow it down. Sholes then went to Remington, the arms manufacturer, to have their machines mass-produced. In 1874 Remington & Sons manufactured the first commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number 1. This typewriter used the "QWERTY" keyboard. The name "QWERTY" for our typewriter keyboard comes from the first six letters in the top alphabet row.

The Keyboard's Development
Like an old proverb said, "nobody perfect", this QWERTY layout wasn't the perfect one, in fact it wasn't the effective one. By the time goes, many researchers and typist trying to find more effective way of typing. One of the considered contender of this QWERTY layout was DVORAK layout, invented by Dr. August Dvorak at 1940.

Comparation between DVORAK and QWERTY (red lettered)

The QWERTY keyboard is very different from the DVORAK keyboard layout. The DVORAK keyboard layout tries to minimize the distance traveled by the fingers. It also tries to make the typist alternate hands on consecutive letters as often as possible. DVORAK's home row uses all five vowels and the five most common consonants: AOEUIDHTNS. With the vowels on one side and consonants on the other, a rough typing rhythm would be established as each hand would tend to alternate. With the DVORAK keyboard, a typist can type about 400 of the English language's most common words without ever leaving the home row, while QWERTY is 100. The home row letters on DVORAK do a total of 70% of the work. On QWERTY they do only 32%.

The comparation of effectiveness

the ideal number is 50-50, however, the closest one to 50 considered more effective

However, the DVORAK keyboard is no more efficient than QWERTY. An independent study in 1956 showed that QWERTY typists and DVORAK typists had about the same rate of speed, and continued studies don't show a clear winner between the two (to see the table of effectiveness, see the diagram above). This may explain why QWERTY is still the standard. Besides, many people and typist already familiar with this QWERTY layout, making it harder for them to adapt again. Just a matter of habit, i think.

The Other Development
Maybe this is a little bit different from QWERTY layout, but this one definitely made by it's layout. These layouts below are considered as a standard for it's own country. Some examples are : QWERTZ, used in Hungaria, Germany, Switzerland ; AZERTY, used in French and Belgium ; QZERTY ; and many more including Dvorak for left hand, for right hand, and for both hands.

AZERTY layout

QWERTZ layout

Hebrew layout

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Veda #14 : How Many US Presidents Got Killed? 8:37 PM

Day 14
Question by : Babypunk - "how many US presidents got killed?"

One of the most dangerous and heavy-sentenced crime is attempt to murder head of government. As we may know, being a head of country, means 24-hours full of protection, security tests, sterilization of area which gonna be visited, bulletproof vest, and of course : Men with black sunglasses (i dunno why they always wearing black sunglasses) who willing to risk their lives in order to save the president. But unfortunately, there were a history about successful murder attempts to president, especially US President, since they lead a super country, that will take effect to other country. Now the question is, how many US President got murdered?

History said that four US presidents were assassinated : Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.

1. Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) was shot on the evening of April 14, 1865, as he sat in the presidential box of Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., watching a performance of Our American Cousin. The man who fired the shot was actor John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), who then jumped onto the stage, fell, and limped away, calling out, "Sic semper tyrannis" (a Latin phrase meaning "Thus always to tyrants").

The president lived through the night, attended by family. He died just after 7:00 a.m. on April 15. He was succeeded in office by Vice President Andrew Johnson (1808-1875). On April 26 a search party found Booth in a Virginia barn, where he was fatally shot.

2. James Garfield
James Garfield (1831-1881) was en route to a class reunion at Williams College , Massachusetts, on July 2, 1881, when his assailant fired two shots at him in a Washington, D.C., train station. The shooter was Charles J. Guiteau (1841- 1882), who held a grudge against the president. One of Guiteau's bullets had only grazed the president; the other was fixed in his back, and doctors were unable to locate it.

Today the president's life might well have been spared, but the medical treatment of the late 1800s, could not save him. He lived 80 days more, dying at a cottage on the New Jersey shore on September 19. He was succeeded in office by Vice President Chester Arthur. Guiteau's trial lawyer would later claim that Garfield's assassin was insane, but it was an unsuccessful plea for his life: In 1882 he was convicted and hung.

3. William McKinley
September 6, 1901, President William McKinley (1843-1901) was attending a reception in Buffalo, New York, where the previous day he had delivered a speech. As he approached a man to shake his hand, the fellow fired two shots at McKinley. One bullet delivered only a minor flesh wound, but the other lodged in his stomach. Surgeons operated, but gangrene and infection set in, claiming the president's life the morning of September 14. He was succeeded in office by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). The shooter was identified as an anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz. He was tried, convicted, and put to death in 1901.

