Each month we’re posing five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As before, they’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as having a bit of fun.
Classical & Ancient World
What is the 4th letter of the Greek alphabet?
Which English city was once known as Duroliponte?
What prized object comprises the coat of the winged ram that flew Phrixus to safety?
Name the Sun-god of Ancient Egypt?
In Greek mythology the Little Owl traditionally represents which goddess?
Palaeontologists have discovered several new species of extinct bone-crushing Tasmanian Tigers.
At the other end of the size scale, researchers looking in a Tibetan glacier have found over 1700 different frozen viruses.
Still with research reported in Popular Science magazine, the social white-browed sparrow weavers varying nest shapes demonstrate that birds have “culture”. Mind I thought we already knew that from the dialects of Meso-American parrots.
Leaving the animal world for the geological, in September 2023 something made Earth ring like a bell for nine days. [LONG READ]
Back in the early life of the solar system, it seems that Jupiter’s moon Ganymede was struck by an asteroid bigger than the one which wiped out the dinosaurs.
While on brains, within the billions of neurons they contain there are trillions of typos – some good, some bad. [LONG READ]
And still on brains, it’s being suggested that many older people don’t just maintain, but actually increase, their cognitive skills. [££££]
And finally with things mental, a Stanford-led research group has identified six different types of depression each of which is likely to respond differently to various treatments. [LONG READ]
Sexuality
Sex historian Dr Kate Lister tries to explain exactly why women masturbate. [££££]
Loughborough has installed a new memorial bell as a tribute to those who died from Covid, and a thank you to NHS and other key workers. And unusually for the UK, it’s a campanile. We need more campaniles.
In which David Hockney stimulates an academic epidemiologist and mathematician to think about four dimensional chairs.
Philip Curtis, the director of The Map House in London, talks about mapping Antarctica.
History, Archaeology, Anthropology
We reported previously that Stonehenge’s altar stone had been identified as originating in NE Scotland. Now it seems that the front runner locations, Orkney, has been ruled out.
Our favourite London blogger, Diamond Geezer, visits Theobalds Grove (one stop outside Greater London). This is my home town; I was brought up just three minutes walk from this station! Needless to say it’s changed quite a bit since I last lived there in late 1970s.
I lived a couple of hundred yards down the road to the right of the church
Emma Beddington set out to see what it’s like to spend a day as a dog, and finds it impossible.
People
A German mathematician who lived in France as a hermit, left thousands of pages of work. Now there’s a debate over whether he was a mathematical genius or just a lonely madman. [LONG READ]
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1724
7 April. The premiere performance, of Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245) at St Nicholas Church, Leipzig.
22 April. Birth of Immanuel Kant, German philosopher (d.1804)
25 August. Birth of George Stubbs, English painter (d.1806)
24 September. The Paris Bourse, the stock exchange for France, is created by order of King Louis XV on the advice of Nicolas Ravot d’Ombreval, four years after a financial panic had shut down trading.
Unknown Date. Construction of Blenheim Palace (below) is completed. It is presented as a gift from the nation to the Duke of Marlborough, for his involvement in the Battle of Blenheim in 1704.
Unknown Date. Founding of Longman, the oldest surviving publishing house in England.
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1624
2 March. The English House of Commons passes a resolution making it illegal for a Member of Parliament to quit or wilfully give up his seat. Afterward, MPs who wish quit are appointed to an “office of profit”, a legal fiction to allow a resignation. It is still in force today.
13 April. Death of William Bishop, first Roman Catholic bishop after the English Reformation (b.1553)
May. The first Dutch settlers arrive in New Netherland.
July. Birth of George Fox (below), English founder of the Quakers (d.1691)
13 August. Cardinal Richelieu is appointed by Louis XIII of France to be his chief minister, having intrigued against Charles de la Vieuville, Superintendent of Finances who was arrested for corruption the previous day.
24 August. Jasper Vinall becomes the first known person to die while playing the sport of cricket, after being struck on the head with a bat during a game at Horsted Keynes in England.
21 September. The Roman Catholic church’s Dicastery for the Clergy issues a decree that no monk may be expelled from his order “unless he be truly incorrigible”.
24 December. Denmark’s first postal service is launched by order of King Christian IV.
Unknown Date. Frans Hals produces the painting now known as The Laughing Cavalier.
Unknown Date. The German-language Luther Bible is publicly burned, by order of the Pope.
Unknown Date. Birth of a Female Greenland shark (which is still alive in 21st century).
Each month we’re posing five pub quiz style questions, with a different subject each month. As before, they’re not difficult, but it is unlikely everyone will know all the answers – so hopefully you’ll learn something new, as well as having a bit of fun.
