Author: legostudent

“Around the World in Eighty Days” is a book about a man named Phileas Fogg and his journey around the world. It was written by Jules Verne. It’s one of the first science fiction books written, despite the fact that they use only old transportation. It is a very good book with lot’s of humor and good cliffhangers that keep you on the edge of your seat. I enjoyed the book immensely.

The book starts out with Phileas Fogg going about his day. Phileas Fogg was a very rich man who was constantly giving donations to whatever he thought deserved it. He was very exact and did exactly the same thing every day. His sole servant had been fired for having his drinking water exactly two degrees warmer than usual. This day he was hiring a new servant named Passepartout. He went to the only club he belonged to every day and played whist (a card game) with his fellow members. This day his fellow whist players were arguing about how far a bank robber could get before the police caught him. One was arguing that they would get him quickly because the world was small and you could go around the world in 80 days. The other was arguing it was completely theoretical that you can go around the world in 80 days and the world was big, so the robber would get away. Phileas took the side of the former and said he would bet them £20,000 he could make the journey in 80 days. The people who were arguing against him took him up on his offer and bet their own £20,000 against him. He immediately went home and told his servant Passepartout to start packing their bags and to fill one with all the money not being used to bet, his remaining £20,000, for he had bet half his fortune on his journey. He immediately got started and took a train to Paris. Soon after they left many smaller bets were placed before they learned the bank robber had stolen £20,000 and bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Fogg. Mr. Fogg and Passepartout barely spent any time in Paris before moving on to Bombay, India. It’s there that we meet Detective Fix, the detective assigned to arrest Fogg for stealing the money. Fix, however, needs a warrant to arrest him. This means Fix has to follow Fogg around the world until he can get a warrant. this goes on for the entire story, except in America, because the warrant won’t work in America, so he speed Fogg up on his journey through the country. before they get there though, they go through India on the back of an elephant. while there they save a woman who was going to be sacrificed against her will by the native people. She joins them on there journey because she has a relative in Europe she plans to live with. they continue their journey through Asia all the way to Japan, where they miss the only boat headed to America. Throughout this Fix attempts to slow them down but only succeeds in costing them more money. Fogg decides to buy a boat to get them to America, and they have to kidnap the captain and burn most of the deck to get to the California coast. Once in California they take a train half-way through America but there they get attacked by native Americans and the train is damaged. Fix, however, suggests they use a sled with a sail on it so that they can sled across america to the next train station. they do this and make it to the New York port just in time. However, Fix arrests them as soon as the get on English soil. this costs the group a day before it turns out Fogg was innocent. They think the bet is lost, however, it turns out that because they were heading east they gained a day and so Mr. Fogg managed to walk into the Reform Club the same minute that he’d walked out, 80 days ago.

This was a very good book and I hope that anybody who likes suspense and a slight confusion on who the hero is will read this book and enjoy it to.

The Hyperboreans were a people that lived far, far to the north. The word Hyperborea means “beyond the north”. We have very few records of them, and know only that they lived in the north and worshipped Apollo far more than other Greeks. This is my story on why. The Hyperboreans lived a peaceful life beyond the arctic circle, although at this time they had light constantly with no night because they worshiped Apollo so much and he enjoyed it. Eventually, there came a new king who believed not in Apollo or the other gods and decided none of his people should either. He tore down all monuments and temples to Apollo, killed all his oracles in Hyperborea, and destroyed all musical instruments. This angered Apollo so much, he decided to leave them totally. For 30 days Apollo was gone from Hyperborea, a full month of night. In this time the Hyperboreans killed their king and tried to rebuild the temples, but they all died of frostbite. Apollo decided to see if they had learned their lesson yet, and went back to find them dead. For 30 days Apollo shed tears for them, but when winter came again his heart hardened and abandoned Hyperborea again. This is the cycle Apollo goes through in summer and winter, and why there are long summers and winters in the arctic.

