Every Day Is Special: Klaus

Showing posts with label Klaus. Show all posts

September 25 - Feast Day of Saint Nicholas of Flüe in Switzerland

Posted on September 25, 2020

There's something about "Saint Nicholas" that just kicks me right into Christmas stuff, but apparently this St. Nick had nothing to do with presents for kiddos.

Wait - he is sometimes referred to as Brother Klaus, which makes me think of Santa Claus - the other name for St. Nick!

It turns out that Klaus is sometimes a person's entire name but is other times a shortened version of Nikolaus or Niklaus, which are German forms of Nicholas.

So, today's honored saint is STILL not the Christmas character we know so well. Who was this Nicholas of Flüe?

He lived long ago. Nicholas of Flüe lived in Switzerland in the 1400s, right around the time of the Renaissance.

He was a hermit. Well, he was a farmer, a soldier, a judge, a husband, and a father of 10 kids. But he had a dream (or vision?) and decided that the dream was telling him that his ordinary work and concerns were taking away from his spiritual life, so he left all of that and went off to live by himself.

This was the area where Nicholas of Flüe lived by himself.
Of course, it's probably changed a lot in more than 500 years!

However, Nicholas was not alone all the time. He assisted at a mass every day - and supposedly he lived off of no other food other than the bread and wine used for Holy Communion (or Eucharist) for 19 YEARS!!! Also, "Brother Klaus" gave such good spiritual advice that important leaders from all over Europe came to him for counsel! And when he died at age 70, he was surrounded by his wife and grown children. So that's nice!

There are quite a few chapels named Brother Klaus
(or similar names) in Germany and Switzerland.
This German chapel (above and below) is pretty amazing!

Apparently Brother Klaus was able to prevent a civil war between the various cantons of Switzerland, and that is one reason he is considered the patron saint of that nation.

Also on this date:

National One-Hit Wonder Day

Math Storytelling Day

Anniversary of the passage of an amendment that took 74,003 days to be adopted!!!

Anniversary of an early warning that smoking

is harmful (1878!)

Feast Day of Niklaus von Flüe in Switzerland

Kamarampaka Day

Birthday of author and cartoonist

Shel Silverstein

Armed Forces Day in Mozambique

Save the Koala Day
(last Friday in September)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

January 23 – Happy Birthday, Karl Ernst Claus

Posted on January 23, 2015

Have you ever heard of the platinum group?

I'm not talking about a rock band that has had loads of platinum records (like the Beatles or the Rolling Stones).

Instead, I'm talking about a group of metals that hang out together on the periodic table. These metals are dense and generally inert to most chemicals. That means that they don't easily react with other substances.

This makes these metals highly resistant to wear and tarnish. Chemicals, hot temperatures, electricity—these metals tend to be quite stable no matter what we throw at them. All of these characteristics make the platinum group metals useful to humans!

Today's birthday boy (born on this date in 1796) was a chemist who discovered the last of the platinum group metals. He was Russian, and he named his discovery Ruthenium, which basically was a way of honoring his homeland.

By the way, Karl's name is sometimes seen as Karl Klaus and Carl Claus. If you are wondering what the REAL spelling is...well, he was Russian, so here it is: Карл Ка́рлович Кла́ус.

Ruthenium's chemical symbol is Ru, and its atomic number is 44. That means that there are 44 protons in each and every atom of ruthenium...and 44 electrons in non-ionized atoms, as well.

The atomic mass is an average. The periodic table give ruthenium's atomic mass as 101.07, so most ruthenium atoms must have 57 neutrons. Some isotopes have from 53 to 58 neutrons.

(Isotopes are forms of an element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. They are the same in their chemical properties, but different in weight or mass.)

Ru, Rh, Pd, Os, Ir, Pt are the platinum group.
They are ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum.
They make a square in the middle of yellow "transition metals."

To learn more about elements and the Periodic Table, check out this earlier post (scroll down to find links to the Element Song), or this earlier post (scroll down to the cool Interactive Periodic Table of Elements), or this earlier post (with an even better, even more interactive, Periodic Table).

I loved playing around the history portion of the interactive Periodic Table!

Also on this date: