One of Venice’s most famous attractions was unveiled Wednesday following a three year $3.74 million restoration. This marked the first time in a century that the 400 year-old Bridge of Sighs (Ponte dei Sospiri) had undergone renovation. The project attracted some controversy, as the scaffolding placed at the site had been covered with paid advertising. [...]
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
According to some, the automobile age started 125 years ago this week when a patent was filed in Germany for a two-wheeled machine driven by an internal combustion engine. Gottlieb Daimler had helped develop a single-cylinder four-stroke engine in 1884, notable for its relatively light weight. To test the engine, Daimler built a “riding car” —a [...]
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A team of archaeologists has discovered the remains of an extensive three-story building on the island of Ithaca, in the Ionian Sea off the northwest coast of Greece. The complex also features a well from the 8th century BC, roughly the period in which Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, is believed to have been king [...]
Monday, January 25, 2010
In an effort to solve the mystery of who inspired the Mona Lisa, Italian researchers have reached an agreement in principle with French cultural authorities to exhume the body of Leonardo da Vinci. His remains are interred at a chateau in the Loire Valley. If Leonardo’s skull is found, experts can recreate his face, and compare it [...]
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Jennifer Jones, Oscar-winning actress and Norton Simon Museum chair emeritus, died today at age 90. Jones, whose film career began in the 1930s, won an Academy Award for 1943′s “Song of Bernadette,” in the role as a French peasant girl who has apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Jones’ third marriage was to industrialist and art [...]
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Over a period of 33 years, Italian immigrant Simon “Sam” Rodia built a series of structures in the Watts neighborhood of L.A. Adorned with bits of tile, pottery, colored bottle glass, and shells, the Watts Towers were saved from demolition fifty years ago. In spite of official declarations that they were unsafe, the towers passed [...]
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
“The Twilight Zone” premiered on CBS-TV 50 years ago October. Rod Serling, series creator and host, also wrote 92 of the 156 episodes for its five year run. The show became a touchstone of popular culture, and has enjoyed nearly uninterrupted popularity through television, syndication, and DVD releases. The genre-busting series was in vivid contrast [...]
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
An Australian sculptor has planned and supervised the building of 32 “land art” projects on five continents over the past ten years. The geoglyphs are formed from tens of thousands of tons of stones. Andrew Rogers was inspired by ancient America’s mound-builders, and by Peru’s Nazca lines. Rogers involves as many as 5,000 local people [...]
Monday, December 15, 2008
200 Turkish intellectuals today issued an apology for the World War I era massacres of Armenians. The online petition uses the term the “Great Catastrophe,” rather than the word “genocide,” in referring to the 1.5 million deaths that historians estimate Ottoman Turks were responsible for. The official Turkish view is that the deaths were a [...]
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Forty years ago this week, at a conference hall in San Francisco, a Stanford computer researcher demonstrated the first personal computer. The device had a mouse and monitor, and featured rudimentary tools which enabled moving among documents, as well as text and graphics editing ability. The scientist who headed the development team envisioned a computer [...]
Thursday, December 1, 2011
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