What I Learned Today at Work
by
Collins Library,
One of the reasons I love working in a library is that I learn
something every day.
(If I don’t record anything on a work day, it doesn’t mean I didn’t learn anything, it just means I didn’t have time to record it.)
Feb. 9, 2009
In 2008, Judith Kristen published her book Everybody Loves Mookie.—OCLC cataloging record.
William Hayward “Mookie” Wilson (born February 9, 1956) is a former Major League Baseball center fielder
who played with the New York Mets (1980–89) and Toronto Blue Jays (1989–91).—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mookie_Wilson>.
Jan. 21, 2009
Leon Uris published
his novel Mila 18 in 1961.
The story was set in the midst of the
Jan. 20, 2009
The
Jan. 14, 2009
Ice Ih is the normal form of ice obtained by freezing water at atmospheric pressure or by direct condensation from water vapour above about -100 degrees C. The number I was assinged by Tammann (1900) following his discovery of the first of the high-pressure phases of ice, and the “h” is commonly added to distinguish this normal hexagonal phase from a metastable cubic variant called Ic.—Victor F. Petrenko and Robert W. Whitworth, Physics of Ice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Jan. 9, 2009
Lateral inhibition is an illusion whereby we perceive exaggerated contrasts along the edges of objects, enabling us to see the object more clearly. Given a series of side-by-side solid grey bars, with increasing shades of darkness, we mis-perceive each band as shaded—the edge of one bar appears darker next to its lighter neighbor, lighter next to its darker neighbor, even though the tone is the same.—Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, edited by Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Dec. 16, 2008
It is believed that the water held behind large dams can trigger earthquakes.—Thirsty planet. Waters of discord / produced by DW-TV (Princeton, N.J.: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2004).
Dec. 10, 2008
1. John F. Kennedy said in his commencement address at
2. FDR’s fourth inaugural address was only six minutes—only Washington’s second inaugural
was shorter—because he
believed a short inauguration was appropriate in a time of war, and because
that was about as long as he could stand at the podium. He died three months
later.—Great
speeches, vol. 20 (
Dec. 8, 2008
A screw sloop is a propeller-driven sloop-of-war. In the 19th century, during the introduction of the steam engine, ships driven by propellers were differentiated from those driven by paddle-wheels by referring to the ship's screws (propellers). Other propeller-driven warships included screw frigates and screw corvettes.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_sloop >
Dec. 5, 2008
The heavy metal band Finntroll bases their lyrics on the
“trollish” myths of
Dec. 2, 2008
1. In
2. The phrase “The Black Legend” (La leyenda negra) was
coined in 1912 by a Spanish journalist in protest of the characterization of
Spain by other Europeans as a backward country defined by ignorance,
superstition, and religious fanaticism, whose history could never recover from
the legacy of its violent conquest of the Americas.—Rereading
the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the
Renaissance Empires, edited by Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo, and
Maureen Quilligan (
Dec. 1, 2008
A common feature in the Gnostic writings which contain and use Mary Magdalene traditions is that in all of them she isgiven a significant position among the most intimate adherents of Jesus. She is not always the most central figure of the work, but in none of he writings is she shown in a negative light. In the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene has a special role explicitly in the life of the historical Jesus. She is the only one of his disciples who during his earthly life understands his real character and message.—Antti Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved : Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996).
Nov. 25, 2008
“Kangaroo care” is a
way of holding a preterm or full term infant so that there is skin-to-skin
contact between the infant and the person holding him or her. The baby, wearing
only a diaper, is held against the parent’s bare chest. Kangaroo care for
preterm infants is typically practiced for two to three hours per day over an
extended time period in early infancy.—Wikipedia.
Nov. 24, 2008
In his book Stolen
Legacy, George G.M. James maintains that Greek philosophy and culture was
stolen from Africa; in particular stolen by Aristotle from the great library at
Nov. 18, 2008
1. “Renminbi” is the name of the currency introduced in
2. According to the Economist
“Big Mac Index,” in 2007, the renminbi was the most undervalued currency in the
world.—Tristan Orford, “Trade
Troubles, Currency Confusion,” senior thesis,
Nov. 17, 2008
1. In a survey in 2005, respondents were given the statement
“Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of
animals.” They were asked if the
statement was true or false, or if they were not sure. In the U.S., of 1484 respondents, roughly 40%
agreed it was true, 20% were not sure, and 40% thought it was false—putting the U.S. near the bottom
among industrialized countries in the percentage of public acceptance of
evolution, below much of Eastern and Western Europe and just above Turkey.—Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul (New
York: Viking Penguin, 2008).
2. There have been more books written about Abraham Lincoln
than any other American.—Gerald J.
Prokopowicz, Did
3. On Sept. 11, 1944, the British Royal Air Force tested a
new strategy to inflict maximum damage and casualty: 230 bombers coming from
various directions joined over
4. “Dunam” is a
unit of area used in the
Nov. 14, 2008
1. In 1921, William Wrigley, Jr., of the chewing gum family,
gained controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs. In 1926, the field where the Cubs played was renamed Wrigley Field.
In 1894, the stadium where they played was partially burned, and it was
suspected to be arson by the Sunday Observance League.—Northsiders: Essays on the History and
Culture of the Chicago Cubs, edited by Gerald C. Wood and Andrew Hazucha (
2. In the McCarthy Era, anticommunist crusaders launched
investigations to root out “perverts” in government. Homosexuality itself was
seen as a mark of potential subversive activity, grounds for dismissal from
jobs, and justification for persecution. In the “Lavender Scare,” more people
lost their jobs under suspicion of being gay than those who were fired for
being suspected “Reds.”—Elaine
Tyler May, Homeward Bound:
American Families in the Cold War Era (
Nov. 13, 2008
Paper, invented in China in the first century A.D., has been known in the West for about half its history, having come by way of the Arabs and North Africa to Iberian peninsula, and from there, to Italy in the late 13th century.—Leonard Schlosser and Kenneth Tyler, Paper and Printmaking Glossary (North Hills, Pa.: Bird & Bull Press, c1978).
Nov. 10, 2008
The Dutch name for
Nov. 7, 2008
“
Nov. 5, 2008
“Colorimetry” is measurement of color, or any technique by which an unknown color is
evaluated in terms of standard colors. A
“colorimeter” is any of various instruments used to determine or specify
colors, as by comparison with spectroscopic or visual standards.—random web pages.
Nov. 3, 2008
In December 1802, Thomas Jefferson asked the Spanish
ambassador if the Spanish court would object to the proposed Lewis and Clark
Expedition.
Oct. 31, 2008
Malcolm X’s secretary went by the name James 67X.—Brother Minister, director by Jack Baxter (X-ceptional Productions, 1995).
Oct. 27, 2008
1. John Spilsbury
is credited with creating the first jigsaw puzzle. In 1766, he mounted a map on
hardwood and cut around the country’s borders; it was used as a way to teach
children geography. Adult puzzles in a wooden format were introduced in the
1900s and at first were highly expensive because they were cut one piece at a
time. The name “puzzle” was coined in 1908.
By 1909, jigsaw puzzle sales were so lucrative the Parker Brothers games
company switched its business entirely to
mass-produced jigsaw puzzles. But it was not until the Great Depression and the
introduction of die-cut cardboard sets, that jigsaw puzzles were popular with
the masses. In 1933, jigsaw puzzle sales reached 10 million per week.—Phaidon Design Classics (
2. The
3. Steller’s bluejay and Steller’s sea cow are named after
Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German employed by the Russians, who was traveling with the explorer Vitus Bering and
one of the first white man to set foot in
Oct. 23, 2008
The naturalist John James Audubon was born in
Oct. 14, 2008
Michaelmas is the
feast of St Michael (St Michael and all Angels), one of the quarter days in
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of the phrase “nitty-gritty” is
uncertain, but its earliest appearance in print is in the writing of African
Americans. OED cites the appearance of
the term in a personal letter (1952), a novel (1956), a Texas newspaper (1956),
The Wall Street Journal (1963), an academic journal (1973), The
Financial Times (1974), a British women’s magazine (1986), The New York
Times Book Review (1991), and an British journal (2002).
Oct. 13, 2008
A ream of paper was formerly defined as 480 sheets (20 quires), but now, it is typically 500 sheets (25 quires), and 480 sheets is called a short ream. A quire is a sheaf of 24 sheets of paper, though that definition has changed over time, too.—random web sites.
Oct. 10, 2008
Edgar Allen Poe was last seen sober by his friends on the
evening of Sept. 26, 1849, as he embarked on a steamship to
Quotation from Poe: “If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment, the opportunity is his own—the road to immortal renown lies straight, open, and unencumbered before him. All that he has to do is to write and publish a very little book. Its title should be simple—a few plain words—My Heart Laid Bare. But—this little book must be true to its title.”—random web sites.
Oct. 9, 2008
1. “Sabotage” comes from the French word “sabot” for a
wooden shoe, and was coined to describe willful damage done to employers’
machinery by laborers.—Edward Abbey,
The Monkey Wrench Gang (
2. Edith Stein was born in 1891 into a devout Jewish family. She drifted
into atheism in her mid teens, took up the study of philosophy, studied with
Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology, became a pioneer in the women's
movement in Germany, a military nurse in World War I, converted from atheism to
Catholic Christianity, became a Carmelite nun, was murdered at
Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and canonized by Pope John Paul II.-- Alasdair MacIntyre,
Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue,
1913-1922 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006).
Oct. 8, 2008
1. “Rime” (as in “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Samuel
Taylor Coleridge) means rhyming verse.—
2. A) In 157 countries, English is the sole language in air
traffic control for plane take offs and landings; so, for example, an Italian
pilot flying an Italian plane in Italian airspace will communicate the local
control tower in English. B) The 1977 Voyager included greetings in 55
languages, but the primary message was in English, read by a German (Kurt
Waldheim, then Secretary-General of the U.N.). C) In the mid-1980s, more copies
of the Oxford English
Dictionary were sold in
Oct. 7, 2008
1. The Jevons paradox , proposed by
William Stanley Jevons in 1865, indicates that advances made in fuel efficiency
will not reduce the use of fuel, but, rather, increase it. Writing about the use of coal in Britain, he
proposed that if less coal was needed in a blast furnace to create pig-iron,
the price of the iron would fall, the demand for it increase, and more energy
would be used to meet that demand. A
more recent application: a survey asked Swedes if they saved money by eating
less meat, how would they use that money? Most said to travel. The environmental savings from the vegetarian
diet would be countered by the increased environmental destruction caused by
the travel.—John M. Polimeni,
et al., The Jevons Paradox and the Myth
of Resource Efficiency Improvements (
2. Russian geologists explored the formation of the Earth by
drilling a hole in the bedrock of the
Sept. 22, 2008
Edgar Allan Poe the pseudonym Edgar A.
Perry when enlisting in the Army.—Library of Congress authority record.
Sept. 22, 2008
In some cases, the color of bird plumage is affected by what
the birds eat, and that is may be why females choose brightly-colored males—because they are able to
out-compete the other males for desirable food.— Geoffrey E. Hill, A Red Bird in a
Brown Bag (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).
Sept. 18, 2008
1. The flippers of seals are “hands” and “feet” where the digits are bound together by webs of skin.—Chris Maser, et al., Natural History of Oregon Coast Mammals (Portland, Or.: Pacific Northwest Forest and Range Experiment Station, 1981).
2. Snakes can hatch from eggs laid by the mother, or they
can be born “live.” The ones in eggs have an “egg tooth” at the front of the
upper jaw, similar to that found in hatching birds. This small, sharp
projection is shed a few days after hatching.
The ones born live leave their mother’s body encased only in a
transparent membrane from which they usually escape immediately by breaking out
of the sac.—Hal. H. Harrison, The World of the Snake (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1971).
3. A) Color
change is a temperature-regulating mechanism used by lizards such as the desert
iguana. When they first emerge in the
morning, desert iguanas are dark. By the time they reach their activity
temperature, they have turned light. This color change reduces heat gained from
the sun by 23 percent. B) Luminescent bacteria in the light organs of fishes
emit light as a by-product of their metabolism. The flashlight fish has a
light-emitting organ under each eye. The fish can cover the organ with a
shutter to conceal the light, or open the shutter to reveal it. It uses the
light organ in social interactions with other flashlight fish, and in a
blink-and-run defense to startle and confuse predators. —F.
Harvey Pough, Christine M. Janis, and John B. Heiser, Vertebrate Life, 5th ed.
