The name of the unit of magnetic field strength, the gauss, is now part of the verb degaussing for the near-elimination of a metal object’s magnetic field (it cannot be eliminated completely). The name degaussing was invented by British researchers in World War II for the process of making Royal Navy ships less detectable to German magnetically-triggered mines. It is possible that the “Philadelphia Experiment”, in which the destroyer USS Eldridge is said to have been made to disappear in a time vortex, originated in a severe misunderstanding of US Navy experiments in degaussing.
On New Year’s Day, 1801 (New Century’s Day?) an Italian monk, Giuseppe Piazzi, peering through his telescope chanced upon a tiny star in the shoulder of Taurus. A few days later he found that it had moved! He named it Ceres; the first asteroid was discovered. But before he’d been able to make many observations the monk fell ill, and the asteroid disappeared into the haze of the sun. When it reemerged from the sun’s haze, it couldn’t be found; the orbit would need to be calculated from scanty data. Pierre-Simon Laplace, the leading astrophysicist of the day, declared this to be impossible.
Carl Friedrich Gauss had already considered this problem and, as soon as Piazzi’s data was published, calculated the orbit of Ceres. On New Year’s Eve, 364 days after the initial sighting, Ceres was definitively spotted, precisely where Gauss predicted. The great mathematician was instantly catapulted to worldwide fame.
Isaac Asimov wrote* Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids*, among other tomes of the Lucky Starr series, under the nom de plume Paul French. He declined to use his own name, despite the urging of Doubleday’s Frederik Pohl, out of a fear the books would be turned into a crappy TV space opera he didn’t want to be associated with his name. The first one of the series was titled David Starr, Space Ranger, but the remaining six called our intrepid hero Lucky.
The Latin form of the name Lucky is Felix.
Felix the Cat first appeared in 1919.
The total solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 provided the first opportunity for empirical observation of light deflection, as predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Observations were made simultaneously in the cities of Sobral, Ceará, Brazil and in São Tomé and Príncipe on the west coast of Africa.
Brazil nuts are exported primarily from the pristine forests of Bolivia since disturbed forests lack the necessary large-bodied bees for pollination. Brazil nut tree propagation is aided by agouti who harvest and eat the seeds, but bury some for a rainy day.
Technically, Brazil nuts are not nuts (hard-shelled fruits) but instead seeds from inside a soft-shelled fruit.
Australia has over 1,500 species of native bee.
Bees, wasps and ants are all in Order Hymenoptera. While termites are communal like ants and bees, called “white ants” in Australia, and sometimes mistaken for flying ants, they are not in Order Hymenoptera. Instead they evolved from cockroaches in Order Blattodea.
Vespa is an Italian brand of motor-scooter. The name means ‘wasp’.
In The Millionairess, co-starring Peter Sellers, Sophia Loren appears wasp-waisted in a négligée.
Sophia Loren won the Oscar for best actress in 1961 for her performance in Two Women. It was the first time the award was given for a non-English speaking role.
Linda Hunt won the Oscar for best actress in 1983 for her performance in The Year of Living Dangerously. It was the first and only time the award was given to someone playing a character of the opposite gender.
In 1968, Katharine Hepburn won the Oscar for best actress in The Lion in Winter AND, due to a tied vote, Barbra Streisand won the same Oscar for Funny Girl. It was the first and only time that two Best Leading Actress awards were given. (The 1931/32 Best Actor award was also shared, as were some minor awards.)
Oscar is the third most popular name for males born in Sweden.
KSSS, the Royal Swedish Yacht Club, is located in Saltsjöbaden, a 20-minute drive from Stockholm (in no traffic). KSSS stands for Kungliga Svenska Segel Sällskapet. In 2012 and 2013 KSSS challenged for the 34th America’s Cup in San Francisco.
72-foot catamarans were used in that America’s Cup. However in the next one, the 35th in 2017 in Bermuda, teams have voted to race smaller catamarans. They were considering 62-foot catamarans but they recently decided to go smaller, with 45- to 50-foot ones.
In Australian recipes a cup is equal to 250mL.
In the US a cup equals 8 ounces. At 29.573 ml per ounce, that is just shy of 240 ml.
The symbol that is now universally accepted in mathematics for equality (’=’) was first recorded by the Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde in The Whetstone of Witte (1557). In his book Recorde refers to his design as “Gemowe lines” (meaning twin lines, from the Latin gemellus).
Emperor Napoleon I’s heraldic animal symbol was the bee (see the carpet here): https://romancingthebee.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/napoleon.jpg
