Glass harp

A glass harp (also called musical glasses, singing glasses, angelic organ, verrilion or ghost fiddle) is a musical instrument made of upright wine glasses.

It is played by running moistened or chalked fingers around the rim of the glasses. Each glass is tuned to a different pitch, either by grinding each goblet to the specified pitch, in which case the tuning is permanent, or by filling the glass with water until the desired pitch is achieved.

History

The glass harp was created in 1741 by Irishman Richard Pockrich, who is known as the first virtuoso of the musical glasses. Pockrich called his instrument the "angelic organ" and it was played with sticks, rather than by rubbing the glasses with a moistened finger. His successful concert career was brought to a premature end by a fire in which both the inventor and instrument perished in 1759.

The composer Christoph Willibald Gluck played the musical glasses. He performed in London and Copenhagen. His instrument consisted of 26 goblets.

Sugar plum

A sugar plum is a piece of dragée or hard candy made of hardened sugar in a small round or oval shape.

"Plum" in the name of this confection does not mean plum in the sense of the fruit of the same name, but referred to small size and spherical or oval shape. According to The Atlantic Monthly, traditional sugar plums contained no fruit, but were instead hardened sugar balls. According to the Huffington Post, these hardened sugar balls were comfits, and often surrounded a seed, nut, or spice.

History

The term sugar plum came into general usage in the 1600s. At that time, adding layers of sweet which give sugar plums and comfits their hard shell was done through a slow and labour-intensive process called panning. Until the mechanization of the process, it often took several days, and thus the sugar plum was largely a luxury product. In fact, in the 18th century the word plum became British slang for a large pile of money or a bribe. However, by the 1860s manufacturers were using steam heat and mechanized rotating pans, and it was then available for mass consumption.

The Nutcracker

The Nutcracker (Russian: Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия / Shchelkunchik, Balet-feyeriya; French: Casse-Noisette, ballet-féerie) is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera Iolanta.

Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s, and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in North America. Major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.

Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions, in particular the pieces featured in the suite. Among other things, the score is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda.

MS Asuka II

MS Asuka II (飛鳥II) is a cruise ship owned and operated by Nippon Yusen Kaisha. It was originally built by the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan, as Crystal Harmony for Crystal Cruises. In 2006, Crystal Harmony was transferred from the fleet of Crystal Cruises to that of Crystal's parent company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, and entered service under her current name.As of February 2009, it was the largest cruise ship in Japan.

Service history

1990–2006: Crystal Harmony

During the Crystal Harmony's maiden voyage in the South American/Caribbean waters, the ship caught on fire due to water entering her engine system. The Crystal Harmony drifted afloat for three days and, after passengers debarked in Panama,she sailed to the island of Curaçao, escorted by a tugboat.

2006 onwards: Asuka II

The Crystal Harmony was retired from the Crystal fleet in 2005. It was transferred to the parent company Nippon Yusen Kaisha to replace the Asuka. It underwent some renovations, and re-entered service as Asuka II.

Glass

Glass is a non-crystalline amorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical, technological, and decorative usage in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optoelectronics. Scientifically, the term "glass" is often defined in a broader sense, encompassing every solid that possesses a non-crystalline (that is, amorphous) structure at the atomic scale and that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state.

The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of glass are based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide), the primary constituent of sand. The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, which is familiar from use as window glass and in glass bottles. Of the many silica-based glasses that exist, ordinary glazing and container glass is formed from a specific type called soda-lime glass, composed of approximately 75% silicon dioxide (SiO₂), sodium oxide (Na₂O) from sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃), calcium oxide, also called lime (CaO), and several minor additives. A very clear and durable quartz glass can be made from pure silica which is very tough and resistant to thermal shock, being able to survive immersion in water while red hot. However, quartz must be heated to well over 3,000 °F (1,650 °C) (white hot) before it begins to melt, and it has a very narrow glass transition, making glassblowing and hot working difficult. In glasses like soda lime, the other compounds are used to lower the melting temperature and improve the temperature workability of the product at a cost in the toughness, thermal stability, and optical transmittance.