The Peloponnesian Wars were a collection of three wars between Sparta and its allies and Athens and it’s allies. In the wars Sparta and Athens were the main cities fighting each other. They started in 459 B.C, just after the Persian wars ended in 481 B.C. They started because Sparta and Athens had always had a rivalry which crossed the breaking point after Athens started its own empire and Sparta refused to join. Sparta teamed up with several other cities to fight the Athenian empire and they called themselves the Peloponnesian League. For 15 years Athens had the upper hand and won most of the battles before Sparta marched its entire army right up to the city of Athens and conquered it. They knew they couldn’t keep their army at Athens indefinitely and destroy it, so they forced Athens into agreeing to the 30 Years Peace. The 30 Years Peace was a peace agreement that said Athens and Sparta were not allowed to interfere in any cities that were not in an alliance with either of them or were allied with the other one. Athens broke the treaty in 431, which was 16 years after the treaty was signed, by enforcing trade taxes on Megara. They did it again by backing up Corcyra when it went to war with Corinth. Sparta eventually decided Athens had violated the treaty and declared war. The Athenians then made Pericles the general of their army. Pericles wasted no time in sending ships to Sparta and keeping trading ships away, or, better yet, sending them to Athens. Sparta was doing very badly and wasn’t able to fight the Athenians because they had no ships. They did manage to get a land army to the Hellespont, which was where Athens got the majority of its food. While there they got a disease into the food, and it was shipped down to Athens. The disease quickly turned into a plague that wiped out 1/3 of the Athenians, including Pericles. Athens was severely weakened and could’ve been destroyed by the Spartans if they hadn’t been so scared of the plague. Athens recovered somewhat and sent a very small sea army to continue their old plan, but the Spartans had already sent their army to Thrace. Thrace was the main silver mine for the Athenians and was central to their empire. Athens got Thrace back, but both Sparta’s general and Athens’s general died in the battle. There was a pause in the war as both sides recovered. In Italy Athens had a colony that was being attacked by a city called Syracuse. As Athens went to defend its colony Sparta allied itself with Syracuse to attack Athens. Athens lost the battle and was destroyed by Sparta. Sparta then went to Athens and made it part of Sparta.

After Cyrus the Great established Persia as a major empire his son Cambyses the 2^nd conquered Egypt just before his death. His cousin Darius the Great didn’t conquer as much as the last few kings but he did strengthen the empire hold over the places under his rule. He was a much crueler ruler than Cyrus or Cambyses, so the Greeks under his rule in Ionia (the easternmost part of Greece, westernmost part of Persia) rebelled against him. The Ionians called for help from their western brothers, Athens and Eretria, who helped considerably in the rebellion. Despite this help, though, the Persians still got Ionia under their rule. Darius was absolutely furious with the two cities that had helped the rebellion and decided to conquer all of Greece as a punishment. King Darius sent his a small portion of his army to collect Greece, which he thought would be easy pickings. The Persians’ ships landed in Marathon, planning on making their way down to Athens. When they got, though, the Athenians had made a human wall with their men, making it impossible for the Persians to get out of the bay without gong through the Greeks. The Persians found they were at a stalemate because the Athenians were uphill and the Persian cavalry were therefore useless at breaking the Greek line. After five days of stalemate the Persians started loading onto their ships, which was when the Greeks attacked. Being in complete disarray and with no cohesive group they were slaughtered. The top picture represents this. The Persians lost about 6,400 soldiers and the Greeks lost around 190 soldiers. A messenger went from marathon and ran all 24 miles to Athens just to give them the good news. Moments afterwards he died of exhaustion. Once Darius heard of this defeat he prepared a very large army to fight them, but an Egyptian rebellion caught his attention and he went to quiet the Egyptians down, but died on his way back. His son Xerxes became king, and he decided to finish what his father had started. Xerxes led a very large army that was around 60,000 soldiers large over two large bridges made out of boats lined up into a walkway. Just before getting into Thermopylae a storm destroyed his bridge, destroying a good sized part of his army with it. On his second try, he succeeded in getting to Thermopylae, only to find himself in a battle with a small force of Spartans. The Spartans defended the only pass through the mountains and only pass into Greece for two days before a traitor Greek told Xerxes about a way to get around the Spartan line and crush them. The middle picture shows this. This battle is also the battle the movie “300” was based on. After this defeat at Thermopylae the Greeks went to make a last stand at the Isthmus of Corinth. The Persian marched down and destroyed Athens, which was undefended. They got in their ships and sailed out to Salamis to destroy the Greek resistance once and for all. When they got there they entered into a sea battle with the Athenian fleet. The big and bulky Persian ships were decimated by the Greeks. The third picture depicts this. This battle was the last straw for the Persians and they decided to head home and let the Greeks live in peace. The Athenians, however, didn’t want to live in peace. They formed an alliance with several other cities (notably not Sparta) and they sailed to Persia and started several rebellions. Eventually Persia and Greece signed an alliance that said Greek warships couldn’t sail into Persia and Persian warships couldn’t sail into Greece.

My favorite character from “Around the World in 80 Days” is Passepartout. In the book Passepartout is the servant of the main character, Phileas Fogg and is commanded by him to come along on his journey. Throughout the story Passepartout is constantly costing them time on their journey and they always have to have to think of ways to make the time up in interesting ways. I think that Passepartout’s character is very relatable and funny, which is why he’s my favorite character.

