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Quick History of Syria. First agriculture, first trade city, Assyrians, Persians, Roman Empire, Arab Spring, Isis and today. SUBSCRIBE to Cans on Youtube: http://goo.gl/8Vnrzc Watch our Vikings videos: http://goo.gl/SC0VWE Click here to see more videos: http://www.youtube.com/cansdesign Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/cansdesign Twitter: http://twitter.com/cansdesign Facebook: http://facebook.com/designcans Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/cansdesign

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Rube Goldberg Machine 1:16 mins~ Pop a balloon

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A screen linked chain reaction collaboration with toothpaste35 and doodlechaos demonstrating some of the coolest chain reaction tricks, ideas, and inventions! http://www.spricemachines.com

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Ancient Egypt: Crash Course World History #4

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Looking at how and when women got the right to vote across the globe

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Teaching Tools | Resources for Teachers from Scholastic

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Are they serious?!

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The recent resurgence of this ancient idea reminds us that flat Earth believers have a long history

smithsonian.com

This week, a particularly odd little bit of pseudoscience reared its head again when rapper B.o.B. took to Twitter and proclaimed that the Earth is flat. Since then, the rapper has drawn the ire of all sorts of incredulous people, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

People have known that the Earth is round since at least the sixth century B.C.E. So many were surprised to hear the flat Earth concept still kicked around. But this wasn't the first resurgance of the idea. Back in the 1970s and '80s, a man named Charles Kenneth Johnson became a minor celebrity for his refusal to believe the Earth is round, Cheryl Eddy writes for iO9.

Johnson's good friend Samuel Shenton founded a small fringe group dubbed the Flat Earth Society in the 1950s. In 1972 Johnson became the president of the society after Shenton's death, transforming the group from a small collection of conspiracy theorists into an organization with thousands of members.

He made waves in the national media and became known for cheerfully insisting the rest of the world was being duped by scientists, Douglas Martin wrote in Johnson's obituary for the New York Times in 2001.

''If earth were a ball spinning in space, there would be no up or down,'' Johnson told David Gates and Jennifer Smith for Newsweek in 1984. Similarly, Johnson's wife Marjory believed that the Earth must be flat, because otherwise she would have spent her childhood in her native Australia hanging upside-down by her toes, Martin wrote at the time.

During his tenure as president of the Flat Earth Society, its ranks swelled to about 3,500 people. In his newsletters, Johnson wrote off such spectacles like the sunrise and sunset as optical illusions, discussed how Charles Lindbergh proved the Earth was flat, and claimed that NASA and the moon landing were nothing but hoaxes, Eddy writes.

"You can't orbit a flat earth," Johnson told Robert J. Schadewald for Science Digest in 1980. "The Space Shuttle is a joke-and a very ludicrous joke."

Ironically, Johnson lived just over the hill from Edwards Air Force Base in southern California-the facility where the Air Force tests experimental aircraft, and where NASA's Space Shuttles landed after returning to Earth.

While most of the articles about Johnson and his fringe beliefs were written with tongue firmly in cheek, he channeled his odd sort of fame into increasing membership in the Flat Earth Society (as well as a starring role in an ice cream commercial). But it didn't last: By the time Johnson died, the society had dwindled again to just 100 members.The Flat Earth Society is still around, though they remain little more than a tiny fringe group.

"It is always good to question 'how we know what we know'," Christine Garwood, author of Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea, tells Brendan O'Neill for the BBC. "But it is also good to have the ability to accept compelling evidence-such as the photographs of Earth from space."

The cities in the background are approx. 16miles apart... where is the curve ? please explain this pic.twitter.com/YCJVBdOWX7
- B.o.B (@bobatl) January 25, 2016

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The Curious History of The International Flat Earth Society

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smithsonian.com This week, a particularly odd little bit of pseudoscience reared its head again when rapper B.o.B. took to Twitter and proclaimed that the Earth is flat. Since then, the rapper has drawn the ire of all sorts of incredulous people, including astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson.

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A country founded by convicts?

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On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare.

