The art of Japanese marquetry
Crafted with different colors of wood arranged in intricate patterns, Yosegi Zaiku or Japanese marquetry is a style of object decoration that’s practiced in Hakone, a town near Mount Fuji. No wood...
View ArticleToothpaste – Ingredients With George Zaidan
Cultures throughout history have tried a variety of things to clean their teeth… Egyptians and Babylonians brushed with twigs around 3500-3000 BC. In 5000 BC, a recipe of ox hooves, eggshells, myrrh,...
View ArticleHow a mathematician dissects an astonishing coincidence
True story about an adventure that befell Anne Parrish one June day in Paris. She was wandering through the old book stalls along the Seine with her husband who had been there before. He sat down at a...
View ArticleGlobe Making (1955) – British Pathé
Skilled British artisans in this North London globe making workshop would painstakingly create 60,000 world globes every year. This awesome 1955 film from British Pathé showcases their step-by-step...
View ArticleMarie Tharp: Uncovering the Secrets of the Ocean Floor
In the early 20th century, Alfred Wegener proposed a revolutionary idea: that the Earth’s continents were once joined together, and had gradually moved apart. The idea contradicted almost everything...
View ArticleNeil deGrasse Tyson Replies to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
“I got a phone call from the Abraham Lincoln Library Foundation, and they asked me, would I mind composing 272 words of my own reflecting on Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address? I’m going to read you...
View ArticleEarth’s History Plays Out On A Football Field
The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. How can we comprehend such a massive amount of time? Skunk Bear‘s Adam Cole sets out to answer this question by using the 100 yard length of a football field to help...
View ArticleThe stories behind Fahrenheit and Celsius
Fahrenheit (°F) is a unit of measurement for temperature. Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736) is the inventor of the mercury-in-glass thermometer and the aforementioned scale of measurement. In this...
View ArticleHow to Understand Power – TED Ed
Every day, we move and operate within systems of power that other people have constructed. But we’re often uncomfortable talking about power. Why? Eric Liu describes the six sources of power and...
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Dinosaur’s Feathered Tail Found Remarkably Preserved in Amber
This incredibly well-preserved, feather-covered dinosaur tail was found by Beijing-based paleontologist Lida Xing in a northern Myanmar (Burma) amber market. The find is a first: Skeletal material from...
View ArticleThe Big Cloth (An Clò-Mòr): Weaving Harris Tweed
On the Island of Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, over 170 freelance weavers weave Harris Tweed. It’s the only cloth protected by an Act of Parliament, the Harris Tweed Act 1993, which...
View ArticleUnmasking the Secrets That Ancient Mummies Hold
For more than a century, archaeologists have dismantled mummy coffins, also known as cartonnage, in a hunt for literary treasure. In ancient Egypt, undertakers entombed the departed middle-class in...
View ArticleA sonata played on the earliest known surviving piano
What does the earliest known surviving piano sound like? Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, listen to the ‘Giga’ of Sonata number 6 in B flat major, played by professional keyboard player and...
View ArticleWhy are Dalmatians the Traditional Dog of Choice at Firestations?
Before fire trucks, there were horse-drawn carriages. One of the most effective fire-fighting tools in the middle of the 18th century was the steam pumper- a machine that consisted of a boiler which...
View ArticleThe mathematics of sidewalk illusions
Have you ever come across an oddly stretched image on the sidewalk, only to find that it looks remarkably realistic if you stand in exactly the right spot? These sidewalk illusions employ a technique...
View ArticleThe 1,000 year old windmills of Nashtifan
In the small village of Nashtifan, Iran, some of the oldest windmills in the world, with what may be the earliest windmill design in the world, still spin. From National Geographic: Made of natural...
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Bessie Coleman, The First Female African American Pilot
Born on January 26, 1892, American aviator Bessie Coleman was the first African-American woman to hold a pilot license and the first American woman to hold an international pilot license. Her daredevil...
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Jackie Robinson, baseball pioneer and American hero
It was 1947 when Jack Roosevelt Robinson, known as ‘Jackie’ in popular culture, put an end to segregation in baseball as the first African American player in the major leagues. This Mini Bio reveals...
View ArticleAn Automaton of Marie Antoinette, The Dulcimer Player
From the 2012 exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, take a closer look at a unique piece of automata: David Roentgen’s Automaton...
View ArticleThe Glass Ribbon Machine
In 1879, Thomas Edison and his research team developed a durable carbon-filament light bulb. In the 1880s and 90s, when glass had to be blown by hand, the skilled Corning glassblowers that Edison hired...
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