Word of the day
- menorah December 26, 2024Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 26, 2024 is: menorah • \muh-NOR-uh\ • noun A menorah is a candelabra with seven or nine lights that is used in Jewish worship. // At sundown on the first night of Hanukkah, Elliott's father helped him light the first candle on the menorah. See the entry > […]Merriam-Webster
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On This Day
332 – Constantine the Great announced free distributions of food to the citizens in Constantinople.
Constantine the Great (Latin: Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus;[2] Greek: Κωνσταντῖνος ὁ Μέγας; 27 February c. 272 AD[1] – 22 May 337 AD), also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine,[3] was a Roman Emperor of Illyrian and Greek origin from 306 to 337 AD. He was the son of Flavius Valerius Constantius, a Roman Army officer, and his consort Helena. His father became Caesar, the deputy emperor in the west, in 293 AD. Constantine was sent east, where he rose through the ranks to become a military tribune under Emperors Diocletian and Galerius. In 305, Constantius raised himself to the rank of Augustus, senior western emperor, and Constantine was recalled west to campaign under his father in Britannia (Britain). Constantine was acclaimed as emperor by the army at Eboracum (modern-day York) after his father’s death in 306 AD, and he emerged victorious in a series of civil wars against Emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become sole ruler of both west and east by 324 AD.
As emperor, Constantine enacted administrative, financial, social, and military reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. The Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile field units and garrison soldiers capable of countering internal threats and barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued successful campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—the Franks, the Alamanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—even resettling territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century.
Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.[notes 1] Although he lived most of his life as a pagan, he joined the Christian faith on his deathbed, being baptised by Eusebius of Nicomedia. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared religious tolerance for Christianity in the Roman empire. He called the First Council of Nicaea in 325 that produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built on his orders at the purported site of Jesus’ tomb in Jerusalem and became the holiest place in Christendom. The Papal claim to temporal power in the High Middle Ages was based on the supposed Donation of Constantine (now regarded as a forgery). He is venerated as a saint by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Church. He has historically been referred to as the “First Christian Emperor,” and he did heavily promote the Christian Church. Some modern scholars, however, debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of the Christian faith itself.[notes 2]
The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire.[7] He built a new imperial residence at Byzantium and renamed the city Constantinople after himself (the laudatory epithet of “New Rome” came later, and was never an official title). It became the capital of the Empire for more than a thousand years, with the later eastern Roman Empire now being referred to as the Byzantine Empire by historians. His more immediate political legacy was that he replaced Diocletian’s tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession by leaving the empire to his sons. His reputation flourished during the lifetime of his children and centuries after his reign. The medieval church upheld him as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a prototype, a point of reference, and the symbol of imperial legitimacy and identity.[8] Beginning with the Renaissance, there were more critical appraisals of his reign due to the rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources. Trends in modern and recent scholarship have attempted to balance the extremes of previous scholarship.
Born On This Day
1048 – Omar Khayyám, Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet (d. 1131)
Omar Khayyam (/ˈoʊmɑːr kaɪˈjɑːm/; Persian: عمر خیّام [xæjˈjɑːm]; 18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet.[3][4]:7
As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics.[5][6] As an astronomer, he composed a calendar which proved to be a more accurate computation of time than that proposed five centuries later by Pope Gregory XIII.[7]:659[8]
Omar was born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran. He spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt رباعیات). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world due to the translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle.
FYI
By Clover Hope: A Plant Mom Grows in Brooklyn
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By Katie Rife: This week’s animals (and 1 human child) want you to live each day to the fullest
A Message from the Director of the National Science Foundation
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Ideas
Alicia W HometalkerMiddletown, PA: Epsom Salt for Your Plants – Inside and Out
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wikimedia
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for December 27 December 27, 2024Picture of the day The Seehornsee in the Berchtesgaden Alps. On the right the normal route to the Seehorn.
- Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for December 26 December 26, 2024Picture of the day Khone Phapheng Falls, Si Phan Don, Laos. Located on the Mekong River near the border with Cambodia, at 10.7 kilometres (6.6 mi) wide, it is the widest waterfall in the world.
Recipes
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