4. The gestation period for the humpbacked whale is 12
months. The calves typically nurse for
one year. They mature at four to six
years of age and have been documented to live as long as 95 years. They are
among the largest vertebrates that have ever lived. Their large pectoral
flippers, proportionally longer that those of other cetaceans,
allow tight turns during swimming. Karel F. Liem, et al., Functional Anatomy of the Vertebrates (
Sept. 15, 2008
Jazz musician Dexter Gordon learned to read French during
the years he was in
Sept. 11, 2008
In the 17th century, coffee was cultivated in a very
restricted part of the globe. Large supplies of coffee for sale were found only
in the markets around the Arabian peninsula, in
southern
Sept 10, 2008
1. A glossary of Italian terms and phrases that “occur in almost every opera,” would include the words for go, come, flee, die, leave, be cursed, wait, listen, tell, say, speak, open ,believe, be silent, let’s go, I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are, it is I, it is you, you are you, we are alone, we are two, you are lost, I am happy, where is he, he is dead, I am a poet, doctors, boys, men, girls, women, hours, times, with me/you/him/her/us, mine, thine, his, her, ours, yours, her husband, his wife, my sister, his/her brother, my daughter, our son, father, mother, this, all, that, pretty, good, large, I love you, good morning, good evening, good night, thank you, here, behold, peace, have pity, no more, never more, where is, well then, still, yet, love, one, two, three, it is not true, always, let’s go, sir, miss, madam, Great God!, oh joy, weep, yes, no.—George Martin, The Opera Companion (New York: Amadeus Press, 1961).
2. Peter Marshall, before he was host of The Hollywood Squares, was an actor who
appeared on stage and in Broadway musicals.—Library of Congress authority record.
Sept. 3, 2008
1. The special place of the trombone in the music of
Christian worship derives in part from the practice initiated in the 16th
century of trombones doubling vocal lines in higher centers of Catholic
worship. The Moravian church has an extensive and continuous tradition of
amateur trombone playing from the 18th century to the present; it provides a
unique example of continuity of association between the instrument, a
vernacular community and its sacred and secular rituals. Moravian religious
values are distinctive, but are based upon disarmingly simple ideals which have
conditioned both community life and religious ritual, with musical practices
being prominent in both.—Trevor
Herbert, The Trombone (
2. In 1999, Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan’s first native-born,
democratically-elected president, touched off a political firestorm with his
remark that Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China enjoy a “special state-to-state
relationship”—a surprising
departure from the intentionally ambiguous terminology in which Taiwan’s status
has been shrouded since 1949. The PRC responded by conducting military
exercises in and around the
3. A 1992 musical based on the life of Jelly Roll Morton was called “Jelly’s Last Jam”—Library of Congress authority record.
4. Christianity is moving south, to the extent that
Sept. 2, 2008
Aug. 29, 2008
The largest migration in human history is taking place now. Over 130 million Chinese peasants, mostly young women, have left their villages in search of jobs in the globalized economy.—China Blue, a film by Micha X. Peled; a coproduction of Teddy Bear Films and the Independent Television Service in association with the Center for Asian American Media, c2007
Aug. 28, 2008
1. In 2000, the Canadian mining company Goldcorp took the
unconventional step of publishing on the internet its propriety information
about the geology of its property. They
offered prize money to anyone who could suggest locations for gold that the
company geologists had not found. Within weeks, geologists and amateur
prospectors submitted their analyses.
They identified 110 targets on the property, 50% of which had not been
previously identified by the company, and over 80% of those new targets yielded
substantial quantities of gold. The online collaboration saved the company two
or three years of exploration time.—Don
Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, Wikinomics
(
2. In the late 18th century, every baby left anonymously at
the real Casa de Expositos (Royal House for Abandoned Children) in
3. There are more than 30 varieties of the Kalashnikov
assault rifle. The AK-47 is one specific
type; there are a number of AK-47 sub-types. Between 1986-2005, the average prices for a Kalashnikov (in U.S. dollars) in the Middle East was
$869; in the
Aug. 25, 2008
The word “ergonomic” was invented in 1952.—
Aug. 15, 2008
Steinway & Sons was not allowed to make pianos in its
Aug. 14, 2008
1.Our word hammock comes from a term used by the natives of the West Indies, as recorded by the Spanish in the 16th century.—The Oxford Companion to World Exploration, David Buisseret, editor-in-chief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
2. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, divided the
New World between
3. In much the same way that European and American Elm trees were decimated by the fungal Dutch Elm disease (which was identified in Holland, but originated in Asia), the American Chestnut was pushed nearly to extinction by the introduction of an Asian blight fungus in the early 20th century.—Susan Freinkel, American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Aug. 13, 2008
Archaea (pronounced ar-kee-ah) microorganisms were
discovered 30 years ago, and represent a previously unknown branch on the tree
of life. The first colonies were found
in extreme environments, such as boiling pools of sulfuric acid around
volcanoes, glacial ice, and toxic waste dumps. More recently, archaea were
discovered to be abundant in our soils, oceans, and lakes. They are as common
as bacteria, older than rocks, and capable of surviving anywhere. A survey of
Central Park in 2006 found 200 previously unknown species of microbes.—Tim
Friend, The Third Domain: The Untold Story of Archaea and the Future of Biotechnology
(
Aug. 1, 2008
Foxes were introduced to the
July 31, 2008
Muskrats were introduced into
July 25, 2008
The Tables of Toledo (Toledan Tables) were the most accurate
compilation of astronomical/astrological data ever seen in
July 18, 2008
Only an estimated 4 percent of the population is born with red hair
(only 2% in the
July 17, 2008
1.
“Jeanne d’Arc” is a tactical role-playing game developed by Level-5
and published by Sony for the PlayStation Portable.
The narrative makes use of various fantasy elements, and is loosely based on
the story of Joan of Arc and her struggles against the English occupation of
France during the Hundred Years’ War in the early 15th century.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_d'Arc_(video_game)>.
2. Stratovolcanoes are tall with a steep profile; shield
volcanoes have a wider base and a more gently sloping profile.
3. In the
4. Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one
apart from the sender and intended recipient even realizes there is a hidden message. By contrast,
cryptography obscures the meaning of a message, but it does not conceal the
fact that there is a message.
Generally, a steganographic message will appear to be something else: a
picture, an article, a shopping list, or some other message.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steganography>.
5. A grimoire is a textbook of magic. The word grimoire is from the Old French grammaire, and is from the Greek root “grammatikos”, “relating
to letters”, from which grammar,
a system for language, and glamour,
influential appeal, are derived. In the mid-late Middle Ages, Latin “grammars” (books on
Latin syntax
and diction)
were foundational to school and university education, as controlled by the Church—while
to the illiterate majority, non-ecclesiastical
books were suspect as magic, or believed to be endowed with supernatural
influence.
The word “grimoire” came over time to apply specifically to those books which did
indeed deal with magic and the supernatural.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire>.
July 14, 2008
The Voynich
manuscript is a mysterious illustrated book written in an indecipherable
text. It is thought to have been written between approximately 1450 and 1520.
The author, script and language of the manuscript remain unknown. The
manuscript has been the object of intense study by cryptographers, all of whom
failed to decrypt a single word. This has turned the manuscript into a famous
subject of historical cryptology, but it has also given weight to the theory
that the book is simply an elaborate hoax—a meaningless sequence of arbitrary symbols.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript>
July 7, 2008
Roadrunners are a
typo of cuckoo.—Leigh Marian Larson, Osteology
of the California Road-runner, Recent and Pleistocene (Berkeley, Calif.,
University of California Press, 1930).
July 2, 2008
Some examples of
birds using tools: 1) the male satin bowerbird colorfully paints the walls of
his bower after he finds some kind of fibrous material that can be used as a
brush and some kind of color-producing substance (such as cherries or charcoal)
that can be used as paint; 2) in Scandinavia, hooded crows at times catch fish
by pulling up the lines that fishermen leave suspended through holes in the ice
of frozen lakes; and 3) black kites of India are called “fire hawks” because
they have been see picking up smoldering sticks from fires, dropping them on
dry grass, and waiting to catch the small animals that run out of the grass to
avoid the fire.—Theodore Xenophon Barber, The
Human Nature of Birds (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
June 20, 2008
1. Analemma: a figure 8-shaped diagram that shows the declination of the sun for each
day in the year. If you took a snapshot of the sun at the same time each day
and from the same location, it would form this shape.—Go Astronomy glossary page
<http://www.go-astronomy.com/glossary/astronomy-glossary-a.htm>
2. Comping (short for accompanying) is a term used in jazz music to describe the
chords, rhythms, and countermelodies that keyboard or guitar players use to
support a jazz musician’s improvised solo or melody lines.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comping> and Daniel Davis, Creative Comping (San Diego, CA: Neil
A. Kjos Music Co., 1995.).
June 16, 2008
Ornithologists
doing taxidermy on birds for specimen cases have a convention of arranging the
right leg crossed over the left for male birds, and left over the right for
females.—Oliver Davie, Nests and Eggs of
North American Birds (Columbus, Ohio: Landon Press, 1898).
Friday, June 13,
2008
The name “Oxfam”
is derived from the name “Oxford Committee for Famine Relief”.—Library of Congress authority record.
June 10, 2008
In 1984, the
Ecclesiastical History Society held a meeting to discuss hermits.—Monks, Hermits, and the Ascetic Tradition,
edited by W.J. Sheils. (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1985).
June 6, 2008
Some of the
specialized terms used in British coal mining: adit, afterdamp, banksman,
blackdamp, chock, dirt (meaning stone and shale), downcast, upcast, drawing
off, drift, dykes and sills, firedamp, hole out, inbye, outbye, longwall face,
nogs, onsetter, sough (pronounced suff), sprag, stinkdamp, sylvester,
whitedamp, and winder.—Geoffrey Hayes, Coal
Mining (Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, 2000).
June 4, 2008
The first Hamlet
on film was Sarah Bernhardt. Probably
the first Hamlet on radio was Eve Donne.
Ever since the late eighteenth century, leading actresses have demanded
the right to play the role.—Tony Howard, Women
as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction (
May 30, 2008
The word
“chronos” is about time in a quantitative sense; “kairos” is about time in a
qualitative sense; the quality of a special moment, for example, the occasion
for decision or action, often, divinely ordained; usually translated in English
as “timing”.—random webpages.
May 29, 2008
A “semi-postal”
stamp in one issued to raise money for a charitable cause; they are sold at a
higher sum than their postal value, with the extra sum going to designated
charity.—some random webpage.
May 23, 2008
Minoru Yamasaki,
architect for the World Trade Towers, suffered vertigo, and that was the
motivation for the design of the façade with vertical support beams surrounding
very large, open floors, thus acting as a filter to prevent the sensation of
being right in the sky.—Christian de Portzamparc and Philippe Sollers, Writing and Seeing Architecture
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008).
May 22, 2008
1. In 1976,
Ceren, a pre-Columbian Mayan settlement, was discovered in
2.
May 21, 2008
Pearl
Sydenstricker Buck had a sister named Grace Sydenstricker Yaukey, who was born
in
May 19, 2008
1. The Galapagos
blue-footed booby is about the size of a goose.
They weigh between 3 and 4 pounds, with the female being larger than the male.
They can live to be more than 17 years old.—some random webpage.
2. “Treenware” is
an old term for small, handcrafted wooden objects (some say it applies only to
kitchen tools).—Library of Congress authority record and
some random webpages.
3. “George Orwell” was a pseudonym of Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950).—some random webpage.
4. The movie “The
Great St. Louis Bank Robbery,” released in 1959, was based on a true incident.
Many of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers and bank employees play
themselves doing what they actually did during the robbery in 1954.—OCLC
cataloging record.
5. Man Ray’s real
name was Emmanuel Radenski.—Library of Congress
authority record.
May 13, 2008
The roots of
Japanese manga can be traced to satirical graphic stories created by a monk in
the 12th century. The genre gained
popularity following World War II. Because
of the paper shortage, the government opened manga rental shops, where the
public could pay to borrow manga for one day.
Manga is extremely widespread in
May 10, 2008
In 1944, Julia
Martinez, a member of the Santa Clara Pueblo, married a Navajo man. The couple and their children lived on the
May 8, 2008
1. The White
Cliffs of
2. Lists of winning
athletes from the ancient Olympiads were compiled in Olympic victor lists. The
first known list was from Hippias of Elis around 400 BCE. By the Roman period,
Olympic victor lists covered more than 200 Olympiads and listed over 2,000
athletes. The lists are helpful for outlining Greek history, because they often
included references to political or other events. The current assumption that
the first Olympic games were held in 776 BCE may be wrong; there appear to have
been games held before that.—Paul Christensen, Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007).
May 7, 2008
The Viceroy
butterfly mimics the coloring of the Monarch butterfly, and this helps it
survive because, though the Viceroy is not poisonous to predators, the Monarch
is.—Alicia Arrizón, Queering Mestizaje:
Transculturation and Performance (
May 5, 2008
1. When the Khmer
Rouge came to power in
2. Almost two million Cambodians were killed or died of
famine under the Khmer Rouge.—S21, the Khmer
Rouge Killing Machine (2002)
3. Khmer is the official language of
May 2, 2008
Though there is
an anticipated need for 2 million new teachers in the next few years (due to
retirements and career changes of current teachers), the attrition rate of new
teachers is very high. Within the first
five years, about 1/2 of the new teachers leave the profession, with 17%
leaving after one year, rising to a total of 30% of them after 2 years, and 40%
after three years.—Donna Niday and Jean Boreen, Mentoring: Guiding, Coaching, and Sustaining Beginning Teachers
(Portland, Me.: Stenhouse Publishers, 2003).
