Jemma Pixie Hixon become a global star despite suffering from a crippling fear of the outdoors.

 An agoraphobic singer has released her first single after becoming a YouTube sensation - despite not leaving her house for THREE YEARS. 


Jemma Pixie Hixon, 21, has become a global star despite suffering from a crippling fear of the outdoors.

Largely unknown in the UK, she is a household name in China and the Far East and has attracted nearly 12 million views on the internet.

She creates her music in a makeshift studio in her bedroom in Malvern, Worcestershire, where she lives with her parents.

Her first single, Never Let Go, was released last week. The instrumental was produced by DJ5parks while Jemma recorded her vocals on a laptop at home.

She hopes it will help highlight the plight of others affected by agoraphobia.

Jemma said: 'It would be amazing if people bought my single, it does have chart eligibility, so it's up to everyone who's supported me and followed me to help make the single do as well as possible.

'It would be a huge honour if it did well and I hope it would inspire other agoraphobics, or anyone at all for that matter, that you don't have to give up or let anything get in the way of your dreams.'

Jemma started suffering panic attacks when she was just six years old and her condition spiralled when she left school at 16 and had no daily routine of leaving the house.

She last left her house three years ago and has not gone further than the garden gate ever since.

Jemma explained: 'When I have an attack I feel really short of breath and it's like my heart is going to explode. I literally feel like I'm going to die.

'It's a strange thing because I know logically I have nothing to worry about walking out of the house but it's a completely different thing when I actually try and do it.

'After I left school I didn't really have any reason to get me out of the house so it was easy for me to stay in.

'I wanted to go to university but couldn't because of my condition. It's had a huge affect on my life.'

Jemma - who lives with her property developer mum Tonia, 50, and dad Mark, 49, in their six-bedroom detached house - uses a microphone, webcam and Apple Mac to produce and broadcast her music.

She started by uploading cover versions of songs onto YouTube but has since progressed to producing her own material.

Jemma is now well-known in China and last year won the coveted 'most viewed' video of the month in the whole of the country.

She has seen dozens of psychologists and hypnotherapists but no one has been able to cure her agoraphobia.

The young star hopes to one day be able to perform outside of her bedroom again, and feels that music is what makes her happiest.

She added: 'Music is the thing that helps me escape and makes me happy, whether it's singing, writing or simply listening to it.

'When I'm feeling particularly anxious I like to try to focus on writing a sort of stream of consciousness which I then adapt into lyrics.

'Singing is something that keeps me going and something I have done since I can remember.'

The single is available from sites such as iTunes, Amazon and HMV.

 

 SOURCE: Daily Mail

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Photographer Jim Adams - Merges black and white images with modern scenes

With a couple of clicks, photographer Jim Adams from Whidbey Island, Washington, transforms a familiar landscape into a modern marvel.
When Mr Adams comes across a place he finds fascinating, a home, a hill, or an ancient hall, he painstakingly researches the location to find photographs of its former glory.
He then reproduces the original image and overlays it on the newer one, creating fascinating scenes that collapse a century into a single image.
Armed with his Nikon D90, Mr Adams explores the history of his surrounding environment thanks to a spark started by his parents.
'Growing up, my parents always had some kind of camera around for capturing moments,' he writes on his Flickr page.
'I remember 126 cameras, 110 cameras, even Polaroid cameras.'
He devoured photography magazines and began to study the art in high school, where he 'learned how to make photographs, not just snap pictures.'
He went on to attend the Art Institute of Philadelphia to study photography, but dropped out after two years to move to Washington.
'I realized the photography industry doesn't offer many career opportunities,' he said. 'To fund my relocation in 1990, I sold my Nikon F3 gear… a decision I still regret to this day.'
Mr Adams had a successful career in the IT industry for 20 years before he picked up a camera again, and has since dedicated his free time to to turning landscapes into time capsules.
'The concept is to photograph an old photo in the original location the photo was taken while fitting that photograph into the original scene,' he said.
For the images, he finds a historic place and researches it in the public library. Finding old negatives or 8 x 10 prints, he will re-print them.
He will either add the older image to the new one in Photoshop or line up the photograph with the scene with one hand and take a new photo with the other.
The result is an astonishing image that captures both the past and the present in a single shot.

 Imagine: Armed with his Nikon D90, Mr Adams explores the history of his surrounding environment thanks to a spark started by his parents. The Mukliteo Lighthouse is pictured in 1920 and 2010 at left, and the Admiralty Head Lighthouse is pictured in 1902 and 2010 at right

Time Lapse: He then reproduces the original image and overlays it on the newer one, creating fascinating scenes that collapse a century into a single image. A barn is pictured in 1937 and 2010

Landscape: With a couple of clicks, photographer Jim Adams from Whidbey Island, Washington, transforms a familiar landscape into a modern marvel. Fort Casey Main Battery Line is pictured in 1955 and 2010

Journey: He will either add the older image to the new one in Photoshop or line up the photograph with the scene with one hand and take a new photo with the other. The lighthouse keeper's garden is pictured in 1920 and 2010

Passage: For the images, he finds a historic place and researches it in the public library. Finding old negatives or 8 x 10 prints, he will re-print them. The Ferry House is pictured in June 1934 and May 2010

Drive: This photomontage combines a photograph of present-day Oak Harbor and a postcard of Oak Harbor from 1940

 Homestead: When Mr Adams comes across a place he finds fascinating, a home, a hill, or an ancient hall, he painstakingly researches the location to find photographs of its former glory. The lighthouse assistant keeper's quarters in 1920 and 2010

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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Marcel Pohl - Sued For Finishing School Too Quickly

It looks as if finishing with school too quickly can land you in a mess of legal trouble -- at least in Essen, Germany.

Marcel Pohl completed his bachelor's and master's degrees in just three semesters, and now the School of Economics and Management (FOM) is suing the former student for lost income, German newspaper The Local reports.

The degrees normally take about 11 semesters and 60 exams to complete, but the 22-year-old student divvied up lectures and swapped notes with friends in order to speed the process along. Now, his scheme may end up costing him an extra $3,700, according to the paper.
A link to the story was posted on Reddit, where several users expressed admiration for Pohl's speedy strategy.

"You know, for the time wasting I do in 99% of each semester and doing the s*** up 4 hours before final paper's due. I could really use a college that lets me do this (and not sue me afterwards)," Reddit user feureau posted to the forum.

While this school is suing Pohl for allegedly not holding up his end of the bargain, one New York graduate sued her alma mater after she found herself still unemployed months after earning a degree.

Trina Thompson filed suit against Monroe College for $70,000 -- the cost of tuition -- in 2009, claiming the Bronx-based school's Office of Career Advancement didn't do enough to help her get a job in her field, according to the New York Post.

(Via Gawker)
Source:http://www.net1news.org

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The Blue Man of Kentucky Martin Fugate

Illustration of Martin Fugate and his family. Some reports say Martin was not blue but was a carrier of the methemoglobinemia gene.

Image via NClark

If a good friend of usually normal intelligence suddenly insisted they saw little blue men, you’d be inclined to think they had lost all their faculties and would carefully hide all alcohol from sight, that or they’ve been watching too many reruns of the Smurfs. But until only recently the chance of seeing not only blue men but blue women was a very high likelihood, especially if you frequented the Appalachian Hills of Kentucky. In fact, you’d see whole families of blue people.

Stemming from one French immigrant, Martin Fugate, who moved to Kentucky in 1820, the blue families were to become legends in their own rights, all because of the color of their skin.

Ingesting elemental silver can also turn the skin blue. This man, Paul Karason, rubbed colloidal silver on his face and skin many years ago to treat a skin condition, which made him slowly turn a bluish/grey color.

Image via Wunderkabinett

Their story came to the attention of medical researchers in the early 1980s when 9th generation Fugates (now with the surname Stacy, through marriage) gave birth to a child named Benjy. He was a dark blue color immediately after birth, which caused panic among the medical team, and after carrying out a hoard of tests, mainly for heart and lung problems, the doctors found nothing of note. The only clues to the child’s diagnosis was when the grandmother piped up, “Have you ever heard of the blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek? My grandmother Luna on my dad’s side was a blue Fugate. It was real bad in her.”

Born with the condition methemoglobinemia, the Fugates and their affected descendents suffered from a rare hereditary blood disorder where there is excessive methemoglobin in the blood. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary states methemoglobin is “a brownish-red crystalline organic compound formed in the blood when hemoglobin is oxidated either by decomposition of the blood or by the action of various oxidizing drugs or toxic agents. It contains iron in the ferric state and cannot function as an oxygen carrier.” Because the circulating blood is less oxygenated those with the disorder appear various shades of blue, depending on how seriously they are affected.

Methemoglobinemia is a recessive gene, which means it can only be passed on if both parents carry the gene. So the chances of Martin Fugate meeting and marrying someone who carried the ‘blue’ gene were pretty slim, but that’s what happened. Martin Fugate and Elizabeth Smith went on to have seven children, four of them reported to be blue.

Lorenzo and Eleanor Fugate. Lorenzo was also known as ‘Blue Anze’ and was mentioned in Trost’s The Blue People of Troublesome Creek.

Image Hazard Kentucky via Appalachian History

Researcher Cathy Trost, who compiled the most comprehensive history of the Fugates to date, says:

“The clan kept multiplying. Fugates married other Fugates. Sometimes they married first cousins. And they married the people who lived closest to them, the Combses, Smiths, Ritchies, and Stacys. All lived in isolation from the world, bunched in log cabins up and down the hollows, and so it was only natural that a boy married the girl next door, even if she had the same last name.”

And so, after ten generations, from Martin Fugates father, ‘blue’ people roamed the hills of Kentucky.

It was only when researchers investigating Benjy Stacy’s case discovered a report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation by EM Scott in 1960 that a cure appeared likely.

The article pointed to an absence of an enzyme from the red blood cells called diaphorase, which Scott found was lacking in some indigenous Alaskans he had studied previously. Trost explains:

“In normal people hemoglobin is converted to methemoglobin at a very slow rate. If this conversion continued, all the body’s hemoglobin would eventually be rendered useless. Normally diaphorase converts methemoglobin back to haemoglobin.”

The descendants of the Fugates were then tested, and they too lacked this enzyme. Springing into action, doctors studying the Appalachian clans considered Scott’s findings and found their own methemoglobin converter – a dark blue dye called methylene blue.

Trying to convince members of the blue clan to have blue dye injected into them so they would revert to a natural skin tone must have been harder than trying to find the cure, but one couple conceded. Minutes after the methylene blue was administered the blue tinge to the skin was gone.

Since then, it’s thought that all the Fugates and their relations have been treated – records claim that by 1982 only two of three family members had methemoglobin. We’re guessing they’ve been sorted by now.

So, the next time you’re feeling slightly persecuted, spare a thought for the Blue Fugates, a small populace in America who had skin as blue as blueberries and no doubt endured taunts that only Willy Wonka’s Violet Beauregarde could understand.

Source:http://amazingdata.com

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Top Ten Human Freaks Of Nature In The World

by Ryan Thomas

Kermit the Frog sang that “It ain’t easy being green.” How about, “It ain’t easy being a conjoined-twin forced into a humiliating form of circus-slavery,” or “It ain’t easy having no limbs.” Being green is the least of these people’s worries (in fact, it might be nice to be culturally-beloved for a change). At the turn of the last century, entertainment was a different species than it is today, having no T.V. nor radio nor action movies; you had to witness a living miracle in order to be fully entertained, and circuses provided that very thing. Showcasing hoards of deformed and mutant varieties of humans – that freak-collectors like P.T. Barnum rounded up and whipped into shape – the world marveled at what it so often sought to sweep under its own carpet. Circus sideshows might have been a cruel form of psychological abuse for any of the so-called “freaks” placed under contract (or a kind of indentured slavery), but some of these individuals also went on to profit greatly off what no one else would hire. So as you ask yourself, “Was being a circus freak actually a bad thing?” – given the duality of the situation – step right up and ogle at these 10 freaks of nature:

10:The Hilton Sisters

Violet and Daisy Hilton

Not Paris and Nicky – although they are a different sort of freak – these sisters were twins. Conjoined, to be exact. They shared a common blood and nervous system, which means they truly felt all the same pain. They were sold as slaves by their impecunious mother to a midwife, who greedily took advantage of their misfortune; while they sang, danced, played instruments in circus sideshows, their veritable slave-owner kept all their earnings and forbade them from socializing. Eventually a lawyer helped them escape their proverbial shackles and even reacquire the money they were swindled out of. They went on to do movies (including 1932’s Freaks) and earned as much as $5000 at the height of their showbiz careers.

