Mythical creatures

Almost every culture on earth has legends full of imaginary which are either part human or part animal; while others are unlike anything we know.



Centaurs – A centaur is a half horse and half man, with the head and arms of the man and the body of the horse. This myth arose in northern Greece, perhaps due to the skillful horsemanship of the people there. These incredible beasts made there way into modern adaptations like Harry potter, the chronicles of Narnia etc

Dragons - These are perhaps the most popular mythical creatures which appear in the legends of many cultures, especially china, where the dragon was the symbol of the emperor. In legends dragons often guard the cave of treasures.

Fairies – Fairies also features in many tales. They are usually sweet, kindly creatures. In the middle ages, however, people believed that fairies stole children and replaced them with fairy beings known as changelings.

Giants – Giants or ogres are enormous human shaped creature. They are usually seen as fearsome but stupid monsters that feed on human flesh.

Leprechauns – They are small Irish creatures who are believed to bring good luck. They are helpful creature usually shown wearing green clothes and a red cap. They always protect their cauldron full of gold coins which is believed to be kept at the end point of the rainbow

Mermaids – Mermaids are beautiful creatures with the head and body of a women and the tail of a fish. The little mermaid by Walt Disney is a popular adaptation of the legend.

Trolls – Trolls are ugly and rather dumb creatures in Scandinavian folklore. They are said to steal sleeping children, sometimes replacing them with one of their own. Trolls have poor eyesight and are active only at night because sunlight turns them to stone.

Unicorns – a unicorn has the body of a horse, a lion’s tail, a goat’s beard, an antelope’s legs and a single, often twisted, horn growing from his forehead. The unicorn is a popular subject in medieval stories. It is fierce but divine and can purify water or neutralize poison. The way to catch a unicorn is to use a young girl as bait, as a unicorn will lie down peacefully next to a maiden. In the bestseller series,”Harry Potter” it is considered that drinking unicorn’s blood give’s life, but a horrible one.

Vampires – Vampires are the “undead” who drink the blood of the living to survive. Vampires are often related to bats. Ideas about vampires include the belief that plunging a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart can destroy it. Some people also think that garlic, holy water, crosses and bibles can provide protection against vampires. And that a vampire can’t enter a home unless invited. The most popular vampire is undoubtedly the Transylvanian, Count Dracula.

Werewolf – Werewolves are creatures in the folk tails of many cultures. They usually appear as man by day but may turn into wolves on the night of the full moons. The werewolf is blood thirsty and ruthless. It devours its pray and shows none of the remorse that it might have felt in human form.

Calendar problem

Some non-catholic countries such as Britain refused to adopt the Gregorian calendar at first. The julian calendar previously used in Britain was based on a solar year, the time taken for the earth to rotate around the sun. This is 365.25 days, which is fractionally too long (395.24219), so the calendar steadily fell out of line with the seasons. In 1752 Britain decided to correct this by abandoning the julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar. By doing so, 3 September instantly became 14 September – and, as a result nothing whatsoever happened in british history between 3 and 13 september 1752. Many people believed their lives would be shortened. They protested in the streets, demanding,”Give us back our 11 days”.

Gregorian calendar

The Gregorian calendar is the one most used now a days. It is named after Pope Gregory XIII who introduced it in 1582. There is a leap year every four years ( or more precisely, 97 leap years every 400 years). This means that the year corresponds closely with the astronomical year so that it is just one day out in every 3,300 years.

In Gregorian calendar, July and August have same no. of days because Augustus ceaser wanted to be equivalent of julius caeser so 1 day was taken out of february to make august of 31 days.

Leap seconds

The rotation of the earth is slowing down. This means that a solar day and the time shown by the atomic clock would gradually diverge. This problem has been solved by adding “leap seconds”. There have been 22 leap seconds since 1972. The last one was added on 31 December 2005 which delayed new year’s day by one second.

Just a second

A second does not sound very long, but by the time you have read this sentence, almost five of them will have gone by. Watch an average length film and 5,000 seconds will tick away. In a lifetime of 80 years, there are more than 2.5 billion seconds – but you will spend more than 800 million of them asleep!

The world in a single day

In one day (24 hours 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds) the world turns once on its axis, on average:

• 358,522 people are born
• 155,012 people die
• 203,510 are added to the world’s population.

The universe in a year!

The American astronomer Carl sagan first suggested a “comic calendar” as a way of helping people understand the history of the universe. He put everything into the scale of a calendar year:

The Galaxies are formed over nine months and the earth appears in September. All human history is crowded into the last five minutes of the last day of the year. Recent time has to be devided into seconds and fraction of seconds. So everything that happened over the last 475 years takes place in less than the last second of the last minute of the year.

Date/time	Event
1 Jan (midnight)	Big Bang – Universe forms
15 march	First stars and galaxies form
1 may	Milky way galaxy forms
8 sep	Sun forms
9 sep	Solar system forms
12 sep	Earth forms
13 sep	Moon forms
20 sep	Earth’s atmosphere forms
1 oct	Earliest known life on earth
7 oct	Earliest known fossil
18 dec	First multi cell life formed
19 dec	First fish
21 dec	First land plant: first insect
23 dec	First reptiles
24 dec	First dinosaurs
26 dec	First mammals
27 dec	First birds
28 dec	First flowering plants
28 dec	Dinosaurs extinct
31 dec(11:55 pm)	Homo Sapiens (Humans) appears