Author: mioisabelle

World War 1 was supposed to be “The war to end all wars”. While it didn’t live up to that promise it was one of the most interesting wars of all time as countries from across the world fought in it (when you think about it it’s really not that cool). World War 1 started because Arch-Duke Franz Ferdinand assassinated Gavrilo Princip who was a member of a Serbian nationalist group. The war lasted from 1914-1918 after this event. The Allies who won the war included the U.S., Britain, France, Serbia, and Russia against the central powers which included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and The Ottoman Empire. 

Serbia was sent an ultimatum from Austria-Hungary with impossible demands. When Serbia didn’t agree to the terms there was war. Germany told Austria-Hungary to go ahead and fight to know that Serbia’s ally Russia would join the war. Russia already mobilizing its troops for a fight was only the beginning though. Germany wanted more power in Europe, But having reached its theoretical peak in power it needed a war to get more territory and power. Germany however couldn’t just declare war on all of Europe as that would end the country due to the inevitable outcome of Germany being singled out of an alliance to destroy Germany. Meanwhile, Britain, noticing Germany’s rising power on the seas where borders didn’t matter, began to worry. Britain had always had an advantage on the water compared to almost all countries. With this new challenger to their Naval power, Britain decided to strike. Austria-Hungary had the same motivation as Germany, they needed more land, and what better place to get it than their southern neighbor Serbia. When Franz Ferdinand was killed it was Austria-Hungary’s perfect opportunity to go against Serbia in a war. Serbia on the other hand killed Austria-Hungary’s Archduke, what was their motivation? Serbia, having just come out of the Balkan Wars, wanted to free all the Slavs that were stuck in their new Austrian home.

World War I probably could have been avoided if so many countries hadn’t been so willing to participate, and desperate for power. After all, should a world war start because of the death of one man? Irrationality and selfishness can lead to violence and chaos…

Should I include reconstructed speeches in my autobiography?

For my personal autobiography, I’m not sure how many reconstructed speeches I could really put in it, seeing as I haven’t heard many in my lifetime.

Words from my parents, in my mind, are important not only because they are directed towards me and sometimes me alone, but also because readers of my autobiography can have samples of how I was brought up. This would hopefully help them get a better feel for my character, provided I write things in an easy-to-understand way.

School lectures that I find interesting might be something I could put in my book as well.

Putting speeches in my story would also have to be consistent with the theme of my autobiography, which I believe my book should have.

To conclude, autobiographies are for people who’ve done things that are worthy of people’s attention. Something that can change the world. I don’t think that’s something for me.

As far as adding reconstructed speeches to my book goes, it may or may not be a good idea, depending on how my overall story goes. They can either be helpful to readers or an unnecessary, boring detail about my life that won’t have a huge effect.

Spanish-American War was a significant event in American history that resulted in America overthrowing the Spanish rule of several countries in the Caribbean. Due to the victory of the United States, Spain had to relinquish its claims in Cuba and ceded their sovereignty over Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines to the U.S.

    The Cuban War for Independence from Spain began in 1895. This was the third and final war between Cuba and Spain, but then the United States of America interfered. They decided to take Cuba’s side in the war under President William McKinley who claimed they were doing so for “humanitarian reasons”. While Spain treated the Cubans horribly, even torturing them, this was an obvious smear campaign from American journalists attacking the Spanish. Plenty of American civilians went to Cuba around that time, so the government sent the USS Maine to protect them instead of forcing them to return to America. The USS Maine arrived in the harbor of Havana, Cuba on January 25^th, 1898, but about three weeks later the ship was mysteriously sunken. The US government immediately pointed fingers at the Spanish government and used this as an opportunity to declare war against Spain.

    While the US was hungry for war, the Spanish had been in a precarious political situation for a few months and did not want to engage in another war. Unfortunately for them, most of their colonies in the Caribbean and Central America had either already gained their independence or requested reforms, so they could not afford to lose another territory and had to go to war. The US Navy was much more powerful than the Spanish Navy, and the US fleet was able to destroy a Spanish fleet quickly and easily in the Pacific Ocean during their first battle.

    The US Navy then went to Manila Bay, Philippines, and defeated the Spanish in that area. However, rather than giving the Philippines their independence, the US held its revolutionaries at bay and gained control of the islands which led to the Philippine-American War a few years later. Then they captured Guam without a single shot fired. The Spanish garrison in Guam was captured and they left no Americans on the island. All this had happened while Cuba just wanted their independence, and not to be colonized by America. Unfortunately, they were under the control of the US until yellow fever broke out, forcing the American troops back to their country, and finally freeing Cuba.