9:The Wild Men of Borneo

These “wild men” were actually a twin pair of mentally-retarded midgets, for which there’d be no hope of employment if not for those ever-gawking circus-goers providing seemingly limitless opportunity (at least back in 1852). They were bought from their mother at the age of 26 by a man named Lyman Warner, and were taught their routine by P.T. Barnum, an act which included acrobatics, dancing, speaking in “their native language” (actually gibberish), and reciting poems in English. Enslaved in the Warner family for three generations, they kept on performing for almost fifty years – steady occupation, to say the least.

8:The Puppet-Woman

Lucia Zarate

Born as more of a “finger puppet,” at a weight of 8 ounces and a height of 7 inches, Zarate weighed less than a cat as an adult. She is the smallest recorded human being on Earth, a fact that had no trouble drawing a big crowd at the circus. When she came to America – she was born in Mexico in 1864 – at the age of 12, she was the highest paid dwarf at the time (at $20/hour). Sadly, she died at the age of 26 when her train got stopped in the Rocky Mountains during a snowstorm.

7:The Texas Giant

Jack Earle

Earle had a condition called acromegalic gigantism, the clinical term for what a circus – such as the Ringling Brothers or Barnum and Bailey – would label simply “a giant.” He traveled with both of the aforementioned for 14 years, longer than his original one-year contract. He also appeared in movies, like Jack and the Beanstalk (guess who he played). While it’s not easy for a “freak” to find normal work, Earle did just that, showing what he was capable of beyond the exploitation of his appearance: he was a salesmen for a wine company, eventually becoming their PR rep, as well as a sculptor, painter, and poet (published in a 1950 book called “Long Shadows”).

6:“Le Bossu”

Quasimodo is not fictional. Not entirely anyway. Appearing in Victor Hugo’s ultimate tale about being a victim of pure disposition, the eponymous Hunchback of Notre Dame may have been inspired by an actual hunchback who lived in Notre Dame. A British researcher found a memoir excerpt that told of a “humpbacked stone carver” that worked in a cathedral Hugo was very much involved with. Speculation is that he must have come across this rather antisocial individual, given the workers level of involvement on government-commissioned projects. Nicknamed “Le Bossu,” it’s not hard to see how this individual could have led to some fanciful speculations in Hugo’s fertile mind, as this was also about the time he was penning the novel (c.1831).

5:The Mule-Faced Woman

Grace McDaniels

Not a pleasant thing to be nicknamed, this women was born with a facial deformity that rendered her simply unpleasant to look at (what some might call ugly… or mule-faced). She was actually billed as “the ugliest woman in the world” as if that were an achievement worth aspiring to. In spite of her physical appearance, she was actually a nice person, and was married with child (who didn’t inherit the deformity, but became a problem drinker and criminal – which is to say, more of a social outcast than her).

4:Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy

Fedor Jeftichew

This dog-boy actually had a canine-like father as well. The dad, Adrian, was a bitter drunk, and ran from his village and into the woods one day, living in the feral manner a stray dog might. He himself faced mockery and ample shunning, and performed in sideshows to make money (billed as the son of a bear and a peasant woman). After he conceived a child, equally as hairy, they toured together until Adrian ended up dying a drunken death. The boy, however, went on to continue performing faithfully – under P.T. Barnum’s top hat – just as a trained dog might, barking and growling on command. In actuality, he wasn’t a dog-child, obviously, he had a condition called hypertrichosis; and more than just barking, he could speak English, Russian, and German (making him essentially quadrilingual).

3:Julia Pastrana

This indigenous Mexican woman’s memory is literally preserved, as she – following her death in 1860 – was stuffed and put on display the very way she had been while alive. Also born with hypertrichosis, her features were more characteristic of a gorilla than a dog; her nose and ears were especially large, her face was covered with hair, and she had a double pair of teeth which pronounced her mouth as such. She had a husband named Theodor Lent – who had originally purchased her and taught her to be a performer – and eventually a child of the same affliction, who died after three days. She died five days after that (complications from birth), and her exploitative husband had both her and the baby mummified and placed in a glass cabinet. Lent went on to marry another woman with a similar condition, and was later admitted to a mental hospital.

2:Schlitzie

Simon Metz

“Pinheads” were an especially big draw in the circus sideshows, and Schlitzie was one of them. Having a condition called microcephalus, his cranium was incredibly underdeveloped and sat like a baby’s head on the shoulders of a grown man. Schlitzie, as far as his brain was concerned anyway, was three. Nonetheless, he sang and danced, could count to 10, and starred in the movie Freaks at the physical age of 40. Also, if you’ve ever read the comic strip Zippy the Pinhead in the Sunday funnies, you can see where the inspiration comes from.

