451
After spending years besieging the city of Troy, the Greek armies suddenly decamp, leaving behind only an enormous wooden sculpture of a horse.
Greek kings leading a mighty host have for ten years laid siege to the city of Troy (in what is now northwest Turkey), demanding the return of Helen, a kidnapped princess. Dido listened with shining eyes, as Trojan hero Aeneas told how the Trojans looked out and saw the Greeks had gone, leaving nothing but an enormous wooden horse — to be placed in the temple of Athene, as a prayer for their journey home.
Picture: © Paul, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted April 16 2021
452
Victor Hugo berates the general public for crediting everything they do themselves to their supposedly wonderful Government.
L’Homme Qui Rit (1869) is a novel by Victor Hugo, who took as his theme the miseries set in train by acts of arbitrary power; though his story was set in England during the reign of King James II (1685-1688), France in his own day, under Napoleon III, was uppermost in his mind. In this passage, Hugo takes a moment to reflect ruefully on the way that the public idolises the Power of the State.
Picture: © Mikey, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted April 15 2021
453
Sir Isaac Newton told William Stukeley about the day when an apple fell from a tree and set him thinking about the solar system.
Most people know the story of Newton’s apple: how the great mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton, stumbled onto the principle of gravitation when he saw an apple fall from a tree. In his Memoirs of Newton’s Life (1752) William Stukeley not only confirmed the truth of the tale from Newton’s own lips, but also gave us a glimpse of the astonishing fertility of mind that followed.
Picture: © DS Pugh, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Posted April 14 2021
454
Sir Isaac’s secretary has left us an engaging portrait of a kindly genius, the absent-minded professor of our fancy.
In 1685, Sir Isaac Newton engaged a secretary to help him with his increasing workload, a Mr Humphrey Newton who was, it seems, no relation of the great mathematician. Many years later John Conduitt, Newton’s successor as Master of the Mint and also the great man’s nephew by marriage, asked Humphrey to supply him with his recollections of Sir Isaac.
Picture: By Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted April 13 2021
455
When a new mother found herself and her kittens on the wrong side of a nasty-looking stream, Twink was there to help.
A pamphlet published in 1815 sought to satisfy the public’s increasing thirst for information about matters of science. The anonymous authors chose as their overall subject the Quadrupeds of the British Isles, and the traditional enmity between Dog and Cat was noted, of course. But there was also this heartwarming little tale.
Picture: © Arunankapilan, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted April 13 2021
456
When Archimedes discovered the principle of displacement, he was hot on the trail of a clever fraud.
Hiero II (?308 BC – 215 BC), ruler of Syracuse in Sicily (an ancient Greek colony), made a present of a golden crown to a temple in honour of the gods. The crown was commissioned and duly delivered, but Hiero suspected that the craftsman had kept some of the gold and mixed in some lesser metal. So he turned to a relative of his, the mathematican Archimedes, and asked him to do some detective work.
Picture: By Anonymous (1810), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted April 12 2021