    Over the course of the Spanish-American War, Spain lost several colonies, as well as their entire navy. They had no interest in continuing the fight, so the Treaty of Paris was offered in 1898 as a compromise. Just ten weeks later, the treaty was accepted, and the Spanish-American War had officially ended. Cuba went on to organize their independence in 1902, and the US-controlled none of their territory other than Guantanamo Bay.

    The Spanish-American War lasted only around three months, but lots of changes occurred in this small window. Several of Spain’s colonies had been repossessed by the United States or even set free. In conclusion, the Spanish-American War was a very important historical event because of all the changes in the colonies in the Caribbean and the political changes in Spain and the US.

Today I get to tell you all the amazing things I learned in my astronomy class this week.

Starting off with Giovanni Demisiani, the man who came up with the telescope terminology, telescope means far-seeing. He came up with the idea in 1608 and soon after he did it was built by Galileo Galilei.

Now we have lots of astronomers that are very fascinated by this new invention. A man named Johannes Kepler invented a refracting telescope in 1611, it had a wider scope than most telescopes we have today. I think it looks like the telescopes from those pirate movies. The only problem that would occur is there would sometimes be a rainbow haze reflecting into the telescope, making it harder to see things clearly.

Many years later, around 1668 the reflecting telescope was invented. A very well-known man named Sir Isaac Newton actually invented this telescope. What made this telescope so special is that it had mirrors instead of lenses. One mirror was concave, and the other mirror was slightly tilted. This made it so that the light would bounce off the tilted mirror and hit the concave piece, which would then go right into your retinal.

Moving on we also looked over the telescope history and some very interesting space theories. For about 70 years people believed that the earth was in the middle of the universe. They would say that the stars and the sun, moon, and Venus actually went around the earth in a circular orbit.

I found this all very fascinating, I had lots of fun learning all about telescopes and the history behind them. That concludes my report summary. I hope you found these as fascinating and interesting as I did. Thank you for reading, see you next time!

A Food Forest is a forest filled with edible plants and trees. Another name for a food forest is a forest garden, which means a garden grown like a forest. 

A food forest is composed of the same layers and components as a normal forest. A forest has an overstory of great trees that towers over all the other plants, then there are the small trees and bushes that fill the empty space between the gigantic trees and the ground, then there are plants that cover and are near the ground. They are the long twisty vines that are a web connecting every layer into one entangled living mesh.

So like a forest, the forest garden will be a living system with many layers of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, aromatic herbs, and with a grapevine connecting them all.

In a food forest, there are 7 plant layers working in harmony together, the overstory trees, the understory trees, the shrub layer, the herbaceous layer, the ground cover layer, the root layer, and the vine layer.

The overstory layer is the canopy of the whole food forest, becoming the keystone plant of the whole system, influencing every other plant, never changing, but always having surrounding plants that changes constantly in their long lifetimes. 

The overstory trees shields like the atmosphere of the plants under them from most of the strong winds, and cool the plants under them by blocking some of the light, creating a more moderate climate for the plants below to enjoy. The canopy trees are also a great habitat for birds and many animals. The big trees also shed a lot of biomass on the forest floor for the small plants to enjoy. 

Examples of overstory trees are usually nut trees like walnut, timber trees like oak, or big fruit trees like apple trees.

The second layer is the understory trees, these trees are grown to be lower in height for ease of harvesting, and usually, these species are more delicate and dependent than the big overstory trees.

Examples of understory trees are usually shade-loving fruit trees like persimmon, or dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees like mulberry trees, peach trees, and nectarine trees, most of the fruit trees are located in this layer.

The third layer is shrubs which fills the gap between the small trees and the ground. Bushes can be used to protect the smaller delicate green herbs and plants from heavy winds. Bushes are the most versatile and diverse type of layer where you could plant for many different reasons like food, crafting, flowers, and also different places and sizes, shade to full sun, gigantic like a small tree to a small dwarf bush.

Bushes have among the most examples of different variations, too gigantic hazelnuts, too small dwarf lilacs, too shade-loving currants, and too sun-loving blueberries, so bushes come in different sizes and kinds.

The fourth layer is the herbaceous layer which usually grows in traditional gardens. This layer has vegetables, herbs, and flowering plants. The use of this layer is mostly to get the traditional herbs and vegetables as normal gardens, but also has flowers to attract pollinators.

Examples of the herbaceous layer are the normal veggies such as lettuces, too the normal herbs like parsley, and too beautiful wildflowers like asters.

The fifth layer is the ground cover layer. Every plant covers the ground, but ground cover plants especially do it by spreading and covering as much bare ground as possible, and usually low to the ground. The use of Ground covers is to blanket the ground so weeds won’t grow.

