“Researcher baffled by document written by artillery master Franz Helm featuring pictures of jetpacks strapped to cats and doves” is the subheadline on an Associated Press article in The Guardian. It tells of a discovery made by University of Pennsylvania scholar Mitch Frass [pictured here, right]. Here’s the cat/dove picture (you can see it and […]
Tag: history
The Fashionable Diseases Conference
Fashionable scholars will flock to The Fashionable Diseases Conference this coming July 3-5, hosted jointly by Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, sponsored by the often-fashionable Leverhulme Trust. The most fashionable diseases, for purposes of the gathering, are the ones suffered, diagnosed, discussed, and flaunted between the years 1660 and 1832. That timespan, evidently, saw the height of fashion […]
The quest for the elusive tooth worm(s)
The Chirurgeon’s Apprentice blog discusses “the battle of the tooth worm“: This is a depiction of the infamous tooth worm believed by many people in the past to bore holes in human teeth and cause toothaches….Tooth worms have a long history, first appearing in a Sumerian text around 5,000 BC. References to tooth worms […]
A Brief History of Fridge Magnets [video]
The Tripe Marketing Board presents A Brief History of Fridge Magnets: BONUS: The history continues past that point, of course. Part of it is documented in this study: “Design, manufacture, and test of an adiabatic demagnetization Refrigerator Magnet for use in space,” Steve Milward, Stephen Harrison, Robin Stafford Allen, Ian D. Hepburn, Christine Brockley-Blatt [pictured […]