₦airaland Forum

plaetton:
You have to ask your self, who was Justin Martyr?
He was one of the earliest Christian fathers, who lost his life on account of his beliefs.

To say that Justin Martyr's testimony while on trial is evidence of Jesus historicity is quite laughable.
And there no mention of Jesus in annals of Roman history. No mention if Jesus in annals of Jewish history.

How can you say it is laughable. His life was in danger and he was proving the basis of his beliefs. As evidence he asked the Roman senate to check one of their own documents to attest to what he is saying. would he stake his life on a non-existent document.

Mind you he a converted xtian, you think he would risk his life on a lie and also base his evidence on a non-existent document? It wasn't a laughing matter, it was a life and death matter. So it is a relevant case to mention.

*** w80 3/15 p. 31 Questions From Readers ***
Questions From Readers
● Should congregation action be taken if a baptized Christian accepts a human organ transplant, such as of a cornea or a kidney?
Regarding the transplantation of human tissue or bone from one human to another, this is a matter for conscientious decision by each one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some Christians might feel that taking into their bodies any tissue or body part from another human is cannibalistic. They might hold that the transplanted human material is intended to become part of the recipient’s body to keep him alive and functioning. They might not see it as fundamentally different from consuming flesh through the mouth. Such feelings may arise from considering that God did not make specific provision for man to eat the flesh of his fellowman when he made provision for humans to eat the flesh of animals that had been drained of their life-sustaining blood. They may give consideration also to the way people in Bible times viewed sustaining themselves by taking in human flesh. For example, see the account at 2 Kings 6:24-30; Deuteronomy 28:53-57; Lamentations 2:20 and 4:10. At John 6:48-66, Jesus spoke figuratively of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. On hearing this discussion and not perceiving the spiritual significance of his words, some of his Jewish disciples were shocked and turned from following him. These accounts illustrate how some humans felt about eating human flesh.
Other sincere Christians today may feel that the Bible does not definitely rule out medical transplants of human organs. They may reason that in some cases the human material is not expected to become a permanent part of the recipient’s body. Body cells are said to be replaced about every seven years, and this would be true of any human body parts that would be transplanted. It may be argued, too, that organ transplants are different from cannibalism since the “donor” is not killed to supply food. In some cases persons nearing death actually have willed body parts to be used for transplants. Of course, if a transplant should require taking in another person’s blood, undeniably that would be contrary to God’s command.—Acts 15:19, 20.
Clearly, personal views and conscientious feelings vary on this issue of transplantation. It is well known that the use of human materials for human consumption varies all the way from minor items, such as hormones and corneas, to major organs, such as kidneys and hearts. While the Bible specifically forbids consuming blood, there is no Biblical command pointedly forbidding the taking in of other human tissue. For this reason, each individual faced with making a decision on this matter should carefully and prayerfully weigh matters and then decide conscientiously what he or she could or could not do before God. It is a matter for personal decision. (Gal. 6:5) The congregation judicial committee would not take disciplinary action if someone accepted an organ transplant.

asala1:
I believe there were some scholars during the time of Jesus, I don't know if there are any historical documentation of the life of Jesus Christ outside the Bible. He should be an important figure during His time because he had many followers and was a thorn in the flesh of the Romans. Is there anything written about Him in their political history, judicial history, or something during his time? People go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem and many of them visit the tomb of Jesus Christ, I feel there should be something written about Him somewhere outside the Bible?

There is no historical record of socrates, alexander the great etc but what people that came after them wrote and what their followers wrote. but there is little doubt that these two people lived.

petikal:
Rubbish on limiting God to just "needs". He's much bigger than that, and can provide far beyond our imagination.

Phil 4:19 is translated in proper English. "My God shall supply all your wants" makes no grammatical sense. How about Psalm 23:1? The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want?

We're urged to correctly divide the word of Truth through the help of the Holy Spirit. So, yes, when you seek the Kingdom of God first, everything else will be added [through Faith]. Now what we do with the provisions reflects even more on our love for God and people.

Some Bible translations cited phil 4:19 as need and if you look at the context of paul's statement he was talking not about wants but needs and how his needs were met by the contributions of the Philippians. he was not talking about luxuries and he said God would also reciprocate the gesture to them in turn.
Moreso it is English that differentiates between wants and needs, the original bible language may not have such specificity.

While God can give more than you will ever need, but it is at his discretion. it is not a right or a birthright of xtians to have wealth more than than they can ever want.

Justin Martyr who was born in 100 C.E in his evidence to the roman senate mentioned Jesus Christ and said all the things said about him is true. He told the senate to check those facts from the Acts of Pontius Pilate i.e official records of pontius pilate.

Those records cant be found again but if it didn't exist, Justin could not have asked the senate to check it.

This is just one out of several other sources.

Sarassin:
It is misleading to say that not a single Arab Palestinian was displaced by the creation of the State of Israel. According to United Nations figures, 726,000 Palestinians had fled or were evicted by the Israelis between 1947 and 1949. The Palestinian refugees were settled in large refugee camps in poor, overcrowded conditions in Jordan. In December 1949, the UN (in response to a British proposal) established an agency (UNRWA) to provide aid to the Palestinian refugees. It is a matter of records.

I might also add that the Israeli –Palestinian issue did not begin with the war of 1967, the fact that Israel has occupied these territories in a land grab as the spoils of war is a thorny matter, there are subsisting UN resolutions dealing with that issue that Israel simply ignores. Nobody denies Israel the right to defend itself, and they do so very well, however, we should not all subscribe to the doctrine that “might is right”. Israel should not deny the Palestinians the right to a homeland of their own.

I appreciate the fact that as a muslim, you are able to talk about this thorny issue with so much calm. that cant be said about so most others.

cheers

PastorKun:
^^^
Yes I can understand some muslim scholars condemning ISIS because moderate Muslims like them have become victims but this wasn't the case when the victims were none Muslims or Jews. And it certainly pales in significance to the outrage Muslims express to mundane issues of danish cartoons or mutilation of the quoran by obscure people they don't even know.

They used to organize protests and rallies when cartoons and parodies come up. They burn US flags and Israeli flags and whatever country they perceive are against them. I have not seen anyone doing same when Assad was murdering thousands and also no one is burning ISIS flags anywhere an organizing rallies and protests.

Bis1234:
the price is 55k,its is durable and takes about 500 fingerlings.i stay in lagos.interested buyers can call for siting.thanks in anticipation.

Madam, I know you might just be a marketter and know little about fish production. Read up some threads here and get educated. A 13 by 13 ft tank will take thousands of fingerlings and get those pictures for pple to take u serious. Hardly will anyone come to ur place without some motivation.

2cents

italo:
Jesus knew he was a thief, yet Jesus accepted him as a human being with dignity and value. Jesus even sent him to preach and heal. Jesus ate with him from the same bowl.

Same with Matthew. Jesus knew he was a sinner yet he called him. Jesus even went to feast with him and other sinners in his house. Jesus did not accept their sins but accepted and loved them.

Same with you. Jesus knows you are a terrible sinner, yet he accepts and loves you.

Why can you not love and accept your neighbour who is a sinner?

Is it because his sin is different from yours?

There is no place in the scriptures that indicated that Judas was a thief before he became a disciple of Jesus. So he may have become a thief much later. Jesus accepts sinners who acknowledge their sinful state as wrong and are willing to change or are striving to discontinue living a life of sin. Matthew was part of a profession that were generally classed as greedy and extortionist in nature and everybody hated them much like our police but nowhere in the scriptures was it said that matthew himself was like that (just like all policemen are not corrupt). despite that even if he was immediately Jesus called him and he joined the 12 he was no longer an extortioner, he left that profession and became a fisher of men.

Homosexuals wants God to accept them the way they are without changing, for them to continue to live in their sinfulness and abhorrent behavior without changing. That is never going to happen according to the scriptures not me not any synod or pope.

I can eat with a homosexual, i recognize it is a sin but it is a sin that constitutes a way of life, a sin that is perpetually being perpetuated in such unions.

italo:
Jesus accepted, even called Judas, but did not accept his ways.

You clarify that and leave Jesus' Church alone.

Was Judas a known and celebrated thief when he was called, did he come and declare himself as a thief before he was called. Was he even a thief when he was called or became a thief when he had d opportunity of being the treasurer. What value did Jesus say was found in his act of stealing and betrayal. Judas allowed satan to eventually have a complete hold on him and that was why Jesus called him d son of destruction.

Catholic church distorting and subverting the word of God since 300 CE. Not surprising. Never mind a new pope can come, cancel all these and declare this one a heretic and burn his body.

