The World's Strangest Recorded Deaths
The ways people die are often conventional, however, history provides us with a multitude of recorded deaths that are markedly more interesting. Let’s take a fascinating look at some of history’s strangest deaths: Chrysippus of Soli, 207 BC Chrysippus was a Greek philosopher who devoted his life to important matters including ethics, mathematics, physics, epistemology and religion. Despite being a great thinker, even he would not have been able to imagine his demise.
ARCHIPELAGO CINEMA
Wednesday, March 28, 2012 Redefining the outdoor cinema, is architect Ole Scheeren. His vision was to build a giant floating cinematic auditorium, where? Not in a parking lot, not on top a fancy building, not on the roof of a pub, but in the oceanic setting of Yao Noi, Thailand.
GARUDA
Garuda's origins in Indonesia go back to the time, around the first century A.D., when sailors and traders from Southern India first came to the shores of the fertile islands looking for rice and riches. Not only did they bring goods and techniques, they brought also their literature. In this literature, there were the stories of the origins, or Puranas, with the story of Garuda among them. The locals soon made these stories their own in a Sanskrit derived language called Kawi.
Heavens (World Treasures of the Library of Congress: Beginnings)
Views of the Universe The Emperor's Astronomy The "Emperor's Astronomy"(dedicated to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) elegantly depicts the cosmos and heavens according to the 1400-year-old Ptolemaic system, which maintained that the sun revolved around the earth. By means of hand-colored maps and moveable paper parts (volvelles), Petrus Apianus (1495-1552) laid out the mechanics of a universe that was earth- and human-centered.
Why Is Pink for Girls and Blue for Boys?
Blue is for boys and pink is for girls, we're told. But do these gender norms reflect some inherent biological difference between the sexes, or are they culturally constructed? It depends on whom you ask. Decades of research by University of Maryland historian Jo Paoletti suggests that up until the 1950s, chaos reigned when it came to the colors of baby paraphernalia.
The Savage Eye: Aesthetics After 9/11
The reflexive habit — reflexive, at least, in these United States — of falling back on the mythic languages of Hollywood and Madison Avenue when we’re narrating our lives is a fact of life in the Society of the Spectacle. In his essay “This is Not a Movie,” the New Yorker critic Anthony Lane noted TV commentators’ tendency, on 9/11, to resort “to a phrase book culled from cinema: ‘It was like a movie.’ ‘It was like Independence Day. ‘It was like Die Hard.’
10 Greatest Moments in Flight
Humanity's tree-dwelling ancestors probably never dreamed that their descendants could eventually fly aboard airships, winged aircraft and spacecraft into the skies and beyond Earth. Each great moment in flight inspired the next generation of aviators to try flying higher, faster and farther as they shaped the course of human history. Early balloon and airship flights led the way, but the Wright brothers' Flyer demonstration at Kitty Hawk became the milestone celebrated by most people. Daring aviators flew the aircraft descendants of the Wright Flyer as they took on the challenges of flying across the world's oceans and faster than the speed of sound — even leaving the Earth's atmosphere aboard rocket ships as they inaugurated the era of spaceflight. The first free ascent of a hot-air balloon with human passengers, on Nov. 21, 1783. — Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d´ArlandesCredit: 2001 National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (SI Neg.
Will You Marry Me?
It’s not a get-down-on-one-knee-in-public proposition, but I think it still counts as a public proposition, no? Out there for all the world to see, open to well wishes and ridicule and all? Regardless of unconventional format, though, I’m genuinely asking: will you? Just so you know, I’m not asking because I’ve got this dream wedding fantasy with swans and confetti in mind (though why not, we might as well go all out). I’ve actually always been terrified of getting married because I’ve seen so many people I love go through painful divorces and also the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do was be attached to someone, but you’re different. You’ve always been different.
Alan Turing's Legacy Lives On
When the history books of the future are written, Alan Turing will go down in the company of Newton and Darwin and Einstein. His visions changed how humanity conceives of computation, information and pattern -- and 100 years after his birthday, and 58 years after his tragic death, Turing's legacy is alive and growing.In celebration of his achievements, the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific fellowship -- Newton was once its president -- published two entire journal issues devoted to Turing's ongoing influence. On the following pages, Wired looks at some of the highlights.Above:Turing at WarThough he hardly fit the image of a soldier, Alan Turing had the heart of one. With war on the horizon, Turing joined the British government's codebreaking office in 1938, and one year later turned the full force of his intellect on Enigma, the seemingly uncrackable German cryptography system."No one else was doing anything about it and I could have it to myself," he said of his decision.
