Frankincense, an aromatic resin that features prominently in the Christmas story and is used extensively in religious rituals, is in danger of disappearing. Fires, grazing cattle, and longhorn beetles that lay their eggs under trees’ bark are decimatin…
Blog Archives
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The Crinoline
Crinoline is a stiff fabric made with cotton warp and horsehair. By the 1850s, the term was being applied to a large, steel-framed underskirt used to give skirts a fuller shape. This sort of crinoline enjoyed widespread popularity for over a decade des…
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The Sami People
The Sami are the descendants of ancient nomadic peoples who inhabited northern Scandinavia. They are sometimes called Laplanders, but many Sami consider this name pejorative. From the earliest times, they survived through hunting reindeer, and they bec…
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The Ku Klux Klan Is Formed (1865)
The Ku Klux Klan is the name of two distinct secret societies that played a part in American history. The first Klan was an organization that thrived in the South during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War. The second was a nationwide org…
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France Recommends Removal of Rupture-Prone Implants
France is recommending that tens of thousands of women go under the knife again if they have silicone breast implants made by the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP). The implants were banned last year after it was discovered that they were made…
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Isidor Feinstein Stone (1907)
Stone worked on several newspapers in his native Philadelphia and in New York before starting his own investigative newsletter, I. F. Stone’s Weekly. It was believed to have an influence far greater than the size of its readership, which included some …
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clothier
DEFINITION: (noun) A merchant who sells men’s clothing.
SYNONYMS: haberdasher.
USAGE: It was for the next generation to patronize clothiers who kept each suit on its separate hanger.
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roughage
DEFINITION: (noun) Coarse, indigestible plant food low in nutrients; its bulk stimulates intestinal peristalsis.
SYNONYMS: fiber.
USAGE: Fruits and vegetables should be eaten every day to ensure that one gets enough roughage in his diet.
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Joseph Smith, Jr. (1805)
Smith was the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In 1827, he claimed that an angel directed him to buried golden plates containing God’s revelation, which he translated as the Book of Mormon. He led converts to Ohio, Missouri, …
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Lucky Lamborghini Winner Reckless or Luckless?
Car enthusiasts will likely wince when they hear what one US man who won a $380,000 Murcielago Roadster did just hours after it was delivered—he crashed it. David Dopp was giving family and friends rides in his new luxury sports car when it hit a…
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Looted Art
For millennia, artworks have been looted during times of war. By the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt in 332 BCE, the tombs of almost all the Pharaohs had already been looted, and as recently as the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, thieves looted Ba…
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Rutan Voyager Completes First Nonstop Flight around the World without Refueling (1986)
Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, who first conceived of the craft and sketched it on the back of a napkin in 1981, the Rutan Voyager was the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling. It took off from Edwards Air Force…
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unfrequented
DEFINITION: (adjective) Devoid of creatures.
SYNONYMS: lonely, solitary.
USAGE: The reference library is quite unfrequented as a rule, and the silence there is so intense that I often find myself holding my breath in a subconscious effort to …
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Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887)
Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician. Extremely poor, he was largely self-taught from age 15. In 1913, he began a correspondence with English mathematician Godfrey H. Hardy that took him to England, where he made advances, especially in the theory of …
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World’s Shortest Woman Has Big Dreams
The 18th birthday celebration of Jyoti Amge of Nagpur, India, involved cake, friends, and a Guinness representative armed with a measuring tape. There, she was measured and officially declared the world’s shortest living woman. An achondroplastic dwarf…
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Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate Reopens (1989)
The only remaining town gate of Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate was modeled after the propylaeum of the Athenian Acropolis. Originally topped with the “Quadriga of Victory,” a statue of a chariot drawn by four horses, it was heavily damaged in World War I…
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The Steam Engine
In a steam engine, hot steam expands under pressure, and part of the heat energy is converted into work. The idea to harness steam’s power and convert it to mechanical energy dates back 2,000 years to Hero of Alexandria and his aeolipile, but the conce…
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Premiers (1937)
Snow White was the first full-length animated feature film in history. It was animated entirely by hand and took Walt Disney and his studio three years to complete. It was exponentially more expensive than the animated shorts the studio had produced un…
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insomniac
DEFINITION: (adjective) Experiencing or accompanied by sleeplessness.
SYNONYMS: sleepless, watchful.
USAGE: Every night, I’m woken by the sound of creaking floorboards as my insomniac husband leaves for another late-night snack.
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The Lion Dance
The lion dance is a form of traditional Chinese dance in which performers mimic a lion’s movements in an elaborately decorated lion costume. Originally performed as entertainment or as part of a ceremony to disperse evil spirits and bring good luck, th…