Plagiarism is a plague in this country...from schools to businesses. Lindaikeji peddles rumours, semi-facts and facts. Thats what happens in blogs. And blogs are notorious for copying from others especially repeat especially gossip blogs like lindaikeji....that is what it is, it cant be totally clean, gossip would always be gossip. The people that are awfully guilty are newspapers such as complete sports that has 5 percent original content and 95% copied content, half of which are not credited.

Its not just Linda that needs to learn, in fact everybody is learning, for example punch. Before the news of lindaikeji's issues with copyright (though it was more of a spurned love than copyright...waiting for the guys version if ever), punch will lift stories and pictures without crediting anybody in the sports section. In their older issues, the only pictures they credit are AFP's picture, but you guys should just check yesterday punch, all pictures were credited with all the funny websites they lifted them from.

Even the big guys are learning

Phoenixfrank: I think its one of those cultural imperialistic stuffs the white men used to do and so our people acculturated it. Personally I think the meat in the food has become a rationality of one's status symbol whether eaten after or before meal. Eaten last or first all depends ur cultural background.

What has white people got to do with this, don't we have the way we eat before the white men came. How many of our ancestors had direct interaction with white people that would now make the practice so pervasive. Mind you there are some native proverbs that discredits children's desire for meat as morally wrong and indicates greed.

Smooyis: The whole thing is in the hands of experts investigating it. These are issues that have to do with loss of lives. No true prophet would do anything to compromise standard or cut corners. Not a man like T B Joshua who does aims at excellence in everything he does. If we cannot help the church in these hours of grief, it is better we remain silent and let the investigators do their jobs. A prophet of God like T B Joshua is not one you just talk to as you like. He is a true ambassador of God. God fights their battles.
He has said it repeatedly that God will get back at the perpetrators of the incident. And sooner than later, the truth will be revealed for everyone to see. Why cant we just hold our tongues or pens for a while. It is better to stay clear rather than saying things you are not sure of, and as such receive God's wrath. To before warned is to before armed!

Tell the idi.ot to stop insulting us with his crass ignorance and incredible lies. Does he think everyone in this country drinks from the rubbish he has been feeding you all.

I wonder if anyone of them would declare a miracle crusade by the end of the year. Then please TB Joshua should carry all his minion pastors and go and heal all those who were injured in the building collapse. Even if God only reveals some things to him and not all things as his gullible followers claim, i hope he still has his healing powers, it is urgently needed right now. By the way a friend of mine lost his younger brother in that building and someone needs to pay for this crime. Does he even pay tax for the money he collects from lodgers in that apartment. The Government should please look into all this.

This is one of the worst statement I have read about a tragedy. How can he make sucha bland statement in this kind of tragedy. This is shameful beyond belief. I heard in d news that the church said their CCTVV captured helicopters hovering around d compound before its collapse. Were they expecting an invasion from d sky that they pointed their cameras up, then did d camera capture the helis undermining the building, helicopters have been hovering around buildings and pple for yrs nobody has died because of it nor a building collapse. The church should release d footage of whatever d helis did to d building. Or they should just stop talking trash.

This man and his pastors have always been greasy. Frying their hair all over the place speaking phoney and wearing designer suits. That's straight from guy men's book and u expect them not to be guy men

AroOkigbo: .
You are right to an extent- but note the following:
Unlike in Qatar,
1. EGTL is built on a reclaimed land (you don't want to know how many cubic feet of sand was used)
2. The modules were fabricated in Qatar, Korea, etc and shipped to Nigeria. A new wharf had to be built to take these heavy modules. Moreover, the low water depth meant the sea had to be dredged to take heavy ships.
3. Location. Escravos is only accessible by air or water. A lot of money was spent on flying staff and contactors from Warri and Lagos. Aero contractors, Arik and other airlines made a lot of money. Logistics took a good chunk of the cost of the project.
4. Converting gas to liquid is a whole new technology owned by Sasol. Chevron spent a lot to train operators in SA, US and Qatar. Over 200 people were trained at a point...with some trainees spending over 3yrs in SA.
5. Power supply. A brand new power plant had to be built to take care of energy requirements. And believe me, the energy requirement is high.
6. etc...etc. I don't want to talk about money spent to settle communities, ...and govt. big boys to keep the project going. Uduagha must be commended though. ..without him, the project would have been cancelled by the senate midway.


The GT Diesel and naphtha produced will be exported...100%. Our trucks cannot run on that quality of diesel. So don't expect the price of diesel ever coming down as a result of this project.

Thanks for your insight, a lot of people don't know the construction industry and how just a simple variation in conditions can shoot up the cost of a project. but please can you explain what you meant by our trucks cant run on this type of fuel. Cant we get the ones that use this fuel.

cheers

princefunmi: My Grandma's Ikoko when she used to live in Tabon Tabon Agege. Oh boy, I always looked forward to drinking water out of that Ikoko. No matter how stressed up you are, or how hot and tired you are, all it takes is a drink of water that has stood in that Ikoko for some time. Meeeeeeenn that was heaven.

awon ti tabon tabon agege, gbogbo aina akera nko, akinleye, amoo, olurinde, ayige.....eku atijo. The whole of Orile Agege to AP was my thumping ground....The ghetto of the ghettos.

That is our lovely Akhe (Esan name for it). We have it in Lagos here. Though we have our freezer and fridges but we still drink from this always.

Cool and refreshing always....may it never die.

Return to Venice
In Rome, Casanova had to prepare a way for his return to Venice. While waiting for supporters to gain him legal entry into Venice, Casanova began his modern Tuscan-Italian translation of the Iliad, his History of the Troubles in Poland, and a comic play. To ingratiate himself with the Venetian authorities, Casanova did some commercial spying for them. After months without a recall, however, he wrote a letter of appeal directly to the Inquisitors. At last, he received his long sought permission and burst into tears upon reading "We, Inquisitors of State, for reasons known to us, give Giacomo Casanova a free safe-conduct ... empowering him to come, go, stop, and return, hold communication wheresoever he pleases without let or hindrance. So is our will." Casanova was permitted to return to Venice in September 1774 after eighteen years of exile.

At first, his return to Venice was a cordial one and he was a celebrity. Even the Inquisitors wanted to hear how he had escaped from their prison. Of his three bachelor patrons, however, only Dandolo was still alive and Casanova was invited back to live with him. He received a small stipend from Dandolo and hoped to live from his writings, but that was not enough. He reluctantly became a spy again for Venice, paid by piece work, reporting on religion, morals, and commerce, most of it based on gossip and rumor he picked up from social contacts. He was disappointed. No financial opportunities of interest came about and few doors opened for him in society as in the past.

At age 49, the years of reckless living and the thousands of miles of travel had taken their toll. Casanova's smallpox scars, sunken cheeks, and hook nose became all the more noticeable.
Venice had changed for him. Casanova now had little money for gambling, few willing females worth pursuing, and few acquaintances to enliven his dull days. He heard of the death of his mother and, more paining, visited the deathbed of Bettina Gozzi, who had first introduced him to sex and who died in his arms.
In 1779, Casanova found Francesca, an uneducated seamstress, who became his live-in lover and housekeeper, and who loved him devotedly. Later that year, the Inquisitors put him on the payroll and sent him to investigate commerce between the Papal states and Venice. Other publishing and theater ventures failed, primarily from lack of capital. In a downward spiral, Casanova was expelled again from Venice in 1783, after writing a vicious satire poking fun at Venetian nobility.
he became the librarian to Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein, a chamberlain of the emperor, in the Castle of Dux, Bohemia. Casanova describes his last years as boring and frustrating, even though it was the most productive time for writing. His health had deteriorated dramatically and he found life among peasants to be less than stimulating.

In 1797, word arrived that the Republic of Venice had ceased to exist and that Napoleon Bonaparte had seized Casanova's home city. It was too late to return home. Casanova died on June 4, 1798, at age 73. His last words are said to have been "I have lived as a philosopher and I die as a Christian". Casanova was buried at Dux (Duchcov), but the exact place of his grave was forgotten over the years and remains unknown today.

On the run
This time, however, his mission failed and he fled to Cologne, then Stuttgart in the spring of 1760, where he lost the rest of his fortune. He was yet again arrested for his debts, but managed to escape to Switzerland. Weary of his wanton life, Casanova visited the monastery of Einsiedeln and considered the simple, scholarly life of a monk. He returned to his hotel to think on the decision only to encounter a new object of desire, and reverting to his old instincts, all thoughts of a monk's life were quickly forgotten. Moving on, he visited Albrecht von Haller and Voltaire, and arrived in Marseille, then Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples, Modena, and Turin, moving from one sexual romp to another.