Apr. 28, 2008
1. In the fishing
business, in some cases, the “bykill”—animals killed while trying to catch
others—greatly exceeds the target catch. Four pounds of bykill is discarded for
every pound of shrimp caught by
2. Spring tides
occur at the new moon and full moon, when the gravity of the sun and moon align
to pull the Earth’s oceans into two bulges; neap tides occur at the 1st and 3rd
quarter moon, when the moon and sun are pulling at 90 degree angles, causing
four bulges. The lunar bulge is larger than the solar bulge. Alan P. Trujillo
and Harold V. Thurman, Essentials of
Oceanography (
Apr. 23, 2008
Recent excavations
at Lejre, on the Danish
Apr. 22, 2008
German brothers
Adi and Rudi Dassler launched a successful shoe business in their mother’s
laundry room, but were pulled apart by a feud and split the company into the
rivals Adidas and Puma.—Barbara Smit, Sneaker
Wars (New York: Ecco, 2008).
Apr. 21, 2008
The
Apr. 17, 2008
1. In the 1950s,
when Japanese primatologists offered sweet potatoes to macaque monkeys, to lure
them from the forest to the seashore, where they were easier to observe, one
female, called Imo, started washing the potatoes in a stream, to remove the
soil from them. The new habit spread to the other monkeys. They later started
washing them in the ocean, apparently to add a salty flavor. Imo later solved
another problem: when the primatologists offered the monkeys wheat, it got
mixed with the sand. Imo threw the mixed sand and wheat into the water, where
the heavier sand sunk and the wheat floated, making it easier to eat. The new
habit spread from the children to their mothers. Adult males, who interact much
less with the young, were the last to learn, and some did not learn at all.—Eva
Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in
Four Dimensions (
2. suasion (noun)
is the act of persuasion—various webpages.
Apr. 16, 2008
W is the chemical
symbol for tungsten, based on its other name, wolfram.—some random webpage.
Apr. 15, 2008
1. Arboreal frogs
of the family Centrolenidae lay their eggs on the undersides of green leave above
running water. The tadpoles fall into the water after hatching.—Coleman J. Goin
and Olive B. Goin, Introduction to Herpetology (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman,
1971).
Some of the frogs
of the family Centrolenidae have translucent skin, so their common name is
glass frogs.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrolenidae>.
2. Each week, the
oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan
3. Pancho Villa’s
real name was Doroteo Arango.—Jaime Suchlicki, Mexico: From Montezuma to the Rise of the PAN (
Apr. 11, 2008
The poisonous and
harmless varieties of coral snakes both have bands of red, black, and yellow,
but they are in a different order. The
harmless coral king snake has bands of red-black-yellow-black-red, while the
poisonous coral snake has bands of red-yellow-black-yellow-red.—Raymond L.
Ditmars, Field Book of North American
Snakes (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, c1939). According to the notes left in the margin by
one reader, “Red touch black is good for Jack; red touch yellow can kill a
fellow.”
Apr. 10, 2008
Grist is grain or
malt that has been, or is to be, ground; the phrase “to bring grist to one’s mill”
means to bring business to one’s hands; to be a source of profit or
advantage.—Oxford English Dictionary.
Apr. 9, 2008
The plural of
shaman is shamans, not shamen, because it is not based on the English word
“man,” but a Russian word derived from a Mongolian term.—Oxford English Dictionary.
Apr. 8, 2008
A modern
restoration team has taken over 30 years—and
expects to work another 10—to reconstruct the
Parthenon—the temple the ancient Greeks built
in less than nine years.—Nova, “Secrets of the
Parthenon” (
Apr. 7, 2008
In the 1960s, the
alternative press reported that one could get high by smoking bananas; they
printed recipes for how to scrape, boil, and bake it. The United Fruit Company responded with
reports from the government and universities that bananas had no dangerous
neuro-chemical qualities.—Peter Chapman, Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped
the World (
Apr. 4, 2008
1) There are only
about 9 miles between Europe and
Apr. 2, 2008
1. Thomas Edison
invented a motion picture camera in 1895, so the Spanish American War of 1898
was the first war the public could see footage of, in motion picture theaters. Support
for the war was created by Edison newsreels, some of which the viewing audience
thought were films of real events, but were reenactments made at a studio in
the
2. Peanut butter
will set off the alarms of the devices that screen bags at airports.—American Libraries
Direct (4/2/2008).
Mar. 28, 2008
Dympna was the
Christian daughter of a pagan Irish king, and had to flee to
Mar. 27, 2008
The name
“Cossack” is a westernized version of the Russian “kazak,” which is derived
from the Turkic “qazaq.” The Cossacks can be divided into several subgroups,
based on their location in
Mar. 26, 2008
“Often, when
human visitors walk up to the chimpanzees at the Yerkes Field Station, an adult
female named
Mar. 19, 2008
Lady Bird
Johnson’s real name was Claudia.—Library of Congress
authority records.
Mar. 7, 2008
The reason
objects we see through electron microscopes look grey is that they are shorter
than the wavelengths of the visible spectrum—they
are too small to reflect color.—Kees Boeke, Cosmic
View: The Universe in 40 Jumps (
Mar. 6, 2008
“Medical
tourism”: Westerners who cannot get affordable health care in their own
countries, going to the developing world for treatment.—Milica Z. Bookman and
Karla R. Bookman, Medical Tourism in
Developing Countries (
Mar. 5, 2008
1. Soren
Kierkegaard published works under several pseudonyms. He wrote that he created
the authors, but those authors created the works, so he hoped that anyone
quoting from those books would attribute the words to those authors, rather
than to him.—Jacob Howland, Kierkegaard
and Socrates: A Study in Philosophy and Faith (
2. Both Fort Knox
and
Mar. 4, 2008
The Trial of the
Pyx is conducted annually in the
Feb. 29, 2008
In June 1942, the
Japanese captured Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, the first invasion of
Feb. 26, 2008
There are people
with the family name “Batman.”—Library of Congress
authority records.
Feb. 22, 2008
The
Feb. 19, 2008
1. Uranium is one
of the heaviest elements on Earth, almost twice as heavy as lead, and two
pounds of it amount to about three tablespoonfuls. The bomb that was dropped
over Hiroshima carried 133 pounds of uranium, but only one millisecond of
fission reactions, exploiting only two pounds of that uranium, was sufficient
to release energy equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT, temperatures higher than
the sun’s, and light-speed pulses of lethal radiation.—William
Langewiesche, The Atomic Bazaar (
2. A cane spider
is a light brown spider native to
3. The Japanese
school year run from April to March, with only a short spring break between
years. Translator’s note for Woman on the
Other Shore, by Mitsuyo Kakuta (
Feb. 18, 2008
1. During his
life, Copernicus was known as a professional administrator, an economist, a
paragon of humanist leaning, and above, all a skilled doctor. Most of those
acquainted with him had only sketchy notions of his deep commitment to the
science of the heavens and an even dimmer grasp, if any, of his radiant
cosmological idea. Copernicus was an amateur astronomer. He was never paid for
his science nor granted any patronage to help him pursue it. Not once since his
student days, did he deliver any lecture on celestial mechanics or mathematics
in any academy or university.—Dennis Danielson, The First Copernican (
2. The Japanese
city of
3. French Canadian
flight attendant Gaetan Dugas was dubbed “Patient Zero,” and blamed for the
start of the AIDS epidemic, but the long latency of the HIV makes it impossible
to determine whether he was the index case who brought the virus to the
U.S.—Priscilla Wald, Contagious:
Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2008)
Feb. 13, 2008
In fencing, forte is the thick, strong base of the
blade; foible is the top of the
blade, the thinnest part.—Fencing 101 website <www.whatisfencing.com/>
Feb. 12, 2008
1. Flowers sold
in
2. “Fiasco” is the
Italian name for the straw basket around a Chianti bottle.—Il Fiasco restaurant
website <http://www.ilfiasco.com/>.
Feb. 11, 2008
There is a
history of astronomical phenomenon being discovered by military or intelligence
systems. Classified military capabilities detected evidence of radio waves from
space at about the same time as Jansky made the first map of the radio sky. A
British radar used to detect incoming V-2 missiles during World War II picked
up radio noises from celestial sources, but this information was kept
confidential until after the war. X-ray-emitting objects were found first by
military systems; the information was kept secret until it could be released
without endangering security. Gamma-ray bursters, among the most energetic of
phenomena in the universe, were discovered first by military satellites
designed for a completely different purpose.—Michael
A.G. Michaud, Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about
Encountering Extraterrestrials (
Feb. 6, 2008
1. Stem cells
have the capacity to self-renew as well as the ability to generate differentiated
cells; hence the name: many cells can stem from them. “Embryonic stem cells”
come from embryos developed from eggs that have been fertilized in vitro.
“Embryonic germ stem cells” are collected from the fetus later in development.
“Somatic stem cells” are from adults; they help maintain and repair the tissues
in a mature organ. For example, blood cells have only a 120-day lifespan; stem
cells create new cells to replace them.—Evelyn B. Kelly, Stem Cells (
2. Male rats will
travel several kilometers to find female rats and mate.—Randy J. Nelson, An
Introduction to Behavioral Endocrinology (
Feb. 5, 2008
The social rules
that govern the appearance of widows vary within the different regional,
ethnic, and religious communities of
Feb. 4, 2008
The “Sputnik”
name was used on a series of rockets. The first was launched Oct. 1957, and the
fourth (the last one), Apr. 1958.
Sputnik 3 carried the dog Laika.—Sputnik
Declassified (broadcast on Nova, 2008; DVD from WGBH Boston Video, 2008).
A
piece of Sputnik 4 crashed into a street in
Feb. 1, 2008
1) The
Jan. 30, 2008
1) Domestic horse
foals and semi-feral donkeys have been observed to play “king of the mountain,”
usually at the end of a play bout: one or more playmates will attain and hold
position at the peak of a small mound. 2) When horses stand and press their
faces against a vertical surface (such as the wall of a stall), it indicates a
central nervous system disease.—Sue McDonnell,
The Equid Ethogram: A Practical Field Guide to Horse Behavior (
Jan. 29, 2008
Oology
is the branch of zoology that deal with the study of eggs, especially birds’
eggs.—Wikipedia <en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oologist>
Jan. 29, 2008
There
are two English ballads known
as The
Ballad of Chevy Chase, but the nature of ballads means that there may
well have been many more versions of this once popular song. The ballads tell
the story of a large hunting party ("chase") in the
Jan. 28, 2008
Animal
signals are more or less reliable messages.
Some apparent exceptions to honest signaling among animals have involved
false badges of status (typically, small splotches of coloration on birds),
bluffing during encounters over resource ownership and social rank, individuals
misrepresenting the benefits they can offer to potential mates, withholding
information, and providing false information.—Michael D.
Jan. 25, 2008
During
the German occupation of France in World War II, a French laborer who did not
speak German said he needed only four words to communicate with them:
Kartoffel, Arbeit, Geld, and verboten (potato, work, money, and
forbidden).—Richard Vinen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (
Jan. 23, 2008
1. In
1996, the original name Mumbai was restored as the name for
2.
The question is not “is there life on other planets?”—there probably is—but is
there life which has sense organs similar to ours (that would therefore
communicate in a similar way), and an intelligence comparable to ours, with a
civilization that lasts long enough to develop electronic communication?
Consider that life originated on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, the hominid
lineage developed about 300 million years after that, and high intelligence
developed less than 300,000 years ago. Out of all the millions of branches of
evolutionary lineage, only one developed our intelligence. Of the twenty great
civilizations that rose and fell, few have lasted as long as 1,000 years—and if aliens
were like us, why would their civilization be more stable? Only since 1900 have we have the equipment to
detect electronic signals. The chance that an alien civilization broadcast
greetings at a time when we can understand their message is improbable to an
astronomical degree.—Ernst Mayr, What Make Biology Unique?
Considerations on the Autonomy of a Scientific Discipline (
3. Catholic
priest and author Henri J.M. Nouwen was inspired by the trapeze artists the
Flying Rodleighs, and the metaphor one of them gave him, in describing the
special relationship between the daredevil flyer, who lets go of the trapeze,
and the catcher who plucks him from the air: “The flyer must never catch the
catcher. He must wait in absolute trust.”—Henri J.M. Nouwen, Sabbatical
Journey: The Diary of His Final Year (New York: Crossroads Publishing,
1998).
Jan. 22, 2008
1) Peoples who
were born deaf develop better peripheral vision that people who can hear. 2)
Most people have to start learning a second language by the age 4 to develop a
native accent, and by the age 6 to have a native’s grasp of grammar.—Human
Brain Development: Nature and Nuture (
Jan.
14, 2008
1.
The Jewish Kingdom of Khazaria was located in an ancient region of southeastern
2.
The first vertebrate mating in space were Medaka fish on the space shuttle
3. Desert iguanas
change color to regulate their temperature. When they emerge in the morning,
they are dark, by the time they have reached activity temperature, they turned
light.—f. Harvey Pough, et al., Vertebrate
Life, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996).
