Apatosaurus - also known as Brontosaurus - was a huge, plant-eating dinosaur, of the suborder Sauropoda, that lived in the Late Jurassic period, more than 140 million years ago. The name Brontosaur comes from the Greek bronte, 'thunder' and sauros, 'lizard', and implies that the animal shook the ground when it walked. It was about 21 metres long and weighed up to 30 metric tons. Its body was relatively short and thick, the neck long and slender, the tail large and strong, and the four limbs massive and of nearly equal length. The first brontosaurus skeleton was discovered in 1879 in Colorado by the American palaeontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. It lacked a skull, so Marsh gave it a blunt, small skull found nearby. Scientists confirmed in 1979 that the skull was that of another sauropod, Camarasaurus. The Apatosaurus true skull was found to have a longer snout and longer, finer teeth. Research Apatosaurus
Charlotte Bronte was an English writer. She was born in 1816 at Thornton and died in 1855. She was the third daughter of the Reverend Patrick Bronte, rector of Thornton, from which he removed in 1820, on becoming incumbent of Haworth, a moorland village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, about four miles from Keighley. Her mother died soon after this removal, and her father, an able though eccentric man, brought up Charlotte and her sisters in quite a Spartan fashion, inuring them to every kind of industry and fatigue.
After an education received partly at home and partly at neighbouring schools, Charlotte Bronte became a teacher, and then a governess in a family. In 1842 she went with her sister Emily Bronte to Brussels, with the view of acquiring a knowledge of the French and German languages, and she subsequently taught for a year in the school she had attended here.
In 1844 arrangements were entered into by her and her sisters Emily Bronte and Anne Bronte to open a school at Haworth, but from the want of success in obtaining pupils no progress was ever made with their scheme. They resolved now to turn their attention to literary composition; and in 1846 a volume of poems by the three sisters was published, under the names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. It was issued at their own risk, and attracted little attention, so they quit poetry for prose fiction, and produced each a novel. Charlotte Bronte (writing as Currer Bell) entitled her production The Professor, but it was everywhere refused by the publishing trade, and was not given to the world until after her death. Emily Bronte (writing as Ellis Bell) with her tale of Wuthering Heights, and Anne Bronte (writing as Acton Bell) with Agnes Grey, were more successful.
Charlotte Bronte's failure, however, did not discourage her, and she composed the novel of Jane Eyre, which was published in October, 1847. Its success was immediate and decided. Her second novel of Shirley appeared in 1849. Previous to this she had lost her two sisters, Emily dying on the 19th of December 1848, and Anne on the 28th of May, 1849 (after publishing a second novel, The Tenant of Wild Fell Hall). In the autumn of 1852 appeared Charlotte's third novel, Villette. Shortly after, she married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Bell Nicholls, but in nine months died of consumption. Her originally rejected tale of The Professor was published after her death, in 1857, and the same year a biography of her appeared written by Elizabeth Gaskell. Research Charlotte Bronte
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist. She was born in 1810 at Chelsea and died in 1865. The daughter of William Stevenson, editor of Scott's Magazine, she was brought up by an aunt at Knutsford in Cheshire (the original of the village in her story of Cranford) and in 1832 married William Gaskell, a Unitarian minister at Manchester. She achieved fame with her novel 'Mary Barton', written in 1848, which described factory life and the struggles then rife in Lancashire between workmen and employers. The Moorland Cottage, a Christmas story, appeared in 1850; and in 1853, her next regular novel, Ruth, which aims a distinct blow at the common moral judgments of society. Lizzie, Cranford, and other minor tales appeared at various times in Household Words, in which also she wrote her next novel, North and South, a Yorkshire tale. In 1857 appeared her admirable Life of Charlotte Bronte, and in 1860 Sylvia's Lovers. Wives and Daughters appeared posthumously in 1866. Research Elizabeth Gaskell
Horatio Nelson (Duke of Bronte) was an English naval commander. He was born in 1758 and died in 1805 from a sniper's gunshot at the Battle of Trafalgar. He was created Duke of Bronte by the Neapolitan government in 1799. Oddly, Horatio Nelson suffered from sea sickness. Horatio Nelson's dying words were indeed 'Kiss me Hardy', a popular myth that he actually said 'kismet Hardy' is believed to have been started at a time when affection between male friends was viewed as inappropriate, however during the 18th and 19th centuries such affection was quite usual and acceptable.
As well as a national hero, Horatio Nelson was famously cruel to his wife, who doted on him, abandoning her for the prostitute Emma Hamilton - at the time affairs with prostitutes and infidelity was quite the usual practice. Research Horatio Nelson
Dyspraxia (also known as Clumsy Child Syndrome, Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), Perceptuo-motor Dysfunction, Minimal Brain Dysfunction and Motor Learning Difficulty) is a believed (but unproven) immaturity of the brain though to result in messages not being properly transmitted to the body. It is believed by advocates of the theory to affect at least 2% of the British population in varying degrees of severity with 70% of those affected being male. Symptoms of dyspraxia may include some of: clumsiness; poor posture; awkward walking; confusion over which hand to use; difficulties in throwing or catching a ball; sensitivity to touch; finding some clothes uncomfortable; poor short term memory; poor body awareness; difficulties with reading and writing; inability to hold a pen or pencil properly; poor sense of direction; lack of balance; slow development; inability to answer simple questions even though they know the answer; speech problems, slow to learn to speak or incoherent speech; phobias and obsessive behaviour;
impatience; intolerance to having hair or teeth brushed, nails and hair cut; plasters too uncomfortable to wear. Though advocates of dyspraxia claim that different sufferers will suffer various symptoms, not all suffering all or even the same symptoms. Older sufferers typically display signs of very immature behaviour. Recent discoveries have found that often sufferers of dyspraxia hallucinate taste sensations when speaking, that is pronouncing different words gives rise to different tastes in the mouth. The Bronte sisters were thought to suffer from dyspraxia, and often sufferers excell in language and literature, while facing severe difficulties with inter-personal relationships and motor coordination. Research Dyspraxia
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