Huygen's Union Sign-Up Thread

[conmcb25]

What are you explorers going to do when you run into pirates?

[proviisori]

Originally posted by conmcb25
What are you explorers going to do when you run into pirates?

They will yell something in Dutch that no-one understands and wet themselves.


...something like: "stoelgang!"
Gotta love online dictionaries.

[SFADAMS44]

Originally posted by proviisori
...something like: "stoelgang!"
Gotta love online dictionaries.

Chair pace??

[Rhothaerill]

I think it's "Die pirates".

[proviisori]

I guess you have to wait for Aidun to come here and provide you with the translation.

[Keygen]

Originally posted by conmcb25

What are you explorers going to do when you run into pirates?

I guess they will have to call for the mighty navy of the Delian League to trash every single pirate that will stand before them

[Beta]

So - I'm sure you heard the story....

The Dutch and the Indigenous American People (ie Indians) were negotiating after the Dutch landed on what is now Long Island. The Dutch offered new technology and cloth. The natives offered trinkets. The Dutch weren't impressed and asked if the Indians had anything else to trade. The Indians pointed to the south-west, and offered to include the island down there in the trade. The principal Dutch negotiator, looking through his telescope, asked:

S'tat an island?

[Aidun]

Stoelgang is a euphemism for ****ting, because you have to sit down before you **** (stoel = chair (English: stool); gang = a movement, going to something; so it means sitting down for a certain purpose). In hospitals doctors generally don't ask patients "how's your ****ting going?" but they ask how a patient's stoelgang was going.

[Aidun]

There were two famous people with the name Huygens:

Constantijn Huygens was one of the most senior political advisors of the Dutch stadholder (president) Prince Maurits van Oranje and his younger brother Prince Frederik-Hendrik van Oranje. Huygens was secretary of the Council of State, the main advirsory council of the executive and senior diplomat to mainly England. He was provide that status of a nobleman by the English King Jacob I and the French King Louis XVI. Apart from this political activities, Huygens is one of the greatest Dutch poets and composers. He wrote a truly vast amount of poems. As a typical man of the renaissance and a humanist, he was a homo universalis in that he practiced everything from the arts to the natural sciences as well as duelling. He died on Good Friday, 1680 at the age of 90.

His son Christiaan Huygens is probably the person to which this team's name is dedicated. He was a famous mathemathician, astronomer and physicist. He studied mathematics and legal studies at Leiden University. He was member of the Englsh scientific order the Royal Society from 1663 inwards. He was research director of the French Académie des sciences. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle Blaise Pascal and John Locke

At the age of 17 the proved how Simon Stevin and Galileo Galilei were wrong that a hanging chain is not parabolic. Huygens invented the formula for the circular, centre-tied force, which Isaac Newton later used in his Mechanics. Huygens also formulated the laws governing inelastic collission.

Huygens invented the first reliable tool to measure time: the pendulum clock. Before this invention the measurement of time for longer periods than half an hour was impossible. The pendulum clock also allowed the measurement of minutes and seconds. The centerpiece of this research was the cyclocloid, the curve made by the pendulum and along which every point moves in an equal speed. He got a patent on the pendulum clock in 1656 and invented the first watch and patented it in 1675.

Huygens is the discoverer of Titan, the biggest of the moons of Saturnus with the telescopes he and his less famous brother Constantijn (not to be confused with his fater) built. He also discovered the rings of Saturnus and concluded (correctly) that they were made of small rocks. He was the first to draw a map of the planet Mars. He also discovered the Orion nebula and was able to detect individual stars in it. He was able to spot the comet of Halley. Finally he estimated the distance of the star Sirius as 22664 times the distance to the sun by comparing their respective light density. For Huygens the sun was a star like every other.

Huygens disagreed with Isaac Newton about the nature of light. Newton thought that light was made up of particles, photons, and denied the possibility that it was a wave; Huygens described light as a wave. In the early 19th century it was Thomas Young who confirmed Huygens' theory and rejected Newton's. In the early 20th century by Einstein, and again with the invention of lasers in the second half of the 20th century, it was shown that both 17th century scholars were right and that light should sometimes be analyzed as a wave and sometimes as a stream of particles, photons.

Huygens research into combustion engines and steam engines as well as air pumps were important for the later inventions of the steam engine by Thomas Newcomen and of the combustion engine by Daimler. Huygens was able to let gunpowder explode in a controlled way to power an engine.

Huygens believed in and speculated about life on other planets. 98 years before the publication of this book, Giordano Bruno was burned by the Inquisition for similar speculations. However, living in the Republic of the United Netherlands, Huygens enjoyed protection of freedom of speech and religion.

Huygens died at the age of 66 on 8 July 1695. His collection of lenses and telescopes has been sold and is scattered all over the world, but still exists.

[Keygen]

Nice historical lesson Aidun

There is a spacecraft called "Cassini-Huygens", probably the second part refers to Huygens, the Dutch astronomer mentioned above. Developed by ESA and sent to Saturn, to study the planet and its satellite, Titan.

[ZargonX]

Excellent summary, Aidun. Thank you for posting

[Beta]

Aidun.

Thank you.

[GeoModder]

Dood aan de boekaniers!!!

That's what those Huygenaars will yell.
(comes rather close to "guichelaars", don't you think? )

[Aidun]

Translation:

Death to the buccanneers!!!

Pronunciation of the Dutch phrase:

>>Doad aahn duh bookanears<<

[ZargonX]

Ok, my first shot at an icon for the team. Pretty straightforward, with the "golden clock gear" motif for Huygen. Anyone else can feel free to throw up a concept!