Examples of Ground Covers are strawberries, phlox, and any other low-growing ground covering plants.

The sixth layer is the root layer, the root layer is composed of all the other kinds of plants’ roots, but there are certain plants that specialize in roots. The plants that have big and deep tap root systems will break up any hard soils, and will break into the hard pan soils deep underground, untouched to any other roots, and bring the untouched nutrients up to the surface for the typical shallow rooted plants to use.

Examples of plants that specializes or are known for their roots are Carrots, radishes, Jerusalem artichoke, and Yams.

The seventh layer is the vine layer. The vine layer is a type of plant that fills the gaps between the different plants and layers making most of the space, maximizing and getting the most out of the land. 

Examples of plants in the vine layer are grape vines, Passion vines, and melon vines.

The 7 layers are used to show what characteristics a natural food forest needs. Plants don’t always follow the categories of layers perfectly, some plants can be in many layers. Layers just show what categories of plants can be grouped together by their characteristics and their abilities. Certain plants can do many things making them qualified to be in many layers.

A food forest is an ultimate garden, where all the food needs of humans can be fulfilled, and where the garden maintains and grows by itself.

Humans from the beginning were always fascinated with space from the old astrologers to present-day stargazers. People have always made theories about what is out there in space, but nobody ever went to space, until the age of space exploration. 

People for a long time have improved their abilities to view space through the constant improvement of the telescope causing people to see farther and farther into space, but never being able to go to space itself. The V-2 rockets of Germany were the first manmade object that is able to go to space itself, which made people not only look into space, but one day be in space.

Going to space wasn’t the priority in post WW2 world until the beginning of the Cold War when the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik 1 satellite, which alarmed the western nations because of being inferior in space technology to the Soviet Union, which started the space race between the east and the west, which greatly boosted the push for space exploration.

The space race was intense between America and the Soviet Union fighting for every inch of ground for being the one superior in space technology. The Soviet Union at the beginning of the space race was winning constantly, by sending the first satellite into space, then sending the first animal to space, then even sending the first human to space, but eventually, America caught up and did the most incredible thing. 

America worked hard to beat the Soviet Union setting an ambitious almost impossible goal of walking on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, a momentous historical landmark of space exploration, where humans have walked on another planet.

In the present-day space exploration has gone further to new limits like having people live in space in the international space station and also having satellites connecting many technologies on earth for humans to use, and even sending satellites into uncharted space to drift along documenting the world unseen from the earth, exploring space to this day.

How important is it for a person to summarize his philosophy of life in an early chapter of an autobiography?

Summarizing the philosophy of life is important to be told in an early chapter of an autobiography because of how it will show the thinking and motive behind the actions of your life. If we don’t tell our philosophy of life in the early chapters of the autobiography people will have a more challenging time figuring out how the philosophy affects decisions, and may even think different motives are at play because of not knowing the philosophy of life.

Sometimes, it’s not important to tell the philosophy of life early on in the autobiography because you may have a different philosophy in your early life than your present life or you don’t have clearly a philosophy of life yet.

There are also good reasons why to tell your philosophy of life in the ending chapters of the autobiography. Here is a reason why to say to the philosophy of life at the ending, how the accounts of your life in the autobiography will show people how you get the worldview, so you say to the philosophy at the ending.

There are even times when you don’t have to summarize your philosophy of life in the autobiography because of how some autobiographies will clearly show the philosophy of life all through the book in the actions and thinking, so people will know what is the philosophy without having to be summarized.

There are reasons why it’s important to tell the summary of the philosophy of life and not important, there are even reasons why you don’t even need to summarize the philosophy at all.

Ronald Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, in Illinois to a low-income family. Ronald Reagan’s early careers were in the entertainment industry like sports broadcasting and even being an actor in several movies and tv shows.

In 1966 he became the governor of California, pivoting from the entertainment industry into politics.

In 1979 he entered the Republican presidential candidacy and was elected President of the United States in the 1980 presidential election. Reagan’s presidency was marked to be a very conservative presidency where he cuts taxes, withdraw government welfare, preferring private people to do charity, basically shrinking the government roles in American citizens’ lives.

Ronald Reagan was among the most liked presidents in America and the era in which he was president was called the Reagan era, where conservative values were predominant.

John Kennedy was born into a rich and prominent Kennedy family in May 1917 in the state of Massachusetts. JFK grew up in a privileged family journeying across the world and seeing many things, when he finished college at Harvard he entered the navy during World War 2. In WW2 he commanded a gunboat, almost a the end of the war his gunboat was sunk and he valiantly helped his crew, making him get a medal.

