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Month: February 2022

By The Generalist Posted on February 27, 2022January 25, 2023

Featured category: Europe

The mosque in the middle of the Parthenon; the book smugglers of Russian-occupied Lithuania; the fake-real bridges of the Euro banknotes; and the time Da Vinci and Machiavelli conspired to steal a river.

Categories: Featured category
Birthday cake
By The Generalist Posted on February 26, 2022January 25, 2023

Stats 3

This website is three years old today.

Categories: Updates
By The Generalist Posted on February 26, 2022February 25, 2022

Most and least popular birthdays

In the English-speaking world, more people are born in September than any other month of the year; the least popular birthdays (outside of leap days) are around Christmas, New Year, and other public holidays.

Categories: Health & medicine
By The Generalist Posted on February 25, 2022January 25, 2023

Viking sunstone

The Vikings navigated by the position of the sun. But what did they do when it was cloudy?

Categories: Astronomy, Europe, Medieval history, Physics & chemistry, Technology, The oceans
By The Generalist Posted on February 24, 2022January 25, 2023

The scientists of Mars

When asked why we have no proof of extraterrestrial life, the Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard joked that Martians were already among us… they just called themselves Hungarians.

Categories: 20th century history, Computer science, Europe, Mathematics & statistics, North & Central America, Physics & chemistry, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on February 23, 2022February 22, 2022

First piano

The arpicembalo (harp-harpsichord) of Bartolomeo Cristofori could play notes both loud and quiet, which the harpsichord could not. It was the first piano.

Categories: Early modern history, Europe, Music, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

The Phony King of England

Disney’s Robin Hood features a song about the “Phony King of England.” That song is based on an old (and very bawdy) English folk ballad about “The Bastard King of England.”

Categories: 20th century history, Europe, Film & television, Music, North & Central America, Politics & law
By The Generalist Posted on February 21, 2022February 20, 2022

Buried film history

In 1978 a cache of five hundred film reels was discovered under an ice rink in Dawson City, Yukon. These buried reels included the only copy of films that had been lost for decades.

Categories: 20th century history, Film & television, North & Central America
Augustus
By The Generalist Posted on February 20, 2022January 25, 2023

Featured category: Ancient history

The Roman measurement of a human lifetime; the extinct species of gibbon we know only from a Chinese noblewoman’s tomb; how Pompey the Great was defeated by maddening honey; and the treasure map in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Categories: Featured category
Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holofernes
By The Generalist Posted on February 19, 2022January 25, 2023

From the archives: Renaissance art

One of the few female artists of the Italian Renaissance; the Mona Lisa with and without a moustache; why the Sistine Chapel ceiling has green shadows; and the Inquisition vs. a Last Supper painting with drunken Germans, dogs, parrots, and dwarfs.

Categories: From the archives
By The Generalist Posted on February 18, 2022January 25, 2023

Pierced buildings

A highway goes directly through the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan; a monorail line goes directly through an apartment block in Chongqing, China.

Categories: Architecture, East Asia, Technology
By The Generalist Posted on February 17, 2022February 16, 2022

Medieval cat poetry

Pangur Bán was an Irish monk’s cat in 9th century Germany; we know this cat’s name because the monk wrote a poem about him. Even though this poem was written more than a thousand years ago, Pangur Bán was not the first named cat in history.

Categories: Ancient history, Animals, Europe, Literature, Medieval history, Middle East
By The Generalist Posted on February 16, 2022January 25, 2023

Ski ballet

The 1988 Winter Olympics included three freestyle skiing events as a demonstration sport: moguls, aerials, and ski ballet. Two of these have become official Olympic sports. One has not.

Categories: 20th century history, Games & sport
By The Generalist Posted on February 15, 2022February 14, 2022

Constipation Blues

The blues music genre at its core is about hardship, oppression, and suffering. But it took Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to sing about that real pain down inside.

Categories: 20th century history, Health & medicine, Music, North & Central America
By The Generalist Posted on February 14, 2022February 13, 2022

Marriage by proxy

What do Marie Antoinette, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Charles I, and Napoleon have in common? All of them were not in the same location as their partner when they married.

Categories: Early modern history, Europe, Medieval history, Politics & law
Don Quixote
By The Generalist Posted on February 13, 2022January 25, 2023

Featured category: Literature

The anonymous unauthorised contemporary sequel to Don Quixote; the inflammatory lost memoirs of Lord Byron; the library buried for a thousand years; and the strange fate of the Tin Woodman’s human body parts.

Categories: Featured category

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