Tea at Trianon: The First Ship to Sail around Africa

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 19, 2022

The First Ship to Sail around Africa

From Ancient Origins:

We know very little about their journey. The only source we have for their trip is Herodotus, a Greek writer who lived more than 100 years after they set sail. Historians, however, have a few theories on what they would have seen.

It’s believed that they would have spent their first year traveling through known lands, sailing down the Red Sea and crossing by Punt, a kingdom Egypt traded with regularly . But when Punt drifted away in the distance, they would have moved into an uncharted part of the world.

Here, they may have seen whales for the first time in their lives. They would have landed in African jungles and sowed crops. And it was here, we know for certain, that they saw the sun rise in the wrong part of the sky. (Read more.)