In 1831 Dumont Durville made a contribution to the Bulletin of the Société de Géographie that was billed as a book review. It began, however, not with a discussion of the book in question but with an extended rant against the French naval establishment.
It was probably not a good idea on my part to get involved in a purely American tragedy, but I had an excuse. A fellow Brit had posted a comment suggesting that he thought that US-style gun control, or lack of it, would be a good idea in the UK. I thought some opposition to that would be worth while.
After his failure to measure the mean density of the Earth in the Dolcoath mine in Cornwall in 1826, George Airy waited 30 years before making another attempt. For this he went to the Harton Pit near South Shields and used innovations such as electrical signalling. But was he any more successful?
One of the criticisms faced by Ayn Rand in her lifetime was that her ‘rational men’simply did not exist. To this she had a standard answer. “I know they do. I married one. His name is Frank O’Connor.”
In finding a place to stay in Rio de Janeiro, Rose and Louis de Freycinet were indebted to a “M. Taunay,, the son of a painter and a member of the Institute’s Academy of Fine Arts, whose name and works are well known in Europe”. But who was this friend in need?
The Republic of Croatia can lay claim to being the homeland of two scientists whose names are, if not exactly household words, have at least integrated themselves into the international vocabulary., but until April 2022, only one of them had a statue in Zagreb.