4. John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, traveled in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. They were en route to the Dallas Trade Mart, where the president was scheduled to make a lunchtime speech. At 12:30 p.m., shots rang out; the president, who was riding in the back seat of a convertible, was hit in the neck and head. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died at 1:00 p.m. The nation's loss was immediately felt, as television and radio stations broadcast the message live that Kennedy had been shot and killed. He was succeeded by Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations of 1976–1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, who himself was murdered before he could stand trial.

Additionally there were assassination attempts on the lives of Presidents Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Gerald R. Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan recovered from their injuries; the others were not injured in the attempts.

Fact : But that number is uncomparable with this murder attempt to ONE leader. Adolf Hitler, single man, has been through 42 murder attempt, all failed. How he died then?simple :Suicide.

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Veda #1 : Moctezuma 1:41 PM

Day 01

Question by : Babypunk - "Moctezuma"

Moctezuma II

His Profile
Moctezuma II a.k.a Montezuma was an Aztec leader, successful leader and general for around 1502-1520. Moctezuma II ruled over the empire of Mexica, yes also known as Mexico at present day. Moctezuma II was born around C.E. 1480. Of princely background, he was the youngest son of Emperor Axacayatl, who ruled between 1469-1481. Axacayatl was succeeded by Ahuitzotl, a Genghis Khan type whose reign fell between 1481-1502. Able, ruthless and bloodthirsty, Ahuitzotl doubled the size of the Aztec empire and is once said to have ritually slaughtered twenty thousand prisoners at a reconstructed sacrificial "god house". On Ahuitzotl's death, a council of nobles selected a promising theology student in his early twenties to be the next emperor. This was Moctezuma Xocoyotl, the last name meaning simply "the youngest."

His Empire
Moctezuma was every bit as much of a no-nonsense executive in the domestic area. He built temples and furnished a supply of fresh water to his capital at Tenochtitlan by constructing a double aqueduct. To encourage respect for the law, he would resort to such ruses as offering judges bribes just to see if they were corrupt. Moctezuma consolidated an empire that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific, and was centred on the fabulous city of Tenochtitlan, set amid a vast lake and housing perhaps 200,000 people, probably larger than any western European capital of the time.

His Fall
Aztec culture was sophisticated in many ways. Its empire was won and controlled by a fiercely successful military and an elaborate system of taxation and tribute. Yet in just two years, Moctezuma’s rule, and that of the Mexica, collapsed in the face of an invasion led by a few hundred Spanish adventurers. When the Spanish conqueror Hernan Cortes landed at Veracruz in 1519 and attempted to march on, he was well received by the inhabitants and made Moctezuma his prisoner when he invited to the Imperial palace, with an accusation that Moctezuma has invaded Spanish at Veracruz.

Why Cortes was well received by inhabitants and easily held Moctezuma as prisoner?
here's the fun fact : Religious Superstition.
Before became an Aztec leader, he was a theology student, and he was familiar with the legend of Quetzacoatl, the beloved Aztec god who would one day return as beraded and fair-skinned man. When the Spanish landed at Veracruz, Moctezuma fall into agony of indecision. He held a meeting with several top advisers of the kingdom. The meeting was fruitless, as some wanted to resist Cortes while others wished to treat the invaders with the deference due to their beliefs.

His Death
Being a prisoner has broke Monctezuma's spirit. The emperor spent the pathetic last months of his life trying to ingratiate himself with his captors -- playing ball games with them in the imperial gardens. He accepted Christianity and swore allegiance to King of Spanish, Charles V.

In April 1520. Cortés had just returned from defeating a rival Spanish force at Veracruz sent by the envious governor of Cuba. In his absence, Pedro de Alvarado, slaughtered more than 3000 Aztecs because he mistook a spirited religious ceremony for an outbreak of rebellion. The furious population of Tenochtitlan rose massively against the Spanish, who were barricaded inside the imperial palace. The Spanish sent Moctezuma to calm his peoples but he was greeted with stones. One projectile knocked him unconscious and he was carried downstairs by attendants. Though he didn't appear to be seriously hurt, he died within two weeks, maybe of a broken heart.

There are still a controversy about how he died, was he killed by Spanish or by his own people. but, one thing for sure, the Spanish didn't conquer the empire alone, they were only a part of a force that changed the order of things in Mexico.

Satisfied? :)

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