Charlie Sanabria

“Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” Bernard Shaw

“It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled” Mark Twain

“It is only when one sees one’s own mistakes with a convex lens, and does just the reverse in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two” Mohandas Gandhi

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand” Confucius

On this day, in 1975, Venera 9, the first spacecraft to orbit Venus was inserted into Venus’ orbit. Its lander dropped down two days later. The found itself under 90 atmospheres of pressure at 480°C, in an atmosphere rich in toxic gases. Venus suddenly started looking less like the goddess of love and more like the incarnation of hell. One picture was sent back, and the lander operated for 53 minutes before it failed due to the extreme environment.

Added a few notable events from the Byzantine Empire to the timeline: see full rez here: storage.googleapis.com/imagesbycharli…

“Great minds have great purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them” Washington Irving

“Fortune favors the prepared mind” Louis Pasteur

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently” Henry Ford

“Errors once discovered are more than half amended. Some men will gain as much experience in the course of three or four years as some will in ten or a dozen” George Washington

“Each of us makes his own weather, determines the color of the skies in the emotional universe which he inhabits” Fulton J. Sheen

“Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years” C. S Lewis

“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil” Thomas Paine

“Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.” Carl Sagan

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” Viktor Frankl

“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it the superficial appearance of being right” Thomas Paine

“A greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances” Martha Washington

“A dog in a kennel barks at his fleas—a hunting dog does not feel them” Chinese Proverb

“A belief in invisible cats cannot be logically disproved, although it does tell us a good deal about those who hold it” C. S Lewis

Sometime in early June in 177 AD, Commodus was proclaimed Augustus (emperor). With him, idiocy had reached the throne after a long line of “Philosopher kings”. His father, Marcus Aurelius, made his biggest mistake by choosing Commodus as his successor; an emperor of un-believable cruelty, who lived in the gladiator school for a time, fighting others and even animals. In on event, he killed 100 tigers with 100 arrows. In another, he fought a hippopotamus, an elephant, and a tiger, unaided and before breakfast. He drank, gambled, and kept a harem of 300 women and 300 boys. He also cross-dressed. Politically, he was caught in a perfect storm of provincial uprising and frontier troubles. Neglecting his responsibilities, he assigned prefects to rule for him instead. These eventually turned on him and assassinated him on December 31st, 192 AD