You Won't Find A Truer Valentine's Day Quote Than This
An amazing perspective of us. Blue Marble, the picture snapped by the crew of Apollo 17 while on its way to the Moon, from a distance of 29 400km away. Apart from the white swirls of large cloud system and the deep blue of the oceans, you are looking at all 1.57 billion people in our home, 'Africa'. That's a pretty amazing perspective.
Image: Wikipedia
Valentine's Day quote
I love you more than coffee, but please don’t make me prove it. – Elizabeth Evans
Did you know?
The first recorded Valentine’s Day message was sent in 1415 by Charles, the French Duke of Orleans. Captured at the disastrous Battle of Agincourt, he was locked up in the Tower of London for 25 years before a ransom secured his release. From the tower he continued his life as a poet and nobleman in spirit, keeping up correspondence with family and friends. Among his prose, a poetic letter expressing his love for his spouse, Bonne of Armagnac, centuries before the holiday became the commercial celebration we know today.
On this day, February 14
269 Roman Emperor Claudius II executes two Christian martyrs who share the same name, Valentine. Two hundred years later, the church sets up an annual feast, Valentine’s Day, in honour of them. The feast evolves outside of the Church from an eternal devotion to Christ to become a celebration of romance and love.
1840 Dingane, stripped of his kingship after he and his Zulu warriors are vanquished at the battle of Magongo, at the Umkuzi River, flees to Swaziland, where he is murdered.
1840 Natal is proclaimed a Voortrekker Republic, with the borders being the Umzimvubu in the south, the Black Mfolozi in the north, the sea to the east.
1900 British forces begin a fourth attempt to lift the Siege of Ladysmith.
1929 Seven people, six of whom are rivals of mobster Al Capone’s gang, are murdered in the St Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago.
1945 Prague is bombed by the Allies. Hundred of civilians die and thousands of buildings are destroyed. Some of the dead, including 23 who had rushed to a cellar for safely, are only found during the reconstruction of houses 25 years later. Survivors are deeply troubled about why they were bombed and this becomes a useful propaganda tool for the Nazis and Soviets, who called it an ‘Anglo-American terrorist raid’. The truth was that the Czech capital was mistaken for Dresden, 150km away, where tens of thousands died in the ‘fire bombing’ that night. Other groups of bombers also dropped their loads on the wrong cities and towns.
1990 From a distance of 6 billion kilometres from earth, the Voyager 1 spacecraft snaps the Pale Blue Dot photo showing just how small the planet is in the infiniteness of space.
1994 King Goodwill Zwelithini tells President FW de Klerk he rejects the interim constitution and is prepared to set up a Zulu kingdom.
2005 YouTube is founded.
2013 Olympian and paralympian Oscar Pistorius kills his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
2018 Jacob Zuma resigns as president.
2024 The worth of Nvidia, the world leader in artificial intelligence, hits $1.83 trillion. Today it is $3.2tn. (To give an idea of how enormous a number that is: All the seconds in 32 000 years add up to 1 trillion.
DAILY NEWS
A mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam The famous Pale Bue Dot photo taken of Earth from the Voyager spacecraft from an astounding 6 billion kilometers. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.... It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
Image: https://keithdb.medium.com/