Jan.
8, 2008
In
World War I, to encourage public support for war, the English published
accounts of German atrocities such as killing Belgian babies, raping nuns, and
running a factory that converted human bodies to useful products. After the
war, it was shown that these stories were false. During World War II, when the
news came that Nazis were perpetrating atrocities against the Jews, it was
dismissed as more propaganda.—“Propaganda,”
Culture Fix (BBC, 2000).
Jan.
7, 2008
1. Captain
James Cook’s first round-the-world voyage (from Plymouth, England, around Cape
Horn, South America, across the south Pacific, around the tip of South Africa,
and back to England) lasted from Aug. 1768 to July 1771.—John Gascoigne, Captain
Cook: Voyager between Worlds (London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007).
2.
Balzebub (Baal-zebub, or other variants) was the name of a Philistine god
worshipped at Ekron. The name has been translated “Lord of the Flies”—Bibletext
website <http://www.bibletexts.com/terms/beelzebu.htm>.
3. Indian rupees
in amounts over 100,000 are counted in lakh, lacs, and crore. 1 lakh = 100,000
rupees. 10 lakh = 1 lacs = 1,000,000. 100 lakh = 10 lacs = 1 crore =
10,000,000.—eBearing website <http://www.ebearing.com/rupees-explained.htm>.
Jan.
3, 2008
1. A)
Like a heart, the Sun pulsates. There is a gradual buildup in strength and then
weakening of the giant magnetic bubble that emanates from within the Sun and
surrounds all of the planets. Each of these magnetic heartbeats takes about
eleven years to complete. B)
When a large solar flare is observed, planes are rerouted or ordered to fly at
lower elevations to minimize their passengers’ exposure to radiation. Light
from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth, but particles from a solar
flare might take eighteen to forty-eight hours to arrive.—Stuart Clark, The
Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How
Modern Astronomy Began (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
2.
“To scotch the snake” is an expression meaning to render powerless, disarm,
disable, or incapacitate.—Webster’s
Online Dictionary.
Jan.
2, 2008
1. QALY: A quality-adjusted
life year; a unit used, esp. in cost-benefit analysis, in the prediction of
both quality and duration of life after medical or surgical treatment.—
2. The Prosopography of the
Dec.
21, 2007
Journalist
David Brooks says people who are in business are 2-1 Republicans; accountants,
2-1 Republicans; academics, 11-1 Democrats; actors, 18-1 Democrats;
journalists, 93-1 Democrats; librarians 223-1 Democrats.—Arches
[University of Puget Sound alumni magazine] (Winter 2008).
Dec.
18, 2007
1.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was able to skip 9th and 12th grades and entered
college at age 15. He was ordained a minister at age 18, and received his Ph.D.
at age 26.—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Historical Perspective,
documentary film written and directed by Thomas Friedman (
2. A
“global economics paper” published by Goldman Sachs in 2003, commonly called
“the BRIC report,” predicted, based on demographic changes, that Brazil,
Russia, India and China (BRIC) will become leading forces in the world economy
in the early 21st century.—Get 1.1 Billion’s Attention (Films for the
Humanities & Sciences, 2007)
3. In
2004, workers in the U.S. sent $17 billion to their families in Mexico, an
amount more than Mexico makes in tourism, an amount second only to oil as a
source of income for that country.—Letters from the Other Side, written and
directed by Heather Courtney (Front Porch Films, 2006).
Dec.
17, 2007
1. In
1700, an earthquake in the Pacific Northwest triggered a tsunami that hit
2. In a cloze
test, certain words are removed from a text, and the participant is asked to
supply the missing words. The test assesses the participant ‘s understanding of
context and knowledge of vocabulary. The word cloze is derived from closure in
Gestalt theory. The test was first described by W.L. Taylor in 1953.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloze_test>.
Dec.
13, 2007
Following
the September 11, 2001, attack, the
Dec.
10, 2007
1.
The Greeks had no single term to express what we mean by the word “life.” They
used two terms that are semantically and morphological distinct: zoe, which
expressed the simple fact of living common to all being (animals, men, and
gods) and bios, which indicated the form or way of living proper to an
individual or group.—Giorgio
Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1998).
2.
The Inquisition had its origins in
Nov.
30, 2007
1.
Charles Berlitz, of language school fame, wrote several books on odd phenomenon
and pop culture “mysteries” such as the Bermuda Triangle and the Roswell
incident.—Library of Congress authority records.
2.
Fred Gwynne, the actor, also wrote children’s books (A Chocolate Moose for
Dinner). He died in 1993.—Library of Congress authority record.
Nov.
26, 2007
The
two-color Technicolor movie camera used to film Redskins in 1929 captured red
and green color records on separate frames, thus each shot required twice the
length of negative as a black-and-white film.—Treasures III: Social Issues
in American Film: Program Notes (San Francisco, Calif.: National Film
Preservation Foundation, 2007).
Nov.
21, 2007
1.
The bombing of the Basque town of Gernika in 1937, by the German Luftwaffe, was
the first time in modern warfare that a target was destroyed solely for
symbolic reasons and a civilian population attacked from the air.—Russell Martin,
Picasso’s War: The Destruction of Guernica, and the Masterpiece that Changed
the World (New York: Plume, 2002).
2. Henry Morton
Stanley was born in poverty in North Wales, raised in a workhouse, emigrated to
3. Einstein wrote
in 1955, “For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past,
present, and future is only an illusion, however tenacious this illusion may
be.”—Jürgen Neffe, Einstein: A Biography
(
Nov.
20, 2007
1.
The current theory is that most Ice Age “cave art” was produced in the open,
but simply hasn’t survived weathering, and thus the sheltered art inside caves
is what we know today, but hundreds of figures from that same era, pecked into
rocks, have been found at a dozen sites in Spain, Portugal and France.—Colin Renfrew
and Paul Bahn, Archaeology Essentials (New York: Thames & Hudson,
2007).
2. A)
Most visitors to the
Nov. 19,
2007
1. A
legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority (and the corresponding
duty) to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called
a ward. A guardian appointed to represent the interests of a person with
respect to a single action in litigation is a guardian ad litem.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_guardian>
2.
Hippotherapy (riding on horses, under the supervision of therapists) can be
helpful to people with a range of diagnoses, including cerebral palsy,
traumatic brain injury, and autism. The rider’s response to the rhythmic gait
of the horse can help improve balance, posture, mobility, and function, and the
natural setting can be a very enjoyable learning experience.—American
Hippotherapy Association website
<http://www.americanequestrian.com/hippotherapy.htm>.
Nov.
15, 2007
1. In
our attempt to understand nature, we see a very complicated system. Francis
Crick faced a complicated system when viewing the constituents of living cells.
He suggests in his book What Mad Pursuit that one should first characterize all
the parts of the system and then understand their geometric relationships. He
then suggests one must study the system as a whole to understand how it behaves
when various parts are perturbed.—David D. Pollard and Raymond C. Fletcher, Fundamentals
of Structural Geology (
2.
From the author’s preface: “After preparing the volume of Geological Rese
Nov.
14, 2007
The
Nov.
11, 2007
It is possible to
see the tattoos on the skin of a mummified Neolithic iceman, found after 5,000
years in an alpine glacier.—Nina G. Jablonski, Skin:
A Natural History (
Nov.
10, 2007
1. Near its mouth
at the Atlantic Ocean, the
2. Florence Goodenough (1886-1959) spent a
good portion of her intellectual life developing tools for assessing
intelligence in young children. She strongly believed that IQ could be reliably
measured with significant stability for most preschoolers. In 1926, she
introduced her Draw-a-Man test in a book entitled Measurement of Intelligence
by Drawings (1926). This nonverbal test of intelligence was intended for
children aged two to thirteen and required children to draw a picture of a man.
Although the test only took about ten minutes to administer (significantly less
time than other nonverbal tests of the time), it was highly reliable and it
correlated well with standard IQ tests of the time. The Draw-a-Man test gained
immediate popularity and even twenty years after its introduction it was listed
as the third most frequently used test by clinical psychologists.—Human
Intelligence website <http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/goodenough.shtml>
3.
Sugar Ray Robinson’s real name was Walker Smith, Jr.—Library of Congress
authority record
Nov.
9, 2007
1. During the
development of the technology, the acronym DVD stood for “digital video disc.”
In 1995, at the time of the spec finalization, it was called “digital versatile
disc,” to include non-video uses. The
official specification documents have never stated that DVD stands for
anything.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvd>.
2. Rayner Unwin,
the publisher who in 1951, reviewed Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings manuscript,
wrote to his boss (his father) that he thought they would lose 1,000 pounds if
they published it, and his father wrote back, “If you believe this to be a work
of genius, then you may lose a thousand pounds.”—Houghton
Mifflin video on The Fellowship of the Ring movie.
Nov.
7, 2007
1.
Ice is “hot,” compared to other materials.
Room-temperature steel is 2,700 degrees Farenheit from its melting
point, metamorphic rocks are over 3,000 degrees from theirs, but ice is
typically less than 50 degrees from its melting point.—Mariana Gosnell, Ice:
The Nature, the History, and the Uses of an Astonishing Substance (New
York: Knopf, 2005).
2. Haole, (pronounced
how-leh) in the Hawaiian language, means “foreign” or
“foreigner”; it can be used in reference to people, plants, and animals. The
origins of the word predate the 1778 arrival of Captain James Cook (which is
the general accepted date of first contact with westerners); for example, the
expression haole ʻeleʻele, which means a dark-skinned foreigner, is
found in an ancient chant.—Wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haole>.
Nov.
6, 2007
The Disney
cartoon Goliath II, released
Jan. 1960, was the first production to be fully animated using a Xerox process
for transferring the pencil drawings to cells.—some random webpage.
Nov.
2, 2007
1.
The boiling point of a solution is always higher than that of a pure solvent.—some random
webpage that I found when I was looking for something else.
2. “Cockaigne” is
an imaginary land of ease. Etymology: from the Middle English cokaygne, from Middle French (pais de) cocaigne “(land of)
plenty,” ultimately adapted or derived from a word meaning “cake” (a kind of
small cake sold to children at fairs). The Dutch equivalent is Luilekkerland ("lazy luscious
land"), and the German equivalent is Schlaraffenland (also known as “land of milk and honey").—Dictionary.com <http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2001/07/27.html>
and Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockaigne>.
Oct.
26, 2007
1.
2.
The composer J.S. Bach had 20 children, ten of whom predeceased him.—Peter Williams,
J.S. Bach: A Life in Music (
3. In
4.
“Footpad”: an old term for a criminal who assaults pedestrians, sometimes
knocking them unconscious, and robs them.—various webpages.
Oct.
25, 2007
The
“Arizona Articulation Proficiency Scale” is a test to assess children’s and
teenagers’ ability to pronounce English words.—Western Psychological
Services website <http://portal.wpspublish.com/>.
Oct.
24, 2007
Abraham Lincoln
is the most frequently honored person in
Oct. something—I
fell behind and lost track
Pat
Benatar’s real name is Patricia Andrzejewski.—Library of Congress authority
record.
An
“orant” is a standing figure, with arms outraised—the gesture of prayer in the
early Christian period.—various webpages.
Oct.
1, 2007
1.
Walt Disney performed the voice of Mickey Mouse in the early sound animations.—Mickey
Mouse in Black and White: The Classic Collection [DVDs] (
2. Jodie Foster’s
real name is Alicia Christian Foster.—Library of
Congress authority record.
Sept.
20, 2007
A
pingo is an arctic mound or conical hill, consisting of an outer layer of soil
covering in a mound of ice.—Pingos in Central Alaska, by G. William
Holmes, David M. Hopkins, and Helen L. Foster (
Sept.
17, 2007
1. In 1988, the
painter Chuck Close suffered a collapsed spinal artery, which left him almost
completely paralyzed. A brace device on his partially mobile hand, a
sophisticated wheelchair, and other aids allowed him to paint again.—
2.
Artist Vija Celmins was born in 1938 in
Sept.
12, 2007
In
1965,
Sept.
10, 2007
1.
“The American Malacological Society is a dynamic international society of individuals
and organizations with an active interest in the study and conservation of
mollusks.” Founded in 1931.—AMS website <http://www.malacological.org/>.
2. The Richter
scale was developed by seismologist Charles Richter
(1900-1985), and though it is a household word, few understand the scale.
Richter was known as intensely private, passionately interested in earthquakes
and iconoclastic. His oddities may have be the consequence of a profound
neurological disorder.—Princeton University Press website <http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8248.html>.
Sept.
7, 2007
1.
The Iraqw people live in Tanzania.—Library of Congress authority record.
2.
Paul G. Richards and Xiaodong Song have discovered evidence that the Earth’s
core is rotating eastward in relation to the mantle and crust. They estimate
this core, which is about the size or the moon, will turn one full revolution
in about 1,000 years.—Paul G. Richards’ web page
<http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~richards/>.
Aug.
