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The 10 most important events of the human kind
The Tragic Story of the Titanic
Before the fate of the Titanic, Morgan Robertson wrote a book called The
Wreck of the Titan in 1898. The ship predicted "unsinkable" sank. Many
lives were lost due to too few lifeboats. This story predicted the fate
of the Titanic.
In 1907, J. B. Ismay, president of White Star Lines, and Lord Pirrie,
chairman of Harland & Wolff shipbuilders, discussed to plan three ocean
liners, one of which was the Titanic. The Titanic would become the
biggest ship of her day.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, commanded by Captain Edward J. Smith,
set sail. On April 11, 1912, there were seven warning messages about
icebergs on the Titanic s course. These messages were noted but were not
taken into account. At around 11:40 p.m. Sunday, April 14, the Titanic
hit an iceberg. (The picture shows distress flares after the Titanic hit
the iceberg). By 2:18 a.m., April 15, 1912, the Titanic submerged into
the murky water and sank to her final resting place.
The Discovery
The Titanic was discovered by Robert Ballard (left) in August 1985.
With the help of Sonar and Agro, Ballard and his research team found the
wreck. Argo was a small submarine (more like a sled) with lights and
cameras. It was operated by the research team above her in her mother
ship, Knorr. With the help of Argo s cameras, the Titanic was found.
Without the use of Argo, the Titanic may not have been found.
After the discovery, one year later Ballard and his research team
travelled back to take a closer look. They used a small submarine,
Alvin, to get a first hand look at the wreck. To explore the Titanic
closer, a crew member inside Alvin manipulated Jason, a robotic mini
sub. Jason was the first to explore and see the Titanic since 1912!
Below is how the Titanic looks at her final resting place. On the left
is the stern (rear of boat) and on the right is the bow (front of the
boat).
WHY: I think that the sinking of the Titanic is one
of the 10 most important events of the human kind because it marked the
people and the history.
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden is both one of the CIA s most wanted men and a hero to
many young people in the Arab world.
He and his associates were already being sought by the US on charges of
international terrorism, including in connection with the 1998 bombing
of American embassies in Africa and last year s attack on the USS Cole
in Yemen.
In May this year a US jury convicted four men believed to be linked with
bin Laden of plotting the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Bin Laden, an immensely wealthy and private man, has been granted a safe
haven by Afghanistan s ruling Taleban movement.
During his time in hiding, he has called for a holy war against the US,
and for the killing of Americans and Jews. He is reported to be able to
rally around him up to 3,000 fighters.
He is also suspected of helping to set up Islamic training centres to
prepare soldiers to fight in Chechnya and other parts of the former
Soviet Union.
Sponsored by US and Pakistan
His power is founded on a personal fortune earned by his family s
construction business in Saudi Arabia.
Born in Saudi Arabia to a Yemeni family, Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in
1979 to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
The Afghan jihad was backed with American dollars and had the blessing
of the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
He received security training from the CIA itself, according to Middle
Eastern analyst Hazhir Teimourian.
While in Afghanistan, he founded the Maktab al-Khidimat (MAK), which
recruited fighters from around the world and imported equipment to aid
the Afghan resistance against the Soviet army.
Egyptians, Lebanese, Turks and others - numbering thousands in bin
Laden s estimate - joined their Afghan Muslim brothers in the struggle
against an ideology that spurned religion.
Turned against the US
After the Soviet withdrawal, the "Arab Afghans", as bin Laden s faction
came to be called, turned their fire against the US and its allies in
the Middle East.
Bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia to work in the family construction
business, but was expelled in 1991 because of his anti-government
activities there.
He spent the next five years in Sudan until US pressure prompted the
Sudanese Government to expel him, whereupon bin Laden returned to
Afghanistan.
Terrorism experts say bin Laden has been using his millions to fund
attacks against the US.
The US State Department calls him "one of the most significant sponsors
of Islamic extremist activities in the world today".
According to the US, bin Laden was involved in at least three major
attacks - the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 killing of 19 US
soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
Islamic front
BBC correspondent James Robbins says bin Laden had "all but admitted
involvement" in the Saudi Arabia killings.
Some experts say he is part of an international Islamic front, bringing
together Saudi, Egyptian and other groups.
Their rallying cry is the liberation of Islam s three holiest places -
Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem.
