On this day in 1718… Peter Atyon , of St. James’s Westminster, was indicted on two indictments; one for stealing a Pocket and a Head-dress, val.2 s. of Margaret Davis , the 12th of April last. The Prosecutor deposed, as she was going along the Street she was thrown down, and her pocket pulled off, …
I can’t find out much about this–it mostly shows up on Google in the form of vintage bottles of ink being sold to collectors (I didn’t know there were vintage-ink-bottle collectors until now!), but I did find an interesting mention in an old scientific paper online, called Herring Investigations at Plymouth, written by E. Ford, …
A 9 1/2-foot long Bosendorfer concert grand piano comes to a tragicomic end.
There’s an old joke that goes, “I’m on a see-food diet. When I see food, I eat it.” Brian Wansink, John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing and of Applied Economics at Cornell, says there’s a lot of truth to that old joke—and he’s done a lot of studies to prove it. (He’s also the author …
…not green. Chlorophyll, it seems, may have been a relative latecomer.
…but still an airship (I guess): the M.A.R.S. Floating Wind Generator (which, despite its name, does not generate wind, but rather electricity. Go figure.)
Robert Bigelow continues to have, er, “Big” plans for “low” earth orbit: The Bigelow Aerospace commercial inflatable manned space module venture intends to have three large multi-module outposts in Earth orbit by 2015 to serve different user communities.CEO Robert T. Bigelow says his engineers predict 800 paying crewmembers could fly to Bigelow outposts over the …
Every day or two I check the SiteMeter stats for edwardwillett.com, and today I noticed my visits were around 200 higher than I would expect (I usually get 350 to 450 visitors each day, but today I’m up over 600). A check revealed that the extra traffic is coming from people searching for “spider goat” …
A public service announcement by the British Commercial Gas Association, telling you in no uncertain terms it is unfair to blame the cook if she is forced to cook on anything other than a gas stove. If she does have a gas stove, of course, you may say what you like about her, since she …
…is about to get a lot easier to create: Installing one of those prefab, snap-together wood-flooring kits is a lot easier than shaping and sanding rough planks. Adapting a similar construction strategy, a biotech startup called Codon Devices, based in Cambridge, MA, aims to streamline genetic engineering. It makes made-to-order DNA strands, freeing scientists from …
At his Ficlets blog, John Scalzi points to the amazing story of Harry Bernstein, “whose new novel is getting him fame and attention at the tender age of 96.” Bernstein published his first short story in 1934. It took seven decades for his next literary achievement. His novel The Invisible Wall is about his early …
Yes, John Oakey & Sons, “the pioneers in introducing the concept of coated abrasives to the world,” live on…in a company called John Oakey & Mohan Limited, incorporated in 1962, “manufacturers of high performance coated abrasives.” From the first link above: John Oakey who was born in 1814 founded John Oakey & Sons Ltd in …
