He rode a bull to fox hunts and used pigs as pointers. He built a sail-powered carriage that flung him through a shop window. When summoned to meet the king, he wrote back that he was busy training otters to fish. Jemmy Hirst — the man who kept the crown waiting and left with its wine.
Making progress on my portrait of Qing Dynasty astronomer, mathematician and poet Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797) for the #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt multiplication.
Electrical terms that Benjamin Franklin appears to have been the first to use, at least in print in English: armature battery brush charged charging condense conductor discharge electrical fire electrical shock electrician electrified electrify electrized Leyden bottle minus (negative or negatively) negatively non-conducting non-conductor non-electric plus (positive or positively) stroke (electric shock) uncharged This list is from Carl Van Doren’s 1938 biography. “Though he never lost sight of what was being done in electricity during his whole lifetime, he was perfectly willing to have his contributions to it absorbed in the enlarging science. They were absorbed, and it is now...
He poured infected vomit into his eyes. He fried it in a pan and inhaled the steam. He built a small closet and sat inside it, breathing. Then he drank it — and noted the taste was "very slightly acid." Stubbins Ffirth never got sick, declared victory, and graduated. He was right for entirely the wrong reasons: the man who drank the plague.
1926 March 16
Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945)
launched 1st successful liquid-fueled #rocket
& Space Age (only the world didn't know it yet)
reached a height of 41 ft & traveled a distance of 180 ft in a flight lasting 3 sec
100 yrs later, still basis for #spaceflight
photograph by E. C. Goddard, 1926, Library of Congress Digital ID cph.3c10433, public domain
#spacetechnology #histsci #physics #areospace #engineering
He spent twenty years on the outer walls alone. The finished palace is twelve meters high and twenty-six meters long. He built it from stones he picked up on his mail route, working by oil lamp after dark, copying temples and shrines from postcards — places he'd never been. When he couldn't be buried in it, he built his own tomb instead. He was seventy-eight when he started.
Happy birthday to botanist & photography trailblazer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children!
Atkins’ mother died when she was still an infant, but she was close with her naturalist father & received a much more scientific education than was common for women in her time. Her 250 detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father’s translation of Lamarck’s ‘Genera of Shells’; 🧵
#sciart #printmaking #linocut #womenInSTEM #histsci #womensHistoryMonth
Happy birthday to Caroline Herschel (1750 –1848) a trail blazing woman in #astronomy. Hers was a real life Cinderella story where rather than marrying a prince, she made a life and career for herself. Marriage was her expected role but she was deemed unmarriageable, since a childhood bout of typhus stunted her growth. Her mother thought she should train to be a servant & purposely stood in the way of her learning 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/187140629
#printmaking #sciart #WomenInSTEM #astronomer #histsci
Oddlet - Lovable Weirdos
Ele Willoughby, PhD
Dr Surekha Davies, Historical Monster Consultant (she/her)
Abie
Jennifer Lynn Bartlett
Thony C