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Cornelis Matelief de Jonge (c. 1569 – October 17, 1632) was a Dutch admiral who was active in establishing Dutch power in Southeast Asia during the beginning of the 17th century. His fleet was officially on a trading mission, but its true intent was to destroy Portuguese power in the area. The fleet had 1400 men on board, including 600 soldiers. Matelief did not succeed in this. The Dutch would ultimately gain control of Malacca more than thirty years later, again joining forces with the Sultanate of Johor, and a new ally Aceh, in 1641. He was born and died in Rotterdam.
The Tacuinum (sometimes Taccuinum) Sanitatis is a medieval handbook on health and wellbeing, based on the Taqwim al‑sihha تقويم الصحة ('Maintenance of Health'), an eleventh-century Arab medical treatise by Ibn Butlan of Baghdad.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân was a Christian physician born in Baghdad and who died in 1068. He sets forth the six elements necessary to maintain daily health: food and drink, air and the environment, activity and rest, sleep and wakefulness, secretions and excretions of humours, changes or states of mind (happiness, anger, shame, etc). According to Ibn Butlân, illnesses are the result of changes in the balance of some of these elements, therefore he recommended a life in harmony with nature in order to maintain or recover one’s health.<br/><br/> Ibn Butlân also teaches us to enjoy each season of the year, the consequences of each type of climate, wind and snow. He points out the importance of spiritual wellbeing and mentions, for example, the benefits of listening to music, dancing or having a pleasant conversation.<br/><br/> Aimed at a cultured lay audience, the text exists in several variant Latin versions, the manuscripts of which are characteristically profusely illustrated. The short paragraphs of the treatise were freely translated into Latin in mid-thirteenth-century Palermo or Naples, continuing an Italo-Norman tradition as one of the prime sites for peaceable inter-cultural contact between the Islamic and European worlds.<br/><br/> Four handsomely illustrated complete late fourteenth-century manuscripts of the Taccuinum, all produced in Lombardy, survive, in Vienna, Paris, Liège and Rome, as well as scattered illustrations from others, as well as fifteenth-century codices.
Vice Admiral Sir Francis Drake (1540 –96) was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, a renowned pirate, and a politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588, subordinate only to Charles Howard and the Queen herself. He died of dysentery in January 1596 after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.<br/><br/> His exploits were legendary, making him a hero to the English but a pirate to the Spaniards. King Philip II was claimed to have offered a reward of 20,000 ducats, about US $6.5 million by modern standards, for his life.<br/><br/> He led the first English circumnavigation of the world, from 1577 to 1580, during which time he met native American tribes in California, which he claimed for Britain, and visited the Spice Islands in the East Indies [Indonesia].