Apple

Although the origins of apples seems to be an ongoing debate; historians generally will start a talk about apple history with the ancient Egyptians or other civilizations around the Caspian Sea and also in China. However we do know that the ancient Egyptians kept excellent records about almost everything including their apple crops.
In the 13th century BCE, the famous Ramses II decreed that apples of various varities were to be cultivated in the Nile Delta. Evidence also shows that the ancient Greeks , as far back as the 7th century BCE were growing and harvesting apples. In ancient Rome the great Roman statesmen Pliny the Elder, recognized 37 different types of apples in his ancient scroll the Historia naturalis. (vegparadise)
Most Americans can identify apples as strictly American; however it wasn't until westward expansion that the apple played a part in American history with the famous Johnny Apple seed. Johnny apple seed was indeed a real person, going by the name of John Chapman. John was born in Leominster, Massachusetts on September 26,1774. His story starts around the turn of the 19th century when he started to purchase apple seeds from a Pennsylvania cider mill .
After purchasing seeds Johnny started to the Midwest where he started nurseries. In the growing frontier newly established homesteads were required under law to plant 50 apple trees in their first year. Apples quickly became a staple in settlers diets. To help these settlers Johnny would sell seeds and help pioneers in growing their own trees. Johnny apple seed settled to the Ohio and Indiana region where he owned a lot of land. The misconception is that he walked with a satchel and planted seeds across the U.S. he did do a lot of traveling and helped settlers, however he spent most of his time on his own tracts of land. He primarily spread apples by selling and giving settlers trees.

History of the Greek coins

Ever wonder why our coins today look the way they do? How the basis for the decoration of coins developed? Today, most bills and coins alike share the common pattern of depicting the profile or bust of a ruler on the obverse, while the reverse bears the image of an important civic symbol be it a building or an animal. This tradition began with the ancient Greeks.
From about the eighth century B.C. and even after the Greeks were absorbed into the kingdoms of Alexander the Great and his successors, the Greek world was characterized by the polis, the citystate, of which there were several hundred. Each polis consisted of a city and its surrounding countryside, and each had its own form of government, its own patron deities and heroes and sanctuaries dedicated to them, and its own distinctive economy.
The poleis were fiercely independent, even when they were ruled by tyrants or dominated by Hellenistic kings, and their coins are eloquent testimony to their autonomy. Almost from their earliest appearance Greek coins used a combination of figures, symbols, and inscriptions to emphasize the independence and individuality of the poleis, depicting their patron deities and heroes, products, and even visual puns on the cities' names.
The historical portraits on early Greek coins are a significant contribution to the history of art. Within them they reflect the highest ideals of the traditional art of the day, as well as provide exact replicas of images of many sacred and important buildings and temples, making their historical importance incalculable. From their very beginnings, coins were not merely chunks of metal to be used in commerce, but important tools for the expression of art and the communication of religious devotion and civic pride.

Violin

The violin is a stringed musical instrument comprising four strings tuned a fifth apart. It is the smallest and highesttuned member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola, cello and double bass. The lowest string (and hence the lowest note) is the G just below middle C, then in ascending order D, A and E.
The violin is a carefully made hollow wooden box, with a neck protruding from the top, and a internal sound post connecting the front (belly) and the back. The sides of the violin, curiously, are called ribs. The belly is reinforced by an internal bass bar, which runs vertically through the instrument underneath the lowest string.
The four violin strings run from a tailpiece attached to the base of the violin, across an intricately carved wooden bridge, then upward just above the fingerboard. At the top end of the fingerboard, the strings cross the nut, a very small second bridge, mounted just slightly above the fingerboard. They then enter the pegbox, where they are wound around their tuning pegs, which are mounted sideways through tightly fitting holes in the pegbox. The tip of the pegbox is ornamented with a carved wooden scroll.
The bridge of a violin has two purposes. First, it holds the strings in an arched configuration, permitting each to be touched separately by the bow. The bridge also transmits the sound vibrations of the strings to the belly, from which they are transmitted to the back by the sound post.

Thirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam

There is ample literary and epigraphic testimony to the antiquity of the temple of Lord Sri Venkateswara. All the great dynasties of rulers of the southern peninsula have paid homage to Lord Sri Venkateswara in this ancient shrine. The Pallavas of Kancheepuram (9th century AD), the Cholas of Thanjavur (a century later), the Pandyas of Madurai, and the kings and chieftains of Vijayanagar (14th 15th century AD) were devotees of the Lord and they competed with one another in endowing the temple with rich offerings and contributions.
It was during the rule of the Vijayanagar dynasty that the contributions to the temple increased. Sri Krishnadevaraya had statues of himself and his consorts installed at the portals of the temple, and these statues can be seen to this day. There is also a statue of Venkatapati Raya in the main temple. After the decline of the Vijayanagar dynasty, nobles and chieftains from all parts of the country continued to pay their homage and offer gifts to the temple. The Maratha general, Raghoji Bhonsle, visited the temple and set up a permanent endowment for the conduct of worship in the temple. He also presented valuable jewels to the Lord, including a large emerald which is still preserved in a box named after the General. Among the later rulers who have endowed large amounts are the rulers of Mysore and Gadwal.
After the fall of the Hindu kingdoms, the Muslim rulers of Karnataka and then the Britishers took over, and many of the temples came under their supervisory and protective control. In 1843 AD, the East India Company divested itself of the direct management of nonChristian places of worship and native religious institutions. The administration of the shrine of Sri Venkateswara and a number of estates were then entrusted to Sri Seva Dossji of the Hatiramji Mutt at Tirumala, and the temple remained under the administration of the Mahants for nearly a century, till 1933 AD.
In 1933, the Madras Legislature passed a special act, which empowered the Thirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) Committee to control and administer a fixed group of temples in the TirumalaTirupati area, through a Commissioner appointed by the Government of Madras. In 1951, the Act of 1933 was replaced by an enactment whereby the administration of TTD was entrusted to a Board of Trustees, and an Executive Officer was appointed by the Government .

Cotton

The first people to grow cotton for clothing and towels and sheets were the Harappan people in India, about 2500 BC. Cotton is mentioned in the Rig Veda, written about 600 BC in India. A little bit of cotton was also grown in Egypt, but it never became very important there. In the 400’s BC, a Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote that in India there were "trees growing wild, which produce a kind of wool better than Sheep’s wool in beauty and quality, which the Indians use for making their clothes".
Around this time, the Ajanta Cave carvings show that cotton growers in India had invented a roller machine to get the seeds out of the cotton. By the Guptan period, about 200 AD, the Indians made a good business of selling cotton as a luxury to the Parthians to their west and to the Chinese to their east. The Romans, further away, thought of cotton as an expensive luxury like silk. They had to buy it from Arabic or Parthian traders.
Soon afterwards in the 500's AD, the Sassanians were certainly growing cotton, at least at the city of Merv in their eastern possessions. The English word for cotton comes from the Arabic “qutun.” The establishment of the Islamic Empire in the late 600's AD gave a big push to cotton production, which spread westward across the Islamic Empire to North Africa and Spain (which also uses the Arabic word for cotton, "algodon").
And the Eastern Roman Empire also started growing cotton, by the 700's or so. In West Asia and northern Africa, poor people began wearing cotton clothing. But in Europe, cotton was still a very unusual luxury, imported from the Islamic empire. After about 1000 Italian traders brought a little more cotton to Europe, but still as a finished luxury product, not growing it in Europe.

Ayurvedic medicinal plants

Ayurveda, the ancient Indian therapeutic measure is renowned as one of the major systems of alternative and complimentary medicine. As other herbal systems, greater parts of its medicaments are based on indigenous herbals. And the thorough and fractionate knowledge about the medicinal plant is mandatory for all who is working in the field of ayurveda, in order to identify and select the appropriate plant for a specific disease.
In the recent years, the interest in medicinal plants has increased in a great deal. Apart form this; people from the west have also taken this matter seriously by conducting various researches on plant based medicines. But for reference, presently a complete website regarding the ayurvedic medicinal plants is nowhere available in the net. It’s a humble attempt to fulfill this gap.
This work is mainly concerned with the morphology and the therapeutic properties of Indian medicinal herbs. The findings obtained by the research workers who have been engaged with medicinal plants are also incorporated here. We are presenting almost complete variety of indigenous ayurvedic medicinal plants especially that is grown naturally in Kerala, the southern most state of India, renowned as the Holy Land of Ayurveda.
You can come across realistic, high resolution digital pictures of ayurvedic medicinal plants, morphology, their therapeutic properties, the ayurvedic principle behind the selection of a plant as a medicine etc. with no access restrictions. Apart form this; the basic property of this site is regular renewal of its contents, to keep this site uptodate and make it always fresh for a reviewer. This humble attempt is undertaken by a charity trust for the conservation of ayurvedic medicinal plants.

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.