Latest news with #GeorgeVI
Toronto Star
23-05-2025
- General
- Toronto Star
Michelle Good:King Charles can't fix the Crown's broken promises. But he can offer Indigenous people this one powerful symbol
By Michelle Good, Special to the Star Michelle Good is the author of 'Five Little Indians,' a novel about the survivors of residential schools and the effects of their experience on subsequent generations. She wrote it in answer to the question people often ask about survivors: 'Why can't they just get over it?' The book has won almost every major literary prize in the country. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation. I was born, and spent my childhood, in a non-Indigenous community in northern British Columbia. My mother lost her Indian Status when she married my father and thus her legal rights and access to her own community. I was a child with an enthusiastic nature and it didn't take much to inspire my passionate devotion to this or that. My paternal grandfather was born in Britain, in Essex, and it's fair to say his children were imbued with a hearty respect for the monarchy. When my father was ten years old, King George VI bore the crown. When I was ten, Elizabeth II had ascended the throne twelve years prior. Her picture was hung prominently in every classroom I learned in and we sang heartily to God to save her at every school assembly. I was a child in this country when it still was a Dominion of Great Britain, before Canada patriated the constitution asserting our independence while remaining a member of the Commonwealth. I particularly remember Dominion Day — what Canada Day was known as before we cut the apron strings with Britain, or at least untied them. It was a fun day filled with pancake breakfasts and a big parade; games and concerts and all sorts of activities. My father, the head of the X-ray department, used to take me and my siblings up to the top floor of the hospital where we had a bird's eye view of the elaborate floats inching their way along the main thoroughfare below. His birthday was July 1 st and for a while I actually believed him when he told us the parade was in honour of his special day. Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
What's Hiding in Antarctic Ice? Giant Lakes, Ancient Mountains, Prehistoric Creatures & More!
Antarctica is famous for its frigid temperatures, desolate landscape, penguins, and the predators who eat them. That's what it looks like from the surface, but there are hidden organisms and environments tucked inside and underneath the Antarctic ice. There is rocky land on the Antarctic continent, but it's covered by a thick layer of ice. The distance between the ground and the surface is an average 1.3 miles, but it gets considerably thicker in some places. And nearly the whole of the continent has been covered over like this for more than 30 million years. From above, the continent looks like a vast, nearly featureless waste of white but, like the researchers of The Thing learned the hard way, it's hiding a much more complex environment below. In early 2025, an international team of scientists aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's R/V Falcor (too) had to make a quick pivot in their research plans when an iceberg the size of Chicago broke loose from the George VI ice shelf. All at once, researchers had access to a whole new piece of exposed seafloor. Exploring this never-before-seen part of the planet revealed large corals, sponges, octopuses, giant sea spiders, bizarre ice fish with clear blood, and a whole lot more. Just a few years ago, scientists found an estimated 60 million ice fish nesting beneath the Antarctic ice. Odds are these sorts of communities are common beneath the ice. 'We didn't expect to find such a beautiful, thriving ecosystem. Based on the size of the animals, the communities we observed have been there for decades, maybe even hundreds of years," said Dr. Patricia Esquete from the University of Aveiro, Portugal, in a statement. As the ice sheet moves across the Antarctic continent, it grinds across the rocky ground below, but every so often it gets a break, courtesy of sub-glacial lakes and rivers. Using satellite data, scientists have identified hundreds of lakes and rivers beneath the ice, some of which seemingly defy our expectations. In ordinary environments, water always flows downhill, following the pull of gravity. But in some parts of Antarctica, the immense pressure of surface ice forces rivers to flow uphill, moving from one sub-glacial lake to the next. Not only are these subsurface waterways exciting places for scientists to study, but they might also help biologists understand how alien life might exist on places like Europa, where liquid water covered by ice is the norm. There are more than 400 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, and scientists have confirmed the existence of microbial life in some of them. With no access to sunlight or the surface, microbes have to survive on whatever nutrients they can find in the sub-glacial water. At the boundary between rock and ice, scientists have discovered erosion pulverizing rock. As that happens, nutrients and minerals are released into the water. Those nutrients support methanotrophs which use methane to create energy, methanogens which create energy by converting hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane, bacteria which convert ammonium into nitrite and nitrate, and more. If there's a useful chemical in the sub-glacial waters, scientists have uncovered a microbe which uses it. In addition to low-lying valleys, covered lakes, and bizarre sub-glacial rivers, the Antarctic ice is also hiding massive mountain ranges. The Gamburtsev Mountains are roughly equivalent in scale to the European Alps, stretching for approximately 750 miles. A study published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters reveals the range formed about half a billion years ago during the formation of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana, when two continental plates smashed together. Since then, they've been relatively stable and they remain there today, buried in the ice. Today, any animal living on the Antarctic continent or in its coastal waters must be specially evolved to survive the harsh conditions of the planet's South Pole. Ice fish, for instance, have evolved clear blood lacking hemoglobin in order to survive in the frigid polar ocean. In the deep past, things were different. When Antarctica was part of Gondwana, it was positioned closer to Australia, further from the South Pole, and rotated about 90 degrees. The continent supported lush plant life and a robust ecosystem filled with dinosaurs, ancient marsupial mammals, marine reptiles, and a wide variety of plant life. Researchers have discovered fossil remains of wood, pollen, fungal spores, leaves, and mosses alongside ankylosaurs (armored dinosaurs), mosasaurs, and plesiosaurs (both marine reptiles). From more recent parts of the fossil record, scientists have uncovered ancient whales and dolphins, dating to about 4.5 million years ago. These days, Antarctica is a frozen desert, the only place on the planet too extreme for us to set down roots. But there's plenty to see and plenty to learn about the rest of the planet if you're willing to look deeper. John Carpenter's 1982 frozen thriller, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Has Harvard actually found the Magna Carta?