1:The Human Caterpillar

Prince Randian

 No, not a Human Centipede; this was a real person, although no less startling while dressed in that sleeveless sock outfit. Just a head and a torso, this P.T. Barnum attraction was capable enough as a quadriplegic that he could light a cigarette with just his mouth – not to mention the fact that he had a wife and kids (none of which shared his affliction). He shows up in the movie Freaks, and performs the aforementioned cigarette “trick” – although its hardly a trick when you have no other limbs to rely on.
Source: http://listverse.com

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Top Ten Japanese Fascinating Samurai

by Tanner Brooks

The samurai were the great warriors of Feudal Japan who were respected and feared for their gracefulness in peace and brutality in war. Dignified by the strict code of honor that bound them, the samurai were more than ready to give their own life than suffer a harsh existence of dishonor. In the few hundred years that they existed as Japan’s most dominating warriors, they filled the pages of history with their heroic tales, and for a select few who cast a shadow upon all of Japan, they generated a legend larger than any one man could ever hope to attain. People still marvel centuries after the height of their reign at the innovations in warfare and politics that were born from the minds and hearts of a class of warriors like none other.

10:Tomoe Gozen

As the only female on this list, Tomoe is one of the very few women who took the battlefield alongside her male counterparts though her exploits and history still are uncertain.

In The Tale of Heike, Tomoe is described as a woman of exquisite beauty with fair skin and long black hair and as an excellent archer and swords woman who was “ready to confront a demon or a god.”

Serving under Minamoto Yoshinaka, Tomoe was one of his finest soldiers, and her skills in battle dwarfed many of those held by even the strongest men in her unit. She is believed to have fought and survived through the Genpei War, the first major war between samurai clans and a place of origin for many popular attributes that would become associated with the samurai warrior over the years. It was here at the battle of Awazu where Tomoe even took the head of a rival samurai, an incredible honor for any samurai who defeated an opposing warrior in combat.

After the battle, Tomoe was said to have retired from being a warrior, instead taking up an occupation as a nun, though it is also said that she became the wife of a samurai named Wada Yoshimori who she supposedly pledged her devotion after being defeated by him in battle.

9:Minamoto Tametomo

Today, samurai are legendary for their exquisite swordsmanship that is synonymous with the iconic katana, and while they were indeed proficient in the art of sword-fighting, the samurai that we are familiar with today are descended from warriors who were skilled in their practice of mounted archery. That tradition never faded as the samurai grew, and for all the great swordsmen who garner mention throughout the history of the samurai, there are just as many archers whose skills were worth mentioning. One of such men was Minamoto Tametomo whose legend may very well precede the skills that forged it.

Tametomo is said to have had a left arm that was up to six inches longer than his right, which could generate far stronger shots due to the increased distance of which he could draw the bowstring. These powerful shots would have been essential for Tametomo during a conflict between the Minamoto clan and the Taira clan, where Tametomo is said to have sunk a full-sized Taira ship merely by firing a single arrow below the craft’s waterline.

Tametomo committed seppuku in 1170 as the Taira captured him and severed the tendons in his left arm, leaving him useless for battle. In the end, he decided to take his own life by way of seppuku, one of the first samurai on record to do so.

8:Kusunoki Masashige

Masashige began as a small time land owner who answered emperor Go-Daigo’s request for military assistance during the Nanbokucho Wars. Starting as a small-time leader with only five hundred men to his credit, Masashige rose through the ranks serving as a general loyal to the emperor Go-Daigo during the Nanbokucho Wars. Masashige is most famous for his undying devotion to his emperor that persisted even through the emperor’s exile and up until his death at the hands of fellow samurai, and traitor, Ashikaga Takauji. Leading up to the battle with Takauji, Kusunoki pleaded with his emperor to refrain from a direct battle with him, opting instead for the guerrilla-based tactics that had served them well to that point. Go-Daigo dismissed his Kusunoku’s concerns, and despite his knowledge that the emperor’s orders were basically a death sentence, Kusunoki marched onward to face Takauji where he suffered a massive defeat and was forced to commit seppuku.

Following his death, Masashige was seen as the forerunner for a samurai’s undying loyalty. Upon the removal of the Tokugawa shogunate during the Meiji Restoration in the mid-19th century Kusunoki Masashige become a national symbol of loyalty, and his image was again used in World War II in propaganda posters to keep soldiers loyal to the emperor.

7:Miyamoto Musashi

Some of the most interesting tales in the samurai’s decorated history involve the ronin, which translates roughly to “men of the waves” in English. The ronin were samurai who paid no allegiance to a master for one reason or another, and as such they found their work as mercenaries. Some worked for the benefit of the people as they were hired to protect small villages or for rich men who could do little to defend themselves. Others traveled to other countries or worked as pirates.

Incessant conflicts between warring clans brought samurai masters to an early grave, thus breeding thousands of ronin who wandered the countryside as independent warriors who were often seen as inferior by their fellow samurai. Of these many wandering swordsmen, none were more popular than Miyamoto Musashi.

Few samurai have been celebrated in modern culture more throughout the course of history than Musashi, who has seen countless works of film and literature devoted to his gaudy resume as a swordsman and duelist that has often been embellished to the point of absurdity, sometimes by Musashi himself. Still, for all of the uncertainties that remain about his legend, the fact that Musashi was a magnificent combatant still remains indisputable.

Born in 1584 to his father Munisai, also an accomplished martial artist and swordsman, Musashi was raised under his father’s tutelage until the age of seven when his uncle took him in. At thirteen, Musashi experienced his first duel against which he won with little difficulty. At age sixteen, Musashi took part in the war on the side of the Toyotomi clan against the Tokugawa clan, and following the Toyotomi clan’s defeat at the Battle of Sekigahara, where Musashi was rumored to have fought, he fell from the public eye until the age of twenty-one when he surfaced in Kyoto to challenge the renowned Yoshioka School of Swordsmanship, and following several successful duels against the heads of the Yoshioka school where he innovated the niten’ichi sword-fighting style which involved Musashi battling with his katana held in one hand and the shorter wakizashi held in the other, Musashi set out to travel all across Japan as a part of a developmental pilgrimage where he further improved his skills as a warrior.

In 1612, Musashi fought in his most famous duel against his most daunting opponent, master swordsman Sasaki Kojiro. Kojiro was exceptional in his precision and speed with the nodachi, a curved sword much like the katana but several feet longer. In an effort to unsettle his opponent, Musashi arrived over three hours late for the duel, and after heckling Kojiro and coaxing the first attack out of him, Musashi killed him almost effortlessly with a single blow from a wooden sword he had apparently crafted from one of his oars.

