Tuesday, 7 April 2020
Helen Keller (L5U6)
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| Helen Keller as depicted on the Alabama state quarter. |
Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political
activist, and lecturer. She was the first deaf blind person to earn a Bachelor
of Arts degree. The story of how
Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near
complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to
communicate, has become widely known through the dramatic depictions of the
play and film The Miracle Worker. Her birthplace in West Tuscumbia,
Alabama is now a museum and sponsors an annual "Helen Keller Day".
Her birthday on June 27 is commemorated as Helen Keller Day in the U.S. state
of Pennsylvania and was authorized at the federal level by presidential
proclamation by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, the 100th anniversary of her
birth.
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| Helen and Anne in 1898 |
Johanna "Anne"
Mansfield Sullivan Macy (April 14, 1866 – October 20, 1936), better known as Anne Sullivan,
was an American teacher, best known for being the instructor and lifelong
companion of Helen Keller. She contracted trachoma, a highly infectious eye
infection, when she was eight years old which left her blind and without
reading or writing skills. She received her education as a student of the Perkins
School for the Blind where upon graduation she became a teacher to Helen.
Louis Braille (L5U6)
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|
Bust of Louis Braille (1809-1852)
by Étienne Leroux (1836-1906) |
Blinded
in both eyes as a result of an early childhood accident, Braille mastered his
disability while still a boy. He excelled in his education and received
scholarship to France's Royal Institute for Blind Youth. While still a student
there, he began developing a system of tactile code that could allow blind
persons to read and write quickly and efficiently. Inspired by the military
cryptography of Charles Barbier, Braille constructed a new method built
specifically for the needs of the blind. He presented his work to his peers for
the first time in 1824.
In
adulthood, Braille served as a professor at the Institute and enjoyed an
avocation as a musician, but he largely spent the remainder of his life
refining and extending his system. It went unused by most educators for many
years after his death, but posterity has recognized braille as a revolutionary
invention, and it has been adapted for use in languages worldwide.
Friday, 31 January 2020
The Great Barrier Reef (L5U5)
The Great Barrier Reef is the
world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and
900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area
of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef
is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
The Barrier Reef:
From a glass-bottom boat:
Stonehenge (L6U5)
Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire,
South of England. Stonehenge's ring of standing stones are set within earthworks
in the middle of the most dense complex of Neolithic and Bronze Age monuments
in England, including several hundred burial mounds.
Archaeologists believe it
was constructed from 3000 BC to 2000 BC. The surrounding circular earth bank
and ditch, which constitute the earliest phase of the monument, have been dated
to about 3100 BC. Radiocarbon dating suggests that the first bluestones were
raised between 2400 and 2200 BC, although they may have been at the site as
early as 3000 BC.
The site and its surroundings were added to UNESCO's
list of World Heritage Sites in 1986 and it is a legally protected Scheduled
Ancient Monument. Stonehenge is owned by the Crown and managed by English
Heritage; the surrounding land is owned by the National Trust.
Stonehenge could have been
a burial ground from its earliest beginnings. Deposits containing human bone
date from as early as 3000 BC, when the ditch and bank were first dug, and
continued for at least another five hundred years.
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