- Andre Breton founds surrealism, defining it as "pure psychic automatism"
- Voting in federal elections becomes compulsory in Australia - US bootleggers begin to use Thompson SMGs
- Fritz Haarmann sentenced to death for 27 murders
Samba is one of the most famous of the various forms of music arising from African roots in Brazil. The name samba most probably comes from the Angolan semba (mesemba) - a religious rhythm.
Samba developed as a distinctive kind of music at the beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro (then the capital of Brazil) under the strong influence of immigrant black people from Bahia.
History
"Pelo Telefone" (1917), by Donga and Mauro Almeida, is generally considered the first samba recording. Its great success carried the new genre outside the black ghettos. Who created the music is uncertain, but it was most probably the work of the group around Tia Ciata, among them Pixinguinha and João da Bahiana.
In the 1930s, a group of musicians led by Ismael Silva founded in the neighbourhood of Estácio de Sá the first Samba School, Deixa Falar. They transformed the musical genre to make it fit better the carnival parade. In this decade, the radio spread the genre's popularity all around the country, and with the support of the nationalist dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas, samba became Brazil's "official music".
In the following years, samba has developed in several directions, from the gentle samba-canção to the drum orchestras which make the soundtrack of carnival parade. One of these new styles was the bossa nova, made by middle class white people. It got increasingly popular over time, with the works of João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim.
In the sixties, Brazil was politically divided, and the leftist musicians of bossa nova started to gather attention to the music made in the favelas. Many popular artists were discovered at this time. Names like Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho, Velha Guarda da Portela, Zé Keti, and Clementina de Jesus recorded their first albums.
In the seventies, the samba got back to radios air waves. Composers and singers like Martinho da Vila, Clara Nunes and Beth Carvalho dominated the hit parade.
In the beginning of the eighties, after having been sent to the underground due to styles like disco and Brazilian rock, Samba reappeared in the media with a musical movement created in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. It was the pagode, a renewed samba, with new instruments, like the banjo and the tantan, and a new language, more popular, filled with slangs. The most popular names were Zeca Pagodinho, Almir Guineto, Grupo Fundo de Quintal, Jorge Aragão, and Jovelina Pérola Negra.
Nowadays, samba is still one of the most popular musical genres in Brazil.
- McGowan, Chris and Pessanha, Ricardo. The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova and the Popular Music of Brazil. 1998. 2nd edition. Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-545-3
Herpetology (Greekherpeton = to creep, to ramp and logos = word) is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of reptiles and amphibians.
Herpetology deals with what are called the cold-blooded tetrapods, that is, those land vertebrates which are ectothermic (deriving their body temperature from their environment) rather than endothermic (deriving their body heat from an independent, internal source). This distinction applies to most (though not quite all) living tetrapods, but may break down somewhat in regard to extinct reptilian creatures such as dinosaurs, about whose body metabolism we know frustratingly little and the sea turtles which seem to have some degree of endothermy owing to their large size. (See the article on Bob Bakker for more information about the warm-blooded dinosaur theory.)
The two taxonomic classes dealt with in herpetology, reptiles and amphibians, share "cold-bloodedness" but otherwise have surprisingly little else in common. Typically, amphibians have a permeable skin that assists in the exchange of gases and respiration, have a two-chambered heart like fish, and are often bound to water for at least some part of their life, if only the laying of eggs or birth of young. Their skins have many glands and are often toxic. Reptiles, by contrast, have a dry watertight skin, usually protected by scales, that normally has few if any glands. The reptilian heart is a three-chambered one (four-chambered in the case of crocodilians), and living reptilians usually if not always lay eggs or give birth on land, even marine turtles which only come ashore for this purpose. Again, extinct creatures may have exhibited some differences.
Apart from being an intrinsically interesting area of study in its own right, herpetology offers benefits to humanity in the study of the role of amphibians and reptiles in global ecology, in particular in the role of amphibians as long-range ecological warning devices (their decline worldwide is the subject of much study) and the use of the toxins of some amphibians and venoms of some snakes in human medicine.
Bilancia (astronomia)
La Bilancia (Libra in Latino) è una costellazione dello zodiaco. È una costellazione piuttosto piccola, e non contiene stelle di prima magnitudine. Si trova tra la Vergine ad ovest e lo Scorpione ad est. Come testimoniano i nomi delle sue stelle più brillanti, faceva una
Scorpione (astronomia)
Lo Scorpione (Scorpio in Latino) è una costellazione dello zodiaco. Si trova tra la Bilancia ad ovest e il Sagittario ad est. È una costellazione estesa, e si trova nell'emisfero meridionale, vicino al centro della Via Lattea.
Moschellandsbergite
La Moschellandsbergite è un minerale scoperto nel Read More...
Ophiuchus
Ophiuchus (colui che porta il serpente, serpentario, a volte chiamato ofiuco in italiano) è una delle 88 moderne costellazioni, ed è anche una delle 48 costellazioni originarie menzionate da Tolomeo. Delle 13 costellazioni dello zodiaco moderno (quelle che si trovano sull'eclittica), Ophiuchus è l'unica che non viene considerata come un segno astrologico.
Ophiuchus è raffigurato com
Saigo Takamori
Saigo Takamori (Kagoshima, 1826 - intorno al 1877) militare giapponese, samurai del feudo di Satsuma.
Nel 1868 è uno dei principali capi militari che appoggiano la restaurazione imperiale.
Nel 1873, deluso per il crollo delle antiche istituzioni sotto la spinta delle riforme tendenti a mode
Sagittario (astronomia)
Il Sagittario (l' arciere) è una costellazione dello zodiaco, comunemente raffigurato come un centauro tendente un arco. Il Sagittario si trova tra lo Scorpione ad ovest e il Capricorno ad est.
Caratteristiche
La costellazione è facilmente riconoscibile grazie ad un Read More...
Eugenite
L'eugenite è un minerale scoperto nel 1986 n
Questa costellazione è la più debole tra quelle dello zodiaco, dopo il Cancro. Le sue stelle più brillanti si trovano in un triangolo i cui vertici sono Giedi (α), Deneb Algedi (δ) e ω Capricorni.
Acquario (astronomia)
L'Acquario (Aquarius in Latino, talvolta scritto anche come Aquario in italiano) è una costellazione dello zodiaco, e una delle più antiche costellazioni conosciute.
Caratteristiche
Tra le principali stelle dell'acquario ci sono:
- α Aquarii, Sadalmelik ("il fortunato del re"), vicino all'equatore celeste;
- β Aquarii, Sad
