Croatia - It's Now On My Travel Destination List

Whenever someone asks me where I would like to travel to, it always has to be Europe. I can't really pinpoint exactly why, but that's probably just it. There's something about Europe that intrigues you, there's so much to see, and the architecture is simply magnificent.

But even then, even in Europe, the only places I'd like to travel to are Paris or anywhere in France for that matter, Dublin (because of the many memories), London, Liverpool (because I'm a Liverpool fan), Spain, and Italy. Not to say I don't fancy travelling anywhere else, but these places are at the top of my list.

So how did Croatia come into the picture?

I googled places to travel and came across Lonely Planet. And scrolling down the page, I came across Photo of the Day on the website.

Plitvice National Park

A beautiful, emerald green lake, surrounded by luscious green forest captivated my view. I have never seen such wondrous beauty. Never in my life, have I seen something so divine as that single photo. And so I clicked on the photo to find out more about this beautiful lake.

It took me to 'Croatia Gallery', which led me to believe the lake was somewhere in Croatia (I'm a genius, I know) and there were more photos taken from all over Croatia and they were all as beautiful as the lake.

Croatia is like a beautiful fairy tale. Whenever you imagine Beauty and the Beast, Snow White or Rapunzel, you can imagine Croatia being the backdrop for all these magical tales.

And you want to relive your childhood memories of reading these wonderful fairy tales, where anything can happen, where magic constantly floats in the air, and happy endings will always come for those who wait and those who strive for it.

Just looking at the photos, you can already imagine yourself being a part of the magic. You are the Cinderella and you will find your Prince Charming here. Being a hopeless romantic, it all seems believable. And yes, I hope to go to Croatia one day, to re-live the childhood magic I once knew.

Trakoscan Castle

Defensive walls leading up to the Venetian citadel

Lovrjenac

St Saviour Curch

Palace Hotel

Old Town city wall and fort

Old harbour at dusk

So .. does MAS have a promotional flight bound to Croatia? hehe~

Croatia - It's Now On My Travel Destination List

What I Learned Watching The Discovery Channel

Cleopatra.

It was never a topic that actually has intrigued me to discuss or to find out more about her before. She was probably the last pharaoh of Egypt as history has told us that the Roman Empire has conquered Egypt, which then thus brought the death of Cleopatra. Because she refused to be paraded and humiliated by Octavius, her captor, she committed suicide by smuggling the venomous Egyptian cobra.

By chance, I was waiting for my house-mate to get ready to get to work, and I just happened to switch on the Discovery Channel - The Mysterious Death of Cleopatra. I didn't know why it was mysterious. We all know the history of her death. Her lover, Julius Caesar, was assassinated. Then the Romans cam a-knockin' led by Octavius and Cleopatra and Mark Antony lost the battle, which led to Mark Antony's suicide. Imprisoned and about to be humiliated, Cleopatra chose death over the Roman's triumph.

But there was more to the Egyptian Queen than what was merely mentioned.

She came from an incestuous marriage. Her parents were brother and sister. She later married her own brother, and then murdered him and thereby inherit the throne of Egypt at age 17. So basically, she was trouble from the start. If you can commit such heinous crime, killing your own brother or husband or something ... you must have been rotten to the core. Just because you're rotten, doesn't mean you can't climb to great power. Because of just that, I believe you are willing to do anything to be in power.

Although, Cleopatra can't be fully blamed because her family ties were filled with murder and mayhem. So I suppose, it's just in her blood. Anyway, what Discovery Investigates had to show was that was Cleopatra's death really by suicide or homicide? Pat Brown, a leading FBI Criminal Profiler, and a team of experts from fields as diverse as archaeology and toxicology, goes deep into the mind of Cleopatra and the minds of those who were connected to her untimely death.

People commit suicide because they no longer want to be alive. They are so emotionally-pained and distraught that they simply cannot continue to live, believing that death and only death will rid them of this pain. According to Pat Brown, this does not fit Cleopatra's personality or behavioural pattern at all. Cleopatra was a strong woman, who stared defeat right in the eye, refused to back down and always continued fighting. Therefore, it is impossible for her to be so out of character to end her own life.

Even in her family history, there was no history of suicide. There was plenty of murder, but no suicide. Pat Brown flew all the way to Egypt to investigate history - what caused her death. She allegedly committed suicide by allowing a deadly snake to bite her arm, thus allowing the venom to seep through her body hence ending her life. The primary suspect - the Egyptian cobra.

