Month: September 2019

During the early Age of Exploration, explorers from Europe searched for a northern passage which would allow explorers to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific. These explorers, such as Henry Hudson and Vitus Bering, failed to discover such a passage but did discover many previously unknown places. In 1819, William Edward Parry‘s expedition to Arctic Canada almost made it to the other side, but ultimately their ship got stuck in ice over the winter, and their attempts to go further west the following summer were unsuccessful. Further expeditions in the 1820s by Parry and other British explorers remained unsuccessful at finding the Northwest Passage, but in 1827 Parry attempted to reach the North Pole, and went as far as 82° 45′ N (for reference, the North Pole is 90° N). An 1871 American expedition undertaken by the ship Polaris also tried for the Pole, but that expedition failed after its leader died from a likely poisoning and the ship was set adrift during a storm the next year and was wrecked. Subsequent expeditions to reach the Pole during the 1870s and 1880s were also met with hardships and ended in failure, though new discoveries were made. In 1890, Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen came up with a strategy to let his ship Fram drift through the ice towards the Pole, and his expedition started in 1893; however, the drift was far too slow and Nansen and a partner embarked from the Fram in 1895 in order to reach the Pole on foot; the team eventually gave up and headed for land, but not before reaching 86° 14′ N, which was by far the new record. Umberto Cagni’s expedition reached 86° 34′ in 1900. (There was also the spectacular failure of an 1897 Swedish balloon expedition to the Pole which ended in the deaths of its 3 members, who had struggled back to land after their balloon crashed.)

By 1908, American explorer Robert Peary had made many attempts at reaching the Pole, such as a 1900 expedition which reached the northern tip of Greenland, and a 1906 expedition in the SS Roosevelt in an attempt to set a new Farthest North record, which he claimed to have achieved when he returned. Peary eared the Hubbard medal from the National Geographic Society for the latter expedition, and in 1908 he set out to finally reach the Pole. After departing from Ellsmere Island in Canada in February of 1909, Peary and 5 of his companions apparently reached the Pole on April 6, 1909. However, when Peary returned home, he learned that Frederick Cook, who had accompanied Peary on many of his previous voyages, had claimed to have visited the Pole the previous year. Peary was frustrated, and tried to establish that Cook’s claims were false as soon as he got back to the mainland of North America. (Peary also ordered a friend of Cook’s expedition in Greenland who possessed Cook’s journal and equipment to leave those items behind in Greenland, which complicated matters for Cook.) Indeed, Cook had little firm evidence of reaching the pole, and some of the measurements he was able to produce were inaccurate. Though some doubt fell on Peary’s claim to have reached the Pole as well, especially given that all of Peary’s navigational staff had turned back before the Pole, ultimately Peary and his supporters were able to convince many of the relevant authorities that their claims were true. Peary thus sat as the undisputed first to reach the Pole for many decades, and Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had been the first to traverse the Northwest passage, set his sights on the South Pole instead and became the first explorer to reach it in 1911.

The dispute still simmered on though, and in 1984 the National Geographic Society, who had been the foremost proponents of Peary during his lifetime, commissioned polar explorer Wally Herbert, who had himself walked to North Pole in 1969, to determine whether or not Peary had actually made it to the Pole. Herbert then published a book entitled The Noose of Laurels in 1989, which argued that Peary missed the pole by 60-80 miles. The report used data held by the National Geographic Society which had not previously been seen by researchers, as Peary had kept them from public view after they were used in what he perceived to be a biased analysis. However, the Society published its own report the same year using analysis of Peary’s depth measurements and photographs taken on the expedition, which concluded that Peary made it to within 5 miles of the pole. Both conclusions are controversial, but Herbert’s argument has become somewhat accepted.

Cook’s claim to have been the first to summit Mount McKinley (or Denali, as it is also known and now known officially – but that’s another story) has generally been disproven, as it seems to have been taken on a lower peak, lending doubt to his polar claims. However, Peary had also made implausible and inaccurate claims on his previous expeditions, such as the discovery of a far-northern “Crocker Land” which does not exist.

A good source I used:

Smithsonian magazine, Who Discovered the North Pole?

 

 

Following the dawn of nuclear physics, scientists realized that elements with large atomic numbers could be created either by nuclear reactions or by colliding two atoms together. The first element to be discovered via artificial creation was element 43, which was produced accidentally after foil made from element 42 (molybdenum) was irradiated. It was soon named technetium in honor of its artificial creation. In the early 1940s, Elements 93 and 94 were created, and were named neptunium and plutonium in order to create a pattern of elements named after planets starting with uranium. Around this time, the Manhattan project was formed to develop the first nuclear weapons, which made this research a part of the national interest. Over the next 7 years, elements 95-101 were detected.

However, the Soviet Union became a nuclear country in 1949, and sought to develop its own nuclear research program. In 1956, prominent Soviet physicists established the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), which had the equipment necessary to create new elements. This thus brought the race to create new elements firmly into the Cold War.

As their discoveries were undisputedly made by American scientists, their proposed names for elements 95-101 were accepted without issue. However, Glenn Seaborg, leader of the element discovery team, had to ask the government whether naming element 101 mendelevium after the Russian formulator of the periodic table was acceptable, which would be a sign of the national tensions which would come to define the next 40 years of element discovery.

