History of Paper

Since the invention of writing, people had been trying to come up with something easier to write on than papyrus or parchment, and also something easier and cheaper to make. But it took 3000 years to come up with paper! Paper seems to have been invented around 100 BC in China. In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor HoTi, a government official in China named Ts'ai Lun was the first to start a papermaking industry.
Ts'ai Lun seems to have made his paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemp rags with water, mashing it flat, and then pressing out the water and letting it dry in the sun. He may have based his idea on bark cloth, which was very common in China and also made from mulberry bark. Ts'ai Lun's paper was a big success, and began to be used all over China.
Even after people in China began to use paper, it took another thousand years before people were using paper all over Eurasia. By the 400's AD, people in India were also making paper.After a little more than 500 years, people in the Abbasid Caliphate began to use paper. There was a big battle in 751 AD in Samarkand, where the Chinese and the Arabs were fighting for control. The Arabs captured some Chinese men. Some of these Chinese men knew how to make paper, and they explained it to the Arabs as the price of their freedom.
People all over the Islamic world soon began using paper, from India to Spain. But Christian people in Europe were still using parchment.Starting in the 1200's, though, the Christians conquered Islamic Spain, and as they took over Spain they also learned how to make paper. By 1250 AD, the Italians had learned to make good paper and sold it all over Europe. In 1338, French monks began to make their own paper. By 1411 nearly a millennium and a half after it was invented people in Germany began to produce their own rag paper. Once they had learned to make paper, they became more interested in also learning about Chinese printing, and a man called Gutenberg produced the first printed Bible in 1453.

The Solar System

Our solar system consists of an average star we call the Sun, the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. It includes: the satellites of the planets; numerous Comets, Asteroids, and meteoroids; and the interplanetary medium. The Sun is the richest source of electromagnetic energy (mostly in the form of heat and light) in the solar system.
The Sun's nearest known stellar neighbor is a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri, at a distance of 4.3 light years away. The whole solar system, together with the local stars visible on a clear night, orbits the center of our home galaxy, a spiral disk of 200 billion stars we call the Milky Way. The Milky Way has two small galaxies orbiting it nearby, which are visible from the southern hemisphere. They are called the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud.
The nearest large galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy. It is a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way but is 4 times as massive and is 2 million light years away. Our galaxy, one of billions of galaxies known, is traveling through intergalactic space. The planets, most of the satellites of the planets and the asteroids revolve around the Sun in the same direction, in nearly circular orbits. When looking down from above the Sun's north pole, the planets orbit in a counterclockwise direction. The planets orbit the Sun in or near the same plane, called the elliptic. Pluto is a special case in that its orbit is the most highly inclined (18 degrees) and the most highly elliptical of all the planets. Because of this, for part of its orbit, Pluto is closer to the Sun than is Neptune. The axis of rotation for most of the planets is nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic. The exceptions are Uranus and Pluto, which are tipped on their sides.
The Sun contains 99.85% of all the matter in the Solar System. The planets, which condensed out of the same disk of material that formed the Sun, contain only 0.135% of the mass of the solar system. Jupiter contains more than twice the matter of all the other planets combined. Satellites of the planets, comets, asteroids, meteoroids, and the interplanetary medium constitute the remaining 0.015%. The following table is a list of the mass distribution within our Solar System.

Rice

Rice is a kind of grain, or grass, like wheat, millet, or barley, which provides carbohydrate to people who eat its seeds. It grows wild in southeast Asia. People probably first began to farm rice in Thailand, about 4000 BC. From there, people learned how to grow rice in southern China (north of Thailand) and in India (west of Thailand).
Certainly people were growing rice in India in the Harappan period (about 2500 BC) and in China in the late Stone Age (about 3000 BC). Rice may have been brought to West Asia and Greece about 300 BC by the armies of Alexander the Great. By the time of the Roan Empire, people were growing some rice around the Mediterranean Sea, in southern Europe and North Africa including Egypt (but not as much as in China or India).
By 800 AD, thanks to trade with India and Indonesia, people in East Africa were also growing rice. It was probably Chinese farmers who first invented the rice paddy. This is a system of growing rice in artificial (manmade) ponds, which saves water and also helps to kill weeds.
People usually cook rice by boiling or steaming it to make it soft. You can eat it plain, or with a sauce of vegetables or meat or fish, or sweetened and baked into rice pudding. Or you can crush rice into a powder and use it to make rice noodles. Rice is a good source of carbohydrates (energy).

The History of Hunstrete House

Hunstrete House was part of a former great estate, some 3,000 acres in extent. This ideal location with its ready supplies of wood and water and its sheltered location had been occupied from the earliest times. Stoneage artefacts have been recovered from a nearby wood and there are the remnants of an Iron Age fort on nearby Stantonbury Hill. Roman remains have been found throughout the area, including a villa and coffins at Burnett as well as coins in the grounds of the hotel.
In Saxon times, there was a deer park here and it’s most likely there were associated buildings but no trace has been found of these. In AD 936, Hunstrete was given to Glastonbury Abbey which held it for the next 600 years. The monks didn’t live here but managed the estate, principally for its timber, leasing the land and manor house to tenants. Fish were also farmed in a chain of six ponds that were situated to the north of the present lake. The first documented building is referred to in a survey for the abbey in 1258. It was located in the vicinity of Hunstrete Lake about 200 metres to the north of the present house. A later survey of 1517 alludes to a beautiful manor in a sylvan setting rebuilt in the time of Abbot Chinnock (1375 1420).
The abbey lost control of Hunstrete at the time of the Reformation and it passed through the hands of various owners until the beginning of the 17th century when it was acquired by Sir John Popham who was Lord Chief Justice to Queen Elizabeth I. He was extending his holdings in the north of Somerset. As Lord Chief Justice, he presided at the trials of Mary Queen of Scots, Sir Walter Raleigh and Guy Fawkes.
In the Elizabethan era, the Popham family were the main promoters of colonisation of America, founding the Popham Colony thirteen years before the voyage of the Mayflower. The Pophams held Hunstrete for the next 350 years although it was only their country seat, with their principal residence being at Littlecote in Wiltshire. In the English Civil War Alexander Popham, a general in the Parliamentary army, billeted his troops at Hunstrete prior to joining a large gathering near Chewton Mendip on 6th August 1642. Several musket balls from this period have been unearthed in the hotel grounds.