Analysts say bin Laden s organisation is very different from the groups
that carried out bombings and hijackings in the past in that it is not a
tightly knit group with a clear command structure but a loose coalition
of groups operating across continents.
American officials believe bin Laden s associates may operate in over
forty countries - in Europe and North America, as well as in the Middle
East and Asia.
The few outsiders who have met bin Laden describe him as modest, almost
shy. He rarely gives interviews.
He is believed to be in his 40s, and to have at least three wives.
WHY: I think his birth was one of the most important 10 events of the
human kind because if there wasn’t any Osama bin Laden, USA would not
know how it is to fight to defend their territory.
The World Trade Center
Height: 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 meters)
Owners: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Architect: Minoru Yamasaki, Emery Roth and Sons consulting
Engineer: John Skilling and Leslie Robertson of Worthington, Skilling,
Helle and Jackson
Ground Breaking: August 5, 1966
Opened: 1970-73; April 4, 1973 ribbon cutting
The World Trade Center is more than its signature twin towers: it is a
complex of seven buildings on 16-acres, constructed and operated by the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ). The towers, One and
Two World Trade Center, rise at the heart of the complex, each climbing
more than 100 feet higher than the silver mast of the Empire State
Building.
Construction of a world trade facility had been under consideration
since the end of WWII. In the late 1950s the Port Authority took
interest in the project and in 1962 fixed its site on the west side of
Lower Manhattan on a superblock bounded by Vesey, Liberty, Church and
West Streets. Architect Minoru Yamasaki was selected to design the
project; architects Emery Roth & Sons handled production work, and, at
the request of Yamasaki, the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle and
Jackson served as engineers.
The Port Authority envisioned a project with a total of 10 million
square feet of office space. To achieve this, Yamasaki considered more
than a hundred different building configurations before settling on the
concept of twin towers and three lower-rise structures. Designed to be
very tall to maximize the area of the plaza, the towers were initially
to rise to only 80-90 stories. Only later was it decided to construct
them as the world s tallest buildings, following a suggestion said to
have originated with the Port Authority s public relations staff.
Yamasaki and engineers John Skilling and Les Robertson worked closely,
and the relationship between the towersàdesign and structure is clear.
Faced with the difficulties of building to unprecedented heights, the
engineers employed an innovative structural model: a rigid "hollow tube"
of closely spaced steel columns with floor trusses extending across to a
central core. The columns, finished with a silver-colored aluminum
alloy, were 18 3/4" wide and set only 22" apart, making the towers
appear from afar to have no windows at all.
Also unique to the engineering design were its core and elevator system.
The twin towers were the first supertall buildings designed without any
masonry. Worried that the intense air pressure created by the
buildingsàhigh speed elevators might buckle conventional shafts,
engineers designed a solution using a drywall system fixed to the
reinforced steel core. For the elevators, to serve 110 stories with a
traditional configuration would have required half the area of the lower
stories be used for shaftways. Otis Elevators developed an express and
local system, whereby passengers would change at "sky lobbies" on the
44th and 78th floors, halving the number of shaftways.
Construction began in 1966 and cost an estimated $1.5 billion. One World
Trade Center was ready for its first tenants in late 1970, though the
upper stories were not completed until 1972; Two World Trade Center was
finished in 1973. Excavation to bedrock 70 feet below produced the
material for the Battery Park City landfill project in the Hudson River.
When complete, the Center met with mixed reviews, but at 1,368 and 1,362
feet and 110 stories each, the twin towers were the world s tallest, and
largest, buildings until the Sears Tower surpassed them both in 1974.
On the 11th of September 2001 The World Trade Center collapsed becaused
it was struck by two civillian airplanes.
WHY: I think that this is one of the 10 most important events of the
human kind because since then the interstate relations considerately
changed.
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Charles Darwin, M.A.,
Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnæan, etc. societies; Author of
Journal of researches during H. M. S. Beagle s Voyage round the world.
London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1859
Slow process of change from one form to another, as in the evolution of
the universe from its formation in the Big Bang to its present state, or
in the evolution of life on Earth. Some Christians and Muslims deny the
theory of evolution as conflicting with the belief that God created all
things. English naturalist Charles Darwin assigned the main role in
evolutionary change to natural selection acting on randomly occurring
variations (now known to be produced by spontaneous changes or mutations
in the genetic material of organisms).
