Tag archives for history
On Everest, It Is Always the Wind
Posted by Cathy Hunter on April 29, 2011 It’s climbing season on Mt. Everest, so let’s take a look back at one of the pioneers of that deadly mountain. Thanks to his fortitude and harrowing tale of survival, Barry Bishop became the stuff of legend around National Geographic.
A Royal Wedding Primer
Posted by Alyson Foster on April 28, 2011 Do you know who the Baron of Renfrew is? If you are planning to watch the royal wedding of William and Kate Middleton this Friday it’s time to brush up on London and all things royal. Take a trip back in time through the pages of National Geographic, with articles and photos showing the royal traditions and pageantry that will be echoed this week.
Posted by Recently astronomers announced the discovery of the youngest black hole yet found, which we see as an object that’s roughly 30 years old. But the news created a bit of a stir, because the black hole lies in a galaxy that’s about 50 million light-years away. Understanding the controversy means knowing the definition of a…
A philosopher and an astronomer in Utah may have found evidence that the Chinese were *not* the first to spot the comet that would become known as 1P/Halley. Instead, they say, that honor goes to the Greeks, who recorded a comet in the sky when a wagon-full of meteor slammed into the northern Hellespont region…
Did you hear? Today, July 20, 2009, is the 40th anniversary of the day humans first set foot on the moon. Yeah, I know. If you read newspapers/watch TV/surf the web/opened your door this morning, you’ve probably been flooded with Apollo 11 news by now. On one hand, it’s quite the achievement worth celebrating. On…
If you [heart] space, you probably know by now that this Thursday, April 2, marks the start of 100 Hours of Astronomy. The event will feature live Web casts, sidewalk astronomy, a literal “Sun Day” for solar science, and scads of other public outreach activities around the world. Kicking off the whole shebang is the…
It seems fitting that in a year being celebrated worldwide as the 400th anniversary of telescopic astronomy, NASA and ESA have chosen one of Galileo’s first loves, Jupiter, as their next top planet. Cut-away images show the insides of Io, Ganymede, … In January of 1610 the famed Italian Galileo Galilei pointed a homemade ‘scope…
Next week me and my mummy are off to visit Egypt, a trip I’ve been looking forward to for more than a year. Sadly, our jam-packed itinerary doesn’t include much computer time, so blogging from the field is not an option. A guard watches over statues of Ramses II in Abu Simbel —Photo by David…
As a professional skeptic, I’d be hard pressed to trust a doctor who thinks my right ankle aches because my ruling planet Jupiter is in retrograde. Image courtesy NASA But that’s just me, and medical astrology—a fairly common diagnostic tool during medieval times—is still alive and kicking in several parts of the world. In fact,…
