Astronaut-politician Astronaut-politician Astronaut-politicians are those individuals who have entered politics after traveling to space as an astronaut. Even with the increasing number of individuals who have flown in space, astronauts still maintain a wide degree of public recognition, and those interested in pursuing a career in politics have been able to take advantage of their renown to enter politics at higher levels of elected office. American John Glenn, one of the Mercury Seven selected in 1959 by NASA became the first American astronaut to orbit the earth when he flew the Mercury-Atlas 6 named "Friendship 7" for three earth orbits on
Chinese as a foreign language Chinese in Europe. In 1837, Nikita Bichurin opened the first European Chinese-language school in the Russian Empire. Since then sinology became an academic discipline in the West, with the secular sinologists outnumbering the missionary ones. Some of the big names in the history of linguistics took up the study of Chinese. Sir William Jones dabbled in it; instigated by Abel-Rémusat, Wilhelm von Humboldt studied the language seriously, and discussed it in several letters with the French professor. Local Chinese variants were still widely used up until a Qing dynasty decree in 1909 that mandated Mandarin as the official language of