In Musashi’s later years, his life of battle and dueling slowed down greatly as one would expect from an aging man. Just before his death in 1630, Musashi authored the Go Rin No Sho or The Book of Five Rings, a book describing various techniques of the sword that is still widely studied by both martial artists and businessmen.

6:Honda Tadakatsu

As a samurai who was one of the generals belonging to the aptly titled Four Heavenly Kings of Tokugawa and one who has been blessed with the fortunate and equally grandiose moniker “The Warrior who surpassed Death,” Tadakatsu could easily be said to be a warrior without any match.

As a subordinate of Tokugawa, Tadakatsu was a veteran of over a hundred battles, and never once was he bested by an opposing general in combat. On top of that, Tadakatsu never suffered a significant wound in all of his years of service, hence his appropriating of the nickname above.

In combat, Tadakatsu was adept in the wielding of a long spear that was dubbed one of the “Three Great Spears of Japan,” and in 1584, with only a small army that was outnumbered greatly by an army headed by general Toyotomi Hideyoshi, he stood tall and challenged the opposing army to battle, an act that struck so deeply with Hideyoshi that he ordered the safety of Tadakatsu and all of the men accompanying him.

Tadakatsu served valiantly in the Battle of Sekigahara which ended the contentious Sengoku period and ushered in a new era of peace led by Tokugawa Ieyasu who would go on to construct Japan’s final shogunate not long after this victory.

5:Date Masamune

Ruthless was a term that was used to describe many samurai during the Sengoku period as it was a quality that was needed by any daimyo if they were to make a run at ruling Japan. Few samurai, however, fit the bill better than Date Masamune who struck fear into all of those who crossed his path due to his violent nature and reckless approach in times of war.

Masamune was born as the eldest son to the renowned Date clan who served honorably in the Genpei Wars. As such, it was expected that Masamune would succeed his father as the head of the clan, but after losing the sight in his right eye to a case of smallpox as a child, he was deemed unfit to take control of the clan by his mother.

After suffering several defeats as an inexperienced general early in his career, Masamune gained his footing as a leader and soon became one of the most feared men in all of Japan. As he branched out and began a campaign to conquer all of his clan’s neighboring provinces. The neighboring Hatakeyama family pleaded with Masamune’s father, Terumune, to reel in his son’s aggressive campaign. When his father said that there was nothing he could do to control his wild son, the Hatakeyama family kidnapped Terumune, and were subsequently trailed by an enraged army led by Masamune who was ordered by his father to wipe out all of his kidnappers, even if it meant killing him in the process. Masamune did as he was told, and Terumune, along with all of the other kidnappers were killed. Masamune’s brutal reputation would only grow from there as he proceeded to brutally torture and murder the families of all of his father’s kidnappers.

In 1590, with Masamune at the head of the Date clan and Japan under the rule of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Masamune outwardly refused Hideyoshi’s demands to report for battle. When Masamune finally confronted an enraged Hideyoshi, he did so fearlessly with the expectation that he would be executed on the spot for his defiance. Fortunately for Masamune, Hideyoshi decided to spare him.

Masamune, for all of his insolence toward Hideyoshi, did serve loyally in Hideyoshi’s ill-fated campaigns in Korea, and following Hideyoshi’s death, he became a loyal general under Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Despite the cloud of suspicion that always hung over the head of Masamune regarding his true intentions and the fear he invoked due to his seemingly heartless nature in times of war, Masamune held a successful reign over his territory under the supervision of shogun Tokugawa. Masamune was known for opening the doors to his province to foreigners and to Christian missionaries, and with an undying hunger for foreign technology, he initiated a voyage to Rome to begin relations with the Pope, and along the way his ship, the Date Maru, become a part of the first Japanese voyage to sail around the world.

4:Tokugawa Ieyasu

In Japan, there was a saying in regards to Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu: “Nobunaga pounds the national rice cake, Hideyoshi kneads it, and in the end Ieyasu sits down and eats it.”

Tokugawa Ieyasu stands tall as possibly the most famous samurai of all time and the only one of the three great unifiers of Japan, the others being Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, to be crowned shogun. Tokugawa reveled in all of his successes despite the fact that he wasn’t the great tactician or leader that Nobunaga and Hideyoshi made themselves out to be. What Tokugawa was, however, was a pragmatic man who dealt only in common sense and took calculated risks to put himself in the best position to climb to the top of the pack. He played the field of feudal Japan like pieces on a board game, and when it came to capitalizing on the strengths and weaknesses of his contemporaries, there was no-one better at doing so than Ieyasu.

From Ieyasu’s birth in 1543, he was caught in between the perils of war as his own clan, the Matsudaira clan, was torn in its allegiance to the Imagawa clan and the Oda clan. At age six, Ieyasu nearly found himself to be a casualty of this conflict as he was kidnapped by the same Oda clan whom he would eventually ally himself with as an act of hostility toward his father and his allegiance to the Imagawa clan, however, a year later the young Ieyasu was rescued by the Imagawa clan and returned home.

Ieyasu fought his first battle for the Imagawa clan at age sixteen, and at twenty, following the appointing of the cunning Oda Nobunaga as the head of the Oda clan, Ieyasu showed flashes of his wisdom that would later become famous as he switched his allegiance over to the powerful Oda clan.

The next few years strengthened the core of his power by surrounding himself with strong generals and allies whom he rewarded with sections of the land they conquered together.

Following Oda Nobunaga’s death and later that of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s, Ieyasu stood ready to take control of Japan with the Toyotomi clan as one of the few obstacles remaining in his path, and upon gathering the help of the Toyotomi clan’s enemies, he engaged in a massive battle with the Toyotomi clan and its allies at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 which is seen as one of the most important battles in Japanese history as it ultimately allowed Ieyasu to stake his claim as shogun only a few years later.