Before the Persian Empire became a big empire it was a much smaller empire ruled by the Medians and was called the Median Empire. This median empire was constantly at war with the Assyrian Empire and was allied with the Babylonian empire in fighting the Assyrians. They eventually defeated the Assyrians and the old empire was split up between the two empires. In the southern part of the Median empire there was a small kingdom called Persia that had been under the Medians control since before the defeat of the Assyrians. The ruler of Persia was married to the daughter of the emperor of the Medians and had a son named Cyrus the 2^nd who was the grandson of the Median Emperor. After his sons birth he had a dream about his son taking over all the lands, and decided he would kill his son before he usurped him. He ordered one of his servants to take his son into the woods and kill him. However, the servant took the baby as his own and raised him until his father died. Once his father died he claimed lordship over Persia and his grandfather the emperor acknowledged his claim to the throne, making him king of Persia. After a while of being king Cyrus decided he wanted to be the emperor of all the Median Empire. Since he was related to most of the other kings and the old emperor was starting to become a terrible ruler, they decided to help Cyrus take the throne. Cyrus’ grandfather stepped down from the throne willingly when confronted with most of his empire. Once he became emperor Cyrus started conquering the surrounding territories. He was a very good tactician and quickly conquered the Middle East and Greece. Despite the fact that most world conquerors are not friendly to their subjects Cyrus was a very friendly and tolerant ruler. He was a Zoroastrian but when he conquered Babylon he set the Jewish prisoners free and actually funded their rebuilding of Jerusalem, despite their religious differences. After all this happened Cyrus the second became known as Cyrus the Great.

If you have a dog than you know how annoying collars and leashes can be, with all the clicking the collar around your dogs neck with him fighting against it, and then snapping on the leash while he’s dancing around to go outside. The Magnetic Dog Chip and Leash can save you the trouble of all that with the push of a button and the turn of a dial. All you have to do is buy one of our Magnetic Dog Chip Installers and a Magnetic Dog Chip and Leash, load the dog chip in the installer, press the barrel of the installer to the back of your dogs neck, and inject the chip into your dog. Now that the chip is in your dog you can take the Magnetic Dog Leash and turn the dial to the appropriate level for your dog. We recommend level 1 for extra small dogs, 3 for small dogs, 5 for small medium dogs, 7 for medium dogs, so on and so forth. Level 30 is for ripping the chip out of the dogs neck. With this new device you never have to worry about leashes tangling up again!

Note: improper injection of the dog chip can result in the dog bleeding profusely, after injection small metal objects may fly towards the dog chip and the dogs neck, if dial is turned to high for your dog they may become attached to the handle until dial is turned down, food with to much magnetic substance may become stuck in dogs throat.

In Ancient Greece there were lots of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists. A pretty well known Greek philosopher is Socrates. Even though Socrates rarely wrote down his thoughts and things about himself, we still have a lot of information about him from other philosophers he interacted with. Our main such resource is his student Plato. Plato only wrote in dialogue, meaning he wrote his thoughts as if Socrates was talking to someone about it. Because of this most of what we know about Socrates is from him taking to someone like his brother Glaucon. We do know from this, despite Plato’s own thoughts that he wrote as Socrates’, that he would teach people in Athens, where he lived, about philosophy and math. He’s best known for his style of teaching, which we still use today and call the Socratic method. The Socratic method is where you know the answer to something and get another person to believe the same thing by asking them questions about how they know what they know. An overly simplistic example of this would be: Socrates said “What is one plus one?” Glaucon answered “Three” “How do you know that?” Socrates replied. “Well” Glaucon reasoned. “One pebble and one pebble together would be… two pebbles! I was wrong about it being three”. The reason Socrates did this was that if you just tell someone the answer they might disbelieve you and think you’re being rude about it, but if they come up with the answer themselves they think it’s true and they are still on good terms with you. His most famous idea and concept in philosophy was that all physical things are merely poor representations of real things. In the same way we think of shadows as very poor representations of objects, Socrates believed physical objects are very poor representations of true ideas. An example of this would be if there was a perfect idea of a chair. Well, compared to this any chair you find will be a poor version of this perfect chair. Because his Socratic method ended up questioning the elite rulers of Athens and the gods themselves too much when he applied his method to them Aristophanes, a very wealthy and elite philosopher, decided to put Socrates to death. He was able to very easily convince the other elite to execute Socrates. The charges he was executed under was corrupting the youth and questioning the gods. The method of execution was poison that they made Socrates drink. Socrates would’ve easily managed to escape with the help of his students, namely Plato, but Socrates said he wanted to make the elite carry their threat out and to let them know there were consequences for their actions. Socrates did drink the poison and die but his legacy still lives with the Socratic method and in philosophy.

