Transcript “E Pluribus Unum”, “Habeus Corpus”, “Carpe Diem”, “Caveat Emptor”. All of these phrases are known by most people, yet they come from a language that has been dead for 1500 years: Latin. Latin is on our money, serves as mottos for universities, and is the foundation for our entire naming system in biology. Many …
Transcript Even if you aren’t a fan of classical music, you are probably at least familiar with what an orchestra is. But have you ever wondered why orchestras use the instruments they do? Or why they have them in that combination, or why it is even called an orchestra at all? And what exactly is …
Transcript In the early hour of March 18, 1990, two police officers enter Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The problem was, they weren’t police officers. They were thieves. In a little over an hour, they stole 13 valuable works of art which had a combined value of over $500 million dollars. It was the largest …
Podcast Transcript The Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus oversaw the rise of Sweden as one of the great powers in Europe. In 1626, he ordered the construction of a warship that would be the most powerful floating platform in Northern Europe. Its maiden voyage in 1628 was one of the most memorable of any ship in …
Podcast Transcript There are some subjects that are perceived to be mind-numbingly dull and boring. One such subject is accounting. Yet, believe it or not, accounting and bookkeeping have not only have been around since the dawn of human civilization, but they also had a hand in shaping it. Without it, the world would be …
Podcast Transcript 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno posited a quandary. If you want wanted to travel from one place to another, you first have to go half the distance, then you have to go half the distance again, and then again. You can do this infinitely and never reach your goal. This was …
Podcast Transcript Located on the French Riveria, just a few kilometers from the border of Italy, sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, is the tiny country of Monaco. Monaco has several distinctions among the countries in the world, not just for its size, but for its population and its history. Learn more about Monaco, …
Podcast Transcript For several hundred years, the British navy was the most powerful in the world. One of the things which the British navy ran on was rum. Every sailor on a British ship was given a daily ration of rum. However, on one dark day, the tradition of the daily rum allotment came to …
Podcast Transcript Every so often you might hear something on the news about a record high or low temperature being set. Usually, these might be records for a particular month, or maybe for a particular place. Temperature records, especially global records, can be very contentious and there are rigid rules surrounding how such recordings are …