Ny-Ålesund (Svalbard) and the flight to the Pole

Following my research in a recent post, I gathered all the data about Ny-Ålesund setlement in the Svalbard archipelago and Amundsen's flight to the North Pole in the airship Norge in a slideshow. Organized to be attractive and educative, here it is:

Svalbard: from Ny-Alesund to the North Pole

View more presentations from Mario Ricca.

When music is beyond time and space

Arturo Benedetto Michelangeli is one of those mythical pianists that few had the oportunity to listen live ; he didn´t record much , but what he did record is so utterly sublime that we feel the presence of some remote thulean genius...

Here the 2nd movement (adagio) of Ravel piano concerto, with Michelangeli playing and Celibidache directing.

The Passarola

An adventure in the skies of Lisbon

300 years ago, the jesuitic priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão was the first to attempt the rise of an object heavier than the air. That took place in Lisbon, in 1709. The priest was a student at the Coimbra University, only 24 years old.

He started raising acclaim of an important audience – King, Queen, Rome Church representative – when he successfully left rising up to the ceiling a balloon filled with hot air.

Then he built a large manned version called “Passarola”. Launched from the St Jorge Castle, on the top of a hill in Lisbon, Gusmão drived his Passarola flying about 1 Km before landing at the city’s main square.
Known since then as “The Flying Priest”, he deserves a place among the airship flying pioneers.

Kajaani - a castle in the far North

Kajaanin Linna, as the finns say, is nowadays just a ruin; but once it was a fine, strong and fearful castle at 64° 13' N, in the remote wilderness of north Finland, not far from the the arctic circle.

By 1666 the castle, although not a perfect fortification, presented a formidable obstacle to any invasion from the east. Kajaneborg, as the castle was known in Swedish, took the form of a long rectangle with a circular tower at each end.

Its purpose was to protect Northern Ostrobothnia from Russians and oversee movements on the inland waterway. It also functioned as an administrative centre and a prison.

It was so formidable that throughout the 1600s the Russians did not even attempt an attack. Only during the Great Northern War and after a long siege did the castle fall to Russian forces. On taking the castle the Russians proceeded to blow it up in March of 1716.
 

http://www.kajaaninlinna.fi/en.php?k=14386

a quote for Thule

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, thats all.

Oscar Wilde