Dinesh's photos

On the fields of Cajamarca, November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro and his 167 men annihilated some seven thousand Incas and took emperor-elected Atahualpha prisoner

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napo_River en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara%C3%B1%C3%B3n_River en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River

The Andes Cordillera was so brutally steep and difficult that Gonzalo Pizarro lost most of his ill-clad porters and many of his horses during his initial mountain crossing in late February 1541

Amazon under moonglow was hauntingly beautiful, but also rife with danger, the river teeming with ferocious caimans and deadly anacondas

The "Thetis" heading north, stopped by ice en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thetis_(1881)

Hospital steward Biederbick at the dangerous ice foot near Fort Conger (Library of Congress)

Stone cairn, referred to as "Arctic post office." Polar expeditions left caches and vital records and correspondence beneath the rocks (Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

The Thetis at Camp Dudley Digges, a little over two hundred miles south of Cape Sabine,9(Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

Greenlandic hut under construction. (Courtesy of Naval History and Heritage Command)

window (n.) c. 1200, literally "wind eye," from Old Norse vindauga, from vindr "wind" (see wind (n.1)) + auga "eye" (from PIE root *okw- "to see"). Replaced Old English eagþyrl, literally "eye-hole," and eagduru, literally "eye-door." Compare Old Frisian andern "window," literally "breath-door." Originally an unglazed hole in a roof. Most Germanic languages later adopted a version of Latin fenestra to describe the glass version (such as German Fenster, Swedish fönster), and English used fenester as a parallel word till mid-16c. Window dressing in reference to shop windows is recorded from 1853; figurative sense is by 1898. Window seat is attested from 1778. Window of opportunity (1979) is from earlier figurative use in U.S. space program, such as launch window (1963). Window-shopping is recorded from 1904.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._McNeill_(historian)

He would rather have at his bed’s head Twenty books bound in black and red Of Aristotle and his philosophy Than rich apparel, fiddle o gay psaltery. . . Every penny he could wheedle out of friends Was spent on books and learning. . . ~ Geoffrey Chaucer, “The General Prologue’, The Canterbury Tales 1478

The communal drinking of beer through straws was not just the prerogative of some ancient inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent and environs. It is worldwide phenomenon -- attested in China and the Pacific, the Americas and Africa and still widely practiced. The custom is wide-spread that one suspects that another factor is at work beyond simple utility. Certainly, reeds and stalks are easily come by, and their long, uniform hollowness would have invited blowing and sucking. A solid head of husks and yeast of the surface of a brew keeps out oxygen and preserves the beer longer, so it is worth keeping it intact and using a drinking tube to get at the good stuff below. Even if such practicalities argue for independent invention, one is still left with the question of why drinking through straws and employing the same vessel to both make and consume the beverage are nearly universal practices for cereal beer but generally unattested for fruit wines and mead. ~ Page 70

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Laussel

www.gutenberg.org/files/2440/2440-h/2440-h.htm

Francisco Orellana, first European to descend the Amazon from the headwaters in the Andes to its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean. His voyage in 1541-1542 is considered as one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of exploration and discovery, hailed by chronicler Oviedo as “something more than a journey. . . more like a miracle The Spanish saying that had been associated with Diego de Ordaz, that “he who goes to the Orinoco either dies or comes back made,” could now be rewritten and hung on Francisco Orellana: “He who goes to the Amazon goes mad and dies.” ~ Page 238