The surefire signs that Spring is just around the corner have started to appear – trees are budding, flowers beginning to bloom and there’s more rain than snow. (Full disclosure – I live in the UK...
I have a longstanding fascination with Victorian arts and sciences. It was the era when Darwin published the “Origin of the Species,” Perkin synthesized dyes, Lister introduced antiseptic surgery,...
Back in the 18th century, a theatrical line that was delivered to shamelessly elicit or “trap” applause from the audience was referred to as “claptrap.” The line usually didn’t have much meaning...
Leonid Tenkaev and his wife claim that the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in Ukraine transformed them into human magnets. Pictures of the couple show spoons, keys and even irons sticking to their...
In virtually every film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic, Frankenstein, the Creature is brought to life with a jolt of electricity with sparks flying all over. Often there are also the...
A long, long time ago, before electricity, fire was the only weapon against darkness. Ancient civilizations made use of torches but by 4500 B.C. oil lamps made out of shells or hollow rocks were in...
Pencils do not contain any lead, and they never did! The mistake in terminology can be traced back to the ancient Romans who drew lines on papyrus using pieces of actual lead, all the while not...
In the late 1880s the two giants in the burgeoning field of electricity, namely Thomas Edison and Georges Westinghouse, squared off in what has been called The Battle of The Currents. Edison was...
Way back in 1802, Humphrey Davy, one of the most brilliant chemists of all time, became interested in the novel phenomenon of electricity. By this time he had already published a treatise on the...
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