29, 2007
1. In
1832, Évariste Galois died from a duel at age 21, but he left behind 60 pages
of work that revolutionized mathematics. He invented a language to describe
symmetry in mathematical structures, and to deduce its consequences. Today that
language, known as group theory, may be the key to unlocking a unified “theory
of everything” in physics.—Ian Stewart, Why Beauty Is Truth (
2.
Twenty-four times as many Mexicans enter the
Aug.
28, 2007
Trishaw
is another name for a bicycle rickshaw (a rickshaw is pulled by a person on
foot). Trishaws are also called pedicab, velotaxi, and many other names, and
variations of them are used in major cities throughout the world.—Balan Moses, Brickfields
(
Aug.
27, 2007
The
Rann of Kachchh is saline mudflats of west-central
Aug.
24, 2007
Aug.
23, 2007
1.
Hants is the abbreviation for the English county Hampshire.—various webpages.
2.
Endgame: a term for the final moves of a chess match.—various webpages.
Aug.
20, 2007
1. In
1939, a little-known author and poet named Ernest Vincent Wright published his
work Gadsby: A Story of over 50,000 Words without Using the Letter “E.” His
motivation for writing it was “hearing it so constantly claimed that ‘it can’t
be done.’”—Ethan Haimo, Schoenberg’s Transformation of Musical Language
(
2.
According to anthropologist Inge Bolin, childhood is not recognized as a
separate phase among the Chillihuani in the remote Quechua communities of the
3. “The purpose of the Pugwash Conferences is
to bring together, from around the world, influential scholars and public
figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking
cooperative solutions for global problems. Meeting in private as individuals,
rather than as representatives of governments or institutions, Pugwash
participants exchange views and explore alternative approaches to arms control
and tension reduction with combination of candour, continuity and flexibility
seldom attained in official … discussions and negotiations.… The Pugwash
Movement is a clear demonstration of the fundamental change that has taken
place since World War II in the relations between scientists and society. The
traditional “ivory tower” attitude of scientists, that often resulted in a
sense of indifference to the social and political impact of their work, is
being replaced by an increasing awareness of their moral duty to help to reduce
and, when possible, to eliminate the actual and potential harmful effects of
the scientific and technological explosion that have become the hallmark of our
time.”—Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs webpage <
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3778/ >.
4. The symptoms
that came to be known as Alzheimer’s dementia were first described by the
German physician Alois Alzheimer in 1906; he believed it to be a rare
condition. A British epidemiological study published in 1964 showed it was
relatively common in the elderly.—Robert L. Taylor, Psychological
Masquerade (
Aug.
17, 2007
The
Old and Middle English letter yogh resembles an Arabic numeral 3, and, as it
fell into disuse, printers would sometimes substitute a “y” or sometimes a “z”
to represent the sound. It was the precursor to the “gh” sound in night, the
“y” in yeoman, and the “sh” in Shetland (formerly written Zetland). The 12th
century poet La<yogh>amon’s name is now written sometimes as Lazamon and
sometimes as Layamon or Laweman.—various webpages, including that of the
Aug.
16, 2007
In
1898, Marie Curie published her discovery of thorium, and used the term
“radioactive substance” for the first time in print. She proposed the detection
of radioactive properties as a means for the discovery of new substances, and
she and husband Pierre used that method to discover polonium and radium. Marie
was the first woman appointed professor at the Sorbonne and the only woman to
receive two Nobel Prizes. Her daughter Irene also won a Nobel Prize, in
chemistry, in 1935, for the discovery of positron radioactivity.—Out of the
Shadows: Contributions of Twentieth-Century Women to Physics (Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
Aug.
15, 2007
1.
Anthropologist Stuart Kirsch was permitted to learn sacred beliefs and
practices from the yawat male cult rituals of the Yonggom people of
2. A)
A clay tablet from the days of the Hammurabi dynasty of Mesopotamia proves the
Babylonians were familiar with the “Pythagorean theorem” 1,000 years before
Pythagoras lived. B) To find the result of a number multiplied by five, it is
possible to halve the number then move the decimal point one place to the right
(5 x 6 = 30; 1/2 of 6 is 3, 3 moved one decimal place is 30).—Eli Maor, The
Pythagorean Theorem (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
3. On
the island of Aruba, development of the tourism industry brought unemployment
down from 40 percent in 1985 to virtually zero one decade later.—Polly
Pattullo, Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean (London:
Latin American Bureau, 2005)
Aug.
14, 2007
1.
The International System of Units (SI) is the most recent effort to develop a
coherent system of units. It allows only
one unit for each base physical quantity, and is constructed from seven base
units for independent quantities (ampere, candela, kelvin, kilogram, meter,
mole, and second).—ACS Style Guide (
2.
Modern archaeologists have uncovered clay tablets from late 5th century Uruk
which contain Babylonian mathematical word problems and their solutions (“The
square-side of a house is sixty cubits. [I bought] a square-side of 3 cubits
for [1/2 shekel]. What did I buy the total house for?”).—The Mathematics of
3.
Mary Surratt, a
Aug.
13, 2007
1.
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun was the official portrait painter for Marie-Antoinette.
Fleeing the Reign of Terror, she went to Russia in 1795, at age 40, where she
received commissions from the imperial family and other wealthy patrons; before
she left in 1800, she had painted 50 portraits.—Gita May, Elisabeth Vigée Le
Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution (New Have: Yale
University Press, 2005).
2. In
1904, Henri Poincaré proposed a guess about the shape of the universe (in which
he asserted that any compact three-manifold on which any closed path can be
shrunk to a point, is the same topologically as the three-sphere). For nearly a
century, mathematicians tried to prove or disprove the Poincaré conjecture. In
2000, a one-million dollar prize was offered to whoever published the solution
in a referred journal. In 2002, Grigory Perelman posted proof on the internet,
indicating he had discovered the answer but wasn’t going to claim the
prize.—Donal O’shea, The Poincaré Conjecture (
3. To
the people of
4. It
is possible to smell garlic on the breath of a person who has eaten it because
the allicin and other sulphur-containing compounds that are responsible for its
odor are excreted from the body via the lungs, and to a lesser extent, through
the skin.—Desk Reference to Nature’s Medicine (Washington, D.C.:
National Geographic, 2007)
Aug.
3, 2007
1. As
Coca-Cola and Pepsi increased sales abroad following World War II, their
merchandising cut into the profits for German beer, Italian wine, and Japanese
sake. In
2. A
Foley artist makes the naturalistic sound effects that are missed by production
microphones and must be added to a movie soundtrack (footsteps, creaks,
rustling of clothing, etc.). The techniques are named for Jack Foley, a sound
editor at Universal Studios.—various webpages.
July
30, 2007
1.
The University of
2.
The
3.
“Bataille de boules de neige” is French for “snowball fight.”—The European
Pioneers (
July
24, 2007
1.
Henry Ford built his first car in 1893, at age 30. He founded a company to
manufacture cars of his design in 1899. The production of standardized parts
had been introduced a century earlier, by Whitney; Ford’s idea was to bring the
parts to the workers, rather than vice versa. In his assembly lines, the
product moved while workers stood still, repeatedly performing a single
task.—Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and
Technology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1972)
2.
The first around-the-world submariner was named Beach (U.S. Navy Captain Edward
L. Beach).—Library of Congress name authority record, quoting the New York
Times (2002).
July
23, 2007
An
ephemeris is a table listing the coordinates of a celestial body at a number of
points during a select period. Given precise masses and accurate starting
positions and velocities for a planet, in principle, an ephemeris can be
calculated for any time in the past or future.—Michael A. Houlden and F.
Richard Stephenson, A Supplement to the Tuckerman Tables (Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society, 1986).
July
20, 2007
Gandhi’s
given name was Mohandas; the Indians called him the Mahatma, which means “Great
Soul.”—various webpages.
July
19, 2007
Regarding
the emblems on the flag of
July
5, 2007
Pablo
Picasso’s full name was Pablo Diego José
Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Clito
Ruiz y Picasso.—Wikipedia
<http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso>
June
27, 2007
1.
The
2.
Light reflected from most surfaces (such as paper) is broken into a
high-contrast fine-scale granular pattern, because the surface is rough on the
scale of the optical wavelength (mirrors are a notable exception). The
granularity is called speckle. Speckle is also observed at other wavelengths,
such as in the use of radar imagery, and in other fields and applications.—Joseph W.
Goodman, Speckle Phenomenon in Optics (
3.
The numbers 4 and 9 and considered unlucky in
June
25, 2007
A.A.
Milne, author of the Winnie-the-Pooh books (first published 1924?), had a son
named Christopher (born 1920).—various records in the OCLC database.
June
22, 2007
Qat
(also known as khat, miraa, chat, Abyssian tea plant, Catha edulis, and
numerous other names) is a plant that has been cultivated for centuries in a
narrow geographical belt ranging from
June
20, 2007
1.
The poultry breeder industry is based on female chickens. Traditionally, after
the eggs hatched, it took several weeks until a trained sexer could distinguish
between hens and roosters. In 1964, Arbor Acres introduced chickens with a
genetic marker, so that males had a distinctive colored pin feather.—Kenneth D.
Durr, A Company with a
2. “I
don’t know when I first noticed that starlings, and other kinds of perching
birds like sparrows, tend to space themselves out evenly along telephone
lines…. I wonder if it means the birds all like each other the same amount, or
if it would be more accurate to say they all dislike each other slightly….The
mystery only deepened when I observed birdwatchers doing the same thing, all
strung out along a boardwalk with three feet between them.”—James Elkins, Visual
Studies (
June
19, 2007
Merrill
Memorial Library in
June
18, 2007
1.
UXO is an acronym for “unexploded
ordnance.” Topmiller is an American vet who returned to
2.Clara
Immerwahr was a chemist and the first woman Ph.D. at
June
15, 2007
A
koppie is a hillock found in the arid regions of southern
June
11, 2007
Lavabo
(from the Latin “I shall wash”) is the name of the basin used by the priest to
wash his hands after preparing the altar and before saying
June
8, 2007
The
Fin Garden of Kashan, Iran, is a classical Persian palace and garden, where the
kings of the Safavid dynasty (1501-1722) would spend their vacations, but there
is evidence that people have come to the site for water for thousands of years.
Artifacts (mostly earthenware) dated to first millennium B.C. have been found
in the area, and the 6,000-year-old Sialk ziggurat is nearby.—various websites.
June
6, 2007
1.
The myth of Cyclops, the race of giant, one-eyed monsters, may have originated
from ancient people finding, in caves in
2.
The young Adolf Hitler applied to the
June
5, 2007
1. A.
A “henge” is a prehistoric enclosure consisting of a circular ditch and
adjacent external bank. Many were constructed in
B.
Archaeologists reckon “common era” and “before common era” dates without a zero
year (so that 1 CE follows 1 BCE), but astronomers count backward, through zero
and into negative numbers (year 1 follows year 0, which follows year -1). Thus,
the archaeologist’s year 331 BCE is the astronomer’s year -330.—both from Ancient
Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth (
2.
Seabiscuit, the horse that set race track records in the 1930s, was initially
considered undersized and lazy; he lost his first seventeen races in
1935.—Robert Niemi, History in the Media: Film and Television (
June
4, 2007
1. In
the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was much experimentation for the
possible use of electricity in medicine. Electrolysis was invented in 1875; the
electrocardiograph was invented in 1906. An invention that didn’t last was
galvanic spectacles, which delivered a current across the bridge of the nose
intended to stimulate the optic nerve and improve vision.—Medicine, Health,
and Bioethics: Essential Primary Sources (
2.
Fugitive slaves in the Caribbean were called “maroon,” from the Spanish word
“cimarrone,” for one who is wild, unruly, or escaped.—Suzette Benitez, “The
Maroons in Jamaica” web page < http://scholar.library.miami.edu/slaves/Maroons/individual_essays/suzette1.html
>.
3. A.
Although now used to describe athletes who participate in team sports, the term
“jock” came from the word “jockey.”
4.
The term “berdache,” used to describe some androgynous or feminine Native
American men, was applied to them by French explorers, and derived from the
Persian word “bardaj,” meaning “a close intimate male friend.”—both from Men
& Masculinities: A Social, Cultural and Historical Encyclopedia (
June
1, 2007
“Swash”
is the rapid flow (uprush) of a breaking wave up the beach face.—Encyclopedia
of Coastal Science (
May
31, 2007
1.
Iridium is one of the platinum-group elements. Iridium concentrations are very
low in the Earth’s crust, and high iridium values in crustal rocks can be
assumed to be an indicator of a bolide impact.—Jonathan Nott, Extreme
Events: A Physical Reconstruction and Risk Assessment (
2. “What is a bolide? There is no consensus on
its definition, but we use it to mean an extraterrestrial body in the 1-10-km
size range, which impacts the earth at velocities of literally faster than a
speeding bullet (20-70 km/sec = Mach 75), explodes upon impact, and creates a
large crater. “Bolide” is a generic term, used to imply that we do not know the
precise nature of the impacting body—whether
it is a rocky or metallic asteroid, or an icy comet, for example.”—USGS Chesapeake Bay Bolide page < http://woodshole.er.usgs.gov/epubs/bolide/introduction.html
>.
