Historical References - fact or fiction?
In writing "Meridian's Heart" I drew from a multitude of historical and scientific sources from magazine, journal and newspaper articles, reference books, Google and Wikipedia searches, and other assorted odd bits of information that we see, hear, or take notice of in the course of an average day. I have included the below information to the readers, to help them separate historical and scientific facts, and see how I employed them in the story. When reading other books, I always wondered what was true and what wasn't. I have provided many of the references contained in the story for your enjoyment...and to give you insight on where ideas come from and how a writer incorporates them in a story. Almost all references are based on factual information.
-Page 15- Chapter 2-Fact. The lances contained a mixture of nitrate salt, sulfur and carbon that was tamped with jagged rocks, thistles and thorns." This is close to the recipe for gunpowder: potassium nitrate (saltpeter), sulfur and charcoal (carbon). Gunpowder was invented in 9th-century China and spread throughout most parts of Eurasia by the end of the 13th century.
-Page 18-Chapter 2-Fact. "Condottieri" were the leaders of the professional military (or mercenaries) contracted by the Italian city states (Venice, Florence, and Genoa) and the Papacy in the 13th and 14th centuries to fight for them. The military-service terms and conditions were stipulated in a "condotta" (contract) between the city-state and the soldiers (officers and enlisted man), thus, the the contracted leader, the mercenary captain commanding, was titled the "Condottiere."
Page 20-Chapter 3-Fact. The father of the twin boys, Charley and Marley, is named Charles Foley, and I selected his name for the game designer. I used the name Charles Foley as he is credited with being one of the inventors of the game "Twister."
-Page 27-Chapter 4-Fact. Henry VIII-Was King of England from April 21, 1509 to 1547. The six women who were married to Henry VIII were, in chronological order, including their outcome are: 1) Catherine of Aragon (died under guard at Kimbolton Castle), 2) Anne Boleyn (marriage annulled, then beheaded), 3) Jane Seymour (died 12 days after giving birth to Edward VI), 4) Anne of Cleves (marriage annulled, outlived all the other wives), 5)Catherine Howard (beheaded), 6) Catherine Parr (widowed at the death of Henry VIII).
One rhyme to remember:
"King Henry VIII, To six wives he was wedded. One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded."
-Page 30-Chapter 4-Fact. Dermestrid beetles-referred to as "skin beetles. They are used in taxidermy and natural history museums to clean animal skeletons.
-Pages 38 and 39-Chapter 5- Fact. Word counts noted for the books and tablets vary depending on the version referenced for the Bible and Torah. However they are within 10-15% in being accurate. The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799, weights 1,680 pounds, and is a fragment of a larger stele. It bears three inscriptions: the top register in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the second in Egyptian Demotic script, and the third in Ancient Greek. None of the three texts are complete. Deciphering the Rosetta Stone is attributed to many scholars however, Jean-FrancoisChampollion is said to have spent 23 years in solving the riddle of the text. Due to the many scholars who contributed to deciphering the stone between 1799 and 1850, how many years actually spent on the effort is difficult to determine.
-Page 40-Chapter 5-Fact. The Temple of the Tooth is a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka, which houses the relic of the tooth of Buddha. It was smuggled to the island by Princess Hemamali and her husband, Prince Dantha in 301-328 A.D. Since ancient times, the relic has played an important role in local politics because it is believed that whoever holds the relic holds the governance of the country.
-Page 40-Chapter 5--Fact. Plutarch, was a famous biographer of Greek and Roman figures and did write an ancient text entitled: "Life of Alexander."
-Page 46-Chapter 6-Fact. All the characters at the bottom of the page are real people: Babe Ruth, Steve Jobs, George Washington Carver, and Johann Sebastian Bach. The characters on the following page are all fictional characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Spiderman, James Bond, Harry Potter and Tarzan.
Page 60-Chapter 8-Fact. Pisaster orhraceous is the name of a starfish.
Page 70-Chapter 9-Fact. Rafflesia arnoldii and Titan arum, are known as the 'Corpse Flower" and gives off an scent that smells like a rotting corpse.
Page 71-Chapter 9-Fact. Tapputi was a women chemist from India credited with developing perfumes in the second millennium BC.
Page 71-Chapter 9-Fact. The Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden, Mount Sinai-St. Catherine for short does exist and it does house one of the world's finest collections of books and manuscripts. It was built by Emperor Justinian I in the 6th Century AD to preserve knowledge. Animal skin parchment was used for writing and often they were rewritten over with new text. These erased texts are known as "palimpsests."
Page 82-Chapter 11-Fact. "Manuka honey" does contain bee pollen, enzymes and propolis and is credited with having healing properties.
Page 90-Chapter 12-Fact. The first image of an angel appeared in a 4th century painting.
Page 95-Chapter 13-Fact. Alexander the Great is a famous ruler and conquer from Greece who lived between 300BC-323BC. He did have a horse named "Bucephalus" that he rode for over 20 years. The story of his childhood and how he choose Bucephalus when he was 10 years old was recited by a greek biographer Plutarch and is believed to be historically accurate. It offered the perfect historical reference for the Researcher to discover the first evidence of Terraloria on Earth.
Page 98-Chapter 13-Fact. The Antikythera Mechanism was found off the coast of Greece in 1960, It is a complex system of 37 dials, gears, and cogs that predicted and measured the movement and cycle of the planets in relationship to the sun, Earth and moon. It was an astronomical calculator used for traversing and navigating the oceans and seas.
