Tomorrow, July 20, 2019, will mark the 50th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon: the module of the spacecraft called _Eagle_ settled on the _Sea of Tranquility_, a relatively smooth, basalt area of its surface. The poetic name Mare Tranquilitatis was coined by two astonomers: the first was the 17th-century scientist […]
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When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon fifty years ago, one of their ritualistic actions was to place memorabilia on the surface that honored both American and Soviet cosmonauts who had died in their pursuit of forwarding humanity’s quest for discovery in outer space. One of the cosmonauts was Vladimir Komarov, pictured
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The concentration of human-created beauty might be no greater than in Florence, where works by the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance overflow. Across the centuries, travelers have made their way to immerse themselves in the visual spectacle that abounds. So overpowering was the sense of beauty to the French author Marie-Henri Beyle (d. 1842),
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This is the private library of American business tycoon Pierpoint Morgan (d. 1913), and it is a wonder to behold. Its three balconies of books are reached by hidden staircases behind bookshelves. Sumptuous Renaissance-inspired bookcases pack thousands of rare volumes. The ceilings and upper walls are covered with ornate paintings of allegorical figures representing various
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Sheet music written by Franz Schubert in 1826, called the “Rondo Brilliant.” It was designed to showcase the vituosity of a specific violinist Schubert worked with, and was the only piece he wrote for violin and piano published in the artist’s lifetime. Schubert, who had many loves but suffered from bouts of depression throughout his
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The smallpox vaccination has been one of the greatest contributions science has made to better the human condition. Although Edward Jenner has justly earned credit for his development of the vaccine, an 18th-century British aristocratic woman named Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) also deserves recognition. Montagu was a “Turkophile,” and published many writings critiquing the confining
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The small village of Mesilla in New Mexico was the site of archtypical American Old West cultural traditions: developing railroads, silver mines and cattle ranches, wars against the American Indians, and showdowns among ineffective government officials were commonplace in the Arizona and New Mexico territories of the late 19th century. Billy the Kid, ne Henry
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The Musee Horta (1898) embodies the style of Art Nouveau of the late 19th century. Known for its attention to beauty and incorporation of nature, Victor Horta designed this building in Brussels originally as his home. You can see the pronounced use of glass and steel – typical elements of his construction. The fluctuating movement
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Malaria has been an extraordinary shaper of history. Dated as far back as 30 million years old, this protoza really took off after the agricultural revolution (not surprising, since it thrives in mosquitos, who love the standing waters that frequently accompany cleared out lands). Some scientists believe Malaria to be the single-biggest killer in human
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A strange relationship between mathematics and the occult began early on in Western history, and some of the most advanced intellectual minds fostered the study of numbers primarily as a stepping stone for understanding hidden truths about the physical world. This tendancy goes as far back as Pythagoras, but flourished notably in Early Modern Europe.
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Although the Ancient Roman aristocracy certainly showed off their social status with elaborate banquets, they did not actually purge themselves in rooms called “Vomitoria.” This misconception arose from some 19th- and 20th- century writers, who claimed that a Vomitorium was where Romans deliberately threw up their food so they could keep eating. In fact, the
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“The Priestess of Delphi,” by John Collier (1891). This haunting painting of one of the famous oracles from Ancient Greece – known as the Sibyls – is reflective of the lack of certainty modern scholars have about what specific prophecies the oracles pronounced. We know that the Romans truly believed that one of the Sibyls
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Hormones, as author Randi Hutter Epstein relays in_Aroused: the History of Hormones and How They Control Just about Everything_ really do a lot — from metabolizing food, to regulating sleep and mood swings, to the act of sex, to prompting our immune systems. Hormones can make our lives both really amazing and really terrible. So
Rosalyn Sussman Yalow and Radio-Immunosassay Read More »
This is Erwin Schrodinger, Nobel-prize-winning architect of the famed equation with his name — along with silhouettes of his famous alive-and-dead cats. Born in Austria on 1887, Erwin’s chronic struggles with tuberculosis had him confined in a sanitorium in the 1920’s: it was during his stay that he developed his famous wave equation. Many conclusions
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Although popular culture promotes an idea that the belief in magic flourished mainly in the Medieval European past, maybe declining with the onset of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th-century, this is not necessarily the case. As Owen Davies, author of _Grimoires: A History of Magic Books_, relays, the so-called “Modern” era of Western history
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This watercolor by Julian Peters, called “I Have Come to Consume the World,” illustrates beautifully a central moment in the Hindu epic, _The Bhagavad Gita_. The _Gita_ is the most famous sacred scripture in Hinduism, dating to perhaps the second century BCE. This particular point comes in the eleventh chapter, when the hero Arjuna begs
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In the early twentieth century near Mount Union, Pennsylvania, a mining company called Harbison-Walker profited from quarrying a type of sandstone known as “ganister” to make bricks. To get to the stone pits, the miners built a long trail into the mountainside in 1936 – here you see the trail today, known as the “Thousand
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The term “swan song” comes from an Ancient notion that swans are mute throughout their lives, but sing a beautiful last melody as they are about to die. As far back as the Roman Pliny the Elder (in 77 CE), people have known this is not the case, but regardless, a swan song refers to
Here is the coat-of-arms designed by Niels Bohr, after he was awarded the Order of the Elephant by the Danish king in 1947: it has a yin-yang symbol and the phrase “contraria sunt complemementa,” which means “opposite things are complementary.” The heraldry speaks well in terms of the discoveries in physics that Bohr undertook in
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Here is a portrait of a young Sophie Germain, the French mathematician whose celebrated work involved the properties of elasticity and number theory (especially prime numbers). When we read about Germain, we quickly encounter a narrative that focuses on the multiple limitations placed on her life: her parents initially discouraged her scholarship, she was banned
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