Tokugawa’s overwhelming victory at Sekigahara ushered in a long-lasting peace for all of Japan, and in 1603, he was finally crowned shogun by emperor Go-Yozei. Already at the ripe old age of sixty, Tokugawa lasted as the shogun for only a handful of years, abdicating himself of his powers only three years after being crowned shogun.

As a retired shogun, Ieyasu still had one loose-end to tie up: that of Toyotomi Hideyori, the son of Hideyoshi who stood as the last beacon of rebellion against the Tokugawa shogunate. Living in Osaka Castle, Tokugawa stationed a siege of the area led by his son Hidetada, and after refusing an order to vacate in 1615, Ieyasu ordered an army of 155,000 troops to attack all of those in the castle, in an assault that killed Hideyori, his entire family, and all of his supporters. With Hideyori’s demise, the Toyotomi bloodline had been severed, leaving no further opposition against the Tokugawa shogunate.

Ironically, the Tokugawa shogunate that was born from the most violent period in Japanese history brought in a new age of peace that lasted for 250 years and effectively brought an end to the samurai who relied on the contentious times of war to stay relevant.

3:Takeda Shingen

During the Sengoku period in Feudal Japan, the countryside was rife with incessant fighting that characterized the most violent period during the era of the samurai. With the constant wars that crippled or completely destroyed entire clans who vied for power, the Takeda clan, led by Takeda Shingen, was one of the few constants that stood out on a landscape dominated by the likes of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Takeda was a veteran of over forty campaigns, including the five battles of Kawanakajima, and during the fourth battle, one that is seen as the bloodiest that the samurai had ever seen, Takeda was met by his rival Uesugi Kenshin in a one-on-one battle where he fought off a mounted attack with little more than a lessen, or battle fan.

Of all of the clans in Japan, the Takeda clan could boast a military might that was by far the most powerful of all the clans, even more so than the Oda-Tokugawa alliance that rivaled it, and after a period of weakness following his war with Uesugi Kenshin, Shingen was able to restore the power of his army due in large part to the prowess of Shingen’s “Twenty-Four Generals” who often outweighed Shingen’s own skills on the battlefield. It is widely believed that with his superior military power, Shingen was the only daimyo who had a chance to stand up against the superpower Oda Nobunaga in his quest to take over Japan, however, he chose to focus his efforts on more local problems that pertained to the provinces under his control.

Shingen is also credited with being one of the first warlords to widely integrate firearms into his regimen of soldiers as he believed that these new marvels of war technology would eventually render bows and arrows obsolete. Coincidentally, it is speculated that Shingen himself was killed by a gunshot wound.

2:Toyotomi Hideyoshi

Born as a peasant to a low-ranking foot soldier, Hideyoshi carried no samurai lineage, and since a samurai’s bloodline played such an integral role in any samurai’s standing amongst his peers, it should have been impossible for him to become the formidable general and innovative leader that he became.

Hideyoshi was awarded no luxuries that were given to noble families of samurai bloodline, and his dignified career began humbly as a sandal-bearer for Oda Nobunaga at the bottom of the Oda clan’s hierarchy, but as Nobunaga dominated the battlefield of Feudal Japan and set himself from the competition to become Japan’s fiercest warlord, Hideyoshi also separated himself from his peasant bloodline to become a magnificent general under Nobunaga.

Following Nobunaga’s assassination, Hideyoshi’s power within the Oda clan continued to grow until he assumed all control over the clan upon defeating the clan’s own preeminent general at the Battle of Shizugatake. Hideyoshi would only continue to prosper from here as he blossomed as an strong leader that built upon the resolute demeanor that Nobunaga had himself possessed.

Hideyoshi constructed the massive Osaka Castle, a structure that still stands today as one of Japan’s most recognizable landmarks. Ironically, Osaka Castle would be the site where his son Hideyori was killed by Tokugawa, effectively ending the line of Toyotomi.

Along with Osaka Castle, Hideyoshi also put into effect many groundbreaking laws that sought to end rebellion against his regime and bring an organization to Japan that the country had been lacking. In an effort to create a clearer social hierarchy, Hideyoshi banned peasants from taking arms in 1588 with the Separation Edict and confiscated what weapons they had in a massive “sword hunt.” The weapons he seized were promised to be melted down into a giant statue of Buddha, though he merely armed his troops with the weapons he stole. Both the Separation Edict and the sword hunt brought an end to rebellion under his leadership as the lowly peasants no longer had a means to arm themselves, and soon after that, he banned samurai from living with the common populace and from taking part in common occupations such as farming or trading to further bring a dividing line between the class of samurai and that of the peasants.

In Hideyoshi’s final years, he saw his legacy’s glory fade some with two very bold and ultimately unsuccessful invasions of Korea that left his regime weakened and conflicted. Only a year before his death, Hideyoshi made one of his final statements as a leader as he sought to suppress Christianity in Japan by ordering the execution of twenty-six Christians that he used to deter Japanese citizens who looked to convert to Christianity.

1:Oda Nobunaga

During the peak of the samurai’s presence in Japan, no samurai was stronger or more cunning that Oda Nobunaga. His name is one of the most recognizable in Japanese history, and it isn’t without reason.

Following a long and costly war that saw the preeminent daimyo in Japan – Takeda Shingen and Uesugi Kenshin – greatly weakened, many clans broke out in war with the hopes of filling the void of power left by them, though none of them held sufficient power to risk marching upon the capital to take the throne.

In 1560, when Yoshimoto Imagawa of the Suruga province finally attempted to take the capital of Kyoto, all that stood in his path was a simple conquering of the Owari province and the small time daimyo who ruled it, Oda Nobunaga.

Imagawa marched with an army of twenty-five thousand men that outnumbered the small forces of Nobunaga eight to one. During a thunderstorm that forced Imagawa’s troops to take shelter, Nobunaga set his troops into motion, waiting until just after the rains ceased to launch a swift attack that left Imagawa and his entire army stunned. Before he could even realize what was happening, Imagawa was killed, and Nobunaga had completed the unlikeliest victory in Japanese history.