According to an expert in venomous snakes, a grown person can die from the snake's bite in a matter of a few hours. Therefore, this eliminates the snake as being the cause of Cleopatra's death. This is because, as history wrote it, Cleopatra wrote a suicide note which she had the guards to send to her captor, Octavius. The timeframe from her writing the suicide note to Octavius finding her dead was merely a matter of minutes, therefore it was impossible for Cleopatra to die from a snake bite.

Another version of history was that Cleopatra drank poison from a poisonous plant, smuggled through her haircomb. An expert in toxicology advised that for a person to die from this poison, she would have had to drank at least 30 millimetres of the poison, which also eliminated this theory as the comb only allowed a few millimetres at least.

Therefore, the only conclusion would be homicide. But the question was, who murdered Cleopatra and why? Octavius seemed the only likely candidate, but he did not seem to have a motive to murder Cleopatra because he wanted to humiliate Cleopatra in front of Rome.

We later learned that carved deep into the walls of ancient temples in Egypt were reliefs that symbolised Cleopatra and her son from her liaison with Julius Ceasar, Caesarion. The reliefs showed that Cleopatra had wanted Caesarion to take the throne of Egypt. He was supposed to come in power, and thus was a threat to Octavius.

Knowing Cleopatra's intention for her son, Octavius then ordered Cleopatra to be murdered. Octavius had all the power now that he was the ultimate ruler of Egypt and Rome, he had the power to re-write history as we know it. He had Cleopatra murdered, spread the word that she committed suicide, then had Cleopatra's son murdered as well.

It just goes to show, we cannot 100% trust history as they can be manipulated into lies, truths can be hidden, tales can be exaggerated.

What I Learned Watching The Discovery Channel

My Birth Date in History - 1958

Nautilus travels under North Pole

On August 3, 1958, the U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus accomplishes the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The world's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska, and travelled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of the world. It then steamed on to Iceland, pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe.

The USS Nautilus was constructed under the direction of U.S. Navy Captain Hyman G. Rickover, a brilliant Russian-born engineer who joined the U.S. atomic program in 1946. In 1947, he was put in charge of the navy's nuclear-propulsion program and began work on an atomic submarine. Regarded as a fanatic by his detractors, Rickover succeeded in developing and delivering the world's first nuclear submarine years ahead of schedule. In 1952, the Nautilus' keel was laid by President Harry S. Truman, and on January 21, 1954, first lady Mamie Eisenhower broke a bottle of champagne across its bow as it was launched into the Thames River at Groton, Connecticut. Commissioned on September 30, 1954, it first ran under nuclear power on the morning of January 17, 1955.

Much larger than the diesel-electric submarines that preceded it, the Nautilus stretched 319 feet and displaced 3,180 tons. It could remain submerged for almost unlimited periods because its atomic engine needed no air and only a very small quantity of nuclear fuel. The uranium-powered nuclear reactor produced steam that drove propulsion turbines, allowing the Nautilus to travel underwater at speeds in excess of 20 knots.

In its early years of service, the USS Nautilus broke numerous submarine travel records and on July 23, 1958, departed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on "Operation Northwest Passage"--the first crossing of the North Pole by submarine. There were 116 men aboard for this historic voyage, including Commander William R. Anderson, 111 officers and crew, and four civilian scientists. The Nautilus steamed north through the Bering Strait and did not surface until it reached Point Barrow, Alaska, in the Beaufort Sea, though it did send its periscope up once off the Diomedes Islands, between Alaska and Siberia, to check for radar bearings. On August 1, the submarine left the north coast of Alaska and dove under the Arctic ice cap.

The submarine travelled at a depth of about 500 feet, and the ice cap above varied in thickness from 10 to 50 feet, with the midnight sun of the Arctic shining in varying degrees through the blue ice. At 11:15 p.m. EDT on August 3, 1958, Commander Anderson announced to his crew: "For the world, our country, and the Navy--the North Pole." The Nautilus passed under the geographic North Pole without pausing. The submarine next surfaced in the Greenland Sea between Spitzbergen and Greenland on August 5. Two days later, it ended its historic journey at Iceland. For the command during the historic journey, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decorated Anderson with the Legion of Merit.

After a career spanning 25 years and almost 500,000 miles steamed, the Nautilus was decommissioned on March 3, 1980. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1982, the world's first nuclear submarine went on exhibit in 1986 as the Historic Ship Nautilus at the Submarine Force Museum in Groton, Connecticut.

My Birth Date in History - 1958