The London Bridge was created because many people were inconvenienced by not having easy access over the Thames River (The river the bridge now crosses.) Previous bridges were made across the river, but they were made out of wood, which eventually caught fire and burned down. The construction of the London Bridge took six years to complete. ” It was designed by John Rennie, a Scottish Engineer, begun in 1825 under the superintendence of his sons, Sir John and George Rennie, and completed in 1831″ (London Bridge). The cost to make the entire bridge was £2,000,000 which is equivalent to $3,043,300. If you take in consideration that this bridge was built in the 1800’s, you’ll come to the realization that this bridge was highly expensive to construct. The bridge 928 feet long and 54 feet broad and is help up by five granite arches. These granite arches have a span of one hundred and fifty-two feet. An interesting fact is that the lamp posts on the bridge are made of iron from French Canons which were captured in the Peninsular War. More recently, the expanded the bridge in width and it is now 65 feet wide. It is calculated that about 22,000 vehicles and about 110,000 pedestrians cross the bridge every single week. This shows the importance of this bridge to the many people who live in London.

In the Sherlock Holmes story, The Man with the Twisted Lip, the London Bridge was mentioned when John Watson was describing how to get the opium den. “Upper Swandam Lane is a vile alley lurking behind the high wharves which line the north side of the river to the east of London Bridge. Between a slop-shop and a gin-shop, approached by a steep flight of steps leading down to a black gap like the mouth of a cave, I found the den of which I was in search” (Doyle). For some reason, in the context of the story, it seems to make the bridge mysterious and almost creepy. I think it seems like that because it’s so close to the opium den and the author also used words like “lurking” to describe the alley near the London Bridge. Besides that description, I don’t see any other mention of the London Bridge in this Holmes story.

Citations:

Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Man with the Twisted Lip. London: Penguin, 1995. Print.

“London Bridge.” London Bridge. George Landow, 10 Oct. 2001. Web. 05 Nov. 2015.

 

 

Link to spread sheet: https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1uJSEpWfF6U1SOOq7jw3Acw7BQg0UhWhjtkxAmexs

Cards:

 

 

Here’s my introductory video!

 

I chose to do my topic of Google Ngram on science. Since science is a huge interest for me, I felt that this would be a perfect topic. My two words I chose was “God” and “evolution.” These two words are actually totally opposite, but they do relate to each other. They’re opposite in the way that evolution completely goes against the teaching of God. In the bible, it states that God created everything, including humans. In the theory of evolution, it states that humans evolved from apes, which is the polar opposite of God creating humans. Darwin published his book on evolution, On the Origin of Species, in 1859. Before this book, no one even thought to question the bible or the ways of God. Most people believed in Adam and Eve and God being the creator of everything because of how big of a role the church played in eighteenth century society. Even right after Darwin published his book, many people still weren’t convinced that there were any other theories of human creation aside from God. But, towards the end of the eighteenth century, people started to question the Bible and even started wondering if Darwin was right. You can see this in the Ngram pictures I have below. There’s an extreme spike of the word evolution in books from 1870 to 1900. The word ‘God’ is pretty gradual through out the entire 18th century, but around 1894, the line for evolution is actually higher than the line for God, proving that people started to change their minds and their way of thinking. Also, the line for God had a pretty dramatic drop from 1895 to 1900. I was curious as to how much this line would continue to drop, so I changed the year from 1900 to 2000. This results were actually quite shocking. ‘God’ started dropping more gradually and ‘evolution’ was increasing with every passing year. Towards the end of the 19th century, evolution is actually a lot higher than God. I find it interesting that it took so long for people to start changing their opinions on God and science. Now, I feel that more people believe in evolution than they do in Adam and Eve, which is completely opposite of how it was  in the 18th century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinism

It saddens me to say this because I was really excited for assignment, but for some strange reason, I could not find any eighteenth or nineteenth century books with marginalia in them. I spent three whole hours in the library and went up and down countless isles. I looked in probably over 40 books and I could not find anything. I found some interesting things such as THIS blue and red ink fingerprints, used tissues folded in the pages, and I found a lot of underlining, but I unfortunately could not find anything with good marginalia. I really do not know why I couldn’t find any. My friend that was in the same isle as me found a book with marginalia in it. I browsed all the books I passed by to look for the characteristics that would make them an eighteenth or nineteenth century book. I looked at the bindings, the spine of the book, the design, the type of paper, the covers and the layouts of the covers, etc. I opened all the books that looked like they were older and flipped through the pages, but all I found was underlining, highlighting, and occasional scribbles. I actually did find marginalia in one book, but the modern writing style proved it not to be from the eighteenth or nineteenth century. The one book I found interesting with the red and blue ink finger prints in it was called In the Favor of the Sensitive Man, and Other Essays. It had a couple of other underlining’s, but the person who did that never actually wrote words, so I am not positive if it was even in the eighteenth or nineteenth century. I hope to one day, in the near future, go back to the library and continue my search for eighteenth and nineteenth century marginalia.

My Omeka archive was about three different portrayals of Sherlock Holmes;

-Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes

-Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes

-The original illustration of Sherlock Holmes

These are my three items:

#1

#2

#3

This is my Collection

This is my Exhibit

 

 

Out of all the articles on the list, I chose to read an article about women on trains. It was about one specific woman who was writing to the editor of the Times Magazine asking if there was anyway that there could be a specific section for mothers who had children. She traveled for many miles on several different occasions and asked a variety of people while on the train if she could go somewhere specific with her children for privacy.  This was one of the responses; “At Bristol (Midland Station) I was laughed at for requesting such a thing as a ladies’ compartment; at Liverpool I was almost insulted for the same request; at Chester they were more polite, but would not promise to keep a compartment for ladies only; at Dublin it was useless to mention the subject, and so on at many other stations. ” This request was made out of genuine care of others in her same carriage. It not like she wanted a separate carriage because she felt like she deserved it more than others, because that’s the opposite of her reasoning. She just wanted it so she wasn’t an inconvenience to anyone else on the train which is proven in this statement; “Now, Sir, anyone who has travelled far with children knows the trouble and annoyance they cause to everyone in the carriage, especially to those in charge; and surely it would be the greatest boon to mothers and nurses to be sure of having a compartment to themselves, or, at least, with only other children and females as companions.” The article never mentioned if her request was accepted or denied, but because of my knowledge of the Victorian Age, I am assuming it was denied because of the lack of rights and empathy of not only women, but children too.