From his success in his battle with Imagawa, Nobunaga’s stock only rose as he struck an alliance with Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu to begin the building of a foundation that would lead to the unity of Japan to centuries of peace under the Tokugawa shogunate.

Nobunaga’s rise from a lowly daimyo to an unstoppable general is due to the revolution he brought the battlefield that saw him bring to life a class system based on merit that saw warriors designated to specific roles based on ability and skill rather than heritage. Most importantly, though, was Nobunaga’s adoption of firearms and his ingenious creation of the rotating volley tactic that ensured his troops would unleash a never ending barrage of gunfire as one troop of gunmen always stood in reserve ready to attack and unleash hell when the first troop was forced to reload.

Apart from being a magnificent general, Nobunaga was a gracious leader who carried his intellect over to the field of business and politics. He reconstructed an economy based exclusively on agriculture to one that operated as a free market and focused more on the manufacturing of goods and services, and he expanded international trade during his reign to include countries in Southeast Asia as well as Europe. To streamline his growing economy, Nobunaga commissioned the construction of roads between towns under his control which incidentally helped not only with trading but also in transporting his massive armies across his land.

Despite all of Nobunaga’s achievements and his dominating presence on the field of battle, he was never able to achieve the position of shogun that so many believed him to be was destined for. In 1582, while lounging in a temple with only a small entourage acting as his guard, one of Nobunaga’s own generals, Akechi Mitsuhide, ordered his army to attack Nobunaga’s stronghold in an act of betrayal. With Nobunaga surrounded and trapped within his temple that had been set aflame, he retreated away from the fighting where his few troops were being slaughtered and committed seppuku.

Nobunaga’s death would not go without justice for long, however, for not more than two weeks after his death, Toyotomi Hideyashi intercepted Akechi Mitsuhide and enacted revenge for his master at the battle of Yamazaki, and along with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the two of them ensured that the progress made by Nobunaga wouldn’t die, as they would both use the framework of Nobunaga’s contributions to the country to create the foundation of what would be the final shogunate to rule over Japan.
Soure:http://listverse.com

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Tips Find True Love for Unfeminine Women

Being a smart and professional woman, you can get your career promotion with ease. However, you would find it hard to choose "mr.right" if acting of unfeminine ways such as official tasks rather than domestic works.

If this describes you, let’s put your masculine energy down and make it easier for your feminine energy to wake up. We now introduce you to some love tips for women which may help you act more feminine and get the love you want.

Making decisions in office means managing fields of people, projects as well as goals in order to reach the expected outcome. However, treating your love as work management is likely to result in confliction between you and your boyfriend which can end your relationship. Therefore, you should try to learn to accept your sweetheart for who he is in stead of changing him by all means

Learn to accept your sweetheart for who he is and don’t attempt to change him

Systematic strategies and to-do lists at work will help you connect and put priority on your task better.  In love, the manner may make your daling keep away and break up as a result just because he finds it uncomfortable.  By connecting to your man naturally, you will find true love.

Try to connect to him by your heart

Work is something serious and most of us tend to make it professional as mush as possible.  In contrast, being too clever in love is not a good way  Almost men don’t pay attention to serious women. The way to impress your boyfriend is having fun and lightheartedness.

Almost men find attractive in women who have fun and lightheartedness

Some women would like to perform themself as workalohics by addressing all tasks without any help.  But in love, your man may feel that you don’t need him if you often do everything by yourself.  Try to be a needy lady instead. Your boyfriend will feel good about himself and your relationship when you receive his help.

Your boyfriend will feel good about himself and you when you receive his help

Source: ezine9.com

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Top Major Breakthroughs of Humanity

Humans have proudly achieved more through sheer intellect and manipulation of their environment than any of their contemporaries. We can grow artificial tissues and use lasers in surgery. However, many of the breakthroughs of which we are so proud are only known or available to the upper echelons of our society, and the lifestyles of others remain completely unaffected. It is difficult to write any comprehensive list, but nevertheless here are ten (the first list of two) breakthroughs which literally changed the lives of close to every human on the planet. Each one is important in its own right, so they are in order of chronology instead of significance (the second list will continue in time order), but as many developed concurrently or have at best inexact dates; this order is only very approximate, and several have been instead better grouped by topic.


10:Logical Thought
millions of years ago

Logical thought, also called scientific thought, is the process of reasoning and testing in order to deduce the truth in any situation so that it may be more widely applied. For example, noting that every time anyone eats a certain berry they grow sick and die leads to the conclusion that the berry is likely poisonous. However, noting that when one ate a certain fruit the rain began to fall should not lead to a conclusion of ‘eating fruit makes it rain’ because the process has not been repeated or tested to confirm the link. A large number of animals are able to make such connections without testing them logically. Many superstitions are a result of illogical connections, where a coincidence that occurs once or twice is wrongfully interpreted. Several ancient civilizations even developed priest-kings who interpreted various signs according to increasingly complex superstitions and often produced bizarre or destructive behaviors. The ability to think with increasing logic allowed humans to make important links with far-reaching consequences in every field of human endeavor. Every advance is thanks to our capacity to think logically and search for connections so that we may gradually build a better world for ourselves.

9:Stone Tools

2.6 million years ago

Apes, and indeed many other animals, have been making tools for millions of years. However, very few ever venture to refashion stones. Tools made of leaves and wood tend to rot or wear away, but stone tools are much more permanent, and therefore lend themselves to better and better shaping towards their purpose over time. A spearhead, after a hunt, can be retrieved and refined so that the next hunt is easier. Hunting suddenly became much more successful. Stone tools and the need for more refined tool making require a greater intellect and imagination than that of most animals, and so the humans with better brains made better tools, enjoyed better lives, and generally lived longer, allowing them time to have more offspring. In shaping stone tools we shaped our own evolution.