Australia, once known as New South Wales, was originally planned as a penal colony. In October 1786, the British government appointed Arthur Phillip captain of the HMS Sirius, and commissioned him to establish an agricultural work camp there for British convicts. With little idea of what he could expect from the mysterious and distant land, Phillip had great difficulty assembling the fleet that was to make the journey. His requests for more experienced farmers to assist the penal colony were repeatedly denied, and he was both poorly funded and outfitted. Nonetheless, accompanied by a small contingent of Marines and other officers, Phillip led his 1,000-strong party, of whom more than 700 were convicts, around Africa to the eastern side of Australia. In all, the voyage lasted eight months, claiming the deaths of some 30 men.

The first years of settlement were nearly disastrous. Cursed with poor soil, an unfamiliar climate and workers who were ignorant of farming, Phillip had great difficulty keeping the men alive. The colony was on the verge of outright starvation for several years, and the marines sent to keep order were not up to the task. Phillip, who proved to be a tough but fair-minded leader, persevered by appointing convicts to positions of responsibility and oversight. Floggings and hangings were commonplace, but so was egalitarianism. As Phillip said before leaving England: "In a new country there will be no slavery and hence no slaves."

Though Phillip returned to England in 1792, the colony became prosperous by the turn of the 19th century. Feeling a new sense of patriotism, the men began to rally around January 26 as their founding day. Historian Manning Clarke noted that in 1808 the men observed the "anniversary of the foundation of the colony" with "drinking and merriment."

Finally, in 1818, January 26 became an official holiday, marking the 30th anniversary of British settlement in Australia. And, as Australia became a sovereign nation, it became the national holiday known as Australia Day. Today, Australia Day serves both as a day of celebration for the founding of the white British settlement, and as a day of mourning for the Aborigines who were slowly dispossessed of their land as white colonization spread across the continent.

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Australia Day - Jan 26, 1788 - HISTORY.com

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On January 26, 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip guides a fleet of 11 British ships carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales, effectively founding Australia. After overcoming a period of hardship, the fledgling colony began to celebrate the anniversary of this date with great fanfare.

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We've discussed Canada's independence from Great Britain, but what about our neighbour, The United States?

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Most colonists continued to quietly accept British rule until Parliament's enactment of the Tea Act in 1773, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company by greatly lowering its tea tax and granting it a monopoly on the American tea trade.

The low tax allowed the East India Company to undercut even tea smuggled into America by Dutch traders, and many colonists viewed the act as another example of taxation tyranny. In response, militant Patriots in Massachusetts organized the " Boston Tea Party," which saw British tea valued at some 18,000 pounds dumped into Boston Harbor.

The British Parliament, outraged by the Boston Tea Party and other blatant acts of destruction of British property, enacted the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774. The Coercive Acts closed Boston to merchant shipping, established formal British military rule in Massachusetts, made British officials immune to criminal prosecution in America, and required colonists to quarter British troops.

The colonists subsequently called the first Continental Congress to consider a united American resistance to the British.

With the other colonies watching intently, Massachusetts led the resistance to the British, forming a shadow revolutionary government and establishing militias to resist the increasing British military presence across the colony.

In April 1775, Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, ordered British troops to march to Concord, Massachusetts, where a Patriot arsenal was known to be located. On April 19, 1775, the British regulars encountered a group of American militiamen at Lexington, and the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.

Initially, both the Americans and the British saw the conflict as a kind of civil war within the British Empire: To King George III it was a colonial rebellion, and to the Americans it was a struggle for their rights as British citizens.

However, Parliament remained unwilling to negotiate with the American rebels and instead purchased German mercenaries to help the British army crush the rebellion. In response to Britain's continued opposition to reform, the Continental Congress began to pass measures abolishing British authority in the colonies.

In January 1776, Thomas Paine published "Common Sense," an influential political pamphlet that convincingly argued for American independence and sold more than 500,000 copies in a few months. In the spring of 1776, support for independence swept the colonies, the Continental Congress called for states to form their own governments, and a five-man committee was assigned to draft a declaration.

The Declaration of Independence was largely the work of Virginian Thomas Jefferson. In justifying American independence, Jefferson drew generously from the political philosophy of John Locke, an advocate of natural rights, and from the work of other English theorists.

The first section features the famous lines, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The second part presents a long list of grievances that provided the rationale for rebellion.

On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress voted to approve a Virginia motion calling for separation from Britain. The dramatic words of this resolution were added to the closing of the Declaration of Independence. Two days later, on July 4, the declaration was formally adopted by 12 colonies after minor revision. New York approved it on July 19. On August 2, the declaration was signed.