In 1760, Casanova started styling himself the Chevalier de Seingalt, a name he would increasingly use for the rest of his life. On occasion, he would also call himself Count de Farussi (using his mother's maiden name) and when Pope Clement XIII presented Casanova with the Papal Order of the Éperon d'or, he had an impressive cross and ribbon to display on his chest.

Back in Paris, he set about one of his most outrageous schemes—convincing his old dupe the Marquise d'Urfé that he could turn her into a young man through occult means. The plan did not yield Casanova the big payoff he had hoped for, and the Marquise d'Urfé finally lost faith in him.

Casanova traveled to England in 1763, hoping to sell his idea of a state lottery to English officials. He wrote of the English, "the people have a special character, common to the whole nation, which makes them think they are superior to everyone else. It is a belief shared by all nations, each thinking itself the best. And they are all right." Through his connections, he worked his way up to an audience with King George III, using most of the valuables he had stolen from the Marquise d'Urfé. While working the political angles, he also spent much time in the bedroom, as was his habit. As a means to find females for his pleasure, not being able to speak English, he put an advertisement in the newspaper to let an apartment to the "right" person. He interviewed many young women, choosing one "Mistress Pauline" who suited him well. Soon, he established himself in her apartment and seduced her. These and other liaisons, however, left him weak with venereal disease and he left England broke and ill.

He went on to Belgium, recovered, and then for the next three years, traveled all over Europe, covering about 4,500 miles by coach over rough roads, and going as far as Moscow and St Petersburg (the average daily coach trip being about 30 miles in a day). Again, his principal goal was to sell his lottery scheme to other governments and repeat the great success he had with the French government. But a meeting with Frederick the Great bore no fruit and in the surrounding German lands, the same result. Not lacking either connections or confidence, Casanova went to Russia and met with Catherine the Great but she flatly turned down the lottery idea.

In 1766, he was expelled from Warsaw following a pistol duel with Colonel Franciszek Ksawery Branicki over an Italian actress, a lady friend of theirs. Both duelists were wounded, Casanova on the left hand. The hand recovered on its own, after Casanova refused the recommendation of doctors that it be amputated. Other stops failed to gain any takers for the lottery. He returned to Paris for several months in 1767 and hit the gambling salons, only to be expelled from France by order of Louis XV himself, primarily for Casanova's scam involving the Marquise d'Urfé. Now known across Europe for his reckless behavior, Casanova would have difficulty overcoming his notoriety and gaining any fortune. So he headed for Spain, where he was not as well known. He tried his usual approach, leaning on well-placed contacts (often Freemasons), wining and dining with nobles of influence, and finally arranging an audience with the local monarch, in this case Charles III. When no doors opened for him, however, he could only roam across Spain, with little to show for it. In Barcelona, he escaped assassination and landed in jail for six weeks. His Spanish adventure a failure, he returned to France briefly, then to Italy.

There have been lovers and there would always be lovers but hardly would you ever get any one that would meet the prowess and reputation of the quintessential lover boy Giacomo Casanova...yeah we got Casanova from his name..the guy was was not just into women he was into so many other things.

The Real Player: Giacomo Casanova

Today, Casanova is best known as one of the most famous lovers in history. But the Venetian was more than a womanizer. He was a scam artist and scofflaw, an alchemist, spy and church cleric. He wrote satires, fought duels, and escaped from prison more than once.

Church to military to music… and womanizing

Born in Venice in 1725, Casanova was a sharp child—so sharp, in fact, that he entered the University of Padua at the age of 12. After graduating, he took up some of the vices that would make him a name Europe-wide. Gambling, for one. Women, for another. Whether it was his wit, his charm, or his style (or maybe just his hair, which he powdered, scented, and curled), they loved him. But it’s said that he really found his passion for them, too, when he had an affair not just with a 16-year-old girl, but with her 14-year-old sister… at the same time. (If that weren’t bad enough, years later, Casanova wound up in bed with one of the two sisters again—and her daughter… who was also his (now that is utterly disgusting)).
As was not uncommon at the time, Casanova, depending on circumstances, used more or less fictitious names such as baron or count of Farussi (the name of his mother) or Chevalier de Seingalt (pronounced Saint-Galle, as in French). He often signed his works Jacques Casanova de Seingalt after he began writing in French following his second exile from Venice.

He has become so famous for his often complicated and elaborate affairs with women that his name is now synonymous with "womanizer". He associated with European royalty, popes and cardinals, along with luminaries such as Voltaire, Goethe and Mozart. He spent his last years in Bohemia as a librarian in Count Waldstein's household, where he also wrote the story of his life.

Casanova was trained byhis grandmother who later sent him to a boarding house. Conditions at the boarding house were appalling so he appealed to be placed under the care of Abbé Gozzi, his primary instructor, who tutored him in academic subjects as well as the violin. Casanova moved in with the priest and his family and lived there through most of his teenage years. It was also in the Gozzi household that Casanova first came into contact with the opposite sex, when Gozzi's younger sister Bettina fondled him at the age of eleven. Bettina was "pretty, lighthearted, and a great reader of romances. ... The girl pleased me at once, though I had no idea why. It was she who little by little kindled in my heart the first sparks of a feeling which later became my ruling passion."
Early on, Casanova demonstrated a quick wit, an intense appetite for knowledge, and a perpetually inquisitive mind. He entered the University of Padua at twelve and graduated at seventeen, in 1742, with a degree in law ("for which I felt an unconquerable aversion". It was his guardian's hope that he would become an ecclesiastical lawyer.
Casanova had also studied moral philosophy, chemistry, and mathematics, and was keenly interested in medicine. ("I should have been allowed to do as I wished and become a physician, in which profession quackery is even more effective than it is in legal practice." He frequently prescribed his own treatments for himself and friends. While attending the university, Casanova began to gamble and quickly got into debt, causing his recall to Venice by his grandmother, but the gambling habit became firmly established.

Back in Venice He quickly ingratiated himself with a patron (something he was to do all his life), 76-year-old Venetian senator Alvise Gasparo Malipiero, the owner of Palazzo Malipiero, close to Casanova's home in Venice.[16] Malipiero moved in the best circles and taught young Casanova a great deal about good food and wine, and how to behave in society. When Casanova was caught dallying with Malipiero's intended object of seduction, actress Teresa Imer, however, the senator drove both of them from his house.

Scandals tainted Casanova's short church career. After his grandmother's death, Casanova entered a seminary for a short while, but soon his indebtedness landed him in prison for the first time. An attempt by his mother to secure him a position with bishop Bernardo de Bernardis was rejected by Casanova after a very brief trial of conditions in the bishop's Calabrian see. Instead, he found employment as a scribe with the powerful Cardinal Acquaviva in Rome. On meeting the pope, Casanova boldly asked for a dispensation to read the "forbidden books" and from eating fish (which he claimed inflamed his eyes). He also composed love letters for another cardinal. But when Casanova became the scapegoat for a scandal involving a local pair of star-crossed lovers, Cardinal Acquaviva dismissed Casanova, thanking him for his sacrifice, but effectively ending his church career.

In search of a new profession, Casanova bought a commission to become a military officer for the Republic of Venice. His first step was to look the part:

Reflecting that there was now little likelihood of my achieving fortune in my ecclesiastical career, I decided to dress as a soldier ... I inquire for a good tailor ... he brings me everything I need to impersonate a follower of Mars. ... My uniform was white, with a blue vest, a shoulder knot of silver and gold... I bought a long sword, and with my handsome cane in hand, a trim hat with a black cockade, with my hair cut in side whiskers and a long false pigtail, I set forth to impress the whole city.[20]

He joined a Venetian regiment at Corfu, his stay being broken by a brief trip to Constantinople, ostensibly to deliver a letter from his former master the Cardinal.[21] He found his advancement too slow and his duty boring, and he managed to lose most of his pay playing faro. Casanova soon abandoned his military career and returned to Venice.

At the age of 21, he set out to become a professional gambler, but losing all the money remaining from the sale of his commission, he turned to his old benefactor Alvise Grimani for a job. Casanova thus began his third career, as a violinist in the San Samuele theater, "a menial journeyman of a sublime art in which, if he who excels is admired, the mediocrity is rightly despised. ... My profession was not a noble one, but I did not care. Calling everything prejudice, I soon acquired all the habits of my degraded fellow musicians." He and some of his fellows, "often spent our nights roaming through different quarters of the city, thinking up the most scandalous practical jokes and putting them into execution ... we amused ourselves by untying the gondolas moored before private homes, which then drifted with the current". They also sent midwives and physicians on false calls.