3.
The Procter & Gamble company was formed in 1837 by the candlemaker William
Procter and soapmaker James Gamble, who were brothers-in-law (married the
sisters Olivia and Elizabeth Norris). The company logo of moon and stars was
first used in the 1850s on boxes of their Star brand candles (the company
stopped making candles in the 1920s). Ivory soap was developed by Procter’s son
and its name suggested to Gamble’s son by a passage from the Bible (“out of
ivory palaces”).—P&G company history webpage
<http://www.pg.com/company/who_we_are/ourhistory.jhtml>
May
30, 2007
1. In
October 1948, near
2. A.
The Fibonacci ratio was described by Leonardo Fibonacci, who was born in
3. As
a Lieutenant Colonel in 1944, the future Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski
prosecuted the notorious Seattle court-martial of 43 African-American GIs, with
the result that three soldiers were found guilty of murder, even though
Jaworski failed to produce any evidence linking any one individual to the
crime, and others were convicted of and punished for rioting.—Jack Hamann, On
American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II (Chapel Hill,
N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005).
May
29, 2007
1.
Zooarchaeology is the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. One
example: Elizabeth Scott found at the
2.
“By searching existing collections and employing copyists and binders, Caliph
al-Hakim II (961-976)…built an extraordinary library in Cordoba [Andalusian
Spain] with about 400,000 volumes—the catalogue itself consumed forty-four
volumes. Some scholars suggest that the intellectual activity in the great
mosque in Cordoba, which attracted scholars and students from across the Near
East and Western Europe, served as a catalyst for the establishment of new
universities and the transmission of important knowledge from East to West—of
papermaking, for example.”—Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History
(Great
May
25, 2007
1.
One of the most important collections of Basque material in the world is the
Basque Studies Library of the
2.
“Solar tope”: evidentally a name for a type of hat wore by English explorers,
perhaps a sort of pith helmet, but with a large, round crown and narrow brim
(I’m having trouble finding confirmation of that.)—Literature of Travel and
Exploration: An Encyclopedia (
3.
The film Koyaanisqatsi began as a project of an ascetic Catholic monk with no
experience and little interest in film.—Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film
(
May
21, 2007
A.
B.
“Yawning is an easy way to reduce stress because doing so relaxes the throat,
palate, upper neck, and the base of the brain. It helps balance the flow of cerebrospinal
fluid, which helps keep the brain and spine clean and flexible. It also
increases production of saliva and so improves digestion. Yawning also
increases fluid flow to the eyes, which washes and soothes them. It also
increases the brain’s production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter that tends
to balance mood. Because of increased serotonin, yawning helps to induce
sleep….”—both from The Encyclopedia of Stress and Stress-Related Diseases
(
May
18, 2007
The
mark between Is in Hawai‘i is not an astrophe, it is a glottal stop (’okina,
the eighth and final consonant in the Hawaiian alphabet)—
May 17,
2007
1.
When “D.B. Cooper” hijacked a plane in 1971, and demanded $200,000 in $20
bills, he said the serial numbers had to be random, not in sequential order.
The FBI made sure each serial number started with L, and nearly all of the
bills were dated 1969. They also rapidly microfilmed all the money, and were
able to supply banks with a list of all 10,000 serial numbers. Three bundles of
those bills were found on the banks of the
2.
Blind Gospel singer and pianist Arizona Juanita Dranes (1894-1963) was born and
raised in Texas.—“The Handbook of Texas Online,” at TSHA Online website
<http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/>.
May
16, 2007
1.
“During the late eighteenth century the English East India Company, a private
trading organization, established a vast territorial empire on the Indian
subcontinent. As the Company extended its power and influence…it was
transformed into an imperial power, backed by a large army, and it began to
exercise administrative control over millions of Indians. The nature and
completeness of this extraordinary institutional transformation was such that
when the Company lost its last remaining commercial privileges in 1833 it
continued to exercise British rule over much of
2.
VENONA was a top-secret code-breaking project of
May
15, 2007
“Chatter
control” to eliminate unstable vibrations helps airplanes, robots, and other
machines work more accurately and efficiently.—various cataloging records in
OCLC WorldCat.
May
11, 2007
In
2002, at the opening of a weapons museum in
May
10, 2007
Sisters
Sarah Moore Grimke (1792-1873) and Angelina Emily Grimke (1805-1879), thought to
be the first women to speak publicly against slavery (in 1836), were born to a
prominent slaveholding family in
May
9, 2007
1.
Sugar plantation economies and societies developed in
2.
Weka (rhymes with
3.
Some trace the birth of Hip Hop to Nov. 11, 1973, when Afrika Bambaataa
established the Zulu Nation, a communal organization intended to eradicate
street violence by transforming gangs into crews, who would compete against
their rivals in shows of turntable skills, dance, and lyrical talents, instead
of weapons.—Yvonne Bynoe, Encyclopedia of Rap and Hip Hop Culture
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006).
4.
Since 2001, more than fifty percent of the babies born in
May
8, 2007
1. “
2.
Boy Scouts had a chant “Dyb, dyb, dyb,” to remind one another to “do your
best.”—various websites.
3.
Baden-Powell’s manual Scouting for Boys is one of the best-selling books of the
20th century; from the time it was first published in 1908, until after the
Second World War, its sales, among English-language books, was exceed only by
those of the Bible—Elleke Boehmer, introduction to the Oxford University Press
edition of Scouting for Boys (2004)
May
7, 2007
There
are several methods used to reduce the speed of planes on landing, and thereby
shorten the landing distance. One device that is less commonly used is the drag
parachute. They are typically used only on military aircraft, though some
Russian commercial airliners have used them. The Space Shuttle is also equipped
with a large parachute. During landing, one or more parachutes are deployed
from a compartment in the aft end of the aircraft to increase the drag of the
vehicle and provide additional stopping force. The primary disadvantage is that
the parachute must be repacked aboard the plane before the aircraft can take
off again.—<http://www.aerospaceweb.org/>.
May
3, 2007
1.
The American cartoon Speed Racer (debut 1967) was based on the Japanese anime
Mach Go Go Go.—Mechademia, vol. 1 (2006)
2. Some
racers in the 1950 Tour de France, seeking relief from the heat, took a
spontaneous break to get wet in the
May
2, 2007
Soto
Zen Buddhists of Japan believed that women are polluted by their menstrual
blood, and therefore, after death, are condemned to Blood Pool Hell (where they
are tormented and forced to drink from the pool of blood six times a day), and
that a woman’s only means of salvation was to recite, copy and worship the
Ketsubonkyo (the Blood Pool Hell Sutra).—Duncan Ryuken Williams, The Other
Side of Zen: A Social History of Soto Zen Buddhism in Tokugawa, Japan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
Apr.
30, 2007
1.
The expression “Ozymandias moment” is a reference to “Ozymandias of Egypt,” a
poem by Shelley, in which a traveler in the desert finds the remnants of an
ancient monument.—Nick Gillespie, “Ozymandias Redux,” Reason (Apr. 10,
2003) <www.reason.com>.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
2.
The subspecies name of the Western Lowland Gorilla is Gorilla gorilla
gorilla.—various websites.
3.
X-rays penetrate mirrors, rather than reflect from them.—Mark Pendergrast, Mirror,
Mirror: A History of the Human Love Affair with Reflection (
Apr.
28, 2007
“Beadle”
is an old English term for: 1) one who makes a proclamation for another; a
herald; the crier or usher of a town court; a town crier; 2) one who delivers
the message or executes the mandates of another; 3) a precusor who walks
officially in front of dignitaries, esp. at the lead of a university
procession; the apparitor of a trades guild; an inferior parish officer or
parish constable.—Oxford English Dictionary.
Apr.
26, 2007
1.
Liquid crystals are fluids with characteristics that place them between the solid
state crystal and the isotrophic liquid. They were discovered in 1888. They
have three different blue phases, also called a fog phase, or a blue fog.—Ingo
Dierking, Textures of Liquid Crystals (Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2003)
2. In
the
3.
Spandau is a section of Berlin.—Norman J.W. Goda, Tales from Spandau: Nazi
Criminals and the Cold War (
4.
Author Upton Sinclair hired author Sinclair Lewis to tend the furnace at the
communal residence Helicon Hall.—Kevin Mattson, Upton Sinclair and the Other
American Century (
5. In
her book Freedom and Culture, Dorothy D. Lee writes that the people of the
Trobriand Islands have no verb tenses to indicate past, present, or future.—various
websites.
Apr.
24, 2007
“War
no longer exists. Confrontation, conflict and combat undoubtedly exist…[but]
war as battle in a field…as a massive deciding event…no longer exists…. [T]he
last real tank battle known to the world…took place in the 1973 Arab-Israeli
war…. Since then thousands more tanks have been built and purchased, especially
by groups of nations in NATO and the former Warsaw Pact. Indeed, by 1991,…NATO
allies were estimated to have over 23,000 tanks…whilst the Warsaw Pact states
has nearly 52,000.”—Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in
the Modern World (
Apr.
23, 2007
1.
Disc jockey Wolfman Jack’s real name was Bob Smith.—Library of Congress name
authority record.
2.
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s father, William Lloyd Webber, was also a composer. When
cited as Lord Lloyd-Webber, a hyphen is used because “Chamber rules for the
House of Lords require that all double-barreled names have hyphens.”—Library of
Congress name authority record.
Apr.
20, 2007
1.
The Eighteenth Amendment, barring the manufacture, sale, and transportation of
alcohol, was the first time the Constitution was “used to limit, rather than
protect, the personal liberties of individuals.”—Michael A. Lerner, Dry
2.
Golda Meir—then known as Golda Mabowetz—was vice president of her junior class
at the Milwaukee State Normal School, in 1917.—Michael B. Oren, Power,
Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2007).
Apr.
19, 2007
Jesuit missionaries arrived in
The
Christian faith…is strictly prohibited. Anyone knowing of a suspect shall
report to the authorities without fail. The following shall be given in reward:
To an informer on a father: 300
pieces of silver;
To
an informer on a brother: 200 pieces of silver;
To an informer on a retrovert: 200
pieces of silver
To an informer on a Catechist or lay
Christian: 100 pieces of silver
Even if the informer himself is a member of a Christian
household, he shall be rewarded with goods in the value of 100 pieces of
silver.
Public
notices prohibiting Christianity were removed in 1873.—Religion in Japanese
Culture, edited by Noriyoshi Tamaru and David Reid (Tokyo: Kodansha
International, 1996).
Apr.
18, 2007
“It is
ironical that Richard [the Lionhearted] should have become one of the great
folk-heroes of England, for not only was he hardly ever in England, but also he
came close to impoverishing the country—and he did not even speak
English.”—Stephen Howarth, The Knights Templar: The Essential History (
Apr.
17, 2007
“Gold
“and “Platinum” records awards are issued by the Recording Industry Association
of America, but only to their own members (major labels and their
affiliates).—Moses Avalon, Confessions of a Record Producer (
Apr.
11, 2007
Poet
Mark Halperin met someone in Tallinn, Estonia, who had always assumed the
Hebrew name Abraham meant President Lincoln was Jewish.—Mark Halperin, Time
As Distance (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 2001).
Apr.
5, 2007
The Tripolitan
War, 1800-1815, was a conflict between the U.S. and the north African Barbary
States (Tripolitania, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco), which were demanding the
U.S. pay tribute or suffer pirate attacks on merchant vessels in the
Mediterranean.—various websites.
Apr.
4, 2007
1.
The Mabinogi is a set of four interrelated tales considered the finest example
of medieval Welsh prose narrative. The oldest surviving copy of the text was
written in the late 13th century, but the characters and events are based on
much older Welsh and Celtic mythology. Many of the places described in the
tales can be identified as specific locations in Wales.—John K. Bollard, The
Mabinogi: Legend and Landscape of Wales (
2. In 1750,
Apr.
2, 2007
Participants
in a study were told the definitions of obscure words, and asked to provide the
words, in an attempt to create “tip-of-the-tongue” (TOT) experiences.
Typically, participants who could not quite recall a word could provides
details of it, such as number of syllables, or words which sound like it. 57%
of the time, participants could identify the first letter of the word they were
trying to recall.—Ian Stuart Hamilton, The Psychology of Ageing (
Mar.
29, 2007
Bengali
poet Rabindranath Tagore, first non-Westerner to win the Nobel Prize for
Literature (in 1913) wrote the national anthems of both India and
Bangladesh.—Rabindranath Tagore, Of Myself (London: Anvil House Poetry,
2006).
Mar.
28, 2007
1. In
2.
Mar.
26, 2007
In
1778, Hanover and other towns in
Mar.
23, 2007
1. In
the 1920s, Ivar Kreuger had a monopoly on the sale of matches in
2.
The Republic of Kalmykia is in the southeast of the European part of the
3.
Where Americans say “counterclockwise,” the British say
“anti-clockwise.”—several websites.
Mar.