The Water Cycle: Water Storage in the Atmosphere

The water cycle is all about storing water and moving water on, in, and above the Earth. Although the atmosphere may not be a great storehouse of water, it is the superhighway used to move water around the globe. Evaporation and transpiration change liquid water into vapor, which ascends into the atmosphere due to rising air currents. Cooler temperatures aloft allow the vapor to condense into clouds and strong winds move the clouds around the world until the water falls as precipitation to replenish the earthbound parts of the water cycle.
About 90 percent of water in the atmosphere is produced by evaporation from water bodies, while the other 10 percent comes from transpiration from plants. There is always water in the atmosphere. Clouds are, of course, the most visible manifestation of atmospheric water, but even clear air contains water—water in particles that are too small to be seen. One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles (mi3) or 12,900 cubic kilometers (km3).
That may sound like a lot, but it is only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth's water volume of about 332,500,000 mi3 (1,385,000,000 km3), as shown in the table below. If all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the ground to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch. If you know what air pressure and a barometer are, then you know that air does have weight. At sea level, the weight (pressure) of air is about 14 ½ pounds per square inch (1 kilogram per square centimeter).
Since air has weight it must also have density, which is the weight for a chosen volume, such as a cubic inch or cubic meter. If clouds are made up of particles, then they must have weight and density. The key to why clouds float is that the density of the same volume of cloud material is less than the density of the same amount of dry air. Just as oil floats on water because it is less dense, clouds float on air because the moist air in clouds is less dense than dry air.

Beauty Tips

Mix sixteaspoon petroleum jelly, twoteaspoon glycerin and twoteaspoon lemon juice. Apply this moisturizing lotion at least twice a week if you have dry and flaky, arms and legs. Peel and grate a cucumber. Squeeze the juice to this, mix halfateaspoon glycerin and halfateaspoon rose water. Apply this on sunburns, leave it for some time. If you have cracked heels, melt paraffin wax; mix it with little mustard oil and apply on the affected area, Leave it overnight. After 10 or 15 days, your heels will become smooth.
Massage your body with a mixture of coconut oil and any of your favourite scented oils like lavender or rosemary. For rough palms, use a mixture of glycerin and limejuice in equal proportion. For cracked heals, massage the foot with coconut oil and keep the foot in warm water for some time. Wipe the water off the feet and apply a mixture of hibiscus flower(10), Henna (1 handful) and juice of half a lemon. when dry wash it off. Remove scars on your hands and feet by rubbing them with lemon peel. Carrot shavings or juice with a little lemon juice can be applied directly to the face like a facial mask. Best for oily skin.
Dip wads of cotton in a chilled mixture of cucumber and potato juice. Keep this on your eyelids for 15 to 20 minutes and gently wash it off. Apply a little baby oil. For long eyelashes, apply a thin coat of castor oil every night. It strengthens lashes and cools your eyes. Massage a few drops of coconut oil around the eyes to get rid off dark circles. To reduce puffiness of your eyes, grate a potato; tie in a cloth and place the cloth over your eyes for about 15 minutes.
Add a small pinch of salt in water and wash for bright and sparkling eyes. Mix tomato juice and lemon juice in equal quantity and apply around the eyes. After 30 minutes wash it off with cold and hot water alternatively. Make a paste of sandal wood and nutmeg. Apply the paste around the eyes before sleeping and wash it off in the morning. Crush a cucumber and take the juice. Add a little rose water and apply around the eyes and wash it after 30 minutes. Place cotton wool swabs dipped in cold milk on closed eyes for removing dark circles.

Essential of Carrot

Carrot Seed oil comes from wild Queen Anne's Lace (also known as Wild Carrot). The seeds are steam distilled to produce a pale yellow oil. Some of its places of origin are England, France and Europe. Carrot has been known as a medicinal and culinary plant from before the 1st century A.D.
As a natural diuretic, Carrot Seed helps to drain toxins from the system. Infused carrot oil is used in skincare, especially for dry or mature skin and for burns. When blended into a cream or base carrier oil, it helps to restore the skin's elasticity and tone and helps eliminate the tiny lines and wrinkles associated with weather worn skin. Also helpful for dermatitis and general skin rashes.
It is excellent for eczema, psoriasis, rashes and wrinkles. Carrot Seed also has a powerful detoxifying action on the liver and gall bladder by helping these organs to flush the body of toxins and excess fluids. This makes it helpful when dealing with gout, arthritis, edema and rheumatism (for releasing the toxins in the system that contribute to these conditions). Assists the disgestive system with problems such as anemia, colic, indigestion and liver congestion.
Its active constituents include, carotol, daucol, limonene and pinene. Blends well with Bergamot, Juniper berry, Lavender, Lemon, Lime, Neroli, Orange, Petitgrain and Rosemary. Grated carrots make an excellent poultice for ulcers, abscesses, carbuncles, scrofulous and cancerous sores, and bad wounds. The seeds of carrots, ground to powder and taken as a tea, relieve colic and increase the flow of urine. The powder may also be placed in capsules and 1 or 2 taken daily with a glass of water. Carrot blossoms, used as a tea, are a most effective remedy for dropsy and will very often cure when all other means have failed.