History
Who died near Lincoln on 28 November 1290 and was buried 17 December at Westminster Abbey?
Which country has the world’s oldest surviving parliament?
What was ceded to Britain in 1713 as part of the settlement of the War of Spanish Succession?
Who was the first Merovingian King?
Roald Amundsen was the first man to reach the South Pole. What nationality was he?
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1524
17 January. Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, on board La Dauphine, in the service of Francis I of France, sets out from Madeira for the New World, to seek out a western sea route to the Pacific Ocean.
17 April. Verrazzano’s expedition makes the first European entry into New York Bay, and sights the island of Manhattan.
August. Protestant theologians Martin Luther and Andreas Karlstadt have a theological dispute at Jena.
24 December. Death of Vasco da Gama, Portuguese explorer (b. c1469).
Hello, good heatwave and welcome, to this months collection of links to items you may have missed but didn’t know you didn’t want to.
Science, Technology, Natural World
Against all the odds the aging spacecraft Voyager 1 is back on air and communicating intelligibly with ground control. Two items on this from Live Science and Scientific American [££££].
There are currently lots of sunspots and we’re nearing the solar cycle maximum … so the sun’s magnetic field is about to flip.
The search for a planet beyond Pluto has been going on since I was a kid, although astronomers can’t even agree Planet Nine exists, nor what they’re actually looking for.
Even so Planet Nine is amongst eight strange objects which could be hiding in the outer solar system – maybe.
Here’s a BBC News item about the beavers which have been reintroduced less than a mile from my house.
So it looks as if our invasive Asian Hornets have successfully overwintered here, although for some reason the government doesn’t see this as a huge problem!
They look like mini horseshoe crabs … some very rare, very ancient, three-eyed “dinosaur shrimps” (below) have suddenly emerged in Arizona.
How old is that termite mound? Researchers in South Africa have found 34,000-years-old termite mounds, beating the previously known oldest by 30,000 years!
Research is showing that our native wild orchids (not the tropical ones you buy in a supermarket) actually feed their seedlings through underground fungal connections. [££££]
In addition you may have more body parts that you should have!
You should pay attention to your nipples – and this applies you you guys too, not just the gals – as they can tell you things about your health.
A chemist and an epidemiologist take a look at the whys and wherefores of sunscreen.
Apparently 80% of people with sleep apnoea are undiagnosed. Here’s what to look for.
Finally in this section, the little known Oropouche virus is spreading rapidly in South America; although usually mild it can cause serious complications and could become a healthcare emergency.
A cancer diagnosis, or indeed any serious illness, can affect how we approach sex.
Environment
I’m used to seeing green parakeets in my west London garden – they’re noisy, they’re quarrelsome, but they’re colourful and often comic – so how did they actually get here from India?
In good news, it seems that the Iberian Lynx, one of the world’s rarest cats, is recovering from near extinction.
Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics
Kit Yates lays out why it is important for democracy that we have a numerate society.
Scientists have developed a method for making healthier, and more sustainable, chocolate by using the parts of the cocoa pod to replace loads of sugar. But they’ve not yet been able to commercialise it.
Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs
So just what is it really like to live in Antarctica?
An 18th century CE ivory dildo complete with contrivance for simulating ejaculation and its own discreet cloth bag. Now housed at the Science Museum in London.
Some stupid tourists seem to think that wild animals are cuddlable and cute! Why?
And I’ll leave you this month with two things to try to get your head round …
First, Corey S Powell suggests that, like gravitational waves or ripples in a pond, we are just ripples of information in expanding outwards space-time. I see his point but I’m still trying to work out what it means.
Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.
Notable Events in 1324
8 January. Death of Marco Polo (below), Italian merchant and explorer (b.1254)
5 March. Birth of David II, King of Scotland (d.1371)
23 March. Pope John XXII excommunicates Ludwig the Bavarian, King of the Germans, for not seeking papal approval during his conflict against his rival Frederick the Fair. Ludwig, in turn, declares the Pope a heretic, because of John’s opposition to the view of Christ’s absolute poverty held by some Franciscans.
3 November. At Kilkenny in Ireland, Petronilla de Meath, the maidservant of Dame Alice Kyteler, becomes the first person in the British Isles to be burned at the stake as a witch. Dame Alice was able to escape and avoid capture.
Unknown Date. Marsilius of Padua writes Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace), a theological treatise arguing against the power of the clergy and in favour of a secular state.
Unknown Date. William of Ockham, English Franciscan friar and philosopher, is summoned by John XXII to the papal court at Avignon and imprisoned.
Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker
