Tea at Trianon: People With Blue Eyes

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

Thursday, October 12, 2023

People With Blue Eyes

From Ancient Pages:

About 6,000-10,000 years ago, an interesting mutation resulted in the emergence of blue eyes.
Before that, all people on Earth had brown eyes. If you have blue eyes, you have more in common with other blue-eyed individuals than you once thought. Scientists have been able to confirm that all people with blue eyes have one common ancestor. This person originated from the region around the north of the Black Sea following the last Ice Age.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen examined mitochondrial DNA and compared the eye color of blue-eyed individuals in countries as diverse as Jordan, Denmark, and Turkey.

"A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a "switch", which literally "turned off" the ability to produce brown eyes," Professor Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark said. (Read more.)