After saving the life of a senator by giving some medical advice, the senator and his two bachelor friends thought Casanova wise beyond his years, and concluded that he must be in possession of occult knowledge. The senator invited Casanova into his household and he became a lifelong patron.
Casanova stated in his memoirs:

I took the most creditable, the noblest, and the only natural course. I decided to put myself in a position where I need no longer go without the necessities of life: and what those necessities were for me no one could judge better than me.... No one in Venice could understand how an intimacy could exist between myself and three men of their character, they all heaven and I all earth; they most severe in their morals, and I addicted to every kind of dissolute living.

For the next three years under the senator's patronage, working nominally as a legal assistant, Casanova led the life of a nobleman, dressing magnificently and, as was natural to him, spending most of his time gambling and engaging in amorous pursuits. His patron was exceedingly tolerant, but he warned Casanova that some day he would pay the price; "I made a joke of his dire Prophecies and went my way." However, not much later, Casanova was forced to leave Venice, due to further scandals. Casanova had dug up a freshly buried corpse in order to play a practical joke on an enemy and exact revenge—but the victim went into a paralysis, never to recover. And in another scandal, a young girl who had duped him accused him of rape and went to the officials. Casanova was later acquitted of this crime for lack of evidence, but by this time he had already fled from Venice.
Escaping to Parma, Casanova entered into a three-month affair with a Frenchwoman he named "Henriette", perhaps the deepest love he ever experienced—a woman who combined beauty, intelligence, and culture. In his words, "They who believe that a woman is incapable of making a man equally happy all the twenty-four hours of the day have never known an Henriette. The joy which flooded my soul was far greater when I conversed with her during the day than when I held her in my arms at night. Having read a great deal and having natural taste, Henriette judged rightly of everything." She also judged Casanova astutely.

As noted Casanovist J. Rives Childs wrote:

Perhaps no woman so captivated Casanova as Henriette; few women obtained so deep an understanding of him. She penetrated his outward shell early in their relationship, resisting the temptation to unite her destiny with his. She came to discern his volatile nature, his lack of social background, and the precariousness of his finances. Before leaving, she slipped into his pocket five hundred louis, mark of her evaluation of him.
Crestfallen and despondent, Casanova returned to Venice, and after a good gambling streak, he recovered and set off on a Grand Tour, reaching Paris in 1750. Along the way, from one town to another, he got into sexual escapades resembling operatic plots. In Lyon, he entered the society of Freemasonry, which appealed to his interest in secret rites and which, for the most part, attracted men of intellect and influence who proved useful in his life, providing valuable contacts and uncensored knowledge. Casanova was also attracted to Rosicrucianism.

Casanova stayed in Paris for two years, learned the language, spent much time at the theater, and introduced himself to notables. Soon, however, his numerous liaisons were noted by the Paris police, as they were in nearly every city he visited.
He moved on to Dresden in 1752 and encountered his mother. He wrote a well-received play, La Moluccheide, now lost. He then visited Prague and Vienna, where the tighter moral atmosphere of the latter city was not to his liking. He finally returned to Venice in 1753. In Venice, Casanova resumed his wicked escapades, picking up many enemies and gaining the greater attention of the Venetian inquisitors. His police record became a lengthening list of reported blasphemies, seductions, fights, and public controversy.

Imprisonment and escape
The following day, at age thirty, Casanova was arrested: "The Tribunal, having taken cognizance of the grave faults committed by G. Casanova primarily in public outrages against the holy religion, their Excellencies have caused him to be arrested and imprisoned under the Leads." "The Leads" was a prison of seven cells on the top floor of the east wing of the Doge's palace, reserved for prisoners of higher status and political crimes and named for the lead plates covering the palace roof. Without a trial, Casanova was sentenced to five years in the "unescapable" prison.



"It's him. Place him in custody!"
He was placed in solitary confinement with clothing, a pallet bed, table and armchair in "the worst of all the cells", where he suffered greatly from the darkness, summer heat and "millions of fleas." He was soon housed with a series of cell mates, and after five months and a personal appeal from Count Bragadin was given warm winter bedding and a monthly stipend for books and better food. During exercise walks he was granted in the prison garret, he found a piece of black marble and an iron bar which he smuggled back to his cell; he hid the bar inside his armchair. When he was temporarily without cell mates, he spent two weeks sharpening the bar into a spike on the stone. Then he began to gouge through the wooden floor underneath his bed, knowing that his cell was directly above the Inquisitor's chamber. Just three days before his intended escape, during a festival when no officials would be in the chamber below, Casanova was moved to a larger, lighter cell with a view, despite his protests that he was perfectly happy where he was. In his new cell, "I sat in my armchair like a man in a stupor; motionless as a statue, I saw that I had wasted all the efforts I had made, and I could not repent of them. I felt that I had nothing to hope for, and the only relief left to me was not to think of the future.
Overcoming his inertia, Casanova set upon another escape plan. He solicited the help of the prisoner in the adjacent cell, Father Balbi, a renegade priest. The spike, carried to the new cell inside the armchair, was passed to the priest in a folio Bible carried under a large plate of pasta by the hoodwinked jailer. The priest made a hole in his ceiling, climbed across and made a hole in the ceiling of Casanova's cell. To neutralize his new cell mate, who was a spy, Casanova played on his superstitions and terrorized him into silence. When Balbi broke through to Casanova's cell, Casanova lifted himself through the ceiling, leaving behind a note that quoted the 117th Psalm (Vulgate): "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord".

Illustration from Story of My Flight
The spy remained behind, too frightened of the consequences if he were caught escaping with the others. Casanova and Balbi pried their way through the lead plates and onto the sloping roof of the Doge's Palace, with a heavy fog swirling. The drop to the nearby canal being too great, Casanova pried open the grate over a dormer window, and broke the window to gain entry. They found a long ladder on the roof, and with the additional use of a bedsheet "rope" that Casanova had prepared, lowered themselves into the room whose floor was twenty-five feet below. They rested until morning, changed clothes, then broke a small lock on an exit door and passed into a palace corridor, through galleries and chambers, and down stairs, where by convincing the guard they had inadvertently been locked into the palace after an official function, they left through a final door. It was six in the morning and they escaped by gondola.

Return to Paris
He knew his stay in Paris might be a long one and he proceeded accordingly: "I saw that to accomplish anything I must bring all my physical and moral faculties in play, make the acquaintance of the great and the powerful, exercise strict self-control, and play the chameleon." Casanova had matured, and this time in Paris, though still depending at times on quick thinking and decisive action, he was more calculating and deliberate. His first task was to find a new patron. He reconnected with old friend de Bernis, now the Foreign Minister of France. Casanova was advised by his patron to find a means of raising funds for the state as a way to gain instant favor. Casanova promptly became one of the trustees of the first state lottery, and one of its best ticket salesmen. The enterprise earned him a large fortune quickly. With money in hand, he traveled in high circles and undertook new seductions. He duped many socialites with his occultism, particularly the Marquise Jeanne d'Urfé, using his excellent memory which made him appear to have a sorcerer's power of numerology. In Casanova's view, "deceiving a fool is an exploit worthy of an intelligent man".

Casanova claimed to be a Rosicrucian and an alchemist, aptitudes which made him popular with some of the most prominent figures of the era, among them Madame de Pompadour, Count de Saint-Germain, d'Alembert, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. So popular was alchemy among the nobles, particularly the search for the "philosopher's stone", that Casanova was highly sought after for his supposed knowledge, and he profited handsomely. He met his match, however, in the Count de Saint-Germain: "This very singular man, born to be the most barefaced of all imposters, declared with impunity, with a casual air, that he was three hundred years old, that he possessed the universal medicine, that he made anything he liked from nature, that he created diamonds." The count immediately saw he was a fraud and he could tell a lie convincingly, he decided to employ Casanova as a spy.

De Bernis decided to send Casanova to Dunkirk on his first spying mission. Casanova was paid well for his quick work and this experience prompted one of his few remarks against the ancien régime and the class he was dependent on. He remarked in hindsight, "All the French ministers are the same. They lavished money which came out of the other people's pockets to enrich their creatures, and they were absolute: The down-trodden people counted for nothing, and, through this, the indebtedness of the State and the confusion of finances were the inevitable results. A Revolution was necessary."

As the Seven Years' War began, Casanova was again called to help increase the state treasury. He was entrusted with a mission of selling state bonds in Amsterdam, Holland being the financial center of Europe at the time. He succeeded in selling the bonds at only an 8% discount, and the following year was rich enough to found a silk manufactory with his earnings. The French government even offered him a title and a pension if he would become a French citizen and work on behalf of the Finance Ministry, but he declined, perhaps because it would frustrate his Wanderlust. Casanova had reached his peak of fortune but could not sustain it. He ran the business poorly, borrowed heavily trying to save it, and spent much of his wealth on constant liaisons with his female workers who were his "harem".

