Badshahi Mosque, Lahore, Pakistan

Badshahi Mosque in Lahore (Punjab, Pakistan) is one of the best examples of Mughal architecture anywhere in Asia. Begun in 1671 under the orders of Emperor Aurangzeb (the sixth Mughal Emperor) it has had a checkered history but, following a complete restoration between 1939 and 1960, it is now a major tourist attraction as well as a centre of Moslem worship and prayer.

Some facts about Badshahi Mosque:

· The building of Badshahi Mosque was started in 1671 and completed in 1673

· It was originally built to house a sacred relic, namely a strand of the Prophet’s hair

· For more than 300 years (until 1986) it was the largest mosque in the World. It is still believed to be the fifth largest in the World.

· The design is based on that of the Jama Mosque in Delhi that was built by Aurangzeb’s father, Shah Jahan.

· The architecture incorporates Indian, Central Asian, Persian and Islamic elements.

· The main Prayer Hall is more than 2100 square meters in size, and the courtyard occupies nearly 26,000 square meters.

· The walls were built using small bricks assembled with lime mortar, then faced with red sandstone.

· The main Prayer Hall is decorated with stucco tracery, frescoes, and inlaid marble.

· The Mosque was built on a 6-meter high plinth to prevent flooding by the nearby Ravi River. The main entrance (from the east) is therefore approached by a flight of 22 three-sided steps.

· The Mosque is symmetrical. The closeness of the river meant that it was not possible to build a northern gateway, so there is therefore no southern gateway either.

· The main Prayer Hall is divided into seven sections by arches. Three of these chambers are surmounted by domes that are clad in white marble.

· The four minarets at the corners of the Mosque are 54 metres high.

· Badshahi Mosque suffered damage during the Sikh Empire of the early 18th century. An earthquake in 1840 destroyed the turrets at the tops of the minarets which were then used during the Sikh Civil War as gun emplacements to bombard the nearby Lahore Fort.

· Repairs to the Mosque began in 1852, but the real restoration work took place in the 20th century, at a cost of around five million rupees

Today, despite the large number of tourists it attracts, Badshahi Mosque is a place of peace and tranquillity. It is well worth a visit not only as a wonderful example of Mughal architecture but as somewhere to offer a prayer and be quiet for a time.

© John Welford

Aldabra Atoll, Indian Ocean

Aldabra Atoll is a group of coral islands that surround a shallow lagoon in the Indian Ocean. It is part of the Seychelles island group, but it is unoccupied by people and seldom visited by anyone. It is the least-disturbed large island in the Ocean. The atoll measures 21 miles long by 9 miles wide, the whole land area being 60 square miles. It is the second largest coral atoll in the world.

The isolation of Aldabra (it is more than 700 miles from the main island of the Seychelles) is what makes it a very special place in terms of its wildlife, because it is home to more than 150,000 giant tortoises - the world’s largest population of this endangered reptile. It is therefore the only place in the world where a reptile is the dominant herbivore. The only mammals on the atoll are flying foxes (a species of bat).

Aldabra Atoll was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.

© John Welford

A white elephant - an unwanted gift

We often use the term “white elephant” to describe a publicly funded project that costs a huge amount of money to build and maintain but is generally reckoned to be utterly useless. This is a case of a term being used for something very close to its original meaning, although it rarely applies to real elephants these days.

In old Siam (now known as Thailand) elephants were extremely useful animals when tamed and trained to do all sorts of agricultural work – just about everything that horses would do on western farms, or tractors in more recent times. They were also used to carry heavy goods and on ceremonial occasions.

As we know, elephants are usually grey, but sometimes a white one is born. This is a very rare event, so every time this happened in 18^th century Siam it automatically became the property of the King and therefore highly revered for that reason alone.

The white elephant’s special status meant that it could not be put to work or even ridden, but it had to be looked after and pampered. For someone to have charge of a white elephant but neglect it in any way was a serious offence.

That meant that the King had an excellent means of keeping people in order. If somebody annoyed him, but could not actually be accused of doing something for which he could be punished, the King would give him a present – namely a white elephant.

To be given anything by the King was clearly a great honour, and the recipient had no choice but to treat the gift with every consideration, but nobody who was given that particular gift was likely to be very happy about it. Here was a hulking great beast that was very expensive to maintain, was likely to have a lifespan that equaled or exceeded that of its new owner, but which could never be made to pay its way. Many people who were given white elephants suffered financial ruin as a result.

It is hardly surprising that British travelers to Siam saw the custom of royal gifts that bankrupted the recipients as being an excellent metaphor for the useless and costly buildings and monuments that their own government sought to foist upon the general public. The use of the term “white elephant” is still widespread, even though most people have no idea where it comes from.

© John Welford

A plea for "Unique"

If you consult a modern dictionary of English and look up the word “unique” you will usually find at least two meanings on offer. These are “the only one within a given set of objects or circumstances” and “remarkable or unusual”. This – to my mind – is unfortunate and I would like to make the case for only the first of these being allowed.

There is no doubt as to where the word comes from. It entered the English language in the 17^th century via French, which in turn got it from the Latin “unicus”, meaning “only”, the root of the word being “unus”, which means “one”. There is therefore no question that the original meaning had nothing to do with “remarkable” or “unusual”.

