Forty-nine percent of the people between the ages of 18 and 29 in the U.S. have at least one tattoo.
Earthy
The English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) is most famous today for his book, On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, which revolutionized evolutionary biology. He was also the world’s foremost authority on barnacles.
But did you know that Darwin had a lifelong interest in earthworms?
In the mid-nineteenth century, no one knew much about the role worms played in agriculture. They considered them pests in the garden. Darwin thought they were important to aerate the soil.
He conducted a series of earthworm experiments over the course of forty years, including having his son play the bassoon in front of them (he concluded they were indifferent to sound, but not to vibration).
His book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits was practically a blockbuster. It sold 6000 copies in its first year–much better than his Origin of Species.
Pope Pet
Pope Leo X (1475 – 1521) had a pet elephant named Hanno.
Tied Up
In the eighteenth century, clerks in Great Britain tied red ribbons, or “tapes,” around official documents–hence the origin of the phrase “red tape.”
A Perfect Red (1)
Tuition Bills
In 1814, the cost of a Harvard education was $300 per year.
Batons Are Better
Conductors have used batons for centuries, but prior to the nineteenth century, it was also common for choir directors and conductors to beat the time by banging a long staff on the floor.
On January 8, 1687, Louis XIV’s royal composer Jean-Baptiste Lully was conducting a celebratory piece to celebrate the king’s recovery from surgery (I am sure you can’t wait to click through to my account of his anal fistula operation here). Lully banged himself in the foot with his baton, which created an abscess and got infected. Lully refused to have his toe amputated and the wound turned gangrenous. He died several weeks later.
Decimated
The word “decimate” comes from the Latin “decimare,” after the Roman practice of killing one in every ten soldiers after a mutiny or desertion.
Walking Through London
Over the summer I read an amazing book by Judith Flanders, called The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London.
This has always been one of my favorite historical periods, maybe because so many of the books I read as a kid were centered in London—starting with A Little Princess, and E. Nesbit’s books, Sherlock Holmes, and, as I became a teenager, anything by Dickens, Wilkie Collins, P.G. Wodehouse, etc etc. I became obsessed with seeing London, but I was from a big, middle class family, and the farthest we got was Martha’s Vineyard.
I finally managed to travel there after my sophomore year of college. I decided to take a year off and go live there. I waitressed all summer and into the fall, and then landed a job working for a Member of Parliament, for a very small monthly wage.
Flanders points out that in London (and elsewhere), walking was the most common form of locomotion throughout the nineteenth century (26). By midcentury, ¾ of a million Londoners were walking back and forth to work—not just the working classes, she says, but middle class and even wealthy people thought nothing of it. She reminds us of the walkability of London, which reminded me that most mornings, I walked to work to save on bus fare. I set out from my house (a bedroom within a larger flat that I found by a small miracle) in Holland Park, walking along Kensington High Street to Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner and then through the park to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. Google maps tells me it was about 3 ½ miles.
I travelled a well-trodden path. Flanders talks about the steady stream of pedestrians, “a thick black line, stretching from the suburbs into the heart of the City; every evening the black line reversed…” (24)
The Heir
Shortly after Samuel Johnson’s wife died, in 1752, a former slave from Jamaica named Francis Barber came to work as a servant in his house. He remained there for thirty years, along with his wife and children, and became Johnson’s heir.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
history/
historic_figures/johnson_samuel.shtml
Copper Tones
Medieval stained glass windows were made by adding copper to the molten glass, which created ruby red, deep blue, bright green, golden yellow, and royal purple. Variations in the thickness of the blown glass made subtle variations in the hues.