For his debts, Casanova was imprisoned again, this time at For-l'Évêque, but was liberated four days afterwards, upon the insistence of the Marquise d'Urfé. Unfortunately, though he was released, his patron de Bernis was dismissed by Louis XV at that time and Casanova's enemies closed in on him. He sold the rest of his belongings and secured another mission to Holland to distance himself from his troubles.

axum: Fulaman post some beautiful Fulani women so I may decide if your women are on the same level as Cushitic women

Plaintiff, Judge and Jury at the same time....Oga your own too much.

We have all heard about Tarzan and how he was brought up by animals and could talk to them and what not....well Tarzan was just Hollywood and its a lot of lies because the real Tarzan was actually a girl and she came long after Hollywood created Tarzan..and of course she wasnt raised by wild animals..that is just Hollywood b*ls**t. Meet Tippi Degre, the Tarzan of the Jungle.

Tippi Degré

Born in Africa to French wildlife photographer parents, Tippi Degré had a most unusual childhood. The young girl grew up in the African desert and developed an uncommon bond with many untamed animals including a 28-year old African elephant named Abu, lion cubs, giraffes, an Ostrich, a mongoose, crocodiles, a baby zebra, a cheetah, giant bullfrogs, and even a snake. Africa was her home for many years and Tippi became friends with the ferocious animals and tribespeople of Namibia. As a young child, the French girl said, “I don’t have friends here. Because I never see children. So the animals are my friends."

Parents Alain Degré and Sylvie Robert documented Tippi's life and relationships with the African wildlife and transformed those moments into captivating books and movies. Tippi of Africa, published in 1998, told Tippi's story of she and her parents, and Tippi's close bonds with wild animals made her quite famous. Her mother said, "She was in the mindset of these animals. She believed the animals were her size and her friends. She was using her imagination to live in these different conditions."

Tippi later moved with her parents to Madagascar and then to France.

In Paris (France), Tippi attended a local state school for the first two years, but was then homeschooled because she was found to have little in common with the other children in Paris. She is now studying cinema at la Sorbonne Nouvelle University in Paris. A documentary on her experiences, Le Monde Selon Tippi was released in 1997.

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James Holman was able to travel the world because he honed his skills in a supernatural ability called echolocation. Echolocation in layman's term is the ability to use echos coming from an object to identify its location. Well there was a little boy who was exceptional in the use of this supernatural ability....

Ben Underwood

After being diagnosed with retinal cancer Ben Underwood lost both his eyes at the age of 3. He taught himself to perceive and locate objects by making clicking sounds with his tongue and using the echoes as they bounced off his environment to create a visual image in his mind. He began to use this technique at age 3 and further improved it so that even the surface of the objects did not matter whether it is metal, wood or another human being. Ben was able to perceive the distance to objects in his environment by how loud and faint the echo was.

There was the time a fifth grader thought it would be funny to punch the blind kid and run. So he snuck up on Ben Underwood and hit him in the face. That's when Ben started his clicking thing. "I chased him, clicking until I got to him, then I socked him a good one," says Ben, a skinny 14-year-old. "He didn't reckon on me going after him. But I can hear walls, parked cars, you name it. I'm a master at this game.

Ask people about Ben Underwood and you'll hear dozens of stories like this – about the amazing boy who doesn't seem to know he's blind. There's Ben zooming around on his skateboard outside his home in Sacramento; there he is playing kickball with his buddies. To see him speed down hallways and make sharp turns around corners is to observe a typical teen – except, that is, for the clicking. Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal cancer claimed both his eyes (he now wears two prostheses), Ben has learned to perceive and locate objects by making a steady stream of sounds with his tongue, then listening for the echoes as they bounce off the surfaces around him. About as loud as the snapping of fingers, Ben's clicks tell him what's ahead: the echoes they produce can be soft (indicating metals), dense (wood) or sharp (glass). Judging by how loud or faint they are, Ben has learned to gauge distances.

In his final days, Ben enjoyed listening to gospel music and getting neck and back massages. He seemed more concerned about his mother's emotional state than his own pain, forgoing medications and assuring her that he was fine.

Underwood died on January 19, 2009 at the age of 16, from the same cancer that took his vision.

"It was hard to watch my baby go from being so active and so happy-go-lucky to not being able to walk or talk anymore," Gordon said. "But the blessing was in seeing all of the people around him, loving on him.

The Man Who Saw The Road

We have heard of great travelers and explorers like the likes of Marco Polo, Vasco Da gama, Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus and the likes, but there is a little known man who travelled more than any three of them combined. If that was not impressive enough...well this should...He was Blind...Join me in welcoming back

James Holman

JAMES HOLMAN TRAVELLED a whopping 250,000 miles in his lifetime - further than anyone had ever travelled before. It was a record that stood well into the twentieth century. And he did it, incredibly, despite being totally blind.

And not just blind. Holman also suffered from an acute form of rheumatism. The pain was often so bad he couldn’t get out of bed. But when the worst agonies had passed, he would always pick himself up, grab his battered walking stick and carry on globetrotting. The man was awesome. He was unstoppable.
James Holman was a Devonian, born in Exeter in 1786. A healthy boy with perfect vision, he dreamed of seeing the world. At the age of twelve, he joined the Royal Navy and set sail for the Atlantic. He served there for a dozen years, patrolling the freezing waters off Canada and New England, rising to the rank of lieutenant.

But life at sea was brutal and the Exeter lad was unlucky. The constant cold and wet started to get to him. Mysterious pains began to shoot through his bones. His feet and ankles became inflamed. Soon he was barely able to walk. No use to the navy, Lieutenant Holman was sent back to England in 1810, an invalid.

And it got worse. While recuperating in the spa city of Bath, his eyesight too began to fail. It’s not clear why; perhaps there was some link to the rheumatism. But the deterioration was rapid and catastrophic. In a matter of weeks, poor Holman was left not only crippled, but completely blind. He was just twenty-five years old.

Lesser men might have jacked it all in right there. In the early nineteenth century blind people were viewed, at best, as creatures to pity. No one would dream of hiring a man who couldn’t see – even a bright one like Holman. The blind were expected to settle for a life of begging in the street, a rag tied round their damaged eyes to avoid upsetting sensitive passers-by.

But from the start Holman had other ideas. He wasn’t going to be treated as a charity case. As soon as he was able, he began venturing out alone, learning how to navigate city streets with his metal-tipped walking stick. He wore his blue Royal Navy uniform wherever he went. He refused to wear a blindfold.

He secured a small income by getting accepted as a Naval Knight, an honorary position for disabled sailors which came with a yearly allowance and free lodging at Windsor Castle. He worked hard at sharpening his wits, honing his sense of touch, hearing and smell to make up for being sightless. He got used to people mysteriously raising their voices when speaking to him as if he must also be hard of hearing. And then he got himself an education.

Studying medicine at Edinburgh University was a mad idea. Holman had left school at twelve. He was a decade older than most students. And braille hadn’t been invented so he couldn’t read text books. It’s a testament to his doggedness that he completed his studies by repeatedly attending lectures – once, twice, three times – till all the information stuck. Then, on the advice of his doctor, he left Scotland and set off to Mediterranean for its healing sunshine.

A leisurely cruise to the South of France accompanied by a nurse and servants is what the doc had in mind. But Holman’s modest budget didn’t stretch to that. So instead he hobbled aboard a bog-standard ferry to Calais and went south overland, travelling entirely alone. It was the best decision of his life.

The journey that followed would have been hell for a healthy man. France’s roads were a muddy, pot-holed mess after years of war. Coach journeys were spine-jolting, soul-destroying ordeals that rumbled on painfully through the night. Passengers were crammed in on top of one another. Holman couldn’t speak a word of French.

But the Exeter lad who’d once dreamed of seeing the world loved it. “Behold me, then, in France!” he writes joyously, “Surrounded by a people, to me, strange, invisible, and incomprehensible.”

His health improved. His spirits lifted. Sometimes, on slow stretches of road, he’d hop out of his coach, tie a bit of string to its wooden frame – then jog along behind holding the cord. The exercise invigorated him. He was becoming a man of adventure.

Holman trundled steadily through France like that for a year, pausing in Paris, Toulouse and Montpellier. He must have been a curious sight: a tall, thin, sightless Englishman, still wearing his navy uniform. And now he wore a big straw sunhat too.

He became expert at making his way around strange cities, tap-tap-tapping with his walking stick, soaking up the sounds and smells of town squares and market places, feeling his way around new buildings. Always the perfect gentleman, women quickly warmed to him and would let him explore their faces with his hands. Holman loved that. Blind or not, he had quite an eye for the ladies.

People asked him how a sightless man could enjoy sightseeing. He told them that his blindness heightened the pleasures of travel. It gave him what he called “a stronger zest to curiosity”, forced him to pause and examine everything deeply. The journalist William Jerdan, who knew Holman, grasped what he meant. “[Holman] had eyes in his mouth, eyes in his nose, eyes in his ears,” he writes, “and eyes in his mind, never blinking.”

After France, Holman should have headed home. Naval Knights had obligations as well as privileges. He’d been given a year’s leave from Windsor Castle, no more. Now he was expected to return and fulfil the main duty of a knight: attending chapel twice daily. But Holman couldn’t do it. He was on a roll. He had the bug. Instead of turning around, he kept on going down the boot of Italy.

In Rome, the blind adventurer climbed up inside the dome of St Peter’s Basilica and tried (unsuccessfully) to get out a window and scale the cross on its roof. Fired up, he then hiked to the top of Mount Vesuvius – while the volcano was active. He was the first blind person to reach the summit. He tapped his way gingerly round the crater, singeing his walking stick in the process and filling his boots with ash.

In nearby Naples, Holman hooked up with an old navy pal, a guy he calls Mr C. The anonymous Mr C had gone deaf since the pair served together in the Atlantic. But he too had developed a passion for travel. So the blind man and the deaf man teamed up and went north together through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. It was the one and only time that Holman chose to travel with a companion.

The friends parted in Amsterdam. Then, when he was good and ready, Holman took a ferry back to Britain. It was now 1821. He’d been gone more than seven hundred days. He’d overstayed his leave from Windsor Castle by almost a year.

Yet six months later he was off again. He stuck around in England just long enough to dictate a book about his adventures in Europe*. By the time it hit the bookshelves, he was gone. Wandering around Europe had been a warm-up. Now he was going to attempt the mother of all journeys: a complete circuit of the world.

Circumnavigating the globe in the 1820s was the stuff of fantasy. A few sailors and merchants had done it. But independent travellers didn’t go there – the seas were too dangerous, berths on sailing ships too expensive, and the trip would take forever. Only a nutcase would even consider it; a nutcase like the half-crippled, totally blind Royal Navy Lieutenant James Holman.

Holman had a plan: he’d cut down the cost of sea voyages by travelling as far as possible overland in public transport, sleeping in cheap hostels and eating local food. That meant he had only one route open to him, a path no circumnavigator had tried before. Instead of sailing west to the New World, he would have to start by going east into the vast Russian Empire. He was going to try to cross Siberia.

The journey began okay. Holman took a boat to St Petersburg, then a public sledge to Moscow. But when he told people there he was going to continue east, Muscovite jaws dropped in amazement. They called him insane. “The name of Siberia seemed connected in their minds only with horror,” he reports.

But Holman was fixed on getting to Russia’s far eastern coast where he hoped to find a whaling ship to take him across the Pacific. His determination was unshakeable. He bought a rickety old wagon, hired a driver, packed a good supply of tea, medicine and brandy – and trundled off into the frozen wilderness with “a feeling of happy confidence” in his heart.

The journey, as predicted, was a horror show. Passenger and driver went for days eating nothing but bread. One week they faced subzero temperatures; the next they were in a swamp with gnats and mosquitoes feasting on their faces. When Holman heard the rattle of chains he knew his cart was passing another column of convicts being force-marched into Siberian exile.

The bone-rattling ride went on for 3,500 miles across some of the harshest, bleakest wilderness on the planet. Three months after leaving Moscow the bruised and frozen travellers arrived in Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia. And there, after initially being given a warm welcome, Holman was suddenly arrested on suspicion of being a spy - and whisked right back the way he’d just come.

It was a kind of nineteenth century extraordinary rendition. A shady character from the Tsar’s secret police appeared with orders to escort Holman out of Russia. The Englishman was plonked on a sledge and driven thousands of miles westwards at breakneck speed. It was no sleep till Poland. He was dumped at the border and told to cross it.

A baffled and bewildered Lieutenant Holman made his way home across Europe, arriving in Hull in June 1824. He’d been away two years and one day. His round-the-world jaunt had failed. But there was good news awaiting him: his European travel book was selling well. He was famous. He’d become the celebrated Blind Traveller.

After producing a second best seller about his Siberian adventure*, he was on the move again. And with royalties in the bank, he could now afford to attempt a round-the-world trip by sailing ship. He told the bigwigs at Windsor Castle he had to travel to the sun again for health reasons. Then, without a trace of irony, he sailed for West Africa – the white man’s grave.

He left on the HMS Eden, a Royal Navy frigate sent to establish a British settlement on the island of Fernando Po, just off Africa’s west coast. Unlike the mainland, Fernando Po was thought to be free of malaria, cleansed by a brisk sea breeze. The crew of HMS Eden expected to find a little tropical heaven. Instead they found hell.

Fever quickly ripped through the European settlement. Of the one hundred and thirty-five men who sailed on the Eden, just twelve would survive the expedition. Yet despite the appalling death toll, Holman stuck it out on that toxic little island for a year, helping his friend Captain Owen get a base up and running. And for once he had luck with his health: he made it out alive.

It was on Fernando Po that Holman grew a whopping great beard that he kept for the rest of his life. According to William Jerdan, it “would have done credit to the Chief Rabbi of the Jews”. And it was there that he met a young African woman who, unlike the ladies of Europe, let him touch more than just her face. “Perceiving that I did not immediately recognise her… [she] placed my hand on her bosom,” he tells us happily. “Her relatives and countrymen all laughed heartily and appeared to enjoy my astonishment much.”

Hitching a ride in a Dutch ship, he moved on to Brazil. And from there he began an astonishing series of sea voyages that would finally realise his round-the-world dream. South Africa, Zanzibar and Mauritius came first. Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Calcutta and Canton (now Guangzhou) followed. From China he headed to Australia. Then it was across the Pacific, round the tip of South America, back to Brazil, and home.

On boarding a new boat Holman would sometimes treat the crew to his little party trick: he’d clamber up the rigging, right to the very top, then shout and wave to the gobsmacked men below. If anyone was tempted to treat him like an invalid that usually put a stop to it. And when he went exploring on land he made a point of behaving exactly like a man who’d never lost his sight.

In Brazil he accepted an invitation to inspect a gold mine (he didn’t bother bringing a lantern). In South Africa he taught himself to ride a horse and went off into the wilds with a young African sidekick who didn’t speak English. In Ceylon he took part in an elephant hunt. He crossed Zanzibar and Tasmania on foot. And in China he toked on an opium pipe.

It wasn’t all plain sailing: he was assaulted by a swarm of wasps, he was thrown from a horse, and his rheumatism sometimes crippled him. But he always pressed on, patiently and tenaciously, still wearing his old naval uniform and carrying his stick. He relied, he says, on “divine protection and on the sympathies of mankind”. And they didn’t let him down: in five years circling the globe he was never once ripped off or robbed.

The Blind Traveller got back to England in 1832 and set to work on his third book, “A Voyage round the World, including Travels in Africa, Asia, Australasia, America &, from 1827 to 1832”. But it was less well received than his previous efforts. The novelty of a sightless sightseer was wearing thin. The inspirational adventurer had somehow become a bit of a joke.

It was eight years before he got to travel again. In 1840, Holman (now fifty-four) once again set out alone and on a shoestring, this time for the Mediterranean and Middle East. He visited Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, Syria and the Holy Land. He passed through Libya, Tunisia and Egypt. He went up into Bosnia, Montenegro and Hungary. He was gone six years. And by the time he got back, he was pretty much forgotten. No one was interested in even publishing his account of that last epic journey, the swansong of the most travelled man of all time.

This is bizarre. According to his biographer, Jason Roberts, Holman had now clocked up a staggering quarter of a million miles. “None could even approach the achievements of the Blind Traveller…” writes Roberts in “A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveller”. “Alone, sightless, with no prior command of native languages and with only a wisp of funds, he had forged a path equivalent to wandering to the moon.”

James Holman lived out his remaining years in east London, down by the docks. It was a dodgy part of town, full of sailors’ pubs and brothels. No place for a gentleman. But it was the ideal spot for a sick, old, white-bearded wanderer who now needed the sounds and smells of the world to come to him.

The Blind Traveller died on 28 July, 1857, aged seventy. A week before his death he finished work on his autobiography. No one was interested in publishing that either. The manuscript has now been lost.