The Revolutionary War would last for five more years. Yet to come were the Patriot triumphs at Saratoga, the bitter winter at Valley Forge, the intervention of the French, and the final victory at Yorktown in 1781. In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris with Britain, the United States formally became a free and independent nation.

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Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence | July 4, 1776 | HISTORY

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In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the i...

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Quick History of Syria. First agriculture, first trade city, Assyrians, Persians, Roman Empire, Arab Spring, Isis and today. SUBSCRIBE to Cans on Youtube: http://goo.gl/8Vnrzc Watch our Vikings videos: http://goo.gl/SC0VWE Click here to see more videos: http://www.youtube.com/cansdesign Follow us! Instagram: http://instagram.com/cansdesign Twitter: http://twitter.com/cansdesign Facebook: http://facebook.com/designcans Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/cansdesign

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCj6Qeofw1U

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In this cans video, we tell you how the Vikings invaded Europe and the beginning of the Viking Age. Go Vikings Go! Have fun! Watch the next Vikings video: http://youtu.be/0BTUGIpFdeM Please share this video If you like it and subscribe to support us for more content!

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How did Hitler rise to power? - Alex Gendler and Anthony Hazard

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An empire hidden in the mountains for hundreds of years!

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The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

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The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire

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Creation Story of the Maya | Living Maya Time

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From Sci-Fi novels to billions of dollars in realestat investments. How this religion came to be

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What is scientology?

According to their official literature: " Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one's true spiritual nature and one's relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being."

What are the origins of scientology?

It claims to have roots in the beliefs of "all great religions" and thus encompasses "a religious heritage as old and as varied as Man himself" and could be considered 50,000 years old.

What are the actual origins?

It was founded by a man named Lafayette Ron Hubbard, (known as L. Ron Hubbard) from New Jersey, US, who wrote a book on "dianetics" in 1950. Four fans, described as an attorney, a publisher, a doctor and an engineer, then formed a Hubbard Dianetics Research Foundation.

The first Church of Scientology was established in February 1954, with more than a dozen new churches springing up over the next decade.

L. Ron Hubbard, a former science fiction writer, died in 1986. His former assistant David Miscavige, 56, has been leader of the church ever since.

What is the basis of their beliefs?

Scientology begins with the concept that man is "basically good, and that his spiritual salvation depends upon himself, his fellows and his attainment of brotherhood with the universe."

The fundamental principles are threefold:

* Man is an immortal spiritual being.

* His experience extends well beyond a single lifetime.

* His capabilities are unlimited, even if not presently realised.

What is the appeal of scientology?

According to the church, people believe in scientology because of an "absence of answers" from science. They claim scientology supplies "workable methods of application, that made it possible for Man to reach the ancient goal he has been striving toward for thousands of years: to know himself and, in knowing himself, to know and understand other people and, ultimately, life itself."

What does scientology mean?

Scientology means "knowing how to know". It is a contraction of the Latin Scio ("knowing, in the fullest sense of the word") and Greek logos ("study of").

Where is it based?

In a 500-acre compound about 100 miles from Los Angeles, California known as the 'Gold Base'. The desert site was bought by the church in 1978 and at least £30 million has been spent redeveloping it.

It also has a 60-acre UK base - the former home of L. Ron Hubbard - called Saint Hill Manor, in East Grinstead, Sussex. It's also now the home of Hollywood megastar and scientology devotee Tom Cruise, according to reports.

Do they celebrate any holidays?

Yes: L. Ron Hubbard's birthday in March, the anniversary of the first publication of Dianetics in May, and Auditor's Day in September.

How do they deal with pain?

They believe the spirit can alleviate "injury, trauma or discomfort" by "putting the spirit in communication with the body". The church advises a method of detoxification involving saunas, exercise, vitamins, the drinking of oils, as well as light jogging."

How do they view human beings?

They believe life is compartmentalised into eight "dynamics". The First Dynamic, experienced by babies, is explained as an "urge towards existence" and the Eighth is an "urge toward infinity". They call a spiritual being "Thetan", meaning "the source of all life or life itself".

Do they believe in God?

They have a concept of God or Supreme Being, but no set dogma. They explain: "Scientologists take the maxim quite to heart that God helps those who help themselves."

Do they believe in reincarnation?