At the end of the war, he entered politics easily becoming a congressman and later senator because of his family’s deep political connections. John Kennedy, in 1961 became the American president because of his charming personality, great oratory skills, and also a rich and politically deeply connected family. John Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy were not only a leader politically but also fashion trendsetters.

John Kennedy was well known to be the person to deal with the Cuban communist government, such as defusing diplomatically the Cuban missile crisis. John Kennedy also expanded NASA encouraging the agency to outrun the Soviet space technology, he did many other things during his presidency.

John F Kennedy was sadly assassinated in Nov 1963 in Dallas by an assassin, when he was campaigning.

That is my essay on JFK.

In this week’s essay, I will be writing about the life of a very famous historical military figure, Napoleon Bonaparte. What I will be getting into exactly is his early life, his military achievements, and his later life and death.

Early Life

Napoleon was born on August 15th, 1769, to Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, on the Island of Corsica, France. He was the fourth and second surviving child of his parents. Napoleon had a good education thanks to the fact that his father had gotten a very good job after being appointed as assessor of the judicial district of Ajaccio Corsica in 1771. Napoleon attended France’s College d’Autun after he attended the military college of Brienne, where he was for five years until he moved on to the military academy in Paris, where he excelled greatly, so much so that he graduated after a year into the military academy at just sixteen years old! When he graduated from the military academy in Paris, he was given the rank of second lieutenant in the artillery. His father passed away around this time, so he returned home to Corsica, but in 1793 his sympathies with the French Revolution forced him and his family to flee. He and his family began living in mainland France and also changed their name to Bonaparte, the French version of their name. Also in 1793, he was promoted to brigadier general.

After the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, Napoleon was put into prison for more than ten days, because he had been a Jacobin supporter. 

Rise To Power

Napoleon was promoted to General of the Army of the West under the new Directory. The next year he began commanding the French Army in Italy. During the years 1796-1799, he had a series of very successful military campaigns, which helped France expand in power also stabilized the military situation in France, this left him very popular amongst the French citizens.

In 1799 after his campaign to conquer Egypt(which was mostly a success), he returned to France. In France, he began pressuring to replace the Directory, which had never been a popular government. Because he had the military at his side the Directory was forced to resign, and Napoleon was appointed to become the First Consul of the French government.

The first thing Napoleon began doing now that he was appointed, which gave him some political power, was to write a new French constitution and to hold an election in France for Emperor of France. During the Election 99% favored Napoleon(this seems to be an impossible number), this was thanks to the fact that no one opposed him. After the election, Napoleon was crowned Emperor of France by the Pope. This repaired France’s relations with the Church.

His Military Successes

Even though he was now Emperor he was almost always on the move, this was because he was moving from one successful military campaign to another, he forced alliances and conquered his enemies. By 1810 France was the most powerful country in Europe, but it also had its weaknesses. These weaknesses were thanks to the fact that the wars that Napoleon waged were quite expensive, which left France struggling financially. He eased this problem by selling Louisiana territory to the United States. But the financial problems were not the worst out of these weaknesses. The citizens of France were sick and tired of all this war, and they began losing trust in Napoleon, which was a huge problem.

His Downfall

His luck changed greatly in 1812 though when his army was defeated during the campaign to conquer Russia, thousands of soldiers died during the campaign, quite devastating. And in 1814 the Senate, which was under Napoleon announced that the Empire had now ended, and a new ruler was appointed, Louis the 18th, who was related to the original line of kings in France. Napoleon was removed from his throne and forced into exile on the small Island of Elba in the Mediterranean, his wife and son fled to Vienna, Austria.

But Napoleon escaped Elba in 1815 and returned back to France. The citizens of France that heard of his escape and arrival welcomed him quite warmly, and this helped him gain the throne again quite easily.

Napoleon like usual started another military campaign to fight against the British and Prussian forces, that were under General Wellington. This great battle is known as the battle of Waterloo, which was the last battle that Napoleon fought. Napoleon was defeated and the victorious British and Prussian troops forced him to abdicate his throne and go into exile to the very small island of Saint Helena.

Death

During his exile, Napoleon’s health began to deteriorate, and he was beginning to show signs of a stomach ulcer or even stomach cancer, by 1821 he was so ill that he had to remain in bed. On May 5th, 1821 Napoleon died, during his exile.

Conclusion

Most of the land that Napoleon had conquered was given back to its original rulers. Even though in the end France did not gain that much territory the country did benefit thanks to the fact that Napoleon had ended the French Revolution. Even though he did not leave much of a legacy because he was too busy gaining territory for the empire, he is still remembered as one of the greatest military generals of all time.