Coffee, Tea, or Revolution

Did you know that the American Revolution is the reason that most Americans prefer coffee over tea? Before the American Revolution, most Americans, like other British subjects, drank tea, The Boston Tea Party marked the beginning of a protest against the tea tax. ("No taxation without representation.") that would result in a switch to drinking coffee for that caffeine boost. Coffee houses had been popular for some time and coffee grown in South America was readily available in North America.

Secrets of The Pharaoh's Tomb

Tutankhamun’s famous death mask wasn’t really his. It was probably reworked adding a different face to someone else's golden death mask after the boy king died unexpectedly. The evidence of a repurposed death mask is that the gold of the surrounding headpiece is better quality than that of the face section. The entire mask is made up of eight pieces riveted together. The blue stripes in the head piece are glass, in the face (such as the eyebrows) the blue is lapis lazuli. Tiny holes for earrings were covered up with gold leaf. Earrings were used in female death masks. It is speculated that the death mask and many other items in the tomb may have been originally a part of Nefertiti’s funerary objects. Nefertiti’s tomb has never been found. Tutankhamun’s tomb was discovery by Howard Carter, his team, and his patron, the Earl of Caernarvon, on Sunday November 26, 1922.

A Corny Subject

The corn plant came to us from Native Americans, but the word corn is of Germanic origin from Old Frisian and Old Saxon "korn" for grain. Hominy however is a word of Native American origin from Powhatan meaning 'that which is ground."

 Pharaoh's Military Cows 

Cows were the secret weapons of Egyptian Pharaohs! Did you know that cattle were an important element in Ancient Egyptian military hardware manufacture? We use carbon fiber in bows and as tough flexible masts for sailboards, but cattle horns are a superior source of carbon fiber. Cattle horns were used as the inner compressive layer of laminated bows as early as 4,000 years ago.  Horn, wood, and sinew were glued together to create a bow with superior range. Those charming spotted cattle pictured in Egyptian tombs were a source of hides to cover shields, leather to absorb shock as the woven floor of a chariot, served as an outer covering for chariot wheels, and as a layer for bows, as well as providing dried meat to feed the army. Rearing cattle was important to the military might of Ancient Egypt.

Son and Heir

King Henry VIII as a concerned father walking 2 miles barefoot for the sake of his child. This seems unlikely. History is full of surprises. When Henry VIII and his queen Catherine had a son on January 1, 1511, Henry went on pilgrimage to the shrine at Walsingham. It was customary for pilgrims to walk the final mile to the church barefoot. King Henry walked 2 miles barefoot hoping to ensure the life of his son through his sacrifice. Unfortunately the little prince died before he was 2 months old. Henry and Catherine had 6 children all died except princess Mary.

Oxygen Blue

Ever wonder why the sky is blue? The answer links the air we breath and the rainbow created by a prism splitting sunlight. The atmosphere is largely made up of two colorless gases: oxygen and nitrogen. Sunlight appears white but is made up of a rainbow of colors created by light with different wavelengths. Because the wavelength of blue light is roughly the size of an atom of oxygen, blue light interacts with the oxygen in the atmosphere and is scattered by it. If the Earth had no atmosphere, the sun’s light would travel directly from the Sun in a straight line towards our eyes and we would see the Sun as a very bright star in sea of blackness. Because the blue light waves in sunlight are scattered by the oxygen in the atmosphere, blue light from the Sun enters our eyes from all sorts of different angles and we see the entire sky as blue. 

Dinosaurs And Spark Plugs

Did you know that the firing end of your car's spark plugs and the extinction of dinosaurs are linked by the same metal--iridium? A clue to the extinction of the dinosaurs was found in a layer of rock laid down at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs, 65.5 million years ago, that contained a very high concentration of iridium. Iridium occurs in high concentrations in asteroids. The layer must have been laid down by dust settling over the entire planet after a very large asteroid impact. Iridium is one of the nine least abundant elements in Earth's crust, gold is 40 times more abundant, platinum is 10 times more abundant, and silver and mercury are 80 times more abundant. Iridium is found in high enough concentrations for mining in two types of geologic locations: igneous deposits (crustal intrusions from below, iridium is heavy and sank into the central layers of the molten early Earth), and impact craters. The high melting point, hardness, and corrosion resistance of iridium make it the perfect metal for the spark point of spark plugs.