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Okay guys if there is anyone the world will never see again....it is James Holman....but HE HAS SEEN THE WORLD.

anonymous6: I was expecting a list of 10 people but you put one snake guy person

Lol, i dont have a list but just memories of potpourii of different unique people i have read about, am sure I can remember far more than 10. So your number 10 is safe. I will definitely get there.

Zedric: Following but this epistle long o

The devil is in the details.

johnwizey: Shey na only one person his history long lyk dis?

You've got Joan of Arc Coming

Execution


Joan of Arc's Death at the Stake


Heresy was a capital crime only for a repeat offense. Joan agreed to wear feminine clothing when she abjured. This created a problem. According to the later descriptions of some of the tribunal members, she had previously been wearing male (i.e. military) clothing in prison because it gave her the ability to fasten her hosen and tunic together into one piece, which deterred rape by making it difficult to pull her hosen off. A woman's dress offered no such protection. A few days after adopting a dress, she told a tribunal member that "a great English lord had entered her prison and tried to take her by force. [i.e. rape her]" She resumed male attire either as a defense against molestation or, in the testimony of Jean Massieu, because her dress had been taken by the guards and she was left with nothing else to wear.

Her resumption of male military clothing was labeled a relapse into heresy. Medieval Catholic doctrine held that cross-dressing should be evaluated based on context, as stated in the "Summa Theologica" by St. Thomas Aquinas, which says that necessity would be a permissible reason for cross-dressing. This would include the use of clothing as protection against rape if the clothing would offer protection. In terms of doctrine, she had been justified in disguising herself as a pageboy during her journey through enemy territory and she was justified in wearing armor during battle and protective clothing in camp and then in prison. The Chronique de la Pucelle states that it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. When her soldiers' clothing wasn't needed while on campaign, she was said to have gone back to wearing a dress.[76] Clergy who later testified at the posthumous appellate trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape.

She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter. The Poitiers record no longer survives but circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics had approved her practice. She also kept her hair cut short through her military campaigns and while in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Jean Gerson, defended her hairstyle for practical reasons, as did Inquisitor Brehal later during the appellate trial. Nonetheless, at the trial in 1431 she was condemned and sentenced to die.

Eyewitnesses described the scene of the execution by burning on 30 May 1431. Tied to a tall pillar at the Vieux-Marché in Rouen, she asked two of the clergy, Fr Martin Ladvenu and Fr Isambart de la Pierre, to hold a crucifix before her. An English soldier also constructed a small cross which she put in the front of her dress. After she died, the English raked back the coals to expose her charred body so that no one could claim she had escaped alive, then burned the body twice more to reduce it to ashes and prevent any collection of relics. They cast her remains into the Seine River. The executioner, Geoffroy Thérage, later stated that he "...greatly feared to be damned."

Personally i think all those who took part in her execution are damned. She was definitely a unique individual. And for all the ladies who love the bobcut hair style. This is the Lady that started it.

If there was ever a Witch, this woman would be it.

The Legendary Joan of ARC

Joan was born the daughter of Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée in Domrémy, a village which was then in the French part of the duchy of Bar. Joan's parents owned about 50 acres (20 hectares) of land and her father supplemented his farming work with a minor position as a village official, collecting taxes and heading the local watch. They lived in an isolated patch of eastern France that remained loyal to the French crown despite being surrounded by pro-Burgundian lands. Several local raids occurred during her childhood and on one occasion her village was burned.

At her trial, Joan stated that she was about 19, which implies that she thought she was born around 1412. She later testified that she experienced her first vision around 1424 at the age of 12 years, when she was in her "father's garden" and saw visions of figures she identified as Saint Michael, Saint Catherine, and Saint Margaret, who told her to drive out the English and bring the Dauphin to Reims for his coronation. She said she cried when they left, as they were so beautiful.

At the age of 16, she asked a relative named Durand Lassois to take her to the nearby town of Vaucouleurs, where she petitioned the garrison commander, Robert de Baudricourt, for permission to visit the royal French court at Chinon. She was Denied. She returned the following January and gained support from two of Baudricourt's soldiers. She told him that "I must be at the King's side... there will be no help (for the kingdom) if not from me. Although I would rather have remained spinning [wool] at my mother's side... yet must I go and must I do this thing, for my Lord wills that I do so. She gained a second meeting, where she made a remarkable prediction about a military reversal near Orléans.
Robert de Baudricourt granted her an escort to visit Chinon after news from Orleans confirmed her prediction. She made the journey through hostile Burgundian territory disguised as a male soldier.
Upon arriving at the Royal Court she impressed Charles VII during a private conference. During this time Charles' mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon was financing a relief expedition to Orléans. Joan asked for permission to travel with the army and wear protective armor, which was provided by the Royal government. She depended on donated items for her armor, horse, sword, banner, and other items utilized by her entourage. Historian Stephen W. Richey explains her attraction to the royal court by pointing out that they may have viewed her as the only source of hope for a regime that was near collapse:

After years of one humiliating defeat after another, both the military and civil leadership of France were demoralized and discredited. When the Dauphin Charles granted Joan’s urgent request to be equipped for war and placed at the head of his army, his decision must have been based in large part on the knowledge that every orthodox, every rational option had been tried and had failed. Only a regime in the final straits of desperation would pay any heed to an illiterate farm girl who claimed that the voice of God was instructing her to take charge of her country’s army and lead it to victory.

Upon her arrival, Joan effectively turned the longstanding Anglo-French conflict into a religious war. But this course of action was not without its risks. Charles' advisers were worried that unless Joan's orthodoxy could be established beyond doubt – that she was not a heretic or a sorceress – Charles' enemies could easily make the allegation that his crown was a gift from the devil. To circumvent this possibility, the Dauphin ordered background inquiries and a theological examination at Poitiers to verify her morality. In April 1429, the commission of inquiry "declared her to be of irreproachable life, a good Christian, possessed of the virtues of humility, honesty and simplicity." The theologians at Poitiers did not render a decision on the issue of divine inspiration; rather, they informed the Dauphin that there was a 'favorable presumption' to be made on the divine nature of her mission. This was enough for Charles, but they put the ball back in his court by stating that he had an obligation to put Joan to the test. 'To doubt or abandon her without suspicion of evil would be to repudiate the Holy Spirit and to become unworthy of God's aid', they declared. The test for the truth of her claims would be the raising of the siege of Orléans.

She arrived at the siege of Orléans on 29 April 1429, but Jean d'Orléans, the acting head of the ducal family of Orléans on behalf of his captive half-brother, initially excluded her from war councils and failed to inform her when the army engaged the enemy. However, his exclusions did not prevent her presence at most councils and battles.

The extent of her actual military leadership is a subject of historical debate. On the one hand, noblemen such as the Duke of Alençon always had direct command; but on the other hand, many of these same noblemen stated that Joan had a profound effect on their decisions. Traditional historians, such as Édouard Perroy, conclude that she was a standard bearer whose primary effect was on morale. This type of analysis usually relies on the condemnation trial testimony, where she stated that she preferred her standard to her sword. Recent scholarship that focuses on the nullification trial testimony asserts that the army's commanders esteemed her for the advice she gave them. In either case, historians agree that the army enjoyed remarkable success during her brief time with it.

Military campaigns
"... the Maiden lets you know that here, in eight days, she has chased the English out of all the places they held on the river Loire by attack or other means: they are dead or prisoners or discouraged in battle. Believe what you have heard about the earl of Suffolk, the lord la Pole and his brother, the lord Talbot, the lord Scales, and Sir Fastolf; many more knights and captains than these are defeated."

Her Letter to the citizens of Tournai, 25 June 1429
Joan of Arc's appearance at Orléans coincided with a sudden change in the pattern of the siege. During the five months before her arrival the defenders attempted only one aggressive move and that had ended in disaster. On 4 May, however, the Armagnacs attacked and captured the outlying fortress of Saint Loup (bastille de Saint-Loup), followed on 5 May by a march to a second fortress called Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, which was found deserted. When English troops came out to oppose the advance, a rapid cavalry charge drove them back into their fortresses, apparently without a fight. The Armagnacs then attacked and captured an English fortress built around a monastery called Les Augustins. Armagnac troops maintained positions on the south bank of the river before attacking the main English stronghold called "les Tourelles" on the morning of 7 May. Contemporaries acknowledged Joan as the heroine of the engagement. She was wounded by an arrow between the neck and shoulder while holding her banner in the trench outside Les Tourelles, but later returned to encourage a final assault which succeeded in taking the fortress. The English retreated from Orléans the next day, and the siege was over.

