“I hate to advocate drugs...to anyone, but they've always worked for me." Hunter S. Thompson, journalist and author MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-methamphetamine) was originally synthesized by Anton Kollisch (1888-1916)— who was working for German pharmaceutical giant Merck—in 1912 as a side product to a drug intended to control bleeding. It was routinely patented in 1914, and Kollisch died two years later, oblivious to the impact that his discovery would have in years to come. MDMA found its way onto the streets of America during the 1960s. Legend has it that the drug was deliberately developed as an appetite suppressor for use in World War I, but there is no documented evidence that human trials were carried out. It is also "unclear" whether experiments carried out in 1959 by Merck employee Wolfgang Fruhstorfer may have involved tests on humans. The experiments were carried out with an unknown partner, creating even more mystery as more...

The French painter and army officer Nicolas-Jacques Conte patented the process to make pencils in 1795, but it was another Frenchman, Bernard Lassimone, a mathematician, who filed the first patent for a pencil sharpener, in 1828. Up until that point pencils were sharpened using a penknife, which itself derived its name from its use in sharpening quills into pens. it was not until 1847, however, that the pencil sharpener really took off in its modern form, and this was with the invention of a new sharpener by Therry des Estwaux. Perhaps, though, the most significant advance in pencil sharpener design was that by the African-American inventor John Lee Love. He designed the portable pencil sharpener, known as the Love Sharpener, which remains in wide use today, especially by artists. The pencil is placed in the ... -opening of the sharpener and rotated by hand, with the shavings being collected in more...

"Those who drag in the use of human blood for internal remedies of diseases...sin gravely." Thomas Bartholin, professor of anatomy, 1616-1680 James Blundell (1790-1878), an obstetrician and gynecologist at Guy's Hospital, London, realized that blood transfusions offered a possible solution for women who suffered severe hemorrhage following childbirth. Blundell was familiar with the work of John Leacock, who, in 1816, had reported experiments in cats and dogs, establishing that the donor and recipient had to be of the same species. The first human transfusion supervised by Blundell did not in fact involve an obstetric case, but a thirty- five-year-old man with stomach cancer. On December 22,1818, the man was transfused with about fourteen ounces of blood administered by a syringe in small amounts from several human donors. Despite a slight improvement, the patient died fifty-six hours later. To facilitate transfusions Blundell devised an apparatus, known as Blundell's Impeller, consisting of more...

"The Internet... allows [us] at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control." Vinton Cerf When we send files or e-mails to others over the Internet, few of us care how our messages arrive, almost instantaneously, at a distant terminal, with no direct connection between the two. But without the decentralized magic of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), these remarkable events would not be possible. TCP and IP are separate networking protocols, but so intimately linked in use that they are generally referred to as a single entity. Developed by Robert Kahn (b. 1938), Vinton Cerf (b. 1943), and others, and initially used on the U.S. Government's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) packet-switching network in 1983, TCP and IP permitted an ever growing number of remote networks to connect to each other and ultimately mature into the Internet. In essence, TCP and IP more...

"At the campaign of Yuzhang, he ordered his troops to propel the flying fire' on the besieged city...." Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044) In 904 at the siege of Yuzhang, in southeastern China, attacking troops were ordered to launch "flying fire" on the city gates, burning them down and allowing their army to enter and capture the city. This is the first use of "fire arrows," a term that originally meant an arrow carrying a tub of gunpowder that would explode when the arrow impacted. The Compendium of Important Military Techniques (1044), written by Tseng Kung-Liang, gives details of how to launch fire arrows by gunpowder rather than using bows. By 1232, when the Chinese were fighting the Mongols, a much more recognizable rocket was being made using the exploding tubes to propel the arrows. The tubes were capped at the top, but open at the bottom, and tied to more...

“... this [invention] enables good sight and is one of the most useful of arts... the world possesses." Fra Giordano da Rivalto, sermon (1305) In the first century the Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca used a glass sphere full of water resting on his reading material to magnify the letters, and this method was certainly used by farsighted monks a millennium later. Glass blowers in Venice produced lenses that were used as magnifying glasses, and in Europe in the late thirteenth century these were being used in pairs, one for each eye, the holding frame being made of wood or horn. Salvino D’Armate of Pisa (1258-1312) and the friar Alessandro da Spina (d. 1313) of Florence are often given the credit for the invention of spectacles, in the year 1284, but Marco Polo, in 1270, saw elderly Chinese using spectacles and, when asked, they credited the invention to Arabs in more...

More than fifty years: before the Wright brothers flew almost an entire minute in the world's first airplane, French engineer Henri Giffard (1825-1882) traveled 17 miles (27 kilometers) from Paris to Trappes in a lighter- than-air aircraft. Inspired by the streamlined model airship unveiled by.his compatriot Pierre Jullien in 1850, Giffard built his'"'143 feet (44 meter) long, cigar-shaped dirigible and got it off the ground two years later. With its three-bladed propeller driven by a 3-horsepower (2.2 kilowatt) steam engine, it was the first passenger-carrying, powered, and steerable airship in history. The world's .most famous airship, the twentieth century zeppelin, was rigid with a shape determined by a skeletal structure. Giffard's design was non-rigid. Like a balloon, the envelope's shape depended on the pressure of the hydrogen inside that lifted the airship. The dirigible's maiden flight took place on September 24, 1852, when Giffard—sitting in a gondola hanging, from a. more...

There are cinema halls in almost every town. But there is circus hall anywhere. They are possible in big cities like Bombay Calcutta and Delhi. Going to cinema has become a habit. But it is not so with circus. Once there arrived a company to my town. The company announced its arrival to the people by loud-speakers and distribution of hand-bills, t was glad because I had not seen a good circus before. I reached the circus ground in the evening before the time of the show. There were many other students of my school. We went together in a party to the manager and requested him to give us tickets at the concessional rate. He agreed. So, inspire of the great rush we bought our tickets before the start of the show. The circus hall was very big. It had been erected on beams and was covered with thick more...

Dr. Chandra Shekhar Venkata Raman, popularly known as C.V. Raman, is one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20th century. It was he who during a long sea voyage to Europe in 1921 as the representative of the Kolkata University, at a science meet, wondered why the water in Mediterranean sea was such a dark shade of blue. And the time came when he gave the answers to this apparently simple question and won the world's most prestigious award-the Noble Prize in 1930. Dr. C.V. Raman was born on November 7, 1888 in an orthodox South Indian Brahmin family in tirchurappalli, Tamilnadu. His father's name was Chandra Shekhar Aiyer who had special interest in science and mathematics. His mother Parvati was a pious lady. Raman was a very brilliant student since his early childhood. He passed his matriculation at the age of 11 and at 15 graduated from the more...

I live near the Jamuna River in a small village. There are forty families in our village. Every year during the rainy season our village is surrounded by Jamuna water. We have built our houses on the rocky ground. It is much above the level of the surrounding earth.  Last year heavy rains caused flood. We had to vacate our village. We saw big sheet of water all round. Boats were playing in the Jamuna. Many houses were surrounded by angry water and it was a horrible site. Ultimately we were compelled to vacate our houses and we went to our farm where we were safe. The farm was situated at about fifteen kilometres away from our village in the interior. I saw that many other villages were submerged in water. The people were carrying their luggage in the boats. The Government had called the police. The police helped those more...