Imagine you bring along to the Antiques Roadshow a scuffed piece of parchment covered in writing in Latin so faded that you find it impossible to decipher the letters. You confess that your grandparents paid £20 for it at an auction way back in 1946. It is then revealed, at that awkward moment when members of the public are told that their prized chipped mug from the coronation of George VI is only worth £5, that your parchment is actually a copy of Magna Carta worth £16,000,000. Scuffed items sometimes do well on that programme. Rolex watches are a case in point, reaching into the tens of thousands. They have in a sense become a reserve currency for the very rich, without being particularly elegant in appearance and despite (even because of) all the knocks and bruises they have received. Then there was a poverty-stricken man living in a shack in California who was inspired by the American equivalent of Antiques Roadshow to take a filthy Navajo blanket his mother thought might fetch ten dollars to an auction house, which sold it for $1,500,000. A Chinese bowl from around AD 1000, bought at an American garage sale for $3, fetched $2,200,000 in the sale rooms. The only one like it is in the British Museum. This time, though, the proud owner of a text of Magna Carta is the Law School at Harvard University, by far the richest university in the world, even after President Trump has taken away a great slice of its research funding. Even so, Harvard probably will not need to sell it. And in any case – this is where things turn awkward – it isn't actually an original from 1215, but a copy made after its re-issue in 1300, apparently in 1327. It was most probably sent all the way to a remote corner of Westmorland, its former county town of Appleby, which for centuries had the right to send two members to the House of Commons. Indeed, one of the features that led two eminent scholars, David Carpenter at King's College London and Nicholas Vincent at the University of East Anglia, to identify it was that it begins with a large E, which stands not for King John, obviously enough, but for King Edward I who had re-issued the charter amid political ructions less acute than those that tore England apart nearly a century earlier under King document survived among the papers of the great abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, whose campaigns against the slave trade have lately achieved the ultimate accolade of being sneered at in a tendentious exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge about the abolition of the slave trade with the rousing title Rise Up! Resistance, Revolution, Abolition. Clarkson would have seen Magna Carta as support for his entirely admirable convictions. However, most of the liberties of which Magna Carta speaks are not quite what we think of as liberties, and only four clauses remain on the Statute Book to this day, but they are fundamental to our principles of government. The most memorable is 'to no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.' Even in our own day we may wonder whether these clauses have only been honoured in the breach. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
ITV News
14-05-2025
- Automotive
- ITV News
Colour footage of first ever Formula One race at Silverstone released for 75th anniversary
Newly restored footage of the first-ever Formula One race has been uncovered as part of the sport's 75th anniversary. The footage of the 1950 British Grand Prix at Silverstone has been colourised through AI software and manual painting techniques. It was released on Tuesday and is the first time Formula One fans are able to watch a race from the era in colour. The race, held on 13 May 1950, was watched at the now renowned Northamptonshire track by King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and their daughter - the future Queen - Princess Elizabeth. The race, won by Giuseppe 'Nino' Farina in an Alfa Romeo, was attended by over 100,000 people and featured drivers who would become some of the sport's most famous names, including five-time champion Juan Manuel Fangio. It was the first race held officially as part of the Formula One World Championship, part of a seven-race series at the time. This year's edition on 6 July will be the 59th British Grand Prix held at Silverstone.
Otago Daily Times
12-05-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Concerns raised about Cave Rock cross lights
Concerns have been raised by some residents about the schedule, frequency, brightness and configuration of the Tuawera Cave Rock lights. Photo: Christchurch City Council Consultation has opened on Sumner's Cave Rock cross lights after residents raised concerns about their brightness, configuration and frequency. The Waihoro Spreydon-Cashmere-Heathcote Community Board is now seeking public feedback on the issues created by the lights, which were installed on the former Christchurch signal station mast in December 2021. The board wants the community to tell it how the daily lighting hours should be managed and how frequently they should be lit. The lights are currently turned on between dusk and 11pm each day, except during Matariki or when a request is made for them to be switched off temporarily. The mast was lit for the first time to mark the coronation of King George VI in May 1937. More than 500 bulbs were lit, including those along the foreshore and pier. Photo: Supplied via Christchurch City Council The mast was erected in 1864 to signal the state of the bar to coastal ships entering or leaving the Ihutai Avon Heathcote Estuary. Black, ball-shaped markers were used to indicate the conditions. It was lit for the first time in May 1937 to mark the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1953, and later as a community tradition for Easter, Anzac Day, Christmas and other significant national events such as VE Day. In 1961 the Sumner Lifeboat Institute took over the signal station as a lifeboat control tower and operated the lights intermittently for more than 30 years. After the signal house was damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes and repaired in 2016, a new deed was established in 2020 with Breakfree Foundation, allowing them to install, own and operate the lights. Funds were raised by the community and the solar powered lights were installed in 2021.