They believe in "past lives", with a person being born again. One cannot progress unless "aberrations" from past lives are dealt with. The concept of heaven or hell therefore relates to a future life, with experiences being earned by behaviour.

"In other words, the individual comes back," they say. "He has a responsibility for what goes on today since he will experience it tomorrow."

Do they believe in charity?

Tentatively, and with caveats. They explain: "Some form of exchange is necessary in any relationship. If a person only receives and never gives, he will lose his own self-respect and become an unhappy person."

How do they raise children?

Scientologists believe children are spiritual beings occupying young bodies, and should be given the same respect as adults.

Can they cure drug addicts?

They claim so. They have established rehabilitation centres in more than 40 countries practising "narconon", meaning "no drugs".

Credit: Chris Ware/Keystone Features/Getty Images

Can they help criminals?

They also have a rehabilitation programme called "criminon", or "no crime".

What is their relationship with the media?

They say: "In recent years, church representatives have met with the editorial boards of major media outlets to brief them on Scientology, its policies and its activities. These meetings help dispel the rumors and false allegations that have gathered in reference files over the years. Such meetings have been very beneficial for both the Church and journalists."

The media says: "Very weird cult... Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people." (Rupert Murdoch)

Do they believe in aliens?

It has been reported that scientologist believe in xenu, an extra-terrestrial dictator who brought billions of people to Earth in a spacecraft 75 million years ago. The essence of these people remains, causing spiritual harm to those in the modern day, it is claimed.

An official statement from the church, however, says "absolutely not. Scientology holds no such belief. Any suggestion otherwise is as absurd as asserting that those of the Christian faith believe themselves descended from aliens because they believe there is a Heaven."

How is it funded?

Through donations from members. The church explains: "Scientology does not have hundreds of years of accumulated wealth and property like other religions; it must make its way in the world according to the economics of today's society."

Are there any famous scientologists?

Yes - lots. Tom Cruise is probably the most famous. John Travolta, Kirstie Alley and Lisa Marie Presley have all been said to believe in scientology.

Credit: Reuters

Has it been involved in any controversy?

Yes, a lot. Among the numerous court cases, reports and rumours involving scientology are allegations of human trafficking, holding people against their will and members cutting ties from their families.

The church says: "Like all new ideas, Scientology has come under attack by the uninformed and vested interests. The so-called controversy of Scientology is merely the bitter old resisting the ambitious new."

The Church has its own cruise ship, the MV Freewinds, based in Curacao, for the most committed members. A former member claims she was held against her will on board for twelve years, and forced to perform hard labour.

An Australian senator called Scientology a "criminal organisation" and accused it of embezzlement and blackmail.

Does it require any commitment?

The official scientology website says that members sign a "a one-billion-year pledge to symbolize their eternal commitment to the religion."

Where can I learn more about scientology?

There are more than 15,000 pages of technical writing and more than 3,000 taped lectures on scientology. The church claims: "Its truths are self-evident, its principles are easily demonstrable and its technology can be seen at work in any Church of Scientology."

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What is Scientology and who was L. Ron Hubbard?

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According to their official literature: " Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one's true spiritual nature and one's relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being."

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Conquering Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Iraq and more before the age of 23!

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Alexander the Great: Crash Course World History #8

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Learn about the Mongol Empire which rapidly spread with the help of Khan's ruthless tactics!

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The Rise of the Mongol Empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP-csR_XuoE&t=1s Subscribe! http://bitly.com/1iLOHml Despite the Mongol Empire's fierce rise to power, it no longer exists today. So how did this mighty empire collapse? Learn More: History.com: Genghis Khan http://www.history.com/topics/genghis-khan Britannica: Mongke https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mongke All Empires: The Mongol Empire http://www.allempires.com/article/?q=The_Mongol_Empire Music Track Courtesy of APM Music: "Concentration" Subscribe to Seeker Daily!

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Fall of The Roman Empire...in the 15th Century: Crash Course World History #12

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Explore the story behind the conflict...

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5 minute history of Israel Palestine conflict.

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Gifts from God?!

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Excerpt from History Channel's Ancient Aliens, series 1 episode 6 "Chariots, Gods, And Beyond"

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What is left? Only massive heads carved from stone. Was it a plague? Did they flee? Or was it cannibalism?

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Big Heads, Small Brains: The Story of Easter Island