At Chinon and Poitiers Joan had declared that she would give a sign at Orléans. The lifting of the siege was interpreted by many people to be that sign, and it gained her the support of prominent clergy such as the Archbishop of Embrun and theologian Jean Gerson, who both wrote supportive treatises immediately following this event.

The sudden victory at Orléans also led to many proposals for further offensive action. Joan persuaded Charles VII to allow her to accompany the army with Duke John II of Alençon, and she gained royal permission for her plan to recapture nearby bridges along the Loire as a prelude to an advance on Reims and the coronation of Charles VII. This was a bold proposal because Reims was roughly twice as far away as Paris and deep within enemy territory. The English expected an attempt to recapture Paris or an attack on Normandy.

The Duke of Alençon accepted Joan's advice concerning strategy. Other commanders including Jean d'Orléans had been impressed with her performance at Orléans and became her supporters. Alençon credited her with saving his life at Jargeau, where she warned him that a cannon on the walls was about to fire at him. During the same siege she withstood a blow from a stone which hit her helmet while she was near the base of the town's wall. The army took Jargeau on 12 June, Meung-sur-Loire on 15 June, and Beaugency on 17 June.

The English army withdrew from the Loire Valley and headed north on 18 June, joining with an expected unit of reinforcements under the command of Sir John Fastolf. Joan urged the French to pursue, and the two armies clashed southwest of the village of Patay. The battle at Patay might be compared to Agincourt in reverse. The French vanguard attacked a unit of English archers who had been placed to block the road. A rout ensued that decimated the main body of the English army and killed or captured most of its commanders. Fastolf escaped with a small band of soldiers and became the scapegoat for the humiliating English defeat. The French suffered minimal losses.

"Prince of Burgundy, I pray of you — I beg and humbly supplicate — that you make no more war with the holy kingdom of France. Withdraw your people swiftly from certain places and fortresses of this holy kingdom, and on behalf of the gentle king of France I say he is ready to make peace with you, by his honor."
"Her Letter to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy",

The French army left Gien on 29 June on the march toward Reims, and accepted the conditional surrender of the Burgundian-held city of Auxerre on 3 July. Other towns in their path returned to French allegiance without resistance. Troyes, the site of the treaty that tried to disinherit Charles VII, was the only one which put up even brief opposition. The army was in short supply of food by the time it reached Troyes. But the army was in luck: a wandering friar named Brother Richard had been preaching about the end of the world at Troyes and convinced local residents to plant beans, a crop with an early harvest. The hungry army arrived as the beans ripened. Troyes capitulated after a bloodless four-day siege.

Reims opened its gates to the army on 16 July. The coronation took place the following morning. Although Joan and the Duke of Alençon urged a prompt march on Paris, the royal court preferred a negotiated truce with the duke of Burgundy. Duke Philip the Good broke the agreement, using it as a stalling tactic to reinforce the defense of Paris. The French army marched through towns near Paris during the interim and accepted several peaceful surrenders. The Duke of Bedford led an English force and confronted the French army in a standoff at the battle of Montépilloy on 15 August. The French assault at Paris ensued on 8 September. Despite a wound to the leg from a crossbow bolt, Joan remained in Paris' inner trench until she was carried back to safety by one of the commanders. The following morning the army received a royal order to withdraw. Most historians blame French Grand Chamberlain Georges de la Trémoille for the political blunders that followed the coronation. In October, Joan was with the royal army when it took Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, followed by an unsuccessful attempt to take La-Charité-sur-Loire in November and December. On 29 December, Joan and her family were granted nobility by Charles VII as a reward for her actions.

Capture


Joan captured by the Burgundians at Compiègne. Mural in the Panthéon, Paris.
A truce with England during the following few months left Joan with little to do. On 23 March 1430, she dictated a threatening letter to the Hussites, a dissident group which had broken with the Catholic Church on a number of doctrinal points and had defeated several previous crusades sent against them. Joan's letter promises to "remove your madness and foul superstition, taking away either your heresy or your lives."

However, the truce with England quickly came to an end. Joan traveled to Compiègne the following May to help defend the city against an English and Burgundian siege. A skirmish on 23 May 1430 led to her capture, when her force attempted to attack the Burgundians' camp at Margny. When the troops began to withdraw toward the nearby fortifications of Compiègne after the advance of an additional force of 6,000 Burgundians, Joan stayed with the rear guard. Burgundian troops surrounded the rear guard, and she was pulled off her horse by an archer. She agreed to surrender to a pro-Burgundian nobleman named Lionel of Wandomme, a member of Jean de Luxembourg's unit.

"It is true that the king has made a truce with the duke of Burgundy for fifteen days and that the duke is to turn over the city of Paris at the end of fifteen days. Yet you should not marvel if I do not enter that city so quickly. I am not content with these truces and do not know if I will keep them, but if I hold them it will only be to guard the king's honor: no matter how much they abuse the royal blood, I will keep and maintain the royal army in case they make no peace at the end of those fifteen days."
Her Letter to the citizens of Reims, 5 August 1429

Joan was imprisoned by the Burgundians at Beaurevoir Castle. She attempted several escapes, on one occasion jumping from her 70 foot (21 m) tower, landing on the soft earth of a dry moat, after which she was moved to the Burgundian town of Arras. The English negotiated with their Burgundian allies to transfer her to their custody, with Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, an English partisan, assuming a prominent role in these negotiations and her later trial. The final agreement called for the English to pay the sum of 10,000 livres tournois to obtain her from Jean de Luxembourg, a member of the Council of Duke Philip of Burgundy.

The English moved Joan to the city of Rouen, which served as their main headquarters in France. Historian Pierre Champion notes that the French attempted to rescue her several times by launching military campaigns toward Rouen while she was held there. One campaign occurred during the winter of 1430-1431, another in March 1431, and one in late May shortly before her execution. These attempts were beaten back. Champion also quotes 15th century sources which say that Charles VII threatened to "exact vengeance" upon Burgundian troops whom his forces had captured and upon "the English and women of England" in retaliation for their treatment of Joan.

Trial of Joan of Arc


The keep of the castle of Rouen, surviving remnant of the fortress where Joan was imprisoned during her trial. It has since become known as the "Joan of Arc Tower".
The trial for heresy was politically motivated. The tribunal was composed entirely of pro-English and Burgundian clerics, and overseen by English commanders including the Duke of Bedford and Earl of Warwick.


Joan interrogated in her prison cell by the Cardinal of Winchester. By Hippolyte Delaroche, 1824, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France.
To summarize some major problems: Under ecclesiastical law, Bishop Cauchon lacked jurisdiction over the case. Cauchon owed his appointment to his partisan support of the English government which financed the trial. The standard of evidence used in the trial also violated inquisitorial rules (lol, as bad as inquisitorial rules were). Clerical notary Nicolas Bailly, commissioned to collect testimony against Joan, could find no adverse evidence. Without such evidence the court lacked grounds to initiate a trial. Opening a trial anyway, the court also violated ecclesiastical law by denying her the right to a legal adviser. Worse, stacking the tribunal entirely with pro-English clergy violated the medieval Church's requirement that heresy trials needed to be judged by an impartial or balanced group of clerics. Upon the opening of the first public examination Joan complained that those present were all partisans against her and asked for "ecclesiastics of the French side" to be invited in order to provide balance.

The Vice-Inquisitor of Northern France (Jean Lemaitre) objected to the trial at its outset, and several eyewitnesses later said he was forced to cooperate after the English threatened his life. Some of the other clergy at the trial were also threatened when they refused to cooperate, including a Dominican friar named Isambart de la Pierre. These threats, and the domination of the trial by a secular government, were obvious violations of the Church's rules and undermined the right of the Church to conduct heresy trials without secular interference.

The trial record contains statements from Joan which the eyewitnesses later said astonished the court, since she was an illiterate peasant and yet was able to evade the theological pitfalls which the tribunal set up to entrap her. The transcript's most famous exchange is an exercise in subtlety. "Asked if she knew she was in God's grace, she answered: 'If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.'" The question is a scholarly trap. Church doctrine held that no one could be certain of being in God's grace. If she had answered yes, then she would have been charged with heresy. If she had answered no, then she would have confessed her own guilt. Notary Boisguillaume later testified that at the moment the court heard this reply, "Those who were interrogating her were stupefied."

Several court functionaries later testified that important portions of the transcript were altered in her disfavor. Under Inquisitorial guidelines, Joan should have been confined in an ecclesiastical prison under the supervision of female guards (i.e., nuns). Instead, the English kept her in a secular prison guarded by their own soldiers. Bishop Cauchon denied Joan's appeals to the Council of Basel and the Pope, which should have stopped his proceeding.