Getty Images has just announced an embed function, which makes it possible to very easily use images from their collections in blogs and other social media, while simultaneously maintaining Getty Images’ rights and — this is the really nice bit — avoiding the use of unsightly watermarks. This is rightly being greeted with enthusiasm (though […]
Under the terms of an agreement made in 1909 between the three main British aviation bodies, the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain concentrated on ‘the scientific phases of the movement’, the Aero Club of the United Kingdom was responsible for ‘sporting and social aspects’, and the Aerial League of the British Empire, the one I’m
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] On 15 February 1915, the Winnipeg Evening Tribune‘s daily astrology column noted the unfavourable positions of Mars and Uranus: The affliction of Mars this month is ominous of outrages against persons in power. A disaster that will shock the people living in cities is threatened. Uranus foreshadows peril
‘Excubitor‘ is Latin for ‘sentinel’; it was the pseudonym chosen by a frequent correspondent on naval affairs for the Fortnightly Review. In March 1908, for example, Excubitor contributed an article entitled ‘The British reply to Germany’s dreadnoughts’; the following January, ‘The blessings of naval armaments’. By May 1913, though, a new theme had appeared. ‘Sea
The art of Charles Dellschau has been receiving some attention lately, thanks to the recent publication of a book about his work. Dellschau, who produced thousands of strange and wonderful watercolours, drawings and collages in Houston, Texas, between about 1899 and 1922, is significant as an early outsider artist, but he is mainly of interest
[Cross-posted at Society for Military History Blog.] (Or, ‘Trenchard at sea’.) Jamel Ostwald’s recent post on urban bombardment in the early modern period, itself partly a response to my post on Trenchardism, prompted me to wonder how straight the line was between aerial bombardment and earlier naval and land bombardments? Was the naval precedent more
So, to wrap up this accidental series. To check whether professional astronomical journals displayed the same patterns in discussing ‘Mars’ and ‘canals’ as the more popular/amateur ones I again looked at the peak decade 1891-1900, this time selecting only the more serious, respected journals. However, because of the French problem I had to exclude L’Astronomie
In my post about the lingering scientific interest in the Martian canals hypothesis after 1909, I said that there was a problem with journal coverage. What do I mean by this? Have a look: This is a repeat of the first plot in the previous post, showing the number of articles published in peer-reviewed astronomical
In a recent, hmm, let’s call it a discussion resulting from an old post I wrote about the US Air Force’s one-time interesting in mapping Mars, I tried to assess how scientific interest in the Martian canals hypothesis lingered after the early 20th century, and said I would run up some figures to illustrate the
If the threat from Germans outside Australia during the First World War was small, the threat from Germans inside Australia was non-existent. There is no credible evidence at all of any espionage, subversion or sabotage activities by German-Australians. But you wouldn’t know it from the way the Australian people and their government behaved. It’s not
