Skip to main content

Free topic yay !

Free Topic... You know what this means boys and girls...

For those who don't like historical studies or find them boring, you can leave now :P

Right, now that those who are uninterested are gone, let's talk about history !

Many of you may know this tongue-twister, be it from your parents or your English teacher 

-"She sells sea-shells by the seashore."

It seems like a really simple, a sentence used to practice pronunciation of words starting with "s". Well, there's actually hidden history behind this simple sentence.

Enter, the Princess of Paleontology, Mary Anning.

Not a familiar name, isn't it ?

Well, Mary Anning was the first person to discover a variety of fossils, from the ichthyosaurus to raptors. Although, her discoveries were not credited to her at the time, and few know about her name now... Many people did not know the existence of dinosaurs at the time, and so when fossils as such were debated in the halls of society regarding on what it is, or what it used to be, but never who found it. 

She grew up like her father, a person who collects eccentric objects on the beach, e.g interesting looking seashells, whatever that might have washed up on shores.  Hence, the sentence, she sells sea-shells by the seashore.  Living in a poor family, she sold every fossil to wealthy collectors which in return took credit for the fine, which Mary learnt to resent. 

She had a total of 5 major discoveries on the beaches near her home. But as the more and more frequently seen fossils were dug out, her sales on the fossils reduced. The members of the Geological Studies of London didn't give her the recognition she deserve... and so now, we only know her as the woman who sold sea shells by the seashore.

Anyway, thanks for reading this poorly written blog-post. 

Cheers,
Chua.

Comments

  1. Kiran4 August 2018 at 19:56

    This is a very creative thing to talk about. Thank you for enlightening me with a small history lesson! I had no idea who Mary was till this very day.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Nightshade2 November 2018 at 03:34

    Wow, I never knew that the tongue twister "She sells sea-shells by the seashore" was based on Mary Anning's life and job until reading your post. This was an informative and great write-up on the history of someone that contributed to the geological study of fossils.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ICT-ton and Carnival 2018

Well it's sad to say I missed this one purely because I was busy and no other reason. So I'm going to sum the event up through friends' experiences. To start off, there was a senamrobik activity in the morning. This is quite weird as... you know... it's a carnival.... not Sports Day to be exact. Nevertheless, that happened. I'm guessing most of the participants weren't wearing the proper attire as they didn't get the memo till the last minute. Besides, there was a dunking game that was setup by the Scouts. Though I didn't go to the carnival personally, a few clips circulated around social media such as Facebook and Instagram and that's how I know Joash from 4 Balau got dunked. Mr James that was a former teacher in the school along with Pn Lau got dunked as well. Lastly, the Teen Star Talent show. Again, I didn't go to the carnival so I do not know half of what happened during the event, but the highlight of the carnival was Mr Ganapathy, th...
7 comments
Read more

Optimism / Pessimism Bias

Welcome back, friends. Exam weeks was long and harsh, but now it's over. Hooray! As for the blog posts, they're starting again and this time, oh boy, free topic for days (at least I hope so). So fasten your seat belts as we explore more random topics for no apparent reason. Today's Topic : Optimism/Pessimism Bias "Great, another bias. What's next? K-Drama bias? Anime bias? Jeez, at least talk about something positive." Well, positive things aren't always fun to write. So... cliche and boring. I rather dig into negative stuff just to find out what causes them and how we can solve them. Doesn't  that sound positive to you? Either way, let's jump into today's topic. I'm going to cover both Optimism bias and Pessimism bias in the same blog post, because they usually are found together in a statement. But before that, let's ask ourselves this common question that is used to test optimism and pessimism. Is the cup half full or h...
2 comments
Read more

First Week of School

First Week of School (SMKDJ) The very first week of the first school semester. Some dread it, while others look forward to it. To me, neither of both mattered. A month of holiday might sound good to take a break after a long year of hard work and constant studying to prepare for PT3, but after a week or so, you start to get that feeling of missing being with your friends in school, doing activities together. (not group work with random people that don't know each other really well) New semester, new class, new classmates and a whole new timetable to memorize. First week is always pretty exciting, since you get to meet your friends again after a long month. What's more exciting is that the classes. While some might be boring, others can be quite fascinating. Since it's the first week, nothing much other than normal classes and longer than average speeches from Mr.Ganapathy. The changes for co-curriculum were quite interesting too, but transporters...
3 comments
Read more