Page 99-Chapter 13-Fact. All the inventors, and inventions credited to them are real: Alessandro Volta, Evan Faraday, Samuel Morse, Henry Ford, Nikolas Otto, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and Guglielmo Marconi. The Titanic did sink in 1912 claiming the lives of 1,500 of its 2,224 passengers. Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of the radio, did miss taking the doomed ship.
Page 100-Chapter 13-Fact. Albert Einstein's equation E=MC2 did lead to the development of the atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer contributed to the development of the first atomic bomb named "Trinity." Trinity was detonated on July 16, 1945.
Page 101-Chapter 13-Fact. David Packard and Bill Hewlett, founders of Hewlett Packard (HP) and Steven Jobs and Steve Wozniak, founders of Apple are real inventors and business founders.
Page 106-Chapter 14-Fact. Dunure Green Darners are dragonfly's. Of North America's 331 dragonfly species, only nine make regular trips down the shorelines. Adult Darners only live 3 months.
Page 114-Chapter 15-Fact. All the attributes of the plants and venoms noted in the chapter are based on fact.
Page 115-Chapter 15-Fact. The antennae of the male silkworm moth can detect a single molecule of female pheromone in the air.
Page 115- Chapter 15-Fact. Humans have been slaughtering birds at the rate of over 340 million a year just from moving vehicles. Olive fields in Greece and elsewhere place nets over trees to capture birds and many die by flying into office building windows, power lines, and other man-made structures. Vast tracts of land are seeing less and less birds.
Page 131-Chapter 17-Fact. The Chalice of Abbot Suger is real and was used for more than six centuries for the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist at the Basilica of St. Denis in Paris, France. It is a fluted sardonyx cup carved in Hellenistic Alexandria in approximately the year 100BC. It was rescued from destruction during the French Revolution in 1789 and over the years found its way to a man named A.Lenoir. It now resides in a dark alcove in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. That the Chalice employed the use of the screw in making it is fictional...but offered a great place for Terraloria to have been hidden for such a long period of time.
Page 132-Chapter 17-Fact. Metal screws were not used as fasteners in Europe until the 1400's.
Page 139-Chapter 18-Fiction. Mitten's Conjecture. The original conjecture is called “Witten’s Conjecture.” In algebraic geometry the Witten Conjecture is a conjecture about the intersection numbers of stable classes on the moduli space curves introduced by Edward Witten in the paper “Witten” (1991). I used it to address class differences of people and how it worked in hiding Terraloria on Earth. Plus I thought is offered a scientific theory that would work in the story.
Page 139-Chapter 18-Fact. "Houdini" was a famous magician and escape artist who lived from 1874 to 1926. He died from the effects of escaping from a tank of water, bound and chained.
Page 140-Chapter 18-Fact. The Smith Brothers invented the licorice cough-drop in 1880 and placed their bearded faces on the cough drop box for advertising.
Page 141-Chapter 18-Fact. Orville and Wilbur Wright are credited with inventing the first successful airplane. During the test flights in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur, the younger brother did suggest adding a tail rudder to stabilize the airplane in flight. The butterfly placed on the drawings is fictional.
Page 142-Chapter 18-Fact. George and Charles Parker are credited with inventing the game of Monopoly as well as the other board games listed. Later historical reference attributes the original idea to a woman named Elizabeth “Lizzie” J. Magie (1866-1948), a Quaker and the creator of the Landlord’s Game which bears a striking resemblance to the game of Monopoly.
Page 143-Chapter 18-Fact. During World War II an unprecedented number of orphans were dropped off at a hospital in Poland. Many of the orphans had patches sewn into their blankets or garments by their mothers to help identify them when the parents returned. One hospital record indicated that of 16,282 infants admitted to the hospital only 152 were reclaimed. This fact was provided from an article on an exhibit at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
Page 148-Chapter 19-Fact. The Stratford Find is real. The items were discovered in a field in Scotland and the quantity of the items noted in the chapter are correct.
Page 169-Chapter 19-Fact. Pathfinder Village is a real place. Located in Edmenston, NY (20 minutes from Cooperstown, NY home of the Baseball Hall of Fame and Doubleday Field) it is one of the largest Downs Syndrome community in the United States. Flora Bell is based on my younger sister Yvonne who has Downs Syndrome and resides at Pathfinder Village.
Page 170-Chapter 19-Fact. ”Banging the Beehive” is an actual financial name that describes a practice that traders use to place high-speed trades to trigger huge price swings before critical financial data hits the trading floor that may affect a stock price.
Page 177-Chapter 22-Fact. A gene called MKRN3 is real. It provides instruction for making a protein called makorin finger protein 3 (MKRN3). This protein plays a role in directing the onset of puberty, which describes the changes in the body related to sexual development that normally occurs in adolescence. The exact function is unknown.
Page 179-Chapter 22-Fact. Caravaggio was a Baroque painter and it is believed he used the fine powder from dried fireflies to create a photosensitive surface on which he projected images to be painted. Caravaggio’s “Penitent Magdelene” is one of his paintings.
Page 183-Chapter 23-Fact. The Carrington Event occurred in 1859 and was caused by an extremely strong sunburst (solar flare) that disrupted electrical telegraph systems around the world. The scientific community is concerned that another Carrington like event could destroy communication satellites and power stations on Earth and cause massive power outages.
Page 214-Chapter 26-Fact. Salvatore Capezio was a shoemaker in New York City who made fine ballet shoes. A sign that read: “The Theatrical & Historical Shoemaker” advertised his shop in 1887. Capezio ballet shoes are still in production today.
When developing this list I found it interesting that all the facts I utilized in writing Meridian’s Heart were mostly used in the front end of the book (Chapters 1 through 22). The facts ground the foundation of the story and give it a reality based feeling, which offers the reader a more believable story.