The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi
"The Star of Bethlehem: The Legacy of the Magi has stunning new insight and approach, which finally gives a confident answer to a question that has fascinated all Christians through the ages. ... don't buy any other book on the Star of Bethlehem, because the old astronomical views are guaranteed to be irrelevant." — Prof. Bradley E. Schaefer, Yale University
The history of weather vanes is an interesting one which spans many centuries and travels over many countries.
The earliest recorded weather vane honored the Greek god Triton, and adorned the Tower of the Winds in Athens which was built by the astronomer Andronicus in 48 B.C. The figure, which is believed to have been 4 to 8 feet long, had the head and torso of a man and the tail of a fish. To the ancients, the winds had divine powers. In Greece and pre-Christian Rome, weather vanes depicting the gods Boreas, Aeolus, Hermes and Mercury decorated the villas of wealthy landowners.
Sundials in and around Leeds
Why look at Sundials in Leeds? An introduction to what sundials are all about and why their time is different from GMT, BST, etc.
A list of Sundials in and around LeedsPrecise locations are given in terms of the OS national grid reference.
Link to British Sundial Society Homepage
The ancient Egyptians were possibly the first civilisation to practice the scientific arts. Indeed, the word chemistry is derived from the word Alchemy which is the ancient name for Egypt.
Where the Egyptians really excelled was in medicine and applied mathematics. But although there is a large body of papyrus literature describing their achievements in medicine, there is no records of how they reached their mathematical conclusions. Of course they must have had an advanced understanding of the subject because their exploits in engineering, astronomy and administration would not have been possible without it.
Almost every High School child knows that the Sun is 93 million miles (or 150 million Kilometres) away from the Earth. Despite the incredible immensity of this figure in comparison with everyday scales - or perhaps even because it is so hard to grasp - astronomical data of this kind is accepted on trust by most educated people. Very few pause to consider how it could be possible to measure such a distance - the 'Astronomical Unit' - and few are aware of the heroic efforts which attended early attempts at measuring it. Unfortunately, even most popular astronomy text books give insufficient information to allow one to see precisely how the task was accomplished.
In the History of Science collection one will find early editions of major works such as De Fabrica by Versalius and Opticks by Newtons. Materials on the History of Technology can be found in the technical papers of the Cleveland firms of Warner and Swasey and Charles F. Brush. In addition, the collections contain important early German, French, English, and American journals. The Natural History collection includes 220 plates of Audubon's Birds of America, Catesby's The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, and Travels of Lewis and Clark.
An unusually fine collection of manuscripts representing primarily British and American literary, political, and historical figures has been received from a number of donors. These include letters from Mms. de Sévigné, Voltaire, George III, Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson, and John Steinbeck
Traditional Chinese medicine is thousands of years old and has literally more than a billion satisfied customers. Many of its treatments and teachings are based on the effects of Chi, a mystical form of bio-energy.
Abacus is probably the first of calculating devices. Encyclopædia Britannica traces the word abacus to the Phoenician abak (sand). American Heritage Dictionary points to the Greek word abax, which might have originated from Hebrew avak (dust). There is little doubt that Ancients used a flat surface with sand strewn evenly over it as a disposable tool for writing and counting. It's said that the great Archimedes was slain by a Roman soldier while concentrating on figures drawn in sand.
"But woolen articles are never taken into temples, nor are (the Egyptians) buried with them. That is not lawful. They agree in this with the so-called Orphic and Bacchic practices (which are really Egyptian) and with the Pythagoreans. For it is not lawful for one who partakes in these rites to be buried in woolen clothes. There is a sacred account given on this subject."
(Herodotus Histories II. 81)
