via the Guardian by Robin McKie
A photographic reproduction of the Turin shroud. Photograph: Jorge Guerrero/AFP/Getty Images
Martin Kamen had worked for three days and three nights without sleep. The US chemist was finishing off a project in which he and a colleague, Sam Ruben, had bombarded a piece of graphite with subatomic particles. The aim of their work was to create new forms of carbon, ones that might have practical uses.
Exhausted, Kamen staggered out of his laboratory at Berkeley in California, having finished off the project in the early hours of 27 February 1940. He desperately needed a break. Rumpled, red eyed and with a three-day growth of beard, he looked a mess.
And that was unfortunate. Berkeley police were then searching for an escaped convict who had just committed several murders. So when they saw the unkempt Kamen they promptly picked him up, bundled him into the back of their patrol car and interrogated him as a suspected killer.
Continue reading
==============================
via Boing Boing by David Pescovitz
NASA has just released this incredible image of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope on June 27, 2019.
Continue reading
==============================
via Ancient Origins b y Ed Whelan
Archaeologists examine the remains of an ancient fortress off the coast of Dor Beach, Israel, March 19, 2019. Credit: Hagai Nativ / Haaretz
Underwater archaeology is helping to transform our knowledge of the ancient world. In Israel, maritime archaeologists have discovered a 2,200-year-old Hellenistic fortress linked to biblical battles. The discovery is helping us to understand Hellenistic military fortifications and strategies and the impact of rising sea levels on ancient communities.
The find was made at Tel Dor , which “overlooks the eastern Mediterranean on the southern Levantine coastline of Israel,” as the researchers wrote in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology . It is now known as the beach of Kibbutz Nahsholim and is due south of the bustling city of Haifa. There is a natural harbor there and that means that it was excellent for the anchorage of ships. Tel Dor is a site that has revealed evidence of Phoenician, Hebrew, Roman, and Byzantine occupation and it has a long and often bloody history.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
Previously, we’ve offered ten of the best extremely short poems by women, as well as ten classic sonnets by female poets. But what are the best poems about being a woman, and about womanhood – those written by both male and female poets? Here are some suggestions. Rather than stick to more recent and contemporary poets, we’ve ranged far and wide down the centuries to find the ultimate timeless poetic statements about womanhood. For a good anthology of poems for women, we recommend Poems That Make Grown Women Cry.
Continue reading
==============================
via Picture This by Kristi Finefield
The Adam Forepaugh shows. 1776 Historic scenes and battles of the American revolution. Lord Cornwallis’ surrender of the British Army to General Washington, at Yorktown, Oct. 19th, 1781. Poster (chromolithograph), published by Strobridge Litho. Co., 1893. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.55227
All students of American history – as well as fans of the hit Broadway show Hamilton – know that the victory at the Battle of Yorktown by a combined French and American force was the turning point of the American Revolution. British General Charles Cornwallis surrendered his troops and ships at Yorktown, Virginia on Oct. 19th, 1781. Interestingly, Cornwallis himself did not attend the surrender, sending his second-in-command, General Charles O’Hara, in his place.
An historic reenactment of the surrender is captured in this colorful and very large (16 feet wide!) 1893 poster advertising a production of “The Adam Forepaugh Shows” focusing on the American Revolution:
Continue reading
==============================
via The National Archives Blog by Sally Hughes
Clothes are not just essential for warmth and modesty – they can be for so much more. They can be a source of joy or misery, a memory, a celebration, a disguise, a means of self-expression or a way of proclaiming allegiance to the tribe. They can attract judgement, compliments and condemnation. They can gild the lily or disguise the unmentionable. They can proclaim your age, your era, your politics or your rebellion. They can be serviceable, impractical, ugly or beautiful. They can also tell stories.
Continue reading
==============================
via 3 Quarks Daily (S. Abbas Raza): From the MIT Press Reader:
Your thesis is like your first love," Eco muses. "It will be difficult to forget.”
You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences. If they come into your head, write them, but then break them down. Do not be afraid to repeat the subject twice, and stay away from too many pronouns and subordinate clauses.
Do not write,
The pianist Wittgenstein, brother of the well-known philosopher who wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicusthat today many consider the masterpiece of contemporary philosophy, happened to have Ravel write for him a concerto for the left hand, since he had lost the right one in the war.
Write instead,
The pianist Paul Wittgenstein was the brother of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Since Paul was maimed of his right hand, the composer Maurice Ravel wrote a concerto for him that required only the left hand.
Continue reading
==============================
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Young ones, gather round, and let Ole Grampa Doctorow tell you about the glory days, before the creation and deprecation of the
Cory tells a much better story than I ever could of what those early days were like.
==============================
via Ancient Origins by Morgan Smith
Colored Giza Casing Stones, Menkaure's Pyramid .
Most casual students of ancient history know that the outer casing stones of the Giza pyramids were constructed of highly polished Tura limestone blocks that caused them to gleam like a trio of colossal jewels in the Egyptian sun. It is a lesser-known fact, however, that a portion of the casing stones were not light in color but dark, and that the Giza complex in its entirety once exhibited far more color than modern film and art depictions would indicate.
Continue reading
==============================
via Interesting Literature
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new introduction to horror fiction
Trying to tell the story of the horror genre in under 200 pages may seem a daunting prospect – indeed, almost a horrifying one. But thankfully in Sleeping With the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror, the erudite Darryl Jones is our guide, picking up just the right example on the end of his pen (to borrow from and adapt Chesterton’s description of Jekyll and Hyde author Robert Louis Stevenson) and weaving together the disparate periods of horror fiction in all its forms – not just literature but film and TV too – in order to give us not so much a brief history of the horror genre as the story of the genre’s themes, tropes, interests, and preoccupations.
Continue reading
No comments:
Post a Comment