Recently in History Category

In the past, I've shown a pair of photos showing how London has developed.

This wonderful film was made in 1927 by Claude Friese-Greene. Colour film from the 1920s is exceptionally rare, and this is a very powerful example. It shows scenes of London Bridge, the Thames, the Tower of London, Greenwich Observatory, the London docks, Whitehall, the Cenotaph, Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Petticoat Lane, the Oval, the Changing of the Guard, Rotten Row, and the Houses of Parliament.

The Cenotaph sequence from around 3:37 to 3:54 is very poignant. This was filmed only nine years after the end of the Great War. The women and looking at the wreaths would very likely be wives and mothers of the men killed, and the Second World War was, at that time, inconceivable.

Claude Friese-Greene was the son of pioneering cinematographer William Friese-Greene, and devoted himself to developing commercially his father's colour process - Biocolour - but without great success. It was soon overtaken by Technicolor and Claude abandoned the process. His role as a pioneer of colour film has now been recognised.

The footage is part of London's Screen Archives and the British Film Archive.

Original Link: How To Be A Retronaut

I am a huge fan of Google. They are doing an increasing amount of things to improve the internet and using technology to its fullest, something that can only be good. Yes, there are those who think that they are diversifying a little too much, but I disagree. Everything they do, they do to the highest standard.

Anyway, I'm writing primarily about their search engine having constantly been in awe of the things they think of to do.

I'm not talking about it being the most used search engine online (figures from December 2008, the most recent I can find, show that 62.9% of the 8,000,000,000 searches surveyed were done through Google compared to 16.8% done through Yahoo! and 9.8% done using MSN/Windows Live Search [source]), I'm thinking about the creativity put into celebrating significant events through their logo.

If you've never been to Google when there's been a celebration of a world event, or a scientist's birthday or even valentine's day, then you've missed out on a little slice of personalisation. For as long as I can remember, Google have been altering their logo to reflect those sort of things, with a seeming emphasis on the world of science. I've managed to find copies of some of the images via, appropriately enough, a Google search and reproduce them for you here. Not all of these would necessarily have been shown at all the Google home pages - for instance there is one from India and China below.

14th March 2003 - Albert Einstein's birthday

15th January 2004 - Spirit on Mars

3rd February 2004 - Gaston Julia's birthday

8th June 2004 - Venus transit

13th March 2006 - Percival Lowell's birthday

16th May 2008 - First laser

6th June 2008 - Diego Velazquez's birthday

7th July 2008 - Mark Chagall's birthday

21st November 2008 - Rene Magritte's birthday

12th February 2009 - Charles Darwin's 200th birthday

17th May 2009 - Igor Stravinsky's birthday

20th June 2009 - Apollo 11 Lunar landing anniversary

10th July 2009 - Nikola Tesla's birthday

22nd July 2009 - Longest solar eclipse in India and China

23rd July 2009 - Comic-Con 2009

12th August 2009 - Perseid meteor shower

Via: Google Logos Collection, Telegraph.co.uk, Google.co.uk

This is pretty cool.

A US spacecraft has captured images of Apollo landing sites on the Moon, revealing hardware and a trail of footprints left on the lunar surface.

The release of the images coincides with the 40th anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the Moon. The descent stages from the lunar modules which carried astronauts to and from the Moon can clearly be seen. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site shows scientific instruments and an astronaut footpath in the lunar dust.

It is the first time hardware left on the Moon by the Apollo missions has been seen from lunar orbit. The pictures were taken by Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft, which launched on 18 June. The spacecraft is carrying three cameras on board: one low-resolution wide-angle camera and two high-resolution narrow-angle cameras mounted side-by-side. These are known collectively as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument.

"The LROC team anxiously awaited each image," said the instrument's principal investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. "We were very interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just for the thrill - and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed, the images are fantastic and so is the focus."

The camera instrument was able to capture five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution. Long shadows from a low sun angle make the locations of the lunar modules' descent stages particularly evident. The image of the Apollo 14 landing site had a particularly desirable lighting condition that revealed additional details.

The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, a set of scientific instruments placed by the astronauts at the landing site, is discernable, as are the faint trails between the module and instrument package left by the astronauts' footprints. The LRO satellite reached lunar orbit on June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15.

Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images were taken before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit.

"Not only do these images reveal the great accomplishments of Apollo, they also show us that lunar exploration continues," said LRO project scientist Richard Vondrak of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, US. "They demonstrate how LRO will be used to identify the best destinations for the next journeys to the Moon."

Although the pictures provide a reminder of past lunar exploration, LRO's primary focus is on paving the way for the future. Data returned by the mission will help Nasa identify safe landing sites for future explorers, locate potential resources, describe the Moon's radiation environment and demonstrate new technologies.

[Via: BBC News]

From BBC News:

It seems even one of history's most notorious womanisers had a romantic side - at least in the beginning. Concealed in the Vatican for almost five centuries, a love letter from King Henry VIII to his second wife Anne Boleyn is to go on display at the British Library in London.