Organic evolution traces the development of simple unicellular forms to
more complex forms, ultimately to the flowering plants and vertebrate
animals, including man. The Earth contains an immense diversity of
living organisms: about a million different species of animals and half
a million species of plants have so far been described. There is
overwhelming evidence that this vast array arose by a gradual process of
evolutionary divergence and not by individual acts of divine creation as
described in the Book of Genesis. There are several lines of evidence:
the fossil record, the existence of similarities or homologies between
different groups of organisms, embryology, and geographical
distribution.
The idea of continuous evolution in the living world can be traced as
far back as Lucretius in the 1st century BC, but it did not gain wide
acceptance until the 19th century, following the work of Scottish
geologist Charles Lyell, French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck,
English naturalist Charles Darwin, and English biologist Thomas Henry
Huxley. Darwin assigned the major role in evolutionary change to natural
selection acting on randomly occurring variations. Natural selection
occurs because those individuals better adapted to their particular
environments reproduce more effectively, thus contributing their
characteristics to future generations. The current theory of evolution,
called neo-Darwinism , combines Darwin s theory with Austrian biologist
Gregor Mendel s theories on genetics and Hugo de Vries s discovery of
genetic mutation. Although neither the general concept of evolution nor
the importance of natural selection is doubted by the vast majority of
biologists, there remains dispute over other possible processes involved
in evolutionary change. Besides natural selection and sexual selection ,
chance may play a large part in deciding which genes become
characteristic of a population, a phenomenon called `genetic drift . It
is now also clear that evolutionary change does not always occur at a
constant rate, but that the process can have long periods of relative
stability interspersed with periods of rapid change. This has led to new
theories, such as punctuated equilibrium model . See also adaptive
radiation .
Although the broad outlines of the evolutionary sequence are known, much
research is still necessary to fill in the details and to discover the
mechanisms of evolutionary change. Evolution depends on the presence of
heritable variations in a population which confer a selective advantage
on the individuals displaying them. The phrase `survival of the fittest
is misleading since it implies the death of the `unfit individuals.
From an evolutionary point of view, fertility is much more important
than survival since if one type regularly leaves more offspring than
another, the frequency of the more fertile type in the population is
bound to increase. Fertility depends on many things including general
vigor, the length of the reproductive period and the ability to mate
successfully. Heritable changes arise from genetic mutations which occur
spontaneously in all organisms. Many investigations, which are currently
being made into the genetic structures of living plant and animal
populations, show the relative importance of mutations and isolation in
the origin of new species. It is believed that the processes now
occurring on a very small scale are the same as those which have caused
the evolution of the major groups over a vast period of geological time.
These studies will therefore throw light on the mechanism of evolution.
Evolution is a diagram by Charles Darwin of Galapagos finches, drawn
during the voyage of the Beagle. On the Galapagos Islands, Darwin found
a colony of finches that contained at least 14 distinct species, none of
which existed on the continental mainland. He proposed that, in the
isolated environment of the islands, the finches had evolved over many
generations and were embroiled in a `survival of the fittest .
WHY: I think the appearance of the book “Origin of Species†is one
of the 10 most important events of the human kind because it lets us
know from where begin.
The discovery of the telephone
Telephone Instrument for communicating by voice over long distances were
invented by US inventor Alexander Graham Bell 1876. The transmitter
(mouthpiece) consists of a carbon micro-phone, with a diaphragm that
vibrates when a person speaks into it. The diaphragm vibrations compress
grains of carbon to a greater or lesser extent, altering their
resistance to an electric current passing through them. This sets up
variable electrical signals, which travel along the telephone lines to
the receiver of the person being called. There they cause the magnetism
of an electromagnet to vary, making a diaphragm above the electromagnet
vibrate and give out sound waves, which mirror those that entered the
mouthpiece originally.
The Microphone Primary is a component in a sound-reproducing system,
whereby the mechanical energy of sound waves is converted into
electrical signals by means of a transducer. One of the simplest is the
telephone receiver mouthpiece, invented by Scottish-US inventor
Alexander Graham Bell in 1876; other types of microphone are used with
broadcasting and sound-film apparatus.
