Adela
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Graduation Traditions
Since it’s that time of year where students from all over receive their diplomas after years of hard work. We decided to do a short post on where some of the traditions actually started. The Graduation cap, which is sometimes called a mortarboard, due to the fact it resembled the mortar board used by bricklayers. The mortarboard is believed to have developed from the biretta. The Biretta is worn by Roman Catholic clergy and academics, typically in red or black, square, upright with three or four peaks. The Graduation tassel has been worn on graduation cap for centuries, In the last 40 or 50 years student started moving the tassel…
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Skull and Bones
This mysterious secret society was founded in 1832 after a dispute among Yale debating societies Linonia, Brothers in Unity, and the Calliopean Society over that season’s Phi Beta Kappa awards. William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft co-founded “the Order of the Scull and Bones”. The Russell Trust Association, incorporated in 1856 and named after the Bones co-founder manages their assets. Their members go by the nickname “Bonesmen”. Many famous and powerful people have been known to be in the society. Skull and Bones selects new members among students every spring as part of Yale University’s “Tap Day”, and has done so since 1879. Since the society’s inclusion of women in…
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The first death by Robot
Robert Williams was 25 and worked as an American engineer for the Ford Motor Company factory in Flat Rock, Michigan. He was killed by an industrial robot arm on January 25, 1979 when he was struck in the head and killed by the arm of a 1-ton production-line robot as he was gathering parts in a storage facility. The robot was part of a parts-retrieval system that moved material from one part of the factory to another; when the robot began running slowly, Williams reportedly climbed into the storage rack to retrieve parts manually when he was struck in the head and killed instantly. His family sued the manufacturers of…
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Chernobog
Also known as Czernobog, he was a dark demonic deity in Slavic mythology. His name means ‘Black God’. Only coming out at night he causes calamity and disaster, bringing bad luck and misfortune wherever he turns. His opposite number is Belobog, the White God of Goodness. Few would pray to such a god but one early passage reveals that people would spit curses into a bowl during feasts to keep him at bay. Little else is known about him. The only historical sources, which are Christian ones, interpret him as a dark, accursed god, but it is questionable how important or malicious he really was. The name is attested only…
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Arrhichion – Olympic victor even in death
He was a champion pankratiast (martial art blending boxing and wrestling) in the ancient Olympic Games. He was the winner of the pankration at the 52nd and 53rd Olympiads. Little did he know that the 54th would be his last. His fatal fight was described by the geographer Pausanias and by Philostratus the Younger. Pausanias states: “For when he was contending for the wild olive with the last remaining competitor, whoever he was, the latter got a grip first, and held Arrhachion, hugging him with his legs, and at the same time he squeezed his neck with his hands. Arrhachion dislocated his opponent’s toe, but expired owing to suffocation; but…