If you look at a less-than-modern dictionary you are unlikely to find the second meaning offered to you, as this usage has only appeared relatively recently and must be regarded as an informal usage that has crept into common parlance and is therefore recognized by later dictionaries that seek to reflect usage rather than dictate it.

My complaint about the informal usage - which is usually seen when people qualify the term to say that something is “quite unique” or “very unique” – is that an important language tool is being lost. If you stick to the original meaning you have a quick and simple way of saying that there is only one of something – “The Eiffel Tower is a unique structure”, for example. 

However, if you assume that the word means “unusual”, what form of language can you use when you do actually want to say that there is only one of something? You cannot use “very unique” or even “extremely unique”, because these qualifying terms are only stages in a spectrum of meaning. “Very” could imply anything from, say, 70% to 99%, and it is anyone’s guess what you had in mind. “Very” can never mean 100%, and you have thrown away the only word you had at your disposal that pedants like me can use when we mean “the absolutely only one”.

I suppose that is the answer – you would have to say “absolutely unique”, but I am only using one word whereas you have to use two!

© John Welford

A few facts about paperclips

The humble paperclip – a short piece of thin wire bent round in such a way that that it can provide a means of holding two or more pieces of paper together on a temporary basis – is perhaps more interesting than you might think. Here are a few facts about paperclips that might surprise you.

Who invented it? 

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903). Spencer was a polymath, being skilled in philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics and engineering. As a writer on these subjects he sold more than a million books in his lifetime. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame – paperclips aside – is that he coined the phrase “the survival of the fittest” that Charles Darwin was perfectly happy to acknowledge was an apt description of how members of species passed on new characteristics to later generations by not being the ones that died young.

It was as an engineer that Herbert Spencer came up “Spencer’s Binding Pin”, and he went into production with it at a small factory in central London. Although it was initially successful, the product failed to excite long-term public interest, and it was left to a Norwegian engineer, Johann Vaaler, to file a patent for the device in 1899. 

A symbol of resistance

During World War Two the paperclip acquired political significance, given its re-invention by a Norwegian. When Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Norway, badges bearing the image of King Haakon VII, who had been forced into exile, were banned. Norwegians took to wearing paperclips on their jacket lapels instead.

Many are sold, but few are used

An unnamed researcher, on a quiet day, worked out that only a tiny proportion of the 11 billion paperclips sold each year ever fulfill their purpose of clipping pieces of paper together. 

Apart from all those boxes of paperclips that never come out of the office store cupboard, people have found all sorts of other uses for paperclips which mainly involve pulling them out of shape in such a way that they can never be returned to how they were when they left the factory.

If you need to poke something into a small hole, a deconstructed paperclip is often just the job. Pulling a paperclip apart is also something to do if you can’t be bothered to doodle on a piece of paper while waiting for your phone call to be connected to the person you really want to speak to!

© John Welford

A few facts about elements

An element can be defined as a substance that cannot be broken down into a simpler one by means of a chemical reaction.  Elements (e.g. carbon and oxygen) can often be combined (either by natural means or in a laboratory) to form other substances known as compounds (e.g. carbon dioxide).

The factor that distinguishes one element from another is the number of protons in its nucleus. The most basic element is hydrogen, which has only one proton, hence its “atomic number” is 1.

To date, 118 different elements have been identified, but many of the heavier elements do not occur naturally and have only been created in laboratories. 

Very heavy elements are unstable and readily break apart, releasing particles and/or energy as they do so – these are termed “radioactive”, such as uranium with an atomic number of 92 and plutonium (atomic number 94). 

The term “half-life” has been coined to define the stability of an element, the factor in question being how long it takes for half of a given quantity of the element to decay as the nucleus breaks up and the substance changes into something that is more stable. Some radioactive elements have half-lives of millions of years, whereas some manufactured elements exist for only fractions of a second.

Various elements share certain features in common and so can be grouped together. The standard method of organizing the elements so that these shared features can be tabulated and easily recognised is the Periodic Table (see illustration).

© John Welford

A few facts about electrons

The basic particles of atoms are protons, neutrons and electrons. However, to call an electron a particle is perhaps a bit misleading, given that it can better be described as a packet of energy that whizzes round the nucleus of an atom and more resembles a cloud than an orbiting particle. 

The electron is tiny in comparison to the nucleus of protons and neutrons. The mass of a proton is about 1800 times greater than that of an electron, but the two carry equivalent opposing electric charges, that of the proton being positive and the electron negative. 

There will generally be as many electrons in an atom as there are protons. In a hydrogen atom, which has a single proton, there will be a single electron. However, a carbon atom has six protons and therefore six electrons. 

Multiple electrons are arranged in “shells” at increasing distances from the nucleus, such that the innermost shell can hold a maximum of two electrons, shell 2 can contain up to eight electrons, shell 3 can have up to eighteen electrons, etc. 

An atom of sodium contains 11 protons in its nucleus and therefore has 11 electrons. These are arranged in three shells – two in the first shell, eight in the second, and the final electron being on its own in the third shell. 

Electrons can be gained and lost between atoms. When this happens, the overall electric charge of the atoms will change, thus allowing chemical bonds to be made. Electric currents are created when electrons move between atoms of elements such as copper, which are classed as good conductors of electricity.

© John Welford