If I wanted to go around the world as quickly as possible I estimate I would need to take seven planes and have six stops before reaching the same spot I started. I’m currently in Missoula, Montana, so I would take a plane to Portland, Oregon and from there take the second plane to Honolulu, Hawaii. I then would take a third plane to Tokyo, Japan. the fourth plane I would take would be from Japan to New Delhi, India. From New Delhi I would take a fifth plane to London, England. The sixth plane that I would take would be from London to New York city, New York. The Seventh and final plane would be new York to Missoula, Montana, where I started. I think this would take roughly 28 hours.

In Ancient Greece there was city called Argos, and the king of the city was named Acrisius. Acrisius did not have a son, only a daughter, and therefore had no heir to take his place as king. He had a rivalry with his brother, so he did not want him to be king. In desperation he went to the oracle of Delphi to learn what to do about his lack of an heir. When he asked the oracle his question, it told him he would have a grandson who would then kill Acrisius. The king decided to do the only rational thing and imprisoned his only daughter Danae in a prison that had only one opening to let air into the cell. He didn’t kill his daughter because it would be family murder and Zeus would smite him for it. While Zeus was deciding whether or not to smite him anyway, he saw how beautiful Danae was through the roof opening and decided to visit her by turning into golden rain so as to get past the bars on the roof hole. He impregnated her while there and when she gave birth to Perseus king Acrisius was furious. Once again he didn’t kill them for the same reason as last time, but he did stuff them in a pot and sent them into the sea. Zeus asked Poseidon to calm the sea so that they would be safe from harm. Poseidon also made a current to take them to a nearby island called Seriphos. A friendly fisherman hooked the pot and dragged it to shore. It was here that Perseus grew up and trained to become a very good fisherman. One day at a feast for the new king of the island the fisherman and his family were invited to celebrate with the other people of the palace. When the king saw Danae he immediately wanted her to be his wife, despite Danae’s disagreement. The king would have married her anyway, but he was scared of Perseus, who was now a very strong man. The king decided the easiest way to get rid of perseus was to send him on an impossible journey that would get him killed, like, say, killing Medusa. Since he was a young man who wanted to prove himself he accepted the quest. Since no one knew where the Gorgons lived he decided to visit the Graeae, the sisters of the Gorgons. The three Graeae shared one eye and one tooth to share between them. Perseus took their eye hostage and said he would give it back if they gave him the location of the Gorgons. They cooperated and he gave back the eye. On his way to the gorgons he finds the island of the Hesperides, the daughters of Atlas. While there his half-brother Hermes and half-sister Athena visit him and give him winged sandals and a polished mirror shield respectfully. The Hesperides gave him a magic sword, helmet and sack, the sword being one of only a few things that could kill Medusa. The helmet was modeled off of Hades’ and could turn anyone wearing it invisible. The sack was big enough to hold the head of Medusa. Using the sandals he flies to Gorgon island and sneaks into Medusa’s cave with the helmet, chops off the head with the sword while she’s sleeping and stuffs it in the bag. While flying back to Seriphos, however, Perseus sees a beautiful woman strapped to a rock facing the sea. He lands next to her and asks her her name and why she’s tied to a rock. She tells him her name is Andromeda and that mother said she (Andromeda) was even more beautiful than the Nereids, the spirits of the sea. The Nereids were greatly offended and demanded a sacrifice. Poseidon decided it would be easier to force the queen into a sacrifice than to fight the Nereids, so he told the city to sacrifice the daughter or else a sea monster would eat the island. So the king and queen put their own daughter on the rock. As Andromeda finished the story the sea monster that was planning on eating her burst up out of the water. Perseus decided to rescue Andromeda from the sea monster, so he killed after a very long fight, in which he flew around it and made little cuts with the magic sword. He brought Andromeda with him to his home island of Seriphos. When he went to the palace he found out the king had written him off as dead and forcibly married Danae. While in the court of the king where he found this out he pulled out the Medusa head and turned the king and his whole court to stone. He set up the fisherman who had fished him out of the water so long ago as king and married Andromeda. If you were wondering how Perseus killed his grandfather even though he had no desire whatsoever to take vengeance on him then you should hear about a very special Olympics festival where Perseus threw a discus and the wind blew it into the head of king Acrisius of Argos. Despite this accidental murder of his grandfather Perseus is one of the very, very few heroes who got a happy ending and a happily ever after.