8:Fire

1 million years ago

Although there are records of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, performing ritualistic fire dances and even wielding flaming branches, humans are the only verified creature to have learnt the art of creating a flame. Fire provides comfort and warmth, but much more importantly, it allows us to cook meat. Our ancestors found that cooked meat was easier and safer to eat, and they rapidly adapted to a diet with more meat in it. Their powerful vegetation-chewing jaws shrank and their brains grew as they hunted more game, an act requiring a relatively high amount of intellect for the planning and communication involved. Fire changed our diets, which subsequently changed our digestive tracts, our jaws and teeth, and was one of the biggest factors in the development of near-modern intelligence. Stone tools may have started us down the road to larger brains, but fire massively accelerated the process. In a relatively short space of time after fire was mastered, the brain size of our ancestors more than doubled.

7:Domestication

10,000 years ago

Rather than live nomadically and follow herds of game around, some groups of early people found they could keep groups of less aggressive creatures confined to a set area and alleviate themselves of the need to constantly travel. This allowed more permanent settlements to be formed, and the people had more free time due to not having to travel so often. Written language became much more useful in keeping track of things, and the extra time gave them the window to develop it. Domestication was applied to plants as well, and basic husbandry began. Breeding became a carefully controlled process. Weaving and other arts could be refined, and trading for goods greatly increased. Instead of having only a few occupations as in a hunter-gatherer society, there were now hundreds of specialist jobs, ranging from metal workers to breeders to primitive vets. No-one was a generalist anymore. Where previously the world population had been only a few million, farming allowed a number approaching the billions. Farming had an internal affect as well: the large stores of food which resulted from farming gave rise to larger and larger numbers of disease-carrying vermin, which in turn made people develop stronger immune systems.

6:The Wheel

6,000 years ago

Around six thousand years ago, the wheel began to be used in various parts of the world. Our fascination with it was slow at first, as the lack of smooth roads limited its wider uses. Gradually it took hold and settlements would flatten paths so that wagons could pass, greatly increasing the efficiency of a number of human endeavors. The wheel went on to give birth to the water wheel and the windmill, which gave us power and dramatically reduced the amount of effort needed in farming and food production. Vehicles and chariots began to develop, changing the fate of empires through warfare and travel. Its other offspring are the spinning wheel, enabling the development of various kinds of refined cloth making, potter’s wheels, used to make higher quality and refined pottery, cogs and pulleys, allowing all manner of mechanics to develop, the astrolabe, a device used by great minds to study the movements of the heavens, the propeller, used much later on planes and boats as a means of propulsion, and the steam engine, another great breakthrough discussed below.

5:Mathematics

20,000 years ago

Mathematics had a slow beginning, but became highly needed once agriculture developed. Dealing with trading goods and keeping track of larger numbers of animals necessitated counting and manipulation of numbers. As farming grew, people needed not only to count into the hundreds or even thousands, but they also had to be able to add and subtract those numbers. Mathematics allowed far more complex trading, which had up until then been dependent largely upon haggling, and introduced the notion of currency. This revolutionized business and gave rise to economics and true commerce. Mathematics also allowed engineering and astronomy to become independent fields in their own right, and together these formed the basis of much of modern science and technology. More recently, the introduction of Arabic numerals and the place-value system made higher mathematics universally accessible. Up until then, years at university were required before something as simple as multiplication could be understood.

4:Metalworking

10,000 years ago

Probably the first metal to be widely used was gold. This is because, unlike many other metals, it naturally occurs in a fairly pure form and is soft enough to be worked by stone tools. Eventually, ancient people realized that heat from fire could be used to extract other quite pure metals from ores (rocks containing small amounts of metal). Copper and tin were extracted and prized for their superior hardness, but were still too soft for many uses until they were combined, probably by accident, and formed bronze, an alloy that is much harder and more useful. Bronze weapons and tools easily outperformed all that had come before them. Farming tools, chariots, armor, and scientific instruments became unrecognizably better. Iron took much longer to be mastered, due to its higher melting point, but when it was, it was found to be an even better metal. People noticed that iron that had come into contact with organic matter formed a near-perfect metal – steel. Steel is more resistant to rust, is easier to weld, and today is cheaply mass-produced and used around the world.

3:Paper

100BC

The wide availability of paper was a major factor in the push towards universal literacy. Before paper was easily available, people could generally only write in the dirt or sand, which was impractical for most uses and therefore all but the most intelligent people were not disadvantaged by remaining illiterate. Universal literacy meant writing needed to be simple and efficient, and so complex hieroglyphs became refined and less cumbersome. This new art of easy writing was so persuasive that it passed even to people who had no paper and no opportunity to develop this smooth writing on their own. Widespread literacy and the subsequently developed writing was incredibly useful at storing information and reliably recording knowledge too vast for any one person to be relied upon to remember it all perfectly. The amount of knowledge capable of being maintained by humanity leapt forward. Literacy made communication at distance much more viable, and it was the first small step towards a unified global community.

2:Printing Press

1440

Paper and writing were useful in recording valuable information, but books needed to be painstakingly written out one by one, and therefore were few in number and devoted only to the most important topics. The printing press allowed entire books to be printed in minutes, making knowledge much more widely available and enabling books to encompass a much broader range of subjects. The total amount and range of knowledge capable of being stored by humanity increased almost exponentially, and the availability of books and knowledge made education improve and become more widespread. The idea that all children should be academically educated is today almost omnipresent. This was a great milestone in the path towards increasing the average intelligence of the general populace.

1:Vaccination

1724

Although used by a number of ancient cultures, vaccination became properly understood in the eighteenth century and was carried out on a widespread scale only last century. Most famously, the terrible disease smallpox has been completely extinguished thanks to vaccination. Smallpox was fatal for nearly half of infected adults, and over 80% of infected children. It killed millions of people every year for millennia. A vaccine, initially developed from the milder yet related disease cowpox, was used to produce immunity, and when enough people were vaccinated by 1977, the disease had no-one left to infect and died out. A myriad of other unpleasant and often deadly diseases which plagued our ancestors are now easily avoided thanks to vaccinations at birth and in childhood. Even those who are not vaccinated often benefit as the disease is less likely to spread if enough others are vaccinated. Billions of lives have been saved and the entire human population have better lives thanks to vaccination.

Source: listverse.com

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