22, 2007
"Mao”
is the Chinese word for cat.—Gerald Scott Klayman and Yunfeng Zhao, Urban
Chinese (
1. A
“ha-ha,” in
3.
Many African societies divide people into three groups: the living, the sasha,
and the zamani. The sasha have died but are still remembered by someone who is
living; they become zamani when the last person to know them dies.—James
Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me, quoted by Kevin Brockmeier in The Brief History of the Dead (New
York: Random House, 2007)
Mar.
21, 2007
Commodore
Matthew Perry liked to have musicians on board ships to boost morale and
provide pomp and decorum. When he was sent to Japan in 1853, to secure Japanese
agreement for a proposed treaty, he brought entertainers, including a
whites-in-blackface minstrel show, to perform at these official
ceremonies.—Victor Fell Yellin, in American Music (Fall 1996): p.
257-275.
Mar.
20, 2007
1.
According to the Documentary Hypothesis, pioneered by Julius Wellhausen, the
Bible is assumed to have been compiled from four primary sources, determined in
part by the name of the deity that was used (YWHW translated as Lord; Elohim as
God); these sources are called J or Yahwist; E (Elohim), D (Deuteronomist), and
P (Priestly). They are tentatively dated according to the biblical history of
2.
Koinonia Farm, founded by two ministers and their wives in southwest
3.
“Elvii": popular term for a group of Elvises.—Jason Lee Oakes, Losers,
Punks, and Queers (and Elvii, too): Identification and Identity at
Mar.
19, 2007
In
1950, according to a Gallup poll, a majority of Americans favored a law
requiring everyone to wear a name tag, which would also indicate blood type, in
case of a nuclear attack.—Greg Mitchell, Tricky Dick and the Pink Lady:
Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas: Sexual Politics and the Red Scare,
1950 (New York: Random House, 1998).
Mar.
16, 2007
The
film All Quiet on the Western Front, based on Erich Maria Remarque’s
novel about the horrors of World War I, was criticized by the Nazis as being
anti-German and banned in Poland for being pro-German.—"Books and Writers”
web page <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/remarque.htm>.
Mar.
15, 2007
1.
Reptiles and birds have a “salt gland"—a nasal gland for salt
regulation.—Robert Allan Teitge, An Introduction to the Salt Gland of Marine
Aves with Particular Reference to its Histology, Thesis (M.A.)--University
of Puget Sound, 1921.
2. “Pure
copper is very difficult to cast, as well as being prone to surface cracking,
porosity problems, and to the formation of internal cavities. The casting
characteristics of copper can be improved with the addition of small amounts of
elements including beryllium, silicon, nickel, tin, zinc, chromium, and
silver.”—Key to Metals webpage <http://www.keytononferrous.com/Articles/Article64.htm>
3.
The elements in the periodic table are divided into 18 groups.—Wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table_group>
Mar.
14, 2007
"Earbob”
is a regional term for earring.—Linda J. Rice, What Was It Like? Teaching History and Culture through Young Adult
Literature (
Mar.
9, 2007
1.
The Icelandic author and Nobel Prize winner Halldór Laxness was born Halldór
Guojónsson; he took the name Halldor Kiljan Laxness when he become Catholic in
1923.—Library of Congress name authority record, quoting Wikipedia.
[Traditional Icelandic names consist of first name and patronymic, with no
surnames.]
2.
“Molotov” was a pseudonym of Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Skriabin. He died 1986, in
Moscow.—Library of Congress name authority record, quoting Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Molotov
cocktails” were used in the Spanish Civil War; they got the nickname from the
Finns, during the Winter War between
3.
Léopold Sédar Senghor (1906-2001), first president of
4.
Shin'ichi Suzuki, founder of the Suzuki method of teaching music, lived
1898-1998.—Library of Congress name authority record.
Mar.
8, 2007
The
expression “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” comes from a line of
Juliet’s, from Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet.—"The Phrase Finder” website http://www.phrases.org.uk/
Mar.
2, 2007
1.
Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters
was the first jazz album to sell one million copies (in 1986).—Steven F. Pond, Head
Hunters: The Making of Jazz’s First Platinum Album (
2. As
of 2005, in Sub-Saharan Africa, 25.8 million people were infected with HIV
virus, representing 60-70 percent of all those worldwide living with the
disease, even though this region supports just over 10 percent of the world’s
population. In
3.
American on average filled 10 prescriptions per person per year; those over 65
filled an average of 25 prescriptions.—Jeremy A. Greene, Prescribing by the
Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease (
Mar.
1, 2007
1.
Cigarette manufacturers used to insert a card to stiffen the packs. They
printed on these cards sets of various themes. The British brand Wills
Cigarettes ran a series of 50 musical celebrities, featuring composers,
conductors, and opera singers. The 1914 set included eight Germans, but because
of hostilities with
2.
The quantum Hall effect, named for the physicist Edwin H. Hall, is not related
to the mathematical Monty Hall dilemma, named for the game show host.—John
Singleton, Band Theory and
Electronic Properties of Solids (Oxford University Press, 2006), and
various websites.
Feb.
28, 2007
Letting
various samples of water drip into a standing bowl, and photographing the
ripples from above, Theodor Schwenk (Herrischreid, Germany) found that pure
water creates a complex and beautiful pattern, like a flower of the compositae family, while polluted
water creates much simpler, more boring rings.—What Is Art? Conversation
with Joseph Beuys, edited by Volker Harlan (Forest Row,
Feb.
22, 2007
In The Impossible Adventure, French
explorer Alain Gheerbrant wrote that when he and his companions arrived in a
Feb.
21, 2007
When
Albert Einstein visited the
Feb.
20, 2007
1. The
salamanders called “sirens” are different from other salamanders in that they
do not have hindlimbs. They may be a separate taxonomic order, with no close
phylogenetic relatives among living organisms.—David Heyse, Todd Jackman and
Greg Sievert, Tree of Life web project “Sirendae” page
<http://www.tolweb.org/Sirenidae>
2.
New studies comparing human fat tissue with that of other mammals have shown
that even in the leanest wild mammals, fat tends to be distributed in similar
locations around the body. Relative amounts of fat vary, but whatever the
species, fat deposits collect in the breast area, around the upper part of the
front legs (the upper arms of humans), on the tailbone and around the thighs,
in three to eight regions of the abdomen, and at the back of the neck.
Researchers have also found that the body’s fat cells (adipose tissue) has
different properties, depending on its location in the body. Some deposits are
efficient at absorbing lipids, while others are primed to release lipids
easily.—New York Times web site, Feb. 20, 1997.
Feb.
19, 2007
1.
The emblem of twin snakes wrapped around a staff with wings (caduceus),
commonly used as a symbol of the medical profession, is derived from the symbol
for Hermes, the messenger of the gods, and was used to symbolize peace or
commerce. The symbol for Asclepius, the god of medicine, had one snake curled
around a staff, and no wings. In many ancient Mediterranean cultures, snakes
represented healing.—Ask Yahoo web site, Nov. 9, 2000, and “Greek Medicine”
page, <www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_asclepius.html>. The National
Library of Medicine catalog header nicely juxtaposes the NCBI logo (a pair of
twining swoopes) with a double helix image, emphasizing the nice visual
coincidence of the caduceus and modern genetic theory.
2.
There are 2 types of ear wax, “wet” and “dry". Wet ear wax is common in
Caucasians and African-Americans, it tends to be honey-to-brown in color and
sticky in nature. In contrast, dry ear wax is common in East Asians and is gray
in color and more brittle and flakey. Japanese scientists recently isolated the
gene that determines the type of ear wax.—"Coffee break” web page,
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Feb.
16, 2007
Since
the 1960s, neuroscientists trying to find the particular neuron that holds a
particular memory (i.e., “the grandmother cell” that remembers your
grandmother) have been frustrated; research has suggested instead that memories
are stored in patterns. Jerry Lettvin of MIT proposed that memory is
distributed across various parts of the brain.—Ori Brafman and Rod A.
Beckstrom, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless
Organizations (
Feb.
15, 2007
"In
the old scholastic treatises logic was considered the art of demonstration, while
eloquence (or rhetoric) was held to be the art of persuasion.... Rhetoric was
often represented ... by the image of an open hand and logic by that of a
fist.”—from essay by Pasquale Gagliardi in The Sage Handbook of
Organizational Studies, edited
by Stewart R. Clegg, et al. (
Feb.
12, 2007
1.
Columnist Molly Ivins knew George W. Bush in high school.—obituary, New York
Times website, Feb. 1, 2007.
2.
Showman/pianist Liberace was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace; he had his name
legally changed to just the one name.—Library of Congress name authority
record.
3.
The artist Tom Wesselmann produced a book about himself under the alias
Stealingworth—Stealingworth, Tom Wesselmann (New York: Abbeyville Press,
1980).
Feb.
9, 2007
Elma
G. Farnsworth (1908-2006), known a “Pem” to her friends, helped her husband
Philo T. Farnsworth invent television, and was among the first persons to have
their image transmitted on TV.—obituary, New York Times website, May 3, 2006.
Feb.
8, 2007
1.
From an essay on the corporate culture of IKEA: “To make sure executives are
constantly in touch with that’s going on along the front lines, once a year the
company holds a 'breaking the bureaucracy week' during which time executives
are required to do store and warehouse work. “—Jennifer M. George and Garth R.
Jones, Understanding and Managing Organizational Behavior (
2.
The British financial year runs 1 April through 31 March.—Roger Woolhouse, Locke:
A Biography (
Feb.
2, 2007
The
Four Corners region of the
Feb.
1, 2007
Early
in the 20th century, Casimir Funk hypothesized the existence “vitamines,”
unseen substances of unknown composition, extremely small amounts of which were
necessary for nutrition. By 1920, the existence of vitamins A, B, and C had
been deduced from experiments.—Greta E. Miller, Vitamine Malnutrition,
Thesis (B.A.)--
Jan.
30, 2007
In
the omnibus admission bill, passed 1889, preparing for admission to the Union
for the territories of Dakota, Montana, Washington, and New Mexico, an
amendment proposed changing the name of Washington territory to Tacoma (because
the Northern Pacific railway terminus was in there, and it seemed destined to
be the most important city).—Keith D. Goodman, History of the Tacoma Daily
News, Thesis (B.A.)--University of Puget Sound, 1918, and “Charles D.
Voorhees and the Omnibus Admission Act,” by Charles K. Wiggins (1989).
Jan.
29, 2007
Alessandro
Volta, a professor at the
Jan.
21, 2007
From
an oral history collected in the “StoryCorps” project (http://storycorps.net/ ). A recent immigrant
didn't speak much English, but she needed a particular kitchen implement. She
went to the store, and asked for “macaroni stop, water ahead,” and the clerk
got her what she wanted: a colander.
Jan.
18, 2007
As
part of the Allied occupation, as part of the drive to create a democracy in
Jan.
17, 2007
1.
Service dogs can be very helpful for people with Parkinson’s disease; for one
thing, the dogs can tap people’s feet to help initiate movement when they
“freeze.” One woman with Parkinson’s said she appreciates grocery shopping with
the help of her dog because “he doesn't read the labels and doesn't mind buying
feminine hygiene products like my son or husband.”—Joanne Gamache, “The Experience of Service Dog Ownership for
an Individual with Parkinson’s Disease,” Thesis (Master of Science in
Occupational Therapy), University of Puget Sound, 2006.
2.
The Philippines consists of an archipelago of 7,107 islands.—Eurie Salarzon, “Let’s Play Together: OT-based Philippino
Leadership and Advocacy for Youth,” Thesis (Master of Science in
Occupational Therapy),
Jan.
16, 2007
Early
in the 1900s, Booker T. Washington traveled to Europe and
Jan.
10, 2007
The
“Lincoln Logs” building toy was created by John Lloyd Wright, the architect son
of Frank Lloyd Wright. He said he got the idea from his father’s design for the
Imperial Hotel in
Jan.
10, 2007
Frederick
Douglass was born into slavery in
Jan.
9, 2007
Stupa:
an Indian memorial structure that predates the Buddha, but became a focus of
Buddhist ritual. “The obvious similarities between Buddhist stupas and Iron Age
megaliths suggest that Buddhism was integrated within an existing mortuary
pattern...rather than simply replacing it.”—Lars Fogelin, Archaeology of Earl Buddhism (
Jan.
8, 2007
1.
According to statistics tabulated by Ray and Brenda Tevis, of the 236 female
librarian characters who appeared in 224 movies released between 1917 and 1999,
80, or 34%, wore glasses.—The Whole
Library Handbook, edited by George M. Eberhart (Chicago: American
Library Association, 2006).
2.
Linguistic, cultural, and astronomical evidence indicates that the “star” seen
by the Magi, foretelling the birth of a king, was the conjunction of Jupiter
and Saturn in Pisces in 7 B.C. Johannes Kepler suggested this in 1604.—Simo
Parpola in Mysteries of the Bible:
From the Garden of Eden to the Shroud of Turin, ed. by Molly Dewsnap
Meinhardt (Washington, DC: Biblical Archaeology Society, 2004).
Jan.
