Things I like, things I'm interested in, things I find beautiful, magical or odd.
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09
Feb
MEXICO CITY – A Mexican collector has handed over a batch of just over 200 artifacts – most of which date to between 700 A.D and 1,100 A.D. and show the development of Mayan cities in the country’s southeast – to the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH.
The pieces were…
Adriaen van der Werff, Amorous Shepherds, c. 1690
With a weight that rivals a baby elephant, a meteorite that fell from space some 30,000 years ago is likely Britain’s largest space rock. And after much sleuthing, researchers think they know where it came from and how it survived so long without weathering away.
The giant rock, spanning…
On February 9, 1913, a unique procession of meteors was observed from Canada, parts of the US, and in one case, off the coast of Brazil. Several streams of brilliant meteors were seen moving relatively slowly across the sky; the event lasted too long for a regular meteor sighting, but too short for a regular meteor shower, and moreover, the meteors did not, like showers, radiate from a single point in the sky. Most of North America was cloudy that day, so out of the millions of potential observers, only hundred-odd reports were made, mostly from remote locations, but there is no doubt that it happened. The meteors were accompanied by a trembling sound.
Comparing eyewitness reports and making calculations of possible trajectories, scientists have proposed a remarkable possibility: that this event, called by some the Cyrillid meteor shower, was a short-lived natural satellite of the Earth. (This view is not undisputed.) Natural satellites, especially bigger ones, are more conventionally called moons. If this hypothesis is true, the most likely explanation for the 1913 event is that some small celestial object, after however many round-trips around the Sun, got caught in orbit around the Earth, for a brief while giving us a second, tiny moon, until it broke apart into a brilliant procession of meteors.
The picture is a painting by Gustav Hahn, depicting the procession as seen from Toronto. (via Picture This Date)
26
Jan
A mass grave in Dorset containing 54 decapitated skeletons was a burial ground for violent Viking mercenaries, according to a Cambridge archaeologist.
The burial site at Ridgeway Hill was discovered in 2009.
Archaeologists found the bodies of 54 men who had all been decapitated and placed…
A Jie warrior with scars designed to look like AK-47s. Previous generations had scars representing wild animals and abstract symbols of power. Now, guns and satellite phones are common showing how deeply guns have become a symbol and tool for holding onto power.
(Source: malformalady)
Brendan Foley peels his wetsuit to the waist and perches on the side of an inflatable boat as it skims across the sea just north of the island of Crete. At his feet are the dripping remains of a vase that moments earlier had been resting on the sea floor, its home for more than a millennium….
Not far from here at least 500,000 Africans took their first steps into slavery in colonial Brazil, which took in far more slaves than the United States and where now half of its 200 million citizens claim African descent.
The “Cais do Valongo” – the Valongo Wharf – was the busiest of all slave…
The Blue plaque on the former site of the prison in London that was known as The Clink.
The Clink was a notorious prison in Southwark, England which functioned from the 12th century until 1780 either deriving its name from, or bestowing it on, the local manor, the Clink Liberty. The Clink was possibly the oldest men’s prison and probably the oldest women’s prison in England.
photo by J.P.Lon
12
Jan
FINSON, Louis
(b. ca. 1580, Brugge, d. 1617, Amsterdam)
Allegory of the Four Elements
1611
Oil on canvas, 179 x 170 cm
Private collection
via archaeologicalnews
via centuriespast
via science.jpg)
via 
via mediumaevum