Barnum Brown was marked for greatness from a young age. Born on a Kansas farm on February 12, 1873, the third child of Clara and William Brown went weeks without a name. Nearby Topeka was plastered with advertisements for P.T. Barnum’s traveling circus at this time, as were cities throughout the Midwest. The colorful posters still loomed large in 6-year-old Frank Brown’s mind when his baby brother arrived. As his parents argued about what to name their new son, Frank offered a suggestion: “Let’s call him Barnum.” Young Barnum’s life bore no resemblance to that of the enterprising circus showman, but he would live up to his name. He showed little interest in farming the family’s property and preferred combing the grounds around his home for fossils. His father ran a modest strip-mining operation on their coal-rich property, and the plows and scrapers unearthed ancient treasures. Corals and seashells littered the landscape. Barnum collected enough fossils to stuff every drawer in the house.

The true story of the president who couldn’t hear music

When Ulysses S. Grant was inaugurated for his first presidential term in 1869, thousands of people showed up to celebrate. It was one of the grandest and swankiest parties held in generations, and naturally included lots of music, mostly parade-marching tunes that set the tone of the event. Yet one person who did not enjoy the sound of the beat was the incoming president himself. There’s a famous line attributed to the acclaimed Civil War general: “I know of only two tunes: one of them is Yankee Doodle Dandy, and the other isn’t.” Underneath the joke was a real neurological condition that Grant had, although he never knew it. This disorder also would also afflict at least two other future presidents, Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft. It is known as “congenital amusia,” or an inability to hear music and understand it as — well — music. To those with the condition, music typically sounds cacophonous, like noise.

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Continue reading “Barnum Brown, the man who discovered T. Rex”

In 1832, Europe was in the throes of a cholera epidemic. A Scottish doctor named Thomas Latta knew cholera patients’ blood lacked water and salt, so he’d tried pumping a briny solution directly into the veins of an elderly patient. At first there was no response, but then the woman started to grow stronger. Nearly 140 years after Latta’s experiments, work on the disease would lead to one of the 20th century’s most consequential medical discoveries: oral rehydration solution (ORS). This cheap, simple solution of sugar, salts, and water mixed in the right proportions and delivered orally has saved the lives of more than 70 million, mostly children, since its introduction in the 1970s. It has helped slash the number of children under five dying of diarrhoeal diseases from around 4.8 million in 1980 to about 500,000 today. All of this from a drink that in its most basic form can be made by anyone with access to kitchen salt, sugar, and water.

Last time a president was arrested it was for going too fast in his horse-drawn buggy

The last time a US President was arrested, it involved a speeding horse and buggy, the thunder of hooves near the White House and a repeat offender who happened to be the president of the United States. Ulysses S. Grant, who had an eye for spirited horses and an apparent yen to test their mettle, was arrested in 1872 for speeding on a street in Washington, where he had been driving a two-horse carriage. It was the second time in two days that the policeman had stopped the president; the first time, the officer had issued him a warning. The Grant episode apparently wasn’t reported in the press at the time, but it came to light in 1908 when The Sunday Star newspaper in Washington published an interview with the then-retired officer who pulled the 18th president of the United States over.

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Continue reading “How scientists learned to treat the biggest killer of children”

It was March 1827 and Ludwig van Beethoven was dying. As he lay in bed, wracked with abdominal pain and jaundiced, grieving friends and acquaintances came to visit. And some asked a favor: Could they clip a lock of his hair for remembrance? The parade of mourners continued after Beethoven’s death at age 56, even after doctors performed a gruesome craniotomy, looking at the folds in Beethoven’s brain and removing his ear bones in a vain attempt to understand why the revered composer lost his hearing. Within three days of Beethoven’s death, not a single strand of hair was left on his head. Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death. Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while raising new questions about his origins and hinting at a dark family secret.

What were Neanderthals really like—and why did they go extinct?

When limestone quarry workers in Germany’s Neander Valley discoveredfossilized bones in 1856, they thought they’d uncovered the remains of a bear. In fact, they’d stumbled upon something that would change history: evidence of an extinct species of ancient human predecessors who walked the Earth between at least 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. Researchers soon realized that they had already encountered these human relatives in earlier fossils that had been found, and misidentified, throughout the early 19th century. The discovery galvanized scientists eager to explore new theories of evolution, sparking a worldwide fossil hunt and tantalizing the public with the possibility of a mysterious sister species that once dominated Europe. Now known as Neanderthals—so named by geologist William King—Homo neanderthalensis are humans’ closest known relatives.

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Continue reading “DNA from Beethoven’s hair unlocks family secrets”

In 1747, the young poet Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim was sitting in his study in the small German town of Halberstadt, surrounded by stacks of letters from his friends and associates, and had an epiphany. He realized that despite having corresponded with so many people, he had never actually met most of them in person. And this got him thinking: what if there was a way to visualize all the people he had formed relationships with through letter writing? And thus, the poet’s Temple of Friendship was born. Gleim set out to collect painted portraits of all his friends and relatives, creating an extensive personal portrait gallery that soon filled all the walls of his apartment. He referred to this portrait gallery as his Tempel der Freundschaft (“Temple of Friendship”). He carefully thought about the arrangement of his portrait gallery: his own portrait was always at the center of the gallery, while other portraits were positioned around it.

Jean Denis and the “Transfusion Affair”

Beginning in the spring of 1667, public opinion in Paris was rocked by a remarkable affair involving domesticated animals: the first practical experiments to transfuse animal blood into humans for therapeutic purposes. The experiments that came to be known as the “Transfusion Affair” were shrouded in the competing claims of a highly public controversy in which consensus and truth, alongside the animal subjects themselves, were the first victims. “There was never anything that divided opinion as much as we presently witness with the transfusions”, wrote the Parisian lawyer at Parlement, Louis de Basril, late in the affair, in February 1668. “It is a topic of the salons, an amusement at the court, the subject of philosophical dissertations; and doctors talk incessantly about it in all their consultations.” At the center of the controversy was the young Montpellier physician and “most able Cartesian philosopher” Jean Denis, who experimented with animal blood to cure sickness, especially madness, and to prolong life.

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Continue reading “The poet who invented social media in the 18th century”

An engineer in Wisconsin claims to have improved grief’s design. Aerodynamic, he says, showing off his sketches, barely grief at all! Applying physics like salve to a wound, he remembers what Torricelli said about vacuums, what Carnot said about absolute terror. He grabs a pencil and revises one more time. There’s money to be made in this, his father would assure, chopping chicken-necks through the afternoon. Flightless birds! The engineer pores over schematics, grimaces at draft after draft. His last sketch: confused. Joints unlabeled. A room inside a room inside a room.

J. Estanislao Lopez (2022)