The secrecy of nuclear experiments, combined with the difficulty of confirming an element’s presence, meant that it would often take months for a team to announce they had discover an new element. As a result, the Soviet and American teams would often claim to discover elements at around the same time. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) gave priority to the discoverer of an element when deciding on a name, and the American scientists used the assumption that they had discovered elements 104 and 105 to propose the names rutherfordium and hahnium after pioneering nuclear physicists Ernest Rutherford and Otto Hahn. However, the Soviets believed that the Americans were being far too hasty with their announcements, and counteracted the American team by instead proposing the names kurchatovium and nielsbohrium after Soviet physicist Igor Kurchatov and Danish atomic pioneer Niels Bohr.

Element 106 was named seaborgium after Glenn Seaborg, a decision which was particularly controversial given that Seaborg was still alive and naming elements after living people was discouraged by the IUPAC. However, the Soviets never proposed a name for the element, perhaps because they retracted any claim to have discovered it in 1984.

During the 1970s the IUPAC attempted to resolve the dispute, and suggested that elements only be named 5 years after the first report of their discovery. However, the American and Soviet scientists largely rejected this proposal; a 1991 report by the Soviet team countered that the IUPAC “have never been and are not now experts in these fields of science,” referring to nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry. However, by 1985 a Transfermium Working Group (referring to elements beyond fermium, element 100) was formed to resolve the issues of of discoveries and names, and in 1991, the first formal criteria for determining discovery of a transfermium element were established. The Russian team (the Soviet Union collapsed around this time) was satisfied by the report, but the Americans objected to the categorization of element 104 as a joint discovery between the Soviet and American teams, as they believed they deserved sole credit.

The name issue was not resolved either, and a 1992 suggestion from the German team which discovered elements 107-109 went nowhere. In 1994, the IUPAC made its first ruling on the names for the transfermium elements, which used many of the American, Russian, and German names but transferred many of the names to different elements than were originally proposed. For example, the name hahniumwas transferred to element 108, and the name rutherfordium was given to element 106. This did not satisfy the Americans, who wanted the rights to name all the elements they discovered, and insisted on keeping the name seaborgium. The American Chemical Society refused to accept the report, and argued that giving the names hahnium and rutherfordium to different elements would create confusion. A 1995 compromise from the IUPAC, in which all American proposals but seaborgium were dropped, was rejected for shaking up the names of other elements too much.

In 1997, the IUPAC finally reached an arrangement which was agreed to by all sides. The American names for elements 103, 104, and 106 were accepted, while element 105 was given the name dubnium in honor of the city where the JINR is located in Russia, which had previously been given to element 104 in the 1994 proposal. The German names for elements 107-109 were accepted, though nielsbohrium was shortened to bohrium. The Russians were somewhat bitter about kurchatovium being rejected, while the Americans, who had used “hahnium” for many years, were also unhappy, but this perhaps goes to show that the agreement was truly fair. Also, the rejection of the name hahnium and the acceptance of the name meitnerium for element 109 was seen as posthumous justice for Lise Meitner, as despite being Otto Hahn’s collaborator, she did not get to share his 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission. (Hahnium cannot be used for another element now to avoid causing confusion with its former usage.)

 

Sources:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-75813-8_5 (This is where I sourced much of my information from, and provides a more technical history of the discoveries of these elements.)

Religious history is fraught with schisms between members of a previously common religion. These schisms often occur for reasons not strictly related to religion, such as political schisms (when the Southern Baptists split off in the 1840s over disputes with their Northern counterparts over slavery, and the 2018 decision by the Russian Orthodox Church to sever relations with the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Constantinople over Constantinople’s decision to grant autonomy to the Ukranian Church, which was likely connected to Russia and Ukraine’s conflict over Crimea). Usually, a variety of disputes are responsible for these schisms, such as the 1054 split between the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which occurred due to a combination of cultural differences between the Greek-dominated East and the Latin-dominated West and the many discrepancies between Eastern and Western religious practices. However, in the 17th century, a schism occurred in Russia entirely over what most would perceive as minor changes to church doctrine, which serves as an example of how even mundane differences in belief can create severe tension.

Background

The first vestiges of the Russian Orthodox Church originated when Christian priests from the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) empire started to spread their faith to the then-pagan Slavs of Eastern Europe. In 988, Christianity became the state religion of the Kievan Rus’, the predecessor of the later Russian state, under the Christian Prince Vladimir I. At first the Russian church answered directly to the leadership of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople, but in 1448, just five years before Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans, it started making decisions on its own.

During the 17th century Time of Troubles, when Russia had trouble finding a viable Tsar, the patriarchs of the Russian Church were able to command more power. Nikon, who was elected Patriarch in 1652, sought to make big changes to the Church. When the Russian Orthodox Church was first formed, religious texts were translated from Greek into Russian; however, over many years of copying numerous differences between the texts began to show up. Nikon set to work in order to rectify these changes, and almost immediately began making changes to parts of the church doctrine in order to make it more like the original Greek doctrine. Perhaps the most famous of these changes was that the sign of the cross had to be signed using three fingers instead of the original two. Many priests did not accept these changes, arguing that the rituals which had served them well for centuries were the only true way to salvation. These priests were soon excommunicated by the Church, and they and their followers would see varying degrees of persecution over the next 200+ years of the Russian Empire, though they managed to flourish in some of the more far-flung regions of the country and often moved out of Russia.

