From antiquity to the present day, everyone from philosophers to scientists to spinners of yarns have claimed that stars can be seen during broad daylight, provided you look at them from the bottoms of mine shafts, tall chimneys, coal pits or cisterns. Folk tales have also described people spotting distant suns in light reflected in dark lake bottoms or deep wells.
Is there any truth to these tales, or are these well-wishers merely moonstruck?
The 1894 kinetoscope of Fred Ott sneezing after inhaling a pinch of snuff, taken by Thomas Edison’s laboratory, was one of the first human acts ever committed to film. If you believe the internet rumors concerning the relationship between sneezing and sex, it might also have been the first movie orgasm.
No wonder nasal snuff was so popular for hundreds of years – and small wonder, too, that Pope Urban VIII threatened to excommunicate Catholics who took snuff in church….
Weekend circulars and hardware store ads tout “long-lasting” light bulbs that burn for 10,000-20,000 hours, but they can’t hold a candle to the subject of this story: a bulb that has shed continuous light for over a century.
We’ve all received the emails, posts and tweets from well-meaning friends: “It takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown. Why tire yourself?” But is it true? Has anyone actually tallied up the facial forces involved? If so, did they account for the full range of smiles we express when amused, contented, excited, proud, satisfied or relieved? And is it true that the very act of smiling can make us happy?
Thomas Edison has long enjoyed the incandescent light of public admiration and textbook domination while Nikola Tesla, the scientist and inventor who pioneered the alternating current that truly powers the modern world, has unjustly languished as a footnote in scientific history. Farsighted, quirky, driven and brilliant, Tesla frequently leapfrogged ahead of his contemporaries to the next step, and the next.
Over the course of his long career, Tesla registered over 111 American patents and around 300 patents worldwide, including radio and alternating current. He designed the Niagara Falls power station that provided electricity to most of the northeastern United States. But his loyalty to his first loves, science and progress, cost him his fame, his fortune and, some argue, his sanity. These are just a few of the …