Telephones have a carbon microphone, which reproduces only a narrow
range of frequencies. For live music, a moving-coil microphone is often
used. In it, a diaphragm that vibrates with sound waves moves a coil
through a magnetic field, thus generating an electric current. The
ribbon microphone combines the diaphragm and coil. The condenser
microphone is most commonly used in recording and works by a capacitor.
Telecommunications and Communications over a distance is generally made
by electronic means.
Long-distance voice communication was pioneered 1876 by Scottish
scientist Alexander Graham Bell when he invented the telephone. Today it
is possible to communicate with most countries by telephone cable, or by
satellite or microwave link, with over 100,000 simultaneous
conversations and several television channels being carried by the
latest satellites. Integrated-Services Digital Network (ISDN) makes
videophones and high-quality fax possible; the world s first large-scale
center of ISDN began operating in Japan 1988. ISDN is a system that
transmits voice and image data on a single transmission line by changing
them into digital signals. The chief method of relaying long-distance
calls on land is microwave radio transmission.
The first mechanical telecomunications systems were the semaphore and
heliograph (using flashes of sunlight), invented in the mid-19th
century, but the forerunner of the present telecommunications age was
the electric telegraph. The earliest practicable telegraph instrument
was invented by William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone in Britain 1837 and
used by railroad companies. In the US, Samuel Morse invented a signaling
code, Morse code , which is still used, and a recording telegraph, first
used commercially between England and France 1851. Following German
physicist Heinrich Hertz s discoveries using electromagnetic waves,
Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi pioneered a `wireless telegraph,
ancestor of the radio. He established wireless communication between
England and France 1899 and across the Atlantic 1901. The modern
telegraph uses teleprinters to send coded messages along
telecommunications lines. Telegraphs are keyboard-operated machines that
transmit a five-unit Baudot code. The receiving teleprinter
automatically prints the received message.
The drawback to long-distance voice communication via microwave radio
transmission is that the transmissions follow a straight line from tower
to tower, so that over the sea the system becomes impracticable. A
solution was put forward 1945 by the science-fiction writer Arthur C
Clarke, when he proposed a system of communications satellites in an
orbit 35,900 km/22,300 mi above the equator, where they would circle the
Earth in exactly 24 hours, and thus appear fixed in the sky. Such a
system is now in operation internationally, by Intelsat . The satellites
are called geostationary satellites (syncoms). The first to be
successfully launched, by Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral, was Syncom 2
in July 1963. Many such satellites are now in use, concentrated over
heavy traffic areas such as the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans.
Telegraphy, telephony, and television transmissions are carried
simultaneously by high-frequency radio waves. They are beamed to the
satellites from large dish antennae or Earth stations, which connect
with international networks. Recent advances include the use of
fiber-optic cables consisting of fine fiberglass for telephone lines
instead of the usual copper cables. The telecommunications signals are
transmitted along the fibers on pulses of laser light.
telecommunications Satellite dish. Geostationary communications
satellites over the Earth s equator which orbit in 24 hours permit
connections between all points on the Earth s surface to be made using
such dishes. Satellite dishes are commonly used by European households
to receive television channels broadcast by satellite.
WHY: I think that the invention of the telephone was one of the 10 most
important events of the human kind because now the telephone is an
indispensable thing and it is part of our lives for some of us.
The Apollo program
The Apollo program is the US program to land human beings on the moon.
Inaugurated May, 1961, by President J. Kennedy, the program suffered a
serious setback in the preparatory phase when a fire broke out in the
Apollo 1 space capsule (Jan. 27, 1967) during testing at Cape Kennedy.
Three astronauts in the capsule were killed, the first deaths of US
astronauts. Preparations for the moon landing included a number of
preliminary missions and several moon landings were eventually made.
Apollo 8 was the first manned moon orbit (Dec. 1968), and Apollo 11 was
the first moon landing (July 20, 1969). In the latter, astronaut N.
Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. Apollo 17 (Dec.,
1972) was the last flight of the program. Apollo project US space
project to land a person on the Moon, achieved 20 July 1969, when Neil
Armstrong was the first to set foot there. He was accompanied on the
Moon s surface by Col Edwin E Aldrin, Jr; Michael Collins remained in
the orbiting command module.
The program was announced 1961 by President Kennedy. The world s most
powerful rocket, Saturn V, was built to launch the Apollo spacecraft,
which carried three astronauts. When the spacecraft was in orbit around
the Moon, two astronauts would descend to the surface in a lunar module
to take samples of rock and set up experiments that would send data back
to Earth. The first Apollo mission carrying a crew, Apollo 7, Oct 1968,
was a test flight in orbit around the Earth. After three other
preparatory flights, Apollo 11 made the first lunar landing. Five more
crewed landings followed the last 1972. The total cost of the program
was over $24 billion.
Apollo project The crew of Apollo 11 , who made the first lunar landing
in July 1969 (from left to right): Neil Armstrong, commander; Michael
Collins, command module pilot; and Edwin `Buzz Aldrin Jr, lunar module
pilot. While Armstrong and Aldrin actually set foot on the Moon s
surface, Collins remained in orbit in the command module.
Apollo-Soyuz test project Joint US-Soviet space mission in which an
Apollo and a Soyuz craft docked while in orbit around the Earth on 17
July 1975. The craft remained attached for two days and crew members
were able to move from one craft to the other through an air lock
attached to the nose of the Apollo. The mission was designed to test
rescue procedures as well as having political significance.
In the Apollo craft were Thomas Patten Stafford (commander), Vance DeVoe
Brand, and Donald Kent Slayton; the Soyuz vehicle carried Alexei
Archipovich Leonov (commander) and Valeri Nikolayevich Kubasov. The
project began with the signing of an agreement May 1972 by US president
Nixon and Soviet premier Kosygin.
WHY: I think that going in space is one of the 10 most important events
of the human kind because it opened new doors to the technology
development.
Christopher Columbus
(1451 – 1506)
Genoese navigator in the service of Spain, credited with the discovery
(1492) of America. Though the Vikings are believed to have previously
landed (c1000) in North America, it was Columbus voyage that opened the
great epoch of European exploration and colonization in the New World.
Columbus became an experienced navigator while serving the Genoese and
Portuguese, and his idea of sailing west to Asia was not new. It was not
until 1492, however, that the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella
agreed to support his venture. He left Spain (Aug. 3, 1492) with three
ships, (the Santa Maria, Nina and Pinta ) and landed on the island of
San Salvador in the Bahamas Oct. 12, just over two months later.
Believing he had reached islands east of Japan, he briefly explored the
Caribbean and then returned to Spain later in October. Three other
voyages followed (1493, 1498, 1502), on which he discovered other
Caribbean islands and reached the South American coast. Unable to
adequately administer the Spanish colony in the New World he was removed
as governor (1500), and died shortly after his disastrous fourth voyage
(1502 04).
Leif Ericson ( Ericsson, Erikson, Eriksson) fl. 1000 was a norse
explorer, son of Eric the Red. Raised among the Norse colonists in
Greenland, he was converted to Christianity while visiting Norway. Sent
back to Greenland to convert the colonists, he apparently went off
course and landed somewhere in North America, which he called Vinland.
He wintered there and then went on to Greenland. By another account, he
first went to Greenland and then sailed westward on a voyage of
discovery.
WHY: I think that the discovery of America is one of the 10 most
important events of the human kind because if there was no America we
would not have all the advanced technology and who knows what the world
would be like.
World War Two
Appearing before the Nazi Reichstag (Parliament) on the sixth
anniversary of his coming to power, Adolf Hitler made a speech
commemorating that event and also made a public threat against the
Jews...
"In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet, and have
usually been ridiculed for it. During the time of my struggle for power
it was in the first instance only the Jewish race that received my
prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day take over the
leadership of the State, and with it that of the whole nation, and that
I would then among other things settle the Jewish problem. Their
laughter was uproarious, but I think that for some time now they have
been laughing on the other side of their face. Today I will once more be
a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe
should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then
the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the
victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!"
Adolf Hitler - January 30, 1939
Nazi Euthanasia
In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler
ordered widespread "mercy killing" of the sick and disabled.
Code named "Aktion T 4," the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate "life
unworthy of life" at first focused on newborns and very young children.
Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three
who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other
symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry.
A decision on whether to allow the child to live was then made
by three medical experts solely on the basis of the questionnaire,
without any examination and without reading any medical records.
Each expert placed a + mark in red pencil or - mark in blue pencil under
the term "treatment" on a special form. A red plus mark meant a decision
to kill the child. A blue minus sign meant meant a decision against
killing. Three plus symbols resulted in a euthanasia warrant being
issued and the transfer of the child to a Children s Specialty
Department for death by injection or gradual starvation. The
decision had to be unanimous. In cases where the decision was not
unanimous the child was kept under observation and another attempt would
be made to get a unanimous decision. The Nazi euthanasia program
quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler s
decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated
to Sept. 1, enlarged "the authority of certain physicians to be
designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human
judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their
condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death." Questionnaires
were then distributed to mental institutions, hospitals and other
institutions caring for the chronically ill. Patients had
to be reported if they suffered from schizophrenia, epilepsy, senile
disorders, therapy resistant paralysis and syphilitic diseases,
retardation, encephalitis, Huntington s chorea and other neurological
conditions, also those who had been continuously in institutions for at
least 5 years, or were criminally insane, or did not posses German
citizenship or were not of German or related blood, including Jews,
Negroes, and Gypsies. A total of six killing centers were
established including the well known psychiatric clinic at Hadamar. The
euthanasia program was eventually headed by an SS man named Christian
Wirth, a notorious brute with the nickname the savage Christian.
At Brandenburg, a former prison was converted into a killing
center where the first Nazi experimental gassings took place. The gas
chambers were disguised as shower rooms, but were actually hermetically
sealed chambers connected by pipes to cylinders of carbon monoxide.
Patients were generally drugged before being led naked into the gas
chamber. Each killing center included a crematorium where the bodies
were taken for disposal. Families were then falsely told the cause of
death was medical such as heart failure or pneumonia. But the
huge increase in the death rate for the disabled combined with the very
obvious plumes of odorous smoke over the killing centers aroused
suspicion and fear. At Hadamar, for example, local children even taunted
arriving busloads of patients by saying "here comes some more to be
gassed." On August 3, 1941, a Catholic Bishop, Clemens von
Galen, delivered a sermon in Münster Cathedral attacking the Nazi
euthanasia program calling it "plain murder." The sermon sent a
shockwave through the Nazi leadership by publicly condemning the program
and urged German Catholics to "withdraw ourselves and our faithful from
their (Nazi) influence so that we may not be contaminated by their
thinking and their ungodly behavior." As a result, on August 23,
Hitler suspended Aktion T4, which had accounted for nearly a hundred
thousand deaths by this time. The Nazis retaliated against
the Bishop by beheading three parish priests who had distributed his
sermon, but left the Bishop unharmed to avoid making him into a martyr.
However, the Nazi euthanasia program quietly continued, but
without the widespread gassings. Drugs and starvation were used instead
and doctors were encouraged to decide in favor of death whenever
euthanasia was being considered. The use of gas chambers at
the euthanasia killing centers ultimately served as training centers for
the SS. They used the technical knowledge and experience gained during
the euthanasia program to construct huge killing centers at Auschwitz,
Treblinka and other concentration camps in an attempt to exterminate the
entire Jewish population of Europe. SS personnel from the euthanasia
killing centers, notably Wirth, Franz Reichleitner and Franz Stangl
later commanded extermination camps.
Statistics of World War II
Including the European and Pacific Theaters
USSR 20,600,000 10.4% 13,600,000 7,000,000
CHINA 10,000,000 2.0%
GERMANY 6,850,000 9.5% 3,250,000 3,600,000
POLAND 6,123,000 17.2% 123,000 6,000,000
JAPAN 2,000,000 2.7%
YUGOSLAVIA 1,706,000 10.9%
FRANCE 810,000 1.9% 340,000 470,000
GREECE 520,000 7.2%
UNITED STATES 500,000 0.4% 500,000
AUSTRIA 480,000 7.2%
ROMANIA 460,000 3.4%
HUNGARY 420,000 3.0%
ITALY 410,000 0.9% 330,000 80,000
CZECHOSLOVAKIA 400,000 2.7%
GREAT BRITAIN 388,000 0.8% 326,000 62,000
NETHERLANDS 210,000 2.4% 198,000 12,000
BELGIUM 88,000 1.1% 76,000 12,000
FINLAND 84,000 2.2%
AUSTRALIA 39,000 0.3%
CANADA 34,000 0.3%
ALBANIA 28,000 2.5%
INDIA 24,000 0.01%
NORWAY 10,262 0.3%
NEW ZEALAND 10,000 0.6%
LUXEMBOURG 5,000 1.7%
TOTAL 52,199,262
WHY: I think that the WW2 was one of the 10 most important events of
the human kind because it changed the entire course of the history.
The first TV
The first opto-mechanical system that functioned was breveted in 1884 by
a student named P. Nipkow.
The first demonstration with the television system, made by Nipkow, was
made in 1925 by the Scottish inventor that is known as the inventor of
the television, John Logie Baird, and the first demonstration with a
color television was made in 1928 by the same Scottish inventor. Baird
also invented the video disk in 1928, but it was commercially available
only from 1978. The video disk is a disk with pictures and sounds
recorded on it , played by laser. It is a type of compact disk. The
video disk is chiefly used to provide commercial films for private
viewing. Most systems use a 30 cm/12 in rotating vinyl disk coated with
a reflective material. Laser scanning recovers picture and sound signals
from the surface where they are recorded as a spiral of microscopic
pits.
WHY: I think that the invention of the first television and the first
video disk is one of the 10 most important events of the human kind
because they are some of the most used things from our days.
The discovery of fire
Human species, origins of Evolution of humans from ancestral primates .
The African apes (gorilla and chimpanzee) are shown by anatomical and
molecular comparisons to be the closest living relatives of humans.
Humans are distinguished from apes by the size of their brain and jaw,
their bipedalism, and their elaborate culture. Molecular studies put the
date of the split between the human and African ape lines at 5-10
million years ago. There are only fragmentary remains of ape and hominid
(of the human group) fossils from this period. Bones of the earliest
known human ancestor, a hominid named Australopithecus ramidus 1994,
were found in Ethiopia and dated as 4.4 million years old.
Australopithecus afarensis , hominids found in Ethiopia and Tanzania,
date from 3.5 to 4 million years ago. These creatures walked upright and
they were either direct ancestors or an offshoot of the line that led to
modern humans. They may have been the ancestors of Homo habilis
(considered by some to be a species of Australopithecus ), who appeared
about a million years later, had slightly larger bodies and brains, and
were probably the first to use stone tools. A. robustus and A. africanus
also lived in Africa at the same time, but these are not generally
considered to be our ancestors.
Over 1.5 million years ago, H. erectus , believed by some to be
descended from H. habilis , appeared in Africa. The erectus people had
much larger brains, and were probably the first to use fire and the
first to move out of Africa. Their remains are found as far afield as
China, Java, western Asia, Spain, Germany, and England. Modern humans,
H. sapiens sapiens , and the Neanderthals, H. sapiens neanderthalensis ,
are probably descended from H. erectus . Analysis of DNA in recent human
populations shows that H. sapiens originated about 200,000 years ago in
Africa. The oldest known fossils of H. sapiens also come from Africa,
between 150,000 and 100,000 years ago. Separation of human populations
occurred later, with separation of Asian, European, and Australian
populations between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. Neanderthals were
large-brained and heavily built, probably adapted to the cold conditions
of the ice ages. They lived in Europe and the Middle East, and died out
about 40,000 years ago, leaving H. sapiens sapiens as the only remaining
species of the hominid group. The most recent fossil discovery is that
of a lower jaw of a fossil ape found in the Otavi Mountains, Namibia. It
comes from deposits dated between 10 and 15 million years ago, and it is
similar to earlier finds from E Africa and Turkey. This is the first
record of a fossil ape from S Africa and it extends the known range of
fossil apes by at least 3,200 km/2,000 mi. It is thought to be close to
the initial divergence of the great apes and humans, although genetic
studies indicate that the last common ancestor between chimpanzees and
humans lived 6 to 8 million years ago.
Human species, origins of A reconstruction of Java Man. This fossil
dates back to between 750,000 and 300,000 years ago. Since its discovery
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Java Man has been shown by
anthropologists to be a human predecessor and it provides a valuable
chronological marker for human evolution.
WHY: I think that the discovery of fire is one of the 10 most important
events of the human kind because it is indispensable.
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