An engraving issued by a publisher called John Boydell gave libertine Georgians the opportunity to hang “Joconda” in their boudoir. It must have been popular because many copies survive. This Mona Lisa sits in a chair with her hands crossed in front of a fading view of distant rock formations. And, like the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, she smiles enigmatically. But there is one key difference: she is naked from the waist up. The print has a caption saying this is a reproduction of the painting by “Lionardo da Vinci” that hangs “in the Gallery at Houghton”. Back then it was famous for the oil paintings amassed by its owner, Britain’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. The nude Mona Lisa no longer attributed to Leonardo but to one of his 16th-century followers. Yet, if the work is by a Leonardo imitator, was there a nude Mona Lisa by him to imitate? And if there was, why did Leonardo paint it and for whom? It is one of the most tantalising, and entertaining, mysteries in art – and I think I may have solved it. (via The Guardian)
He doesn’t know Spanish but after undergoing surgery he started speaking it fluently
Stephen Chase was 19 years old when he woke up from a knee surgery speaking fluent Spanish. Despite having only minimal knowledge of the language prior to the surgery, he was able to converse fluently in Spanish for about 20 minutes after waking up from the surgery, before going back to English. The father-of-three from Salt Lake City, Utah, doesn’t remember speaking Spanish, just that nurses were asking him to speak English after waking up from the surgery, which made him really confused. He recalls everything he said to them in English, and it was only later that he found out he spoke fluent Spanish. The 33-year-old attorney was diagnosed with Foreign Language Syndrome (FLS) an extremely rare medical condition that can be caused by anaesthesia, with only around 100 confirmed cases on record since it was discovered in 1907. (via Oddity Central)
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This 2,000-year-old machine found in a Chinese tomb could be the world’s first computer
The computer, at its core, is an input-output device: it receives instructions, executes programmes, performs calculations automatically and produces results. By this definition, China’s ancient ti hua ji, or figured loom – dating back more than two millennia – may well be recognised as the world’s earliest computer, according to the China Association for Science and Technology. Unearthed in 2012 from a tomb dated to around 150BC in Chengdu, southwestern China, this silk-weaving machine made use of programmable computation. Its “programme” came in the form of physical pattern cards – the ancient equivalent of software – which directed the lifting of individual warp threads according to a preset design. CAST is China’s largest official scientific body. Its entry into the global debate over who invented the computer is part of a growing momentum to rewrite technological history from a non-Western perspective. (from SCMP)
Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.
Almost every map you see of ski trails at a mountain resort was painted by one man
For nearly 35 years, James Niehues has hand-painted some of the world’s most iconic mountains. But instead of hanging in art galleries, his work appears in the brochures and on the websites of the world’s ski resorts. And that’s just the way he likes it. “Many skiers come up to me and we get talking and it comes out that I’m the trail map artist, and they all say, ‘Oh my gosh, I thought that was done by computers!’ And I say, ‘No, I paint all of those trees’,” Niehues says. He’s 74 years old with sharp blue eyes. Niehues began painting trail maps in 1987, when he was a 40-year-old graphic designer in Denver, struggling to put food on the table for his wife and four children. Colorado has always been his home. He grew up in Loma, a dusty town near the western border with Utah, surrounded by flat-topped mesas and empty red rock canyons. The sort of landscape that stretches the eye and tempts the palette. (via Adventure.com)
The cork-screw was originally invented as a tool for cleaning musket rifles
The invention of the cork is the most important event in the history of fine wine,” wrote British wine historian Hugh Johnson. If this is true, the invention of a tool to remove the cork can’t be too far behind in importance. The story of the corkscrew is one of ingenious creativity. Originally derived from early firearms technology, corkscrews were once only used in emergencies. But the popularization of the device led directly to one of the biggest technological breakthroughs in the history of wine: the airtight glass bottle, tightly sealed with a breathable cork. According to journalist George M. Taber, “for many decades, there were only two ways to remove the cork [from a bottle], and both of them were bad.” One was to leave the cork sticking out, which made the bottle more difficult to store and the seal less effective. Pushing the cork all the way in made for a better seal, but the only way to get it out was to cut the glass neck of the bottle. This required special heated metal pincers and rendered the bottle unusable. (via Popular Science)
Where cartoons get their inspiration from
Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other places that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest and Why Is This Interesting by Noah Brier and Colin Nagy. If you come across something you think should be included here, feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com