After the glitzy red-carpet arrivals, the feel-good montages, and the host’s opening roast, the Oscars ceremony switches to its raison d’être: revealing the previous year’s highest achievers in cinema. One after another, the presenters list the nominees, open a lavish envelope, and reveal the winner in each category. The champions breathlessly accept their awards and,…
When it comes to calendars, small errors can add up over time. The Julian calendar—the prevalent calendar in the Christian world for the first millennium CE and part of the second millennium—was an improvement over the Roman republican calendar that it replaced, but it was 11 minutes and 14 seconds longer than the tropical year (the time it…
In June 1946 an airplane travelled from Rome to Paris, crossing over the Mediterranean Sea. There was nothing unusual about this flight except one thing: for 20 minutes of the plane’s journey, one of its passengers became its pilot. The passenger was Dr. Helen Keller, an American author, educator, and activist who since childhood had…