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.
To her credit, Ayn Rand did not approve of slavery. Through the mouth of John Galt, she not only said “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man” but added “nor ask another man to live for mine”. Whether she actually lived by the second part of that creed is another matter,
When communism collapsed in the Soviet Union in the early 90s, the free-marketeers moved in to build their Ayn Rand paradise. They have built it, the biggest thug of all is in control and the ruins of Mariupol are the measure of his success.