Probably written in January 1528, it shows a softer side to the infamously bloodthirsty royal as he pursues her. He assures Anne that "henceforth my heart will be dedicated to you alone," and apologises profusely for ever suggesting she could be a mere mistress.

Unfortunately, that devotion did not last and as school children learn, things ended badly for Anne. Henry eventually had her beheaded at the Tower of London in 1536 and subsequently married another four women.

The letter is part of a major exhibition on Henry VIII opening at the British Library in April. Never displayed publicly before, it was almost certainly stolen from Anne.

It speaks of the king's "unchangeable intention" to marry her and marks a turning point in their relationship. Before then, Anne had held out - aware of Henry's womanising reputation - and had refused any pre-marital sexual relations. The letter - originally written in French - appears to show that she has finally made a "too humble submission" to his advances.

It reads: "The demonstrations of your affection are such, and the beautiful words of your letter are so cordially phrased, that they really oblige me to honour, love, and serve you for ever... For my part, I will out-do you, if this be possible, rather than reciprocate, in loyalty of heart and my desire to please you. Beseeching you also that if I have in any way offended you, you will give me the same absolution for which you ask, assuring you that henceforth my heart will be dedicated to you alone, and wishing greatly that my body was so too."

The letter is signed like a love-sick schoolboy, "H seeks A.B, No Other Rex," alongside his beloved's initials in a heart.

Henry battled with the Vatican throughout his life, ultimately leading to him separating the Anglican church from Rome and creating the Church of England. The exhibition - which also includes portraits, tapestries and armour, as well as correspondence, official documents, maps and books - gives an insight into what drove him.

It is curated by historian and broadcaster Dr David Starkey, who said: "Henry is not only England's best-known king - with his wives, his girth and his bloodthirstiness - he is also our most important single ruler. When he came to the throne, Henry was the pious prince who ruled an England at the heart of Catholic Europe. When he died, he was the great schismatic, who had created a national church and an insular, xenophobic politics that shaped the development of England for the next 500 years."

Henry VIII: Man and Monarch is open from 23 April to 6 September.

My first adventure as a National Trust Member was to East Riddlesden Hall in Keighley with a very dear friend... I've actually been here twice a week apart - once as a visitor and once to a wedding there. Now, this place is lovely both inside and out, except that inside the main house operates a one way system where you have to visit each room in turn - we were positively scolded for daring to enter a room without following the desired approach. Very odd.

Anyway, here are links to the photos from both visits. The first time was again cloudy, with spots of rain in the air, but the second time was in glorious sunshine. See if you can spot the difference between days...

• Saturday, 14th June 2008 (12 photos)


• Friday, 20th June 2008 (42 photos)

In my boredom this summer, it was suggest by JSC that I do some kinda research into something that interested me. An attempt to get me off the web and into a library no doubt (and there would've been had she not said, "It'll get you off the web and into a library...")

Anyway, Daniel Fahrenheit. The Fahrenheit temperature system is one I've never understood. When people spoke of it getting to 100 in July, part of me was thinking that water would instantly boil. And then I remembered about Fahrenheit.

It's not something I've been brought up with. I don't have an understanding of it, the numbers don't mean anything to me. Much like pounds and ounces are of little significance to me.

Born in 1686, spending most of his life in Amsterdam, he lived around the same time as Anders Celsius (the guy whose scale means more to me) - but there is no evidence to say they met.

Fahrenheit was fascinated by scientific instruments and wandered around Europe learning from scientists in different cities. In Copenhagen he met a guy called Olaus Roemer, a Danish astronomer who had invented his own thermometer. Roemer's used alcohol to measure temperatures, specifically wine, using two main points of reference: 60 degrees was the temperature of boiling water and, somewhat bizarrely, 7 and a half degrees as the temperature of melting ice.

Fahrenheit took Roemer's thermometer and modified it because he was no fan of "inconvenient and awkward fractions," according to his letters. He used mercury rather than wine and established three fixed points on his thermometer.

This is the part that I find absurd.

For zero on his scale, he chose the temperature of an equal ice-salt mixture. For 30, he chose the freezing point of water, and 90 was supposed to be the human's normal body temperature.

There's so much wrong with that... firstly, Fahrenheit got his measurements wrong. The freezing point of water is 32 degrees and the average human body temperature is 98.6. So he's an inaccurate moron. Secondly, what's wrong with using zero as the freeing point of water, why use 30? Oh, wait, he's used zero for an equal ice-salt mixture. What the...? Why ice and salt? Why not ice and orange juice?

It's just a bad idea. And for some people, Americans in particular, they're stuck with it.

I'm almost glad it means nothing to me.

Anders Celsius by the way would have told you that your cup of coffee would have measured zero degrees by his original scale, as zero represented the boiling point of water and 100 was the temperature at which water froze...

Celsius' scale doesn't make intuitive sense now, and it apparently didn't when he developed it. After he died, his scale was sneakily inverted to the style we now know it as, with zero representing the freezing point of water at standard atmospheric pressure and 100 the boiling point.