Wikiquote (René Descartes (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650) a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day. In particular, his Meditations on First Philosophy continues to be a standard text at most university philosophy departments. Descartes' influence in mathematics is equally apparent; the Cartesian coordinate system — allowing reference to a point in space as a set of numbers, and allowing algebraic equations to be expressed as geometric shapes in a two-dimensional coordinate system (and conversely, shapes to be described as equations) — was named after him.)
Wikipedia Image: Fresco from Monastery of St. Jovan, above the village Gornji Matejevac near Nis. depicting St. Constantine the Great and his wife, holding the cross; Bronze statue of Constantine I in York, England, near the spot where he was proclaimed Augustus in 306; Constantine the Great, mosaic in Hagia Sophia, 1000.>
Wikipedia Image: The Siege of Antioch, from a 15th-century miniature; After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade; The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, 1337 miniature; Pope Innocent III excommunicating the Albigensians, Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders; The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success.
Wikipedia Painting: Isabella I of Castile ● Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada offering the Edict of expulsion of the Jews to the Catholic Monarchs for their signature. ● The Tribunal of the Inquisition, by Francisco de Goya.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Grand Union - Stars and Stripes Flag
Wikipedia Painting: The Massacre at Chios (1824) by Eugène Delacroix.
Wikipedia Painting: Treaty of Kanagawa; The Japanese government, opens the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade
Wikipedia Photo: The very nature of Chile's topography made it one of the toughest parts of South America for the Spanish to conquer (Torres del Paine National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Torres del Paine) is a national park encompassing mountains, a glacier, a lake, and river-rich areas in southern Chilean Patagonia); Lautaro; The Mapuche were the original inhabitants of central and southern Chile; Chilean and Argentinean troops going to the Battle of Chacabuco (February 12, 1817) led by José de San Martín.
Wikipedia Photo: The Meiji Restoration (明治維新 Meiji-ishin)
Wikipedia Photo: Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, Fisheye - HDR, credit Erlend Robaye, Getty Images.
Wikipedia Image: Richard Pearse (December 3, 1877 – July 29, 1953) was a New Zealand farmer and inventor who performed pioneering experiments in aviation. (It is claimed Pearse flew and landed a powered heavier-than-air machine on 31 March 1903, some nine months before the Wright brothers flew their aircraft.)
Wikipedia Image: RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK to New York City, US. The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,502 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in modern history.
Wikipedia Photo: Part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, the island of St. John incorporates both a land-based national park and a sea-based national monument (First established in 1956 and later expanded by the U.S. Congress, the Virgin Islands National Park covers more than 7,000 acres (2,800 hectares) - Coral Reef National Monument—established ten years ago this week by presidential proclamation—encompasses submerged lands within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of the St. John coast), credit Earth Observatory NASA.
Wikipedia Photo: Tsitsernakaberd is a memorial in Yerevan, Armenia, dedicated to the victims of the Armenian Genocide. The 44-meter stele symbolizes the national rebirth of Armenians; 12 slabs are positioned in a circle, representing the 12 lost provinces in present day Turkey. In the center of the circle, at a depth of 1.5 meters, there is an eternal flame. credit Marianna Meliksetyan, iStockphoto ● Armenian alphabet monument in Yerevan.
Wikipedia Image: Map of the World Time Zones, credit Mihalko-family
Wikipedia Image: Motion Picture Production Code imposing strict guidelines in film.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
Wikipedia Photo: Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936; Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans; Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
Wikipedia Picture: UNIVAC I; Univac Operator's Console and Operator ● The LLNL Univac Console Area ● The Acoustic Memory Units. credit Computer History.
Wikipedia Photo: Simonos Petras Monastery, credit Travis Dove, National Geographic ● Tibet - Heinrich Harrer, National Geographic ● Tibet - Two yaks, wispy clouds and the grand vista of the Tibetan Plateau, credit Felix Torkar. © 2011 National Geographic ● Tibetan People.
Wikipedia Photo: The launch of Explorer 6; designed for photographing the Earth's cloud cover, and transmitted the first pictures of Earth from orbit.
Wikipedia Photo: Hijacked Sudan passenger jet lands in Libya, August 27, 2008; Amsterdam false alarm revives airplane hijacking memories, Passengers leave a Vueling plane at a field near Amsterdam Airport after a hijack scare last week that led the Netherlands to scramble F-16 fighter jets, September 2, 2012 Reuters; Egypt Air flight 648 was hijacked in November 1985 by the terrorist Abu Nidal organisation, credit AP; Cockpit section of Pan Am 103 wreckage following a mid-air explosion, December 21, 1988; 747 Pan Am airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, with 259 passengers on board in 1988; Debris lies in a deep gash through the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, caused by the crash of Pan Am flight 103, credit AP; Flight 175 hits the WTC South Tower. The picture was taken from a traffic helicopter. credit: WABC 7/ Salient Stills; Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center and explodes at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001 in New York City, credit Spencer Platt / Getty Images.
Wikipedia Photo: WrestleMania; The World Wrestling Federation staged the first WrestleMania on March 31, 1985 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. (The main event was a tag-team match between the WWF Champion Hulk Hogan and Mr. T.)
Wikipedia Image: Lucy skeleton reconstruction. Cleveland Natural History Museum; Cast of the remains of "Lucy"; ‘Lucy’ Australopithecus afarensis skull; A reconstruction of a female Australopithecus afarensis; 3.5 million-year-old skull has been found in Kenya, and scientists say it might evict the Ethiopian fossil nicknamed "Lucy" from the line of direct human ancestry, Asociated Press.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.