5, 2007
"Anastasis”
means “the Resurrection” in Greek [hence the Russian name Anastasia]—Chris
Hellier, Monasteries of Greece
(London: Tauris Parke Books, 1996)
Jan.
4, 2007
In
1866, the German naturalist Ernst Haeckel proposed the term “Homo stupidus” for
the recently discovered Neanderthal.—Mario A. Di Gregorio, From Here to Eternity: Ernst Haeckel and
Scientific Faith (
Jan.
3, 2007
1.
Sitting Bull appeared as a headline performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
only for the summer season of 1885. He was paid $50 a week.—Daniel Francis, The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the
Indian in Canadian Culture (
2. In
Spring 1998, the top 20 television programs in the Toronto market were all from
the U.S.; Canadian content accounts for less than 25 percent of
English-language Canadian broadcasts between 7 and 11 p.m.—David Taras, Power & Betrayal in the Canadian Media (Peterborough,
Ont.: Broadview Press, 2001).
3.
Biologists estimate there are 300 coyotes living in Vancouver, Canada.—Tina
Loo, States of Nature: Conserving
Canada’s Wildlife in the Twentieth Century (
Jan.
2, 2007
1.
Excavation of the
2.
Supernova Shelton 1987A (discovered 1987) is the brightest and nearest
supernova observed since the one Johannes Kepler recorded in 1604, before the
invention of the telescope.—Illustrated
History of Canada, ed. by Craig Brown (Toronto: Key Porter Books. 2002).
3.
Frances Brooke’s epistolary novel The
History of Emily Montague, drawn from her experience living in
Dec.
21, 2006
In
August 1867, a boy helping his father clear a farm lot near Renfrew, Ontario,
turned up a circular metal object about six inches across. It was an astrolabe,
an instrument used to navigate by the stars, stamped with the date 1603. It is
assumed to be the astrolabe lost by Samuel de Champlain in 1613.—Craig Stewart
Walker, The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian
Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition (
Dec.
20, 2006
The
content of caffeine in coffee varies, and one factor is the mode of preparation
(boiled, filtered, percolated, espresso, or instant). The content of caffeine
in a 150-ml cup of coffee can be as low as 19 mg/cup in instant coffee and as
high as 177 mg/cup in boiled coffee.—Coffee,
Tea, Chocolate, and the Brain, ed. by Astrid Nehlig (
Dec.
19, 2006
1.
The Union of
2. In
the 1930s, in a pine forest in
Dec.
18, 2006
[Not
something I learned at work, but certainly the most amusing thing I learned
today.]
Canadian
James Turner is creating a comic called Rex
Libris (
Dec.
13, 2006
1.
Sable Island—one hundred miles due east of Nova Scotia, in the midst of the
worst weather in the North Atlantic—is a thirty mile-long sand dune,
uninhabited except by a couple of government agents who maintain an outpost,
and by bands of wild horses that have populated the island for more than two
hundred years.... Sable may have been discovered as early as the fifteenth
century, and it has been the subject of several failed colonization efforts by
2. In
women, the incidence of depression mirrors changes in estrogen across the life
cycle. As estrogen levels rise during puberty, the incidence of depression also
rises, and it falls again during menopause, when estrogen levels fall. Women
have the same frequency of depression as men before puberty and after
menopause, but during childbearing years, their incidence is two-three times as
high as in men. The postpartum and perimenopausal periods are times of especially
high vulnerability for first episodes of depression or for recurrence.—Stephen
M. Stahl, Essential Psychopharmacology (
Dec.
12, 2006
1.
Southwestern
2.
The archaeological record has been used to advance theories of an Asiatic
origin for Na-Dene (Athabaskan) peoples of
Dec.
11, 2006
1.
Circa 1575, as daily attire, the students at Cambridge University wore a cap
and a gown reaching down to their heels, the same as the caps and gowns worn by
priests of the era.—Alexander C. Judson, The Life of Edmund Spenser (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945).
2.
“Josephine Shaw Lowell was a pioneer in the advancement of organized charity in
the United States, a transitional figure between patrician noblesse oblige and
the new social science in the tradition of liberal religious women of the
mid-nineteenth century such as Dorothea Dix, who transformed asylums for the
mentally ill; Clara Barton, a founder of the Red Cross; and Florence
Nightingale, English crusader for hospital reform and founder of modern
nursing. Shut out of university faculty appointments, the world of scholarship,
science, and the professions, denied the vote, such women found a way into the
public realm, where their education, aristocratic lineage, family money, and
familiarity with the world of influence could have immediate impact in social
reform.”—John Louis Recchiuti, Civic
Engagement: Social Science and Progressive-Era Reform in
Dec.
8, 2006
In
Dec.
7, 2006
In
1971, an official of the Philippine government announced that he had discovered
the “Tasaday” people, a tribe of only a few dozen, living in peaceful but
primitive isolation, as though they were in the Stone Age. They were featured
in National Geographic and
other media, with the Philippine government extracting fees from those who
visited the tribe, until the government prohibited access to their reserve. In
1986, after the Marcos regime was toppled, a Swiss reporter visited the
Tasaday, and was told they had been coerced into pretending to be cavemen, and
were in fact farmers from nearby.—Robin Hemley, Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).
Dec.
6, 2006
The
ENIAC computer, built in 1945, used 18,000 vacuum tubes. On average, 20 failed
each day. ENIAC weighed 30 tons, and could carry out 5,000 additions and 300
multiplications per second. In 1971, Intel introduced the 4004 microprocessor
chip, which had a computation power similar to ENIAC on a 5 mm(squared)
surface.—Andras Gedeon, Science and
Technology in Medicine (New York: Springer, 2006).
Dec.
5, 2006
Mozart,
at age 22, wrote, “For I am a born wood-hitter and all I can do is to strum a
little on the clavier.”—William Kinderman, Mozart’s Piano Music (
Dec.
4, 2006
1.
One unadorned plaque at St. Peter’s Cemetery, which simply says, “This plaque
honors six Indian scouts who died in battle, May 1778,” is the only European
American commemoration of
2. Per
Joseph J. Ellis, Samuel Adams was “the Lenin of the American Revolution.”—blurb
for Mark Puls, Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution (New York
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). From the dust jacket: “A genius at devising civil
protests and political maneuvers, Samuel Adams...was behind nearly every major
protest over British rule, and his pioneering tactics of civil disobedience
outfoxed the leading ministers in England.”
3.
“In striving for ever increasing precision through improvements in instrument
design and measurement practices, geodesy [the effort to determine the shape of
the Earth] aspired to the exactness of astronomy, which until the late
seventeenth century had been the lone cynosure of quantitative
science.”—Michael Rand Hoare, The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth:
Ideas and Expeditions in Four Centuries of Geodesy (
Nov.
30, 2006
Louis
Tiffany adapted the Old English word “fabrile,” meaning handmade, to “Favrile,”
in order to have a trademark term for Tiffany Studios products.
—Robert
Koch, Louis Tiffany’s Glass, Bronzes, Lamps (New York: Crown Publishers,
1971).
Nov.
29, 2006
1.
The tune we know as “Song of the Volga Boatmen” ("Yay-ee ooh-nyem!
Yehsh-cheeaw rah-zeek, yehsh-cheeaw rahz!") was first published in A Collection of Russian Folksongs, assembled
by Balakirev (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1866), and issued in sheet music in
2.
bell hooks’s given name is Gloria Jean; she took her great-grandmother’s name
as a pseudonym—bell hooks, Talking
Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston, Mass.: South End Press,
1989).
Nov.
28, 2006
1.
Industrial designer Brooks Stevens created thousands of ingenious and beautiful
designs for industrial and household products—including a clothes dryer with a
window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the Oscar Mayer
Wienermobile. ("There’s nothing more aerodynamic than a wiener,” he
explained.) In 1954, he coined the phrase “planned obsolescence,”
defining it as “instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little
newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary.”—Glenn Adamson, Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World
(
2. “For no better reason than that a century of
advertising has conditioned us to want more, better, and faster from any
consumer good we purchase, in 2004 about 315 million working PCs were retired
in North America. Of these, as many as 10 percent would be refurbished and
reused, but most would go straight to the trash heap. These still-functioning
but obsolete computers represented an enormous increase over the 63 million
working PCs dumped into American landfills in 2003. In 1997, although a PC
monitor lasted six or seven years, a CPU was expected to last only four or
five. By 2003 informed consumers expected only two years of use from the new
systems they were purchasing, and today the life expectancy of most PCs is even
less.”—Giles Slade, Made to Break:
Technology and Obsolescence in
Nov.
27, 2006
1.
Starbucks buys about 4% of the coffee grown in the world. One of the busiest
Starbucks stores in central Tokyo. There are over 500 Starbucks in
Japan.—Joseph A. Michelli, The
Starbucks Experience (
2.
“Begging remains the primary occupation for the majority of the world’s
disabled people.”—Karen Whaley Hammell, Perspectives
on Disability & Rehabilitation (
3. “Red
House” was the only house William Morris had built for himself. The challenge
of furnishing it inspired Morris and friends to create their design firm Morris
& Co.—Jan Marsh, William Morris & Red House (
4.
Imagine two balloons, one inflated and the other slack, connected by a closed
tube. If the tube is opened, gas escapes into the slack balloon until the
pressures equalize. The gas molecules in both balloons have a tendency to
escape their confinement. The molecules in the inflated balloon are more
crowded and have a greater escaping tendency. This escaping tendency is called
fugacity, after the Latin fugere, to
flee.—Des W. Connell, Basic Concepts of Environmental Chemistry (
5. Horseshoe
crabs live at a considerable depth of the seafloor, but every spring, on three
successive nights when the moon is full, thousands of them emerge from the sea.
Near the high-tide line they dig shallow pits with the edge of their shells,
into which the females shed their eggs and the males their sperm. The young
emerge at the next full moon.—Dorrik Stow, Oceans: An Illustrated Reference
(
Nov.
21, 2006
In
1968 and '69, the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama staged happenings on Wall Street
and other public
Nov.
21, 2006
Some
of Alfred Stieglitz’s portraits of Georgia O'Keeffe were printed with a
platinum/palladium process, which can reproduce a much longer tonal scale than
the more common silver printing. “Unlike a silver print, which is made on a
coated paper, the palladium image is embedded in the fibers of the paper and
thus takes on the texture of that support.”—from an essay by Douglas G.
Severson in Museum Studies, vol.
31, no. 2 (2005).
Nov.
20, 2006
"Briar
Rose” is another name for the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty.” The oldest European
version of the story is found in a Catalan manuscript from the 14th century;
some Chinese and Arabic versions are older than that.—from the introduction to Briar Rose, by Jane Yolen (
Nov.
17, 2006
Anti-Semitism
persisted in
Nov.
15, 2006
1.
When William Faulkner submitted his manuscript for The Sound and the Fury, he reportedly said, “This one’s the
greatest I’ll ever write.” He was 32 at the time; he lived to be 65.
2.
Some of the Japanese-Americans interned in our camps during World War II made
beautiful art objects from whatever materials were available to them: jewelry
from seashells; carvings from slate and scrap wood; paintings on scraps of
paper; weaving from packing string; sculpture from rocks, wire, wood, etc.—The Art of Gaman, by Delphine Hirasuna
(Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005).
Nov.
14, 2006
1. Is
the universe actually a giant quantum computer? According to Seth Lloyd…the
answer is yes.… All interactions between particles in the universe…convey not
only energy but also information—in other words, particles not only collide,
they compute. And what is the entire universe computing, ultimately? “Its own
dynamical evolution,” he says. “As the computation proceeds, reality
unfolds.”—from the publisher’s blurb for Programming
the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos, by Seth
Lloyd (
2.
Some of the anachronisms in various film versions of the Illiad: the city of
Troy with a mix of Minoan, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and other styles of architecture
(various film versions); art deco interior design and costumes (1927 film);
placing coins on the eyes of the dead (2006 film)—Troy: From Homer’s Iliad to Hollywood Epic, ed. by Martin M.
Winkler (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Pub., 2007).
Nov.
13, 2006
1.
“Football will not catch on here [in
2.
From the same book: the Portuguese expression Deus é brasileiro (God Is
Brazilian) is “a well-known phrase in
Nov.
9, 2006
In
1953, Clair Patterson used measurements of lead from the Canyon Diablo
meteorite (that created Meteor Crater, in
Nov.
7, 2006
“According
to a recent
Nov.
2, 2006
“
Oct.
31, 2006
“Isn't
it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that
there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”—Douglas
Adams.
Oct.
30, 2006
Henry
Rollins was lead singer of Black Flag.—Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry
Rollins (New York: Villard Books, 1997) [And in these essays, he comes
across like a real jerk].
Oct.
26, 2006
1.
2.
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics,
died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on his work, died
similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics. Perhaps
it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.”—David L. Goodstein, States of Matter (New York: Dover,
1985).
Oct.
25, 2006
“Nicolas Bourbaki,” author of some influential math
texts, was the Greek pseudonym for a group of French mathematicians.