Like many people, my knowledge of Robert Fitzroy has long been limited to the sole fact that he was the captain of the H.M.S. Beagle during Charles Darwin’s famous voyage upon it. I’d read in Darwin’s own writings that he had held Fitzroy in high esteem, as well as passing mentions elsewhere that Fitzroy and […]
Given all the talk about the Moon recently, you’d think there was a significant anniversary in the history of space exploration approaching.
You’d be correct, of course. The Apollo 11 mission launched on 16 July 1969 and its Eagle module landed on the Moon a few days later on 20 July, making 2019 the 50th anniversary of a human being setting a first foot on the moon.
“Unclean! Unclean!”
We all likely know the story – about how those with the leprosy, plague, or various other diseases were required to carry bells, clappers, or other instruments with which to draw attention to themselves, and shout “Unclean!” – thus warning any with whom they may happen to come into contact in the streets. It actually stems from a verse of the Hebrew Bible – Leviticus 13:45 to be specific, “And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean.”
In 1959, C. P. Snow, the noted British chemist and novelist, delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University that has come to be far more discussed and debated than perhaps any other of such in the past century. In his The Two Cultures, as it was later published, Baron Snow described the existence of two […]