In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II signed an edict of religious toleration, which finally allowed the Old Believers to practice as they wished. However, the Soviet opposition to religion likely caused the number of Old Believers to fall. When the USSR became more tolerant of religion, though, the Old Believers began to be accepted as never before, and the Russian Orthodox Church started accepting Old Believers in 1971. 

The story of the Old Believers makes one wonder why so much conflict occurred over what seem to be minor differences in rituals. If you are an atheist, you might be compelled to think that this conflict is yet another example of how religion can drive people into petty conflict. However, the conflict between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Old Believers is much deeper than just the differences between their rituals. The Old Believers, as stated before, viewed the old rituals as the only way to God, seeing as they were practiced by the old Russian saints. Also, Nikon was very hasty with his announcements, as even the Patriarch of Constantinople warned him to be cautious. As for the Church and the Tsar, they went along with the changes for political reasons, as they wished to centralize church power at a time when Russian influence was threatened in areas along the Russian border. This makes the raskol (the Russian name for the schism which created the Old Believers) just another part of the long Russian history of culturally- and politically- motivated schisms which still occur to this day. Also, while the power of ritual is certainly still important, over time these rituals can lose some of their significance, as indicated by the eventual acceptance of the Old Believers.

It is no secret that English spelling is not particularly consistent. Many words with similar spellings, such as words ending in “-ough,” are pronounced differently (such as in “enough” and “through”.) This is in contrast to many other languages using the Latin Alphabet, which have relatively simple orthography with few inconsistencies, such as Spanish and Italian, whose native speakers can usually identify the pronunciations of unknown words easily. This has caused many English-speakers in the past and present to propose a variety of changes to way English is spelled. However, most of the efforts have failed, though a few changes have managed to survive.

When Old English was first put to writing, words were spelled pretty consistently, with one letter or combination of letters only corresponding to a few sounds. However, things got more complicated when the Norman takeover of England led to the adoption of many French words, and French spelling were typically used for these words. Perhaps the most significant change, however, came at the end of Middle English, when the Great Vowel Shift brought about many changes to the way English vowels were pronounced. The single vowels a e i o u, which were previously pronounced the same way as they were in Latin, changed pronunciation when they were long vowels. This was also responsible for the changes in vowel pronunciation caused by a silent E.

In addition to these natural changes to English, many other words are pronounced differently due to other factors. Many foreign words, such as pterodactyl from Greek, had silent letters in their source languages which were carried over, and words like pizza are pronounced using the rules of their native language instead of English. Also, many words which lost a letter during the changes from Latin to French had the Latin letters added back in as silent letters to reflect the ultimate origins of these words (such as doubt, debt, and indict).

Before literacy became almost universal in the English-speaking world, words were still spelled differently than they were today. Inspecting documents from before the 17th century reveals many differences from modern spelling. However, the spread of printing and standardization of spelling amongst the educated soon led to most words attaining their modern-day spellings.

Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary of The English Language would solidify British spelling for years to come. However, Noah Webster advocated for an American spelling which contained many differences from Johnson’s and which tried to eliminate some of the stranger spellings in English. Many of these spellings (such as spelling color instead of colour) still serve to distinguish American and British English, and some of them (public instead of publick) are almost universal. However, many of the spellings Webster supported (such as masheen) never gained support. (It should be noted that many of these spellings were not originated by Webster; he merely noted his preference of them.)

This would not be the end of attempts to reform English spelling. Alexander John Ellis wrote and 1848 book entitled A Plea For Phonetic Spelling. By the latter half of the 19th century, English spelling reform began to be seriously considered. An International Convention for the Amendment of English Orthography was held in Philadelphia in 1876, and the Spelling Reform Association was formed that same year. By 1898, the National Education Association had adopted 12 updated spellings from the SRA: tho, altho, thoro, thorofare, thru, thruout, catalog, decalog, demagog, pedagog, prolog, and program. In 1906, the zenith of the American Spelling Reform movement occurred with the formation of the Simplified Spelling Board at the behest of Andrew Carnegie. Notable members included librarian Melville (or, as he spelled it, “Melvil”) Dewey and Mark Twain. The SSB even convinced President Theodore Roosevelt to order the Federal Printing Agency to use some of its spellings; however, this move was lampooned by the press and was quickly reversed by Congress. Carnegie later lost faith in the board and failed to provide it any more money in his will.

This marked the last major attempt at the government level to reform English spelling in America, though the movement also existed in Europe. George Bernard Shaw left a large sum of money in his will towards spelling reform, and a failed spelling reform bill in the UK led to a “Teaching Alphabet,” which introduced modifications aimed at making the alphabet correspond better to phonetics, being implemented in some British schools, although such practices have mostly fallen out of favor.