Gold. Since the dawn of civilization, we humans have been obsessed with this most divine of metals. Empires have risen and fallen over it, oceans crossed and continents conquered in search of it, the entire field of chemistry invented to try and make more of it, and – until relatively recently – the entire global… Read More »
English novelist Marie Corelli, author of the popular 1886 novel A Romance of Two Worlds, once wrote: “Let me be mad, mad with the madness of absinthe, the wildest, most luxurious madness in the world.” In the late 19th and Early 20th centuries, few vices exemplified the spirit of La Belle Epoque and the ideals… Read More »
The symptoms were gradual but inexorable. It began with headaches, joint pain and tremors in the hands and feet, mild at first but growing steadily in intensity. The victims’ movements became increasingly uncoordinated and clumsy, their stance and gait unsteady. Soon they were unable to walk at all, racked by severe tremors and muscle spasms.… Read More »
Every day millions of Americans carefully wash, sort, and set out their recycling for collection. But while many might feel proud to be doing their bit to help save the environment, such efforts are minuscule next to the gargantuan recycling effort that accompanied the Second World War. The term “total war” refers to a state… Read More »
It was a dark, stormy night in October 1934 when the residents of Albury, a small town in New South Wales, Australia, were awakened by the drone of an aeroplane droning overhead. Endlessly it circled above the iron grey clouds, searching for a place to land. Any aeroplane lost in a storm was cause for… Read More »
Few junk food items have ever reached the heights of general and almost universal popularity as the humble potato chip and its tasty derivative brethren the tortilla chip. But who invented the potato chip, and its cheesy and blessed of the light modification, nachos? How about the invention of tasty, tasty Doritos? Well, I’m glad… Read More »
Scapa Flow lies barely seven degrees below the Arctic Circle, in the cold, windswept Orkney Islands at the northern tip of Scotland. Measuring 10 kilometres wide by 8 kilometres long with an average depth of 30 metres, this natural anchorage is bounded to the north by the mainland, to the east by the islands of… Read More »
The idea of the robot – an autonomous, even sentient machine – has been around for millennia. In Ancient Greek mythology, the blacksmith god Hephaestus, whose legs were injured as a child, crafted a pair of mechanical women to help him walk. From the Middle Ages onwards, various master craftsmen constructed increasingly sophisticated clockwork automatons… Read More »
The Great War of 1914-1918 has been described as the first “industrial war”, and saw the battlefield debut of a number of advanced weapons, including the aeroplane, poison gas, the tank, the flamethrower, and the submarine. Of these, the tank and the aeroplane would go on to completely revolutionize modern warfare. The post-war years saw… Read More »
Sticking your thumb out to convey some meaning has seemingly been around for about as long as humans have been humaning, or, at least, as far back as written history goes. But how did the gesture come to be a signal that you’d like to hitch a ride from someone? And is hitching a ride… Read More »
The ins and outs of the music business are notoriously complex, with many details hidden behind closed doors, and rates subject to wide variation. In part this is understandable – both artists, streaming services and labels, strive to keep their individual contracts opaque, in part to secure for themselves the most favourable deals possible. The… Read More »