The Lantern Festival or the Spring Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar. Usually falling in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar, it marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. As early as the Western Han Dynasty (206 BCE-CE 25), it had become a festival with great significance. During the Lantern Festival, children go out at night carrying paper lanterns and solve riddles on the lanterns (simplified Chinese: 猜灯谜; traditional Chinese: 猜燈謎; pinyin: cāidēngmí; Jyutping: caai1 dang1 mai4).
In ancient times, the lanterns were fairly simple, and only the emperor and noblemen had large ornate ones. In modern times, lanterns have been embellished with many complex designs. For example, lanterns are now often made in the shape of animals. The lanterns can symbolize the people letting go of their past selves and getting new ones, which they will let go of the next year. The lanterns are almost always red to symbolize good fortune.
The festival acts as an Uposatha day on the Chinese calendar. It should not to be confused with the Mid-Autumn Festival; which is sometimes also known as the "Lantern Festival" in locations such as Singapore and Malaysia. The Lantern Festival has also become popular in Western countries, especially in cities with a large Chinese community. In London, the Magical Lantern Festival is held annually.
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Friedlieb (or Friedlob, occasionally misnamed as "Friedrich") Ferdinand Runge (born near Hamburg on 8 February 1794, died in Oranienburg on 25 March 1867) was a German analytical chemist.
Runge conducted chemical experiments from a young age, serendipitously identifying the mydriatic (pupil dilating) effects of belladonna (deadly nightshade) extract.
In 1819 he demonstrated his finding to Goethe, who encouraged him to analyse coffee. A few months later, Runge identified caffeine.
Commemorative plaque in Oranienburg. It reads: Historical site of the Oranienburg chemical product factory, whose technical director from 1832–1852 was Prof. Dr. Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, discoverer of coal tar dyes.
Runge studied chemistry in Jena and Berlin, where he obtained his doctorate. After touring Europe for three years, he taught chemistry at the university of Breslau until 1831. From then until 1852 he worked for a chemical company, but was dismissed by a resentful manager and died fifteen years later in poverty.
His chemical work included purine chemistry, the identification of caffeine, the first coal tar dye (aniline blue), coal tar products (and a large number of substances that derive from coal tar), paper chromatography, pyrrole, chinoline, phenol, thymol and atropine.
He was the first to notice in 1855 the phenomenon of "Liesegang rings". He observed them in the course of experiments on the precipitation of reagents in blotting paper.
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Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜːrnər ˈtruːθ/; born Isabella (Belle) Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was an African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, Ulster County, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside "testifying the hope that was in her". Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title "Ain't I a Woman?," a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect; whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language.
During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves.
In 2014, Truth was included in Smithsonian magazine's list of the "100 Most Significant Americans of All Time".
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