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Achilles’ heel
A weak spot in a person’s character is known as their Achilles heel.
Achilles was a Greek legendary hero, a character in Homer's epic The
Iliad. He fought in the war of the Greeks and the Trojans. He was
strong, athletic, good looking and all the other things that a Greek
warrior should be. When he was an infant, his mother, Thetis, tried to
make him invulnerable by immersing him in the magical waters of the river
Styx. The water touched and protected every part of his body, except the
heel, which Thetis held as she doused him in the enchanted river. During
the siege of Troy, Paris, Prince of Troy, shot an arrow at Achilles from
the walls of the city. The arrow pierced Achilles’ heel, the only
vulnerable part of his body, fatally wounding him.
adidas
Some people say it means ‘All day, I dream about sport’ but this isn’t
true. The company was founded in 1948 in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria by a
cobbler, Adolf Dassler (1900 – 1978) who took his nickname ‘Adi’ and the
first three letters of his surname together, individualising the name by
having a lower case initial letter ‘a’. The company gained a reputation
after the Olympic Games of 1952 and 1956 and continued to prosper. Adolf
Dassler had a brother Rudolph Dassler, who founded the Puma, the football
boot company.
Alzheimer's disease
is a progressive deterioration of the brain, first described in 1907 by
the German psychiatrist and neurologist Alois Alzheimer (1864–1915).
Alzheimer worked at Frankfurt Asylum where he observed a patient who had
strange behavioural symptoms, including a loss of short-term memory. He
continually made notes on her behaviour and when she died, he removed her
brain for further examination. By further laboratory work, he was able to
identify the disease, but sadly found no cure. Alzheimer died on a train
aged 51 and is buried in Hauptfriedhof Cemetery, Frankfurt.
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Dr Alzheimer's grave |
Amazon, Amazon river
According to the Greek historian Herodotus,
the Amazons were a fierce tribe of Scythian women. They dealt with men
only in battle or for procreation. They killed their sons and raised their
daughters to become warriors. Each woman hacked off her own right breast
to allow her to use a bow. The word in Greek was ‘a mazos’, without a
breast. In 1541, a Spanish explorer, Francisco de Orellana, was attacked
by a savage tribe while travelling down the river. He though the skirted
tribesmen were women and called the river the Amazon. The founders of
Amazon.com chose that name because the Amazon River is the largest river
in the world, and so the name Amazon implies magnitude.
America. Two continents wrongly named after Amerigo
Vespucci.
Amerigo Vespucci (1451–1512) from Florence, Italy, made four voyages to
the New World. He made some map sketches of the coastlines of what we now
call Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina. It is very odd that America is named
for Amerigo when Christopher Columbus arrived there first. In 1507, Martin
Waldseemüller, a German cartographer, published a map of South America,
which he named America, after what he thought was the discoverer of the
new lands. The name stuck and in the English-speaking world, America is
known as America. However, the Spaniards never accepted this label and for
them, America is called Columbia, after Christopher Columbus. This name
exists in English in British Columbia, The Republic of Columbia and the
District of Columbia.
ampère, amp, Ampère's law
An ampere is a unit of electric current produced by one volt acting
through a resistance of one ohm. The name comes from André-Marie Ampère
(1775–1836) a French physicist and mathematician, the discoverer of
electromagnetism. Ampère had a tragic life. His father was guillotined
during the Reign of Terror. His wife died after only four years of
marriage. After this last tragedy, Ampère devoted himself to his work. He
became professor of physics at the College de France, where he developed
theories of magnetism. His greatest discovery, the law of reaction between
electric currents came to be known as Ampère's law. He died in 1836 and is
buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris.
Archimedes' principle
Archimedes (287–212 B.C.) was an early mathematician and the inventor of
the Archimedes' screw, a device for raising water. He also deduced the
principle of specific gravity in a strange way. Hieron, King of Syracuse
in Sicily, needed to find if his crown was of pure gold or whether the
goldsmith had fraudulently alloyed it with base metal. He set Archimedes
the task of finding out. Archimedes could not find the solution right away
but when he took a bath, the water overflowed the tub and he realized that
the amount of water he had displaced must be equal to the bulk of his
immersed body. He promptly ran naked through the streets, excitedly
shouting “Eureka” (Greek “I've found it”).
argyle
The duke of Argyle in the western Highlands is the head of the Campbell
clan. The Campbell clan tartan, in green and white, provides an attractive
pattern and has been copied worldwide by textile manufacturers to make
socks and sweaters. It is mentioned in the novels of Sir Walter Scott that
the duke had a series of posts erected in the treeless parts of his estate
so that his cattle could rub against them to ease themselves of the
torment of flies. The herdsmen when the saw the effectiveness of this
measure used to utter, “God bless the Duke of Argyle.” The phrase became a
humorous remark to make when someone is seen scratching himself.
Atlas a book of maps
The name Atlas derives from a
mythological character, one of the Titans who failed to overthrow Zeus.
His punishment was to hold up the weight of the heavens on his back. After
holding up the weight for centuries, he became faint from weakness, until
one day Perseus, carrying the head of Medusa, flew by. Atlas, knowing that
anyone who looked upon Medusa would be turned to stone, asked Perseus to
let him see her. Perseus agreed, and when Atlas looked, he was petrified
and became the Atlas Mountains on the coast of North Africa. In the
sixteenth century, the Flemish cartographer, Gerhardus Mercator, drew a
figure of Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders in the title page of
his book of maps. The idea caught the attention of other publishers who
then made similar pictures for their map books.
August. A month named after an emperor.
In 27 B.C., Gaius Octavius, the adopted son of Julius Caesar became the
Roman Emperor. The Senate awarded him the title Augustus, meaning revered,
and so he became known as Augustus Caesar. Julius Caesar had a month,
July, named after him, so Augustus took the month after that and gave it
his own name. In those days, the month of August had only 30 days, so
Augustus, not wishing to be considered lesser than his adopted father,
borrowed a day from February and added it to his own month. |