Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 27, 2025
But Clio, the Muse of History, is an inexorable mistress, and she will not rest content with mere hearsay, however venerable, and as a result of careful investigation it would seem that Flavio Gioja, who for centuries has been generally credited with this marvellous discovery, must himself have been a personage almost as mythic as the Sirens of this shore, for his very name is spelled in a variety of ways that is hopelessly confusing.
The subject hardly yet admits of an exact and scientific answer. We can merely here suggest the probability of a vast antiquity to human beings, and of the existence of the FOSSIL or PRE-ADAMITIC MAN. Ripogenus is a tarn, a lovely oval tarn, within a rim of forest and hill; and there behold, O gioja! at its eastern end, stooping forward and filling the sphere, was Katahdin, large and alone.
Nor can the ingenious theory be upheld that the fleur-de-lys, the emblem of the French kings of Naples, which still decorates the dial of the compass in almost all lands, is in any wise connected with Carlo il Zoppo, the monarch to whom Gioja is said to have dedicated his ingenious discovery.
As he passed me last night in his carriage of State, while the music pealed in rich rejoicing strains, that solemn chant with which the monks break upon the revellers, in "Lucrezia Borgia," came into my mind: "La gioja del profani 'E un fumo passagier' "
At Aleppo or Alexandria some astute trader of Amalfi—perhaps his name really was Flavio Gioja—contrived to learn the new method of steering from some Moslem or Jewish merchant, and he in his turn brought this novel and precious piece of information back to the Italian shores.
The compass, discovered according to tradition by Gioja of Naples in 1302, was employed by Columbus for the voyage to America in 1492. The telescope, known to the Arabians in the Middle Ages, and described by Roger Bacon in 1250, helped Copernicus to prove the revolution of the earth in 1530, and Galileo to substantiate his theory of the planetary system.
THE COMPASS. The properties of the magnetic needle were not first applied to navigation, as has been thought, by Flavio Gioja, but long before his time, as early as the twelfth century, the compass came into general use. Navigation was no longer confined to the Mediterranean and to maritime coasts. The sailor could push out into the ocean without losing himself on its boundless waste.
On the contrary, the nearer the travellers approached the lunar surface, the drearier, the more inhospitable, and the more unearthly, everything seem to look. Still when five o'clock in the morning brought our travellers to within 50 miles of Mount Gioja which their spy-glasses rendered as visible as if it was only about half a mile off, Ardan could not control himself.
Their only thought was of traffic, and of carrying it on by the shortest road. The mariner's compass, invented, according to the generally received opinion, about 1302, by one Flavio Gioja of Amalfi, enabled vessels to sail at a distance from the coasts, and to guide themselves when out of sight of land.
Aesthetics, Criticism, Philology, and Philosophy; Baretti, Parini, Giordani, Gioja, Romagnosi, Gallupi, Rosmini, Gioberti. From 1860 to 1885. ITALIAN LITERATURE AND ITS DIVISIONS. The fall of the Western Empire, the invasions of the northern tribes, and the subsequent wars and calamities, did not entirely extinguish the fire of genius in Italy.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking