Our monthly selection of links to items you may have missed …
Science, Technology, Natural World
So what if this Universe was made in somebody else’s laboratory? [LONG READ]
Voyager 1 is way beyond and listening to the stars – but for how long? [LONG READ]
Juno is another space probe which is still working after many more years than expected surveying Jupiter. [LONG READ]
On the curious history of Dark Matter.
There’s a recent, and rather inexplicable, international agreement to abandon leap seconds and maybe sometime impose a leap hour. Two reports, the first from The Guardian, and the second from The Conversation.
Now we mention time, it is being suggested that animal life may be significantly older than we have hitherto thought.
The sexual behaviour of animals (including humans) changes with the advent of autumn.
We end this section with something completely different … surprising as it may seem, the humble sheet of A4 paper is one of humanity’s greatest achievements.
Health, Medicine
Flu has kicked off early this year, but how do the various suggested causes stand up to scrutiny?
Sexuality & Relationships
The Dutch, being progressives, have a new word for labia, but will it catch on?
The thoughts of one man on what he feels it’s like to have a foreskin.
So here’s an explainer – for the boys and anyone educating them – about wet dreams … because most of us were never told and had to work it out for ourselves.
Art, Literature, Language, Music
A look at how we talk about pregnancy.
Etymologist Susie Dent takes a look at collective nouns.
So you thought you new English grammar and punctuation? Well here are 19 strange punctuation marks you never imagined you’d need.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
It appears that the Neanderthals may have been a lot more violent than previously thought.
Archaeologists have found the world’s oldest known shipwreck off the cost of Turkey.
Meanwhile in Scotland archaeologists have uncovered a long suspected major early monastery. [££££]
Now we’re deep into medieval mysteries with the Green Children of Woolpit.
Until the Black Death changed everything, rabbits were a luxury for the wealthy.
Here are a few very odd mediaeval beasts you’ve probably never heard about.
It seems to have been medieval month, because there’s yet more with the discovery of a major leper hospital in Lincoln.
Scholars have recently suggested that their predecessors have been reading the mysterious Voynich Manuscript all wrong, because it has been wrongly bound.
A book of advice for the 14th-century young housewife.
There’s a huge amount of controversy over which is the oldest pub in England, so Dr James Wright has taken a long, detailed look.
We’re gradually coming up to date with some of the most astonishingly bad Puritan names.
So where, and when, was the first flight in England?
London
So now to London proper …
For anyone who is into maps, the Historic Towns Trust has detailed maps of Medieval and Tudor London.
The fields to the north of the City had lots of marks for archery practice; one survives. [££££]
General Roy’s Bollards [££££]
A look at the darker side of wartime Covent Garden.
Finally in this section, a look at a few of London’s secret wartime defences. [££££]
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
Now here’s an oddity: the legend of the Mongolian Death Worm.
And finally … why wants to be an ordnance expert? A behind the scenes look at the art of defusing a WW2 bomb and living to tell the tale! [LONG READ]
