This is a photo from 1943 of a detention hospital for infected women in Leesville, Louisiana. And I’m about to deliver a really sad story about the U.S. government’s treatment of women during the 20th century. This is about a series of laws that came to be known as “The American Plan,” and they resulted […]
Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918 Read More »
Fibonacci was an early 13th-century Italian who made Europeans aware that the Arabic number system we use today is much better for doing math than the Roman Numeral system medieval people had been using. Plus he wrote out the Fibonacci numbers, which are shown here in his most important book, _Liber Abaci_ (Book of Calculations).
Fibonacci Writings Read More »
The Lechuguilla Cave in south-eastern New Mexico (you can see a photo of part of it in the first slide) is the second deepest in the US (at 1,604 feet), and it runs underground for 150 miles. Located in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park, the cave isn’t open to regular visitors because it includes an
I would have liked to have met this man, who was as eccentric as this visage here implies. This is none other than Paul Erdös, a Hungarian mathematician who published more papers than any other to date (over 1,500) and worked with so many other scholars (he co-authored with over 500) that math geeks know
This is a jade statuette from 18th-century China of a type of mushroom called the _Lingzhi_. It has been used in Chinese Traditional Medicine for over a millennium, and was associated in the religion of Daoism with immortality. The physician Li Shizhen who lived in the 1500s writes that “it positively affects the life energy,
Al-Biruni’s phases of the moon. Fitting image for the lunar eclipse tonight. Biruni was one of the geniuses of astronomical investigation, active in the 11th century during a Golden Age of Islamic science.
Al-Biruni’s Phases of the Moon Read More »
This baddie not only flourished in 14th and 15th century Eurasia. It also killed millions in the 6th cenuury, and struck again in 19th century China. Scientists are now thinking it might have caused a bottleneck in the population of Europeans in the Neolithic era too!
Creationists frequently bring up the Piltdown Man to support their idea that scientists deliberately lie about human evolution. True, the Piltdown Man was a famous fake (built by *one* “scientist”) – a supposedly missing link between humans and apes. However, it was actually the scientific community that proved the bones to be a forgery.
Catch up on how historical geneticists are unveiling fascinating new discoveries about early human history ( example- new discussion about the so-called “Hobbit” peoples from the Indonesia area). _Who We Are and How We Got Here_ is a great read!
Hobbit Peoples Skull Read More »
The Antikythera Mechanism from Ancient Greece had over 30 gears, and could predict when eclipses would happen, track the irregular orbit of the stars, and figure out when the Olympic games would happen!
The Antikythera Mechanism Read More »
Ah! What could be cooler than the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript, a document that has stumped linguists and cryptographers since its rediscovery? Yeah, It’s super fascinating. It uses different letters and people have tried corresponding them to various languages like Latin (it has some Latin words in the margins). The paintings are about medical/”sciency” stuff, and
15th – Century Voynich Manuscript Read More »
The symbol you see here that means “prescription” comes from an abbreviation of the Latin word “recipe” meaning “take”, as in the command form of the verb recipere, which means “to hold or contain.” It doesn’t come from a joining of the letters R and x, but rather the slashed line through the “R” was
Latin Etymology of Rx Read More »
The stately Classical background of Paris’ Panthéon has been the perfect location to house the invention of 19th-century physicist Léon Foucault: a massive pendulum made of a 62-lb brass-coated led bob, suspended from the Panthéon’s central dome by a 220-foot wire. Foucault debuted his pendulum in 1851, and although the original was damaged in 1995,
Foucault’s Pendulum Read More »
Late 18th-century Georgian Britain had such fascinating trends. An age of Enlightenment, it brought forth people who were in love with science and anything that sounded “science-y”, even when the actual science was missing. And, no surprise, interest peaked when said pseudo-science trend dealt with sex. This brings me to one James Graham (1745-1794), a
Sexologist James Graham’s Celestial Bed Read More »
We all know the man on the right — that’s Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the 20th century. But to his left is another important scientist, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician so brilliant that Einstein said that he used to come to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton just “to have the privilege
Kurt Godel and Time Travel Read More »
This post is about a mathematical puzzle and a French astronomer-mathematician who tried to solve it: the Three-Body Problem, and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an aristocratic woman working in Enlightenment-Era France. (See images one and two.) Practically as soon as Isaac Newton developed his ideas about gravity, he also realized that, while he could predict the orbits
The Three-Body Problem and Nicole-Reine Lepaute, an Astronomer Who Tackled It Read More »
Often revolutions are only recognized as such in the wake of their transformations. This was the case for the massive shift in human culture in accepting the fact that the earth orbits the sun rather than the other way around. Between the heliocentric model of Nicolaus Copernicus (d. 1543) and the Papacy’s condemnation of Galileo
Christopher Clavius and the Debate over Geocentrism Read More »
This photo shows a Carthusian monk mixing ingredients for the liqueur known as “Chartreuse,” a beverage so famous that it gave its name to a color. The monks have been producing this drink for centuries. The Carthusian order has been consistently strict since their founding in the late eleventh century. The monks have prayed and
The History of Chartreuse Read More »
The excavations of the Ancient Maya world have continued to reveal surprises, and in 2020 two fascinating stories about urban water supply made headlines. Both were about the city of Tikal (known as Yax Mutal among the ancient Maya), but one was much sadder than the other. Tikal was an epicenter of power and was
Classical Maya Water Reservoir Technology Read More »
“We in the West are the first generation in human history in which the mass of the population has to deliberately exercise to be healthy.” — so wrote Jeremiah “Jerry” Morris towards the end of his 99-year life of remarkable scholarship about the effects of disease and physical movement. Or really, the lack of physical
Jerry Morris and the Discovery That Exercise Is Good for You Read More »
